This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at |http : //books . google . com/
^
GIFT or
Digitized by
Google
■si XkQJtr\ ^J^^^y^,
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by
Google
CLARK'S
FOEEIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
NEW SEEIES.
VOL. XLIl.
Silt ^tttflfttlta of l0a{8^
VOL. L
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 88 GEORGE STREET.
1892.
Digitized by
Google
PRINTED BY MORniKON AND OIBB,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, MAHILTON, ADAHS, AND CD.
DfBLlN, (JBOSOB HERBERT.
NEW YORK, CHARLES SCRIBNER'h KONU.
Digitized by
Google
BIBUCAL COMMENTARY
THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAE
FRANZ DELITZSCH, D.D.,
LKirzia.
TUANSLATED FROM THE FOURTE EDITION.
"QOKtb an Sntroductlon
BY
Teofessok S. R DHIVER, D.D., Oxfobd.
VOL. L .-*.. ;. :••- :
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
1892.
[Tliu Tratulation is Copyright, by arrangemenl with the AiUhor.]
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
^ 1
>/>
DKK
OXFOBDKB MHSTERN ALTTKTAMENTUCHEE FORSCHraO
T. K. CHEYNE und S. R. DRIVER
ALS DANK TCR BEWAHBTE LIKB' UND TKBUE
GEWIDMET.
Digitized by
Google
^
^
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
This fourth edition of my Commentary on Isaiah contains
the fruit of continued labour since the appearance of the
third in 1876, and, after the latter was out of print, a
thorough revisal of the whole has been made in preparation
for a fourth appearance.
To the commentary in the form it has hitherto presented,
the objection has been made that it contained too much
etymological matter and too many curious details far removed
from the proper object of an exegetical work. The com-
plaint was not without foundation, and I have taken care
that it cannot be raised against the commentary in its present
form, especially since, apart from this consideration, I had
thought to make the greatest possible curtailment, and my
taste is opposed to unnecessary repetitions. In former
editions of my commentaries, however, I always leave so
much that is peculiar to each, that they do not quite become
antiquated by later ones.
The illustrative essays contributed by my friends Fleischer
(d. Feb. 10, 1888), Wetzstein, and Von Strauss- Tomey are
to be found in the second and third editions ; those who
consider these contributions of importance may still have
access to them, at least in libraries.* The excursus by
Wetzstein on the Gable mountain - range in Batanea (Ps.
' These papers are those of Victor v. Stranss-Tomey, " Can D'3*D, in
Isa. xlix. 12, be the Chinese !" and of Wetzstein, in the second edition,
" On Isaiah, chap. zzL ; " "On the Kabl (1)3}) and kindred stringed
instruments, chap. v. 12;" "On nrnDS, chap. v. 26 ;" "On npD3 and
ix^£, and matters of agricultural botany generally, chap. xxviiL 26 ; ''
T
371501
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
VI PRKf ACE.
Ixviii. 16), which was published separately in 1884 as a
supplement to the fourth edition of my Commentary on the
Psalms (1883), but which has not yet been appreciated as it
deserves, was the last conjoint production which I could
obtain from him.
In the correction of typographical errors appearing in this
edition of my Commentary on Isaiah, I have been somewhat
fortunate ; perhaps I may venture to hope that it will be
found as correct as could possibly be expected. And yet
even this book, after it is finished, will sooner or lat«r, in my
eyea, shrink into a very imperfect and insignificant produc-
tion ; of one thing only do I think I may be confident, that
the spirit by which it is animated comes from the good Spirit
that guides along the everlasting way.
F. D.
Leipzig, Augtut 7, 18S9.
"On miO and rirp, chap. iix. 24" There are also, in the third
edition, papers, "On mn in Isa. xi. 8, and mvy in Josh. xix. 34;"
" On vf'D in Isa. xvi. 1, xlii. 11, and iriva in xxxiv. 6 and Ixiii. 1."
The contents of these essays are much more varied than the titles lead
one to expect
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
The translation of chaps. L to iv., and from page 436 to
end of this volume, is by the Kev. Jahes Kennedy, B.D.,
New College, Edinburgh. The Eev. William Hastie, B.D.,
and the Bev. Thomas A. Bickerton, B.D. (Examiners in
Theology, Edinburgh University), have translated chaps, v.
to XX. and chap. xxL to page 435 respectively.
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE
Bt Pbofkssoe S. E. driver, D.D., Oxford.'
The death of Professor Franz Delitzsch, which took place on
March 4, 1890, deprived Christian scholarship of one of its
most highly gifted and influential representatives. Though
known probably to the majority of English students only by
his commentaries upon parts of the Old Testament, these
writings represent, in fact, but a part of the literary activity
of his life, and, except to those who can read between the
lines, fail entirely to suggest the wide and varied practical
interests to which his energies were largely dedicated. The
outward story of his life may be told briefly. He was born
at Leipzig, February 23, 1813 ; and, having graduated at the
University of his native city in 1835, he became Professor at
Eostock in 1846, at Erlangen in 1850, and at Leipzig in
1867, the last-named Professorship being retained by him till
his death. From his early student days he devoted himself
to the subject of theology, and laid the foundation of his
knowledge of Hebrew literature (including especially its post-
Biblical development in the Talmud and cognate writings), as
well as of Semitic philology generally, under the guidance of
Julius Fiirst, editor of the well-known Concordance (1840),
and H. L, Fleischer, who was destined in future years to
become the acknowledged master of all European Arabic
scholars. What may be termed the two leading motives of
his life, the desire, viz., to make the Old Testament better
known to Christians, and the New Testament to Jews, were
first kindled in him by the apparent accident of his meeting
in these early years two agents of the London Society for
Promoting Christianity among the Jews. His earliest publi-
* Reprinted from The Expository Timtt, June 1890.
vit
Digitized by
Google
VllI INTRODUCTOKY NOTICE.
cations, which appeared during the time that he was Privat-
docent at Leipzig, were, however, philological or historical.
The first of all was a learned and interesting work on the
history of post-Biblical Jewish poetry, Zur Oesehichte JUdiseher
Poesie, 1836, followed, in 1838, by Wisseiischaft, Kunst,Jvden-
thiim, Schilderungm v/id KrUiken, and Jesurun, seu Isagoge
in grammaticam et lexicographiam linguae Hebraeae, in wliich,
following his teacher, Fiirst, he developed etymological prin-
ciples which were far from sound, and which afterwards, at
least in great measure, he abandoned. In 1841 he edited a
volume of Anekdota in illustration of the history of mediaeval
scholasticism among Jews and Moslems. The next work
which deserves to be mentioned is of a different kind — a
devotional manual bearing the title of Das Sacrament des
wahren Leibes und BltUes Jesxi Christi, which attained great
popularity in the Lutheran Church, and has passed through
several editions (the seventh in 1886). In 1842 there
appeared a Dissertation on the life and age of Habakkuk,
which was followed in 1843 by the first of his exegetical
works, consisting of an elaborate philological commentary on
the same prophet — part of a series of commentaries which
was projected by him at this time in conjunction with his
friend, C. P. Caspari, but of which the only other volume that
was completed was the one on Obadiah (by Caspari). A
treatise on Die Piblischprophetische Theologie, published in
1845, closes the list of works belonging to the years during
which he was Privatdocent at Leipzig.
Not much of importance was published by Delitzsch during
the Eostock period (1846-50) ; he was probably at this time
engaged in preparing lectures, and also in amassing that store
of materials which was to be utilized more fully in future
years. The seventeen years of his Erlangen Professorship
were more prolific. 1851 saw Das Hohdied untersucht und
ausgelegt; 1852, the first edition of his Genesis — interesting
from the fact that he already clearly recognised the composite
structure of the book ; 1855, his System of Biblical Psychology,
remarkable for original but difiBcult thought and subtle specu-
lations ; 1857, a Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, to
which Bishop Westcott, in his recent edition of the same
epistle, acknowledges gratefully his obligations ; 1 8 5 9-6 0, the
Digitized by
Google
INTBODOCTOET KOnCK. IX
first edition of a Commentary on the Fsalms; 1861-62, a
monograph, entitled, ffandschriftliehe Funde (notices of the
textual criticism of the Apocalypse, and an account of the
re-diacovery by himself of the famous Codex Beuchlini, — a
MS. of A.D. 1105 containing the Hebrew Text, with Targum,
of the prophets, — which bad been used by Erasmus, but had
since been lost); 1864 and 1866, the first editions of his
Commentaries on Job and Isaiah respectively (in the series
edited by himself and C. F. Keil conjointly). The Eriangen
period was closed by a second edition of the Psalms (1867 —
incorporated now in the series edited with Keil), and the two
instructive descriptive sketches of life in the time of Christ,
entitled, Jesiis and Hillel (directed against Renan and the
eminent Jewish writer Abraham Geiger), and Artizan Life in
the time of Jesus.
The literary activity of the last period of bis life, the
twenty-three years passed by him in his Professorship at
Leipzig, shows even greater versatility than that of his earlier
years. His inaugural lecture is a study on Physioiogy and
Music in their relation to Grammar, especially Hebrew Orammar.
The studies on the age of Christ, just mentioned, were followed
before long by others of a similar nature, viz. A Day in
Capernaum (graphically written and learned), Sehet welch ein
Menseh I and Josi and Benjamin, a tale of Jerusalem in the
time of the Herods. In 1869 he published his System der
Christlichen Apologetik, in 1873 and 1875 Commentaries,
likewise in the series edited with Keil, on Proverbs, and on
the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, respectively. In 1871,
1878, and 1886 there appeared three monographs, full of
minute and interesting researches, entitled, Studies on the
Origin of the Complutensian Polyglott ; in 1874, in honour of
his former teacher and present colleague, Fleischer, Jiidiseh-
Arabische Poesien aus Vormuhammedischer Zeit ; Ein Speci-
men aus Fleischer's SehuU als Beitrag zur Feier seines silbemen
Jubildums ; in 1885 a short Biblical study, Der ifessias als
VersOhner ; in 1889 another, Sind die Juden wirhlich das
auserwdhlte Vblk t The publication of Wellhausen's Gesehiehte
Israels in 1878 stirred him deeply: he was alternately pained by
the boldness with which it treated sacred things and impressed
by its brilliancy and the frequent cogency of its argument
Digitized by
Google
X INTBODUCTOBY NOTICE,
The immediate result was the series of twelve papers, called
Pentatetich-kritisehe Studien in the Zeitsehrift filr Kirehiiche
Wissenschaft imd Kirchliches Ze&«n for 1 8 8 0. In these papers
Delitzsch discusses critically certain prominent questions
(such as the laws respecting the Passover, the Tabernacle,
Deuteronomy, the " Law of Holiness ") on which Wellhausen's
conception of the history of Israel turns, and, while fre-
quently repudiating particular points in Wellhausen's argu-
ment, recognises in his conclusions a large element of truth.
Six other papers on cognate topics followed in the same
periodical in 1882. About this time also two courses of his
lectures were published in English from notes taken by one
of his pupils — Messianic Prophecies and The Old Testament
History of Redemption (1880, 1881). Meanwhile he had
been busy in the preparation of new and improved editions
of many of his commentaries. Thus the fourth edition of his
Genesis appeared in 1872, the fifth, incorporating the results
to which his recent critical studies had led him, under the
title Mn neiur Commentar ilber die Genesis, in 1887 ; Job
reached a second edition in 1876, the Psalms a fourth
edition in 1883, Isaiah a fourth edition in 1889. In 1888
a number of discourses and articles were reprinted by him in
a volume called Iris ; Farbenstudien und MumenstUcke ; here
he gives freer scope than usual to his imagination, and treats
a variety of topics half playfully, half in earnest, with inimit-
able ease and grace. Professor Delitzsch's last work was
Afessianische Weissagungen in Geschichtlicher Folge, the preface
to which is dated only six days before his death. In this
volume, which contains bis lectures on Messianic prophecy in
the form in which they were last delivered by him in 1887,
his aim, he tells us, was to state the results of his lifelong
study — " eine Spatlingsgarbe aus alter und neuer Frucht " —
in a clear, compendious form, as a last bequest to those
engaged in missionary work.
One department of Delitzsch's literary labours remains still
to be noticed. As remarked above, it was a guiding aim of
his life to make the New Testament better known to Jews.
This first bore fruit in the missionary periodical called Saat
auf Roffnung, — " Seed in hope," — which was edited by him-
self from 1863, and to which he was a frequent contributor.
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTOBT NOTICK. jd
In 1870 it assumed a still more practical shape in an edition
of the Epistle to the Bomans in Hebrew, accompanied by a
most interesting introduction, containing an account and
criticism of existing translations of the New Testament into
Hebrew, and valuable illustrations of the thought and phrase-
ology of the apostle from Babbinical sources. He did not,
however, rest here. A series of Talmudiscke Stvdien, chiefly on
linguistic points connected with the New Testament, which ulti-
mately extended to seventeen papers, had already been begun
by him in the Zdtsehrift filr die gesammte Lutherische Theo-
hgie und Kirehe (1854-77);' and in 1876-88 these were
followed in the same periodical by another series of papers,
Horat Hdrraicae et Talmudicae, supplementary to Lightfoot
and Schoettgen, on the Hebrew equivalents of various New
Testament expressions. These were, no doubt, " chips "
from the great work on which he was at this time busily
engaged ; for the desire of his heart, a new Hebrew version
of the entire New Testament, was now on the point of being
realized, the British and Foreign Bible Society having en-
trusted him with the revision of the version published by
them. This revision was completed in 1877. The improve-
ments which it contained were very numerous ; nevertheless, it
was capable of more ; and these, due partly to himself, partly
derived from the criticisms and suggestions of other scholars
(which Delitzsch always generously welcomed), were incor-
porated by him in the editions which followed (the 9th, in
1889). It was in consequence of some suggestions tendered
by him for this purpose that the present writer first made
the acquaintance of Professor Delitzsch, and began a literary
correspondence with him, which was continued at intervals
to the period of his last illness. An interesting account of
Professor Delitzsch's labours in connection with this subject
has been written by himself in English in a pamphlet called
The Hebrew New Testament of the British and Foreign Bible
Society (Leipzig 1883). In its successive editions Delitzsch's
Hebrew New Testament has enjoyed a very large circulation,
partly among Christian scholars, on account of the exegetical
interest attadiing to it, and partly among Jews, for many of
*■ See the snbjects and dates in The Siimw New Tatament of the BritiA
and Foreign Bible Society, p. 35 t
Digitized by
Google
XII INTEODUCrOEY NOTICK.
whom the primaiy documents of Christianity, set forth in
their own language, have been found to possess a peculiar
attractiveness. During the later years of his life, Delitzsch
spent much time in the successive revisions of this work,
and was unwearying in the effort to make it correspond more
completely with the ideal which he had set himself.* At the
time of his death he had nearly completed his preparations
for a tenth edition, which was to include such extensive im-
provements as to entitle it to he termed, in a certain sense, a
"new" translation.* The translation, even in the editions
which have already appeared, shows great scholarship and
accuracy, and every page evinces the care that has been
bestowed upon it
Such is the record, though even so not told quite fully,' of
Professor Delitzsch's wonderfully busy literary life. It can
afford no cause for surprise that one who knew him well,
and who found him working whilst lying propped up in bed
daring his last illness, should have remarked that he had
never known a man who made uniformly such a careful use
of his time. His nature was a richly-gifted one ; and he had
learnt early how to apply to the best advantage the talents
entrusted to his charge. And yet he was no mere student of
books. He had a singularly warm and sympathetic dis-
position ; he was in the habit of meeting his pupils informally
1 See, most recently, his short papers in the ExpotUor for February,
April, and October 1889 ; twelve others, written by him during his last
illness, and published in the Theologiichei LiUraturblatt, 1889, Nos. 46-62,
1890, Nos. 1 and 2; and Saat auf Hoffnwng, February 1890, pp. 71-74.
The first of those in the Expositor is of importance as evidence of the
friendly spirit in which Delitzsch and Salkinson, the author of another
modem Hebrew version of the New Testament, which has sometimes
been placed in rivalry with Delitzsch's, regarded personally each other's
work. On the characteristics of these two Hebrew New Testaments, the
writer may be permitted to refer to an article by himself in the ExpotUor
for April 1886 (though it should be stated that some of the grammatical
faults there pointed out in Salkinson's translation have since been
corrected).
» See Saat au/Soffnung, February 1890, pp. 67-70, 74
• For some minor writings, as well as several other articles in periodi-
cals, and his contributions to Herzog's Beal-Eneyelopiidie (Daniel, Heilig-
keit Oottes, Hiob, etc. ; see the list in voL zviiL p. 726 of the second
edition), have, of necessity, been left unnoticed.
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTORY NOnCK. XIU
in both social and religious gatherings ; and he loved to make,
and succeeded in making, many friends. His personality was
an impressive one, and exerted a wonderful charm upon all
who came within reach of its influence. He loved England ;
and there are many both in this country and in America who
still retain the vivid memory of kindnesses received from him
in past years, while they were students at Leipzig, and who
have heard with sorrow the tidings of his death. The present
writer never had the privilege of meeting him personally, but
he has received from him many most genial and friendly
letters, besides experiencing in other ways tokens of his re-
gard. The depth and reality of his convictions are attested
by many passages of his writings. His personal religion was
devout and sincere. Mission work, especially among the
Jews, interested him warmly ; he was much attracted by the
movement among the Jews of South Bussia in the direction of
Christianity, headed by Joseph Eabinowitzsch, and published
several brochures illustrating its principles and tendencies.
Of his pamphlet, Emste Fragtn an die Cfebildeten jildischer
Religion, more than 4000 copies were disposed of in three
months. The anti-Semitic agitation which broke out in
Grermany a few years ago deeply vexed him ; the injustice of
the charges and insinuations brought against the Jews by a
Roman Catholic writer in 1881 he exposed in a pamphlet,
entitled, BoUin^s TtUmtuiJude beleitehUt, which was followed
by other publications having a similar aim.
As a thinker and author, though he is apt to be less suc-
cessful in his treatment of abstract questions, and sometimes
does not sufficiently hold his imagination in check, Delitzsch
is forcible, original, and suggestive. His literary style is
altogether superior to what those who know it only through
the medium of translations would suppose to be the case.
His commentaries and critical writings are distinguished not
less on account of the warm religious feelii^ which breathes
in them than for the exact and comprehensive scholarship
which they display. Thoroughness is the mark of all his
works. His commentaries, from their exegetical complete-
ness, take rank with the best that Germany has produced.
He brings out of his abundantly furnished treasury things
new and old. Among Christian scholars his knowledge of
Digitized by
Google
XIV nmiODUCTOET NOTICK,
Jewish literature was unsurpassed. Jewish views — though
these, it is true, are often only of interest as curiosities — are
noticed in his commentaries more fully than in those of any
other modem scholar. In difficult and controverted passages,
the interpretations adopted by different authorities, from the
earliest times, are compactly stated. The successive editions
of his commentaries invariably bear witness to the minute
and conscientious labour bestowed upon them. It is not the
least valuable of their characteristics that they incorporate, or
contain references to, the latest notices or researches which
have any important bearing upon the text History, philo-
logy, criticism, travel, archaeology, are equally laid under con-
tribution by the keen-eyed author. One never turns to any
of his commentaries without finding in it the best information
available at the time when it was written. His exegesis, if
occasionally tinged with mysticism, is, as a rule, thoroughly
sound and trustworthy, attention being paid both to the mean-
ing and construction of individual words, and also to the
connection of thought in a passage as a whole. The least
satisfactory of his commentaries is that on the Song of Songs,
the view taken by him of the poem as a whole obliging him
in many cases to adopt strained interpretations of the text
Delitzsch appreciated scholarly feeling and insight in others,
and acknowledges gracefully (in the Preface to the second ,
edition of Jdi) his indebtedness to the exegetical acumen of
that master of modern Hebraists, Ferdinand Hitzig. In the
matter of etymologies, however, Delitzsch never entirely dis-
owned the principles which he had imbibed from Fiirst ; and
hence, even to the last, he sometimes advocated derivations
and connections between words, which are dependent upon
questionable philological theories, and cannot safely be accepted.
Critically, Delitzsch was open-minded ; and with praise-
worthy love of truth, when the facts were brought home to
him, did not shrink from frankly admitting them, and modi-
fying, as circumstances required, the theories by iirhich he had
previously been satisfied. As was remarked above, he had
accepted from the beginning, at least in its main features, the
critical analysis of Genesis ; and in the earlier editions of his
Commentary on Isaiah he had avowed that not all the argu-
ments used by rationalists were themselves rationalistic. But
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTORY NOTICK XT
as late as 18*72 he still taught that the Pentateuch, as we have
it, was virtually a product of the Mosaic age. A closer study
of the subject, however, which he was led to undertake by the
appearance of Wellhansen's History, convinced him that this
view was not tenable; and in the papers noticed above,
written by him in 1880-1882 (the substance of which is
stated in a condensed form in the Introduction to his New
Commentary on Genesis), he embraced the critical view of the
structure of the entire Hexateuch, treating Deuteronomy as
being, in form, the work of a prophet of the age of Hezekiah,
and allowing that the ceremonial law was not probably cast
into its present shape until a later date still. While accept-
ing these conclusion.s, however, he holds rightly that each of
the main Pentateuchal codes embodies elements of much
greater antiquity than itself, and rests ultimately upon a
genuine Mosaic basis. The importance of this change of
position on Delitzsch's part is twofold : it is, firstly, a signi-
ficant indication of the cogency of the grounds upon which
the critical view of the structure of the Old Testament rests ;
and, secondly, it is evidence of what some have been disposed
to doubt, viz. that critical conclusions, properly limited and
qualified, are perfectly consistent with a firm and sincere
belief in the reality of the revelation contained in the Old
Testament. In the matter of the authorship of the Psalms,
though there are signs in his last edition that he no longer
upheld so strenuously as before the authority of the titles, he
did not make the concessions to criticism which might per-
haps have been expected of him. In the case of the Book of
Isaiah, the edition of 1889 — which, by what was felt by
both to be a high compliment, was dedicated conjointly to
Professor Cheyne and the writer of this notice — is accommo-
dated throughout to the view of the origin and structure of
the book generally accepted by modem scholars.
Such is a sketch, only too inadequate and imperfect, of
Franz Delitzsch's life and work. He has left a noble example
of talents consecrated to the highest ends. May his devotion
to learning, bis keenness in the pursuit of truth, his earnest-
ness of purpose, his warm and reverent Christian spirit, find
many imitators I
8. B. DRIVER.
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTION
TO THB
PROPHETICO-PREDICTIVE BOOKS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT.
In the Canon of the Old Testament the prophetico-historical
are followed by the prophetico-predictive books. Both to-
gether, under the name of &*K*?^, form the middle of the three
divisions in the collection, — the first, in accordance with their
position, being designated the "Former Prophets" (D*K'?>'i
D'alnnn), while the second are named the " Later Prophets "
(n'ilnnNn O'K'ajn). In the Masora this middle division is
sometimes called NnWB'K, " tradition," ' because the Torah is
regarded as the fundamental revelation of God, and post-
Mosaic prophecy as tradition {^^^., for which the Aramaic is
•'^P^f?, from o7^»^ tradere) flowing from this original source
in a continuous stream ; the Former Prophets are then, under
the title of W'^D'Ji? ^wdt^K, distinguished from the Later
Prophets, which are called WJJn Knp»^.
It is true that the Torah also is a prophetical work, and is
cited as such in Ezra ix. 11; for Moses, the mediator of the
revelation of law, is, as such, the prophet to whom no other
was like, Deut. xxxiv. 10 ; but it was not becoming that the
Pentateuch, which is separated from the Book of Joshua
under the name of mwn (idd), should be included in the
division of the Canon which is designated " the Prophets ; " it
is certainly the unique record of the fundamental revelation
which has ever conditioned the existence and life of Israel as
the nation pre-eminently associated with the history of re-
' Begarding this Masor«tic title, see Johannes Delitzsch, De Iiupiratioru
Scripturae Sacrae, 1872, p. 7 f.
VOL. L A
Digitized by
Google
2 ISAIAH.
demption, and from which, moreover, all prophecy in Israel
has been derived. And this holds true, not merely of
prophecy, but of all later writings. Not only the prophetic
style of writing history, but also the non-prophetic, — t.e. the
priestly, the political, the popular styles, — has its model in
this Torah. The former follows the Jehovistico-Deuteronomic
type, the latter the Elohistic'
The opinion that the historical works found among the
Hagiographa were placed there merely because of their later
origin, but should properly have been ranged among the
" Former Prophets," ' rests on a misconception concerning this
variety in the style of writing history. Ezra, — whom we have
good ground for regarding as the author of the great " Book
* With reference to the Pentateuchal criticism, we purposely remark
here, in a conspicuous position, that the acknowledged Isaianic discourses
present parallels to all the constituent portions of the Pentateuch. (1)
The Jehovist : jn tnpnn Wd, xxx. 29, of. mOD, xxxi. 6<>^Ex. xiL 13, 23,
27 (only here in Jehovistic context is the name of the festival referred to
the verb HDB); nffvh • • • n35{D, xix. 19 'V/ Gen. xxviil 18, 22, xxxi. 13
(as, inasmuch as the law forbids the erection of a nsVD, not only as a tadxut
of heathen worship. Lev. xxvi. 1, but also absolutely, Deut xvL 22, the
view which the prophet reveals appears to be shaped by a reference to the
naSD of Jacob at Bethel).— (2) The Law of the Two Tables : »3B rAvrh
Hi '>o»3B"nK rrttnS Ex. xxxi v. 24 (also Deut. xxxi. 1 1).— <3) Deuteronomy,
i. 2i>sw.the beginnin<; of the Song U'jKn, Deut. xxxii. I. — (4) Deuteronomy
together with the Iaw of Holiness : i. 7, 0008* OayiK'v^Lev. xxvi. 33,
noaef oariK nnTn; tnn nerw oanyx^Lev. xxvi. 31, 33, v?r canjn
nain ; nnw uhsm oni astiJ} oanonK'x.Deut xxviiL 33 (cf. ei ; Lev.
xxvi. 16) ; ont roBnoa nDDW^Deut xxix. 22, mojn mo rOBTOa (cf.
the reference to Sodom and Gomorrah in ver. 10 ff.). Add also xxxvi. 7,
according to which Hezekiah abolished the high places, and centralized
the worship in the Temple of Jerusalem : the restriction of worship to
one place, accordingly, does not date from Josiah's time. — (5) The Elohist :
iv. 6, rnJV M131 "Vj Gen. i. 1 (though I would not adduce this parallel, if
Wellhausen did not pronounce (Ps to be the late production of theological
abstraction, and the passage in Isaiah corrupt); i. 14, D3*Bnn'v>Num.
X. 10, xxviii. 11 ; topo, i. 13 (which occurs with the Klohist and else-
where also, but not with the Jehovist^ and m^ in the same verse 'v^ mvPi
Num. xxix. 36 (and elsewhere also, but not with the Jehovist) ; n*lt3p iu
the same verse -x. Lev. ii. 2, ix. 16, v. 12, vi. 8, pan TtSprn (vix. the
DiaTM). And is not the altar in heaven, vi. 6, the antitype of the rOTO
mopn in Ex. xxx. 27, etc 1
* This view has been maintained, e.g., by B. Anger, Oetehiehte der
messianuchm Idee (edited by Max Kienkel, 1873X p. 9.
Digitized by
Google
iNTBODuonoir. 8
of Kings" to which the Chronicler (2 Chron. xxiv. 27) refers
under the title D'?7?? ''?? ''^??> & collection bearing on the
history of Israel, to which he had appended, as the concluding
portion, the history of the time of the Bestoration, — is no-
where called a " prophet " (<<*??), and, in fact, he was not one.
The Chronicler also — who, besides the Books of Samuel and of
Kings, both of which have been arbitrarily divided into two
parts, had - also before him that work of Ezra as his main
source of auUiorlty, and thence produced the historical com-
pendium lying before us, the conclusion of which was made
up of the memorabilia of Ezra (now, however, in separate
form as the Book of Ezra) — makes no claim to be a prophet.
Nehemiah, too, — from whose memorabilia our Book of
Nehemiah is an extract, arranged in the same fashion as the
Book of Ezra, — ^was not a prophet, but a Tirshatha, ie. a
provincial governor under the king of Persia. The Book of
Esther, however, through its relegation of the religious element
to the background, is as far as possible removed from the
prophetic style of writing history ; from the latter, indeed, it
differs as characteristically as the Feast of Purim, the Jewish
Carnival, differs from the Passover, the Israelitish Christmas.
But it must seem strange that the Book of Buth stands
among the Hagiographa. This little work so closely resembles
in character the closing portion of the Book of Judges (chaps,
xvii.— xxi.) that it might have been placed between Judges
and Samuel, and probably did actually stand there originally ;
only for liturgical reasons has it been placed beside the so-
called five MegiUoth (festival rolls), which succeed one another
in accordance with the festival calendar of the ecclesiastical
year ; for the Book of Canticles forms the lesson read on the
eighth day of the Feast of Passover, Buth is read on the second
day of the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), Kinoth (Lamentations)
on the ninth of the month Abib, Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) on
the third day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while Esther is
read in the Feast of Purim, which falls in the middle of Adar.
This is also the simplest answer to the question why the
Lamentations of Jeremiah are not appended to the collection
of Jeremiah's prophecie& The Psalms, however, — though
David may be called a prophet (Acts iL 30), and Asaph is
named " the seer " (n^), — stand first among the Hagio-
Digitized by
Google
4 ISAUH.
grapha, inasmuch as they do not belong to the literature
of prophecy (ntoaj), but of that of sacred lyric poetry (tc
mrr). Their prophetic contents are entirely lyric in their
origin, whereas the lyric contents of the Lamentations through-
out presuppose the official position and public announcements
of Jeremiah as a prophet Among the canonical books of
the prophets (d'K'33) are found only the writings of those who,
in virtue of special gifts and calling, were commissioned
publicly — whether by word of mouth or by writing — to pro-
claim the word of God ; and this they did freely, not being
fettered, like the priests, by legal forms. For, though the name
K*33 denotes one who announces, publishes, proclaims, i.e. (as
we must further conceive of him) one who speaks as the organ
(HD, "mouth," Ex. iv. 15 f.; Jer. xv. 19) of God; and though
the earliest application of the term (see Gen. xz. 7 ; cf. xviii.
17-19 ; P& cv. 15), which is revived in the writings of the
Chronider, is far wider than the later ; yet here, in designat-
ing the middle division of the Canon of the Old Testament,
the word is certainly not so restricted as in Amos vii. 14,
where it indicates one who, having gone through a school of
the prophets, or at least having been educated through inter-
course with prophets, had wholly devoted himself through life
to prophetic teaching. It has, however, a specific sense that
has been incorporated into the organism of the theocratic life :
here it is the designation of one who comes forward, on the
basis of a divine vocation and divine revelations, as a public
teacher, and who thus professes not merely the gift of predic-
tion, but also by preaching and writing exercises the office
of a prophet, — an office which, at least on Ephraimitish soil,
had further received a distinct and characteristic impress
through the institution of the schools of the prophets. This
explains the fact that the Book of Daniel could not find a place
among the d'K'oj. For Daniel was not a prophet in this
sense : he received and became the medium of divine revela-
tions, but he was not a divinely commissioned public teacher
like Nathan and Gad, Ezekiel and Zechariah. As remarked
by Julius Africanus (in his letter to Origen concerning
Susanna), not only did the way and manner in which the
divine disclosures were made to him differ from the iiriirvoia
wpo<f»}TiKij, but he did not hold the ofHce of a prophet, so that
Digitized by
Google
nrrEODUCTioir. 5
the Talmud (Megilla 3a), speaking of the post-exile prophets
ia relatioa to him, says, " They stood above him, for they
were prophets, but he was not a prophet " (mro 'ony inj'K
It is thus because of a fundamental distinction between
literary productions of a prophetic character properly so called,
and those which are not prophetic in the same strict sense, —
a distinction that holds alike in the domain of history and in
that of prediction, — that all the books of historical and pre-
dictive content, which stand among the Hagiographa (D*2in3,
which the grandson of Sirach renders by the expressions -rh
SHiXa varpia fiifixia and tA Xoiirh t&v fiifiXlmv), have been
excluded from the middle division of the Old Testament
Canon entitled b>»'<23. Distinction was made between the
historical books from Joshua to Kings, and the predictive
books from Isaiah to Malachi, as works of men who exercised
the prophetical office, and thus as works of a prophetic
character ; and such books, on the other hand, as Chronicles
and Daniel, which, though recognised as having been written
imder the guidance of the Holy Spirit, were not written on
the occasion of a call to make prophetic announcements
through speech and writing, and did not thus originate from
true prophetic inspiration. The two dififerent styles of writing
history are also really unmistakable. Each of them has its
own peculiar history. The non-prophetic — considering its
history Eind remains — ^we would call the national or annalistic.
It is evidently quite possible that a prophetic historical work
like the Books of Kings and an annalistic work like the Books
of Chronicles, may have borrowed certain elements from the
other historical style; but when once the distinguishing
features of the two styles have been discerned, those elements
which are foreign to the peculiar nature of each work, and
which have merely been utilized for carrying out its design,
nearly always admit of being made out with certainty.
The oldest type of non-prophetical historic composition
is found ia the priestly-Elohistic style of writing in the Penta-
teuch, as distinguished from the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic style.
These two styles are continued in the Book of Joshua, and
this, too, in such a way that, generally speaking, the latter
appears in those portions which narrate the history of the
Digitized by
Google
6 ISAUH.
conquest, while the former occurs in those sections which
describe the division and apportionment of the land. The
Book of Judges, at the very beginning, which holds up the
history of the judges as a mirror in which one may see and
learn of God's dealing in salvation, bears the impress of a pro-
phetic historical production ; while the concluding portion,
like the Book of Buth, deals with Bethlehemitish stories, which
point to the Davidic kingdom, the promised kingdom which
formed the centre of prophecy. And though the main portion
of the book is founded upon oral and even written forms of
the stories regarding the judges, there are also introduced
extracts from a more complete work, in which the prophetic
pencil of a man like Samuel had combined into an organic
whole the accounts of the judges, not merely down to the
times of Samson, but even to the complete overthrow of the
Philistine oppression. That the Books of Samuel are a pro-
phetico-historical work is expressly attested by the Chronicler
in a passage which refers to the main body of these books ; in
those pieces, however, which record the encounters with the
four Philistine children of the giants, 2 Sam. xxL 15 ff.
(= 1 Cbron. xx. 4 ffi), and those which tell of David's heroes
(Dnjjl) who stood nearest to him, 1 Sam. xxiiL 8 ffi (= 1 Chron.
xi. 11 K), they contain at least two remnants of national or
popular historical composition, which delights in the repetition
of the same words at the beginning and the end, after the
manner of a refrain, and touches on the domain of an epic or
national ode, reminding us, as Eisenlohr has fitly said, of the
legend of Boland and Artus, and the Spanish Cid. More of
such remains are found in the Chronicles, as the list of those
who joined David during the time of persecution by Saul,
1 Chron. xii. 1—22, beginning with the words : " Now these are
they who eame to David at ZUdag, while he was still hard
pressed by SaiU the son of Kish ; and they belong to the heroes
who are ready to help in war, armed vnth bows, vnth the right
hand and the left using stones and arrows by means of the bow."
Some of these pieces may have fallen into the hands of the
later historians separately, and may have been incorporated
without any change ; but, so far as they are tabulated, the
Chronicler leaves us in no doubt regarding their main source.
After giving a census of the Levites from the age of thirty
Digitized by
Google
niTHODOcrnoir. 7
years and upwards, in 1 Cbron. xxiiL 2-2 4a, he adds in ver.
245 and other verses following, in a sketchy manner, that
David, considering afterwards that the heavy work of former
days had now ceased, reduced to twenty the age at which
service should begin ; for " t» the last words of David (TVi ^y^
0'?^''DJ5'|') the deseendanis of Levi are numbered from the age of
twenty." He here refers to the last part of the history of
David's life in the "book of the Kings of Israel" (^^o iDp
V*'!) which lay before him ; and we learn from 1 Cbron.
xxvii. 24, regarding the other work from which such lists bad
been transferred into this his leading source. There, after
giving the list of the princes of Israel, he remarks concerning
a general census that David had intended to make, " Joab, the
ton of Zeruiah, began to count, but he did not finish ; and there
arose because of this an outburst of wrath upon Israel, and this
numbering was not put into the numbering (-)bd03, but read
1BD3, ' into the book'} of the Chronicles (own nn) of David."
Hence the Annals or Chronicles of David contained such
tables, which bore the character of national historic writing ;
and from these Annals they were transferred into the large
Book of Kings lying before the Chronicler.
These official annals began with David. The kingship of
Saul rose into little more than a military supremacy ; and
the kingdom, as reunited under him, did not develop beyond
the first stages of a military constitution. Under David,
however, king and people entered into a mutual relationship
of the most extensive kind, and the thorough organization of
the kingdom was necessarily followed by the multiplication
of public servants of various kinds and degrees. We see
David, as supreme head of the kingdom in all respects, even
in matters of religion, acting on his official supremacy ; and
we meet with several entirely new offices instituted by him.
Among these was the post of the "''?|P, t.e. " recorder," or, as
the LXX. often designatively renders the word, inrofunjiiaTo-
ypa^oi, or (as in 2 Sam. viiL 1 6) o eirl t&v xnroiivrifuiTwv
(Jerome, in genuine Boman fashion, "a commentariis ").
The Targums similarly render K'?!?!"^ N|PO, "the officer
over the memorabilia" (=K»3i3n ibd bo. over the annals,
2 Chron. xxxiv. 8 ; c£ Ezra iv. 15 ; Esth. vi. 1). The -I'aro
had to keep the national annals, and his office was di£ferent
Digitized by
Google
8 ISATAH.
from that of the ib^d, or chancellor. The •«» had to prepare
the public docaments ; the fon had to presei-ve them, and to
incorporate them in the connected history of the nation.
That it was David who instituted the office of national
annalist in Israel is proved by the fact that references to the
annals begin with the Chronicles (D»D'ii *i3n) of David,
1 Chron. xxyiL 24, and are afterwards continued in the
" Book of the Chronicles of Solomon " (rtchv nm iBD, which
is an abbreviation from ntJyt^ nnD»n »i3n nOD), 1 Kings xL 41.
Thereafter, references to them are carried on in Judah to the
end of Jehoiakim's reign, and in Israel to the end of the
reign of Pekah. Under David, and also under Solomon, the
office of national annalist was filled by Jehoshaphat, the son of
Ahilud. The fact that, apart from the annals of David and
those of Solomon, nothing bat the annals of the kings of Judah
and those of the kings of Israel are ever cited,is easily and simply
explained. When we view the national annals as a whole,
they naturally divide themselves into four parts : the first two,
the annals of David and of Solomon, set forth the history of
the still united kingdom ; while the last two, the annals of
the kings of Judah and of Israel, presented the history of the
nation as divided. The original state archives doubtless
perished in the flames when Jerusalem was burnt by the
Chaldeans. Copies made from these documents, however,
were preserved ; and the histories of the reigns of David and
Solomon in the historical books which have been handed
down to us, particularly rich as they are in annalistic material,
show that diligence in copying and distributing was specially
directed to the annals of David and of Solomon, and that these
probably were circulated separately, like single decades of
Livy.
Bichard Simon thought the ienvains publics were prophets,
and in more recent times also the annals have occasionally
been regarded as prophetic historical compositions. L Appeal
is made to the statements of the Chronicler regarding prophetic
materials in the work which formed his main source, the great
Book of Kings; and it is assumed that this great Book of
Kings contained the combined annals of the kings of Judah
and of Israel But (a) the Chronicler cites his chief source
under various designations, as a Book of the Kings, once
Digitized by
Google
ETTEODUCTION. 9
(2 Chron. zzxiiL 8) as ^^t. (i.e. res gestae, or historice) of the
kings of Israel, but never as the annals of the kings of
Judah or Israel ; he even designates it once as ">Bp Bnnp
O^ST&n, commenUarius libri regum, and thus, as an explanation
and elaboration of our canonical Book of Kings, or — what we
leave undecided — of an older Book of Kings altogether,
(i) In this Midrash there were, of course, inserted numerous
and extensive pieces of a prophetico-historical character, for
the purpose of illustrating the history of the kings ; but the
Chronicler expressly states, on several occasions, that these
were incorporated materials (2 Chron. xx. 34, xxxiL 32).
Among the documents which were taken into the annals,
there must also have been pieces of a prophetic character,
and not merely those referring to priestly and Levitical
matters, military affairs, and such like ; but it would be the
greatest literary blunder to imagine that such pieces as
the histories of Elijah and Elisha, which are plainly of
Ephraimitish and prophetic origin, have been taken from the
annals, especially because Joram of Israel, during whose
reign Elisha flourished, is the only monarch of the northern
kingdom in whose case there is no reference to the annals.
The character of the documents which were chiefly utilized
in the annals, and Incorporated into the connected history,
may be perceived from an instance found in 2 Chron.
XXXV. 4, where the arrangement of the Levites into classes
is referred to the " writing of David " (yf\ ara) and the
" writing of Solomon " (nb'PB' anpp), which passed for royal
writings, either because they were drawn up by order of the
king, and confirmed by him, or because records actually
written by the king's own hand formed the basis of the
sections in the annals (cf. 1 Chron. xxviii. 11-19). When
we further bear in mind that the accounts given by the
Chronicler of the arrangements made by David regarding the
priests and the Levites, point to the annals as the original
source, we have — at least in 2 Chron. xxzv. 4 — a confirma-
tion of the governmental and (so to speak) royal character of
these annals.
II. A second reason for regarding the annals as prophetic
historical works is the consideration that otherwise, especially
in the kingdom of Israel, they could not have been written in
Digitized by
Google
10 ISUAH.
the theocratic spirit. But (a) the official or state origin of
the work is implied in the very fact that they end just where
the work of a prophetic historiographer would properly have
begun. For, of references to the annals in our Rook of
Kings, there are fourteen (counting from Rehoboam and
Jeroboam) in the history of the kings of Judah (references
being wanting only in the cases of Ahaziah, Amaziah, and
Jehoahaz), and seventeen in the history of the kings of
Israel (the case of Joram being the only one in which no
reference is given) ; in neither line do the annals come down
to the last monarch in the two kingdoms, but only to
Jehoiakim and Pekah, from which we must infer that the
writing of the national annals ceased with the approaching
fall of the two kingdoms, {b) When we look more closely
at the thirty - one references, we find that sixteen of these
merely state the rest of the acts of the king mentioned are
written in the annals: 1 Kings ziv. 29; 2 Kings viiL 23,
xil 20, XV. 6, 36, xvL 19, xxi 25, xxiiL 28, xxiv. 5;
1 Kings XV. 31, xvL 14; 2 Kings L 18, xv. 11, 21, 26, 31.
In the case of four Israelitish kings, it is merely stated
further that their >TJ<M (heroism, t.e. their brave conduct in
war) is described in the annals, 1 Kings xvi. 5, 27 ; 2 Kings
X. 34, xiii. 8. More definite statements, however, regarding
what was to be read in the annals, are found in the case of
Abijam, whose war with Jeroboam was there described,
1 Kings XV. 7 ; in the case of Asa, xv. 23, all whose bravery,
and all that he did, and all the cities that he built, being
there related ; in the case of Jehoshaphat, xxii. 46, where
reference is made to the heroic deeds that ho performed, and
the kind of wars that he carried on ; in the case of Hezekiah,
2 Kings XX. 20, where mention is made of all his heroism,
and how he made the pool and the aqueduct, and brought
the water into the city; in the case of Manasseh, xL 17,
all that he did, and the sin whereby he sinned ; in Uie case
of Jeroboam, 1 Kings xiv. 19, what kind of wars he carried
on, and how he ruled; in the case of Zimri, xvL 20, his
conspiracy that he formed ; in the case of Ahab, xxiL 39,
all that he did, and the ivory house that he constructed, and
the cities that he built ; in the case of Joash, 2 Kings xiiL
12, xiv. 15, his heroism, how he warred with Amaziah,
Digitized by
Google
IMTBOD0CTION. 1 1
king of Judah; in the case of Jeroboam, 2 Kings xiv. 28,
his bravery, how be warred, and how he recovered Damascus
and Hamath, that belonged to Judah, for Israel ; in the case
of Shallum, xr. 15, his conspiracy which he formed. These
references furnish plain proof that this annalistic history was
not prophetico-pragmatictd in its character. It recorded out-
ward events, it had its roots in the popular mind and its
sphere of action in the national life and institutions ; com-
pared with the prophetic history, it was more secnlw than
sacred, more a history of the people than a history of
redemption.
The numerous references of the Chronicler to historical
writings by prophetic authors show the constant literary
activity in the field of history which was displayed by the
prophets generally, after the time of Samuel, with whom,
properly speaking, b^'ns the era of the prophets in Israel as
a nation settled and constituted under the law (Acts iiL 24).
That writer, at the dose of the history of David, refers
(1 Chron. xxix. 29) to the words of Of?) Samuel the seer
(p^), of Nathan the prophet (K'^iC), and of Gad the seer
(nriin); at the end of the history of Solomon (2 Chron.
ix. 29) to the words of (T!??) the prophecy of (nifftaj) Ahijah
the Shilonite, and the visions of (nitn) Jedi (or Jedo) the
seer; in the case of Behoboam (2 Chron. xiL 15), to the
words of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer ; in the
case of Abijah (2 Chron. xiii. 22), to the commentary of (t^*)?)
the prophet Iddo; in the case of Jeboshaphat (2 Chron.
XX. 24), to the words of Jehu the son of Hanani, which were
included in the Book of the Kings of Israel ; in the case of
Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi 22), to a complete history of that
king, which was composed by Isaiah the son of Amoz ; in the
case of Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxii. 32), to the vision of (fitn)
Isaiah, as an account that could be found in the Book of the
Kings of Judoh and Israel ; in the case of Manasseh (2 Chron.
xxxiii 19), to the words of Hozai There is certainly room
for doubting whether, in these citations, ^^n does not rather
(as, for instance, in 1 Chron. zxiii. 27) denote the historical
account of such and such a person. The following reasons,
however, prove that, in the mind of the Chronicler, historical
accounts written by the person named were meant, (a) From
Digitized by
Google
12 ISAUH.
2 Chron. xxvi 22 we see how easy and natural it was for him
to think of prophets as historians of particular epochs in the
history of the kings. (6) In other places also, where *!>3^ is
combined with the name of a prophet (as in 2 Chron. xxix.
30, zxxiiL 18), the latter ia the genitive of the subject or
author, not of the object (c) In the citations given above,
^nria is used interchangeably with *?3'!"?y, an expression which
still more decidedly requires us to understand it as referring
to authorship ; and (d) this view is put beyond all doubt
by the interchange of ^ Bhto, in 2 Chron. xiii. 22, with
iiy 'nsf, in 2 Chron. xii. 15. That these accounts, how-
ever, which are named after prophets, were not lying before
the Chronicler as separate writings along with his main
source, is evident from the fact that, except in 2 Chron.
xxiii. 18 f., he never refers to both together. They had
been incorporated in " the commentary of the Book of Kings "
(2 Chron. zxiv. 27) lying before him, where, along with the
annalistic sources of the work, they could easily be distin-
guished as prophetic productions. And inasmuch as it is
conceivable that the author of our canonical Books of Samuel
and Kings should not have made use of these sources com-
posed by prophetic authors, it is legitimate to ask whether it
be still possible for critical analysis to discover these sources,
either in whole or in part, — just as one may with certainty say
that the list of officers used as a boundary-stone in 2 Sam.
XX. 23-26, and the survey given in 1 Kings iv. 2-19 of
Solomon's ministers and his court, together with the details
as to the requirements of the royal kitchen (1 Kings v. 2 S.),
the number of stalls for the king's horses (1 Kings v. 6), and
similar matters, have been derived from the annals.
This is not the place to enter more minutely into such an
analysis. It is enough for us, through the references given in
Chronicles, to have cast light on the restless activity of the
prophets, from the time of Samuel onwards, engaged in writing
history, — an activity which, even without the express references,
is obvious from the many historical extracts in the Book of
Kings from the writings of prophet-historians. Both authors
draw, directly or indirectly, from annalistic and prophetic
sources. But the Book of Kings and the Chronicles them-
selves also, taken as a whole — when we look at their authors.
Digitized by
Google
INTBODUCTION. 13
and thus at the mode in which the historical materials are
arranged and wrought into shape — represent two different
styles of historical composition ; for the Book of Kings is the
work of a prophet, and is pervaded by the prophetic spirit,
while the Book of Chronicles is the work of a priest, and
bears a priestly character. The author of the Book of Kings
has taken Deuteronomy and the prophetic literature as bis
models, whereas the Chronicler so closely imitates the old
style of the on^n *vxn, that his own is often nndistinguish-
able from the style of the sources from which, directly or
indirectly, his material was derived ; the work, accordingly, is
a strange mixture of very ancient and very modem phraseology.
From the view of history which is inserted in 2 Kings xvii.
7 t, one may see the spirit and the purpose of the author in
writing the book. Like the author of the Book of Judges,
who wrote in a similar spirit (see Judg. ii. 1 1 ff.). he seeks
to show, in his history of the kings, how both the king-
doms of Judah and Israel, by despising the word of God borne
to them by the prophets, and particularly through the great sin
of idolatry, had fallen from one stage of inward and outward
corruption to another till they reached the depth of misery in
the Exile. Judah, however, with its Davidic government,
was not without hope of rising again from the depths, if the
hearts of the people were not closed against the prophetic
preaching from their own past history. The Chronicler, on
the other hand, permits his love for the monarchy and
priesthood, which were chosen from the tribes of Judah and
Levi, to be felt even in the annalistic surveys forming the
preface to his work ; and, starting at once with the sad end
of Saul, wastes not a word on the course of suffering through
which David reached the throne, but hastens on to the joyful
beginning of bis reign, which is pictured to us in a style at
once popular, military, and priestly, as in the case of the annals.
Then he sets before us — almost quite apart from the history of
the northern kingdom — the history of Judah and Jerusalem
under the rule of the Davidic family, and this with special ful-
ness when he is able to praise the care of the monarch for the
temple and its service, and his co-operation with the Levites
and the priesthood. He displays a preference and partiality
for the brighter portions of the history ; whereas, in the case
Digitized by
Google
14 ISAUH.
of the author of the Book of Kings, the law of retribntion,
which prevails in the historical matter, demands at least equal
prominence for the darker parts.
Both of them, nevertheless, equally afford us a deep insight
into the laboratory of the two modes of writing history, and
the historical works of both are rich in discourses by prophets,
which deserve closer consideration, because, equally with the
prophetico-historical writings from which citation is made,
they are to be regarded as the preliminary and occasional
exercises of the prophetic literature, properly so called, which
afterwards assumed a more or less independent position, and
to which the " Later Prophets " (D-nntJ W»^^) belong. The
Book of Kings contains the following utterances and discourses
of prophets : (1) Abijah of Shiloh to Jeroboam, 1 Kings xL
29-39 ; (2) Shemaiah to Behoboam, xii. 22-24 ; (3) a man
of God to the altar of Jeroboam, xiiL 1 f. ; (4) Abijah to the
wife of Jeroboam, ziv. 5—16 ; (5) Jehu the son of Hanani to
Baasha, xvi. 1-4 ; (6) a prophet to Ahab, king of Israel,
XX. 13 f., xxii. 28 ; (7) a pupil of the prophets to Ahab,
XX. 35 £f. ; (8) Elijah to Ahab, xxl 17-26 ; (9) Micaiah the
son of Imlah to the two kings, Ahab and Jehoshaphat,
xxii. 14 ff. ; (10) Elisha to Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, 2 Kings
iil 11 ff. ; (11) a pupQ of Elisha to Jehu, 2 Kings ix. 1-10 ;
(12) a " burden " or message concerning the house of Ahab,
ix. 25 f. ; (13) Jehovah to Jehu, x. 30 ; (14) Jonah to Jero-
boam II., — indirectly, — xiv. 25-27 ; (15) a general message
of the pi-ophets, xviL 13 ; (16) Isaiah's addresses to Hezekiah,
chaps, xix. and xx. ; (1 7) warning prophecy on account of
Manasseh, xxi. 10-15 ; (18) Huldah to Josiah, xxii. 14 ft;
(19) message of warning from Jehovah concerning Judah,
xxiii. 27. Of all these prophetic utterances and discourses,
only Nos. 2, 9, and 18 are found again with the Chronicler
(2 Chron. xi. 24, xviii., xxxiv.), partly because he relates
merely the history of the kings of Judah, and partly because
he aimed at supplementing our Book of Kijigs, which doubt-
less lay before him. The following prophetic utterances and
addresses, not found in the Book of Kings, meet us in the
Chronicles : (1) The words of Shemaiah in the war between
Behoboam and Shishak, 2 Chron. xii. 7, 8 ; (2) the words of
Azariah the son of Obed before Asa, xv. 1-7 ; (3) Hanani to
Digitized by
Google
INTKODUCnON. 15
Asa, xvj, 7-9 ; (4) Jahnziel the Asaphite in the assembling
of the nation, xx. 14—17 ; (3) Eliezer the eon of Dodavabu
to Jehosbapbat, xx. 37 ; (6) the letter of Elijah to Jeborani,
xxi. 12-15 ; (7) Zecbariah the son of Jehoiada in the time
of Joasb, xxiv. 20 ; (8) a man of God to Amaziah, xxv. 7-9 ;
(9) a prophet to Amaziah, xxv. 15, 16 ; (10) Oded to Pekah,
xxviiL 9-11. To extend still more widely the sphere of our
examination, we add (1) the address of the " messenger of
Jehovah " in Bochim, Judg. il 1-5 ; (2) the address of a
prophet to Israel, in Judg. vL 8—10 ; (3) the address of a man
of God to Eli, 1 Sam. ii. 27 ff. ; (4) Jehovah's words to
Samuel concerning the bouse of Eli, 1 Sam. iii 11—14 ; (5)
Samuel's words to Israel before the battle at Ebenezer, 1 Sam.
viL 3 ; (6) Samuel's words to Saul in Gilgal, 1 Sam. xiii.
ISt; (7) Samuel to Saul after the victory over Amalek,
1 Sam. XV. ; (8) Nathan to David in view of his intention to
build the Temple, 2 Sam. vii ; (9) Nathan to David after his
adultery, 2 Sam. xil ; (10) Gad to David after the nambering
of the people, 2 Sam. xxiv.
Ait6r taking a general survey of these utterances and
addresses, and comparing one with another, we are warranted
in assuming that some have been preserved to us in theii
original form, such as (in the First Book of Samuel) the
addresses of the man of God to Eli, and tJie words of Samuel
to Saul after the victory over Amalek : this we infer from
their peculiar character, their snblimity, and the difference
between their style and that of the historian who gives them,
as this is seen elsewhere in bis writings. In other cases, at
least the essential features have been preserved, as in the
addresses of Nathan to David : this is proved by their echoes
which reverberate in later history. Among the addresses
handed down veriatim by the author of the Book of Kings
may be reckoned those of Isaiah (2 Kings xix. 6 ff., 20 f.,
XX. 1, 6 f., 17 f.) ; the " burden " (Kfcp) in 2 Kings ix. 25 t.
of primitive and peculiar form, together with some other brief
utterances of prophets. Possibly also the words of Huldah
are given in all essential respects, for it is only in her mouth
(2 Kings xxii. 19; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 27), in the mouth of
Isaiah (2 Kings xxii. 19), and in the "burden" to which
reference has just been made, that we find the prophetic
Digitized by
Google
16 ISAUH.
expression " declareth Jehovah " (fjJT Dtu), which likewise
meets us in 1 Sam. iL 30 with other tokens of its being
original, and whose high antiquity is fully attested by the
Davidic Psalms and 2 Sam. xxiil 1 (cf. Gen. xxiL 16). In
some of these utterances the historian does not at all concern
himself about giving the original words ; they are prophet-
voices which sounded forth at one time or another, and whose
leading tone he seeks to give, as in Jndg. vL 8-10 ; 2 Kings
xvil 13, XXL 10-15. Beproductions of prophetic testimonies
in such general form naturally bear the impress of the
reproducing writer ; thus, in the Books of Judges and Kings
there is visible the Deuteronomic style of thought of their
final editor. But we will go farther, and must affirm
generally that the predictions in the Books of Samuel, Kings,
and Chronicles bear marked traces of the narrator's own hand,
and of the influence exercised by indirect sources. The dis-
courses which are common to the Chronicles and the Book of
Kings, are almost literally the same in both ; the remainder,
however, have quite a different look. The addresses in the
Book of Kings almost always begin with, "Thus saith
Jehovah" (n}n^ new nb), or, " Thus saith Jehovah, the God of
Israel" (so also in Judg. vi. 8, and in 2 Kings xix. 20 before
the addresses of Isaiah) ; and there is nothing that occurs in
them more frequently than the phrase "Wtt jp; (« because
that "), and Deuteronomic expressions like Ofvsn^ '''?J?,!?i T? V)},
and others ; to which may be added a liking for similes, in-
troduced by 12^ ("as"), 1 Kings xiv. 10, 15; 2 Kings
xxi. 1 3. Tlie idea of God's " choice " of Jerusalem recurs
in the same words in 1 Kings xL 36 ; 2 Kings xxiil 27 ;
and the idea " that there may always remain a light to
David " (ypjp T3), 1 Kings xi. 36, is an exclusive peculiarity
of the author among Old Testament writers. The words,
"I have raised thee up from among the people, and set
thee for a prince over my people Israel," occur not merely in
the second address of Ahijab (1 Kings xiv. 17), but also
slightly altered in the address of Jehu (xvi. 2). The words,
" Him that dicth in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that
dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat," are found in
substantially the same form in the second address of Ahijah
(xiv. 11), in Jehu's address (xvi. 4), and in that of Elijah to
Digitized by
Google
INTBODUCnOM. 17
Ahab (xxL 24). The threatenings, "I will destroy every
man child, him that is shat up and him that is left at large
in Israel, and will sweep behind the house of Jeroboam," is
found, with slight variation, in the second address of Ahijah
(xiv. 10), in the address of Elijah to Ahab (xxL 21), and in the
second address of Elijah to Jehu (2 Kings ix. 8) ; while it is
clearly seen from 1 Kings xvi 11 and 2 Kings xiv. 26, that
the form of these threatenings is the style of the narrator.
It is therefore undeniable that almost all these prophet-
utterances, so far as a common impress is possible at aU,
are of similar type, and that the common bond which
unites them is no other than the subjectivity of the Deutero-
nomic narrator. A similar condusion must be drawn
regarding the prophetic addresses in the Chronicles, which
likewise so extensively bear the unmistakable traces of the
Chronicler's own treatment, that Caspari, in his treatise on
the Syro-Ephraimitish war (p. 53 ff.), acknowledges, even
regarding what seems to be the most original of all the
addresses (in 2 Chron. xv. 2-7), that it recalls the peculiar
style of the Chronicler. In the case of the Chronicler, how-
ever, whose chief source of material must have resembled the
spirit and style of his own, — an assumption which the Book
of Ezra especially warrants us in making, — ^it is less easy to
say how far he exercised a free hand than it is in the
case of the author of the Book of Kings, who seems to have
found the most of the addresses merely indicated in outline,
and to have freely reproduced them from such sketches.
If these discourses had come down to us in their original
form, we should possess in them an exceedingly important
source of information for the history of the development of
prophetic ideas and forms of expression. We should then
know that Isaiah's favourite phrase, "for Jehovah hath
spoken it " C*?^ 'ijn*, *3), so far as we have information, was
first employed by Ahijah (1 Kings xiv. 11); that Joel, when
he prophesied " in Jerusalem shall be deliverance " (Joel iii.
5), had been preceded by Shemaiah (2 Chron. xii 7) ; that
Hosea, in iii 4 (cf. v. 15), took up again the utterance of
Azariah the son of Oded, " And many days shall Israel con-
tinue without the true God, and without a teaching priest,
and without law ; but when they turn in their distress "...
vou i. B
Digitized by
Google
18 ISAIAH.
(2 Chron. xv. 3 f., where, as the parallel proves, the perfects
in ver. 4 are to be understood in accordance with the pro-
phetic context); that in Jer. xxxL 16 we have an echo of
an utterance by the same Zechariah, in the words, " ibr there
is a reward to thy work;" that Hanani, in saying, " The eyes
of Jehovah run to and fro throughout the whole earth"
(2 Chron. xvL 9), is the precursor of Zechariah (iv. 10); and
there are other similar instances. But, considering the influ-
ence which the idiosyncrasies of the two historians exercised
upon the discourses which they communicate (cf. for instance,
2 Chron. xv. 2 with 1 Chron. xxviii. 9 ; 2 Chron. xiL 5
with xxiv. 20; also ver. 7 with 2 Chron. xxxiv. 21, and
the parallel in 2 Kings xxiL 13; and 2 Chron. xv. 5, "In
those times," with Dan. xL 14) ; considering also the difficulty
in finding out the original elements of these addresses (pos-
sibly, for instance, the idea that a light will remain to David,
1 Kings XV. 4, 2 Kings viiL 19, was really first expressed by
Ahijah, 1 Kings xL 36), one will be able to make of them
for this purpose only a cautious and sparing use. It is
doubtful whether such expressions as, " to put my name
there," 1 Kings xi. 36, and " he shall root out Israel from
this good land," 1 Kings xiv. 15, have received the Deutero-
nomic form (see Deut xiL 5, 21, xiv. 24, xxix. 27) from
the prophet or from the author of the Book of Eangs (cL
1 Kings ix. 3 and the parallel passages in 2 Chron. viL 20,
ix. 7 ; 2 Kings xxi. 7 f.). There remains, however, in the
predictions of those older prophets, a sufficient amount of
original matter for enabling us to see in them the prefigura-
tions and predecessors of the later ones. Thus Shemaiah,
with his threat (gainst Behoboam and its later modification
(2 Chron. xii. 5-8), reminds us of Micah opposing Hezekiah
(Jer. xxvi. 17 K). The position assumed by Hanaui towards
Asa, when he invoked the aid of Syria, is precisely the same
as that of Isaiah in relation to Ahaz, — as there is also a close
resemblance generally between both events. like the man
of God in Bethel, Hosea and Amos prophesied against the
" high places of Aven " (Hos. x. 8), and the " altars of Bethel "
(Amos ill 14, ix. 1). When Amos, in consequence of the
divine call (Amos vii 1 5), leaves his home and betakes him-
self to Bethel, the chief seat of the Israelitish image-worship.
Digitized by
Google
IMTBODUCnOK. 19
in order to prophesy against the idolatrous kingdom, is
there not in this a repetition of the history of the prophet
in 1 Kings ziii.? And when Hanani, in consequence of
denouncing Asa, is thrown into prison, is this not a kind of
prelude to the subsequent fate of Micaiah the son of Imlah
(1 Kings xxii), and of Jeremiah (Jer. xxxii.)? Moreover,
Ahijah's sjmbolization and confirmation of what he predicted,
by rending into twelve pieces a new garment (a symbol of
the kingdom still undivided and strong), has its analogies in
the history of the earlier prophets (1 Sam. xv. 26—29) as in
that of the later (Jer. xxiL). It is only such signs (oviBto)
as that by which the prophet who came from Judah to Bethel
confirmed his prophecy (1 Kings xiii 3), that almost wholly
disappear from the later history of the prophets, though even
Isaiah does not disdain to ofifer King Ahaz a sign in verifica-
tion of his prophetic testimony (Isa. vii. 11).
No essential difference exists between the prophecy of
earlier and that of later times ; in particular, we see it is the
same spirit which from the first, and all through, unites the
prophets of both kingdoms, notwithstanding the diversity of
action which was necessitated by different circumstances.
But differences do present themselves. The earlier prophets
are exclusively occupied with the internal affairs of the king-
dom, and do not as yet draw within their range the history
of other nations in the world with which that of Israel was
closely interwoven ; their predictions are exclusively directed
to the king and people of both kingdoms, and not yet to a
foreign nation, — one of the neighbouring peoples, or what we
might expect, the Egyptians and Syrians ; the Messianic
element still lies in a non-transpatent chrysalis state ; and
the poetry of thought and language, which afterwards ap-
peared as the result of prophetic inspiration, announces itself
only in some striking figures of speech. As we have seen,
it is perhaps scarcely possible to pronounce a decided opinion
regarding the style of delivery of these older prophets ; but,
from a general impression of a sufficiently reliable kind, we
may distinguish prophecy, down till about the time of King
Joash, as the prophecy of overmastering action, from the
later prophecy, which was that of convincing speech: as
remarked by 6. Baur, in the case of the older prophets it is
Digitized by
Google
20 iSAiAa
only as a confirmation of clear inward conviction that concern
is shown aboat words, — ^tbe modest attendants of powerful
external action. Just for this reason they could not very
well produce prophetic writings in the highest sense of the
word. But even from the time of Samuel, the prophets as a
body had made it a part of the duties of their calling to treat
the history of their time in a theocratic-pragmatic way. The
cloistral, but by no means quietistic, retirement of the life in
the schools of the prophets was specially favourable in the
northern kingdom to this literary occupation, and secured for
it unquestioned liberty. From 2 Chron. xx. 34, however, we
perceive that prophets in Judah likewise occupied themselves
with the writing of history ; for the prophet Jehu belonged
to Judah, and, as may be inferred from 2 Chron. xix. 1-3,
lived in Jerusalem.
The literature of predictive writings, however, properly so
called, had begun in the time of Jehoram king of Judah
with the " visi(»i " (l^W) of Obadiah, — for we think we have
proved elsewhere' that this pamphlet against Edom was
occasioned by the calamity mentioned in 2 Chron. xxL 16,
17, to which also Joel and Amos refer. Obadiah was
followed by Joel, who had before him the prophecy of the
former, introducing into the wider and fuller circle of his
own publication, not only matter, but also expressions, found
in the prophecy of Obadiah. Here again the prophetic
literature, in the higher sense, shows how it grew out of the
prophetico-historical literature; for Joel informs us of the
result of the penitential worship which had been brought
about through his appeal, in a historical passage (IL 18, 19a)
connecting the two parts of his writings. It is now the
fashion to bring him down into post-exilic times, but this is
one of the worst fruits of the forced consistency of Penta-
teuch - criticism : nothing is more certain than that he
flourished during the first half of the reign of Joash the king
of Judah.* Obadiah and Joel were contemporaries of Elisha.
' In the essay, "When did Obadiah Prophesy?" Zeittchri/i /Ur da*
gesamtnte bUheritehe Thtohgie uml Kirche, ISfil, p. 91 ff.
* See my essay, " Two certain Results regarding the Prophecy of Joel,"
in the same jonmal, 1861, p. 306 ff. ; cf. Le Prophiu Joel nach E. Le
Savoureus, ron Ant J. Baurogartuer, Paris 1888.
Digitized by
Google
IKTBOD0CTION. 21
Elisha himself wrote nothing ; but from the schook under his
guidance there proceeded, not merely prophetic deeds, but also
prophetic writings; and it is significant that the writings which
bear the name of Jonah, whom an ancient Haggada describes
as one of the "sons of the prophets" (DtJ'ain yn) of the
school of Elisha, do not so much belong to the prophetic
literature, in the higher sense, as rather to the prophetico-
histozical, and, in fact, to the historical writings by prophets.
An approximation to the time when Jonah was sent to
Kineveh may seem from 2 Kings xiv. 25 — according to which
Jonah the son of Amittai, of 6ath-hepher, in the tribe of
Zebolun, had predicted the restoration of the kingdom of
Israel to its promised extent — a prediction which was
fulfilled in Jeroboam the son of Joash, the third of his house
after Jehu, and which thus was issued in the beginning of the
reign of Jeroboam II., if not even under Joash. The mission
to Nineveh may belong to an earlier period than this predic-
tion. A glance at the Book of Amos, on the other hand,
shows us that at the time when this prophet flourished,
Assyria was about to arise again. The indication of time,
" two years before the earthquake " (Amos i 1), fixes nothing
for us. But if Amos prophesied " in the days of Uzziah king
of Judah, and of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel,"
then — assuming that, according to 2 Kings xiv. 23, Jero-
boam II. had reigned forty-one years, from the fifteenth year
of Amaziah, and was thus for fourteen years contemporary
with Amaziah, and for twenty-seven years with IJzziah — bis
period of activity lay in the last twenty -seven years of
Jeroboam's reign. When he appeared, the kingdom of Israel
was still at the height of its power which had been secured
through the efforts of Jeroboam, while the kingdom of Judah
was yet in the low estate into which it had fallen under
Amaziah ; for both, he predicts a common fate to befall them
at the hands of Assyria, which, though not mentioned, is never-
theless clearly meant The beginning of the public ministry
of HosEA. comes into contact, at most, with the close of the
ministry of Amos. The symbolical portion (chaps. i.-iii)
with which his book begins takes us to the last five years of
Jeroboam's reign, and the subsequent prophetic discourses are
not out of accord with the statement in chap. i. 1 (which is
Digitized by
Google
22 ISAIAH.
ftx>m a later hand), according to which this prophet continued
to prophesy under Hezekiah, and thus till the fall of Samaria,
in the sixth year of Hezekiah. After Hosea, the Ephraim-
itish Jeremiah, appeared Isaiah, who according to chap. vi.
was called in the last year of Uzziah, about twenty-five years
after the death of Jeroboam IL His younger contemporary
was MiOAH, of Moresheth, who, according to chap. L 1, did
not appear till some time within the reign of Jotham, and
whose book, according to the inscription " concerning Samaria
and Jerusalem," must have been composed after the fall of
Samaria in the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign (with which
also the narrative in Jer. xxvL 17 IT. agrees), so that
his ministry thus began and ended within the far longer
ministry of Isaiah. The same remark holds good of Nahum,
the Elkoshite, whose " burden of Nineveh " closes the pro-
phetic writings of the Assyrian period: he prophesied after
the defeat of Sennacherib, when the power of Assyria was
broken; but the yoke on Judah's neck (L 13) was to be
viewed as broken only if Assyria did not rise again. Nahum
was followed by Habakkok, who, among the twelve minor
prophets, was the last of the Isaianic type, and began to
announce a new era of judgment, — the Chaldean. He
prophesied before Zephaniah and Jeremiah,* during the reign
of Josiah, and possibly even as early as Manasseh's time
With Zephaioah, then, begins the series of prophets of the
type of Jeremiah, whom he resembles in following older
prophets, and reproducing their materials and words in a
kind of mosaic Jkbemiah, according to the opening verse
in his prophecy, was called in the thirteenth year of Josiah's
reign ; hence he began his public ministry before Zephaniah,
— ^for internal grounds * compel us to place the prophecies of
the latter after the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. Jere-
miah's ministry in Judaea, and iSnally in I^ypt, lasted more
than eighty years. In his last prophetic discourse (chap, zliv.)
he gives a pledge of the certain fulfilment of its threats, in
the approaching fall of Pharaoh-Hophrah, who in the year
570 B.C. lost throne and life in the same place where his
great-grand&ther Psammetichos, a century before, had seized
*■ See my Oommentsry on these prophets. 1843.
* See my article on Zephaniah in Henog'a Oydopoedia.
Digitized by
Google
niTEODUCTlON. 23
the Egyptian crown. Contemporaneously with Jeremiah,
though without knowing him personally, so far as we are
aware, "RzinrTHT. wrought in the same spirit among the exiles
of Judah. According to chap. L 1, 2, his call took place in
the thirtieth year, i.e. of the era of Nabopolassar, which is
nearly the fifth year after the captivity of Jehoiakim,
595 KG. The latest date associated with his ministry (xxix.
17) is the twenty-seventh year of the captivity, which is the
sixteenth after the destruction of Jerusalem, — the period
between Nebnchadnezzar's raising of the si^e of Tyre and
his expedition against Egypt. We thus know of a ministry
of twenty-two years on the part of this prophet, who, when
called, may have already been older than the stUl very youth-
ful Jeremiah. Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the two great
prophets who spread their praying and protecting hands over
Jerusalem as long as possible, and when the catastrophe was
inevitable, saved it even in its fall Their announcements,
together with the prophetic sermon in Isa. chaps. xL-lxvi.,
have bridged over the chasm of the exile, and laid the
foundation of the restored national church of post -exilian
times. This community was cheered and encouraged by
Hagoai, in the second year of Darius Hystaspes, through his
prediction of the glory in store for the temple, now rising
anew from its ruins, and for the house of David, which was
again coming to honour in Zerubbabel. Only two months
later Zechabiah appeared: his last predictive discourse
belongs to the third year of Darius Hystaspes, the year after
the promulgation of the edict requiring the building of the
temple to be continued. The predictions of the second
portion of his book (chaps, ix.— xiv.) are thoroughly eschato-
logical and apocalyptic, and make use of older circumstances
and utterances of prophets as emblems of the final future.
Prophecy was now silent for a considerable time, until the
last prophet-voice of the Old Covenant was heard in Malachi.
His book accords with the state of things found by Nehemiah
on the occasion of his second stay in Jerusalem under Darius
Nothus ; and it was his peculiar calling in connection with
the history of redemption to predict the speedy advent of the
messenger appointed to precede the coming of the Lord, —
namely, El^ah the prophet, — and that the foremnner would
Digitized by
Google
24 ISAIAH.
then be followed by the Lord Himself, as " the Angel of the
Covenant " (n*!?'? Wt"?), the Messenger or Mediator of a New
Covenant
This survey shows that the arrangement of the "later
prophets" in the Canon is not strictly chronological The
three " greater " prophets, who are so called because of the
extent of their books of prophecy, stand tc^ether; and the
twelve " minor " prophets, because of the smaller extent of
their books of prophecy, are conjoined in a /ttovojSt/SXo?, as
Melito calls it, which is named ">fe'y D*3B', in the Masora "Vy?
(="'?? T?"), in the Hellenistic dialect ol SmSexa (Wisd.
xlix. 10 ; Josephns, e. Apion, L 8 ; of Ensebius, Hist. EecUs,
iii. 10), but also r^ Bt»SeKaivp6<j>t)Top (the Book of the Twelve
Prophets). Within this collection of Jbhe smaller prophetical
books, chronological order is so far observed as that they fall into
three groups, representing three periods of prophetic literature,
viz. prophets of the Assyrian period (Hosea to Kahum), pro-
phets of the Chaldean period (Habakkuk and Zephaniah), and
prophets of the post-exilian period (Haggai to Malachi).
There is, moreover, an evident desire to join, as far as possible,
a prophet belonging to the kingdom of Israel with one belong-
ing to the kingdom of Judah, — thus, Hosea with Joel, Amos
with Obadiah, Jonah with Micah, Nahum with Habakkuk.
Besides this, however, Hosea stands first, not so much because
the opening word in his book (viz. n^nR, " beginning ") made
this an appropriate one with which to begin the collection, —
still less because (as is stated in Bathra 146) of the four
prophets, Hosea and Isaiah, Amos and Micah, he was the first
to be called, — ^but (in the same way as, among the Pauline
letters, the Epistle to the Bomans is placed first) because his
book is the largest; and this principle of arrangement becomes
more prominent in the Septuagint, in which Hosea comes first
with fourteen chapters, while Amos follows with nine, then
Micah with seven, Joel with three, Obadiah with one ; a new
series next begins with Jonah. The reason why, in the
Hebrew Canon, Joel immediately follows Hosea, may lie in
the contrast between the complaint of Joel over the all-parch-
ing heat and the all-devouring swarms of insects on the one
hand, and the illustrations from vegetable life — bright, fresh,
and fragrant — at the dose of Hosea on the other. Ahos
Digitized by
Google
INTBODUOTION. 25
then succeeds Joel, because, taking up again the announcement
of judgment with which the latter concludes (Joel iv. 16), he
opens his book with the words, "Jehovah will roar out of
Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem." Obaduh follows,
on account of the mutual relation between Obad. 19 and
Amos ix. 12. ^nd Jonah comes after Obadiah, for the latter
begins, " We have beard tidings from Jehovah, and a messenger
is sent among the nations," and Jonah was such a messenger.
Similar reasons of a more accidental character aided in the
combination of a Judaic with an Israelitish prophet. The
fact that Zepbaniah follows Habakkuk is explained on such a
ground, which happens also to accord with the chronological
order ; for a catchword in the prophecy of Zephaniah (L 7),
" Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God," is taken
from Habakkuk (ii 20). The post-exilian prophets (called in
the Talmud D^3inKn D^^n^n, " the last prophets ") then form
the close, necessarily following in the order of time and in
accordance with the contents of the books ; for, like the trans-
position of Joel into the post-exilian period, the transposition
of Malachi into the time before Ezra is one of the evil results
of forced consistency in Pentateuchal criticism.'
We now return to the so-called Greater Prophets. These
immediately follow the Book of Kings, which is now divided
into two parts ; and at the head, in the Hebrew as well as in
the Alexandrian and Syriac Canon, stands Isaiah. Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, — such is the Masoretic arrangement,^ in
accordance with the chronological order of their appearance.
In the manuscripts, particularly the Crerman and French, an-
* From the &ct that no trace of any reference to the Priest-code is found in
HaUchi, but rather, on the other hand, more reference to Deuteronomy, —
for to him the Levite is identical with the priest (ii. 4-7), his proscribing
of mixed marriages (ii. II) rests on Deut rii. 3 (but cf. also Ezra iz. 14),
and his requirement of the tithe and the heave-offering (iiL 8-12) is stated
in Deuteronomic language in Deut. zii. 6, si. 17, — one must draw another
inference than that folse conclusion of Pentateuchal criticism.
* In Oehla vie-oehla, indeed, the citations from Isaiah follow those from
Jeremiah and Ezekiel ; but when the Masora reckons Isa. xviL 3, ^n
D>tra3n, «.«. the middle verse of the division called the D*K*a}i it ia
understood that Isaiah is the first prophet following after the series from
Joshua to Kings.
Digitized by
Google
26 I6AUH.
otW arrangement is occasionally found, — Kings, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Isaiah : this is the order laid down in the Baraitha
(i.e. the collection of treatises not taken into the official
Mishna) regarding the consecution of the Biblical books and
their authors, and the regulating principle here was, as shown
in the Gtemara,' affinity of contents. Jeremiah follows the
Book of Kings because his prophecies almost wholly relate to
the Chaldean catastrophe, with which the Book of Kings con-
cludes ; and Isaiah follows Ezekiel, whose book ends with
consolation, because the hortatory portion of Isaiah is consola-
tion throughout* In opposition to this Talmudic arrangement,
— ^which Lagarde (Symmieta, p. 142) and others, following
Eichhom, erroneously regard as meant to be chronological, but
which Comill (Jeremia und seine Zeit, 1880) thinks was in-
tended to express progressive estimation of the worth of the
several works, — the order given in the Masora, for which
better reasons can be assigned, and which is further attested
by the earliest ecclesiastical writers (Melito, Origen, and
Jerome), has justly maintained its superiority.
1 The explanation is not a folse one, but neither is it exhaustive. The
Baraitha regards Jeremiah as the author not merely of the book contain-
ing his prophecies but also of the Book of Kings, so that " Kings" and
"Jeremiah" inseparably cohere, forming the linkp uniting the "former
propheta" with the "later prophets ;" see Marx (Dalman), Traditio Bab-
binorum vdtrrima d» librorum V. T. ordine atqut origxTU, 1884, pp. 34-37.
* It is precisely with reference to chaps. xL-lxvi that Isaiah is regarded
as the prophet of comfort xor' i^tx')' i ^ ^^^^ according to Berachoth &7i,
whoever sees Isaiah in a dream may look for consolation ; and according
to the Midrash on the Lamentations, all the ill that Jeremiah predicted
was by Isaiah turned beforehand into good.
Digitized by
Google
INTRODUCTION
TO
THE BOOK OP ISAIAH,
SSPECIALLT THE FIBST PABT, CBAPS. L-XXXIX.
i 1. The Time of the Prophet.
The first reqaisite for an xuderstanding and appreciation of
the prophecies of Isaiah is the knowledge of his time, and of
the periods during which he exercised his ministry. The
first period embraces the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham. The
starting-point is determined in accordance with the view
taken of chap, vl ; but, in any case, Isaiah appeared about
the end of Uzziah's reign, and thereafter laboured continuously
through the sixteen years of Jotham's reign. The first twenty-
seven years of the fifty-two during which Uzziah reigned run
parallel with the last twenty-seven of the forty-one during
which Jeroboam II. ruled. The kingdom of Israel, under
Joash and his son Jeroboam II., and the kingdom of Judah,
under Uzziah and bis son Jotham, each passed through a
season of outward splendour greater in height and duration
than had ever been previously experienced. In proportion
as the glory of the one kingdom faded, that of the other
flourished ; the bloom of the northern kingdom grew fainter
as that of the south grew brighter and excelled the other.
But outward splendour, in this case as in the former, carried
within it the seeds of ruin and decay ; for prosperity degene-
rated into luxury, and the worship of Jehovah stiffened into
idolatry. It was during this last and longest season of pro-
sperity in Judah that Isaiah appeared, called to the sad task
n
Digitized by
Google
28 ISAIAH.
of vainly preaching repentance, and therefore also of announc-
ing the judgment of hardening and devastation, of the ban
and banishment The second period of his ministry extends
from the accession of Ahaz to that of Hezekiah. Daring these
sixteen years three events occurred, all combining to bring on
a new and momentous turn in the fate of Judah. In place
of the worship of Jehovah, which had been conducted under
Uzziah and Jotham with regularity and in external con-
formity to the law, open idol-worship of the most varied and
abominable character commenced with the reign of Ahaz.
Then were resumed and continued the hostilities already
begun under Jotham's reign by Fekah the king of Israel, and
Bezin the king of Damascene Syria : the Syro-Ephraimitish
war threatened Jerusalem with the express purpose of destroy-
ing the Davidic kingdom. lu this distress, Ahaz invoked
the aid of Tiglath-Fileser the king of Assyria ; he made flesh
his arm, and thereby entan^ed the people of Jehovah with
the kingdom of the woiid in a manner unknown before, so
that they thenceforward completely lost their independence.
The kingdom of the world is the Kimrodic form of the
heathen state. Its characteristic feature is the constant
endeavour to burst beyond its natural boundaries, not merely
for purposes of self-defence or revenge, but for conquest, and
to throw itself upon foreign nations like an avalanche, that it
may become an ever-growing and world-embracing colossus.
Assyria and Some are the first and the last members of the
world-kingdom that brought enslavement and oppression on
Israel throughout her history. The times of Isaiah saw the
approach of the calamity. Placed thus on the verge of this
new and important change in history, and embracing the
whole with bis far-seeing eye, Isaiah is, so to speak, the
universal prophet of Israel The third period of his active
ministry extends from the beginning to nearly the end of
Hezekiah's reign. Under this king the nation rose almost in
the same d^ree as it had fallen during the reign of Ahaz.
He forsook the course of his idolatrous father, and restored
the worship of Jehovah. The mass of the people, indeed,
remained at heart unchanged, but Judah had once more an
upright king who listened to the word of the prophets at his
side, — two pillars of the state, men of might in prayer
Digitized by
Google
I 1. THE TIME OF THE PROPHET. 29
(2 CfaroD. xxxii 20). When it came therefore to a breaking
off from the .AissTtian domination, this was certainly an act
of unbelief on the part of the nobles and the mass of the
people, since they relied on help from Egypt, — an expectation
which caused ruin to the northern kingdom in the sixth
year of Hezekiah's reign, — but, on the part of Hezekiah, an
act of faith in Jehovah (2 Kings xviii. 7). When Senna-
cherib then, the son and successor of Sargon, was coming
against Jerusalem, conquering the countiy and laying every-
Uiing waste, while Egjrpt did not bring the help that had
been promised, the carnal defiance of the magnates and the
mass of the people brought its own punishment But Jehovah
averted the worst of the impending calamity ; the flower of
the Assyrian host was destroyed in a night, so that, as in the
Syro-Ephraimitish war, now also there was no proper invest-
ment of Jerusalem; thus the faith of the king and of the
better portion of the people received a reward for their quiet
resting in the word of promise. There was still a power in the
state that preserved it from ruin ; and the coming doom,
shown in chap, vi to be inevitable, was yet once more delayed
when the last annihilating blow was to have been expected.
It was in this miraculous deliverance, which Isaiah predicted,
and for which be prepared the way, that the public ministry
of the prophet reached its calmination. Isaiah is the Amos
of the kingdom of Judah ; for, like the latter, he has the
dreadful vocation to see and proclaim the fact that the time
of forgiveness for Israel as a people and kingdom is gone for
ever. But he was not likewise the Hosea of the kingdom of
Judah, for the dreadful call to accompany the fatal course of
his coontty with the knell of prophetic announcements was
not assigned to Isaiah, but to Jeremiah. This is the Hosea
of the southern kingdom ; for to Isaiah was granted what
was refused to his successor Jeremiah, once more to restrain,
through the might of his prophetic power, arising from the
deep and strong spirit of faith, the coming of the night, which
threatened at the time of the Assyrian judgment to engulf
his peopla The Assyrian oppressions ceased, and, so far as
Judah was concerned, were not to be renewed. The view
beyond Assyria was clear, and prophecy was about to be
concerned with the next world - kingdom, now cautiously
Digitized by
Google
30 ISAIAH.
approaching. Beyond the noon-tide of his public ministry
there remained the evening of life, which he cannot have
idly spent, devoid of word or deed. But though he no
longer took part in public affairs, he lived to the beginning
of Manasseh'a reign, when, according to credible tradition ^
to which allusion is made in Heb. zi. 37 (" they were sawn
asunder"), he fell a sacrifice to the heathenism which had
once more become predominant.
I have purposely refrained from assigning numbers which
might indicate the length of reign of the four (or, including
Manasseh, five) kings of Judah under whom Isaiah exercised
Iiis ministry. It is certainly difficult enough to make a
thoroughly harmonious and consistent arrangement of the
dates given in the Book of Kings and also in the Chronicles ;
but at present, after the monument literature of Babylonia
and Assyria has also come forward as a witness, it is un-
deniably certain that the Biblical numbers assigned to the
reigns of kings occasionally need correction, though in other
respects they are proved to be true by indubitable Assyrio-
logical testimonies.
The founder of the received Biblical chronology was James
Ussher (Usserius), in his AnnaUa Veteris et Novi Teetamenti,
1650-54,' a work at which he had laboured for sixty years.
We give here a tabular view of his reckoning in that portion
of the history of the kings under whom those prophets flour-
ished who committed their prophecies to writing. The
Biblical reckoning of this section rests on trustworthy
tradition, but in a number of instances it is uncertain how
' According to tHe Talmudic treatise, Jebamoth 496, it was found in a
genealogical liat of a Jerusalem family ; and according to Satihedrin 1036
in a Targum on 2 Kings xxi. 16 (published by Assemani, OaUd. Vatic
i. 4S2X it is amplified in a Jerusalem Targum which the Oodex ReudUin
puts in the margin, Ixvi. 1 ; and appears in simpler form (compared with
the Targum) in the Apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah" (edited in the
Ethiopia text by Rich. Laurence in 1819, and by Aug. Dillmann in
1877 ; in Greek, from a MS. in the National Library at Paris, by 0. von
Qebhanlt in Hilgenfeld's Zeittchrift, xxL 330 if-X to which Origen appeals.
Begarding a Persian form of this "Ascension," or rather the kindred
" Vision of Isaiah," see Spiegel, Literatur der Panen, p. 128 ff,
* Gustav Baur also made Ussher's system the basis of his TabelUn Uher
die OeickidUe de$ uraeL Voiktt, 1848, except where Prideaux (on Ezra and
Neheraiah) and Bunsen (on Egypt) offered something better.
Digitized by
Google
I 1. THE TIME OF TUB PROPHET.
31
the Scripture historian himself counted the begiuning and the
end of the reigns, and the mutual relation of these in both
kingdoms. Alongside of Ussher's calculations, accordingly, I
place, by way of example, those of my friend Aug. Kohler
(in the appendix to his Biblische Oeschichte des A. T., 1884).
The figures within parentheses beside the name of the king
indicate the duration of his rule, and the large numbers give
the year in which the monarch in question ascended the
throne.
JUDAH.
Ussher.
Kohler.
Israel.
Uasher.
Kohler.
B.C.
B.C.
B.C.
B.C.
Atbaliah (6), .
884
881
Jehu (28),
Jehoanaz (17), .
884
881
Joash (40),
878
875
856
853
Ainaziah (29), .
839
836
Jehoash (16), .
Jeroboam 11.(41),
839
838
Uzziah (52X .
810
807
825
822
1
Zediariah {^\ .
773
769
Shallum (^X •
772
768
Jotham (16X '
Menahem (10^ .
772
768
Sole ruler, .
758
755
Pekahiah (21 .
761
758
Ahaz (16). 1
742
739
Pekah (20),
759
756
Hezekiah f29), .j
Manasseh (55^ .
726
724
Interregnum .
736
698
695
Hoshca (9X
730
727
Amon (2), .
643
640
FallofSamaria,
722
719
Josiah (31X
641
638
This table is merely intended to render the computation of
the Books of Kings and Chronicles as objective as possible.
Doubt remains especially as to the interregnum between
Pekah and Hoshea ; perhaps such a blank should be excluded,
and the reign of Pekah made to extend to 727 B.c. No
account is taken in the table of the Assyrian chronology :
Kohler himself is of opinion that it helps us in several
instances to the actually correct dates. He has already
shown ^ that what is narrated in Isaiah, chaps, xxxviii., xxxix.,
occurred in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign ; and, on
the other hand, what we read in Isaiah, chaps, xxxvi., xxxvii.,
happened in his twenty-fourth year (701 Rc).
The following durations of reigns are definitely fixed by
the testimony of the Assyrian monuments : —
Shalmaneser II., .... 860-824 b.c.
Tiglath-Pileser II., . . . 745-727 „
* In the Zeittehrift fiir luaieritche Theologie, 1874, pp. 96-98.
Digitized by
Google
32 ISAIAH.
Shalmaneser IV. 727-722 KC
Sargon, 722-705 „
The following names and dates are also given : —
Ahab (battle at Karkar between Aleppo and
Hamatb, against the kings of Damascus and
Hamatb, with their allies ; unless, as Well-
haasen and Kamphausen suppose, Ahab is
erroneously named instead of his son,
Joram), ..... 854 RC.
Jehu (tributary) 842 „
Azariah (i.e. Uzziah, in connection with Tig-
latb-Pileser IL), . . 740 „
Menahem (made tributary by Pul, w. Tiglath-
Pileser IL*), . . . . 738 „
Pekah (dethroned by Tiglath-Pileser), . 734 „
Fall of Samaria, 722 „
Campaign of Sennacherib against Samaria, 701 „
See the thorough investigations of Schrader's Cuneiform In-
scriptions and the Old Testament, 2nd edition ; ' and the sum-
maries of Friedrich Delitzsch, under the article, "Sanherib,"in
Herzog's Real-Encydop., continued by Hauck, Band xiL (1884).
To these Assyrian synchronisms regard is shown, either
entirely or in great measure, in the calculations of Well-
hausen in his article on " The Chronology of the Book of
Kings after the Division of the Kingdom," in the Jahrbilcher
fur BeuiseJu Theologie, 1875, pp. 607-640 ; cf. Kamphausen,
in Stade's Zeitschrift, iii. (1883) pp. 193-202, and in his
work, The Chronology of the HArew Kings, 1883 ; and of
Duncker in his Hidory of Antiquity, 5th edition, 1878.
Following S. R Driver in his Isaiah, his Life and Times
(1888, p. 13), we give here the estimates of these three
writers, passing over the otherwise important article in The
Church Qtiarterly Review for Jan. 1886, pp. 257-271, inas-
much as the author is unknown to us, and an anonymous
authority is of no weight
* His name was probably Pulu (Puru) before he rose to be ruler of the
Babylono- Assyrian kingdom.
' Translated into English by the Bev. Professor Owen C. Whitehouse,
London 1886-88, 2 vols.— Tr.
Digitized by
Google
§ 1. THE TIME OF TEE PROPHET.
33
JUDAH.
i
i
i
ISRAEU
4
a
i
^
^
<s
^
^
B.C.
B.O.
B.C.
B.a
B.C.
B.C.
Athaliah (6X .
84?
843
843
Jehn (28X
Jebuanaz (17), .
84?
843
843
Joash (40), .
83?
837
837
81?
815
815
Amaziah (iff),
800
797
797
Jehoash (16), .
Jeroboam II. (41X
801
798
798
UKiah(32X .
791
778
792
786
782
790
Zechariah (J), .
746
741
749
Shallum (-^X •
745
741
749
Jotbam (16), .
Sole niler, .
(760)
(761)
Menahem (10^ .
Pekahiab (2i .
744
741
748
740
736
740
wanting
738
738
Ahaz (16X .
735
736
734
Pekah (20X
734
736
736
Hezekiah (29),
Manasseh (66),
715
716
728
Hosbea (9),
733
730
734
686
686
697
Fallof&maria,
722
722
722
Ainon (2),
641
641
642
Josiah (31), .
639
639
640
Tlie figures do not give here the year of accession to the
throne, but the complete first year of the reign of the monarch
which followed his accession. Those of Duncker prefer, in
seven places, instead of the Biblical figures, other numbers,
which make Jeroboam II. to have come to the throne
earlier than Uzziah, and Jotham earlier than Pekah, — an
unfounded conjecture, as even Kampbausen thinks. A
strange feature in Wellliausen's arrangement is the elimina-
tion of Pekahiah (but cf. his Prolegomena, p. 475). Kamp-
bausen, in six instances, lengthens or shortens the numbers of
the years indicating the duration of reigns (Amaziah, 19 ;
Uzziah, 42 ; Ahaz, 20 ; Manasseh, 45 ; Menahem, 3 ; Pekah,
6) ; but, without claiming mathematical exactness for these
corrections, he is rather on the whole convinced that, in the
Biblical chronology of the period of the kings, we are on
really historical ground. It may thus perhaps be necessary
also to maintain, with W. Kobertson Smith (2%e Prophets in
Israel, pp. 413-419), that the year of Samaria's fall was
not one of the last years of Ahaz, but one of the first of
Hezekiah.
If we place the death of Uzziah in the year 740, and the
defeat of Sennacherib before Jerusalem in the year 701,
then Isaiah's public ministry embraced a period of forty
years.
VOL, L C
Digitized by
Google
34 ISAUH.
§ 2. 7^ Arrangement of the Collection.
The collection of Isaiah's prophecies is, on the vhole,
chronologically arranged. The dates in vL 1, viL 1, xiv. 28,
XX. 1, xxxvi 1, are points in a continaous line. The thre^
main divisions also form a chronol<^cal series; for chaps.
i-vL set before us the ministry of Isaiah under Uzziah and
Jotham; chaps, vii-xxxix., his ministry under Ahaz and
onwards to the last years of Hezekiah ; while chaps. xL-lxvi
— their authenticity being assumed — are in any case the
latest productions of the prophet. In the middle division,
likewise, the group in chaps. viL-xiL, belonging to the time
of Ahaz, chronologically precedes the prophecies in chaps;
xiii.— xxxix., belonging to the days of Hezekiah. In several
instances, however, the chronological arrangement is set aside
in favour of an arrangement according to the subject-matter.
Thus the discourse in chap. L is not the oldest, but is placed
first as an introduction to all the rest ; and the account of
the prophet's consecration, given in chap, vi, which should
stand at the beginning of the group which belongs to the
reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, is placed at the end, where it
looks backwards and forwai-ds, like a prediction in the process
of being fulfilled. The Ahaz group, which follows in chaps,
vii.— xiL, is a whole moulded at one casting. But in the
group belonging to Hezekiah's time (chaps. xiiL-xxxix.) the
chronological order is again interrupted several times. The
predictions against the nations, from xiv. 24 to chap, xxii.,
which belong to the Assyrian period, are introduced by a
" burden " concerning Babylon, the city of the world-power
(chaps. xiiL-xiv. 23), and closed by one concerning Tyre, the
city of the world's commerce, which was to be destroyed by the
Chaldeans (chap. xxiiL) ; while a shorter " burden " concerning
Babylon, in chap, xxi 1-10, divides the cycle into two halves,
and a collection of prophecies regarding the nations converges
in the great apocalyptic epilogue (chaps, xxiv.— xxvii.), like
streams discharging themselves into a sea. Accordingly, the
first portion of the Hezekiah group, of pre-eminently ethnic
contents, is interwoven with Babylonian pieces which belong
to divers points in the life of Isaiah. Another such piece is
the great epilogue in chaps, xxxiv., xxxv., forming the last
Digitized by
Google
S S. THE AKBANGEMENT OF THE COLLECTION. 35
echo of the second portion of the Hezekiah group. This
second portion is mainly occupied with the fate of Judah, the
judgment which the Assyrian world-power executes upon
Judah, and the deliverance that awaits it (chaps. xxviii.-xxxiii.):
these announcements are closed with a solemn declaration, in
chaps, xxxiv., xxxv., of the judgment of God on the world of
Israel's enemies on the one hand, and the redemption of Israel
on the other. This Babylonian portion is followed by the
historical section in chaps. xxxvL-xxxix., which form the
historical frame of Isaiah's predictions delivered near the
time of the Assyrian catastrophe, and furnish us with the key
for understanding not merely chaps. viL-xxxv., but also chaps.
xL-lxvL
If we take the Book of Isaiah, then, as a whole, in the
form in which it lies before us, apart from critical analysis, it
falls into two halves, chaps. L-xxxix., and chaps, xl.— Ixvi.
The former subdivides into seven parts, the latter into three.
The first half may be called the Assyrian, inasmuch as the
point at which it aims and in which it terminates is the fall
of Assyria ; the second may be called the Babylonian, as its
final object is the deliverance from Babylon. The first half
is not purely Assyrian, however; but among the Assyrian
portions are inserted Babylonian pieces, and generally such as
apocalyptically break through the limited horizon of the
former. The seven portions of the first half are the following:
1. Prophecies on the growth of obdura^ in the mass of the
people (chapa ii.-vi.). 2. The consolation of Immanuel in the
Assyrian oppressions (chaps, vii.— xiL). These two portions form
a syzygy, ending with a psalm of the redeemed (chap, xii.),
the last echo of the song at the Red Sea ; and are separated
by the consecration of the prophet (chap, vi.), which looks
both backward and forward : the opening discourse (ch^ffTl.),
as a kind of prologue, forms the introduction to the whole.
3. Prophecies of Judgment and salvation of the heathen (chaps.
xiii.-xxiii.), chiefly belonging to the period of the judgment
on Assyria, but enclosed and intersected by Babylonian pieces.
A prophecy concerning Babylon (chap. xiii.-xiv. 23), the city
of the world-power, forms its introduction ; while a prophecy
concerning l^re (chap, xxiil), the city of the world's com-
merce, which received its death-blow from the Chaldeans,
Digitized by
Google
89 ISAUH.
forms its conclusion ; and a second propbecy concerning the
desert by the sea, i.e. Babylon (chap. xxL 1-10), forms the
centre. 4. Then follows a great apocalyptic prophecy eon-
eerning the judgment of the vxrld and the last things (chaps,
xxiv.-xxvii,), affording a grand background to the cycle of
prophecies concerning the nations, and with it forming a
second syzygy. 5. A third syzygy begins with chaps.
xxviii-xxxiiL : this cycle of prophecy is historical, and treats
of the revolt from Assyria and its results. 6. With it is
combined a far-reaching eschatological prophecy on the
avenging and redemption of the Church (chaps, xxxiv., xxxv.),
in which we already hear, as in a prelude, the keynote of
chaps. x1.-lxvi. 7. After these three syzygies we are carried
back (by chaps. xxxvL-xxxix.) in the first two historical
accounts to the Assyrian period, while the other two show us,
afar off, the entanglement with Babylon, which was then but
about to begin. These four historical accounts, with the
indications of their chronological order, are peculiarly arranged
in such a way that half of them look backwards, half of them
forwards ; they thus also fasten together the two halves of
the whole book. The prophecy in chap, xxxix. 5-7 stands
between the two halves like a sign-post, tjearing on its arm
the inscription " Babylon " (^M). Thither tends the further
course of Israel's history ; there is the prophet henceforward
buried in spirit with his people ; there (in chaps. xl.-lxvi.)
does he proclaim to the mourners of Zion the approaching
deliverance. The trilogical arrangement of this book of con-
solation may be regarded as proved ever since it was first
observed and shown by Eiickert in 1831. It falls into three
sections, containing three times three addresses (chaps.
xl.-xlviii., xlix.-lvii., Iviii.— IxvL), with a kind of refrain at
the close.
§ 3. The Critical Questions.
The collection of Isaiah's prophecies is thus a united whole,
whose several parts have been skilfully and significantly
arranged. This arrangement is worthy of the prophet
Nevertheless, the present form of the work is not to be
attributed to him, if (1) the prophecies in chaps. xiiL-xiv. 23,
Digitized by
Google
S 8. THE CBITICAL QUESTIONS. 37
xxi. 1-10, xxlii., xxiv.-xxvil, xxxiv. and xxxv. cannot Lave
been composed by him ; and (2) if the historical accounts in
chaps. xxxvi.-xxxix., which we find again in 2 Kings xviiL 13
to XX. 19, are not records from Isaiah's pen. For if those
prophecies be taken away, the beautiful whole, especially the
book against the nations, tumbles to pieces into a confused
qiiodlibet ; and if chaps. xxxvL-xxxix. were not directly com-
posed by Isaiah, then neither can the arrangement of the
whole be directly the work of Isaiah; for it is precisely
chaps, xxxvl-xxxix. which form the clasp binding the two
halves of the collection together.
The critical treatment of Isaiah began in the following
manner : — ^The commencement was made with the second part,
Koppe first of all expressed doubt regarding the genuineness
of chap. 1. ; then Doderlein expressed his decided suspicion
as to the genuineness of the wliole ; and Justi, followed by
Eichhorn, Paulus, and Bertholdt, raised the suspicion into
confident assurance of spuriousness. The result thus attained
could not possibly remain without reaction on the first part
Kosenmiiller, who was always very dependent upon predeces-
sors, was the first to deny the Isaian origin of the prophecy
against Babylon, in chaps. xiii.-xiv. 23, though this is attested
by the heading ; Justi and Paulus undertook to find further
reasons for the opinion. Greater advance was now made.
Along with the prophecy against Babylon in chaps, xiii.-
xiv. 23, the other, in chap, xxi 1-10, was likewise condemned,
and Bosenmiiller could not but be astonished when Gesenius
let the former fall, but left the latter standing. There still
remained the prophecy against Tyre, in chap. xxiiL, which,
according as the announced destruction of Tyre was regarded as
accomplished by the Assyrians or the Chaldeans, might either
be left to Isaiah, or attributed to a later prophet imknown.
Eichhorn, followed by BosenmuUer, decided that it was
spurious; but Gesenius understood the Assyrians as the
destroyers, and as the prediction consequently did not extend
beyond the horizon of Isaiah, he defended its genuineness.
Thus was the Babylonian series of prophecies set aside. The
keen eyes of the critics, however, made still further dis-
coveries. In chaps, xxiv.-xxvii., Eichhorn found plays on words
that were unworthy of Isaiah, and Gesenius an allegorical
Digitized by
Google
38 ISAUH.
announcement of the fall of Babylon: botli accordingly
condemned these three chapters, and Ewald transposed them
to the time of Cambyses. With chaps, xxxiv., xxxv., on
account of their relation to the second part, the procedure
was shorter. Bosenmiiller at once pronounced them to be
" a poem composed during the Babylonian exile, near its
close." Such is the history of the origin of the criticism of
Isaiah. Its first attempts were very juvenile. It was
Gesenius, but especially Hitzig and Ewald, who first raised it
to the eminence of a science.
If we take our stand on this eminence, then the Book of
Isaiah is an anthology of prophetic discourses by different
authors. I have never found anything inherently objection-
able in the view that prophetic discourses by Isaiah and
by other later prophets may have been blended and joined
together in it on a definite plan. Even in that case the collec-
tion would be no play of chance, no production of arbitrary
will Those prophecies originating in post-Isnian times are,
in thought and the expression of thought, more nearly akin to
Isaiah than to any other prophet ; they are really the homo-
geneous and simultaneous continuation of Isaian prophecy,
the primary stream of which ramifies in them as in the
branches of a river, and throughout retains its fertilizing
power. These later prophets so closely resembled Isaiah in
prophetic vision, that posterity might on that account well
identify them with him. They belong more or less nearly
to those pupils of his to whom he refers, when, in chap.
viiL 16, he entreats the Lord, "Seal instruction among my
disciples." We know of no other prophet belonging to the
kingdom of Judah, like Isaiah, who was surrounded by a band
of younger prophets, and, so to speak, formed a school
Viewed in this light, the Book of Isaiah is the work of his
creative spirit and the band of followers. These later prophets
are Isaian, — they are Isaiah's disciples ; it is bis spirit that
continues to operate in them, like the spirit of Elijah in
Eltsha, — nay, we may say, like the spirit of Jesus in the
apostles ; for the words of Isaiah (viii. 18), "Behold, I and
the chUdren whom God hath given me," are employed in the
Epistle to the Hebrews (ii 13) as typical of Jesus Christ. In
view of this fact, the whole book rightly bears the name of
Digitized by
Google
{ 8. THE CBinCAI. QUXSTIOKS. 89
Isaiah, inasmuch as he is, directly and indirectly, the author
of all these prophetic discourses ; his name is the correct
common-denominator for this collection of prophecies, ■which,
with all their diversity, yet form a unity ; and the second
half particularly (chaps. xL-lxvi.) is the work of a pupil
who surpasses the master, though he owes the master every-
thing.
Such may possibly be the case. It seems to me even prob-
able, and almost certain, that this may bo so ; but indubitably
certain it is not, in my opinion, and I shall die without
gettii^ over this hesitancy. For very many difficulties arise,
— this first of all, that not a single one of the canonical
books of prophecy has a similar phenomenon to present, ex-
cepting only the Book of Zechariah, with chaps, ix.-xiv. of
which the same is said to be the case as with Isaiah, chaps.
xL-lxvi., with this difference merely, that whereas the latter
are ascribed to a prophet who lived during the exile, chapa
ix.— xiv. of Zechariah are attributed to one or two earlier
prophets of pre-exile times. Stade has proved the post-
exilian origin of Zechariah, chaps. ix.-xiv., also; and we
may still continue to assume that it is the post-exilian — ^bnt,
after chaps, i.— viii, much older — Zechariah himself who, in
chaps, ix.— xiv., prophesies concerning the last days in figures
borrowed from the past, and purposely makes use of older
prophecies No other book of prophecy besides occasions like
doubts as to ite unity of authorship. Even regarding the Book
of Jeremiah, Hitzig allows that, though interpolated, it con-
tains no spurious pieces. Something exceptional, however,
may have happened to the Book of Isaiah. Tet it would cer-
tainly be a strange accident if there should have been preserved
a quantity of precisely such prophecies as carry with them, in
so eminent a degree, so singularly, and in so matchless a
manner, Isaiah's style. Strange, {^in, it would be that
history knows nothing whatever regarding this Isaian series
of prophets. And strange is it, once more, that the very
names of these prophets have suffered the common fate of
being forgotten, even although, in time, they all stood nearer
to the collector than did the old prophet whom they had taken
as their modcL Tradition, indeed, is anything but infallible,
yet its testimony here is powerfully corroborated by the rela-
Digitized by
Google
40 ISAUH.
tion of Zeplianiab and Jeremiah — the two most reproductive
prophets — not merely to chaps. xL— bcvL, but also to the
\mdisputed portions of the first hal£ To all appearance thej
had before them these prophecies, making these their model,
and taking out passages for incorporation in their own pro-
phecies, thus forming a kind of mosaic, — a fact which has
been thoroughly investigated by Caspari, but which none of the
modern critics as yet has carefully considered, and ventured,
with like citation of proofs, to disprove. Further, though the
disputed prophecies contain much that cannot be adduced from
the remaining prophecies, — material which Driver, in his Isaiah
(1888), has carefully extracted and elucidated, — ^}'et I am not
convinced that the characteristically Isaian elements do not pre-
ponderate. And, thirdly, the type of the disputed prophecies,
which, if genuine, belong to the latest period of the prophet,
does not stand in sharp contrast to the type of the remainder, —
rather do the confessedly genuine prophecies lead us in many
ways to the others ; the brighter form and the riclier eschato-
logical contents of the disputed prophecies find their preludes
there. And if the unity of Isaian authorship is actually given
up, how many later authors, along with the great anonymous
writer of chaps. xL-lxvl, have we to distinguish 1 To this
query no one has yet given a satisfactory reply. Such are
the considerations which, in the Isaian question, assuredly do
not allow me to attain the assurance of mathematical certainty.
Moreover, the influence of criticism on ex^esis in the Book
of Isaiah amounts to nothing. If any one casts reproach on
this commentary as uncritical, he will at least be unable to
charge it with misinterpretation. Nowhere will it be found
that the exposition does violence to the text in favour of a
false apologetic design.
When John Coleridge Patteson, the missionary bishop of
Melanesia, undertook his last voyage of supervision among
the islands, — a voyage which ended with his martyrdom
on September 29, 1871, — he was studying, on board the
schooner, the Book of Isaiah, with the help of this com-
mentary, regarding which he wrote before on one occasion,
" Delitzsch helps me much in Isaiah." His last letter speaks
at the close about this commentary and Biblical criticism.
Miss CL M. Yonge, in her biography, has not given this
Digitized by
Google
S 4. EXPOSITION IN ITS PRESENT STATE. 41
passage.* But doubtless it expressed bis deep and absorbing
interest in the Divine word of prophecy, which at present
almost completely disappears behind the tangled thorns of
an overgrown criticism. Meanwhile, if we hold ourselves
warranted, on the one hand, in objecting to that direction of
criticism from which a naturalistic contemplation of the world
demands foregone conclusions of a negative character, — on
the other hand, we are certainly far from denying to criticism
as such its weU-founded rights.
§ 4 Exposition in its Present State.
When the Chiirch, at the time of the Beformation, began
to examine and sift its possessions that had been handed
down by tradition. Biblical criticism also took its rise. At
the same time,' Scripture exposition on historico-grammatical
principles, conscious of its task, endeavoured to reach the one
true meaning of Scripture, and put an end to the legerdemain
of the " manifold sense of Scripture " which had been developed
in accordance with tedious examples ; this advance was made
imder the influence exerted by the revival of classical studies,
and by the help of increased knowledge of Hebrew derived
from Jewish teachers. For Isaiah, however, the Beformation-
period itself did not accomplish mncL
Calvin's Commentaries answer the expectations with which
one goes to consult them ; on the other hand, Luther's Scholia
are a second-hand and poor performance. The productions of
Grotius, important enough in other fields, are in Isaiah, as
throughout the prophets generally, of little consequence ; he
mixes up the sacred with the profane ; and being unable to
follow prophecy in its flight, be clips its wings. Aug.
Varenius, of Bostock, one of the orthodox Lutherans, wrote
a Commentary on Isaiah which is not to be despised even
now ; but, though learned in many ways, it is the confused
production of an undisciplined mind. But Camp^us
VUringa (who died in 1722 as professor of theology at
Franequer), by his Commentary in two folio volumes, which
appeared in 1714, threw all the works of his predecessors
into the shade. It is he who originated the historical
I life of J. 0. PaUttm, vol iL p. 379 (c£ 268X 6th edition (1875X
Digitized by
Google
42 ISAUH.
method of expounding the prophets, and in this he has
given us his own work as a model ; ^ but^ though starting with
the correct principle that it does not exhaust the meaning of the
prophet's words, he nevertheless, in the allegorical explanation
appended to the grammatico-historical, shows that he is not
yet quite free from the Cocceian method, which, without con-
sidering the complex-apotelesmatic character of prophecy,
reads in the prophets the most minute allusions to the
history of the world and the Church. The shady sides of
the commentary usually come before the reader first ; but the
more he uses it, the more highly does he learn to value it^
There is deep research throughout, — nowhere a superabund-
ance of dead and dry learning. The author's heart is present
in Ids work. At times he pauses in the path of toilsome
investigation, and gives vent to his thoughts in rapturous
expressions. He sees and feels more deeply than Bishop
Lowth, who keeps to the surface, alters the Masoretio text
according to his taste,* and does not get beyond sesthetic
admiration of the form.
The era of modem exegesis begins with that destructive
theology of the latter half of the eighteenth century which
pulled down but could not build. This destruction, however,
was not unproductive of good : the denial of the divine and
eternal in Scripture has helped us to recognise its human
and temporal aspects, the charm of its poetry, and — what is
of still greater consequence — the concrete reality of its
history. RoaenmilUer't Scholia (3 vols.; last edition, 1811—
1820) are an industrious, clear, and elegant compilation,
chiefly from Vitringa ; the sobriety of judgment displayed in
selecting, and the dignified earnestness — far removed from all
frivolity — deserve our praise. The Commentary of Gesenitis
(in three parts, or with the translation, four parts, 1820-
1821), which is more decidedly rationalistic, is also more
independent in its exegesis, careful in its historical expositions,
and especially distinguished for its pleasing and perspicuous
style and the stores of learning gathered from all the literature
on Isaiah, especially the new sources of grammatico-historical
knowledge opened up since Yitringa's time. The Commentary
1 See Diestel, GexhvMe da A. T. in der chrialichm Kirch*, 436-438.
* Against hini, Eobler vrrote Vindiciae Uxtut Heb. Eiaiae, 1786.
Digitized by
Google
I 4. EXPOSITION Ur ITS PKESENT STATE. 43
of Hiizig (1833) remains his best work, eminent for its
precision, acuteness, and originality of grammatical perception,
its fine tact in discovering the train of thought, its pith and
exactness in stating carefully considered results ; but it is
also disfigured by reckless and pseudo-critical assertions of an
arbitrary character, and by a designedly profane style of
thought that remains unaffected by the spirit of prophecy.
The Commentary of Hendewerk (2 vols. 1838-1843) is in
-philological and historical exposition often very weak; the
style is diffuse, and the eye of the disciple of Herbart is too
dull to distinguish between Israelitish prophecy and heathen
poetry, between the politics of Isaiah and those of Demos-
thenes. Nevertheless, the careful dUigence and earnest
endeavour to point out in Isaiah the germs of eternal verities,
are unmistakeable. In the work of Ewald (translated into
English; London 1875-1881) there is universally recognised
his natural penetration, and the noble enthusiasm with which
he throws himself into the contents of the prophetic books,
in which he finds a perpetual present ; and his endeavour
to attain a deep apprehension is in some degree rewarded.
But it is provoking to observe the self-sufiiciency with which he
ignores nearly all bis predecessors, the dictatorial confidence of
his criticism, the false and often nebulous pathos, and the com-
plete identification of his opinions with truth itself. lu setting
forth the characteristics of the prophets, he is a master ; his
translations, on the other hand, are stiff, and hardly according
to the taste of any one. Umbreit's Practical Commentary
(2nd edition, 1846) is useful aud stimulating; a profound
issthetic and religious conviction of the glorious character
of the prophetic word reveals itself in highly poetic language,
heaping one figure on another, and almost never descending to
an ordinary level. The other extreme is the prose of Knobd
(died 1863). The precision of this scholar, the third edition
of whose Commentary on Isaiah (1861) was one of his last
works, deserves the most grateful recognition for its excellence
in philological as well as in archaeological matters ; but his
almost affected commonness of style prevents him from seeing
the depth of nieauing, while his excessive desire to find
historical realization everywhere conceals from him the poetry
of the form. The Commentary of Dnehder was a real
Digitized by
Google
44 ISAIAH.
advauce in the exposition of Isaiah. It was edited by himself
only as far as chap, xzvii., and then completed (2 vols.
1845-57) by me and by H. A. Hahn of Greifswald (who died
in 1861), from his notes, though these afforded little that
could be used in the exposition of chaps. xl.-xlvi. Since the
time of Yitringa, this is comparatively the best Commentary
on Isaiah, chaps. L-xiL,^ and especially on chaps. xiiL-xxviL
Its excellence does not lie in the exposition of details, — for
this is inadequate, through the fragmentary and glossatorial
style of its exegesis, and, though diligent and thorough,
especially in a grammatical point of view, is not homogeneous
or productive, — but in the spiritual and spirited conception of
the whole, the profound perception of the character and the
ideas of the prophet and of prophecy, the vigorous penetration
into the inmost nature of the plan and contents of the whole.
Meanwhile (1850, 2 vol&) there appeared the Commentary of
Peter Schegg, which follows the Vulgate, and contains valuable
remarks in connection with the history of translations, but
also displays free and profound insight into the genesis and
meaning of the prophecies; at the same time there also
appeared the Commentary of Ernst Meier, the Tubingen
orientalist, which did not get beyond the first half. If any
one was specially called to advance the exei:;etical study of the
Book of Isaiah, it was C. P. Caspari of Christiania ; but of his
Norw^ian Commentary all that has appeared reaches only to
the end of chap, vi.,' and its progress has been hindered not
only by the exhaustive thoroughness of investigation at which
he aimed, but Jilso by the Grundtvig controversy, which
involved him in very extensive studies in the field of Church
history. Wealth of material for the following prophetic dis-
courses is also afforded by his " Contributions to the Intro-
duction to the Book of Isaiah, and to the history of Isaiah's
time," which appeared (1 848) as vol. u. of our Studies in BMiad
* See the review by Franz Dietrich in Reuten Rqtertorium, voL xlviiL
pp. 1-26. In the same year, 1846, Schroring in Wismar began his Studie$
wt Itaiah, three parte of which (1846, 1862, 1867) have appeared.
' Commentar til de tolv fSnte Capitler of Propheten Jesaja, Christiania
1867. Cf. also the treatise on the Seraphim in Isaiah in the Theological
Tidsskrifi for 1869, and the Essay on the position and meaning of Isaiah
viiL in the History of the Kingdom of God, in the BiMtke AfhandKnger,
1884.
Digitized by
Google
i 4. EXPOSITION IN ITS FBESENT STATE. 45
Theology; his "Programm" on the Syro-Ephraimitish war (pub-
lished iu 1849); and his treatise, not by any means obsolete;
on "Jeremiah a witness to the genuineness of Isaiah,chap. xxxiv.,
and hence also to that of Isaiah, chaps. xL-lzvL, chaps. xiiL—
xiv. 23, and xxi 1-10 " (with an Excnrsus on the relation of
Zepbaniah to the disputed prophecies of Isaiah), which appeared
in the Zeitsehrifif. d. ges. liM,. Thedogie u. Kirehe, 1843.
Among Jewish CJommentaries, two roust be mentioned ; the
work of M. L Malbim (who died at Kiew 1879), which
(published at Erotoschin 1849) especially deals in a concise
style with the exact meaning of synonymous words and ex-
pressions ; and the learned, subtle, and ever-stimulating work
of Samuel David Lvzzaito, of Padua (died 1865), part of
which, from the beginning to chap, xxxviii., was published by
himself under the title Profeta Isaia volgarvezato e eommerUato
ad uso degli Israeliti, while the remainder was edited after
his death from the materials he had left (Padua 1855—1866).
Of additional literature that has been published since the
appearance of the second and third editions of this Com-
mentary (1869, 1879), the following, arranged in chronological
order, is worthy of notice : —
Cheyse, T. K (Oriel Professor at Oxford, and Canon of
Colchester) : The Book of Isaiah chronologically arranged.
An amended version, with historical and criticifil introductions
and explanatory notes. London 1870.
There had previously been puUUhed, by the same writer, Notes
and Criticisms on the Hebrew text of Isaiah (London 1868):
frequent reference was made to this work in the second edition of
our Commentary.
Seinecke, L. (Pastor at Hevensen, near Nordheim): Der
Evangelist des Alten Testaments. Erklarung der Weissagung
Jesaia's, Kap. xl.-lxvL Leipzig 1870.
See the review by Ed. Richra, in Studien u. Eritiken, 1872,
pp. 553-578.
BiRKS, T. R. : Commentary on tlie Book of Isaiah. London
1871.
Digitized by
Google
46 ISAUR.
•vyv ISO, Liber Jesaiae. Textum masoreticum accnratissime
expressit, e fontibus Masorae vane illustravit, notis criticis
confirmavit S. Baer. Praefatus est edendi operis adjator Fr.
Delitzsch. Leipzig 1872.
DiESTKL, Lddwio (died at TttbiogeD, 1879): Der Prophet
Jesaia, erklart von Aug. Kuobel (who died 1863); Aufl. 4.
Leipzig 1872,
BiEHM, Ed. (died at Halle, 1888): Das erste Buch Mo.«e
nach der deutschen Uebersetzuug Dr. Mart Lathers iu
rediviertem Text mit VorbemerkuDgen und Erlauterungen,
und einem die Berichtigungen des Jesaja enthaltenden Anhang
im Aaftrag der zur Revision der Uebersetzang des A. T.
berufenen Conferenz herausgegeben. Halle 1873.
Stade, Berxhabd (Professor in Giessen): De Isaiae
vaticiniis Aethiopicis diatribe Leipzig 1873.
See the notice by Aug. DiUmann in the Liter. Centralblatt, 1874^
Nr.9.
Strachet, Sir Edward: Jewish History and Politics ia
the time of Sargon and Sennacherib. An inquiry into the
historical meaning and purpose of the prophecies of Isaiah.
Second edition, revised. London 1874.
Weber, Ferd. (died at Polsingen, 1879): Der Profet
Jesaja in Bibelstanden ausgelegt. 2 vols. Nordlingen
1875-76.
Klosteemann, Adg, (Professor in Kiel) : Jesaja, cap. xL—
Ixvi Eine Bitte um Hiilfe in grosser Noth. In Zeitschrift
fiir luth. Theologie, 1876; pp. 1-60.
KoHUT, Alex. (Chief Eabbi in Funfkirchen) : Antiparsische
Ausspriicbe im Deuterojesajas. In Zeitschrift der Deutschen
MorgenL Gesellschaft, 1879, pp. 709-722.
Neteleb, B. : Das Buch Isaias aus dem Urtext tibersetzt
und mit Beriicksichtigung seiner Gliederung und der anf
seinen Inhalt sich beziehenden assyr. Inschriften erklart
Miinster 1876.
See the notice by W. Baudissin in the TlieoL Literaturzeitung,
1876, Nr. 19.
Digitized by
Google
I 4. EXFOSmOK IN ITS PBESEMT STATS. 47
Bbcss, Ed. (Professor in Strasburg) : Lea Prophfetes (form-
ing Part 2 of his work oa the Scriptures), 2 vols., the former
of which contains the translation and exposition of the old
Isaiah portions, while the latter contains the decidedly later
portions. Paris 1876.
The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish
Intcipreters. I. Texts edited from printed books and MSS.
by Ad. Neubauer. II. Translations by S. R Driver and Ad.
Neubauer. With an introduction to the translations by Prof.
E. B. Pusey. Oxford and London 1876-77.
See the notice by Hermann Strack in the Theologische Liteiatur-
leitung, 1877, Nr. 21.
Le Hir (formerly Professor in the Seminary of Saint-
Sulpice, Paris): Les trois grands proph^tes, Isaie, J^r^mie,
Ez^chiel; analyses et commentaires. Paris 1877.
See the notice by W. Baudissiu in the Theologische Literatur-
zeitung, 1877, Kr. 11.
Nagelsbach, C. W.Eduabd (died at Gunzenhausen, 1880) :
Der Prophet Jesaja, theologisch-homiletisch bearbeitet (Theil
14 des Lange'schen Bibelwerks). Bielefeld u. Leipzig 1877.
[Translated into English, with additions, by Samuel T. Lowrie
and Dunlop Moore. New York and Edinburgh 1878.]
See the notice in the Beilage zar Luth. Eirchenzeitung, Nr. 1,
and that by Em. Eautsch in the Theologische Literaturzeitung,
1878, Nr. 25.
Strack, Heem. (Professor in Berlin): Zur Textkritik
des Jesaias. In Zeitschrift ftir luth. Theologie, 1877, pp.
17-52.
Studer, 6. L. (Professor in Berne) : Beitrage zur Textkritik
des Je-saja. In the Jahrbiicher fiir protest Theologie, 1877,
pp. 706-730.
Fehr, Fredrik : Profeten Jesaja : Ett gammaltestamentligt
TJtkast. Upsala 1877.
De Lagakde, Paul (Professor in Gottingen): Semitica.
Aus dem 23. Bande der Abhandl. der kgL Gesellschaft der
Wissensch. in Gottingen. Gottingen 1878.
Digitized by
Google
48 ISAIAH.
Pages 1-32 contain critical remarks on Isaiah, chaps. L-xvii. : see
the notice by Eberh. Nestle in the TheoL Litereturzeitung, 1878,
Nr. 11.
LOhr, Fc. (Pistor in Zirchow a/Usedom): Zur Frage iiber die
EchtheitvonJesaias 40-66. DreiHefte. Berlin 1878-80.
See the notice in the Liter. Beilage der Lather. Eirchenzeitung,
1879, Nr. 17.
KosTLiN, Friedeich : Jesaia und Jeremia. Ihr Leben und
ihr Wirken aus ihren Scliriften dargestellt. Berlin 1879.
Bartu, J. (Professor in Berlin): Beitrage zur Erklarung
des Jesaia. Karlsruhe 1855.
ScHOLZ, Anton (Professor in Wiirzburg) : Die alexandrin-
ische Uebersetzung des Buches Jesaios. Wiirzburg 1880.
Cheyne, T. K: The Prophecies of Tsaiah. A new trans-
lation, with commentary and appendices. 2 vols. London
1880-81. [Fifth edition, 1889.]
See my notice of the first edition in The Academy, 1880 (Ap. 10);
Knabenbaueb, a. (Jesuit priest) : Erklarung des Propheten
Jesaia. Freiburg i. B. 1881.
Distinguished for the very extensive use made of the older exposi-
tory literature (certainly \vith no great profit)^ and for beneficial
regard to the more inodei-n.
GuTHE, Herm. (Professor in Leipzig): Das Zukunftsbild
des Jesaia. Leipzig 1885.
Bredenkamp, C. J. (Professor in Greifswald) : Der Prophet
Jesaia erklart. Drei Lieferungen. Erlangen 1886—7.
This author has also published Vaticinium guod de ImmanueU
edidit Jesaias. Erlangen 1880.
"Von Orelij, Conr. (Professor in Basle): Die Propheten
Jesaja und Jeremia ausgelegt. Nordlingen 1887. [Trans-
lated in Clark's For. TheoL Lib., Edinburgh 1889.]
[Driver, S. K. (Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford
University): Isaiah, his Life and Times. London 1888.]
[Sayce, a. H. : The Life and Times of Isaiah. London 1889.]
[Smith, George A. : The Book of IsaiaL 2 vols. London
1889-90.]
Digitized by
Google
THE SUPERSCRIPTION OP THE BOOK OP
ISAIAH.
L The exUmal title at handed down is >^y(^f The LXX.
always modifies the form of the prophet's name into HSAIAS
(see Frankel, Vorettidien, p. Ill); on the other hand, it
renders the name Tvyv in Ezra viii. 7, 19 l^^ 'JvattK (but in
other places in many other ways *), both paroxytone, inasmuch
as a9 in prosody is long ; Lat laaias (JEsaias), in Prudentius
with accented a and short i (but, on the other hand, JeremVu,
because in this case the e, which is short in accordance with
the Hebrew, is not suited for bearing the accent of the vrotd).
In the book itself, and throughout the Old Testament Scrip-
tures, the prophet is called vr^ne^, (in the Bal^lonian Codex,
dating from the year 916, V^y^^ according to the old style of
writing) ; on the other hand, in the Books of Chronicles,
Ezra, and Nehemiah, the shorter form designates other per-
sons. Though the shorter form of such names was in ancient
times current along with the longer, it came to be exclusively
used in more recent days ; hence its employment as the
usual title. The name is a compound word, signifying " Jahu
(Jah) has wrought salvation," — yv* being equivalent to ye'^n
(in n^'"'), as am in njam is equivalent to ^rrvi — not
" salvation of Jahu " (as explained, for instance, by Kliper,
with Caspari) ; for, as Kohler has shown, in the banning of
his Commentary on Zechariab, the number of the names of
persons compounded of a substantive and n^ is exceeded by
* 'Hnitif (or even 'HtiuiK, following the analogy of 'Hvttiitct 'H«t!x<*()
is essentially a modification like ' lantai. ■ There are some other proper
names b^inning with eft, biit the LXX. renders none of these by H»
or U, like this one. In Ezra viii. 7, 19, r cyer is modified into the fornt
Utttttf, and in 1 Chron. ilL 21, Neh. xL 7, into 'Iw/o;,— a worse form.
VOU L D
Digitized by
Google
50 ISAIAH.
that of those which are formed from the perfect of the Qal,
and this, too, with the meaning of a derived conjugation,
especially the Piel and HiphiL Combined with Wl, how-
ever, the name would probably take the form ^f^J^f*. (like
",•!??'", "J?j^, "V^IV), and signify, " Jahu is my salvation ; "
hence f^^^ like nnar, rnat, rrsriJ, will lie an exclamation of
thankfulness to God made into the name of the ohild.^ The
prophet shows he is conscious that it was not by accident he
bore this name ; for T^'^, V?^, and T\^^, are among his
favourite words, — nay, we may say, he lives and moves in the
coming salvation : but mrr> is the God of salvation ; this is
the peculiar redemptive designation of God. The name in-
dicates the Being who exists absolutely (i.e. eternally and
independently), who bears witness to Himself (Ex. iii. 14), as
freely and according to His own counsel determining His
ways, ruling throughout the course of history, and fixing its
form. This work of free graoe has for its end that salvation
which, beginning with Israel and working outwards, embraces
and includes all mankind. The element vv (tv) in the prophet's
name has been shortened from the " tetragrammaton " tw by
rejecting the second n. From this abbreviation we see that
the vowel a stood at the beginning of the divine name.
According to Theodoret, it was pronounced 'Jafie by the
Samaritans ; this is also the pronunciation given in the
Archontic list of the divine names found in Epiphanius.
Jacob of Edessa, as we leara from an excursus to his Syriac
translation of the Aoytn iiridpomoi of Severus of Antioch,
was under the erroneous impression that the name in Hebrew
was pronounced rrn* like rrnx ; moreover, this OT-iOU, in the
Codex Curzonianius of the Syro-Hexaplar Isaiah, is tran-
scribed in Greek characters HEHE (Zeitschrift der deuischen
morgenl. GeseUachaft, xxxii. 465 ff.). The testimony hereby
borne to the conclusion of the word in n-^ is confirmed by the
abbreviation into >% which, after the analogy of similar
abbreviations, has come from nirn, through an intermediate
form ^^. The modified form ^Ala (found in Theodoret) does
not point to the divine name mrr (which must have been
represented by ^la^d), but n»; 'lam with its by-forms is
VTJ, and 'latold (in Origen, contra Celmm, i. 656) ia the
' Sec Friedr. Delitzsch, ProUgomtna, pp. 206-208.
Digitized by
Google
TBK SUPERSCRIPnOK OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. 5 1
condensed Tr>\rr>} The pronunciation Jehovah (Tehovah) has
arisen from a combination of the Qeri and Kethib, and did
not become current till after the sixteenth century ; Galatinus,
abont 1518, in his work de arcanis cathalicae veritatis, was
the first who remarked that the " tetrRgrammaton," read as it
is pointed, sounds Jehovah {Ye?u>vah) ; from that time people
began to pronounce it so, but Genebrard, who died in 1597,
in his Commentary on the Psalms, continues against Beza to
oppose it as an intolerable innovation : Impii vetustatis
temeratores et nominis Dei ineffabUis prqfanatores aique adeo
trans/omiatores JovA vel Jehovah legurU, vocdbulo novo, barbaro,
JklUio, irreligioso et Jovem geniUium redolenle.
II. The title of the book, given by itself. Ver. 1 : "The
vision of Yeshayahu, son of Amoz, which he saw concerning
Jitdah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziyahu, Jotham, Ahaz,
Yehizkiyahu, kings of Judah." Isaiah is here called )^OK~]|f.
The Jewish doctrine, known even to the early Fathers of the
Church, that when a prophet's father is named, the latter also
was a prophet (Megilla 15a), is unfounded. But there is at
least some sense, though no historic basis, in an old tradition
repeated in the Midrash (Pesikta de-Rob Cahana 111b) and
the Talmnds (Megilla 10b, cf. Sota 10b), that Amoz was the
brother of Amaziah, the father and predecessor of Uzziah, and
that Isaiah was thus, like the Davidic kings, a descendant of
Jttdah and Tamar. The nature and appearance of Isaiah
make a thoroughly royal impression. He speaks to kings
like a king. With majestic bearing he goes to meet the
magnates of his people, and of the world-power beyond. In
his style, he is among the prophets what Solomon was among
the kings. In all ciroumstances and moods, he is master of
his materials, a master of language, — simply magnificent,
sublime without affectation, splendid though unadorned. But
this regal character had its roots somewhere else than in
blood. Only this much may be said with certainty, that
Isaiah was born in Jerusalem. For the character of his
prophecy betokens closest intimacy with the capital : accord-
ing to Chagiga 13b, he stands in relation to Ezekiel as a
native of the chief city to a native of the provinces ; notwith-
standing his exceeding manifold prophetic missions, we never
■ Cf. Baudissin, Studien ntr temt. ReliffiotugeiehiehU, i. 163 f.
Digitized by
Google
62 ISAIAH.
find him outside of Jerusalem; here, too, as may be seen
from chap. xxii. 1, and the style of his intercourse with king
Hesekiah, he lived with his wife and children in the lower
part of the city ; here he carried on his ministry under the
fonr kings named in ver. 1, who are enumerated without " vav
copulative ; " there is the same unconnected enumeration as
in the titles of the Books of Hosea and Micah. There
Hezekiah is called >^% — almost the same form as here, —
but with the simple rejection of the toneless t The
Chronicler especially prefers the complete form, — full both at
the beginning and the end, — though he also uses the rarer
form vrpra Eoorda is of opinion that tiie Chronicler took
this malformation from the three titles, where it is a copyist's
error for ^^\^. or fi^i??r". ; but it is also found in Jer. xv. 4
and 2 Kings xx. 10, where such an error in transcription
could not possibly have taken place. Accordingly, it is not
au irregular form ; we must not, however, with Boorda, derive
it from the Piel, but from the Qal of the verb (" strong is
Jehovah"), with a connecting t, which occurs pretty frequently
in proper names derived from verb-roots with a vowel in the
middle, such as 'yvayin^ from B^, 1 Chron. iv. 36.
Under the kings already mentioned Isaiah exercised his
ministry, or, as it is expressed in ver. 1, saw the vision which
he committed to writing in the book before us. Among the
many Hebrew synonyms for seeing, nrn is the general ex-
pression regularly used for prophetic perception, whether the
form in which the divine revelation was made to the prophet
was a vision or an audible communication ; in both cases he
" sees " it, — distinguishing this divine message, in its super-
natural objectivity, from his own conceptions and thoughts by
means of the inner sense, which is designated by the term
used to denote the noblest of the five external senses. The
prophet accordingly is called nrn, «a seer" (at an earlier
period in the language, nx\ l Sam. ix. 9), and prophecy is^
called I^tn ; the term fiwaj, which is the cognate of K'M, appearSi
only in the latest period (thrice in Chronicles and Nehemiah).
The noun l^tn, indeed, is also applied to individual visions (cf.
Jer, xxix. 7 with Job xx. 8, xxxiii. 15), like ffV} (const. I^rn),
which is formed from in by euphonic doubling, and is more
frequently used in this sense ; but here, in the title to the
Digitized by
Google
TOE SOPEBSCRIPTION OP THK BOOK OF ISAIAH. 53
Book of Isaiah, the abstract meaning passes over into the still
more closely related collective, indicating the whole of what
is seen, i.e. the contents of the vision. We may not conclude,
therefore, that the first part of ver. 1 was originally the
superscription merely of the first prophetic address, and that
it was only through the addition of the latter part that it was
changed into a general title for the whole book: Vitringa
held this view, and perhaps it may even be correct, but with
the Chronicler (2 Chron. zxxii. 32) this VTVB^ pm appears
as the general title of the collection.
Along with Jndah, Jerusalem is further specially mentioned
as the object of the vision. The " perpetual Qeri " to xhtrf
(DTBTi'^ is DTBTi'^ which is hardly to be regarded as a " broken
dual," i.e. as formed through internal change of sound, but —
like rifP for friDP, 2 Chron. xiii. 19, and the Aramaic XPS^Uff —
a later form in which the diphthongal ajim or aim has been
resolved from the original im, am,, an. Cheyne finds in the
particularizing, from Judah to Jerusalem, an indication of the
fact that Isaiah was a city-prophet But the object of the
prophecies of the provincial prophet Micah is also (i. 1)
marked by the mention of the capitals of both kingdoms.
The advance from " Judah " to " Jerusalem " is a centralizing
step ; and if pm is meant to indicate the totality of what was
seen by Isaiah, this designation of the object of Isaiah's
prophecies by " Judah and Jerusalem " is centralizing. For
his vision extends far beyond Judah, not merely to the sister
kingdom of Ephraim, but also to the Gentile nations. Within
the widest circle of the nations of the world there lies the
smaller one containing the peoples bordering on the Hebrews ;
and within this, again, there is the still smaller one of all
Israel, including Samaria ; within this, once more, there is the
yet smaller circle of the kingdom of Judah ; and all these
circles include Jerusalem, because the whole history of the
world, regarded in its inmost working and its final purpose, is
the history of the Church of God, which has Jerusalem, the
cit^ of Jehovah's temple and the kingdom of promise, for its
peculiar site. In this sense, the expression "couceming
Judah and Jerusalem " is also suitable for the whole book, in
which everything that the prophet sees is seen from Judah
and Jerusalem, and for the sake of both, and in the interests
Digitized by
Google
54 ISAIAH.
of both. It is more probable, however, that the latter part of
ver. 1 is a more receut addition, so that the words from prn to
ehwf thus formed the original superscription of the first
address, and could only indirectly (like the names of the
Books of the Pentateuch) be used as the designation of the
whole book. For it is inadmissible, with Luzzatto, to take
10( as nominative instead of accusative (^ut instead of juam,
8C. vigionem), in order to stamp the words " The Vision of
Isaiah, son of Amoz," as the superscription of the first dis-
course, in chap, i ; the suggestion is contrary to the sjmtax,
for nrn netc fm is the usual Hebrew construction of the verb
with its own substantive (Ges. § 138. IX
Digitized by
Google
FIRST HALF OF THE COLLECTION OF
PROPHECIES.
CHAPS. I.-XXXTX.
PART I.— PEOPHECIES RELATING TO THE COURSE OF THE
MASS OF THE PEOPLE ONWARDS TO HARDENING OF
HEART, CHAPa L-VL
Opening Discotjhsk, regasdino Jehovah's way with His
Ungrateful and Eebellioto People, I. 2 fp.
The prophet is standing on the fateful boundaiy-line between
the two halves of the history of Israel. Neither by the riches
of divine goodness which they experienced during the times
of Uzziah and Jotham, which closely resembled those of
David and Solomon, nor by the chastisements of the divine
displeasure which inflicted wound upon wound, have the people
allowed themselves to be brought to repentance and reflection ;
the divine means of training have been exhausted, and it only
remains that Jehovah should let His people in their present
condition be consumed in the fire, that a new people may be
formed out of the gold which has stood the fiery test. At
this period, so pregnant with storms, appear the prophets, like
birds upon the sea, presaging the tempest, and more active
than at any other epoch, — ^Amos in the days of Jeroboam,
Micah in the reign of Jotham, but above all Isaiah, the
prophet KUT efop^v, standing midway between Moses and
Christ.
Conscious of this his exalted position in the history of
salvation, be begins his opening address in Deuteronoroic
fashion, like the grand Song of Moses in Dent xxxii. This
form has been shown by the investigations of Klostennann
Digitized by
Google
56 ISJIUH.
(Siudien u. Krit. 1871) to have passed current in Hezeltiah's
time, at latest, as a prophetic testimony reaching back to Moses,
so that it may actually be regarded as such (see No. X. of my
" Studies in Pentateuchal Criticism," in Luthardt's Zeitschrift,
1880, p. 503 ff.). This song is the compendious programme
and the common watchword of all prophecy, to which it stands
in the same fundamental relation as the Decalogue to all other
laws, and the Lord's Prayer to all other prayers. The law-
giver therein sets before the eyes of his people their whole
history to the end of time. This history falls into four great
periods : the creation and exaltation of Israel ; the ingratitude
and apostasy of Israel ; the surrender of Israel into the hands
of the heathen ; lastly, the restoration of Israel, — sifted but not
destroyed, — and the accord of all nations to praise Jehovah,
who has revealed Himself in judgment and in mercy. This
fourfold division is not merely preserved in every part of the
history of Israel, but'it forms the distingoishing mark of the
history as a whole to its remotest end. Every age of Israel
has thus in that song a mirror of its present condition and
future destiny. This mirror the prophets held up before
their contemporaries. Thus did Isaiah. He opens his
prophetic address as Moses begins his Song. Moses begins
(Deut xxxL 1): "Hear, ye heavens, and I will speak,
and let the earth hear the words of my mouth." In what
sense he calls on heaven and earth he himself tells us in
Deut xxxi 28 £, He foresees in spirit the future apostasy
of Israel, and takes heaven and earth, which will endure
beyond his earthly life now drawing to a close, as witnesses
of what he has to say to his people with such a prospect. In
like manner, — only with the interchange of the parallel verbs
VXf and jwn, — Isaiah begins, "Hear, heav im^ mid give atr,"^
earifi: ftrr /ffi/mah i fpfal-jt'^ The ground of the demand
IS put in a general way : they are to hear because Jehovah
is speaking. But what Jehovah speaks substantially agrees
with that address of Jehovah which is introduced in Deut.
xxxii. 20 by the expression " And he said." What Jehovah,
according to the statement there, will one day have to say in
His wrath. He now says through the prophet, whose present
corresponds to the future of the Song of Moses. For the time
has now arrived when heaven and earth, — ^which always exist
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE I. 2. 57
and are always tbe same, which have continued through the
past history of Israel iu all places and at all times, — should
fulfil the duty laid on them by the lawgiver to be witnesses ;
and this is just tbe special, true, and ultimate sense in which
they are required, as they were by Moses, to hear. They
were present and shared in the proceedings when Jehovah
gave the Law to His people ; t he heavens, according to Deu t.
iv. 36. as the place from wh icfi the voice of God issued, and
_the earth as the place wheiS- His great fire appeareH] They
were solemnly admitted to the dcene when Jehovah gave to
His people the choice between a blessing and a curse, life and
death (Deut. xxx. 19, iv. 26). They are now, therefore, to
hear and bear witness regarding what Jehovah, their Creator
and the God of Israel, has t^ say, aiid what complaints He
' aautd.mS^tn^Mve reoM^a^dmi^ Me. ^TliougE'^i^eris^
meant, Israel is not named, but the historical facts are
generalized into a parable, in order that the astounding and
appalling state of matters may be made more prominent.
Israel is Jehovah's son (Ex. iv. 22 f.); all the membere of
the nation are His chj ldlSP (Deut. xiv. 1, xxxii. 20); He_is_
the Father of Israel, whom He has begotten (Deut xxxiL
6, 18). The existence of Israel as a nation, like that of
other nations, is effected, indeed, by means of natural repro-
duction, not by spiritual regeneration ; but the primary
ground of Israel's origin is the supematurally efficacious
word of grace addressed to Abraham (Gen. xviL 15 f.) ; and a
series of wonderful dealings in grace has brought the growth
and development of Israel to that point which it had attained
at the Exodus from Egypt It is in this sense that Jehovah
has begotten IsraeL This relation of Jehovah to Israel as
His children has already, in Isaiah's time, a long time of
grace behind it in the past, — the time of Israel's childhood in
Egypt, the time of youth in the desert, the time of growing
manhood from Joshua to Samuel ; and now Joshua can say
in the days of Isaiah, " I have brought up children, and
exalted them." The opposite of i'i^| is ibi^, that of tr\ is
-w. The Piel i^l signifies to " make great," and when applied
to children (as here and in 2 Kings x. 6, etc.), to " bring
up" in the sense of natural growth; and the Pilel ocrt\
Digitized by
Google
58 ISAIAH.
which is used also in xxiii. 4, Ezek. xxxL 4 (cf. the proper
names in 1 Gliron. xxv. 29-31), as the parallel to i?.|, signifies
to "exalt" in the dignitative sense of raising to a high
position, to which wise love of a father gradually advances a
child. The two verses depict the condition of mature man-
hood and high honour which Israel had reached under the
monarchy of David and Solomon, and which has again been
enjoyed under Uzziah and Jotham. But how ungrateful
were they towards God for what they owed to Him, — " but
they have broken away from me ! " Instead of an adversative
particle (baK possibly), there is merely i copulative, used
energetically, as in vL 7 (cf. o>}\ Hos. viL 13). Two things
that ought never to have been conjoined, — the gracious and
filial relation of Israel to Jehovah, and Israel's base apostasy
from Jehovah, — these, though utterly contradictory, were now
actually combined. The verb V^f, cJmJ (hei-e with retracted
tone,^ from the presence of the following *a), in accordance
with its radical idea, signifies to " break away, break loose "
(Lat. dirumpere, as in amicitiam dirumptre)^ and is followed
by a with the object forming the completion of the action ;
it means violently and determinedly to break connection with
any one, and is here used of the inward severance from God,
and renunciation of His claims, which forms the climax of
nK»n (Job xxxiv. 37), and of which the full outward mani-
festation is idolatry. From the time that Solomon, towards
the end of his reign, gave himself up to idolatry, the worship
of idols had never wholly ceased, even in public, down to the
days of Isaiah. Two attempts had been made to put an end
to it, — the reformation begun by Asa and completed by
Jehoshaphat, and afterwards the one accomplished by Joash
during the lifetime of the high priest Jehoiada, who had
' Only in the following cases is there no retraction of the tone :
(1) When the syllable to which it would be retracted is a closed syllable ;
(2) When the former of the two logically connected words ends with a
lieavy suffix ; (3) When the final syllable of this word is closed and
accented, as in v D'i??.
* In Arabic, t_"-* originally had a purely sensuous meaning, and it is
expressly remarked that it received an ethical sense only through Islam ;
it is the proper word for breaking the fruit by bursting open the
husk.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER I. 8. 59
preserved him and brought him up ; the first, however, had
uot been able wholly to abolish idolatry altogether, and what
had been removed byJoash returned with redoubled abomina-
tions as soon as Jehoiada was dead. Hence the expression,
" they have broken away from me," which sums up the whole
of Israel's ingratitude in the one culminating sin, applies to
the entire history of the nation from the zenith of glory under
David and Solomon down to the time of the prophet
In ver. 3 Jehovah now complains of the apostasy' with
which His children have rewarded Him as inhuman, — nay, 3
ox knomth his owner, and an ^wTa^ crib of tts rpjister;- — ^f* •
Israel doth not mmxfmy^'pto^lam^ nm'cm^
ing ox has a knowledge of its purchaser and" owner ('"'jf'), to C^? fU,>,
whom it willingly submits ; and an ass, the domestic animal
of proverbial stupidity (in the East also ; see Zeitschrift der
deutseken morgenl. Chsellschaft, xL 266 f.), has a knowledge
at least of the crib of its master OvW, a plural of excellence,
as in £xod. xxL 29, — a degenerate species of the " extensive "
plural, as distinguished from the " multiplicative " plural),
i.e. it knows that it is its master who puts its fodder into
the manger (W3K — from D3K, to fatten cattle — with — instead
of — , like the forms pDK, pDK). No such knowledge has
Israel, — neither direct, like instinct, nor indirect, acquired by
reflection (R^ann). The expressions jn» \ih and piann \ih can-
not be taken here (as for example in Ivi 1 ; Ps. IxxxIL 5)
in an objectless sense, and as indicating a state or condition, —
— as if the meaning were, "they are ignorant end inconsiderate,"
but the object is implied in what precedes, and the words
mean "they know not, consider not what, on their side,
corresponds to the owner and to the manger which the roaster
fills," — namely, that_the)y_are the children and the property of
Jehovah, and their existence and prosperity solely^ depend,
on the grace of Jebomh— (Jer. v. 24, cf. Hos. ii. 10). The
IMifallel, with its many contrasts, like the similar one in Jer.
viiL 7, where animals are again introduced, explains itself even
through the employment of " Israel " and " my people."
Those who, in knowledge and gratitude, are far surpassed and
put to shame by the brutes, are not a nation like any other
nation among men, but " Israel," descendants of Jacob, who
Digitized by
Google
f
60 ISAUH.
wrestled with and overcame the wrath of God, and by
wrestling also obtained the blessing for himself and his pos-
terity ; they are " my people " too, — those whom Jehovah has
chosen out of all peoples to be the people of His possession,
and most especial care and direction. This people, bearing
the honoured name — bestowed by God Himself — of one who
was a hero of faith and prayer, — this favoured people of
Jehovah lowered itself far beneath the level of the brutes.
Such is the complaint poured out before heaven and earth by
the noble speaker.
The piercing cry of complaint by the deeply-pained Father
is at the same time the heaviest impeachment But the cause
of God is to the prophet the cause of a friend who feels the
grief of his friend as he would feel his own (v. 1). Hence
the complaint of God now changes into strong invective and
threatening on the part of the prophet ; and in conformity
with the deep indignation by which he is moved, his discourse
in verse 4 moves rapidly along like a lightning storm, giving
forth flash upon flash. The address consists of seven mem-
bers, not formally connected, but so arranged as to form a
climax, and each is composed of Imt two or three, wordsT/
" Woe to the sinful nation, the guilt-tac^'^eople,t^ inM^ww
race, the children acting corruptly ! They have forsaken J^ehowah,
blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, turned away bachoards!"
The distinction attempted between ^n and itt> making the former
to signify " Ohl" and the latter " Woe!" is untenable ; for, with
some doubtful exceptions, in also is an exclamation of pain,
and here not so much a calling down of woe {vas genti, as
Jerome renders it), as a lamentation (vae gentem), but one
that is filled with wrath. The appellations of Israel which
follow point to what the nation ought to be in accordance
with the divine choice and determination, and express what,
through its own choice and self-determination in opposition
to God, it has become. (1.) According to the divine choice
and determination, Israel should be a "holy nation," Ex.
xix. 6, but it is a "sinful nation" (gens peeeatrix, as the
Vulgate correctly translates) ; for KOh here is not so much
a participle as a participial adjective, signifying what is
habitual, — the usual singular to the plural O'mn, afiap-
ToiKol, the singular of which is not in common use, and occurs
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB I. 4. 61
only once (Amos ix. 8) in the feminine as an adjective.
" Holy " and " sinful " are sharp contrasts, for v'n^ signifies
that which is separated from what is common, unclean, sinful,
and superior to it. At the same time, the alliteration in ^3
*in (with Pasek, to preserve the independence of the two
words, whose sound is so similar) is intended to produce the
impression that the nation as sinful is a nation of woe. (2.)
In the Law, besides being called vS^i^ 'ia, Israel is called
Thxv D? (Num. xvii. 6), the people chosen and highly favoured
by Jehovah ; but it is |^ ^33 oy, a people heavy with iniquity.
133 is the construct from 133, "heavy," like TTtf from T^;
the form 133 is usually employed with the meaning of
"clumsy" (Ex. iv. 10); and besides, the dissyllabic form
sounds more rhythmically. Instead of employing the readiest
descriptive expression, "a people of heavy iniquity," the
property of the iniquity (the weight) is attributed to the
people themselves upon whom it lies as a burden, — in accord-
ance with the view that he who carries a heavy harden is
himself so much the heavier (cf. gravis oneribus in Cicero).
fiV is always the word employed whenever sin is meant to be
indicated as heavy and coarse (e.ff. in xxxiiL 24 ; Gen. xv.
16, xix. 15), and when there is farther included the idea of
the guilt incurred by it. From being the people of Jehovah,
they have become a people heavily laden with the guilt of
sin. In this way the true nature of Israel has been crashed,
and changed into its opposite. We translate ii by " nation,"
and Dp by " people," because the former (from ^) is the mass
of individuals who have been joined together through one
common descent, language, and country, whereas DP (from
opf, ^, " to combine ") is the people joined together by unity
of government (cf. for instance Pa cv. 13); hence we always
read of the " people of Jehovah " ("Jn^ op), not the " nation of
Jehovah " (njn^. il) ; and ij, free from every slur, occurs only
twice (Zeph. iL 9 ; Pa cvL 5), with a suffix referring to
Jehovah, but here it is used as in Mai. iii. 9. (3.) Israel
elsewhere bears the honourable title of the seed of the patri-
arch (xli 8, xlv. 1 9, cf. Gen. xxi. 12); in reality, however,
it is a seed of evil-doers (xiv. 20, cf. xxxi 2). The idea of a
similar descent, contained in rit. goes back to that of a like
Digitized by
Google
62 KAIAH.
iuherited nature (Ixv. 23 ; Prov. xi. 21); and 0*^0 does not
mean the fathers, but the contemporaries of the prophet
(the genitive being intended to be taken attributively), — a
race consisting of miscreants. The singular of the noun DT!!9
is IT!?, with the sharpening of ino with Pathach, vhich
is usual in m verbs with guttural radicals; jno (with
Kamez in pause, ix. 16, which see) is a Hiphil participial
uoun. (i.) Tlie children of Israel are, in virtue of the
divine act, " children of Jehovah," D^ut xiv. 1 ; but through
their own doings they are Dwrete D'33, "children acting
corruptly;" what the Law had dreaded and predicted had
thus come to pass : Deut iv. 16, 25, xxxL 29. In all these
passages the Hiphil is found, and in the parallel passages of
the grand song, Deut xxxiL 5, the Piel T\nv, both of which
conjugations contain within themselves the object of the
action (Ges. § 53. 2): these verbs thus signify to do some-
thiug destiMictive, to act in such a way that one becomes a
cause of ruin to himself and others. That the degeneration
of the children is meant to be regarded in relation to Jehovah,
and not to their forefathers, — the opinion of Bosenmiiller,
who follows Vitringa, — is evident from the latter part of
ver. 2, cf. xxx. 1, 9. After the four exclamatory clauses,
there follow — making up the saddening seven — three de<
claratory clauses describing Israel's apostasy as complete.
There is apostasy in disposition: " they have forsaken Jehovah."
There is apostasy in words : " they blaspheme the Holy One
of Israel." fW (properly, " to sting," then " to mock, treat
with contempt"), used of blasphemy, is an old Mosaic
word; see Deut. xxxi. 20; Num. xiv. 11, 23, xvi. 30.
" The Holy One of Israel " is a title designedly applied to
Ood here ; it is the keynote of Isaianic prophecy, and first
sounded in this passage (see under vi. 3). To mock what is
holy is in itself sinful ; it is doubly a sin to mock God the Holy
One ; it is trebly a sin that Israel mocks God the Holy One,
who has set Himself to be the SanctiGer of Israel, and who,
as He is the holiness of Israel, so also, in conformity with
His holiness, seeks to be sanctified by Israel (Lev. xix. 2,
eta). And lastly, their apostasy is also apostasy in their
way of acting : " they have turned away backwards." In the
Niphal i^n, which occurs only here, there is contained the
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTEB L & C3
idea of deliberaleness in their estrangement from God : the
expression of this is still further intensified by employing
"Arm (which is added emphatically, instead of '^ip?'?). Their
conduct should be an imitation of Jehovah's ; but they have
turned the back to Him, and entered on the path chosen by
themselves.
In ver. 5, which now follows, it is, first of all, doubtful re-
garding the meaning of np'i'J' (po, as in Ps. x. 13, iv. 3, with
-^ even in cases where no guttural follows, after ??, as after
^P, Ps. iv. 3 ; J?!, Hag. v. 9 ; and thrice '""p^, 1 Sam. L 8 ; see
on Prov. xxxi. 2 ; cf. Kcinig, Lehrgeb. p. 143), whether it
signifies " why," as the LXX., Targum, Syriac, Eashi, Kimchi,
Hitzig, and now also Cheyne take it, or " on what," i.e. " on
which part of the body " (Jerome, Saadias), a view for which
Ewald, Knobel, and Schroring (in Part 2 of his Jesaian. Stvdien)
decide. Eeuss also translates, cyk vous frajipera-t-an encore ?
Luzzatto considers the latter rendering insipid, especially
because a member of the body that has already been smitten
can be repeatedly struck again ; but he thinks the meaning is
that there is no judgment which had not already fallen on
Israel, so that it is no longer far from utter ruin. Never-
theless, we decide with Caspari for the meaning " to what "
(».«. for what end) ? For in all the other (fourteen)
passages in which no'^y occurs, it has this meaning, once
even along with fisn, Num. xxii. 32 (cf. Prov. xviL 26), and
the people do not come to be viewed as a body till ver. 6,
whereas the interrogative, " upon what," would require the
reader or hearer to presuppose it even here. But in translat-
ing np"?y by "to what end," we do not understand it (as
Malbim does, for instance) in the sense of cut bono ? with
the idea underlying the question, that it would certainly be
fruitless, as all smiting hitherto has proved, — for this thouglit
is not, as we should expect, directly expressed, — but after the
ar.alogy of questions with neb (Ezek. xviii. 31 ; Jer. xliv. 7 ;
cf. the comment, on Eccles. v. 5, vii. 16 f.), qua de causa ? with
the underlying thought that this continual calling forth of
divine chastisement is certainly a mad desire for one's own
destruction. Accordingly, we render the first part of ver, 5 :
" WTiy do you unsh always to he smitten, increasing your re-
hellion t " *riy (with Tiphclia, a stronger disjunctive than
/
Digitized by
Google
64 ISAIAH.
Tebir, cf. Ezek. xix. 9) belongs to '2n ; but <3B without 'tis
would make it appear as if they bad not yet been smitten for
their apostasy hitherto. There are not two interrogative
clauses on the same plane (as Lnzzatto tliinks), as if the mean-
ing were, " Why do ye wish to be smitten afresh ? Why do
ye add revolt ? " Nor is the second clause the answer to the
first, to which it assigns the reason (as Nagelsbach thinks),
" For what (for what purpose) should ye be smitten still more ?
Ye heap rebellion on rebellion ; " but the second clause is
subordinated to the first, an adverbial secondary clause more
closely defining the main proposition, as in v. 11, xxx. 31,
cf. Ps. Ixii. 5 (" delighting in lies "), iv. 3 (" while ye love
vain show"); also Ps. v. 10, xxvii 27 ; see Ewald's Hebrew
Syntax, § 341* [Eng. transl. pp. 240, 241]. The LXX. has
•irpoim0evT6<t avofiiav, '"nD (a fem. partia used as a noun,
with neuter sense) is deviation from truth and rectitude ;
here, as pretty frequently elsewhere, it means disloyalty to
Jehovah, who is the absolutely Good and absolute Goodness.
It is difficult to decide whether B'Kn-i>3 and ^a^a signify
" every head," " every heart," or, as Ewald and others think,
" the whole head," " the whole heart" i>b, followed by an
indeterminate singular, sometimes signifies completeness, as iu
ix. 11, " with whole mouth ; " Ezek. xxxvi 5, " with joy of the
whole heart ; " 2 Kings xxiii. 3, " with whole heart and with
whole soul ; " also Ezek. xxix. 7, " the whole shoulder . . .
the whole loins." More usually, however, hb, with an indeter-
minate genitive of parts of the body, signifies " each," " every"
(quiaqtu, not tottts), xv. 2, xlv. 23 ; Jer. xlviiL 37 ; Ezek. vii.
17 f., xxi. 12. It is thus most natural, syntactically, to
translate the latter part of ver. 5, " every head is diseased,
and every heart is sick ; " this rendering is also most in accord
with the circumstances, inasmuch as the words in the first
part of the verse are not addressed to the people as a whole,
but as a multitude made up of individuals. The i> at the
beginning of ^n?, indicates the state or condition into which a
person or thing has come : " every head is in a diseased con-
dition;" see Ewald, § 217 d : lachOli (this, in spite of Kouig,
Lehrgeb. p. 106 f., is the pronunciation intended), without the
article, as in 2 Chron. xvL 18; cf. '?»3, 1 Sam. i. 11 ; the
form with the article would need to be 'pn?. What is meant
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTIB L 6. %S
is disease arising from a wound caased by a blow (as in Jer.
X. 19, V. 3). The prophet asks his fellow-ooantrymen why
they are so mad as to continne calling f(»th the judgments of
6od, which have already fallen on them stroke upon strokej
through their heaping one apostasy on another. Are matters
already so far gone with them l^at, among the many heads
and hearts, there is no longer a head that has not fallen into
a diseased condition, and no heart which is not thoroughly
sick (yn, an intensive form, from nn) ? Head and heart are
named as the noblest portions of the outer and the inner man :
outwardly and inwardly, every individual of the nation has
already been smitten by the wrath of God, so that they have
enough, and might have been brought to bethink themselves.
Considoing this utterly miserable condition of every
individual of the nation, the view (in ver. 6) of the whole
pe(^le as a miserably diseased body does not come on us
unexpectedly : " From the sole of the foot to the head, there is
nothing aownd in it, — scars, and weals, and fettering wounds i
theif have not been pressed out, or lound up, nor has there been
any softening with oil." In the body of the nation, to which
(or to the people as a whole) reference is made by ia, " in it,"
—the address now passing into objective form, — there is
nothing healthy {Oho from O^, not, as in Judg. xx. 48, from
no with the root nno) ; it is covered with wounds of various
kinds, inflicted at different times; and for the healing of
these many and manifold wounds, which all together, dose on
one another, one on the other, cover the body of the nation,
no kind of means has been employed. V9f (from jnn, to
cleave, tear open) is a wound made by tearing the fledi, as
by a sword-stroke : this required binding up (Eaek. xxx. 21),
that the gaping Sesh might close again ; n'nin (&om *>3n=j^^
to be striped) is a swollen stripe or lump, such as is caused
by the stroke of a whip or a blow of the fist ; this required
softening with oil, in order that the coagulated matter or the
swelling might disperse ; ipo nsp is the still fresh and bleed-
ing wound, which needed pressing out to cleanse it, and thns
fooilitate healing. The three predicates, in relation to the
ideas presented in the subjects, show an approximation to a
chiasm. The predicates are plural in form, owing to the
subjects being taken collectively ; the expression jofi ms^ tfy^
vou I. £
Digitized by
Google
which, as regards its meaniog, refers to man, is accordingly
to be understood as a neuter construction, and to be rendered,
" nor has softening with oil been effected." Considering the
Pual near it, vif might also appear to be of the same conjuga-
tion, but actually is not, because, according to the accentuation
(with two Pashias, the first of which, as in *^, Gen. L 2,
marks the place of tone, so that the form here is to be pro-
nounced aku), it has the tone on the penult, — a fact for
which (in spite of what Stade says, § 41 5) no reason could be
perceived, if the form were from the verb nTt. For the
assumption that the tone is retracted in order to prepare us
for the heavy incidence of the tone in ^Bran (Ewald, § 194<;)
is quite arbitrary; for, though the influence of the Pause
sometimes reaches to the second last word, it does not extend
to the third last Moreover, according to the usage of the
language, inf signifies " to be -dispersed," not " to be pressed
out," whereas *m and tit are commonly used in the sense of
pressing together, and pressing out Hence )*)! (like vffii) is
either the Qal of a middle-vowel intransitive verb "ist, or (more
probably)— because the middle-vowel verb nf in Ps. Iviii 4
has another meaning •(" they are estranged ; " cC y^^ above, in
ver. 4) — the Qal of "nr (= jj, eonatringere), which is here in-
flected as an intransitive verb, and in a measure corresponding'
to the Arabic passive of the Qal \jjj (OlsL § 245. 1); c£
Job xziv. 24, xeh, and Gen. xlix. 23, the actively used tah.
The surgical treatment, so highly necessary for the nation, is
a figurative representation of the pastoral address of the
prophet, which, though certainly published, was as if it had
not been published, inasmuch as its salutary effect was con-
ditioned by repentance on the part of the nation. The people
despised God's offer of service like that of the good Samaritan
(Luke X. 34). They did not like the radical cure of which
the prophets made offer. The view of the body as diseased
within and wholly lacerated without was thus all the more
calculated to excite compassion. The prophet speaks of the
existing condition of things. He says that it has already
come to the worst with the people, and this is precisely the
ground and the subject of his inculpatory complaints.
Hence, when he passes in ver. 7 from figurative to literal
Digitized by
Google
CDAPIBS I. 7, 07.
language (like ver. 23 after 22), it is to be perceived that he.
is there also speaking of what was then present.
The body thus internally and externally disorganized was,
properly speaking, the people and the country in the frightful
condition described in ver. 7, which begins in the most compre-
hensive manner, and closes in the same way : " Your country
— a toatU ! your cities — himed with firt I your arable land —
before your eyes strangers are devouring it, and a desert like an
overthrowing by strangers." Caspari (in his BeitrOge zur Mnl.
in das Buck Jesaia, p. 204) has pointed out how nearly every
word here corresponds to the threatenings of a curse in Lev.
xxvL and Deut xxviil (xxix.). The designation given by
the prophet to the foes who have devastated the country
reduced its cities to ashes, and seized its harvest, is simply
O^J, " strangers," or barbarians (cf. Festns : hostis apud antiquos
peregrinus dicebatur), without mentioning their nationality.
He abstracts from the historic definiteness of the present, in
order the more impressively to show that it bears the character
of the curse which was predetermined. The climactic ex>
pression for this is, that — as stated in the noun-clause at the
end of ver. 7, which goes back to repeat what was previously
said — ^there has been wrought a desolation, Ofnit rDBnp3, '< like
an overthrow of foreigners." This emphatic repetition of a
catchword in a verse, seen here in the case of 0^4> '^ * figure
of speech (called tpanaphora) common to the two halves of
the collection : Ewald, Studer, Lagarde, and Obeyne, reading
0*10 nsBHsa, mistake this peculiarity of Isaiah's writings. It
is a question, however, whether, with Caspari, Knobel, and
Nagelsbach, D^T is to be taken as a subjective genitive, in
which case the clause would mean " like an overthrow such
as barbarians usually cause ; " or whether we should, with
Hitzig. Luzzatto, and others, regard the word as an objective
genitive, and render the expression, " like an overthrow such
as is wont to befall barbarians.'' As n^BTip, in conformity
with the primary passage in Deut. xxix. 22, in all other
places where it occurs, designates the overthrow of Sodom,
Qomorrah, etc. (xiii 19 ; Amos iv. 11 ; Jer. L 40), that was
accomplished by God, and seeing that Isaiah also, as ver. 8
shows, has this catastrophe in his mind, we decide for the
view that onr, like 0*jwn in Prov. xii. 7, is the objective
Digitized by
Google
6^8 ISAIAH.
g^nitiTe : this view is farther rendered more probable by the
form of the noun, which points to a state or condition rather
than an action (c£ ^fT^, Jw??, "P?^) ; in this way also
the 3, marking the comparison, becomes more significant
The prophet means to say that the desolation which has
befallen the countiy of the people of God is like such com-
plete ruin (mbvenio) as God sends on nations which stand
outside of the covenant-relation (cf. £ph. ii 14), and which,
like the people of the Pentapolis, are utterly destroyed by
Him, leaving no trace behind.
But, as declared in vers. 8, 9, there is merely similarity,
not identity. Jerusalem is still preserved, but in how sad a
condition ! There is no doubt that in ver. 8 " the daughter
of Zion " means Jerusalem. The genitive in the expression
t^vra is that of apposition, so that "daughter of Zion" is
equivalent to " daughter Zion ;" cf. fnr^ '^f, xxxvil 22,
where annexion comes in twice, instead of apposition (Gres.
$ 128. 2<2). Zion itself is represented as a daughter, ie. as
a woman. Such ia the name applied, first of all, to the
townspeople dwelling round the fortress of Zion, to which the
individual inhabitants of the city are related as children to
their mother, inasmuch as the community sees its members
from time to time coming into existence and growing up, and
those who are thus bom within her are, as it were, bom of
her and brought up by her ; but, in the next instance, the
name is also applied to the city itself, either including at
excluding (c£ Jer. xlvi 19, xlviiL 18; Zeoh. iL 11) the
inhabitants, — here, however, as shown in ver. 9, these are
included. This is precisely the point of the first two com-
parisons. "And the daughter of Zion is left remaining like a
booth in a vineyard, like a night - hut in a cucumiier -field."
The vineyard and the cucumber field are considered by the
prophet in their condition before the harvest (not e^ler, as the
Targums represent it), during which they need to be watched ;
hence the point of the comparison is this, that throughout the
vineyard and the cucumber field not a single human being is
to be seen, and that, nothing but the booth and the night
hut' show, nevertheless, thait such a being has his abode here.
* The pictare of "a lodge in a garden of cacumbera," in Thomson'i
Land <md the Boek, shows four polen covered above with boughs, and with,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPm I. 8. 69
So stands Jerasdem in the midst of a far-reaching desdlation.
— a sign, however, that the country was not wh<^y de-
populated.
But what is the meaning of the third of the comparisons f
Hitzig renders, " like a watch-tower;" Elnobel, " like a guard-
oity;" BeuSB (who, however, would raUier expunge the words,
which he considers a gloss), " oonune nn lien de garde;" Imt
though n-nv3 may mean a guard, a watoh, "VV cannot mean a
tower. Anid for the rendering which most readily presents
itself, "like a guarded city" {i.e. a city preserved ttwm
danger), the 3 of comparison is unsuitable. Nor is it ad-
missible to take the first two a in the sense of 9i«wt, and
the third in the sense of tie; for this correlative 3 is usual
only in clauses indicating identity, not in those properly
signifying comparison. Weir's conjecture, that the reading
ehould be nvna Tys (Prov. xxv. 28; 2 Cbron. xxxii, 6), is
ingenious: this would make &e clause mean "like a city
(with walls) broken through," — hence, defenceless ; but there
is no need for this conjectura We translate, "like a blockaded
cily," deriving nrim here, as in Prov. viL 10, from ">», — not,
with Luszatto, from "nv, Ni if^, fern, n-rno (which is not in
use, and, moreover, in this obscured feminine form, cannot
be proved to exist; see Stade, § 78a), and after the LXX.,
with Strachey, rendering the words " like a besieged city." "i^
signifies to observe with keen eye (ct. Tvyto, and Uj, obsenmn,
with ia}, euttodire), with good intention, or (as in Job viL 20)
with hostile design ; it may thus, like the 83monymous terms
in 2 Sam. xi 16, Jer. v. 6, be used of the investment of a city.
Jemsalem was not aotually blockaded when the fnuphet
uttered his predictions, but it was just like a blockaded oi^,
inasmuch as between such a town and the Uockading enemy
there is a desdate and uninhabited space, in the nticbt of
which the city lies in silence and solitude, shut up within
itsel£ The citizens do not venture fortii ; while the enany,
tm account of the missiles of the dtiiens, do Hot hazard aa
approach into the near vicinity of the walls ; in the suburbs
a floor for the watcher, taiaed somewhat ahove the gtotmd : the whda
thus forms a hot open on all sides. A fuller description is ^yea by
Wetzstein in our Commentary on Job (2nd edition)^ |>. 34B.
Digitized by
Google
70 ISAIAH.
eveiything has been laid waste, partly by the dtizens, that
the enemy may not find anything nsefol, — ^partly by the enemy,
who, for instance, fell the trees. Thus, in spite of all the joy
that might be felt at the preservation of Jerusalem, the city
wears a cheerless aspect ; it looks as if it were in a state of
blockade That we must explain the passage in this way,
with Caspari, is shown by Jer. iv. 16 fl, where the actual
storming of Jerusalem is predicted, and the enemy — probably
with reference to this comparison by Isaiah (see Hitzig on the
passage in Jeremiah) — are called 0^1^.
For the present, Israel has stUl been spared the worst : the
omnipotence of God has graciously prevented it. " Unless
Jehovah of Hosts had left us a little of what escaped, we shotUd
have become as Sodom, we should he like Gomorrah," ver. 9.
*T^iB> (for which the LXX. and Bom. ix. 29, with a regard to
vi 13, has <nrip/M) is also in. Deut. iL 34, etc., what
escapes by flight from defeat and destruction : and, accord-
ing to the accents, oyo3 is to be taken with *i^^, so that
these two words will mean "an escaped remnant, which is
nothing more than a trifle:" on this noun-use of cpo, cf.
xvi 14 ; 2 Chron. xii. 7 ; Prov. x. 20 ; Ps. cv. 12. Looking at
Pa IxxxL 14 f., cf. Job xxxii 32 (where the conditional
clause is easily supplied), one might be inclined to place 0^?
in the apodosis, and render it " we would almost . . . ;" but
considering the accentuation actually before us, the inference
is more strictly logical The designation rntov mrr occupies
a strongly emphatic position in the front It would have
been all over with Israel long ago but for the compassion of
God (cf. Hos. xi 8) ; and because it is the omnipotence of
Grod which set in motion the will of His compassion, He is
called rrtKM rfn^, "Jehovah (the God oO the heavenly hosts,"
-> — a title in which >^tay is a governed genitive, — not, as
Oheyne and Luzzatto think, in accordance with the analogy of
0*r6tt, an independent name of God.* The prophet says " us "
and " we :" he is himself an inhabitant of Jerusalem ; and
even if he had not been such, he is, nevertheless, an Israelite :
* That fritOV does not indicate the hosts of Israel (which was the view
of R. Jos6 in Shabuoth 36b), bnt the powers of nature subject to God, I
think I have shown in the essay, Dtr OMunamt JcJuot Zebaoth, in ^e
XiitA«r. .ZettnAri^ 1874, p. 217 fit. .
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTSB L 10, 11. 11
be therefore associates himself with his nation, like Jeremiah
in Lam. iiL 22. As he has come to experience the wrath of
Qoi along with them, so he now also celebrates the mighty
compassion of God which he has experienced with them. But
for this compassion, the people of God would have become
like Sodom, from which only four human beings escaped:
they would have been like Gomorrah, which was utterly
annihilated.
The address of the prophet has now reached a resting-
point That it is here divided into two sections is shown
even to the eye by the space left between vers. 9 and 10.
The prophet pauses after he has declared that nothing but
divine compassion for Israel has prevented the utter destruc-
tion it has well deserved. He hears in spirit the remon-
strance of his audience. They would fain represent the
accusations which he had just uttered as unfounded, by appeal-
ing to their exact observance of the divine law ; but in
opposition to this ground of self-vindication which the pro-
phet has read out of the hearts of those impeached, he but
proceeds to prove the divine arraignment, which he begins in
vers. 1 0, 1 1 : " ffear the word of Jehovah, ye Sodom-judges !
listen to the law of our God, Gomorrah-nation ! For what
fmrpote is the multitude of your slain offerings to met saith
Jehovah. I am sated with burnt-offerings of rams, and the
suet of fatted calves ; and the llood of buttocks and lamis antl
he-goats, I do not like." The second attack in the prophet's
address begins, like the first in ver. 2, with " hear ye I " and
" listen 1 " The summons to hear is in this instance (just
as in the case of Isaiah's contemporary, Micah, — cha(. ill)
addressed to the OVit> (from Wij, ^.a*, deeidere, with the
noun -ending f^, see Jeshurun, p. 212 fil), ijt. men with
decisive authority, the rulers in the fullest sense, and to the
people who are subject to them. It is of the mercy of God
that Jerusalem still exists, for Jerusalem is nrviHiuvnK&i
Soho/ia, as is said regarding Jerusalem in the Apocalypse
(xi. 8), with reference to this passage in Isaiah. According to
Ezek. xvi. 49, pride, the lust of the flesh, and want of mercy
were the chief sins of Sodom ; and of these, the rulers of
Jerusalem and the multitude subject to them and worthy of
Digitized by
Google
72 ISAIAH.
tbem were not less guilty now. But they think tbey do not
by any means stand in such disfavour with God, because out>
wafdly they render satisfaction to the law. The prophet,
therefore, summons them to hear the law of the God of Israel
which he wishes to declare to them, — for the prophets were
called to be the expounders of the law, and to announce what
was truly the will and good pleasure of God ; and what He
requires is, not external acts of worship with no corresponding
homage of heart, not ceremonial performances at all in the
first instance, but freedom from sin and a course of life that
flpws. from obedience to Him and loving sympathy with other
men. " For what purpose is the multitude of your slain-
ofiferings to me ? saith Jehovah." The prophet purposely says
"lOK*, not *1DM, to indicate that what he declares is the constant
language of God in opposition to the heartless show of rever-
ence and the hypocritical ceremonial righteousness of Israel
The multitude of Q^nnr, i.e. sacrifices of animals which they
slaughtered, has no value in His eyes. As the whole worship
is here examined in detail, O'ror appears to denote the
D'ppe', «.«. the " peace-offerings " or communion-offerings, with
which a meal was associated, for Jehovah vouchsafed to the
offerer a share in the enjoyment of what be offered. Bat it
is better to take O^nst as a general name for the bloody
sacrifices, which are then divided into rriV^p and ^^n ; for they
are. partly whole-offerings, which ace wholly (though piece
by piece) laid on the altar and there consumed by fire, and
partly those sacrifices of which only the pieces of fat were
burned on the altar, viz. sin-offerings and trespass-offerings,
and especially peace-offerings. Of the sacrificial animals
mentioned, D'^B (bullocks) and D'K'TO (fatted calves) are species
of *>iJ3 (large cattle), while B'^M (lambs) and onwy (young
he-goats as distinguished firom "i*^, the older long-haired he-
goat, the animal taken as a sin-offering) together with the 7IK
(ram; the usual whole-offering of the high priest, the tribe-
prince, and the nation on all high feast-days) are species of
fix (smaller cattle). The blood of these sacrificial animals
(such as, for example, the young bullocks, sheep, and he-goats)
was, in accordance with the requirement of the law, dashed
Sgaiost the altar round about, in the case of the whole-offer-
ing, the peace-o£fering, and the trespass-offering ; in the case
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTSB I. 12. 13
of the sia-offering, it was smeared on the horns of the altar,
poured out at the toot of the altar, and in some instances
sprinkled on the side of the altar or towards the vessels of
the inner sanctuary. With such offerings Jehovah is sated,
and no longer cares for them. (The two perfects here indi-
cate what has long been and still is going on at present.) '
What Jeremiah (viL 22) says of sacrifices — that Qod never
properly wished them — Isaiah now says, in ver. 1 2, regarding
visits to the temple : * When ye come to appecer be/ore my
face, who kath asked this at your hand, — to tread my courts f "
rAsrh is a contracted infinitive Niphal for rtionp, as in Ex.
xxxiv. 24; Deut xxxi 11; cf. the similarly contracted
Hiphil forms in iil 8, xxiiL 11 ; on the other band, i^ in
Deut xxvi 12 = 1!??^ (c£ Neh. x. 39); as r?i»TO, Dan.
ii 35, iv. 34 ■>• T^Pi^. ^^, ""if '"'^1? is the standing expression
for the appearing of all male Israelites in the temple, in
accordance witii the law, at the three great feasts, but it also
oame to be used in speaking of visiting the temple generally
(c£ Pa xlii 3, Ixxxiv. 8). According to Ewald (§ 279e),
*jf indicates the subject connected with the passive verb
C to be seen by the face of God ") ; but why is it not rather a
local accusative with prepositional meaning, "before the face of"
(as NSgelsbach thinks), seeing that it is used interchangeably
with the prepositions f, HK, and ?M ? It is probable that
fltei^ has thus been pointed here and in Ex. xxxiv. 24, Deut
xxxL 11, instead of rfMrf? (like WJ!, Ex. xxiii. 15, xxxiv. 20,
instead of ^to*), in order to avoid speaking of " seeing God," —
an expression which is so apt to be misunderstood as meaning
a vision with the eye of sense (cf. Ex. xxiv. 11, LXX. &^ti-
aav) ; unquestionably, however, lite Niphal perfect stands in
xvi 12 ; 1 Sam. i 22 ; and also nsr (not HKn^) in Ex. xxiii
17; moreover, the expression, "to see the face of God," i«.
of Him who reveals Himself in His sanctuary, is not opposed
to the rel^ious ideas of the Old Testament, Ps. xi 7, xxvii 4 ;
and in the Mishna, appearing before God at the great feasts
is called nnn and jl'in {Hagiga i. 1-, Pta i. 1). Cheyne
eonsiders that the expression " to see the face of God " is a
remnant of the old Semitic worship of God by means of
sensible figures which has been transferred to the language of
revealed religion : this is possible, but there is no proof that
Digitized by
Google
71 ISAIAH.
such transition has actually occurred. Those whom Jehovah
here addresses through His prophet certainly visit the temple
diligently ; but who has required this of their hand (t.«. asked
this performance from them) t Jehovah certainly has not
" To tread my courts " stands in apposition with " tiuB,"
which it more closely definea Jehovah has not desired them
to appear before Him ; He has not asked for this lifeless
and undevotional tramping thither (vii. 25, xxvi. 6 ; Ezek.
xxvi. 11), this senseless optia operatum, which would better
be left unperformed, as it merely desecrates the holy places,
by wearing out the floors for no purpose.
Because they do not perform what Jehovah has commanded,
as He has commanded it. He directly forbids them in ver. 13
to go on : " Contintu not to bring lying meat-offerings: abomino'
tum-ineenae is it to me." It is but rarely that nrao denotes an
offering in general (Gen. iv. 3-5; 1 Sam. ii 17, xxvL 19); here,
however, as throughout Malachi, the " meat-offering " (meal-
offering) ia meant, as is shown by the more specific term fnbp
following, which, without such an addition as is made in Ps.
Ixvi 15, cannot be understood in the same way as the expres-
sion in the law, ■^naion TDj^n (to consume in smoke upon the
altar). The meat-offering of the people of Jerusalem is called
NIB' nroo (the second nonn being derived from trtB'=nKe^, to
be waste, desolate, and of like form with rno), as being a
lifeless and hypocritical performance, having behind it nothing
of the mental disposition which it appears to express (c£ Job
XXXV. 13X In the second half of the verse the LXX.,
Jerome, Oesenius, Umbreit, Knobel, and Nagelsbach trans-
late thus: "incense, — it is an abomination to me," — ^the
term " incense " being here used as the name of what was
offered daily on the golden altar of the Holy Place (Ex.
XXX. 8). But in no place where the prophets denounce
heartless ceremonial worship is mention made of the offering
of incense by the priests, and in any case it is more simple
and natural to take nnbi», not as a bare absolute case, but —
what is quite allowable — in conformity with the Darga
marking it, as a construct The meat-offering is called
"incense" because of the so-called "memorial" (^3?t(), i.e.
that portion of it which brought the grateful offerer in
remembrance before God, and which the priest burned on the
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB L 14. 75
altar, — an act which was called '"^"JSJ^ "''PP'!' (see Lev. ii. 2 ;
cf. Jer. xxxiii 18); with this "memorial" also there was
regularly combined incense, which was wholly — not merely in
part — ^burned on the altar. The meat-offering, with its sweet
odour, is merely the form in which gratitude for God's bless-
ing, and earnest prayerful desire for this, manifest themselves;
but in the case of these worshippers, there was only the form,
without the inner spirit ; the form with which they thought
they have satisfied God is empty, and therefore an abomination
to Him.
As little pleasure has God in their punctilious observance
of the feasts : " New moon and Sabbath, the calling of an
assembly — I cannot hear iniquity and a festal crowd." The
first object-ideas, which are logically governed by »^K"i6
(properly the imperf. Hopbal, " I am unable," viz. to bear, —
an ellipsis which must be supplied in the same way as in
Ps. cL 5 ; Jer. xliv. 23 ; Prov. xxx. 21), become absolute
cases, inasmuch as 73)K~t<7 assumes another and a different
object in the following rnvjl f». When three things are
enumerated, the conjunction is readily dropped by the third,
and stands only with the second: see also Deut xxix. 22;
Ps. xlv. 9 ; Job xlii. 9 ; Eccles. viL 26. As to new moon and
Sabbath (which, when joined with ^j\, always signifies the
weekly Sabbath), and generally the convocation of assemblies
of the whole community on the weekly Sabbath and high
festivals, as required in Lev. xxiii., — Jehovah cannot endure a
festival associated with wickedness, tt^ (from 1W, to press,
squeeze together) is synonymous with ^^, as shown by
comparing Jonah L 14 with 2 Kings x. 20, to which it is
related in the same way as vavij^vpi^ to iKK\ii<rla ; ^ and QK
(from ]4K, to breathe) is moral vileness, as the utter absence of
all that has essence and value in God's sight. These two
nouns are purposely placed together by the prophet A closely
packed festive gathering, and inward barrenness and emptiness
on the part of those assembled, — this is a contradiction that
God cannot endure.
* In tHe language of the law, the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles
(Lev. zziii. 36 ; Num. xxix. 36) and the Beventh day of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread (Deut. xvi 8) is called n*)VP, not from i^, cokiber*,
claudtre, bat eonitipare (cf. Jer. ix. I).
Digitized by
Google
76 ISAIAH.
In ver. 14 He gives still stronger expression to His
aversion : " Tvwr new moons and your fatal seeuotu my sovl
hates ; they have become a burden to me ; I am weary of bear-
ing them." As the soul of man, viewed as the bond between
his spiritual and his bodily life, is, though not the principle
of his self-consciousness, yet the centre from which he draws
the circle of this self-consciousness, in order to comprehend
the sum-total of his whole being, and attach it to the thought
of himself as a person ; so — to take a designation from man
who has been made in the image of God — the " soul "of God,
as indicated by ^c'U, is the centre of His being, encircled and
penetrated by self-consciousness : hence, whatever the soul of
God hates (cf. Jer. zv. 1) or loves (xliL 1), that He hates or
loves in the inmost depths and in the whole extent of His
being. (See Bibl. Psychology, p. 258 of £ng. transl.) Thus He
hates each and all of the festivals that are kept in Jerusalem ;
the beginnings of the months and the onjito ("appointed
feasts," — here, as in Ezra iii. 6, applied to all the feasts on
which, or on the most solemn days of which, a " holy convoca-
tion " took place) during the course of the month. These have
long been to Him, who bears them, a burden, nnb? (mb
being synonymous with Kto, Dent L 12), so that He can no
longer endure them ; His patience is tired of such religious
service. Kin (in Isaiah, found also in xviiL 3, for nttfe' or
DMb', and here for HKb?) has for its object the festal celebra-
tions mentioned. like the great variety of offerings, this
variety of sacred seasons (cf. Hos. iL 13) presupposes the
existence of a law of correspondingly large extent
Their self-righteousness, inasmuch as it rested on sacriGce
and observance of feasts, is now put to shame ; in ver. 15 the
last and innermost bulwark of the seemingly holy nation was
destroyed : " And when ye stretch out your hands, I hide mine
eyesfivm you: even when you pray much, I do not hear, — your
hands are full of hlood." Even their prayer is an abomination
to God. Prayer is something common to man ; it is the inter-
preter of religious thought and feeling, coming as a mediator
between God and men ; it is spiritual sacrifice. The law does
not command prayer ; apart from Deut zxvi, it contains no
form of prayer : but prayer is so natural to man as such that
there was no need of any precept for this fundamental
Digitized by
Google
CHATTEB I. 1& 77
expression of oar relation to Ood. Hence the prophet oomes
to prayer last of all, in order to reduce to its nonentity their
self-rigbteonsuess, which is rotten even to this last foundation.
tna (=fcCDjfi), ^J>) or Piel '^'9? 'T!! (used in xxv. 11 of
swimming), here with « instead of e in a closed syllable, as
in XXV. 1, lii. 12, etc, is the gesture of one in prayer, who
spreads out his hands (the expression nowhere means "to
break the hands " = wrestle), and stretches them, thus spread
out, upwards to heaven or the Most Holy Place in the temple;
mcHreover, — as if under a feeling of emptiness and need, and
through the desire to receive God's gifts, — it is the inner
surfaces of the hands, o*B3 (cf. tmdert palmas, e.g. in Virgil's
^neid, xiL 196, tenditque ad tidera palvuu), that are held
up, though often enough on^ is interchanged with the word.
If they stand before Him in this suppliant attitude, or lie upon
the ground, Jehovah hides His eyes, i«. His omniscience wants
to know nothing of this ; and though they pray ever so much
and so long (^ D», etiamsi; cf. the simple ^ in Jet. xiv. 12),
He is as if He were deaf to it alL We would now expect a ^a
to introduce the ground or reason ; but the more excited the
speaker is, so much the more brief and disconnected is his
speech. The plural Q^ always denotes human blood shed,
especially by force, and then also the bloody deed and blood-
guiltiness itself ; the plural points neither to the quantity nor to
the separate drops, but is rather plural of the product, like 0^,
oyS, etc. For the sake of emphasis the dreadful o^ stands
before its govoning verb UCD, which points to many acts of
murder committed, and deeds of violence resembling these.
Blood did not indeed actually adhere to their hands stretched,
out in prayer ; but before God, from whom no outward show
conceals the true nature of things, they drip with blood,
though washed ever so clean.
The protest of the people against the accusations of God
has now been given negatively in vers. 11-15; their work-
tigbteous worship, defiled through unrighteous deeds and
even murder itself, Jehovah will not have. The divine
arraignment is next proved positively also, in vers. 16, 17,
where the true righteousness which the accused had not is
(qppoqed to the false righteousness of which they boastb
Digitized by
Google
78 ISAIAH.
Overwhelming denanciation here changes into hortatory
appeal, and already there is proclaimed the love that is
concealed behind the wrath, and would gladly break through.
There are eight exhortations. The first three refer to the
removal of evil, the other five to the performance of what is
good.
The first three verses run thus: ver. 16, " Waak yourulves,
purify yourselves ; remove the evil of your deeds from be/are
mine eyes ; cease to do evil." This is not merely an advance
from figurative language to the most literal, it is also an
advance even on what has been already declared. The first
exhortation requires first of all, and above all, purification
from the sins that have been committed, through forgive-
ness sought and obtained. )Vn is here used in the frequent
middle sense, Xovevdai; and ^n, ^vith the tone on the final
syllable, is not the Niphal from ^3T ^for the 2nd per& plural
imperat Kiphal of verbs y^ usually and natundly has the.
tone on the penult, see liL 11, xviL 10), but the Hithpael
from list, for u^Tn, with the same assimilation of the pre-
formative n as in the Hithpael OOtiM (= errMMm), xxxiiL 10.
In conformity with the difference between the two synonyms
(to wash one's self, to purify one's self), the former is to be
referred to the great act of repentance on the part of one
who returns to God, the latter to the daily repentance of one
who is converted. The second exhortation requires that they
shall place themselves in the light of (Jod's countenance, and
put away the evil of their deeds that cannot be endured by
pure eyes (Hab. i. 13). They are to wrestle against and'
overcome the vicious disposition to which actual sin had
grown, that it may at last wholly disappear. According to
its root-idea, *U} (from iu, tX^, to be elevated, opp. jU, to be
depressed, sunk) signifies prominence (cl Arab. lUgd, elevated
country, visible from afar), conspicuousness, so that *i^p is thus
properly equivalent to e eonspeetu, as fii is in co7ispectu : regard-
ing y?Sp, see under iil 4.
The five exhortations pointing to the practice of what is
good, are in ver. 17 : " Zearn to do good, take an interest in
judgment, set the oppressor right, pronounce the sentence of the
orphan, plead the cause of the widow." The first exhortation
is the fundamental one: they are to learn to do good, — a
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTIB L 17. 79
difficult art in which one does not become a master merely
through good intentions. The inf. absol. a^D^n is regarded as
the accusative of the vipV; and n? in ver. 16 (for which
we might also have TT!.^) similarly takes the place of the
object : such employment of this infinitive as a noun is not
very rare, see vil 15 f., xlii. 54, Ivii. 20 ; Jer. ix. 4. That
this primary exhortation now branches out into four minor
ones referring to the administration of justice, is accounted
for by the fact that no other prophet directs so keen an eye
upon affairs of state and judicial proceedings as Isaiah. In
this respect he differs from his younger contemporary Micah,
whose character is more generally ethical, while Isaiah's is
largely political Hence the exhortations : " apply yourselves
to judgment," — •J^'i signifying to devote one's self zealously
and carefully to a thing ; then : " bring the oppressor to the
right way." So we must render the words ; for Y^on (from
T'on, to be sharp in taste, dazzling in appearance, violent or
furious in disposition) cannot well mean him who is
oppressed, injured in his rights, as most of the old translators
have rendered it (LXX. aBiKovftevw, Targ. D*3tn, "who is
oppressed"). The form Mdj certainly may have a stative
meaning closely connected with the passive, and marking
a high d^ree (as shown by I'jn, "provided with a girdle,"
in relation to i«n, " girded ; " plur. *Ti3n, Ezek. xxxiii. 16);
but more frequently it has an active sense, like l^on (see ver.
31), "rtaa, Jer. iii 7, 10 ; t^Wl, Jer. xxii. 3, and the Qamez is
then unchangeable (hence fem. ^^33), after the manner of the
Arabic form J^U (/« "0- Such is the meaning here ; for
the Piel ">?'« signifies neither to make happy nor to
strengthen (Luzzatto renders rianimate ehi i oppresso), — nor
is the latter its meaning in the Talmud, where it rather
signifies to confirm or ratify, — but either to pronounce a
person happy or fortunate (the verb being in this case a
denominative from 1B^, ^^B^, like /uiKapi^ew), a meaning
which is quite unsuitable here ; or, as in iii. 2, ix. 15 (cl Prov.
xxiii 19), to lead in the right way; or, to make any one
keep the straight course. In this way, then, )it3n will have
the intensified signification of f^n, Ps. Ixxi 4. ie. it will
mean a violent, regardless, heartless man ; and }ion r^ will
signify, " show the violent man the way of righteousness : " the
Digitized by
Google
80 iSAua
expression does not point so much to punishment and render-
ing harmless, as to correction and improvement, Ps. Ixxii. 4.^
Next follow two exhortations referring to widows and orphans :
these, with the stranger, are under very special protection,
the objects of care by God and His law; see Ex. xxil 21,
cf. 20. " Pronounce the sentence of the or[^an " (ODB', as in
Deut XXV, 1, is abbreviated from 'b OBBto Me*) ; for, if n<>
decision and verdict is pronounced in their case, this is the
most outrageous unrighteousness, inasmuch as not even the
form and appearance of justice are preserved. " Plead the
cause of the widow," the imperative 3^, with the accusative
of a person (a construction which is further found only in
11 22), is a condensed expression for 'b sn a'^, to plead and
maintain the cause of any one. Thus the reasonings adduced
in self-defence by the hearts of the accused are refuted, both
negatively and positively. They are thunderstruck and pat
to shame. The law announced in ver. 10 has been preached
to them. The prophet has thrown aside the husks of their
dead works, and revealed the moral kernel of the law in its
universal application to all mankind.
Jehovah has been addressing His people in anger, but
even in the exhortations of vers. 16, 17 His love had begun
to move. This love, which seeks not the destruction of
Israel, but their inward and outward salvation, now breaks
forth in ver. 18 : " Come ncno, and let ua reason together, saith
Jehovah : if your sins come out like scarlet clothes, they dudl
become white like snow : if they be red like crimson, they shall
come out like wool." Cheyne translates: "let us bring our
dispute to an end," and thus interprets away the offer of free
grace, but without giving any reason for the possibility of
this rendering. Wellhausen also sets it aside by taking the
latter part of ver. 18 as a question (" If . . . should they
become white ? "). But it is always a very precarious make-
shift to regard such clauses as questions without any inter-
rogatory sign, when there is no necessity for a resort to
this expedient; the Hiphil rrain certainly may signify to
* It is an instractiTe fact, throwing light on the meaning of the word,
that in the Talmud (Joma 396) a person who had nBurped not merely
his own inheritance hut that of another, hore the nickname of pttsn {3
through life.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBR I. 1& 81
"decide;" the Niphal rq\i, however, does not mean to
" bring a lawsuit to an end," but to carry on litigation
with another, Job xxiii 7 (in post-Biblical Hebrew, navtn),
syn. OSS'], xliiL 26. In this litigation it will be made clear
that no kind of guilt lies on the side of Jehovah, but that the
righteousness which Israel could vindicate for themselves is
but a semblance of righteousness, and this seeming righteous-
ness, properly regarded, is blood-stained unrighteousness. It
is assumed that the investigation can have no other result
than this ; hence Israel is worthy of death. Jehovah, how-
ever, does not wish to deal with Israel in accordance with
His retributive justice, but according to His free mercy and
compassion (c£ the expression pointing to " grace alone " in
xliiL 25, and further, Micah vii. 18 f.). He is willing to
remit the punishment, and not merely to r^ard the sin as if
it were not, but even to change it into its opposite. Sin of
the brightest red dye is by His grace to become the purest
white. On the two Hiphils indicating colour, see Gesen.
§ 53. 2, where the signification was formerly stated to be, to
assume a colour, or rather to give out (or emit rays of) colour,
— not eolorem aeeipere, but cclorem dare. '?B' signifies clear or
bright red (from Ta^=\j^, to be bright, glisten), not Sl^a(f)ov
(from 'IJB', to do twice, viz. to dye twice; for it is in the
case of purple that the double dyeing can be proved, not in
the case of crimson). B'jf (cf. our remarks on Prov. xxxi. 21)
are not materials which have been dyed twice, but those which
have been dyed with ''iV, " bright red." j6iH (here and in
Lam. iv. 5), a worm = worm -dye, is the name of the same
dye-stuff, — ^that of the crimson obtained from the coccus-
insect of the quereiis cocci/era and other plants, — the color
eocctTUfUS. In the middle books of the Pentateuch the colour-
ing matter is called '?«' nj;^ ; and where mention is made of
wool dyed this colour, the expression used is nj^n '•yf (Lev.
xiv. ; Num. xix.): here and in Prov. xxxL 21, O'JB' are scarlet
clothes, — the plural from the singular which is used in the
same sense in 2 Sam. 1. 24, Jer. iv. 30, along with which
}h^F^ (worm-dyed cloth) is employed.* Jerome has translated
> The later name, found only in the Chronicles, is b^DtS (from the
Persian kirm, kirim), Rom. earmin, carminio; see my essay on red dye-stnfls
VOL. I. F
Digitized by
Google
82 ISAIAH.
the term correctly ; but Luther, in order to give it a more
popular turn, has " rose-colour ; " the red of the rose, indeed,
represents all the shades of red from a pale red to a dull and
almost dark red to a fiery red, but the rose is unsuitable in
the present passage. The representation of the work of grace,
which God promises, as a change from red to white, is founded
on the symbolism of colours, quite as much as when, in the
Apocalypse, the garments of the saints are said to be of a
bright white (xix. 8), while the clothing of Babylon is purple
and scarlet (xvii. 4). Bed, and this of a scarlet hue (ie.
bright red, or yellowish red), is the colour of fire, of anger,
and therefore also of sin : white is the colour of light, of grace,
of righteousness and holiness. White and scarlet are corre-
lated as light and fire. Fiery red is the colour of sin, as the
selfish, greedy, passionate life, which goes out of itself in order
to destroy : sin is called red, inasmuch as its nature consumes
and destroys the man in whom it dwells, and when it breaks
forth, also consumes other men. According to the Biblical
view, sin and piety, anger and love or grace are mutually
related as fire and light, hence as red and white, or also as
black and white ; for red is the colour of the fire that shines
up out of the darkness and returns into it, while white, with-
out any mixture of darkness, sets forth the pure, absolute
triumph of light What we read here in Isaiah is a deeply
significant symbolical representation of the act of justification.
Jehovah offers Himself to Israel for the performance of a
forensic act, out of which, though the people have merited
death on account of their sins, they are to go forth justified
by grace. The righteousness, white as snow and wool, with
which Israel goes forth, is a gift which, without being con-
ditioned by the performance of a..legal requirement, becomes
theirs through pure compassion displayed towards them.
But after Israel has been completely restored to its former
state through such an act of grace, the conduct of the people,
of course, comes into consideration, not, however (as Cheyne
thinks), as the condition on the fulfilment of which the pro-
in the Zeittdmft der deiUtck. marg. GeteUichaft, xviL 676 ff., and the article
" Colours in the Bible" in Herzog's Cyclopaedia (English translation,
edited by Schaff, toL i. p. 514 f.}, also my " Iris : Studies in Colour and
Talks about Flowers " (English translation, Edinburgh 1889).
Digitized by
Google
CBAFTBR I. 19, SO. 83
mised change would take place, but as prospectively, its
morally certain and necessary result. According as Israel
accepts the proffered grace of God and afterwards acts in
accordance therewith, Jehovah decides the future of Israel,
vers. 19, 20 : " If yt will consent and hear, ye shall eat the good
of the land ; hut if ye will refuse arid rebel, ye shall be devoured
by the sv!ord,for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it." K they
assent to the act of grace which God offers them, and accept
this discharge from the guilt of sin, then certainly there again
lies before the justified once more a blessing and a curse, in
the same way as the law had already announced both (in
connection with ver. 19i, compare Deut xxviii. 33 f. ; Lev.
xzvL 3 ff. ; and on the threat of the avenging sword in 205,
see Lev. xxvL 25). The promise speaks of eating, viz. the
enjoyment of abundant domestic blessings, and thus points to
settled and peaceful home-life ; for here the subject of the
purification from sin is not (as in Ps. li.) a person, but the
nation. The opposite of this is the curse, — not of eating the
sword (cf. Arab. aXama. es-sifa, to give any one the sword to
eat, t.e. to kill him), as Aug. Miiller {Hebr. Syntax, £ug.
transl. § 47, Bern, a) thinks, rendering, " ye shall be made to
devour the sword," — but (as /3K elsewhere also is a simple
passive, not a causative passive of the Qal), as shown in
Gesen. § 121. 3, "ye shall be devoured by the sword."
3^n is the accusative of manner, in the sense of the means
(instrumental accusative), as in P& xvii 13, 14 ; standing in
this way, without genitive or adjective or sufiBx (as also, e.g.,
in Ex. XXX. 20), this adverbial accusative is rare, and in this
passage is a bold construction which the prophet allows him-
self to make for the sake of the paronomasia, instead of saying
oajQKh nnn. - in the conditional clauses, the two imperfects are
followed by two perfects (cf. the mode of expression in Lev.
xzvi 21, which is more consonant with our Western usage),
inasmuch as obeying and rebelling equally result from an act
of the will : " if ye will consent, and, in consequence of this,
hear ... if ye will refuse, and show yourselves obstinate : "
we have thus here true " consecutive perfects." nSK, which
is elsewhere used fifty-two times with t6, or in a native
question (Job xxxix. 9), is used only here in a positive mean-
ing, — perhaps to chime with aio ; like ^'p^ with '^«tK
Digitized by
Google
64 ISAIAH.
The second half of the address begins with ver. 21, and
like the first it opens with the lamentation of God over the
apostasy of His people. To the Piska after ver. 20 corre-
sponds a long pause in the mind of the speaker. Will Israel
tread the saving path of forgiveness of sins, now offered them,
and enter on a life of new obedience, and will it thus be
possible for them to be brought back by this way ? Some
may perhaps return, but not all ; hence the divine address
becomes a mournful complaint So peaceful a solution of the
discord between Jehovah and His children is not to be hoped
for; Jerusalem is far too deeply depraved. " Hcrw is she
become a harlot, the faithful citadel, — »he that teas full of
judgment, and wherein righteousness used to lodge, — hut now
murderers ! " The keynote here sounded is that of an elegy.
nyK (properly, " how thus ? " — for 'K gives an interrogative
sense to demonstrative words), only seldom in the shortened
form Tl*, is an expression indicative at once of complaint and
astonishment This longer form, more like a sigh, is a word
characteristic of the ni'p or lamentation ; thus, while the
Lamentations of Jeremiah begin with ns^K, and receive their
usual designation (in Hebrew) from this word, — on the other
hand, the shorter Tlf, used in mockiug complaints, is a
word characteristic of the pf^ or proverb, see xiv. 4, 12;
Micah ii. 4. From this word, which gives the keynote, every-
thing runs on softly, folly, evenly, and slowly, in the manner
peculiar to an elegy. That such forms, moreover, as 'J?^
for nsjD (on the so-called "Hirek compaginis," see the
introduction to Ps. cxvi.), softened through lengthening, are
adapted for elegiac productions, is at once evident from the
first verse of the Lamentations, which begin with the elegiac
keynote struck by Isaiah. Jerusalem was formerly nnp
™P???, a faithful city, ie. one that stedfastly adhered to the
alliance of Jehovah with her (cf. Ps. IxxviiL 37). This
alliance was a marriage-alliance ; but she has broken it and
has thereby become a njit, « harlot," — a prophetic view, the
outlines of which have already been given in the Pentateuch,
Israel's worship of idols being there called a whoring after
them, e.g. in the law of the two tables, Ex. xxxiv. 1 6 ;
Num. xiv. 33, etc. (in all, seven passages); ct Ps. xvL 4,
IxxiiL 27. It is not merely gross outward idolatry, however.
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB I. SI. 85
that makes the Church of God a "harlot," but the defec-
tion of the heart, however this may at any time express
itself ; for which reason Jesus also could call the generation of
His time yeveh /tot;^a\('9, in spite of the strict worship of
Jehovah carried on in Pharisaic spirit For, as shown by the
verse before us, the basis of that marriage-relation was justice
and righteousness in the widest sense : Off?, i.e. a realization
of righteousness corresponding to the will of God as positively
made known ; and P^, i.e. a righteous state of things regu-
lated by that will, a righteous line of conduct in accordance
with it (different from the more attributive ^i^). Jerusalem
was formerly full of such justice ; and righteousnesa was not
merely like a passing guest in the city, but she who came
down from above had there fixed her permanent abode ; there
she used to tarry day and night, as if it were her home.
When the prophet refers to former days, he has in his mind
the times of David and Solomon, but especially those of
Jehoshaphat, who (about one hundred and fifty years before
Isaiah appeared) restored the administration of justice which
had fallen into neglect since the latter years of Solomon and
the days of Behoboam and Abijah, — a point to which the
reformation of Asa had not extended, — and who reorganized
all in the spirit of the law. Those institutions of Jehoshaphat
which fell into decay under his three godless successors may
possibly have been re-established by the high priest .Tehoiada
under the rule of Joash ; but even in the second half of the
reign of Joash the administration of justice had already fallen
once more into the fearful disorder in which — compared at
least with the times of David and Solomon, and afterwards of
Jehoshaphat — it still remained even in Isaiah's days. The
whole point and weight of the complaint concentrate upon
nnjn, " but now," which expresses the contrast In correct
codices and editions (e.g. Brescia 1494) OBvp has not Zaheph,
but Bebia ; and 33, which ought to have Zakeph, has Tiphcha,
on account of the shortness of the succeeding clause. In this
way the declaration regarding the former state of things
is duly distinguished from that concerning the present
Formerly righteousness, now D'rnnp, "murderers," and that
too (as distinguished from Q^ri^) by profession, who form a
band, like King Ahab and his son Joram, 2 Kings vi 32.
Digitized by
Google
86 ISAIAH.
The contrast is as great as it could possibly be ; for murder
is the extreme opposite of righteousness, its grossest violation.
From the city generally, the complaint now turns to the
rulers, and first of all is couched in figurative language, ver.
22 : " Thy silver has become dross, thy drink adulterated with
water." This passage is the basis of other two in which like
figurative language abounds, Jer. vL 27 fif. ; Ezek. xxii. 18—22.
The silver represents the princes and lords, viewed with
reference to the nobility of mind associated with their nobility
of birth and rank ; for silver — sterling silver — is a symbol of
all that is noble and pure, and it is the purity of light which
shows itself in it, as in the pure white of byssus and of the lily.
The princes and lords formerly possessed the virtues which to-
gether are in Latin called candor animi, — the virtues of magna-
nimity, courtesy, impartiality, and freedom from the influence
of bribes ; now, this silver has become dross, such base metals as
are separated or thrown aside (yp, pL 0<m, D'jp, D*jp, from jio, to
withdraw ; refuse removed in smelting, dross ; cf. Prov. xxv. 4,
xxvL 23). In a second figure, the leading men of Jerusalem
in former days are compared to K3b, " choice wine," such as
drinkers like, — for this must have been the meaning of the
word (from K3p, to carouse, Arab. Ax^, to purchase wine for a
carousal) in Isaiah's time (cf. also Nah. i. 10) among educated
circles. This pure, strong, and costly wine is now adulterated
with water (castratum, according to Pliny's expression in his
Natural History ; cf. juffitlare Falemum, in Martial, L 1 8), or
weakened ; i.e. through this addition, its strength and flavour
are diminished. The present is but the dregs and the shadow
of the past
In ver. 23 the prophet explains himself ; he repeats in
plain language what has been already stated under a figure :
" Thy rulers are rebellious, and associates of thieves ; every one
loves a bribe, and hunts after payments ; the orphan they judge
not, and the cause of the widow has tio access to them." The
utter and contemptible meanness of the rulers (Q^^) of the
people is here depicted by the alliterating O^o in relation
to God, " rebellious, stubborn," and by D*?J| '^an in relation to
men, " associates of thieves," in that they allow themselves
to be bought over, by a present of part of the plunder, to
connive at the theft, and to deal unjustly towards those who
Digitized by
Google
OBAPTKBI ti. 87
were robbed. Snch bribes are not merely wUIingly (ani*)
accepted by thera, — and that, too, by the whole body of the
princes, ia every single one of them (153 with, neuter suffix,
synon. TSf}, all), — ^but they even greedily go after them Cn*^).
It is not 'BSbf ("peace") they hunt after (Ps, xxxiv. 15), but
D'Jbfe ("payments," recompense for their trouble; cf, o^W,
Micah vii 3) ; and thus not peace, but something to satisfy
their avarice and partiality..
Such is the case of Jerusalem, which will hardly enter on
the path of grace opened up to it in ver. 18 ; Jehovah will
therefore employ another means of correction (ver. 24):
" Therefore, declaration of Jehovah, of Jehovah of Hosts, of the
Strong One of Israel, Ah! I shall enjoy myself on mine
adversaries, and will avenge myself on mine enemies." Salva-
tion through judgment is still and ever the only means of
improving and preserving the congregation that takes its
name from Jerusalem. Therefore Jehovah seeks to satisfy
the demands of His holiness, and to sift Jerusalem through
judicial dealing. Such on accumulation of divine names as
occurs here is nowhere else found in Isaiah; cf. xix. 4, iiL 1,
X. 33, xvi 3, 15. The irrevocable decree concerning the
sifting judgment is sealed with three names which iudicate the
irresistible omnipotence of God. The title V?^. "''?^i " the
Mighty One of Israel," is derived from Gen. xlix. 24, though
the name of the nation is changed. In accordance with the
deep and earnest pathos of the address, instead of iptt there is
here used otu, from DKl, for which the form in the Mishna
is cm ; cognate is Dni, Arab. *U, to speak softly, groan ; «j,
to whisper quietly. All these verbs indicate the emission of
a dull and hollow groan ; hence D^tu means that which is
spoken significantly and secretly, solemnly and softly. The
word occurs only in genitival connection with a following
subject indicating the person who speaks, particularly in the
expression nin* DKi ; it always forms a noun-clause (" declara-
tion of Jehovah," ie. Jehovah speaks). It is first found in
Gen. xxii. 16 ; in the writings of the prophets, it is found
even so early as in Obadiah and Joel, most frequently in
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, usually at the end of a sentence, or
parenthetically in the middle of it, — rarely, as here and in
Digitized by
Google
88 ISAUH.
Ivi. 8 (see our commentary on Ps. ex. 1), at the beginning.
The utterance commences with in, the painfiilness of pity
commingling with the outburst of wrath that has been
determined. Along with the Niphal p o^i (" to avenge one's
self on ") there stands the allied Niphal on (properly, " to
console one's self "), the latter with g, the former (in accord-
ance with the so-called Assyrian system of pointing) with t
under the preformative, which is sometimes found elsewhere
also, e^. in Gen. xvL 2, xzi 24; Num. xxiii. 15 ; Ezek.
XX. 36 ; 1 Sam. xiL 7. Jehovah is going to relieve Himself
of His enemies by letting out on them the wrath that had
hitherto burdened Him (Ezek. t. 1 3) : thus does He now call
the mass of the people in Jerusalem by their right nam&
Ver. 25 declares wherein consists the revenge to which
Jehovah has been inwardly constrained : " Arid I toUl bring
mine hand upon thee, and toill smelt out thy dross as with
alkali ; and I will remove all thy pieces of lead." As long as
God leaves any man's actions or sufferings alone. His hand
is said to rest "^ y^\! followed by i^P signifies the turning
of the hand which has hitherto been at rest, either for
punishing (Amos L 8; Jer. vi. 9; Ezek. xxxviii. 12; Ps.
Ixxxi. 15), or even, though but seldom, for saving (ZecL
xiiL 17) tlie person mentioned. Here the reference is to
dealing towards Jerusalem, in which punishment and salva-
tion are combined — the punishment as the means, salvation
as the end. Jehovah's intervention is compared to a smelting
which will sweep away, not Jerusalem, but the ungodly who
dwell there. These are compared to dross or drossy ore,
and — inasmuch as lead is removed in all refinement of silver
— to those commingled pieces of lead which Jehovah will
speedily and thoroughly separate ""io, " like the alkali," — the
abbreviated mode of comparison, instead of "i^s, " as with the
alkali." 0')fn2 (from ??a, to separate) are the pieces of tin or
lead (lead-glance)^ containing the silver, which, inasmuch as
' Pliny {Hisl. Nat. 24. 16) Bays that plumbum nigrum sometimes occurs
alone, sometimes combined with silver : ejut qui primus fluii in fomacibut
liquor ttannum appeUatur. What is here meant is the litharge which,
in the process of obtaining silver from the lead-glance containing the
precious metal, separates itself till it comes to be the so-called silver-
glance. This dross, in the form of powder, is called ^la, and the pieces
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTES L 26. 89
all the baser metals are distinguished from the precious ones
by the fact that they are combustible (oxidisable), are sepa-
rated by smelting. Both nb, i.e. potash (an alkali obtained
from the ashes of wood and of land-plants generally), and iw,
■Le. natron or soda (which is either mineral, or obtained from
plants), which dissolves in water (see on Prov. xxv. 20), were
employed from the earliest times, when one wished to extract
a metal from its ore, as a means of accelerating the process of
smelting. The conjecture of a dififerent reading, naa ("WS?, " in
the crucible "), is thus superfluous.
As the threat against Jerusalem, put in this allegorical
form, does not refer to destruction, but to smelting, there is
nothing strange in the fact that in ver. 26 it clianges into
pure promise, the meltingly soft, ardently mournful conclusion
of the clauses in T.T, which is the keynote of the later songs
of Zion, being continued : " And I will restore thy judges as
in the olden time, and thy counsellors as in the beginning;
afterwards thou shall le called the city of righteousness, a faith-
ful citadel." Even the threatening itself was relatively a
promise, in so far as what could stand the fire in Jerusalem
would survive the judgment, the specific object of which was
to bring back Jerusalem to the precious metal of its true
nature. But after this has been accomplished, still more
than this shall also come to pass. The imperishable kernel
that remains becomes the centre to which all elements of
excellence are attracted, — Jerusalem again receiving from
Jehovah its judges and counsellors, whom, from the time that
it became the city of David and the seat of the temple, it
had possessed in the best days of the kingdom, — not, indeed,
the same persons, but men of like excellence. The two
time-limitations have the force of accusatives attached to the
predicate : " as in the beginning," i.e. of the same character as
they were before, njb'jnn signifies, in a neuter sense, what is
D'^a ; o& the other hand, niB^ is the name of the solid lead which is
obtained by melting down lead -glance which does not contain silver.
Bat that >na signifies lead (ptum&um nigrum), Zech. iv. 10, as well as
tin (p2um&um aOnvm), Nam. xxxL 22, is accounted for in the same way
OS the homonymy of iron and basalt, oak and terebinth : the two metalt
are called by the same name on account of external resemblance and
common properties,— softness, flexibility, colour, and specific gravity.
Digitized by
Google
90 iSAun,
temporally or locally (Ix. 9) the first; and the fact that,
in lUytOM, a second preposition follows 3, is not without
example elsewhere, as Gen. xxxviiL 24 ; Lev. xxvi 37 ;
1 Sam. xiv. 14 (also x. 27, if we read Bhnoa, which is sug-
gested by the LXX.); cf. also pS3, Fs. cxix. 14 ; Isa. lix. 18,
IxiiL 7 Under such divinely commissioned leaders, Jerusalem
will then become what it had been, and will be what it
ought to be ; and the names by which the city is called are
the expression of the effect produced on the minds of others
through the manifestation of its true nature and character
(cf. Zech. viii 3). With Isaiah the giving of a name is the
perception and recognition of the real existence of what has
come into outward manifestation. The second designation
applied to Jerusalem is without the article : this term nnp, of
such weighty and definite purport, is never used in Isaiah
with the article, and, indeed, never occurs with it anywhere
except in 1 Kings L 41, 45.
Jehovah has thus announced the course irrevocably fixed,
and leading to salvation, which He will pursue with Israel : this
is the leading principle of God's dealings henceforth, the law of
Israel's history. Its purport, briefly and tersely put, is thus
expressed in ver. 27 : " Sion vnll be redeemed through judg-
ment, and her returning ones through righteousness." DBBis and
n^ are in other places called divine gifts (xxxiii 5, xxviiL 6),
lines of conduct on the part of men that are well-pleasing to
God (i. 21, xxxii. 16), royal and Messianic virtues (ix. 6,
vi. 3-5, xvi. 5, xxxii 1). Here, however, the idea is not
this peculiarly human one (as Cheyne thinks), but, as
shown by parallel passages like iv. 4, v. 16, xxviii. 17, it is
to be referred to Jehovah, and the words are to be regarded
as meaning God's justice and righteousness in their primarily
judicial self-fulfilment A judgment of God the Kighteous
One will be the means through which Zion, — so far as it has
remained faithful to Jehovah, — and those who in the midst
of the judgment return (^T^r, instead of which Luther read
iT3B'), will be redeemed. This judgment will fall upon sinners
and sin, and wiU be the means of breaking that power which
has restrained and impeded the nature and workings of Zion,
as these were designed of God ; it will further be the medium
through which those who turn to Jehovah are incorporated
Digitized by
Google
OHAPTKB L S9. 91
into His true Church. When God therefore reveals Himself
in His punitive righteousness, He is working out a righteous-
ness which is bestowed as a gift of grace on those who escape
the former. The idea of " righteousness " (Stxatoo-vi^) is here,
as in Hob. iL 2 1, on New Testament lines. In front, there
is the fire of the law ; behind, there is the light 'of the gospel.
Behind the wrath is hidden love, as the ultimate motive-
power, like the sun behind the thunder-clouds. Zion, as far
as it is truly Zion and is becoming Zion, is redeemed ; only
the ungodly are destroyed, but these without mercy, as is
added in ver. 28 : " But the destruction of the transgressors and
sinners \shall he] together, and those who forsake Jehovah shall
perish." In this way even the judicial aspect of the ap-
proaching act of redemption is expressed in a manner that
can be understood by every one. The impassioned exclama-
tory clause in the first half of the verse is explained by the
declamatory verb-clause of the second. 0*;%^ are those who
in heart and in outward conduct have broken away from
Jehovah ; D'Kon are those who spend their lives in open and
prevailing sins ; njrp '•yf) are those who have become estranged
from God in one or other of these ways.
Ver. 29, beginning with an explanatory '3, declares how
God's judgment of destmction falls upon all these : " For they
shall he ashamed of the terebinths in which ye delighted, and ye
mtist WksA because of the gardens in which ye had pleasure."
The terebinths and gardens (this second word with the article,
as in Hab. iii. 8 first onnja, then c^nja) are not referred to
as objects of luxury (as Hitzig and Drechsler suppose), but as
unlawful places of worship (see Deut xvi 21) and objects of
worship : both of them are frequently mentioned by the
prophets with this meaning, Ivil 5, Ixv. 3, Ixvi 17. *ipn and
'ina are the usual verbs employed in speaking of Gentile will-
worship (i0e\o6pi]o-K£la), as in xliv. 9, xlL 24, Ixvi 3 ; and
]p V\2 is the customary phrase for indicating the shame that
comes over idolaters when the helplessness of their idols proves
that they are nothing. Eegarding B^^a (to be disturbed, lose self-
command) and IB" (to be covered over, become covered with
shame), see our commentary on F& xxxiv. 6, xxxv. 4; c£
WUnsche on Sosea, i. p. 54. The LXX. and other ancient
versions incorrectly render ofyvt by ttSmXa, though the feeling
Digitized by
Google
92 IBkUS.
by which they were prompted is correct : the placea of worship
here (cfl Jer. xlviiL 13) stand for the idols {O*^, for which the
form Dv'S is never written when Dii is the meaning). The
abrupt transition from plain statement to direct address shows
how excited the prophet is here at the close of the discourse.
In this animated strain he continues ; and, led by the
association of ideas, he makes terebinths and gardens the
future figures of the idolaters themselves. Ver. 30 : " For ye
shall be like a terdnnth with withered leaves, and like a garden
in which there is no water." Their prosperity is being
destroyed, and they are thus like a terebinth fjVy rfeai. This
last expression does not mean " withered its foliage," i.e. whose
foliage is withered (for n?^ is masc.), but " which is withered in
its foliage "^ (genitival construction, as in xxx. 27 ; see Ewald's
Syntax, § 288c); their sources of help are dried up, and thus
they resemble a garden that has no water, and is therefore waste.
The terebinth (turpentine-pistacia), a native of southern and
eastern Palestine, casts its leaves (which are small, and resemble
those of the walnut-tree) in the autumn. In this dry and
parched condition, terebinth and garden, to which the idolaters
are compared, are readily inflammable. There is but needed
a spark to kindle, and then they are consumed in the flames.
Ver. 31, in a third figure, shows the quarter from which
this kindling spark will come : " And the wealthy one leconus
tow, and his work a spark ; and both shall hum together, and
no one extinguishes them." The form v^^ primarily suggests a
participial meaning, " he who prepares it ; " but l^onn would
be an unusual epithet to apply to the idol. Besides, the
figure, on this view, becomes distorted, for certainly the
natural order is that the idol is what kindles or inflames,
while man is the object to be kindled, — not the converse.
Hence '^V^ here means " his work " (as in the LXX., Targum,
' The noim r6v is a collective, and not till we come to Nehemiah do
we find the plur. D^^i just as it is not tUl we reach the post-Biblical
Hebrew that a plur. n^iB is formed from the collective v^b- We might
have expected rl^ instead of n^,— like nib' in 8 Kings viiL 3 ; but such
nouns firam verbs n!> are mostly combined with the suiBxca ehu, ^ha {e.g.
ntOO for rIKlO, Lev. xiiu 4, xx. 25), the termination ii=ai having an
influence on the choice of the suffix-form (Qesen. § 91, note 16).
Digitized by
Google
OHAPTEB I. 81. 93
and Vulgate): the forms li'^B and l^fc (cf. lii. 14; Jer.
xxiL 13) are two equallj possible modifications of the funda-
mental form v!)Q OV?)- -^^ ^*''' 29 referred to the worship
of idols, 7$b does not here mean work in the general ethical
sense (as Gesenius thinks, Thcs.), but the idol, as something
made (cf. ii 8, xxxviL 1 9, etc.). The wealthy idolater, who
out of the abundance of his possessions ({Dh, xxxiii. 6) could
afford gold and silver for making idols, will become tow (Talm.
'inm bv mm, " refuse of flax," from iw, to shake out, viz. in
the swingling and combing ; and, on the other hand, !0H is
the Talmudic word for flax that is still uncombed and un-
dressed), and the idol will be the spark that sets this mass of
fibres on fire, so that both will bum without anj possibility
of being saved (regarding "i??, see the remarks on iv. 4).' For
the fire of judgment that consumes sinners does not need to
come from without : sin carries within itself the fire of wrath.
But the idol is the corpus delicti, — the sin of the idolater, as
it were, set forth and embodied in visible form.
The time when this first prophetic discourse was composed
is a difficult problenu Caspari, in his CotUribuiions, has
thoroughly examined all possible dates, and has finally decided
in favour of the view that it belongs to the time of Uzziah,
on the ground that vers. 7-9 do not relate to an actual, but
merely to an ideal present But this view is, and must con-
tinue to be, arbitrary. Every unprejudiced reader will receive
from vers. 7-9 the impression that what is there depicted is
something actually present Moreover, during the period of
Isaiah's ministry the land of Judah was actually laid waste
on two occasions, on both of which Jerusalem was spared only
through the miraculous protection of Jehovah, — once during
the reign of Ahaz, in the year of the Syro-Ephraimitish war ;
and the second time during Hezekiah's reign, when the Assyrian
host laid waste the country, only to be finally dashed to pieces
at Jerusalem. Gesenius, Maurer, Movers, Knobel, Driver, and
* Thia ph IB an old Hcbiew word preserved in the Mishna {Shabbatk
iL 1). Babbi Joseph there explains it, with reference to the present
passage, pw V&i p'm ton'3, flax which has been broken, but iiot yet
combed ; and it seems to be assamed there that Isaiah, when he calls
the idolater pDnn, alludes to ph : "As the Tywyi proceeds from the {DID,
so will the idolatrous pon become ntipj." — (Dr. H. Ehientreu.)
Digitized by
Google
94 ISAIAH.
others decide in favour of the year when the Syro-Epbraimitish
war took place ; while Hitzig, Umbreit, Drechsler, Luzzatto, and
Ktiper hold that the time was that of the Assyrian oppressioa
Whichever view we may take, there ever remains, as the test
of its admissibility, the di&icult question. How has this pro-
phecy come to stand at the beginning of the book, if it belongs
to the times of Uzziah and Jotbam ? This question we shall
endeavour to answer when we reach chap. vL
The path of General Judgment, showing the course of
Israel from False to True Glory, Chaps. II.-IV.
The limits of this discourse cannot be mistaken. From
the beginning of chap, ii to the end of chap. iv. a complete
circle is formed. After frequent changes between exhortation,
reproach, and threatening, the prophet reaches the object of
the promise with which he began. On the other hand, chap. v.
commences with a wholly new subject, forming an indepen-
dent discourse, though connected with that which precedes
by the superscription in iL 1 : " The word which leaiaJi, the son
of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem." Chaps, ii.— v.
may possibly have already existed under this heading before
the whole collection was formed : this superscription was then
taken over into the entire work, in order to call attention to
the transition from the prologue to the body of the book.
What the prophet utters concerning Judah and Jerusalem he
calls " the word which he saw." When men speak one to
another, the words are not seen, but heard ; but when God
speaks with the prophet, this is done in a supersensuous
manner, and the prophet sees it in this way, — for thounh the
spirit of man has neither eyes nor ears, yet when enabled to
perceive the supersensuous, it is altogether eye.
The way in which Isaiah begins this second discourse is
without a parallel ; there is no other prophetic address whatever
that commences with n*rn (for Ezek. xxxviiL 1 is not a begin-
ning, but a continuation). It is easy to tell the reason, however.
This " consecutive preterite " receives the meaning of a future
only from the context; whereas ^T!! (with which historical
books and sections very commonly begin) shows its character
by its very form. It is further to be noted that the copu-
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB n. I. 95
lative meaning of the i in the " consecutive imperfect " retains
less of its living force than in the "consecutive perfect"
The prophet accordingly begins with " and ; " and that n^n is
meant to bear a future sense is to be made out, not from
what precedes, but from what follows. This, however, is not
the onlj strange thing here ; for there is, further, no other
case in which a prophetic address — especially one like this,
which runs through all the phases of prophetic discourse
(exhortation, reproof, threatening, promise) — ^begins with a
promise. We are in a condition, however, to see clearly the
reason of this remarkable phenomenon; for vers. 2-4 are
not at all the words of Isaiah himself, but the words of
another, taken out of their connection. " Every one of the
prophets," says the Pesikta de-Sab Cahana 125b, "follows
the precedent set him by those who have gone before (((*33
waj *Bo) ; but thou, Isaiah, dost prophesy under the direct
influence of the divine majesty" (miajn 'do). This is a
grand testimony to the originality of Isaiah, yet it does not
exclude his falling back on his predecessors. For we also
find the words of vers. 2-4, in a slightly diCTereut form, in
Micah iv. 1—4 ; and whether Isaiah took the words of this
prediction from Micah, or whether both prophets derived
them from a common source, in any case they are not Isaiah's
originally.^ Nor was it at all intended that they should
* The statement in Jer. zxvi 18, that Micah uttered the threatening
recotded in Micah iiL 12 (the counterpart of which is the promise in Micah
iv. 1-4 and Isa. iL 2-4) during the reign of Hezekiah, seenia to niiHtate
i^inst the idea that Isaiah borrowed from Micah. Independently of
each other, Ewald (ProjAeU of the Old Tettament, Eng. trans, vol. iL pp.
27, 314) and Hitzig (Commentary on Itaiah and Mieah; Studien und
Kritikm for 1829, 2) have conjectured that both Micah and Isaiah repeat
what was first uttered hy a third and earlier prophet, whom Hitzig
farther supposes to have been Joel ; Cheyne also (1868) thinks this prob-
able. The passage in question has actually many points in common
with the Book of Joel, such as the picture given of the reforging of the
0*nK and nnOtO (iv. lOX the combinations of 3*1 and DWP« of \Bi and
rUKn (cf. with Micah iv. 4). In Micah, however, it forms the obverse
side of the threat of judgment that preceded ; ver. 3 also reminds us ol
Micab's style (see the remarks on that verse) ; and the statement in Jer.
xzvL 18 is quite compatible with the supposition that Isaiah borrowed
these words of promise from Micah (see the closing remarks on chaps.
L-vL)i Cf. Caspari on Micah, p. 444 ff.
Digitized by
Google
d6 ISAIAH.
seem to be his. Isaiah has not fused them into the general
current of his own address, as prophets are elsewhere wont to
do with the predictions of their predecessors. He does not
reproduce them, but, as we are meant to observe, from the
abrupt beginning, he quotes them. This certainly does not
seem to agree with the heading, according to which the
succeeding declarations are the word of Jehovah which Isaiah
saw ; but there is no real disagreement It is just the spirit
of prophecy which here brings into Isaiah's remembrance a
prophetic utterance already recorded, and makes it the starting-
point of the series of thoughts which follow. The borrowed
promise is not by any means cited for its own sake, but serves
merely as a basis for the following exhortation and threat of
judgment, through which, after the borrowed introduction,
Isaiah's discourse aspires to a conclusion of its own.
The subject-matter of the borrowed words of prophecy is
the future glory of Israel. Ver. 2 : " And it comes to pass
at the end of the days, the mountain of the hotise of Jehovah
will be established on the top of the mountains, and exalted over
hills, and all nations stream unto it." The expression " the
last days," or " end of the days " (p'vm nnw), which does not
occur anywhere else in Isaiah, may either, in contrast with
the time of commencement, signify the time of the end, or,
in contrast with the present, the time that follows (as in
Deut xxxi. 29; Jer. xxiii. 20); according to preponderating
usage, however, this expression is applied to the future that
forms the close of history. Whether we render it by iv
itrxdraK ^fiipaii or (as in 1 Tim. iv. 1) by ev i<rrepo«
«a{ji>o(9, . the idea it presents is eschatological, but this in
relation to the horizon of the speaker. This horizon is very
varied ; and the history of prophecy is just the history of its
gradual extension and completion. In the blessing of Jacob,
Gen. xlix., the occupation of the land of Canaan stands in
the foreground of the "last days," and regulates the per-
spective ; but here, in Isaiah, " the last days " mean the time
of the end in the most simple and literal sense. The prophet
predicts that the mountain on which the temple was built
will one day visibly tower above all the heights of the earth,
and be enthroned like a king over his subjects. At present,
the south-eastern hill on which the temple is built is sur-
Digitized by
Google
en AFTER n. J. 6V
passed in height hy the south-western hill; and the basaltic
mountains of Bashan, rising in bold peaks and columns, look
down with scorn and contempt on the little limestone-hill
which Jehovah has chosen (Pa Ixviii. 16 f.X — a wrong re-
lation which the last times will remove, by making the out-
ward correspond to the inward, the appearance to the reality
and intrinsic worth. That such is the prophet's meaning is
confirmed by Ezek. xl 2, where the temple-monnt appears
gigantic to the prophet, and by Zech. xiv. 10 (parallels,
which Cheyne also compares), according to which all Jeru-
salem will one day, as the actual centre and apex (cf. Ezek.
V. 5), tower above the country round about, which shall have
become a plain. If this be the meaning of the passage, there
still remains doubt regarding the sense attaching to B^tths.
Is it meant that Moriah will come to stand " upon the top "
of the mountains surrounding it (C'k'i3 being vendered as in
P& Ixxxil 16), or that it will stand "at the head" of tbem
(the expression being used as in 1 Kings xxi. 9, 12; Amos
vL 7 ; Jer. xxxi. 7) ? The former is the view of Hofmann
(in his Weisaag. und Erfidlvng, ii 217): his opinion is, not
that the mountains will be piled up, one on the top of the
other, with the temple-mount over all (as it is said in Pesikta
de-Eab Cahana 1445, that God will bring together Sinai,
Tabor, and Carmel, and erect the temple-building upon the
top of them), but that Zion will seem to float on the summit
of the other mountains : this is also the explanation given by
Ewald. But inasmuch as the expression |^, " established," is
not favourable to this mode of getting rid <^ a wonderful
phenomenon, and because B^hs, in the sense of "at the
head," occurs still more frequently than with the meaning
" on the top," what is meant is the exaltation of Zion by
means of lifting, yet this in such a way that the physical and
visible elevation is but a means to the dignitative and moral,
and easily changes &om the literal sense to the ideal Raised
to a position towering over everything besides, the mountain
chosen of God becomes the place of meeting and the centre
of unity for all nations. It is the temple of Jehovah which
now, visible to the nations from afar, exercises such magnetic
powers of attraction, and with such results (of. Ivi 7 ; Jer. iil
17 ; Zech. viii 20 fit). Now, it is but a single nation, Israel,
VOL I. G
Digitized by
Google
98 ISAUH.
that makes pilgrimages to the temple-mount on great festivals,
— then it will be otherwise.
Ver. 3 : "And peoples in multitudes go and say. Come and
let us go up to ihe mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the
God of Jacob : let Him instruct us out of His ways, and we wiU
walk m His paths." This is their watchword for the starting,
this is their song on the way that they go (cf. Zech. viii.
21 f., iL 15). What urges them is the desire of salvation.
Desire for salvation expresses itself in the name thej give to
the goal of their journey: they call Zion (= Mount Moriah,
2 Cbron. iiL 1) the " mountain of Jehovah ; " they call the
temple built on it " the house of the Grod of Jacob ; " " Israel,"
as the name of the people of God, has by frequent use become
common, so they employ the more refined name " Jacob," — ■
the name dear to Micah, of whose style (see iv. 11, 13, v. 6 t)
we are further reminded by the expression " many nations."
Desire of salvation shows itself in the object of their journey ;
they wish Jehovah to teach them " out of His ways " C?T!9)
— rich material for instruction with which they would like to
be gradually intrusted {p is here osed in a partitive sense,
— "out of the fulness of this material for instruction," cf.
xlviL 13, and the somewhat different IP in Ps. xciv. 12) : " the
ways of Jehovah " are those in which He Himself walks and
in which He conducts men, the revealed ordinances of His
government and His will Desire of salvation also shows
itself in their resolution to set out : they not merely wish to
learn, but they have made glad resolve to act in accordance
with what they have learned : " so will we walk in His paths,"
— the cohortative, as frequently is the case (e.g. Gen. xxvii 4),
being used as the expression of the subjective purpose, or the
subjective inference.
Here end the words of the multitude of the heathen who
are going up to Zion ; but the prophet, at the end of ver. 3
further adds the reason and motive of this holy pilgrimage
of the nations : " For from Zion wiil a law go forth, and the
word of Jehovah from Jerusalem." Zion * was originally the
name of the south-eastern hill (not, as is now acknowledged,
of the south-western hill which was erroneously considered
' On the meaning of the word, see Wetstein in my Cmvaumtary on
Ometis, 4th edition (English translation, Edinburgh 1889)i
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB n. 4 99
Zion) on which, at several successive stages of descent, were
built the temple, the palace of Solomon, and the city of
David ; ^ then it came to be specially applied to the height
on which the temple stood, and by synecdoche to the whole
of Jerusalem, the true centre of which is the sanctuary. The
greatest emphasis is laid on the expressions " out of Zion "
and " out of Jerusalem," which indicate a feeling of triumph,
and remind us of John iv. 22, ^ atvnipia iK tov 'lovSa^v
iariv. From Zion-Jorusalem will go forth frtn, i,e. instruc-
tion regarding the questions which man has to ask at God ;
and " the word of Jehovah " is that by which the world was
created and by which it is spiritually transformed. Hence,
what makes the nations truly prosperous comes from Zion-
Jerusalem. Thither assemble the nations, thence they carry
away a blessing with them to their homes, and tlTus Zion-
Jerusalem becomes the source of all-embracing good; for,
from the time that Jehovah chose Zion, the sanctity of Sinai
(according to P& IxviiL 18) was transferred to Zion; and
what was begun at Sinai for Israel is completed from Ziou
for all the world. This was fulfilled at that Feast of Pente-
cost when the first-fruits of the Church of Christ proclaimed
the law of Zion, ie. the gospel, in all the languages of the
world. It is fulfilled, as Theodoret here remarks, in the fact
that the word of the gospel, beginning at Jerusalem olov airo
Tivtm vriyrj^, ran through the whole inhabited world (cf. Luke
xxiv. 47, ap^dftevov airb ' lepovvaX'^/i).
All these fulfilments, however, were but preludes to an
end still to be expected, and forming their completion. For
there is no fulfilment yet of what is predicted in ver. 4 :
" And St will judge letween the nations, and pronounce judg-
ment to many nations ; and they forge their swords into coulters,
and their spears into pruning-hooks : nation lifts not up the
sword against nation, neither do they learn war any more."
When the nations thus betake themselves as pupils to the
God of revelation and to the word He has revealed. He
becomes among them the supreme judicial tribunal When
dispute arises, it is no longer decided by force of arms, but
by the word of God, to which they all bow with willing
' See Klaiber in the ZeiUckrifi da DeuUehen PaUMina- Vertins, m.
201.
Digitized by
Google
100 IBAIAH.
sabinission. D*31, used in this way by itself (without the
parallel D*P^, found in Micah iv. Z), signifies " many," not
" great" When this power of the peace-producing word of
Qod is in active exercise (Zech. ix. 10), there is no longer
need for iron weapons: these are re-forged into tools for
works of peace, — into O^tm (instead of which we find D'OK in
1 Sam. xiii. 21, from JVik, to break), "coulters" which pre-
prepare the furrows while the ploughshare turns them up,
and into rfiOj?, " pruning-hooks " or " bills," with which the
vine is pruned, in order to increase its fruit-bearing power.
Neither is there any more need for military exercises, for
there is no need in learning what can no longer be applied :
it is useless, and men turn from it in disgust There is
peace ; yet not an armed peace, but a full, true, and God-sent
peace. The true humanity that was overwhelmed and choked
by sin now gains the mastery, and the world observes its
Sabbath. What is set forth in Ps. xlvi 9 f., IIos. ii 20,
was seen more fully by Isaiah, Micah, and Zechariah, is a
moral postulate laid down in Scripture, the goal of the history
of redemption, the predicted counsel of GSod.
Isaiah comes before his contemporaries with this older
prophecy regarding the noble and world-embracing calling of
the people of Jehovah ; he holds it up to them like a mirror,
and exclaims (ver. 5) : "0 house of Jacob, come ! and let us
walk in the light of Jdurvah ! " This exhortation is formed
under the influence of the context from which vers. 2-4 are
taken (as may be seen from Micah iv. 5), and of the cited
words themselves ; Micah prefers 3i?K to -'?fj^j though the
former name is not unusual in Isaiah (see viii. 17, x. 20 f.,
xxix. 23), and in chaps, xl.— Ixvi. comes into prominence.
With the words " house of Jacob " he turns to his own
nation, for whom, because Jehovah has shown Himself
graciously present among them, so glorious a future is in
store ; and he calls ou them to walk in the light of such a
God, unto whom, in the end of the days, all nations shall
come in crowds. The summons, " Come, and let us walk," is
the echo of the summons, "Come, and let us go up," in
ver. 3 ; and Hitzig quite correctly remarks, " Like Paul in
Ham. xi. 14, Isaiah seeks to rouse his fellow-countrymen to a
noble jealousy by pointing to the example of the heatlien."
Digitized by
Google
CHAITEB II. 6. 101
" The light of Jehovah " (an expression in which there is a
not unintentional reference to ^'}^'] in ver. 3 ; ct Proy.
vL 23) is the knowledge of Him that has been revealed.
It is now high time to walk in the light of Jehovah, i.e. to
turn this knowledge to regulate dailj life ; and the exhorta-
tion to this is highly necessary for Israel just now, when the
nation, because it did the contrary, had been given over to a
perverse mind.
This sad thought, which the prophet is constrained to
make the basis of his warning cry, comes from him in ver. 6,
in the form of a prayer breathing sighs : " For Thou fuut
rejected Thy people, the htnue of Jacob; hecanse they have
been ^filled from the East, and are sorcerers Wee the Philistines,
and with the children of foreigners they go hand in hand."
Once more we have twice ^, in immediate succession ; the first
gives the reason for the warning cry, the second introduces
the justification of this reason. The address is directed to
Jehovah, not to the people. Of early commentators, Saadia
and Gecatilia (cf. also Bashi), and among modern writers, J.
D. Michaelis, Hitzig, and Luzzatto take the first words to
mean, " Thou hast given up thy nationality " (Wi being
taken for 1©? nfc^). But Dp signifies " people," not " nation-
ality ; " and this interpretation would not have been thought
of if the sudden introduction of the address to God had not
been considered strange. But in il 9, ix. 2, etc., the
prophecy also assumes the form of a prayer ; moreover, the
combination of <s^3 with D? as an object, recalls such passages
as P& xciv. 14; 1 Sam. xii. 22. Jehovah has cast away His
people from Him {i.e. rejected them), and left them to them-
selves (^); the perfect is not a prophetic one (as Gheyne
thinks), but speaks of what has actually occurred, as is shown
by the various symptoms pointed out : (1) They are full from
the East (Q*^ : here 1? indicates the source from which the
filling comes, Ezek. xxxil 6 ; Jer. li. 34 ; and see my com-
mentary on Eccles. L 8), i.e. full of Oriental manners and
fashions, particularly idolatrous usages, tnj^ is the name given
to Arabia dovm to the peninsula of Sinai, together with the
Aramean countries adjacent to the Euphratea Under Uzziah
and Jotham, whose dominion extended as far as Elath, the sea-
port of the Elanitic Gulf, the influence of the south-western
Digitized by
Google
*lOa'':''" ' • •••■• •• ISAIAH.
Orient predominated ; but under Ahaz and Hezekiah, on
account of their relations to Assyria, Syria, and Babylon, that
of the north-east was predominant. The conjectural reading
DO^ (suggested by Gesenius in his Thesaurus) at Dopp
(supported by Ewald and Bottcher) would remove the name
of the extensive region from which Judah's disposition to
imitate received its impulse and material ; but perhaps Isaiah
wrote mpD DDP (" fullhrj of sorcery from the East "). (2)
They are Q'J^Jj (a form which is interchanged with the more
complete CJ'apVp, Deut xviii 14, etc., from the Poel 0i>, Lev.
xix. 26 ; 2 Kings xxi. 6), not " Tagewahler," as Luther
renders it — for the form ia opposed to the derivation from
<^^V, "time" (see Sanhedrin 656; and c£ Bashi on Lev. xix.
26), but those who observe the clouds for signs of the future
(a rendering which Aben-Ezra also very properly prefers), or
— more in accordance with the meaning of the Poel — those
who bring clouds and storms ^ like the Philistines (who were
subdued by Uzziah, and afterwards by Hezekiah), among whom
' There is no ground for the explanation "concealing "(*.«. practising
secret arts) ; for the meaning "to cover" is arbitrarily transferred to the
verb pp from the roots [33 and pa (see on Ps. lixx. 16) with which it is
said to be allied. But as a denominative from py (" a cloud," as meeting
the eye)^ piy might mean " he gathered auguries from the clouds." Or — if
we take pj; as synonymous with {jp, Qen. ix. 14 (for, in the Targums, gp
and |3jn3 interchange with the Hebrew p^j; and glypi &V^- piv) — ^^ means
" to cause a storm ; " we would then have the rendering " storm-raieers,"
tempestarii, pt^tiianTmi. (On storm-raising through incantations, especially
among the Turanian nations by means of the " rain-stone," see Bernstein's
edit of Eirsch's Syriae (^retUmathy, p. Ill, line 9 S. ; Wiistenfeld's edit
of Kazwtnt, L p. 221, line 10 ff. ; Hammer - Purgstall's Getckickte der
goldenen Horde in Kipttehak, pp. 206 f., 435-438.) The derivation of
JJ^P from py in the sense of Uie Arab, 'dna (imperif. ja'tnu), — as it were
" to ogle," in modem Greek iftfutri^u; oeulo maligno petere et fasdnare
(see the Journal of the German Oriental Society, xxxL 639),— though in
itself philologically possible, founders on the Targumic ^y (to practise
sorcery), which cannot possibly be traced to pjj. From a purely philo-
logical standpoint, however, another explanation still remains possible.
From the idea of " coming to meet," 'dna obtains the transitive sense of
holding back, preventing, restraining (as it were ccmirarier), especially to
rein in the horse with the bridle Ctn4n), in application to sexual rela-
tions.
Digitized by
Google
CBAFTEB U. 7, 8. 103
sorcery was practised by incorporated guilds (1 Sam. vi. 2), while
a famous oracle of Beel-Zebiib existed at Ekron (2 Kings i. 2).
" And with the children of foreigners they make themselves
familiar ; " such is the rendering we must give this expression,
following Gesenius, Knobel, and Nagelsbach : PfiD with O^aa
signifies to clap hands (Job xxvii 23) ; the Hiphil is used only
here with 3 in the sense of striking hands with a person. On
the other hand, the LXX. and Syriac render the expression in
accordance with the idea of abundance or fulness elsewhere pre-
sented in peo (or ptiff) ; but whether it be translated " in the
children of foreigners they find satisfaction," or "with the
children of foreigners they provide themselves abundantly," the
tendering is equally opposed to the usage of the language, which
nowhere points to this construction with f . But the Hiph.
PVO!} may be compared with the Arab. «_&&«, IV., to give the
hand (as a token of agreement and approval) ; it is here com-
bined with a after the analogy of 3 ]»B, foedua pangere cum
aligito. Jerome, following Symmachus, here translates puerit
alienis adhaeseruiU ; but D»T33 npj is equivalent to "03 '33
(Ix. 10, Ixi. 5), only with stronger emphasis on the un-
sanctified birth, the heathenism inherited from their mother's
womb. The prophet means to say it is with bom heathens
that the people of Jehovah make themselves common, — ^make
common cause in the ordinary business of life.
He now goes on, in vers. 7, 8, to describe how, in con-
sequence of this, the land of the people of Jehovah is crammed
full of objects of luxury, self-trust, and estrangement from
God : " And their land it JUUd with silver and gold, and there it
no end to their treaturea ; and their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots. And their land is filled
with idols ; to the work of their hands they how dovm in worship,
to thai which their own fingers have made." The glory of
Solomon's days, which revived under Uzziah's reign of fifty-
two years, and was maintained during Jotham's reign of
sixteen years, carried within it the curse of the law ; for the
law regarding the king, in Deut xvii 14 fT., forbids both the
multiplying of horses and the multiplying of gold and silver.
Standing armies and stores of national treasures, like every-
thing that lends support to carnal self-trust, are opposed to
the spirit of the theocracy. Nevertheless Judea is immeasur-
Digitized by
Google
104 ISAIAII.
ably full of those things which entice to apostasy (WiJ, from
ivp, according to Abulwalid and otheis, like naa, fun ; cf. ^),
and not only so, but also of things that openly show it;
DTft? are " idols " (in the Pentateuci only found in Lev. xix.
4, xxvi. 1 ; in the singular T'pR, " empty, worthless," Assyr.
ulalu, from 7?*, to be weak, decaying, null ; * not, as Heiden-
heim thinks, from ?^, " a false god ; " nor, as Movers supposes,
s diminutive, meaning a little god, a small image of a god).
The condition of the country is thus at variance not merely
with the law regarding the king, but also with the decalogue.
The existing splendour is the most offensive caricature of
what had been promised ; for the nation whose God will one
day become the desire and salvation of all nations had
exchanged Him for the idols of the nations, and vied with
them in the appropriation of heathen religion and practice.
This was a condition of affairs ripe for judgment, and from
which the prophet can at once proceed to the proclamation of
the judgment, ver. 9 : " Thus, then, men are lowed dotcn, and
masters brought low; and forgive them — nay, this thou shalt
not ! " The moods of the verbs mark the judgment &s one
that arises through an inward necessity from the worldly and
ungodly glory of the present; this use of the verb-forms
frequently occurs, as in ix. 7 ff. It is a judgment through
which small and great, i.e. people of all classes, are brought
down from their false eminence, ne*^, as in xxix. 4 (cf. Eccles.
xii. 4), might be the imperfect Niphal (cf. hi\ "OS; 7B»), and
Gesenius regards it as such; it is probably, however, the
intransitive imperfect Qal (Stade, § 490a), for nne^, ree^,
nne' hardly ever have formed a Niphal ; the Qal in itself
signifies to be bowed down, depressed, as b^f signifies to be
humble and to be humbled. DTiH and V^^ are not mere inter-
changeable terms, without any essential difference (as Nagels-
bach thinks), but differ as in v. 15 ; P& xlix. 3 (cf. iv. 3 ;
Isa. liii. 3) ; Prov. viii. 4, and as in Attic Greek dvdpmrro^
differs from aviip, — ordinary human beings who disappear in
the crowd, and men who rise out of it,* — all (Rev. vL 15) are
' See Friedrich Dclitzoch, Prolegomena, p. 133.
* In the Axabio of Syria, D*1K is strangely used in the latter seme ;
" people of importance " are called atodtftm, or n&$ awdddm (Jonrnal of the
German Oriental Society, xxiL 164).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER H. 10, IL 105
thrown down to the ground by the judgment, and that with-
out mercy. The prophet expresses the conviction (7M being
used as in 2 Kings vi. 27) that God can and will no longer take
away their sin (this noun being the object we must regard as
following the verb Kb^, Fs. xzxiL 1 ; viffi is applied to God,
and signifies to forgive, as in Hos. i. 6).
No other coarse is now left open for them but to follow
the sarcastic command of the prophet in ver. 10 : " Creep
into the rock, and bury thyself in the dust, before the dread look
o/JehoveA, and before the glory of His majesty ! " The forms
Kta and |o^n are imperatives ; the inf. constr. of the Niphal
ia sometimes indeed used instead of the infin. absolute (Num.
XV. 31 ; 1 Kings xv. 39), but there is no instance of the latter
form being employed as an imperative. The nation that was
supposed to be a glorious one shall and must creep away and
hide itself ignominiously, when the glory of God which it had
rejected, but which alone is true glory, is judicially mani-
fested. It must conceal itself in holes of the rocks as if
from a host of foes (Judg. vi 2 ; 1 Sam. xiiL 6, xiv. 11), and
bury themselves with their faces in the sand, as from the
deadly simoom of the desert, that they may but avoid the
necessity of enduring this intolerable sight When Jehovah
reveals Himself thus in the fiery glance of judgment, there
follows the result summed up in ver. 11:" The haughty
looks of the people are brought low, and the pride of the lords
is bowed down, and Jehovah,, He alone, stands exalted in that
day." The result of the judicial process is expressed in
perfects; 3|bo is the 3rd pers. of the pi-eterite, not the
participle : " Jehovah is exalted," ie. shows Himself exalted ;
while the haughty demeanour of the people is abased (p^ is
a verb, not an adjective, in agreement, by attraction, with the
genitive, instead of its governing word ; see also 2 Sam. i. 21;
Lev. xiii 9 ; Ps. cxl. 10, Kethib; Dan. iii. 19, Kethib),«DA the
pride of the lords is bowed down (nB* = nriB', Job ix. 13).
Here ends the first strophe of the proclamation of judgment,
appended to the borrowed prophetic passage in vers. 2-4.
The second strophe extends as far as ver. 17, where ver. 11 is
repeated as the conclusion.
Looking at the expression, " on that day," we ask ourselves,
what kind of day is this ? To this question the prophet
Digitized by
Google
106 iSkUB.
replies in the second strophe, first of all in ver. 12: "lor
Jehovah of Hosts has a day over everything, totoering and high,
and over everything lofty, and it beames low." tS<^ Oi»,
" Jehovah has a day " (xxii 5, xxxiv. 8), which even now forms
part of what He has freely and independently determined and
appointed beforehand (Ixiii 4, xxxvii. 26 ; cf. xxii. 11), the
secret of which he makes known to the prophets, who, from
the time of Obadiah and Joel, announce this day, in terms
ever Uie same, like a watchword. But when the time
appointed for this day arrives, it passes into the history of
time, — a day for the judgment of the world, which, through
the omnipotence by which Jehovah rules over the highest as
well as the lowest spheres of all creation, passes upon all
worldly glory. With kS'?"^ the accent used is Tiphtiha
(Luzzatto, Baer) ; but certainly Athnaeh would be more
suitable, as in Lev. xiiL 18. As the future is spoken of, the
perfect TBC^ acquires the force of a future {pret. eonsee.), " and
it shall be brought low (or, sink down)."
The prophet now enumerates all the high things on which
this day falls, arranging them together two by two, and com-
bining them in pairs by a double correlative \. The day of
Jehovah falls, as the first two pairs declare, on everything
lofty in nature (vers. 13, 14): "As upon all cedars of Lebanon,
the lofty and exalted, so upon all the oaks of Bashan ; as upon
ail mountains, the lofty ones, so upon aU hills, the exalted ones."
But why upon all this mtyestic beauty of nature ? Has this
language a merely figurative meaning ? Knobel understands
it figuratively, and regards it as referring to the grand build-
ings of Uzziah and Jotham, for the erection of which like timber
had been brought from Lebanon and Bashan, on the western
slope of which the old shady oaks (svndidn and ballut) still con-
tinue to grow luxuriantly. But that trees may mean the houses
built of them cannot be proved from ix. 9, where the reference
is not to houses made of sycamore and cedar wood, but to the
trunks of such trees; nor again from Nah. ii. 4, where
D^nan mean the fir lances which are brandished about in
eager desire for the fight As little can mountains and hills
mean the castles and fortresses upon them, especially because
ver. 15 expressly refers to these, in literal terma In order to
understand the prophet, we must bear in mind what sacred
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTZB n. It, IC 107
Sci-iptnre assumes thronghout, that all nature is joined with
man to form one common history ; that man and the whole
world of nature are inaepacably connected as centre and
circumference ; that this circumference likewise is under the
influence of the sin which proceeds from man, as well as
under the wrath and the grace which proceed from God to
man ; that the judgments of God, as proved by the history of
nations, bring a share of suffering to the subject creation, and
that this participation of the lower creation in the corruption
and the glory of man will come into special prominence at the
close of this world's history, as it did at the beginning ; and
lastly, the world in its present form, in order to become an
object of the unmixed good pleasure of God, stands as much
in need of a regeneration (iraTijfffeveaia) as the corporeal part
of man himself. In accordance with this fundamental view
of the Scriptures, therefore, we cannot wonder that, when the
judgment of God goes forth upon Israel, it extends to the
land of Israel, and, along with the false glory of the nation,
overthrows everything glorious in surrounding nature which
had been forced to minister to the national pride and love of
display, and to which the national sin adhered in many ways.
What the prophet predicts was already actually beginning to be
fulfilled in the military inroads of the Assyrians. The cedar
forest of Lebanon was being unsparingly shorn : the hills and
vales of the country were trodden down and laid waste, and,
during the period of the world's history beginning with
Tiglath-Pileser, the holy land was being reduced to a shadow
of its former predicted beauty.
From what is lofty in nature, transition is now made in
vers. 15, 16 to what is exalted in the world of men, — the
fortresses, commercial structures, and the works of art that
minister to the lust of the eye : " As upon every high Unoer, so
upon every precipitous tcalL As upon all ships of Tarshish, to
upon all works of curiosity" By erecting lofty and precipi-
tous, ie. difficult of ascent (*W(3), fortifications for defence and
offence in war, Uzziah and Jotham particularly desired to
render service to Jerusalem and the country generally. The
chronicler (2 Chroa, chap, xxvi.) states that Uzziah built
fortified towers over the corner-gate, the valley-gate, and the
southern point of the cheese-makers' ravine, and strengthened
Digitized by
Google
108 ISAIAH.
these places (till that time, possibly, the weakest positions in
Jerusalem) ; also that he built towers in the wilderness
(perhaps in the wilderness extending from Beersheba to Gaza,
for increasing the safety of the country, and its vast flocks
that were pastured in the '"•JOS', ie. the western portion of
Southern Palestine). The Books of Kings (2 Kings xv.
32 f.) and Chronicles relate of Jotham that he built the
upper gate of the temple ; and the Chronicles, moreover,
record (2 Chron. xxvil) that he still further fortified tho
Ophel, i^ the southern spur of the temple-mount ; that he
founded cities in the hill -country of Judah, and erected
strongholds and towers in the forests (for watching and
repelling hostile attacks). Hezekiah also distinguished him-
self by such building enterprises (2 Chron. xxxii 27-30).
But the mention of ships of Tarshish points to the times of
Uzziah and Jotham (as Ps. xlviii 8 points to the time of
Jehoshaphat), for the seaport of Elath, which, according to
2 Kings xiv. 22, was recovered by Uzziah, was once more
lost to the kingdom of Judah under Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 6).
From this Elath (Ailath), Jewish ships, following in the wake
of the Phenicians, used to sail through the Bed Sea and
round the coast of Africa, landing at the harbour of Tartessus,
the ancient Phenician emporium of the maritime district
abounding in silver and watered by the Baetis (i.e. the
Guadalquivir), which was itself also called Tdprfiiraoi : they
returned through the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gib-
raltar, so called after the landing of Tarik in 711 : Gibraltar
= Gdel-Tdrik). The expression tt'TJNn rt«3« was primarily
applied to these vessels sailing to Tarshish, then probably to
merchant-ships generally.' The following expression rt»3fc'
nronn is taken in too restricted a sense if we confine it, with
the LXX., to the ships, or, with Gesenius, understand it as
meaning beautiful flags. Jerome has correctly rendered the
* Jerome, on the verse we are now considering (where the LXX.
renders M rit vXoio* tcPi.»cinK), gives it as a Jewish opinion that {^enn
is the proper Hebrew name for the sea, while Q« was originallj derived
from the Syriac ; and in conformi^ with this, Luther says that the
Hebrew has two words for indicating the sea, D' and 1^1^11% the latter
being nsed specially to indicate the ocean. Perhaps this view is meant
to reconcile i Chron. ix. 21, zx. 36 with 1 Kings iz. 26 £ (Kamphausen
in Jemw Literaturmtung, 1876, p. 170.)
Digitized by
Google
CIIAPTKB n. 17. 109
clause et super omnt quod vim pukJirum est. ^'^t from
fot, to see, behold (see my commentaries on Job xxxviii 36
and Gen. iiL 6), is sight in a quite general sense (Oia) ; while
rnpn is nsed here in something of the same way as in Ezek.
xxvi. 12, but without the need of understanding it, as in that
passage, to mean splendid buildings, with the additional idea
of wEitcbing, or outlook, in accordance with the Targumio
noD = neSD (Ewald, Cheyne) ; the proper place for men-
tioning these would rather have been after ver. 15, before
the ships of Tarshish. What is meant, therefore, is every
kind of works of art, made of stone or metal, and painted
(n»3B«, Biafui, display ; cf. Lev. xxvi. 1 ; Ezek. viii. 1 2),
which delight the beholder by their imposing and tasteful
appearance.
Ver. 17 now concludes the second strophe of the an-
nouncement of judgment appended to the earlier prophetic
passage : " And the pride of the people is bowed down, and the
haughtiness of the lords brought low ; and Jelwvah, He alone,
stands exalted on that day." This refrain- verse only slightly
differs from ver. 11. The subjects of the verbs in ver. 17a
have been transposed. It is almost a rule to put the predicate
at the banning of the sentence in the masculine (nei, but
nnri in Ps. xliv. 26), though the subject following is a
feminine noun, when this denotes a thing or things (see
Gesenius, § 145. 7, a).
The refrain-verse of the two following strophes (in vers.
19-21) is based on the closing portion of ver. 10, and runs
out into the concluding words rjKri fyp. The announcement
of judgment now turns to the idols, which were mentioned
before (in vers. 7, 8), but last in order, as the root of evil,
among the things with which the land abounds. In a brief
verse, consisting of one member and but three words, their
future is declared (ver. 18) as if with a swift lightning-
flash : " and the idols pass utterly away." The combination
of the plural nominative with the verb in the singular is
intended to signify that the idols, one and all, are a " mass of
nonentity " which will be reduced to annihilation : they will
disappear 773, i.e. either they will utterly perish, or (seeing
that 7*p3 is not elsewhere nsed adverbially) they will all
perish (Judg. xx. 40, a passage which shows that one might
Digitized by
Google
110 ISAIAH.
also say obhm ^p^), — ^their images, their worship, even their
names and their memory, Zeoh. xiL 2.
In ver. 19 is declared what the idolaters will do when
Jehovah has so thoroughly deprived their idols of all
divinity, hy rising from His heavenly throne, while His glory
revealed in heaven returns to earth and manifests itself as a
judicial fire : " And they mU creep into eaves of rocks, and into
ceUars of earth, before the dreadful look of Jehovah, and "before the
glory of Sis majesty, when He rises to put the earth in terror."
n^^ (from -f\y, to go down deep, to be sunk down) is a cave
naturally formed, and npno (from i^n, to bore through, or bore
out) is an artificial excavation underground: in this way,
apparently, — ^to judge from the added genitives, — ^we must
distinguish between the two synonyms, r}?'? "tw is a sig-
nificant paronomasia which admits of being easily rendered in
Latin: ut terreat terrain. The judgment thus falls on the
earth without limitation,— on men, its inhabitants, and on
all nature, intimately associated with human history, — a
whole in which sin, and therefore wrath, has gained the
mastery.
The fourth strophe begins with ver. 20 : "On that day will
man cast away his idols of geld and idols of silver which they
made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats." The
traditional text separates nf'^B ibnp into two words, without
giving us to understand what they are intended to signify.^
The division was due to the fact that in early times pluri-
literals were misunderstood, and r^arded as compound words ;
cf. IxL 1 ; Hos. iv. 18 ; Jer. xlvL 20. The word as uttered
by the prophet was certainly rrtiBnan^i (see Ewald, § 157c);
and •n91?D (a form similar to tfiB"jDB', the dawn) would appear
I Abulwalid, Farchon, and others regard the double word as the singu-
lar of a noun which signifies a bird (perhaps a woodpecker)^ as an animal
that pecks fruits Di^fX Kimchi prefers to take *ibr6 as an infinitive
(c£ Josh. iL i), signifying " to dig holes," comparing the Talmudic TB,
a pit or hole, a grave. No one renders the expression " into the mouse-
hole," because mB> mouse =».li, more exactly i\j (from /a'ara, to dig,
dig ap), is not a Hebrew word, and was taken from the Aiabic only at a
late period (hence the Hebraeo-Arabic m^Bi a mouse-trapX The name
of the mole in Aisbio is ^ac^ iU, *■«■ the blind mouse (ratX
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTBR n. 20. Ill
to be the mole, and to have received the name as an animal
that digs and throws np the soil with its shovel-like forefeet,
Lat talpa (as translated by Jerome and explained hy Basht).
Against this view, Gresenius and Knobel make the objection
that the mole does not live in honses ; but it actually burrows
underneath the floors of houses, bams, etc., forming its holes
beneath them. And are we obliged to think that the shamed
idolaters throw their idols into lumber-rooms, instead of rather
hiding them outside, thrusting them into holes and crevices ?
Along with the mole is named " the bat," ^?BS (the sound of
which is but accidentally similar to talpa) : this name, since the
time of Bochart and Schultens, has been regarded as a com-
pound of ^p = nobn and *\S (cf. wtcrepK, vespertilio, ItaL
nottola, etc.).* Moreover, the mole, the shrew-mouse, and the
bat are regarded by ancient and modem naturalists as closely
related. The bat is among birds what the mole is among
smaller predatory animals. Even in the LXX. we find
n^nfiOT? conjoined with these two words : Malbim and Luz-
zatto likewise make this connection, — as if the idolaters would
descend to the most absurd forms of animal-worship. The
accentuation, however, which does not make the division of
the verse at St^I!^ starts from a correct understanding of the
meaning: the idol-worshippers, convinced by God's judicial
manifestation that their idols are nonentities, and furious
over their unfortunate deception, will throw away with im-
precations their gold and silver images which artist hands
' The Semitic arrangement of the words would certainly be ^oy C|P, as
the bat ie in Arabic called not merely wafviM, but also fir el-Ul : the
order tfg JOV ia like that of the Persian name of the bat, j^=i
j>^ I-. '« *' (ie. night-flyerX Journal of the Germ. Oriental Soc. zxxii 241.
Fleischer says that " Fiirsfs caU;, oecuZtare— put in this general way —
is a fiction. The probable etymology, as correctly explained in Frcyta^
ft f r I
^ Jt--', jVi r, applied to the heavens, and night. From this comes
■ .-\V>A, one in the dark, tendrw, i.t. wolf; and this form resemble*
*(?av, alike in its quinqueliteral form and in its general etymological
meaning. See Berieht der kSn. $achs. Gtt. der Wiu. Band L 1846 and
1847, pp. 430, 431."
Digitized by
Google
tl3 ISAIAH.
made to their order, and thrust them like smuggled goods in
bat-holes and mole-heaps to hide them from the eyes of the
Judge, that, after casting away the useless burden that would
condemn them, they may then betake themselves to flight
Ver. 21: "To creep into the hollows of the stone-Mocks, and
into the defU of the rocks, before the dreadful look of Jehovah
and before the glory of Sis majesty, when He arises to put the
earth in terror." Instead of rniVOS, in ver. 19, there is here
found rrtnpJa, " into the hollows " (from ip5. to dig a hole) ;
and instead of nej? ni^nna, there is here D'??f [i '??93, " into the
crevices of the rocks " (j6d, a rock, properly a cleft, like rapes,
from rumpere). Thus ends the fourth strophe of this " dies
irae dies ilia" appended to the quotation from the earlier
prophet.
Now follows a closing nx>ta bene in ver. 22 : " then, let
man go, in whose nose is a breath ; for at what is he to be
valued t " The LXX. leaves this verse wholly untranslated :
was it not to be found in their copy of the Hebrew ? Cheyne
regards it as a marginal note, dating from post-exilic times,
which breaks the connection; but it is the moralizing condnsion
drawn from what precedes, and the basis of the proclamation
of judgment (introduced by '2) which follows with the opening
of the next chapter. Instead of noa, Jerome (like Berachoth
14a) read no3, giving the strange rendering, excelsus reputatas
est ipse ; and it appears that Luther also allowed himself to be
misled by this. If we look both backwards and forwards, we
cannot possibly miss the proper meaning of this verse, which
must be regarded as not only giving the result of what precedes,
but as forming the transition to what followa What has
gone before is the prediction of utter ruin to everything of
which men are proud, and of which they boast ; and in the
beginning of the following chapter the same prediction is
resumed, with more special reference to the Jewish state from
which Jehovah is taking away every support, so that it is
falling into a state of collapse. Accordingly, ver. 22 exhorts
to renunciation of trust in man and all that is human, as in
Ps. cviii. 8 f., cxlvL 3 ; Jer. xvii. 5. The view taken is as
general as in a gnome or apothegm. The ethical dative 03? is
in this case also the dative of advantage: out of regard for
yourselves, for the sake of your own salvation, do cease from
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB n. S3. 113
man, ie. from trust in him, in whose nosis (in eujits nato, as
in Job xxvii 3 ; on the other hand, in Oen. ii 7 is found
the equivalent ^BKS, tn nares efiui) is a breath, a breath of
life, which God has given him, and can take from him again
as soon as He pleases (Job xxxiv. 14 ; Ps. civ. 29). Upon
the breath which goes out and in through his nose depends
his earthly existence, which, once lost, is gone for ever
(Job vii 7). On this breath, therefore, there also depends
all the trust that is placed on man — ^how weak a foundation 1
Under these conditions, and in view of this transitoriness, the
worth of man as a basis of trust is as nothing. This idea
is here expressed in interrogatory form: "At {or for) what
is he reckoned (or to be reckoned) ? " The passive partic.
ac^ combines with the idea of actuality (aeatinuUm) that of
necessity (aestimandwi) and that, of' possibility, or what is fit
and becoming {cuatimahilia). The 3 is here that of price or
value, corresponding to the Latin genitive (^uarUt) or
ablative {quanta), — a species of the instrumental 3, the price
being represented as the means of exchange or purchase:
hence the meaning is, " At what is he reckoned 1 " not, " With
what is he compared ? " — an idea which would be expressed by
JlK (liiL 11 ; cf. lura in Luke xxii. 37) or 0? (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5).
There is here used noa, not noa, because this looser form is
usually found only when a relative clause follows (eo quod,
see Eccles. iiL 22), and not noa ; because the long final vowel
in this case is employed only when the succeeding word begins
with M, or when noa stands in pause (as in 1 Kings xxiL 21) ;
under all other circumstances ^Qa is used. The question
thus introduced cannot be answered with a positive fixing of
value; the worth of man, considered in himself, and apart
from God, is as nothing.'
At this porism a pause is made in the announcement of
judgment, but only for the purpose of gathering new strength.
In four strophes, concluding in the same way, the prophet has
proclaimed the divine judgment on every exalted thing in the
world that has fallen from commuuicm with God, just as
' In a fragment of Aeschylus preserved in Plutarcb, De ExiL, Tantalus is
represented as saying of himself : " My courage, which formerly reached
to heaven, now sinks to earth, and cries to me, Learn not to esteem too
highly what is of man."
VOL. L B
Digitized by
Google
;114 ISAUH.
Amos begins his book with a roand of judgments, forming
seven strophes which begin in the same way, and bursting
forth like seven thunder-peals upon the nations on the stage
of history ; the seventh stroke falls on Judah, on whom, as on
its proper object, the storm of judgment remains. Similarly with
Isaiah here, the universal proclamation of judgment concen-
trates itself more especially on Judah and Jerusalem. The
current of discourse now bursts the banks confining it in
strophic form, — though otherwise it flows with freedom, — and
the exhortation in ii. 22 not to trust in man, which rests on
what has gone before, becomes the stepping-stone from the
universal proclamation of judgment to the more special one in
iiL 1, while the prophet assigns a new reason for the exhortation:
" For, Idiold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, remotes from Jerusalem
and from Judah support and means of support, every support of
bread, and every support oftoater." That the announcement of
judgment here begins anew is evident even from the name of
God, rtK3V nin». fnwy, with which Isaiah everywhere (L 24, x. 16,
33, xix. 4) introduces the judicial dealings of God. Trust in
man was the great sin especially prevailing in the times of
Uzziah and Jotham. The national glory at that time carried
within it the wrath of Jehovah, which began to break out
even in the days of Ahaz, and during Hezekiah's reign was
merely restrained, not changed. This outburst of wrath
Isaiah here proclaims, describing how Jehovah is throwing
down the Jewish State into ruins by removing from it the
supports of its existence and the pillars of its fabric. In t.V^
T\i^erg\ the full idea is placed in the foreground; the two
nouns, which are but one and the same word in different
forms, and these determined by the gender (cfl Micah ii 4 ;
Kah. ii. 11; Zeph. L 15, ii. 1; Ezek. xxL 3; Ewald,
§ 172b), serve to generalize the notion: fulcra omne genus
(omnigena). Both are " instrumental " forms, and signify that
which is used in giving support, whereas I'^fO means what
supports: hence the three perhaps correspond to the Latin
fulcrum, fuUura, fulcimen. Of the various means of support,
bread and water are first named, not in a figurative sense,
but as the two absolutely indispensable conditions, and the
basis of human life. Life is supported by bread and water (\SV
being synonymous with ^OT)^ ^^' ^^'^- ^ ^« *^) i ^' S^^> ^ **•
Digitized by
Google
CffAFTEfi m. S, 8. 115
wete, on the crutch of bread, and " to break the staff of bread "
(Lev. xxvL 26 ; Ezek. iv, 16, v. 16, xiv, 13 ; Ps. cv. 16) is
thus equivalent to physical destruction. The fall of the
Jewish State accordingly begins with the withdrawal from it
by Jehovah of all support afforded by bread and water, all stores
of both. And this was actually fulfilled ; for, both in the
Chaldean and in the Boman periods, Jerusalem perished under
dreadful famines such as were threatened in Lev. xxvi. and
especially Deut. xxviii., — ^both chapters filled with curses to
follow the commission of sin ; on both occasions, the inhabit-
ants were reduced to such extremity that women devoured
their own children (Lam. il 20 ; Josephus, Bell. Jud. vL 3.
3, 4). No real objection, therefore, can be made against the
opening of the enumeration with " every support of bread, and
every support of water." Nevertheless these words are
regarded by Hitzig, Knobel, Meier, Gheyne, and Beuss as a
gloss. We grant that the transition ^m these words to
what follows ("hero and man of war") shows a certain
abruptness and want of homogeneity, and that this fact,
of course, arouses suspicion ; on the other hand, if they be
omitted, we regretfully miss the arrangement of ver. 1 into
two members (c£ xxv. 6).
Vers. 2 and 3 continue the enumeration of the supports
which Jehovah takes away : " Heron and men of war, judges,
and prophets, and soothsayers, and elders : captains of fifty, and
highly respected men, and counsellors, and masters in art, and
those skilled in muttering." As the State, under Uzziah and
Jotham, had become a military one, the prophet in both verses
b^[in8 with the mention of military officers : "fiSA is a com-
mander who has already proved himself brave ; npn5>p B''K is
the common soldier who is armed, and had been well trained
(see Ezek. xxxix. 20); Q'Bton "iv is the leader of a company
consisting of fifty warriors (see 2 Kings i. 9, etc. ; similar
officers were also found in the Assyrian army). Moreover,
the leading members of the State are mixed together, so that
the picture here given presents great variety of colour:
ttdte is the officer appointed by the government to administer
justice and carry out the law ; |^ is the oldest member of his
family, and the senator appointed by the city corporations; f^*
is the counsellor standing nearest the king ; D*3B v^in (properly.
Digitized by
Google
116 ISAIAH.
one whose face (ie. personal appearance) is accepted — «.«. one
who is beloved and respected : Saad. todgth, from wdgh, the
face, appearance) is a person held in esteem, not merely in
virtue of his office, but also on account of his wealth, age,
benevolence, etc ; Q'P'^n D?n is in the LXX. rendered ero^
apxureKTav, and very well explained by Jerome as in artUms
meehanieis exercUatua easque collide traetana. In the Chaldean
captivities, skilled artisans especially were carried away
(2 Kings xxiv. 14 S. ; Jer. xxiv. 1, xxix. 2) ; hence there can
be no doubt that Q'B^H, from the sing, vhn (different from
D'B'^n, workmen, the singular of which is ^^, for B'^n, —
though in 1 Gbron. iv. 14, of. Neh. xL 35, we find the vocaliza-
tion D»Bnn in this personal sense also, from Bnn^ following the
analogy of the form Qsn). is intended to mean mechanical
arts (not "magical arts,'* as Gesenius, Hitzig, and Meier
affirm), and the B'?^n D?n therefore does not signify, as Ewald
formerly rendered the expression, a sorcerer or wizard. The
masters of the black art are introduced under the designation
B'n? 1133: B'n? is the whisper, the muttering of magical
formulas. Moreover, the master of the black art farther
comes before ns under the name Qpl', a term which (from the
radical idea of making fast — as seen in op ; Vp, — swearing,
conjuring), together with K*33, the false prophet of Jehovah
whose predictions are also merely Qbp (Micah iii. 11 ; Ezek.
xxii. 28), signifies a soothsayer that cherishes heathen
superstition: the word is found as early as in Deut. xviii.
10, 14. After bread and water, these are the supports of the
State. They are here intermingled thus, without any attempt
at arrangement, because the mighty and magnificent State,
properly regarded, is but a heterogeneous mixture of Judaism
and heathenism, and the godless glory will become a mass
of utter confusion when the wrath of Jehovah bursts forth.
Deprived of its proper foundation and torn from its grooves,
the kingdom of Judah falls a prey to the most audacious
despotism, as shown in ver. 4 : " And I give them hoys as
princes, and childish caprices shall rule over them." The
revived glory of Solomon is thus anew followed, as before, by
Behoboam-times. The king is not expressly mentioned, —
intentionally so : he has sunk to the mere shadow of a king ;
it is not he who niles, but the party of aristocrats around
Digitized by
Google
OHAFTIB m. fi, 117
bim, who move bim aboat like a puppet as they choose,
treating him like one of themselves. Now, if it is in itself
generally a misfortune when the king of a conntiy is a lad
0!?, Ecdes. z. 16), it is doubly so when the princes or
magnates surrounding and advising bim are also youths (O^)
or youngsters, in the bad sense of the term : this produces a
government of omiim. None of the nouns of this form has a
personal meaning. According to the root-idea of the verb-
stem, it is possible that the word may be explained (with
Ewald, § 167i) as signifying " childishness," and this as being
equivalent to " little children " (the abstract being used for
the concrete, like t^ iratBued). But there is no need for
supposing that ahibvn stands for tr6^9 (or tr6^ii]» ; see under
ver. 12); or, what is comparatively more admissible, that it
is an adverbial accusative (the opinion of Cheyne, who trans-
lates the passi^, " and with wilfuluees shall they rule over
them"); for ^?(rp^ does not necessarily require a personal
subject (c£ Ps. xix. 14, dii 19X The form oMm (which
occurs only in the plural, and is formed like D^^run) takes its
meaning &om the reflexive ^gP^^, which signifies to meddle
with, make sport of, give vent to one's caprice ; hence this
noun signifies "vexations, annoyances" (IxvL 4). Jerome,
who translates the word by effeminati, appears to have been
thinking of i>^n in an obscene sense ; better is the rendering
of the LXX. which gives i/ivaiKTeu, though ifinravfitaTa would
be more exact ; here, in association with ansn, it denotes out-
bursts of youthful caprice, which, whether in joke or in
earnest, do injury to others. It is not law and righteousness
that will rule, but the very opposite of righteousness, — a
course of conduct which treats the subjects as the helpless
plaything, at one time of their lust (Judg. xix. 25), atanoUier
of their cruelty. Varying humour, utterly unregulated and
imrestrained, rules suprema
Then the people become like tlra government : passions are
let loose, and all restraints of modesty are burst asunder.
Ver. 6 : " And the people oppress one another, one this and
another that ; the boy breaks out furiously upon the old man,
and the despised upon the honoured." As shown by the cknse
describing the mutual relation of the persons, is*!? is a Niphal
with reciprocal meaning (cf. txhi, xix. 2) ; this verb, followed
Digitized by
Google
118 ISAUH.
by 2, signifies to tre&t as a tjrrant or taskmaster (see iz. 3).
The meanest selfishness then stifles all nobler motives ; one
becomes a tyrant over another, and rude insolence takes the
place of reverence, which, by the law of nature, as well as
the Torah (Lev. xix. 32) and custom, is due to the aged and
superiors from boys and those in the humbler ranks, n?^}
(from npi?, which is synonymous with ?P0, viiL 23, xxiii 9 ;
cf. xvi. 14 ; the root of which is ^p, to be light, small) means
one who belongs to the lowest stratum of society (1 Sam.
xviii 23), and is the opposite of ^^^? (from ^3^, to be difficult,
weighty): the LXX. well renders o artyuov nrpo^ top evrifiov.
When there is this disregard of the distinctions due to age
and rank, the State in a short time becomes a wild and waste
scene of confusion.
At last, there is no longer any authority bearing rale;
even the desire to govern dies out, for despotism is followed
by mob-rule, and this by anarchy in the most literal sense ;
distress becomes so great that he who has a coat (cloak), so as
to be still able in some degree to clothe himself respectably,
is besouglit to undertake the government Vers. 6, 7 :
" When a man shall lay hold of his brother in his father's
house [and say], ' Thou hast a cloak ; thou shall ie our ruler,
and take this ruin vmder thy hand,' he will cry out on that day,
saying, ' I do not want to be a surgeon, when there is in my
house neither bread nor cloak ; ye cannot make me ruler of the
people.' " The population will have become so lean and
dispirited through hunger, that, with a little energy, it would
be possible to decide, within the narrow circle of a family,
who is to be ruler, and to carry out the decision. The
father's house is the place where (n*3 being here the local
accusative) one brother meets the other ; and one breaks out
into the following words of urgent entreaty, which are here
introduced without ibW (cf. xiv. 8, 16, also xxii. 16,
xxxiii 14). W is a rare mode of writing ^p, found also in
Gen. xxviL 37 ; *^^ indicates the assumption, without any
ceremony, that be will agree to what is expected. In Zeph.
i. 3, Iwp? means that through which one comes to ruin ; here
it means the thing itself that has been overthrown, and this
because TB's (not merely to stumble, trip, slip, but actually to
tumble over after being thrown off the equilibrium by a
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER m. 8. 119
thrust from the outside) is not used of buildings that fall into
ruin, and with a reference to the prosopopeia which follows in
ver. 8. He who has the advantage over many, or all others,
of still being able to clothe himself respectably (even though
it were merely with a blouse) is to become supreme ruler or
dictator (cf. 17^, Judg. xi. 6), and the State, now lying in a
wretched state of ruin, is to be under his hand (t.«. bis
dominion, his protection and care: 2 Kings viii 20; Gen.
xlL 35 ; cf. xvi. 9, where, instead of the more usual singular
T, the plural is found). With ver. 7 begins the apodosis to
the protasis introduced by *3 as a particle of time. The
answer given by the brother to the urgent request of those
who make the appeal is introduced by the words, " he will
raise (viz. his voice; see xxiv. 14) on that day, saying:" it
is stated in this circumstantial manner because it is a solemn
protest. He does not like to be Bbn, ie, a binder (viz. of the
broken arms and legs and ribs of the ruined State, xxx. 26,
i 6, Ixi 1). It is implied in the form njnK that he does not
like it, because he is conscious of his inability. He has no
confidence in himself, and the assumption that he has a coat
is false ; not merely has he no coat at home in his house (in
view of which we must remember that the conversation is
carried on in his father's house), but he has no bread ; hence
what is expected from him, almost naked and starving as he
is, becomes impossible. "When the purple of the ruler,"
says the Midrash on Esth. iii. 6, " is offered for sale at the
market, then woe to the buyer and the seller alike ! "
Tliis deep and tragic misery, as the prophet proceeds to
show in vers. 8-12, is righteous retribution. Ver. 8 :
"For Jerusalem is overthrown and Jvdah is fallen, because
their tongue and their doings are against Jehovah, to defy the
eyes of His glory" The name of the city of Jerusalem is
regularly (Gesen. § 122. 3a) treated as feminine, the name of
the people of Jndah as masculine ; names of nations appear
as feminines only when there is a blending of the two ideas,
the country and the people (as, for instance, Job L 15).
The two preterites nbe*3 and TU express the general fact
which will prove the occasion of such scenes of misery as
have just been described. The second clause (a substantive
one), on the other hand, beginning with^a, assigns already
Digitized by
Google
120 ' IBAUH.
present sin, not sin still future, as the reason o( the coming
judgment ^t is employed to indicate hostile direction, as
in il 4 ; Oen. It. 8 ; Kum. xxxii 14 ; Josh. x. 6. The
capital and the country are in word and deed against
Jehovah Waa 'jp rfrioi". Here 'i?? = 'T9 and rhob (as in
Ps. Ixxviii. 17) is the syncopated HiphQ int for rtnpr6
(cf. the syncopated forms in xxiiL 11, i. 12). The Qal
n^. which is likewise pretty often construed with the
accusative, means to reject in a contumacious manner, and
the Hiphil fnon to treat contumaciously, — properly, to
oppose strenaously, ammlveiv, dbniH : the root is no, j^
ttringere, and this is connected with ^o, the name of anything
bitter, as being astringent, though there is no warrant for the
rendering in the LXX. of tid, mori, ton, Ex, xxiii. 21, by
vapavucpaiveiv. The ? is a somewhat shortened expression
for \0O^, Amos u. 7 ; Jer. vii 18, xxxjL 29. But what does
the prophet mean by " the eyes of His glory " ? The con-
struction is certainly just the same as is " the arm of His
holiness " (liL 10), and a reference to the divine attributes is
thus intended. The glory of God is that eternal manifesta-
tion of His holy nature in its splendour which man pictures
to himself anthropomorphically, because he cannot conceive of
anything more sablime than the human form. It is in this
glorious form that Jehovah looks upon His people. In this
is mirrored His condescending yet jealous love. His holy love
which breaks forth into wrath against all who requite His
love with hate.
But Israel, instead of living in the consciousness of being
a constant and favoured object of these majestic and earnestly
admonishing eyes, is studiously defying them in word and
deed, not even hiding its sin through fear of them, but
exposing it to view all unabashed. Ver. 9 : " The appear'
anee of their faces tettifies against them, and their sin they
declare like Sodom, without concealing it; woe to their soul! for
they do evil to themselves." In any case, what is meant is the
insolent look which their sinfulness is stamping upon their
faces, without the self-condemnation which in others takes
the form of dread to commit sin (Seneca, ds vita leata,
c. 12). The constroct form ffy^''}, if derived from Tsn (Jos.
Kimchi and Luzzatto), would follow the anal<^ of rnjja
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTES m.' 10, u. 121
in Ezek. xxxir. 12. But nan » Arab, hakara (hakira),
affords no suitable meaning ; t^^ is the active noun formed
from the Hiphil T?". The common expression D'JB Tan
signifies to look searchingly, inquiringly, keenly into the
face of a person, to fix the eye upon him ; and, ^vhen used
of a judge, to take the side of a person, by showing undue
r^ard to him (Deut i. 17, xvL 19). This latter meaning,
however (" their respect of persons," " their partiality," Prov.
xxiv. 23, xxviii. 21), though supported by Hitzig, Maurer,
and Gesenius, is inadmissible here, simply because the words
do not refer to judges specially, but to the whole nation.
" The appearance of their faces " is to be understood here in
an objective sense, their look (to elSov, Luke ix. 2 9), as the
agnitio of Jerome is also to be taken as meaning id quo se
agnoseendum dot miltus eorum. This is probably the usual
Hebrew designation for what we call physiognomy, — the
meaning indicated by the expression of the face, and then
the latter itself. The expression of their countenance testifies
against them (3 njp as in lix. 12) ; for it is the distorted and
troubled image of their sin that cannot and will not hide
itselt They do not even content themselves, however, with
this open though silent display; they further speak openly of
their sin, making no concealment of it, like the Sodomites
who proclaimed their fleshly lost (Gen. chap. xix.). Jerusalem
is, in fact, spiritually Sodom, as the prophet called it in i. 1 0.
Through such shameful sinning they do themselves harm
(b^, allied to i^, signifies to complete, then to carry out, to
show by actual deed) : this is the undeniable fact, the actual
experience.
But seeing it is the curse of sin that the knowledge of
what is perfectly clear and self-evident is just what is marred
and even obliterated for man, the prophet dwells still longer
on the £act that all sin is self-destruction and self-murder,
presenting this general truth with its opposite in palilogic
fashion, like the Apostle John, and calling to his contem-
poraries in vers. 10, 11 : " Say of the just, that it is well with
him ; for they will enjoy the fruit of their doingt, Woe to the
wicked! it is iU; for what hia hand* hate wrought will he
done to him." What is declared in Prov. xii. 14 is here
re-echoed in prophetic form. We cannot, with Yitringa and
Digitized by
Google
122 isAua
some mudera commentators, translate " Praise the righteous
one;" for, though lOM is sometimes construed with the
accusative (Ps. xL 11, cxlv. 6, 11), it never means to
praise, but to utter, express (see also Ps. xL 11). We have
here the transposition familiar to us even from Gen. i 4, —
simple and natural in the case of the verbs n»n (c£ also
xxil 9 ; Ex. ii 2), jnj (1 Kings v. 17), and IDK (like Xeyeiv,
John ix. 19): dieiie Justum quod bonus =dieite justum esae
honum (Ewald, § 3366) : the object of seeing, knowing, or
saying is first mentioned generally, and then what qualifies
it or defines it in some way. 3ft3 and, in ver. 11, y^(V^ when
not in pause) might both be the 3rd sing, perfect of their
verbs, used in a neuter sense : aita, " it is well," viz, to him
(as in Deut v. 30; Jer. xxii. 15 f.); and JH (from J>?^),"it
is ill " (as in Ps. cvL 32). But Jer. xliv. 17 shows that we
may also say wn 3^0, wn jri, in the sense of xaXw; e;^e*,
Kaxm Sxet, and that both expressions have been so regarded,
and hence in both cases do not need i^ to be supplied. The
form of the first favours this, while in the second the accentua-
tion vacillates between *im with Ti/cha, jnhh with Munack,
and IK with Merkah, ji^h with Ti/cha; the latter mode of
accentuation, however, which favours the personal view of jn.
is presented by important editions (such as those of Breschia,
1494; Pesaro, 1516; Venice, 1515 and 1521), and rightly
preferred by Luzzatto and Baer. The summary statements,
" the righteous is well," " the wicked is ill," are established
by the latter end of both, in the light of which the previous
misfortune of the righteous appears as good fortune, and the
previous good fortune of the wicked as misfortune. With
reference to this difference in the eventual fate of each, the
call " say," which is common to both clauses, summons to a
recognition of the good fortune of the one and the ill fortune
of the other. that Judah and Jerusalem recognised this
for their salvation, ere it becomes too late ! For the state of
the poor nation is already sad enongh, and they are very
near destruction.
Ver. 12:" My people, — its oppressors are boys, and women
rxde over it ; my people, thy leaders are mideaders, and they
have swallowed the way of thy patlis." The idea that ^Pp
signifies those who maltreat or abuse others, is opposed by
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTZR m. IX 128
the parallel B*i^ ; moreover, the notion of despotic treatment
is already contained in t^p. Along with women, one expects
to find children ; ^ and this, too, 77^DO means, but not a suck-
ling (Ewald, § I6O0), like 5»«f and ^ (see our commentary
on Job xvi 11), for the active form requires an active idea;
bat ^ does not mean "to suckle" (rather to support,
nourish), much less then "to suck," so that it would thus
need to signify the suckling in the sense of one who is
nourished. This is improbable, however, for the simple
reason that it occurs in Jer. xliv. 7 and Lam. ii 11 along
with P3f\ and thus cannot have exactly the same meaning as
the latter word, but, like tAv and 5Wjf (the former of which
may have been contracted from ^VO), signifies a boy as
playful and wanton {latcimim, protervum): see the remarks
on ver. 4 (where By'^SR occurs with 8*7??), and c£ the
Bedouinic V*^XP, plur. 'awdlU, with the sense of Juvencus (a
young bull, three or four years oldX Bottcher correctly
renders the word by pueri (luaores) ; iinj», however, is not, as
he supposes, in itself a collective form, bat the singular is
used collectively ; or perhaps better still, the predicate is
meant to apply to every individual included in the plural
idea of the subject (cf. xvi. 8, xx. 4 ; Gresenius, § 145. 5),
so that the meaning is, — ^the oppressors of the people, every
one without exception, are (even though advanced in years),
in their way of thinking and acting, like boys or youths, who
make all those subject to them the plaything of their
capricious humour. The person of the king — v^:i being
understood by Hitzig, Ewald, and Cbeyne as a plural of
excellence — ^is here also placed in the iMuskgroond ; but the
female sway, afterwards mentioned, points us to the court
This must have been the state of the case when Ahaz, a
young spendthrift, twenty years of age (according to the
LXX., twenty-five), came to the throne, after the end of
Jotham's reign. Once more the prophet, with deep pain,
repeats the words " my people," and, addressing them directly,
passes from the rulers of the nation to the preachers, — for the
□ne^KO are prophets (Micah iii. 5) ; but what characters 1
> An Arabic proverb (Cot Codd. Lip*, p. 373) runs thtu: "I flee to
God in order to eacape (ix>m tlie domination of boya and the government
of women."
Digitized by
Google
124 ISAUH. '
Instead of leading the people on the straight road, they lead
them astray (iz. 15; of. 2 Kings xxL 9); for, as we know
from the history of this gang of prophets, they ministered to
the godless interests of the court, making themselves the
slaves either of the dynasty or the demagogaes; or they
pandered to the desires of the people, which were of no
higher tone. Moreover, " the way of the path " of the people
(i.e. the main-road or highway, hy the branches of which the
people were to reach the goal designed by God) have they
" swallowed " (t«. taken away the eyes and feet of the people),
so that they cannot find it and walk in it. Nagelsbach
renders this passage differently, — " they drag down thy path of
life into destruction ; " but the solemn nature of the expression
rather points to the conclusion that " way" means law, or the
path of duty (Theodoret, Jerome, Luther). Whatever is
swallowed is invisible ; it has disappeared without leaving a
trace behind. "To swallow," in the sense of degltUire, is
expressed by the Qal, as in xxviiL 4 ; the Piel V?^ signifies
absorption, in the sense of annihilation. The way of salva-
tion shown in the law is no more to be seen or heard ; it has
perished, as it were, in the preaching of the false prophets
with their misleading doctrines.
Such is the state of matters. The exhortations of the
prophet have no great range or breadth of view, for he must
ever recur to the announcement of judgment. The judgment
of the world comes anew before his mind in ver. 13 :
" Jehovah ia standing to plead, and has stepped forward to
judge the nations." When Jehovah, wearied of exercising
patience, arises from His heavenly throne, this is called tnp,
as in IL 19, 21, xxxiiL 10; when He sits down on the
judgment-seat before the eyes of all the world, this is called
3B^, as in Ps. ix. 5 ; Jonah iv. 12 ; when He descends from
heaven (Micah i 2 ff) and comes forward as accuser, this is
called 3X3 or lop, Ps. Ixxxii. 1, — the latter word signifies to
go forward and stand, in contrast with sitting; while the
former means to stand, with the additional idea of being firm,
fixed in purpose, ready. But Jehovah's pleading (3^., Jer.
zxv. 31) is likewise judging (H), because His accusation,
which cannot possibly be denied as false, is at the same time
the sentence of condemnation; and this sentence, which
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB m: u. u. 126
irresistibly operates, is at the same time also the execution of
the paoishmeDt. Thus God stands — Accuser and Judge and
Executioner in one Person — in the midst of the nations
(Ps. vii. 8). But among the nations it is Israel specially,
and among the Israelites it is particularly the leaders of the
poor misguided and neglected people against whom He stands,
as shown in vers. 14, 15 : "Jehovah will enter into judgment
with the elders of His people and their princes, — and you, ye
have eaien up the vineyard; the plunder of the sufferer is in
yontr houses. What do you want, that you crush my people,
and grind the face of those in suffering f Declaration of the
lord Jehovah of hosts." With the first part of ver. 14 c£
Ps. cxliii 2. The address of God begins with DijiK); the
clause to which this " and ye " (or " but ye ") forms the
contrast is wanting, just as in Ps. iL 6, where the address of
God begins with "?», "and I" = «but I." The suppressed
clause, however, is easily supplied in some such way as this :
" I set you over my vineyfutl, but ye have eaten up the
vineyard." The question has been asked whether it is God
Himself who silently passes over this clause, or the prophet ;
but certainly it is Jehovah Himself. The majesty with
which He comes before the rulers of His people of itself
practically and undeniably declares, even without express
statement in words, that their majesty is but a shadow of
His, and that their office is held from Him and under Him.
But their office is owing to God's having committed His
people to their care ; the vineyard of Jehovah is His people,
— a figure which the prophet, in chap, v., forms into a
parable. Jehovah appointed them to be keepers and pre-
serves of this vineyard, but they have themselves become the
cattle 07?) which they were to drive ofT; the verb i?2 is
used in speaking of the cattle that utterly devour the stalks
of what grows in a field, or the tender vines in a vineyard
(Ex. xxii. 4). The property of which their unhappy fellow-
countrymen have been robbed is in their houses, and
attests the plundering that has been carried on in the vine-
yard. 'Jyn forms an explanation of D^an ; for a lowly and
distressful condition is the usual lot of the community which
God calls His vineyard ; it is an oppressed Church, but woe
to the oppressors I In the question 03^ there is implied the
Digitized by
Google
126 ISAIAH.
want of understanding and the bold insolence of the begin-
ning tbey have made: no is here, after the manner of a
prefix, fused into one word with cup, as in Ex. iv. 1 ; Ezek.
viiL 6 ; MaL i 13. The Qeri, by resolving the KdMb, helps us
to understand the meaning. tnpD should properly be followed
by *3 {ffuid est vdbis quod atteritis poptUum meum, as in
xxii 1, 16), but the discourse hurries on (as in Jonah i. 6)
because it is an outburst of wrath. Hence also the expres-
sions setting forth the conduct of the rulers of the people
are the strongest possible. K3^ occurs also in Prov. xxiL 22,
but *i>B |no is a strong metaphor of which no other example
is found. The former signifies to beat (or pound), while the
latter (the extreme opposite of *jB npn) means to grind small
(to powder), as the millstone grinds the grain. They beat
the face of those who are already bowed down, repelling them
with such merciless harshness that they stand as if they were
annihilated, and their face becomes pale and white, from
oppression and despair, — or even (without any reference to
the loss of colour) so that their joyful appearance is ex-
changed for the features and gait of men in despair. Thus
far, language still affords figurative expressions fitted in some
measure for describing the conduct of the rulers of Israel, but
it lacks the power of adequately expressing the boundless im-
morality of this conduct ; hence the greatness of their wicked
cruelty is set before them for consideration in the form of a
question : " What is it to you ? " ie. what kind of unutterable
wickedness is this you are beginning ? Thus the prophet
hears Jehovah speak, — the majestic Judge whom he here
calls rttav rrtn» >p» (to be read AdOnd* SldMm ZebaOth,
according to the traditional vocalization). This threefold
name of God, which pretty frequently occurs in Amos, and
also in Jer. iL 19, first appears in the Elohistic psalm
Ixix. (ver. 7), — as this judgment-scene generally is painted
with psalm- colours, and especially reminds us of Pa Ixxxii.
(Elohistic, and a psalm of Asaph).
But though the prophet has this judgment - scene thus
vividly and dramatically before him, yet he cannot help
breaking off, even after he has but begun the description ; for
another message of Jehovah comes to him. It is for the
women of Jerusalem, whose sway is now, when the prophet
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB m. 16, 17. 127
is deliveriug his burden, not one whit less influential in the
capital (see ver. 12, beginning) than that of their husbands,
who had forgotten their calling. Vers. 16, 17: "And
Jehovah JuUh spoken : Because tlie daughters ofZion are haughty,
and vxilk with necks stretched forth and twinkling with the eyes,
walk with tripping gait, and tinkle wUh their foot ornaments ;
therefore the Lord maketh the crown of the head of Zunis
daughters scabbed, and Jehovah will make bare their secret
parts." Their pride of heart (iUl is used as in Ezek. xvl 50,
cf. Zepb. iii 11) reveals itself in their outward conduct
They go with outstretched neck, i.e. bending back the fore
part of the neck, seeking to make themselves taller than they
are, since thej think themselves exceedingly great. Cornelius
k Lapide here remarks : instar gruum vel eygnoram ; habitus
hie est insoUntis ac proeaeis. (The Qert here substitutes the
usual form n^Qji, but Isaiah perhaps intentionally employed
the more rare and rugged form nliQJ, for this form actually
occurs in 1 Sam. xxv. 18, as also its singular ^tii for fVS3 iu
Job XV. 22, xli 25.) Moreover, they go twinkling (rtn^ffo,
not rti??'?, " falsifying ") the eyes (like iii|, the accusative of
closer specification), ie. in pretended innocence casting wanton
and amatory glances about them (LXX. vevfiara d<f>0a\iJMv) :
this participle comes from *ii?^~'^?D, not in the sense oifucare
(Targum, Shahbaih 626, Yoma 96, Luther), properly " to dye
reddish-yellow" (Pesikta, ed. Buber, 132a, "with red coUy-
rium;" Talm. jnv, paralL hra, Kethvboth 11 a) ; but secondarily
to paint the face. This derived sense is in itself not probable
here, from the simple fact that the painting of the eyelids
black with powdered antimony (ipa, liv. 11) was not con-
sidered a piece of vanity, but regarded as an indispensable
item of female adornment The verb is rather used in the
sense of nictare (LXX. Vulgate, Syriac, cf. Saad. "making
their eyes flash"), syn. wn, cf. "ipp, Syr. to squint, Targ.
= *Sf, Job XX. 9. Compare also the Talmudic witticism,
" God did not create the woman out of Adam's ear, lest she
might become an eavesdropper C^^^^^V); nor out of Adam's
eye, lest she might become a winker (n*3"jpp)." *
' Cf. alM Sola 476 .■ "Since there has been increase in the number of
women with extended neck and winking ejes, there has also been increase
of the cases in which the curse- water (Num. v. 18) had to he used." To
Digitized by
Google
128 I8AUB.
The third descriptive clanse states that they walk ineedmdo
et seUiendo : the second infinitive absolute is here, as asoal,
that which gives the definite colour to the expression, while
the other keeps before the eye the occurrence that would be
denoted by the verb in its finite form. They go skipping
along Clbo, et i_jbL yt, to spring, so called &om drawing the
feet together ; hence *|C, the skipping little family), ie. taking
short and tripping steps, almost always placing the heel at the
great toe, as the Talmud everywhere says. The LXX. gives
a rendering of interest for the history of luxury in dress:
Koi T§ iropeif r&v voB&p Sfta tripoweu to^ p^tTuva?. Quite
as appropriate, but contrary to the meaning of the words, is
the rendering of Luther, " they walk along and waggle," ie.
dtmibuB agitatis, a meaning for which the Semitic has other
expressions (see ZeiUchrifi der deittseh. morgerd. Oesellsehaft,
xvi 587).* But the rendering should rather be "tripping;"
for only such little steps can they take, owing to their pace-
chains, which join together the costly foot-rings (Q'P?5) that
were placed above the ankle. With these pace-chains, which
perhaps even then as now, were sometimes provided with little
bells, they make a tinkling sound, — an idea which is here
expressed by the denominative verb Mj> ; with their feet they
make a tinkling sound, clinking the ankle-ornaments, by placing
the feet in such a way as to make these ankle-rings strike one
another. In view of this fact, Dn^f]3 for IJ^^l? is perhaps
not an unintentional interchange of gender; they are not
modest virgines, but bold viraginea, and thus in their own
persons display a synallage generis. This coquettish clinking,
such an extent, indeed, did the evil grow, as is well known, tbat Jobanan
ben Zaccai, the pupil of Hillel, completely abolisbed tbe ordeal of the
Seta ({.«. the woman Eu^>ected of adultery) ; his contemporaries were
thoroughly adulterous (jtux»>^l:). Synonymous with riPptStS is jtaetOy
a Latin epithet of Venus, which Philoxenus glosses by /tv«n^ roi; Sfi/tctvt ;
but a different meaning is conveyed by iypa, which also is a term having
reference to the eyes.
* The translation of the Targum ]B^ )TinB34 is explained in the same
way by Qesenius {Thttaurm, p. 664) to mean elunei agitanUt, but more
correctly by Rashi to signify "putting on false hair-toupees," KnB=nnKB
(riKBn). See Levy's Targwmic Didunwry, under (|p] I. and KDMB-
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER m. 18-28. 129
though forbidden by the Qoran, is still the delight of women
in Moslem Oriental countries at the present day, as the
women of Jerusalem enjoyed it in Isaiah's days. Great is
the attractive influence of natural charms, especially when
enhanced by lavish employment of art; but the prophet,
blind to this display of splendour, sees only the filthiness
within, and announces to the women of rank a foul and by
no means aesthetic fate. The Almighty will smite with scab
the crown of their head, from which long hair now flows
down (nebl has l consecutive, and, at the same time, forms
the apodosis; the verb is a "denominative" from nnsp,
which means the scab or scurf which deposits itself on the
skin) ; and Jehovah, by delivering them over to the violation
of and insult of coarse enemies, will uncover their nakedness,
— the greatest disgrace in the eyes of a woman, who covers
herself as carefully as possible from every stranger (xlvii 3 ;
Kah. iii 5 ; Jer. xiii 22 ; Ezek. xvi 37). The noun nb is
derived from a verb rna (Arab, faut, tefdvxut, signifying inter-
eapedo), so that tnna or innb (of. Stade, § 353(, and, farther,
intt for ^ in Ezek. xzxiv. 31) is thus a designedly disrespectful
term ; cf. iinb, plur. n^, a Kblical and Talmudic word signi-
fying cardo femina. The Babylonians read pn? from na,
which is rather derived from nna (ct |3T ; also nriB in the
sense of wlva, in Pesaehim 87a; and in explanation of this
passage, Skahbath 62b)}
The prophet now proceeds in vers. 18—23 to describe
further how the Lord will tear from them their whole toilet
as plunder for their foes : " On that day will the lard remove
the tpUndour of the ajikle-clasps, and of the forehead-hands, and
of the crescents ; the ear-drops, and the arm-^Aains, and the
light veils; the tiaras, and the stepping-chains, and the girdles,
and the tmdling-bottles, and the amtUets ; the finger-rings and
the mae-rings ; the gcUa-dresaes, and the sleeved-frocks, and the
vrrapping-doaks, and the pockets; the hand-mirrors, and the
> Lnzzatto explains nb by the Aram. (tn^B, "forehead;" but thi* word,
the full form of which is KTnBK, is equiralent to kbK K*BK, the faee or
countenance ; moreover, the Syriac /tU (whence comes I'fAt =:<C^X which
Bernstein regards as a collateral form from/itni, tnB> the " mouth," is the
apocopated apit = apai.
VOL. L I
Digitized by
Google
130 ISAIAH.
Sindu-covers, and the turlans, and the gauze-mantles'' The
oldest commentary on this passage, important for the infor-
mation it affords regarding ancient costumes, though itself
needing explanation, is found in the Jerusalem Talmud,
Shabbath vL 4. Later writers who have industriously treated
of these articles of female dress are Nic. Wilh. Schroder, in
his Commemtarius de vettitu niulierum Hebraearum ad Jet.
iiL 16-24 (Lugd. Batav, 1745, 4to), and Ant Theod. Hart-
uiann (sometime Professor in Bostock), in his work entitled.
Die Hehraerin am Putztische und als Braut, 1809—10 (3 vols.
8vo); of. Saalschiltz's Arehaologie (1885), chap. 3 of which
treats of the dress of men and women ; and Sal. Ruhin, ptu
D^^Tl rmn* (on the luxury, love of show, and mode of living
among the Hebrew women referred to in the Bible), in vol. L
of the monthly magazine called iriB'n (also published sepa-
rately, Vienna 1870). [See also Keil's Biblical Archaeology
(English translation, Edinburgh 1888), vol. ii. 142.] It is
not customary elsewhere with Isaiah to he so detailed in his
descriptions; among all the prophets, Ezekiel most displays
this style of writing (see, for example, chap. xvL) ; nor do we
find anything similar again in other prophecies against women
(cf. xxxii 9 ff.; Amos iv. 1 S.). Here ends the enumeration
of articles of female finery and show ; and while it forms a
trilogy with the enumeration of the props of State in iii. 1-3,
and the enumeration in iL 13—16 of persons and things lofty
and exalted, it has its own special ground in the boundless
love of ornament which had become prevalent especially
during the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, it is intended to
make a serious impression, and yet show the ridiculous cha-
racter of the unrestrained luxury actually existing ; for it is the
prophet's design in this address throughout to draw a sharp
contrast between the titanic, party-coloured, .noisy, worldly
glory, and the true glory, which is spiritual, gitmdly simple,
and shows itself in working outwarda from within. Indeed,
the subject of the whole address is the course of universal
judgment from false glory to the true. The general idea of
" splendour " or " glory " (iTiKBn), which stands at the head
and forms the foundation of the whole, already points to the
contrast which follows in iv. 2, with quite another kind of
glory.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER in. 18-S8. 131
In explaining each particular term, we must content our-
selves with stating what is most necessary and comparatively
most certain regarding the words which here occur. 0^P3}|
(from D3P, fj^A (jlXfi, to bind, see the remarks on liz. 5)
are rings worn round the ankles, and made of gold, silver, or
ivory: hence the denominative verb D3J? (used in ver. 16),
to make a clinking sound with these rings. 0*0^ (from
02f=f2V, to weave) are bands woven of gold or silver thread,
worn on the forehead and under the hair-net, and extending
from one ear to the other ; plausible, but less probable, is the
explanation current since Schroder's time, that the word means
son-like balls (Q^p'DB'), worn as ornaments round the neck
(Arab, himeisa, hibeisa, a little sun). O'i'iA^ are bullulae of
this kind, moon-shaped ornaments (Arab, j^, Aram, -ino,
moon), fastened round the neck, and hanging down on the
breast (Judg. viiL 26 ; cf. 21, royal ornaments), half-moons or
crescents (hildlat), like those of which an Arabic girl usually
possesses several kinds, for the hil^ (new moon) is an emblem
of increasing good fortune,* and, as such, the most approved
means of warding oflf the evil eye.* rteo: are ear-drops
(found in Judg. viii. 26 as a designation of the ornament worn
by Midianite kings); hence the Arab, munattafa, a female
adorned with ear-rings, rtitp (from 'HB', to twist) are chains,
and these, too (according to the Targum), chains for the arms,
or spangles for the wrists, corresponding to the spangles for
the ankles ; the arm-chain or bracelet is still at the present
day called siivdr (hence the denominative jy^, to present or
adorn with a bracelet). rti)»n are veils (from ?in, Aram.
' In this Bcnse the crescent is the sign (mum) with which the tribe of
the Ruwale mark their herds as their property.
* "Amulet" and "talisman " are both words derived from the Arabic ;
the former comes from ilju«». instead of the plural JjU»- (from
J.4A., to bear, carry), which is more usual in this sense, — see, however,
Qildemeister (in the Zeit*ehrift der dmUteh. morgenL QttUtchafi, xxxriiL
140-142), who considers amoUtwm an old Latin word : the latter is from
>...ii ' , the Arabic form of ritMfim.
Digitized by
Google
132 ISAIAK
^^:' cK,** J*" J^' *" ^ loose and flaccid, to hang down or
hang over loosely); these were more costly and of better
quality than the ordinary veil worn by maidens, which is
called 1'yv, 0*iSB are tiaras ; the term occurs elsewhere in
Scripture only in passages in which the word is applied to
coverings for the heads of men (the priests, the bridegroom,
and persons of rank). ^^W are the stepping-chains (from
rnys, which primarily means a step or pace ; then the little
chain which makes the pace short and elegant). or«^ (from
iB'P, to gird) are dress girdles, such as the bride wears on the
marriage-day (cf. Jer. ii 22 with Isa. xlix. 18) ; the Targum
wrongly renders "JWCffi?? hair-pins (/caXa/uSe;). V&i 'Tia are
holders of scent (WO being used only here in the sense of the
breath of an aroma). Luther appropriately renders the ex-
pressiota " musk-apples," i.e. capsules filled with musk. D'K'rp
(from vrh, to whisper, to work magically) are amulets worn
either as charms or as a protection against witchcraft, perhaps
something like the later nijnsp {Shahbath 60a), i.e. small
plates with an inscription, or small bunches of plant-
roots with sanative powers, nlyap (from 530, to sink into,
seal) are signet-rings worn on the finger, corresponding to the
orrtn worn by men on a string hanging down over the breast
1^? *??? are the nose-rings in common use from patriarchal
times (Gen. xxiv. 22) till the present, generally put through
the right nostril, and hanging down over the mouth ; they are
different from nn (a word occurring seven times), which is the
ring put through the nose of animals, though this term is also
found along with an in Ex. xxxv. 22 as the designation of an
ornament.' ^*^ are garments such as a person of rank
brings out and presents to another, — gala-dresses, robes of
honour (from pn, ^1^*-, to draw out ; as a denominative verb
it signifies to put on a gala -dress); the Aralx is <ul^
(usually pronounced ifiji-, whence our "gala," Spanish gala;
it does not come from Jl^. =Yn, n^n, jewellery, ornaments).
' This on signifies also an ear-ring, vLich afterwards came to be called
V'JP by way of distinction ; see the essay on " Obrgehange (COB) »1»
gbtzendienerisches Gcrdth," in Oeiger's Zeittckn/l, x. (1872) pp. 46-48.
Digitized by
Google
CEAPTEB m. 1»-3S. 133
ncD^ is the second tunic or frock, which was worn over the
ordinary one, — the Boman stola. nlnaop (from nee, to spread
out) are wrappers or broad wrapping - cloths,^ like the one
which £uth wore when she crept close to Boaz in her best
attire (Euth iiL 15). O'P^n (here written D'D*inn with the
article, according to the Masora) are pockets into which
people put money (2 Kings v. 23), which at other times is
carried in the girdle or in a purse (D*?). Q^s^J (according to
LXX. ButifMvrj "Knucwvuca, sc Iftdria) are Lacedaemonian gauze
or crape dresses, which reveal rather than conceal the naked-
ness (from n^3 in the sense of laying bare) ; Eimchi (in his
Lexicon, under mi) compares the Arab. «ji«>-, a transparent
dress ; but the word is more certainly mirrors with handles,
polished plates of metal (from n)>|, !>., ^j^-. in t^e primary
sense of making smooth), for )1*^ elsewhere signifies a smooth
table, as in the later Hebrew it means the empty space on
the page of a book, the margin.* Q'?'"!? are veils or coverings
made of the finest linen, perhaps of Sindu or Hindu texture
(o-tvSove?) ; for Sindu, the country of the Indus, is the ancient
name of India (see our commentary on Prov. zxxi. 24).'
nlB^sy (from *|?y, to roll up) are the turbans or headbands
formed of cloths of various colours, twisted round the head.
^ The term nnstSO is veiy commonly used in the Mishna and the
Gemaia to signify a wrapping-doth, such as a bath-sheet, or a cloth in
which articles (e.g. the Levitical utensils) are wrapped up, a cloth for
wiping off (such as a hand towel or bath towel) ; see, for example.
Kdim zziy. 13, zxviiL 6. On the other hand, m^no has no connection
with the Mishnic term nibvTID, which means plaited mats for covering
and laying on the top of an object, but not for folding round anything.
* The Jerusalem Talmud everywhere explains D'j^i by n«bi^3, and in
Bereichith rabba c 19, p^^j occurs as a specific article belonging to the
dass of rrin, corresponding to the articles of male attire named J>ch\p,
galeae; Levy accordingly renders it by "headband," and derives it &om
'fyi=\fyi. But, as shown by the use of the word in other passages, the
root does not mean to roU or wind, but to make smooth, or lay bare.
* The Mishna (Kelim zziv. 13) distinguishes between three kinds of
n^O, the material used for bed-clothes, the material used for curtains,
and that used for embroidering. The Sindon is pretty often mentioned
as a covering for the body ; and in Menachoth 41a we read KD^P^ K^ID
MITID^ K^31D1) "the sindon is summer clothing, the sarbal (cloak) is
winter clothing," — a passage which explains Mark xiv. 61 1
Digitized by
Google
134 ISAIAH.
BfT! (from *TTi = Tn, to spread oat) are wide manUes,
light and loose, for throwing over the shoulders and the
body.
No mention is made of stockings and pocket-handkerchiefs ;
the former were not introduced into Western Asia from
Media till long after Isaiah's time, and a ladj of Jerusalem
needed a pocket-handkerchief as little as one of Greece or
Home. The <rovBdpia koI ctiiucivdui mentioned in Acts
xix. 12 were not used for cleaning the nose. Kor did the
veil {Jnirhob), now commonly used for muffling the face, except-
ing the eyes, form a portion of female dress among the ancient
Israelites.* The prophet mentions together twenty-one articles
of personal adornment, a threefold evil seven, especially for
the husbands of these State dolls. In the enumeration there
is no order observed, — from above downwards, or from
without inwards ; there is as little arrangement in it as in
the whole array of attire itself.
When Jehovah now will take away all this grandeur with
which the women of Jerusalem are laden, they will become
wretched - looking captives, disfigured by iU - treatment and
dirt. Ver. 24 : "And instead of Icdmy fragrance there will he
a movldy smell, and instead of a sash a rope, and instead of
artistic dressing of hair a baldness, and instead of a wide cloak
a frock of sackcloth, branding instead of bea%ty." Then, in
place of the D^ (i.e. the odour arising from the powder of
balsam, and aromatic powder in general) there comes mouldi-
ness (PO, as in v. 24, the dust of things that have rotted or
moulded away) from which a dust may be raised, and the
smell of which cannot but be felt ; and in place of the fTiljn
(the beautifully embroidered girdle, Prov. xxxL 24) there shall
be napJ. This word signifies neither a " wound " (as inter-
preted by the Targum and Talmud) nor "rags" (the opinion
of Knobel in his first edition), — views which find some
support in the derivation from ^i?i as meaning to smite through,
cut through, — but it denotes the rope (as rightly rendered in
* Bashi remarks on Shabbath 65a, " Tbe Israclitisli women in Arabia
go out veiled (rfSjH, wearing a veil that muffles the countenanceX while
those in India go out n^Q^IB (with a cloak fastened together above, about
the mouth)."
Digitized by
Google
CIIAPTEE in. 24. 135
the LXX. Vulgate, and Syriac) which is thrown over them as
prisoners : the word is derived from *li», to turn round, revolve,
and is thus the feminine of a masc. ^p.3 or ^^3 : it is un-
necessary to assume the existence of a verb 'i?p=njP, signifying
to twist (as is done by Meier, and by Enobel in his second
edition).^ A baldness takes the place of fB'iJp ^f^ (not
^^^, so that the second noun is in apposition, as in the case
of two indeterminate notions ; see also Ezek. xxii. 18 ;
1 Chron. xv. 19, etc.; cf. also the remarks on xxx. 20), i.e.
not (as the LXX. renders) a golden head -ornament, though
TVPpo in other passages signifies embossed or carved work in
metal or wood: by " artificial turned- work" is here meant
hair either crisped with the curling-iron, or artificially plaited
and set up, which custom compels them to cut off in times of
mourning (xv. 2, xxii. 12), or which falls off from them
through grief. A P?* n"ilnp, i.e. a smock of coarse hair-cloth,
comes in place of the -'TO^, ie. dress cloak (from ina, the root
of which is ne, to be open, spreading, with the noun -ending
il: Targ. iriB=tna?, HP; hy the old interpreters, beginning
with the Talmud, the word was misunderstood, as if it were a
compound of 'nB and ?'?) ; and in place of beauty comes '?, a
branding mark (= 13, the cognate form being fi>i3^ which
occurs in the legal enactment, Ex. xxi 25 ; the word is
derived from ""03, Arab. .^, which is especially used of
cauterizing with the J^U, *.«. red-hot iron, as practised by
surgeons), which is burnt by the conquerors into their fore-
head, though proud and beautiful as Juno's. For '3 (Arab.
«
i) is a noun, not a particle, as in Jer. ii. 34 ; iu correct
codices it stands without Maqqeph, and with Tifcha, but nnn
with Mercha, and the first letter of this word with Dagesh.
' Of c<^ate origin perhaps is the Arab, nvkha (explained in Zamach^ari,
Mdkaddima, Wetstein's edition, p. 62, by the Persian mijAn-hend, a waist-
belt), a kind of apron fastened by means of a drawing-string, according to
the Turkish K&m(is.— ia
' In Arabia the application of the fce; by means of a red-hot piece of
iron {mikuidh) plays an important part in the medical treatment of man
and beast One sees many people who have been burned, not merely on
the Ie(^ and arms, but also on the face ; and the most beautiful horses are
generally disfigured by the Jg.
Digitized by
Google
136 ISAIAH.
The form of the word is like % 'Jf, % *i, Job xxxviL 1 1 ;
along with ^., Simson ha-Nakdaa also compares ^i in £zek.
xxviL 32. The inverted arrangement of the words in the
last of the five clauses is very effective. In the fivefold
exchange, shame and sadness take the place of the haughty
rejoicing of luxury.
The prophet now, by a sudden transition, directly addresses
the people of Jerusalem ; for the " daughters of Zion " are the
daughter Zion in her present degenerate state. The daughter
Zion loses her sons ; the daughters of Zion thereby lose their
husbands. Ver. 25 : " Thy men vnll fall by the sword, and
thy heroism in the loar." The plural D^np (the singular of
which — in Ethiopic, mU, " man " in the sense of husband, the
Latin maritva — ^is still found only in the form tfip, with the
union-vowel <t, as a constituent part of proper names) is a
prose-word in the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy ; else-
where it is a poetic archaism. ^*np is changed for ^niuj,
" thy heroic power," an abstract expression meaning the
inhabitants of the city, in the same way as robwr and
robora are also used in Latin ([»-obably in like manner Jer.
xlix. 35).
What the prophet here predicts for the daughter Zion be
sees in ver. 26 as fulfilled on her : " Then will her gates lament
and mourn ; and she is made desolate, sits down on the earth."
The gates where the husbands of the daughter of Zion, now
fallen in the war, used at one time to assemble in such
numbers, have been deserted, and in this condition one as it
were hears them complain and sees them mourn (xiv. 31 ;
Jer. xiv. 2; Lam. i. 4); and the daughter Zion herself is
quite vacated, thoroughly emptied, utterly stripped of her
former population. In this state of saddest widowhood, or
bereavement of her children, brought down from her former
exalted position (xlvii. 8) and princely adornment (Jer.
xiii 18), she sits on the ground in the manner shown on
Boman commemorative medals, struck after the destruction of
Jerusalem, which represented Judea as a woman utterly
crushed and in despair, sitting under a palm-tree before a
warrior standing erect, while there is inscribed at the side,
Judaea capla (or devicta). The LXX. translates in accord-
ance with the general sense, xal KaTa\et^ij<rif /tovfi koX e»«
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTSB IT. i. 137
T^j' y^v iSa<f>UT0i^<r^ (cf. Luke xix. 14), — only 3e'a is not the
second, but the third person, as also nn^p is third person perfect
Niphal (for >^^), a pausal form, such as is often found also
with smaller distinctive accents than Silluk and Athnach
(here in connection with Tifeha, as also in v. 9, xxiL 14 ;
1 Kings V. 31 ; Amos iiL 8). The clause ae^n }nt6 follows
without any connecting particle, as is pretty frequently the
case when one of the two verbs stands in relation to the
other as a closer specification which would otherwise be
expressed adverbially, as for instance in 1 Chron. xiii. 2, and
with inverted arrangement of the words, Jer. iv. 5 ; cfl xil 6 :
in her depopulated and therefore isolated condition, or her
deprivation also of even the most necessary articles of house-
hold furniture (cf. xlviL 1, 5, and the Talmudic VD930^p3,
" robbed of his property "), Zion sits on the earth.
When war shall have thus unsparingly swept away the
men of Zion, then will arise an unnatural state of things :
women will not be sought by men, but men by women.
Chap. iv. 1 : " Arid seven women shall lay hold of otie man on
that day, saying. Our oum bread vnU we eat, and in our own
garments will we clothe ourselves ; only let thy name he named
upon, us, take away our reproach." The division of the chapters
is wrong, fur this verse is the closing one of the prophecy
against the women, and the concluding portion of the whole
discourse only begins with iv. 2. The present pride of the
daughters of Zion, every one of whom deems herself the
greatest, as the wife of so-and-so, and whom many men now
woo, comes to an end with the self-humiliating fact that seven
of them offer themselves to one man, — any one, — and that,
too, with a renunciation of the claim, legally resting on the
husband, for food and clothing (Ex. xxL 10). It is enough
for them to bo allowed to bear bis name (i>V is employed, as
in Ixiii 19 : the name is put upon what is named, because
giving it its definiteness and its character); he is to take
away their reproach merely by letting them be called his
wives (viz. the reproach of being unmarried, liv. 4, as in Gen.
XXX. 23 the reproach was that of being childless). Grotius
appropriately compares Lucan (Pharsalia, il 342) : Da tantum
nomen inane connubii, liceat tumulo scripsisse Catonis Marcia.
The number seven (seven women to one man) is explained by
Digitized by
Google
138 ISAIAH.
the fact that there is an evil seven as well as a sacred seven
(for example, Matt. xii. 45).
With iv. 1 endit the threatenings addressed to the women
of Jerusalem. It is the side -piece which accompanies the
threatenings against the rulers of the nation. Both scenes of
judgment are but parts of the picture showing the doom about
to fall on Jerusalem and Judah as a State or commonwealth.
And even this again is but a part^ namely, the central group
in the picture of a much more comprehensive judgment about
to fall on everything lofty and exalted on the earth. Jeru-
salem is thus the centre and focus of the great judgment-day
for the world. In Jerusalem there is concentrated the un-
godly glory now ripe for judgment ; here, too, will concentrate
the light of the true glory in the latter days. To this pro-
mise, with which the discourse returns to its starting-point,
the prophet now passes directly. But indeed no transition-
stage is needed ; for the judgment in itself is the medium of
salvation. Jerusalem is sifted by being judged ; and by being
sifted it is delivered, pardoned, glorified. In this sense the
prophet proceeds, with the words " on that day," to describe
the one great day of God at the end of time (not a day of
twenty-four hoars any more than the seven days of creation)
in its leading features, as beginning with judgment but
bringing deliverance. Ver. 2 : " On thai day will the sprout of
Jehooah become an ornament and glory, and the fruii of the
earth pride and splendour for the saved ones of Israel" The
four terms signifying glory, here combined in pairs, confirm
us in the expectation that after the mass of Israel have been
swept away together with the objects of their worthless pride,
mention will be made of what will become an object of well-
grounded pride for the " escaped of Israel " (i.e. those who
have escaped destruction, the remnant that has survived the
judgment). According to this interpretation of what is pro-
mised, it is impossible that it can be the Church of the future
itself that is called " the sprout of Jehovah " and " the fruit
of the earth " (the opinion of Luzzatto, Malbim, and Beuss) ;
moreover, considering the contrast drawn between what is
promised and what is set aside, it is improbable that njn» nov
and n?'? 'I? (not " fruit of the ground," "oiKn ns) mean the
blessing of harvest bestowed by Jehovah, the rich produce of
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKn IV. 2. 139
the land. For though " the sprout of Jehovah " may possibly
signify this (Gen. xix. 25 ; Ps. civ. 14), and though fertility
of the land is a permanent feature in the promise regarding
the latter days (as seen in xxx. 23 S. ; Zech. ix. 16 t ; cf. the
close of Joel and Amos, also the end of Hos. ii.), while it is
also said that the fruitful fields of Israel will become famous
in the eyes of the nations (£zek. xxxiv. 29 ; Mai. iiL 12 ;
cf. Joel ii 17X yet this earthly, material good, of which, more-
over, there was no lack during the times of Uzziah and Jotham,
was wholly unsuited for forming a contrast that would quite
outshine the worldly glory hitherto prevailing. Even after
granting what Hofmann says, " that the blessing which comes
from the fields, as the natural gift of God, may form a con-
trast with the studied works of art and articles imported from
abroad of which men had hitherto been proud," yet what
Bosenmiiller had previously remarked remains true, "that
the grandeur of the whole discourse is opposed to this inter-
pretation." Let any one but compare xxviii. 5, where
Jehovah Himself is in like manner called the glory and
ornament of the remnant of Israel. Bat if nlrp ncx is neither
the delivered remnant itself, nor the fruit of the field which
Jehovah causes to sprout, it will be the name of the Messiah :
such is the view given in the Targum, and such also is the
opinion, among modem commentators, of Eosenmiiller, Heng-
stenberg, Steudel, Umbreit, Gaspari, Drechsler, Strachey, and
de Lagarde.' The great King coming in the future is called
npy (avaroKij in the sense of Heb. vii 14), as a Sprout arising
from soil which is at once earthly, human, and Davidic, — a
Sprout that Jehovah has planted in the earth, and causes to
burst through and sprout up as the pride of His congregation,
which was waiting for this heavenly Child. In the parallel
member of the verse, this Child is likewise called IT}^^ *1P, as
the fruit which the land will bring forth, — just as Zedekiah
is called }^s<n JHT in Ezek. xvii 5, because the same reasons
' In his Semitiea (i. 178) on this passage, this writer explains rnV HOY
as avnftiras 0vh and ei»udit liiafinftifoi), SO that, taken in conjunction
with Jer. xziii. 6, xxxiii. 16, it points to a descendant of the house of David
whom Jehovah causes to be bom in a time of darkness and distress, in
contrast with the natural descendant that had become utterly nselesa and
worthless.
Digitized by
Google
1-10 ISAIAH.
for which njfi*^ npv cannot mean the blessing of the fields
apply with like force to rj.?? 'If • instead of which there
would be used the expression <^1^ *ib, if the produce of
agriculture were intended, — for whenever the former expres-
sion occurs instead of the latter, there is always a probable
reason for the choice, as in Num. xiiL 20, 26 ; Deut. L 25 ;
of. Lev. XXV. 18 f. Here, however, it was necessary to say
" the fruit of the ground " in order to make clear the mean-
ing of the expression " the sprout of Jehovah," for it is
self-evident that noiK means the land of Israel In this way
therefore will the Messiah be the " fruit of the earth " as the
noblest fruit of the land in the future, — ^fruit in which all
growth and bloom in the history of Israel reaches the end
that has been promised and appointed of God.
Without importing New Testament ideas into the passage,
we may nevertheless account for this double designation of the
Coming One merely on the ground of the endeavour to describe
the twofold aspect of His origin : on the one side, He comes
from Jehovah, and yet on the other side He is also of earthly
origin, by His going forth from Israel We have here the
passage on the basis of which np^ has come to be adopted in
Jeremiah (xxiiL 5, xxxiii 16) and Zechariah (iiL 8, vi. 12)
as a proper name of the Messiah. There is much that com-
mends itself, however, in Bredenkamp's interpretation : " The
prophet here depicts the circle of light forming part of the
future glory, but not its centre. The Sprout of Jehovah — an
expression which points to the silent and mysterious power
of creative grace — and the frait of blessing with which the
land is clothed, is the same as is called in Hos. iii. 5, ' the
goodness of Jehovah,' the good things of the last days, which,
as the gift of God, will present themselves on the ruins of the
glory that has passed away." Nagelsbach also understands
what is promised in the sense of the declaration in IxL 11.
Connecting itself with the expression -'K'jfe'^ no^pB in ver. 2,
ver. 3 goes on to describe the Church of the future : " And it
shall come to pass, whoever is left in Zion and remains in
Jerusalem, — holy vrill he be called, every one who is wrilten
down for life in Jentsalem.." The kejmote of the whole
verse is given by the word " holy." Whereas formerly, in
Jerusalem, persons were distinguished according to their
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTKBI7. & 141
rank and their fortune, without regard to their moral worth
(iii 1-3, 10 f. ; ct xxxii 5), " holy " will then be the one
chief name of honour befitting every individual, inasmuch
as the national vocation of Israel (Ex. xix. 6, etc) would
now be realized in every one. . Hence the expression " he
shall be called " is not, of course, equivalent to " he shall be,"
but it presupposes this, as in i. 26, IxL 6, Ixii. 4. "Holy"
(tPVl^) means what is separated from the world and superior
to it; the congr^ation of the saints, or holy ones, who
now inhabit Jerusalem, are what remain after a smelting ;
their holiness is the consequence of a washing. The term
nwin is interchanged with "irtji? : the former word contains the
idea of intention as a part of its meaning, and thus signifies
what has been purposely left behind ; the latter points more
to the simple fact, and signifies what remains over or is left.
The latter part of ver. 3 declares the character and the
numbers of those who will constitute this " remnant of grace."
This apposition - clause means something more than those
who are entered as living in Jerusalem ; for f 3n3 signifies
not merely " to inscribe as " something, but (like sns with
the accusative, Jer. xxii 30) "to inscribe as destined for"
something. Whether we translate D'^n? "for life" (as in
Dan. xii 2), or — a less probable meaning, however, as the
form is not O'jn^ — " for living ones " (cf. Ps. Ixix. 29 ;
1 Sam. XXV. 29), there is always contained in the expression
h 3tf)3n the idea of predestination, the presupposition of a
divine " Book of life " (Ex. xxxii 32 f. ; Dan. xii 1 ; cf. Ps.
cxxxix 16 ; Bev. xx. 12, etc.), and thus a meaning like that
which is contained in the words of Acts xiii. 48, wot ^av
rerarfftivot eli ^ctijv alwvutv. The reference is to persons
who, on account of the good kernel of faith which is in
them, have their names standing in the book of life as those
who are to be partakers of the life in the New Jerusalem,
and who, in accordance with this divine purpose of grace,
have been spared amidst the sifting judgment For it is
only by passing through the judgment, which sets free this
kernel of faith, that such a holy community can be formed.
Whether ver. 4 belongs to ver. 3 and specifies the con-
dition and the time of the fulfilment of what is there indicated,
is a question as difficult to decide as the similar case in
Digitized by
Google
142 IS&IAH.
Ps. Ixiii. 7a. It seems more likely and natural, however, tiiat
ver. 4 is a Iiypothetical protasis to ver. 5 : the combination of
clauses will then be like what is found in 2 Sam. xv. 33 f.:
" When tJie Lord shall have vxtshed avmy the fiUh of the
daughter of Zion and purged away the blood-guiltiness of
Jerusalem from the midst of her, hy the spirit ofjvdgment and
the spirit of sifting ; then Jeihovah creates "... Here, as in
xxiv. 13, OK followed by a preterite forms the futurum
exactum (Gesen. § 106. 3c), and introduces that through
the preceding occurrence of which the other is conditioned.
The imperfect rnj (Hiphil, to wash or rinse away, as in
2 Chron. iv. 6 ; Ezek. xL 38, to rinse off; from iwi, to push
away) likewise obtains the meaning of a futurum eocactum
through the preterite Y^Tl (cf. the very same consecution of
tenses in vi 11). The double purification corresponds to the
two scenes of judgment described in chap. iiL The filth of
the women of Zion is the moral pollution bidden under
their showy and coquettish finery ; and the bloody deeds of
Jerusalem are the judicial murders committed by its rulers
on the poor and innocent This filth and these spots of
blood the Sovereign Euler washes and purges away (see
2 Chron. iv. 6) by the pouring out of His Spirit or breath
(xxx. 28) over the men and women dwelling in Jerusalem.
This breath is called MB^ ran, inasmuch as it punishes what
is evil, and i]?3 TOi, inasmuch as it sweeps it away or removes
it. lya is to be explained, as in vi 13, in the same way as
in Deut. xiii. 6, etc. ; cf. especially xix. 13, xxi. 9. The
rendering of the LXX. (which is followed by the Vulgate),
iv irvevMart Kavo-eoK, is based on another meaning of the
verb, which not merely signifies to cut away, sweep away,
depasture (iiL 14, v. 5, etc.), but also to bum, consume by
fire (xliv. 15, etc.). The "spirit" is in both cases the Spirit
of God, which pervades and works throughout the world, not
merely giving and sustaining life, but also destroying and
sifting, as seems good (xxx. 22 f.); and such is the case
before u&
In ver. 5, the imperishable glory is described as breaking
forth : " And Jehovah creates over every spot of Mount Zion,
and over her festal gatherings, a cloud by day, and smoke, and
the brightness of a Jlaming fire by night ; for over all the glory
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKE TT. 6. 143
comes a canopy." As the Israelites who had been redeemed
from Egypt were led and screened by Jehovah through the
day in a smoke-cloud and through the night in a iire-cloud,
which moved before them in the form of a pillar and floated
over them as a roof (Num. xiv. 14, etc.), — the continued
manifestation of His self -revelation at Sinai, — so will He
also shield the Israelites of the final redemption-days, who,
because they have no longer to wander, no longer need the
pillar of cloud, but only the roof of cloud. Such a cloud-
roof Jehovah will create, as the " consecutive perfect " K'JM
declares. The verb tn^ (for the pre-exilian use of which, in
the sense of " creating," we have vouchers in such passages
as Ex. xxxiv. 10 ; Num. xvi 30 ; Amos iv. 13 ; Deut
iv. 32) always indicates a miraculous divine production
having a beginning in time, for even when God does any-
thing natural, such action is in itself always supernatural ;
here, however, the reference is to a new manifestation of His
gracious presence, in a sphere exalted above the present
course of nature and the world. This manifestation takes
the form, by day (Cheyne thmks that OdC has by an over-
sight been taken from ver. ^, of a cloud, and this too (as is
designedly made prominent by the hendiadys IK'yi ^y, viz. cloud
as regards form, and smoke as regards substance) in a cloud
of smoke (not a watery cloud, like those which naturally
cover the sky), and by night in a fiery splendour, and this,
too, not a calm brightness resembling fire, like that of the
sunset, but, as shown by n3r6, which here follows (as in
Lam. iL 3 ; Ps. cv. 32), a brilliantly flaming and therefore a
real and living fire. The purpose of the cloud is not merely
to afford a shade, but also to serve as a protecting wall (see
Ex. xiv. 1 9) to withstand opposing influences ; and the fire
is not merely for the purpose of giving light, but also by
flaming and sparkling to ward off hostile forces. But the
cloud and fire are above all meant to serve as a token of the
near presence of God and of His goodwilL In the most
glorious times of the temple, a smoke-cloud of this kind
filled the Holy of Holies, and only once (namely at the dedi-
cation of Solomon's temple, 1 Kings viiL 10) the whole
building; but now the cloud, whose smoke, moreover, still
changes into flaming fire by night, spreads over every spot
Digitized by
Google
144 ISAIAH.
(1^30 used as the more poetic word instead of O^po) of Moont
Zion and Zion's festal gatherings. The whole mountain has
thus become a Most Holy Place, and is holy, not merely to
the extent of its being the dwelling-place of Jehovah, but
wholly sacred as the meeting-place of a congregation of the
saints. The word v^^TJi^, or according to another mode of
writing, ■iJK'ipp (a defective plural form, as in Jer. xix. 8),
refers to Zion. There is no need for taking this noun (as is
done by Gesenius, Meier, Hitzig, Ewald, Luzzatto) in the
sense of " meeting-halls " — a meaning which it has nowhere
else ; it may, however, also signify (as in i 13) the meetings
or assemblies [iKKKrialaC).
Though ambiguity rests on the explanatory clause "vS"?? 's
nan liss, this is no reason for holding (as Cheyne does) that
the text has been mutilated ; rather may we suppose these
words, as a general statement, to be a gloss. Schegg and
others regard the clause in this way, as a locus eommunis,
and render it : " because, for everything glorious, protection
and covering are seemly ; " and certainly non bears the mean-
ing of covering and concealing generally. As a noun, nan
in Ps. xix. 6, Joel iL 16, does not signify, as in post-Bibliual
Hebrew, the nuptial canopy, but the bridal chamber, from its
being concealed. But the verb-forms nan, neru also signify
to cover, to clothe for adornment ; and in this way the Han
here will also serve, not merely for a guard or protection,
but also as an honour to the object covered. A doud of
smoke and a blaze of fire floats over Mount Zion like a
canopy. (It is thus unnecessary to take nan as the 3rd pers.
Pual, inasmuch as n\npi, which immediately follows in ver. 6,
readily suggests itself as a word to be supplied.) The only
question is whether *rt33"73 means " every glory," or, as in
Ps. xxxix. 6, xlv. 14, " pure glory, nothing but glory." There
is much that commends itself in the view of Hofniann, that
Jerusalem is now all glory, as its inhabitants are all holiness,
and that therefore this screen is spread out over pure glory ;
nevertheless we prefer the former view, as more in accord
with the noun -clause. The glory of which Zion has now
become a partaker no longer suffers any decay; Jehovah
acknowledges it by tokens of His gracious presence, for
there will henceforth be nothing glorious in Zion over which.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKE JV. & 145
in the way indicated, there will not be a canopy to affoAl .
shade and light, to cover, protect, and adorn.
In this way, Zion becomes a safe retreat and shelter against
all adversities and misfortunes. Yer. 6 : " And there wiU be
a hooth for a shade hy day from the htai of the sun, and a
refuge and hiding-place from storm and from rain.'' Just as
in this passage, the place of concealment and safety is also
called "30 in Ps. xxxi 21, Ixxvil 5. The subject of the verb
rrnn is not the miraculous roofing, for IJ? (cloud) is masculine ;
and to say of a nan (canopy) that it will be a nsD (booth) is
absurd. But n*nn is either used in a pregnant sense (as in xv.
6, xxiiL 13), 80 as to mean "and there will be a booth;" or
" Zion " in ver. 5 is the subject. Considering that " Zion " is so
far away, we prefer the former alternative ; the preservation
naturally applies to the dwellers in Zion. Hitzig, with whom
Niigelsbach agrees, thinks the end of ver. 5 should be read in
undivided connection with ver. 6 (" for over everything glorious
will arise a canopy and a booth for a shade by day," ije.
serving as such, etc.). But the combination of the synonymous
terms nsoi nen is not in Isaiah's style, and the preservation
from the glowing heat of the sun does not properly accord with
the inanimate object Ti33"i>|. With noTO (ie. not fiDTO) from
non, which is allied to irtn (cf. the Assjrrian hasili, and Msu),
"to flee for refuge,"* "ilnpD is combined (only here in the
Old Testament), for the sake of alliteration, instead of inp,
which is more frequently used by the prophets in other
passages, as xxviiL 17, xxxiL 2. The temporal adjunct DOf*,
" by day " (which stands in construction with 7p ; cf. Ezek. xxx.
16), is purposely left without a corresponding ^yh, « by night,"
because what is meant is a place of safety and concealment
at all times, whether by night or by day. Instead of speci-
1 This word is shown by the round of its initial letter (} not J^) to be
different from the Arab, ^u.^, from which comes _<»^\ *U, the water
that is preserved under or by means of a covering of sand, or by means of
the rock below, from evaporating or oozing away. In a biography of
Mohammed (MSS. in the Boyal Library at Berlin, Seti. Wetztt. ii. Nr.
31 IX it is said in the section on the battle at Mfita : " ^^,m^\ (hitd or
h<ud) is a sandy spot under which there is a rocky bottom ; if rain falls
upon this sand, the water dries up, but the rock prevents it from running
VOL. L K
Digitized by
Google
149 tSAUH.
'fying the most manifold dangers, the burning beat of the
sun, storm, and rain are mentioned as examples; but it is
a striking fact that the rain, which certainly is a benefit
earnestly desired by one in a state of 3nh, m, drought and
burning heat, is also mentioned. At the present day, when
rain falls in Jerusalem, the whole city leaps for joy. But
the effects of rain, especially of the winter rain which suddenly
pours down, are certainly very often destructive. The Jeru-
salem of the latter days is like Paradise restored (Glen. E 5 £) ;
one will not then be any longer exposed to the destructive
chaises of the weather. In this way the end of this pro-
phetio address runs into the beginning. This Mount Zion,
roofed over with a cloud of smoke by day and the shining of
a flaming fire by night, is no other than the mountain of the
house of Jehovah, which is exalted above all mountains, and
to which the nations make their pilgrimage ; and this Jeru-
salem, which is holy within and all-glorious without, is no
other than the place from which one day the word of Jehovah
will go out into all the world. But what kind of Jerusalem
is that ? Is it the Jerusalem which is to see the glorious
days of the people of (Jod in this present life (Rev. xii), or is
it the Jerusalem of the new heavens and the new earth (Bev.
XX.) ? The proper answer is. Both in one. In the vision of
the prophet, the Jerusalem of the latter days on earth and
Jerusalem of the life beyond — the glorified Jerusalem of
earth and the glorified Jerusalem of heaven — are fused to-
gether as one. For it is a characteristic of the Old Testa-
xnent that it views the closing period of the present life and
the eternity that lies beyond as forming one continuous line,
and looks upon the whole as if its character were that of
^rtL The first cross-line was drawn by the New Testament
away, and the sand keeps the heat of the sun from drying it up ; if any
one therefore digs under this sand, he finds water." According to this,
it might appear that non originally means to " hide one^s self." But the
proper signification of the old Arabic i<«<^ lS""*' ^ ^ ^"^^ °^^
(water), to exhaust, empty, and, metaphorically, to find out something
secret, to draw secret thoughts out of any one by questions, etc The
water of a - n v rr- is gradually taken out from under the aand, hence the
luune.
Digitized by
Google
OBAPTKB T. 1. 147
TflK Jdogmrmt of Devastation upon Jehovaq's Yinetard,
Chap. V.
Conducting Discourse of the First CycU of Propluey.
The foregoing discourse, at the close of chap, iv., has run
through all the phases of prophetic address; and it has so
completely worked out its fundamental thought, — ^the over-
throw of the false gloiy and the establishment of the true
glory of Israel, which is realized through judgment, — that
chap. T. cannot be regarded either as a continuation or as a
completion of it. Unquestionably chap. v. contains various
allusions to chap, ii— iv. The parable of the Vineyard in
chap. V. 1—7 grows as it were out of chap. iii. 14 ; and in
chap. V. 15 the recurrent verse or refrain of chap, ii 9 is
repeated, but varied in a similar manner as in chap, iu 17.
Yet these and other points of contact with chap. ii.-iv. do
not prove that chap. v. was not independent, but only that
the two were written about the same time. The contem-
porary circumstances or situation of the two discourses is the
same; and the range of the prophet's thought from its
relation to his surroundings at the time, is therefore closely
related. Nevertheless the fundamental thought which is
carried out in chap. v. is an entirely different one. The
basis of the discourse is constituted by a parable of
Israel as the Vineyard of Jehovah, which, contrary to all
expectation, was bringing forth bad fruit, and therefore was
given up to devastation. What sort of bad fruit this was, is
described in a sixfold woe ; and what kind of devastation it
wad to.be, is told in the gloomy night-like close of the dis-
course, which is wholly without a promise.
The prophet began the first discourse in chap. L like
another Moses, and the second not less intensely with the
text of an older prophecy; and now he begins this third
discourse like a player who has a crowd of people around
him, and who with alluring words addresses and rouses up
himself and his hearers. Ver. la ; " Come, I will sing of my
beloved/ a soTig of my dearest about his vineyard!" The
winged rhythm, the musical euphony, and the graceful
assonances of this invocation are inimitable and cannot be
reproduced in a translation. The '> of TTJ" and to"0^
Digitized by
Google
148 IBAUH.
indicates the reference : the song refers to his Beloved ; it is a
song of his dearest one himself about his vineyard (not of
his cousin, pairudis, as Luther, following Jerome, translates it,
for TIT signifies patruvs, uncle, but here the meaning is deter-
mined by "VT a^awijToi). The song of the beloved one is more
definitely designated a song of the beloved one himself ; it is
not a song composed about him or composed for him, but a
song as he himself has sung it and has to sing it. Knaben-
bauer rightly says: "The prophet recites it out of the
thoughts of God." Cheyne, with Lowth, conjectures the
reading O'vn TWZf ; but this is not appropriate, for it is not
a " love-song." The little song is short, and runs thus, lb-2 :
"My Beloved had a vineyard on a fatly nourished mount.
And he dug it up and cleared U of stones, and planted it with
noble vines, and built a tower in it, and also heiced out a wine-
press therein, and he hoped for grape-iringing, hit it hrougJU
vnldings." The vineyard DT3 (originally meaning hill, like
the Assyrian karmu, c£ Talm. D13, to heap, to heap up ') lay
upon a rj5, i«. a mountain peak projecting like a horn, and
consequently open to the sunshine on all sides ; for " apertos
Bacchus amat colles," as Virgil says (Georg. iL 113). This
mountain-horn or peak was l^fl^, a child of fatness ; fatness
was innate in it, it belonged to it by nature. 19F, ^ ^^ chap,
xxviii 1 , is used to indicate the richness of a soil capable of
cultivation. On this vineyard the possessor bestowed all
possible trouble and care. On account of the steep side
of the mountain, the plough could not bo used ; and therefore
he dug it up, i.e. the soil, which was to become the vineyard,
with a hoe (i^, to hoe, t.«. with th^ hoe ; Arab, mtzak, mizaka,
to hand hoe in order to make fertile; Mishn., to draw a
trench around something, whether a plant or a place, which
is followed by the LXX., cf. Mark xiL 1 : xaX ^pafy/top
irepU0TjKa, see Kimchi's Diet under pry). And as he found
it covered over with stones and debris, he proceeded to get rid
of this rubbish by throwing it out (bgD, privative PL; lit taking
to do with stones, to clear of stones, like ^JOJ^, removing
sickness, healing, cf. casting the skin, scaling off, and such like).
* The Oemara, ShMath 88ft, says of the verb D*a •' "it has the sense of
heaping, gathering ' (wn V3Xn WB^X
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEBV. 2. 149
After the soil had been brought under cultivation, he planted it
with Fp, the finest kind of eastern vine with bright-red grapes ;
for it is a colour word, not (like the Arab, naine of wine,
a-zerkd, the bright-blue, the bright) indicating the colour of
the drink, but that of the grapes (pi.fe' = j^, to be suffused
with red, t.«. to be dark red, different from j&Jt>, signifying to be
light red). Then, in order to protect and adorn the vineyard,
planted at such cost, he built in the midst of it a tower.
Wi sets prominently forth that he also hewed out a wine-
press trough in it (35J, the trough into which runs the must
pressed out in the wine-press n|, locus in distinction from
toradar) ; using a rocky portion of the soil in order that the
trough may be the more immoveable and lasting. ^3 3vri has
not the accent retracted, as e.g. njm anh, Prov. xiL 1, xvii. 19,
and *3 fon, Ps. xviii. 20, because a Beth would thereby easily
become inaudible, and hence there is also more firmness
given to avn by the pronunciation avn ; and in like manner
in chap. x. 15 we have ^3 avhn and *iraa for inaa, chap.
xL 14; cf. Gomm. on Ps. cxxxii. 10. This was a dif&cult
piece of work, as the ax\ gives us to understand; it was
difiBcnlt, and for that reason gave evidence of surest expecta-
tion. But how utterly was this deceived ! The vineyard
brought forth no such fruit as is expected from a sorek-
planting ; it brought forth no Q^ajjr at all, i.e. no berries or
clustera such as a cultivated vine bears, but it brought D'T^3,
wildings. Luther at first translated this word as wild grapes,
and latterly as harsh or sour grapes; but they come to the
same thing. The wild and the noble vine are only qualita-
tively different ; the vUis vini/era is, like all cultivated plants,
assigned to human nurture, under which it becomes ennobled,
whereas growing in its wild state it falls short of its destina-
tion. Hence 0TK3 designates the small sour berries of the
wild vine (Rashi : lamhruches, i.e. berries of the labrusca), as
well as those berries of the noble vine which have remained
unripe and stunted (but which are not like '^D^, which are
only not yet ripe).* Such berries as these were brought forth
* In the Jerusalem Talmud auch stunted berries are called r?^'*>
and in the Mishna {Mdatercth i. 2, SheMith iv. 8), B^Kan is the word
used r^pilarly of grapes that have become half-ripe.
Digitized by
Google
150 jatiAS.
by that vineyard; they were such as are prodaced by the
wild vine, but not such as are to be expected from the most
carefully cultivated vines of the noblest sort.
The Song of the Beloved One, so sorely deceived, thus ends.
The prophet recites it, and not his dearest one himself ; but
because the two are one heart and one soul the prophet can
continue thus in vers. 3 and 4 : " And now, ye inkaJbiUmtt of
Jerusalem and, men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and
my Vineyard I What toas there further to do for my Vineyard
which I did not do for it t Why hoped I for the bringing of
grapes, and it brought wildings I " The person of the Beloved
may already be discerned, from the fact that the prophet
speaks as if he were the beloved himself. The Beloved of
the prophet and Lover of the prophet, *i^ and ih, is
Jehovah, with whom he is so united through a unto myetiea,
elevated above earthly love, that, like the Angel of Jehovah
in the primeval histories, he can speak as if he were Jehovah
Himself (see especially Zech. ii. 12—15). To one who has
insight, the parabolical meaning and purpose of the song,
therefore, betrays itself already here ; and even the inhabit-
ants of Jerusalem and men of Judah (3X?\'' and V^, taken
collectively, as in chap. viiL 14, ix. 8, xxii. 21, cC xx. 6),
who are appealed to as adjudicators or umpires, are not so
utterly stupefied by sin that they should not perceive at what
the prophet was aiming. They are called upon to decide on
which side the guilt of this unnatural issue lies, of this nfis'^
of the Vineyard, so contradictory to the ntfe^ of the Lord :
that instead of the bringing of grapes, which was hoped for,
it has brought wildings. On ntb^rnp, quid faciendum eat f
see Comm. on Hab. i. 17 ; Ges. § 132. 1. Instead of (ne^)
no?, we have the more appropriate $^o ; for the latter asks
for the causa effieiens, or the cause, whereas the former asks
for the eauaafinalis, or the purpose. The parallel passage in
chap. 1. 2 resembles this passage, both in the use of the vrro,
and also in the fact that there, as well as here, it relates to
both clauses, and especially to the latter of the twa This
paratactical construction is also found in the case of other con-
junctions, as in ch8p.xii. 1, Ixv. 12. They are called upon to
decide and answer as to this whai and wherefore ; but they are
silent, just because they clearly see that they would have to
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKB V. 5, 8. 151
condemn themselves (as David similarly condemned himself
on the occasion of Nathan's parable, 2 Sam. xii. 5). The
Lord of the vineyard, therefore, again proceeds to speak. He,
its accuser, will now also be its judge. — Ver. 5 : " Now then, I
vnll let y<m know what I will forthwiih do to my vineyard : take
away its hedge, and it shall be for yraziruf ; pull down its wall,
and it shall he for trampling upon." Before W{?^, aa, in chap,
iii 14, we must imagine a pause ; the Lord of the vineyard
breaks the silence of the umpires, which betrays their con-
sciousness of guilt They shall hear, then, from Him what
He is going to do to His vineyard (> in *9^??, as, for example,
in Deut. xi. 6). nfc^ 'jk, fut. inUans, equivalent to fattwrua
sum (Ges. § 134. 2 b). In the following inf. ahs. the content
of the iBV n«, id quod, is unfolded. On this explicative use
of the inf. abs., see chap. xx. 2, Iviil 6, 7 ; in such cases it
represents the place of the object, as elsewhere of the subject,
but always in an abrupt, stiff manner. He will take away
the nznfe'D, i,*. the green thorny hedge (Prov. xv. 19 ; Hos.
iL 8 = fi?wp, Micah viL 4 fr. 1?fc'=?pie>, tpo, 3W, to hedge round),
with which the vineyard is enclosed, and will pull down the
T!|, i.e. the low stone wall (Num. xxii. 24; Prov. xxiv. 31 ; cf.
Ezra ix. 9 ending, according to Cheyne, in allusion to Isaiah's
parable), which had been surrounded by the hedge of thorn-
bushes to make a better defence, as well as for the protection
of the wall itself, more especially against undermining, so tliat
the vineyard, in consequence of this, is exposed to grazing and
trampling down (LXX. KaTatrdnifia), ie. becomes an open way
and resort for men and beasts.
Thus the unthankful vineyard comes to an end, and indeed
to a hopeless end. Ver. 6 : " And I vnll utterly ruin it : it
shall not be pruned, and it shall not be hoed, and it shall shoot
up in thorns and thistles ; aiid I will command the clouds not
to rain rain over it." nri3=nFQ fr. Twa=nn3 (^^ ^i, akin to ins,
j*j), ahsdndere, signifies the sharply cutting off, and, as the
action is viewed as a quality : what is sharply cut off, ahsdssum
proeruptum, vii. 1 9, or it is also transferred to the result of
the action : the sudden total destruction.^ This is the
' In the Arabic, tjj\\, tlhatla (Vulg. haVbatt), from the meaning
axwifut; (absolutely), cornea to be commonly used for " surely."
Digitized by
Google
iS^Sr ISAIAE.
f
meaning here, where nna n^ is a more refined expression for
the more usual n^3 nfc>^, both being construed with the accusa-
tive of the thing which is brought to a total end. Further,
pruning (not) and hoeing (iny, different from another "ny, to
put in order, 2 Chron. xii 33, 38) with the weeding-hoe
C^??, vii. 25), would not improve it, but only bring new
disappointments : it is the will of the Lord, therefore, that the
deceitful vineyard shall shoot up thorns and thistles (iv? is
applied to the soil, as in chap, xxxiv. 13 and Prov. xxiv. 31 ;
of. noy, Eccles. iL 6, with ace. of the object, according to Ges.
§ 138, 1, 2, applied here to the exclusively and peculiarly
Isaianic ^.^ "'*??'). And in order that it may remain a
wilderness, the clouds receive commandment from the Lord
not to rain upon it. There can now be no longer any doubt
who the Lord of the vineyard is. He is the Lord who gives
commands to clouds (cf. Gen. iL 16), or in respect to the
clouds (c£ 2 Sam. xiv. 8, according to the old interpretation,
to the angels), and therefore the Lord of heaven and of earth.
It is He who is the prophet's Beloved and dearest One. The
song which opened in so loving and harmless a tone, has now
become sharply severe, and terribly repulsive. The husk of
the parable, which has already been broken through, now falls
completely off (cf. Matt. xxiL 13, xxv. 30). What it sets
forth in symbol is true. This truth the prophet establishes
by an open declaration in ver. 7 : " For the vineyard of Jehovah
of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the
plantation of His delight ; he waited for jtistiee, and hehdd
rapine; for righteousness, and lehold an outcry." The
conception is not that the Lord of the vineyard lets
no more rain fall upon it, for this Lord is Jehovah
(which is not indeed said in what follows *?) ; but more
generally : this is how it stands with the vineyard, for
all Israel, and especially the people of Judah, is this vine-
yard, which so bitterly deceived the expectations of its Lord,
and, moreover, it is the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts, and
therefore of the omnipotent God, whom even the clouds
must serve when He punishes. The ^3 justifies, as in Job
vi 21, not only the truth of what was last stated, but the
truth of the whole simile, including this ; it is '3, explic., which
opens the ^mythion. " The vineyard of the Lord of hosts "
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB V. 7. tSS
(rA»yx 'n D-13) is the predicate. " The house of Israel "
^inb| n^a) is the whole nation, which is also symbolically
represented in other passages under the same figure of a
-vineyard (chap. xxviL 2 sqq. ; Ps. Ixxx., etc.). But because
Isaiah is prophet in Judah, he applies the figure more parti-
cularly to Judah, which is called Jehovah's favourite planta-
tion, inasmuch as it was the seat of the divine sanctuary and
of the Davidic kingdom. VPji conct along with vpi, like VJ
in Num. xi. 7, Ew. § 213a, and D'V^jB', an abstract plural form :
the delighting, from the Pilpel, occurring in chap. xL 8, in the
sense of delightful playing, literally, stroking or cares^ing;
Luther has seine zarte Feser, a term applied to the vine-shoot
which is planted. This makes it easy enough to interpret the
details of the simile. The fat mountain-peak is Canaan,
flowing with milk and honey (Ex. xv. 17) ; the digging up
of the vineyard, and clearing it of stones, is the clearing of
Canaan from its former heathen inhabitants (Ps. xliv. 3);
the sorek-vines are the holy priests and prophets and kings
of Israel of the better early times (Jer. u. 21) ; the protecting
and ornamental tower in the midst of the vineyard is Jeru-
salem as the royal city, with Zion the royal fortress (Micah
iv. 8) ; the winepress-trough is the temple, where, according
to Pa. xxxvi 9 (8), the wine of heavenly joy flows in streams,
and by which, according to Ps. xlii. and many other pass-
ages, all the thirst of the soul is quenched. The grazing and
trampling down are explained in Jer. v. 10 and xii. 10. The
bitter deception experienced by Jehovah, is expressed in a
play upon two words, indicating the surprising change of
what was hoped for, into its opposite. The explanation which
Gesenius, Gaspari, Knobel, and others give of riabv, as
" shedding " = bloodshedding, does not commend itself; for
even if ncD occurs once or twice in the Arabizing book of
Job (chap. XXX. 7, xiv. 19) in the sense of effundere, like
,^vi-»i y«t this verbal root is otherwise strange to the Hebrew
(and the Aramsean). Moreover, noto in any case would only
mean pouring out, or shedding, and not shedding of blood ;
and although the latter might indeed be possible in reference
to the Arabic aaffdh, aaffdk (blood-shedder, blood-man), yet it
would be an ellipsis such as cannot be substantiated anywhere
Digitized by
Google
154 tSAlAH.
else in Hebrew usage. Oa the other hand, hsfev, rendered
"leprosy," does not yield any appropriate sense, as (inap)
nriBop is never generalized anywhere else into the general
meaning of " dirt " (Luzzatto : aaatura), nor does it appear as
an ethical conception. We therefore prefer to connect it
with a meaning assuredly belonging to the verb nco (see Eal,
1 Sam. il 36 ; Niphal, xiv. 1 ; HUhpad, 1 Sam. xxvL 19),
viz. " to associate or to join," of violent annexation, or from
the root-conception of " snatching," and specifically " carrying
forcibly away," etc ; c£ 1PJ, 1D«, tpo, noo. Hence we regard
the word as denoting the grasping appropriation and unjust
heaping up of worldly possessions ; certainly a suitable anti-
thesis to DBtTD, as n^^ vox oppressorum (not sanguinis, which
would be said) to nfjv. The prophet depicts, in full-toned
figures, how the expected noble grapes had turned into wild ■
grapes, with nothing more than an outward resemblance
to grapes. The introduction to the prophecy goes thus far.
The prophecy itself follows next, a sevenfold discourse
composed of the sixfold woe contained in the following vers.
8-23, and the announcement of punishment in which it
issues. In this sixfold woe the prophet describes the bad
fruits individually. Confirming our explanation of nato, the
first woe relates to wXeove^la, covetousness and avarice, as
the root of all evil. — ^Ver. 8 : " Woe unto those joining house
to house, who lay fidd to field, tiU there is no more room, and
ye are made to dvxU alone within the land." yii, as also aip, is
construed with n in Judg. xix. 13 and Ps. xcL 10. The
participle, because equivalent to a relative clause, is continued
in the finite verb, as in ver. 23 and x. 1 ; the r^fular
syntactical construction in cases of this kind (Ges. § 134^ 2).
The preterites after 1^ (there being two such preterites, for
DDK is an intensified f^ including the verbal idea) correspond
to future perfects : they, the insatiable, rest not till, after all
the smaller landed properties have been swallowed up by
them, the whole land has become their possession, and no one
besides themselves will be settled in the land (Job xxiL 8).
Such covetousness was all the more condemnable, as the law
of Israel had provided very stringently and carefully, that as
far as possible there should be a proper proportional distribution
of the ground and soil (Num. xxxiiL 54), and that hereditary
Digitized by
Google
CBATTEB V. 9, la 165
family property should be inalienable. The curse in Deut.
xxvii, 17 was directed against the displacing of a boundary
(in the language of the Boman law, Crimen termini motiy,
All landed property that had been alienated reverted to the
family every fiftieth year, or year of jubilee ; so that aliena-
tion had reference only to the usufruct of the land till that
time. But how badly the law of the jubilee year was
observed, may be inferred from Jer. xxxiv., according to which
the law of the manumission of Hebrew bondsmen in the
Sabbatical year had fallen entirely into neglect The same
complaint which Isaiah makes is brought forward by his con-
temporary Micah, in chap. ii. 2 (cf. P& xlix. 12 ; Job xxii. 8).
The announcement of punishment is also there expressed in
terms similar to what we have here in vera 9 and 10:
"Into my ears Jehovah of hosts: Truly many houses shall
become a desolation, large and beautiful ones without any in-
habitants. For ten yokes of vineyard land will yield one
pailful, and a quarter of seed com will bring forth a bushel."
How the prophet thinks of the nominal clause. Into my
ears (or literally in my ears) is Jehovah - Zebaoth, is made
clear from chap. xxii. 14 : He is revealing Himself there to
me. ^ITKS, pointed with Kamez along with Tifcha, as in that
parallel passage, reminds us of what is to be interpolated in
thought In Hebrew, to say into the ears did not mean to
speak secretly and softly ; but, as Gen. xxiii 10, 16, Job
xxxiii. 8, and other passages show, it means to speak in a
manner that is distinct and intelligible, and which excludes
all misunderstanding. It is true that the prophet has not
Jehovah now locally external to him, but he has Him
notwithstanding objectively over against his own ego, and he
is able to distiugnish distinctly the thoughts and words of
his own ego from the inspeaking of Jehovah which rises aloud
within him. This inspoken word tells him how it will go
with the rich insatiable landowners. l6*0t( introduces an
oath' of an affirmative sense (the complete form being ''}'* *n
'^'^^)> just as BK, e.g. Num. xiv. 23, introduces an oath of
a negative sense. A universal desolation will ensue; 0*3*2
signifies not less than all, for the houses (pronounced bdttim)
form altogether a great number (cf. O^an, chap, ii 3, and
iroXKol, e.g. Matt xx. 28). Tf9 is double, and is thus abso-
Digitized by
Google
156 ISAUH.
lately negative (so that there is not no inhabitant). How
such a desolation of the houses will come about, is explained
by *3, beginning in ver. 10 : failure of crops brings famine,
and this brings depopulation of the country. Ten '^.<f>V (with
Bajg. lent, Ewald, § 212&) of vineyard laud are ten pieces as
large as can be ploughed daily with a yoke of oxen, as is
shown by the analogous \^ (^m), Pr®' H?. which signifies
the plough-span with belongings, and then the field, and
particularly (in accordance with the Turkish Elamus) a culti-
vated field of the extent of 400 roods. On the assumption
that vineyards, on account of their many curves, are difficult
to calculate by yokes, and that they were never ploughed,
Noskowyj (in his treatise, De valle Hadhrartuiut, 1866) under-
stands the meaning to be ten pieces of yoke-like espaliers of
vines trained on cross-laths (called vina jugata in Varro).
But 1 Sam. xiv. 14 decides iox jugum (jugerum) as a measure
of land. D'DT3 is also applied to vineyards lying in the plain,
and 10V may be a measure of corn-land transferred to vine-
yard land, which undoubtedly was not worked with the
plough but with the hoe. Moreover, we want the inter-
mediate links requisite to furnish the proof that the ancient
Israelites had the same chief field-measure as the Homans.*
Thus, then, ten days' work will only produce a single n?.
This measure of liquids, which first appears in the time of
the kings, was equivalent to n&'>t( as a dry measure (Ezek.
xlv. 11). According to Josephus (Antiq. viiL 2. 9), it con-
tained 72 Boman sextarii, or a little more than 33 Berlin
quarts. The "loh (perhaps an ass's burden,' cf. I'on, 1 Sam.
xvi 20), a dry measure generally called lb after the time of
the kings, contained (according to Josephus, Antiq. xv. 9. 2)
about ten Attic fiiSi/ivoi* a fUSinv<K being a little more than
15 pecks. If any one sowed 150 pecks of grain, not more
would be reaped from it than 15 pecks: the harvest there-
I See on tha jugerum, Hnltscli, Grieehuehe und rSmitehe Metrologie,
1862, p. 68 £
* It bas been objected to me tbat, according to Mexia 80a, a T^ is
already equal to ^ lb°*lori, the amount of a normal ass'8 burden.
* Or rather 7^ Attic MedinmialO Attic Metreti « 4Q Roman Modii ;
Bee BOckh, MetrologitAt UnUmuihungen, p. 269i
Digitized h''
Google
CHAPTER V. 11, 12. 157
fore would only yield the tenth part of the seed sown, for
the nQ*M is the tenth part of non, or three seahs, the usual
minimum for one baking {e.g. Matt xiii. 33). In the trans-
lation, these relations of measure could not be exactly re-
produced.
The second woe, to which the curse falling upon the vine
cultivation (ver. 10a) leads by association of ideas, is directed
against the revellers who carry on their indulgence in carnal
security into the day. Ver. 11:" Woe to those who rise up
in the earhf morning to run after strong drink, who continue
till late in the evening, loine inflaming them." "<5^ (from
ip3, hakara, to slit, tear up, split) is the break of day, and ^vi
(from 1?^, to blow, sigh) the evening twilight (Berachoth 36),
when it begins to become cool (1 Sam. xxx. 17), and the
night into which it passes (chaps, xxi. 4, lix. 10). ins, to
continue till late, as in Prov. xxiii. 30 ; the construct state
before words with a preposition, as in chaps, ix. 2, xxviii. 9,
and often elsewhere (Ges. § 116. 1). "O??, standing with C!,
is the general name of all other strong drinks, especially of
"wines made artificially from fruit, honey, raisins, dates, etc.,
including barley - wine, olvo<i KplOtvo<!, or beer (ix lepiO&v
lUOv in jEschylus, Suppl. 930, elsewhere called ^pvrov
^pvTov, ^vOoi ^vOoi, and various other names), acquaintance
with which goes back to Egypt, which was half a wine
country and half a beer country, and is traceable up to the
time of the Pharaohs. The form tsc' is formed like 33^
(Arab, 'inab), fix)m ^3?*, to intoxicate ; according to the Arabic,
literally to dose by stopping up (T?p, njp), i«, to stupefy
(cl Hos. iv. 11). The clauses after the two participles
indicate the circumstances (chap, i 5a) under which they
run out already in the early morning, and remain sitting
till late into the darkness at these tempestiva eonvivia (Cicero,
De Sen. 14) ; they hunt after mead, they heat themselves
with wine, particularly in order to lull the conscience amid
their deeds of darkness. '
Ver. 12 describes how these blind ones carry on their
music-making and carousing : " And guitar and harp, kettle-
drum andflvie and wine is their carouse; but the work of
Jehotah they regard not, and the purposing of His hands they
do not see." Their carouse (OJi'RB'p, only plural in appearance,
Digitized by
Google
158 ISAIAH.
rather a singular, as in Dan. L 10, 16, and frequently with a
softened ' of the ground form 'n^=nne*D ; c£ on ^V, chap. L
30, and <^^, chap. xxii. 11, Ges. § 93, 9) is that and that,
■Le. it consists of such things, it is composed of intoxicating
music and wine. Enobel construes it thus : " And there is
guitar, etc., and wine is their drink ; " but the sentence thus
divided becomes feeble, and the other mode of expression is
employed in the Semitic to the widest extent, e^. Ezek.
xxxviii 5, " they all are shield and helmet," ie. they appear
in this armour. "lU?, guitar (an onomatopoeic word like '^i'^,
cataract, jlxo, spindle), is the general name of the instru-
ments which have their strings drawn (upon a bridge) over
the sounding-board ; and 73] (harp and lyre) is the general
name of those instruments which have their strings swinging
freely, so that both hands could at the same time seize the
strings; (|in (Arab, duff.) is the general name for the
tambourine, the drum, and the kettledrum; T?n (bored
through) is a general name for the flute and double flute.
In this rioting and revelling they have no perception and uo
eye for the work of Jehovah and the project of His handa
This expresses in idea God's eternal counsel (chap. xxxviL 26,
ver. 19), which leads to salvation by the circuitous ways of
judgment (chap. x. 12, xxviii. 21, xxix. 23), in so far as that
counsel is realized in history which is shaped by the invisible
interposition of God's hands. In their carousing and revel-
ling they have no sense for the moving and working of God
in history ; nor do they at all observe the judgment which
is being prepared in the present. And therefore will the
judgment fall upon them in this blind, dull, stupid, animal
state.
Ver. 13 : " Therefore my people goes into lanishmevi from
waiti of knowledge ; and its glory turns into hungry ones, and
its tumult into men vnth burning thirst." As ]•>> (as in chap.
L 24) opens the threat of punishment, >h^ (to emigrate,
properly, to lay bare, i.e. the land) is a prophetic preterita
Israel must vacate his laud, must go into exile, and moreover
n}n"^ao. The 19 of i>aD is causative as in npnn 720, Deut.
ix. 28, cf. Num. xiv. 16, and also in Hos. iv. 6 : fit>m want
of knowledge ; and to regard it here as the negative (as in
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB V. 14. 159
rttp), becaose run is indeterminate, is not justified ; and
besides, our view is supported by njn »ii3D, being iminedi-
atelj joined to 12i as a fundamental statement Moreover,
nin '^ao does not signify " unawares," but unknowingly = un-
designedly, and yet more frequently " in non-understanding,"
Job XXXV. 16, xxxvL 12, cf. iv. 21. The knowledge which
they lack, according to 12(, is knowledge of the ruling of
God and of the moral order of the world, according to which
calamity is the necessary consequence of wrong-doing. In
the sequel, Sitis and ^^ion are, as the predicates show, collective
terms used in a personal sense ; the former signifies the Slite
of the people (cf. Mic. i. 15), and the latter the crowd that
lived in riot and revelling. The former become a^ *np, men
of famine {"rto, as in Gen. xxxiv. 30 ; Job xi. 11 ; otherwise
'triM, 2 Sam. xix. 29, or "•:}, 1 Sam. xxvL 16); and the latter
spy nny (sing, as the subj.), parched with thirst. Instead of
*np, the LXX. and Jerome read *np (dead ones) ; but the
reading adopted by Hitzig, Eoorda, Ewald, and Bottcher, *n|>
(".tP), after Deut. xxxil 24, and exactly corresponding to the
parallel nm, is more probable; it signifies sucked out or
emaciated by hunger, nnv (air. Xe7.) is formed like oVk,
''i??, ^:n, and other adjectives which express defects; the
place of the i is represented in such forms of verbs n^ by an
a that has arisen out of ay. The debauchees of rank must
starve, and the low boon companions must thirst to death.
The threat of punishment commences again with |3? ; it
has not yet satisfied itself, and therefore reaches deeper still.
Ver. 14 : " There/ore tlu wider-world opens wide its throat,
and stretdies its mouth immeaturably wide ; and the pomp of
Jerusalem, goes down, and its tumult and uproar, and those
who are jubilating in it." The verbs which follow t?b are
propbetio preterites, as in ver. 13. The feminine suffixes
attached to what the lower world swallows up, do not refer
to ^KB', but, as expressed in the translation, to Jerusalem,
which is necessarily required by i'? tTjn ; 7<KC^ has, accord-
ing to the rule, JDag. forte conj. The withdrawal of the tone
from >^ to the penidtimate (cf. fpn in Ps. xviil 20, xxil 9,
Ezek. xxiL 25, whereby the Zere, which cannot be shortened
into Segol, gets the checking Metheg) is here omitted ; the
rhythm thereby becomes more picturesque : one bears the
Digitized by
Google
160 ISAIAH.
falling object rolling down, and at length striking upon some-
thing. A mouth is ascribed to the under-world, also a B%],
i«. a greedy soul, in which sense VBi is applied metonymicaliy
sometimes to a thirst for blood (Ps. xxvii. 12), and sometimes
to devouring greed (chap. IvL 1 1), and even, as in the present
passage and Hab. il 5, to the throat or gullet which the soul
opens "without measure" (of. MaL iii. 10, ^"'i'fny, to insuf-
ficiency), when its craving knows no bounds (Psychol, p. 204).
One is reminded here of Cerberus, whose original was Egyptian :
the devourer in Amenthes (nether-world).* The prophet ap-
pears to connect Mkb^ (which is feminine, like the names of
countries) in thought with the verb b^f (of. Hab. ii. 6 ; Prov.
XXX. 15): the God-ordered accursed power which calls for
and swallows up all that is upon the earth. The idea of
" decision " appears to be really connected with the Assyrian
iueUu* But the view always still recommends itself, which
holds that the Hebrew word starts from the idea of sinking
or depth ; for the fundamental meaning of the V^ is x"^^'
not to be hollow, as it might appear after 7^ (hollowing,
properly deepening of the hand), >ipfp (hollow way, properly
a sinking of the ground), -'WB' (excavator = eavorum habitator,
properly deepener, one who digs himself in). The desig-
nation corresponds to the notion, universal in antiquity, which
assigned Hades to the depths below the upper world. As
God reveals Himself in heaven among blessed spirits accord-
ing to the light of His love, so does He reveal Himself in
She61, in the darkness and fire of His wrath. And, with the
exception of Enoch and Elijah in the Old Testament, with
their singular departure from this life, the way of all mortals
went hither, until Jesus Christ changed the dying of all
believers on Him from a descent into Hades into an ascension
to heaven. But even under the Old Testament the believer
might know that whoever hid himself on this side the grave
in Jehovah the living One, would retain his eternal germ of
life even in Shedl in the midst of the shades, and would taste
the divine love even in the midst of wrath. It was this
postulate of faith which lay at the foundation of the fact,
^ See Lndw. Stem, UOer dot Og. TodtengeridU, Ausland 1870, Nr. 46.
* See Alfred Jereraias, DU babyl-assyr. VoriUUungen wm Ldm naeh
dm Tode, 1887, p. 62.
Digitized by
Google
CIIAFTSR V.'IS, 1& 161
that already ander the Old Testament the all-compi-ehending
range of the idea of InKtr begins to be contracted into the
narrower notion of a limbo or fore-hell (see Psychol, p. 415).
This is the case in the passage before us, where Isaiah
predicts of everything of which Jerusalem was proud,
and in which it revelled, including the jubilating persons
themselves, descent into Hades ; just as the Korahite author
of P& xlix. wrote (ver. 14) that the pomp of the godless
will be given up to Hades to be consumed, without having
hereafter a place in the upper world, when the righteous
will have dominion over them at some future time. Hades
even there is almost equivalent to the New Testament
The prophet now repeats a recurring thought of the second
prophetic discourse (chap, ii 9, 11, of. ver. 18). It acquires
here a much deeper sense, from the connection in which it
stands. Vera. 15, 16 : " Then are mean men lowed down, and
lords humiled, and the eyes of lofty m,en are humbled. And
Jehovah of hosts shows Himself high in jtidgment, and God tJie
Holy One hallows Himself in righteousTiess." What had exalted
itself above earth to heaven, must go down earthwards into
belL The consecutive imperfects exhibit the future, here
represented as historically present, as the direct sequel of what
is also represented as present in ver. 14 : Hades opens up,
and then both low and high in Jerusalem sink down, and the
soaring eyes now wander about in a horrible depth. It is
the will of God, who is both exalted and holy in Himself,
that as the exalted One He shall be exalted, and that as the
Holy One He shall be sanctified. But Jerusalem has not
done this ; and He therefore proves Himself the exalted One
by the execution of justice, and sanctifies Himself (C'^?? is to
be rendered as a reflective verb, as in Ezek. xxxvi. 23,
zxxviii. 23, whereas the reading tr^E^i is the expression of a
resulting fact), by the manifestation of righteousness, in con-
sequence of which the people of Jerusalem must give Him
the glory against their will, as Kaja-)(06vio<{ (Phil. iL 10).
Jemsalem has been thus swallowed up twice by Hades : once
in the Chaldean war, and again in the Boman war. But the
invisible background of the outward event was the fact that
it had already fnllen under the accursed power of hell. Even
VOL. I. L
Digitized by
Google
162 ISAIA.H.
in its outward teality, ancient Jerusalem, like tbe company of
Korah (Num. xvL 30, 33), has become subterraneaa Just
as Babylon and Nineveh, the ruins of which axe dug out of
the inexhaustible mine of their wide-stretching foundation
and soil, have sunk into the earth, so do men walk about
in the present Jerusalem over ancient Jerusalem, which has
sunk beneath the ground ; and many an enigma of topography
will remain an enigma so long as ancient Jerusalem is not
scraped out of the earth again.
And considering that the Holy Land is at the present
time a great pasture-ground for tribes of Arab shepherds, and
that the modern Jerusalem, which has been built out of
rubbish, is a Mohammedan city, what ver. 17 prophesies has
been literally fulfilled : " And lambs feed as upon their pasture,
(f,nd nomad shepherds enjoy the waste places of the bloated ones."
There is no necessity to supply an accusative object to the
verb 'jni (Knobel and others), namely, the devastated lands
mentioned in the second clause (•'^in, to pasture, as in chap.
XXX. 23), nor is ^^f that accusative (Caspari) ; but the
place is determined by the context thus : Where Jerusalem is
sunken, there lambs feed in the manner of their own pasture-
ground, i.e. just as if they were in their old accustomed
pasture pa"', as in Micah ii. 1 2, from nan, the Targum word
for jnj in Exod. iiL 1, is to drive, and D'ja'Jf' is equivalent to
Dnnnnp). The lambs meant are those of the Q^| mentioned in
the second clause, which word, used so substantively as here
in distinction from D^3, indicates strangers putting up any-
where yet settled down, those roaming inconstantly about or
leading a nomadic life. Were O^i (cf. chap. xi. 6) referred to
the lambs themselves, it would be an idle word. The LXX.
translation has apvev, and therefore there must have been
read D'"]3 or O'ni (which is approved by Ewald, Knobel, Beuss,
and Bredenkamp). But one of the lines in the prophecy,
which is authenticated by the historical fulfilment, is thereby
obliterated. D'TO nbnrt are the lands of those who were
formerly full of marrow (i.e. full-fed, and strutting about in
fulness of enjoyment), which lands have now become wastes.
With ver. 17 the second woe closes. It is the longest of
the woes. This also confirms the fact that luxury was the
chief vice of Judah under Uzziah and Jotham, as it was of
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBS T. Id 163
Israel ander Jeroboam IL (see Amos vL, whete the threat of
punishment is also the sameX
The third woe is pronounced upon the supposed strong-
imnded men who challenge the judgment of God by
presumptuous sins and blasphemous sayings. Ver. 18 :
" Woe nnto those who draw criminality with cords of un-
righteousness, and sin as vrith the cart-rope^' As ^B^ is also
used in Dent xxL 3 in the sense of drawing at the yoke,
that is to say, drawing a plough or cart, and as the cart or
waggon, npjJl (the word commonly used for a transport waggon,
as distinguished from •*i33'io, the state-carriage or even the war
chariot), is here expressly named, the figure might appear to be
the same as that which underlies the New Testament enpo-
l^vyeiv (2 C!or. vL 14), and to mean : Evil-doing is the burden
which they draw behind them with cords of K^e', and sin the
waggon to which they are harnessed as with (Ewald, § 221b)
a thick cart-rope (Hofmann, Drechsler, Nagelsbach, Cheyne,
and Knabenbauer). But this is hardly the meaning of the
prophet The '5fO thus put without D?'"?!!)* presupposes the
signification attrahere in itself, as in Ps. x. 9 ; Job xl. 25
(Knobel and most commentators), and it means this in what
is regarded as the closest parallel, Hos. xi. 4 : I drew them
(».& to myself) with man's bands, with cords of love. Breden-
kamp says rightly : The actual drawing to, is in contrast to
the implied famess. v^^ means desolation and emptiness
(see Comm. on Ps. xxvi 4, and especially on Job xv. 31),
and in the ethical sense : irreligiousness, unconscientiousness,
characterlessness. The cart-rope is an image of the coarse
boldness with which they diligently draw to them the sin,
which is here considered as making them liable to punish-
ment* They sin forgetful of duty and boldly, because they
set themselves in their unbelief above the prophetic threaten-
ings, and look upon the day of Jehovah as an idle terror.
> From this Isaianic verse, which is cited in Sanhedrin 09b as n^3p3
({.«. to be found in the prophetic division of the Holy ScriptureV springs
the proverb nvnaw Tvcn'? 1D1D b^n N'3i3 5>B' c^rh non wrr Non pe' trfyn
nbvm i Bee Sifri 33a, ed. Friedmann. Hesba Stretton has made it
the motto of her novel, Cobtnela and Cables, 1882, where it is rendered :
SiTu are at first like cobv>ebs, at last like eaMee. The English oob corre-
sponds to the Talmudic K^a^s.
Digitized by
Google
164 ISAIAH.
Ver. 19:" Who tay. Let him hasten, let him then speed on his
work that vx may see ; and let the counsel of the Holy One of
Israel Turw draw luar and come so that we may experience it*
They doubt that the day of Jehovah will ever come (Ezek.
xiL 22 ; Jer. v. 12 f. ; cf. 2 Pet ilL 3 £) ; and they go so far
ia their unbelief as to wish for what they cannot and will not
believe, and challenge it to come so as to see it with their
own eyes and experience it (Jer. xviL 15 ; otherwise than in
Amos V. 18 and Mai. ii 17— iii. 1, where this wishing does
not proceed from scorn and defiance, but from impatience and
littleness of faith). As the two verbs denoting haste are
used both intransitively (Judg. xx. 37, to make haste, to
hasten) and transitively, the passage may also be translated:
let his work haste, hurry itself on (Hitzig, Ewald, Umbreit,
and Drechsler) ; but we prefer the transitive sense in accord-
ance with chap. Ix. 22. The forms ff^rr (fli from Bin=
Beduin i^\»., to move oneself quickly, to drive along;
DMZ. xxii, 159 f.) and fwrtan are, along with Ps. xxiv. and
Job xi 1 7, in fact the only examples of a voluntative in the
third person, strengthened by the ah of summons or challenge ;
for the imperfects in ah in Ezek. xxiiL 20 and Job xx. 21
are double feminine forms (Gres. § 48, 3). The fact that the
freethinkers call Grod ^xifc" V\1\), while they yet scoff at His
self-attestation actually authenticating this name, is explained
from chap. xxx. 1 1 : They take this name of Grod out of the
mouth of the prophet, so that their scorn applies to both God
and His prophet at the same time.
The fourth woe is expressed in ver. 20 : " Woe to those who
call evil good, and good evil ; who give out darkness for light, and
light for darkness ; who give out hitter for sweet, and sweet for
hitter." The previous woe had reference to those who made
the facts of sacred history the butt of their naturalistic doubt
and ridicule, especially so far as they were the subject of
prophecy. This fourth woe relates to those who adopted a
code of morals that completely overturned the first principles
of ethics, and was utterly opposed to the law of God ; for evil,
darkness, and bitter, with their opposites, represent funda-
mental moral principles that are essentially related (Matt
vL 23; Jas. iiL 11). Evil, as antitheistic, is dark in its
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEK T. Sl-SS. 165
nature, and therefore loves darkness, and is exposed to the
punitive power of darkness. And although it may be sweet
as regards its material enjoyment, it is nevertheless bitter,
inasmuch as it produces abhorrence and disgust in the godlike
nature of man, and, after a brief self-deception, is turned into
the bitter woe of miserable consequences. Darkness and light,
bitter and sweet, therefore, are not tautological metaphors for
evil and good ; but designations of evil and good according
to their essential natures, and their necessary and internal
effects. The D'pfc', with following '?, parallel to D'^P*<*f (with
Mercha, not Darga), has a subjective meaning, as in Job
ivii. 12.
The fifth woe, ver. 21 : "Woe unto those who are wise in their
own eyes, and who are prudent in their own sight." The third
woe had reference to the unbelieving naturalists, the opponents
of prophecy, nwaa ; the fourth woe referred to the moralists,
who brought ideas into confusion ; and to this woe is attached
by a closely-connected thought the woe denounced upon those
whom want of humility makes inaccessible for the nosn, which
goes hand in hand with the n«l33, — that wisdom of which the
fear of Jehovah is the basis (Ps. cxi 10 ; Prov. i 7 ; Job
xxviiL 28; Eccles. xii 13). "Be not wise in thine own
eyes," is a fundamental rule of this wisdom (Prov. iii. 7).
Upon this wisdom rests the prophetic state - policy, whose
warnings, as we read in chap. xxviiL 9, 10, they rejected so
contemptuously. That in this woe the prophet had specially
in view the untheocratic state-expediency, is shown by the
sixth woe, which is directed to the administration of right in
the State.
The sixth woe, vers. 22, 23 : " Woe unto those who are heroes
to drink loine, and bold men to mix strong drivJc, who acquit evil-
doers for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous
from everybody." We see from ver. 23 that the drinkers in
ver. 22 are unjust judges. The threatening of these is every-
where Isaiah's ceterum censeo ; and accordingly it is also here
the content of the sixth and last woe. They are heroes, yet
not in avenging wrong, but in drinking wine; they are
famous men, yet not for deciding between guilt and innocence,
but for mixing strong drink, tliat is to say, with spices (so
Cheyne, Knabenbauer, and others; cf. vinum aromatites.
Digitized by
Google
166 ISAIAH.
myrrhinum, dbsynthUea, etc in Pliny).* The wine of the
Jews of the present day in Jerusalem and Hebron, Guthe
tells me, is always spiced, and it thereby acquires great power
of heating, and passes violently into the blood, a fact which
agrees with the vphv in chap. v. 11. But it always remains
questionable (cf. on Song of Sol. vii. 3) whether it is not
mixing with water that is meant It was an old custom to
temper or dilute wine and other spirituous liquors ("O?', e.g.
date wine and cider) by an addition of water, and to make
them more agreeable for drinking (Maimonides' rvsa\ yi^n roa^n,
viL 9), which is called Ipo (in the Mishna are, Aloda zara 586),
wherefore this verb also comes to mean to pour in, to fill
up, chap. xix. 14 (in Mishn. jto), e.g. Pesachim x. 1, and else-
where, and the classical Kepawwai and tcmperare. Accord-
ingly ^oo, 'HDDp, or 3JO signifies any kind of fine tasting wine
which has been made palatable by spicing or diluting (Arab.
ckamr memzUga). In such preparation of intoxicating drinks
they are praiseworthy and strong, and therefore the more
accessible to bribery for acquitting the guilty and condemning
the just (Deut xxv. 1; Prov. xvii. 15); beclouding them-
selves with strong drink, they become blind to right, and get
bold for wrong, chap, xxviii. 7 f. ; Prov. xxxi. 5, aij» (Arab.
'ulcb, whereas ai?^, a heel = 'cM)) is an adverbial accusative :
in compensation for, or for pay ; and iJsp (which, as one is
tempted to read D^, belongs, according to the Masora, to the
misleading uod) refers back distributively to D'i3'«nf; as, for
example, in Hos. iv. 8.
In the three denunciations of woes in vers. 18-21, Isaiah
confined himself to the mere unexplicated ^n. On the other
hand, the first two woes denounced upon the covetous and the
revellers were already expanded into a detailed announcement
of punishment. But now, when the prophet has reached the
bad judges, the announcement of punishment breaks out so
vehemently that a return to the form of the mere expression of
woe is not to be thought of. To the two therefores, ???, in vers.
13, 14, a third is now added in ver. 24 : " Therefore as fire's
tongue devours stubble, and hay collapses in fiame, their root
* The Assyrian Syllabaries enumerate several kinds of such spiced
wines, such as karanu Idni = Absinth wine (karauu ={Unp, Aboda zara
30a. CL Noldeke in DMZ. xxxiiL 331).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBB V. 24. 167
vnll leeome as mould, and their blossom fiy wp as dust ; for
they have despised the Torah of Jehovah of hosts, and scom-
fttlly rg'eeted the proclamation of the Holy One of IsratL"
The persons primarily intended are those described in vers.
22, 23, but with an extension of the range of view to Jadah
and Jerusalem, the vineyard of which they are the bad fruit.
The sinners are compared to a plant which moulders both
above and below, and therefore altogether, into dust (cf.
chap. xxxviL 31; Job xviiL 16; Amos ii. 9; MaL iii 19;
and the expression, " let there not be to him root below and
fruit above," in the epitaph on the sarcophagus of the
Fhenician king iTpjoe^K, E^mun'azar). Their root moulders
in the earth, and their blossom (n^B, the same as in chap,
xviii 5) turns to fine dust which the wind carries away. And
this transformation of root and blossom takes place very
suddenly as through the force of fire. In the expression fejQ
B'B'ni B'K ;^e6 cp, which consiste of five short words with five
sibilants (cf. Ja IL 5), one hears the crackling sparks, the
lambent flame. When the infinitive construct is connected
with both subject and object, the subject generally stands
firat, as in chap. Ixiv. 1, but here it is the object, as in chap.
XX. 1 (with reference to the former, compare the similar
Arabic form Jcatlun Zeidun 'Amran). The infinitive con-
struct passes in the second clause into the finite verb just as
in the similarly constructed passt^, chap. Ixiv. 1. As "3"]^
has the intransitive meaning eolldbi, either nsn? is aee. loci, or
nxv? e^n is the construct state, and means flame-bay, ie. hay
destined for the flame, or going up in flames.* As the reason
' In Arabic also, Atdt/ signifies hay ; but in common usage (at least in
Syriac) it is applied not to dried grass, but to meadow-green grass or
green barley : bence the expression yahuU here gives green fodder. Here,
however, in Isaiah, v^vn is equivalent to hatti ydbii, and this is its tme
original meaning. In the time of the kings, as is evident from Amos
vii. 1, the growth of grass was twice mown, specially in order to be used
as fodder for cattle ; (S'p? there is hay in the proper sense, i.e. grass for
fodder after the first cropping. In our day it is only in March and April
that grass and green barley are cut and used as fodder ; during the rest of
the year the fodder is made up of barley and chopped straw (pn, 1 Kings
V. 28). When grass is otherwise cut, it is used for firing. Stubble and
wild growths, when dried by the heat of the sun, are set on fire and burnt
to ashes (see James Neil in Jewish Intelligenee, 1886, pp^ 66-^),
Digitized by
Google
16d ISAUR.
vrhj the plantation of Judah so suddenly dies out, instead of
certain particular sins, there is at once named the sin of all
sins, the rejection of the word of God with the heart (0*5°),
and in word and deed (I'M). The twofold ri« and riKl give
prominence to the object, and the bunt* V\tp, changing with
'n, makes the sin appear all the greater, the more exalted
and holy the God is who reveals Himself in His word, and
who has, moreover, revealed Himself to Israel as His own
peculiar people. No sooner has the prophet named the
guilty sin of Judah, than the proclamation of punishment
has also got new fuel, and it flares forth anew in ver. 25 :
" Wherefore tfie anger of Jehovah is kindled against His people,
and He stretches His hand over it and smites it ; then the
mountotns tremile, and its carcase becomes like outsweepings in
the midst of the Greets, — with all this His anger is not stilled,
and His hand remains stretclud out." The last words are
repeated in chaps, ix. 11, 16, x. 4, as a refrain. Cheyne
thinks with Ewald, that vers. 25-30 had a place originally
within chap. ix. 7-x. 4; and Bredenkamp expounds chaps.
V. 24, 25, ix. 7-11, 12-16, 17-20, x. 1-4, as fivef con-
nected strophes. But what could have occasioned their
separation from each other? As chap. iiL 14 is a prelude
to chap. V. 1—7, this passage from vers. 25—30, with the
formula, " with all this His anger is not stilled . . . ," may
also he a prelude to chaps, ix. 7— x. 4 ; and further, in chap.
V. 15 there is repeated chap. iL 9, 17, without chap. v. and
chap. ii. sq. therefore being a whole. The judgment upon Judah
which stands here before the soul of the prophet, is certainly a
future and not a past judgment ; for the verbs after IS'?}' are
like those after the three previous p?, praett. prophetica. It
is therefore impossible to interpret the phrase, " then the hills
tremble," as a reference to the earthquake in the time of
Uzziah (Amos i. 1 ; Zech. xiv. 5). This judgment in the
near future will consist in Jehovah stretching out His hand
over His people, or, as it is elsewhere said, swinging it over
them (Luther: swaying or moving it hither and thither),
chaps, xi. 15, xix. 16, xxx. 30, 32 ; and bringing it down
upon Judah with a blow, the violence of which gets to be
felt by the surroundings of nature as well as by men. What
sort cf blow this will be, may be inferred from the fact that
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEIt T. 26. 169
the corpses lie anbaried upon the streets like the common
sweepings. The reading niltn is to be rejected, for either
rtvn^ as the Complut., or nnnn, which has the Masora on
Num. XX. 39 in its favour. It at once occurs to compare
nraDS with the Arabic kusd^a, sweepings, scourings, from
.^^, to sweep, to scour (see on chap, xxxiil 12); but htsdfyi
is the common form for such refuse (e.g. kvidma, nail-paring),
while nrnE)3 must mean swept out, and then as there was no
reason for using here the form rRB3, any more than P9n,
fnn, h\iiV, nmoa had to be written. Hence the a is to be
taken as that of comparison, and nmo is to be derived from
IBD (yerrere), as 'np from nnp (V^u synonymous with ,^\^).
It will therefore not be a pestilence (which, moreover, as a
stroke of God is indicated not by nan, but ^X), but a carnage
of war ; and in reference to the still more fearful judgment
threatened in vers. 26 sqq., which is to proceed from the
world-power, it cannot be doubted that the spirit of pro-
phecy here indicates the bloodshed brought about by the
Syro-Ephraimitic war in Judah (see 2 Chron. xxviii. 5, 6).
The mountains may well have then trembled under the
marching of troops and the clashing of arms, and the felling
down of trees, and the shrieks of woe, and nature in any case
had to suffer along with what men had incurred ; for nature
is related to man according to God's creative order, as the
body of man to his souL Every infliction of the wrath of
God which falls upon a people, smites at the same time the
land which has deteriorated with it; and in this sense the
mountains of Judah then quaked, although only to the hear-
ing of initiated ears. But for all this (3, notwithstanding, in
spite of, as in Job L 22), Jehovah's anger, as the prophet
foresees, will not turn away as it does when He is satisfied,
and His hand will remain always still stretched out over
Judah in order to strike again.
Jehovah does not take the human instruments of His
further strokes anywhere from Israel and the neighbouring
peoples, but from the peoples in far-ofiT lands. Ver. 26:
" And H« lifts up a hawner for the distant peoples, and hisses
to it from the end of the earth ; and behold hurrying hastily it
comes hither." What the prophet here prophesies already
Digitized by
Google
170 ISAIAH.
began to be fulfilled in the time of Ahaz. Bat tbe propbecy
which starts with this verse bears in it all tbe possible marks
of being tbe opposite of a vaticinium post eveiUum. It is
properly only what was threatened in Deut xx\'iii 49 sqq.
(of. chap. xxxiL 21 sqq.), which is here presented in a more
plastic form, but which yet appears to tbe perception of tbe
prophet as if emerging out of mist. God summons the far-off
peoples; P^nno is here and in chap. xlix. 1 virtually an adjective,
as Jer. xxiil 23 it is virtually a substantive. It combines
the meanings from afar, as e.g. in chaps, xxv. 1, xliii. 6, and
far away, as e.g. in chaps, xxil 3, xxiil 6, cf. chap. xvii. 1 3,
as in Homer, IxaOev, from far, may have the sense of far away
(so with the opposite, eyyi^dev, near) ; the measure of length
being determined from the terminus ad quem backwards,
instead of from the terminus a quo forwards. In this passage
and elsewhere p^mo has become fixed into an expression of
distance, with the whence and whither lost sight of (see on
chap, xxxvii. 26). The visible working of God presents
itself sensibly to the prophet in two figures. Jehovah plants
a banner or standard which, like an optical telegraph, tells
the peoples still at a far distance, like the battle-horn, 'id^B',
that they are to band themselves together for war. Dl is a
high staff with a fluttering banner (chap, xxxiii. 23), set np
upon a bare mountain-top (chap, xiii 2) ; K^, in this favourite
figure of Isaiah, alternates with D^?. The peoples through
whom this was first fulfilled, were those of the Assyrian
empire. These peoples are regarded as far off, dwelling at
the end of the earth (chap, xxxix. 3), not merely inasmuch as
the Euphrates formed the boundary to the north-east between
what was geographically known and unknown to the Israel-
ites (Ps. Ixxii. 8 ; Zech. ix. lU), but also inasmuch as the
prophet has in his mind a complex body of peoples stretching
away into further Asia. The second figure is taken from a
bee-master, who entices the bees with hissing or whistling to
come out of their hives and settle on the ground ; as Virgil
{Oeorg. iv. 54) says to the bee-master who wants to make the
bees settle down : " Baise a tinkling sound, and beat the
cymbals of Cybele round the quarter." ' Thus does Jehovah
' This tinkling with acythes and cymbals is now regarded as of no nse ;
Ke Gedde's Apiarixm AngUeum (1721), xv. § 13^
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBB T. r, 88. 171
entice the banded peoples, like swarms of bees (chap. vii. 1 8),
who now swarm hither, hurrying rapidly. The plural passes
into the singnlar, for those who are approaching appear at
first as an indistinguishable agglomerated mass ; but it is also
possible that the ruling people among the many is fixed upon.
The perception and the expression are both misty, and this is
quite characteristic Witli nan the prophet points to those
who step into his circle of vision ; ?? n^TO, they are coming
on, t.«. in the shortest time, with quick feet, and the nearer
they come within his view, the more distinctly can he describe
them. — Ver. 27: " There is none wearied, and no otu stuvMing
among them ; they give themselves no slximher and no deep, and
to none is the girdle of his hips loosed ; and to none is the thong
of his shoes rent asunder." Notwithstanding the long, far
march, there is no one fatigued, *l"5?, who had been obliged to
fall out singly and remain behind (Deut. xxv. 18 ; Isa.
xiv. 31). There is no P?*^3; for they march on, pressing
incessantly forwards, as if on a levelled road (Jer. xxxi. 9).
From their eagerness for the conflict they do not slumber
(du, mimetic of audible breathing), to say nothing of them
sleeping (iB^) : they do not slumber in order to repose, and
they do not allow themselves the usual night's rest The
girdle of his armour-shirt or coat-of-mail in which the sword
is inserted (Neh. iv. 12), is lacking in none; not even the
shoe-thong of any one, with which the sandals are fastened
and knotted, is rent asunder (pw, disrumpitur). The descrip-
tion of their wanting rest forms a climax descendens, while the
representation of the tightness and lastingness of their armour
is a climax aseendens ; the two statements follow each other
after the manner of a chiasmits.
The prophet now describes their weapons and war-chariots.
Ver. 28 : " He whose arrows are sharpened, and all his hows
strung ; the hoofs of his horses are accounted like to flint, and
his wheels to the whirlwind" As perceived by the prophet,
they are moving always nearer. For they have brought with
them pointed arrows in their quivers (chap, xxii 6). But all
their bows are already trodden (which implies that, as they were
in length as much as the height of a man, this was done by
means of setting the left foot upon the inner bend) ; and the
fact shows that they find themselves near their goal The
Digitized by
Google
172 ISAUH.
right reading is f^ft?, with Dag. dirimms (Gesen. § 20. 26X
as, according to Abulwalid, Kimchi, and other witnesses, it is
also in Ps. xxxviL 15. As the horses in ancient times were
not shod, firm hoofs, SrrXai Kaprepal, were, according to
Xenophon's Hippikos, a prime quality of a good horse. The
horses of the enemy now drawing near to Judah have hoofs
which must be found like flint (">¥, air. \67.=Arab. zirr, Syr.
tarana), hard, sharp-cornered or sharp-pointed stone. Homer
calls such horses x''^'"^'''^'^^ brass-footed. And the two
wheels of each of the war-chariots, in front of which the
horses are harnessed, turn with such rushing rapidity, and
throw everything down before them with such violence, not
merely as if the whirlwind drove, but as if they were the
whirlwind itself (chap. IxvL 15 ; Jer. iv. 13). Naham com-
pares them to flashes of lightning, chap, ii 5. — ^Thus far the
description of the prophet moves on as if in double quick
marches, through clauses consisting of from two to four words.
Now the description becomes heavy and stealthy, and then
springs, in a few sentences, like a carnivorous beast upon its
prey. Ver. 29 : "A roar he raises like the lioness ; he roars
like the lions arid growls low, — seizes the prey, carries it off, and
no one rescues." The imperfects (Kert, JKf*), with the preced-
ing r? ^i^f, which is equivalent to a future (according to which
also Chethib, 3Kfi, is, therefore, admissible as per/, consec.), hold
fast every separate factor of the description for consideration.
The lion roars when he longs eagerly for prey, and such now
is the battle-cry of the bloodthirsty enemy, which the prophet
compares to the roar of the lioness C'??, Copt laioi, with the
feminine form, nop <), and with the roar of young lions full
of strength (D'T??). In place of the roaring there succeeds
a growling (pm^ fremitus, Prov. xix. 12), when the lion makes
himself ready, and prepares to fall upon his prey.' And so
the prophet hears, in the army thus ready for battle, a low,
evil-foreboding hum. But he immediately also perceives how
the enemy seizes his booty and drags it irrecoverably away
(DvB!, properly, how he makes it slip away, ie. brings it into
* In Arabic, en-ruhem is used to signify greediness (see Ali's Proverbt,
No. 16).
' The Indo-Qermanic names of the lion appear to be connected with
tmh, perhaps also k^^; see Curtius, Qriedt. StymoL No. 643.
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTIB V. 8a 173
a place of safety; cf. Micah vi. 14). This prey or booty
is Judah. And it adds to the weird, gloomy character of the
prophecy that the prophet does not name Judah. As if he
was not able to let it pass his lips, this object still remains
unexpressed in ver. 30 : "And there is a deep moaning over
it in that day, like the moaning of the sea; and he looks to the
earth, and behold darkness — tribulation and light — it becomes
night in the clouds of heaven over there." The roar of the
lion and the surging of the sea are so like each other in the
impression they make, that Sierra Leone (Sierra = Arab. i\j^,
mountain chain) took its name from the fact that those who
first landed there took the noise of the waves breaking on the
steep shores for the roaring of lions. The subject of Dii3^ is
the mass of the enemy; and in the expressions v?^ and
033 (with the Pi used only here instead of the usual Hi.
t3*3n) the prophet has the people of J.udah in view as the
enemy falls upon them with a roar like the sea, and thus
rushes as in sea-billows over them. And when the people
of Judah looked to the earth, and therefore to the land in
which they dwelt, darkness presents itself to them, — a darkness
in which is swallowed up every friendly and smiling aspect
formerly exhibited by it And what further ? "^KJ "iv have
been explained as moon (="1TO) and sun (Jewish expositors),
and as stone and gleam = hail and lightning (Drechsler) ;
but these and similar explanations depart too far from the
ordinary usage. And the separation of the words 1V and
T<K, proposed by Hitzig, Gesenius (Thesaurus), Ewald, Elnobel,
Umbreit, Schegg, Meier, Luzzatto, Nagelsbach (who refers to
Job xviil 1 6), and Bredenkamp, so that the one word closes a
sentence (" darkness of tribulation ") and the other opens one
(Cheyne : " yea, the light is dusk through the clouds thereof"), is
against the impression of the connection made by the two
monosyllables, and which is supported by the punctuation.
However, we thus obtain a connected thought, as in the
Valg. : et ecee tendn-ae tribulationis et lux dbtenebrata est in
ealigine gns (Jer.). But if lisj iv are left together, a still
more expressive meaning results, i^tn iy are tribulation and
lighting up, the one following the other and passing over
into the other, like morning and night, chap. xxi. 12. This
Digitized by
Google
176 IBAUH.
as the preacher of the judgment of hardening;" and if chap. vi.
stands in its true historical place, it would contain the result
or sequel of the preceding prophetic preaching. But true as
it is that the whole of the central portion of Israel's history,
which lies midway between the commencement and the close,
is divided into halves by the contents of chap, vi, and that the
significant importance of Isaiah as a prophet consists especially
in the fact that he stood upon the boundary between these
two historic halves, yet there are serious objections which
present themselves to such a view of chap. vi. It is possible,
indeed, that this distinctive importance may have been given
to Isaiah's calling and appointment at liis very first calL
And what Umbreit says — namely, that chap. vL must make
the impression upon every unprejudiced mind of its being the
prophet's inaugural vision — cannot really be denied. But
the position in which chap. vi. stands in the book itself
exercises an influence contrary to this impression, unless that
position can be accounted for in some other way. The im-
pression, however, still remains (just as at chap. i. 7-9), and
recurs again and again. We will therefore proceed to chap,
vi. without labouring to efface it It is possible that we may
discover some other satis&ctory explanation of the enigmatical
position of chap, vi in relation to what has preceded it
Thb Prophbt's Account of his Divine Mission, Chap. VI.
The time of the occurrence narrated in the following
words : In the death-year of the king Uzziah, is important as
regards the prophet himself. The statement thus made in
the naked form in which it is here prefixed, makes a much
sharper impression than if it commenced with W (cf. Ex.
xvi 6 ; Prov. xxiv. 27). It was the year of the death of
Uzziah (as he is also called in 2 Kings xv. 13, 2 Chron.
chap, xxvi, whereas he is called Azaria in 2 Kings xiv. 21,
1 Chron. xii. 12, and in cuneiform inscriptions). It was
therefore the year in which Uzziah was still reigning, although
his death was at hand ; not the first year of Jotham's reign,
bnt the last of Uzziah's ; for it is more than highly probable
that in the calculation of the regnant years of the kings, the
year of the accession of one king was reckoned to his prede-
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTIR T. to. 175
from afar is couched in sach nameless and general terms, and
is 80 vague and misty, that we cannot but say that everything
that was to happen to the people of God on the part of the
world-power during the five great and extended periods of
judgment that were now so soon to commence (viz. the
Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Persian, the Grecian, and the
Soman), is here unfolding itself out of the mist of futurity,
and presenting itself to the prophetie eye of the seer. Already
in the time of Ahaz the character of the prophecy changes in
this respect It is then that the eventful relation of Israel
to the imperial power assumes its first concrete shape in the
form of a relation to Assur (Assyria). And from that time
forth the imperial power in the mouth of the prophet is no
longer an unknown quantity ; for although the notion of the
world-power was not yet embodied in Assur, yet it is called
Assur, and Assur represents it. It also necessarily follows
from this, that chaps. iL-iv., v. belong to the time anterior to
Ahaz, i«. to that of Uzziah and Jotham. But several puzzling
questions suggest themselves here. If chaps. iL— iv., v. were
uttered under Uzziah and Jotham, how could Isaiah begin
with a promise (chap, il 1-4) which is repeated word for
word in Micah iv. 1 sqq., where it is the direct antithesis of
the threat in chap, iii 12, which was uttered by Micah,
according to Jer. xxvL 18, in the time of Hezekiah ? Again,
if we consider the advance made in this threatening prophecy
from the general expressions with which it commences in
chap. L to the close of chap, v., in what relation does this
discourse in chap. i. stand to chaps, ii.— iv., v., seeing that
vers. 7—9 are not ideal, but have a contemporary historical
reference, and therefore at least presuppose the Syro-Ephraim-
itish war ? And lastly, if chap, vi does really relate, as it
apparently does, to the calling of Isaiah to the prophetic
office, how are we to explain the singular fact that three
prophetic discourses precede the history of his call, which
ought properly to stand at the opening of the book 7
Drechsler and Caspari have attempted to explain this by
maintaining that chap. vL contains an account of the call
of the prophet, who was already installed in his ofiBce, to a
particular mission. The proper heading to be adopted for
chap. vL would therefore be, " The consecration of the prophet
Digitized by
Google
178 isAUH.
man, and bis limitation by the present life. Tliis is the mode
of revelation characteristic of ecstatic vision (ip iKoraaei. or
ip TTpevfMTt). Isaiah, then, is here transported to heaven;
for although elsewhere prophetic ecstasies have the earthly
temple as the place and object of the seeing (Amos ix. 1 ;
Ezek. viiL 3, x. 4, 5 ; Acts xxii. 1 7) ; yet here the high exalted
throne (to which and to Him sitting on it, chap. IviL 15,
K^l D*} is to be referred) is the heavenly counterpart of the
earthly throne of the mercy-seat ; and therefore ?a'? (properly,
spacious hall, a name of the temple as the palace of God the
King), as in Ps. xL 4, xviii. 7, xxix. 9, and frequently else-
where, is not the Jerusalem temple (Beuss and others), but
the heavenly temple. There he sees the universal ruler, or,
as we prefer to translate this name, formed from n?=P^,* the
All -Lord sitting (3?'' is an accusative predicate, for the
Hebrew expression is like the Latin form vidi te ambulantem),
and, moreover, in human form (Ezek. i. 26), as is shown by the
trailing robe, of which the floating ends or skirts fill the hall
(obw, as in Ex. xxviii. 33, from ^B'=JL, med. 0, and
JU, med. Y, to hang down loose, see on chap. v. 14). The
LXX., Targum, Jerome have obliterated the figure of the
trailing robe as too anthropomorphic. But John in his
Gospel is bold enough to say that it was Jesus whose glory
Isaiah beheld (John xii. 41); for the incarnation of the
Logos is the truth of all the Biblical anthropomorphisms.
The heavenly temple is the super - terrestrial place which
Jehovah, by giving Himself to be beheld there by angels and
saints, makes into a heaven and a temple. In giving His
glory to be beheld. He must at the same time veil it, because
the creature cannot bear it But what veils it is not less
splendid than what of it is made manifest It is this which
is symbolized to Isaiah in the long trailing robe. He sees
the Lord, and what he further sees is the all-filling splendid
robe of the indescribable One. As far as the look of the seer
reaches, the ground is covered everywhere with this splendid
robe. There is therefore no place to stand there. In accord-
ance with this, the vision of the seraphim is determined in
I Conip. Dor WdUende as applied to (3od by the Old German and Anglo-
Saxon poets.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB VL S. 179
ver. 2 : " Seraphim stood over Him, eadi one of which had six
wivgs; vnth two he covered his face, and wUh two he covered his
feet, and with two hefleruo." v >P?D is not to be explained as
near to bim ; for although the mode of expression that one in
standing finds himself hv, over one sitting, Ex. xviii. 13, or
even ?po, above him, Jer. xxxvi. 21 (2 Chron. xxvL 19,
niDpn naiDj) 7?o, above the altar of incense), is also used of
spirits, Job i. 6 ; 1 Eangs xxiL 19 ; Zech. vL 5 ; and of men,
Zech. iv. 14, in relation to God upon His throne, where an
actual towering above is not to be thought of ; yet 'h hvt/0,
that strongest expression for supra, cannot be otherwise than
literally meant ; and hence the Targum and Bashi explain it
" above, for His service." The sequence of the accents can be
taken as in favour of this view (Luzzatto) ; it is the same as
in Gen. i 5a. How Isaiah thinks of this standing above Him
who is on the throne, is to be inferred from the use made of
the wings of the seraphim. The imperfects do not state what
they are accustomed to do (Bottcher and others), but what the
seer saw them do ; he saw them fiy with two of their six
wings (2!?Jfi, dual, instead of tbe plural, as also elsewhere in
the case of words used for what is presented in pairs,
DMZ. xxxii. 33). They therefore stood flying, that is, they
hovered (cf. Toy, Num. xiv. 14), as is said of the earth and the
stars : they stand although in free space. Job xxvi 7 ; and as
Apuleius says of the eagle when fixing his prey : Tolatn paemt
eodem loco pendtila eircumiuetur. It is true that the seraphim
(how many not determined ') are not to be regarded as tower-
ing over the head of Him who is sitting on the throne, although
i? applies to Him, and not to the throne (Jer. super Hind,
scil, solium) ; but they hovered over His robe that filled the
hall, being supported by the two outspread wings, while with
two other wings they covered their faces in awe before the
divine glory (Taig. n« videaiU), and with two wings they
covered their feet in the feeling of the deep distance of the
creature from the Holiest of all (Targ. ne videantur), as the
cherubim in Ezek. L 11 do their bodies. This is the only
* Nestle draws my attention to the fact that Origen only accepts two
seraphim, and refers the suffix of VJD and v^D to God. The LXX.
favour this view, for they have merely tc »?e»«x»» and tw; tsSx; (without
»ir«i>, as in the imperfect text of the Stier-Thcil Polyglott).
Digitized by
Google
180 ISAIAH.
passage in the Holy Scripture where the seraphim are
mentioned. The representation of the Church, which took its
rise from Dionysius Areopagita, represents them as at the
head of the nine choirs of angels ; the first rank or order is
formed by the seraphim, cherubim, and throni, for which view
it may be addujced that the cherubim in Ezekiel bear up the
chariot of the divine throne, whereas here the seraphim hover
round the seat of the divine throne. In any case the
seraphim and cherubim are heavenly beings, different in kind ;
the attempts to prove their identity have only an apparent
support in Rev. iv. 8. Further, tnr\\^ certainly does not
mean merely spirits as such, but if not the most exalted of all,
yet such as have a separate place before the others ; for the
Scriptures really teach a gradation in their rank, MtranMa
eoeUstis. As the cherubim of Ezekiel are three-fourths in
animal form, and the writer of the Apocalypse gives animal
forms to three of the tour l^&a, which are six-winged, like the
seraphim here (Rev. iv. 7, 8), the seraphim thus appear, apart
from what was human shaped in them, necessarily to be
represented as winged dragons ; for the serpent lifted up by
Moses is called 1'ifc' in Num. xxL 8, and the flying dragon in
xiv. 29, IP^J® (rib, from fpb (to bum, and particularly to
cause burning wounds, whereas serpens is related to Spireiv,
repere '). In any case the name seraphim includes the idea of
burning, and in any view the sensible externality in which
they appear to the seer is an emblematic embodiment of their
supposed nature. While the seraphim hover above on both
sides of the throne, and thus form two semicircular choirs
hovering over against each other, they worship Him that sits
on the throne as in a responsive hymn. Ver. 3 : " And one
cried aloud to the other, and spake : Holy, Jwly, holy is JehovaJt
of hosts, filling the whole earth is His glory." The meaning is
not that they raised their voice in concert at the same time
(Luzzatto); nor is ?^ used in Ps. xlii. 8 iu this sense as
= 1J39 ; but it was an antiphonal song proceeding without
interruption. Some of them commenced and others responded,
whether they repeated the whole Trisagion or continued the
> Cheyne, like Riehm, sees in the clierab of the original extia- Israelite
representation, the personified thunder-cloud, and in the seraph the
jiersonified serpent-like lightning.
Digitized by
Google
OHAPTKR VI. 8. 181
}^p B^np e¥ip with rraa pKir^a k^ Isaiah hears this anti-
phonal or hypophonal song of the seraphim, not merely to
learn that endless worship of God is their blessed occupation,
bnt it is with this doxology as with the doxologies of the
Apocalypse : like the whole scene, its significance lies in its
reference to the history of salvation. God is in Himself the
Holy One VS''?,, i.e. He that is separated ; that is, from the
world of the finite and also of sin, and who is exalted above
it His glory *ri3ii, as Oetinger and Bengel have formulated
it, is His disclosed holiness, as His holiness is His inner
glory. That God's holiness should become universally
manifest, or what is the same thing, that His glory should
become the fulness of the whole earth, is what was already
brought into view in Num. xiv. 21 as the end of the work
of God (cf. chap, xi 9 ; Hab. ii 14). This end of the work
of Crod stands eternally present before God ; and the seraphim
also have it before them in its final completion as the theme
of their song of praise. But Isaiah is a man in the midst of
the history which is striving to this end ; and the exclama-
tion of the seraphim, as now thus precisely expressed, gives
him the means of knowing to what it will eventually come
on earth ; and the heavenly forms which now present them-
selves visibly to him enable him to conceive the nature of
the divine glory with which the earth is to become fulL The
whole Book of Isaiah bears traces of the impression of this
ecstasy. The favourite name of God in the mouth of the
prophet 'Nnb^ t'in^, is the echo of this seraphic Sanetus ; and
the fact that this name of God is already expressed in the
discourses in chap, i 2-iv. 5, and thus used by way of pre-
ference, is a further confirmation of the view that Isaiah is
here narrating his first calling. All the prophecies of Isaiah
bear this name of God on them as their stamp ; it occurs thir-
teen times (and including chaps, v. 16 and x. 17, fifteen times)
in chaps, i.— xxxix. ; twelve times (and including chaps. xliiL 1 5,
xlix. 7, c£ also IviL 15, fourteen times) in chaps. xl.-lxvL ; and
therefore twenty-nine times in all in the whole Book of Isaiah.
On this Lnzzatto remarks : " The prophet, as if foreseeing that
the second part of his book would be denied to be his, has
impressed the name of God, ^b^ e^p, as his seal on both
parts, i^caa lomn onn." The word elsewhere occurs, apart
Digitized by
Google
182 ISAIAH.
from Hab. L 12, only three times in tbe Psalms (Ps. IxxL 22,
Ixxviii. 41, Ixzxix. 19), and twice in Jeremiah in two pas-
sages (chaps. L 29, IL 5), which the hypothesis of interpolation
regards as introductions of their Isaiah IL It belongs to
Isaiah's peculiar prophetic signature, puD. Here we find
ourselves at the very source of this phenomenon. Does the
thrice holy indeed refer to God the Triune ? ^ Knobel con-
tents himself with remarking that the expression serves for
strengthening. No doubt men are accustomed to say thrice
what they wish to say exhaustively and satisfyingly ; for
the three is the number of disclosed unity. But why is this
so ? The Pythagoreans said that number is the principle
of all things ; but the Scripture, according to which God
creates the world in twice three days by ten words of power,
and completes it in seven days, teaches that God is the prin-
ciple of all numbers. That the three is the number of un-
folded and self-enclosed unity has its ultimate ground in this,
that it is the number of the threefold being of God ; and that
being admitted, the Trisagion of the seraphim (as well as that
of tbe cherubim in Sev. iv. 8) therefore applies in tbe con-
sciousness of those spirits to God the Triune, and it is called
in the language of the Church, not without right, Hymnua
Trinitatia.
Isaiah, hearing this, stands enraptured at the farthest dis-
tance from Him that sat on the throne, namely, under the
door of the heavenly palace or temple ; and what he there
further felt and saw is related by him in ver. 4 : " And
the foundatiojis of the thresJiolds shook at the voice of those
who cried ; and the house became full of smoke." By rtB*
trasri the LXX. Jer. Syr. and others understand the posts
of the lintels, the supporting beams of the I^Pf^ closing the
door at the top (Mishn. *fi?f, Arab. iiLJ), This may be
taken as correct ; for that Q^bd means not merely the thres-
holds, but also the horizontal beam which closes the frame-
work of the door above, is proved by Amos ix. 1, where the
I Galatinus asserts that he saw a Targum in Lecce (a town in the
Neapolitan province of the same name), in which the Trisagion was trans-
lated : Ktmp nn WCnp »-\2 Wenp ttSK Wtrnp, doubtless an inter-
polation by a Christian hand.
Digitized by
Google
CHAWKB VI. 4. l83
commancl is given to smite tbe chapiters of the temple of
Bethel that the D^fio may tremble, and to smash the upper
beams, supported by tbe pillars, down upon the head of those
assembled. Hence Bottcher^s view (Lehrb. i. 428) recom-
mends itself ; he understands o^BD to mean the upper and
lower threshold together, as distinguished from the upright
door-posts. nwM, however, does not mean, as Nagelsbach
holds, " the nght-angled frames, like the bend of the arm "
(for which no parallel can be quoted), but the basis of the
upper beam ; noM being related to bk as matrix to mater,
and being used of the receiving basis (e.g. Talmudic ktiqm
^ITTi, the frame or box of the hand-mill, Berachoth 186, and
tvao noK, the woodwork which runs along the back of the
saw and holds it stretched, Kdim xxi. 3 ; cf. the German
Scraubenmutter, literally, screw-mother or female-screw, which,
with its hollowed windings, receives and holds the cylindrical
screw).^ As often as the choir of the seraphim began their
song (»«1!?P?, cf. the collective singular ^l'*"?, the ambush, in
Josh, viii 1 9 ; P?"!?, the men of war, in Josh. vL 7 and elsewhere ;
and *|BMon, the rearguard, in Josh. vL 9 and elsewhere), the
lower and upper crossbeams of the portal which Isaiah stood in
shook. The building was seized, as it were, with devout awe.
At the same time it was filled with smoke. Seference in this
connection has been made to 1 Kings viii. 10 ; but there God
attests His presence by the cloud of smoke behind which He
conceals Himself, whereas here such a self-attestation was not
required, nor does God dwell here in cloud and mystery ; and
the smoke is not represented as the e£fect of the presence of
God, but of the songs of praise of the seraphim. The material
for producing smoke on the altar of incense is thereby set on
fire. From this point some light begins to fall upon the name
D'ETjfc', which, when derived from a verb, 1"}^', in the sense of
the Arabic iarafa (iarufa), to tower forth, to be set high, or
highly honoured (Gesenius, Hengstenberg, Hofmann, Kurtz,
Cheyne, Schultz, Bredenkamp), gives a sense which expresses
1 Friedr. Delitzsch, Proleg. 107-110, carries back the cognate terms Qs,
noK, niDK to the fundamental notion of width (roominess), according to
which matt in this passage would mean the holder which receives into it
the beam or post.
Digitized by
Google
184 ISAIAH.
little. On the other hand, to follow Knobel, who reads O^niB',
servants of God (Targ. fve^, would be a venturesome contri-
bution of a new word to the lexicon. The verb tpb means
urere and eomburere ; and if the name is explained therefrom,
then the wtriff are fire-spirits of a burning nature, and efficient
in setting on fire or burning away. And in any case there
exists a connection between the name of these heavenly beings
and the name of the serpents, wtHv, in Num. xxL 6, especi-
ally as Isaiah himself uses f|ib in chap. xiv. 29 as the name
of a serpent Why should not the seraphim be heavenly
antitypes of that which the serpent was, which, apart from
sin and the curse, belonged to the good creation of God, and
even appears in Num. zxL 6—9 as ayaOoBai/juav (cf. John
iii. 14) ? Like winged dragons, the seraphim hover round the
throne of God as a crowning lustre. But it is only their
being, which is invisible in itself to sensuous eyes, that thus
makes itself visible to the seer.
At first, overwhelmed and intoxicated by the majestic
spectacle, the seer now becomes conscious of himself. Ver. 5:
" Then I said, Woe to me, for I am lost ; for a man of undean
lips am I, and I am dwelling among a people of unclean lips i
for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts." It is a
fundamental view of the Old Testament that man cannot see
God without dying (Ex. xix. 21, xx. 19, xxxiiL 20 ; Deut.
xviii. 16 ; Jndg. xiiL 22). He must die, — not, as Bitschl and
Schultz, in their theory of sacrifice, suppose, as a creature
standing at a deep distance from Grod, but as an impure one
and a sinner, — because the divine holiness is for the sinner a
consuming fire, chap, xxxiii. 14. But besides, it is true that the
infinite distance between the Creator and the creature exercises
of itself a prostrating effect, which even the seraphim cannot
sustain without veiling their faces, but not a death-producing
effect Here, in Isaiah, the two facts meet : he is a man, and,
moreover, a sinful man. Therefore, as he has come to see
God, he regards himself as undone, annihilated On^*)?, like
SXxoKa, peril, the preterite of the fact viewed as complete for
the individual's consciousness) ; and so much the more since,
as regards his own person, he is unclean of lips, and at the
same time is a member of a people of unclean lips. The nn-
holiness of his own person, in virtue of the solidarity of the
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB VI. 6, 7. 183
natural coonection, is doubled by the anboliness of the people
to which he belongs. This anboliness be calls uncleanness of
lips, because he sees himself transported into the midst of
choirs of l)eings who praise the Lord with clean or pare lips ;
and he calls Jehovah the King, for he has in fact not seen
Jehovah face to face, but he has seen the throne, the all-
filling talar, and the seraphim hovering around the enthroned
One and doing Him homage. — He has therefore seen the
heavenly King in manifest majesty, and he designates what
was beheld by the impression he received. Here, however, to
stand in sight of Jehovah of Hosts, the King exalted above
all, to whom everything pays homage : to stand here and, in
the consciousness of deep uncleanness, to be compelled to
remain dumb — this excites in liim the annihilating anguish
of self-condemnation. And this finds expression in the con-
fession which is made by the contrite seer.
This confession is followed by forgiveness of sins, which is
guaranteed to him through a heavenly sacrament, and is appro-
priated as his through a seraphic absolution. Vers. 6, 7 :
" And then flew to me otu of the seraphim, with a ghvaing coal
in his hand ; vrith the tongs he had taken it away from off the
altar. And with it he touched my motUh, and said : Behold,
this has Uniehed thy lips and away is thine iniguity, and thus
tliy sin is expiated," One of the seraphs hovering about the
Lord flies to the altar of incense, the heavenly type of the
golden altar of incense of the earthly tabernacle, which was
reckoned as belonging to the Holiest of all, and in his hand a
nari, which he had taken ni»=rin5^, with tongs from the altar.
•WYi is either a red-hot stone (Aq. S. Th. V*^^, Jer. ecUculus)
from the structure of the altar, or a red-hot coal (LXX.
&v6pa^ The Masora distinguishes scholastically * ncri,
mosaic pavement (see Norzi on Ezek. xl. 17),* and nnn,
' Comp. Ndldeke, Syritche Gramm. p. 18. An analogooa example is
the distinction bcitweeen )£t\ and \s!\, of which the former means a
natnial fiither, the latter a spiritual father (see Payne Smith, under
' In the sense of burning coal or burning stone, nBYl iB related to
c /
D^yn (ruyX ^ Kings xix. 6, as n. unUatit, Also in Arab. \_i^j (not
Digitized by
Google
186 tSAUH.
glowing coal ; and the latter mast be what is here meant, as
the seraph would not have torn a stone out of the structure
of the altar ; and it is far from being natural to think of the
heavenly altar as constructed of stones, according to the direc-
tions in Ex. XX. 25 (cf. Josh, viil 31), which, moreover, refers
to the altar of burnt-oSering, and not to the altar of incense.
With a pair of tongs he has taken it off from the altar,
because even the seraph's hand does not immediately touch
the structure consecrated to God, and the sacrifice belonging
to God ; and now he flies with this burning coal to Isaiah,
makes it come into contact with his mouth (W, Hi. in
the causative sense as in chap. v. 8 ; Ex. xii. 22), of whose
uncleanness above the other members of the body he had
complained (cf. Jer. i 9, where the prophet's month is touched
by Jehovah's hand, and is thereby made divinely eloquent),
and assures him of the forgiveness of his sins, coincident with
the application of this sacramental sign (cf. Zech. iii. 4).
The 1 connects as simultaneous what is s(dd by Vii and ^D ;
the fiT in the neuter refers to the burning coal ; and "ifsn is a
mode of sequence separated from its l, because the notion of
the subject has to be made prominent For it is really im-
possible that the removal of the guilt of sin is to be thought
of as momentary and the expiation as taking place gradually :
the very fact that the guilt of sin is done away, shows that
the expiation is also completed, i*?, with the accusative or
7S of sin, signifies to cover up, extinguish, or wipe out this
sin (see for the fundamental meaning, chap, xxviii. 18), so
that it has no existence for the punitive justice of God. The
sinful uncleanness is burned away from the prophet's moutL
The seraph therefore does here by means of fire from the
AfiJ,) is the name used for the stone made red-hot, which serves for
roasting by : it and the flesh, wrapped up in leaves, being covered over.
Two verbal stems of the form (jyi are to be distinguished. The one,
from which is derived DDV^, pavtmentum, means to lay firmly on or beside
one another, Assyr. rjfdpu (whence, e.g., artip, I erected, used of piling
building-stones on one another), Arab. ■. «"], and the cognate word in
Mishna, r|Vl, to join in rows, connect The other meaning is to glow,
Arab. ujLo;, cognate r|en. This distinction ie correctly made by Miihlau-
Volck. Stone, eakulu*, yf^^t't, as a part of the flooring, is a meaning
erroneously adopted by Aquila and others.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPT£B VL & 187
altar, and therefore by means of divine fire, what his name
denotes : he bums up, yet not in a destructive way, but in a
wholesome way : he bums away as likewise from the elevated
17^ in Num. xxL 6—9, there proceeds a healing power which
makes the deadly poison ineffective. As the smoke which
fills the house comes from the altar, and arises in consequence
of the adoration of the Lord on the part of the seraphim, the
incense-offering upon the altar and this adoration are thus
closely connected. A fire-glance of God, and, moreover, as
the seraphim are sinless, a pure fire-glance of love, has kindled
the sacrifice. Now, if the fact that a seraph by means of this
love-fire purges the seer of sin, presents an example of the
historical calling of the seraphim in relation to salvation, the
seraphim ate the bearers and mediators of the fire of divine
love, as in £zekiel the cherabim are the bearers and mediators
of the fire of divine wrath. For as in this instance a seraph
takes the fire of love from the altar, so in that case
(Ezek. X. 6, 7) a cherab brings forth the fire of wrath from
the throne-chariot ; and the cherabim therefore appear as the
bearers and mediators of the wrath which destroys sinners ;
or at least of the doxa which has its fiery side tumed towards
the world, as the seraphim appear as the bearers and mediators
of the love which purges away sin, or of the doxa which is
tumed on its side of light to the world.^
After Isaiah is purged of sin, it becomes manifest what is
the special purpose of the heavenly scene. Ver. 8 : " Then
I heard the voice of the All-Lord saying : Whom shall I send,
and who will go for us t Then I said : Behold me lure ; send
met" According to Knobel, the plural ^ is the plural of
majesty, by which God frequently speaks of Himself in the
Koran ; but the Holy Scripture furnishes no certain example
of this. It is rather the plural of inner reflection or of self-
consultation (Hitzig), but the Biblical representation of the
relation of the heavenly beings to the heavenly God decides
for the view that the seraphim are included in the idea, as
^ Seraphic love is the expression used in the language of the Church to
denote the ne plui vUra of holy love in the creature. The Syriac fathers
regarded the bnming coal as the symbol of the incarnate Son of Qod, who
is often designated in poetry as the " live or baming coal " (femutid denvri) :
liiiZ. 1890^ pp. 679, 681.
Digitized by
Google
188 ISAIAH.
they form along with the Lord an assembled coandl (*rt3
0*B^^, Ps. Ixxxix. 8), as in 1 Kings xxiL 19—22 ; Dan. iv. 14,
and elsewhere (see comm. on Gen. i 26). The mission for
which the right man is sought is not only a divine mission,
but generally a heavenly mission ; for it is not only a matter
that concerns God that the earth shall become full of the
glory of Qod, but it is also a thing incumbent on the spirits
who serve Him. But Isaiah, whose longing to serve the
Lord is no longer suppressed by the feeling of his sinfulness,
has no sooner heard the voice of the Lord than he exclaims
in holy self-consciousness : 'P!???' '???«
There now follows the terms of the mission and the sub-
stance of the message. Vers. 9, 10 : " Se spake, Ch and say
to this people : Sear always, and tmderstand not ; and but see ever
and perceive not. Make the heart of this people greasy, and its
ears dull, and its eyes sticky ; lest ii see with its eyes, and hear
wiih its ears, and its heart vmderstand, and it Is converted, and
one britiff about its healiry." ntn 0^ points back to the
people of unclean lips, dwelling among which Isaiah had
complained, and which the Lord cannot call *Q9 (cl Judg.
ii. 20 ; Hagg. i. 2). He is called to go to this people and
to preach to it, and therefore he is called to be the pro-
phet of this people. But how sad does the divine commission
sound ; it is the terrible opposite of the seraphic mission
which was experienced by the prophet in himself. The
seraph had purified Isaiah from sin by the burning coal, in
order that he now as prophet may not purify his people from
sin, but harden them by his word. They are to hear and see,
and, moreover, as the added intensive infinitives say, on and
on, by having the prophetic preaching actu directo always before
them, but not to their salvation. The two prohibitives u*3n~i}K
and ^(!i'?K express what, according to Grod's judicial will, is
to be the result of the prophetic preaching. And the im-
peratives in ver. 10 commission the prophet not merely to say
to the people what Grod has determined ; for the proposition
saepe prop/ietae facere dicuntur quae fore pronuneiant (for
which reference is made to Jer. i 10, cf. xxxL 28 ; Hos.
vi 6 ; Ezek. xliiL 8) has its truth not in a rhetorical figure,
but in the very nature of the divine word. The prophet is
the oi;gan of the divine word, and the divine word is the
Digitized by
Google
CHAPIXB VL 9, 1& 189
comprebension of the divine will, and the divine vill is an
intra-divine act, a divine act that has only not yet become
historical For this reason it may be said that the prophet
executes what he proclaims as fnture : God is the eaum
effieima principalis; the word is the causa media, and the
prophet is the causa ministerialis. There are three figurative
expressions for hardening : r^?f!}, to make fat, pinguem, i.e. to
make without feeling for the operations of grace (Ps. cix. 7) ;
Tsan, to make heavy, and especially heavy or dull of hearing
(chap. lix. 1); W^ or S?*? (whence imper. V^, also in p.
V^), to spread thickly, to smear over, to do to any one what
happens to diseased eyes when their sticky secretion daring
the night becomes a closing crust (from V^, syn. n^D or nnp,
chap. xliv. 1 8 ; Arab. J^, illinere coUyrium in the sense of
oeeaeeare ; related to \P^, with which nno is translated in the
Targum). The three future clauses with )■ point back in the
inverse order to the three demands. Spiritual sight, spiritual
hearing, spiritual feeling are to be taken from them, their
eyes becoming blind, their ears deaf, and their hearts covered
over with the grease of insensibility. Baled by these im-
perfects, the two preterites v KBTi 36* say what might have
been the result, but what will not be the result, if this
hardening had not taken place. ? KCn is always elsewhere
used transitively (e.g. Hos. vii. 1), for to heal any one or to
heal a disease, and never subjectively, to become whole ; here
it gets a passive sense through the so-called impersonal con-
struction, " and one heal it = and it be healed," according to
which it is paraphrased in Mark iv. 12, whereas the three
other New Testament quotations of it (in Matthew, John, and
Acts) reproduce the KaX tdtrtafun avrov^ of the LXX. The
commission which the prophet receives, sounds as if it were
quite incompatible with the fact that Qod as the Good only
wills the good. But it is not only God's will of love that is
good, but also His will of wrath, into which His will of love
is transformed when He is obstinately rejected. There is a
self-hardening of man in evil which makes him absolutely
incorrigible, and which is not less a judicial infliction of God
than self-produced guilt of man. The two are involved in
each other, sin bearing its punishment already essentially in
itself, as a punishment which consists in the wrath of God
Digitized by
Google
190 leAuo.
excited, by it Israel has delivered itself over to this wrath
by obstinate sinning. Hence the Lord now closes the door
of repentance to His people. But that He nevertheless has
repentance preached to the people through the prophet, takes
place because the judgment of hardening, while decreed upon
the mass of the people, is yet not without the possibility of
the saving of individuals.
Isaiah has heard with sighing, but with obedience, what the
mission to which he has so joyfully offered himself is to
consist in. Ver. 11a: " Then I said. How long, AU-Lordt"
He asks how long this service of hardening and this state of
hard - heartedness were to continue, — a question which bis
sympathy with the people to which he himself belongs forces
from him (cf. Ex. xxxii 9—14), and one which is justified
by the certainty that God, who is faithful to His promise,
cannot cast off Israel as a people for ever. The divine answer
follows. Vers. 11—13 : " UntU cities are made desolate, with-
out inhaJntaiUs, avd houses without men, and the ground shall
le laid waste, a wilderness, and Jehovah shall remove men far
away, and there shall he many forsaken places within the land.
And if there is stUl a tenth therein, this is again given up to
extermination ; like the terebinth, and like the oak, ofwhicJi, when
they are felled, there only still remains a root-stock — a holy seed
is such a root-stock." The answer intentionally begins, not
with '?'*'?, but with DK iB^ ng (which is only elsewhere found
in Gen. xxviiL 1 5 and Num. xxxii. 7), — an expression which,
without dropping the conditional DK, means that the end of
the judgment of hardening is only coming after the condition
is realized that the cities, houses, and soil of the land of
Israel and its surroundings have been first laid waste (pret.
and imperf., thus in the sense of fut. ex. as in chap. iv. 4 ;
cf. Num. xsiii. 24) ; and, moreover, utterly and thoroughly as
the three successive accompanying determinations declare
(without inhabitants, without men, wilderness). PCH is a still
wholly vague designation of the exile (cf. Joel iv. G ; Jer.
xxvii. 10), for which chap. v. 13 already presents the proper
designation in using npj. Instead of some national designa-
tion, the expression here employed is general, n"]Kn"nK, along
with the process of depopulation, its consequence, the lack of
men, being thus expressed. Like PCn], "^T, is also a perf
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKB VL U-18. 191
eotuee. vith accent on the last syllable (Olsh. p. 482); and
rutt^i^, " the forsaken," embraces the idea of places which \rere
formerly full of life, with the life now extinct and fallen into
ruins (chap. xviL 2, 9). This judgment will be followed by
a second, which will also subject the remaining tenth of the
people to a sifting; n^rn 2f, to become again (Ge& § 142, 3);
"i??^ "'?. not as in chap. v. 5, but as in chap. iv. 4, after
Num. xxiv. 22, the feminine refers to the tenth. Up to
ij?37 the announcement is a threatening one ; but from that
point up to 03 a comfortiDg prospect already begins to dawn,
which in the last three words lines the horizon of this gloomy
announcement like a distant streak of light. It will fare
with them as with the terebinth and the oak. These trees,
with which a multitude of associations from the early times of
Israel were connected (see on Gen. zil 6), have (like certain
others, as, for instance, the beech, the nut tree, and the alder)
the property of renewing themselves again from the root->
stump even when their trunk has been felled. As the forms
T\fsi (dryness), n;m (fever), rnjjf (blindness), neng' (consump-
tion) designate certain conditions, and especially faulty ones,
so roW is not the throwing down or felling as an act, but the
condition of a tree which is thrown down or hewn down : the
state of &llenness, not (which would here be too little) that of
defoliation (Targum) or of the falling of the fruit from the
stalk (Syr.). Perhaps also the name of the gate of the
temple, TOfV 1S^, points to trees which formerly stood there,
and bad been felled down. 03 . . . irtt goes together in guibus ;
3 has its primary significance of cleaving to something. Of
the felled terebinth or oak, deprived of its trunk and its
crown, there is still a naifp (collateral form of "ajfo), i.e. there
is a root-stock, tnmcus (a cippus, which the word otherwise
signifies, but it is a natural cippus, and capable of shooting),
fast fixed in the ground, — an image of the remnant surviving
the judgment, which becomes a Bn{) jnj from which a new
Israel shoots out after the old Israel is exterminated. In a
few weighty words the way is thus sketched upon which God
will henceforth go with His people. It presents an outline of
the history of Israel to the end of time. It is repeated in
Zech. xiii. 8, 9, where instead of the tenth we have a third,
and they are therefore both to be taken as the symbolical
Digitized by
Google
192 ISAUH.
designation of a fraction, but not as its arithmetioal measnre-
ment Israel as a people is imperishable in virtue of divine
promise ; but the mass of the people is henceforth destined for
destruction in virtue of a divine decision, and only a remnant
which is converted will finally propagate Israel's prerogative
as a people, and inherit the glorious future.
Now, if the impression which we have received from vers.
5—8 is not a false one, — namely, that the subject of chap. vi.
is the inaugural vision of the prophet, and not his calling ad
unitm speciaUm actum officii, as Sebastian Schmidt holds, — ^this
impression will be verified by the fact that the discourses in
chaps, i— V. do not merely give a picture of the state of the
people ripening for the fatal event in chap vi., as Strachey
holds, but that these discourses already contain the elements
here conveyed to the prophet in the way of a revelation, and
that the prophet is there already found executing his fateful
commissioa The impression also actually stands the applica-
tion of this test For the vety first discourse, after it has
shown to the people as such the gracious way of justification
and sanctification, takes in the consciousness of its being all
in vain, the turn indicated in chaps, xi-xiii. The theme of
the second discourse is that it will only be after the overthrow
of the false glory of Israel that the promised true glory will
be realized, and that after the extermination of the mass of
the people, only a small remnant will live to experience its
realization. The parable with which the third discourse
begins, rests upon the supposition that the measure of the sin
of the people is full, and the threatening of judgment which
is introduced by this parable agrees actually, and in part
verbally, with the divine answer received by the prophet to
his question, *rio~lj>. From all sides, therefore, we have the
view confirmed, that Isaiah in chap, vi relates his consecra-
tion as a prophet. The discourses in chaps. ii.-iv. 5, which
belong to the time of Uzziah and Jotham, do not fall earlier
than the death-year of Uzziah, from which date the whole time
of Jotham's sixteen years' reign is open for them. Now Micah
appeared on the scene under Jotham ; but his book, by work-
ing up the proclamations he delivered in the time of Jotham,
Abaz, and Hezekiah, has taken the form of a chronologically
indivisible summary, which, ns we may learn from Jer. xxvL
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBB VL U-19. 193
18, he recited or published in the time of Hezekiah ; and
hence Isaiah may thus quite well have taken the word of
promise in chap. iL 1-4 (certainly borrowed from some source)
from Micah's lips, though not from Micah's book.
Further, the position of chap, vi is not inexplicable.
Havemick has already observed that the prophet in chap. vL
is justifying, on the ground of a divine commission, the manner
and st^le of his previous proclamation. But this only serves
to explain the intention from which chap. vi. was not made
to stand at the commencement of the collection, and not why
it is found exactly in this and no other place. Prophecy and
fulfilment are brought together ; for, on the one hand, chap.
viL brings manifestly forward the judgment of hardening
suspended over the Jewish people in the person of king Ahaz ;
and, on the other hand, we find ourselves in the middle of the
Syro-Ephraimitish war, which forms the transition to the judg-
ments of extermination prophesied in chap, vl 11—13. It is
only the position of chap. i. which still remains obscure. If
the verses chap. i. 7-9 are meant to have a historical reference
to the times, then chap. I was composed when the danger of
the Syro-Ephraimitish war was averted from Jerusalem, while
the land of Judah was still bleeding from the opened wounds
which this war, aimed at its annihilation, had inflicted npon
it. Accordingly chap. i. is more recent than chaps, ii.— v., and
also more recent than the connected chaps. viL— xii It is
only the comparatively more indefinite and general character
of chap, i which seems to tell against this view. This
objection, however, is removed, if we assume that chap. L is
not, indeed, the first spoken discourse of the prophet, but the
first of his discourses that was written down, and that it was
primarily designed to form the proemium to the discourses
aud historical narrations in chaps, ii.-xii, the contents of
which are ruled by it^ For chaps, ii.— v. and viL-xii are
two cycles of prophecy; chap. L is the portal which leads
into them, and chap. vL the band which connects them
> A different view is taken by ▼. Hot&nan {Hermeneutik, heransgef;.
Ton Volck, p. 133), who regards chap. L as the ■pre&ce to chaps. ii.-xxxT.
Nagelshach again holds chaps. L S-v. 6 to be the threefold introitus of the
whole book in its two divisions, chaps. viL-xxzix., xL-IxtL, and chap. L to
be the portion of the collection which was written last.
VOU I. K
Digitized by
Google
19 i ISAUH.
together. The cycle of prophecy in chaps. ii.-v. may, with
Caspar!, be called the Book of hardening, and chaps. vii.-xii.,
after the example of Chr. Aug. Crusius, may be called the
Book of Immanud. For in all the stages through which the
proclamation in chaps, vii— xii passes, the future Immanuel is
the banner of consolation which the proclamation lifts up amid
the judgments which are now breaking in, in consequence of
the doom pronounced in chap. vL
PART II.— CONSOLATION OF IMMANUEL IN THE ASSYRIAN
OPPRESSIONS, CHAPa VII.-XIL
TuE Divine Sign of the Wondrods Son of the Virgin,
Chap. VII.
As the following prophecies cannot be understood without
reference to the contemporary historical events into which
they entered, the prophet begins historically. Ver. 1 : "It
came to pass in the days <tf Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the
son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, that Bezvn, the king of
Aram, and Pekah, the son of Jiemaliah, the king of Israel,
went up towards Jerusalem to war against it; and was not
aUe to war upon it" We read the same words again, only a
little varied, in the history of the reign of Ahaz in 2 Kings
xvL 5. That the author of the Book of Kings takes them
from the Book of Isaiah, is betrayed by the fact that he inter-
prets them. Instead of " and he was not able to war upon
it," he says particularly : " and they besieged Ahaz, and could
not war upon him." The singular 7b^ in Isaiah is transformed
into the simpler plural ; and the iaaX. that the two allies could
not assault or storm Jerusalem (which must be the meaning
of 7? QH^i here) is more exactly determined by saying that
they vainly besieged Ahaz (ft i^V is the usual expression for
obsidione claudere, cf. Deut xx. 19). This et dbsederunt
Ahazum cannot merely mean obsidere conati sunt, although we
know nothing in detail about this siege, and 2 Kings xvi 5,
from the secondary relation of this passage to Isa. viL 1, cannot
be regarded as a historical source. But happily we have
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER vir. % 195
two acconnts regarding the Syro-Ephraimitish war, in 2 Kings
xvi. and 2 Cbron. xxviiL The Book of Kings relates that
the incursion of the two allies into Jadah began already at
the end of the reign of Jotham (2 Kings xv. 37); and apart
from the statement taken from Isa. vii. 1, it mentions that
Bezin reconquered for Edom the port of Elath which belonged
to the kingdom of Judah (in 2 Kings xvi. 6 read DiK^ instead
of tnvh) ; and the Book of Chronicles relates that Bezin
brought a multitude of Jewish captives to Damascus ; and that
Pekah conquered Ahaz in a bloody battle, in which his forces
were destroyed. However unquestionable the credibility of
these events is, yet it is as difficult to bring them into an
indubitably certain connection in relations of fact and chrono-
logy, as Caspari has attempted to do in a monograph on the
Syro-Ephraimitish war, published in 1849. If we could
assume that 16, ?b' (not *^3'), is the authentic reading, and
that the thwarting of the attempt to take Jerusalem, related
here, had its ground, not in the intervention of Assyria, but in
the strength of the city, — so that accordingly 16 would not be
an anticipation of the ultimate thwarting of the whole under-
taking, although such summary anticipations are in the
manner of the Biblical mode of writing history, and likewise
also in the manner of Isaiah, — then the course of events
might be so represented that while Bezin marched to Elath,
Pekah wished to deal with Jerusalem, but did not attain his
purpose ; but that Bezin was more successful in his easier
undertaking, and that after the conquest of Elath be joined
his allies.
It is this which may thus be taken to be referred to - in
ver. 2 : " And it was told the hmise of David : Aram ha*
settled down upon Ephraim, — then his heart shook, and the heart
of his people, as the trees of the forest shake before the wind."
The ?S no indicates here the coming down of the one army
after the other in order to strengthen it ; whereas ver. 19,
2 Sam. xvii. 12 (cf. Judg. viL 12), indicates a hostile attack,
and 2 Kings iL 1 5, a spiritual Kara^alveiv. D^'^bm (feminine,
like the names of countries, and of the peoples thought along
with their countries, see chap. iii. 8^, as the name of the chief
stock of Israel, is used as the name of the whole kingdom,
and here of the whole military power of Israel. Following
Digitized by
Google
196 ISAUH.
the combination indicated above, we find that the allies now
prepared themselves for a second united march against Jeru-
salem. In the meantime, Jerusalem was in the condition
indicated in chap, i 7-9 : like an invested city in the midst
of a land overrun by a plundering enemy setting everything
on fire. Elath had fallen, as Rezin's opportune return from
it showed ; and it was quite natural, humanly regarded, that
in the face of his approaching junction with the united army
of the allies, the court and people of Jerusalem should
tremble like aspen leaves. Vi^ is a contracted impf. Qal
ending in a, not in short o, on account of the guttural, as in run,
Ex. XX. 11, and such like ; and ^J, otherwise the form of the
infin. ais. chap. xxiv. 20, is here and only here inf. constr.
instead of V^ (cf. rri3. Num. xi. 25; 2V, Josh. ii. 16;
D^o, Fs. xxxviii. 17, and frequently).
In this time of terror, Isaiah received the following divine
instructions. Ver. 3 : " Then said Jehovah to Isaiah, Come,
go otU to meet Ahaz, thou and Shear-Jashvi, thy son, to the end
of the aqueduct of the wpper pool hy the road of the fvlUri fM."
The fullers,' i.e. cleaners and thickeners of woollen stufia,
received as workmen the name ts>pis from D33, related to
^??> lH^> 'x^<''<> which is related to f^n, as ifk&veiv, likewise
specially used in reference to clothes washing, is related to
XoCew. The D3b rnir, so called as 'being their washing and
bleaching place, lay, as Bobinson, Schultz, von Itaumer,
Thenius, Unruh, Schick, and most expositors hold, upon the
western side of the city. Zimmermann, in his maps and
plans of the topography of ancient Jerusalem (1876), places
the two great pools on the west of the city, the lower pool
and north-west therefrom the Mamilla pool, eastward from
which in the same line lies the Hezekiah pool, through which
an aqueduct led the water of the upper pool to the upper
city. On the other hand, Williams, Kraft, Meier, and Hitzig
transfer the upper pool with the fullers' field to the north-
east of the city, beside the monument of the fuller (Joseph.
' In the Aramaic of the Talmud and Targums the fuller is called ixp
as in Arab, we have aleo hau&r and mOcfar, the cylindrical round fuller's
club, which, according to Hegesippus (in Euteb. U. E. iL 23X was the
instrument by which James the Just was beaten to death. A D3U
appears in the controversial dialogue with a Christian in Sanhedrin 3Sb.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKK YD- 4. 1&7
Wan, V. 4. 2). But Sabshake encamping by the upper pool
(chap. zxxvL 2) comes from Lachis, and therefore from the
south-west Furrer (in the Bibd-Lex. IL 464) also recognises
the Mamilla-pool as the "upper pool in the fullers' field."
Explorers have not yet succeeded in discovering a living
spring on the west side ; * both pools were probably even in
former times only fed by rain, for catching which the lie of
the land is very favourable.' If the upper pool was the
Mamilla-pool, then the road pfPp, which ran past this fullers'
field, was the road which led from the western gate to
Joppa. Here in the west of the city, outside the enclosing
wall, king Ahaz now found himself engaged in preparations
for the event of a siege of Jerusalem, which received the most
part of its water supply ftoux the upper pool ; and here,
according to Jehovah's direction, Isaiah with his son was to
meet him. These two are like a blessing and curse in person,
offering themselves to the king for him to make his choice.
For the name 3At^ ikb', %.«. remnant is converted (chap. x.
21, 22), is a kind of abbreviation of the divine answer which
had been given to the prophet in chap. vL 11-13, and is,
moreover, at once threatening and promising, but in such a
way that it has the curse, as it were, before it, and the grace
behind it. The prophetic name of the son of Isaiah is
intended to urge the king by threat to Jehovah, and the
prophetic announcement of Isaiah himself, whose name points
to salvation, VB^ is designed to entice him by promise to
JehovaL
No means remain untried. Ver. 4 : " And say to him.
Take heed, and keep thyself quiet ; fear not, and let nat thy
Juart become soft from these tvjo smoking stumps of fwrtbrands, —
aJt the himing anger of Besin and Aram, and the son of Bema-
liah." The imper. " take heed " is regularly pointed "iD^
(see especially, Ex. xxiii 21 ; Job xxxvi. 21), and thus *>o^
0^fiy\ will accordingly be infinitives absolute in the sense of
ui^ent imperatives (Hitzig): take heed, and keep at rest I =
* Schick believed he had discovered it in 1866 about ten minntea^
walking distance from the Jaffa gate ; see Ansland, Nr. 38, 1865.
* This is entirely different from the Gihon, a running, although inter-
mittent spring, probably the same as the Mary-spring at the east foot of
Ophel, and therefore in the eastern aide of the city.
Digitized by
Google
198 ISAIAH.
be on your guard, and do not act precipitately, rather keep at
rest. The first is a warning against self-willed acting ; the
latter is an exhortation to undismayed equanimity. Calvin
correctly renders it : utet exteriua amtiiuat sese et intus paeato
sit animo. The explanation given by Jewish expositors of
ipB'n, conside super faeces ivas (Luzzatto, vivi riposato),
according to Jer. xlviil 11 and Zeph. i. 12, gives an unseemly
sense to the exhortation. The object of terror before which
and at which the king's heart is not to be dismayed, is first
introduced with p, and then with 3, as in Jer. li. 46. The
two allies are at once designated as what they are before God,
who sees through things in the future. They are two tails,
i.e. nothing bat the fag ends of wood pokers ("ntt, properly
turners, namely, fire-turners, an Arabic figure for a warrior,
Ges. Tfus. p. 1575),* half-burned off and wholly burned out,
so that they do not bum any longer, but only still keep
smoking. Certainly they are not this yet at the time in
question as regards outward reality, where, as ^"3 does not
conceal, their anger has not yet been long kindled, but they
are such before God, who makes the prophet o^isant with
Himself of His counsel. Along with \T] (in cuneiform in-
scriptions BasHna % in order not to honour it with the name
of a king, D'W is specially named, and Pekah is called
^T7pi-|a, to recall the lowness of his descent, and the want of
any promise in the case of his house.
The "^ C! which now follows does not belong to ver. 4, as
might appear in consideration of the Sethume after it (fear
not on this account that), cf. Ezek. xiL 12, but it gives the
motive of the following sentence of judgment as in chap,
iii. 16. Vers. 5-7: "Because that Aram has resolved evil
against thee, Ephraim, and the son of Bemaliah, saying. We
toill march against Judah, and strike it with terror, and conquer
it for ourselves, and make the son of Tabel king in the midst of
it : thus saith the JU-Lord Jehovah, It shall not com* about,
and not take place." The promise to Ahaz is founded upon
the wicked design with which the war has been begun.
How far the allies had already advanced on the way to their
* Cf. Schwtrtzlose, Waffm der alten Araber, p. 38.
* Schnder, Die KeUintchnfim wnd dot AUe Tutament, 2nd ed. 1883, p.
260 aqq.
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB Vn. 8, 9. 109
oltimatd goal, the overthrow of the Davidic kingdom, it does
not say. Bat we know from 2 Kings xv. 37 that the
invasion had already b^un before Ahaz had ascended the
throne, and we may see from ver. 16 of Isaiah's prophecy
that the "IV'pS (from fv. taedere, pavere, for which the Syrian
translator has niy;?] from ft?^ absdndere) had been snccessfully
attained. The Vi?3n, i«. cleaving, forcing of the passes and
fortification (2 Kings xxv. 4 ; £zek. xxx. 16 ; 2 Chron. xxi 17,
xxxii 1) can therefore not be regarded as pertaining to the
future. For history knows nothing whatever of a successful
resistance of Judah in this war. Only Jerusalem has not yet
fallen, and this, a» PdiTB ifTO shows, is what is specially referred
to under fnv^, just as "^^ in chap, xxiii. 13 refers to- Nineveh.
Here they intend to appoint as king a favourite named ^^^
(see Ezra iv. 7, in p. intentionally ^M3D, a vocalic change
which the tone -long e o{ i^ does not otherwise admit;
cf. J>MZ. xxxiii. 30, but which here separates the name of
God from the name of " this good-for-nothing fellow ") ; but
the intention remains a mere wish, the thing wished does not
come about (cf. Prov. xv. 22), and is not realized (cl Zech.
xiv. 8).
The allies will not succeed in altering the course of history
as the Lord has ordered it Vers. 8-9 : " For head of Aram
is Damasciu, and head of Damaseut Besin, and in other sixty
and five years Ephraim will he broken to pieces as a people.
And head of Ephraim is Samaria, and head of Samaria the
ton of Remaliah ; if ye helieve not, verily you will not remain."
It naturally occurs to regard 8& as a later interpolation
(Eichhom, Gresenins, Hitzig, Maurer, Knobel, Meier, Dietrich,
Cheyne, Benss). The prophecy here becomes divination, and
one might hold that an indefinite expression of the near
future would have been more effective than this fixing of a
considerably distant terminus, and it is, in fact, probable that
instead of roB* Btem B'Ste* TiVM there stood in the original
text the expression of what was only but a short delay
(chap. xvi. 14, xx. 3, xxi. 16), and that a later band glossed
the unprecise expression by a reference to the history of the
1 The name has not yet been traced out in the cuneiform inscriptions;
■ee Schroder, «.*. p. 384, and eomp. hia KeiUiuchriften «. Qttehiditt-
fonhung, p. 386L
Digitized by
Google
200 ISAIAH.
fulfilment of the propbecj. If 6b be left out, the whole idea
is only this, that the two hostile powers will temain in tiieir
previons relationships without an annexation of Judah. If
8b is retained (under the supposition of such a phrase as
" within a short time " instead of the " within sixty-five
years "), then 8a and 9a similarly say that the old condition
of things will remain ; bat 85 states that while Syria gains
nothing, Ephraim, which had become involved in an unnatural
and irreligious league with it, will lose its national inde-
pendence, and 9b, that Judab, although Samaria's attempt to
take away its independence fails, yet if it gives up its trust in
Jehovah and makes flesh its arm, it will have no continuance,
i.e. will lose its national independence Yer. 8b is a prophecy
announcing the destruction of Ephraim; 95 is a warning,
threatening Judah with destruction in so {iu as it rejects
the promise from unbelief. The colour of the style of 8b is
entirely Isaianic (cf. on "^V^, chap, xxi 16, xvL 14; and on
D^, away from being a people ^ so that it is no more a
people, cf. chap. xvii. 1, xxv. 2, and Jer. xlviii 2, 42).
But it cannot be asserted that the sixty-five years are false,
and that they are in contradiction with chap. vii. 16.
Certainly they do not come out if we refer the prophecy to
what happened to Ephraim in consequence of the Syro-
Ephraimitish war carried on by Tiglath-Pileser, and to what
was done to it by Salmanassar in the sixth year of Hezekiah's
reign, to which events, and more especially to the former,
chap. vii. 16 relates. But there is another event through
which the existence of Ephraim, not merely as a kingdom,
but also as a people, was broken, namely, the carrying away
of the last remnant of the Ephraimitish population, and the
planting of East Asian colonists upon the soil of Ephraim.
While the land of Judah remained desolate after the deporta-
tion to Gbaldea, and a new generation grew up there, which,
being in exile, might again return, the land of Ephraim was
occupied by heathen settlers, and the few who remained
behind were fused with these into the mixed people of
Samaritans, those in exile being lost among the heathen.
This is the view which was already held by Malvenda,
Calmet, and Usher as to the terminus ad quem. Bosanquet
reckons the sixty-five years from the year 736 as the con-
Digitized by
Google
cnAPTZR vn. 8, 9. 201
jectnral date of the meeting of Isaiah with Ahaz, and as
extending to 671, founding upon the fact that even after the
fall of Samaria, a kingdom of Samaria continues to be always
mentioned in the inscription, bat it is found for the last time
in one that dates from 681 to 673. This calculation by the
Assyrian monuments has, however, meanwhile become doubt-
ful by more correct reading of them. Nevertheless the
fact remains that the populating by Esarhaddon (2 Kings
xvii 24, Ezra iv. 2, and his successor Asnappar = Asur-
banipal, Ezra iv. 10) of the land of Ephraim with colonists
from Eastern Asia is the fulfilment of the D^ T\iv, • and if it
was Esarhaddon under whom Manasseb was carried away to
Babylon about the middle of his reign (2 Chron. xxxiii. 1 1),
then we get just sixty-five years from the second year of the
reign of Ahaz to the final ending of the existence of Ephraim
as a people (fourteen years of Ahaz + twenty-nine of Heze-
kiah -I- twenty-two of Manasseb = sixty-five). Then was ful-
filled what is here unconditionally predicted, oyp nrr (certainly
not 3 imp/. Qal, but M. nru, Mai. ii. 6), just as the condi-
tionally threatened upKn K? was fulfilled on Jadah by the
Babylonian exile. For jotti signifies to have a fast hold, and
rPftn to prove fast holding. If Judah does not holdfast to
his Qod, he will lose his fast hold by losing the country in
which he dwells, the ground beneath his feet The same
play on words is found in 2 Chron. xx. 20. The suggestion
that the original reading was '•n U^DMTl K^ DM, but that *3
appeared objectionable and was altered into ^, is improbable.'
Why should it have been objectionable when the words form
the conclusion of a solemnly introduced direct discourse of
Jehovah ? On this ^, which has passed from the confirmat-
ive into an affirmative meaning, and here opens the conse-
quence of the hypothetical clause, cf. 1 Sam. xiv. 39 ; Ps.
cxxviii. 4 ; and (as used in the formula nn^ *3) Qen. xxxi 42,
xliiL 10 ; Num. xxii 29, 33 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 30. Their con-
tinuance is conditioned by faith, as this «3 surely asserts.*
^ Qeiger in DMZ. 1861, p. 117, and pKrioualy in tbe Review fhim,
1860, p. 89.
* It is worth quoting wliat Augustine remarks on this subject in his
De doetrvM ChriHiana, iL 11 : Niti eredideritis, turn tittelligetit [so LXX.
and Itala]. Alius [Jerome] interpretatus est : Niii erediderUi$, noti per-
Digitized by
Google
202 ISAIAH.
Thus Isaiah speaks, and thus Jehovah speaks through him,
to the king of Judah. We are not informed as to whether
he replied or what he replied. He is silent, for in his heart
he hides a secret which consoles him better than the word of
the prophet. The invisible assistance of Jehovah and the
distant prospect of the fall of Ephraim are not sufficient for
him. His mind is already made up. His trust is in Assur
(Assyria), with whose help he will be superior to the kingdom
of Israel, as that kingdom had been to the kingdom of Judah
through the help of Damascene Syria. The pious theocratic
policy of the prophet comes too late. He therefore lets the
enthusiast talk, and thinks he knows what it is worth at the
best. Nevertheless, the grace of God does not give up the
unhappy son of David as lost Vers. 10, 11 : "And Jehovah
continued to speak to Ahaz as follows : Ask thee a sign from
Jehovah thy Ood, going deqa down to Hades or high up to the
height above." Jehovah continued, — what a deep and firm
consciousness of the identity of the word of Jehovah and the
word of the prophet is expressed therein ! It occurs also in
chap. viiL 5. According to an astonishing eommunicaiio
idiomatum which runs through the Old Testament books of
prophecy, the prophet speaks at one time (as, e.g., in Zech.
it 13 and 15) as if he were Jehovah, and at another time,
as in this passage, Jehovah speaks as if He were the prophet.
Ahaz is to ask a sign from Jehovah his God. Jehovah does
not scorn to call Himself the God of this son of David who
80 hardens himself. Perhaps the holy love which pulsates
in this T^^lf may yet move his heart ; or perhaps he may
reflect upon the covenant promises and covenant duties
manebUit. Qois horam vera secutns sit, nisi exemplaria linguae praece-
dentia legantar, incertum est Sed tamen ex utroque magnum aliqtiid
insinoatur scienter legentibus. Difficile est enim ita diTersoa inter se
interpretes fieri, ut non se aliqua vicinitate contingant. Ergo qnoniam
intellectus in specie sempitema est, fides yero in rerum temporalium
quibusdam cunabulis quasi lacte alit parvulos, nunc autem per fidem
ambulamns, non per speciem, nisi antem per fidem ambulaverimtu, ad
speciem pervenire non poterimus, quae non transit, sed permanet per
intellectum purgatum nobis cohaerentibas veritati : propteiea ille ait :
Nisi aredideritit non permanebitit. Ille vero: Nid crtdiirriUi, non
inUUigetis. Et ex ambiguo linguae praecedentis plemmque interpres
fallitur, cui non bene nota sententia es^ ct earn significatiouem transfert,
quae a sensu scriptoris penitus aliena est
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKK Vn. 10, IL 203
vhich this yrhti recalls to xaind. He is to ask for a rriM
from this his God. niK (from nw, to indicate) is a thing,
event, or act which may serve to guarantee the divine cer-
tainty of some other thing, event, or act This happens
partly through sensible miracles presently performed (Ex.
iv. 8, 9), or through fixed symbols of the future (chap.
viiL 18, XX. 3), and partly through prophesied events, which,
whether miraculous or natural in themselves, are not to be
humanly foreseen ; and therefore if they occur, they authentic-
ate either the divine causality of other events retrospectively
(Ex. iii. 12), or their divine certainty prospectively. The
thing to be here guaranteed is what the prophet has just
prophesied with great definiteness : the preservation of
Judah with its kingdom, and the fruitlessness of the wicked
enterprise of the two allied kingdoms. If this was to be
guaranteed to Ahaz in a manner that would break down
his unbelief, it can only be done by a sign, niM, which
breaks through the regular course of natur& As Hezekiah,
when Isaiah announces his recovery and a prolongation of
life for fifteen years, requires a tint, and the prophet gives
him it (chap. xxxviiL), so does Isaiah here meet Ahaz with
the offer of such a sign, and, moreover, by laying before him
heaven, earth, and Hades as the sphere of the miracle. poVin
(P?5?p) and na^n are either in/in. dbs. or imper., and n'aitf is
apparently imper. : 7HV with the fle of challenge, which is
given here instead of n^K^ as npKe^ (as likewise elsewhere
with distinctive accents, as in Dan. ix. 19, and even without
any pause in xxxiL 11, q.v.); but in no case do we need to
read, with Hupfeld, "?^ with the tone upon the last, in the
sense of npse? j and thus : in profundum descende (or descend-
endo) precare. But n7^f may also be a pausal collateral
form for np'<B», which is allowable in itself (cf. Tf% always in
p. for fferp, and other examples. Gen. xliiL 14, xlix. 3, 27),'
and here it appears to be preferred on account of its con-
sonance with n5yo5' (Ewald, § 93. 3). We give the preference
to this latter possibility, with Aq. Sym. Theod. Jer. (jSadwov
1 The pasaing of the o into a (o) likewise produces the infinitive form
^mnibt 1 Sam. zv. 1 ; ^nnf) (according to Norzi), 1 Sam. xxiv. 11 ;
^piDVi Obad. ver. 11. On corresponding impeiative forma, see on chap,
xxxviii. 14.
Digitized by
Google
204 I8AIAH.
C(t f^v), against the Targom ; it corresponds to the antithesis
(cf. Job xi. 8), and if the words before us were unpointed,
this would first suggest itself. The challenge, accordingly,
amounts to this: Descend down deep (in thy asking) to
Hades, or ascend high up to the height ; but more probably
(as the closer construction is more pleasing, and nnin as
imper. would be well distinguished from the inf. by the form
''?|i''7, cf. niJin, Ezek. xxiv. 10, with a gerundive acceptation of
PDVn and nnin.Ewald, § 280a): going deep down to Hades, or
Ik, from fiJK, as vel, from velle) going high up to the height
J^his offer of the prophet of any kind of miracle in the upper
or lower world cannot but perplex the adherents of the
modem view of the world. The prophet, says Hitzig, is here
playing a dangerous game, and if Ahaz had closed with the
offer, Jehovah would certainly have left him in the lurch.
So Meier observes : it cannot have at all come into the mind
of an Isaiah to wish to do a miracle. And de Lagarde says :
If he had done it, he would have been an enthusiast whom the
failure of such a mK would have subjected to punishment for
lying, or whom an artificial performing of it would have made
a deceiver. None of these commentators can recognise the
miraculous power of the prophet, because they do not at all
believe in miracles ; whereas Ahaz knows the miraculous power
of the prophet, but is not to be constrained by any miracle
to renounce his own plans and believe on Jehovah. Yer. 12:
" But Ahaz answered, I may not ask, and may not tempt
Jehovah." How pious this sounds, and yet his self-hardening
culminates in these pious - sounding words ! Hypocritically
he hides himself under the mask of Deut vL 16, in order not
to allow himself to bo disturbed in his Assyrian policy, and
he is so unthinking as to call the acceptance of what Jehovah
Himself offers him a tempting of God. He studiously draws
down upon himself the fate indicated in chap, vl; and not
merely upon himself, but upon all Judah. For under the
successor of Ahaz, the host of Assyria will stand upon this
same fullers' field (chap. xxxvL 2), and demand the surrender
of Jerusalem. In this hour when Isaiah stands before Ahaz,
the fate of the Jewish people is decided for more than two
thousand years.
The prophet might now be sUent, but in accordance with
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB Vn. 19-16. 205
the comniand in chap. vi. he must speak, although his woni
be a savour of death unto death. Ver. 13 : "He spake. Hear,
then, house of David : Is it too little for you to make men
weary, that ye also weary my God } " He spake. Who spake ?
The speaker, according to ver. 10, is Jehovah, and yet what
follows is given as the word of the prophet Here again the
statement proceeds on the assumption that the word of the
prophet is the word of God, and that the prophet himself,
even when he distinguishes himself and God, is the organ of
God. The address is directed to ITI ^"h i.e. to Ahaz, indud-
ing all the members of the court D^K is the plural of the
category, and by it the prophet indicates himself. The prophet
would, indeed, well have borne that those of the house of
David should yield no results to his zealous human efforts,
but they are not satisfied with this (of. on the expression
mimts quam voe - quam ut vobis sufficiat, Num. zvi 9 ;
Job XV. 11); they also weary the long-suffering of his
God by letting Him exhaust all the means of their correction
without effect* They will not believe without seeing ; and
when signs are about to be given them to see in order that
they may believe, they will not even look at them.
Jehovah, then, will give them a sign against their will
after His own choic& Vera 14, 15: "Therefore the All-
Lord, He will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin* is with
child, and bears a son, and calls his name Immanuel. Butter
and honey vnll he eat when he knows to reject the bad and to
* Perhaps \tlhn and ^n^K form an intended enantiophony ; «ee the
collection of examples in the Review y^TVn, Jahrg. 2 (1853X pp. 94-99.
* [As will he seen by what follows, " virgin " is not strictly the correct
rendering of Tfdyf, according to Dr. Delitzsch's own view ; but as he
retains Jungfirav in the German, it has been thought better in like
manner to retain the usual English term rather than introduce " damsel,',
"maid," or "maiden." Cbeyne renders no^ipn, "the young woman,"
"so Hitzig, R. Williams, Nagelsbach, and (in effect) Oesenius ;" gives the
rendering of Ewald and Delitzsch (Jungfirav) as " the maiden ; " and
quotes the late Professor Weir of Qla^ow as retaining "virgin," while
observing : " But the Hebrew, strictly speaking, does not correspond to
our 'virgin.'" Dr. Kay in his comm. on laaiah in the Speaka'i Com-
mentary, $.1., says : " Our English word " maiden " comes as near, pro-
bably, as any to the Hebrew word." " Or nuuden " is added in the margin
of the Be\-i8ed Version. Profl Drever remarks : " Probably the English
word damtel would be the fairest rendering" {Imtiah, p. 41). — Te.]
Digitized by
Google
206 UAIAH.
choose the good." In its form the prophecy recalls Gen. xvi.
11:" Behold, thou art with child, and wilt bear a son, and
call his name IsbmaeL" Here, however, the words are not
addressed to her who was afterwards to bear the child,
although Matthew gives this form to the prophecy ; * for r«ni>
is not 2 p. but 3 j». = HKT^ (ground form kara'cU, which
occurs for nnjJ, " it takes place," Deut. xxxi. 29 ; cf. Gen. xxx.
11 ; Lev. XXV. 21 ; Ps. cxviii. 23).* The question as to
whether the clause is to be translated : Behold, the virgin is
with child, or shall be with child, ought not to have been
raised, mn with the following participle (here participial
adjective ; cf. 2 Sam. xi. 5) is always presentative, and the
thing presented is always either a real thing, as in Gen. xvi.
11 and Judg. xiiL 5 ; or it is an ideally present thing, as is
to be taken here ; for except in chap, xlviil 7, f^}^ always indi-
cates something future in Isaiah. This use of ran in Isaiah
is of itself opposed to the view of Gesenius, Knobel, Fried-
mann {De Jesaiae vaticiniis Achaso rege editis, 1875), S.
Davidson, and others, who understand •^fV^ to apply to the
already pregnant young wife of the prophet, and who, like
Saven (see on chap. viii. 3) and Beuss, identify Immanuel
and MahershalaL* But it is already very improbable that
it is the wife of the prophet who is meant; for if he
meant her, one cannot well see why he did not rather say
HK^Mn. Further, the meaning and use of nobv are against the
reference of the nw to the prophet's own household. For
while ninna (from ^a, related to ina, to separate, sejungere)
signifies the virgin maiden living retired in her parents'
house, and still a long while from marriage (Assyr. has also
batillu, a youth), TOj'P (from a?V, to be strong, full of sap and
vigour, arrived at the age of puberty, V ^y, Ji, to swell) is the
* Jerome discasaes thia difference in an exemplary manner in Ms Up.
ad Pammachium de optima genere irUerpretandi.
* The pointing makes a distinction between nittp (she calls) and ntOp
(as Qen. xvL 11 shoald be pointed), thou callest (see Abenczra's Zaduith,
7a, and Jckuthiel ba-Nakdan on Qen. xvL 11) ; and Olshausen (§ 356) is
wrong in pronouncing the latter form of writing the word a mistake.
* Another view is taken by the expositor to whom Jerome refers :
Quidam de nostria Judaizans Esaias duos filios habuisse contendit Jasub,
et EmraanueL Et Emmanuel de prophetiasa uxore ejus esse guneratum
in typum Domini aalvatoria, etc
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEfi Tn. U, t& 207
mature woman vho is near marriage.^ Both names may be
applied to a female who is betrothed or even married (Joel
L 8; Prov. zxx. 19 ; see Hitzig on these passages). It must
also be admitted that the idea of immaculate virginity is
not necessarily connected with nobp (as in Gen. xxiv. 43,
cf. 16), since in such passages as Song of SoL vL 8 it can
hardly he distinguished in sense from the Arab. Surriya-. It
must also be admitted that it might be said of one who has
a still youthful fresh wife, that he has a vxhv for his wife ;
but it is inconceivable that in a religiously earnest and well-
weighed style a woman who has been already for a long time
married, like the prophet's wife, could be called absolutely
rrdysn without qualification.* On the other hand, the ex-
pression warrants the assumption that the prophet by nobyn
means one of the rrio^ of the royal harem (Luzzatto) ; and if
we consider that the birth of the child in the view of the
prophet is to take place in the near future, his look might
have been directed to that Abijah (AM) bath-Zechariah (2 Kings
xviii. 2 ; 2 Chron. xxix. 1) who became the mother of king
Hezekiah, to whom the virtues of his mother appear to have
been transmitted in contrast with the vice of his father.
But while the expression might admit this view, reference to
Hezekiah and his mother is excluded by the fact that he was
born to the young king Ahaz before lus accession to the
throne, and therefore he cannot be meant either here or
1 Vercellone, in a lecture (in Ms DUsertazUnU aeeademiehe, Boma 1864X
has defended at considerable length the assertion of Jerome : HAraicum
TKhv nwtjuam fiiii de vkgine icribitw, tignifkat enim piteUam viryinem
abicouditttm ; bat his defence is untenable. The root is not o^y> to con-
ceal, according to which Aq. translates Qen. xxiv. 43, ixwcpv^ai. Luther,
in 1523, expressed himself to better effect thus : " WeU, then, to oblige
the Jews, we shall not translate the word Alma as virgin, but as a maid,
although in German maid means a woman who is still young, and wears
her crown with honour, so that it is said : she is still a maid and not a
wife. Thus, then, the text of Isaiah is most properly translated : Behold,
a maid is with duld." In fact, the translation q nin; (Aq. S. Th.) is more
exact than q ntpiitts (LXX. Syr.). In medieval sermons Christ is called
" the son of the maid."
* A young and newly-married wife might be called n^3 (as in Homer,
rvfi^^nubiluH-ainupta; Eng. bride); but even in Homer a married
woman, if young, is sometimes called nuvfiltn ih»x/H, but not utipn
nnm).
Digitized by
Google
208 ISillAH.
in chap. ix. 5.^ But, in any case, even if the prophet tboaght
of one of the tnchp of the then royal house, the child thus
prophesied of is the Messiah, that wondrous heir of the
Davidic throne whose birth is exultingly greeted in chap. ix.
It is the Messiah whom the prophet here beholds as about
to be born, then in chap. ix. as bom, and in chap. xL as
reigning, — three stages of a triad which are not to be wrenched
asunder, a threefold constellation of consoling forms, illuminat-
ing the three stadia into which the future history of his people
divides itself in the view of the prophet Or is nohvn no
determinate person at all, or not any single person ? Duhm
asserts that wife and son are merely representative ideas ; and
Benss holds that by the virgin is meant la femtne eomnu
telle. Kueuen thinks that some particular woman of the time
was meant ; and Henry Hammond as early as 1653 expounded
this view, maintaining that the prophecy has found in Jesus
Christ a fulfilment which goes beyond its immediate sense,
that in its pi^mary sense pregnancy, birth, and maturity are
only parabolicaTlacts subservient to the chronological measure-
ment of time. But all this is opposed by the address in
chap, viii 8, which demands a definite and highly significant
personality. And, further, the view is not to be accepted which
holds that the house of David is the nchv, and that her son is
a future new Israel (Hofmann, Ebrard, Kohler, Weir) ; for
while it is true that in contrast to the widowhood of the
community of Israel a youthful age of it, D^p^^jr, is spoken of
in chap. liv. 4 (cC Jer. iL 2), yet the community of Israel is
never absolutely called nobyn or njunan, and the text is here
thoroughly individual in its reference, and does not point to a
' According to 2 Kings xvi. 2, Abast on ascending the throne was twenty
yean old, and according to 2 Kings xviii. 2, Hezekiah on his ascending
the throne was twenty-fire years old. Now, as, according to 1 Kings xvi
2, Ahaz reigned sixteen years, he thus died in his thirty-sixth year, and
would thus have to be regarded as father of Hezekiah when eleven years
old. According to the LXX. and Pesh., in 2 Chron. xxviii. 1 he was
twenty-five years old on ascending the throne, and therefore died when
forty-one years old, so tliat Hezekiah, according to this reckoning, would
have been bom to him in his sixteenth year. This might have been
possible. But however Hezekiah's accession to the throne may be
regarded (see the tables on pp. 32-33X the result is always reached that
Hezekiah was already bom when his father succeeded to the govern-
ment (ct Driver, Jtaiah, p. 40).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Vn. 14, IB, 209
twofold periona moralis. The prophet would have said I^^vtItI ;
no^jr in this kind of personification is unheard of, and the
house of David, as then before the view of the prophet, was
not at all deserving of such a designation. There is therefore
no other alternative left but to accept the view that the
prophet means by nobpn a particular virgin, and one, more-
over, belonging to the house of David, as the Messianic
character of the prophecy desiderates. She who is meant is
the same as is named by Micah v. 2, nT?\ It is the virgin
whom God's spirit presents before the prophet, and who,
although he cannot name her, yet stands before his soul as
selected for something extraordinary (cf. the article in i?in
in Num. xi. 27 and similar passages). How exalted this
mother appears to him, is seen from the fact that it is
she who gives the son his name, the name >kuqv (here to
be written as one word).^ The purport of this name is
purely promissory. But if we look at the @p and the occasion
which preceded it, the n^K can be no mere promise and no
pure promise ; we expect (1) that it will be an extraordinary
fact which the prophet announces, and (2) a fact with a
threatening presentative side. Now a humiliation of the
house of David is already included in the fact that the Gk)d
it will not recognise nevertheless shapes its future as the
emphatic wn says : He (avrof) from His own impulse and
out of His own choice. But this shaping of the future must
also be as threatening for the unbelieving bouse of David as
it is promising for the believers of Israel. And the threaten-
ing of the n^K cannot be to be sought exclusively in ver. 1 5,
seeing that both 9? and nin transfer the central bearing of
the rm to ver. 14; and further, the externally unconnected
addition of ver. 15 shows that what is said in ver. 14 is the
main thing, and not conversely. In ver. 14, however, a
threatening element of the niM can only lie in this, that it is
not Ahaz and not a son of Ahaz, or generally of the house of
David as then hardening itself, through whom God saves His
people, but that a nameless virgin of humble rank, whom God
has chosen, and whom He shows to His prophet in the mirror
of His counsel, will bring forth the divin* deliverer of His
' See on thU the tractate Sofrim iv. EaUuHui 8, and pp. 67, 68 of the
edition by Joel Miiller, I87a
VOL. I.
Digitized by
Google
210 ISAIAH.
people in the midstr of the impending tribulations. And by
this it is indicated that He who is the pledge of the continued
existence of Judah does not come until the present degenerate
house of David, which is bringing Judah to the brink of
destruction, is removed even to the stump (chap. xL 1).
But now comes the further question. Wherein consists
the extraordiuary characteristic of the announced fact? It
consists in this, that according to chap. is. 5, Immanuel Him-
self is a WB, — He is God in bodily self-presentation. If, how-
ever, the Messiah is ?MUQV in the sense that, as the prophet in
chap. ix. 5 (cf. chap. z. 21) expressly says. He is Himself
Ttt, His birth must also be a wonderful or miraculous one.
The prophet, it is true, does not say that the no^y whom no
man has yet known will bear Him without that happening,
so that He is bom not so much out of the house of David,
as into it, a gift of heaven ; but this nehyn was and remained
in the Old Testament an enigma or mystery, powerfully inciting
to the ipevvav mentioned in 1 Pet L 10—12, and waiting
for its solution in a historical fulfilment Thus the nlK is on
the one side a mystery staring threateningly at the house of
David, and on the other side it is a mystery rich in comfort
to the prophet and all believers ; and it is couched in such
enigmatic terms in order that they who harden themselves
may not understand it, and in order that believers may so
much the more long to understand it It is the result of the
self-hardening of Ahaz, that the tAh withdraws itself from his
comprehension, just as the proclamation of the kingdom of
heaven, according to Matt xiii 10-17, was wrapped in the
veil of parable to the benefit of the disciples, but for the
punishment of the hardened masses.
In ver. 15 the threatening element of ver. 14 then becomes
alone predominating. It would not be so if thickened milk
and honey were meant here, as the usual food of the tenderest
age of childhood (as maintained by Gesenius, Hengstenberg,
and others). But the reason on which it is grounded in the
following verses, 16, 17, conveys another view. Thickened
milk and honey, the food of the desert, will be the only
provisions which the land will furnish in the time con-
temporaneous with the ripening youth of ImmanueL >^^P'^
(from Kpn, Uc;., to be thick, clotted) is butter including the
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTEB Vn. 16, 17. 211
cream (both included in Arab. ^^4^), as ^3*33 means cheese
including the curd. The object to jn' is expressed in vers.
15, 16 by inf. absolvti (cf. the more usual mode of expression
in chap. viiL 4). The h in Vivrh is that of time (Spurrel on
Gen. iiL 8) ; it is. used in a somewhat vaguer manuer than "iV,
as in "f^, Amos iv. 7 ; '^\>^'>, Deut xvi 4, where all the
three parallel passages, Ex. xii. 10, xxiiL 18, Num. ix. 12,
have "IJ? ; ^f? in Lev, xxiv. 12 is a designation of the terminus
ad quern, as it also interchanges in reference to space in
Ps. lix. 14 with 7$ and "Vl. The incapacity to distinguish
between bad and good belongs characteristically to the age of
childhood (Deut L 39 and elsewhere), and to old age when it
relapses into childish ways (2 Sam. xix. 36). The commence-
ment of the capacity to distinguish things is equivalent to
entering into the so-called anni discretionis, into the riper age
of conscious free self-determination. The notion implied in
the expression is not purely ethical, and therefore the f is not
to be taken as the ^ of purpose. By the time when Immanuel
has advanced to this age, all the blessings of the land
will be reduced to this, that a land full of luxuriant corn-
fields and vineyards would have turned into a great wooded
pasture land, only furnishing milk and honey and nothing
more. The fact that traT^ 2bn ror jns ia used in the Torah
as the characteristic designation of Canaan, ought not to
disturb this view. The desolation of the land is the reason
of. the limitation of Immanuel to that most rample and
uniform kind of food, a food which is also most meagre and
insipid when compared with the fat of wheat and the
exhilaration of wine.
This limitation thus finds its reason in vers. 16, IT ; there
are two successive and causally connected events which bring
about that universal desolation. Vers. 16, 17: "For before
the, hoy shaU understand how to reject the evil and choose the
good, laid waste will he the land hefore whose two kings thou art
in terror. Jehovah will hring upon thee, and upon thy people,
and upon thy father's house, days suth as have not come since
the day when Ephraim tore himsdf from Judah — the king of
Assfwr." The land of the two kings, Syria and Israel, is first
devastated by the Assyrians who are called hither by Ahaz.
Digitized by
Google
212 IBAUH.
Tiglath-Pileser conqnered Damascus and a part of the kingdom
of Israel, and took away a large portion of the inhabitants of
both regions into captivity (2 Kings xv. 29, ztL 9). Jndah
is then also devastated by the Assyrians as a punishment for
having scorned the help of Jehovah and having preferred
their human help. Days of misfortune will come upon the
royal house and the people of Judah, such as 0?^> ivaU$, as
in Ex. X. 6) have not come upon them since the days of the
calamity of the falling away of the ten tribes (D^*Pf with prefixed
p, the vague expression of direction in time, as in Judg. xix.
30 ; 2 Sam. viL 6 ; for which elsewhere is also used D^^TIPf*
with following infin., Ex. ix. 18 ; 2 Sam. xix 25). The calling
in of Assur laid the foundation for the overthrow of the king-
dom of Judah not less than for that of the kingdom of Israel.
Ahaz thereby became a tributary vassal of the Assyrian king,
and although Hezekiah again became free from Assyria
through the miraculous help of Jehovah, nevertheless what
Nebuchadnezzar did was only the accomplishment of the
frustrated undertaking of Sennacherib, "nts^ "^QO riK stands
with incisive force at the end of tlie two verses. The ntt is
frequently placed where to an indelinite object is appended
the more particularly defined object (Gen. vi. 19, xxvL 34).
Clieyne thinks that the closing words ly^n i^ nK weaken the
enei^ of the expression, and that their ultra - distinctness
betrays the fact of their being an interpolation. Like Knobel
and others, he rejects them as a gloss. But even if 1^03
yient in ver. 20a be a gloss, here the words appear to me to
be like the arrow point of vers. 16, 17. The very king to
whom Ahaz has. recourse in his terror will bring Judah to the
brink of destruction. Besides, the entirely loose unconnected
succession of ver. 17 after ver. 16 is very efiectivc. The hope
which ver. 16 gives rise to in Ahaz, is suddenly transformed
into bitter deception. In the view of such catastrophes,
Isaiah prophesies the birth of Immanuel. At the time when
he will understand aright what is good and bad, he will eat only
thickened milk and honey ; and this fact has its reason in the
desolation of the whole of the old territory of the Davidic king-
dom which will precede his maturer youth, when he would choose
other kinds of food if they were to be found. Consequently
the birth of Immanuel in the vision of the prophet occurs in
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB Vn. 18. 213
the interval between that present time and the Assyrian
oppressions, and his earliest childhood runs parallel with
the Assyrian oppressions. In any case, their consequences are
still lasting during the time of his riper youth. This cannot
be taken away from the prophecy; nor does Bredenkamp
(who takes injn^ as determining a purpose " in order that he
may know what Ahaz has not known : to reject the evil and
to choose the good ") succeed thereby as he intends in separat-
ing the birth of Immanuel from being interwoven with the
Syro-Ephraimitish war. We shall afterwards see how, not-
withstanding this involvement, the truth of the prophecy
nevertheless continues to exist
What now follows in vers. 18-25 is only the development
in detail of ver. 17. The promising side of the ms remains
in the background. In the presence of Ahaz the promise
must be dumb. So much the more eloquent is the threatening
of judgment expressed from ver. 18:" And it comes to pass
in that day, Jehovah shall hiss for the fly that is at the end of
the Nile-arms of Egypt, and the bee that is in the land of
Assur ; and they come and settle down all of them in the
valleys of the declivities, and in the clefts of tlie rocks, and in
all tJu thorn thickets, and in all the meadows." The prophet
already said in chap. v. 26 that Jehovah would hiss for dis-
tant peoples, and now he is able to name them by name.
Bees and swarms of flies are also used as a Homeric image
for swarms of peoples, II. iL 87 : "^vre e0vea tlcX fiekiacawv
ahivatov, B.n6. 469: ^re fiviaav aZmdav eOvea voXKa.. Here
the images are likewise emblematic. The Egyptian people,
being unusually numerous, is compared to the swarming fly
(3^31, j_,\_, j, from ,_,j, to move much and inconstantly hither
and thither) ; and the Assyrian people, being warlike and eager
for conquest, is compared to the stinging bee, which is so difiicult
to turn away (Deut L 44 ; Ps. cxviiL 12) ; n"jin from nan, jii,
to be behind one another, to follow one another, drive, swarm.
The emblems also correspond to the nature of the two countries ;
the fly to slimy Egypt, which, from being such, abounds in
insects (see chap, xviii. 1),* and the bee to the more moun-
1 Egypt abounds in midges, gnats, gadflies, and especially mtucariae, in-
cluding a species of siuall flies {fM%.<\j> so called from their humming,
Digitized by
Google
214 I8AUH.
tainous and woody Assyria, where bee-cultnre still constitutes
one of the principal branches of trade in the present day.
*<((!, pi. onk\, is a name of the Nile and of its arms ; the word
is Egyptian (ifaro, with the art phiaro, plur. yarSu), but also
Semitic (Friedr. Delitzsch, Rebr. Language, p. 25). The end
of the Nile-arms of Egypt, from a Palestinian point of view,
was the farthest comer of the land. The army of Egypt
marches out of the whole extent of the country, meets with
the Assyrian army in the Holy Land, where both settle down
(ym, according to the Masoretic evidence, MUra, like ipn, chap,
xix. 1 ; 1D31, Lev. xxvL 36, and other instances), and cover it
in such a way that ntaan »?ra, the valleys of steep overhanging
heights (cf. on chap. v. 6), and O'vysn 'g'jjj, clefts of the rocks,
all D'V*''!?, thorn hedges, and Dwru, pastures (from >?3, accord-
ing to the Assyr., related to n^jn, r?''.'?> **> make to conch,
to bring to rest), are covered over with their swarms. Just
such places are named as afford the flies and bees suitable
shelter and abundance of nourishment, and this shows the
faithfulness to nature with which the figure is depicted. If
we look at the historical fulfilment, it also corresponds to the
literal terms of the prophecy ; for no collision of the Assyrian
and Egyptian forces took place in the time of Hezekiah ;
and it was not till the time of Josiah that a collision took
place between the Chaldean and Egyptian powers in the
eventful battle fought between Pharaoh-Necho and Nebuchad-
nezzar at Carchemish, which was decisive for the fate of Judah.
That the spirit of prophecy points to this eventful occurrence,
is shown in ver. 20, where there is now no further reference
to Egypt, because it succumbed to the Eastern Asian empire.
Ver. 20 : "In that day the All-Lord vnll shave ivith a razor
that is for hire on the hanks of the river, with the king of Assur,
the head and the hair of the legs ; and also the heard vnll it take
away." Knobel takes the hair-growth as figurative of the
vegetable produce of the country ; but the allegation that the
flora, as the hair-covering of the soil, is a Biblical representa-
tion, has only limited support in the use of 1*^ as a name of
DMZ. xiL 701, 702, Anm. 3), and they are a great plague to men in the whole
region of the Nile (see Hartmann, NtUttrgetchiehtlich-mediciniiehe Skizze der
NUlUndar, p. 204 f., 1865). The wasp is found as a hieroglyphic sign, in
Lower Egypt (see Ebers, Aegypten utui die Bikher, Moii$ i. 73 i.).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB Vn. SO. 215
the QDcnltivated vine left to itself (Lev. xxv. 5).^ The people
of Jadah are viewed here, as chap, i 6, as a stripped and
naked man, who has not only the hair of his head and parts
i^'Tfi, euphemistically of the place where the two legs separate)
shaved off, but, what is most shameful of all, also the hair of
his beard, which is the sign of manly vigour, manliness, and
manly dignity. For this purpose the AU-Buler uses a razor,
which is more exactly designated as eonduditia in liioribu*
(see on "^y^, 1 Sam. xiv. 4), Euphratis ("inj here instead of
'*'i'?l')> *ind yet more precisely as the king of Asshur, although
this meat 1^3 may be an elucidative addition not belonging
to the original text* "".'Sfef? might mean, as the genitive of
a neuter, eonductUii, or of an abstract term, eonduetionis, as it
seems to have been so taken by the accentuation ; but we take
it rather adjectively : with a razor, that is to say, that which
is for hire in the regions on both sides of the Euphrates — the
king of Asshur. "lyn is mate, in Num. vi 5, but may be /em.
in the same way as "lun in Hos. viL 4, and as ?aw and DSrm^ with
same nominal prefix ta, always is ; and that it is thus understood
here is shown by "BDR. The verb fiBD has here its proper
meaning, to shave off, radere (cf. JSD, abstergere, whence 3<DD,
avoYio<s, <r<^0770?, a sponge), which also takes on the special
sense of scraping together, gathering ia In •vi'Sfe'f} there is
involved the bitterest sarcasm for Ahaz ; the cheap knife which
he had hired for the deliverance of Judah is hired by the
Lord in order to shave Judah wholly and most shamefully.
I In the Arabic (Pereian and Turkish) we frequently find the hair of
the liead compared to long leaves (DMZ. viL 373), to the foliage of vines
(de Sacy, Chratom. iiL 54Xor to the branches of palms (Amrulkais, Muall.
V. 33). In the classical usage, figurative terms like at^^n, ^ifiti, eoma
(eat$arie$) are commonly applied to woods and trees. In the Mishna, Penh
ii. 3, the branches of two trees beating on each other are designated lyb
trnia.
' ^ji\ also signifies the tract along the banks of a river (aa the place for
i>jlc> passing over), and *»t ii, that of the Euphrates, the whole tract of
land stretching from the east bank of the Euphrates to the Tigris, and
from the west bank to the Arabian desert {bartjet-tl-'arab), from which,
according to the Turkish Eftmfls and Ltx geographieum, ii. 232-3, is derived
'Ibri or 'Ibrdni, the name of the Jewish people, as having come from the
land stretching from the bonk of the Euphrates to the Tigris.
Digitized by
Google
216 ISAUH.
Thus shaved Jadab is a depopulated and desert land, in which
men nourish themselves no longer by cultivating com and
wine, or by trade and commerce, but exclusively by the rearing
of cattle. Vers. 21, 22 : "And it will come to pass in that
day that a man keeps a little cow and a couple of sheep. And
it comes to pass, on accourU of the quantity of the milk produce,
he vnll eat cream, for butter and honey shall every one eat who
is left within the land." The former prosperity has gone down
even to scantiest housekeeping. One man keeps carefully
alive (•ijn, like n*nn elsewhere) a diminutive milch cow (only
a heifer, for the strongest and finest of the cattle that are full
grown have fallen as spoil to the enemy) and two bead of
smaller animals, ^^f, not \]^, because two female sheep or
goats in milk are meant, and all the same this is enough ;
there are but a few men now in the country, and since all the
land is pasture, the few beasts give milk in abundance ; for,
as a rural proverb says, " the cow is milked through the Jnouth."
Bread and wine are unprocurable. Whoever has escaped the
Assyrian razor eats thickened milk and honey; this, and
nothing but this, without change ad nauseam ; for the hills,
formerly covered with vines and corn-fields, are now over-
grown with thorns.
The prophet repeats this three times in vers. 23-25 : "And
it wUl come to pass in that day, every plcux where a thousand viTUS
stand at a thousand silver pieces, thorns and thistles wiU it he-
come. With arrows and with hows vnll men go ; for the whole
land will become thorns and thistles. And all the hills which are
womt to be hoed with the hoe, thou wUt not go to them, from fear
of thorns and thistles ; and it becomes a gathering place of gxen,
and a treading place of sheep." The 103 1?N, ie. 1000 shekels
of silver, recall to mind Song of SoL viiL 1 1 ; but there that
is the value of the yearly produce. Here the thousand
shekels are the value of a thousand vines, the designation of
a peculiarly valuable bit of vineyard. In the present day the
value of a vineyard in Lebanon and Syria is still reckoned
according to the value of the separate vines, and usually one
vine is reckoned as worth one piastre, a little more than two- ,
pence each, just as in Qermany a Johannesberg vine is valued
at a ducat Every piece of land where such precious vines
stand will become a prey to thorny brushwood. People go
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER vn. S8-a>. 217
there {p^ ^y, retraction of the tone, with following Milel) *
with ari-ow and bow, because the whole ground will have become
thorns and thistles (see on chap. v. 6a), and therefore wild
beasts will make their abode among them. And thou, — thus
does the prophet address the dweller in the country, — thou
comest not to all the hills which have been hitherto most
carefully cultivated,' thou comest not to them in order to make
them again fertile, from fear (ikt in the accusative = rnn>p)
of thorns and thistles, i.e. because the thick undergrowth
frightens thee from attempting to reclaim such a fallow.
Jerome, Yitringa, Ewald, and others interpret otherwise:
timor veprium non veniet illuc, but nac' idari'to has a personal
meaning ; if riKT were the subject, the expression would have
been DK^^n. Thus, then, they give the oxen free course there,
and let what grows be trodden down by sheep and goats. The
description is intentionally tautological and pleonastic, heavy
and dragging. It aims at giving the impression of a waste
heath, of a dull uniformity. Hence the repetitions of n^n and
'^'^]1. In vers. 23-25, whatever is intended as historically
future may be also in every case translated by the future ;
the impf. DB^'iTn'^ ver. 23a, expresses the condition of things
at the breaking in of the devastation (" where when this breaks
so and so many vines will stand"); only pinjr in ver. 25a has
not a future, but ^ present signification ; not sarruntur, and
still less mrriebantur, but aarriuntur, as expressing the culti-
vation going on at present The indefinite subject of njm in
ver. 255 is all that lies round about.
Thus far does the discourse of Isaiah to king Ahaz go.
~ He does not say expressly when Immanuel will be born, but
only what will have happened before he enters upon the
riper years of boyhood : namely, first the devastation of Israel
and Syria, and then the devastation of Judah itself by the
Assyrians. But when he represents Immanuel as eating
thickened milk and honey as well as all those who survive
the Assyrian oppressions in the Holy Land, he manifestly
^beholds and thinks of the childhood of Immanuel as coincid-
ing with the time of the Assyrian calamities. In such a
* In the Codices the remark is expressly made on {n3> : ^*]^ opoi 'a
p) p jn7irt\ i.e. twice occurring as Milel, here and in Deut. i 3&
* Compare the reminiscence in the Mislina, Peak ii. § 8.
Digitized by
Google
218 ISAIAH.
combined perspective view of events whicli lie far apart,
consists \rhat Ghr. A. Crusius has designated the complex
character of the prophecy.* The ground of this complex
character of it is the human limitation attaching to the far
look of the prophet, which limitation the Spirit of Grod allows
to exist and makes subservient to Himself. If we cleave to
the letter of the prophecy, it is possible on account of its
complex character to find fault with its truth ; but if we look
upon the substance of what it contains, it will be found that
its truth is not thereby destroyed. For the things which the
prophet sees together are also essentially connected although
not in time. If Isaiah here, in chaps. viL-xii., looks upon
Assyria absolutely as the universal empire (cf. 2 Kings xxiiL
29 ; Ezra vi. 22), this is so far true, seeing that the four
empires from the Babylonian to the Eoman are really only
the unfolding of the beginning which had its beginning in
Assyria. And if, here in chap. viL, he thinks of the son of
the virgin as growing up under the Assyrian oppressions, this
is also so far true, since Jesus was actually bom in a time in
which the Holy Land, deprived of its earlier fulness of bless-
ing, found itself under the supremacy of the universal empire,
and in a condition which went back to the unbelief of Ahaz
as its ultimate cause. Besides He, who in the fulness of time
became flesh, does truly lead an ideal life in the Old Testa-
ment history. The fact that the house and people of David
did not perish in the Assyrian calamities is really, as chap. viiL
presupposes, to be ascribed to His presence, which, although
not yet in bodily form, was nevertheless active. Thus is
solved the contradiction between the prophecy and the history
of its fulfilment. We do not need to have recourse to the
expedient of Bengel, Schegg, Schmieder, and others, who hold
that the JTIK consists in an event just about to happen, which
points typically to the birth of the real Immanuel ; nor do we
require the expedient of Hofmann, who takes the words of the
prophet as an emblematic prophecy of the rise of a new Israel
which will come to spiritual understanding in a troublous
> Ed. Konig (Qffenbarungibegnff da A. T. iL 388, 389, 1882) thinks
this subject can be more correctly formulated thus : " God makes what
was announced by prophecy separate itself in reality into different
stages."
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTEB VUL 1, t. 219
time, due to the want of understanding in the Israel of that
present time. Eather is the view of Yitringa, Haneberg,
Eeusch, Vilmar, and others to be adopted, namely, that the
prophet makes the stages in the life of the Messiah of the
for future to be time-measures of the events of the immediate
future. This he actually does ; but in prophesying, without
holding the birth of Immannel to be an event of the distant
future, he combines him who is seen in vision with the
approaching tribulations. Far sight and near sight are com-
bined with each other in his prophecy; the prophecy is ^/
divine within human limits.
Two Signs of the Immkdute Fdtube, Chap. VIII. 1-4.
In the midst of the continued turmoils of the Syro-
Ephraimitish war, Isaiah receives God's instruction to perform
a peculiar prophetic action. Vers. 1, 2 : " Then Jehovah said
to Tne, Take thee a large tablet, aTid write thereon in common
legible lines : In speed trophies, booty hastens} And I will
take for Tne trustworthy witnesses : Uriah the priest and
Zecharich the son of Jeberechiah." The tablet (cf. iii. 23,
where the same word signifies a metal mirror), perhaps a
smoothed tablet of wood, is to be large, in order to produce
the impression of its being monumental; and the writing
upon it is to be 6*^3*1 D^n, the stylus of thg people, i.e. writing
in the usual popular character, consisting of inartistic lines
easily read (cf. Eev. xiii. 18, xxL 17). What is to be written
is introduced with ? of dedication, as in Ezek. xxxvil 16, or,
more generally, of relation, as, e.g., jq Jer. xxiii. 9. But as it
is not a personal name which the ^ introduces, but a thing,
"•nop will have to be taken, as Luzzatto does, for fut. instans,
according to Gen. xv. 12 ; Josh, il 5 ; Hab. L 17 (see remark
upon it) = accelerattira sunt spolia, spoils are about to be
hastened. Most of the commentators confuse the nature of
the thing by taking these words at once as the name
of a person (Ewald, § 288c) ; they are not yet this at the
outset, but only become such afterwards. At first they are
an oracular announcement of what is future : trophies, booty,
are at hand, — but who is the conquered one ? Jehovah and
I [Maher-shalal-hash-'baz.]
Digitized by
Google
220 ISAIAH.
His prophet, although not initiated into the poh'cy of Ahaz,
know. But their knowledge is intentionally shrouded in the
veil of mystery. For the inscription is not to predict any-
thing to the people. It is only to be a means whereby
publicly to announce that the course of events was one that
was foreknown and pre-indicated by Jehovah. Accordingly,
when what is said by the inscription on the tablet occurs,
men will know that it is the fulfilment of this inscription,
and therefore an event predetermined by Gk)d. On this
account Jehovah takes to Himself witnesses. It is not
necessary to read eitlier >fyv^\, with Elnobel and others (and
I got to testify), nor rn'yn), with LXX. Targ. Syr. Hitzig
(and get to testify). The relation is the same as with P*iK
instead of Pjn ^ Ezek. v. 3. Jehovah says what He will do,
and the prophet knows without its being necessary to be told
him that it was to be done instrumentally through him. Uriah
is doubtless the same person who afterwards set himself to serve
the heathen desires of Ahaz (2 Kings xvL 10 sqq.). Zechariali
ben Jeberechiah (Berechiah), of the same name as the post-
exile prophet, was perhaps the Asaphite mentioned in 2 Chron.
xxix. 13. The two are reliable witnesses as being persons of
high distinction whose testimony is of great authority with the
people. Accordingly, when the history of the time itself solves
the enigma of that inscription, these two will tell the people how
long before it had been written down by the prophet as such.
In the meantime something occurred whereby the place of
the dead tablet was taken by a more eloquent living one.
Vers. 3, 4: "And I approached the prophetess; and she con-
ceived, and hear a son. Then said Jehovah to me : Call his
name Swiftly — Trophies — Booty hastens; for be/ore the boy
will learn to cry my father and my mother, they mil carry the
property of Damascus and the trophies of Samaria before the
king of Assur." How entirely dififerent does ver. 3 sound
from chap. viL 14 1 The nx^a: is not the nthv there ; for if the
son of the virgin is the Messiah, he is born into the house of
David, and not into the house of the prophet Besides, the
prophet has already a son from his young wife, and she was
no longer no^.' To his son Shearjashub, in whose name the
1 J. J. Raven (Cambridge), in liis Estay on Jiaiah vii.-ix. 7, observes
on chap. viii. 3 : " New to acconiplish the sign that was given to Ahaz,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Vm. 8, 4. 221
law of the history of Israel was fonaulated to the prophet on
the occasion of his call in chap, vi., there is now added
another son, to whom the inscription on the tablet (with
omission of the ^) is given as a name, apd who therefore
symbolizes the approaching chastisement of Syria and of the
kingdom of the ten tribes. Before this boy learns to lisp the
name of father and mother, they will carry away (k6^., not
3 imperf. Ni. which is k!?'1^ but Kal with the latent un-
determined subject KWjn, Ges. § 137. 3) the treasures of
Damascus and the trophies (ie. spoils taken from the flying
or slaughtered enemy) of Samaria before the king of Assyria,
and he will therefore leave the territory of the two capitals
as a conqueror. It is true that Tiglath - Pileser only
conquered Damascus and not Samaria; but he wrested
from Pekab, the king of Samarin, the land beyond the
Jordan and also a part of the land on this side. The trophies
which he took home from there to Assyria were not less tTV
fnd)} than if he, as Sbalmanasar-Sargon afterwards did, had
conquered Samaria. The birth of Mahershalal took place
about three-quarters of a year later than the preparation of
the tablet (for there is no need to take ^J^^, in the sense of
a plupf.) ; and the interval defined from the birth of the boy
till the chastisement of the allied kingdoms amounts to about
one year. Now, as the Syro-Ephraimitish war did not begin
later than in the first year of Ahaz, and as the chastisement
by Tiglath-Pileser occurred during the lifetime of the allies,
whereas Pekah was murdered soon thereafter (2 Kings xt. 30),
there elapsed from the beginning of the war to the chastise-
ment of the allies at most three years, and the setting forth
of the tablet cannot consequently be assigned a much later
date than the scene with Ahaz. The inscription on the tablet
adopted as the name of the child was not a purely consolatory
prophecy, since the prophet had shortly before prophesied that
the same Assyria would devastate Judah as well as the two
allied countries. It was only a practical proof of the omni-
scient omnipotence of Jehovah shaping the history of the
future. The prophet has indeed the melancholy vocation of
the prophet takes to wife the young woman epoken of;" but this and
other forced hypothetical explanations — such as that Ahaz may have
adoptecl Mahershalal— convict themaelvea.
Digitized by
Google
222 ISAIAH.
having to make obdurate, to harden. Hence his discoursing
and acting are so enigmatical in relation to both the king and
the people. Jehovah foreknows the consequences which the
calling in of the help of Assyria will have for Syria and
Israel. This knowledge He writes down with the certification
of witnesses. If this is fulfilled, it is at the same time a
termination to the rejoicing of the king and people in their
self-obtained deliverance.
But Isaiah does not find himself surrounded merely by the
very wide circle of an incorrigible people ripe for judgment
He does not stand alone, but is surrounded by a small band
of believing disciples, who need consolation, and are worthy of
it. It is to these that the promising other side of the prophecy
of Immanuel belongs. Mahershalal cannot comfort or con-
sole them ; for they know that when Assyria has done with
Damascus and Samaria, the troubles of Judah are not over,
but are only really about to begin. The prophecy of
Immanuel is destined to be the stronghold of the believers in
the terrible judgment time of the worldly power which was
then commencing ; and to turn into the light and unfold
the consolation it contained for the believers, is the purpose
of the discourses which now follow.
The Esotkrio Discourses, Chaps. VIII. 5-XIL
A, — ImmanvLel's consolation in the coming darknesses,
chap. viii. 5-ix. 6.
The beading and introduction: "And Jehovah continued
further to speak to me as follows" extends to all the following
discourses as far as chap. xiL They all tend to consolation.
But consolation presupposes need of consolation. Hence the
prophet must also begin here with threatening of judgment.
Vers. 6, 7 : " Forasmuch as this people despises the vxiters of
SUoa that go softly and hold with delight to Sezin and the son
of Remaliah — therefore behold ! the All-Lord Iringeth up upon
them, the loaters of the river, the mighty and t/te great ones, the
king of Asrnr and all his host ; and it rises up over all his
diannels. and goes over all his hanks." The Siloa has the
name oV, or, according tp a well - supported reading, npe'
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER VUI. 9,7. 223
(the resolved open form like pi^v, "ib*!? is interchangeable with
the sharpened fona like k^j>0, ■>iiy, ni»3, and the full writing
with the defective as in "VVff, ■>in»t5'), ab emittendo, either in an
infinitive sense as shooting forth, or in a concretely coloured
partici^ sense (after the form "i^aj) as emisms (airearaXftevtxi,
John ix. 7), bubbling forth ; cf. Talm. i^rlxm D'a, land to be
artificially irrigated (oppos. b'ari n»3, fertilized by rain).' The
"waters of Siloa" streamed from what is now called the
Mary - spring, and they were brought from there to the
western city by means of a canal sunk in the rocks; and
they served besides for watering the gardens lying at the
outlet of Tyropoeon and the valley of Kedron (see Muhlau,
Art " Siloah " in Iliehm's Diet.). The canal had a slight slope ;
the fall, therefore, was moderate ; and, further, the spring was
intermittent These still-flowing waters * present an image of
the invisible ruling of God which does not always appear
sensibly to the eye, — that God whom Israel and the royal
house with which He had connected His promise might call
their own. The beautiful figure was the more appropriate,
that the Siloa passage ran through tiie Ophel from the north-
east to the south-west, and the Siloa water therefore to a
certain extent streamed from Zion. But Zion and the mount
of the temple are one, and hence Jerome has good ground
for representing the forts Siloe as flowing ad radices montitt
Sum, and again m radieibus montis Moria. The reproach of
* Since Athias, the written form I^VSn (without Dagesh) has come in.
But all the editions from Soncin and the Complutensian to the Venetian
of 16S1 (aa well as Nissel, Lombroso, and Hutter) have tfp^- The
Cod. BabyL aleo writes it thus with Dagesh (although a later hand has
erased it), and the Targum has mJihuff- It is true that Eimchi also
erroneously quotes (under the form \^ytt) rriW; hut there is not a
single text which presents this double flena icripUo with ^ rajJuUwn.
* Babban Simon b. Gamaliel — as we read in Eraehin lOfr— taught that
the Siloah poured forth water onlj to the extent of an a«, that is, bo that
the opening of the spring had only the circumference of an a«. Then the
king ordered that it (the Siloah) was to be enlarged, that it might give
more water. But, on the contrary, it gave less, so that they again made
it smaller, and it then ran as before ; in order thus to confirm what is said
in Jer. ix. 13 : " Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let
the mighty man glory in his might"
Digitized by
Google
224 ISAIAH.
despising the waters of Siloah applies to Judah as well as
to Ephraim, and not to the latter only (ITagelsbacb) : to the
former, because it trusts in Assyria and despises the less
tangible but surer help which the house of David — if it
remained faithful — had to expect from the God of promise ;
to the latter, because it had allied itself with Aram to over-
throw the house of David. And yet the house of David,
although sunken and deformed, is the Grod-chosen fountain-
head of the salvation which is realized in secret still course.
The second reproach applies more especially to Ephraim.
DK is a prep. : and (because) delighting (is felt) with (see on.
the form of connection before a following preposition, Ges.
§ 116. 1), i.e. in and by the fellowship with Bezin and
Pekah, nt< b^fc> like D}> nrj. The substantive clause is pre-
ferred to the verbal clause fc'fe'l on account of the antithetical
consonance of bnbo with dko. Knobel and others refer tlie
reproof to dissatisfied Jews who were secretly favourable to
the undertaking of the two allies. But although there may
have been such under the misgovemment of Ahaz (to which
Luzzatto refers the D'!Wt| rtxpn), yet chap. vii. 2 speaks of the
people of Judah without exception, and W D{«i, which in
Isaiah mostly applies to Judah {e.g. chap. xxix. 13), but
sometimes also to the whole people, with special reference
to Ephraim (chap. ix. 15, cf. chap. ix. 7, 8), will consequently
in attachment to chap. viiL 4 comprehend Ephraim. This is
also confirmed by ver. 8 ; and chap. ix. 7 sqq. may be cited
in support of it, M'here sin and punishment are also appor-
tioned to Ephraim and Judah. An explanation which would
allow the immediate reference of ntn tisn to Judah would be
welcome. Such an expedient is furnished by Kohler (CfeseL
11 1, p. 2), who refers 6a to Judah and explains 6b thus :
" And because nothing but jubilation prevails with Hezia and
the son of Remaliah about the previous succeeding of their
plans." But dk after Mtfa\ makes the impression that it
indicates the object of the delighting. Perhaps Dlop is to be
read with Meier and Bredenkamp, following which Eeuss
also translates : et perd courage au sujet de Re^n ; DiDO, melt-
ing away (chap. x. 18), for fear is perhaps pregnant for
fearing, and is in virtue of a bold construction, irpov to
aijltaivoftevov (like brb, chap. Ixv. 18), connected with the
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTEfi VIIL a 325
Accnsative of the object This melting away would corre-
spond to the trembling like aspen leaves in chap. vii. 2.
But however the text is to be taken, what is threatened in
vers. 7, 8 must be referred to Ephraim and JudaL The
image of the invasion of Assyria is, as in Jer. xlvii. 2, taken
from the periodic overflowings of the Euphrates. The over-
flow of the Assyrian host pia3 here used of a heavy massive
multitude) strikes Ephraim first, in whose territories it flows
over eveiything. P^bk is the channel holding the water, and
nnj the bank ; Fhi is abbreviated from rrtns. The threat of
punishment is introduced by ]?^.; ] is like the Arab.
^_j, the mark of sequence (Ewald, § 348&). The words
■ns's 1^"nK we take as an elucidation by the prophet himself,
as in chap. viL 17.
Not till then, but certainly then, and irresistibly, this
overflowing reaches on to Judah. Ver. 8 : " And presses
fonoard into Judah, overflmos, and streams farther, till it
reaches to the neck; and the spreadings out of its wings fill
thy land, as iroad as it is, Immanuel ! " Ephraim is put
wholly under water by the river ; it perishes entirely. But
in Judah the river rolling on (■>?}?, driving farther or there-
over, Hab. i 11) and pressing forwards (1?n), really reaches
the most dangerous height ; yet if a deliverer is found, there
is still a possibility of being saved. Such a deliverer is
ImmanueL To him the prophet complains that the land
which is his land, and not merely the land of his birth (Gen.
xil 1 ; Jonah i 8) but of his dominion (cf. chap. ix. 6), is
almost swallowed up by the world-power ; the land has become
filled in its whole breadth (cf. on <^., Ges. § 147<i) by the
ontspreadings (rritso, a Hophal noun; cf. similar nominal
forms in ver. 23, chap. xiv. 6, xxix. 3, and especially
Ps. IxvL 1 1 *) of the wings of the stream, w. of the masses of
water covering the land, pouring from the main stream like
two equally broad wings, on either side of the trunk The
figure of wings of the stream is introduced by the fact that
the stream represents the army of Assyria, and the wings of
the stream are the *B3K, the wings of the army of Assyria.
' 71D3> to Bpread itself out, applied to a river, corresponds to the Arab.
vuMii, yamuddu, which is also said of the water passing over its bank
and the surroundings, and flooding them.
VOL. L P
Digitized by
Google
229 ISAIAH.
But it also naturallj occurs from the nature of the subject
to compare the onward hurrying stream to a bird shooting
thither; 'Aero^ is an old name of the Nile.' Immanuel,
whether it be written masoreticallj as one word or as two, is
here in any case used as a proper name, as in chap. viL 14
(as Jerome remarks, nomen proprium non interpretatum).
Brodenkarap makes the apostrophe of Immanuel into an
apostrophe of the people of Judah, and takes ^ UDy as the
watchword : With us is God. But we cannot let this Old
Testament invocation of the name of the future Christ
(Acts iz. 14 ; 1 Cor. L 2) be so easily wrested from us.
The upturned look, imploring help, does not remain un-
answered. The lamentation over the threatening destruction
is immediately transformed into the jubilation of holy defiance.
Vera 9, 10: "Exasperate yowsehes, peoples, and break to
pieces ; and learn it, all distances of the earth ! Gird yourselves,
and break to pieces; gird yourselves, and break to pieces!
Counsel council, and ii comes to naught ; speak speech, and it
does not become real : for vxith us is God." The second imperat-
ives in ver. 9 are threatening words of authority, having a
future signification, and alternating in ver. 10 with imper-
fects : Go on exasperating yourselves (^ with the tone on the
penult, and therefore not Pu. of *^^ eonsodari, as the Targum
translates, but the Qal of W], malum esse), go on equipping
yourselves; nevertheless ye are about to fall in pieces (vih
from nnn, related to nn|, confringi, c&nstemart). The prophet
classes together all the peoples that are rushing on against
God's people, pronounces upon them the sentence of annihila-
tion, and calls upon all the distant lands to hear this ultimate
fate of the kingdom of the world spoken to them. The
world - kingdom must be shattered to pieces in the land of
Immanuel ; for with us — as the watchword of believers runs
in reference to Him — with us is God I
> A. v. Q. in the Lit. CBl. 1889, Nr. 6, puts forward the conjecture that
Atyvsrsf, which is also used as an original name of the river, is equiva-
lent to alyvrUi, because the powerful many -armed river made the
impression on the first Hellenes of a bird of prey with powerful pinions.
IliiTKftif is hardly to be derived from rir-tftcn, but rather from «-< —
n[E]T— «, and is therefore synonymous with l[i{V (see A. Kolbe in the
Zeittehri/t fur d. Oymnatialweun, xz. 927X
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKR Vra. 11, 11 227
There now follows in ver. 11 an explanatory proposition.
It seems at first sight to turn away to a different theme, bnt
it stands in the closest connection with the triumphal words
of vers. 9, 1 0. Immanuel is the stronghold, the fortress of
the believers in the approaching time of Assyrian judgment
He and in Him God, and not any kind of human support.
This is the connection of vers. 11, 12: "For Jtkaoah has
thus spoken to me, overpowering me vnth ChSs Juind, and pressing
it upon me not to walk in the way of this people, saying : Call
not conspij'ocy all that this people calls conspiracy, and what is
feared by it fear not, and do not think terrible." I^f?, the
hand, is the absolute hand which, when it is laid upon a man,
overpowers all his perception, feeling, and thinking ; IJ? njrn
(that is to say, ^^, Ezek. iii. 14) is therefore the condition in
which God's hand shows itself peculiarly strong on the pro-
phet, the state of a peculiarly pressing and impressive working
of God. Luther, like the Syriac, erroneously interprets it :
as if he takes me by the hand ; n^ is related to the Kal,
invalescere, not to the Ri. apprehendere. This circumstantial
statement, and not the main verb ^QK, is what is carried on in
*?l?n ; *<" ^^^ latter term is not 3 p. prf. Pi., which would
have to be '?"iB!i, as Ps. cxviii. 18 C??71^", Josh. ii. 18, is the
form of address to a woman, with 4 instead of i), nor does it
need to so be corrected ; rather is this 3 p. imperf. Kal (without
suffix ">i3'., Hos. X. 10, whereas impf. Pi. iB^) closely con-
nected with Tn nptra, according to the analogy of the usual
passing of the participial and infinitive expression into the
finite form. With overwhelming influence and instructively
warning against going in the way of this people, Jehovah spake
to the prophet as follows. The warning runs to the effect that
the prophet and those who stand on his side are not to call "^^
what the mass of the people call ie^ (cf. the cry of Atbaliah,
nefp -vffp, 2 Chron. xxiii. 1 3). The combination of Sezin and
Pekah does not appear to be meant, for that was, in fact, an
actual conspiracy or league against the house and people of
David. Still less can the warning mean that believers, when
they see how the unbelieving Ahaz brings the people into
misfortune, ought not to enter into conspiracy against the
person of the king (Hofmann, Drechsler) ; they are not
warned, in fact, against making nrp, but from joining in the
Digitized by
Google
228 ISAUH.
popular cry wben tbe people say ne^'pi. Eoorda is therefore
perhaps right when he explains it thus : sermo hie est de eon-
juratione, quae dieebatur propftetae et discipvXorv/m qus. The
same thing happened to Isaiah as to Amos (Amos vii. 10)
and Jeremiah ; when the prophets were zealous against calling
in foreign assistance, they were treated as being in the
service of the enemy, and as having conspired for the over-
throw of the kingdom. Those who were honest were not to
share in this confusion of ideas. But this explanation of
Eoorda is seen to be impossible, by the fact that the warning
is introduced as addressed to the prophet himself ; and even
if it is to be regarded as applying mainly to the disciples
gathered around him, yet it cannot exclude himself. No
solution of the enigma justifies the transformation of the nts'p
into cnf', as held by Seeker, Gratz, and Cheyne; for that
Isaiah with his disciples is warned against making the
religion of the people theirs, is a thought quite foreign to the
connection, nor is it so expressed that the warning could be
understood according to ver. 19. We are therefore thrown
back upon the explanation which has been commonly adopted
since Jerome : noli dvMrum regum timere conjuraiionem. The
prophet and his followers are not to call the enterprise of
Sezin and Pekah conspiracy ; and they are generally not to
join with cowardly political newsmongers (Nagelsbach) in the
worldly ways of judging and speaking of the people who
look upon things apart from God, nor in the hue and cry
(2 Kings xL 4) of the rabble who deny the higher hand in
all things (Knabenbauer) ; they are not to fear O^T^O) what
is to the people an object of fear (with subj. suffix, which is
applied objectively in 1 Pet ili. 14), nor are they to regard
it as terrible, or feel it as terrible (n?|7, as in chap. xxix. 23 ;
Deut. I 29, and in the Jewish TefiUa WV^., " we shudder
before thee ").
The object of its fear was a very different one. Vers.
13-15: "Jehovah of hosts. Him sanctify; and let Him be
your fear, and let Him be your terror ; so will He beconu a
sanctuary, but a stone of stuvMing and a rock of offence to both
the houses of Israel, a snare and trap to the inhabitarUs of Jeru-
salem. And many among them wiU stumble and wUl fall, and
break to pieces, and be snared, and taken." With n|^", commences
Digitized by
Google
ciiAPTEB ■Via. IS-IS. 229
tlie logical apodosis to ver. 13. If je actually confess
Jehovah the Holy One as such a one (b^?'"?, as in chap.
xzix. 23, for which there is only once Pi. in Dent, xzxii. 61),
and if it is He whom ye fear, and who fills you with terror,
(r^, used of the object of the terror as *r^ of the object
of the fear, and therefore it is that which terrifies in a
causative sense), then He will become a B'npp. tr^jsp may
indeed also denote the sanctified object or the object to be
sanctified, as £nobel understands it here according to Kum.
xviiL 29 (o£ the plural in Lev. xxL 23 ; Ezek. xxviii. 18,
res aanetae) ; but keeping to the idea of the word, this gives
an unmeaning apodosis. Usually ehpD means the sanctified
place, the sanctuary, with which the idea of an asylum is
easily associated, because the temple was also regarded among
the Israelites as an asylum, and was also generally respected
as such (1 Kings I 50, ii 28 ; 1 Mao. x. 43 ; cf. Ex. xxi. 14).
This is the explanation given here by most expositors ; and
the punctuators also took it in this sense, seeing that they
have divided the two halves of ver. 14, as antithetical, by
athnaeh ; and thus enpc is to be understood really, and to be
translated sanctuary (Driver), and not asylum or refuge, which
would bo too narrow. The temple is not only a place of
shelter, but also of grace, of blessing, of peace. Whoever
sanctifies the Lord of lords, him He encompasses like temple
walls ; He hides him in Himself whUe death and tribulation
dwell without, and He comforts, feeds, and blesses him in his
fellowship. enpD^ mm must thus be explained, as I still
always think, according to such passages as chap. iv. 5, 6 ;
F& xxvlL 6, xxxi 21, and Prov. xviii. 10 ; for the sequence
makes us expect the expression of what Jehovah will become
for those who sanctify Him. Another view is held by Benss,
who understands enpD to mean an itnapproachable ahvrov
(J;»>) (see Baudissin, Studien, ii. 89), and similarly Breden-
kamp, and v. Orelli : " Sanctuary, He showing Himself as
the destroying one whom one does not profane unpunished ; "
Cheyne, "and He shall show Himself as holy." But this
gives an idea that is not germane to the following series of
synonyms, and a thought that is not to be expected in relation
to ver. 13. One expects the statement that He will become
Digitized by
Google
230 muAM.
8 sanctuary to those who sanctify Him, also on His side. The
antithesis follows : to the two bouses of Israel, on the con-
trary, i.e. to the mass of the people of the two kingdoms
as a whole, which neither sanctifies nor fears Jehovah, He
becomes a rock and snare.' The synonyms are intentionally
accumulated (comp. xxviiL 13) in order to make the impression
of a manifold but always inevitable fate of death. The first
three verbs of ver. 15 refer to \M (stone) and iKS (rock), and
the last two to na (snare) and B'g'o (springe).* All those
who do not give the honour to Jehovah are dashed to pieces
by His ruling as on a stone, and they are caught in it as in
a trap. Accordingly, D3 might refer to pK and nix (on them,
as Gesenius, Hitzig, and Cheyne explain it); but why then
not U on Him ? We take D3, with Ewald and Kagelsbach,
partitively like 13 in chap. x. 22.
The words that follow in ver. 16 : " Bind up the testimony,
seal the doctrine among my ditdfles," is eiUier a prayer of the
prophet addressed to Gk)d (Drechsler and others), certainly
not to Immanuel (Vitringa), or a command of God to the
prophet. As the word of God to the prophet has preceded
this, and as God is not expressly addressed, it is such an
instruction as we find in Dan. viiL 26, xiL 4, 9, Kev.
xxiL 20, and elsewhere, addressed to the seers of things in the
far futura The explanation of Bosenmilller, Knobel, and
others, namely, by bringing in God-taught men {adhibiiis viris
pits et sapientibus), is grammatically impossible. As keep-
ing safely requires a place, the immediate local significance
of the 3 has to be maintained. People tie together C^iv, imper.
nfv, instead of n^, the more orthographic mode of writing it,
not infin. absolute, which would be '^'^v) what they wish not
to get separated and to be lost ; men seal (QDC) what is to be
kept secret, and is only to be opened by one entitled to do it
' As Jerome on this passage informs ns, the " two houses " were referred
by Jewish Christians (Nazaraei qui ita C%m(um recipiwU vt obsarvatione*
legis veteris non admittarU) tx) the schools of Shammai and HilleL
* Malbim correctly remarks : " DB catches but does not injure ; eps
catches and injures [e.g. by breaking off the legs or by crushing the nose.
Job zl. 24] ; the former is the simple snare [like the simple snare or gin
for catching fleldfiires] ; the latter is the springe [a rod bent like a bow, of
a flexible nature, which easily springs back], and the snare which catches
by means of th<! springe (Amos iii C)."
Digitized by
Google
OHAPTEB Vm. 17, 1& 231
And so the testimonj of the prophet which relates to the future,
and his instroction designed to prepare for this future — that
•rnjm and nT^n which the great mass in their obduracy do
not understand, and spnm in their self-hardening — has to be
deposited bj him well secured and well preserved, as if by
band and seal, in the hearts of those who with believing
obedience receive the prophetic word (TQ?, of the same form
as nt]>, ready to learn and learned, common to both halves of
the collection of prophecy, chap/ L 4, liv. 13). For it would
be all over with Israel unless a commanity of believers con-
tinued to exist ; and it would be all over with this community
if the word of God, which is the ground of their life, escaped
from their heart There is here already announced the great
idea which the second part of the Book of Isaiah carries out
in the grandest style. The command in ver. 16 stands un-
connected without nnm like the beginning of a new discourse,
and in ver 17 the prophet continues to speak of himself
without V?,l ; V^^. is the perf. of sequence. Ver. 1 7 :
" / wait then upon Jehovah who conceals Sis face from the
house of Jacob, and I hope on Sim," There is a lacuna per-
ceptible between vers. 17 and' 16, and the supposition that
something has fallen out (Cheyne) suggests itself, nan gets
from the fundamental meaning of " making fast " the mean-
ing of firmly directing, of straining the mind towards some-
thing future, just as rnj), ^jy, originally means to be strained,
firm, strong, and rn? therefore signifies strained expectation,
confident hope. With the i form '0'?"], the older i form
wp| interchanges (Ges. § 75, 9). A time of judgment has
now commenced which will last for a long time yet ; but the
word of God is the pledge of Israel's continuance in the midst
of it, and of Israel's renewed glorification beyond it
The prophet therefore hopes in the grace which has now
hidden itself behind the wrath. The future is bis home, and
he also serves it with his whole house. Ver. 18 : " Behold,
I and the ehUdren whom Jehovah has given me for signs and
types in Isradfrom Jehovali of hosts, who dwelleth upon Mount
Zion." He presents himself to the Lord with his children ;
he devotes himself with them to Him. His bodily children
ere meant, not his spiritual children (his disciples, as Jerome
Digitized by
Google
232 JSAIAH.
Calvin, Yitringa, and Bredenkamp explain itX It is not
the latter, for the obvious reason that it would then be
expressed by tfian, according to the analogy of D-K^ajn ya and
03, the " my son " of the Proverba They are indeed
Jehovah's gift, and certainly given for a higher purpose
than the common everyday happiness of the family. They
serve as signs and types ministering to the purpose of the
history of salvatiou. rriK is a preindication and token,
(TJi/telov, in word and deed, which (whether it is itself
something miraculous or natural) points to the future and is
a pledge of it neto (after the form "irtn = "iwto and Rtto,
from Tim, or after the form ^J?iD, E'g^D from nej = nsK, i^^l
%
=^Bn, iiXi^) is a miraculous work, repav, which refers to a
supernatural cause or type, TiJiros {prodigium=poiridigium),
which points beyond itself to something future and concealed,
literally turned round, that is, opposed to the common, para-
<.%
doxical, striking, standing out ; Arab, u^l, res mira, Beiv6p ri.
His children are signs and enigmatic images of the future,
and that from Jehovah of hosts who dwells on Zion. In
accordance with His counsel (to which the 0^ in Ofio points),
He has set up these signs and types. He who can realize the
future which they represent as certainly as He is Jehovah of
hosts, and who will realize it as certainly as He has chosen
the hill of Zion for the place of His gracious presence on
earth. Shear-jashub and Mahershalal are indeed figures of
future wrath no less than of future grace, but the name of
their father ^n,*)'^, declares that the salvation of Jehovah is
the ultimate end. Isaiah and his children are figures and
emblems of the redemption which is making way for itself
through judgment The Epistle to the Hebrews in chap. iL 13
puts the words of Isaiah into the mouth of Jesus, because the
spirit of Jesus was in Isaiah, — the spirit of Jesus which
in this holy family, bound together by bands of the shadow,
pointed to the New Testament community, bound tc^ether by
bands of the substance. Isaiah and bis children, together
with his wife, and the believing disciples gathered around
this family, form upon the ground and soil of the. present
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBB Vni. 18. '233
masaa perdita of Israel the stock of the community or church
of the Messianic future.
To this eedesiola in eeeUsia is directed the admonition of
the prophet in ver. 19: "And when they shall say to you,
Inqtiire ye of the necromancers and of the soothsayers who chirp
and whisper — shall nU a people inqtiire ai their God 1 for the
living at the dead!" It is unnecessary to take 19a as an
anacolouthon (as Cheyne does) : 195 is the apodosis, as ^^D^<n nb
0^^ easily .completes itself. Those who are demanding are
Jews of the existing stamp ; for, from chaps, il 6, iii 2, 3,
we know that all kinds of heathen superstition had found
their way into Jerusalem, and were practised there as a trade.
Those to whom the prophet assigns the answer are his chil-
dren and disciples. The circumstances of the time were
critical People were going to wizards to obtain information
about the gloomy future. 3^k (from 3ik, to be bellied or hollow,
to sound indistinctly) means primarily the spirit of sorcery or
witchcraft, then the possessor of such a spirit = a^K ^3, and
more especially the necromancer or conjurer of the dead.
*3)rp, means primarily the possessor of a spirit of soothsaying
(irvffap or wptvfia tov irvQavo^), Syr. jadHa (after the inten-
sive form 7WB with unchangeable vowels), then also the
soothsaying spirit itself (Lev. xx. 27 ; Deut. xviii. 11), which
may have been called Wt'j just as Zalfuav is, according to
Plato, = BaijfiMv. These people, designated by the LXX.
here and elsewhere as ^aarpoftndoi, i.e, ventriloquists (ot i>c
T^9 KoiXla^ <lKovovfftv), imitated (as Isaiah ironically intro-
duces into the summons itself) the chirp which was ascribed
to the shades of Hades, whose voice as well as their whole
being had become a mere phantom, according to Homer a
rpi^eiv, II. xxiiL 101, Od xxiv. 5-9; and, according to the
Assyrian descent into hell of Istar, a bird-like existence (cf.
the Arabic name for magicians, zamdzimu, whisperers ; Anidi,
trao, S.V.)} What an unnatural thing that Jehovah's people do
I The Mishna, Sanhedrin 65a, defines it thus : "31K ^]D ia the Python
(DID^B), *'•«• soothsayer (=xiiivjK» xitutos Ixf*), who speaks from his arm-
hole ; <]|]riN he who speaks with bis mouth." The aiK ^3, in so far as
he deals with the bones of the dead, is called in the Talmnd M*DO tt3lK<
T- I T
e.g. the witch of Endor, Shabbath 125i. On the history of the etymological
explanation of the wonl, see Bottcher's De inferii, g 209-217.
Digitized by
Google
234 ISAIAH.
not go to ask their God, bat such beatbenish demqniacal
deceivers and deceived ones 1 (^K vvi, to turn oneself to
any one to inquire, chap. xL 10, synonymoos with 3 7Kf,
1 Sam. xxviii 6). What blindness to consult the dead in the
interest of the living 1 The word of the prophet is the echo
of the divine prohibition in Lev. xix. 31. O'mn here do not
signify the idols, as in P& cvi 28, but tiie dead, as is proved
by Dent xviii. 11; ct 1 Sam. chap, xxviii. ; and *i^ is to be
taken neither here nor elsewhere as equivalent to the substi-
tutive nnn, "instead" (Knobel), but, as in Jer. xxL 2, as
" for " = for the benefit of, as " for " elsewhere is equivalent
to " on account of," Prov. xx. 1 7. The nekyiomancy (necro-
mancy, medieval nigromatia, whence black art), which makes
the dead teachers of the living, is a gloomy deception.
In opposition to such a falling away to miserable super-
stition, the watchword of the prophet and those who stood
with him is thus given in ver. 20 : "To the doctrine of God
and to the testimony I Or shall they not thus speak v^ are
vnthoiU a davmt" The summons : To the instruction and to
the testimony, that is to say, to those of Jehovah of which
His prophet is the medium, ver. 17, is like a watchword
formed in time of war, Judg. vii. 18. In this formation
the following »<?"DK gives the presumption of a conditional
sense : he who has not this word is to be regarded as
Jehovah's enemy, and will suffer the fate of such a one.
This is to all appearance the meaning of the apodosis ifK
"ifw ^TTK, Luther has given the rendering correctly thus:
If they will not say this, they will not have the morning
dawn ; or, as he previously translated it, keeping more closely
to Jerome : they shall never overtake the morning light,
really, they are those for whom no dawn risea But if we
take 'ui t(b DK as a conditional protasis, then *iit^, as opening
the apodosis, is and remains hard in style whether it is taken
relatively : thns they are a people to whom, etc. (cf. 2 Sam.
ii. 4), or as an alternative for the affirmative and recitative
^3, of which there is no certain example (cf. 1 Sam. xv.
20). On the other hand, t6 BK also signifies "truly" (Ps.
cxxxl 2), according to which Luzzatto and Cheyne and
Driver explain it: truly they shall speak thus when (ntwe,
guum, as, e.g., in Deut xL 6) no dawn shows itself to them :
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Yin. 21, 22. 235
but this watchword is not saited for the people which is too
late in thinking of something better, and that assertative
meaning is got by vif DM only by means of the suppression of
a principal clanse (Ges. § 155. 2 f.), which would be insipid
here. But it also means annon, numne; and this meaning
suggests itself the more readily here since there is a pre-
ceding question with J<?ij (cf. chaps, x. 9, xl. 28); and
accordingly we adopt the explanation given by Enobel and
Beuss : Or, will those who are without a dawn not agree with
this word, this people whose present and future is surrounded
by night, and which can hope for no breaking of light which
could benefit them, inasmuch as they do not turn themselves
to God's teaching and God's testimony, of which His prophet
is the bearer ? *
There now follows the description of the people which is
without a dawn, and the description proceeds in the singular,
into which the plural of the interrogative clause has changed
(the individuals being thrown together into one mass). Vers.
21, 22: "And they will enter thereinto hard pressed and
hungry ; and it comes to pass when hunger comes upon it, it is
roused to anger and curses hy its Icing and by its God, and it
turns itself upwards and looks down to the earth, and, behold,
digress and darkness, the anguish of night around, and thrust
out into darhness." Cheyne, agreeing with Siegfried, changes
the order of these verses (arranging thus, vers. 20, 22, 21,
23). Diestel and NSgelsbach begin, without changing the
order, by taking ver. 21 as the apodosis to ver. 20. Accord-
ing to the syntax this is possible, but it more naturally occurs
to take it so that the description of those who are without a
dawn is fnrther carried on by 'i3|n : those who are without a
dawn, and who will enter into . . . The singulars attach
themselves to ^ in ver. 19 ; na refers in the neuter to the
land, as n^V in Job vi 20 to the place. The people roam
about in the land — so far will it come in the approaching
Assyrian oppressions — ne'iJJ, pressed by hard misery, and
3]r>, hungry, for all provisions are gone, and the fields and
vineyards are laid waste. As often as it again becomes
' Strangely enough, vers. 19, 20 are regarded in Lm. lUMa, c. 16, as
words of Beeri, the father of the prophet Hosea, incorporated in the Book
of Isaiah.
Digitized by
Google
236 ISAIAH.
sensible of hnnger, ifc falls into rage Cl?^!!", with i of tbe
apodosis and pausal a with Rebiah), and curses by its king
and by its God, i.e. by its idoL We must thus explain the
passage according to 1 Sam. xrii. 43 and Zeph. L 5, if we
would keep by the authenticated usage of the language,
which shows no 3 7?i> corresponding to the Latin execrari in
aliquem (Gresenius, Gheyue, and others, following LXX. Symm.
and Jer.) ; the object of the cursing is rather everywhere
expressed in the accusative. The connection, king and God,
refers to oue and the same object, as in P& v. 3 and Ixxxiv. 4
(otherwise than in 1 Chron. xxix 20): they curse by the
idol who is regarded by them as king and God ; * they curse
with, as they consider it, this most effective curse their
unhappy condition, without recognising in it the just punish-
ment of their apostasy, and bumbling themselves penitently
under the all-powerful hand of Jehovah. Ckinsequently, all
this reacting of their exasperation and of their rage avails
nothing — whether they turn themselves upwards to see if the
black sky is not unclouding itself, or look down to the earth,
there meets them everywhere only distress and darkness, only,
as n^v c|4yp expresses in a sort of summary, a surrounding
night of anguish OIV^, a connective form of I^VO ^^"^ W>
-<^\ obtegere, the veiling round, darkening). The judgment
of God does not convert them, but only heightens their bad-
ness; just as in Eev. xvi. 11, 21, after the pouring out of the
fifth and the seventh vials of wrath, men utter blasphemies
and do not penitently cease from their works. After this
statement of what the people sees when it turns up its eyes or
casts them down, the participial closing clause of ver. 22 fin.
tells how it sees itself: in ccUiginem propvlmm. There is no
need to supply a completing tnn, but from the preceding •*^n
there is easily repeated iJfi or wn, en ipmm ; f/Btf, ace loci,
stands with emphasis first, as in Jer. zxiiL 12, ^BKa. What
next follows would be directly connected if msD rbetn could
mean at caligo diepellitur (more exactly, eat aliquid quod dit-
pdlitur). This is the view of Hitzig and of Chr. A. Crusius.
But the verb rru, the part. Pual, the shrill interruption of the
I Menahem b. Sernk in his Lexicon (written c 950), under the word
}B{(, assumes the reading \Jyoy
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE vm. 28. 237
gloomy night -image whose close is expected, is altogether
opposed to this interpretation. And yet the reason -giving
•<o, which now follows, assumes the thought that it will not
always continue thus ; but as it remains unexpressed we
must seek to get it by looking back to nnt^ "h r« 1B^
The prophet gives the reason for the assumption involved
in the words he has used, namely, that a renewed dawning of
light is to be expected, although not for that present genera-
tion. Ver. 23 : "For it does not remain dark where there is
now distress : at the first time he has Irought into ignominy the
land of Zdmlon and the land of Naphtali, and in the last he
hrings to honour the road hy the sea, the other side of the Jordan,
the circle of the heathen." Is i6 ^ to be understood as inter-
rogative with Abravanel and Luzzatto ? (cf. 2 £ings v. 2C) ;
for is it not surrounded with night . . . ? Such a form of
address expressed by vh with the accent of interrogation, is
the style of Hosea, but not of Isaiah. Or is O, by supplying
the intermediate clause, " it will not so continue," to be trans-
lated by "but" or "nay, rather, imww," Ewald, § 3306
(Cheyne, 1870, "nay" novr," surely "}1 This would be a
harsh ellipsis. We have not to read between the lines what
is grounded by *3; but the statement that the unbelieving
people of Judah is passing into a night without a morning, is
grounded on the fact that a morning is coming whose light,
however, does not rise first over the land of Judah, but over
other regions of the land. The transition is harsh, how-
ever explained. Beuss remarks: Transition hrusgue (chap,
iv. 2, vi \Z) ilia prediction d^vn changement heurevax. *l^
and p^, because formed from p^ and pw, cannot have arisen
from 1?)P and PV)0 (as ni>«D, a tube for pouring through, from
^i^). and are therefore to be regarded as Hophal nouns, like
nso in chap. viiL 8. They indicate that which (S, rt) is
darkened, oppressed, and then also that (Sri) it is darkened,
oppressed, and therefore the fact or circumstance of darkening
and oppression; and they thus pass into the meaning of
abstract verbal terms, being darkened, being oppressed. The
meaning is that there is not, i.e. there does not continue, a state
of surrounding night on the land (i^, like as in ver. 21, to be
referred to J^K) which is now in a state of distress, and,
moreover, those very regions which God formerly made to
Digitized by
Google
238 ISAIAH.
experience deep hnmiliatioiis, vill be bronglit hy Him in the
future to honour ('Pt?=?2n, opp. Ta^n, as in chap. xxiiL 9).
The height of the glorification will correspond to the depth
of the ignominy. The noun t\g, however it be construed,
is used as masculine, although it is originally feminine, how-
ever it may be derived. It is not correct to translate with
Knobel : as in the former time, etc., so that n? is <tec temp.,
and 3=ie^ for 3 is never used conjnnctionally in this way
(see on Ps. xxxviii 15) and in chap. IxL 11, Job vii. 2, the
verbal clauses after s are elliptical relative clauses. The
rendering adopted by Bosenmiiller and many others is also
wrong : sieut tempus prius vilem reddidit, etc. Hence, too,
the ] of ti^^C*^, is not the ioaw of sequence used in place of |3
of comparison, Ewald, § 360a. Both ptnnn njQ and pnnKn
are adverbial determinations of time. The prophet intention-
ally designates the time of ignominy with 3, because this is a
period in which the same fate should occur again and again.
And, on the other hand, he indicates the time of the glorifica-
tion with cux. temp., because it comes in at once in order to
continue unchangingly. It is undoubtedly possible also that
rnnicn is regarded as the subject, but the antithesis thereby
become iucongruent The region ('^^f^, loealis, with the
signification obliterated, as in Job xxxiv. 13, zxzvii 12,
cC Ezek. xxi. 31) of Naphtali is the later Upper Galilee, and
the region of Zebulon is the later Lower Galilee. In the
antithetical parallel clause what is meant by the two regions
is specialized : (1) cm rQ'n is the tract of land on the western
side of the htj? d; (Kashi, s^l?? ^^ '^) ; (2) ^rl^^ "•??. the
country east of the Jordan ; (3) oi^in yoi, the northern border
district of Palestine, only a part of the later so called
Fe^Xaia. All these regions were exposed from the time of
the judges, by their local position, to the disintegration of
heathen influences, and to subjection by heathen enemies.
The northern tribes on this side, along with those on the
other side, suffered most in the almost incessant war of Israel
with the Syrians and in the later war with the Assyrians ;
and the deportation of their inhabitants went on increasing
under Phul-Tiglathpileser and Shalmanasar until it gradually
came to utter depopulation (Caspari, Beitr. pp. 116-118).
It is these very regions which will be remembered before all
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB IX. 1. 239
Others when that dawn of glory arises. How this has been
fulfilled in the commencement of the Christian era, is stated
in Matt. iv. 13 sqq. On the ground of this prophecy of
Isaiah, and not, as Benan in chap. xiii. of his Lift of Jema
says, of a "considerably erroneous exposition of it," the
Messianic hope of the Jewish people was actually directed to
Galilee.^ The Nazarenes, indeed, according to Jerome on this
passage, referred ver. 2 Si to the light of the gospel spread
in ttrmiiios gentium et viam univerai maris by the Pauline
preaching. In the time of the crusades, the via maris was
still the name of the way passing by the Mediterranean from
Acco to Damascus ; but it is impossible to take D^n here as
referring to the Mediterranean, for it was the Philistines and
Phenicians who inhabited the o^n pi in this sense. But the
prophet intends to designate the regions belonging to the
Israelitish people which have suffered ignominy and aHUction
above all others.
The prophecy now takes together the inhabitants of those
rejected and degraded regions, while at the same time the
range of vision is widened. Chap. ix. 1 : " The people who
walk in darkness see a great light ; they who dweU in a land
of tlie shadow of death — a light shines forth over them." The
horizon is enlarged, not, however, to the heathen, but to the
whole of Israel Salvation does not break forth till it has
become entirely dark along the horizon of Israel, as in chap.
V. 30, till the land of Jehovah, on account of the falling away
of its inhabitants from Him, has become a land of the shadow
of death. ^)fi^ is modified ' in the manner of a composite
* It is a Jewish tradition that the Messiah wUI appear in Galilee, and
that the redemption will break forth from Tiberias ; see LitereUurblatt dt$
OrienU, 1843, Col. 776 ; cf: Eisenmenger, iL 747.
* The shadow, ^, Arab, fill (radically different from tall =^D, dew^ gets
its name ab obUgcndo ; and, according to the idea attached to it as the
opposite of beat or of light, it was used as a figure of what is beneficial,
shading (chap. zvL 3 — tZJytl\ Jio in a poetical passage of the J&kdt of
the thick terebinth-shadow of a valley), or of what was dark and horrible
{et Tug. <}^D, a night-demon). The Verb Q^, in the sense of the Arabic
talma, bears the same relation to ^ as ona to nn3U OVI, to be naked,
to iTip. Another verbal stem is the oby, from which comes obv-
1
Digitized by
Google
24a ISAIAB.
word (/^=7i as, e.g., in H*???), like the proper name njotp in
2 Sam. xxiii. 31, being modified from rno^ according to the
form nvTJP (from thi, Aetb. salgma, Arab, zalima, to be dark).
The apostate mass of the people is to be regarded as swept
away ; for if death has cast his shadows over the land, it
must be quite desolate. In this state of things those remain-
ing in the land behold a great light which breaks through the
sky hitherto covered with blackness. The people which
turns its eyes upwards in vain, because with cursing, chap,
viii. 21, is no more ; it is the remnant of Israel which sees
this light of spiritual and material redemption rise above their
heads.
The prophet, in what follows, tells what this light consists in,
first describing the blessings and then the star of the new time.
He tells it in a thanksgiving of prayer and praise. Ver. 2 :
" Them makest the nation numerous, preparest for it great joy ;
they refoiee be/ore thee like the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when
they divide spoil." *iin is doubtless the Israel that has melted
down to a small remnant. That God makes this again into
a numerous people, is a leading feature in the picture of
the time of glory (chap, xxvi 15, Ixvi. 8; Zech. xiv. 10, 11),
which in this respect is a counterpart of that of Solomon in
1 Kings iv. 20. If our explanation is so far correct, then the
Chethib s6, taken negatively, can only be understood if we
translate, with Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and Schegg, thus : Thou
increasest the nation to which Thou formerly didst not give
great joy, which must signify per litoten, which Thou hast sunk
into deep sorrow. But it is unnatural to take one of the
prophetic preterites commencing with *'*3-i' in chap, viiu 23
in any other than a future sense. "We must therefore give
the preference to the Kert 'h^ and translate : magnum fads
nuvrt/erum geidis, et ingens gaudium paras. S'p stands first
without special emphasis, as in chap. xlv. 24 ; Lev. viL 7—9 ;
1 Sam. iL '6,Ken; Job xxix. 21; Ps. vil 14, cxxxix. 17;
Dreschler gives it such emphasis, rendering thus:. To i^, in
which there was not any appearance at all of such an issue.
And it is intentionally that Iji^Jv' and Jvarv} stand beside each
' On the passages in which t(b Chelktb is 'h Kert, see commentary on
Ps. c 3, and in Job xiiL 16. nb'jn is an ingenious conjecture by Selwyn
and otherfffor f/h 'Un (n'nn).
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTBU 'IX 8, 4. 211
otiier, in ortl6r te co-ordinate the intensity of joy ' vitU the
extensiveuess of the multitude. This joy is a holy joy, as
TJB^ indicates ; the expression is the one used in Deuteronomy
for the joy that is experienced at the meals connected with
the sacri6ces and tithes (chap. xiL 7, xvl 11, xiv. 23, 26).
It is a joy "i^V?? "0°^, like the joy in the harvest-time (the
temporal intpa operates here as a virtual genitive), just as men
exult when they divide spoils. It is therefore joy over good
things that have been obtained, and, moreover, in consequence
of evil that has departed. For the division of spoil is a thin^
that is done by conquerors. This second figure is not merely
a figure. The people so gladdened is actually a victorious
and triumphant people. Ver. 3 : " For the yoke of its iurden,
and the stick of its neck, the stick of its driver, thou hast hroken
to pieces, as in the day of Midian." The suffixes refer to Ofn^,
Instead of vao from 33b, the more vigorous form TOD is inten-
tionally used with Bag. dirimens and Chateph-Kamez, under the
influence of the previous u. The rhythm of the one-membered
verse is anapaestic. vSD and fa ^p both recall the Egyptian
bondage (Ex. ii. 11, v. 6). The future deliverance which the
prophet celebrates is the counterpart of the Egyptian deliver-
ance. But as at that time the whole of the great people of
Israel was redeemed, whereas only a remnant participates in
the final redemption, he compares it to the day of Midian, when
Gideon broke the seven years' dominion of Midian, not with
a great army, but with u handful of undismayed wari-iors
strong in God (Judg. vii.). One asks here : Who is the hero,
Gideon's antitype, through whom this is to happen? The
prophet does not say this yet, but building a clause with ^3
upon the others, he first of all gives a reason in ver. 4 for the
ceasing of the despotic sway of the world-power from the
annihilation of all the equipments of war. Ver. 4 : " For every
hoot of hooted tramplers in the tumvlt of battle, and cloak rolled
in blood — all is for burning, a food of fire." The complex
subject stands first in the way of a protasis, for the predi-
cate begins in the way of an apodosis with nn^m ; cf. chap,
xliv. 12 ; Ex. xxx. 33, 38 (Driver, § 123a). AU the equip-
ments of war are meant, wherever they may be found; but
while in Zech. ix. 10 the representation referring to the fratri-
cidal wars between the separated kingdoms applies primarily
VOL. I. q
Digitized by
Google
242 isaiab:
to tbe whole of iRrael, here it is applied b^ reference to the
previous subjugation by the universal power primarily to the
foreign enemies from whom the possibility of conquering
Israel henceforth shall be withdrawn. What becomes ^"3^^
e^ rlp^ is not merely kindled and burned out, but
entirely burned away; it is consumed by tbe fire until it
disappears without leaving a trace behind. This closing state-
ment requires for I^md the concrete sense of a thing that can
be burned ; and this at once excludes the meaning, noise or
din (~t^, Jer. Syr. Bashi, Malbim, and others). On the
other hand, the meaning, equipment of arms, given by Enobel
and others, is admissible ; it is obtained by comparison of the
derivatives of the Aramean pt, {TM and the Arabic zdna, Impf.
yadn (to deck, to equip) ; nevertheless the interchange of d
aiid T in this word cannot be philologically established by the
dialects. Jos. Kimchi has rightly referred to the Targumic
pp too (Syr., also saHn), which means shoe (see Bynaeus, De
ealceo Rebraeorum, p. 83), which is rather an Aramean than
a Hebrew word, and the application of which in this place
is explained from the fact that the prophet has in his mind
the annihilation of the Assyrian forces. One would, indeed,
rather expect pKO (saAn), aavSaKov/tevot}, instead of )t<b ; but
tiie denominative verb |KD may mean the appearing or coming
up in the soldier's shoe or soldier's boot, caiigatum venire,
although the primary meaning is undoubtedly calceare se (Eph.
vi. 15 ; Syr.). Accordingly we translate it : Every boot of
the booted strider in the tumult of battle. Thus we do not
take vs^ (which Gratz, after the Targum, would transform
into Jffin), with Drechsler, as indicating the noise of the warrior
proudly tramping in his war-boots, nor do we take it, with
Luzzatto and Nagelsbach, as applying to the war-boot itself,
for which, notwithstanding the elavi ctUigares of Pliny, IT. If.
ix. 8, the word is too strong ; but we take it as referring to
the noise of battle (as in Jer. x. 22), amid which the warrior,
booted for military service, appears. {Mb is genitive and
rA^tap is attributive ; rolled in DW, that is, in violently shed
blood, in which the mortally wounded wamor rolled about.
The prophet intentionally names boot and cloak. Tbe destruc-
tion of the hostile weapons is viewed as a matter of course,
when even every single, shoe which a soldier of tbe enemy
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTEB IX. 5. 243
has worn, and every soldier's cloak lying on the battle-field, ia
given np to the fire.
The prophet upon the two sentences with 'a now rears a
third. The ground of the triumph is the deliverance, and
the ground of the deliverance is the annihilation of the enemy,
and the ground of all the joy, of all the freedom, of all the
peace, is the new great king. Ver. 5 : " For a child is lorn
to us, a son is given id us, and the government rests upon His
shoulder, and they call His name : Wonder, Counsdlor, Strong
God, Eternally Father, Peau Prince." He whom the prophet
foretells in chap. viL as the Son of the virgin, who was to
grow up in a troublous time, is here beheld by him as bom
(but the words do not say that this is now seen only in the
vision of the prophet), and as having entered upon possession
of the government In the former passage he appeared as a
sign, and here as a gift of grace. The prophet does not say
expressly here, any more than in chap, vii, that he is a
descendant of David. But this follows of itself from the fact
that he bears nnfc'Bn (from •"'■ife'=Tife', -vto), the government
with its official right, chap. xziL 22, upon his shoulder; for
the promise of eternal kingship, of which the new-born child
is the fuIGlment, has been bound up with the seed of David
in the course of the history of Israel since 2 Sam. vii. In
chap, vii it is the mother who names the child ; here it is
the people, or any one who rejoices in him, t^^P!?, " they
name, he is called," as Luther correctly translates, but under
the mistaken idea that the Jews, in order to e£face the
Messianic sense of the passage, had altered the original K^
into K^iw. The active mpn has, in fact, been misused by
Jewish expositors with this object in view, as Hashi, Eimchi,
Malbim, and others, following the example of the Targum,
explain the passage thus: The God who is called, and is
TP^3K "yoi-^ yvi' Ki>B. calls his name uh»^b\ but this
explanation evidently tears asunder the connection in the
clause from a motive or tendency. And Luzzatto rightly
observes that one does not here expect attributes of God, but
such as characterize the child ; and therefore he translates
thus : God, the Strong, the Eternally-Father the Peace-Prince,
resolves upon something wonderful. He thus persuades
himself that the wltole of this long clause is meant to be the
Digitized by
Google
244 n&UH.
proper name of the child, as, indeed, other proper names thus
consist of whole verbal clauses, not merely in Arabic (as, for
example, the giant's name, baraJjca nahruhu, his collar-bone
flashes), but also m the Hebrew, as, for instance, the names
of the two sons of the prophet But granting such a
sesquipeddian proper name to be possible, how unskilfully
would it be formed, since the long-winded sentence, which
yet should have to be spoken in one breath, would resolve
itself in this form into separate clauses which are again
names, and, moreover, contrary to expectation, names of God !
l^is holds also against Gbeyne, who maintains that what
follows yofff is one name, although not, as Lnzzatto thinks, in
the form of a connected proposition. There are, however, in
any case five, or if, with Cheyne, Wonderful-Counsellor is
taken together, four names, forming one name. According to
Luzzatto's way of taking it, the name would also be one
name as regards its form. Lnzzatto frankly confesses what
prompted him to bis view. He formerly attempted, like
Aben Ezra, to take the words from (6e to ol^e^ir as the
name of the child, regarding ntu b» as well as njnsM as a
hyperbolical expression, like the words applied to the king
in P& xlv. la ; but afterwards he could not help taking the
view that it was absolutely impossible for a human child to
be called itU 'nt, as God Himself is in chap. x. 21. The
accentuators likewise appear to have shrunk from making
nvu 'ft/t be regarded as a human name. For if nss' vrip^ was
to be the introduction of the following string of names, then
\a^ would not have been marked with geresh, but with zakepk
It is inter-punctuated as if Di^JB^b ijT'nK were the name of
the child, and what precedes from K^B were the name of the
God who assigns to him these two names of honour. But
wherefore should there be just here in connection with the
naming of the child such a periphrastic designation of God,
seeing that this is not Isaiah's habit elsewhere, and generally
it is unexampled, especially in this form, without a prefixed
'n ? Moreover, the names of God, in order to mark them off
in contrast to the two names of the child, should at least be
determined thus : "^ain b»n lOf )^»n. Supposing then that,
according to the acoentnation, the translation would be : " And
He who is a Wonder of a Counsellor, or (as in this case we
Digitized by
Google
CITAFTKB IX. 5. 245
expect a conneofive accent instead of the tdisha, although the
least separative accent) He who resolves upon something
wonderful, the Strong-Gtod, calls his name: Etemally-Father,
Peace-Prince : " we must jet reject it as resting upon mis-
understanding and misinterpretation. We take the whole
from M^D — as the connection, expression, and syntax require
— as a governed accusative predicate to the yav inp<i, which
stands at the head : " they call his name " (cf. top, they name,
it is called. Gen. xL 9, xvL 14; Josh. vii. 26, and supra
chap. viiL 4, Mic^, they will carry; chap, vii 24, they will
come, Ges. § 137. 3). If it be objected to the Messianic
interpretation of chap, vii 14, 15, that the Christ who
appeared has not been called Immanuel, but Jesus, this
objection is removed by the fact that neither did He bear as
a proper name the five names by which He is to be called
according to this second prophecy. Moreover, this objection
does not less apply to the interpretations adopted by Jewish
expositors, such as Bashi, Aben Ezra, Eimchi, Abravanel,
Malbim, Luzzatto, and others, and also by such Christian
expositors as Grotius, Gesenius, and Hendewerk, who are in
favour of referring the prophecy to Hezekiah, — a view which is
chronologically untenable, as has been shown in connection
with chap, vii 14. The name Jesus is a combination of all
the Old Testament designations of the one to come, according
to His nature and works. The designations given in chap,
vii 14 and chap. ix. 5 have not, however, disappeared in it ;
they continue to be in the mouth of all believers from Mai;
downwards ; and there is none of these names under whiclt
worship and homage have not been paid to Him. The first
name is K^f or K?B,' which is not to be taken along with )^',
as might seem recommended according to chap, xxviii. 29,
rwj? iri>Bn. This is the view of the LXX., A S*: Baviuurrh
avfifiovXm* Theodoret : davfuurrm fiovKevmp. Explaining it
^ To be written here with zere, according to Abulwalid, Rikma, p. 67,
and Kimchi, Michlol, S02a. The codices vary (see Norzi).
' The fiiyAknt /Sot/Xq; Ayy0,t( of the LXX. is evolved out of ^ fy^ K^
from the view that not only trn^K *33 »nd 0*^t< '33, but also D'n^S in Pa.
viii 6, and ^ in Job xx. 15, can mean " angels." In A and 5* there ii
interpolated after fLf/Akns j3avx«r ilyytXe; a new independent translation
of the five names : tavftmcric avftfitulits Ifrxupit i^m/nturif AfxP» tlfifn;
xMT^/i r»v fuMiorT»( mtirof. S* has also tti{ before l»x^fi;, which again ia
Digitized by
Google
-246 I8AIAH.
in this waj, ftn* v&t may be T^;arded as an inverted form for
t^B fffi* : One connselling wonderful things ; and the possi-
bility of this inversion is proved by chap. xxii. 2, mho nwrn,
ix. fall of tumult Or we may, with Ewald, § 287^, after the
analogy of q*ik mo, Gen. xvL 12, take tha connection as genitive
or appositional (Nagelsbach) : a Wonder of a Counsellor ; in
which case the separating teltska gedda in K^ would have to
be exchai^ed for a connecting mahpach. Both combinations
have their weak points, and their meaning would rather lead
tis to expect nv^ K7E1P ; whereas to take ttbfi and ypf> as two
separated names has nothing opposed to it (not even the
accentuation, which, in this combination of pathta with telt^ia
gedola, is without a parallel elsewhere, and is therefore unique).
As the Angel of Jehovah answers Manoah in Judg. xiii. 18,
when he asks how he is . named, that his name is y^ C^j*?)*
and therefore that his nature is incomprehensible by mortals,
so the God-given Buler is K^B (^ 50, to split, separate) a
phenomenon lying beyond human comprehension and natural
occurrence. Not merely is this or that in him wonderful ;
he is himself entirely a wonder, irapaBo^aaii6<i, as Symmachus
translates it. The second name is fVf*, Counsellor, because in
liis royal office (Micah iv. 9), by virtue of the spirit of counsel
which he possesses (chap. xi. 2), he always knows how to
find and to bring counsel for the best good of his people ; he
does not need to surround himself with counsellors ; but
without being counselled he counsels those who are without
counsel, and he is the end of all lack of counsel for his people.
The third name, ifiiii 7», ascribes to him a certain divine
nature. This indeed is not so if we translate the words with
Luther : " power, hero ; " ^ or with Meier : " hero of strength ; "
or as Hofmann formerly did : " a God of a hero ; " or with
Ewald : " hero-God," i.e. he who combats and conquers like an
invincible God. But all these and similar renderings break
a double translation of ^t This interpolation of the LXX. is older than
Irenaens and Origen ; see Field's Hexapla, m loc
i Lather would have "power" understood in the sense of abeolate
flight, but translated it more correctly in 1542 as De^ /ortis. His
accepted rendering i* like the Ivx/nfit lutmitit of Aquila and Symmachna,
and Theodotion's lcx,i>f»( ivtmnnt- Only Syr. and Jerome give ^ its
gleaning " Qod ; " and S* has, as stated, ft itxff^t iiavti»m(.
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTKU IX. t. 247
down in connection with chap. x. 21, where he to whom the
remnant of Israel again penitentlj turns is called ^^31 V.
Moreover, we cannot take <i< (which in the sense of " mighty"
only occurs in the plural, with the exception of Ezek. xxxi.
11, where the Orientals write 7K) in this name of the Messiah
otherwise than in '*f^?. And, in addition to this, 7X in
Isaiah is always a name of God, and he is strongly conscious of
the contrast between 7M and ciK, as is shown by chap. xxxi. 3
(cf. Hoe. xi. 9). Finally, ifai ^ is everywhere else a designa-
tion of God, as in Deut x. 17 ; Jer. xxxii. 18 ; Neh. ix. 32 ;
and the noun il3i is used in the designation adjectively, like
♦nc' in *nB' i>K. The Messiah is therefore here called " Strong
God " (and so the designation is understood by Enobel and
.others), but he is thus named as a hero equipped with divine
power ; or according to Kuenen, who compares Zech. xiL 8,
as a mighty God surpassing the children of men, and not as
a supernatural ruler. We compare "opn pm> in Jer. xxiii 6
— a Messiah name which even the synagogue cannot call in
question (see Midrash Mithe 57a, where it is cited as one of
the eight names of the Messiah), and whose significance for the
conscious faith of the Old Testament was that the Messiah
would be the image of God as no other man (cfl ?M, Ps. Ixxxii.
1), and would have God dwelling in him (ci Jer. xxxiii. 16).
Who shall lead Israel to victory over the hostile world but
God the Strong ? The Messiah is the bodily presence of this
Strong Grod ; for He is with him. He is in him, He is in him
with Israel From the third name arises the fourth name :
i]n3H (according to (khla weoehla and some manuscripts
*ir-^t in one word), Etemally-Father; for it is just what is
tiivine that is etemaL He is thus named not merely as the
possessor of eternity (Hengstenberg) in the same sort of
way that the pre-Islamio Arabians called their time - god
^jt ^\} nor as creating a continued existence (Junilius,
JmtUuta regvl. l 15: Cauaa et genitor hecUUudinis nottrae),
but as the tender, faithful, and wise trainer, guardian, and
provider of his own in eternity (chap. xxii. 21). He is
Etemally-Father as the eternal loving King, as P& Ixxii.
describes Him ; the primitive word for king is Sanskr.ysmaibi,
begetter, ix. father (see Max Mttller^s Chipt, vol ii.)L He is
> 8e« T. Orelli, ZeU md Evigknt, p. 107.
Digitized by
Google
248 ISATAH.
Strong God, as the man in whom God exhibits Himself, and he
uses his divine strength in a philanthropic gentle manner for
ever for the good of his people. And he is accordingly, as the
fifth nime says, triT^b, a Prinee who removes all peace-
distorblDg powers, and secures peace among the peoples, Zech. ix.
10, as it were the embodied peace which has come down to the
world of the nations (Micah 7. 4). If TjnaK signified, accord-
ing to Gen. xlix. 27, "father of booty" (as held by Hitzig,
Knobel, Knenen, Schnltz, and others), then the advance to
ahtf—itr would only express that ha leads through a conflict
ridi in booty (Micah t. 3, 4 ; Isa; liiL 12) to peace; but 3K
has, when a ruler is in question, presumptively the same sense
in its favour as in chap, xxii 21, and in genitive connections
tv always represents the adjective aettmus (e.g. chap. xlv. 17,
IviL 15).^ He will therefore be thus named on account of the
devoted protection and tender provision which he bestows
apon his people, and which he indeed vouchsafes to them for
ever. But the goal and the fruit of his dominion is peace.
Intentionally the five names die away in ubv, like the three
utterances of the Aaronic blessing. To elevate the Davidie
government to a government of eternal peace is the end iat
which he is bom, and for this end he proves himself to be
what he is named and is.— Ver. 6 : " For increate of the
gaoemment, and for peace without end upon David^a throne and
over his kingdom, to establish and tupport it through judgvient
and righteousness from now onwards for everlasting — the
jeaiomy of Jehooah of hosts will aeeomplith this." ^^^ (with
rxnrm d^q)' is here not a participle but a substantive, according
I Among the namea of persons compounded with <aM (see Nestle,
iHgennamen, pp. 182-188), hardly one is found elsewhere in which the
relation ia genitival and the genitive has an attributive sense, for D^^3t(i
tn^ie^iCnieans, in fact, not iatber-of-peace, but the Father (God) is peace.
* In the Talmud the Mem elatuum if represented as a mystery. When
Bar-Kappara says (Sanhedrin 94a) that God designed to make Hezekiah
the Messiah, and Sennacherib Oog and M^^, but that Hezekiah was
not found worthy of this, and therefore the M«m of ny)iJy was closed
lltFinp], there is so far some sense in this, since the Messianic hopes really
could cleave for a certain time to Hezekiah ; whereas the assertion of a
certain Hillel {ib. 986), that Hezekiah was actually the Messiah of Israel,
and no other was to be expected, is an absurd (perhaps antiehristiaB)
idea. Compare the beautiful Midrash on Meh. iL 18r 0'vr\t Dl, that
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEK IX. 6. '249
to the fonn fwno nfc^, and not from ^y} but from nyj, an
infinitive noun expressing abstract action or its actual resolt
The august king's child brings -an always more widely extend-
ing dominion and endless peace when he sits upon David's
throne and rules over David's kingdom. He is a temper
Auguatui, i.e. one always inere&sing the kingdom, yet not by
war, but by peaceful spiritual weapon& Internally he gives
the kingdom tsaep and n^, as the foundations and pillars
of its continuing existence : legal right which he pronounces
and Ordains, and justice which he himself practises and
transmits to the members of the kingdom. This new time of
the Davidic monarchy is as yet still a thing of faith and of
hope, but the jealous zeal of Jehovah guarantees its realiza-
tion. The accentuation is here misleading, since it gives the
appearance as though the words cmyn^fi Tm^ belonged to the
closing clause, whereas the perspective which they open
applies directly to the government of the great descendant of
David, and only indirectly to the work of the divine jealousy,
n^i? (properly glow, cf. Deut iv. 24) is one of the deepest
eoDcqytions of the Old Testament* It is double-sided ; the
glow of love has for its obverse the glow of wrath. For
jealousy is jealous for the object of its love in opposition to
ieverything which trenches upon it and this love. Jehovah
loves His people. That He leaves it to such bad Davidic
kings as Ahaz, and gives it up to the world - power, is not
compatible with this love in the long run. His love flames
np, consumes all that is adverse to it, and gives His people
the true king, in whom that which was typified iii David and
Solomon culminates as in its antitype. With this same
expression : the jealousy of Jehovah of hosts, etc., Isaiah seals
the promise in chap. xxx. 32.
the broken walls of Jeruealem will be closed in the d&y of salvation, and
that the government will then be opened, which has been closed up to the
time of King Messiah (rreisn "jte Iff noviD>
* See my Introduction to Ferd. Weber's treatise on the Wrath of Qod,
1862, p^ XXXV.
Digitized by
Google
250 ISAIAH.
B. — The punishing hand reaching out to inflid still mate strokes,
chap. «. 7-x. 4.
The great light will not arise before the darkness has
reached its deepest The gradual increase of this darkness is
prophesied in this second section of the esoteric discourses.
Many difficult questions rise in connection with this section :
(1) Is it directed only against the northern kingdom, or
against the whole of Israel? (2) What is the historical
standpoint of the prophet in time? Most commentators
answer that the prophet is here only prophesying against
Ephraim, and particularly after Syria and Ephraim had been
already chastised by Tiglathpileser. The former position is
incorrect; the prophet indeed starts from Ephraim, but he
does not stop with Ephraim. The fates of both kingdoms,
causally connected as in reality they are, flow into one
another here, as in chap. viiL 5 sqq. And it is not merely
this or that point, but all that is expressed historically in this
section which the prophet has lying behind him from the
standpoint he occupies. We know from chap. ii. 9, v. 25,
that he uses the imperf. eons, as the preterite of the ideal past
We translate here in the present throughout, for our mode of
representation is familiar with making a past event present,
but not with this historicizing of the future. In its external
arrangement, no section of Isaiah is so symmetrical as this one.
We have had approximations to strophes with the same ban-
ning in chap, v., and with the same ending in chap. iL In
this section chap. v. 255 is made the recurring refrain of four
symmetrical strophes. In translating we shall always take a
whole strophe at once.
Strophe 1, vers. 7-11: "The AU-Zord sends out a xoord
against JaecA, and it descends into Israel. And the people
altogether must make expiation, Ephraim and the inhabitants of
Samaria speaking in arrogance and pride of heart. 'Bricks
have fallen, and we build up with hewn stones ; tyeanwre trees
are hevm down, and we put cedars in their place.' Jehovah
raises high Eezin's oppressors over him, and goads on his ene-
mies. Aram from east, and Philistines from west, they devour
Israel with, full moxUh, — for all that His anger does not turn
Digitized by
Google
OBAPTEK IZ. 7-11. 2fil
avxiy, and His hand ia stretched out stiU." The word *un is
the messenger of the Lord in nature and history; it runs
quickly through the earth (Ps. cxlviL 15, 18); sent by the
Lord, it comes to men to destroy or to heal (Ps. evil 20), and
never returns to its sender with its object unaccomplished
(chap. Iv. 10, 11). Thus does the Lord even now send a
word against Jacob (3f^,!, not used otherwise than in chap^
ii. 5). And this heavenly messenger passes down into Israel
(TBI, as in Dan. iv. 28, and like the Arab. nmcUa, the term
used of the coming down of divine revelation), turning to
lodge, as it were, in the soul of the prophet Its first com-
mission is directed against Ephraim, which is so little humbled
by the misfortunes experienced under Jehu (2 Kings x. 32)
and Joahaz (2 Kings xiiL 3), that they are presumptuous
enough to substitute for bricks and sycomores (Jicus sycomonis}
which furnishes an excellent wood for building, but is a very
common tree, 1 Kings x. 27) hewn building stones (n^, Ck)d.
BabyL n*^ from ns, like n*n!i from Tia) and cedars. Ti>nn
is not used here as in Job xiv. 7, where it means nova germina
emittere, but as in ohap. xL 31, xli 1, where it means, with
nb, novas vires assumare, so that in this passage, where the
object is something external to the subject, it means substi'
titers, like the Arab, achlafa, to restore, to replaca The
poorest style of building in the country is contrasted with
the best, for " the sycomore is a tree which only flourishes in
the plain, and there the most wretched dwellings are still built
in the present day of bricks dried in the sun, and of knotty
beams of sycomore." * If the war has destroyed these, then
more lasting and stately dwellings will be raised in their
place. Ephraim is to be brought to feel this defiance of the
judgments of God (jnj as in Hos. ix. 7 ; Ezek. xxv. 14). Jeho-
vah gives to the adversaries of Rezin supremacy over Ephraim
(^^), and spurs on the enemies of Ephraim. i|D3p, as in
chap. xix. 2, from ^30, in the root meaning, which is dialeo-
ticdly guaranteed, means to prick, ^ere (which has nothing
to do with the meaning to plait and to cover^; from which
I As diBtingaiahed fh>m rviti/Mftt or tunifuttt, the sjeomore, TKFU mean*
the molheny-tiee, fnonu; see Imm. Ldw, Arcm. Pflataennamm, Nos. 332
and 338.
* Boten, " Topogt^hiaches aoi Jenualem," in DMZ. 1860, xiv. 618.
Digitized by
Google
252 ISAIAH.
we Lave 1|#, ^D, «^, a prickle, a nail, p^, and the Aramaeo-
Heb. r?^, ^^J^, a knife : and theiefore the pilpel ia to be
translated to goad, to incite, according to which the Targum
translates this passage and chap. six. 2 and the LXX. chapi
xix. 2. It is not necessary to adduce the Talmudic ^D3p, to
kindle (by friction), which never occurs in the metaphorical
sense of to excite; our idsd would be better taken as an
inteusiTe form of TI?D, in the sense of the Arab, (jj^, " to
provide oneself vrith weapons, to arm;" but this is properly
a denominative £rom that iUcka which means an offensive
weapon, from stabbing and spearing, from which the transition
is easy to the meaning of spurring on and instigating. The
" oppressors of Bezin " (tTi ^V. like 'li ^n in chap. L 4) are
the Assyrians who were called in by Ahaz against Eezin.
The indirect designation of them is peculiar, but neither does
the striking out of the nx (Lagarde) nor its transformation
into nv (Ewald, Cheyne) commend itself; most in its favour
has the conj. xnrt with pn expunged (Bredenkamp), so fbat
vmrt (rnv) and VTm are specialized in ver. 11. The range of
-vision here widens to the whole of Israel ; for the northern
kingdom has never had to suffer from the Philistines, whereas
an invasion of Philistines into Judah actually belonged to the
punitive judgments of the time of Ahaz, 2 Chron. xxviil 16-19.
Ephraim is overrun by Aram, that is to say (if jn is not
expunged), by Aram as subjugated by Assur, and now tribu-
tary to it, and Judah is invaded by the Philistines, and
becomes a fat prize of both. But this extreme distress is still
far from being the end of God's punishments. Because Israel
does not turn (3b^ vh), God's wrath also does not turn (s^ v6).
Strophe 2, vers. 12—16 : " But the people tumeth not unto
Him that smiteth it, andthey seek not Jehovah of hotts. There-
fore Jehovah rooteth out of Israel head and tail, paiwriranch
and rush, in one day. Eldert and the right honourable, this is the
head ; and prophets, teachers of lies, this is the tail : the leaders
of this people have become mis-leaders, and their followers
swallowed up ones. Ther^ore the AU-Lord wUl not rqoies
in their young men, and vfill not have compassion on their
orplians and widows : for altogether they are impious and evil-
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTBE Cr. 1S-1& 263
doers, and every mouth tpeaketh Uatphemjf, — imih all this Sis
anger is not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still."
The ^ of nyn corresponds to tiie Latin autem. IV ^ is
used of tborottgfa conversion that does not stop half way.
^^?^!i> the smiter of it, or he who smiteth it, is Jehovah (com-
pare, on the other hand, chap. x. 20, where Assnr is meantX
The arUcle and suffix are used as in chap. zxiv. 2 ; Prov.
xvi. 4, and elsewhere. It might be thought that the 1 of
viaon was inadvertently appended from the following nm;
but the article conld rather be dispensed with than the suffix ;
the case is similar to what we have in 0^ t3?von, chap. LdiL
11, f.v. There is now coming a great day oi punishment,
like several which Israel has experienced in the Assyrian
oppressions and Judah in the Chaldean oppressions ; and in
it head and tail, at, according to another proverbial ex-
pression, palm branch and rush are rooted out One might
think that by this is meant the uppa: and the lower classes,
high and low; but ver. 14 makes another application of the
first double figure by giving it a turn di£ferent from its
popular sense (cf. Arab, er-rv^is v^al-edndb = high and low,
in Dietrich, p. 209). Since Koppe this ver. 14 has lieen
almost universally held to be a gloss (Hitzig, Ewald, Dietridi,
Knobel, Cheyne, Diestel), and, moreover, a sotte glose (Reuss).
But in opposition to this is to be put the habit of Isaiah
(chap. i. 22, 23), and also of the other prophets and poets of
interpreting their figures themselves (Hos. xiiL 15 ; Ps. xviii.
17, 18, cxliv. 7); against it also is the Isaianic conception in
chap.iiL 3,xxx. 20; against, too, is the mediating relation of this
verse to ver. 1 5 ; and a^nst it further is the wit of the inter-
pretation. The chiefs of the people are the head of the people
as a body; and behind it sit the prophets, like the wagging tail of
a dog, flattering the people, — prophets who love, as Persius says
(iv. 15), blando caudam jactare popello. The prophet drops the
figure of HBS, the paln^ branch forming the crown of the palm
(which has its name from the fact that it is formed like the palm
of the hand, instar palmae maniui), and jtoSK, the rush which
grows out of the marsh.' It signifies the rulers of the people
I The noun OM is used in the Old Testament as well as in the Talmud
to signiify both a manhy place (see Afezla 366, and more especially Ahoia
tara 38a, where jnjjn n^J signifies the laying bare of the marshy soil
Digitized by
Google
2S4 JBAIAH.
and the rabble of the people. Accordingly, the demagogic
prophets form the ignoblest extremity. For so far has it
come, says ver. 15, that those who promise to lead by a
straight way 0?'*') lead astray, and they who allow them-
selves to be led by them are as good as already swaUowed np
by hell (cf. chap. v. 14, iiL 12). Therefore the All-Rnler
will not rejoice over the young men of this people, i.e. He
will let them be smitten by their enemies without going
forth with them into the conflict, and he will deny his
wonted compassion even to widows and orphans, for they
are all utterly corrupt on all sides. The alienation, obli-
quity, and dishonesQr of their heart is indicated by ISfJ^ (from
tpn, which has in itself the indifferent root-idea of inclina-
tion, whence, in the Arabic, hanSf conversely signifies one
who is decided for right) ; the badness of their conduct is
indicated by jno, a sharpened form, as in Prov. xvii 4, for
n?> makjiats' and the vicious infatuation of their words is
indicated by rra}. This they are and this they continue to
be ; and consequently the wrathful hand of God continues
stretched out over them for the inflicting of new strokes.
Strophe 3, vers. 17-20 : "For the toickednets blaza up likt
fin : it eoTisumes thorns and thisUu, and kindles in the thickets
of the wood; and they roll upwards in a high whirl of smoke.
Through the tarath of Jehovah of hosts the land is cJiarred, and
the people has become like the food of fire : one does not spare
his brother. They hew on the right, and are hungry; and
devour on the left, and are not satisfied : they devour the fiesh
of their own arm : Manasseh, Ephraim ; and Ephraim, Man-
asseh : these together over Judah, — with ail this His anger is
by the burning up of the reeds), and also the marsh grass (Sh<Math llo,
" if all the onSJK were kalams, Le. writing reeds, or pens ; " and KiddA-
Mn 626, where DIM ngnifies a stalk of marsh-grass or reed, a rush or
bulrush, and is explained, with reference to Isa. IviiL 6, lU^iXUI tovh
inn, "it means a tender, weak stalk"). The noun poJK, on the
other hand, means only the stalk of the marsh-grass, or the marsh-grass,
like the Aramaean KDB^n, the marsh-growth, from (^Isl., to rot, to
/ /
t
fast=UK. *»-1.
1 On the extra-biblical nse of the rpn, see J)MZ. xxiii. 635, 63&
* The reading jnp is wrong ; the Masoretie reading is jnD* and the
interpretation i» rotvfov is therefore excluded.
Digitized by
Google
CHArriB ccir-so 255
tua lumed away, and His hand is stretched out still" The
standpoint of the prophet is at the farthest end of the course
of judgment, and from there be looks back ; consequently this
link of the chain is also past in his view, and hence the con-
secntiTO imperfects. The curse, which the apostasy of Israel
carries within itself, now breaks fully out Wickedness
'T^BH, tje, the constant willing of evil, is a fire which man
kindles in himself. And when the grace of God, which stifles
and checks this fire, is at an end, it breaks forth ; the wicked-
nese flames forth like fire p^a, as in chap. xxx. 27, is used of
Good's wrath). So it stands with the wickedness of Israel,
which now consumes first thorns and thistles, i.e. the indivi-
dual evil-doers who are the most ripe for judgment on whom
the judgment begins, and then the thicket of the wood (^330
or '330, as in chap. x. 34, from il?p. Gen. xxii. 13 =
^), that is to say, the mass of the people knit together by
bands of iniquity, is set on fire (nxni, not reflexive Niphal, as
in 2 Kings xxii. 13, to kindle, but Qal: to kindle into
something = to kindle up, from nr, related to 3V^, literally to
set on [fire]). The distinction which the two figures intend
is therefore not the high and low (Ewald), not the useless
and useful (Drechsler), but the individuals and the whole
people (Vitringa). The fire into which the wickedness breaks
out seizes individuals first, and then like a forest-conflagration
it seizes the people in all its ranks and members who wliirl
up (roll forth) the ascending of smoke, i& they roll forth
in high ascending smoke. ^?Kn'?, iir. Xey., a synonym of
^9?9'^, Judg. viL 13, to turn oneself or roll (cf. Assyr. aMku,
to turn) ; the smoke itself has the name tf^, ^^, from the
pillars of smoke curling into one another (cf. ^i^aac, used
of the felted beard of the camel). This fire of wickedness is
nothing else but God's rns^, for so wrath is called as breaking
forth from within and spreading itself inwardly more and
more, and then passing outwards into word and deed ; it is
God's own wrath ; for all sin carries this within itself as its
own punishment By this fire of wrath the soil fA the land
is gradually and wholly burnt out, and the people of the
land entirely consumed ; Dn{>, air. Xey., to glow (LXX. av^Ki-
Digitized by
Google
756 ISAIAR
Kavrai, and similarly also in Taigam), and to be -darfc,
black (Arab, 'otoma, late ni^t), for what has bamed oat
becomes black (cf. mn, Aram. 0*ne^ Fire and darkness are
correlates throughout the whole of Scripture. Thus &ic do
the figures go in which the prophet unveils the inner nature
of this stage of judgment In its historical manifestation it
consists in the most inhuman self-destruction during an
anarchical civil war. Devoid of any gentler feeling (?M ?pn
for /f, as in Jer. li. 3), they devour each other without being
satisfied ; *>», to cut, to hew into (whence the Arab. ^>; the
butcher), ^jnt, according to Jer. xix. 9 = <nyn, a member
of his family and tribe, who, as being a natural defence and
support, is figuratively called his arm, Arabic 'adud (see Ges.
Tlieg. p. 433). The Talmud in reading iTj! testifies to tlie
defective mode of writing vnt (see Norzi). This ii^rminable
self- slaughtering and the king-murder conjoined with the
jealousy of the tribes, shook the northern kingdom again to
its destruction. And how easily the unbrotherliness of die
northern tribes towards each other can turn into united
hostility against Judah, has been sufficiently proved by the
Syro-Ephraimitish war, whose consequences are always still
going on, even now when the prophet is prophesying. This
hostility of the brother kingdoms will still increase. But
even this is not yet the end of the judgments of wrath.
Strophe 4, chap. x. 1—4 : " Woe unto them that ordain
godless ordinances, and to the toriten who prepare trouble ; to
force away the needy from demanding justice, and to rob the
suffering of my people of their rightful claim, that widows may
become their prey, and they plunder orphans. And what will
ye do in the day of visitation, and in the storm that cometh
from afarf To whom will ye flee for help, and where will ye
deposiU your glory f There is nothing left but to crouch down
under captives, and tliey fall under the dain — witfi all this Sit
anger is not turned aioay, but His hand is stretched out stiU"
This last strophe is directed against the unjust authorities and
judges. The woe upon them, as we have already several
times seen, is £he ceterum eenseo of Isaiah. P^ (to cut in,
originally to mark, chap. xxx. 8 ; Job xix. 28) is their
deciding of decrees ; and ^ns (Piel occurring only here, and
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER X. 1-4. 257
in the perf. according to Ges. § 126. 3) is their official sub-
scribing and writing (not scribbling, scrawling, Ewald, § 1205).
Their decrees are IJK 'iJpn (an open plural from a principal
form pn=pn, as in Judg. v. 15, cf. '^3, '^in, »Dpy, "h'ri)^
inasmuch as their content is nothingness, i.e. is the direct
opposite of moral reality : and what they write out is boy,
trouble, i.e. unjust (cf. -n-ovois, ttoj/tj/jo?) oppression of the
people.* Poor people who wish to enter upon legal proceed-
ings are not allowed by them to do it ; widows become their
prey — that is, the object of their spoil, and they plunder the
orphans entirely (compare on the diversion into the finite
verb, chap. v. 24, viii. 1 1, xlix. 5, Iviii. 5). For this the
judgment of God cannot be escaped by them, and this is told
them in ver. 3, the statement being clothed in three questions
(beginning with nci, quid igitur). The noun >r^ of the first
question always means simply a visitation of punishment,
ntrtt? from fiSB* is empty and waste, emptiness and wasteness,
then the rtimbling of what has fallen down into an empty
deep ; and more generally it is a catastrophe, destruction,
and here "coming from afar," because a distant people
(Assur) is God's instrument of wrath. The second question
runs thus : Upon whom will ye throw yourselves when
seeking refuge (>9 D^, constr. praegnans only here) ? Third
question : Where, i.e. in whose hand, will ye deposit your
wealth in money and property (1^33, what is weighty in value
and imposing in its appearance) ? 3]? with ^K, as in Job
xxxix. 11, or j>, Job xxxix. 14, is to leave anything with a
person as property in trust No one receives from them
their wealth as a deposit ; it is irretrievably lost. To this
negative answer there is attached the following 'nba, which as
a preposition after a preceding negation signifies praeter, as a
conjunction nisi (0« 'Wa, Judg. vil 14), and when it governs
the whole proposition, as in this case (cf. Gen. xliiL 3 ; Num.
^ On the punctuation of >ppr\ with vocal Shebd (without metheg) see
Kimchi, MiclM, 796. In like manner Dent. xxxiiL 17 has rri33i, not
aiithcuticated like rA2T\ in Num. x. 36.
* The current accentaatioD, D^3n3Q1, tnereha, ^p, tiphehah, is wrong.
The correct accentuation is D'anpo^, tiphehah (and metheg), ^y, mercha;
then una hoy is an attributive clause.
VOL. I. R
Digitized by
Google
25S ISAIAH.
xi. 6 ; Dan. xi. 1 8), nid quod ; and here, where the previous
negation is to be supplied iu thought, it signifies nil reliquum
est nisi quod. The singular jns is used contemptuously, the
high persons being taken together in the mass ; and nnn does
not mean aeqru etc or loco (Ewald, § 217/j), but infra in its
primary local sense (cf. ^na, Ezek. xxxii. 20). Some crouch
down in order to find more room at the feet of the prisoners
Avho are crammed closely together iu the prison ; or if this
is to be taken as referring to a scene of deportation, they
sink under the feet of the other prisoners, being unable to
bear their hardships. The others fall in war; and as the
carnage lasts long, in such a way that when corpses them-
selves they are covered by the corpses of the other slain
(cf. chap. xiv. 19).' And even with this God's wrath is
not yet satisfied. The prophet, however, does not follow
out the terrible gradation further. The exile to which this
fourth strophe points also actually forms the close of a
period.
C. — The annihilation of the imperial kingdom of the world
and the rising of iJie kingdom of Jehovah in Sis
Anointed, chap. x. 5— xii.
The law of contrast which rules in the history of salvation
also holds good in prophecy. When distress culminates, the
course of events takes a turn and it is changed into help ;
and when, as in the previous section, prophecy has become
black as night, it suddenly becomes as bright as day, as iu
the section which now begins. The in spoken over Israel
now becomes a nn over Assyria (Asstir)} Assyria, proud of
its own power, after having served for a time as a rod of
the wrath of Jehovah, itself now falls under the power of that
wrath ; its attack upon Jerusalem becomes its overthrow, and
* Lagarde (Symmieta, L 105 ; Mittheilungen, i. 210) reads njni) 'nVa
TDK nn '' " Beltis sinks down, Osiris in crushed " (according to xlvL 1 ;
Jer. 1. 2> But the following "tf D'mn nriTO has then no connection ;
and I still hold that it cannot be shown that Egyptian gods were
worshipped in Jndah in the time of the kings.
* [Dr. Delitzsch uses " Assur" rather than Assyria, and it is retained in
the renderings of the Hebrew text — Tr.]
Digitized by
Google
cnAPTEE X. 5-xn. 259
on the ruins of this imperial kingdom of tlie world there
rises up the kingdom of the great and righteous son of David,
who rules in peace over his redeemed people and over the
people who rejoice in him. This is the counterpart of the
redemption from Egypt, and one rich in material for songs of
praise, like that which happened on the other side of the lied
Sea. The Messianic prophecy, which in chap. vii. turns the
side of its curse towards unbelief, and the substance of whose
promise breaks through the darkness in chap, viil 5-ix. 6,
like a great light, is standing now upon its third and highest
stage. In chap. viL it is like a star in the night ; in chap.
viiL 5-ix. 6 it is like the breaking in of the morning ; and now
the sky becomes entirely cloudless, and it appears like the
noonday sun. The prophet has now penetrated to the fringe
of the light of chap. vL The name Sbear-jashub, having
emptied itself of the curse it contained, is now transfigured
into a pure promise And it now becomes as clear as day
what the name " Immanuel " means, and what Jmmanuel's
name •v\2i ^ declares : the remnant of Israel turns itself to
God the Strong, and God the Strong is henceforth with His
people in the sprout of Jesse, who has the seven spirits
of God dwelling in him. As regards the date of the com-
position of this third section of the esoteric discourses, most
modern commentators agree in assigning it to the time of
Hezekiah, because chap. x. 9-1 1 represents the conquest of
Samaria as having already taken place. Now if the prophet
had, in fact, already foretold in chap. vii. 8 and viii. 4, 7
that Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel,
would succumb to the Assyrians, he might presuppose
it here as ideally a pa.st But vers. 9-11 really require
us to assign the composition of this section, at least in
its existing form, to the time of Hezekiah, and is opposed
to the view tliat would assign its composition to the time
of Ahaz, whether before or after the punishment inflicted
on the two allies by Tiglath - pileser (Vitringa, Caspari,
Drechsler).
The prophet begins with »in, which is always used as an
expression of indignant pain in opening a proclamation of
judgment over the party named ; although this proclamation,
as in the present case (cf. chap. L 4, 5-9), does not always
Digitized by
Google
260 isAiAn.
immediately follow, but there may be prefixed to it a state-
ment of the sin by which the judgment is brought about.
First of all, Assyria is more definitely indicated as the chosen
instrument of divine judgment upon all Israel. Vers. 5, 6 :
" Woe to Assur, the rod of miru anger and a staff is he in their
hand — min^ indignaiion. Against a reprobate nation will I
despatch them, and against the people of my displeasure will I
direct them to prey prey, and to spoil spoil, and to make it
trodden down like street mire'' What follows *in is not
necessarily vocative, but it may be the designation of the
object (without f, -"K, 7^), as shown by chap. L 4. *??! is
either permutative of the predicative jon, which is placed
emphatically in front (cf. the wn-nriK, similarly with
makkeph, in Jer. xiv. 22), as we have translated it; or
DT3 wn stands elliptically for orn wn ib'K, the staff which
they use is my indignation (Aben Ezra, Gesenius, Bosen-
iniiller, and others), in which case, however, we should rather
expect »Djn tnn d*T3 ntDOt It cannot, however, be rendered :
" And a staff is he, in their hand is my indignation," as
Knabenbauer gives it, for this breaks up the half verse too
much. Nor is it permissible, following Knobel's view, to
take 'DVT as a separated genitive to noo, and to punctuate
nop, which is altogether without an example in the Hebrew
language.' Hitzig, Ewald, Diestel, and others eliminate
DT3 Kin as a gloss ; but a glossator would have written ne'K
DT3, and what remains would be a tautology. Instead of
iD'fc'pi the 2Cert gives Su^v?*, as the infinitive combined with a
suffix appears everywhere else ; compare, on the other hand,
2 Sam. xiv. 7. Further, the manuscripts waver between
Bp^p and opnp like neap (Ewald, § 160c). Assyria is to be
a means of inflicting the divine wrath on Israel ; for Israel,
and particularly (in accordance with the standpoint of this
prophetical discourse) Judah, is the reprobate nation, the
people which had become the object of the overflowing divine
wrath.
The instrument of punishment, however, exalts itself and
* In Arabic this separation of the governed word from the governing
word with a genitive relation (even apart from the allowable interposi-
tion of a word expressive of an oath) is a poetical licence ; see de Sacy,
Gramm. t. ii. § 270.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTIE X 7-11. 261
makes itself out of a mean into an end in itself. Yer. 7 :
" Neverthekaa he meaneth not thus, nor doth his heart think
thus : for to destroy is his striving, and to cut off nations not a
few." Assyria thinks P~t6, not as he ought to think, in
consequence of the fact that he is conditioned in his power
over Israel by Jehovah. For what filled his heart 0*^?^?
instead of the usual ^^p^^?') is the striving peculiar to the
imperial power, not tolerating any independent people beside
itself, to destroy peoples not a few (pvo JO in apposition, as
in Neh. iL 12, cf. Num. ix. 20), i.e. as many peoples as pos-
sible, in order to extend the range of its dominion, and to
deal with Judah as with all the rest; for Jehovah is to
Assyria only as one of the idols of the peoples. Vers. 8—11 :
" For he saith. Are not my generals all kings ? Is not Calno
as Carchemish, or Hamath as Arpad, or Samaria as Damascus t
As my hand has readied the kingdoms of the idols — and their
graven images tcere more than those of Jerusalem and Samaria
— shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, likewise
(to to Jerusalem and her idols ? " The king of Assyria bore
the title of the great king (chap, xxxvi. 4) ; in Assyrian
sarru rahbu, or even (cf. Ezek. xxvL 7) of the King of kings ;
in Assyrian, sar sarrdni (sarru, not malik, because the former,
in the political linguistic usage of the Assyrian,^ is a higher
title than the latter). Tlie generals in his army he can call
kiugs, because the satraps ' who led their contingents were like
kings in the extent and splendour of their dominion, and
some of them were also really subjugated kings (cf. 2 Kings
XXV. 28). He proudly asks whether one of the cities named
was not as incapable of resistance as the other, and yet had
fallen before him. B^PfHI (even after a connecting accusative,
not e'^31??, but Cnsaias,* on account of the incompatibility of
> In the titular designations of the godx, kmru (iarratu) and malUc
(malkatu) interchange, as Schrader has shown against Stade.
* Z«r»«tTiif (cf. aitr^M in the Persian sense in the Achamanians of Aristo-
phanes), in Theopompus i^arfAxits, in inscriptions i^xiiftmitiii, is the old
Persian (cuneiform) kkAatra pdvan, i.e. goTcmraent-keeper (pdvan, in neo-
Persian abridged as ^\j in ^^U^, larbdn, city-keeper, yj^Vi hdghbdn,
garden-keeper), plor. Hebraized into D^SB'ne'nK.
» Cf. on the rule, Luih. Zeittchrifi, xxiv. (1863) p. 414. The punctuation
adopted is as, 33, even after YHK ; whether D3 may also be adoptiid
Digitized by
Google
262 iSAiAn,
the aspirates) is not Circcsium nor Mabug, but tbe ruined
site Girbas (plur. Gerabis), lying to the north-east of Aleppo,
a name coiTupted from Evpair6<; ('Upmroi), or tbe right bank
of the Euphrates, right over against the town of Biredgik
(Assyr. GarkamiS), lying on tbe left bank, to?? is nsutdly
regarded as the later Ctesiphon, on the left bank of the
Tigris.* (Was it the same as nra, Gen. x. 10, and >^p3,
Amos vL 2 ?) As to Arpad, which is now an uninhabited
heap of ruins named Tel Erfdd, in the Pashalic of 'AzSz,
about three German miles north from Haleb, see BMZ. xxv.
258, 239, 655. Ham^tb = Epiphania, on the river Orontes
(which is now called ^Ull, el-'Ast), is still a large and rich
2)lace. The king of Assyria had also conquered Samaria at
the time when the prophet introduces him speaking. Samaria
received its death-blow in 722 through Salmanassar, who
died during the siege, and through Sargon, who succeeded in
his place after the kingdom had been shorn of a great part of
its territory in 734 by Tiglath-pileser. Damascus had been
taken and plundered in 732 by Tiglath-pileser; and Car-
chemis, and with it the kingdom of the Hittites, whose capital
it was, was subdued by Sargon in 7 1 7.* Neither, then, will
Jerusalem hold out against him. As he had got idolatrous
kingdoms into his power Q NXp, to attain, as in Ps. xxi. 9,
and W>sn with the generic article), which had stronger idols
than Jerusalem and Samaria, he will likewise overcome Jeru-
salem like Samaria, Jerusalem having equally powerless idols.
IP, prae, implies only a " more than " (as e.g. in Ezek. v. 6),
which may be either a more in number, or, what is more
directly suggested, a more in power (compare the similar
question in Amos vi. 2). Note here that ver. 1 1 is the apo-
dosis to ver. 10, and that the comparative clause of ver. 10
is repeated in ver. 1 1 in order to bring Samaria and Jeru-
salem specially into comparison^ The king of Assyria calls
the gods of the peoples by tbe name of idols without the
prophet transferring to him his Israelitish standpoint On
the contrary, the chief sin of the Assyrian lies in this. For
(cf. Pa. xxtL 12, ctL 7, cxxix. S, ed. Baer) is questionable ; aee Strock,
ProUg. p. 116, Liber P$alnMrum Hebr. atqiie Lat. p. ix.
> See on this Chald. Gtnttit, p. 29a Paradia, p. 225,
* See ScLrader, KAT. 2 Auf. p. 385.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER X. 11 263
while lie recognises no other gods than his own national gods,
he places Jehovah along with the idols of the heathen cults
which had been introduced into Samaria and Jerusalem.
For the worshippers of Jehovah this fact brings the consola-
tion that such blasphemy of the one living God cannot remain
unavenged. For the idolaters, however, it brings a bitter
teaching ; for their gods really deserve nothing better than to
be spoken of with scorn. The prophet has now characterized
Assyria's sin. It is ambitious self-exaltation above Jehovah,
carried even to blasphemy ; and yet he is only Jehovah's rod,
which it was in His power to use.
And when He has used this rod so far as He would. He
throws it away. Ver. 12 : " And it will come to pass, when the
All-Lord shall bring to an end all His work upon Mount Zion and
in Jerusalem, I will come to punish on the fruit of the pride of
Juart of iJte king of Assur, and on the haughty glancing of his
eyes." The statement about the Lord suddenly changes into
a direct utterance of the Lord. When He will consummate
His whole work, a work which, as in chap, xxviii. 21, is
punitive (Cheyne, Orelli, and Bredenkamp), this will be done
in Ziou and Jerusalem, where He calls to Assyria " thus far
and no farther," with the judgment on Assyria, the instru-
ment of punishment which has become presumptuous and
further unusable. J?*?, ahsindere = absolvere, Lam. ii. 17,
Zech. iv. 9, is a metaphor derived from the loom, as in chap.
xxxviiL 12. There is no reason for taking Wt3>^ as fut. ex-
actum, which would be expressed in the perfect in accordance
with chap. iv. 4. The " whole work " is that which has been
carried out to the utmost The end of the work of punish>
ment passes into the judgment upon the instrument of punish-
ment, and therefore into the deliverance of Jerusalem from
extreme distress. The *1B of the pride of the heart of Assyria
is his vainglorious blaspheming of Jehovah, in which his whole
disposition is concentrated, as the internal quality of the tree is
in the fruit which hangs aloft amid the branches, fn^sn, as
in Zech. xiL 7, is the self-glorification which expresses itself
in the lofty look of his eyes (Prov. xxL 4). A considerable
number of genitives are intentionally brought together in
order to express that Assyria is greatly puffed up, even to
bursting. But Jehovah, towards whom humility is the soul
Digitized by
Google
264 ISAIAO.
of all virtue, will visit and punish this pride. When He has
punished so far that by further punishing He would annihilate
Israel, which is inconsistent with His grace and truth. He
then turns His punishing against the instrument of punish-
ment, which falls under the curse of all that is selfishly
opposed to God. Vers. 13, 14: "For Jie has said: By the
strength of my own hand I have aecomplished it, and hy my
oivn wisdom, for I am prudent, and removed the boundaries of
the peoples, and I plundered their stores, and, as superior, put
doum enthroned ones, and my hand took out the possessums of
the peoples like a nest ; and as men gather forsaken eggs, I have
gathered up the whole earth, — there was no one who stirred a
wing and opened the mouth and chirped." The imperfects
ruled by the preterites express what happened several times.
The second of these preterites, 'nfeiB' (= 'n'oic), is the only
example of a perf. Poel of verbs n*^, and is only In appearance
a mixed form from DpiB' (Po. of 008*) and ^Bp (PL of npe^).
The object to this is rf^nj; {Chethib) or niivij; {Ken), which
means parata in the sense of rk luKKovra (Deut xxxii. 35),
or, as here, rk inrdp^oina. According to the JTert, it is
further to be translated : and put down, a mighty one, en-
throned ones; t??, as in Job xxxiv. 17, 24, and xxxvi. 5.
The Mishna (Yadayim iv. 4) has Dn^nmnp (Chethib), WDIB',
and T33 (Keri). But the Chethib "i'?»?3 is suitable if the
a is taken, as in chap. xiiL 6, as a veritatis: as a strong
one (superior in strength), not : as a bull (Bredenkamp) ; for
"i»3K can be shown to have this meaning only in the plural
(Ps. Ixviii. 31, xxiL 13, L 13), although it would give a
relevant sense. It is possible, however, that what is indicated
by T3K, according to Ps. IxxviiL 25, is a superhuman power
(Cheyne), as the bull-god {cdpt, and also xar' i^. iidu) ap-
pears in the inscriptions as a power marching through the
enemy's lands and trampling everything down. In ver. 14
the stifTer i consec. appears before the 3rd pers. fern. The
kingdoms of the peoples are here compared to birds' nests,
which the Assyrian seizes upon and harries (IP?, as in Hub.
ii. 5 ; cf. nssff in chap. v. 7) ; and their possessions are com-
pared to lonesome eggs, the mother bird being away. And
thus there is not even an appearance of resistance, and in the
nest not one of the little birds stirs a wing to defend itself,
Digitized by
Google
CIIAPTEB X. IS. 265
nor does any one open its beak to scare away by its cbirping.
Seb. Sclimid correctly renders it thus : nulla alam movet ad
de/endendum aut os aperit ad terrendum. Thus proudly does
Assyria look back upon bis course of victory, and thus con*
temptuously does be look down upon the subdued kingdoms.
This self-exaltation is a senseless sin. Ver. 15:" Dare
the axe boast itsdf against him who hews with it, or the saw
magnify itself against him who draws itt As if a staff were
sufinging those who lift it up, as if a stick were to lift vp not-
wood'' What madness lies in this self-deification is indicated
by the two questions. The boosting of the Assyrian is the
bragging of an axe against (literally, over) him who hews with
it (13 y^, without moving back the tone, which is not
usual, especially in participles of Kal, excepting n*^ and v!h),
or of a saw pllsp from "ifc^, »j, Aramean 103, in Misbna "ipj,
serr-are) against him who wields it (V?!7, to move rhythmically,
i.e. to and fro according to a determinate measure and time).
Then follow two exclamations of astonishment at the absurdity
of such a conceit of greatness ; 3 represents here a whole
clause, as in the Arabic \^ : it is the same as that, ... it
is as if. IT^^ is one word, as in chap. xxxi. 8.' The stick
is wood, and nothing more, a thing that is motionless in
itself; the man is not-wood, an incomparably higher living
being. In order to lift up wood there must be not-wood ;
and in like manner, where a man accomplishes something
extraordinary there is always a superhuman cause behind,
namely, God, who stands in the same relation to the man as
the man to the wood. The plural vono points to the fact that
by him who lifts up the stick there is symbolized Jehovah,
the Cause of all causes, the Power of all powers.*
Kext follows the punishment provoked by sncb self-deifica-
* Cf. rVii a as not-speech. There b used even the expression el-la-
ildhiya, the not-deity ; the ) is to be regarded as pars vocabuK.
* The reading accepted by Baer, VO'IDTIW. notwithstanding the im-
posing evidence in its favour, is certainly not the original one ; it can be
explained only in a vay by taking ^ as explicative : as if a staff were to
swing, and indeed (were to swing) those who raise it ; see my treatise,
Complvtetuitche Varianten sum alttat. Texte, 187<).
Digitized by
Google
266 IS.UAH.
tion (cf. Hab. i 11). Ver. 16 : " Tliertfore xtriU the Lord, the
All-Lord of hosts, send forth consumption against his fat me)i,
and there bums under Assur's glory a brand like a fire-brand"
There are three designations of God used hero according to
His unlimited, all-ruling omnipotence : l^''?v'» which in Isaiah
is always used in connection with manifestations of punitive
power; 'l^Kf^t 'j'lK, a combination not met with elsewhere,
similar to the. expression found in the Elohimic Psalms,
niK3V Ci'n*>K; cf. on the other hand, chap, iii 15, x. 23, 24.
However, the expression nitav 'ns wants the evidence of the
Masora,' while many codices and editions give niscv 'n. |in
(chap. xviL 4) is a disease contained in the register of curses
in Lev. xxvi. 16; Deut xxviiL 22. Galloping consumption
comes like an angel of punishment upon the fleshy lumps of
the well-fattened Assyrian gmndees; B'IPfp 1$ personal, as
in Ps. IxxviiL 31. And under the glory of Assyria, i.e. its
expensively equipped army (TiM, as in chap. viii. 9), He who
makes His angels flames of fire, puts fire so that it passes
away in flames. This is expressed in such a way that one
seems to hear the crackling and cracking, the spluttering and
hissing of the fire as it lays hold round about. This fire,
whatever it may be in its natural phenomenal appearance, is
essentially the wrath of Jehovah. Ver, 17 : "And the light
of Israel becomes a fire, and its Holy One a flame, and it sets on
fire and devours its thistles and thorns in one day." God is
fire, Deut ix. 3, and light, Ps. xxvii. 1 ; 1 John i. 5 ; and in
His self-life the former is taken up into the latter. Bnii?
stands here parallel to nitj ; for that God is holy, and that He
is absolutely pure light, is essentially one and the same thing.
The nature of all creatures, and oT the whole cosmos, is a
mixture of light and darkness. The nature of God alone is
absolute light But light is love. In this holy light of love
He has given Himself to Israel to be its own, and He has
taken Israel to Himself as His own. But He has also in
Himself a principle of fire which sin stirj up against itself,
and which now breaks forth as a flaming fire of wrath against
Assyria, when committing sin against Him and His people.
* For this passage is not included among the 134 instances of px^i^
rnnmerated by the Masora, i.e. "real" instances of 'jnjt (not merely in-
stances to be read, but actually written).
Digitized by
Google
cniArTEn x. is, 19. 267
To tbis exterminatinnr power of His penal righteousness tho
splendid host of Assyria is nothing but a crop of thistles and
a tangle of thorns (here this pair of words, peculiar to
Isaiah, JVKi "''OB', is given in reversed order), and as such they
deserve to be burned, and are easily made to burn. According
to the external appearance it is a forest and a park, but yet
irretrievably lost. Vers. 18, 19 : "And the glory of hUfore^
and of his garden fUld it shall destroy, both soul as well as flesh,
that it is as when one mortally sick dies ; and the remnant of the
trees of his forest will let themselves be nunibered, and a boy
could write tlum." A forest, "^T., and a gardenfield, 70")?, repre-
sent the army of Assyria, which resembled the former in being
composed of many and various peoples, and the latter as glitter-
ing in the beauty of its men and armour ; it is a forest of men
and a park of men, and hence the idea of penittis is expressed
by the proverbial ife'3"'?] K'BSP (which is to be understood in
accordance with Gen. xiv. 23 ; Deut. xxix. 10 ; Num. v. 3 ;
1 Sam. XV. 3). Tbis gives occasion for a leap to the figure
of the pining away of a odi (air. Xey., the wasting one, from
DW, which comes from the same root-idea in ciJ, WX, Assyr.
inehi). Bredenkamp puts tho words from vwo to DD3 after
pn, and thus obtains two figures tliat are more distinct from
each other (consumption and forest-burning). Tlie two words
DDb Db03 depict the melting away, i.e. the dying out in the
consuming fire of fever, and the representation is not only
indicated by their slpw movement, but also by their conson-
ance and their accumulated sibilants, in which heavy-breathed
expiring life becomes audible. By resuming the first figure
the prophecy leads us from the death-bed to the scene of the
burning of the forest The proud beautiful forest is burned
down, and only here and there does an isolated tree still tower
over the desolate surface. Only a few trees of the forest, easily
countable (^B9?> *^8 i" Deut, xxxiiL 6 ; cf. Isa. xxL 17), will
remain ; a boy could count up their numbers, and write
them down (compare the lad who is represented as doing
much more in writing in Judg. viii 14). as would be the
figures representing the lai^er cedars of Lebanon which still
remain. And so it actually came about ; only a remnant of
the army that marched against Jerusalem escaped.
The prophet now contrasts with tills remnant of a large
Digitized by
Google
268 ISAIAU.
destroying power the remnant of Israel, which is the seed of
a new power that is rising. Ver. 20 : "And it will come to
pass in that day : Hie remnant of Israel and wliat has escaped
of tlu house of Jacob loill not continue to stay itself upon its
ehastiser, and mil stay itself upon Jehovah, the Holy One of
Israel, in truth." Behind the judgment on Assyria lies the
restoration of Israel, viso Is the Assyrian. Supporting itself
upon the Assyrian, Israel was smitten, Jehovah making
Israel's supporting stick the rod of His wrath. Thereafter,
however, Israel will sanctify the Holy One of Israel by putting
its trust in Him and not in man ; Dp|f|, purely and faith-
fully, and no longer with hypocrisy and wavering. Then will
be fulfilled what the name Shear-jashub promises after there is
fulfilled what He threatens, as is seen in the following verse.
Ver. 21 : " The remnant will turn itself, the remnant of Jaxob,
to Ood the Strong." '^^ ?*< is He who has become historically
manifest in the heir of David, chap. ix. 5. Whereas Hosea
(chap. iii. 5) puts Jehovah and the other David side by side,
Isaiah thus beholds them in each other.
So then the remnant of Israel will return, but only the
remnant to the God who dwells in that son of David (accord-
ing to the New Testament mode of expression, to God in
Christ). Vers. 22, 23 : " For although thy people were as the
sand of tlie sea, the remnant thereof will turn itself : extermi-
nation is strictly determined, flowing in righteousness; for a
thorough and strictly determined finish the All-Lord, Jeliovah of
hosts, executes within the whole earth," As there is no pre-
ceding negation, OK *3 do not go together in the sense of
sed or nisi ; but, as belonging to two clauses, the words mean
nam, si. Were the highest number of the people of Israel
attained according to the promise, yet will only the remnant
among them or of them (la, partitively, like aa in Zech. xiii. 8 ;
2 Kings ix. 3 5) be converted ; or seeing that the more
definite determination ad Deum is wanting, come again into
their right position. With regard to the mass, extermination
is irrevocably decided (D", rifiveiv, and then to determine
Bometliing avoroftui, 1 Kings xx. 40) ; an extermination
which is overflowed by righteousness, or better, which flows
along (lols', as in chap, xxviii. 18), t.«. which flowing brings
along righteousness, and therefore comes like a swelling
Digitized by
Google
OHAFTEB X. 3i. 269
billow of divine righteousness, i.e. penal justice. It is not
(as Luther translates) uprightness as the fruit of the penal
judgment, — a thought which, tliough appropriate in itself,
would not be expressed merely by one word, and it is excluded
by the reason given in the following clause. On IPf' with
the ace, see Ges. § 138. 2. That I^'Va, as in Deut. xxviii. 65,
is not used in the sense of perfecting, is shown by ver. 23,
where n^3 (fem. of fi73, that which vanishes, then the vanishing,
the thorough ending) interchanges with it, and '^^^. designates
the judgment as a thing inexorably decided (as in chap,
xxviii. 22, and borrowed thence in Dan. ix. 27, xi. 36).
Such a judgment of extermination the Almighty Judge is
about to execute (>^^ in the sense of a fut. instans.) within
the whole land (^'ipa, within, not il^na, in the midst of), or
rather of the whole earth (LXX. iv ry otKov/jLevj) o\]j) — a
judgment of the nations of which the judgment on Israel is a
central constituent.
In these esoteric discourses it is not, however, the intention
of the prophet to threaten and terrify, but to comfort and
encourage. Therefore he turns to that portion of the people
which is in need of consolation and is receptive of it, and he
draws the inference from the element of consolation in what
has been prophesied that they may be consoled. Ver. 24:
" Therefore this saith the All-Lord, Jehovah of hosts : Fear not,
my people, which inhabitest Zion, before Assur if it will smite
thee xoith the rod and lift up its stick against thee in tJu manner
of Egypt." I?? never means in Hebrew, nor consequently
here, attamen (Gesenius, Hitzig), but propterea. Already the
address contained in the words : My people which inhabits
Zion, is indirectly encouraging. Zion is, in fact, the site of
the divine gracious presence, and of the kingdom which is
imperishable according to the promise. Those who dwell
there, and who are God's people (God's servants), not merely
by their calling but by their inner qualities, are also heirs of
the promise ; and if the Egyptian bondage becomes renewed in
an Assyrian bondage, they may be certain of this to their
consolation, that the redemption of Egypt will also be renewed.
^TTP T}!?, in the way, i.e. in the manner of the acting of the
Egyptians. TT?. is the course both of active procedure and
also (as in ver. 26 and Amos iv. 10) of passive endurance.
Digitized by
Google
270 ISAIAH.
The encouraging address is now based npon new reasons by
taking up again the grounds of consolation from which the
15^ derives it Vei-s. 25, 26 : " For yet a very little, then ia the
indignation past, and my wrath turns to destroy them, and
Jehovah of hosts shakes over him the scourge as He smote Midian
xit the rock of Orel, and His staff reac?ics out over the sea, and
He lifts it up in the manner of Egypt." The phrase : a very
little (as in chap. xvi. 14, xxix. 17), is meant from the point
of view of the ideal present, when Israel is threatened by
Assyria with destruction. Then will the indignation of
Jehovah at His people .suddenly have an end (oyi nVa,
borrowed in Dan. xi. 36, and to be interpreted according to
chap, xxxvi. 20) ; and Jehovah's wrath becomes or goes forth
DWari"?}?. Luzzatto recommends the conjectural reading :
tih\ plFTPV 'BW : and my wrath against the world will cease ;
bzn being taken, as in chap. xiv. 1 7, with reference to the
oiKovfievt) as enslaved by the empire. It would be better
explained as : " and my wrath at the world will fulfil itself,"
i"?? being taken for the sinful world represented by the
empire. But the traditional text gives an easier connection
Ibrver. 26. We are not, however, to be misled by the ^? into
explaining it as : my wrath (burns) at the destruction inflicted
by Assyria on the people of God, or at the destruction endured
by that people. It is the destruction of the Assyrians to
wliich Jehovah's wrath is now directed ; ?? is used here, as
frequently, of that to which the look is directed, that to
which the intention points (Ps. xxxii. 8, xviii. 42). When
taken thus, ver. 256 leads on to ver. 26. The destruction of
Assyria is here prophesied in two antithetical figures founded
on facts of the olden time. The almighty criminal judge
will brandish the scourge over Assyria (Till'', agitare, as in
2 Sam. xxiii. 1 8, in assonance with the following 3'?.^), and
will smite it after the manner of the smiting upon Midian,
chap, xxvii. 7, or of the blow (overthrow) which Midian
experienced. The rock of Horeb is the place where the
Ephraimites slew the Midian king Oreb (Judg. vii. 25).
Then will His staff be over the sea, i.e. will be stretched out,
like the miraculous staff of Moses, over the sea of tribulation
into which the Assyrians have driven Israel (DJ, an emblem
borrowed from the type, see Koliler on Zech. x. 1 1 ; cf. Vs.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER X. 27. 271
Ixvi. 6), and He will lift it up, commauding tlie waves of the
sea that they swallow Assyria. onfO T^^, a Junus-word, as
Cheyne calls it, indicated in ver. 24 how the Egyptians
raised it, but here how it was raised over the Egyptians.
The expression is intentionally conformed to that in ver. 24 :
Because Assyria bad raised the rod in the Egyptian manner
over Israel, Jehovah will also raise it in the I^ptian manner
over Assyria.
The yoke of the world-power must then burst asunder.
Ver. 27 : " And it will come to pass in that day, its burden
will remove from thy shoulder and its yoke from thy neck, and
the yoke vrill be destroyed from the pressure of the fat.' There
are two figures here : in the first (cessaiit onvs ejus a cerviee
tua), Israel is represented as a beast of burden ; in the second
{et jtigum ejus a collo tita), as a beast of draught ; and this
second iigure divides again into two divisions. For "I'OJ only
states that the yoke, like the burden, will be taken from
Israel ; but 7Sn, that it will itself spring the yoke by the
counter pressure of its fat strong neck. Knobel, who alters
the text, remarks against this view that the yoke was a cross
piece of wood and not a collar. And undoubtedly the simple
yoke is a cross piece of wood, but it lies upon the back of
the neck of the ox (usually of two beasts yoked together,
jumeiUa=jugmenta, like jugum, from jungere), where it often
rubs deep broad wounds on the nape, and is fastened under
the neck by means of a cord, which at the same time connects
it with the beam of the plough.' It is derived from ^/^ = ^V,
inire, U, immitlcre, to let in and close (as by a sort of
stoppel, which the Kam&s explains by ti^-, to stop up). The
conj. 79 i'^ni is therefore in accord with the thing. But that
JOB' '» means " face of the fat," and refers to the head of the
fat bnllock, is contrary to the linguistic usage, according to
which *;3Bp must designate that before which the yoke must
yield (cf. e.g. Ts. IxviiL 3). We therefore do not get away
* Professor Schcgg wrote to me after his return from a visit to Palestine,
in the year 1866, in these terms : " I saw many oxen at the plough in
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and at Ephesus ; and the yoke {Si) was always a
cross piece of wood laid on the back of tlie neck of the Xxaxt, and con-
nected by a rope under the neck with the bvara of the plough."
Digitized by
Google
272 ISAIAIL
from tlie view that what is expressed is a bursting of tbe
yoke produced by the increasing fatness of the ox, the yoke
being a cross piece of wood with its connecting rope or strap.
Undoubtedly ?an is not the most natural word for it; it
means a eorrumpi, but such as has been produced by means
of a disrumpi, which has resulted, lit, if we compare the Arabic
jj^^, by means of a crumpling, a crushing together, a wrench-
ing. Probably the word was chosen by reference to ^n, the
yoke-rope, although there is no denominative Ptud in the
privative signification of being unroped (Nagelsbach). Kimchi
makes the striking remark on this passage, that the yoke
usually becomes hurtful to the fat flesh of the ox by pressure
and rubbing, but that here the converse case occurs, that the
fatness of the ox becomes the means of destroying the yoke
(compare the figure of grafting in Eom. xi. 17, to which
Paul there also gives a turn irapii ^vtrtv). There is no need
for a correction of the text by removing ^3n (Robertson
Smith, BredenkampX The deliverance comes from within
(21b) and from without (27a). It is no less a consequence
of the world-overcoming power which is at work in Israel
than a miracle performed for Israel upon tbe enemy.
The prophet now describes how the Assyrian army advances
against Jerasalem without halting, and spreading terror around ;
and how, like a towering forest planted there, it breaks to
pieces before the omnipotence of Jehovah. Eichhorn and
Hitzig declare this prophecy to be a vaticinium post eventum,
because it is too special for any other view. But the Assyrian
army when it marched against Jerusalem did not come directly
from the north, but from the way to Egypt out of the south-
west Sennacherib had conquered Lachisb, then besieged
Libnah, and marched thence against Jerusalem. The prophet,
however, does not mean to give a piece of military history,
but to present vividly the future fact that the Assyrian will
advance to Jerusalem after devastation of the land of Judah.
One need not object to calling the description ideal, or even
poetical (see Driver, Isaiah, p. 73). It is not, however, on
that account a chimera ; for ideas are the essential roots of
the real, and reality is their historical and e.xtemal form.
This external formation, their essential manifestation, may.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER X. J8-84. 273
without detriment to their essentialitj, he presented in par-
ticular momenta either in one form or in another form. The
Assyrian has really come with the storm strides of a conqueror
from the north, and the cities named have been really strack
by the dangers and terrors of war. The description here
given, when looked at aesthetically, is one of the most pictur-
esque and magnificent representations that human poetry has
ever produced. Vers. 28-34 : " He comes upon Ayyath, vy
marches through Migron, in Michmash he leaves his baggage.
They march right across the ravine ; — let Geba he our night-
quarters ! Bamah trembles ; Oibeah of Saul flees ; Scream
loud, daughter of Oallim f only listen, Laysha I Poor
Anathoth ! Hurries Madmena, the inhabitants of Cfdnm rescue.
To-day he still makes a halt in Nob, — swings his hand over the
mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. — Be-
hold, the All-Lord, Jehovah of hosts, lops down the branches with
terrible force, and those of towering growth are hewn dovm, and
the lofty are laid low. And He fells the thiekets of the forest
roith the iron; and Lebanon, by a majestie One it falls." The
Assyrian suddenly assails njy, or as the two St Petersburg
MSS, write it, n;? (=njj, i Chron. vil 28, Vf^, Neh. xi 31,
usually Vp\ or ^?), about six German miles to the north-east of
Jerusalem (^ tda comes hostilely upon, in the same sense as,
e.g., Judg. xviiL 27), and iu doing so he here steps for the
first time upon Benjamite territory that was under the sway
of Judah. The name of this *At, which means a heap of
stones, agrees with the name of Tdl el-hagar (van de Velde),
which lies at the distance of forty-five minutes' walk south-
east from Beittn = Bethel ; but such Arabic translations of
the original names of a place as reproduce their recognised
original meaning are not to be expected from tradition.
Scb^^,' who made a three days' excursion from Jerusalem
for the sake of exploring this Assyrian marching route, and
who returned by Teyyiba. Michmash, Geba, Anata, and
Isawiya, puts Ay more probably (as the march would then be
straightforwards) on the site of the present Teyyiba, six hours'
journey to the north of Jerusalem, 2700 feet above the sea,
upon an isolated hill from whence a wide view opens up
' See the notice of my Commentary in Beusch's Theolog. LUeraturblatt
Jahrg. ii. 80, 81.
VOL. L B
Digitized by
Google
274 ISAIAH.
towards the lowlands of Jaffa, to the hill of the Franks, over
the Gor, and a great part of the Dead Sea, so that the deep
blue mirror of its waters and the limestone hills encompassing
it are seen nowhere else to such extent from one point of
view. The hill, upon which lies the Christian village with
about one thousand inhabitants, contains many ruins and the
strong foundation walls of ancient fortresses and deep vaults,
which point back to early pre-Boman antiquity. We give
the preference to this determination of the situation of the
place, 88 there is found in the neighbourhood of Teyyiba a
small village with the name of Chirhet 'At. At this point
the Assyrian army could survey the whole of the land yet to
be conquered to the south. Instead of turning to the usual
great north road (the " Nablus road "), the army marches
straight by Michmash to Jerusalem without allowing itself to
be delayed by the difficulties of the unlevelled way which led
over mountain and valley. From Ay they pass Migbox, the
name of which appears to be preserved in the ruins of Burg
Maerin, which lies some eight minutes' walk from Beitin.
MicHHASH (t^-)p, according to Norzi, but in 1 Sam. xiii.
fc«30, while in" Ezra ii 27 and Neh. xL 31 it is ooap,
with d) still exists as a small village with ruins on the
eastern side of the Migron valley under the name of Michm&s.
Schegg says of Michmis : " It lies, like Jerusalem, upon a
neck of land between two valleys, the one of which separates
it from the tableland on the west and the other from that on
the south, on which Geba lies and over which the road to
Jerusalem goes. The latter valley running from west to east
is not narrow, but it is difficult to cross, deep, and so furrowed,
especially near the bottom of the valley, that it requires effort
to pass over it. The stream of this Wadi es-Suweinit has
scooped through the rock a deep narrow frightful bed about
ten minutes' walking to the esst of Michm^. On the right
and left, rocks — some of them 100 feet high, perpendicular,
naked, and dingy red — form such a narrow outlet that the
foaming waters of the winter torrent must still, it appears,
struggle to escape. The rocky clefts of Kedron at Mar Saba
are roomy valleys compared with this Suweinit. I did not see
a rock outlet like it even on Lebanon with all its numerous
ravines. Hence this Wadi has been called from of old i3Vp
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB X. 28-84. 273
6*030, as in 1 Sam. xiii 23." After the Assjrians had de-
posited (^i?B'!i, Jer. xxxvL 20) in Michm&s as much of their
baggage as thej coald dispense with — whether in order to
leave it there or to have it sent after them by the easier road
— they passed over the ford (^3^, as in chap. xvL 2),
namely, that of the Wadi ks-Suwbinit. If they had marched
through this rocky valley lengthwise, this would have led
them to the Dead Sea ; but they wished to go to Jerusalem,
and therefore they cut through the valley and river crosswise.
On their difficult march they encourage each other by saying,
" Geba be our night-quarters I " " The beautiful tableland
between Geba and Hizma," Schegg further remarks, "was
thoroughly fitted for this, and quite inviting ; for it is large,
fruitful, and even to-day is well cultivated. For the first
time I saw here in Judah wide -stretching wheat -fields and
beautiful groups of trees which picturesquely shade the
surroundings of the little village of Greba." This Geba is
now almost universally regarded, according to the view given
by Gross, as not the Gibeah of Saul ; but the latter is
recognised in the towering Tell (Tuleil) el-Ful which lies
more to the south (Robinson, Yalentiner, Keil, and others).
And rightly so. For this mountain, the name of which signifies
" bean-hill," presents a strong position suiting the Gibeah of
Saul ; and for the view that there were two Benjamite places
of the name of i?ai, nyaa, or npaj, there is the evidence of
Josh, xviii. 21-28, where 931 and rijDi are distinguished from
each other. Besides, tliis mountain, which lies to the soutli
of er-Mm, and therefore between ancient Bamah and
Anathoth, fits into the marching route of the Assyrian
as here indicated ; and it is at least improbable that Isaiah
should have named one and the same place first V3a and
then (without any visible reason) Smb' nyns. The Assyrian
army therefore took up its night quarters in Geba, which
still bears this name ; and from there it spread terror
to the west and east, and especially to the south. In the
morning, having emerged from the deep valley between
Michmash and Geba, they leave on their flank the Benjamite
Bama, now er-K&ro, which lay half an hour's march west
from Geba, and which, trembling, sees them march on. The
inhabitants of Gibeath of Saul, lying on the summit of the
Digitized by
Google
276 ISAIAH.
" bean-hill " commanding the whole surrounding region, take
to flight as they march past Every station on their route
brings them nearer Jerusalem. The prophet lives through it
all in the spirit. It is so objectively present to him that it
puts him into anguish and pain. The cities and villages of
the region are lost He calls upon the daughter, i.e. the
inhabitants of Gallim, to set up a far shrilling cry of woe
with their voice (adv. ace. Ges. § 138. 1, R 3); and to the
near-lying Laysha (cf. on the two places which have now
disappeared, Jndg. xviii. 29 ; and on the personal names,
D'jap la's B*vT3 'UPD, l Sam. xxv. 44) he calls out sympa-
thetically : 0, only listen, nearer and nearer come the enemy ;
and over Anathoth (the still existing 'Andtd, which lies three-
quarters of an hour's walking to the north-east of Jerusalem, a
name which Cheyne regards as that of the Babylonian goddess
Anat, the wife of Anu) he makes this lamentation, taking its
name as an omen of its fate: "0, for the poor, Anathoth!"
No change of the text is required. ^*iS, as in chap. liv. 11, is
an exclamation, and n^njj follows according to the same order
of words as in chap, xxiii 12; it is a prefixed apposition -
as in Jer. iiL 6, ^^^. ''?^ (compare in the Persian text
\j\s^ gj6~\i ^\, 0, noble Buchftra, DMZ. xxxviii. 330, 331).
Ever nearer now to Jerusalem draws the crisis so much to
be feared. Madmena ("dung-heap," see on Job, pp. 62, 63)
flees in anxious haste ; the inhabitants of Gebin (" water-
pits ") run off with their belongings ; fyn from W, JU, to flee
(cf. e^n, and also "on),^ and therefore to carry away in flight,
to bring hastily into safety, Ex. ix. 19, cf. Jer. iv. 6, vL 1,
synonymous with O'jn, Ex. ix. 20, Judg. vi. 11; diflerent
from Wn (Prov. xxL 29, vii. 13), from ttjf, J*, to be firm,
strong, defiant, from which is derived ttiD, md'dz, a fortifica-
tion, in distinction from the Arabic jbc<, ma'dd, refuge;
cf. chap. XXX. 2, " to flee to Pharaoh's fortress," a W, like
t—> jlc. Neither of these places has left any certain trace
» Hardly, however, e'W John iv. 11, which probably means, according
to LXX. and Targ., congregari, and with which Gesenius compared the
Arab. litx. in the erroneously accepted sense of " to hasten."
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTEB X. S8-34. 277
behind.' The passage is usually held to mean further that the
army rested another day in Nob. But this is not conformable
to the intention of sorprising Jerusalem by the suddeimess of
the destroying blow. Hence we explain it thus : Even to-
day he will make a halt in Nob {in eo est ut svhsistat, Gres.
§ 132. B. 1) in order to gather up new strength in sight of
the city doomed to destruction, and to arrange the plan of
attack. The view held, that Nob is the still inhabited village
of el-Isawtya to the south-west of Anata, fifty-five minutes to
the north of Jerusalem, is at variance with the situation as
described by Jerome : Statu in oppidvlo Nd et proeul urbem
conspieiens Jerusalem. " 'Isawlya," says Scbegg, " lies at the
commencement of the valley of that name, which is turned
towards the Dead Sea ; it is a very lovely place, but is so
sunk in the valley, and surrounded on three sides by
mountains, that one cannot think at all of identifying it with
Nob." Perhaps what is meant is the height which rises on
the north of Jerusalem, and which is called $adr from its
breast-like prominence or convexity. From this height the
way leads down into the valley of Eedron, and the city
spreads out at a short distance before one going down. It may
have been here where the Assyrian is represented as halting
in the vision of the prophet Nor is it long (which is ex-
pressed by the 16i*, which follows auruviera^) till, stretching
out his hand for a blow, chap. xL 15, xix. 16, he swings it
over the mount of the daughter of Zion (chap, xvi 1, not Tfi,
in connection with which the writer has thought of rniT n^a *in),
over the city of the holy hilL What will Jehovah then do,
the only one who can save His threatened dwelling-place
from such a host? — Up to ver. 32a the discourse has moved
in rapid stormy steps ; then it begins to linger, and, as it
were, to beat with anxiety, and now it breaks forth in
dactylic vibrations like a long rolling thonder. The hostile
army stands before Jerusalem like a broad thick forest Then
it is shown that Jerusalem has a Gkxl who does not allow
Himself to be taunted with impunity, nor does He leave His
city at the decisive moment in the lurch, like the gods of
* A writer in the PaUstint Exploration Fund, 1880, p. 108, rappoees
that Oebim ie in the neighbourhood of the cavea of the six hundred
Benjamitea (ilugh&ret-el'Gai).
Digitized by
Google
278 ISAUH.
Carchemish and Calno. Jehovah is the Lord, the God of the
spiritual and starry hosts. He smites down the branches of
this forest of an army ; <|]DD is a so-called Piel privativum : to
lop off (literally, to deal with the branches, cf. ?§?, chap. v. 2),
and iTjKB = rnNB (in Ezekiel rnsb) means, like the Latin frons,
both branch and foliage, the leafy branches as the adornment
of the tree, or the branches as adorned with leaves. His
instrument is nyjjjo, His terrifying crushing power (compare
the verb in chap, il 19, 21). And even the lofty stems of
the forest, thus stripped of branches and foliage, do not
remain standing ; hewn down, they lie there, and the tall ones
must go dowa It goes with the stems, i.e. the leaders, as with
the branches and the foliage, i.e. with the great crowded
mass. The whole thicket of the forest (as in chap. ix. 1 7)
He hews down (^|3, 3 p. Pid, although it may be also Niphal),
and Lebanon, i.t. the army of Assyria, which now stands over
against Mount Zion, like Lebanon with its forest of cedars,
falls down through a gloriously powerful One, I'^K, i.e.
through Jehovah (chap. xxx. 21 ; Ps. Ixxvi 5, xciii. 4). In
the history of the fulfilment given in xxxviL 36, the 'ii iltj^o
is this nntt as the organ of the present divine government.
So it goes with the imperial kingdom of the world.
When the axe is laid to it, it falls without hope But
in Israel it becomes spring. Chap, xi 1 : " And there goes
forth a sprout ov4 of the stump of Jesse, and a shoot out of
its roots brings fruit." If the world-power is like the cedar
forest of Lebanon, on the other hand the house of David, on
account of its falling away, is like the stump of a felled tree
(VM, truncus, from JW, truTicare), like a root stock without stem,
branches, or crown. But while the Lebanon of the world-
power is overthrown so as to remain lying, the house of David
becomes young again ; and while the former, when it has
reached the height of its glory, is suddenly laid low, the
latter, when it has reached the utmost danger of destruction,
is suddenly exalted. What Pliny says of certain trees in
L. xvi. 44 : inarescwU rursusque adoleseunt, senescunt quidem,
sed e radieibus repvllvXant} is fulfilled in the tree of the
' The cedar is unlike the oak in that when it is felled it does not send
op any shoots. The pine lesembles the cedar in this respect according to
Herodot vi 37 ; "to destroy like a pine-stem."
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Xt 2. 279
Davidic dominion, which has its root in Jesse. Out of the
stamp of Jesse, i.«. out of the remnant of the chosen royal
family, which had sunk down to the insignificance of the
house from which it sprang (" the fallen tahemacle of David,"
as Amos expresses it in chap. ix. 11 '), there goes forth a
sprout, iph ( U^ , from "ion, to swing, to sway, lalancer), which
promises to fill up the place of the stem and crown ; and
below in the roots, covered by the earth and only rising a
little above it, there shows itself a *ntl, a little fresh green
twig (from "i-O, -^, to glance, to blow)L The history of the
fulfilment has here alluded even to the sound or ring of the
prophecy ; the at first insignificant and undistinguished i^.,
was a poor despised Nazarene (Matt il 23). But that this
lowliness of the beginning will not continue is already
indicated by the rnp^, from mo, to break out and up, to
unfold itself, to be or become fruitful, Ex. xxiii. 30. In the
humble beginning there lies a power which carries it up to
the height with certain progress (Ezek. xvii. 22, 23^ The
sprout shooting out below the soil becomes a tree, and this
tree gets a crown with fruits ; and thus a state of exaltation
and completion follows the state of humiliation.
Jehovah acknowledges him and consecrates and equips him for
his high work with the seven spirits. Ver. 2 : " And the spirit
of Jehovah descends upon him, spirit of wisdom and of under-
ending, spirit of counsel and of power, spirit of the knowledge
and fear ofJehomth." '•"• nn is the Divine Spirit as the bearer
of the whole fulness of divine powers. Then follow in three
pairs the six spirits comprehended by 'n rm, the first pair of
which relate to the intellectual life, the second to the practical
life, and the third to the direct relationship to God. For
no3n is the faculty for recognising the essence of things
through their appearances, and >*u^ is the faculty for recognis-
ing the distinctions of things through their appearances ; the
former is ao^la, the latter Stdxpurn or trweiTK. >^T/}) is the
gift which enables man to form right resolutions, and n^
^ The Messiah is therefore emblematically called ^^ 13, Sanhedrin
99b: "when will Bar najli cume?" Cf. Dalman, Der leidende und
tttrbende Matia* der Synagoge (1888), p. 13.
Digitized by
Google
280 isAua
that of putting them energetically into action, 'n nri is the
knowledge that is founded in fellowship of love, and ''"i ntn»
is the fear of Jehovah giving itself up to adoration. There
are seven spirits which are enumerated from above down-
wards ; for the spirit of the fear of God is the basis of all
(Prov. L 7 ; Job xxviii. 28 ; Pa cxi. 10), and the spirit of
God is absolutely the heart of all ; it corresponds to the
shaft of the seven-flamed candlestick, and the three pairs to
the arms that stretched out from it In these seven forms
(see my Psychology, pp. 188, 203) the Holy Spirit descends
upon the second David for abiding possession ; as is expressed
here by the perf. consee. nrai, which is accented on the last
syllable oa account of the following guttural in order to
guard against its indistinct pronunciation (cf. Gen. xxvi 10);
nu, like Karafialvetv xal fihmp, John i. 32, 33. The seven
torches before God's throne in Eev. iv. 5, cf. i. 4, bum and
illumine in his soul. The seven spirits are his seven eyes
(Rev. v. 6).
His royal mode of ruling is then also determined according
to this his divinely produced, spiritual equipment for his
office. Ver. 3 : " And fear of Jehovah is /nuance to him,
and he judges not according to outward seeing, and he determines
justice not according to outward hearing." The translation
should not be : His smelling is smelling of the fear of God,
i.e. the penetrating of it with deep judicial insight (Hengsten-
berg, Umbreit, and others);* nor: His breathing is in the
fear of Jehovah (Cheyne), for nn? does not mean " to breathe,"
and with 3 it does not mean " to smell something " (as with a
following accusative), but " to smell with pleasure " (v. Orelli),
like 3 n»n, to see with pleasure, or as in Gen. xxix. 32, to see
with inward sympathy (Ex. xxx. 38 ; Lev. xxvL 31 ; Amos v.
21). It is not meant that he has as regards himself pleasure
in fear of God, but that fear of God when he perceives it in
men is fragrance to him (nfvj tyn^ Qen. viii. 21) ; for the fear
of God is a sacrifice of adoration, continually ascending to God.
Brilliant or repellent external qualities do not determine his
favour or disfavour; he judges not by the external appear-
> So also in Sanhedrin 93b, whereas R. Alexandri combines in^n with
Q«m,and explains it : He (God) has loaded him with duties and sufferings
as with millstones (see Dalman, op. eit. p. 38)b
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XI. 4, 8. 281
ance, bat by the relationship to his God in the depths of the
heart
This is the standard according to which he will judge in
saving and will judge in punishing. Vers. 4, 6 : " And jvdyes
with righteousness the insignificant, and passes sentence with
equity on the humble in the land, and smites the earth with the
staff of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he slays the
transgressor. And righteousness is the girdle of his loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of his hips." The main thing in ver. 4
lies in the objects there presented. He will do right to the
D71, the weak and helpless, by incorruptibly just procedure
against their oppressors; and he will decide with straight-
ness for the humble or meek of the land ; U{r, like ^PP, from
ny^, to bend, the latter meaning one who is bowed down by
misfortune, the former one who is bowed down inwardly or
emptied of all selfness ; ^ ^^<^, as in Job xvL 21. The wrw^oi
and itfxfwt will be the very special object of his royal care ;
just as the first beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount really
apply to them. But the earth, i.e. the antichristian world and
the wicked one (VK^, not collective, but used as also in Ps.
IxviiL 22, ex. 6, Hab. ill 13, 14, of one in whom the
hostility against Jehovah and His Anointed One satanically
culminates),^ will come to experience the force of his punitive
righteousness. The very word of his mouth is already a
staff which shatters to pieces (Ps. iL 9 ; Bev. L 16), and the
very breath of his lips, no further means being required,
exercises an annihilating influence (2 Thess. ii 8) — a feature
in the Bible which, as Cheyne remarks, brings the Messiah
near the Deity. As the girdle around the loins, D?3np (LXX.
T^o ha^xni), and forward on the hips, D^fj (I^X. tA?
itKEupa<i), holds the clothes together, — the unity of the designa-
tion, "^nt, showing that it is not two kinds of girdles that are
meant, — so all the qualities and activities of his person have
as their connecting bond ''^f^, which follows the inviolable
norm of the divine will, and ^^^t^l?, which keeps immovably
to the relationship which is instituted by Ood, and in accord-
1 In this sense the Targum translates DlVtSIK, ArmH'\u, {.e. 'Po^tvXo;,
BatMAut (DMZ. xxxiz. 343), and according to another reading in the
Cod. ReuehUn, pi^iK (Duinsitt), which perhaps, as Bucher suppose?,
means the incarnated Agramainyut (AhriinanX
Digitized by
Google
282 ISAIAH.
ance with the promise (chap. xxv. 1). The n3«x is specially
made prominent by the article : he is the true and faithful
witness (Rev. L 6, iii. 14).
The trilogy of the prophetic figures of the Messiah — as
about to be bom, as born, and as ruling — is now complete.
Isaiah was not the creator of Messianic prophecy, as Gnthe
(in his Das Zukunftsbild des Jesaia, 1885) tries to prove,
forcing the proof by negativing all the Messianic prophecies
before Isaiah. An ideal king was hoped for before the
expectation was attached to the house of David. But Isaiah
and his contemporary Micah raised the outline to a living
richly-coloured picture, for which the opening period of the
secular empires furnished the basi& With the virgin's son,
the five-named king's chUd, the son of David anointed with-
out measure with God's spirit, there begins a new time in
which this king's righteousness attains to a world-conquering
position, and finds a home in a humanity which, like him, has
risen up out of deep humiliation.
The fruit of righteousness, however, is peace, which now
reigns under the government of the Prince of Peace, not only
in humanity, but, without being disturbed from any quarter,
also in the animal world. Vers. 6-9 : " And the tcolf dwells
with the lamb, and tJu pard lies down with the kid, and the
calf and lion and faUerud ox together — a little boy drives
them before him. And cow and bear go to the pasture,
their young lie down together; and- the lion dewurs chopped
straw like the ox. And the smMing plays on the hole of the
adder, and the weaned child stretches his hand to the pupil
of the basilisk-viper. They will not become bad, and will not
commit destruction in all my holy maumiain : for the land has
become full of knowledge of Jehovah liki the uxUers covering
the sea." The SibyUines, iii. 766 sqq., paraphrase this,
and Virgil in his Eclogue perhaps stands unconsciously
under the influence of Isaiah through the medium of that
paraphrase (Cheyne). The Church Fathers, Luther, Calvin,
Yitringa, Schmieder, regard these images from the animal
world as symbolical Bationalistic expositors take them
literally, but as a beautiful dream and wish. In the Midrash
on Ecclesiastes at chap. i. 9, a real transformation of the
animal world is already rejected with e^trn nnn vhn ptt ; but
Digitized by
Google
CBAPTEB XI. 6-9. 283
we bare here really a prophecy before ns the full realization of
which is certainly conditioned by a re-creation, and it there-
fore belongs to the new earth under the new heaven. Even
Beuss refers here to Som. viii 1 9 sqq., remarking that " the
idea, at once poetical and sublime, of nature sighing for its
glorification, is at bottom only a more ideal form of this same
conception." There now reigns in irrational nature, firom the
greatest beings in it down to the invisibly least, a malevolent
strife and fierce delight in carnage. But when the son of
David shall have entered upon the full possession and exercise
of his royal inheritance, then will the peace of Paradise be
renewed, and the truth contained in the popular legends of
an aurea aetas will be authenticated. It is this which the
prophet depicts in charming images. The wolf, formerly
scared away from the flock, now keeps good neighbourhood
(i|) with the lamb ; the leopard lets the frisky kid lie down
beside it The lion between calf and fatted ox neither seizes
upon the weak neighbour nor lusts after the fat one ; a little
boy rules the whole three together with his driving staff (jnj,
according to Stade, */ S3, stimiUo propdlere). Tbe cow and
bear graze with each other, while their young lie together on
the meadow. The lion thirsts no more for blood, but, like
the ox, is satisfied with chopped food, t.«. with cut and
crashed straw. The suckling has its delight, i.e. enjoys
itself (Filpel in the same reflexive sense as in Ps. cxix. 70,
from VSf, to stroke, to caress, to smoothen, mideere) on the
hole of the adder ; and the child hardly yet weaned boldly
and safely stretches his hand to 'J'J®? rrpKO.^ From Jer.
viii 17 it is clear that >y(SKt is the name of a species of
snake ; it is, according to Aquila and Jerome in the passage,
the PcurOUffKot, serpens regvlua (with which also agrees the
Taignm and Syr. lo'jvi, cAarmana), according to Schnltens
from PBV= - fl ,... to singe by means of the hot breath, but
according to Gesenins and Fiirst from V «|y, to pipe, to hiss,
for which Isidore {Origg. xii. 4), siibUua idem est qui et
1 This tndt of the Hessiaiiic time baa been borrowed by a tradition
dted by Damire under tbe mbric ^juJ^o- (serpent) : " till it come to this
that the child puts his band into the mouth of the serpent wiUiout its
banning him."
Digitized by
Google
284 ISAIAH.
regxdus ; aSnlo mim oceidit, anteguam mordeat vel exurai. It
is hardly equivalent to *?^V3y, as it appears according to
Saadia, who translates it er-rakdl, the spotted (speckled).
rnrt is a air. \ey., and the meaning of it is secured by the
Arabic ^jjb, dirigere, tendere ; it is cognate in root vdth "T,
projicere, from which comes 1J (hand). So much the more
uncertain is the meaning of the av. Xey. miKD. Correspond-
ing to the parallel *>", it appears to mean the hole (Syr.
Jerome, LXX. Koinj), whether from *i)K — "WS, from which
comes <r^, i ,U^ (there is no word in Arabic of this meaning
from a verb beginning with \); or from i1k, the light-hole
(as 'rtKO occurs in the Mishna, OhcUoth xiii. 1), or the opening
where the hole appears. But it is more probable that rrvnm
is something that exercises an attractive power on the child,
such as the play of colour, or better, the apple of the eye
(Taigum), as the fern, of "rtttp, the light of the eye (EruUn 556
== power of seeing). The glance of snakes, and not merely
that of the basilisk-lizard but also that of the basilisk-viper, was
regarded as having a paralysing and fascinating power. But
this terrifying hurtfidness of snakes has now ceased, chap.
Ixv. 25 ; the basilisk has become so gentle that he lets
children catch at his sparkling eyes as if they were precious
stones. The prophet thus represents as in an idyl the state
of peace of the glorified time which was about to come, and
it is requisite to take the thought of the promise in a spiritual
sense without adhering literally to the media through which
it is expressed. But the representation is more than a drapery
thrown around the object ; it is the refraction of the beheld
future in the soul of the prophet But are the animals
still to be taken as the subject in ver. 9 1 The subject most
naturally suggested is the animals, some of which have just
been named as terrible and destructive to men ; and that
they are actually thought of as the subject is confirmed in
chap. Ixv. 25, where chap. xL 6— 9a is compendiously
repeated. That vn* requires men as the subject is refuted
by the usual n^ n*? (compare the parallel promise in Ezek.
xxxiv. 25, which rests upon Hos. ii 20). That vrne'; can
be said of animals is evident from Jer. iL 30, and is at once
understood. But if the animals aro the subject, then ^^ in
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTBK XI. 10. 286
here is not the hill of Zion (Cheyne), upon which wild
beasts never had their lair in historical times, but, as hs
indicates, the holy mountain land of Jehovah ; and this is just
ihe sense of nehp in in chap. Ivii 13 ; of. Pa Ixxviii 54;
Ex. XT. 17. Further, the fact that peace prevails in the
animal world, and that there is also peace between the
animals and man, is founded upon the imiversally prevailing
knowledge of God, in consequence of which has ceased that
destmctiveness of the animal world in relation to man by
which alienation from God and apostasy had been previously
so often punished (2 Kings xvii 25; Ezek. xiv. 15, and
other passages ; see also remarks on chap. viL 24). The
meaning of H(hp nn'^as also determines the extent of the
signification of pttn ; it is the land of Israel, the more
restricted domain of the government of the son of David, that
is meant (Hofmann), which is henceforward, like the para-
disiacal centre of the whole earth, a prelude of its future total
and perfect glorification (chap, vi 3, ptbT^). It has become
full of 'miK n^, of that experienced knowledge of Jehovah
which consists in fellowship of love (njn like •'n?, a collateral
form of ntn), like to the waters covering the sea, i.e. the bottom
of the sea (cf. the borrowed passage in Hab. iL 1 4, where n^
is a virtual accusative : full of the knowing), f nD3 (like
f ^D in Ps. xcL 4) means to afford covering to something ;
the Lamed with a participle readily comes in as a designation
of the object, particularly (in Arabic it holds regularly in this
case) when it precedes the participle (Ewald, § 292e). The
omission of the article in the case of D*D30 is an immediate
consequence of the inverted order of the words ; and generally
the attributive participle, when it is in any way more closely
determined, can dispense with the articla
The prophet has now described in vers. 1-5 the just
ruling of the son of David, and then in vers. 6-9 the peace
which under his government extends to the animal world,
and which is the consequence of the living knowledge of God
having become univeisal, and which therefore follows from a
spiritual transformation of the people subject to him. The
matter here indicated is variously enigmatic, and the detail of
what it contains and presupposes is unfolded in what followa
Ver. 10 : " And it will eome to pass in that day, the root-
Digitized by
Google
286 ISAIAH.
sprout of Jes8e tohieh dands a* a banner of the peoples, for it
shall nations ask, and its resting-place is glory" The proad
tree of the Davidic kingdom is hewn down, and only the root
has still remained ; the new David is ^. Bny, and therefore
in a certain sense that root itself, because it would have long
since perished if it had not borne within itself from the
beginning Him who now springs forth out of it But when
he who was the One hidden in the root of Jesse as its sap
and its power shall have become himself the rejuvenated root
of Jesse in the springtide (cf. Eev. xxii. 16), he will be
exalted out of this lowly beginning and raised B^? PJf, as a
banner, attracting the peoples and uniting them around him-
self. Thus visible to all the world, he will draw the atten-
tion of the heathen to himself ; they will turn zealously to
him ; and his nnuD, ie. the place where he has settled down
to dwell and reign (for the word in this local sense, see Num.
X. 33 ; Ps. cxzxii. 8, 14 ; the Vulgate, et sepulchrum gus, is
contrary to connection and to history), is glory, t.e. the dwell-
ing and reigning seat of a king who shines over all, and rules
all, and gathers all the nations around him. The people,
however, from which and for which this One is primarily
king, will, according to the revelation in chap, vi., be scattered
away from its native land to a far distance.
How will he be able to reign in the midst of this people ?
Vers. 11, 12 : "And it will come to pass in that day : again
wiU the AU'Lord a second time stretch out His hand to ransom
the remnant of Hit people which will be Uft remaining, out of
Assur, and out of Egypt, and out of Pathros, and out of
Ethiopia, and out of 'Blam, and out of Sin'ar, and out of
Hamdih, and out of the islands of the sea. And He lifts up a
banner to the nations and fetches home the outcasts of Israel,
and the dispersed of Judah will He gather from the four
borders of the earth." Assyria and Egypt stand first as the
two great powers of the time of Isaiah, and side by side
(cf. viL 18-20). The following were dependencies of B^ypt :
1. Dhna, in the hieroglyphics tores, and with article petorls, the
southland, i.e. Upper Egypt, so that D^^P in the narrower
sense thus signifies Lower £^pt (see, on the other hand, Jer.
xliv. 1 5) ; and 2. e^, the country lying still farther south
than Upper Egypt on both sides of the Gulf of Arabia. The
Digitized by
Google
\
CHAPTER XI. 18. 287
following were dependencies of Assyria : 1, Of"}), the high
land (Assyr. elamu), the old Eran (Old Pers. Airyama,
Aryama) to the east of the Tigris; and 2. y/^J^, the old
SumSr, from which the Assyrian kings designated themselves
as kings of SumSr and AJckad (southern and northern Baby-
lonia). These are followed by the Syrian Hamath at the
northern foot of the Lebanon, and last of all by o;n »«k, the
islands and coast lands of the Mediterranean with the whole
island part of the world (Targ. K©! nu3, or merely 1U3, cf.
Assyr. nagH, district, laud). There was not yet any such
diaspora of Israel at the time when the prophet prophesied,
nor even after the dissolution of the northern kingdom ; the
specialization is prophetical The redemption which the
prophet here prophesies is, in fact, a second redemption, after
which there is no third ; the banishment therefore out of
which Israel is redeemed is the final form of what is
threatened in chap. vi. 12 ; cf. Deut. xxx. 1 sqq. It is the
second redemption, the counterpart of the Egyptian one. He
will then again stretch out (V0\ supply: n?E?) His hand,
and as He once delivered Israel out of Egypt, so will He now
ransom and reacquire it (nip, opp. ^p) out of all the countries
named. The V? of the names of countries is to be construed
with rt:p?, which the LXX. translate tow ^TfX&aai (to kutu-
Xei^ev tnroXotvov tov \aov), by which it is meant that He
will be zealous in His care for the diaspora ; but in the sense
of this ^■qXovv Tiva (2 Cor. xL 2), KJjJ is not used seq. ace., but
^ K|p. In ver. 12a it is indicated that the conversion of the
heathen becomes the means of the redemption of Israel : the
heathen will at Jehovah's beck let His people free and
accompany them (chap. xlix. 22, Ixii. 10), and thus He will
again gather (HPK with reference to the one gathering point,
and fsj? referring to the dispersion of those who are to be
gathered) even from the uttermost four ends of the world,
rrn.T rtxw^ i>K-ib». 'rns (= -rnj, with the Bag. dropped before the
following guttural as in ^njjn, ^npB'), the outcasts of the
kingdom of Israel, and the dispersed of the kingdom of
Judah, men and women. This recalls the fact of the present
rupture in the unity of the people ; but the people brought
home again will be a single people in brotherly union.
Ver. 13:" And the jealousy of Ephraim is removed, and the
Digitized by
Google
288 ISAIAH.
adversaries of Judah are extirpated; Ephraim will not act
jealously against Judah, and Judah wiU not be hostile- to
Ephraim." As a suffix and genitive after "'I'if are elsewhere
always objective {e.g. Amos v. 12), n"J^n<_ nnV does not mean
those who are hostUe in Judah (Ewald, Enobel, and others),
but those who are hostile to Judah (Umbreit and Schegg).
On the other hand, the genitive after HK}^ may be the gen.
dbj. as well as the gen, snihj. ; but to understand D^nfiK nvap
of the disinclination of Judah against the more powerful
Ephraim (N^ehbach and Cheyne) is yet hardly possible, as
ntup with the objective genitive is only found in the sense of
zeal about something (chap. zxvL 11 ; Ps. Ixix. 10), and not
in the sense of zeal against something. Accordingly we
render it thus : the jealousy (passionate hostility) of Ephraim
will cease, and if there should nevertheless be found those
who oppress (are hostile to) Judah, they fall under the
punishment of the nnan, ».«. God's immediate judgment vrts\
Another question turns upon the relationship of this Israel
of the future with the neighbouring peoples : with the war-
like Philistines, the predatory nomad tribes of the East, the
unbrotherly Edomites, the boastful Moabites, and the cruel
Ammonites. Will not these disturb and contract the new
Israel as they did the old? Ver. 14: "And they fly upon
the shoulder of the PhUistiius seavmrds, unitedly they plunder
the sons of the east, of Edom and Moah they take possession, and
tlu sons of Amman are subject to them." *ins is the proper
name of the coast land of Philistia sloping seawards (JosL
XV. 11, ii")?^ I??); but here alluding thereto it is repre-
sented as the shoulder of the body of the Philistine people
(li??? - 10??. see on the cause at chap. v. 2), on which Israel
sweeps down from the height of his mountain-land like an
eagle. " Object of the outstretching of their hand " is the
same as object of their seizure. Whenever henceforth any one
of the neighbouring peoples here named attacks Israel, Israel
will act in common. But how does this warlike prospect
accord with the previous promise of paradisiacal peace, and
the end of all war presupposed by it (c£ chap. iL 4) ? This
is a contradiction, the solution of which lies in this, that they
are only figures, — figures drawn from the present relations
of the peoples and their warlike actings, in which the
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB Xr. 16,' 16. 289
dominion of the future united people over the neighbouring
lands comes into the vision of die prophet
He lingers still upon the miracles in which the antitypical
redemption will resemble the tTpical one. Vers. 15, 16 :
"And Jehovah pronounces the ban upon the sea- tongue of
Egypt, and swings His hand over the Euphrates in the glow
of His breath, and strikes it asunder into seven brooks, and
makes it that men pass through in shoes. And thits a road
is made for the remnant of His people which will have
remain^ out of Assur, as there was mMe for Israel on the
day of its marching out of the land of Egypt." The two
countries of the diaspora which are here first named are
Assyria and Eg3rpt To those who are returning from both
and through both, Jehovah miraculously makes a way. The
sea -tongue (ptt^, as in Josh. xv. 5) of Egypt ("aj with a
retained in the construct state, as is mostly the case),*
stretching between Egypt and Arabia, is the Bed Sea (sinus
Heroopolitamis, the Gulf of Suez, not as Cheyne supposes,
simis Aelaniticus, i.e. the Gulf of Akaba). This he lays under
the bau (O'lpj!?, corresponding in meaning to the pouring out
of the vial of wrath in Bev. xvL 12, and a stronger expres-
sion than ">^, e.g. Ps. cvL 9), the consequence of which is that
it furnishes a dry passage for those who are returning. As
0*TJ|!3 ^°™ ^"^ ~ Cj^ (with the radical meaning to cut ofiF,
to separate, to consecrate), gives a meaning that is unobjection-
able, it is unnecessary to read 3'nnn from 3"!n = t_,^, or to
follow Meier and Enobel, who take 0*1"^ in the meaning of
to split (from onn. Lev, xxL 18 = *p-). And in order that
the cleaving of the Jordan may also have its antitype,
Jehovah swings His hand to smite the Euphrates, while He
breathes upon it at the same time with glowing breath, so
that it is split into seven shallow brooks through which one
1 The rule is already found in Kimchi, Michlol, SOfio, and following
him in Luzzatto (Gramm. § 870)i The following are the fomis both
written and spoken, D'OB^B D% D'lSD'D', mSSTJ*, nbtWOS whereas it
is tl^O'D* on account of the immediately following tone • syllable. It
would certainly be correct according to rule to write instead of "DN "D'
with Metheg ; see Norzi on Gen. iv. 25 ; Num. xxziv. 3 ; and on the
placing of Metheg, § 11.
VOL. L T
Digitized by
Google
290 ISAIAIL
can go in sandals. B^ stands, according to tlie law of
euphony, for D'?3, and the air. Xey. D,'^ (with fixed Kamez)
from tty = wn, Don, to glow, means a glow, a meaning which,
besides, is so well supported by the two Arabic verbs med. Ye
Ac and Ap {inf. 'aim, gaim, inner glowing, burning thirst,
also violent n^ing), that the conjecture of cnt^a (Luzzatto,
Gesenius, and Cheyne) is not required. The LXX. translate
irvevfMTi piaiijt as if it was written D'K3; the Syriac renders it
only according to the general sense by VvMdna, with a display
of might Saadia, however, renders it with etymological cor-
rectness by suhUn, from sahana, to be hot, kindled. Thus in
the (singeing, parching) hot glow of His breath, transforming
the Euphrates into seven shallow Wadis, Jehovah makes a
free way for His people who come out of Assyria. This is
the idea which thus presents itself to the prophet
Kow, as the Israel that was redeemed from Egypt raised
songs of praise on the other side of the Bed Sea, so likewise
does the Israel of the second redemption when brought not
less miraculously over the Bed Sea and Euphrates. Chap.
xn. 1, 2: "And thou toUt say in that day: I thank Thee,
Jehovah, that Thou wast angry against me, | Thine anger has
turned itself away, and Thou hast comforted me. | Behold, the
Ood of my salvation, | / tmst, and am not afraid ; | for Jah
Jehovah is my pride and song, | and He became salvation to
m«." The address is directed to the people of the future as
contained in the people of the present They give thanks for
the wrath experienced, inasmuch as it was followed by all
the richer consolation. The formation of the sentence after
*3 is paratactic ; the principal tone falls upon lb (see on Job
iv. 2), where 3Wj is equivalent to 3B»i, or, more correctly,
where this modal form, followed by V9^-!.^> has included
ill it a past meaning (of. Deut. xxxiL 18 ; Ps. xviiL 12).
Driver, § 1 75, maintains that it is to be translated as an
optative : May Thy anger turn away, and mayest Thou com-
fort us ; but it is not till 2b that the object for which thanks
are given comes to be fully expressed. As ^! in Hos. vL 1
means " he struck," ruled by *I[JD, so here both imperfects are
ruled by nuK, as Cheyne translates : " Thy wrath turned back,
and Thou comfortedst me." We hear the sound of the ex-
Digitized by
Google
CHArTEB Xn. 8-6. 291
pressions in Pa xc. 1 3, xxvii 1, breaking through here, but
2b is an echo of Ex. xv. 2 (from which also comes Ps. cxviii.
14). iV (a collateral form of ')^) means here the lofty self-
consciousness that is combined with the possession of power :
pride and its expression, glorification; nnor is the extended
ground form of Tnot = rnor, and is therefore only in sense
equivalent to Tmci, the suffix of the first word also holding
for the second (cf. Jfn in 2 Sam. xxiii. 5 = Tf^). Peculiar
to this echo of Ex. xv. 2 is the doubling of the i^^ into
nvr nj, which corresponds to the surpassing of the type by
the antitype.
Attaching itself to the introduction in ver. 1, a prophetic
promise again appears. Ver, 3 : " And ye will draw vmter
with rapture out of the wells of salvation." As Israel drank
miraculous water in the wilderness, so will the God of
salvation, who has become your salvation, also open to you
springs (*i?)?p, with auxiliary Pathach instead of the otherwise
usual '3'?o, as we have frequently «^?! for '''fV!) of salvation,
many and manifold, in order to draw therefrom with and
according to the heart's delight njne^ is repeated three times
as the most striking and comprehensive designation of what
arises out of the gracious work of the future for Israel, and
through Israel for all the world. For, having attained to the
possession of salvation, Israel seeks to put the other nations too
into this same blessed possession, and in this sense the pro-
mise contained in ver. 3 changes into the psalm tones of the
next three verses. Vers. 4—6 : " And ye will say in that
day, Praise Jehxyvah, proclaim His name, | make known among
the nations His deeds, \ boast that His nume is exalted, | harp
to Jehovah, for He has displayed majesty, | let this be known in
all lands. \ Shout and jubilate, inhaintress of Zion, | for great
within thee is the Holy One of Israel." The first hymn of six
lines is followed here by a second of seven lines, a prophetic
word of promise introduced between them separating the one
from the other. This second hymn of praise also begins with
the well-known tones of a psalm ; the passage on which ijmn
vn^^ D'oya is founded is Ps. ix. 12, which has rrjn for ijnin.
The form in which it is put by Isaiah is repeated in Ps.
cv. 1, and in the mosaic of 1 Gbron. xvi. 8. The phrase ^2
'n cfz means to make the name of Jehovah the medium of
Digitized by
Google
293 ISAIAH.
calling (Ges. 138. 1, R 3*), iA to call to Him, or, as here, to
call out, exclaim. Tn»i is high-towering sublimity ; here used
of God, as in chap, xxvi 10, with nb^: to prove such in fact,
as with 6*37 in Ps. xciii 1, to show oneself publicly in such
sublimity. For the Cfhethib ny^ in ver. 5, the K^eri substi-
tutes the more appropriate Hophal form njrno ; yw means
the known = familiar one. According to the previous ap-
peals, the sentence is to be taken as expressing a wish that
the glorious self-attestation of the God of the history of sal-
vation may be introduced into the consciousness of the whole
of the population of the earth, i.e. of mankind. When God
redeems His people. He has in view the salvation of all the
peoples. It is the Holy One of Israel, the knowledge of
whom is spread by the word of proclamation, who becomes
salvation to them all. How, then, may the Church of Zion
rejoice at having such a God dwelling in its midst 1 Thus
closes this second psalm-hjrmn of the redeemed people, and
with it the Book of Immanud. The name of God, ^fc" ;^p,
with which it closes, is, as it were, the anagram of the author.
part iil— collection of oracles concerning the
heathen, chaps. xiii.-xxiil
The Oraclb concerning thb Chaldeans, the Heirs of thb
Assyrians, Chap. XIII. 1-XIV. 27.
Just as in Jeremiah, chaps. xlvl-lL, and in Ezekiel, chapa
XXV.— xxxii., so likewise in Isaiah the oracles concerning the
heathen stand tc^ether. In this respect the three great books
of prophecy have the same kind of arrangement. In Jere-
miah these oracles disjoined from their introitus in chap. xxv.
form the concluding part of the collection. In Ezekiel they
fill up that interval of time when Jerusalem at home was
lying at the last extremity, and the prophet had become
speechless on the Eebar of Chaldea. Here in Isaiah these
prophecies indemnify us for the interruption which his public
labours appear to have undergone in the latter years of Ahaz.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XIII. 1. 293
Moreover, this was their most suitable position, following chaps,
vii,— xiL ; for the great consoling thought of the prophecy of
Immanuel, that all the kingdoms shall become the kingdom of
Gk>d and of His Christ, is here unfolded. And as the prophecy
of the Immanuel is given on the threshold of the period of
the great empires in order to rule this whole period with its
consolation, the oracles concerning the heathen peoples and
kingdoms properly belong to it and go with it
The fact tliat with chap. xiiL there begins a new part of
the whole book, is indicated by the superscription or heading
given in chap. xiii. 1 : " Oracle concerning Babel which Isaiah,
son of Amos, has beheld." Kfe"? from KfeO, efferre, then effari,
Ex. xz. 27, means, as is evident from 2 Kings is. 25,
effatvm, the utterance, particularly the sentence of God ; and
the term (without introducing the idea of onus, according to
which it is translated by the Taigum, Syr. Jer. and Luther,
although, according- to Jer. xxiii. 33, they were only scoffers
who connected this idea with the word) commonly, although
not always, indicates the judicial sentence of God. We see
from this superscription that the ^33 Kfev originally formed a
whole by itself, and that it was handed down to the redactor of
the Book of Isaiah as Isaianic, or, at least, that he had grounds
for holding it to be Isaianic. And, in fact, the mode of
exposition and the whole external character impressed upon
it accords in many respects with those prophecies which are
undoubtedly Isaianic; and Zephaniah and Jeremiah appear
to stand in a relation of dependence to this ^33 vCiro, a re-
lation which cannot be inverted without conflicting with the
admittedly mosaic work in Zephaniah and the imitative
character of Jeremiah (see on this, Caspari in the Lath. Zeit-
schri/t, 1843, 2). Ezekiel, too, in chap. xxxL, where he holds
up before the land of Pharaoh the fate of the Asiatic empire
as a mirror, appears to fuse together recollections of this ttiPO
^33 and of other prophecies which are recognised as the
genuine productions of Isaiah (cf. e.g. chap. xxxL 16 with
Isa. xiv. 8 ; and chap. xxxL 10-14 with Isa. x. 33-34).
The lamentation and the funeral song over the king of
Egypt in Ezek. xxxil is regarded by Ewald and Cbeyne as
the original, which has been imitated by the author of the
^33 Kiro. But there are reasons for holding to the originality
Digitized by
Google
294 I8AUH.
of the ^3 ttbD : Ezekiel may be said to pick particular pas-
sages out of it (compare chap. xxxiL 7, 8 with Isa. xiii.
10; and chap. xxxiL 28 vrith Isa. xiv. 19), and these he
expands in his own way of working details into more com-
prehensive pictures. However, we do not overlook the weight
of the one ground opposed to this view, namely, that this
prophecy concerning Babylon (Babel) has no historical con-
temporaneous attachment in Isaiah's own time. It is true
that Isaiah had become certain in the time of Hezekiah (as
chap, xxxlx. shows ; cf. Micah iv. 10) that it was not Assyria
that would be the executor of the final judgment on Judah,
but Babylon, which was already at that time the second
capital city of the Assyrian kingdom and the seat of depen-
dent kings who were striving for independence, and that it was
thus a Chaldean kingdom. But that Jehovah, as in the case
of Assyria, would avenge His people on Babylon through a
Median (Medo-Persian) empire, which was to arise after the
Chaldean empire, and that He would thus redeem the exiles,
is a consolatory hope for which a prophet of the beginning of
the Babylonian exile is better fitted to be the organ than
Isaiah, for whom, as for Micah, Babylon, as the mistress of the
world, formed the farthest bound of his horizon, and who did
not yet proclaim the fall of Nineveh, as Nahum and Zepha-
niah afterwards did for the first time.
The prophet hears a summons to war. From whom it
proceeds, and to whom or against whom, — still remains secret ;
but this makes the anxiety the more intense. Ver. 2: "On
unwooded mountain lift ye up a banner, call to them with
lovd-sounding voiix, shake the hand, that they may enter into
gates of pnncet." The pronoun onp precedes, and the naming
of those to whom it refers follows, as, for instance, in Deut
xxxiii 2, 3. The summons is pressing, and hence a threefold
signal : the staff of the banner planted in order to be widely
visible on a " bared " mountain ("60, from which comes 'Bf,
only found in Isaiah and Jeremiah) ; the voice raised high ;
and the waving of the hand, which implies a violent beckon-
ing — all three signs being favourite ideas with Isaiah. The
destination of this arrOre-ian is the marching into a city of
princes (D'S'IJ, freemen, nobles, princes, Ps. cvii 40 ; cf. cxiii.
8), that is to say, they were to march in as conquerors ; for
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKB XIII. 8-8. 295
it is not the princes who call them thither, but He who
summons them is Jehovah. Yer. 3: " I have summoned my
consecrated ones, also called my heroes to my lerath, my proudly
exulting OTies." 'BK? is to be explained in accordance with
chap. X. 5. To execute his wrath, he has commanded his
WV^, i.e. (according to Jer. xxii. 7 ; cf. the dependent pas-
sage, li. 27, 28) those who were already solemnly consecrated
to march to battle, and called his heroes whom he had taken
into his service, and who, even while exulting in the intoxicating
pride of victory, are his instruments (apparently borrowed in
Zeph. i 7; cf. iii. 11). r?y is a word peculiar to Isaiah
(xxii 2, xxiv. 8) ; and the combination ™t|j T^ is so unusuol
that it is hardly to be expected in two writers who stand out
of relation to each other.
The command of Jehovah is speedily executed. The
great army is already moving down from the mountain. Vers.
4, 5 : " Sark, tumult upon the mountains after the manner
of a great people ; hark, uproaring of kingdoms of nations met
together ! Jehovah of hosts musters an army. Those have come
out of a far land from the end of the heaven : Jehovah and His
instruments of wrath, to destroy the whole earth." ^p opens
an inteijectional proposition, and thereby becomes itself almost
an interjection (compare liL 8, Ixvi. 6, and on Gen. iv. 10). On
the mountains there is a rumbling uproar (chap. xvii. 12, 13);
for they are the peoples of £ran, and at their head the Medes,
who inhabit the very mountainous part of Eran to the north-
east of Babylonia, who descend over the lofty Shahu (Zagros)
and the mountain chains lying towards the Tigris and stretching
down to the Babylonian lowlands ; and not merely the peoples
of Eran, bat generally the peoples of the mountainous north of
Asia (Jer. IL 27). It is an army under the guidance of Jehovah,
the God of the hosts of spirits and stars, whose wrath it is
about to execute on the whole earth, i.e. on the kingdom of
the world ; for the fall of Babylon is a judgment, and it is
accompanied with judgments upon all the peoples under the
Babylonian government
Then must all sink into anxious and painful terror. Vera
6-8 : " Hold, for the day of Jehovah is near, like a destroying
force, from the Almighty it comes. Therefore all arms hang
slack down, and every human heart melts away. And they
Digitized by
Google
296 ISAIAH.
become dislurhed, (hey fall into cramps and pangs, like a tratail-
iwj tcoman they writhe ; one stares at (he other, their faces are
faces of flame." The outcry, '^^n (not defectively, ^i^|>n), LXX.
oKoKv^ere (cl Jas. v. 1), is founded on the expression " the
day of Jehovah is near," which, from the time of Obadiah
and Joel, was the watchword of prophecy. The 3 in ifa
is the so-called a verUatis, i.e. of the comparison of the con-
crete with its idea (chap. xxix. 2 ; Song of SoL viii 1 0), or of the
individual with the universal or common which is manifested
in it(see Ezek. xxvL 10; Zech. xiv. 3; 2 Sam. ix. 8; Neh. vii. 2);
it is a destroying by him who possesses unlimited power to
destroy (nl? from "nc', j^^ to ram, to attack in a violently
destructive way, from which we have 'W, according to the
form ^3ri from un). In this play of sound the prophet repeats
words of Joel (L 15). He himself uses "^^ nowhere else as
a name of God. On that day men let their hands hang
down from despondency and helplessness, and the heart, the
seat of life, dissolves (chap. xix. 1) in the heat of anguish.
Universal consternation ensues, as is here expressed by the
^bnsn standing in half pause (shalsheleth, with the mark of
separation after it). The following paragogic imperfects in-
crease the energy of the description by their anapaestic rhythm.
Men (this is the subject) are seized by cramps and pangs (as
in Job xviiL 20, xxi. 6), the force of events compelling them
to enter into these states (cf. chap. xxxv. 10). The cramps
are called on^ from "i^ = ""IS, like tormina, from torgnere, and
the pangs and throes Di>3n from the 73n, Ja»-, which is related
in meaning to ny (cf. Ja»., to be pregnant, literally, aemen i»
se constrictum habere). The pains are indicated in their order
of succession, which is here expressed by p^'n'. (from ^'n = 7V\,
JU., to turn oneself, to writhe). Further, their iaaeB are
faces of flame. What is here meant is the fever glow of
anguish, which drives the blood into their face, so that it
becomes deep red and gloMring hot (compare the expression
for deadly paleness in Joel il 6).
Jehovah's day of wrath is coming, — a starless night, a
night-like, sunless day. Vers. 9, 10: "Behold, the day of
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKa Xm. 9, 10: 297
Jehovah comes, a cnul one, and indignation and glovring wratk,
to turn the earth into a toildemesa ; and its sin it abolishes frmn
it. For the stars of the heaven and Us Orions will not let their
light gleam ; the siwn darkens itself at its rising, and the moon
does not let its light shine." The day of Jehovah comes, cruel
and severe (^f^, an adj. rdat., it. the elative form ""IpK), aa
the overflow of inner excitement and as sheer glowing wrath.
tfkh is carried on in the finite verb. It is, indeed, not the
judgment of the world which the prophet is describing, but a
historical catastrophe of the nations drawing the whole earth
afar into sympathetic suffering ; r^Kn is here not merely the
land of Babylon (Enobel), but the earth. That the day of
Jehovah is a day of wrath is established in ver. 10. Even
nature clothes itself in the colour of wrath, the opposite of
which is light The heavenly lights above the earth are
extinguished ; the moon does not shine ; the sun in the act of
rising changes its mind. That 7<p3, in the sense of " the .
fool = foolhardy one," indicates Orion, which is according to
the old translations (LXX. o ^ilplav, Targum j^nT^B) from
t9*B3, in the same astrological sense), is more probable ^ than
that it indicates in the sense of " the tardy one," suM, i.e.
Canopus (see on Job ix. 9, xxxviiL 3 1), although the Arabic suhil
occurs as the generic name for stars of prominent splendour
(see on Job xxxviiL 7). The comprehensive signification of
the term is similar to the use of Q^pVan in Hos. ii 15, 19, as
applying to Baal, Astarte, and the bull images taken together ;
or as when in Arabic (according to a figure of speech which
is called )_. ■,}\i', i.e. the letting the pars potior predominate)
" the two late evenings " are used for evening and late even-
ing; "the two Omars" for Omar and Abubekr (J)MZ. vii.
180-81), and Sibaweihs for Sibaweih and the grammarians
like him, exactly as in Latin we have Scipiones = men of the
greatness of Scipio. Even the Orions, i.e. the stars, which at
other times beam most brightly (cf. aelpui nrafupavoema in
* So when the astronomical R Samuel of Nehardea, Beraehot 68i, aays :
" Were it not for the heat of the VdS, the world could not exist on account
of the cold of the anpy (Scorpion) ;" and, conversely, he mefing by ^ds
Orion. The sense of the saying is that the constellations Orion and
Scorpio, of which the one appears in the hot season and the other in the
cold, maintain an equilibrium in the relations of the temperatoie.
Digitized by
Google
298 ISAUH.
a fragment of Ibykos), withhold their light ; for when God is
angry, the principle of anger stirs also in the natural world,
and indeed primarily in the stars which were created nink?
(compare Gen. i. 14 with Jer. x. 2). Instead of i?'?', Ezekiel
, ' in chap, xxxii. 7 says tkJ.
The prophet now hears again the voice of Jehovah, which
reveals to him what is His purpose — a visitation punishing
the wicked, humbling the proud, and depopulating the lands.
Vers. 11, 12 : "And I visit on the world the evil, and upon
evil-doers their guilt, and sinJc into silence the pomp of the
inflated, and the show of the tyrants I throw to the ground. I
make men more costly than fine gold, and people than Ophit'
jewels." The verb ^2B is, as in Jer. xxxii. 2, construed with
the accusative of what is punished, and with 79 of him who
is punished. Instead of J^K we have here ban, which is
always used in the manner of a proper noun (never with the
article, nor in plural) of the earth without limitation. Instead
of O'anj we have here DTI?, like ^''Sf^, in Job xxi. 28 ; the
former means only princes, having only sometimes the collateral
sense of despots ; the latter signifies primarily ferocious men
or tyrants, and it occurs frequently in Isaiah. The typical
impress of Isaiah is here unmistakable. "What is high is
thrown down " is one of the chief themes of Isaiah's pro-
clamation. It is one of the fundamental thoughts of Isaiah,
that the judgment only leaves a remnant C^f); and this
thought also runs through the oracles concerning the heathen
(chap, xvi 14, xxL 17, xxiv. 6), and is variously represented
(chap. X. 16-19, xvii 4-6, xxiv. 13, xxx. 17). Here the
thought is expressed by indicating that men will be as scarce
as the finest kinds of gold. DTia from ont = j;^, to conceal,
is literally hiding, and then, what is kept hidden on account
of its preciousness. Isaiah is fond of painting in tones, and
the ■''E^'*, which resembles I'ijlK in sound, is — according to
what is still always the most probable view — the gold region
of India, which lay nearest the Phoenicians, the coastland of
Ahhira, east of the mouths of the Indus (see Comra. on
Gen. X. 29 ; Job xxii. 24 ; and as to the Egyptianized
Sov<l>lp of LXX., see Comm. on Job xxviii. 16).
The wrath of God thus rules on earth among men, thus
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Xra. 13-16. 299
casting down and rooting out ; and the natural world above
and below cannot remain unaffected by it. Ver. 13:" There-
fore I set the heavens a-guaking, a-nd the earth trembles avxiy
from its place, becatise of the fury of Jehovah of hods, and
because of the day of His glowing anger." In 13a there is
an echo of Job ix. 6 (cf. xx. 27). The two 3 (of. ix. 18) are
used causatively. They correspond to the I?"?]!? as its explica-
tion. Because God's wrathful judgment is inflicted upon
men, every creature which is not the object of that judgment
of wrath must yet become a means of carrying it out It is
the thought of ver. 9a which is here repeated in a sort of
refrain (similarly as in chap. v. 25). Now follow the several
fatalities. The first is flight Ver. 14: " And it happens as
with a gazelle which is scared, and as with a flock without a
gatherer, they turn every one to his people, and they flee every one
to his land." The subj. of f »ril is a instar : there happens the
like of, or the same as with a scared gazelle. Babylon, the
" shopkeepers' city of the merchants' land " (Ezek. xvii. 4), was
the world market of inner Asia, and therefore a gathering place
of the most diverse nationalities (Jer. I. 16 ; cf. li. 9, 44), the
rendezvous of a irdfifUKTOi SxKo<{, as Aeschylus says in his
Persae, v. 52. This great and motley mass of strangers
scatter hurriedly away on the fall of the imperial city (chap.
xlviL 15; Jer. I. 16, li. 9). The second fatality is violent
death. Ver. 15 : "Every one who is found is thrust throtigh,
and every one who is overtaken faUs by the swvrd" K^3f} are
those who are found in the city by the inrushing conquerors ;
and nepan are those who are caught by them in flight C^??,
chap. viL 20, to snatch away). All are slaughtered. The
third and fourth fatalities are plundering and ravishing. Ver.
16 : " And their sucMings are dashed in pieces before their eyes,
their hmises plundered, and their wives ravished." Instead of
nj^JBfn, the Kert has here and in Zech. xiv. 2 euphemistically
njMBfn, eoncvJntum patientur, a passive which, like the Pual of
the Kert of Jer. iil 2, nowhere appears in the Old Testament
text itself (see Geiger, Urschrift, pp. 407, 408). The queen's
name, «?', and the odalisque's name, n^JC?, in Dan. v. 2, 3,
show that hvt^ was not regarded as ignoble in the ancient
period of the language.
With ver. 17 there begins a new turn of the prophecy in
Digitized by
Google
300 ISAIAU.
vrhicli the obscurity thus far lying upon it is completely
broken through. We now learn the name of the conquerors.
Ver. 17 : "Behold, I rouse upon them the Mede», who regard
not silver, and have no pleasure in gold." The Medes are
called *^, the old Bactrian MMa, the Assyrian Mada-a-a
(without marking of the first syllable as long). The Persians,
who are first named by Ezekiel and Daniel, are not mentioned
here; the prophet who ascribes the fall of Babylon (538 B.c.)
to the Medes, prophesies, as the statement shows, before
Gyrus made himself the master of the Median empire
(549 B.C.) by conquering Astyages. The Medes lived till
about the end of the reign of Hezekiah, in country districts
containing regions (villages) organized in a constitutional
way. After they had broken away, in 714 B.a, from the
Assyrians, they put themselves, in 709-8 B.C., under a
common king, named Deyoces, or more correctly, under a
common monarch. But the proper founder of a Median
kingdom was Cyaxares, 633-593 B.C., who was followed by
Astyages (593-549 B.C.). The " kings of Media" appear, in
Jer. zxv. 25, among those who must drink the cup of revel-
ling, which Jehovah presents through Nebuchadnezzar to the
peoples. Their expedition against Babylon was thus an act
of revenge for the disgrace of servitude brought upon them.
The fact that they did not esteem silver and gold (p^,
aestimare, and indeed magni, as in chap, xxxiii 8, and
frequently elsewhere) is not meant to mark them as a rude
uncivilised people, but the prophet means it in the same way
as Cyrus in Xenophon, Cyrop. v. 120, when he says to the
Medes : ov jfptjftdrmv Beonevoi ciiv iftol i^TdBere. Bevenge
incites them on even to ignore all morality and humanity.
Ver. 18 : "And bows smite down young men; and on the fruit
of the body they have no compassion, on children their eye has
no pity." The bows do not stand exactly for the bowmen
(see chap. xxL 1 7) ; but the bows of the latter smite down
the youths by means of the shot arrow. The fruit of the
body they do not spare, since they kill the sucklings, and
even rip up the bodies of women with child (2 Kings viii 12,
XV. 16, and elsewhere). They feel no emotion of pity or
consideration even towards children ; no such emotion is
keeping them back or expressing itself in their look (Prov.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE Xin. 19-29. 801
XXL 10); tMH, related to j_^U., from which comes (_^JiU-,
aitsit = fVyfJ, here, as in Ezek. v. 11, used of the eye aa the
mirror of the soul (cf 1 Sam. xxiv. 11, where ^yy is to be
supplied).' With such inhuman excesses on the part of the
enemy, the capital of the empire becomes a scene of terrible
conflagration. Yer. 19 : "And Bahd, the omamerU of king-
doTns, the glory of the pageantry of the Chaldeans, becomes like
Mohim's judicial overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah." The
ornament of ^^/oo is so called because it is the centre of
many subjugated kingdoms which now take their revenge
upon her, ver. 4 ; and she is called the gloiy or pride (cf.
xxviii. 1) because the ancient seat of a mighty and far-ruling
people. Its present catastrophe is compared to that of
Sodom and Gomorrah ; the two ntt are in the accusative ;
naanp, Acataor/oo^, is used like n|ri in chap, xl 9 with a
verbal force (to KaraaTph^aC), and the LXX. render it well
hv rpotrov KaTetrrpe^ev 6 6e6<i (cf. on the arrangement of the
words, Ges. § 133, 3).
Babylon, like the cities of the Fentapolis, is now an ever-
lasting wilderness. Vers. 20-22: "She remains unoccupied
for ever, and uninhabited to generation of generations ; and an
Arab does not pitch tent there, and shepherds do not make lie
down there. And beasts of the desert lie down there, and hyenas
fill their houses, and ostriches dwell there, and field-devils hop
about there. And jackals houi in her castles, and wiid dogs in
palaces of pleasiwre : and her time is near to come, and her days
will not be prolonged." A city sits and dwells when it is
settled and inhabitable, and has therefore a settled population
(cf. e.g. Zech. ix. 5). Babylon thus becomes a ruin. The
conclusion is similar to the conclusion of the prophecy against
Edom in chap, xxxiv. 16, 17 ; there the certainty of what is
prophesied is asserted to the most individual details; here
the nearness of the fulfilment is asserted. The fulfilment,
however, did not take place so soon as may appear from
• Thi8 is not connected with A* ^jAttl^ ai^ j. (Hariri, p. 140^
Comment.), in which «MtI1 is not <fen. nihjecti, but n. act., and which
means : Anxiety lest his sons should be smitten by the evil eye ; literally :
Anxiety of ogling for his sons (see the remark above on ii. 6). — Fl.
Digitized by
Google
302 ISAIAH,
the words of the prophecy. According to Herodotus, Cyrus,
the leader of the Medo-Persian army, left the city still stand-
ing with its double ring of walls. Darius Hystaspis, who was
forced to conquer Babylon a second time in 518 B.C., had the
walls taken away all but 50 ells. Xerxes gave the last
blow to the glory of the temple of Belus. Conquered by
Seleucus Nikator (312 B.a), Babylon fell in proportion as
Seleucia arose, and Seleucia even inherited the name of the
city it surpassed.* Bahylon, says Pliny, ad aolitudincm rediit
exhausta vicinitate Sdeudae. In the time of Strabo (bom
60 B.C.), Babylon was a complete desert; and he applies to it
(xvi. 1 6) the words of the poet : iptjfiia fieydXij 'artv ^
neydXi) iroKtf. Consequently prophecy shows itself here too
as subject to the law of perspective foreshortening. But the
curse, to the effect that Babylon should never come again to
be settled and inhabited (a poetical expression, as in Jer.
xvii. 25, xxziii. 16), proved itself effective when Alexander
wished to make Babylon the metropolis of his empire; he
was carried off when engaged at it by an early death. Ten
thousand workmen were at that time employed for two months
in clearing away the rubbish from the foundation of the
temple of Belus (the Nimrod Tower). The fact that there is
now found, not far from the Birs Nimrud, a considerable and
pleasant town named Hilla, is not contrary to 20a; for the
prophecy means Babylon, the city of imperial power. In
ver. 206 it is said that no Arab ('aTIj, from the old Semitic
na'ip,, ijjS, a steppe, used here for the first time, and then in
Jer. iii 2 = ,_*j*J. Bedouin, from jX;, a desert) pitches his
tent there (p^l, different from ?!!i' in chap. xiii. 10 and Job
xxxi. 26, is syncopated from p\}^], tentorium figet, like the
Assyrian ^K=^nK, to settle down, to camp), is the natural
consequence of the great field of ruins which is supplied only
with scanty vegetation. General Chesney found at the foot
of the Birs Nimrud a tribe of Arabs encamping there ; and this
is indeed against the letter of the prophecy, but not against
its sense; — the field of ruins is not a pasture-land where
' Stephanus Byz. : B«|3vX«» Ili^ix^ x«Ai; ^nr^oVoXi; 2(Xivx«« ku.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER Xm. 80-22. 303
nomads could remain. In depicting this desert field the
prophet names all sorts of beasts of the desert and of waste
places that make their haunts there. The series opens with
D'?y (from % dryness = ^V, or from '^, adj. relat. of the noun
>'), ic. inhabitants of the desert, here not men, but, as in most
instances, beasts, yet without its being possible to determine
those which are specially so designated. It was a plausible
conjecture of Aurivillins, that D'nit meant long - eared owls
(Uhu's); but the Assyrian d^H {syn. barbaru) is in favour of a
four-footed beast* Ou njjji*. nlaa, see Comm. on Job xxxix.
13—18 ; Wetzstein combines wy^ with Jucj, a desert; Ewald,
on the other hand, compares the Syriac wv*, greedy, devour-
ing. The feminine plural includes the ostriches of both sexes,
just as the D'^K (sing. 'N = 'IN from nw, ^^, to howl), i.e.
jackals, are called in Arabic, without distinction of sex, ci.*Uj
t^^T, and in the vulgar dialect ^i^V \^ (see Kohler on
Mai. i. 3) has also been regarded since Pocock and Schnurrer
as a name of the jackal ; for which the Arabic name for the
wolf, tindn (which is only incidentally so used), gives less
authority than the Syriac translation by tfj^ij (e.g. in Jer. ii.
24, where the Targum has 'H^''*) ;* it may designate a variety
of the species canis aureus, from the characteristic mark of its
being stretched out long (whether from length of the trunk,
or of the snout, or of the tail).* The animals named, the
quadrupeds (J*?!) as well as the birds (l?f). ^re actually still
found there on the ground and soil of ancient Babylon. When
Ker Porter was approaching the Nimrod Tower, lions were
sunning themselves quietly upon its walls, and they came
down leisurely when alarmed by the cries of the Arabs. And,
as Bich heard in Bagdad, the site of the ruins is still regarded
as a rendezvous for ghosts ; Tyk*, in distinction from "^va,
signifies the full-grown shaggy he-goat, but here D^VB' (as in
* Sec Friedr. Dvlitzscb, Hebrew Language (1883), p. 34.
* Just as strange is the way in which i and i interchange in the
Talmudic ^^3X, and the Palestinio-Aramaean inav (a bit, a little). The
ti-ansition of the 2 tpirans into r is also found in the sphere of the Arian
languages, VMZ. xsxvi. 135, 136.
' W. Bobertson Smith mentions in the accounts of his journey to Hijaz
that the fox is there called abu-hotein, and the jackal ^ „i),j^j,
Digitized by
Google
304 ISAIAH.
chap, xxxiv. 14) are demons in the shape of goats to which
the heathen offered sacrifices (Lev. xvii. 7 ; cf. 2 Chron. xi 15).
Virgil, like Isaiah, calls them saltantes Saiyros. In the present
day the nightly howling and yelling of jackals {<^^ after
IPH, as in 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7) still produces its weird discon-
certing effect upon the traveller there. These are the future
inhabitants of the royal rt30"iK, which the prophet (cf. Targ.
Ezek. xix. 7) with a sarcastic touch calls fi^^p^K, on account
of their witheredness and desolation (although njD^K is shown
to be only different in sound from njtns by the Assyrian
almattu = almantu)} These are to be the inhabitants of the
mV '^3'?}, the luxurious villas and chateaux or pleasure
mansions, with their hanging gardens. The fulfilment is put
in prospect in ver. 22b as in the near future, ny (hardly
contracted out of njp from nw = ruK, to meet, a meaning for
fuy which has no certain support, but out of rnp from ''JJ,
to determine)* signifies the final term of fulfilment Tlie
Apocalypse in chap, xviii. 2 takes up this prophecy of
Isaiah and applies it to a then existing Babylon, which
lias to look at itself in the mirror of the Babylon of old.
It is love to His own people which drives the God of Israel
to suspend such a judgment of eternal destruction over
Babylon. Chap. xiv. 1,2: " For Jehovah vnU have nurey on
Jacob, and u-ill once more choose fsrael, and vrill settle them on
their native soil ; and tlie foreigner will associate himself with
them, and will attach themselves to the house of Jajedb, And
peoples take them and accompany them to their place, and the
house of Israel makes them its own on the soil of JehovaJi as
servants and maid-servants, and they hold captive those who led
them away captive, and become lords of their oppressors." We
have here in mice the comforting substance of chaps, xl.—
Ixvi. Babylon falls in order that Israel may rise. God's
compassion brings this about. He chooses Israel Tiy, iierum
(as in Zech. i. 17, ii. 16), and therefore concludes with it
a new covenant. Then follows restoration to the possession
of their country (DnpiK), of the land of Jehovah ('n Wx», as
' See Friedr. Delitzsch on Bacr's Ezekid, p. xL
' Similar to this pair of derivatives, np and IjrtD, are nvy and nxjto,
•rtp' and n^o ; cf. v. Orelli, Zeit und Etrigkeit, pp. 47-49.
Digitized by
Google
CHAriKB XCV. «, 4. 305
in Hos. ix. 3). The proselytes from the heathen who had
attached themselves to Israel (pvi, as in Zech. ii. 1 5, parallel
to napj), march with them as Buth went with Naomi.
Heathen accompany the exiles to their locality and place.
And the relation between them is now reversed. Those who
accompany Israel are now taken possession of by them for
themselves ('Wnn, used reflexively, like ™?Bnn in chap. lii. 2
\vea6ai) for servants and maid-servants, and they (the
Israelites) become leaders into captivity of those who led them
captive (>, with the participle, as in chap, xi 9), and they will
rule over those who were their oppressors (3 hti, as in Ps.
xlix. 15). The promise literally refers to this world, in
accordance with the national form of the Old Testament
community, and will not be realized in this its literal sense.
Israel, indeed, will be restored as a people ; but the essence
of the Church which is raised above all national distinctions
does not return to the national limit which it has broken
through. The fact that the prophecy moves within this
limit here is explained at once from the fact that it is
primarily deliverance from the Babylonian exile that is
promised.
The song of the redeemed is a song on the fall of the king
of Babylon.^ Vers. 3, 4a : " And it aymes to pass on the day
when Jehovah Irings thee rest from thy torment, and from thy
anguish, and from the heavy servUvde wherewith thou wast
Tnade to serve, then thou raisest stich a triumph-song over the
king of Babd, and sayest." Instead of the Hiphil fTI'? (to let
down, to set down, as in Gen. ii 15) of ver. 1, we have here,
as in the original passage in Deut. xxv. 19, the more usital
form H'in, in the sense of to give rest, to procure rest. 3SiJ is
trouble which torments (as ^^ is trouble which presses
heavy), and M\ agonizing restlessness (Job iii. 26 ; cf. £zek.
xii. 18). The assimilated V? before Ui is not o, as in 3VVo,
but p, with a virtual duplication (MiehM, 54a), as elsewhere
before n, n, and also before i in 1 Sam. xxiii. 28 ; 2 Sam.
xviiL 16. In the relative clause ^3"'?^ "iB'K, tfH is not the
Hebrew causus adverb., corresponding to the Latin ablative,
* In Bungener's Un sermon $ovt Lout* XIV., Bossuet is lepresented as
saying : "What beauty I Were the author a poet, I would say : that is
his masterpiece 1 "
VOL. I. U
Digitized by
Google
306 iSAun.
qtid serviiute servo te usi sunt ; it is conceived as ace. dbj.,
according to Ex. i. 14 and Lev. xxv. 39, qu'on t'a fait
servir, as in Num. xxxii. 5, qu'on donne la terre (Luzzatto).
Delivered from sach a yoke of servitude, Israel will raise a
?B*D. TB'Oj according to its primary general meaning, is
exposition or representation, i.e. oratorical exposition (from
'?'? = JjU, to exhibit, put oneself forward), thoughtful and
pregnant speech, figurative speech, and generally poetry, but
more particularly gnomic poetry, with a liking for what is
emblematic and piquant ; and from this the idea of the
satirical is easily combined with the term.
The song is addressed to the Israel of the future in the
Israel of the present, as in chap. xiL 1. The former will then
sing and say, vers. 4&-6 : " Sow it is over noio with the tyrant,
over with tJte place of torture / Jeliovali has broken to pieces the
rod of the wicked, the nder-daff which smote peoples fiercely with
blows without ceasing, wrathfully subjugated natioiis with pur-
suing that never pauses." The air. \ey. fiJiTJ? is derived, by
Parchon, Kimchi, Ben-Melech, Vitringa, Aurivillius, and
Eosenmiiller, from the Aramaean 3!?^, aurum ; but this was
never thought of by any of the ancients. Tlie latter all
translate the word as if it were •^ptT^p (arrogant, violent
treatment, from am, chap. iii. 5), as it has been mostly cor-
rected since J. D. Michaelis. But we come to this result
without changing a letter, if we take 3^^ = 3*w an, meaning
to flow away, to pine away. The D is the local o, as in
™P"?9, chap. xxv. 10, and therefore the place where they
reduce to pining away, i.e. Babylon, as a house of servitude
where Israel has been made weary to death. The ruler-staff
in ver. 5 is the Chaldean imperial power concentrated per-
sonally in the king of Babylon (cf. t53B' in Num. xxiv. 17);
the ruler is termed 7^, as standing upright and bearing the
sway (kdim bi-l-mulki), just as the parable is called iJC^, as a
(comparative) exhibition or exposition. Here the associated
idea of the tyrant is connected with ??*D. That tyrant-sceptre
smote peoples with incessant smiting and hunting of them ;
with '"130 is connected, as the accusative of manner, the
derivative nap, and with f"^ is connected in cognate
sense iy.P, that which (o, rt) is hunted, then this that
Digitized by
Google
ClIAPTEB XIV. 7, 8. 307
(oTt) there is hunting, and as the meaning of the passive
participle passes into that of the verbal abstract : the being
hunted, a Hophal noun, as in chap. viiL 23, xxix. 3. Dijder-
lein's conjecture of htio is ingenious but unnecessary.
Unceasing continuance is expressed first by w?, which is
used as a preposition, and is followed by nnp, which is a
participial noun like n?3, and then it is expressed by va,
which is construed as in Gen. xxxi. 20, Job xli. 18, with a
finite verb ; for ^BTi ^a is an attributive clause : with a
" being hunted " which did not liold itself in, made no halt,
and therefore did not spare. But it is not Israel only and
other subjugated peoples that now breathe again. Vers. 7, 8 :
" The whole earth is quiet, is at rest ; they break forth into
jtibilation. Even the cypresses refoice because of thee, the
cedars of Lebanon : ' since thou hast fallen asleep, there will not
come up one who lays the axe to us.'" The preterites indicate
inchoatively the circumstances into which the whole earth
has now entered. The want of a subject with ^nva gives the
greatest generality to the bursting out of jubilation ; ni"! IXB,
erumpere gaudio, is an expression exclusively Isaianic (e.g.
in chaps, xli v. 23, xlix. 13). tttp also in historical prose
signifies " since " in a relative conjunctional sense (e.g. Ex. v.
23); and it is peculiar to our prophet to draw the trees of
the forest into the general joy as living and speaking beings
(cf. Iv. 12). Jerome understands the trees here figuratively as
prindpes gentium. But the disposition to allegorize not only
destroys the reality of the contents, but also the colouring of
the poetry. Cypresses and cedars rejoice, because the Chal-
dean has behaved so badly when among them in employing
the almost imperishable wood of both for building ornamental
structures, for carrying on sieges, and for constructing fleets.
They even made ships of them, as Alexander, for example,
built for himself a fleet of cypress wood, and the Syrian ships
had masts of cedar. Of the thousand -year -old cedars of
Lebanon, which at a moderate height are distinguished by the
circumference of their trunk (being about 14*56 metres at
breast high), there are only some seven still remaining, while
the number of all the trunks goes considerably beyond 350.
The old botanist Eauwolff, in the year 1573 (according to
the account of his travels published in 1583), counted only 24.
Digitized by
Google
308 ISAIAH.
Wliile it has now become quiet on eartb, on the other hand
the nether world is found in the most violent agitation. Ver.
9 : " T/u kingdom of the dead helow faU» into uproctr on account
of thee at thy comivg ; it stirs vp for thee the shcutes, all the
he-goats of the earth ; it raises vp from their throne-seats all
the kings of the nations." The mythological idea of Hades
proceeds on the twofold truth, that what and how man has
been in this world is not obliterated in the other world, but
becomes essentially manifest, and that there is an immaterial
self-formation of the soul in which all that the individual
man has become through his own self-determination under
God-given relations is reflected as in a mirror, and that in
an abiding figure. This image of the soul, to which the dead
body is related as the shattered form of a mould, is the
shadowy corporeity of the inhabitants of Hades, in which
they appear essentially, although in the condition of spirits,
as what they were in this life. The prophet depicts this
poetically ; it is truly a hfo which he here inweaves in his
prophecy. The greatest astonishment and excitement lay
hold of the whole of Hades now when the king of Babel
approaches, the invincible ruler of the world, who was not
expected, or, at least, not so soon. From "^^V onwards, TiVSff^
although feminine, might be the subject, since the verb turns
from the feminine form into the original masculine form ;
but it is better to take the subject as neuter, a nescio quid, a
nameless power ; for were ^HE' to be taken as the personified
Sheol with allusion to the heathen god of the nether world
(such as Nergal, the for apsi, king of the water deep. Job
xxvi. 5), then M3T would have to be altered into Tri \DMZ.
xxvL 793). A sudden shock runs through the inhabitants of
the still land, especially those who were formerly the leading
goats or bell-wethers of the herds of peoples, so that they
bound up from astonishment.
And what do they call out to the lofty new-comer as he
approaches? Ver. 10: "They ail begin and say to thee:
Thou also hast been made weak the same as we ; thou art become
like us!?" This verse only contains the address of the shades.
The Pual npn, only used here, meaning to be made sickly or
powerless, signifies the being transposed into the state of the
D'KD"; (a word occurring in Phenician inscriptions, from KB'J =
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB Xrv. II, 11 309
nan, to be slack, weary) ; for tbe life of tlie shades is only a
shadow of life (cf. etBmXa, okikik, and Kanovret in Homer).
We cannot expect more than this expression of highest amaze-
ment in Hades. Why should they taunt their new associate ?
From ver. 11, accordingly, tbe singers of tbe Mashal again
take up the song. Ver. 11 : " Thy splendour ia hurled down
to the realm of the dead, the sounding of thy harps ; maggots
are spread under thee, and they wJto cover thee are vjorms."
We learn from the Book of Daniel the nature of the Baby-
lonian music, which was rich in instruments, partly of a
foreign kind. Maggots and worms — a bitter sarcasm — now
take the place of the artistic and costly Babylonian carpets as
tlie pillows and coverings of the noble corpses. 1'^ might be
a 3rd pers. imperfect Hophal (Ges. § 71), but here between
perfects it is 3rd pret. Pual, like l?' in chap. ix. 5 (Aben
Ezra), noi, which is preceded by the verb in a masculine,
and, to some extent, indifferent form, is the collective name of
small worms which corruption brings with it (from cp"i,
to be rotten, putrid), LXX. <r^t?. With T??, the catchword
of the Mashal, it goes on in ver. 12 : "How art thou, fallen
from the heavens, thou shining star, son of the dawn, smitten
down to the earth, who threw nations down from above ! " ??'(!
(which elsewhere as the imp. Hiphil of the verb 7T means
ejvia) here means the glittering star (from the quadriliteral
^\i, hailala, an intensive form of ^n, to shine), i.e. tbe morn-
ing star, which Babylonians and Assyrians personified in the
feminine as Istar,' but of which they said : " Istar is feminine
at sunset and masculine at sunrise."* To the idea of the
morning star as a male messenger of the sunrise, corresponds
the surname inB*"!?; just as according to the Greek myth he
is son of Eos, because he rises before the sun and swims in
> Iitar is originally goddess of the morning star (like t_0*ii of the
ancient Arabians, DMZ. zli. 710) ; and not till later, after the suppression
of Sin, did she become the Moon-goddess and the planet Venus was
thenceforth represented by Bilit {Baaltis), the ancient goddess of the even-
ing star (see Schrader in Stud. u. Krit. 1874, 337, 340 ; DMZ. xxvii. 403 ;
JahrbUcher fur prolat. Theologie, i. 127). On the mythus of inDD'8 being
transferred to the Pleiades, see DMZ. xxxi. S25-229.
* See Friedrich Delitcsch on Smith's Chald. Gencti*, p^ 271.
Digitized by
Google
310 iSAUir.
the morning red, or latlicr in the morning grey (for tliis is
the literal meaning of the tnr, jA^t in distinction from ^f^,
the red dawn), as if ho were born out of it Lucifer, the
name of the devil, is derived from this passage, the reference
of which to Satan is designated by Luther as insignia error
totiits papalm ; but it is found already in Jerome and other
Fathers. The designation is exceedingly appropriate for the
king of Babylon, because of the Babylonian culture going
back to the grey primeval time, and on account of its astro-
logical character. The additional name assigned to him, v^n
^'^*^, arises from the idea of the ivflvxus siderum ; v^n
means laying low, as in Ex. xvii. 13, and with TV, bringing
overthrow i*^^) upon ; . . . whereas the Talmud (iSutbbath
1496) takes it in the sense of bfO ^BD {prqjidens aortem), and
explains the (Wh (= lOW, lot) of the Mishna by it.
A look is now thrown back at the self-deification of the
king of Babylon, in which he is the antitype of the devil and
the prototype of Antichrist (Dan. xL 36 ; 2 Thess. ii. 4), a self-
deification which has found its reward. Vers. 13-15 : "And
thou, thou hast spoken in thy heart : ' The heavens will I ascend,
high above the stars of God exalt my throne, and sit down on
the mountain of the assembly of gods in the comer of the north.
I will mount up to doud-heights, make myself equal to the Most
High' — nevertheless thou art hurled down into the realm of the
dead, into the comer of the pit." With wiKl there begins, as
in ver. 1 9, an antithetical circumstantial clause : whilst thou,
whereas thou. The Ij?^t3ii i'"? cannot be Zion, as Schegg and
others suppose, misled by Ps. xlviii. 3 ; Zion was certainly
neither a north point of the earth, nor did it lie in the north
of Jerusalem. The prophet makes the king of Babylon speak
according to the ideas of his people, who had not, like Israel,
the seat of the Deity in their midst, but transferred it to a
mountain-range in the farthest north, the Ard.l{i, as the Hindus
transfer it to the fabulous northern mountain Kailftsa lying
beyond the Himalaya, and the Eranians to the Alburg which
bounds the earth to the north. There in the north, on the Arftlft,
the mountain of the lands Qad mAtdti), i.e. at whose feet lie the
lands or countries of the earth, according to the Babylonio-
Assyrian notion, the gods bad their home, their habitation,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKn XIV. 16, 17. 311
the seat of their dominion.' D??'?'^! (from nan* with suffix
IroT) are the two sides of a thing into which it sunders, the
two legs of an angle, and then the apex where the legs
separate. So here fOf *npT is the farthest point of the north
from whence the northern mountain chain stretches fork-like
into the land ; and "rt3"'n3T is the inmost part of the pit into
which it slopes with its two walls, and from which it gapes or
widens. All the foolhardy purposes of the Chaldean are em-
braced ultimately in JIyJ^ TO^K, just as the Assyrians (which,
however, is not yet established by the inscriptions) according
to Ktesias, and the Persians according to the Persae of
Aeschylus, called their king God, and the Sassanidae actually
call themselves bag &EOC on coins and inscriptions, nofntt
is Hithpael=nBnnN, with the usual assimilation of the pre-
formative n. With ^N, in ver. 14, a contrast is drawn
between the pride of the Chaldean flying to the far lofty
mountain range towards the north, and to the heavens above,
and his inflicted punishment dragging him deep down to
the pit ^K, originally affirmative and then restrictive (ns
n is originally restrictive and then affirmative), passes here
to an adversative meaning, as in Ps. xlix. 1 6 and Job xiii. 1 5
(a transition which |3K shows still more frequently) : never-
theless thou wilt be hurled down ; nothing but that will
occur, and not what thou proposest. This prophetic Tiin is
not appropriate either in the mouth of the inhabitants of
Hades or in the mouth of the Mashal-singer. The address
of Israel has here imperceptibly passed into the words of the
]>rophet, who has before him, but still in the future, what the
Mashal sings of as already past.
The subject is also carried on in the tone of prophecy.
Vers. 16, 17: "Those who ue thee look tlumghtfully, hole
meditatively at thee : ' Is this the man who set the earth
quaking, kingdoms shaJdng? He who made the world a
wilderness, and threw down its cities, and did not let away
his captives to their home f ' " The scene is no longer in
Hades (Knobel, Umbreit). Those who thus speak have the
Chaldean before them, not as a weary shade, but as an unburied
corpse that has passed into corruption, "''f"? means the
' See Friedr. Dclitzsch, Paradiet, p. 118. Alfred Jeremias, BabyL
auyruche Vorttellungen vom Lden nack dem Tcdc, p. 59 sqq.
Digitized by
Google
312 IBAIAH.
thoughtful fixing of one's attention upon something. As 73n
is feminine, the suffixes in yer. 17 refer, according to a eon-
stmctio ad sensum, to the oUovfiiiif] as transformed into ^^*ip.
nriB, to open, namely, lock and fetters, here joined with
nn^a, is equivalent to releasing and letting away (syn.
'7^?', Jer. 1. 33). Among the captives the Jewish exiles are
particularly referred to ; and it was their release that had
never entered the mind of the king of Babylon.
The prophet, into whose own words the words of the
spectators have passed, then tells of the state in which tlie
tyrant now lies, a state which calls forth such earnest reflec-
tions. Vers. 18, 19 : " All the kings over nations, all of them
are laid away in honour, every one in his house ; bttt thou art
cast away far from thy sepulchre like a shoot hurled forth,
clothed over with slain ones, those thrust throtiyh by the sword,
those that go down to stones of the pit — like a carcase trodden
under foot," Every other king lies after his death in*33, in
the confines of his residence, but the Chaldean ' lies far from
the hereditary vault which seemed destined for him. The V?
in ^1^^ means away therefrom, as in Zeph. iii. 18 ; cf.
Prov. XX. 3 ; Num. xv. 24. He lies there like a aj'n? "<». i.e.
like a side shoot cut o£f from the tree and thrown away with
disgust, because ngly, useless, and only prejudicial to the
development of the tree ; 3Pn?, pregnant : cum aJxminatione
abjectus. The Targnm takes nv3 figuratively, and translates
"vao errs as a buried abortion (Job iii. 16). The scene which
here rises before the mind of the prophet is the field of
battle. In order to clear it, a hole has been made, and
stones are thrown upon it without the trouble being taken
of shovelling it up pl3"'53K); but the king of Babylon
remains lying like a branch which, when a tree is pruned,
is let lie aside unheeded, and is trodden into the mire.
The following B'ap is also a participle ; he comes to lie in a
common grave deep below other bodies gathered from the
battle-field. There he lies then like a carcase O^B), trodden
down and deserving nothing better than to be trodden down
(D3TO, part. Hophal from W3, concukare). He is not buried
with other kings and like other kings. Yer. 20 : " Thou art
not united with them in burial, for thou hast ruined thy land,
murdered thy people ; seed of evil-doers is not named for ever."
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEH XIV. 21-23. 313
With them, ie. the on) ^J?o of ver. 18a. He does not come
to lie where kings are entombed with royal honours, not in
" his grave," ver. 19a, the royal place of burial Vengeance
is thus taken because he has tyrannically spoiled and
exhausted his country, and because he has made his people
the mechanical instrument of his lust of conquest, and sacri-
ficed them. And it is not merely with himself that all is
over for ever ; it is also so with his dynasty. The prophet,
the messenger of the punitive righteousness, and the mouth
of the omnipotence which shapes history, commands it
Ver. 21:" Prepare for hit sons a slatighter-house because of
the iniquity of their fathers. They shall not rise up and con-
quer lands, and fiU the face of the world with cities." The
exhortation is addressed to the Medes, if the prophet is to be
considered as having particular persons in his mind. After
they stormed Babylon by night, the new Babylonian kingdom
and royal house of Nabopolassar disappeared from history ;
the last shoot of the royal house of Nabopolassar was slain
when a child by conspirators ; and the second Nebuchad-
nezzar " deceived the people by declaring : I am Nabuku-
dracara the son of Nabunita " — as Darius says in the great
inscription of Behistan. ^3 (poetical for 7K, like ^3 in
xiv. 6, for t6) is the expression of a negative wish (as
IB is of a negative intention). A Babylonian kingdom shall
never arise again. Hitzig (Psalms, ii. 89) corrects 0^^ into
D^y, '• heaps of ruins," which is approved by Cheyne, who
renders it " heaps ; " Ewald makes it orfriV (tyrants) ; Meier,
O^S, which is made to mean conflicts ; and Maurer, like Knobel
(in editions 2, 3, whereas in ed. 1 he preferred to read D'jn),
gives on^, which is to be taken, not in the sense of cities, but of
enemies (see on Fs. cxxxix. 20). Nothing of all this, however,
is necessary. Nimrod built cities in order to strengthen his
monarchy. The king of Assyria built cities for the Medes in
order to keep them better in check. It is this building of cities
as a means of subserving tyrannical government that is meant.
Thus far the prophet speaks as from God. The prophecy
concludes with a word of God Himself given forth through
the prophet Vers. 22, 23 : " And I will arise against them,
saith Jehovah of hosts, and root out in Babel name, and remnant,
and gprout, and shoot, saith Jehovah. And I make it the
Digitized by
Google
314 ISAIAH.
j)osses8ion of hedgehogs and ioater-mardus, and sweep it avmy
with tlie besom of destruction, saith Jehovah of hosts." itlt?** or
and *1331 r? are two alliterating proverbial pairs of words in
the alliterative style, and they express the whole without
exception. Jehovah rises against the descendants of the king
of Babylon, and entirely exterminates Babylon root and
branch. The destructive powers, which Babylon hitherto
could control by artificial protection, are let loose. The
Euphrates, now undyked, lays the territory of Babylon under
water. Hedgehogs then take the place of men, and morasses
the place of palaces. BJK, ^\ {Ias^\), means here stagnating
marshy waters, see chap. ix. 13. *ib? appears indeed in chap,
xxxiv. 11 and Zeph. ii 14 associated with birds, but it
signifies in all the Semitic dialects the hedgehog (LXX. ipunov
Surre KaToixeiv ij(lvox;^), which can roll itself together (>J C|p,
(_ii, eomprehendere, eomprimere), and which, although it can
neither fly nor climb very well, being a plantigrade, yet it can
easily get on the capital of an overturned pillar (see Zeph.
iL 14). The concluding threat makes a tabula rasa of
Babylon. From the Pilpel nbkd (or, according to Kimchi,
Michlol, 150a b, Nt?st3, according to which the codices and
old editions read n'riKOKDi), MQKDD means something with
which one drives forth or sweeps away — a besom (a word
which was preserved in the popular speech of Palestine,
according to Rosh ha-shanah 26b). Jehovah treats Babylon
as sweepings (D'?, Babylonio-Assyrian titu), and sweeps it
away, ''Pf ? (a substantively used infinitive absolute) serving
him as besom.
There now follows a short passage about Assyria, which
apparently stands unconnected here. Vers. 24-27: "Sworn
has Jehovah of hosts, saying. Surely as I have thought, so shall U
be ; and as I have resolved, it takes place : to break Assur to
pieces in my land, and upon my mountains I vnll tread him
down : then departs from, them his yoke, and his burden will
depart from their neck. This is the purpose which is purposed
concerning the whole earth ; and this the hand which is stretched
out over all the nations. For Jehovah of hosts has resolved, and
who could bring to naught ? And His hand that is stretched
out, wJio can turn it back i" It is a quite different judicial
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XIV. 28. 316
catastrophe that is presented here from that \i'hich is pro-
phesied in chaps. xiiL 2-xiv. 3. The world-power which it
falls upon is likewise also called, not " Babel " or " Kasdim,"
but " Assur," which cannot be taken as a name of Babylon
(Abravanel, Lowth, and others). Babylon falls by the Medes.
Assyria, on the other hand, perishes in the mountain land of
Jeliovah, which it seeks to subdue ; so it was fulfilled. Only
when this had taken place did a time come for a prophecy
against Babylon, the heiress of the broken Assyrian empire.
The two prophecies against Babylon and Assyria therefore
form, as they here stand, a hysteron-proteron. The thought
which occasioned this conjunction of them, and which it is
intended to set forth, is expressed by Jeremiah thus : " Behold,
I punish the king of Babel and his land as I have punished
the king of Assur " (Jer. 1. 17, 18). The one event is the
precursor and guarantee of the other. This prophecy against
Assyria is, as it were, the pedestal upon which the ^33 Kfens is
placed. For this it was doubly appropriate, on account of its
epilogical tone from ver. 26 onwards.
The Obacle concerning Phoistia, Chap. XIV. 28-32.
The punishments enumerated in 2 Chron. xxviii. 5-21 as
falling upon king Ahaz, also included the one represented
here of the Philistines invading the low country (fij'Bf) and
the south land (3JJ), taking several cities, of which the chro-
nicler mentions six by name, and settling therein. This
aggressive rising of the Philistines against the government of
Judah was probably a consequence of the oppression of Judah
by Syria and Ephraim, or of its continued weakness from its
sufferings in the Syro-Ephraimitish war. However it be, the
fact suffices of itself to enable us to understand the following
minatory prophecy.
This prophecy belongs to those wliich are dated. Ver. 28 :
" In the death - year of king Ahaz, the following oracle went
forth." The death - year of Ahaz is (as in chap, vi 1) the
year in which the death of Ahaz occurred. The Philistines,
without being again humiliated, were still holding possession,
a fact which was shameful to Judah. But this year was
also a turning-point. For Hezekiah, the successor of Ahaz,
Digitized by
Google
316 ISAIAH.
uot only wrested from them the conquered cities, bnt also
smote them completely within their own territory (2 Kings
xviiL 8).
It was therefore a very decisive year in which Isaiah began
thus to prophesy. Ver. 29^: ".Rejoice not so eomjdetely,
Philistia, that the staff which smote thee is broken to pieces : for
out of the serpent's root goes forth a basilisk, and its fruit is a
flying, dragon." Tlie death -year of Ahaz was exactly the
death-year of Tiglatb-pileser (726 B.C.), or it was dose to it.
Hence Earth, with Noldeke assenting, understands by the
broken staff the castigating rod of Tiglath-pileser ; whereas
Bredenkamp, on the other hand, takes it to refer to Sbal-
manassar. On that view, the basilisk and the flying dragon
would have to be understood to be kings of Assyria, as Cheyne
and Driver take them to be. Philistia had really to suffer
from Sargon and Sennacherib, according to the evidence of
the inscriptions. But the supei-scription of the prophecy
does not run (ncsuoi>B') noN^ban i?on mo rueo, but nio tovz
tnet l^a Shall we then hold it to be an erroneous marginal
addendum written by some one or other (as Cheyne and
G. A. Smith* hold), and thus support one hypothesis by
another hypothesis ? No. The point at issue stands in the
same position as that in chap. zv. 9. What Philistia suffered
through Sargon and Sennacherib stands only in a preparatory
relation to the lasting subjection under Judah which the
prophet hopes for. ^30 036', teipio feriens te (not ferientis te,
which is less suitable), is the Davidic sceptre which held the
Philistines in subjection under David and Solomon, and in
later times since Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 6). This sceptre is
broken to pieces ; for the Davidic kingdom is broken by the
Syro-Ephraimitish war, and it has not yet recovered itself,
and it has fallen to pieces in so far as it had extended its
power over the neighbouring peoples. It is about this that
Philistia is wholly filled with joy ; but this joy is at an end
now. The power from which Philistia had withdrawn itself
was a common serpent, ^n, which, besides, is now cut to pieces,
or has died down to the root. But out of this root, i.e. out
of the house of David, which had been reduced to the lowli-
In the first volume of his work, 7%e Book of Isaiah (London, Hodder
and Stonghton, 1888), which has just reached me (Jan. 1889).
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTKE XIV. 80. 817
ness of its origiual stem, there grows forth JBV (see chap.
xi. 8), a basilisk regulrts (Jerome and other old translators) ;
and this, which is already dangerous and deadly in itself, will
when matured bring as fruit a winged dragon — a benst of the
popular mythology, although Herodotus (ii. 75) speaks of
winged serpents in Egypt and Arabia. The basilisk is Heze-
kiah, and the flying dragon is the Messiah (such is the
explanation of the Targum) ; or what is the same thing, the
former is the Davidic kingdom of the immediate future, and
the latter the Davidic kingdom of the ultimate future. The
figure may appear inappropriate, because the serpent is a
symbol of evil ; but it is not a symbol merely of creaturely
evil, but also of the divine curse ; the curse, however, is the
energy of penal justice, and as the executor of this justice as
a judgment of God on Philistia, the Davidic king is here
called a serpent in a climax rising through three stages.
Perhaps the choice of the figure was suggested by Gen.
xlix. 17 ; for the saying concerning Dan was fulfilled in
Samson the Danite, the sworn enemy of the Philistines.
The coming Davidic king is for Israel peace, but death for
Philistia. Ver. 30 : " And the poorest of the poor will feed,
and needy ones lie down in peace ; and I kill thy root by hunger,
and thy remainder he lays low." Drfi *nta3 is an intensified
form of 0''jn «]3, the latter meaning those who belong to the
race of the poor, the former (cf. Job xviiL 1 3, mors dirissima)
those who occupy the first rank in this race ; it is a designa-
tion for Israel as deeply, very deeply reduced and at present
threatened on all sides, but as afterwards enjoying his country
in quiet and peace (Zepb. iiL 12, 13). In this sense ^Jni is
used absolutely, and the conjecture of Lowth, *^te|, or of
Koppe and Hupfeld, '^33, is not required. Israel again comes
up, but Philistia goes down to its root and remainder, and even
this falls on the one hand under the penal infliction of God
(famine), and on the other hand under the punishment in-
flicted by the house of David. For the change of persons in
305 is not a synallage ; JVjl has for its subject the basilisk, the
father of the flying dragon, and not the hunger (as Nagelsbach
holds) ; for the hunger is only one of the means of punish-
ment which take efiect upon Philistia.
The Massa consists of two strophes. The first threatens
Digitized by
Google
318 iSAun.
judgment from Judah, and the second, beginning here,
threatens judgment from Assyria. Ver. 31: "Howl, gate!
Cry, city ! Thou art getting to vult away, Phiiistia, entirely ;
for from the north comes smoke, and there is no isolated one
among its lands." "^^ elsewhere is always masculine, but
liere (of. Song of SoL viL 6) it is used in the feminine as a
local name. The world-renowned strong gates of the Philis-
tine cities (especially of Ashdod and Gaza), and the cities
themselves, shall lift up a cry of woe (cf. Lam. iL 18 if
the text there is uncorrupted), and Phiiistia, which was
hitherto all joy, must wholly perish in the fire of anguish
(chap. xiii. 7); JtoJ is the inf. abs. Niphal (cf. lis. 13;
Konig, Lehrgeb. p. 473) with subject following, as in Ezek.
i. 14 with it preceding. It falls into the state of complete
dissolution, for from the north there comes a singeing and
burning fire which already announces itself from afar by the
smoke ; it is an all-devastating army out of whose bands
(i^D, after the form ^^'^, is the mass assembled at the I?'©,
i.e. the deterniiDed place, Josh. viiL 14 ; 1 Sam. xx. 35, for a
determinate object) no one separates himself from weariness
or self-will (cf. chap. v. 27); and therefore it is an army
without a gap, animated by one striving, namely, the desire
of conquest. And this it cannot possibly have only with a
view to the Philistine strip of coast, the conquest of which is
rather merely a means for securing possession of the countries
on the right and left The question then rises, what will
happen to the land of Judah from the fire which is rolling
along from the north ? For the fact that the prophet of
Judah threatens Phiiistia with that fire, presupposes that
Judah is not also consumed by this fire.
It is this which is expressed in ver. 32: "And what
answer do tlie messengers of the peoples bring ? — That Jehovah
has founded Zion, and that the afflicted of His people are
hidden tliercin." The *iJ"'3??po are the ambassadors of the
several ueighbouruig nations who were sent to Jerusalem
after the Assyrian army was destroyed before Jerusalem, to
ascertain for themselves how it had fared with that city.
The question may be explained : And what answer is given
('"•.Jif. with the most general subject) to the messengers of the
nations ? or, and what do they proceed to say, i.e. what
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XV., xn. 319
information do Uie messengei'S of the nations bring (singular
of the predicate with the plural of the subject, as in chap.
XXX. 20 ; Ezek. xiv. 1 ; Esth. ix. 23, and elsewhere) ? but
however it is explained, there is always a certain hardness in
the expression. The answer, however, is to this effect : Zion,
protected by its God, has remained unshaken ; and the people
of this God, the poor and despised community of Jehovah
(cf. Zech. xi. 7), exists and knows that it is concealed in Zion.
The prophecy is enigmatical and oracular. Prophecy speaks
to the other peoples otherwise than to Israel To the former
its language is dictatorially brief, self-consciously elevated,
loftily poetical, and peculiarly coloured, according to the
special character of the people to which the oracle refers.
The following prophecy against Moab makes it clear to us
that in the view of the prophet the judgment which Assyria
executes on Fhilistia prepares for the subjugation of Philistia
again under the sceptre of David. By the wreck of the
imperial power of Assyria at Jerusalem, the house of David
again recovers its old supremacy round about. And so it
actually happened. But the fulfilment was not lasting and
not exhaustive. Jeremiah therefore (Jer. xlvil) takes up
the prophecy of his predecessor anew in the time of the
Chaldean judgment of the nations. But he only takes up its
second strophe; the Messianic element of the first is con- ,
tinned by Zechariah (Zech. ix.).
The Oracle concerning Moab, Chaps. XV., XVI.
Looked at in its relation to the neighbouring peoples, the
kingdom of Israel began victoriously and gloriously. Saul
made them richly compensate for their previous offences
against Israel (1 Sam. xiv. 47), and the Moabites among them.
David subdued the Moabites completely (2 Sam. viii. 2).
After the division of the kingdom, the northern kingdom
entered into possession of Moab. The Moabites delivered
tribute of their flocks to Samaria. But when Ahab died,
Mesha, the king of Moab, withdrew from this obligation to
pay tribute (2 Kings I 1, iii. 4 sqq.). Tlie memorial stone
found among the rubbish on the field of Dibon is dedicated to
tlie commemoration of his struggles for the independence of
Digitized by
Google
320 ISAIAH.
Moab. It has an inscription of thirty - four lines in the
language and character of the ancient Hebrew, and it contains
at least seven of the Moabite names of places which appear
in tliis Kira.' Ahaziah of Israel did nothing to subdue
Mesha again. In the meantime the Moabites, allied with
other nations, made an attack upon Judah also; but the
allies destroyed each other; and Jehoshaphat celebrated in
the valley of Beracha the victory which he gained without a
battle, aud which is sung in several Psalms. When Jehoram
of Israel proceeded to siibdue Moab again, Jehoshaphat made
common cause with him. The Moabites were defeated, but
the fortress, the Moabitish Kir, which lay on a lofty and
steep chalk cliff, remained unsubdued. The interminable
struggles with the Syrians rendered it impossible for the
northern kingdom further to retain Moab, or generally the
country east of the Jordan. In the time of Jehu the
country east of the Jordan in all its breadth and length, as
far down as the Arnon, was taken possession of by the
Syrians (2 Kings x. 32, 33). The peoples that were now
no longer subject to the kingdom of Israel rose again,
oppressed the Israelitish population, and revenged on the
weakened kingdom the loss of their independence. Jeroboam
II., as Jonah the prophet had prophesied (2 Kings xiv. 23),
was the first to re-conquer the territory of Israel from near
Hamath to the Dead Sea. That he also again subdued
Moab is indeed not expressly said, but as Moabitish bands
in the time of his predecessor Joash disturbed even the
country on this side the Jordan (2 Kings xiii 20), it may
be supposed that he also sought to keep Moab within bound&
If the Moabites had then, as was very probable, extended
their territory beyond the Amon to the north, war with
Moab would have been absolutely inevitable. Further, in
the time of Jeroboam II. on the one hand, and of Uzziah-
Jotham on the other, we read nothing of risings of the
Moabites ; and statements like those in 1 Chron. v. 1 7 and
2 Chron. xxvi. 10 show that they kept themselves quiet.
But the appeal to Assyria by Ahaz conjured up again the
' The Moabite stone has been reproduced with the most painstaking
exactness, and translated in the best possible manner, in Smend-Socin's
Die Inichrift det KSnig$ Mem von Moab, Heft i. 1888.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE XV, 1. 321
hostility of Moab and of the neighbouring peoples, Tiglath-
pileser repeated in 754 B.C. what had been done by the
Syrians ; he took possession of the northern part of the
country on this side the Jordan, and almost the whole of it
on the other side, and depopulated it The Moabites thereby
found room for settling themselves again in their primeval
dwelling-places to the north of the Aruoa This is how
circumstances apparently stood at the time when Isaiah
prophesied.' The misfortune comes from the north, and
therefore strikes chiefly and primarily the region that lay
to the north of the Amon, which appears to be in the posses-
sion of the Moabites after having been previously peopled by
the tribes of Reuben and Gad (1 Chron. v. 26).
There is no prophecy in the Book of Isaiah in which the
heart of the prophet is so painfully moved by what his
spirit beholds and his month must prophesy. All that he
prophesies ia felt as deeply by him as if he belonged to
the poor people whose messenger of misfortune he is com-
pelled to be. He begins at once with a feeling of dismay.
Ver. 1 : " Oracle concerning Moab : for in a night is 'Ar-Modb
devastated, destroyed ; for in a night is Kir-Modb devastated,
destroyed." The '3 is both times expressive of a reason.
The prophet justifies the superscription of his prophecy by
the horrible vision which it is given him to see, transporting
us at once into the heart of it as in chap. xvii. 1, xxiii. 1.
3KiD -^^ (in which i? is Moabitish for TP in Num. xxil 36 ;
cf. Jer. xlix. 3, where, instead of iP which is expected, *9 is
written) is the name of the capital of Moab, lying in the
river valley of the Amon (Deut. ii. 36 ; Josh. xiii. 9, 16).
It is Grecised into ^ApeovoXi^, city of 'Aprji = BnD3 from
Bpa = 6*33, in the present day a large field of ruins with a
village of the name of Eabba. 3W0 T? (in wliich l*i? is
Moabitish for n^?), the same as fcnn n»p in chap. xvL 11,
Jer. xlviii. 31, 36, is the chief fortress of Moab, situated to
the south-east of Ar, now called Kerek, still a city with a
fortress on rocks, which is visible in clear weather with a
telescope from Jerusalem, and which forms so completely one
mass with the rock that Ibrahim Pasha in the year 1834
> See Wolf Wilh. Graf Baudissin, « Zur Erklarung des B. Jesaia Kap.
15 11. 16," in Stutlien u. Kritiken, 1888, 509-521.
VOL. L X
Digitized by
Google
323 isAun.
was compelled to give up his intention of demolishing it
This identity of Kir with Kerek (Targum asrtD"! tfarva) is
indubitable, whereas the identity of 'Ar with £abba has
been disputed by Dietrich (in Merx* Archiv, L 320 sqq.X
For (1) the Old Testament and its versions do not mention
any Moabitish Babba ; it is Eusebius who first mentions it ;
and it appears in consequence of the destruction of 'Ar by
the etirthquake, mentioned by Jerome in commenting on this
passage, to have become the capital of the country, and to
have obtained the name ' ApeoiroXK along with that of
Babbath Moab ; (2) At lay on the Amon boundary, whereas
the ruins of Rabba are 6^ hours' walk to the south of the
Arnon, and do not lie on the northern boundary of Moab, but in
its midst The statement in Num. xxi. 15 makes it probable
that Ar lay near the confluence of the Legum and Mugvb,
perhaps (at least the fortification that lay " on the heights of
the Amon," as mentioned in Num. xxi. 28) on the ruined
site jjfiLeJl »\ (mother of lead), to the south-east of the con-
fluence on the eastern mountain wall of the Amon as it here
winds southwards. The two names of the cities are used as
masculine, like pfcisT in chap. xviL 1 and -fs in chap. xxiiL 1,
though it cannot be said here, as in Micah v. 1, that the city
stands for the inhabitants. In a night it is all over with the
two pillars of the might of Moab. J'ba might be taken as
subordinating to itself what follows ; in which case "^v would
not be an infinitive (Baudissin), since such an inf. constr.
Pual (except in Ps. cxxxiL 1) is without authority, but it
would be 3 pret : " in the night when," — but where would
the apodosis begin ? Not with npi? (Ewald), for "^^ and
TXpTi almost coincide in meaning (cf. Jer. xlviL 4, 5) ; nor
with fyf (Hitzig), for the solemn anadiplosis is not favourable
to the dependence of the two clauses on ^p3. We therefore
take i**? absolutely, as in chap. xxL 1 1, and the arrangement
of the words is like that in Hos. x. 15 (Olsh. § 1426). In
the space of a night, and therefore most suddenly (chap.
xviL 14), Moab is lost As if fixed to the terrible spectacle,
the prophet says twice over what is sufiiciently said once
(cf. on the asyndeton, chap, xxxiii. 9 ; and on the anadiplosis,
ver. 8, chap. viiL 9, xxL 11, xviL 12, 13). His firat feeling
is that of horror.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XV. 8-4. 823
But as horror, when it begins to reflect, is dissolved in tears,
the thunder-daps in ver. 1 are now followed by universal
weeping and lamenting. Vers. 2-4 : " They gti up to the templi
house, and Dvbon unto the heights to weep; upon Nebo and
upon Medeba, Moah vxiils; on all heads baldness, every beard
mutikUed-. On Moab's markets they gird on sackcloth ; on the
country's roofs and in its streets everything vxiils, meltmg down
into weeping. Heshbon cries and Male, to Jahas they hear
their howling, — wherefore even Moab's armed men break out in
lam,entations ; his soul quakes in him." Seeking for help 0?i?>
ad fl^um), the people (the subject to ^y^) ascend the moun-
tain with the temple of Kemosh, the central sanctuary of
the country. This temple is called n;3n, not (which is unex-
ampled) some particular Moabite place, such as Beth Dibla-
thayim in Jer. xlviii 22 (as Knobel and Baudissin suppose),
but rather the Beth-Bamoth mentioned in the inscription.
Sibon, which lies, like all the places named in vers. 2-4,
above the Amon (Wadi Mugib), is now a heap of ruins
situated a short hour's walk to the north of the middle Arnou
in the magnificent plain of el-Kurah. It had heights for
worship in the neighbourhood (cf. Josh. xiii. 1 7 ; Num. xxii.
41), and is therefore turned towards them. The style of
ver. 2a is similar to that in chap. xliiL 146. Moab laments
on Ncbd and MideM. tt;'. (for which W^iT. stands in chap. Hi. 5),
with a double preformative, is used intentionally for W'. (cf.
similar forms in Job xxiv. 21 and Fs. cxxxviil 6 ; Ges. § 70s).
bv is to be taken in a local sense, for Nebo was undoubtedly
a place on a height of the mountain of that name, south-east
from Heshbon (the ruined site of Nabo, Nabau, of the Onom.,
now Ui) ; and Medeba (in StepL Byz., according to Uranios,
TroXt9 T&v Nafiaraltiv, now a mined site with the same
name) lay on a round hill about two hoars to the south-east
of Heshbon. According to Jerome, there was an image of
Kemosh in Nebo ; and among the ruins of Medeba, Seetzen
recognised the foundation walls of a peculiar temple. There
now follows the description of the expressions of pain. We
read here VB'Kh with reference to what has become the stand-
ing collective phrase B^"i>2 (Amos viil 10 and frequently
elsewhere), instead of the otherwise usual VB*jn. Instead of
njmi, abscissae, Jeremiah, in chap, xlviii. 8 7, has nyii, decurtatae;
Digitized by
Google
324 ISATAH.
and the reading attested by the Masora on the passage is riinra.
Everything (n^ written as in chap. xvL 7, whereas we have
\?s in chap. iz. 8, 16) runs down in weeping; elsewhere it is
said of the eyes that they run down (Ti|) in tears, waters,
water-brooks, but here it is said still more boldly of the whole
man that he flows down to the ground, running, as it were,
into a stream of tears, ffeshbon and EldU are still visible in
their ruins, situated on hills only half an hour's walk apart,
and are known by the name of EuiAdn and el-Al (JU!1).
Both places lay on heights commanding a wide view. There
the cry of woe produced an echo that could be heard far
and wide, even to JaTiaa (JaJita), the city where the king of
Heshbon made a stand against Israel in the time of Moses
(Deut. ii. 32). The general mourning is so great that even
the equipped men of Moab (I^^, expeditus, ready for striking,
frequently used in the account of the seizure of the land east
of the Jordan, Num. xxxii. 21, etc. ; Deut iii. 18), i.«. war-
riors (Jer. xlviiL 41), seized by the pain of despair, cried out
(the same element in the figure as in chap, xxxiii. 7) ; W^,
thereat, that is to say, on account of this universal lamentation.
The lamentation is therefore a universal one without exception,
and ^z^3 applies to Moab as a whole peopla The soul of
Moab quakes in all the members of the national body; n{rv
(forming a play of sound with Vf^ from jnj = c jj, to quake,
to waver, to flutter, from which comes ny*n'^ a fluttering tent
curtain, and e|^, reeds waving back and forward (see
Fleischer in Levy's Neu Hebr. WB. il 446 sq.). Nagelsbach
and others erroneously take jnj as a secondary verb to Jljn,
imperf. jn', to be pained, 'h, as in Ps. cxx. 6, cxxiii. 4, is an
ethical dative throwing the action or the pathos inwards (as
\h}j elsewhere). In this pain quivering through Moab the
heart of the prophet shares ; for, as Bashi observes, the pro-
phets of Israel are distinguished from heathen prophets like
Balaam in this, that the calamity which they announce to the
Gentile peoples goes to their own hearts (compare chap. xxi. 34
with chap, xxil 4).
The difficult words in which the prophet expresses this his
sympathy in ver. 5a we translate thus : " My Jieart towards
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEK XT. 5. 325
Moah it cries out, its fugitives even to Zo'ar, the three-year-old
heifer." The p in ^^^Of, both here and in chap. xvL 11, as in
chap. xiv. 8, 9, means turned to Moab. 3t(lD, which was
masculine in ver. 4, is feminine here. From this it may be
inferred that ipi~ip nnna is an expression concerning Moab
as a land. Now, wherever D'n*ia elsewhere occurs, it means
the " bolts," according to which Jerome translates vectea ejus
risque ad Segor ; but everywhere else we read only of the bolts
or bars of a city, as in Lam. ii. 9 and Jet. IL 30 ; cf. Jonah
IL 7. Hence I now prefer to follow the prevailing interpre-
tation, according to which Zoar is named as the south point
as far as which rolls the stream of the fugitives flying froni
the enemy pressing on from the north. Zoar lay (as the
Excursus on Zoar by Wetzstein in the 4th ed. of my Comm.
on Genesis shows) south-east from the Dead Sea in 'Odr
es-Sdfia ; the Safia is a wall of sandstone almost smooth, and
about 1000 feet high, which is formed by the Moabite moun-
tain range dipping down there perpendicularly to the 'O&r.
njB"^ ni>jiy is tiien to be the name of a place by Graf (on
Jer. xlviiL 34), Dietrich in Merz' Arehiv, L 342-346, and
others, and signifying " Eglath the third." But (1) in favour
of an appellative meaning is the fact that it stands in
Jer. xlviiL 34 in like manner aawSira^, after Hbronayim ;
(2) here, in that case, what would be expected is TC^^^ (n'B'*i>^);
(3) there are indeed found names of places like LjUil^^juoS »\,
" Urn Kuseir the second," but a place with the surname of
" the third " has not yet been shown to occur. We therefore
hold by the view that n>^^ rhiV is in apposition either to
"^1^ or to 3tt{o. In any case it is a distinguishing designation :
a head of cattle of three years old, or literaUy, in its third
year (cf. 057?? i" C^en. xv. 9), i.e. a three-year-old beast
(Ges. § 112, Eem. 1), which is still in full fresh strength, and
not yet used up by prolonged bearing of the yoke. The refer-
ence of the term to the Moabitish people (LXX. Targum,
Jer. Luther) is supported by reference to Jer. xlvi 20, where
Egypt in the same sense is called «"<JB"nD', ^^ ; and Babylon
is similarly designated in Jer. L 11; cf. Hos. iv. 16, z. 11.
But the reference to Zoar is more in accordance with the
immediate suggestion of the syntax and the accentuation ;
Digitized by
Google
326 iSAtxn.
and it is supported by Jet. xlviiL 34, where, along with Zoar,
Horonayini receives this surname. So then : Zoar the beau-
tiful, strong, and hitherto unsubdued city, is now the goal of
a wild flight before the enemy tliat is coming from the north.
A blow so terrible as this has never struck Moab before.
In brief co-ordinated clauses the prophet brings before as
the several scenes of mourning and desolation. Vers. 5h, 6 :
" For the mountain slope of Luhith with vueping they aaeend ;
/or on the road to fforonayim they lift wp a cry of despair, for
the waters of Ifitnrim are deserts henceforth ; for toiihered is the
grass, the vegetation toaates away, gone is the green." The way
to Luchith (according to the Onom., lying between Ar-Moab
and Zoar, and therefore ip the centre of Moabitis proper) led
up a height^ and the road to Horonayim (according to Jer.
xlviii. 5) led down a declivity. Weeping, they run to the
mountain city to hide themselves there (la, as in Ps. xxiv. 3,
for which, in Jer. xlviii. 5, there is miswritten pa) ; raising a
hue and cry, they stand before Horonayim, which lay below,
and was more exposed to the enemy. ^piT (perhaps in order
to be more an echo of the sound) has arisen from v^^r^, like
33^9 from 3333, by a compensatory extension, just as '^3 from
"y^ by compensative duplication. The LXX. renders the
phrase well thus : Kpaxr/ifv mnirpin/toO i^ewayepovatv, a pecu-
liar expression which is foreign to us ; it indicates a strained
and always renewed outcry in view of a danger threatening
utter destruction 0W> ^ ^° chap. L 28, xxx 26), and its aim
is to procure relief and help. The description is now trans-
ferred from the extreme south to the farthest north of the
Moabite country, to as far as the Moabites had extended their
territory; for Nimrim, as in fact identical with Beth-Nimra
in Josh. xiiL 27 (Talmud, pD), and Peah iv. 5, iDl n^S), lay,
according to Wetzstein (Comm. on Genesis, pp. 572-574), three
and a half hours' walk to the east of Jordan, still within the
Persean range on the Wadi Soeb, and more particularly on the
south-east bank of the stream from whose abundance in water
it is called ano). The waters there have been choked up by
the enemy, and will now assuredly lie waste for ever (an
expression similar to that in chap. xvii. 2). The enemy have
been marching through the land, firing and burning, so that
all its vegetati(»i has in a manner disappeared. On these
Digitized by
Google
CUAPTKB XV. 7-9. '327
miniatnre-like short sentences, compare chap. xxiz. 20, xxxiii.
8, 9, xxxii. 10 ; and on ^JJ k>, it is not existing, or also it has
hecome nothing, k^ (like Assyrian id), see Ezek. zzL 32, 18 ;
Job tL 21 ; cf. Dan. iv. 32.
The Moabites then thns cross the border and flee to Idumea.
The prophet gives the reason for this by contianing to link on
farther statements with 'a. Vers. 7-9 : " There/ore what was
taved, what was gained, and their store, they carry it over the
wiUow-hrook. For the ery of woe has gone the round in the
territory of Mbab ; to Eglayim sounds Modl/s wailing, and to
Beer-Elim his wailing. For the waters of Dimon are full of
Hood; for I hang over Dimon new calamity, over the escaped
f(f Modb a lion, and over the remnant of the land!' n^n* is
the superfluity which goes beyond the immediate need, and
rn^ (literally a laying np, depositio) what is carefully stored ;
nb*^ (in the same sense as Gen. xiL 5) is, as the borrowed
passage in Jer. zlviii 36 shows, an attributive clause (although
the accentuation of our whole ver. 7 starts from another con-
ception ; see Bashi) : what one has made, acquired, or gained.
All these things they carry over D'?^ 5™, which does not
mean the desert brook (Hitzig, Maurer, Ewald, Knobel),
as the plural of n3n^, desert, is ni^n^ ; but it is either the
Arab-brook (LXX. Saadia), or the willow-brook, torreTis saiieum
(Vulg.). The last meaning is more suitable in itself; and
amoi^ the streams flowing to the south of the Amon from
the mountains of the Moabitish highlands to the Dead Sea
there is actually one which is called Wddi Safsdf, ie. willow-
brook (as also we have the ^^y, "willow"); it is the
northern arm of the Seil d-Kerek. This may be considered
to be what is meant here ; but Wetzstein, on the contraiy
(on Gmeais, pp^ 667, 568), identifies the Arab-stream better
with the Z«red (^3)= Wddi el-Ahsd (W. el-Basd), the
boundary river on the south, which separates Moab and
£dom, and which in its eastern course bore this name. On
emerging from the ravine of the high plateau, in the 'G&r — in
which the 3n^ (populus FuphrtUica, see on chap. xliv. 4),
which requires a very hot climate, is exclusively at home —
it there has got the name tynpn hra. Wading through this
Arab-stream, they carry their possessions across, hurrying to
the land of ESdom ; for their own land, in its whole extent,
Digitized by
Google
1 1
328 ISAIAH.
has fallen a prey to the enemy, and within it the cry of
lamentation goes from Eglaylm on the south-west of Ar, and
therefore not far from the south end of the Dead Sea (Ezek.
xlviL 10) as far as to (IV to be supplied) Beer-Elim (Num.
xxi. 16 — 18), in the north-east of the land towarcls the
wilderness, and therefore — if a diagonal is drawn through it
— from one end of the land to the other. Even the waters of
J)ibon (which here, in order to make it assonant with in, is
called l^D*^), by which may be understood, as Hendewerk does,
the Amon lying less than an hour's walk therefrom (just as
by ''^o 'D, in Judg. v. 19, is meant the Kishon), are full of
blood (0*1 ^K^) ; the enemy has therefore carried devastation
and death to the heart of the country. But what drives them
over the Arab-stream is not merely this ; it is as if they fore-
boded that what has hitherto happened is not yet the utmost
and last Jehovah suspends n'B* (as in Hos. vi. 11) over
Dibon, whose waters are already reddened with blood, niBDl],
a something more coming, i.e. a still further judgment in
punishment, namely, a lion. Moab's measure of misfortune is
not yet full. After the northern enemy a lion will come
upon those who have escaped by flight, and those who have
been spared at home (compare on the expression, chaps, x. 20,
xxxvii. 32). Beuss, who refers the prophecy to the second
subjection of the land east of the Jordan under Jeroboam II.,
finds it consequently " difficult to say what the prophet means
by the lion." This lion, however, is no other than the basilisk
in the prophecy against PhiUstia, only with the difference that
the basilisk is a definite Davidic king, whereas the lion is
Judah generally, which had, according to Gen. xlix. 9, the lion
I as its emblem.
Just because Judah, with its sovereignty, is this lion, the
summons now goes forth to the Moabites who fied to Edom,
and particularly, as it appears, as far as )>?D, ie. Fetra ( Wddi
JIMsd), near Mount Hor, in Arabia Petrea, so called from it ;
and tiiej are summoned to turn, seeking protection, to Jeru-
salem. Chap, xvi 1 : " Send a land - lord^s tribute of lambs
out of the cliffs desertwards to the mountain of the daughter of
Zion." This verse is like a long trumpet blast The prophecy
against Moab takes here the same turn as in chaps, xiv. 32,
xviil 7, xix. 16 sqq., xxiii 18. The judgment produces
Digitized by
Google
CHiLPrEB XTI. 2. 329
davish fear, whioh then becomes refined into loving attach-
ment Submission nnder the house of David is Moab's onlj
deliverance. This is what the prophet, weeping with those
who weep, calls out to them to their hiding-comer, where they
have concealed themselves in such long - breathed, hurried,
and urgent words. Usually by vbp is understood the Sdd of
£dom (see on l6p = Petra, Strabo, xvi 4. 21); a citadel,
^L<, was strll standing in the Middle Ages in the W. M&sd
of the Edomito mountains (i\j£i\ ; see Noldeke in DMZ. xxv.
259, 260, and compare Blau, JDMZ. xzvii 324). However,
Wetzstein (in the third German edition of this commentary,
p. 698) is right in saying that all the attempts to explain
how the Moabites come to be sending lambs out of the Fetra
of Edom are unsatisfactory, — the ^rkv^ necessarily being taken
as indicating voluntary obligation for the future, — and he
understands by )6o the ravines of the 1^ {Main) which
run into the Dead Sea, and especially that of the Amon, in
which (now called ^^1, the rock recess) extensive recesses are
formed by perpendicular walls, mostly several hundred fathoms
in height It is true that }ho does not mean ravine or cleft,
but rather, in distinction from *nx (mass of rock), the rock
as deft ; and there is reason for following Barth ^ in explaining
it, according to Jer. xlviii 28, as : from the rock (the rocky
region) where you have concealed yourselves. The tribute
of lambs due to the prince of the country is briefly called
jHK'^Vto t3 ; this tribute, which Mesha, the king of the pastoral
country which was so rich in flocks (Num. xxxii 4), formerly
sent to Samaria (2 Kings iiL 4), they ought now to send to Jeru-
salem, to the " mountain of the daughter of Zion " (as in chap.
X. 32, cf. chap, xviii 7), to which the way which passes through
the desert lying at the north end of the Dead Sea leads.
The counsel does not fail to make an impression; they
embrace it eagerly. Yer. 2: "And there, too, are found, like
hirds guttering abmU, a seared nest, the daitghters of Moab at
the fords of the Amon." a^to ni33 are like rnyp rta, e.g. in
Ps. xlviii. 1 2, the inhabitants of the cities and villages of the
land of Moab. They are, because fleeing from their country,
* BairUgt zur ErkUirung da Jetaia (188S), pp. SO-83.
Digitized by
Google
330 ISAIAH.
already themselves like wandering birds (Prov. xxviL 8) ; bnt
here, as >^>^ . . . f^>J) indicates, this comparison is used to
depict the condition into which the advice of the prophet
throws them. Both the figure (c£ chap. x. 14) and the
expression (cf. chap. xviL 2) are Isaianic. It is a state of
anxious and timid inesoluteness, resembling the fluttering to
and fro of birds that have been driven out of their nest, and
that wheel anxiously around without venturing to return to
the old dwelling-place. Thus do the daughters of Moab,
coming out of their distant and near hidhig - places, now
show themselves at the fords of the Amoa 1^"^ rrtnapo we
should take as in apposition to 3KlD nf]3 if miajna signified
coastlands (like ^3^ in chap. viL 20), and not invariably
fords; it is locative in meaning, and it is accentuated
accordingly.
There — away at the point where their land formeriy
reached before it passed into the possession of Israel, on its
utmost boundary, in the direction towards Judah, which was
seated above it — they show themselves ; and they take heart
and send suppliant petitions over to Zion. The description
is ideal. Vers. 3, 4a : " Bring counsel, give decision, make thy
ahadow like night in the midst of noon; conceal outcasts,
discover not wanderers ! Let my outcasts tarry in thee ! MoeA
— le a sfielter to it from, the devastator." In their perplexity,
supplicating Zion for counsel, and submitting the decision of
their fate to the men of Judah (so according to the Keri *),
they stand most fervently bespeaking Zion's shelter and
protection — they who were formerly the proud Moabites,
but are now completely humbled before Zion. Their anxiety
after the dire distress of war, which has hardly yet been com-
pletely realized, is so great, that in the sunshine of noon they
wish to be encompassed by Zion's protecting shadow as by
black night, in order that the enemy may not be able to see
them. To the anxious urgency of their supplicating request,
correspond the short propositions in which they are expressed
(c£ xxxiiL Sy. lyvB (of. n^pB, chap, xxviii. 7) is the decision
of a judge (^B), the figure of the shadow is the same as in
chap& XXX. 2, 3, xxxiL 2, and elsewhere ; T!^) is the same as
1 So Eimclii, Yen. 1521, and Codd : n^^ %\rv nsv ^K^SH.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XVL 4, 5. 331
in cLap. zxl 14 ; ^fPli, the same as in cbap. xi. 12 ; yvi is
the same aa in chap. zxxiL 2 and elsewhere; Tile* is the
same as in cbap. xxxiii. 1 ; ^w? ia the same as in chap. xxL
1 5, — it is all word for word Isaianic. It is not necessaiy in
ver. 4 to read W3 for a«<to »rrn3, and still less is ay a collec-
tive ending, as in chap. xx. 4. Nor does the expression :
" My ontcasts ... of Moab," belong to the tyntams m-ruda
(cf. chap, xril 6) ; rather is such a mode of expression here,
where the speaker is speaking of himself, utterly impossible.
We keep to the existing interpunction, according to which
*n^? (zdkeph) closes the first clause of ver. 4a, and 3K^d {tebir,
which subordinates itself to the following tipheha, and with
this to the athnaeh), not used as a vocative (Nagelsbach), but
as a nominative, opens a nominal clause, so that the pro-
position is translated as above : " Moab — be a shelter to it"
(without taking lo? = St).
Ilie question now arises, by what means has Zion come to
awaken such trustful respect and commanding reverence in
Moab 7 The answer to this is given in vers. 4&, 5 : " For the
extortioner has an end; desolation has disappeared; treaders
under foot are away from, the land. And a throne is estaUished
through grace ; and there sits thereon in truth in the tent of
David one who judges, and who is zealous for right, and who is
skiUed in righteoumess." The imperial power which pressed
out the marrow and blood (fo in the form of r2, a pressor,
like r? in Prov. xxz. 33, pressure), which devastated and
trod down everything (chap. xxix. 20, x. 6, xxxiiL 1 ; cf. 8),
is swept away from the land on this side of the Jordan, and
Jerusalem has not fallen under it, but has come forth more
glorious than ever out of her oppressions. The collective
subject is here preceded by ^, as in Ps. xi. 7, Piov. xxviiL 1,
cf. Job viii 19, where the plural of the predicate follows.
And the throne of the kingdom of Judah has not fallen, but
by divine grace is anew established (tS^n, as in Zech. v. 11) ;
there sits upon it no longer a king who disgraces it and en-
dangers his kingdom ; but the tent roof of the fallen, yet now
again erected, tabernacle of David (Amos ix. 11) is arched
over a king who makes truth the criterion of his action, while
realizing right and justice by his government "f^ designates
one who masters a thing externally and spiritually with ease.
Digitized by
Google
332 ISAUIL
It is therefore the Messianic time which has dawned (accord-
ing to which the Targum renders the passage ; and Cheyne,
Driver, and G. A. Smith agree with ns in thus explaining it,
while Baudissin histoiicizes it) ; for ipw npn and njjTTn oae^
are the divine-boman insignia of this time, and as it were
its kindred geniL And who could fail here to recall chap,
ix. 6 (cf. chap. xxxiiL 5, 6) ? If, bat only if, Moab sabmits
to the king on the re-established throne of David, will it
escape the judgment.
Bat if Moab does this, and if the law of the history of
larael, whidi is ^v^ "^f, is then in this way reflected in
Moab's history, ver. 6 cannot possibly be an answer going
from Zion to Moab (Beuss, Baadissin, and others) ; but the
prophecy begins here a new stage, starting from Moab's sin,
and always more elegiacally describing Moab's penal fote.
Ver. 6 : " We have heard of Moah'a pride, the exceedingly over-
toeening, his haughtinets, and hit pridt, and his indignation : the
untruth of his sayings." With the future self-humiliation of
Moab, which will be the fruit of its penal sufferings, is con-
trasted its previous self- exaltation, whose fruit these penal
sufferings will be. ^T^f, says the prophet^ including himself
along with his people (Cheyne). Boastful inflatedness was
hitherto the distinguishing characteristic of Moab in relation
to that people (see chap. xxv. 1 1). The accumulated words of
the same verbal stem (cf. chap, iil 1) are intended to express
how very haughty (M from "Kl, chap, ii 12, the nominal form
of the faults) their haughtiness, and how entirely possessed
Moab was by it Jeremiah in chap. xlviiL 29 retains this
paronomasia as strengthening the meaning and exhausting tihe
idea (cf. Prov. viii 13; Job xL 10; and above, on chap,
iil 1). Moab bragged, and was at the same time full of rage
against Israel, to which, so far as it remained conscious of the
truth of Jehovah, Moab's pratings Q*^^, from 1^3 = 103, to
think out something strange or new and to begin it ; cf.
mentirissnunte fingtre) must appear as }3~Ki, as not right,
and contrary to the relation of things. The adjective or
adverbial p-yb of 2 Kings vii. 9 stands here substantively,
like |3 in Prov. xL 19. Such expressions of sentiment have
been heard by God's people, and, as Jeremiah adds in chap.
xlviii. 29, 30, also by Israel's God.
Digitized by
Google
CDAPTBR XVI. 6-8. 833
Therefore is the delightful wine-land mournfully laid
waste. Vers. 6-8 : " Therefore will Moah wail for Moab,
everything will wail : for the grape-cakes of Kir Hareseth vrill
ye whine, utterly crushed. For the finiit -fields of MeMton
have faded away, the vine of Sebma — lords of peo]^ its nMe
grapes smote down, they reached unto Ja'xer, tunned through the
desert ; its branches spread themselves out wide, they crossed over
the sea." The ^ in 3K^op is the same as in chap. xv. 5, and
in the here following '5''5'K^. Kir-Hariseth (in ver. 1 1 and
in Jeremiah Kir-H6res; at 2 Kings iii. 25, where the vocali-
zation appears to be erroneous, is'^n or r^nn perhaps referring
to glazed tiles or stones dressed for joining) is the chief
fortress of Moab, which, according to chap. xv. 1, is destroyed,
and therefore ^?^ appears to signify foundations, i.e. ^j„^,
(jmL)^^ as laid bare or in ruins, like Tfc^ in Jer. L 16, and
kjb'k in Ezra iv. 12 and elsewhere (synonymous with nrto in
chap. Iviii. 12), with which Kimchi compares it. But the
word, wherever it elsewhere occurs, means a kind of cake ;
and seeing that the devastation of the vineyards of Moab is
what is further bewailed, it means here, as in Hos. iii. 1,
grape -cakes, which consisted of grapes pressed together
into the form of a cake (DMZ. iii 366). Such cakes may
have been a specially abundant article of the trade of Kir.
Jeremiah has altered ""^f^. into '?0K in chap. xlviiL 31. njn
is to be understood according to chap, xxxviii 14, lix. 11 (of
the cooing of the dove) ; ^tfs is to be taken according to Deut.
xvL 15. On the construction of the plural form Tivsv^, com-
pare Hab. iii l7. D*i?^, assuming that it is connected with
Vp, *^^ICP (chap. v. 2), means the beautiful red grapes of the
noble vine which is named from them; for it is a colour
word (Zech. I 8). The clause with 0^ 'hs^ has been trans-
lated by us with the same amphibole as it presents in the
Hebrew ; it may mean : lords of peoples or nations, domini
gentium, smote down its vine-shoots, namely, those of the
vine of fiD3|? (with gaya, in order that the two labials
1
' Tlic word in the Beduin is (_/mw, in diminutive ij^y^t Su^$, the
name of the well-known port, which designates it as having risen on the
foundations of old harbour structures {DMZ. xxii. 176).
Digitized by
Google
334 ISAIAH.
luay be separated), thn as in chap. xli. 7 ; or its vine-shoots
smote down, i.e. intoxicated, the lords of nations, — dominot
gentium ; chn being used as in the undisputed Isaianio pro-
phecy in chap, xxviii. 1. As the prophet launches out here
on the excellence of the wine of Moab, it is rather the latter
that is meant. The wiile of Sibma was so good that it came
to the table of monarch^ and so strong that it smote down
such drinkers as were accustomed to good kinds of wine, t.e.
it irresistibly intoxicated them. This Sibma wine, as the
prophet says, was cultivated far and wide in Moab : north-
wards unto Jazer (now a ruined site,^;ju>), between Samoth
=:Salt, and Heshbon,^ eastwards into the desert, and south-
wards over 0\, ie. (as in Ps. Ixviii. 23 and 2 Ghron. xx. 2) over
the Dead Sea, which, being hyperbolical, is equivalent to till
close to it Jeremiah determines Q^ more precisely in chap,
xlviil 32 as TJy! DJ, by which the hyperbole disappears. But
what sort of sea is the sea of Jazer ? Probably a celebrated
large pool like the pools of Heshbon, a pool in which the
water of the Wddi {Ndhr) Sir, which rose close by, was
gathered. Seetzen found some pools still existing there.
That w is also used of large artificial basins of water, is shown
by the D^ of Solomon's templa In the present day in Dam-
ascus the marble basins of flowing water iu the balls of the
houses are still called bahardt ; and in like manner the public
reservoirs in all the streets of the city, which are fed by
an ancient network of aqueducts from the Barada river, are
also thus designated.* The expression la'iD \yn is also a bold
one ; it probably points to the fact that there were trailing
vines which did not require staking, but crept on the ground,
and thus strayed into the desert, ie. which extended into the
pathless wilderness (U^, mild, to favour the consonance witli
WJ3, c£ the milel forms 'i*? in Ps. xxxviL 27 ; ''(?, Job xxiv. 1 ;
* The Targums render ntJT by yqo (laaoX *•«• Machaenis, which is
approved by Aug. Parent in his monograph, Madvuroui, Paris 1868 (the
fmit of a journey to the east of the Dead Sea) ; but this is an erroneous
view. The ancient Machaeros, but not likewise the primeval Ja'zer, lay
where Seetzen in Jan. 1807 found the ruined site j<f^t Makaur (in the
Attarus range of mountains on the south side of the Zerka-Matn).
* Wetzstein, "Der Markt in Damaskus," in DMZ. 1857, pp. 476, 477.
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTE£ XTI. ft 835
Wf v^V, Pb. cxxxviL 7 ; and the putting forward of the tone
for the same purpose in )i>B, chap, xxviii. 7).
The natural beauties and the fertility of the land which
has fallen to a people are gifts out of the riches of divine
goodness, remnants of the paradisiacal commencement of the
history of man and types of its paradisiacal end, and for this
reason they are not things without interest to tlie spirit of
prophecy. Nor, for the same reason, is it unworthy of the
prophet, who prophesies the renovation and perfecting of
nature to paradisiacal beauty, to mourn elegiacally over
such devastations as those of the wine-land of Moab now
present before his mind (cf. xxxii. 12, 13). Ver. 9 : (//
" There/ore I weep with Jazer's weeping for Sibma's vines ;
I flood thee with my tears, Heshhon and Male, that upon
thy fruit harvest and upon thy vintage hidad has fallen."
This is a tetrastich, in measure and movement resembling
a Sapphic strophe. The prophet mingles his tears with
Jazer's tears; as Jazer weeps for the devastated vines of
Sibma, so does he also weep. ^^M is transposed out of ^,1K
= ^'}lf. Heshbon and Elale (see on this name DMZ. xxv.
560), these cities lying adjacent to each other with luxuriant
fields ntoiB' (ver. 8), and which are now de-^troyed to the
ground, are watered by the prophet with tears, because that
IT*'!? has fallen upon the fruit harvest and wine harvest of
both the sister cities. "H^ is elsewhere used for the wheat
harvest, but it is here preferred to the more exact Tsa for
the sake of the alliteration wiUj Ti? (cf. e.^. ^1nDD for tdd in
chap. iv. 6). It is apparent from the figure indicated in trn
that it is not the wheat harvest that is meant, but the vin-
tage, which nearly coincided with the fruit harvest, which is
called r.i?, as in chap, xxviil 4. "n'f? (from "n^^ ji*, to crack,
to burst forth, after the form 1^3 and also ?3'n, jiom; cf. b'y'n,
chap. xiv. 12) is not a battle-cry, like the Indo-Germanic
a\a\d, but the self-regulating call at which the wine-pressers
in the trough raise their legs and let them fall in order to
squeeze the grapes (ver. 10; Jer. xxv. 30). Sucli a h4dad
has fallen upon the rich plains of Heshbon-Elale, inasmuch
as they have been pressed or trodden down by enemies, —
Digitized by
Google
336 ISATAH.
•n'n to *TTn, a hSdad and yet no hSdad, as Jeremiah in chap.
xlviiL 33 reproduces it in a beautiful oxymoron, ie. there is
no merry shout (Luther's Sovg) of proper grape-treaders.
The prophet, «'.«. Isaiah, to whose favourite words and
favourite figures ^3 belongs as the name of a place and the
name of a thing, now proceeds further in his description,
and is plunged still deeper into mourning. Vers. 10, 11 :
" And joy and jubilation is taken away from the garden land,
and in the vineyards there it no rejoicing, no glad shouting ;
the grape-treader does not tread out wine in the troughs ; to the
h£dad I put an end — therefore my iowels sound for Modb like
a harp, and my interior for Kir-Heres^ Jehovah says 'RSB'n,
and accordingly the words : therefore my bowels sound like a
harp (or as Jeremiah expresses it in chap. xlviiL 36, like
flutes), might also appear to be the expression of the feeling
of Jehovah. Nor do the Scriptures actually shrink from
attributing V^, viscera, to God, as e.g. in chap. Ixiii. 1 5 and
Jer. xxxi. 20. But as the prophet is the sympathizing
subject throughout the whole prophecy, it is appropriate even
on the ground of its unity to take the words here also as
expressing his feelings. Aa the hand or plectrum moves the
strings of the harp so that they vibrate with sound, so does
the terrible thing which he presents Jehovah as saying con-
cerning Moab move the strings of his inward parts, so th&t
they sound in tones of deep pain. By the entrails are
specially meant heart, liver, and kidneys — the noblest organs
of the psyche — which, according to the Biblical idea, are the
seat of the tenderest emotions, as it were the sounding-board
of those " hidden sounds " to be found in every man. God
converses with the prophet iv in«v/MTt; but what occurs
there takes form in the domain of the soul, in individual
impressions in which the bodily organs of the psychical life
sympathetically participate. Thus does the prophet in the
spirit perceive God's purpose concerning Moab, in which he
neither can nor would alter anything ; but his soul is thrown
by it into the restlessness of pain.
The ultimate reason of this restlessness is that Moab does
not know the living God. Ver. 12 : "And it urill come to pass ;
when Moai appears, wearies himself on the mountain height
and enters into his sanctuary to pray — he will obtain nothing"
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE XVI. 18, 14. 337
nxVp risnj, a picturesque assonance such as Isaiah delights
in. HK-i? (from it in chap. i. 12, rAsrh, Talmud mKTi>) is
transferred from the Israelitish worship (the appearing
before God in His temple, Talmud >^vr\, f^vr^, after the form
I^'JP) to the heathen worship, syntactically: ai apparuerit, with t
before the apodosis. It will go with the Moabites as with
the priests of Baal in the time of Elijah (1 Kings xviii.
26 sqq.). Ewald supplies another apodosis: then will Moab
give up his Eemosh and be converted to Jehovah. This
thought would not be impossible before Jeremiah (Baudissin),
but it remains unexpressed, and to interweave it (Cheyne) is
unnecessary and unjustified.
The Massa is now at an end, and there follows an epilogue,
which in conformity with the horizon of the history as moved
forward assigns the term of the fulfilment of what is not
now prophesied for the first time. Vers. 13, 14 : " This is
the utterance which Jehovah uttered concerning Moab lort/f ago.
And now Jehovah speaks thus : In three years, as the years of
a hired labourer, then is the glory of Moab dishonoured, together
with all the midtitude of the great, and a remnant miserably
small, not great at all ! " The determination of the time is
the same as in chap. xx. 3. Of the working time the hiring
master remits nothing, and the hired labourer adds nothing
to it The statement of time is therefore to be taken exactly
83 three years and not longer, rather somewhat short of it than
over it. Then will the old word of God concerning Moab be
fulfilled. Only a remnant, a petty one, will remain (syntac-
tically, as we have punctuated it, an exclamative clause) ; for
all the history of the peoples is the shadow of the history of
Israel.
The Massa, in chaps, xv. 1-xvL 12, is therefore a word
that had gone forth from God before, TKD. This statement is
capable of being taken in three different senses. (1) Isaiah
may mean that older prophecies already announced the same
thing in reference to Moab. But which ? The answer to
this may be derived from Jeremiah's prophecy concerning
Moab in chap, xlviil Jeremiah there reproduces the Kb'D
aWD of the Book of Isaiah, but interweaves with it remini-
scences (a) from the Mashal concerning Moab in Num. xxi.
27-30 ; Q>) from Balaam's prophecy concerning Moab in
VOL. I. T
Digitized by
Google
338 ISAIAH.
Num. xxiv. 17 ; (c) from Anios's prophecy concerning Moab
in Amos iL 1-3 (see Caspari in Luth. Zeiiachrift, 1843).
Isaiah might mean these older words of prophecy, as Haver-
nick, Drechsler, and others hold. This, however, is very
improbable, as there is no echo of these older pieces found in
the Massa, which would be expected if Isaiah bad them in
mind. (2) Isaiah may mean that chap. xv. 1 sqq. is the pro-
phecy of an older prophet which he only brings to remem-
brance in order to combine with it the term of its fulfilment
as revealed to him. This is the view which prevails at
present Hitzig, in a special treatise on the subject (1831)
and in his commentary, has endeavoured to make it probable
on the ground of 2 Kings xiv. 25 that Jonah was the author
of the oracle which is here taken up again by Isaiah.
Knobel, Maurer, G. Baur, and Thenius agree with Hitzig ;
de Wette, Ewald, Umbreit, Beuss, and Kuenen regard it at
least as borrowed from an older prophet by Isaiah from the
terms of his postscript ; and Cheyne assigns the author to
the beginning of the reign of Uzziah. It is hardly possible
to think of Jonah as the author. Jonah belongs to the
prophets of the type of Elijah and Elisha, in whom the
eloquence of prophetic address still falls entirely behind the
energy of the prophetic act His prophecy of the bringing
back of the kingdom of Israel to its ancient extent, fulfilled
by the victories of Jeroboam II., is not to be thought of as
so picturesque and so highly poetic as the 3tnD Kbo is, which
would only be a part of that prophecy. And, moreover, that
Jonah went into the sulks about the sparing of Nineveh, also
accords badly with the elegiac softness of this prophecy and
its flood of tears. Nor is it anywhere indicated that the
conquerors to whom Moab succumbs are of the kingdom of
Israel ; and the hypothesis completely breaks down upon the
call addressed to Moab to send tribute to Jerusalem. My
young friend Oscar Vallette, who died in Paris on the l7th
April 1883, after a richly blessed activity in the ministry,
in a Thise of the year 1864, ably brought together the
reasons against this view. But the fact that the oracle must
be derived from some other older prophet is an inference
from grounds which are worthy of consideration, but are not
sufficient to establish it It is acknowledged that not only
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XVI. It, 14. 339
the epilogue but also chap. xvi. 5b, 6 included in the Maosa,
are thoroughly Isaiania If the view of Cheyne is not
adopted, who regards chap. zvL 56, 6 as an expansion of the
older original Massa by Isaiah, then there undoubtedly
predominates in the rest of it expressions which are not
discoverable elsewhere in Isaiah ; yet they are not on that
account un-Isaiania The expressions which are not found
elsewhere in Isaiah are a^i '%, ITf . ^^)']' ^^> "1^'. "^"'^9. YP.
niDD^J, m^B (provision, possession). There is something
peculiar in the circular movement of the discourse in the
relation of reason and consequence carried out, as it is, to such
length, and in the monotonous combination of clauses by ^3
and W'hv 0?^), of which the former is repeated twice in chap.
XV. 1, thrice in chap. xv. 8, 9, and even four times in
succession in chap. xv. 5, 6. But, in fact, there is no Isaianic
prophecy which does not contain expressions exclusively used
in it by the prophet ; and as regards the conjunctions ^3 and
i3~^? (!?p)> Isaiah accumulates them also elsewhere, but here
it is done even till it becomes monotonous as a natural
consequence of the elegiac mood which prevails throughout.
And is not chap. xv. 6b in form just like chap. xvL 4& ?
And if it is true that in Isaiah there is not found elsewhere a
prophecy which is elegiac through and through, yet is not
chap. xxii. 4 an approach to the Mna ? The third possible
view will therefore be the real one. (3) Isaiah intends to
say that the fate of Moab jnst proclaimed was already long
since revealed to himself, but now in addition to this it was
revealed that it will be realized in exactly three years. Tttp
does not necessarily point to a time before Isaiah (compare
chap. xliv. 8, xlviii 3, 5, 7, with 2 Sam. xv. 34). If we
assume that what Isaiah prophesies down to chap. xvL 12
was already revealed to him in the death-year of Ahaz (at all
events after Tiglath-pileser's invasion of the country east of
the Jordan, in consequence of which, according to the evidence
of inscriptions, the king of Moab became a tributary vassal),
and that the epilogue is to be reckoned from the third or the
teuth year of Hezekiah, in either case the interval is long
enough for the TKD. We indeed do not know anything certain
about the time at which the three years up to the fulfilment
commences. The question whether Shalmanassar, or Sargon,
Digitized by
Google
340 ISAUH.
or Sennacherib is to be thought of as the king who treated
the Moabites so hardly, cannot be answered. In Herodotus
(ii. 141), Sennacherib is called fia<n\ei>i 'Apa^lmv re Koi
' AiTwp'uov. Moab might be included in the Arabians
{'Apafiuov). In any case there remained of Isaiah's prophecy,
when it had been fulfilled in the Assyrian time, a further
part or surplus whose fulfilment, according to Jer. xlviii.,
was reserved for the Chaldeans.
The O11AC1.E coNCERNiKG Damascus and Isbael,
Cdap. XVII.
From Philistia, the neighbouring people on the west, and
Moab, the neighbouring people on the east, the prophecy
now proceeds northwards to the people of the Damascene-
Sjrria. The curse pronounced upon it falls also upon the
kingdom of Israel, because it has allied itself with the
heathen Damascus against their brethren in the south and
the Davidic kingdom, and by this unnatural alliance with
a ">! has itself become a "ij. From the reign of Hezekiah,
to which the xmo »\ffD belongs, according to its epilogue
at least, we are here carried back to the reign of Ahaz,
and indeed back far beyond the death-year of Ahaz (chap,
xiv. 28) to the boundary line of the i-eigns of Jotham and
Ahaz, soon after the conclusion of the league which aimed
at Judah's destruction, by which revenge was taken for the
similar league of Asa with Benhadad ogainst Israel (1 Rings
XV. 9). When Isaiah incorporated this oracle in his collection,
its threats against the kingdoms of Damascus and Israel had
long been fulfilled. Assyria had punished both of them, and
Assyria had also been punished, as the fourth strophe of the
oracle sets forth. The oracle therefore stands here on account
of its universal contents, which are instructive for all time.
The first strophe. Vers. 1—3 : " Behold, Damascus must
away ottt of the number of cities, and becomes a heap of fallen
ruins. Forsaken are the cities of Aroer ; to flocks they are given
np, which lie down there without any one scariry them away.
And abolished is fortress from Ephraim, and kingdom from
Damascus : and to those left of Aram it happens as to the glory
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XVn. 1-3. 341
of the sons of Israel, saith Jehovah of Hosts." ' njri, with the
following participle, points, as it does everywhere else, to
what is just about to happen. Damascus is removed i^{np
(="i'y nl'np, cf. 1 Kings xv. 13), out of the sphere of existence
as a city. It becomes, in fact, npep '{(o, a heap of fallen
ruins. The word -form 'V? (=mjnD, mdawi), of which no
instance elsewhere occurs, is deleted by de Legarde as " ditto-
graphy ; " but the striving after word - painting in tones
produces strange forms, and so here *V? appears as if it would
be an echo to i^^, of which it is an apocope: Damascus
becomes the fragment of a city. The same thing happens to
Israel, which has made itself an appanage of Damascus. The
cities of Aroer {jen. appos. Ges. § 114. 3) represent the
land to the east of the Jordan in which the judgment on
Israel, executed by Tiglath-pileser, began. There were, in fact,
two Aroers : an old Amorite Aroer, which fell to the tribe of
Reuben, situated on the Arnon (Deut IL 36, ill 12, and else-
where) ; and an old Ammonite Aroer, which fell to the tribe
of Gad — Aroer before Babba (Rabbath Ammon, Josh, xiii 25),
The site of the ruins of the former ia jC.\jC, 'Ardir, on the high
northern bank of the Muyib ; the situation of the latter has
not yet been ascertained with certainty (see- Keil on Josh,
xiii. 25). The "cities of Aroer" are these two Aroers along
with the cities on the east of Jordan like them, just as the
" Orions " in chap. xiii. 1 are Orion and stars like it We
again find here in i}>i!| ^^ a significant play of sound : the
name of Aroer is ominous. It will happen to the cities of its
circuit as its name indicates ; "^T^y signifies to lay bare, to
tear down (Jer. li 58), and "ijny (p^^) signifies being in a
stark-naked state, in desolation and solitude (/ys, juniperus,
and as its plur. fractus, ijmj?, the name of the place may be
explained as "juniper bushes," as is done by de Lagarde). Job
xi. 19 (cf. Zeph. iii. 13) is the original passage on which
chap. xvii. 2b /3 is founded. After ver. 1 has threatened
* Before ver. 3 there ia found in the Codd. the remark : D'S'33n 'Vn
D'p1DB2, also Bibl. rabbin.: 0'K*33n »vn. The Masora reckons from
Joshua to lea. xvii. 3 the number of verses to be 4647, the half of the
9204 verses of all the Nebiim.
Digitized by
Google
-(
342 ISAIAH.
Damascus in particular, and ver. 2 lias threatened Israel in
particular, ver. 3 takes them both together. Ephraim loses
the strong cities which served it as protecting walls, and
Damascus loses the rank of a kingdom. Those of Aram who
remain and who do not fall in the war, become like the proud
citizens of the kingdom of Israel — they are dragged away
captive. All this was fulfilled by Tiglath - pileser. The
accentuation draws D'JK ^KB' to the first half of the verse ; but
the meaning remains the same, as the subject to w is in any
case the Aramaeans.
Second strophe. Vers. 4-8 : " And it comes to pass in that
day, then the glory of Jacob wastes atoay, and the fat of his
_fiesh becomes lean ; and it trill be as when a reaper grasps tlie
stalks of com, and his arm mows off the ears ; and it will be as
with one %cho gathers ears in the vaUeij of Rephaim^ Tet a
gleaning remains thereof, as at the olive beating: ttoo, three
berries above at the top ; four, five in its, the fruit tree's, branches,
saith Jehovah, the Ood of Israd. In that day man wiU glance
up to his Creator, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of
Israel. And he will not glance round to the altars, the pnh
duct of his hands, and what his fingers have made he will not
regard, neither the Astartes nor the Sun-gods." This strophe
does not speak of Damascus, but only of Israel, and, moreover,
of all Israel, the range of vision widening out from Israel in
the narrower sense to this total view. It will diminish to a
small remnant, but this will return. a^S'j "i^y is thus the law
of the history of Israel, which is here applied first on its
threatening side, and then on its promising side. The
reputation and prosperity to which the two kingdoms were
raised by Jeroboam II. and Uzziah will pass away. Israel is
ripe for judgment, like a field of com in the car for the
harvest ; and it will therefore be as when a reaper grasps the
upright stalks and cuts off the ears, "i^i? is not used ellipti-
cally for I'V^ B^K (Gesenius), nor is it a determination of time
(Luzzatto, Nagelsbach), nor the accusative of the object
(Knobel), but an intensive active noun in the sense of a
reaper, formed like K*23, t?b, fna (otherwise f^, Arab. JLaS
from J^ = lyp). The figure here indicated is expanded in
John iv. and Eev. xiv. There will hardly any one escape
Digitized by
Google
CHArTER XVII. 4-^. 843
the judgment, just as in the wide plain of Bephaim, covered
with precious wheat fields, sloping down from Jerusalem
towards the south - west to Bethlehem, the reapers scarcely
leave an ear lying here or there. Nevertheless a {^leaning is
left over of Israel (la, i.e. 3^^., ver. 4, chap. x. 22); just as
when the branches of the olive tree, which have been already
plucked by the hand, are again further shaken with a stick
{^\^?, like a shaking off = just as with . . . Gres. § 118. 3
Bem.), there still remain a few berries hanging on the highest
branch (two, three, cf. 2 Kings ix. 32), or hidden under
the foliage of the branches. " Its, the fruit-tree's, branches "
(iVByD, not iVB?D) is an elegant expression, as e.g. Prov. xil 4,
xiv. 13; the drawing over of the n to the second word is
natural in both passages, but the same mode of expression is
also found where this removal is impracticable, as in 2 Sam.
xxiL 33 ; Ps. Ixxi. 7 (see comm. on the passage) ; cf. chap,
xvi. 4a. This small remnant will turn with undiverted look
to the living God, as is becoming in man as such (Ql^^n), and
not consider the idols worth a look, least of all a devout look :
neither the D*}Qn nor the onmn, the two 1 being correlative.
D'JBn are here images of the sun -god, pn bja, well known
from the Phoenician monuments (see 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4),*
as in Himyaritic inbistr, his sun is used for his sun-
sanctuary ; and so or>v« (for which we find more rarely
J^"*???) may be images of the f'^.?'??, and this may be a name of
Astarte ; a view supported by 2 Kings xxiiL 4, " Baal, Ashera,
and the whole host of heaven," and 1 Kings xv. 13, ni^Bts
'1^?'*?^. "H?^ 1**3 DOW actually been shown to be a name of
Astarte in the form Airatu? The name signifies the blessed,
the saving (salvation-bringing), holy one. Of the same root are
the Assyrian plurals aSrS (from ahu) and aSrdti (from dsirtu),
which mean places of grace (temples).* The proper name of
the goddess is litdr, or corresponding to the Hebrew n'^he^,
' Sanchnniathon professes to have drawn his information from ixixpv^m
' Ki*i*wftitt yfininwctt. ' Kufitiinm are pillars or temples of the jDn 7^3.
The Or. Venetv* translates D^JOD, Lev. xxvi 30, with reference to ixttintK
iliXitf, ingeniously by the similar sounding AxifimrTii.
* By the Phoenicio-Assyrian Abd-Ashera-teibl« of Tell-el-Amarna, see
Schrader in the Zeittekrift fiir Auyriologie, Bd. iii. 363, 364.
* See on this, Friedrich Delitzsch, in his Excursus on the name of
Tiglath-pilcser, in Baer's edition of the LUm Chroniwrum, 1868,
Digitized by
Google
344 ISAUH.
lUdrtu} B*i?i< (1^"'?'*) is the name applied to her con-
secrated places, particularly pleasure groves {bosquets) or trees
(Deut. xvi 21 ; cf. the verbs ru> nns, VT^, used of removing
them); but here probably her statues or images (2 Kings
xxL 7 ; compare the n?.?DD in 1 Kings xv. 13, which
is meant to apply to an obscene representation). For these
images of the sun-god and of the goddess of the moon or
morning star the remnant of Israel purified by the furnace of
judgment has no longer an eye. Their look is exclusively
directed to the one true Gk>d of mankind. The promise,
which begins to dawn at the close of the second strophe, is
now again swallowed up in the third strophe, only to break
forth again in the fourth with double and triple intensity.
Third strophe. Vers. 9—11 : "In thM day wUl his forti-
jUd cities be like the i-uins of the forest and of the mountain-
top, which they evacuated before the tons of Israel : and there
arises a vxiste. For thou luist forgotten the Ood of thy salvation,
and of the rock of thy fortress Hum hast not thought, therefore
didst thou plant pleasant plantations, and didst set them with
strange vine slips. In the day that thou plantedst, thou didst
draw a hedge, and with the morning daton thou broughtest thy
seed to the blossom, — a harvest heap in the day of deep wounds
and deadly pain." What was said in ver. 3, that the fortress
of Ephraim is abolished, is repeated in ver. 9 in a more de-
scriptive way. To the strongly fortified cities of Ephraim it
happens as to the old Canaanite forts which were still visible
in their antiquated remains in the depths of woods or on the
heights of mountains. The word n3)T||, which was not under-
stood by the old interpreters, means, as in chap, vi 12,
desolate places that have become ruined. Instead of tsnhn
TDKrn, the LXX. read nottm nnn (which is approved by
de Lagarde), but in the translation they transpose the two
names thus, ol 'AfjLoppaXoi, xcd oi Evaioi. 1'OKri undoubtedly
means elsewhere the top of a tree, which is not suitable here;
but as in this sense it goes back to '^, extollere efferre (see
on Ps. xciv. 4), the Hiphil of which in the Mishna {S<^a
1 Schlottmaim, in DMZ. xxiv. 668 sqq., derives the name, starting
from the Deuteronomic jtwn TWimff)}, Deut vii. 13 et al., from "ypy,
to connect, to beget. Fried. Delitzsch also regards Iitart4 as a triliterate
with inserted n {Astyr. Gramm. § 65, No. 40).
Digitized by
Google
cuAPTEtt xvn. 0-u. 345
ix. 14) means " to top " (tcw ipi'n, the dearness will reach
its highest degree), it may also mean the top of a mountain,
as the contrast to the hase of a mountain (Job xxviiL 9), and
therefore the summit of the mountain.' The name of the
people, ^P^\} (signifying those who dwell high up in the
mountains), proves the possibility that the prophet had this
name in his mind, and was determined by it in his choice of
the word. It is not necessary to read ^ for UR^ ; the sub-
ject of Ul]; is evident of itself. It is only ruins in woods and
mountains that are mentioned, because other places lying on
the lines of intercourse merely changed inhabitants when the
Israelites took possession of their country. The reason that
the same fate is to overtake Ephraim's strong forts as fell on
those of the Amorites then lying in ruins, was because, as is
said in ver. 1 0, Ephraim had turned away from his true rock-
fast fortress, his stronghold of Jehovah. It is a consequence
of this estrangement from God that Ephraim planted "V^i
D'?P?J ('ysfi, with Dag. compensativum, and not the ambiguous
^jnpn), plantations of lovely kind of things = lovely plantations
(as in Sur. S6. 90, gmndtu na'imin, see on Ps. IxxviiL 49),
i.e. they made for themselves all kinds of sensuous cults in
conformity with their heathen inclination. Perhaps d*3DJ0
points to a particular cult, such as that of Adonis.' And
further, it is a consequence of this estrangement from God
that Ephraim planted these garden grounds (to which the
sufifix mmt belongs) with strange vines; or since iTibr
signifies the setter of the vine, he has set it with them, that
is to say, by concluding an alliance with a 1T, the king of
Damascus. On the very day of the planting Ephraim care-
fully fenced it in (this is what the PUpel i^'?^ from nb = :^D
signifies, not : to bring up, as I'fc' = Kjr, tup, cannot be estab-
lished) ; that is to say, he insured tlie continuance of those
sensuous cults in the manner of a State - religion with the
prudence of a Jeroboam (see Amos viL 13), and what had
been sown was already brought into blossom in the morning.
"•»
' Cognate is iyt\, which means a beap of stone, a way-mark (sign-
postX and also anilL
' De Lagarde, with whom Cheyne agrees, combines ;c]n as an Adonis-
name (cf. Ewald, § 287a) with the name of the Anemone.
Digitized by
Google
346 ISA.IAH.
The foreign slip has shot up like a hothouse plant, ie. the
alUance has rapidly become a happy agreement, and has also
already shot forth a blossom which is the common plan
directed against Judah. But this planting, which has been
80 flattering and so full of promise for Ephraim, and which
flourished rapidly and seemingly so happily, is a harvest heap
for the day of judgment. The modem expositors almost all
take I? ■ (for which LXX. have np, and Syr. tj = yoke),
according to the Targum and Jer., as the 3rd person, accord-
ing to the form n? : the harvest flees ; but the 3rd pers. of
TM must be "ij, like the part in Gen. iv. 12 ; whereas the
meaning cumulvs, which it has elsewhere as a substantive, is
quite appropriate, and the statement of the prophet is like
that of the apostle in Som. ii. 5. The day of the judgment
is called day of ihm (npnj), in no case = ?n?, river, stream
(Luzzatto : in giomo di fiumana), as in Ps. cxxiv. 4, the
accent being on the last syllable is opposed to this ; nor is it
on the day of the possession (Rosenmiiller, Meier, Drecbsler,
and others, following LXX. and Jer.), which, as expressing
nothing of itself, would require more precise definition ; but it
is the feminine of fwro^ and written shortly for rvTO nsD in
Jer. xiv. 17, x. 19, Nah. iii 19, inasmuch as it inflicts
grievous and deadly wounds. On this day Ephraim's planta-
tion becomes manifest as a harvest heap. What he has
heaped up is in that day brought home (cf. f^^, a harvest of
punishment, Hos. vi. 11 ; Jer. IL 33), and the hope set upon
this plantation is changed into tt'US 3K3, a despairing, in-
curable heart-sorrow (Jer. xxx. 15). The organic connection of
what now follows in vers. 12-14 with the oracle concerning
Damascus-Israel has been either entirely misunderstood on
the one hand or not properly appreciated on the other. The
relation is this : As the prophet sets before himself how
Ephraim's sin is punished by Assyria, and how the latter
sweeps over the Holy Land, the promise which appears in
the second strophe now breaks fully through: the world-
power is Jehovah's instrument of punishment, but not for
ever.
Fourth strophe. Vers. 12-14 : " Woe to the roaring of
many peoples ; like roaring of seas they roar, and to the
mmbling of nations like the rumbling of mighty waters they
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEK xvn. W-M. 347
rumhle. Nations like the rumllivg of many waters they rumble
and He threatens it — then it flies far away, and is chased like
chaff of mouniains "before the wind, and like straw haulms
before tlie whirlwind. At eventide — behold, there is consterna-
tion ; even before morning dawn it is annihilated — this is the
portion of our plunderers and the lot of our rai>bers." It is the
annihilation of Assyria which the prophet prophesies here, as
in chaps, xiv. 24-27, xxix. 5-8, and elsewhere ; but not of
Assyria as Assyria, but of Assjrria as the empire, which
embraces a multitude of peoples (chaps. xxiL 6, viii, 9, 10,
xiv. 26, xxix. 7, 8) under one will for a common combating
of the Church of God The relation of this fourth strophe to
the third is entirely like the relation of chap. viiL 9, 10 to
chap. viii. 6-8. The exclamation of woe, ^n, is, as in chap.
X. 1, an expression of the pain of wrath, which is then
followed by the proclamation of the judgment of wrath. The
description of the billow of peoples is as picturesque as the
well-known description : ille inter sese, etc, of the Cyclopes in
Virgil. " It spreads and stretches out ; it is as if it would
not cease to swell, and to roar, and to surge, and to sound "
(Drechsler), In ia, in ver. 13a, the many surging peoples
are kneaded together as into one mass. The onomatopoeic
word lyj (in Ethiopic, to cry, to lament) signifies a commanding
influence bringing about silence and yielding. It costs God
only one threatening word, and then this mass flees far away
(prneo, like PiiriD in chap. xxiL 3 ; see on chap, v, 26) ; it is
scattered and whirled asunder like chaff from high -lying
threshing-floors, and as tvi before the storm. The Chddee
"?? ('?') and Arabic gill, gidl, gall, demonstrate the meaning
of ^ji>j to be : stubble, dry blades of straw, Vbi,U} be round,
and to roll, to move easily and quickly. The judgment
begins to execute overthrow nn^2 (from a^3, iL, to get out of
control, to be out of oneselO in the evening. It rages in
the night, and before the break of the morning the host of
peoples belonging to the imperial power is annihilated (com-
pare chap. xxix. 9, 10, and the fulfilment in chap. xxxviL 36).
The fact that this particular oracle concerning Damascus is
so comprehensive on this fourth stage, and is so promising
for Israel, is explained on the ground that Syria was the
Digitized by
Google
348 ISAUH.
precursor of Assyria in the attack on Israel, and that
the alliance of Israel with Syria had become the cause of
the complications with Assyria. If the matter of the f^ffa
pevi had been restricted to what the name Mahershalal
expresses, then the element of promise which is characteristic
of the prophecies against the peoples of the world (the
Gentile nations) would be entirely lacking in it But the
shout of triumph, 'ui pbn nr, supplied a terminal point which
the Kirs cannot pass beyond unless it is to sacrifice its unity.
We are therefore justified in taking chap. zviiL as a prophecy
by itself, although at the same time this last strophe of the
oracle concerning Damascus forms the ring linking into which
the following prophecy concerning Ethiopia is immediately
( attached.
ErmopiA's Submission ukdee Jehovah, Chap. XVIIL
The view which holds that chap, xviii. 4-6 contains a
description of the judgment inflicted on Ethiopia by Jehovah
is untenable. The prophet prophesies the annihilation of the
army of Sennacherib in his usual way, and as it was fulfilled
in chap. xxxviL 36. Equally untenable, however, is the old
Jewish and Christian view, which has been taken up again
by Hofmann, that the people so strangely described at the
beginning and close of the prophecy is the people of Israel.
The borrowed passage in Zeph. iiL 10 should not mislead as,
for it fuses together references to Isa. xviiL and IxvL The
people here peculiarly described are the Ethiopians, and the
prophet prophesies the effect on Ethiopia of the judgment con-
cerning Assyria which Jehovah executes, as Drechsler has con-
vincingly proved (Studien u. Krit. 1847, and Komm.), and as
is now universally recognised. But it is not probable either
that the prophecy falls later than the Assyrian expedition
against Egypt (Scbegg), or that the Ethiopian ambassadors
whom it mentions are dispatched to Judah to offer it friend-
ship and help (Ewald, Knobel, Meier, and Thenius). No ;
the expedition against Egypt, including Ethiopia, is only
in prospect, and that against Judah is a means to this end.
And the ambassadors do not go to Judah, but, as Drechsler
apprehends the situation, with the most active despatch they
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XVIIL 349
carry commands to all the regions under Ethiopian rule. The
Ethiopian kingdom is, in view of the impending Assyrian
invasion, in the greatest excitement, and the envoys are sent
forth to call out the available military force. From the fact
that in the trilogy contained in chaps, xviii.-xx., Ethiopia and
Egypt are specially treated, and are carefully kept apart in
chap. XX., it appears that we must conclude that at the time
when the prophecies in chaps, xviii., xix. went forth, and in
the time of &irgon, Egypt and Ethiopia were not yet one
kingdom. Moreover, Sennacherib, in the prism-inscription
(translated in Friedr. Delitzsch's Assyr. LeaestUeken, xii.-xvi.),
still distinguishes kings of Egypt (sarrdni ' mdtu Musuri) and a
king of Ethiopia (lar mdtu Meluhht), whom he boasts of having
defeated near Eltekg OP^i^, Josh. xix. 44). Egypt and Ethi-
opia did not actually become a single kingdom till the time
of Fsammetichus the son of Necho, whose son, Necho II.,
on his march against Nabopolassar encountered Josiah. In
the Delta, the two chief dynasties, the Saitic and the Tanitic,
still contended with each other ; but in Thebes the Ethiopian
supremacy always gained more in power, and the kings of the
Delta were not able to make a stand against it Shebek {Sa^a-
KtDv) the tno (K7.p), on whom Hosea, the last king of the northern
kingdom, depended (2 Kings xvii 4), was the beginner of the
new (25th) dynasty, consisting of Ethiopian kings, which,
from 725 B.C., reduced the lesser kings to vassals. It was
he whom Saigon overthrew at Baphia in 720 ac. His suc-
cessor was ShabatoTe, whom Taharhi, who encountered Senna-
cherib's expedition against Jndah, removed out of the way in
672 B.C. ; and Taharka himself was subdued by Esarhaddon
in 672 B.C., and this was the end of the Ethiopian dynasty.
At this time, then, when the prophecies in chaps, xviii, xix., xx.
were given forth, Egypt was not yet a single kingdom. The
local princes of Lower Egypt were not yet removed; the
Ethiopian dynasty had the supremacy, but only in so far as
it asserted itself by force and craft The separating of Egypt
and Ethiopia in Isaiah is founded on the same political ground
' Of the texts of tbe two copies of the prism-inscription one has tarrdni,
and tbe other tar. On the place of the hattle of EltekS, in the order of
the details of the Jewish campaign, see Friedrich Delitzsch's art "San-
herib" in the Herzog-Hauek BE. xiii
Digitized by
Google
330 ISAIAH.
as that of the kings of Egypt and of the king of Meluhhi in
the prism-inscription of Sennacherib. Moreover, it cannot
be exactly determined how near or far from the time when
the Assyrian army entered on the expedition through Judah
to Egypt the prophecy in chap, xviii. was composed. What
it sets forth in prospect, namely, that the judgment of Jehovah
upon the empire will have as its consequence the submission
of Ethiopia to Jehovah, did occur at least in a preliminary
way after the catastrophe of Assyria (2 Chron. xxxiL 23).
The prophecy begins with in, which never means heus, but
always vae. Here, however, it differs from chap. xviL 1 2 in
being rather an expression of compassion (cf. Isa. Iv. 1 ; Zech.
il 10) than of anger; for the fact that the more mighty
Assyria is coming against the mighty Ethiopia, is a humiliation
prepared for the latter by Jehovah. Vers. 1, 2a: "Woe, land
of the whirring of wings, which is hegond the rivers of Kui,
which sends messengers to sea, and in papyrus hoots over the face
of the waters." The land of Kush begins, according to Ex.
xxix. 10, cf. XXX. 6, where Upper Egypt ends. The njip
{Aswdn) mentioned by Ezekiel is the boundary point where
the Nile enters Q?iyp proper, and which is still in the present
day a depot of the products that come by the Nile from the
south. The B'O'nnj^ which are to be sought to the south of
that point, are chiefly those that flow round the Kushite K3S
(Gen. X. 7). This latter name is applied to the insular or
interfluvial land of Meixw which is enclosed by the White
and Blue Nile (the Astapos of Ptolemy, now Bohr el-Abyact, and
the Aslaboras of Ptolemy, now £ahr el-Azrak), the present
Seniidr, which, as such, is called ijfj^^ (like Mesopotamia).
Besides, the multitude of tributaries which in its long course
bring always new masses of water to the Nile, might be
well known generally to the prophet. The land "beyond
the rivers of Kush" is the land bounded by the upper
streams of the Nile, ie. the land lying farther to the south
under the Ethiopian rule, including Ethiopia proper; it is
the land of its African auxiliaries, whose names (including
probably the later Nubians and Abyssinians) are mentioned
in 2 Chron. xii. 3 ; Nah. iii. 9 ; Szek. xxx. 5 ; Jer. xlvi. 9.
To this Ethiopia, designated according to its farthest limits
(cf. Zeph. iiL 10), the prophet gives the peculiar name rj^
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XVIII. 1, a. 351
D*d:3 pvps. This has been explained as the land of the wings
of an army with clanging arms (Gesenias and others) ; but
D*U3 has not, even in chap. viii. 8, immediately the same
sense as Q^b?K in Ezekiel. Or, again, it is explained as " laud
of the noise of waves " (Umbreit) ; but Q^bis cannot be said
of waters out of snch connection as in chap. viii. 8. Besides,
TxTit is not an appropriate onomatopoeic word for the noise of
weapons and waves. Or, again, it has been explained as " land
of the double shadow " (Grotius, Vitringa, Knobel, and others).
But however appropriate this epithet {dfjuft(aKio<s) is for the
southmost part of Ethiopia as a tropical country, yet it is
hazardous to take TiCTV in a meaning which is not sustained
by the usage of the language ; and the same objection holds
to Luzzatto's interpretation, " land of the far and wide shadow-
ing defence" Schelling has also correctly remarked against
this view, that the shadow in countries between the tropics
is not a double shadow at the same time (thrown now to the
north and now to the south), and therefore that it cannot be
figuratively called double- winged. D'W3 TV^ is the whirring
of the wings of the insects with which Egypt and Ethiopia
swarm on account of their climat« and abundance of water ;
???y, eonstr. TSTt, tinnitus stridor,^ its primary meaning from
which the three other meanings of the word : cymbal, har-
poon (ie. a whirring dart), and grasshopper,* are derived.
The Egyptian power was called, in chap. vii. 18, the fly from
the end of the rivers of Egypt Here Egypt-Ethiopia is called
the land of the whirring of wings, inasmuch as the prophet,
in association with the swarms of insects, has in his mind the
motley swarms of people of this great kingdom, which were
fabulously strange for an Asiatic. Within this great kingdom
1 The meaning stridere becomes more particularly to sink down with
a whirling motion, and in the Talmud, to have settled down, to be cleared
Ohs, limpidua).
T
' Tgaltzalya in the language of the Gallasi, Ttetse in the language of the
Bechuanas, is the name of the most dreaded insect (diptera) of the tropical
interior of Africa, a species of glostina ; see Hartmann, Skuae der NiUdnder,
i. 205 ; Ausland, 1865, p. 960, and Merinsky, Beilriige zur KemUniss Siid-
Afrikas, 1876, pp. 23-25 (where it is stated that the poison of the tsetse
has a fatal effect only on the domestic animals, the ass being an exception).
Bruce first brought this insect to England, and the first account of tlie
" Tsaltsalya-fly " is found in voL v. of Bruce's Select Specimeni (1790).
Digitized by
Google
352 ISAIAH.
messengers are now passiug to and fro upon its great waters
"Pi Y??, in boats of papyrus (see about K^, explained by
Saadia by tjtij, in my comm. on Job, chap. viiL 11); in
Greek fidpiSe^ (Ionic in Herodotus, ii 96, /8a/>(ef) irairvpiveu
(fiapk, after the Egyptian bari, hali, barge), cf. Lucan, Phars.
4. 136 : conserUur bUmla Memphitis eymia papt/ro. In such
canoes, ex papyro et scirpo et harundine (Plinius, vii. 206, xiiL
72, ed. Jan.), they skimmed along the Nile, and ventured evea
as far as Taprobane (Ceylon). They were made for folding
together (plieatUes), so that they could be carried past the
cataracts (rapids), Arab selldldt (see Parthey on Plutarch de
Iside, p. 198 f.).
It is to the messengers in such paper boats that the appeal
of the prophet is directed. He bids them go and summon
the mighty Ethiopian people to the combat : to a combat,
however, which Jehovah will in their place take upon Him-
self. Vers. 26, 3 : " 6o, fleet messengers, to the nation long-
stretched and leautifully polished, to the terrible people far avoay
on the other side, to the nation of command on command and
treading down, wliose land rivers cut through. All ye possessors
of the world and inhabUants of the earth, when a banner rises
on mountains, look thither, and when they blow the trumpet,
then hear!" They are to go to the powerful people which
will not be the prey of Assyria, but the prey of Jehovah ; for
He Himself will save the world from the conquering might
of Assyria, against which the Ethiopian kingdom summons
all the means of self-help. That to which the looks of
Ethiopia and all the peoples of the earth are directed is made
known to us by what follows : it is the destruction of Assyria
by Jehovah. And they who look are particularly to attend
and mark when they perceive the two signals of the banner
and the trumpet blast: these are decisive moments. The
people which is called to arms is described as being so
glorious a people, not because it will actually join in the
combat, but because it will be Jehovah's own people. It is
^Btop, long-extended, tall (LXX. edvot ftereapov), by which
the Sabeans are likewise designated in chap. xlv. 14 (cf.
jji'^*^, in the sense Hand, from j:^, to extend long) ;
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XVUI. 2, 8. 353
and then t3"jto = an^op,* polished, politus, especially by depila-
tion (cf. iij^\, imberbis, of a youth), and therefore not marred
by a disfiguring growth of hair. To these first two predicates
corresponds the description of the Ethiopians in Herodotus,
iii 20, as fteyiaTot koX KaWtarot avOpdnrav irdvrav ; and as to
the glittering of their skin see also Herodotus, iii. 23.' They
are further called the terrible people, by reference to the
wide extent of their kingdcmi to the remotest south, wn-io
^?ri71» i^oia here (compare the vulgar Arabic min henne,
hitherwards), where the prophet meets with the messengers
further and always further out; cf. 1 Sam. xx. 21, 22 (but
not 1 Sam. xviii. 9, where the expression has a temporal
meaning, which is less suitable here, where everything is so
picturesque ; and, besides, it is to be rejected, because NVrp
cannot be equivalent to iftn "^f^, cf. Nah. iL 9). In
Homer they are also rriXoff' iovre^, those dwelling far off.
Nagelsbach connects the mention of place with mu : feared
far from its boundary ; but then wn-jo would be superfluous.
What ^i> (with a connecting accent and before Makkeph li?),
a measure or criterion, means, when used by the prophet in
the reduplicated form in which it is presented here, is shown
by chap, xxviii. 10, 13 ; or if these parallels are rejected by
Ps. xix. 5, it is a commanding people that conquers region on
region, or (according to Ewald, Knobel, and Cheyne) a people
" of strength strength," m. terribly strong ; and this view
would recommend itself were lij = iy, strength, established as
a meaning in the Hebrew (the radical idea being stiff, com-
pact), nwap is a second genitive to ^l : a people of treading
down, namely, of others, i.e. which subdues and tramples down
wherever it appears, as had been conspicuously shown since
Pianchi, about 766 B-C." The Tirhaka (Teapxav) is called by
Megasthenes in Strabo, xv. 1. 6, a great conqueror who pressed
' So, too, anv^ in Jer. xxix. 17 is equivalent to unv'^p, abhorred,
abominable.
* See on this also the description of the Bitrdbira (plur. of Berbert),
probably epigons of the ancient Ethiopians, in the Zeitschrift Jiir allg.
Erdkunde, xviL 7.
' See Stade's monograph, De Isaiae vaticiniU aethioplcit, 1873.
VOL. I. Z
Digitized by
Google
354 ISAUH.
forward to the pillars of Hercules. These are purely predi-
cates of distinction : an imposingly beautiful people, a ruling
aud conquering people. The last predicate Htra tf» extols
their fruitful land. We do not take Kta in the sense of
diripere = H?, as D«p, to melt == ODD, but in the sense of
Jmdei'e = Vf^, as MM, to sip = »?» ; for it is no praise to say
that a land is carried off or washed away by rivers. Bottcher
aptly compares the phrase used by Herodotus, ii. 108, icare-
Tft^dtj ij AtyvirTo<{. There is a divine irouy lying in the
circumstance that a people so great and glorious, and (looking
at its natural gifts) not without reason so full of self-feeling,
falls into such violent excitement in presence of the threaten-
ing danger and makes such violent efforts to meet it, while
Jehovah, the Grod of Israel, will Himself annihilate the power
that threatens the danger in a night, and consequently that all
the anxiety and labour of Ethiopia is utterly useless.
The prophet knows this for certain. Vers. 4-6 : " For thus
hath Jehovah spoken to me: I will be still, and will look on
upon my throne during clear heat in sunshine, during dew-
clouds in the harvest glow. For hefore the harvest, when the
blossom fades off and the bud becomes a ripening grape, tlwn
will He cut off the vine shoots with vvne-pruners, and He removes,
breaks off the tendrils. Left are they altogether to the birds of
prey of the mountains, and to the cattle of the land, and the
birds of prey summer thereon, and all tlie cattle of the land wUl
winter thereon^" The prophecy expounds itself here ; for the
unfigurative ver. 6 undoubtedly enables us to understand what
it is that Jehovah without interposing will let develope pro-
sperously under favourable circumstances till He suddenly
and violently puts an end to it just as it is approaching per-
fect maturity. It is the power of Assyria. Jehovah calmly
looks on from the heavenly seat of His glorious presence
without disturbing the progression of what is intended. This
rest of His is not neglectf ulness ; it is, as is indicated by the
cohortatives (the second of which is provided with if under
the half-guttural p; of. Num. xxiii. 25), well considered
resolution. The two Caphs (3) in ver. 4 are not comparative,
but are indicative of time. The noun 3y, thickness, darkness,
cloud, is in the construct 3^, or even ^V, as D) is sometimes
D^, sometimes D!, being the latter according to the mode of
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTKB XVIU. 4-4. 355
derivatives from y*T). Jehovah keeps Himself at rest while
there is bright heat with sunshine ('^J|, of a continuing state,
as in Jer. viii. 18, 1 Sam. xiv. 32, and elsewhere), and whilst
there is dew-cloud, 175 '"^ (LXX. Syr. erroneously ova), i-e.
in the midst of that warmth which is favourable for the
harvest, so that the plant thus heated through by day and
refreshed at night by the falling dew shoots up rapidly and
luxuriantly, and ripens. The plant thought of is the vine, as
is shown by ver. 5. It is erroneous to take *i*Vi^ in the sense of
TXa (see xvi. 9) : it is the grain harvest at whose approach the
vine blossom fades and the berry sets, with which the summer
heat, during which the grapes ripen (Hofmann), coincides.
3 is also here indicative of time. When the blossom has
become complete, so that it now fades off, and the set fruit-
bud (^s?, according to the Masora here, in distinction from
Gen. xl. 10 with n ra/atum) becomes a ripening grapelet
("iDb, the still unripe grape, ifufxii, so called from its hardness
and sourness, as^^ is the unripe date), lie cuts away the
vine branches, Ojhi (from ^, to swing to and fro ; cf. Arabic
ddliya, grape, from dald, to hang long and loose), on which
the grapes thtct will soon be quite ripened hang; and the
tendrils (rrtiT'BJ, as in Jer. v. 10, from b'dj, to stretch far
down, Niphal, to twine for a long way, chap, xvi, 8 ; cf. Jer.
xlviii. 32) he removes, nips ofif (tnn, a pausal form for Win, as
^30 is for bR3D in chap. vii. 6, Olsh. § 9 Id, from IW, Hiphil
in Talmud, rnn, to break off, to break in two, to weaken ; cf.
VVPi), an intentional asyndeton with a picturesque sound.
The discourse of Jehovah concerning Himself has here passed
imperceptibly into a discourse of the prophet about Jehovah.
The ripening grapes are, as is elucidated in ver. 6, the Assy-
rians now not far from the summit of their power, and the
fruit-branches that are lopped off and broken to pieces are
their corpses, which are now summer and winter through the
garbage of swarms of summer birds and of the beasts of prey
that remain through the winter. (T^ is a denominative from
ri?. glowing heat = summer, and *l"?™?> denominative, from
(|in, plucking off = harvest) This is the divine act of judg-
ment to which the approaching planting of the banner and
the approaching blare of trumpets is about to call the atten-
Digitized by
Google
356 ISAIAH.
tion of the people of Ethiopia. What effect this act of
Jehovah if it now takes place will exercise upon the people
of Ethiopia is now described. Ver. 7: "At that time will
there be offered as a homage to the Lord of hosts a people long-
stretched and beautifully polished, and from a terrible people far
away on the other side, a nation of command upon command and
treading down, whose land rivers cut through, to the place of the
name of Jehovah of hosts, the mountain ofZion." To the difficult
tISO the op at the beginning does not require to be accommo-
dated (for which Knobel indeed reads ^70); that which is offered
is the Ethiopian people itself, just as it is Israel in chap. Ixvi.
20 ; Zeph. iii. 10. Along with DP and ^j, nominatives of the
subject, D^ can only have a local signification : the people
brings itself as a present, and presents are brought from it
(Nagelsbach) ; but for what purpose is this weakening altera-
tion made ? It is probable that oi is an inadvertent " ditto-
graphy," and should be deleted. Cheyne translates twice :
from the people ; but the former DP is guaranteed by parallels,
as in Zeph. iii. 10. Ethiopia is offered or presents itself as
an offering to Jehovah, being impelled irresistibly to this by
the force of the impression made by the great deed of Jehovah,
or as the Titan among the Psalms says (Ps. IxviiL 32) : " There
come thither the splendid ones out of Egypt, and Gush hastily
stretches his hands to Elohint" In order that the greatness
of this spiritual conquest may be fully appreciated, the de-
scription of this strangely glorious people is here repeated.
The Oracle concerning Egypt, Chap. XIX.
The three prophecies in chaps. xviiL, xix., xx. form a
trilogy. The first (chap, xviii., which, like the introitus,
chap, i, is without any special superscription) treats of
Ethiopia in language of the sublimest pathos. The second
(chap, xix.) treats of Egypt in language of calmer description,
which is expanded to some length ; and the third (chap, xx.)
treats of Egypt and Ethiopia in a setting of plain historical
prose. The kingdom to which all the three prophecies refer
is the same, namely, the i^ypto-Ethiopian kingdom ; but it
is so dealt with that chap, xviii. refers to the ruling people,
chap. xix. to the ruled people, and chap. xx. embraces them
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKR XIX. 1-4. 367
both together. The reason why the prophecy occupies itself
80 particularly with Egypt is that no people of the earth was
so closely interwoven with the history of the kingdom of God
from the patriarchal time as Egypt And because, as the Thora
impresses it, Israel must never forget that it long resided in
Egypt, and there grew great, and enjoyed much good; so
prophecy, when it C9mes to speak to Egypt, is not less zealous
in promising than in threatening. Accordingly the Isaianic
Kb^ falls into two distinct halves : one threatening, vers. 1-15,
and one promising, vers. 18-25 ; and between judgment and
salvation thete stands the terror in vers. 16, 1 7, as the bridge
from the former to the latter. And just as is the great-
ness of the coil of punishments which the prophet unfolds, so
in just as many stages is the promise which is carried on in
ever new grooves, and which here rises so far that at last,
breaking through the temporary historical veil and the Old
Testament limitation, it speaks the spiritual language of the
world-embracing love of the New Testament.
With a short introduction — ^in the use of which Isaiah was
a master — which concentrates the whole of what is contained
in the first half in a few weighty words, and three times
naming Egypt, the land unequalled in the world, the oracle
thus begins. Ver. 1 : " Bduid, Jehovah rides along upon a
light cloud, and comes to Egypt ; then the idols of Egypt shake
lefore Rim, and the heart of Egypt m^Us within it." Jehovah
rides upon clouds when He is about to reveal Himself in
judicial majesty (Ps. xviii 11), and here He rides upon a
light cloud, because it is to happen rapidly. ?S signifies light
and quick ; what is light moves itself quickly ; and even the
light, because tliin doud, is relatively 3^, literally, dense,
opaque, dark. The idols of Egypt shake QPi, as in chap. vL 4,
viL 2), for Jehovah comes over them to judgment (cf. Ex.
xiL 12 ; Jer. xlvL 25 ; Ezek. xxx. 13). They must shake, for
they are about to be thrown down ; their shaking from fear is
a shaking to their fall (^, as in chap. xxiv. 20, xxix. 9).
The 1 of V)y\ (praet. eonaec with tone on the last) connects
cause and effect, as in chap, vi 7.
In what judgments the judgment is about to be executed
is now declared by the majestic Judge Himself. Vers. 2-4 :
" And I goad Egypt against Egy^, and they go to war every
Digitized by
Google
358 ISAIAH.
one with his brother, and every one with hit neighbour ; eitt/
against city, kingdom against kingdom. And the ^rit of Egypt
is emptied out within it, and I swallow up Ua readiness in counsel,
and they go inquiring to the idols, and to the mutterers, and to the
oraele-spirits, and to the soothsayeii. And I shut up Egypt in
the hand of a hard government, and a violent king will rule ocer
them, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts." , Civil war will rage
in Egypt (on ^psp see at chap. iz. 10). The people usually
so prudent will not be able to deliberate ; their spirit is quite
poured out (J^P^,, with the dropped reduplication for n^3J, as
"303 = nau, Ezek. xli. 7, ct oomm. on Gten. xL 7), so that
nothing of insight or resolution remains to them. Then in
their blindness they turn for help in counsel and action to
where none is to be found — to their nothings of gods, and to
the manifold demoniacal arts of which I^ypt could boast that
it was the primeval abod& On the names of the practisers
of the black art see chap. viii. 19. DI^K, mutterers, from
tsptt = LI, to squeak (used of a camel's saddle, especially when
it is new), to nimble (of the empty stomach), and such like
(see Lane's Lexicon). But all this avails them nothing.
Jehovah gives them up (lap, syn. '^'vsn, ovyKKeieip, and "op)
to be under a hard-hearted, severe king. The prophecy does
not refer to a foreign conqueror, so as to lead us to think
of Sargon (Enobel, Kuenen, Schrader, Cheyne, Driver) or
Cambyses (Luzzatto), but to a native despot In comparing
the prophecy with the fulfilment, we must above all keep firmly
to the view that ver. 2 prophesies the national revolution
which broke out in Sais, in the midst of which the Ethiopian
dynasty, which ruled from 725, was overthrown, and the
federal Dodekarchy, which sprang out of the national rising.
Hitzig denies this, but only because he holds it to be im-
]iOssible that the prophetic glance of Isaiah could extend to
events after bis death. Stade' refers the prophecy to the
subjection of Middle and Lower E(>ypt, and especially of the
Saitic prince and conqueror, Tafnecht, by the Ethiopian
^ Op. eit, pp. 31-33 ; cf. " Die Si^esinschrift Konlgs Pianchi von
Aethiopien, iibera. von H. Bmgsch," in the NachrieKten der Kgl. GUtHnger
OtteUtehaft d. W. 1876, Kr. 19. Wiedemann, At^^iftM** Ge»chiehU,
TeU 2 (1884), pp. 666-676.
Digitized by
Google
CHAI'TSB XIX. fi-10. 359
riancIii-Meremen, which he dates between 729 and 722.
But with this interpretation of the Isaianic prophecy would
there not rather be expected, according to the stele of Mount
Barkat, instead of onxoa onxo, rather onasa DHro? The
naPDOa napoo (LXX. vofun iirX vo/t6v) does not apply nearly
so well to the time of Tafnecbt and Fianchi as to those twelve
small kingdoms into which Egypt was divided after the
removal of the Ethiopian dynasty, till Fsammeticbus, the
Dodekarch of Sais, again united these twelve States into one
monarchy, a result which Pianchi was not able to bring about
Shabaka (the Sabakon of Manetho), the Biblical tno, under-
took not only a victorious campaign to "Egypt, like Pianchi,
and not only made it tributary, but remained there, and was
the first Egyptian Pharaoh of Ethiopian race (founder of the
XXV. dynasty).^ Psammetichus I. (604-610) was the first
to restore the unity of the kingdom. He (and generally the
royal house of the Psammetichidse) is the hard ruler, the
ruthless despot After long struggles, and by the aid of
mercenaries of Ionia and Caria, he attained sole undisputed
dominion over Egypt From him onwards the characteristic
Egyptian system appears already much broken by the
admixture of Hellenism, which led in consequence to the
emigration of a large portion of the military caste to Meroe
(Herod, ii 30 ; Diod. i. 67). How oppressive this new
dynasty was came to be felt by the I^ptian people, when
Necho (616-597), the son and successor of Psammetichus,
took up anew the project of Bamses Miamun to construct a
connecting canal between the Mediterranean and the Bed Sea,
and tore away 120,000 natives from their homes and wore
them out in toilsome drudgery (Herod, ii 158). A revolt of
the native troops which, being sent against the rebelling
Cyrene, were driven back into the desert, brought about, after
losing a battle, the fall of Hophra' (Avplrfi of Herodotus and
Diodorus), the grandson of Necho, in 570, and put an end to
the hated government of the house of Psammetichus (Herod,
ii. 161 sqq., iv. 159).
The prophet now prophesies another calamity which is
coming upon Egypt : the Nile dries up, and with it vanishes
the fruitfulness of the land. Yera 5-10: "And the waters
^ See Wiedemann, op. eil. p. 581.
Digitized by
Google
360 ISAIAa
will dry up from the sea, and the river hecomes parched and
dried. And the arms of the river ^read a stench ; the canals
of Masor become shallow and parched ; reed and rush shrivel up.
The meadows hy the Nile, at the mmtth of the Nile, and every
seed-field of the Nile dries up, scatters in dust and disappears.
And the fishers groan, and all who throw ho(^-nets into the
Nile mourn, and they who spread out the net on the face of the
water languish away. And confouTided are the workers of fine-
combed flax and the weavers of cotton fahrics. And the pillars
of the land become crushed to pieces, all who work for hire grieved
in soul." The Nile in ver. 5 (as well as in chap, rs'iii. 1 ;
cf. Nab. iii. 8) is called Q^, just as Homer calls it a>Keav6<t.
which, as Diodoras (i. 19) observes, is the native name of
the river, the Egyptiau oham ; the corresponding Aiabic
name is ^^ ; tts here it ie called yam in the Begawlya idiom
of Besharin. The Nile is really more like an inland sea
than a river from that point where the main stream in
consequence of the swelling of the two great Abyssinian
tributaries of the Blue Nile and the Atbara overflows the
delta of Lower Egypt, assuming this appearance in conse-
quence of its breadth and of its stagnating in the dry season.
It is not till the beginning of the tropical rains that the
swelling river begins to flow more rapidly, and the DJ becomes
inj. But when, as is threatened hei-e, the Nile sea and the
Nile river of Upper Egypt fall together and dry up (VBb,
Niphal, either from nriB', V nB>, to set, to place = wi?^, to set
oneself, to become shallow ; or rather from Tm, since chap,
xli. 17 and Jer. li. 30 warrant us assuming such a secondary
verb), then the arms of the mouth of the Nile (O'lviJ), which
flow through the delta and the many canals (D'l'<^) wliich
convey to the NUe valley the blessing of the overflow,
become stinking pools (iri'jmn, a half nominal, a half verbal
Hiphil, unexampled elsewhere ; to spread a stench, formed
from the elative TOW or tow, which is not found, perhaps in
order to distinguish it from rvJTn, which means to abhor, to
make an abhorrence). Probably it is not without intention
that Isaiah says "^to, seeing that he distinguishes "li^ and
oSne in chap. xi. 11 as Lower and Upper Egypt, Egyptian
sa-hit, lower land, and sa-ris, upper land (together forming
Digitized by
Google
OHAPTEB SIX. 5-10. 361
DnV9). And we are warranted in taking D*ii«^. (standing
beside nhnp) as a name for the canals of the Nile. The
canals and irrigation system of Egypt are older than the
invasion of the Hyksos. On the other hand, i^K) in ver. 7
(thrice written jdene, as also in ver. 8) is the Egyptian name
of the Nile generally (aur, river, or avr-da, great river), which
is thrice repeated with emphasis like the name B!^^ in
ver. 1. On e|4D, a reed, Egyptian sebe, see comm. on Ps.
cvi. 9. Parallel with V}to, but different from it, stands niip
from <P^, nudum esse, which, like several derivatives of the
synonymous verb ^^, signifies open places, and here grass
Hats situated beside the water, and therefore meadows. Even
the meadows close to the mouth of the river (see on Prov.
viiL 29), i.e. where it flows to the neighbouring sea, and all
the fields become so dry that they go off in dust like ashes.
The three chief sources of the nourishment of Egypt thus fail
also, viz. the fishing, the manufacture of linen which supplied
the dresses of the priests and bandages for the mummies, and
the manufacture of cotton which provided all who were not
priests with material for clothing. In ver. 8 no objection
need be taken to the view which assumes an inversion for
"itra nan ''shvo; this obstruction is less striking where the
governing word has Chirek eompaginis in chap, xxil 16 ;
Gen. xlix. 11. rtpnb might be adj. to the feminine d*RB'b
from •vip'B, but it is according to the accents the accus. of
manner : by means of repeated careful combing (cf. P^^p, wool-
combers, Kelim xiL 2). The mode of working the flax is
shown us on the monuments; and in the Berlin Museum
there are some of these Egyptian combs with which they
carded the flax. The fabrics of the Egyptian looms were
celebrated in antiquity ; *T^n, literally, white stuff (a singular
only with the old termination ay), from "wn or w, eandidum
esse (cf. *iin, eandere), is the collective name for cotton stuffs or
the different kinds of byssus which were woven there (cf.
fivaalvwv odoviav of the Rosetta inscription).^ All the castes
from the highest to the lowest fall into the pain of despair.
' Luzzatto and Finaker (Einleitung im das babyl. Punktationuyttem,
p. 133) correct as follows : " And the flax-workers are pnt to shame
lathiuteh), the carden (but would not that be nlpb*?) and weavers
become pale."
Digitized by
Google
362 ISAIAH.
Tbe n^ne^ (a designation perhaps suggested by the thought of
'JiB^, the warp of the web, Syr. 'nfK, to weave), ue. pillars of
the land (with a feminine suffix relating to ^f*?, see on
chap. iii. 8, and constraed as masculine, as in P& xL 3). are
the highest castes who directly support the edifice of the
State ; and I3b ^Vjl cannot mean the citizens engaged in trade
or the middle class of the people, but those who, being hired
to those who provide labour, live not on their own property
but on wages ps^, as in Prov. xl 18, according to Kasbi on
this passage ; cf. comm. on Prov. xxvi. 10 = "OD : the danuuers
of water for the purpose of fishing, like psp, Kelitn xxiiL 6).'
The prophet now pauses to describe the punishment
inflicted on the pillars of the land. Vera 11-13: " Utter
fooh do the princes of Zoan become, the wise connsellors of
Pharaoli ; readiness in counsel is stupefied. How can ye toy
to Pharaoh : I am a son of wise men, a son of kings of the
early time t — Where are they, then, thy wise men t Let them
then announce to thee and know what Jduyoah of hosts hat
resolved concerning Egypt ! The princes of Zoan are stultified,
the princes of Memphis deceived ; they have led Egypt astray,
who are the comer -stone of its castes." The two constructs
"^^ ^pan do not stand in subordination but in co-ordination
(see comm. on Ps. IxxviiL 9 ; Job xx. 17, and compare
2 Kings xviL 13, Ken), the wise men, counsellors of Pharaoh,
80 that the second name is the explanatory permutative of
the first ipi is = Tanis, lying between the Sebennytic
and the Pelusian arm of the Nile, anciently (Num. xiii 22)
a capital of the Hyksos, emd restored after their destruction
by Eamses II. It was the parent seat of two dynasties.
eii per aphaer. = tlio, coitir. e|b in Hos. ix, 6, is Memphis,'
which was raised by Psammetichus to be the metropolis of tbe
whole kingdom. On its ruined site now stands the village of
So Rashi, understanding ■oe^ ^cy to be used of dyke laboarera,
nuderstands B'W 'DJN to be fish - ponds, which is untenable. On the
other hand, the view of Ehrentreu is probable, that the choice of the
word ^JK 'V7M occasioned by D%]K (water tanks formed by means of
confining dykes) ; see above at chap. i. 31.
* With Uiis Qreek form of the name the Assyrian name agrees :
MS-im-pi, Mi-im-pi (Paradiei, p. 314). The original Egyptian form is
Men-nefer (Plutarch, de 1$. 20 : 5fi*t( Ayttiu).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKB XIX. 14, IJk 363
MUrMru (according to Seetzen), and to the north-west of it is
the Serapeum. Princes of Zoan and Memphis were therefore
princes belonging to the most distiuguisbed cities of the
conntiy, and, as may be assumed, of primeval pedigree ; they
were probably priest-princes ; for the wisdom of the Egyptian
priests was of world-wide renown (Herodotus, il 77, 260),
and out of the priest caste sprang the oldest kings of Egypt
Even in the time of Hezekiab, when the military caste had
long become the ruling one, the priests again succeeded in
raising one of their own number, Setbos, to the throne of
Sais. These magnates of Egypt with their wisdom will be
made fools by the history of Egypt in the immediate future,
and — this is the meaning of the sarcastic TOiOn tj»k — they
will not trust themselves further to boast of their priestly
hereditary wisdom or their royal hereditary nobility when
counselling PharaoL ^J> does not mean here " east " as in
1 Kings V. 10, but primeval time. They are the comer-
stone of the B*t33e^, ix. of the castes of Egypt (not of the
districts or divisions, voiutl, Krops, as it is rendered in the
Targum). But instead of supporting and protecting their
people, as it now appears, they have plunged it into error.
^JJnn has here — as is observed by the Masora on ver. 14 — no
VMVJ cop.
This state of disorder is now more minutely described in
vers. 14, 15 : "Jdwtah hat poured into Egyp(s heart a spirit
of giddiness so that they have led Sgypt astray in all its doing
as a drunken man vnnders about in his vomit. And there is
not doM of Egypt a work which worked, of head and tail, palm
branch and ntsh." The spirit which Qoi pours into them is a
spirit of judgment, and has for its judicial penal result D^V)]^,
which is formed from ^^ny (V ijj, to curve), and is abridged
from D^^y, or points back to a singular f^Jf. The sufifix of
Pia-i^a refers to Egypt The divine punitive spirit makes use
of the fancied wisdom of the priestly caste, and by it throws
the people, as it were, into the giddiness of Intoxication.
The prophet uses the Hiphil n^npn of the carefully meditated
doings of the leaders of the people, and the Niphal n^ of
the state of the drunken man when he is no longer free nor
master of himself. The people is made so perverse by false
counsels and hopes that it lies there like a drunk man in his
Digitized by
Google
364 ISAIAH.
own vuiuit, and, not being able to extricate itself, it gropes and
rolls about therein. A work which worked or was effective,
t.e. which brought it out of the disorder (J^„ as frequently of
persons, e.g. in Dan. viiL 24), is brought to a successful result
by no one ; neither by the heads of the people, nor by the
common people and its flatterers ; neither by the upper classes
nor by the masses.
The result of all these plagues which come upon Egypt is
fear of Jehovah and of Jehovah's people. Vers. 16, 17:
" In tfiat day the Egyptians become like toomen, and they trenMe,
and they shudder iefore the twing of the hand of Jehovah of
hosts, which Hie sets into swing against them. And tlie land of
Judah becomes a dread to Egypt: as often as they mention
this against Egypt, it slitcdders, — on account of the decree of
Jehovah of Itosls which He suspends over it." The swinging,
nEfljn, of the hand (chap. xxx. 32) points back to the fore-
going judgments as they smite li^pt with blow after blow.
These humiliations make the Egyptians as soft and timid as
women. The accent on Tim is separative {Mehuppach
Legamuih). Further, the sacred ground and soil of Judah
(TO1?J, as in chap. xiv. 1, 2, xxxii. 13), which Egypt has so
often made the scene of war, throws them, whenever it is but
mentioned (IB^ iib, cf. 1 Sam. ii 13 ; Gen. iv. 15 : literally
whoever, but = as often as any one), into frenzy, into an
excitement of terror (Mn, with K instead of n, like KTJ in
Num. xL 20, Krn^ in Ezek. xxxvil 31 ; cf. «s»3, Ezek.
xxxvL 5, and similar in form with morrah in Prov. xiv. lOX
The originator of the plagues is known to them. Their faith
in the idols is shaken, and the wish naturally rises in them
to avert new plagues by propitiation of Jehovah.
At first there is only slavish fear, but it is the beginning
of a turn for the better. Ver. 18 : "In tluxt day there teiil
be five cities in the land Egypt speaking the language of Canaan
and swearing by Jdumah of hosts, ' Ir ha-Heres wUl one be
called.' " Five cities are few for Egypt,* which is sowed over
with cities (townships) ; but this is only a fractional begin-
ning of the future complete conversion of Egypt. It is an
' Herodotus (iL 177) gives the number of tbem as 20,000 in the time of
Amasis ; Diodorus (i. 31) gives their number as 18,000 in ancient times,
and under Ptolemy Lagi, 30,000.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XIX. 18. 365
external sign of this conversion that the converted begin to
speak the language of Canaan, i.e. the holy language of the
worship of Jehovah (cf. Zeph. iii. 9), and that they devote
themselves with a sworn vow to the God of Israel in words
of this language. ? VSf^ (dififerent from a Papj, chap. Ixv. 16,
as chap. xlv. 23 shows) means to swear to any one, to pro-
mise him fealty, to give oneself up to him. One of these
five win be called cnnn T». As this must be a proper name,
nntt^ thus means not unicuique, as in Judg. viiL 18, Ezek.
L 6, but uni. It is the habit of Isaiah to express the
nature of a thing in the form of a future name of it (chap,
iv. 3, xxxii. 5, Ixi 6, IxiL 4). This name must therefore
liere have a distinguishing meaning in accordance with the
promise. But what does D"inri vy mean ? The LXX. has
changed it into iroXts ocreBeK, pW Ty, in honour of the
Jewish temple, which was founded by Onias IV., the son of
the high priest Onias III., when he emigrated to Egypt, and
found a friendly reception from Ptolemy VL Philometor and
his wife Cleopatra (about 160 B.C.). The o^n, handed down
in the Masoretic text, can mean nothing else than destruction,
and it naturally occurs to read for it D"jnn Ty (which is
also given in some codices,* but is contrary to the Masora).
It is unnecessary to interpret this according to the Arabic as
meaning city of protection (Rosenmiiller, Ewald, Knobel,
Meier) = i^^y^i^S, divinitut prolecta. Di_nn t]» means city of
the sun (D^n, as in Job ix. 7 ; Judg. xiv. 18), as the Talmud
in the leading passage concerning the ran n'3 (the Onias
temple) in Menachoth 110a considers that the traditional
reading is to be understood in accordance with Job ix. 7 {VQ&h
K'n KBtow, " it is a designation of the sun ").' " Sun-city "
was actually the name of one of the most famous old Egyp-
tian cities, namely, 'H\ioviroXi,<t, situated to the north-east of
Memphis, the city of the sun-god Ba, which elsewhere in the
* On the other hand, no Greek Cod. reads xixi( tixip's, into which the
CompL has emended it after the Vulgate, see the Vocabularium Hrbr. 37a
belonging to the Compl. A Hebrew MS. in St Petersburg has the reading
T"?? *'*!' transcribed in inverted order from the Greek, see DMZ. xx. 459.
• In this sense of " sun-city will one be called," these words are the
device on the coat of arms of the Andalusian city Ecija ; see von Vincenti,
In Glut vnd Ext, Bd. ii. 166.
Digitized by
Google
366 tBkUtt.
Old Testament is called jftt,* a name which Ezekiel (chap.
xxz. 17) modifies into QW, in order to brand the idolatry of
the citj. If the well -attested reading vmn is retained, it
can only be taken as meaning " tearing down of the previous
heathen sanctuaries" (cnn, as in Judg. vi. 25; 1 Kings
xviii. 30, xix. 10, 14), and tlie meaning of the prophecy will
be that the city, which was hitherto onnn Ty, the chief city of
the sun-worship, will, become the city of the deatniction of
idolatry (Caspari, Drechsler, Herzfeld), as Jeremiah prophesies,
chap, xliii. 13: "Jehovah will break in pieces the obelisks
of the sun-temple in the land of Egypt" Dinn fv, with this
interpretation, has essentially the same relation to Dinn "vv
as pK n*3 to ^ rP3, and, so far as this is interpreted according
to Hos. X. 8, cf. xiL 12, means: the sun-city becomes a city
of ruins. The prophet is here thinking of the temples and
altars, and also in particular of the i^^^Jip, obelisks (see Jer.
xliii. 13), which stood there on the spot where Ea was
worshipped.
Vers. 19, 20: "In that day there stands an altar con-
secrated to Jehovah in the midst of the land of Egypt, and an
obelisk near the boundary of the land eonsecraied to Jeliovah.
And a sign and a witness for Jeliovah of hosts is this in the
land Egypt : when they cry to Jehovah because of oppressors. He
wiU send them a helper and comiatant, and save them." This
is the passage of Isaiah (not ver. 18) to which Onias lY.
appealed when he sought permission from Ptolemy Philometor
to build the temple of Jehovah in Egypt. He built it in
the nome of Heliopolis, 180 stadia to the north-east of
Memphis (Jos. BeU. viL 10. 3), and particularly on the ground
and soil of the oxvpctfia in Leontopolis which was consecrated
to Bubastis (AtU. xiii. 3. 1, 2).' This temple, built like a
1 'Hxtai/xoX/; corresponds to tlie sacred name Pe-ra, house of tbe sim-
god, which is borne by the city otherwise called fi^ old Egyptian Anu ;
nevertheless Cyril also explains this name thns : 'iln li ini n,ar aiirtit i
$X/«f, that is Ain, Otit, Oni, the eye as emblem of the sun. Perhaps with
reference to this Heliopolis is called in Arabic ' Ain-ei-kmt, see Arnold,
CKretlom. arab. p 66 f. Edrlsi (iii. 3) calls this Ain-ei-lemi, " the plea-
sure seat of the Pharaoh, whom may Ood curse," just as ibn el-Faravn
is an insulting designation of the Coptic fellah.
* Perhaps the present Tel el-Jehftdi points to the site of the old
Jewish temple (Ebeis, Durch Goten zum Sinai, p. 497).
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTiB XIX. 19, sa 867
fortress, was externally nnlike that of Jerusalem ; it stood for
more thaa two hundred years (160 B.C.-72 A.D., when it
was closed by command of Vespasian). It was magnificently
eqnipped and much frequented, yet its recognition was a
subject of dispute in Palestine and even in Egypt itself. It
really lay DHV? T^ ^I^ ; bnt it is not feasible to see in that
temple the fulfilment of the Isaianic prophecy ; for this reason
of itself, that it was built by Jews and for Jews. And where
then would the obelisk have been which, as Isaiah prophesies,
was to stand on the boundary of Egypt, i.e. on the side
of the desert and of Canaan ? The altnr was not to be
in fact a place of sacrifice, but, like the altars in Josh,
xxii 26, 27 and Ex. xviL 15, was to be rriK, a monument
that there were worshippers of Jehovah in Egypt, and the
obelisk was to be a i? that Jehovah had proved Himself for
the salvation of Egypt to be the God of the gods t>f Egypt.
And if those who erected this place of worship and this
monument now cry to Jehovah, He will show Himself ready
to help them, and they will no more cry in vain as they
formerly did to their idols (ver. Z). What is here spoken of
is therefore the beginning of the conversion of the natives
of Egypt The fact that since the Greek period Judaism
became a power in Egypt is certainly not out of relation
to this. The Therapeutae, scattered through all the vofioi
of Egypt as described by Philo (0pp. il p. 474, ed. Mangey),
were of a mixed Egypto-Jewish nature. It was a victory of
the Jehovah religion that Egypt was already covered in the
pre-Christian period with Jewish synagogues and coenobia.
Further, Alexandria did become the place where the law of
Jehovah was rendered into Greek and became accessible to
the heathen world, and where the religion of Jehovah created
for itself the forms of speech and thought in which as Chris-
tianity it was to become the religion of the world. So, when
Christianity had entered into the world, there were already
towards the end of the first century more than one nasD to
be found by any one coming from Palestine to Egypt, and
more than one roTD to be found by any one when he had
arrived in the middle of Egypt Alexandria and the
monachism and anchoritism of the Sinaitic peninsula and of
Digitized by
Google
368 ISAUH.
Egypt 1)ecatne of the greatest importance in tbe history of
the spread of Christianity.'
When I^ypt became the prey of Islam in the year 640,
there had been, at least in magnificent prelude, a fulfilment
of what the prophet prophesies in vers. 21, 22: "And
Jelurvah gives Hirnadf to be known to the Egyptians, and the
Egyptians know Jehovah in thai day; and they seit've with
shin-offerings and meat-offerings, and vow vows to Jehovah, UTid
pay them. And Jehovah smites Egypt, smiting and healing ;
and when they return to Jehovah Se lets Hinuelf be entreated,
and h^als them." From that beginning of the five cities, and
the solitary altar, and the one solitary obelisk, it has come to
this, that Jehovah extends knowledge of Himself to the whole
of I^Tpt (inl), reflexive, se eognoseendum dare, or neuter,
innoteseere), and throughout all Egypt there arises the know-
ledge of "the God made known in the history of salvation,
and this knowledge shows itself in practic& This practice is
described by the prophet, as was naturally to be expected,
according to the views of the Old Testament, as consisting in
the presentation of bloody and bloodless, legal and freewill
ofiferiugs. ^^3Jr|, viz. 'rrriK, and therefore ^?? with the double
accusative, as in Ex. x. 26 ; cf. Grea xxx. 29 : or perhaps
directly in the sense of to sacrifice (Hitzig), as iu the
Phoenician, cf. nb'^ (e.g, in Ps. IxvL 15), and the classical
epSeiv, pe^eiv, faeere, operari; and even when thus taken it
is no evidence against the authorship of Isaiah (cf. chap,
xxviii. 21, xxxil 17). Egypt, though converted, is still
always a sinful people, but Jehovah smites them, trtB'ii «ii3 (cf.
1 Kings XX. 37), so that in the smiting the intention of
healing prevails, and healing follows it, since the chastisement
of Gtod has the effect of leading them to repentanea i^pt
therefore stands now under the same order of salvation as
Israel (e.g. Lev. xxvi 44 ; Deut. xxxii. 36).
As8]rria is not less humiliated, as we know from chap, xviil
Accordingly the two great powers, which hitherto only met as
enemies, now meet in the worship of Jehovah, which unites
them. Ver. 23 : "In thai day a road will lead from Egypt to
Assur, and Assur eonus unto Egypt, and Egypt to Assur ; and
* See my Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Arabia Pctrea in the LuA. Zeit-
ichrift, 1840, 4, and 1841, 1.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XIX. S4, SS. 369
Egypt vnHh Atmr atrves {the Lord)'' HM is not a sign of
the accusative, for there can be no more mention of a sub-
jection of Egypt under Assyria; but it is a preposition of
fellowship, and vis^ is not intended to mean that the two
great powers which are now contending for the government of
the world will then have become subservient (Hof mann) ; but
it is to be understood, as in ver. 21, where the accusative of
manner puts the object out of doubt In this passage as
well as in that one it has the sense of worship. The friendly
intercourse between Egypt and Assyria is brought about by
both peoples being converted to the God of revelation. The
road of communication between them passes through Canaan.
Thus is prepared the highest that the prophet prophesies
in vers. 24, 25 : " In that day will Israel be a third to Egypt
and Assur, a blessing in the midst of the earth, inasmuch as
Jehovah of hosts blesses it, saying: Blessed thou, my people,
Egypt, and thou icork of my hands, Assur, and thou, mine
inheritance, Israel." Israel joins the covenant or federation
of Egypt and Assyria, so that it becomes a tripartite con-
federation, in which Israel is ^'jvvf, tertia pan (like np'?^ in
chap. vL 13, decima pars). Israel, the seed of the patriarch,
is now at the goal of its calling : a blessing K^kh yvp^, in the
whole circuit of the earth, the peoples of which are here
represented by Egypt and Assyria. Hitherto Israel lay to its
own misfortune between Assyria and I^pt. The history of
the kingdom of Ephraim, as well as that of Judab, proves
thi& When Israel leaned on Egypt, it deceived itself and
was deceived; and when it leaned on Assyria, it became
Assjrria's slave, and had Egypt as its enemy. Thus Israel
found itself confined in painful straits between the two great
powers of the world. How this will now be altered I Egypt
and Assyria become one in Jehovah, and Israel is the third
party in the alliance or covenant Israel then is no longer
alone God's people, God's creation, God's inheritance, but
Egjrpt and Assyria are each a third sharer with Israel. In
order to express this, Israel's three names of honour are
mixed together, and each of three peoples receives one of the
precious names, of which wH] is assigned to Israel as point-
ing back to the banning of its history. This essential
equalization of the heathen peoples with Israel is no degrada-
VOL. L 2 a
Digitized by
Google
S70 ISAIAH.
tion to the latter ; for although henceforth there exists no
essential distinction of the peoples in their relation to God, it
is nevertheless always Israel's God who attains recognition,
and Israel is the people which, according to the promise, has
become the medium of blessing to the eartL Hence it is
unnecessary to take the sufiSx of bia distributively ; it applies
to Israel, which is blessed by Jehovah since in blessing Egypt
and Assyria He takes them along with it There is thus
fulfilled what was promised from of old, that in the seed of
Abraham all the kindreds of the earth should bless themselves
(Jer. iv. 2), and therefore be blessed ; that seed has now
really become a naia to all the world.
Thus has the second half of the prophecy ascended step by
step from salvation to salvation, just as the first descended
step by step from judgment to judgment The culminating
point in ver. 25 corresponds to the lowest point in ver. 15.
Every step of the ascending half is marked with a KVin Di>a.
Six times within vers. 16-25 do we read this finger-post
pointing to the future. Generally speaking, this tnnn DV3 is
almost as characteristic of Isaiah as Q*K3 0*p^ 'isn is of
Jeremiah (cf. e.g. Isa. viL 18-25). And it is just the
promising Messianic parts of the prophecy which love this
fugue -like arrangement (chap. xi. 10, 11, xii. 1 ; cf. Zech.
xii, xiii., xiv.). Nevertheless the genuineness of vers. 16-25
has lately been called in question, especially by Hitzig. But
Caspari in a special dissertation (Luth. Zeitschrift, 1841, 3)
has convincingly refuted the reasons put forward for question-
ing the genuineness of this passage. Cheyne and Driver
both leave this whole prophecy to Isaiah as really belonging
to him. The two halves of the prophecy are like the two
wings of a bird. Moreover, it is only in virtue of its second
half that the prophecy becomes the significant middle of the
Ethiopic-Egyptian trilogy, for chap, xviii. prophesies the saving
effect of the catastrophe of Assyria upon Ethiopia. And that
Egypt and Assyria will also be spiritually overcome is
prophesied in chap. xix. with its eschatological dose, in which
Egypt and Assyria are the representatives of the two halves
of the heathen world.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XX. 1, & 371
The SrMBOL of the Fall of Egypt and Etiiiopia, and its
Interpretation, Chap. XX.
This third part of the trilogy, beginning in historical prose,
introduces itself thus. Vers. 1,2a: " In the year when Tartan
came to Ashdod, Sargon, the king of Assur, having sent him, and
he made war against Ashdod, and took it : at that time spake
Jehovah through Isaiah, son of Amos, as follows," i.e. He gave
forth the following revelation through the medium of Isaiah
p!3, as in chap, xxxvii. 24 ; Jer. xxxvii. 2, and frequently), a
revelation which was attached to a symbolical acting of it.
T3 refers to what is to be announced by the prophet through
the medium of what was enjoined upon him, and therefore to
ver. 3, and only indirectly to ver. 2b. Dn?5 does not begin the
apodosis to roe's ; it would then necessarily have been Dn)>? ;
but the infinitive construction is thus carried on (cf. Ps. xxxiv.
1, lii. 2, liv. 2,lix. 1), so that v^nn nja therefore takes up again
and universalizes the nxf2. Tartan appears in 2 Kings xviii 1 7
as the chief general of Sennacherib ; the name (in Assyrian
tur-ta-nu) is not a proper name, but the official title of the
commander-in-chief of the army. An Assyrian king, l^siD, —
or, according to the Masoretic correct writing, i^JiD, — is not
named eLi^where in the Old Testament; but we know now
that Sargon was the successor of Shalmanassar.^ The Book
of Kings, indeed, names Shalmanassar as the conqueror of
Samaria; but the form of expression used in 2 Kings xviiL 10
(Ts??'^). which generally makes the Assyrians the conquerors,
leaves open the possibility that what Shalmanassar begun was
brought to an end under the command of another. The
Eponym-lists which we now possess put it out of doubt that
Shalmanassar IV. reigned as the successor of Tiglath-pileser II.
from 727 to 723-2 B.C., and that Sargon, the successor of
Shalmanassar IV., reigned from 722 to 705 B.c. It was
' On the transition here taking place from the Assyrian D into the
Hebrew gJ, and the Assyrian B* into the Hebrew d, see Complutemitche
Varianten zum alUest. Ttxte (1878X p. 34, cf. 22 (on Hos. x. 14). The name
in the inscriptions is *Sar-«-W«, sometimes also Sa-nt-kina (with d). The
interpretation wavers between " the king he commanded " (uikInX i.e. God,
or " king by right" (Wnu). The prefixing of the object in 'Sanikin is not
surprising in Assyrian syntax (Friedr. Delitzsch, p. 142X but the subject
is missed ; and therefore the latter interpretation is to be preferred.
Digitized by
Google
872 ISAUH.
Longperrler wlio first established the identity of the monarch
of the palaces of Ktiorsdhdd, which form the north-east comer
of ancient Nineveh with the Biblical Sargon. These ruins seem
to have been called, down to a late time, ^^f-j-o, and the old
Assyrian name of the city was DUr-SarrvMn (Sargon's Castle).
We still possess a considerable number of inscriptions on
bricks, harems, votive tablets, and in other forms, which bear
the name of this king, and contain all kinds of testimonies by
him to himself.* Sargon became the founder of a new
dynasty,' and appears, after the death of Shalmanassar, to
have incorporated the military exploits of the dead monarch
in his own list of fame, as if he already had been at that
time king. After the fall of Samaria in 722, according to
his own annals in the inscriptions, ten years were spent in all
sorts of wars with Merodoch Baladan of Babylon, Jahubi'di of
Hamath, etc., before he again, in the eleventh year of his reign
(711), took up the plan of subduing Egypt. The attack upon
Ashdod was only a means to this end. As the Philistines
were led by their situation, and probably also by their kin-
ship, to take the side of Egypt, the conquest of Ashdod (a
fortress so strong that, according to Herodotus, ii. 157, Psam-
metichus besieged it for twenty-nine years) was an indispensable
preliminary of the expedition against ^ypt. Alexander the
Great, when he marched against Egypt, had to do the same
with Gaza. How long Tartan needed is apparently to be
inferred from ver. 1. The conquest of Ashdod, according to
the terms of ver. 1, took place in the year of the attack. The
humiliation of Egypt must have followed not long thereafter,
which, at least, is so far in accord with ascertained fact, that,
as the annals of Sargon relate, soon after the fall of Ashdod,
and in the same year, the king of Ethiopia tendered his sub-
mission. But in vers. 3, 4 this submission is dated three years
later, reckoning from the time when Isaiah had to go stripped
and barefooted. Hence the direction given by Jehovah to
Isaiah must have gone forth three years earlier, and the
vague trnn njQ points back to that time. Or otherwise, it
> Enumerated bjrSchrader in hlBJT/l 7*, pp. 394-396. [Die KeOiiuekrifUn
wtd dot alte Tettammt, 2nd ed. Oiessen 1883.]
' First recognized by Oppert, Le$ Intariptioa* Astyrienna det Sargonidei
It la F<ute$ d* Ninive, VerBailles 1862.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XX. i-i. 873
belongs to lotn, if the punctuation is pot thus: In that time
after Jehovah had spoken ... He said. The latter view is the
more probable, since T? ''i '^. does not introduce a prophecy,
but a direction, and therefore what begins with t¥>nn np3 points
to ver. 3.
The direction received ran thus. Yer. 2b : " Go and loosen
the frock from thy loins, and, draw thy dioes from thy feet I
And he did so, went stripped and barefooted." We see from
this that Isaiah was dressed in the same way as Elijah in
2 Kings L 8 (of. Zech. xiii. 4 ; Heb. xi 37), who wore a fur
coat ; and like John the Baptist, who had on a garment of
camel's hair, with a leather girdle around it (Matt. iiL 4) ; for
Pir is a coarse linen or haiiy overcoat of a dark colour (Rev.
vi 12; cf. Isa. 1. 3), such as mourners wore either on the
bare body C'fc'an^?, 1 Kings xxL 27 ; 2 Kings vi. 30 ; Job
xvi. 15) or over the tunic, in both cases fastened by means
of a girdle ; and hence not B*??, but ""Jn, is the usual word em-
ployed to indicate the putting of it on. That the former was
the case here is not to be inferred from t)1">f (see, on the contrary,
2 Sam. vl 20, cf. 14 ; John xxL 7). Owiug to the great
importance which is attributed to clothing from the stand-
point of Oriental culture and manners, any one who appears
without the upper garment is already regarded as naked and
bare. Isaiah has to lay off the garment of the preacher of
repentance and of the mourner, so that only his tunic, runs,
remains ; and in this dress, and moreover barefooted, he has
to appear in publia It is the costume of a man who had been
robbed and disgraced, of a beggar, it may be, or a prisoner of
war. ]3 is followed by the inf. abs., which develops the
meaning as in chap. v. 5, Iviii. 6, 7.
The meaning and duration of this unclothing of himself is
not learned by Isaiah until after he has acted according to the
divine direction. Vers. 3, 4 : " Then said Jehovah, Even as my
servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefooted, three years low/
a sign and type concerning Egypt and concerning Ethiopia : so
toill the king of Assur lead away the prisoners of Egypt and
the exiles of Ethiopia, children and old men, nxiked and bait-
footed, and with bared seat — a shame of Egypt." This address
of Jehovah, the word of Jehovah '\rv<}i^ Ta, prepared for by
ver. 2, took place after the lapse of three years (Cheyne), when
Digitized by
Google
374 ISAIAH.
the fate of Ashdod was decided. The unseemly strange dress
of the prophet, if he appeared through the whole three years
in the exercise of his office, was a token and type (p^^,
as in Ezek. xxiv. 24) of the fall of the Egjpto-Ethiopian
kingdom, which occurred after the lapse of these three years.
Egypt and Ethiopia were then one kingdom, so that the
shame of Egypt is at the same time the shame of Ethiopia.
nj'ij/ is shameful bareness, and DHVP "57? ^ ^ apposition to
all that precedes it in ver. 4. How prisoners are deprived of
clothing and shoes is shown, for example, in 2 Chron. xxviii
15. TVff is the seat or buttocks (see Bernstein in DMZ. ix.
872), as in 2 Sam. x. 4, being derived from nw, to set a
nominal form, like ja, TK, T}j ^W, with the third radical letter
dropped. *P^ has the same ay as the words in chap,
xix. 9, Judg. V. 15, Jer. xxii. 14, but they are hardly to
be taken as construct forms (although '— of the construct
undoubtedly has arisen from 't); they are rather singular
forms with a collective signification. The emendations ^Bitfn
(Olshausen, Nagelsbach) or 'P'^n, with the i of connection
(Meier), are unnecessary.
If, then, Egypt and Ethiopia are so shamefully humbled,
what sort of impression will that make upon those who proudly
and securely trust to the great power which is supposed
to be unapproachable and invincible ? Vers. 5, 6 : " And
they are terrified, and see themselves deceived hy Ethiopia, to
which they looked, and by Egypt, of which they vaunted. And
the inhabitant of this coastland says on that day, Behold, thus
it happens to those to whom roe looked, whither we fled for help
to save us from the king of Assur, and how should vx, we
escape?" With nnKDn, show, splendour, cap is parallel, which
is a synonym of noap, according to which the Taigum renders
it. On 7? ^^ compare chap. L 29, Jer. il 36. The question
with Tt$ is quite the same as in 2 Kings x. 4. Ht, which
means both island and coastland, is in Zeph. ii. 5 a name of
Fhilistia, and in chap, xxiii. 2, 6 a name of Phoenicia ; and
hence Enobel and others understand it here as meaning the
former with inclusion of the latter. But as the Assyrians,
when they marched against Egypt, liad already measured
themselves with the Phoenicians and Philistines, Isaiah has
doubtless the Jews chiefly in his mind (Ewald, Drechsler,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE XXL 1-10. 375
Meier, Luzzatto), as Jerome already remarks : Jvda speravit
in Aegyptiia et Aegyptus destruatur. The expressions are also
entirely the same as those in which we shall afterwards hear
Isaiah scathing the Egyptianizing policy of Judah. However,
njri ^Kn ae'* signifies the inhabitants of the Palestinian coast-
land in general, among whom Judah is included, because it
denies so untheocratically the character of the Jehovah-people.
The profane designation divests the people and land of their
holiness.
The conquest of Samaria falls in the first year of Saigon
(722 B.C.). In the second year, according to his Annals, he
put the Egyptian ruler (SiUannu) Sabi (Sevech) to flight at
Haphia, and took his ally HanUn, the king of Graza, prisoner.
In his eleventh year he deposed the rebellious king Azuri of
Ashdod; and when the people of Ashdod expelled Ahimit,
the brother of Azuri, whom he had put in his place, and
raised a certain Jaman to the throne, he marches against
Ashdod and conquers it in the self-same year. Jaman fled
to Egypt, to the confines of Ethiopia, but was delivered up to
Sargon by the ruler of that region. The voluntary antici-
pative submission of the Ethiopian ruler was a commencement
of what Isaiah prophesies, but the subjection of the Nile-land
did not come till the time of Asarhaddon and Asurbanipal,
his son, the conqueror of Thebes (Nah. iii. 8—10). The
hope of Judah in Egypt turned out for Judah's destruction,
as Isaiah prophesies. But the catastrophe before Jerusalem
was not yet the end of Assyria. Nor did the campaigns of
Sargon and Sennacherib yet bring about the end of Egypt,
nor were the triumphs of Jehovah and of the prophecy con-
cerning Assyria yet the means for the conversion of Egypt
In all this the fulfilment shows in the prophecy an element
of human hope drawing the distant into immediate nearness,
and this element it eliminates. For the fulfilment is divine,
but the prophecy is divine and human.
The Oracle concxbning thb Desert of the Sea (Babtlon),
Chap. XXI. 1-10.
Ewald's explanation of this and similar headings is that
they are additions made by the ancient readers. Even
Digitized by
Google
376 ISAIAH.
Yitringa ascribed tbem at first to the collectors, thongb later
he saw that this was inadmissible. As matter of fact, it is
not possible to understand bow the title 0^3*10 could be
derived from the prophecy itself, for 0^ (everywhere the west)
cannot mean the south (-^.^), and there is no mention of a
sea in the prophecy. The heading is symbolical The four
Massas, xxL 1—10, 11-12, 13—17, xxii., in virtue of their
symbolical titles (cf. xxx. 6), as also their visionary form
and the numerous points at which their contents come into
contact, unite closely to form a tetralogy. The representation
of the prophet as a watchman is common to the first and second
Massas, while in the fourth Jerusalem is called the valley of
vision, because in it is the watch-tower whence the prophet
views the future destinies of Babylon, Edom, and Arabia.
As in the first two Elam and Madai march against Babylon,
so in the fourth (xxii. 6) do Eir and Elam {^inst Jerusalem ;
even the mode of expression is strikingly similar in both (cf.
xxii 6 sq. with xxi. 7). As r^rds the symbolical headings,
it is to be noted that Isaiah is fond of symbolical names,
xxix. 1, XXX. 7, and D'"^3'TO for Babylon and its surroundings
is one such. Chap. xxi. 1—10, especially in the framework
of a tetralogy, impresses one strongly with the idea that it is
Isaianic. This impression is so strong that Gheyne, Driver,
G. A. Smith, following Kleinert's example (1877), hold
that this second ^33 KbV, as distinguished from the first,
xiiL-xiv. 23, is the work of the original Isaiah. This they
do by referring it, not to the conquest of Babylon by the
Medes and Persians under Cyrus in 538, but to the conquest
of Babylon, the seat of Merodach Baladan's government, by
the Assyrians under Sargon in 710 (not the first conquest in
721, but that in 710, the twelfth year of Sargon's reign, who
from that time calls himself king of Babylon). Though once
beaten by Sargon, Merodach Baladan had again established him-
self in Babylon, and, having sought helpers since his defeat, he
tried not only to be the independent ruler of North and South
Babylon, but also to contest with the Assyrians the position
of ruler of the world. If the messengers of Merodach Baladan
to Hezekiah (Isa. xxxix.) are some of the commissioners
whom for the space of twelve years Merodach Baladan was
constantly dispatching, the pain expressed in this prophecy
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE XXL 1-lOt 877
becomes all the more intelligible. The prophet is announcing
the fall of that Babylon with the hope of having which for a
bulwark against Assyria his people are deceiving themselves
— the city of the secret confederate falls a prey to Assyria,
and now Judah has to expect its vengeance. Nevertheless, I
am of opinion that this historical setting of the oracle does
not suffice for the purpose of retaining the Isaianic author-
ship. The Babylon whose fall he prophesies is the very
same torment of the peoples as is mentioned in chap, xiv.,
the threshing-floor is the exile, and it may be asked how can
Elamite and Median contingents be expected in the army of
Assyria that marched against Merodach Baladan, seeing that
Elam was the hereditary enemy of Assyria, and both by
nature and in fact, the nearest ally of Merodach Baladan ? '
Moreover, while in this way, on the one hand, an original
composition of Isaiah is reclaimed by these three English critics
from being assigned as hitherto to a later date, on the other
hand the prophecy, xxxix. 6 sq., which foresees in Babylon
the future mistress of the world, becomes to them unintel-
ligible, and on this account open to suspicion.' Bather than
pay 80 dearly for maintaining Isaiah's authorship in the case
of xxi. 1-10, we hold that this piece is Deutero-Isaianic, but
emphasize at the same time that the criticism of the Book of
Isaiah, far from having attained finality, is still in constant flux.
We return to the heading. The continent on which
Babylon stands is a '^^'jO, a great plain running south-west-
wards into Arabia deserta, and it is so broken up by the
Euphrates as well as by marshes and lakes that it floats as
it were in the sea. The low land on the Lower Euphrates was
in a manner wrested from the sea, for before Semiramis con-
structed the dams the Euphrates used to overflow the whole
like a sea (TreKarfi^eiv, Herod. L 184). Abydenus even says
that at first the whole of it was water, and was also called
BoKcuraa (Euseb. Praep. ix. 41); and the monuments call
South Babylonia simply mdi tdmtim, the sea land, and its king
Sar (mdt) tdmtim, the king of the sea. The prophet's reason
1 Schroder, KAT*, pp. 846, 361, 363.
* [Professor Driver haa pointed oat that this is an oversight so far as he
is concerned ; see his Itaiah in the " Men of the Bible " series, pp. 96, 127.
— Tb.]
Digitized by
Google
378 ISAUH.
for using this roandabout name may be inferred from xiv.
23 ; the origin and natural features of Babylon are made
into ominous prognostics of its ultimate fate. Jeremiah
(li. 13, 1. 38) gives the correct interpretation.
The power which first brings destruction on the city of
the world, is a hostile army representing various peoples.
Vers. I, 2 : " lAkt storms, which sweep along in the south, it
coTnes from the desert, from a terrible land. A hard vision it
made known to me: The robber robs and the waster wasteth.
Go up, JSlam ! Surround, Madai I I put an end to all their
sighing." 33J3 JitoD (cf. xxviiL 21 ; Amos iiu 9) are storms
which rise in the south, and therefore, in the case of Babylon,
proceed out of the south or south-east, and which, like all
winds coming from open steppes, are exceedingly violent
(Job i. 19, xxxviL 9, see this; Hos. xiii. 15). Accordingly
it lies to hand to connect ifTpo with ^vnb (Knobel, Umbreit),
but the objection to this is the arrangement of the words.
'I^-'D?, " in the act of pressing forwards," instead of "P"! (see
Gesen. § 132, Bern. 1, and in fuller detail note onHab. i. 17)
— the conj. periphrastica, in order to express the violent rush
associated with the onward movement — has great weight at
the conclusion of the comparison. Of course the Medo-
Persian army, if it advanced by the same road as did Cyrus,
could not be said to come i?"]??. For, according to Herod.
L 189, he came over the Gyndes, and therefore descended
into the Babylonian lowlands by the road described bj
Isidor of Charax in his Itirurarium} i.e. over the Zagros pass
through the Zagros gate to the upper course of the Gyndes,
and along this stream which he crossed before its junction
with the Tigris, through Chalonitis and Apolloniatis. If the
Medo-Persian army, however, at least the Median part of it
proper, descended into the lowlands of Chuzistan by follow-
ing the course of the Choaspes {KerTcha) — the route passed
over by Major Eawlinson with a Guran regiment * — and so
advanced from the south-east against Babylon, it could be
regarded in several respects as coming nsTtSD, chiefly because
the lowlands of Chuzistan form a broad open plain, a *u*io.
^ See C. Maason's " Illagtration of the Ronte from Seleucia to Apobatana,
OS given by laid, of Charax," in Atiatie Jour. xii. 97 sqq.
* See Rawlinson's route in Hitter's Erdkunde, ix. 3 (West Asia), p. 397 tqq.
Digitized by
Google
OIIAFTER XXI. 8, 4. 879
The comparison with the storms of the south seems really
to presuppose that the hostile army advanced from Chuzistan,
or (since it is not to he supposed that geographical distinc-
tions are strictly observed) from the direction of the desert
of ed-Dahna, the portion of Arabia dessrta which bounds the
lowlands of Chaldaea on the south-west The Medo-Persian
land itself is called hk^)} )ntt, because it lies outside the circle
of civilised nations by which the land of Israel is surrounded.
After the opening statement of his theme in ver. 1, conform
to Isaianic custom, the prophet makes as it were a fresh start
with ver. 2. n^n has the same meaning here as in xxix. 1 1
(not, however, as in xxviil 18) ; neij ratn is the object of the
passive that follows (Gesen. § 143. lb). The prophet calls
the glance into the future vouchsafed him by divine inspira-
tion nrij, hard or heavy (in the sense of difficUis however, not
of gravis, ^?^), on account of the repellent, hardly endurable,
and so to speak hardly digestible impression which it makes
on him. The contents are wide-spreading spoliation and
devastation (the expression like xxxiii. 1, cf. xvi. 4,
xxiv. IC : fi^, tegere, then teete agere, of faithless, deceitful,
then thievish action), and summons of the peoples on the
east and north of Babylonia to the conquest of Babylon (*](«,
Milra, see on li. 9) ; for Jehovah brings to an end ('Piaf n, as
in xvi 10) all their sighing (nnroK with accented vit., and
therefore n raphatum pro mappicato, as frequently in the
Book of Isaiah, see on xlv. 6 ; cf. 1 Sam. xx. 20 ; Job
xxxi. 22 ; Hos. ii. 8), t.«. all the lamentation which the
oppressor has wrung out on every hand (an abridgment of
xiv. 3-6).
Here, as in the case of the prophecy concerning Moab, the
humanity of the prophet is affected by the contents of the
vision vouchsafed him ; it acts on him like a horrible dream.
Vers. 3, 4 : " There/ore are my loins full of cramp ; pangs
have taken hold of me, like the "pangs of a woman in travail : I
writhe so that I hear not, I am overcome vnth fear so that I see
not. Wildly beats my heart, horror has disturbed m<, the
darkness of night that I love he hath turned for me into
quaking." The prophet does not carry out into detail the
description of what he sees, but we may infer how horrible it
Digitized by
Google
380 ISAIAH.
is from the exceeding violence of the effect it produced, r^n?*?
is spasmodic writhing, as in Nah. ii. 1 1 ; on^ is properly
used of birth-pangs ; >^., to bow oneself, to bend, also used
of convulsive manifestation of pain ; n{in (otherwise than in
Pa xcv. 1 ; cf., however, Ps. xxxviiL 11) is used of insular
feverish beating of the pulse. ptoBto and ^vno are equivalent
to negative consequential sentences as everywhere else ; once
only, Eccles. L 8, does Sbeto occur in another than a n^ative
sense. The darkness of evening and night, which the prophet
so loves (PB'n, desire from inclination, 1 Kings ix. 1, 19) and,
as a rule, wishes for, in order that he may give himself over
to contemplation or to rest from outward and inward work,
is changed for him by the frightful vision into quaking.
According to Herod. L 191, and Xenophon, Oyrop. vii 23, it
was during a nocturnal feast that Babylon was stormed. As in
Dan. V. 30, cf. Jer. li. 39, 57, so in ver. 5 something of the
kind is pointed to. They spread the taUe, watch the waUk,
eat, drink — Arise, ye princes ! anoint the shield I This is not
a scene from the hostile camp, where they are bracing them-
selves for the attack on Babylon, for instruere mensam is
intended to convey the impression of a secure careless life of
pleasure, and the summons " anoint the shield " (cf. Jer. Ell)
presupposes that they are not expecting to have to fight
What the prophet sees therefore is a feast in Babylon. Only
one of the vividly pictorial infinitives (Gres. § 131. 46), vit
rCBin nbv, seems not to square with this. Hitzig's explana-
tion, " they spread carpets out " (as in Talmud KB7, *<™*,
mat, storea), has no support in the language of the Bible, and
on this account we prefer, along with the Targum, PesL
Jerome (LXX. does not translate the words at all), to under-
stand the air. Xcy. n^BV of sentinel - duty, — sentinel - duty
(from HBV DBV, speeulari) is attended ta Content with this
one precaution, they all the more wildly gave themselves up
to their debauch (cf. xxiL 13). The prophet mentions this
matter, because it is by the sentinels that the cry, " Up, ye
princes," etc, is addressed to the revellers. It was customary
to oil the leather of the shields in order that it might present
a shining surface and not suffer from damp, in particular,
however, that blows might glance off (cf. laeves dypeos in
Virgil, Aen. viL 626). The foolish self-confidence of the
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTBE XXI. e, 7. 381
chief men of Babylon shows that they needed this sammons ;
they think themselves so safe behind the walls and waters of
the city that they have not even got their weapons ready for
use.
The prophecy is now continued with ^P ; this is what is
doing in Babylon, for the destruction of Babylon is decreed.
This thought appears in the form of an instruction to the
prophet in a vision that he should station a navo on the
watch-tower to look out and see what more happens. Yer. 6 :
" For thus said the Lord to me : Oo, place a watchman ; what
he sees, let him declare" The introduction runs as in xviii. 4,
^, as in XX. 2. Elsewhere it is the prophet himself who
stands on the watch-tower (ver. 1 1 ; Hab. ii 1 sq.) ; in this
vision he is distinguished from the person whom he stations
on the watch-tower {specula). The first thing that presents
itself to the view of the occupant of the watch-tower is a long
long procession — the army of the foe in orderly, silent,
caravan-like, self-confident march. Yer. 7: "And he saw a
cavalcade, pairs of horsemen, a train of asses, a train of camels;
and he listened sharply, as sharply as he could listen." 33n, here
as in ver. 9 the leading idea, and placed accordingly, means, in
general, a cavalcade, just as in Arabic *.^j means a caravan
monnted on camels. In front, then, there was a cavalcade of
horsemen (D'Bha from cna = ijmJS, rider on horseback)
arranged two and two — for Persians and Modes fought either
on foot or on horseback (in the latter way from the time of
Cyrus at least, Cyrop. iv. S). Next came trains of asses and
camels, a large number of which accompanied the Persian
armies for various purposea They not only carried baggage
and provisions, but were also taken into battle in order to
throw the enemy into confusion. Thus Cyrus carried the
battle against the Lydians by means of the great number of
his camels (Herod. L 80), and Darius Hystaspis a battle
against the Scythians by means of the great number of his
asses (iv. 129). Some of the subjugated peoples rode on
asses and camels ; the Arabs in the army of Xerxes on
camels, the Caramanians on asses. What the watchman sees
is therefore the Persian army. Bat he only sees, and though
Digitized by
Google
382 ISAIAH.
he listens, and that " listening, greatness of listening " (pfft>,
as in 1 Kings xviii. 29; whereas in 2 Kings It. 31, ^
should be written with Abulwalld on MS. authority), ix. he
strains, straining to the very utmost stretch (3*}, substantive,
as in Ixiii. 7 ; Ps. cxlv. 7 ; and ^T?!?, in accordance with its
radical idea " to stiffen," se. the ear), still he hears nothing,
because the long train moves on in deathly silence ; at last the
long train too disappears, he sees nothing and hears nothing,
and impatience takes possession of him. Ver. 8 : " Then he
cried with the voice of a lion, ' Upon the watch-tower, AU-Lord,
I stand continually by day, and at my post I keep my stand all
the nights.' " His patience fails, and he roars as if he were a
lion (cf. Bev. x. 3) ; with a like angrily sullen voice, with
a like long deep full-drawn breath, he complains to God that
he has now stood so long at his post without seeing anything
except that inexplicable vanished train. But just as he was
about to have his say out, the complaint died away in his
mouth. Ver. 9 : " And iehold there came a cavalcade of men,
pairs of horsenun, and began and spoke: Fallen, fallen is
Babylon, and all the images of its gods he has dashed to the
ground." It is now clear to him where the long train went
to when it vanished. It has entered Babylon, has made
itself master of the city, and established itself there. Now
after a long time a smaller cavalcade appears to announce
the news of victory, and the watchman hears them trium-
phantly call, " Fallen, fallen is Babylon." The subject of "lar
(thus, out of pause for '^SC', Ex. ix. 2 5) is Jehovah ; even the
heathen conquerors are compelled to acknowledge that the fall
of Babylon and its B^PB (cf. Jer. \l 47, 52) is the work of
the God of Israel
The gloomy vision of the prophet is intended to comfort
Israel. Ver. 10 : " thou my threshing and child of my
threshing-fioor I what I have heard from Jehovah of hosts, the
God of Israel, that I have announced to you." Threshing, eM,
is a figure that expresses crushing subjugation, xlL 1 5, Micah
iv. 12 sq., and judicial punishment, Jer. li. 33 (a parallel,
which we must not allow to mislead us, seeing that Jeremiah
in this case as frequently has given another turn to the
Isaianic figure), or as in the passage before us disciplinary
scourges, in which wrath and good intention mingle. Israel,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB XXL 11, l^ 383
under the tyrannical supremacy of the world-empire, is called
'nenp (this, not 'Oe^'p, is the reading), i.e. the grain which he
threshes, but under limitations (xxviii. 28). It is also called
r^'if, inasmuch as it is considered fit for the threshing-floor
(cf. nian ja, one who deserves scourging, Deut xxv. 2), and is
transported thither in order after enduring punishment to
come out threshed and winnowed. Babylon is the instru-
ment employed by the divine wrath to thresh with. But
love takes part also in the work of threshing, and restrains
the action of wrath. A picture likely to give comfort to the
grain lying for threshing on the floor, ie. to the people of
Israel which, mowed down as it were and removed from its
native soil, had been banished to Babylon, and there sub-
jected to a tyrannical rule, — that is what the prophet in his
vision has perceived C??^. ^ i" xxviii 22),
The Oeacle concerning the Silence of Death (Edom),
Chap. XXI. 11. 12.
This oracle consists of a question addressed to the prophet
from Se'ir, and of the prophet's answer. Seir is the hill
country in the south of Palestine which was taken possession
of by Edom after the expulsion of the Horites. Thus fon of
the heading cannot be any of the places of this name elsewhere
with which we are acquainted. It is not the Judean non. Josh.
XV. 52 ; nor the Duma in the Damascene •Outa; nor one of the
Dumas {Dauma) in the district of the Euphrates and Tigris. It
is not even the Ddma of the Eastern Hauran, but, supposing
that the word is the name of a place, the Duma (Gen. xxv. 14)
in the lowest district of the Syrian Nufud country, the so-
called uJ^>- (Gdf). It was situated on the great Nabataean
line of traffic between the northern ports of the lied Sea and
'Ir&k, and was called more exactly D&mat el-gendel, or " the
rocky Dftma," because lying in a basin surrounded on every
side by rugged sandstone hills.* This Arabian Duma lies
eastwards from the mountains of Seiir (now 'Serdh), and was a
settlement {hadira) for a time at least loosely united with
* Duma itself is also called (_J«^f ; nu/tki are tracts of loose sandy
ground. See DMZ. x. 828 sq., 74i*
Digitized by
Google
384 ISAIAH.
Edom. That the name of this ripn ^ should appear in the
heading of the oracle, is due to the circumstance that tbis
very name lent itself to symbolical treatment npvi from
cm, to smooth, to still, is entire deep silence, and therefore the
land of the dead (Ps. xciv. 17, cxv. 17). The name on», by
the removal of the sound at the beginning to the end of tbe
word, is made the emblem of the fate of Edom. It becomes
a land of deathly silence, of deathly sleep, of deathly gloom,'
To this the inquiry from Seir corresponds. Ver. 11: " A try
comes to me from Seir: Watchman, how far i» it in the night t
Watchman, how far in the night f" Those making this
inquiry are not Israelites (Hitzig), the cry proceeds from Seir;
an oracle occupying a place between oracles concemiDg
Babylon and Arabia, in virtue of its very position refers to
the inhabitants of Seir. Luther translates ^ rightly " they
cry " (man rufl), for it is a participial present with a perfectly
general subject (as in xxx. 24, xxxiii 4). It is only for the
purpose of bringing out to some extent the change from
'"^P??^ to yvo that, as regards the rest, we have departed from
Luther's excellent translatioa The more winged form of the
second question expresses heightened anxious urgency ; they
would like to hear that already the night is well through, and
will soon be over, p is used partitively (Saad.) — ^What part
of the night is it now f Just as a sick person wishes for the
end of a sleepless night, and is constantly inquiring as to tbe
hour ; so the inquiry comes to the prophet from Edom whether
the night of trouble will not soon be past. It must not, how-
ever, be supposed that messengers from Edom really, as matter
of fact, came to Isaiah. The event possessed only a spiritual
reality. What now is the prophet's answer ? He lets the in-
quirers see, St' iffowrpov iv alv^/um, in ver. 12 : " Watchman
tays, Morning cometh and also night. If you will inquire, inquire !
Betum, come." The answer intentionally takes a kind of foreign
* The C!odex of Eabbi Meir had for non the reading nsn (*t3n\ Jerus.
Talm., Taanith i. 1 (by the people Edom was regarded as equivsJent to
Rome), cfl Jerome on our passage, Qitidam Htbraeorum fro Dv/ma Bamam
UgMvt,
* By Arabian poets a wildemus is mentioned, called tju^/^, ''be
silent 1"
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTEK XXI. 18-17. 385
form, though Nagelsbach goes too far when he says, " the prophet
mocks them with Edomitic sounds." khk (with K at the end,
like \3\ = atawa, according to another reading nns, as in Deut
xxxiii. 2, Arab. ^\ = ataya) is the Aramaic word for trta,
while ny? (K^) is the Aramaic word for 7KB', and from *?3,
^Jo, the fundamental form of the latter, are formed here the
imperfect tib'dyHn (as in xxxiii. 7) and the imperative Vayu.
The analogous imperative from nriN (»nK) is vriK ; here, how-
ever, it is pointed in Syrian fashion, as in Ivi. 9, 12, vnt«.
What is the meaning of the verse? Ewald {Gram. § 354a)
gives D?i here the meaning of " and yet " (o/ioj? Se). Morning
comes, and yet it remains night, inasmuch as the dawning
morning will be at once swallowed up again by night.
There is a difference between the cases of Edom and Israel,
for the night of Israel's history has for irrevocably fixed close
a promised dawn. The prophet therefore sends the inquirers
home. If they wish to make further inquiries, they may do
so, they may return and come. There is a significant hint in
OB'. The prophet has a comforting answer for them only if
they return, come, Le. only if they come converted. So long
as there is no change on them, their future is enveloped in
endless night for the prophet as much as for themselves.
The Oracle in the Evening, Chap. XXI. 13-17.
The heading, when pointed 3'^J'a Nfe*?, means (according to
Zech. ix. 1, cf. Isa. ix. 7) oracle against Arabia. But why
have we not ^"^V. K^, seeing that in the three other headings
the simple genitive follows ttfev ? Is this the only heading of
the four that is not symbolical ? The object of the a, by which
it is distinguished, is almost certainly to make it symbolical.
The prophet undoubtedly pronounced it 3^^3 (Cheyne), and
the LXX. Targum, Syr. Jerome, and Arab, thus read the
second 3i)n, though there was no necessity for their doing so.
Even without this change on S'^p the oracle begins with an
evening scene, and on this ground the Massa received its
symbolical title. Just as D^N becomes npn, because a night
without a morning falls on the mountain land of Seir, so 3i)Q
will it soon be ^nvs, seeing that the sun of Arabia is sinking,
VOL. L 2 b
Digitized by
Google
386 ISAIAH.
the darkness of evening is settling over it, and the land of
the Orient is becoming a land of the Occident. Vers. 1 3—1 5 :
" In the wilderness in Arabia ye mttat pass the night, caravans
of the Dedanites. To the thirsty bring vxUer ! The inhabitants
of the land of Tema come with his bread before the ftigitive.
For before swords they are fleeing, before a dravm sword, and
before a bent bow, and before oppressive war." There is the
less call for making any alteration on 3^^ ny^a, that the
second 3 (wilderness in Arabia = of Arabia) corresponds to
Isaianic usage (xxviii 21, ix. 2, cf. 2 Sam. 121; Amos
iii 9). 3^?^ ^-^. Ezek. xxviL 21 (in pause, ^TR, Jer.
XXV. 24), is the collective for D'?"^ (xiii. 20), j^jaj;*.
inhabitants of the 'Arabs deserticola,^ and yfl is here the
solitary barren wilderness as distinguished from the land
covered with cities and villages. Wetzstein * remarks, that
to say they will have to flee from the steppe into the wood
would be a promise rather than a threat — a shady tree is the
most delightful dream of the Beduin; in the wood he finds
not only shade, but a constant supply of green pasture, and
fuel for his hospitable hearth, — and so he explains it : " Ye
will take refuge in the w'ar of Arabia," i.6. the open steppe
will no longer afford you protection, and so yon will be forced
to hide yourselves in the war. x.j is the name applied to
the trachytic district of the Syro-Hauranitic volcanoes which
is covered with a layer of stones. Undoubtedly in tsf, as
used here, the idea of a wilderness is more prominent than
that of wood. The meaning then is : the trading caravans
(rtmk, wandering troops, like li^l")?, bannered troops, Cant
vi 4) of the Dedanites journeying from east to west, probably
to Tyre (Ezek. xxvii. 20), whom the war in its progress from
north to south has driven from the ordinary route followed
by such traders, must encamp in the wilderness. The prophet,
/ / /
' It was only at a later time that hj&, 'Apafiim, was used as the name
of the deserts of the Arabian peninsula regarded as a whole. Se«
Wetzstein, Zeiticknfi fur VSlkerptychologie und SprachwUiauchaft, vol. vii
pp. 463-465.
* ZeittchriftfUr allgemeine Erdhmde, 1869, p. 123.
Digitized by
Google
CDAPTEB XXI. 18-16. 387
whose sympathy in this instance mingles itself also with the
revelation, asks water for the panting fugitives, vnn (accord-
ing to the Eastern reading, vri'n), as in Jer. xii. 9, is the
imperat =vnKri=vnKn (Ges. § 76. 2c); cf. 2 Kings il 3, and
cjU> give. ^P., which is more suited to the p&rallelism, is
read by Targum, Ewald, Biestel ; but 'twp increases the vivid-
ness of the picture. " His bread," itsn?, refers to Tib ; it is the
bread which was needful for him, the fugitive, in order to
save him. The request is addressed to the Temanites. It is
open to discussion whether tw'9 (''W^) means the trans-
Hauranitic T^md, three-quarters of an hour from which there
is a DuTiia} or the Timd, situated on the pilgrim-road from
Damascus to Mecca between TeMk and Wddi-el-kord, almost
equally distant (four days) from both these places and from
Chaibar* and lying forty hours in a southerly direction from
the Duma of the Syrian desert The latter is the more
probable. Just as uncertain is it whether by the caravans of
the Dedanites are meant those of the so-called Cushites (Gren.
X. 7), who, according to Wetzstein, lived in North-Eastern
Africa, and provided for the transport of caravans between
Egypt and Ethiopia on the one hand, and Syria and the
Tigris - Euphrates districts on the other ; or those of the
Keturean Dedanites, whose name, according to Wetzstein, is
preserved in that of the ruined city ^^^JjjJ^ (Yakut, ii, p. 636),
which he places at the eastern base of the mountains of
Hisml While it seems as if Ezek. xxvil 15, 20, xxxviiL 13
must be understood of the Cushite Dedanites, there can be no
doubt that Ezek. xxv. 13, Jer. xxv. 23, xlix. 8 have in view
the Keturean Dedanites, to the borders of whose district the
land of Edom stretched. Our prophet also seems to refer to
these. While on their way to the Euphrates regions, especially
Babylon, they were driven by the bursting of the war-cloud
southwards into the parched sandy desert as far as T^md, to
which the prophet appeals on behalf of these thirsty and
hungry ones for kindly and hospitable treatment Drechsler
» See Wetzstein, Seitebericht, p. 202.
* See Sprenger, Post vnd Beiieroutcn de* Orientt, part L (1864) p. 118 sq.
Digitized by
Google
388 ISAIAH.
well remarks, How mortifying to be forced to show hospitality,
that on which the Arab most prides himself, in so restricted
a manner, and with such indecent secrecy ! But no other
course is open ; for, as the four times repeated ^pBO shows,
without pause the arms of the foe press forward (nB'»t33, \xaed
of the sword, and in SanJiedrin 95b of the sickle, like nmna,
in the sense, drawn for the pui-pose of cutting at, EzeL xxL 33),
and, without pause, the war, like an overwhelming Colossus,
rolls on its onward way.
Thus is realized and pictured by the prophet the impend-
ing fate of Arabia, which is revealed to him in vers. 16, 17;
" For thus hath the All-Lord spoken unto me : Within a year as
the years of a hireling, it is over with all the glory of Kedar.
And the remnant of the number of bows of the heroes of tlie
Kedarenes will be small, for Jehovah the Ood of Israel has spoken."
Here the noun I'JS (Assyr. Kidru) is a general name for the
Arabian tribes. In its narrower sense, Kedar, like the neigh-
bouring Nebaioth, is a tribe of Ishmaelite nomads, whose
camping-ground extended to the Elanite Gulf. In a yeai-'s
time, calculated as exactly as is the custom between employers
and employed, Kedar's freedom, military strength, numbers,
and wealth (these together being its Tias) shall have vanished.
Only a small remnant is left of the brave archer sons of
Kedar. They are numbered here, not by heads, but by bows,
so specifying the fighting men — a mode of numbering
common, for example, among the Indians of America. The
noun ISC' is followed here by five genitives (just as *7B is by
four, X. 12; see Ges. § 114. 1), and the predicate 1B{?D' is in the
plural because of the fulness of content of the subject. The
time specified for the ful61ment of the prophecy apparently ties
us down to the Assyrian period — though Wetzstein connects
the oracles concerning Edom and Arabia with that concerning
Babylon, the fall of which threatens Edom and the tribes of the
desert with bloody subjection to the new Medo-Persian world
monarchy. We have no exact information as to the fulfil-
ment. In Herodotus (il 141, cf. Joseph. ArU. x. 1. 4)
Sennacherib is called l3curiXev<s ^Apa^Uov re Kal ^Aaavpimv,
and both Sargon and Sennacherib, in the annals of their
reigns, boast of the subjugation of Arab tribes. Jeremiah,
however, prophesies in the Chaldean period similar things
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKB XXn. 1-14. 389
against Edom and against Kedar (cbap. xlix., where xlix.
30 sq. is in reciprocal relation to the oracle in Isaiah). After
a short glimmer of morning, night has fallen for the second
time on Edom, evening for the second time on Arabia.
The Oracle concebnino the Valley of Vision (Jebusalem),
Chap. XXIL 1-14
The mtn concerning Babylon, and the no less visionary
prophecies concerning Edom and Arabia, are followed by a
Massa, the object of which is the l^^^n IC| itself. Of course
these four prophecies did not originally form a group of
four as they now stand side by side. Only at a later date
were they collected into such a group, and to this, notwith-
standing that the cycle of prophecy in chaps. xiL— xziiL
referred to the nations of the world, was attached this
prophecy against Jerusalem, resembling them as it did in
having a symbolical heading, and in being of the nature of a
vision. The internal arrangement of this group was not
determined by the chronological sequence of composition, but
by the idea of a storm advancing from the distance, and at
last breaking over Jerusalem. The time of Sargon (Cheyne,
Nowack) docs not correspond to this, for although it is the
case that Sargon calls himself once in the Nimrod inscription
(Lay. xxxiiL 8) mtiiaknii mdi Ya-u-dv, (he who has subjugated
the land of Juda), still the annals of his reign are silent on the
matter.* This being so, the occasion of the Isaianic oracle must
be sought in the time of Sennacherib, at some point or other in
the campaign which he entered on against Fhenicia, Philistia,
and Juda, 701. The mention of Jerusalem under the name
pnn vn may cause wonder, for aini) {nrep Svo 7uo4>tov dvri-
irpoaairo^ etcrivro, iiia^ ^dpayyi hi^prnuvav, eU ffv iiroKKtikoi
KareXtjyov al oUla* (Joseph. Wars, v. 4. 1). But it is quite
in place, in so far as round Jerusalem there are mountains
(Ps. cxxv. 2), and the very city, which in relation to the
country occupied an elevated position, in relation to the
mountains of the immediate neighbourhood appeared to stand
on a low level (irpo<i 8k rh ^ofteva Tavnyi ytjoXo^a ')(BaiM-
'Kxfy.TM, as Phocas says). Because of this twofold aspect
^ See Winckler, KtiltchnJIUxte Sargont (1889), p. zvi aq.
Digitized by
Google
390 ISAIAH.
Jerusalem is called (Jer. xxi. 13) the "inhabitant of the
valley," and immediately on the back of this the " rock of the
plain " and (Jer. xvii 3) the " mountain in the fields," whereas
(Zeph. ill) not all Jerusalem, but a part of it (probably the
ravine of the Tyropaeum), is called BTiao, the mortar, or as we
say, basin. If we add to this that Isaiah's house was
situated iu the lower city, and that therefore the point of
view from which the epithet was applied was there, the
expression is perfectly appropriate. Furthermore, the epithet
is intended to be more than geographicaL A valley, K)l, is a
lonely, quiet depression, shut in and cut off by mountains.
Similarly is Jerusalem the sheltered peaceful place closed against
the world, which Jehovah has chosen in order to show there
to His prophets the secrets of His government of the world
On this holy city of the prophets, Jehovah's judgment is
coming, and the announcement of the judgment upon it has
place among the oracles concerning the nations of the world !
From this we see that at the time when the prophecy was
uttered, the attitude of Jerusalem was so worldly and
heathenish as to call for this threat, so dark and unrelieved
by any gleam of promise. Neither the prophecies dating from
Ahaz's reign, however, and referring to the Assyrian age of
judgment, nor those uttered in the midst of the Assyrian
troubles, are at the same time so entirely without promise and
so peremptory as this one. This Massa falls then in the
interval, probably in the time when the people under the
influence of freedom had grown light-headed, and, trusting to
an alliance with Egypt, wei« cherishing the hope of being
able to bid defiance to Assyria. The threat harmonizes with
xxviii 1—22. The prophet gives expression to the confidence
of the time, and also its worthlessness, in vera 1—3 : " What
aileth thee then, thai tlwu art wholly ascended to the house-tops f
full of uproar, thou noisy city, joyously shoviing fortress, thy
slain are not slain with the sword nor killed in battle. All thy
chief men, making their escape together, are made prisoners with-
out haw ; all those of thee who are seized are made prisoners
together, while they are fleeing far away." From the flat house-
tops they are looking out, the whole of them at once (H^ for
^3, xiv. 29, 31 ; Ges. § 91. 1, Bemark 2), eager for the fight
and sure of victory, at the approaching army of the enemy.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTES XXU. 4, 6. 891
They are so confident, cheerful, and defiant because they have
no suspicion of what is threatening them. nS/O rS^^n is an
inversion for niSOTi mho, like rnso rh&K in viit' 22. 'nfpJJ is
used of self - confident rejoicing, as in Zeph. iL 1 5. How
terribly they deceive themselves ! Not even the honour of
falling on the field of battle would be theirs. Their chief
men {rf^, judge, and then generally person of distinction), one
and all, would depart from the city and be made prisoners
outside If^o, without the bow needing to be bent against
them (iO, as in Job xxL 9 ; 2 Sam. L 22 ; Ewald, § 2176).
All, without exception, who are met with (T|^KTOJ, as in xiil 15)
in Jerusalem by the invading foe, would, while trying to
escape (per/, de eonatu, corresponding to the classical presens
de eonatu) to a distance (see note on v. 26), be made
unresisting prisoners. The conative clause cannot be trans-
lated who had fled from a distance, i.e. to Jerusalem, in order
to find refuge there, for this thought is not evident enough to
remain unexpressed. The city would be besieged (indirectly
stated), and in consequence of the long siege hunger and
pestilence would destroy the inhabitants, and every one who
tried to reach the open would become the prize of the enemy,
and, because exhausted by hunger, without venturing on resist-
ance. The prophet on realizing the fate of the infatuated
Jerusalem and Judah is seized with inconsolable anguish.
Vers. 4, 5 : " There/ore I say. Look away from me that I
may weep bitterly ; press not on me with comfort for the
destrxiction of the daughter of my people ! For a day of uproar,
and of treading down and of confusion, eometh from the All-
Lord Jehovah of hosts, in the valley of vision, dashing walls into
ruins, and a cry of woe is echoed from against the mountains."
Isaiah here adopts the Ktna style, the same that we meet
with later in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. This prophet
uses 135^ for ^y (Lam. iii 48), and 'B?TT3 is there inter-
changed with 1^'V''? and nTirrria. '333 Tip is more than
"ID naa (xxxiii. 7) ; it means to give up oneself with full
consent of the mind to bitter weeping, to take one's fill of
weeping. The day of the divine judgment is called (ver. 5)
a day in which bodies of men surge, raging through each
other (ne^no), in which Jerusalem and its inhabitants are
trodden down ("P'^o) by enemies and thrown into wDd con-
Digitized by
Google
392 I8AIA.H.
fusion C^r^^o). This is one of two plays upon Bounds in the
passage. The other strikes on our ears like the crash of the
walls overthrown by the siege - engines. ">? "•iT,?? is to he
explained as nieanin<T he tears down walls according to Num.
xxiv. 17, and like the phrases occurring in the Palestinian
Talmud and Midrash, Drrns nn^ DninpD, they tore down the
walls of their houses, and u ip-ip, to demolish a thing (see
Levy, Neuheb. Wdrtarhueh, iv. 391). When that happens
which is stated in ver. 5, then ''v'v'^ ^^> there sounds at
the mountain a cry of woe (^^B* like S'B', V\^ ; cf. «^^, help,
cry for help), i.e. it strikes on the mountains surrounding
Jerusalem, and returns as an echo. Against the translation,
Kir undermineth and Shoa is at the mount (Cheyne, following
Fried. Delitzsch, Parodies, p. 235 sq.), is the arrangement of
the words in li? i?^i?o, and the lack of clearness in nnn-^ jnea
The description does not move forward step by step as
would an historical narrative. Ver. 5 at once depicts the
day of Jehovah in the light of its final cause and efiect, and
only in vers. 6 and 7 is described the advance of the be-
siegers, leading at last to the destruction of the walls. " And
Mam has taken the quiver together with chariots with men,
horsemen, and Kir has uncovered the shield. And then it comes
to pass that thy choice valleys are filled with chariots, and the
horsemen firmly establish themselves in the direction of the gate."
Of the nations in the Assyrian army there is mentioned
'Elam, the Semitic nation of Susiana (Chuzist&n), whose ori-
ginal habitation is the series of valleys between the moun-
tain chain of Zagros and the chain of outlying mountains
that bound the plains of Assyria on the East They were
greatly feared as archers (Ezek. xxxii 24; Jer. xlix. 35).
Though this people appears here as a contingent of the Assy-
rian army, there is no instance of this in the inscriptions
(Parodies, p. 237); but it is to be remembered that the
testimonies of the inscriptions and of the Bible are mutually
illustrative. I'i? also is fully proved by the Bible to have been
a land under Assyrian rule (2 Kings xvL 9 ; Amos i. 5, ix. 7),
and yet down to the present it has not been possible to illus-
trate this from the inscriptions ; for the tract of land through
which the river Cyrus flows can surely not be meant, since
Digitized by
Google
CHATTER ZXn. 8-11. 393
tbe river Kvlt, wliich joins the Araxes and debouches into the
Caspian, is written with k, not k. The readiness for battle,
characteristic of the people of Kur, is expressed by 139 nn]», —
what Caesar (Bell. Gall, iL 21) calls scutis tegimenta detrdhere,
for the Talmudic meaning applicare (Buxtorf, Lex. eol. 1664)
is not to be thought of. These nations, whose custom it was
to fight on foot, are accompanied (3, as in 1 Kings x. 2) by
Dntc 331, chariots filled with men, i.e. war-chariots (as dis-
tinguished from ^yp), and, as is added a<rwScT<B?, by d1^,b,
horsemen (i.e. riders trained to arms). The historical tense
is introduced by 'np (ver. 7), but in a future sense. It is
only for the sake of the arrangement of the words here pre-
ferred thflt the sentence does not proceed w^ (i.e. vav
consec.). T.??? are the valleys by which Jerusalem is en-
circled on the east, west, and south : the valley of Kidron on
the east, the valley of Gihon on the west, the valley of
Kephaim, stretching along on the right of the road to Beth-
lehem (xviii. 5), on the south-west, the valley of Hinnom
meeting the Tyropaeum in a south-eastern comer, perhaps
also the valley of Jehoshaphat, running on the upper side of
the valley of Kidron in the north-east of the city. These
valleys, especially the southern and finest ones, are now cut
up by the wheels and hoofs of the enemies' chariots and
horses, and already have the enemies' horsemen taken up
position, t.«. firmly established themselves (n'B' with T\v, to
strengthen it, as in Ps. iii. 7 ; D'fc', 1 Kings xx. 12 ; cf. 1 Sam.
XV. 2) in the direction of the gate, in order that on the signal
being given they may gallop at the gates and press in at
them.
When Judah now, after having so long given itself up to
the intoxication of hope, becomes aware that it is in extreme
danger, it adopts wise measures, but without God. Vers.
8—11 : " Then does he draw atoay the covering of Judah, and
thou lookest on that day to the ttore of arms of the forest -house,
and the breaches of the city of David ye see, that there are viany
of them, and ye collect the waters of the lower pool. And the
houses of Jerusalem ye count, and pull doum the houses in order
to fortify the waU. And a basin ye make between the tioo walls
for the waters of the old pool ; and ye do not look to Him who
done it, and Him who formed it from afar ye do not regard."
Digitized by
Google
394 ISAUH.
^DO is the curtain or covering which made Judah blind to the
threatening danger. Their eyes now turn first of all to the
forest-house on Zion (it may have stood in the middle of the
outer court of the royal palace) which had been built by
Solomon for the storage and display of valuable weapons and
implements (P^., or, according to the Masora on Job xx. 24 and
old editions, P^), and bore this name because it rested on
four rows of cedar pillars that ran all round. They notice
also in the city of David, the southern and highest part of
the city of Jerusalem, how ruinous is the wall, and begin to
think of repairing it With this end in view they examine
the houses of the city, in order to obtain building material for
the strengthening of the walls and the repair of their breaches
by pulling down buildings likely to be useful in this way and
capable of being dispensed with (cf. Jer. xxxiiL 4). The com-
pensative duplication in VOvn from YDl is dispensed with in
spite of the inconvenient combination of sounds, ^, in order
that the two t may not coalesce into one (cf., on the other
band, Vthrt, Deut vii. 5, and also wwi, Ezek. xxiL 22, where
the duplication remains on account of the aspirated a). The
"old pool" has hitherto been held to be the same as the
upper Gihon (2 Chron. xxxiL 30) = the upper pool (vii. 3)
= Birhet-el-Mamilla, in the west of the city, the tank of the
ni>»n, or conduit (mentioned vii 3), through whose artificial
channel the water of the tank was carried into the interior of
the city to the so-called pool of Hezekiah or the Patriarehsw
This conclusion, however, is based on the identification of the
upper pool (Isa. vii. 3) with the Gihon. This identification
is at present rightly universally given up ; for, according to
1 Kings L 33, cf. 45 (" from the royal castle on Zion down to
Gihon"), 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14, eta, the Gihon coincides rather
with the present Spring of the Virgin on the eastern slope of
the temple-hill. Thus, if we found on 2 Chron. xxxiL 30
(explanatory of 2 Kings xx. 20), a passage also claiming
attention in connection with 9& and 11a of Isaiah's pro-
phecy, Hezekiah's peculiar work consisted in stopping (ono)
the discharge (>WfiD) of the waters of the upper Gihon, i«.
in diverting the Gihon spring, so that it no longer ap-
peared above ground, but sent its waters towards the west
side of the southernmost part of the temple-hill, which lay
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEB XXn. 8-lL 395
inside the city wall, throagh a covered subterranean rocky
channel, i.e. through the Siloah channel, which at present
opens into the Siloah basin, lying thirty metres below the
level of the Spring of the Virgin. This excludes the possi-
bility of the intention expressed in ver. 11 having anything
to do with the pool of the Patriarchs {Birhet-el-Batrak), the
Amygdalon of Josephus, for during the rainy season it is
served by a small conduit descending from the upper pool
along the surface of the ground under the wall at or near to
the Jaffa Gate. On the contrary, the " basin for the waters of
the old pool " must be sought in the neighbourhood of the mouth
of the Siloah channel, where also, in reality, lies the place
' between the two walls," i.e. between the independent ram-
parts of the city of David and the old city, which extended
along both sides of the Tyropaeum.* The " old pool," which
supplied the water for the new basin in the valley of the
Tyropaeum, was therefore one of the several old water-basins
of the Tyropaeum Valley,' and Hezekiah's new channel con-
ducted the waters of this "old pool" into the new basin
" between the two walls." But what is meant here by the
" lower pool " ? Formerly it was thought to be the Birket-es-
Sultdn, situated below the upper pool. Since, however, the
Gihon lies on the east side of the city, and the bringing into
use {Anapannurtg, literally " yoking," Heb. j»3p) of the lower
pool is certainly connected with the waterworks at the end of
the Siloah channel, the lower pool also must be sought in the
lower part of the Tyropaeum valley. It therefore gets this
name in order to distinguish it from another upper pool than
that mentioned in vii. 3. It is perhaps the same as Tobler's
" lower pool of Siloah," which lay dose to the city wall, and
is now called Birket-d-Hamrd. In no other passage than
this one do we meet with the " lower pool " under this name.
The collection also of the waters of this lower pool is one of
' C£ the digest of the most recent views as to the locality "between the
two walls," in Bertheau-Ryssel's Convmmiary on Ezra, Nekmiah, and Either,
pp. 195, 206, 216.
* There is a basin at the month of an old (now blocked-np) channel,
which led down from the Spring of the Virgin, i,t. the Qihon, on the
eastern border of Ophel, and is older than the channel constructed by
Hezekiah. Perhaps this channel is the pre-Hezekian Siloah (iz. 6), and
this basin the " old pool ; " cf. EysscI, ioe. at. p. 213 eqq.
Digitized by
Google
396 ISAIAH.
the prudent measures which will be resorted to in Jemsalem
in view of the impending siege. This will happen, however,
too late, and in self-reliant alienation from God, with no
regard to Him who, in accordance with a plan adopted long
ago before its realization, both executes and gives form to the
fate which by these measures they are seeking to ward off
As in chap. liv. 6, n^ might be plural, but the parallel
aix^ favours the singular ; cf. as to the form (from "^ — nbV)
xliL 5, and the note on v. 12, L 30. Here, as in xxxvii 26
(cf. Eccles. iil 1 1), we have the same doctrine of ideas as is
an underlying prevailing note of the second part of Isaiah.
Whatever is realized in time exists long before as a spiritual
image, i.e. as an idea in God. God discloses it to His prophets,
and prophecy in foretelling the future thereby proves that the
fulfilment has been the work as also the long predetermined
counsel of God. Thus in the passage before us the punish-
ment that befalls Jerusalem is said to have been fashioned
beforehand in God. Jerusalem might avert its realization
by repentance, for it is not a decretum absolvium. As soon as
Jerusalem repented, the realization would proceed no farther.
The realization, therefore, so far as it has gone, is a call by
Jehovah to repentance. Vers. 12—14 : " Tlie All-Lord Jehovah
of hosts calls in that day to weeping, and to mourning, and to
thepvlling out of hair, and to girding with sackcloth, and behold :
jog and gladness, daiightering of oxen and killing of sheep,
eating of flesh and drinking of wine, eating and drinking, for
' to-morrow we die.' And Jehovah of hosts hath revealed Him-
self in mine ears ; Surely this iniquity shall not be expiated to
you until ye die, saith the All-Lord Jehovah of hosts." The
first antecedent condition of repentance is the feeling of
pain caused by the punishments of Grod. In the case of
Jerusalem, however, they produce the opposite effect The
more threatening the future, the more callously and madly do
the people give themselves up to coarse sensual enjoyment of
the present. As harmonizing with Dfne^, nlne^, the feminine
form of the infin. abs., takes the place of ^T\v (for nhe', as in
vi. 9, XXX. 19, lix. 4). A similar case occurs in Hos. x. 4.'
' Similarly there stands in the Pesach-Haggada (in the prayer ip^fi^
0*3>n uruK) between ips^ and tkjh tlie incorrect infin. rhiA (to laisei
Digitized by
Google
CUAPTEE XXll. 12-U, 397
Elsewhere also, for the sake of sound-play, the author ventures
what is unusual (see iv. 6, viii 6, xvi. 9, xxxii. 7, xxxiiL 6 ;
ct Ezek. xliiL 11, and the Kert, 2 Sam. iil 25). Flesh and
wine stand side by side, as in Pro v. xxiii 20, The absolute
infinitives sketch the conduct of the revellers ; their own
statement of the reason for this conduct follows ^3. What is
expressed there is not a joyful welcome of death, but a love
of life that scoffs at death. Then the unalterable will of the
all-commanding God is announced to the prophet in a way
that he can clearly understand. Such disdainful defiance of
God's chastisements will not be otherwise expiated than by
the death of those bidding defiance. To be covered and so to
be expiated is the meaning of ^BS (from ncj, yS, tegere).
This is effected for sin, either by God's justice, as here, or by
God's mercy (vL 7), or by God's justice and mercy combined
(xxvii 9). In all three cases it is divine holiness that
demands the expiation. This holiness requires a cover or
covering between itself and the sin, in virtue of which the
sin becomes as though it were not In this particular case
the act of blotting out consists in punishing. That punish-
ment may also be called expiation is shown by Num. xxxv. 33 ;
uncovered blood (xxvi 21) is just unexpiated blood. So here,
the sin of Jerusalem will not be expiated until the sinners
meet death. The verb tvion stands without qualification, and
is therefore all the more dreadful (cf. airoBaveiaSe, John
viii 21). The Targum renders: tiU ye die the second
(eternal) death (wjan ktiId).
So far as this prophecy holds forth the threat of Jeru-
salem's destruction by Assyria, it was not fulfilled. Still the
prophet did not withdraw it. For, in the first place, it is a
monument of divine mercy which, on the manifestation of
repentance, departs from or lessens the threatened judgment.
The revolt against Assyria was accomplished, but, on the part
of Hezekiah and many who had taken to heart the announce-
ment of the prophet, as an affair which had been surrendered
into the hands of the Grod of Israel, and with regard to which
nothing was hoped for from their own strength or from the
help of the Egyptians. In the second place, it stands here
as the announcement of a judgment which, though deferred,
was not revoked. God's declared counsel remains, and the
Digitized by
Google
398 ISAIAH.
time will come by and by when it will be realized. It
remains hovering over Jerusalem like an eagle, and in the
end, sure enough, Jerusalem becomes its carrion.
Against Shebna, the Stewabd, Chaf. XXIL 15-25.
(Appendix to the Tetralogy, xxL-xxiL 14.)
Shebna (wae^; 2 Kings xviii 18, 26, n«B»>) bears the
official designation n.'30"^ "'5'??-' This is the name of a high
office of state in both kingdoms (1 Kings iv. 6, xviiL 3), ia
fact of the very highest, and it was so superior in rank to all
others (xxxvi. 3, xxxvii. 2) that even the heir to the throne
sometimes held it (2 Chron. xxvi 21). The office is that of
minister of the household, and resembled the Merovingian
office of major domus (maire du palais). The nj3rp5>p ^W<
had under his care the whole domestic efiairs of the king,
and was, on this account, also called pis? (from pp, Assyr.
pC, whence kiknu, governor*), the administrator, as being the
official next to him in rank. In this high office Shebna
showed that he united in extraordinary degree that haughty
self-security and forgetfulness of God in pursuit of enjoyment
for which the people of Jerusalem had just been threatened
with death (cf. chap. vii. in relation to chap, vi ; in the one
a judgment of hai-dening is proclaimed, in the other Ahaz
appears as a conspicuous example of it). He may also have
been a leader of the party of notables whose sympathies lay
on the side of Egypt, and so in connection with a policy
foreign to the spirit of a theocracy the opponent of Isaiah in
advising the king. Therefore the general content of xxii
> The brother of the celebrated Hillel was bo named (Sota 21a) ; in
the full form of the name TY'iTfff (also PhoenicianX which is intetchange-
able with TT'iOV {vioinut Dei), piif ie equivalent to p^ (constr. of psO,
cf. Aram. 22V, MB', vicimu. Nestle supposes that n'33B' from pv=
*!», donare, largiri, is a ^nonym of iTjnj, nnst. and such like
names.
* Cf. 2 Chron. xxsiv. 22, 7|i)Qn itWI. the popular rendering of the
Aramaic KS^U fituihiitol.
« Cf. Fried. Delitzsch, § 46, p. 108.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXn. 15-19. 399
1-14 takes the specific form of a prophecy against this
Sbebna. The time when this happened is the same as in
xxiL 1—14 Defiance is being bidden to what is threatening,
and the great dignitaiy not only drives about in magnificent
eqnipages,but is engaged superintending the erection of a family
tomb. Vers. 15-19 : " 2%ia spaJce the All-Lord, Jehovah of
hosts, Go, get thu urUo this adminvUrator, to Shebna the steward.
What hast thou here, and whom hast thou, here, thai thou hewesl
thee out here a grave, hewing out his sepulchre on high, digging
out in the rode a dwelling for himself f Behold, Jehovah
hurleth thee hurling with a man's throw, and graspeth thu
grasping. Clewing, he dews thee a dew, a hall into a land far
and wide ; there shalt thou die, and thither the chariots of thy
glory, thou shame of the house of thy lord ! And I thrust thee
from thy post, and from thy station he puMeth thee down." ?K
after xS»"ti^ (repair to, as in Gen. xlv. 1 7 ; Ezek. iil 4) is
changed into ?? (used commonly of attack by the stronger,
1 Sam. xii 12). The expression W jabn points contemp-
tuously to the subordinate though high position of the
court servant We already feel from this introduction of the
divine address that ambition is a leading feature of Shebna's
character. What Isaiah is to say to Shebna follows rather
abruptly, but the LXX. insertion koX ehrov ain^ at once
suggests itself. The question. What hast thou to do here,
and whom hast thou to bring here ? is put in view of the
fate awaiting Shebna. This building of a sepulchre is useless :
neither will Shebna ever lie there, nor will he be able to bury
those connected with him there. The triple nb is forcible in
the extreme : here where be is acting as if he were at home
it is not fated that be shall remain. The participles '^^n and
'jjph (with hireq eompaginis, see note on Ps. cxiii.) are still
part of the address ; the third person which comes in here is
syntactically correct, although the second person is used also
(xxiii. 2 sq. ; Hab. iL 15). There were rock -tombs, i.e.
tombs in the form of rock-hewn chambers, for the reception of
several bodies on the south of the valley of Hiunom, and on
the western slope of the Mount of Olives, and in the north-
west of the city beyond the upper pool The rt"io, however,
when we keep before us the triple na and the contemptuous
•""JD i?^i?, points to the city of David (1 Kings ii 10), or
Digitized by
Google
400 IS.UAH.
TTn32 nap rhw (2 Chron. xxxii. 33), i.e. the east slope of
Zion, in the rock of which from the top downwards the tombs
of the kings were hewn. So high a position does Sheboa
occupy, and so great does he think himself, that he hopes
after his death to be laid to rest among kings, and bj no
means far down.
How he deceives himself I Jehovah throws him far away
(^0, Jie, to be long, Pilp. to throw or stretch far '), 13| f^^-
Either this expression is equivalent to ia| npepo nboTO, with
a man's throw (Kosenmiiller), or ^M is in apposition to nvT
(Geseu. Knobel) : throw, a man, i.e. throw of a man, like
D^3"i3 D^D, water, measure of the knees, i.e. reaching to the
knees (of. note, xxx. 20). The vocative rendering, " O man"
(Syriac, Bottcher, Cheyne), is contrary to custom and styla
Jerome gives the strange rendering, " as they carry off a
cock " (•>a3=iJU3nri), which he had from the lips of his Hebraeus.
The verb ntDj; means in Jer. xliiL 12 to be covered (Iki), not
to roll up; in 1 Sam. xv. 19, xxv. 14, xiv. 32, to fly or
rush upon anything (with 3, ?K) ; here, like Ike, to grasp, to
lay hold of (Michaelis, liosenmuller, Knobel, and others).
And as t\y<t means to roll into a ball or clew, nwy, the dew
or roll, so "WRS means that which Shebna becomes by being
rolled up. For a is not to be taken as the particle of com-
parison, "IW3, as we see from the Talmud (cf. note on Job
C/
XV. 24), being used in the sense of globus, sphaera, while ^^J
(cf. J^4i) means only gyrm, periodvs. Shebna becomes a clew,
a ball, which is thrown into a land stretching far out on both
sides, where with nothing to stop it it flies farther ever farther.
Thither he goes to die, — the man who had degraded his own
oflice and the Davidic court as well by an undue exercise and
misuse of his power, — and with him his splendid equipages. In
order to prepare for the transition to the installation of another
into Shebna's office, the punishment of deprivation of his oflice
is put at the end of the first half of the prophecy, though it
cannot be otherwise conceived of than as preceding the punish-
1 In later usage this verbal root means generally " to move on," whence
in»a, movement, walk ; p^oboo, movables, personal property.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEE XXn. 20-24. 401
ment of banishment In 1 9h not the king (Luzzatto), but, as
in 19a, Jehovah (cf. x. 12) is the subject. First of all, be
gives him the push that makes him stagger in his place, then
he pulls him completely down from this lofty station of his.
The object of this, that he may make way for a worthier
man, is stated in vers. 20-24: " And it will come to pass in
that day that I call to my servant MiaMm, son of Hilkiah,
and clothe him with thy robe, and with thy sash I bijid him
round, and thy autlun-ity I give into his hand, and he will
become a father to tlie inJiabitanis of Jerusalem and to the house
of Judah. And I place the key of David upon his shoulder,
and when he opens no man shuts, and when he shuts no ma7i
opens. And I strilce him as a peg into a sure place, and he
becomes a seat of honour to his father's house. And tlie whole
body of (the members of) his father's house hangs on him, the
descendants and the offshots, all the small vessels, from the vessels
of the basins to all the vessels of the pitchers." Eliakim is called
'n ^ap, as being the servant of God in his heart and conduct,
to which official service is now first added. Usually this
title of honour includes both kinds of service (xx. 3). In-
vestiture is the means by which the transfer of office is
carried through (cf. 1 Kings xix. 19). Ptn, with the double
accusative of the official girdle and the person, means here to
tie firmly, to tie round (cf. p]^, ^^ cJj»'), to put the girdle
round him, so that the whole dress sits firmly without any
looseness. From inpe'po we see how almost kingly dignity
attaches to the office forfeited by Shebua. The word 3N like-
wise shows the same, for elsewhere it designates the king as
the father of the land (ix. &). Key means here the power of
the keys, and therefore it is not placed in the hand, but on
the shoulder (ix. 5) of Eliakim. It is used by the king
(Rev. iii. 7), by the steward only in his stead. The power of
the keys consists not merely in supervision of the royal
chambers, but also in the decision as to who was and who
was not to be received intO' the king's service. Similarly in
the New Testament the keys of the kingdom of heaven are
handed over to Peter. There, the mention of binding and
loosing introduces a metaphor related to the other in sense ;
here, in nriB and ^Jp, the metaphor of the key is retained.
The comparison of the settlement of Eliakim in his office with
VOL. I. 2 c
Digitized by
Google
402 ISAUH.
the driving in of a tent-peg was all the more readily avail-
able that in^ is in general the designation of a nation's rulers
(ZecL X. 4), who stand in the same relation to the community
as a tent-peg to the tent which it holds firmly and keeps up.
As the tent-peg is driven into the ground iu such a way that
a person can, if necessary, sit on it, so by development of the
metaphor the peg is changed into a seat of honour. As a
splendid chair adorns a room, so Eliakim graces his hitherto
undistinguished family. The closely connected thought, that
the members of his family in order to attain to honours
would sit on this chair, is expressed by a different figure.
Eliakim is once more presented to us as a inj, now, however,
as a high one, somewhat like a pole on which coats are hung
up, or as a peg driven into the wall at a distance from the
ground. On this pole or peg they bang (vR), i.e. one hangs,
or there hangs *ii33 ?b, i.e. the whole heavy lot (as in viiL 7)
of the family of Eliakim. The prophet proceeds to split up
this family into its male and female components, as the juxta-
position of masa and fem. nouns shows. The idea in O'liV???
and niyDV (from VBV, by straining and pressure to bring forth
and form, cf. JTPy. dung, with nsv, filth) is that of a wide-
spreading and undistinguished connection. The numerous
metaphorical collection of refuse is made up of nothing but
vessels of a small kind (tc^n v^, like "^i?? ?*", xxxvi. 2,
75b nyy, xxviii. 4, combinations in which the genitive expresses
the genus). None of them are larger than n^3W (Arab.
i^gdria, imjdna, wash-hand basin), basins like those used by
the priests for the blood of the sacrifices (Ex. xxiv. 6), or in
a house for mixing wine (Cant viL 3) ; most of them are only
DvaJ, leathern pitchers, earthenware bottles (xxx. 14). The
whole of this large but as yet plebeian set attaches itself to
Eliakim, and through him rises into distinction. At this
point the prophecy that hitherto has spoken of Eliakim most
respectfully suddenly assumes a tone in which there is an
element of satire We are impressed with the idea that the
prophet is now dealing with nepotism, and ask ourselves,
" What propriety is there in letting Shebna hear that ? "
Eliakim is the peg, that beginning so brilliantly comes to an
ignominious end. Ver. 25: "In that day, saith Jehovah of
hosts, mil the pry that is struck into a sure place give way, and
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEB xxin. 403
it is knocked doum and falls, and the burden that it carried
perishes : for Jehovah hath spoken." In this verse the prophet
does not revert to Shebna (Gesen. Ewald, Driver), he could
not more dearly express the identity of the object of his
threat with Eliakim (Cheyne, G. A. Smith). Eliakim also
comes to ruin in the exercise of the plenary power attaching
to his ofiBce by giving way to nepotism. His family makes
a wrong use of him, and with an unwarrantable amount of
good nature he makes a wrong nse of his official position for
their benefit. He therefore comes down headlong, and with
him all the heavy burden which the peg sustains, i.e. all his
relations, who, by being far too eager to make the most of
their good fortune, have brought him to ruin.
Hitzig says that vers. 24 sq. are a later addition. It may
be so, but it is also possible that the prophet wrote down
xxii. 15-25 at one sitting, after the fate of both dignitaries,
revealed to him at two different times, had found its fulfilment
We know nothing but that in the fourteenth year of Heze-
kiah's reign the nj3ri-?y ^B'■N was no longer Shebna, but
Eliakim (xxxvL 3, 22, xxxvii. 2). Shebna, however, also
fills another high office, that of iBio. Was he really made
prisoner by the Assyrians and carried away ? This is con-
ceivable even without an Assyrian captivity of the nation.
Or did he prevent the threatened judgment by penitence and
self-abasement ? To these and other questions we have no
answer.
The Oracle concerning Tyre, Chap. XXIII.
As the series of prophecies against the nations began with
Babylon, so it ends with the other leading type of the pride
and power of heathenism. So says Stier. Babylon is the city
of the empire of the world, Tyre the city of the trade of the
world ; the former is the centre of the greatest land power, the
latter of the greatest maritime power ; the former subjugates
the nations with an iron hand, and secures its rule by means of
deportation ; the latter carries off as peaceably as possible the
treasures of the nations, and secures its interest by colonieq
and factories. The Phoenician cities formed at first froni
six to eight independent States, the government of which was
Digitized by
Google
404 ISAIAH.
in the hands of kin^s. Of these Sidon was older than Tyre.
The ethnological table (Gen. x.) mentions Sidon only. Tyre's
celebrity dates first from the time of David. In the Assyrian
ei-a, however, Tyre had already attained to a kind of supremacy
over the rest of the Phoenician cities. It lay on the coast,
rather more than twenty miles from Sidon ; but being hard
pressed by enemies, it had transferred the real seat of its trade
and wealth to a rocky island,* three miles farther north, and
only 1200 paces from the mainland. The strait that sepa-
rated this insular Tyre {Tvpos:) from ancient Tyre (IlaXai-
Tvpcn) was, upon the whole, shallow, and the ship channel in
the neighbourhood of the island was only about eighteen feet
deep, so that a siege of insular Tyre by Alexander was carried
out by the erection of a mole. Luther refers the prophecy to
this attack by Alexander. But earlier than this event was
the struggle of Tyre with Assyria and Babylon, and first of
all the question arises. Which of these two struggles has the
prophecy in view ? In consequence of new disclosures, for
which we are indebted to Assyriology, the question has
entered a new phase. Do»wn to the present, however, it still
permits of only a hypothetical and unsatisfactory solution.
The point that continues to call for the exercise of ingenuity
lies in ver. 13. Let us therefore content ourselves until
such time as we come to try our skill on this verse with the
knowledge that it is the dominant world-power to which Tyre
succumbs.
The beginning of the prophecy places before us homeward-
bound Phoenician trading vessels, which are appalled by the
evil tidings of their country's fate. Ver. 1 : " Mourn, ye ships
of Tarsliish, for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no
entrance any more ! From tJu land of the Kittaeans it is made
knoum to them." Even while at sea they hear it as a rumour
from ships that meet them. For they have long and far to
sail ; they come from the Phoenician colony on the Spanish
Baetis, the Guadalquivir, as it has been called since the days
of Moorish rule, trcnn rrt«36« (cf. ii. Ifi) are ships that sail to
Tartessus (LXX. inaccurately irXola Kapxv^ovosi). These are
to howl OTb^n, instead of the fem. as in xx.xil 1 1), for the
hand of the devastator has been at work {sc. on Tyre, easily
^ See Socin in Baedeker's Paledina und S'jrien, 2nd ed. p. 324.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEn XXIII. 2, 8. 405
tinderstood), and now home and city, to entering wLich tlie
returning travellers were looking forward with joy, are swept
away. Cyprus ia the last station on this return journey.
D'ro are the Ktrtet?, the inhabitants of the Cyprian port Kir lov
and its district Cyprus, the principal Phoenician emporium,
is the last place of call. As soon as they put in here, what
they had heard as a rumour on the high sea is disclosed to the
crews ij^}}), i.e. it becomes clear, undoubted certainty, for they
are now told of it by eye-witnesses who have escaped hither.
What follows is addressed to the Phoenicians at home, who
have the devastation before them. Vers. 2, 3 : " Be horror-
struck, ye inhabitants of the coast ! Sidonian merchants, sailing
over the sea, replenished thee once on a time. And on great waters
the seed of Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, vxts brought into her
(lit her ingathering), and she became gain for the nations." The
feminine suffixes of K?o (to fill with merchandise and riches)
and nM3R (ingathering, i.e. into barns and storehouses) refer
to the name of the country, — *s, applied to the Phoenician coast,
including insular Tyre. Sidonian merchants are, as in Homer,
Phoenician merchants in general, for the ancient and great
Sidon (nai i^TV, Josh. xL 8, xix. 28) is the mother city of
Phoenicia, which stamped its name on the whole people so
deeply, that on coins Tyre is called d?*tV DK. The meaning
of ver. 3rt is not that the revenue of Tyre, which was pro-
duced on the great barren sea, was like a Nile-sowing, an
Egyptian harvest (Hitzig, Knobel). This would be a fine
comparison ; but as matter of fact the Phoenicians were in the
habit of buying the corn stores of Egypt, the granary of
the ancient world, and of gathering up in the warehouses of
their cities what was brought in 0'3t D^pa (on the great Medi-
terranean). The name inc' (in Dionys. Perieg. and Pliny, Xlpii,
the native name of the Upper Nile) means the black river
{MeXat, Eust on Dion. Per. 222), the dark-grey, almost black
mud of which gives such fertility to the land. ""K^ I'xp is added
more by way of amplification than explanation. The Nile
valley was the field where this invaluable grain crop was
sown and reaped, the Phoenician coast its granary. Phoenicia
being thus the basis for further trade in grain and other
articles of commerce, became a gain (const of ^np, meaning the
same as in ver. 18, xlv. 14; Prov. iii 14, xxxL 18), i.e. a
Digitized by
Google
406 ISAIAH.
means of gain, a scarce of profit and subsistence for many
entire peoples. Others translate the word " emporium," but
inp has not this meaning. Moreover, foreigners did not come
to Phoenicia, but the Phoenicians went to them (Lozzatto).
From addressing; the whole coast land, the prophet now
titms to address the ancestral city. Ver. 4 : " TremUe, O
Sidon, for the sea speaJceth, even the stronghold of the sea; I have
not travailed nor hnrnght forth, and have not reared young men,
broughi up virgins." The sea, not this itself (Nagelsbach), but
more specifically the stronghold of the sea (H])D, with unchange-
able pretonic vowel, like HD, ^pp), i.e. the rocky island on
which New Tyre, with its lofty strong dwelling-houses, stores,
and temples stood, lifts up its voice in lamentation. Sidon,
the ancestress of Canaan, must bear what cannot but cover
her with shame, — the lament of her own daughter Tyre, that
robbed as she is of her children, she is like a barren woman.
Because her young men and virgins have been done to death
by war, she is in the very same case as if she had never
brought forth or reared them (cf. L 2). The fate of Phoenicia
causes dismay even in Egypt Ver. 5 : " When the report
comes to Egypt, they writhe at the report of Tyre." The ex-
pression DnvD^ in 5a requires us to supply in thought a verb,
ti3* (cf. xxvL 9) ; the 3 in 52i means " at the same time as,"
"simultaneously with," as in xviiL 4, %\x. 19 (Gesen. Thesau-
rm, p. 650). In 5a the report is not defined, in 5b it is
specially referred to the fall of Tyre. The genitive after vov
and n^DB^ (e.^. 2 Sam. iv. 4) is almost always (except in liiL 1 )
the genitive of the object. Then anxiety and horror lay hold
of the Egyptians, because along with Tyre, to which they sold
their grain, their own prosperity is ruined, and a similar fate
awaits themselves, now that such a bulwark is fallen, vriv is
the imperfect Kal of 'npn in ver. 4.
The inhabitants of Tyre, however, who wish to avoid death
or deportation, must make their escape to the colonies, the
more distant the better ; not to Cyprus, nor to Carthage (as
when Alexander attacked insular Tyre), but to Tartessus, the
farthest west and most difficult to reach. Vers. 6—9 : " Pass
ye over to Tarshish ; mourn, ye inhabitants of the coast ! Fareth
it thus with you, joyous one, whose origin is of ancient days,
whom her feet carried afar of to settle t Who hath determined
Digitized by
Google
CUAPTKK XXm. 6-9. 407
such a (king concerning Tyre, the giver of crowns, whose tner-
ehanis are princes, whose traders are the honourable of t/ie earth f
Jehovah of hosts hath determined it, to desecrate the magnificence
of every ornament, to disgrace all the hotwurabU of the earth."
The call <^^n implies that they had a right to give themselves
up to their grief. Elsewhere complaint is unmanly, but here
(of. XV. 4) it is justifiable. In 7a it is doubtful whether nr^
is a nominative of predication, as it is explained by most (" Is
this, this deserted heap of ruins, your formerly so joyous one?"),
or a vocative. We prefer the latter, because in this case the
omission of the article is not strange (xxii 2 ; Ewald, 327a) ;
whereas in the other case, although the omission is possible (see
xxxii. 13), it is harsh (cf. xiv. 16). To nTj"? attaches itself the
descriptive attributive sentence — the beginning of whose exist-
ence (p<^i^, Ezek. xvL 55) dates from the days of olden time —
and also a second — whose feet carried her far away (Oyjn, mas&,
as e.g. in Jer. xiii. 16) to dwell in foreign parts. Deportation
by force into the land of the enemy is not intended. Luzzatto
rightly remarks against such a view, that n^JT w3' is the very
strongest expression for voluntary migration, with which also
'^ agrees, and also that this interpretation makes us feel the
want of an antithetical f^V\. What the words refer to are
the trading journeys (whether by sea or land) to a distance
(see as to pifTjp, note on xvii. 13) and the colonies, i.e.
settlements abroad (for which i^J is the most suitable word).
This fundamental characteristic of the Tyro-Phoenician people
is expressed by ^?^, gyiam portdbant. Sidon is no doubt
older than Tyre, but Tyre is also ancient. It is called by
Strabo the oldest Phoenician city after Sidon (jierh SiB&va) ;
by Curtius, vetustate originis insignis ; while Josephus {AiU.
viii. 3. 1 ; cf. Herod, ii. 44) estimates the interval between
the foundation of Tyre and the building of Solomon's temple
at 240 years. Tyre is called <vi»Di|en, not as wearing a crown
(Jerome : quondam coronata), but as conferring crowns (Tar-
gum). As matter of fact, both meanings are suitable; but the
latter answers better to the Hiphil (since nj?'"?, o^^, which
expresses production from within, cannot be brought into
comparison). In the colonies, such as Kition, Tartessus, and
at first Carthage, the government was in the hands of kings,
appointed by, but independent of, the mother city. Her mer-
Digitized by
Google
408 iSAun.
chants were princes (cf. x. 8), the most honoured ones of the
earth. ^?p? acquires a superlative force from standing in the
genitive. Because the Phoenicians had the commerce of the
world in their hands, a merchant was called simply V.^3|, the
merchandise fiyp?. The plural formation IJ'jy?? corresponds
to the sense in which it is intended the word should be
taken (that of a common noun), her merchants. The question,
ver. 8, serves only to give prominence to what the answer,
ver. 9, states. '?f^ I'W, like nr^, has an Isaianic ring.
The verb ?F7> to desecrate, causes us, on the mention of " mag-
nificence of every ornament," to think specially of the holy
places of continental and insular Tyre, among which the
temple of Melkart, in insular Tyre, was celebrated on account
of its great antiquity (cf. Arrian, Anab. ii. 16 : iraXcuoraTov
vw nvriiiri avOpairivti iuurm^tsrai). These glories, which were
supposed to be inviolable, Jehovah profanes, bpn?, ad igiu-
miniam deducere (Jerome), as in viiL 23.
The consequence of the fall of Tyre is that the colonies, of
which Tartessus is mentioned by way of example, achieve
their independence. Ver. 10: "Overflow thy land like the
Nile, daughter of Tarshish! No girdle confines thee any
more," The girdle, nip, is the supremacy of Tyre, which has
hitherto restrained all independent action on the part of the
colony. Now they no longer need to wait in the harbour for
the ships of the mother city, no longer need as her bond-
servants to dig in the mines for silver and other metals ; they
have full and free possession of the colony's territory, and can
freely spread themselves over it, like the Nile, when, leaving
its bed, it overflows the land.
The prophet next relates, as if to the Phoenicio • Spanish
colony, the daughter, t.e. the population of Tartessus, what has
befallen the mother-country. Vers. 11, 12: "His hand hath
He stretched over the sea, thrown kingdoms into trembling;
Jehovah hath given command concerning Canaan, to destroy
her fortresses. And He said. Thou shalt not rejoice any longer,
thou dishonoured one, virgin daughter of Sidon ! Set out
for KUtim, -pass over; there also thou wilt not find rent."
Jehovah has stretched His hand over the sea (Ex. xiv. 21),
in and on which Tyre and its colonies lie ; He has thrown
into a state of anxious excitement the countries of anterior
Digitized by
Google
CnAPTEE XXIII. X3, 14. 409
Asia and the Eaypto - Ethiopian quarter, and with regard to
Canaan (->«, like ?P, Esth. iv. 5) has commissioned instru-
ments of destruction. The Phoenicians themselves called their
country \^3, but in the Old Testament the name occurs in
this most restricted application only here. I'Pf? for I'OB'np
is the same syncope as in iii. 8 (cf. i. 12) ; Num. v. 22 ; Amos
viii. 4; Jer. xxxvii. 12, xxxix. 7. The form i^'JWO (Babyl.
n^jryo) is stranger, but it is not amorphous (Knobel, Meier,
Olshausen, Niigelsbach) ; there are other examples of this
way of resolving duplication and transposition of letters (it
stands for f^'J???). ^''z. wpl?. Lam. iii. 22, cf. on Ps. Ixiv. 7, and,
at least according to Jewish grammarians (see, however,
Ewald, § 2506), i33ij. Num. xxiii. 13.' " Virgin of the daughter
of Sidon," equivalent to virgin daughter of Sidon (two
epexegetical genitives, Ewald, § 289c), is synonymous with
\S33. The name of the ancestral city (cf. xxxvii. 22) has
here become the name of the whole people that has sprung
from it Hitherto this people was untouched, like a virgin ;
now it resembles one who has been ravished and overpowered.
If, now, they flee over to Cyprus (O'Pi? ; according to the
Oriental reading, D^'ns, Kdhib ; D'l??, Kert), there will be no
rest for them even there ; because the colony, emancipated
from the Phoenician yoke, will be glad to rid itself also of the
unwelcome guests from the despotic mother-country.
The prophet proceeds, vers. 13, 14, to relate the fate of
Phoenicia : " Behold the land of tke Chaldeans, this people that
has not been (Assyria — it hath prepared the same for desert
beasts) — they set up their siege - towers, destroy the pcdaces of
Canaan, make it a heap of ruins. Mourn, ye ships of Tarshish,
for your fortress is laid waste" So taken, the text which has
been handed down says that the Chaldeans have destroyed
Canaan, in fact Tyre. <o'i?n is to be referred to the plural
idea, and VJina (Kethtb, vrna) to the singular idea in
oyji fiT ; the feminine suflBxes, on the other hand, to Tyre, —
* PerliapB, however, the j is part of the suffix, and the form an
intentional imitation of Phoenician, like vmy, their helper, D33K, their
father, and like the dialectic *3Dt^=*ptS' (my nameX ChiUlin 51a, Erubin
646. Bei&nann in Maggid, p. 360, compares n'Jty. Lev. xv. 13 = tiV'
Kelim, xvii. 15. The conjecture of Abianisohn, iTU TVO (tVo)> coujilea
two indisparate words.
Digitized by
Google
410 ISAUH.
they (the Chaldeans) have laid bare the palaces (nl30*]M from
rob^N) of Tjrre, i.e. have pulled or burned them down (TPP,
here not from nv, but from i^P = nny, Ps. cxxxvii. 7, like
^FlVi Jer. li. 58) to the foundations, it (the Chaldean people)
has made her (Tyre) a rubbish-heap. If this were all, the
text would be clear and free from difficulty. But in the group
of words D'fJip i^p' i^tSfN is Assyria subject or object ? If the
former, the prophet, in order to describe the instruments of
divine wrath, points to the land of the Chaldeans, calls them
a people njn to, which up to this point has not been, and
explains this by the statement that Assyria at the first laid
for them, the wild hordes (Ps. Ixxii. 9), the foundations of the
land which they (the Chaldeans) at present inhabit, or better
(seeing that 0'^ can hardly be supposed to mean mountain
hordes), that Assyria appointed it (this people, DP, fem. as at
Jer. viii. 5 ; Ex. v. 16) inhabitants of the steppe (so Knobel)
This can convey only the idea that Assyria settled the
Chaldeans, whose place of abode was among the mountains of
the north, in the land now bearing the name of Chaldea, and
so made the Chaldeans a people, i.e. a settled civilised people,
and a people by conquest playing a part in the history of the
world (at first, according to Knobel, as a part of the Assyrian
army). But that the Assyrians brought down the Chaldeans
from the mountains to the lowlands (Calvin), and that about
the time of Shalmaneser (Gesenius, Hitzig, Knobel, Segond,
and others), is an unhistorical, untenable hypothesis, nothing
but an inference from this passage. On this account I have
tried in my Commentary on Hahakktik, p. xxii., to give
another meaning to D'!V^ H"ip', "vshi ; Assyria, i.e. Nineve — it
has assigned the same to the desert beasts. For the transference
of the name of the country to the chief city there are many
examples, as Sham = Damascus, Misr = Cairo {Zeitschrift deut.
morgenl. Gesdlschaft, xxxiz. 341): D'^ is commonly used of
beasts of the desert, e.g. xiiL 21, and D*n6 npj may be
explained in accordance with Ps. civ. 8 (cf. MaL i. 3, rrtjnp nv,
to make over to the jackals) ; while the form of the parentheti-
cal sentence would be like that of the concluding sentence of
Amos 111. This passage, however, would be the only one
where Isaiah prophesies, and that only in passing, how the
transition from an Assyrian to a Chaldean world-empire will
Digitized by
Google
CHAFTEK XXIIT. 13, U. 411
come about ; the drawing of this connecting-line is the business
of Nahum and Zephaniah. For this reason Cheyne, Driver, and
others, as already Riehm, refer 13a to the subjugation of the
land of the Chaldeans by Assyria. This leaves us a choice.
We may think either of the conquest of Babylon (Babel) by
Sargon in 709, or by Sennacherib in 703, and again in 696/5.
The translation would run, See the land of the Chaldeaus,
this people is no more ; Assyria has assigned it to the desert
beasts. We would then need to refer i^D'^ to Babylon
(Babel), which is not mentioned ; since, however, of course,
conquest of Babylon (Babel) and devastation of Babylonia do
not coincide, and since "'the Assyrians" is the subject of
vypn, we must suppose that p points to their irresistibility as
proved in the case of Babylon (Babel). This is so forced, so
unprepared for, so destructive of the unity of the prophecy,
that my own translation, given above, according to which the
land of the Chaldeans is the population of Chaldea and
Assyria is the city of Nineveh, which had been reduced to ruins
by them, appears in comparison much more natural, although it
does not admit of our maintaining Isaiah's authorship. Ewald's
and Schrader's conjecture, that the text originally ran H^ \\>
Q^?9p.? is still the best way of escape. The first sentence read
thus runs : See the land of the Canaanites, this people has
perished (literally, has come to nothing), Assyria has prepared
it (their land) for the desert beasts, n'n i^^ it is true, usually
means, not to be in existence (Obad. ver. 16), not to have
been, but since t6 is used with a slightly substantive force
(cf. Jer. xxxiiL 25), it has also the sense to come, or to have
come to nothing, Job vi. 21, Ezek. xxL 32, and perhaps also
Isa. XV. 6. By this alteration of onfcon into wwon all
objections to Isaiah's authorship are removed. But the
traditional text as it runs makes it necessary for us to suppose
that a later prophet was the author. As the destroyers of
the palaces of Tyre he names the Chaldeans — this people
which hitherto, notwithstanding its great antiquity (Jer. v. 15),
has not distinguished itself as a conqueror of the world (cf.
Hab. i. 6), but was subject to the Assyrians, which now, how-
ever, after it has destroyed Assyria, i.e. Nineveh, has risen to
power. The summons to lamentation addressed to the ships
of Tarshish (ver. 14) brings the prophecy back to its starting-
Digitized by
Google
412 ISAIA.H.
point (ver. 1). The fortress is here, as ver. 4 shows, insular
Tyre.
Since in this way the prophecy is a completely closed
circle, vers. 15-18 may appear to be a later addition. Here
the prophet announces that Tyre will once more rise to
prominence. Vers. 15, 16: "And it will come to pass in
that day that Tyre will be forgotten seventy years like the days
of one king — after the expiry of tJie seventy years it will fan
tcith Tyre according to the song of the harlot : ' Take the lute,
roam throtigh the city, forgotten harlot. Play bravely, sing
zealously, that thou mayest be remembered.' " The da3'S of one
king are a period that is characterized throughout by same-
ness and absence of change ; for, especially in the East, all
circumstances are then determined by one sovereign will, and
so stereotyped. The seventy years are compared to the days
of one king in this sense. In itself seventy is a suitable
number to designate such a uniform period, for it is 10
multiplied by 7, and so a completed series of heptads of
years ninae'. If a Deutero-Isaiah is taken to be the author,
we will have to understand by the seventy years the seventy
years of Chaldean rule, Jer. xxv. 1 1 sq., cf. 2 Chron. xxxvL
21. During these Tyre has against its will to give up the
traffic which hitherto had been carried on over the whole
world, nnprai is not the perfect consec (for "il^ff?)) with the
original fem. termination n, which occurs only in the case of
verbs t^ and n^, vii. 14, Ph. cxviii 23, but the participle
following the same syntax as in Ps. Ixxv. 4, Prov. xxix. 9,
Lat. oblivioni tradita Tyro . . . ew)iiet Tyro. After the
seventy years the harlot once more finds acceptance. It fares
with her as with an alma or ba3'adire, who moves through
the streets singing and playing, and so draws attention again
to her charms. The prophecy at this point passes into the
strain of a street song. As in the popular song it fares with
such a common musician and dancer, so fares it with Tyre.
Then, when it begins again to play the harlot with all the
world, it will get rich again from the profit of such traBic
with the world. Ver. 17:" And it will come to pass at tltt
end of seventy years, Jehovah wUl visit Tyre, and she comes again
to the wages of prostitution, and plays the harlot loith all king-
doms of the earth on the broad face of the earth." In so far
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXIIL 1& 413
as commercial activity, thinking only of earthly advantage,
does not recognise a God-appointed limit, and carries ou a
promiscuous traffic with all the world, it is called rfJf, as being
a prostitution of the soul ; and, moreover, at markets and fairs,
especially Phoenician ones, prostitution of the body was an
old custom. For this reason tiie trades-profits now once more
enjoyed by Tyre are called IjnK (Deut xxiii. 19). The fern,
suffix to this word, according to the Masora, has no Mappik,
whereas the same authority writes in ver. 18 nMntO. Here
nacn is Milra ; in vL 1 3, on the other hand, Milel ; this is au
inconsistency in punctuation (cf. on xi. 2).
This resuscitation of the trade of Tyre is called a visitation
of Jehovah ; for however worldly the activity of Tyre is, the
end which Jehovah makes it serve is a holy one, though it is
true this does not hallow it. Ver. 18:" And her gain and
her wages of prostitution become holy unto Jehovah ; it is not
stored np and not gathered, but theirs who dwell before Jehovah
will be lier gain from trade, to eat their fill, and for splendid
clothing." In this passage "inp (it was not necessary to
assume another form, ino, for ver. 3), being used side by side
with priK, is the business itself which yields the profit. This,
as well as the profit made, becomes holy unto Jehovah. 'Jhe
latter is not, as previously, treasured up ("'■f^.'!) and stored
(?PC~ itom. ^^~ ^^}i^, whence magazine ^ store- place), but
they give tribute and presents from it to Israel, and con-
tribute to maintain in abundance, and to clotlie with splendid
garments (fiB?p, what covers = covering, and P'PV, like Arab.
jjJLc, old, time-honoured, noble, from pnv, provehi, of time,
place, and rank), the people that dwell before Jehovah, i.e.
whose proper dwelling-place is in the temple before the divine
presence (Ps. xxvii. 4, Ixxxiv. 5). A strange prospect I
Haec secundum historiam necdum facia comperimus, says
Jerome.
We return now to the question whether the prophet points
to the Assyrians or the Chaldeans being the destroyers of
Tyre. Shalmaneser IV., concerning whom there are no
cuneiform records, had to do with Tyre ; we are informed of
this by the excerpt from the chronicle of Menander, preserved
in Josephus, Ani. ix. 14. 2. Elulaeus, king of Tyre, had
Digitized by
Google
414 ISAliH,
once more brought the Cyprians (Ktrratoi) into subjection.
In order to recover Cyprus, the king of Assyria made war on
Phoenicia, but a general peace soon put an end to this
campaign. Thereupon Sidon, Arke, Old Tyre, and many
other cities deserted Tyre (insular Tyre) by placing themselves
under the supremacy of Assyria. As the Tyrians did not do
this, Shalmaneser renewed the war, and the Phoenicians
subject to him supplied him with sixty ships and eight
hundred rowers for this purpose. The Tyrians fell upon
these with twelve ships, scattered the hostile vessels, and
took about five hundred prisoners. By this the reputation of
Tyre was much increased. The king of Assyria had to
content himself with leaving guards on the river (Leontes)
and the conduits in order to cut off the supply of fresh water
from the Tyrians. This lasted five years, during which time
the Tyrians obtained water by digging wella We have
information in at least one cuneiform inscription as to the
relation in which Sargon, Shalmaneser's successor, stood : he
punished the lonians, and procured rest (usapsihu) for the
city of Tyre (ir Surri) from these dreaded pirates.* From
this we may infer that the relation was a friendly one, indeed,
one of vassalage Under Sennacherib, Tyre tried to become
more independent. It is not named among the cities of
Phoenicia which Sennacherib boasts he conquered in his third
campaign.' Nebuchadnezzar's expedition against Tyre also
was not crowned with success. Josephus knows {Ant. x.
11. 1) from the Indian and Phoenician histories of Philos-
tratus only that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre thirteen years
while Ithobaal was king. He also reports (c Ap. i 21) from
a Phoenician source that Nebuchadnezzar (from the seventh
year of his reign onwards) for thirteen years besieged Tyre
under Ithobaal, and the history of the Tyrian reigns which
follows this leads us to suppose that previous to the Persian
period the Tyrians were dependants of Chaldea, for twice
they got their king from Babylon. Phoenicia (whether in-
cluding insular Tyre or not, we do not know) became a
satrapy of the Chaldean empire (Joseph. Ant. x. 11. 1 ;
c. Ap. i. 19, from Berosus), and was so still towards the end
of the Chaldean rule. Berosus says expressly, that Nebuchad-
• Schrader, KA T*, p. 169. » Astyritche Leiettiidc^, p. xii. aj.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER xxm. 18. 415
nezzar again suppressed the revolt which had broken out in
Phoenicia and returned to Babylon, whither he had been
recalled by the death of his father, with Phoenician captives.
What we fail to find, however, is information as to an actual
conquest of Tyre by the Chaldeans. Neither Josephus nor
Jerome was able to produce such a thing. The following
word of Jehovah was addressed to Ezekiel (xxix. 17 sq.) in
the twenty-seventh year of the deportation under Jehoiachin
(the sixteenth after the destruction of Jerusalem) : " Son of
man 1 Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, hns made his
army perform a long and grievous service against Tyre : every
head has lost its hair, every shoulder is skinned without him-
self and his army obtaining any recompense from Tyre for
the grievous service which they have endured on account of
it" Then it is added that Jehovah will give up Egypt to
Nebuchadnezzar, and that this will be bis army's recompense.
Hengstenberg (de rebus Tyriorum, 1832), Havernick, Drechsler,
and others are of opinion that this passage presupposes the
conquest of Tyre, and only declares the disproportion between
the profit which Nebuchadnezzar derived from it and the
exertions which it cost him. So Jerome before them (on
Ezek. loe. cit.) : At the time when the army of Nebuchadnezzar
with immense exertion had secured access for themselves to
insular Tyre by throwing up a mole, and were able to make
use of their siege-engines, the Tyrians had already shipped off
all their riches to the islands, ita ut eajpta urbe nihil dignum.
Idbore mo inveniret Nahuchodonotor, et quia Dei in hae parte
obedierat voluntati, post aliquot captivitatis annas Tyriae datur
ei Aegyptus. It is, however, surely far likelier that he did
not succeed in conquering Tyre (Gresen. Hitzig, Grote, and
others), not even in compelling it to capitulate (Winer, Movers,
Kuenen) ; for this last would surely have brought him gain,
and would itself have been of this nature. All our authorities
speak only of a subjugation of Phoenicia, but not of Tyre;
all that can be adduced in support of the vassal-relation of
the latter to the great king of the Babylonian empire is that
one statement of the Phoenician authorities, that the Tyrians
obtained from Babylon {airoaTeiKavre^ /tereire/i'^vTO ix t^
Ba^vKuvosi) two of their rulers, Merbal and Eirom ; but it
has no evidential value.
Digitized by
Google
416 ISAIAH.
But even assuming that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre,
it is still the case that he did not destroy it, as we are led to
expect from the words of the two prophecies. The true
solution lies in the character of all prophetic vision into the
distant future. In the view of the prophet, all the destruction
by which at last the downfall of Tyre was completed moves
forward in company with the impending humiliation and sub-
jugation of the Phoenician mother-country by Assyria and
Babylon. Even Alexander did not destroy Tyre, at least insular
Tyre, when, after seven months' exertions, he conquered it
Under Syrian, and later, under lioman supremacy. Tyre still was
an important and flourishing commercial city. At the time of
the Crusades it was so still, and even the Crusaders who con-
quered it in 1124 did not destroy it Only one hundred and
lifty years later did the work of destruction begin with the
removal of the fortifications by the Saracens. At present all
the glory of Tyre is either sunk in the sea or buried under
drifted sand — an inexhaustible mine of building material for
Beyrout and other coast towns. On this large ruin-coVfered
spot, once occupied by the island city, at the nortli-west comer
of the island, there stands the present Tyre (Stir), a miserable
decaying little place. The island is an island no longer.
Alexander's mole, through the washing up of sand, has become
a pretty broad neck of land, and connects the island with the
shore. This picture of destruction meets the prophet's out-
look into the distance; but the interval of two thousand
years being so much compressed that the whole appears con-
tinuous, the place it occupies is close on the back of the
attack by the Chaldeans on Tyre. The law by which
prophecy is governed all through is the well-known one of
perspective Prophecy itself cannot have been ignorant of
this law, for it needed it in order to vindicate itself in its
own eyes. Still greater need had posterity, in order not to
be led astray by prophecy, to- know about this law, which,
everywhere governing it, combines human limitation and
divine vision in such a way thait, while the former retains its
place and power, the latter perceives things, not under the
form of time, but Id a sort of eternity.
But one other enigma presents itself. The prophet
announces that after seventy years Tyre wiU once more rise
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTERS xxiv.-xxvn. 417
to a high position, and that its world-wide trade will be
transferred to the serAace of the community of Jehovah. As
matter of fact, the Tyre that did rise to note again in post-
Chaldean times, especially after the capture by Alexander the
Great in 333 b.c., had no political importance, but was only a
great emporium. Tyrus olim dura — says Pliny, Hist, Nat. v.
17 — nunc omnis efus nobilitas conchylio atque purpura constat.
Moreover, in post -Chaldean times events also occurred that
were preludes to the fulfilment of this prophecy. In accordance
with the command of Cyrus, Sidonians and Tyrians assisted in
the building of the temple in Jerusalem (Ezra iii. 7, cf, i. 4),
and at the very beginning of the apostles' labours there existed
in Tyre a Christian community, which was visited by Paul
(Acts xxi. 3 sq.), and thenceforth continued to grow steadily.
Is it not, however, Christian Tyre which is lying in ruins ?
One of the most noteworthy ruins is the magnificent cathedral
of Tyre, for the consecration of which Eusebius of Caesarea
composed an address. Down to the present, then, there have
indeed been preludes in which there are features belonging to
the fulfilment of the prophecy ; but the real fuliilment has
apparently become impossible. Whether the prophecy will
in the end be fulfilled only ideally, i.e. in so far as along witii
the kingdoms of the world its commerce also becomes God's
and His Son's, or irvtvfuiriKoi'i in the sense in which this
word is used in the Apocalypse, t.e. by the reproduction in
another city of the essential nature of old Tyre, just as Bome
was a reproduction of Babylon in this respect, or in propria
persona, i.e. by the disappearance of the present miserable Sur
before a Tyre that rises again from its ruins, — this no ex-
positor, who is not himself a prophet, is able to say.
PART IV.— FINALE OP THE GREAT CATASTROPHE,
CHAPS. XXIV.-XXVII.
The cycle of prophecy that begins here finds a counterpart
in the Old Testament only perhaps in Zech. ix.-yiiv. Both
these sections are eschatological and apocalyptic > in content.
VOL. I. 2d
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
418 TSAIAH.
Even 80, they start from apparently sharply-defined historical
circumstances, which, however, like will-o'-the-wisps, elude any
attempt at following out and grasping them. The particular
reason for this is that the root of the idea in the circumstances
being laid hold of, they are lifted forward out of the sphere
of mere history and made symbols of things in the far-distant
final future. It is not matter for wonder, therefore, that in the
case of these chapters (xxiv.-xxvii.) Isaiah's authorship has
been denied since the time of Eichhom and Koppe, notwith-
standing the fact that, so fai- as the mere words are concerned,
they contain nothing later than the Assyrian period. This
was done by Eosenmuller in the first edition of his Scholia,
but in the second and third editions he again deviated from,
this view, mainly because the prophecy nowhere passes beyond
the political horizon of Isaiah's own time. We cannot allow
any weight to the reason mentioned for the genuineness ; it
is the light thrown by it which we compared to a will-o'-the-
wisp. As a consequence, too, of following this light, however,
critics in the course of their search after another historical
basis for this cycle of prophecy to take the place of that
offered in Isaiah's own times, are involved in contradic-
tions. According to some, the author wrote in Babylon;
according to others, in Judah : according to some, towards the
end of the exile ; according to others, as early as the fall of
the kingdom of Judah. Hitzig holds that the city of the
world ( Weltstatf-t) whose destruction is prophesied is Nineveh ;
most others, that it is Babyloa Only Egypt and Assyria
are mentioned by the prophet as powers that enslave Israel,
and so Knobel is led to think that he is speaking figuratively
for fear of the enemies still dwelling in Judah. All attempts
to settle the historical circumstances break down, because
everything that seems to belong to this or that historical
period is only eschatological symbol. There is no way of
determining whether what reads as history belongs to the
present or the past of the prophet ; his stand is taken in
advance of the farthest point as yet reached by history in its
course. These chapters (xxiv.-xxvii.), joined ou as they are
to chaps, xiii.-xxiii. without any heading, demand that they
should be viewed as connected with the oracles concerning the
nations in a relation of continuous progress, and this relation is
Digitized by
Google J
ciiAPTEES xxiv.-xxvn. 419
supported by retrospective allusions, and the fact that Jeremiah
(cf. xxiv. 17 sq. with Jer. xlviiL 43 sq.) seems to have read these
chapters and xiii.-xxiii together/ The particular judgments
prophesied in the oracles against the nations run out into
this final judgment as into a sea, and all the salvation that
encircles with a halo of radiance the oracles against the
nations concentrates hero its light and warmth. Chapters
xxiv.-xxviL are the firuile to chaps. xiii.-xxiii., and that in
the strictest sense of the word. This concluding cycle per-
forms the same function as the fiTiaU in musical compositions,
— ^it gathers into one grand impressive whole the previously
scattered themes. It is also, however, in reality full of music
and song. The description of the catastrophe in chap. xxiv.
is followed by an echo in the simple form of a hymn. As
the book of Immanuel (chaps. vii.-xii.) concludes with a
psalm of the redeemed, so here there rise the strains of a
fourfold song of praise. It celebrates the overthrow of the
city of the world (xxv. 1, 2), the appearing and beatific pre-
sence of Jehovah (xxv. 9), the restoration and resurrection of
Israel (xxvL 1-19), the vineyard of the community bringing
forth fruit under Jehovah's protection (xxvii. 2-5). This
song, too, assumes every form from the most sublime hymn
to the most ordinary kind of popular ditty. It is a great
and varied concert to which we are listening, opened and
closed only as it were with the epic beginning chap, xxiv.,
and the epic conclusion chap. xxviL 6 sqq., and interspersed
with sort of recitative pieces in which the thread of prophecy
is carried forward. Nowhere, too, do we find so much music
in the very sound of the words. This entire findk is a great
Hallelujah to chaps. xiii.-xxiii, hymnlike in content, musical
in form. The form does not make us hesitate to attribute it
to Isaiah ; even Driver notes verses and groups of verses
quite Isaianic in style, and admits the type to be fundamentally
Isaianic and non-Jereniianic. But this cannot be denied : —
the contents, in order to find a place in the development of
the Old Testament knowledge of salvation, must be referred to
post-Isaianic times. The author is not Isaiah himself, but a
disciple of Isaiah's who in this case surpasses his master.
Isaiah is great in himself, greater still in his disciples, as
• See the closing remarka, Drechsler's Iiaiah, iiL 405 sq., cf. 399 sq.
Digitized by
Google
420 iSAiAir.
rivers are greater tlian the source whence they issue. It
must, however, always appear strange, that tradition has
been so careless as to let the name of a prophet who, like the
author of Isa. xxiv.-xxvii., played so important a part in the
history of thought on the subject of salvation, sink into
oblivion.
The Judgment upon the Earth, Chap. XXIV.
Like xix. 1, the first verse of chap. xxiv. places us at once
in the very midst of the catastrophe, and the contents of the
subsequent description of the judgment are gathered together
in a few comprehensive sentences (as in xv. 1, xvii. 1, xxiiL 1,
cf. xxxiii. 1). Vers. 1-3 : " Behold, Jehmah poureth out the
earth and layeth it waste, and marreth its fomi, and scattereth
its inJuih Hants. And it farcth as vdth the people, so with the
2)nest ; as with the servant, so with his master ; as with the
■ maid, so with her mistress ; as with the buyer, so with the
seller ; as with the lender, so with tlie borrower ; as with the
creditor, so with the debtor. Emptying the earth is emptied out,
and plundering is plundered, for Jehovah hath spoken this
word." As it does everywhere in Isaiah (iii. l,xvii. 1, xix. 1,
XXX. 27, and frequently), nsn points to something future. It
is also only in Isaiah that we find prophecies beginning like
this with nothing but njn ; for though the most nearly parallel
beginnings, Jer. xlvii. 2, xlix. 35, cf. li. 1, Ezek. xxix. 3, do
commence with njn, an introductory formula precedes. The
emphatic "la'J n '3, which everywhere in Isaiah forms the
conclusion of a statement about the future, occurs by no
means exclusively (Obad. 1 8 ; Joel iv. 8 ; Micah iv. 4 ;
1 Kings xiv. 11), though, no doubt, principally in the Book
of Isaiah (i. 20, xxi. 17, xxiL 25, xxv. 8, xL 5, IviiL 14;
cf. in addition, specially xix. 4 and xvL 13, xxxvii. 22). The
detailed enumeration of ver. 2 has Isaianic parallels in IL
12-16, iii. 2 sq., 18-23, cf. ix. 13 (cf. also xix. 2-4, where
there is a judgment unfolded which concludes similarly). The
prophet begins at this early stage to play with sounds. There
is a similarity in the ring of Pi^? (root pa, reproducing the
sound of a liquid gradually emptying itself out) and P?3
(cf. Arab, balliika, an empty bare desert), as in Nah. ii. 11,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXIV. 4-9. 421
c£ 3 ; Jer. li. 2. The Niphal imperfects are intentionally
written pian and rt2U? (instead of P3n, tsn), as if from hollow
roots, in order that they may rhyme with the absolute
infinitives (cf. xxii. 13). Instead, too, of the regular iwilMS,
we have nmajs with more closely attracted 3 for the sake of
getting the same opening sound as in the case of the other
ten words, f^p? is a lender, and np one who deals in loans
(borrower). In the clause in which the comparison is drawn,
SB'S (so here according to the Massora, whereas in 1 Sam.
xxii. 2, RB'3) is written instead of nci. Similarly Nfj else-
where also occurs alongside of f'E'J, and indeed from com-
parison of ^^, to prorogue, to delay, to credit, is the original
form. iiE'J is the creditor, and ^2 i<f3 IB'X is not the person
who has borrowed from him, but, as fij'j everywhere means to
credit {ffiph. give credit), the one whom he lends to (with 3
of ohf. like a ^i3, ix. 3), not the person through whom he is
NCO (Hitzig on Jer. xv. 10). Hence — ^likeness of creditor,
likeness of debtor — i.e. it fares with the one exactly as with
the other. The judgment is one that embraces all without
distinction of rank and condition. It is universal, too, not
merely within the borders of the entire land of Israel, but as
regards the inhabitants of the earth, for T!}<^ means the eartli
here, and implies even the New Testament ethical idea of
KotTfiof as in xi. 4.
That it is so, vers. 4—9 show, where the condition of the
curse - smitten earth is more particularly described, and its
cause stated : " Stricken down, lying withered is the earth ;
languishing and withered is the world; they have languished
away, the foremost of the people of the earth. And the earth
is become regardlessly wicked under its inhabitants, for they
transgressed revelations, violated the statute, broke the ever-
lasting covenant. Therefore Curse hath devoured the earth, and
tluy who dwell in it make expiation; therefore are burnt up
the inhabitants of the earth, and there remain few mortals.
Tlie juice of the grape mourns, with^cd is the vine, all the
merry-hearted groan. Hushed is the joyous playing of timhrel,
ceased has the uproar of the exultant, hushed is the joyous play-
in/j of the lute. TJiey do not drink wine with song, bitter tastes
strong drink to them, who drink it." ??R (always without the
Digitized by
Google
422 ISAUH.
article, after the fashion of proper nonus) and n?C» 'wl^ich
are in general in this cycle of prophecy interchangeable, are
used here (ver. 4), as in xxvL 9, as parallel expressions. In
poetry p^ signifies the earth, and that without limitation (also
xiiL 11, xviil 3), so that p.N^ also is used here in the most
comprehensive sense (not as in the passage xxxiii. 9, \rhich
contains the same play on sounds). The earth, including B/ho,
the high ones (dbstr. pro concr. like llM, v. 13, xxiL 24) of
the earth's people (op, as in xliL 5, xl. 7, of humanity), is
plunged into mourning, and is become like a withered heat-
wasted plant. ^WOK (from yg», J^V to be or become long,
to hang down far, loosely, withered) stands in semi-paase,
thus bringing into prominence the following subject It is
the penalty of the sin of the earth's inhabitants which the
earth has to share, for the iniquity of those who live on it
has been imparted to it *l?n (^Jn) means to be degenerate,
set on evil (ix. 1 6), regardlessly wicked, used thus intransi-
tively of a land to have the guilt of iniquity, especially blood-
guiltiness, attaching to it (Ps. cvL 38 ; Num. xxxv. 33 ; cf.
transit. Jer. iii 9). Tlie regardlessly wicked conduct of men,
by which the earth has been made nwn, is expressed in three
short hurried indignantly excited sentences (cf. xv. 6, xvi. 4,
xxix. 20, xxxiii. 8 ; also xxiv. 5, i. 4, vi. 8, and not in Isaiah ;
Joel i. 10; and, perhaps. Josh, vii 11). In view of the
universal reference in P^n, we cannot understand by law
merely the positive law of Israel. There is, however, also a
positive law older than Israel. It was with the human
race in the person of N"oah, and so before it had split into
peoples, that God made an everlasting covenant consisting of
promises and obligations. But the inhabitants cf the earth
have transgressed C^V) this revealed rule of life ; they have
forsaken (left behind tliem, vhn ; cf. ahlafa, to become faith-
less, hnlf, the non-fulfilling what was promised) this law;
they have broken this covenant Ci??, root ne, separate, diri-
mere). Israel is included among the transgressors, and by
this the choice of expression is determined. With I3~^V the
prophecy, exactly as in v. 25, cf. 24, makes the transition
from the sin to the punishment, njs is the curse of God
with which the transgressors of His law are threatened (Dan.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKE XXIV. 10-18. 423
ix. 11; cf. the borrowed passage Jer. xxiiL 1 0, from which,
in some codices and editions, n?2K in place of njofj has passed
into our passage). The curse of God devours, for it is fire,
and a fire devouring from within outwards (see i 31, v. 24,
ix. 18, X. 16 sq., xxix. 6, xxx. 27 sqq., xxxiii. 11-14). ^in
(Mild) from "•in, they are burned out, exicsti. With regard
to ^DC^, it is hardlj necessary to remark that it is not to be
referred to Db'k = db'J, DDB', but of the two meanings eidpam
eontrahere and eulpam sustirure has the latter. We should
note in the vanishing away of men till there is only a small
remnant an Isaianic feature ; iNB'? 0?F) ^ 'he formal word
for this remnant "^^ (used of number here and in xvi. 14,
of time, X. 25, xxix. 17) is exclusively Isaianic, and ^^ is
used as in xxxiii. 8 ; cf. xiii. 12. Ver. 7 reminds us of Joel
chap. i. (cf. on the short sentences xxix. 20, xvi. 8-10)
vers. 8 and 9, of v. 12, 14, and other Isaianic passages. r?»
is found only in Isaiah (Zeph. ii. 15 derives it from Isa.
xxii. 2, xxxiL 13; Zeph. iii. 11, like Isa. xiii 3), and for
Tefa (with joyous song), cf. xxx. 32 (with beating of timbrels
and playing of lutes) together with xxviii. 7. The descrip-
tion is elegiac, and dwells so long on wine (cf. chap, xvi),
because as a vegetable product and as a drink it is of all the
gifts of God in nature the one that most gladdens the human
heart (Ps. civ. 15; Judg. ix. 13). All the means of enjoy-
ment are destroyed, and even though much of what gladdens
still exists, it is bitter to men's taste.
The world and its pleasure are judged, judged also the city
of the world, where the world's power and pleasure were
concentrated. Vers. 10-13 : "Broken to pieces is the dty of
Tdhu, shut up every house, not to he set foot in. A cry of
lamentation because of the wine is in the fields, aU gladness has
set, the joy of the earth is banished. Of the city there is left
desolation, and the gate was battered into ruins. For so will it
be within the earth, in the midst of the peoples, as at the beating
of the olive, as at the gleaning, when the vintage is over." In
view of the fact that nn^ is joined on to ^nh (a kind of proper
name), it is not possible to take ^-ih nnp collectively (like
Bosenmttller, Drechsler), and the context, in which, as we
saw, r3^v> has the sense of Koa-fUK, prevents our understanding
it (like Schegg, Stier, and others) of Jerusalem (according to
Digitized by
Google
424 ISAUH.
xxxii. 13 sq.). It is the city that is the centre of the world
and its alienation from God, whose end will be vih as its
essence was \nk ; destruction of the harmony of the divine
order was its essence, destruction of its existence and pre-
cipitation back into the chaos of the primeval beginning will
be its end. Eome is similarly called turhida Roma in Persios,
i. 5. Here, too, everything is Isaiauic: ^nh is used as in
xxix. 21; and with regard to K^ap {ita ut ingredi ruqneas,
aeil. on account of the ruins that block up the entrance), cf.
xxiii 1, vii 8, xvii. 1 ; also v. 9, vi 11, xxxii. 13. Crying
on account of the wine in the fields outside, ver. 11 (cf. Job
V. 1 0), is lamentation over the destruction of the vineyarda
Wine, which is one of the favourite Isaianic symbols, stands
here, too, for all the natural sources of joy conjointly. The
expression nnotrpa naip presupposes an affinity between joy
and light, for 31», t-^, means to go away, and, especially, to
set of the sun (Assyr. erib iamsi, sunset). Of the city O'??,
partitive, as in case of \3, x. 22) nothing more is left 0*??^?)
than nsB', which it has become (ct v. 9, xxxii. 14). The strong
gates, which once swarmed with men, are battered (na*, as in
Micah i. 7, for nav, Gesen. § 67, Eem. 8) into ruins (n*Kf, o-jr.
\ey., noun predicative of consequence, as in xxxvii. 26, into
desolated heaps ; cf. vi. 1 1 and elsewhere). Then there is left
in the wide circuit of the earth (vi. 12, vii, 22 ; but T^^^, the
earth, as in x. 23, xix. 24), and in the midst of what has
hitherto been a crowd of peoples (cf. Micah v. 6 sq.), only a
small remnant of men. The metaphors of this passage, which
is a miniature of xvii. 4-6, express the fundamental thought
which runs through the Book of Isaiah from beginning to
end. The state of matters produced by the catastrophe is
like the olive-beating, which recovers the fruit left hanging
when the trees were stripped, and like the grape-gleaning
after the grape harvest has been fully gathered in (ni>3, here as
in X. 25, xvi 4, xxi. 16, and frequently = to be past, whereas
it means to be hopelessly gone, xxxiL 10, like xv. 6); there
will be as few men left in the great wide world as olives
and grapes after the principal harvest in each casa Those
who are saved belong especially, but not exclusively (Joel
iii. 5), to Israel The place where they assemble is the land
of promise.
Digitized by
Google
ciiArxER XXIV. i4-i«. 425
There a community now exists which, purified by the judf,'-
ment, now rouses itself to discharge its calling as the apostle
of the world. Vers. 14, 15 : " Those will lift wp their voice,
slwut exidtingly ; because of Jehovah's majesty tlwy shout from
the sea : ' Therefore in the lands of the sun praise ye Jehovah,
in the isles of the sea the najne of Jehovah the God of Israel.' "
The reason and matter of rejoicing is 'n liss, i.e. that Jehovah
has shown Himself so majestic in judgment and mercy (xii.
5 sq.), and is now so manifest in His exaltedness (ii. 11, 17).
Therefore the sound of rejoicing comes from the Mediterranean
(ojo), by which the land where Jehovah's community dwelt is
washed. The community when turned in that direction had
before it the islands and coastlands (0*^ VK, as only once
more, xi. 11 ; cf. Ezek. xxvi. 18) of the European west, and
behind it the lands of the Asiatic east, called Q^IK, the lands
of the light, i.e. of the sunrise. This is the meaning that we,
along with F. Schelling, Drechsler, Griinbaum (Zlschft. deut.
mort/enl. Gesellschaft, xxi. 597), put on the word D'^K (a air.
Xey., like rniKD, xi. 8).' The reading d'-K3 (Lowtli, J. D.
Michaelis, Hitzig, Cheyne, Driver, on authority of LXX.)
destroys the antithesis of east and west, which we are led to
look for. The summons goes forth in both directions, and
calls, because of the manifestation of the glory of Jehovah,
Israel's God (xviii. 7) to the praise of His name. His 0?*
(cf. XXX. 27) is just His essence or nature as made known
and rendered capable of being named in His acts of judgment
and mercy.
The summons, too, does not go forth in vain. Ver. 16a;
" From the border of the earth we hear songs, ' Praise to the
righteous one ! ' " It is not unnatural to think that in P"!l6
Jehovah is meant; but, as Hitzig rightly remarks, P'"^ is
never used thus absolutely of Jehovah (cf. Ps. cxii. 4, where,
•»
* Doderlein compares the Arabic jj^ $e{ientrio, but this is the Greek
tvpo;. It is more natural to think of regions in the west, for_;'^' means
the time between mid-day and sunset, like the Talmudic nis (sniis),
the evening, In Pehlvi jumniK, uncer&n, western ; cf. nms, western
region, Bathra 26a, Kiddushin 125, which, however, according to Fried.
Delitzsch, Aesyr. ^iidien, p. 141, might be a contraction of the Assyrian
aharru.
Digitized by
Google
426 ISAIAH
however, it is connected with other attributes, and Ex. ix. 27
where it occurs in an antithesis), and, in addition to this, 'a*
is what Jehovah bestows (iv. 2, xxviii. 5), while what is
given to him is not '3y but TiM. We must therefore explain
the passage in accordance with iiL 10; cl Hab. iL 4. It is
the community of the righteous whose faith has outlasted the
fire of the judgment of wrath that is intended. Its summons
to praise Jehovah is answered from the border of the earth
with songs, in which it is thanked and congratulated. The
earth is thought of under the %ure of a garment spread out ;
1?3 is the edge or end of it — the most distant eastern and
western extremities (ct. xi. 12). The grateful songs, whose
echo sounds in the ears of the community of the future, rise
from that quarter.
The prophet feels himself iv -nvevfuiTt to be a member of
this community. Still all at once he becomes conscious of
sufferings that must first of all be got over, and which he
cannot see without himself experiencing also. Vers. 16^20:
" I%e» / said. Ruin to met Buin to me! Woe to me! Bob-
bers rob, and, like roblers rMing, they rob. Terror and pit and
snare are upon thee, inhabitant of the earth I And it comes to
pass, whoso fledh from the tidings of the terror falls into the pit,
and whoso escapeth out of the pit is taken in the snare ; for the
trap-doors of the height above are opened, and the earth's foun-
dations quake. Breaking breaks up t/te earth ; bursting bursts up
earth ; totterivg totters earth to its fall : reeling reels earth like a
drunken man, and swings like a hammock ; and the weight of its
crimes presses heavily on it, and it falls and rises not again."
ipw (cf. vi. 5) is connected with an apocalypse in the same
way as, e.g., in Bev. vil 14. He said it at that time when in
a state of ecstasy ; now when he is writing down what he saw,
this saying is a thing of the past Behind the final salvation
there is a final judgment of wrath, and looking back to that he
broke out into the cry of pain ; vT), consuming, wasting away
(see X. 16, xvii. 4) to me, ie. I must pass away. The word
TJ is formed like *io, '^i^, *?f', *??, and is really a neuter ad-
jective, meaning emaeiatum = modes : it is from nn, to make
disappear, wipe away, Arab. \\.y ^j ., more general in signifi-
cation = to damage, whence razlya, plur. raxdyd, Palmyr. fsn,
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKE XXIV. 16-2a 427
calamities {Ztschft. deut. morgerd. GesdUchaft, xvm. 81); ct,
however, also ^i» to be enfeebled, exhausted. He sees a
dreadful fierce people at work among men and treasures
thinning them out (cf. for the play upon sound in lia, tecte
agere, i.e. from behind, treacherously, trickily, xxi. 2, xxxiii. 1).
The exclamation, "terror and pit," eta (applied by Jer.
xlviii. 43 sq. to the fate coming on Moab from the Chaldeans),
is not an invocation, but only the deeply-felt statement of the
inevitable. The words pit and snare compare men to game
and the enemies to hunters (cf. Jer. xvi. 16; Lam. iv. 19).
nriB is derived from a strong verb, nne (cf. the popular
Arabian proverb, " whoever digs a pit for others,^ ii-w*ii,
falls into it himseK"); ^?fI, as in viii. 15, xxviii. 13. The
7? in T?? is used exactly as in Judg. xvi. 9 ; cf. Isa. xvi 9.
Whoever, on hearing the terrible news, flees before it (!»,
as in xxxiii. 3), by no means escapes the destruction, but
falls into its clutches, if not in the one way, then in the
other (the very same thought which is expressed twice by Amos
in V. 19, and again at greater length and in more terribly
sublime words in ix. 1-4). The instruments of punishment
referred to in oniSs are kept in the background. What stands
in the foreground and dominates the whole is the thought
that the judgment is a direct act of God Himself. For this
reason it is described as if it were another flood (for the
niaiK, sluices, KaTappditrai, of the rakia point back ^o Gen.
viL 11, viii. 2 ; cf. Pa Ixxviii. 23), and represented as an
earthquake. rj9 *3?^? *i^ t^c foundations on which the visible
body of the earth rests. The three reflexive forms in ver. 19
together with their gerundives, the latter of which help the
mind to take in, by keeping steadily before it, each stage of the
catastrophe, fix in a word-picture the way in which the earth in
its quaking first breaks, then bursts and falls, i^^ seems to
be a slip of the pen for jn, unless, as in Hab. iii. 9, it is a
nomen adionis instead of the inf. abs. ; the accentuation, how-
ever (different from Prov. xxv. 19, where Dechi does not in-
dicate the place of the tone), treats the oA as a toneless
addition, and the form therefore (like 3^, Num. xxiii. 25) as
inf. abaol. The reflexive form ¥?Tnn is here, of course, not
Hithpal. from W, vociferari, but Hithpo. from W] (IT)),
Digitized by
Google
428 ISAIAH.
frangere. The earth first of all gets fractured, then yawning
chasms open, once more it sways to and fro, and falls. It is
no longer possible for it to keep upright, its enormities bear
it heavily down (1?3 for laa, the weight being represented as
active), so that now for the last time it reels like a drunk
man (xxviii. 7, xxix. 9), or like a hammock (L 8), then falls
never to rise again. The articles with 3 express the genus.
"TO, whence Tl^Jnn, is connected with tDy (Ps. xcix. 1), just as
jLc, to turn oneself hither and thither in walking, se lalancer,
with DID, whence ODbnn.
If the old earth perishes in such a manner from its place
in the universe, God will at the same time (the prophet does
not break up in thought and chronologically arrange what
belongs to the end of all things) punish the princes of heaven
as well as the princes of earth. The secrets of two worlds
here unveil themselves to the gaze of the Old Testament
seer. Vers. 21—23: "And it comes to pass in that day,
Jehovah will visit the host of the lieight in the lieight, and the
kings of the earth on the earth And they are immured as one
immures prisoners in the pit, and shut up in the prison, and
after the expiry of many days they are visited. And covered
with shame is the moon and confounded the sun, for as king
reigns Jcliovah of hosts on Mount Zion, and hefore His elders is
glory." In view of the antithesis of OS-to and noiK (cf.
xxiii 176), which is made as sharp and prominent as possible,
we cannot (with the Targiim, Luther, Calvin, Hiivemick)
understand by the host of the height earthly powers. The
name itself is also opposed to this view ; for D^io K?X, as is
shown by ver. 1 8 (where C^isp = D!?^, cf. xxxiiL 5, xxxvii.
23, xl. 26), is equivalent to D'P^ N3V, and everywhere this
is either the starry host (xL 26) or the angelic host (1 Kings
xxii. 19 ; Ps. cxlviii. 2), occasionally both in one without
distinction (Neh. ix. 6). As sun and moon are mentioned in
ver. 23, we might be inclined to think (with Baudissin, 6. A.
Smith, and others) that here the host of the height is the
starry host : " The shining kingly forms of the sky, the stars
out of which idols have been made fall from their altars, and
the kings of the earth from their thrones " (Umbreit). The
antithetical member 'i?pO, however, compels us to suppose
that DiiQn K3V also designates personal powers, and the par-
Digitized by
Google
ClIAITKE XXIV. 21-23. 429
ticukrizing account of the penal visitation ipv ipB, as in
xxvii. 1, 3, cf. xxvi 21, and the verbal and material parallel,
Jer. xlvi 25), " they are immured," etc., which in some
way or another must be applicable also to the host of heaven,
postulates personality. It might be objected that it is the
kings who are immured, and that in the putting to shame of
the sun and moon in ver. 23, the penal visitation of the
host of heaven is expressed. The fact, however, that sun and
moon are thrown into the shade by the revelation of the
glory of Jehovah, we cannot for a moment admit to be
punishment. But if DiiD N2V is the angelic host, the penal
visitation referred to must be one that, happening within the
spirit-world, stands in causal connection with the history of
humanity, specially with the history of the peoples. Con-
sequently Clno K2X will have to be understood as meaning
the angels of the peoples and kingdoms (Abn Ezra, Kosen-
miiller, Hitzig, Knobel), and the presupposition of this
prophecy is what is stated in Deut xxxiL 8a, LXX. (cf.
Syriac, xviL 14), and represented in the visions of the Book
of Daniel, viz. that there is a world of spirits which God
employs to carry on His government of the world, and which
influences not only the life of the individual, but also the
history of the peoples. God's judgment here goes forth, as
against the kings of earth so against the celestial guardian
powers of the peoples, though it need not from this be
supposed that these guardian powers were from the first
rebel angels. They come under God's penal visitation,
because they have misled the peoples whom it was their
duty to lead.* Ver. 22a states the preliminary punishment
of the angelic as well as of the human princes. •i^CM
takes the place of an inf. intens. like •'j'Dpo, xxij. 17.
nr5?> H^^' i"- 9, cf. nyS, ver. 19, and the construction
TDK nepx, following the verbal expression tdk f)pK, to
immure a captive, means "immuring after the manner of
immuring captives ; " for fiptji, to gather, in x. 14, xxxiii. 4,
has here the signification to immure (thrust into), as in Gen.
xlii. 1 7. Both verbs are used with bs, because the captives
are thrust down into pit and ward from above (^? contains
• Eieenmenger, Entdecktet Judenthum, L p. 814 »q., shows how £Eimiliar
later Judaism was with this idea.
Digitized by
Google
430 ISAIAH.
the two ideas upon or over anything and into it, e.g. 1 Sam.
xxxi. 4 ; 2 Kings iv. 4 ; Job vL 16 ; see Hitzig on Nah.
iii. 12). How we are to understand this is shown by 2 Pet
ii. 4, Jude 6, with the parallels in the Book of Henoch
(xviii. 14-16, cf. x. 12 sq.) and the Jubilees (chap. v.).
The prophet is thinking of the abyss of Hades, where they
are reserved, bound with chains of darkness 6(9 Kp'uriv
tieyd\r)<i iiiUpivi, In accordance with this parallel, we must
apparently understand by ^'ii?B?, on the analogy of xxix. 6,
Ezek. xxxviii. 8, cf. ipB, seq. aec., xxvi. 21 (also xxvL 14),
Ps. lix. 6 : visitation in wrath, and so execution of the final
punishment. Hitzig, Ewald, Knobel, Luzzatto, on the other
hand, understand by it a visitation in mercy ; Gresenius,
Umbreit, and others (without support in idiom or custom), a
citation. A comparison of xxiiL 17 in relation to xxiil 15
(following which the Targum and Saadia paraphrase, they
will come again into remembrance) is in favour of visitation in
mercy ; they are visited in getting free again (cf. Eev. xx. 3).
They then begin again their former life, but only immediately
(as ver. 23 says) to lose for ever their temporarily re-acquired
dominion. Then the Lord reigns with His own in the new
Jerusalem in such glory that the silvery moon (•"'JJf) shame-
facedly veils itself, and the glowing sun (<^^) is confounded
with shame (see on i. 29), because in the presence of such
glory the two great lights of heaven will be, according to a
Jewish expression, Knn'oa ^u^tr^, like a lamp in the noontide
sunshine. Noteworthy among the many parallels to ver. 23
found in Isaiah (TO^ and <^}f?, xxx. 26 ; iBn and B>ia, i. 29;
^?o, xxxiii. 22 ; on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, x. 12) are
those to the concluding noun-sentence "^33 V3i5t 1331, especially
xi. 10 (also iv. 5), and for the definition of the idea in D'P^t,
i 26, cf. iii. 14. "His elders," as also the twenty -four
irpea-^vrepoi of the Apocalypse, are not angels, but men.
Angels never become C'3i5T (see Iris, p. 174). They are elders
alter God's own heart, such as in contrast with its present
bad D'3ipT (iii. 14) are promised to the Israel of the Jerusalem
of the future (i. 26). These, being admitted to God's im-
mediate presence and reigning with Him, are confronted with
nothing but glory, and it they reflect
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTEK XXV. 1^5. 431
The Fouejold Hymhic Echo, Chaps. XXV., XXVL
A. — The first echo : salvation of the peoples after the fall of
the city of the world, chap. xxv. 1-8.
But what at this time is accomplished finds not only its re-
flection but also its echo. At xxv. 1 sqq. the hymnic echoes
begin. The prophet, transported to the end of time, celebrates
what he saw in psalms and songs. These do not reproduce
merely the contents of the prophecy, but by penetrating to its
depths and drawing out of it, they partly develop, partly pro-
vide the means for developing it further. The first echo is
xxv. 1-8, or more exactly xxv. 1-5. The prophet, whom
from chap. xii. we already know to be a psalmist, acts as
leader of the community of the future, and praises Jehovah
for having destroyed the mighty city of the world, and for
having proved Himself the shield and defence of the hitherto
oppressed community against the tyranny of the city of the
world. Vers. 1-5 : " Jehovah, my God art Thou ! I will
exalt Thee, praise Thy name, that Thou hast done wonders,
counsels from, afar, truthfulness, truth. For Thou hast turned
what was a dty into a heap of stones, the steep castle into ruins,
the erection of barbarians into a city of the past, for ever not
to be rebuilt. Therefore vnll a fierce pe<^le honour Thee, cities
of violent naiionsfear Thee. For Thou didst prove Thyself to
be a stronghold to the humble, a stronghold to the poor in his
distress, a shelter from the rain-storm, a shade from the sun's
burning ; for tli/C blast of violent ones became like a rain-
storm against a wall. Like the sun's burning in a thirsty
land Thou didst subdue the uproar of the barbarians ; like the
sun's burning before the shadow of clouds had the violent men's
song of victory to sid>side." The introduction, in structure
reminding us somewhat of the " Aufgesang " of the Minne-
singers, is to be understood in accordance with Ps. cxviii. 28 :
Jehovah (voeat.), my God art Thou. This confession of faith
now sounds forth in tones of increased strength and fervour.
Among the many plays on sound in the cycle of prophecy the
rhyme aramimchu (see as to t on i. 15, liL 12), Odeh simeha
is noteworthy, t^s n'fc^ (like Ps. IxxviL 15, Ixxviii. 12) is
taken from Ex. xv. 11 (as xii. 2 from Ex. xv. 2). The
Digitized by
Google
432 ISAIAH.
wonders now accomplished are piTJ? riivy, resolutions taken far
back, i.e. long before, God's thoughts from eternity, — ^the same
ideal view as in xxii 11, xxxvii. 26 (a perfect parallel in every
respect to our passage), and all through the second part
Nagelsbach translates, " counsels with a distant object," but
even pirnw of xxxvii. 26 points to the past in such a con-
nection. It is the manifold nyy of the Holy One of Israel
(v. 19, xiv. 24-27, xix. 12, 17, xxiii. 8, xxviii 29) wliich
displays its wonders in the events that happen in time. The
phrase nosi ion nbi' requires us to connect emUma omen with
n'C^ as accusative of the second and third object Deriva-
tives from the same original stand side by side in order to
emphasize the idea as much as possible, as in iil 1, xvi. 6. "J'°?5
means faith and faithfulness (from the root idea of firmness)
as qualities and conditions ; pit (only here) is faithfulness
proved and maintained in deeds. Jehovah has shown constancy,
has been constant, i.e. once having allowed His word to take
effect, He has stood to it. The city of the world is overthrown.
Jehovah has, as the first sentence, ending with zakcf, says,
transposed out of the nature of a city into the condition of a
heap of stones. The parallel member might lead us to look
for Tyn, but the sentence as it stands brings only the change
effected into prominence, f is used as in, e.g., xxiii. 13 ; of.
xxxvii. 26 ; and IP as in viL 8, xvii 1, xxiiL 1, xxiv. 10. fyBp
(here and xxiii 13) or niiBO (xvii. 1) is a word, instances of
which are found only in the Book of Isaiah. fV, nnj?, and pD"j»t
are likewise wprds commonly used by Isaiah in parallelisms
(i. 26, xxiL 2, xxxii. 13 sq.); and D'lJ, as in i. 7, xxix. 5, is
the most general designation of the enemies of the people of
Grod. The fall of the world-empire is followed by the con-
version of the heathen ; for the songs, xxiv. 16, come from the
lips of the farthest peoples. Ver. 3 runs parallel with Rev.
XV. 3 sq. Peoples, down to this time uncivilised and slaves
of their passions (XII), submit to Jehovah with proper reverence ;
those hitherto despotically oppressive (DT??> as in xiiL 11 of
the form ^''^^^, QT^B), with humble fear. The reason for
this conversion of the heathen is, as stated in the Apocalypse,
on, rk StKouofUtTa oov itl>avepwOi)<rav. 71 and i^*^ (cC xiv.
30, xxix. 19) are names of the ecdesia pressa, as we know
from their use in the Psalms. Jehovah has proved Himself to
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXV. 6. 433
her in her distress (^? iV?, as in xxvi. 16, Ixiil 9, cf. xxxiii. 2) a
stronghold (rivo from ny) or refuge (from nj>, jlc, see on xxx. 3),
in short, a place of safety, a protection against the storm,
and shade from the heat (cf. as to the figures, iv. 6, xxxil 2,
xvi. 3; Sir. xxxL 16, Greek text), so that the blast of the
tyrants (cf. n\ xxx. 28, xxxiii 11; Ps. Ixxvi. 13) became
like a wall-storm, i.e. like a storm which comes in contact
with a wall (cf. ix. 3, shoulder-stick, i.e. one which comes in
contact with the shoulder), dashes against it and is broken,
without being able to wash it away (xxviii. 1 7 ; Ps. Ixii. 4),
for it is the wall of a strong castle, and this strong castle is
Jehovah Himself. As Jehovah is able to subdue all of a
sudden the sun's intense heat in dryness (i^*X, abstr. pro concr.,
as in xxxiL 2 = njv pK, xli. 1 8), and it is allayed as soon as
He raises a shady cover (Jer. iv. 29), i.e. of clouds (Ex. xix. 9 ;
Ps. xviii. 12), so does He of a sudden subdue the raging (P^,
as in xvii. 12) of the hordes that assail His people, and the
tyrants' song of triumph (ypi elsewhere only Cant, ii 12),
which spread over the world like scorching heat, is made to
subside, njp has its neuter root meaning, " to bow or bend "
(Arab. U*, imp/, o.), as in xxxi. 4.
So the first hymnic echo dies out, and the eschatological
prophecy, returning to xxiv. 23, but with a power of insight
increased by prayer, proceeds. Ver. 6 : " And Jelwvah of hosts
prepares for all peoples on this mountain a feast of fat flings,
a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things rich in marrow, of
wines on the lees well strained." " This mountain " is Zion, the
place of God's presence, the place of His community's worship.
The feast thought of therefore is a spiritual one, an antitype
of the meals in connection with the Shelamim sacrifices (cf.
Ps. xxii. 26 sqq.), which it far surpasses, onof, elsewhere
lees (from ipf, to lay past or up, to let ferment), are here vina
faecata,tLS Cato, de re rust. c. 154, calls wines which have
lain on the lees for a long time for the sake of gaining in
strength, colour, and durability. Of course 0*^9!^ really
means the faeces themselves ; and bad wines might bear this
name, as faex Laletana in Martial, i. 27. But the adjective
does away with the idea of dregginess. For B*p^ o^iop are
wines which, left on their lees after the first fermentation, have
VOL. I. 2 E
Digitized by
Google
434 ISAIAH.
thoroughly fermented and long settled, and which are filtered
before drinking (Greek, otvo^ aoKKia^, i.e. BtvKurfihm or
BiTjdiKov, from 8if}0€iv, percolare), hence strong clear wines.
D'JDB' is equivalent to D*?^fJ from aj>n, \ov being also applied to
animal fat (x. 27, xvii, 4, x. 16). D?CPP D'aos* does not mean
pieces of fat meat deprived of the marrow, for the Fid (Arab.
r^v^^Ve) is "8ed privatively, but never the Pual, and seldom
the KcU (see Miihlau on Prov. xxxi. 3) ; then " to deprive of
marrow " can only bo applied to bones, not to fat meat itself;
thirdly, we expect in this place rather to find mention ot
abundance of marrow. So the meaning of the adjective is
" made marrowy," " provided with marrow," medullata. The
thing thus symbolized is the full enjoyment of blessedness in
the perfected kingdom of God. The heathen are not only
humbled in such a way that they submit to the Lord, they
also have share in the blessedness of His community, and are
satisfied with the abundance of His house, and given to drink
of delight as of a stream (Ps. xxxvi. 9). This verse (6) sounds
like the joyful music of the heavenly feast. The choice of
the more flexible form D'nop (from the original 'TOD = nnop)
instead of Q'TOP is intentional. We hear, as it were, the
playing of rapidly-bowed stringed instruments.
The feast is on earth, for the Old Testament knows nothing
of a heaven where blessed men are gathered. Still the pro-
mise takes a higher flight than anywhere else. Vers. 7, 8 :
" And He stixdlows off on this mountain the veil that veils over
all peoples, and the cover that is covered over all nations. He
svxUlows off death for ever, and the All-Lord, Jehovah, wipes the
tear from every face, and tlie shame of His people He takes aioay
from the whole earth ; for Jehovah hath spoken it" On the
back of what Jehovah bestows comes what He removes.
" This mountain " is specified as the place where this also is
accomplished. He who decreed death and now also abolishes
it is Jehovah Elohim. Veil and cover ("??? from ^?3 = 'Hpo,
x-tii. 8, from ^D3, whence ndsilt, protector, prince ; mitssikku, pix)-
tection=: sovereignty, supremacy. Ztschft. deut. morgenl. Gesell-
schaft, xxviii 128) are symbols, not of grief and affliction, but
of spiritual blindness, like the xaXv/ifut on the heart of Israel
in 2 Cor. iiL 15. 13^?0 "if (cf. Job xli. 5) is the outer or upper
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXV. 7, 8. 436
side of the veil. Niigelsbach asks, " Was He tlien likely to
take hold of it from behind ? " Undoubtedly it is possible to
tear ofif a veil in this way, but Jehovah grasps it by the D';d,
removing it, not with violence, but with care. The second t3i?n
is not a passive form (Kimchi), but for the sake of the homo-
phony, takes the place of atn (see iv. 6, vii. 11, viii. 6, xxii.
13); cf. the obscure Niphal forms, xxiv. 3 (Gesen. § 72,
Eem. 1). With regard to the names for the veil, — in Di5> the
idea of all-sidedness predominates ; in •13SD that of density.
The removing of the veil, as well as of death, is called Vpa, a
word which is used of God also in xix. 3 ; Ps. xxi. 10, Iv. 10.
He has abolished death (I>?3, absorberc, see on iii. 1 2), so that
no trace of its former sway is to be seen. Paul renders freely :
KaretToBf) (V?a ') o ddvarwt ew vucw, 1 Cor. xv. 54 (following
the Aramaic nX3, which, like K3T, cf. Ps. li. 6, LXX., developes
the meaning of "conquering," from the root -idea of being
prominent, bright, outshining). Tlie Syriac version, uniting the
ideas of the Targura (?v?^) and of Paul, translates absorpta
est mors per victoriam in sempiternum. The annihilation of
death, however, is in itself not yet the perfection of blessed-
ness. There are sufferings which wring out a sigh for death
as bringing deliverance. From all these sufferings, too, which
are to be traced finally to sin, Jehovah grants release, n^^,
here as in Eccles. iv. 1, is a collective idea ; cf. Eev. xxi. 4, irav
BaKpvov. Wherever there is a tear on any face whatever,
Jehovah wipes it away ; and since Jehovah does so, it is
thoroughly done. He removes the cause along with its mani-
festation, the sin along with the tear. Naturally this applies
to the ecclesia tnumphans. The world is, of course, judged,
and what it is possible to save is saved. There is therefore,
too, no such thing now as shame of the people of God. In
the whole earth it has no place at all ; Jehovah has cleared
it out Thus, then, the earth is a holy abode of blessed men.
The new Jerusalem is indeed Jehovah's throne, but the whole
earth is Jehovah's glorious kingdom. The prophet's vision of
things lias brought him to the same point as that reached by
Paul, 1 Cor. XV. 28, and John on the last page of his Apocalypse.
• See No. IV. of my Reformation$ge»chichtlicht Cnrhia (Eran. Luth.
Kirch, Zig. 1884, March 28) : Eine alttest. Frage Luthers (p^a or j;^3 ?)
und die Antwort Bemhard Zicglers.
Digitized by
Google
436 ISAUH.
B. — The second echo: the abasement of Moab, chap. xxv. 9—12.
After the predictive vers. 6-8, which followed the first
hymnic echo like a recitative introduced at that point, the
song of praise begins anew, but this is soon changed into the
prophetic tone. The dishonour done to the people of God,
mentioned in xxv. 8, reminds us of their hostile neighboars,
who, though they cannot tyrannize over it like the imperial
power, yet scoff and persecute. Of these foes, the representa-
tive and emblem (cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 2) in the present passage
is the boastful Moab, xvL 6 ; Jer. xlviii. 29 ; Ezek. xxv. 8-1 1.
It is the prediction of Moab's humiliation, in this spiritual
sense, which prepares the way for the second echo by
celebrating the appearance of Jehovah, who is now manifestly-
present as the conqueror of death, the drier of tears, the
preserver of the honour of His oppressed Church. Ver. 9 :
" AtuI people say on thai day, ' Behold our God, for whom vx
waited that He might help us ; this is Jehovah, for whom toe
waited ; let vs be glad and rejoice in His salvation ! ' " The
undefined but self-evident subject of IDKI is the Church of
the latter days ; nr nan are connected, as in xxi. 9. The
waiting is spoken of with reference to the remote past, even
as far back as the exclamation of Jacob, " For Thy salvation
do I wait, Jehovah" (Gen. xlix. 18). The summons, "Let
us be glad," etc., has changed into the beautiful " Praise ye "
of Ps. cxviii. 24.
In the land of promise there is jubilation, but on the otber
side of the Jordan there is the anguish of destruction. Vers.
10—12: "For the hand of Jehovah will sink down on this
mountain, and Moab will be trodden doum where it is, as a
heap of straw is trodden down in the water of the dung-pit.
And he spreadeth out his hands in the pod therein, as the
swimmer spreadeth them, out to swim ; biU Jehovah humUeth
his [Moab's] pride, in spite of the artifices of his hands. Yea,
thy steep, lofty walls He brings dvwn, humbles, hurls to the
earth, even into dust." Upon Zion the hand of Jehovah is
brought down (niJ being here used, as in vii. 2) in oi-der to
protect (Ezra viiL 22, 31), and this, too, by taking vengeance.
Moab will be threshed down, stamped or trodden down (Job
xxxix. 15) where it stands (vnnn being employed, as in
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXV. tO-12. 437
2 Sam. vii. 10, Hab. iil 16, to signify " in his place," "in his
own land," with the additional notion of banishment witliout
any possibility of escape), — just as straw is trampled down
into a dung-pit in order to become manure. K'vnn is the
constract infinitive with £, probably to distinguish it from
the absolute infinitive Bn'nn (see Ewald, § 2405). Instead of
toa (as in xliil 2), the Kethib has 'ca (cf. Job ix, 30),— much
more correctly, inasmuch as •i^?']? in itself does not denote
the hole with dung-water, but the dung-heap, like the Arabic
dimna. It might also be possible, however, that to| is meant
as an allusion to the name Moab i^^^), as ^?1P has probably
been chosen with allusion to the Moabitish city Madmen
(i?"!?, Jer. xlviiL 2). In ver. 11, if 'anpa referred back to
Moab, Jehovah would be the subject (Targum, Aben-Ezra,
and Kimchi); but though the figurative representation of
Jehovah as pressing down the pride of Moab, by spreading
out His hands within it like a swimmer, might possibly, in
another connection, produce an impression of boldness and
sublimity ; yet here, where Moab is described as having been
forced down into the watery filth, to compare Jehovah to a
swimmer would be offensive: the swimmer is Moab itself,
laipa points back, in a neuter sense, to the place, ill-suited
for swimming, into which Moab has been violently plunged.
In a manure-pond one cannot swim; but, to save himself,
Moab attempts it, though without success, for Jehovah presses
down the pride of Moab in spite of (DV being used as in Neh.
V. 18) the nta-jK (thus written without Dagesh), " artifices,"
i.e. the clever and cunning movements of his hands. Ewald,
with maiK, compares the Arab. <_j,\ in the sense of a
"member" or "joint" (Kimchi, in; rn^XK); but the com-
i.
parison of ^^,^ in the sense of "cunning, intelligence with
■'*
craft and forecast " (see Lane's Arab. Lex.), comes nearer the
Hebrew usage of 3'>k. Saadias rightly renders it by tnuhdtala,
t.e. tricks and devices ; Hitzig by " machinations," i.e. twist-
ings and turnings, which Moab makes with his arms in order
to keep himself upon the water. The noun na"ix is here the
nomen aetionis from 3nK, which originally signifies to entwine
firmly and closely, then to lay wait for cunningly Cof. such
Digitized by
Google
438 isiiAn.
expressions as " to forge lies," '' lay plans," etc.). The
figurative statement in ver. 1 1 is exemplified literally in ver.
12. If the reading of the text were TJ^ ntoh 2»PO, one
would require to think of Kir-Moab (xv. 1, xvL 7) ; the text
OS it stands, however, refers to the strong and lofty walls of
the cities of Moab in general. Hitherto mention was made
of but one hostile city — the imperial city of the world. This
closing verse is remarkable, so that Ewald and Cheyne suppose
that it originally stood in some other place ; Smend, however,
derives from this verse a new illustration of the whole cycle
of prophecy.'
C. — Third echo : Israel as restored, or raised to life again
chaps. xxvL-xxvii. 1.
The second hyrnnic echo has thus its confirmation in a
prediction against Moab, on the basis of which a third hymnic
echo now arises. A^liile on the other side, in the land of
Moab, the people are being trodden down and their lofty
castles razed, the people in the land of Judah can boast of an
impregnable city. Ver. 1 : "On that day leiU this song be
stt/ng in the land of Judah : Oiirs is a city of defence ; salva-
tion He sets for walls and hulvmrk." According to the point-
ing, one ought to translate " A city is a stronghold (tV) for
us;" but it is better, in accordance with Prov. xxi. 22, to
render the words " a city of powerful offence and defence
belongs to us." The subject of n'C'J is Jehovah ; the im-
perfect is used to signify what He is constantly doing, and
always doing anew ; for the main walls and the outer walls
of Jerusalem pn, as in Lam. ii. 8, indicating the small outer-
most wall which encloses the whole of the fortifications, —
according to the Rabbinical interpreters, 'fJ'B'"'?, as the Syriac
also translates the word) are not inanimate stone, but fi^S"., an
* See the remarks of this author on Isa. chaps, xziv.-xxvii., in Stade'a
Zeifxhrift for 1884, pp. 161-224, where he endeavonrs to make out that
the historical setting of this cycle of prophecy belongs to the time of the
expedition of Alexander and the &11 of the Persian monarchy. The
portion about Moab (in xxt. 10-12) we regai-d as an episode, while he
considers it the centre of the whole ; on this view there certainly resnlts
a state of affairs (viz. the enslavement of the Jews by the Moabites) for
which no historical testimony can be adduced.
Digitized by
Google
CHArrCR XX VL 2, 8. 439
ever-living and never-dying salvation (Ix. 18). In the same
sense, Jehovah Himself is elsewhere called the wall of Jeru-
salem, and a wall of fire too, Zech. ii 9, — parallels which
show that nne^, is meant to be taken as the accusative of the
object, not (as in v. 6 ; Ps. xxi. 7, Ixxxiv. 7 ; Jer. xxii 6)
as the accusative of the predicate, — the view of Luzzatto and
Nagelsbach.
In ver. 1, the city is still regarded as empty ; hence the
summons in ver. 2 : " Open ye the gates, that a righteous
nation may enter, one that maintains fidelity ! " The cry is a
heavenly one, and those who open — if we have at all to in-
quire who they are — are angels. We are reminded of Ps.
xxiv. 7, 9, but the scene is different ; the present passage
has been individualized by the writer of Ps. cxviii. (vers.
19, 20). As in xxiv. 16, the "rigliteous nation" is the con-
gregation of the righteous ones ; and ^i is here used (as in
ver. 15 and ix. 2) of Israel, which has now through grace
become righteous, and has been confirmed in covenant-faith-
fulness towards God, who maintains His faithfulness (Ps.
xxxi. 24. The form D'JOK is from pOK).
Ver. 3 shows that the relations between Israel and Jehovah
now continue the same on both sides : " A firmly settled
mind Thou keepest in peace, peace ; for on Thee rests his
confidence." This is an apothegm taken from Ps. cxii. 7, 8,
but set in a lyric context, and employed with reference to
the Church of the latter days. The disposition of mind here
designates him who has it, in accordance with his inmost
nature, "ff!. is the constitution of man as inwardly taking
shape in act and disposition (i.e. thinking and willing), — the
form assumed by his whole mental life. This inner life is
said to be " firmly settled " CPO?) when it has a firm hold
within itself, and this it has when it keeps a firm bold on
God (x. 20). The new Israel has such a mind, and Jehovah
preserves this subjective condition (^M, with an object in-
dicating the mental disposition, Prov. xxiL 12), in "peace,
peace," — an accusative of the predicate used instead of a
consequential clause, and signifying " so that deep, constant,
and imperturbable peace prevails within " (cf. Phil. iv. 7), —
for its trust is placed on Jehovah. According to Ewald
(§ 149d), na33 refers to w, and is thus equivalent to W n^?
Digitized by
Google
440 ISAUH.
(cf, Ps. vii. 10, Iv. 20), the passive participle being here used
like the Lat eonfisus, fretus. To depend on God, to be
resigned to Him, brings stability and peace.
Once more a cry goes forth, as if from heaven, exhorting
Israel to continue in this frame of mind. Ver. 4 : " Trttd
ye in Jehovah for ever; for in Jah, Jehovah, is an everlctsiing
rode." 1» is the construct form of IV, which comes iiom
n^y (like 'n? from fno) ; and ^J', which is likewise formed
from the same verb (like ??', a fault, from w?*), properlj
signifies progress, far-reaching duration. The combination
rrtnj iV is found only here and in xiL 2 : it is the proper
name of God the Eedeemer in its most emphatic mode of
expression. The so-called Beth essentiae stands pretty fre-
quently before the predicate (see the remarks on Pa. xxxv. 2) ;
here, as in Ps. IxviiL 5, Iv. 19, it stands before the subject ;
" in Jah, Jehovah, there is an everlasting rock," i.e. He is
essentially such a rock (cf. Deut xxxii. 4 ; as Ex. xv. 2 may
be compared with Isa. xii. 2), or one has such a rock in Hiui.
He has shown Himself to be a rock, on which everjtbiog
breaks that would attack the faithful whom He encompasses.
Vers. 5, 6 : " For He hath bent down those who dwell on high,
the towering fortress; He tore it doum, tore it dovm to the
earth, hurled it into dust. The foot treads it to pieces, — feet of
tlu needy one, steps of tfie lowly." After passing rapidly over
the fall of Moab, there is at once celebrated the fall of the
imperial city (xxv. 1, 2, xxiv. 10-12) to which Moab was
but an adjunct. The imperfects are regulated by the pre-
terite ; and the anadiplosis which in other passages (like
xxv. 1 ; ci Ps. cxviii. 11) places words of a common deriva-
tion beside each other, here contents itself with a change in
the suffix-forms. The second thought in ver. 6 is an intensi-
fication of the first : she is trodden, — trodden is she who
oppressed those who have hitherto been oppressed.
The righteous ones, who, in the estimation of the world, go
astray, thus reach a goal from which their way appears in
quite another light Ver. 7 : " The path on which the
righteous man goes is smoothness ; smooth dost Thou level the
path of the just." i?*! is the accusative of the predicate,
indicating the result or consequence ; Dps means to make
even or level, and also (as a denominative form d^b, a balance.
Digitized by
Google
CIIAPTSR XXYI. 8, 9. 441
by means of which an equipoise is effected) to " weigh," but
not to " make horizontal : " the fundamental meaning of the
word is sufficient here, so that there is no need for thinking
of the balance to explain the expression. This part of the
song has fallen into the style of the Solomonic proverbs
(of. Prov. iv. 26, v. 6, 21): there is a pause, as if the writer
were reflecting.
In vers. 8, 9, there is then made a new beginning in lyric
style : " We have also waited for T/iee [that Thou shouldest
come] in the path of Thy judgments, Jehovah ; after Thy
name and Thy remembrance [went'] the desire of the soul.
With my soul I desired Thee in the night ; yea, vrith my spirit
deeply within me I longed for Thee ; for, when Thy judgments
[strike] the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn rigliteous-
ness." The Church of the last days, looking back into the
past, tells how she waited longingly for the manifestation of
God's righteousness which has now taken place. IK is here
employed in the same way as when we say, after something
wished for has happened : " and we were right in waiting for
this." " The path of Thy judgments " belongs to the " Thee,"
after which we must supply such a connecting expression as
" that Thou shouldest come : " the poetic expression rn_N Kla,
following the analogy of ^I^^ ^Ji, forms the basis of the con-
struction here. They longed for God to come as Bedeemet
along the path of His judgments. " Name " and " remem-
brance " denote the essential nature of God which becomes
capable of being made the subject of speech and thought
through the revelation which He makes of Himself (Ex. iii. 15).
They desired that God would again come before the conscious-
ness and memory of man in an act which would break through
His concealment and silence. The prophet declares this of
himself especially, for he feels himself " in spirit " to be a
member of the perfected Church. TP3 and 'H'l are accusa-
tives of closer specification (Ewald's Syntax, § 281c). " The
night" is that of trouble and sorrow, as in xxL 11 ; and
with reference to this stands '^nB^, with an allusion to '^ne'
(" dawn ") ; for the morning dawn after a night of suffering
was the object for which he (^d?, i.e. with his whole person-
ality, see Psychology, English translation, p. 239 ; and "n^i
*31p3, t.e, with the spirit of his mind, vvev/M rod vooi, — see
Digitized by
Google
442 ISA.IAH.
P&yclwlogy, p. 180) longed. And why ? Because men were
brought to the knowledge, and possibly also to the self-
application, of what is right, whenever God showed Himself
as the Judge, punishing men for their sins (of. Ps. ix. 17).
In the clause Y^IO Tpsw? leva, the verb to be supplied is
suggested (as in xxiii. 5) by the b which indicates the object
or point on which the movement terminates ; the rendering
of the LXX. is StoTi <^w9 (ilKs) rh irpoarayftaTa cov. The
perfect lip? is the usual form in gnomic poetry, and expresses
a fact of experience that has often occurred and still continues
frequently to happen.
Here once more the T?' has struck the tone of the ^7&a ;
and continuing in this strain it here pauses anew to reflect,
as at the end of a strophe. Ver. 10:" If favour icere skovm
to tlie vncked man, he did not learn righteousness ; in the mo^
upright land, he acts perversely, and has no eye for the majesty
of Jehovah." Vcn \tr is a hypothetical clause, left to be
marked as such by the manner in which it is uttered, like
Neh. i. 5 (Ewald's Syntax, § 357i; cf. Ges. § 159. 2), and
meaning " even supposing that kindness (i" = ^(priaTOTifi, Boui.
it 4) is shown to the wicked man : " the Hophal form V^ is
either written defectively for ITB', or it has virtually a doubled n ;
the latter is the more probable view, considering Prov. xxL 10
(where it is written in the same way) ; cf. Dan. iv. 24 (where
the n of )np must be regarded as virtually a doubled letter)
and Job xix. 23 (ipn;). ninbp pK (cf, Isa. xxx. 10, lix. 14)
is a land in which everything is right and is done uprightly.
A villain, even supposing he were placed in such a country,
will nevertheless act as a scoundrel ; and for the majesty of
Jehovah, which shows itself in premonitory visitations for
sin, in the midst of which he is still spared, he has no per-
ception ; this thought the prophet utters in a way which
reveals pain combined with his indignation.
In vers. 11—13 also the state of matters remains essentially
the same: "0 Jehovah, Thy liand has been exalted, but they
do not care to look : they will look, becoming ashavied, upon the
zeal for a people ; actually fire will devour Thine adversaries.
Jehovah, Thou wilt establish peace for us, for assuredly all
our works Thou hast performed for us. Jehovah our God,
lords besides Thee had enslaved us — only through Tlue will we
Digitized by
Google
CUAPTEU XXVI. tl-18. 443
pi'aise Thy name." There are three prayer-ejaculations, each
beginning with nirr, which, in the case of the third, is height-
ened into the fuller expression "Jehovah our God." The
standpoint of the first is the time before the judgment ; that
of the other two is in the midst of the redemption accom-
plished throughout the whole course of the judgment. Hence,
what the prophet utters in ver. 1 1 will be a general truth
which has now received its most splendid confirmation through
the fall of the empire. The complaint of the prophet is
similar to what is found in liii. 1. With this passage we are
not to compare Ps. x. 5, but Ex. xiv. 8, etc. (on does not
mean to remain in the distance and unrecognised, but to prove
oneself high) ; the hand of Jehovah has already made itself
known as highly exalted (fOT is 3rd pers. sing.) by revealing
itself in the history of the nations, protecting the Church, and,
in the midst of its humiliation, preparing the way for its
exaltation. But they have no eye to see this hand (b? marks
not mere negation, but negation combined with a manifesta-
tion of feeling ; its accompanying verb is followed by another,
^'n,', but this with an objective meaning) : they will be obliged
to see, though they do not like to do so, — they will come to feel
the hand of Jehovah in itself, especially as the Avenger of His
people. The expression DV'ns:?, " zeal concerning a people,"
changed from this abstract form into the concrete, means the
zeal of Jehovah of hosts (ix. 6, xxxviL 32) regarding His
people (DV being used as in xlix. 8) ; this expression, more-
over, forms the object of ^tn*, for ^3*3^ forms a dependent
clause, not an interruption which disturbs the flow of the
sentence; cf. Micah viL 16. The words "Thou wilt establish
peace," in ver. 1 2, express the sure hope of a state of peace
which will no longer be destroyed ; and this hope is based on
the fact that everything which the congregation has hitherto
accomplished (fifJjO is the carrying out of work to which one
is called, as in Ps. xc. 17 ; cf. the remarks on v. 12) has not
been their own performance, but the work of Jehovah for them.
In this way the liberation from the yoke of the imperial power,
which they now desire, is also the work of Jehovah. The
meaning of the complaint, " lords besides Thee had enslaved
us," etc., is precisely the same as in Ixiii. 19, with this differ-
ence, that the standpoint there is in the midst of the circum-
Digitized by
Google
444 ISAIAH.
stances regarding which the complaint is made, while here it
lies in the future beyond. Jehovah is the King of Israel He
seemed to have lost His dominion when the lords of the world
ruled Israel as they liked ; but it is otherwise now, and it is
only Jehovah through whom 03, " through Thee ") Israel can
again gratefully celebrate Jehovah's name.
The tyrants who usurped authority over Israel have dis-
appeared without leaving a tmce behind. Ver. 14: "Dead
men live not again ; ghadts rise not again ; therefore hast Thou
visited and destroyed them, and annihilated every memorial to
them." The meaning is not that they are dead for ever, as if
there were no resurrection at all after death; the prophet
knows certainly there is such a thing, as afterwards appears.
When he speaks of D'no and D'KBi, he has in his mind those
who have hitherto been oppressors of Israel, who (like the
king of Babylon, chap, xiv.) have been cast down into the
realm of the shades, so that we are not to think of a self-
resuscitation, a rising up again. The conjunction !?p (" there-
fore," "then"), like the Greek apa, introduces what has
happened along with another event, and is bound up with the
very fact of its occurrence (cf. similar cases in IxL 7 ; Jer. v. 2,
ii. 33 ; Zech. xi. 7 ; Job xxxiv. 25, xliL 3) ; and the meaning
of the passage is that they have fallen into Shedl, from which
they cannot be brought back (Ps. xlix. 15), — then God has
utterly swept them away, so that not even their name is per-
petuated. When Israel has cause to praise Jehovah in this
way, it will again have become a numerous people. Ver. 15 :
" Thou hast added to the nation, Jeh&vah, T/u>u Jiast added to
the nation ; Thou hast glorified Thyself, Thou hast extended all
the boundaries of the land." The verb *ip;, elsewhere construed
with ?P or 7», is here followed by ^, and contains its object
within itself, " to add to" being the same as to give inci-ease.
What is here stated is of parallel import with ix. 2 (cf.
xlix. 19 1, liv. 1 f.; Micah il 12, iv. 7; Obad. 19 f., and
many other passages ; regarding JJprn, see especially Micah
vii. 11); it is also contained, in germ, in vi. IZb.
The prayer now returns once more to the retrospect already
taken, in vers. 8, 9, of the night of sorrow which preceded
the redemption that had taken place. Vers. 16-18 : " Jeho-
vah, in distress they missed Thee ; they poured out gentle prayers
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTKK XXVI. 16-1& 445
Ixcaiise Thy chastisement Jell on them. As a woman with child,
who is nearirtg Iter delivery, writhes, cries mtt in her pangs, so
have we been before Thee, Jehovah. We have been with child,
we have writhed in pain ; it was as if we brought forth wind :
deliverance we have not wrought for the land, nor did inha-
bitants of the world come to the light." Tlie circumstantial
clause, top Tool's, " while Thy chastisement was afflicting them "
Q being used as in ver. 9), corresponds to ^lra in the parallel
member; and to li?B (liere used in the sense of looking
and longing for, as in xxxiv. 16 ; 1 Sam. xx. 6, xxv. 15 ; Jer.
iii. 1 6) corresponds ^^ PPV. " they pour out complaint," — the
perfect (from P'V = pyj, Job xxviii. 2, xxix. 6, to pour out, melt),
with the plural termination p (which elsewhere occurs only
twice, viz. in Deut viii. 3, 16, for P"fP^ in xxix. 31 is the
imperfect from e^^p) ; and B'n? means " whispering," not here
as in iiL 3, a whispered utterance of incantation-formulas (G.
A. Smith : " they pour out incantations "), but a whispered
prayer ; for sorrow and consciousness of guilt form so depress-
ing a burden that one cannot venture to speak aloud to God
(cf. xxix. 4). Pregnancy and pangs here symbolize a state of
most intense expectancy, the end of which seems to be so
much the nearer the more the sufferings are intensified. The
Church, looking back upon the past, says : " We often thought
that deliverance would certainly break forth, but our hope
was ever anew disappointed." The first toa is equivalent to
|i (" like a woman with child who," etc. ; see the remarks on
viiL 23); the second toa is equivalent to "le'SB (cf. Gen. xix.
1 5 ; Prov. xxiii. V), " [it was] as if we brought forth wind," etc.;
the mode of construction is not an inversion for " we brought
forth, as it were, wind," but toa in the sense of " [it was] as
if" governs the whole clause. The result of the painful
labour was, like that of the seeming pregnancy, a wind-birth ;
but this state of matters also, as is declared by T^BD, was the
effect of Jehovah's working ; it was assuredly the consequence
of the sins of Israel, and the nation's continued want of the
proper capacity for receiving salvation. Along with disappointed
hope, ver. 18 sets forth the fruitlessness of man's own work.
Israel's own doings, — no, these availed not to " make the land
salvation," i.e. to aid it in reaching full and satisfactory salva-
tion ; and (for so we may understand the clause at the end)
Digitized by
Google
446 ISAIAB.
they waited in vain for tlie judgment of Jehovah npon the
sinful world opposed to them, — or, they made vain efforts to
conquer these nations. This explanation is favoured by the
fact that the expression -'an *3|^, throughout the entire cycle
of prophecy, docs not denote the inhabitants of the Holy Land,
but those of the world, in the sense of «o<r/io« (see ver. 21, xxiv.
5, 6). The correlation between '^Bl and ^W? (ver. 19), how-
ever, as well as the preceding figure of the birth-pangs, pre-
ponderatingly declares for the view that ?W is meant to refer
to the falling of the fruit of the body (cf. Wisd. vii. 3 ; Uiad,
xix. 110, «oT07reo-«i' and nreaetv, Talm. to miscarry, as in
Kerilhdth ii. 4, and generally to throw off or separate in the
manner of birth). And the expression ^?n ^V* suits this
meaning (viz. that the expected increase of population did not
take place), from the fact that it does not here signify " the
inhabitants of the earth," but (indefinitely) " inhabitants of the
earth," or, as we say, young, new-born " mortals." The con-
dition of the country, as chastised through the oppression of
the imperial power, still continued, and there was no appear-
ance of a new generation to repeople the waste land {Bibl.
Psychology, p. 485, Eng. trans.).
But tin's has now taken place ; and instead of singing in
ver. 1 9 of what has occurred, the prayer places itself in the
midst of the occurrence : " Thy dead ones shall live, my dead
bodies shall rise again: axcake and exult, ye who lie in the
dust. For thy dew is the. dew of lights, and tlu earth will
bring sliades to the light." Such is the language of the
Church in the last days, after it has turned to God. Through
long - continued sufferings and chastisements, it has melted
away to a small renmant; and many of those who could
truly be reckoned among its members are now lying dead in
the dust of the grave. In the confidence of faith, and in full
])ersuasion of a hope that shall not be put to shame, the cry
is raised, " Tliy dead ones (those who belong, O Lord, to
Thee, and who therefore cannot be lost) shall live again"
(reviviscent, as in D'non n»nn, the reawakening of the dead) ;
and comfort is drawn from the workings of God's power and
grace which were at that very time being set in operation :
" My dead bodies shall rise again " (fh^ being a word without
plural form, but frequently used with plural meaning, as in
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXVI. 19. 447
V. 25, and therefore here conjoined with PS^P' = fupfjn ; in the
present form, before the light suffix, there is retention of
the S, which under other circumstances is lost); while the
certainty of the divine purpose gives the ground for the
powerful word of faith proclaimed over the field where lie the
dead, " Awake, and shout for joy, ye that dwell in the dust,"
— this utterance of strong faith finding its justification of
itself in looking up to Jehovah with the confession, "Thy
dew is dew born out of (supernatural) lights, as the natural
dew is bom of the morning-dawn " (Ps. ex. 3). Instead of
"dew upon herbs" (niiiK = nipn/, aa in 2 Kings iv. 39) we
take niniK (from nniN, as in Ps. cxxxix. 12), in the sense of
D«nn ilN, " the light of life." The plural indicates that there
is a perfect fulness of the lights of life in God (" the Father
of lights," Jas. i. 1 7). Of these is born the gentle dew that
revivifies the bones which have been sown in the earth
(Ps. cxlL 7), — a deeply significant figure, which is quite
obliterated by Hofmann, who would here read nii^n pt?, " dew
of thorough saturation." Luther, who renders " thy dew is a
dew of the green field," stands alone among the earlier trans-
lators ; the Targum, Syriac, Jerome, and Saadia all translate,
" thy dew is the dew of light," and, considering the intimate
connection in which the Scriptures everywhere place i^K,
^6)9, and D\*n, (Iwi?, this is natural enough.
But we go on to translate, " and the earth (PS) being the
subject, as in Prov. xxv. 3; cf. Ixv. 17, where it is the
object ; this form is used instead of P?!, which, except in
Job XX. 27 and 1 Kings xi. 1 8, is always only in the construct
state) will bring shades to light" (?*Bn being the causative
from PW, ver, 18), i.e. bring forth again the dead who have
sunk into it ; this is the rendering of Luther in the edition of
1541, "and the land will cast forth the dead" (see Biblical
PsychologT/, p. 485, Eng. trans.), and it was also preferred by
A. H. Franke. The dew from the glory of God falls like a
heavenly seed into the bosom of the earth ; and in consequence
of this the earth gives up the shades which it has hitherto
held fast, so that they again appear alive on the surface of
the earth. Those who understand ver. 18 as referring to the
earnestly expected overthrow of the masters of the world,
explain this expression, in conformity with that view, as
Digitized by
Google
448 ISAIAH.
meaning " and to the earth (p.8< being taken as a local accusative
= ni^J'> ^^'^' 5, or n^? in XXV. 12) dost thou cast down
shades," or even, " and the earth causes shades to fall "
{i.e. into itself). Such is the view of Rosenmiiller, who says,
" terra per prosopopoeiam, ut supra, xxiv. 20, inducta, detur-
hare in orcum sistitur impios, eo ipso manes eos reddens."
But though, according to that view, D'KBt agrees with ver. 14,
in which the oppressors of God's people received this designa-
tion, yet the rendering would be doubtful here, where the
term would need to signify, " those who by that very fact are
becoming shades;" but especially, if it be understood as
referring to the fall of the oppressors, tliis succeeding clause
gives no natural sequence and progress to the next words,
" thy dew is the dew of lights," whereas, according to our
explanation, it confines and seals the faith, hope, and prayer
of the Church by what foUowa Compared with what is
stated in the Apocalypse of the New Testament, it is the
" first resurrection " which is here predicted. Eeuss remarks
that the reference here is to national restitution, and not to
the resurrection of individuals; this may be true of Ezek.
xxxvii. 1-14, but the prophet here plainly means to say that
those who acknowledge Jehovah will be awakened out of
their graves and restored to the Church. The Church of
the times of glory is a Church of those who have been
mxraeulously saved and awakened, both in the present dis-
pmsation and in the life to come. Beneath the ground at
tlieir feet lie their persecutors.
Of the judgment upon these persecutors no mention is
made till after the Church is made up through the addition of
its members who had died, though that judgment, in order
of actual occurrence, precedes. The standpoint of prophecy
in these chapters (xxiv.— xxvii.) continually oscillates back-
wards and forwards, and this fact explains the exhortation
and the attendant reason assigned in vers. 20, 21 : " Go, my
people ; enter into thy chambers, and shut thy door behind thee :
hide thyself for a little moment, until the judgment of wrath
passes by. For, behold, Jehovah goeth forth from His place,
to visit the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth upon them,
and the earth reveals the blood she had drunk in, and no more
covers Tier dead." The song (f^) has now come to an end.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXVI. 20, 2L 449
and tbe prophet as such speaks once more. While the judg-
ment of wrath (D^T) goes on till it shall have passed away
(on tbe future perfect, cf. x. 12, iv. 4; and on tbe thing
itself, see Q|nn nnmt, Dan. viiL 19), the people of God are to
continue in the solitude of prayer (Matt vL 6 ; cf. Ps.
xxvii 5, xxxi 21). This they can do, for the judgment by
which they are delivered from their foes is the work of
Jehovah alone ; and this they are to do, for only those who
are hidden by God in prayer escape the wrath. The judg-
ment lasts but javDJ»3 (x. 24, 25. liv. 7, 8 ; cf. Ps. xxx. 6),
" a little moment," a short time, shortened for the sake of tbe
elect Instead of the dual-form T"^. (as the house-door, but
not the chamber - door is called), the word has with greater
show of reason been pointed VV^. (ftt>m fyn = rkm) ; in like
manner nnn is perhaps purposely changed into the feminine
form *3n, because Jehovah acts for the people, while they in a
purely passive manner commit themselves to His keeping.
Just as Noah, behind whom Jehovah shut the door of the
ark, was hidden in it while the torrents of water poured
down in judgment outside, — so is the Church to shut itself
off from the world without, in its life of prayer, because a
storm of judgment is impending. " He goes forth from His
place " (the words being exactly the same as in Micah i. 3),
i.e. not out of His own immanent divine life, but out of the
sphere of manifested glory in which He has shown Himself
as present to the spirits. Thence He goes forth, prepared
for executing judgment, to visit the inhabitant (3B'' is to be
r^arded as a collective) of the earth for his misdeeds,
especially his blood - guiltiness. The prohibition of murder
dates from the times of Noah, hence it was inserted as one of
the conditions in the " everlasting covenant " (xxiv. 5). The
earth brings forward two witnesses : (1) The innocent blood,
violently shed (on OW see i. 15), which she was forced to
drink in, but which, now disclosed, cries aloud for vengeance ;
(2) the persons themselves who have been innocently
murdered (cf. DWn, Ezek. xxxvii. 9), and who slumber within
her. Streams of blood come to light and bear witness;
martyrs arise and testify against their murderers. The earth
is appeased through vengeance being taken for the martyr-
blood it has drunk (Deut xxxii. 43 ; cf. Num. xxxv. 33).
VOL. L 2 P
Digitized by
Google
450 iSAun.
lu xxvii. 1 the special objects of Jehovah's judgment are
indicated in figurative but enigmatical language : " On tluU
day wiU Jehovah visit with His sword — the heavy, large, and
strong one — leviathan the fleet serpent, and leviathan the tortuous
serpent, and He vnll slay the dragon which is in the sea," The
three animals are doubtless symbols of three empires. There
is no truth iu the assertion (by Eichhorn, Eosenmuller,
Gesenius, Enobel, Umbreit, and Luzzatto), that there are no
more three animals than there are three swords. If the
preposition with the suffixed noun " his sword " were repeated
before each adjective ('ui n^nin ianriM nc'^ri iaina) we should
have to understand that there were also three swords ; but it
is in this threefold manner (with hv repeated) that the state-
ment is made regarding the number of the animals. We
have thus to ask what are the three empires. Now, the
ran (the long aquatic animal) is the constant emblem of
Egypt (li. 9; Ps. Ixxiv. 13; Ezek. xxix. 3, xxxii. 2). And
as the country of the Euphrates and Assyria are mentioned in
vers. 12, 13 along with Egypt, it is highly probable that the
two other animals will mean the kingdom on the Tigris
(i.e. Assyria, with its capital Nineveh, on the Tigris), and the
kingdom on the Euphrates (i.e. Ghaldea, with its capital
Babylon, on the Euphrates). Besides, the designation of the
two kingdoms by means of the common term "leviathan,"
while the difference is indicated merely by the attributive in
each case, certainly points to two related kingdoms. We
must not allow ourselves to be misled by the fact that t^ru
n")*! in Job xxvi. 1 3 indicates a constellation ; here we have
not Dhea as in xxiv. 21, and we are therefore on the surface
of the earth. The primary occasion of the designation here
given was the situation of the two cities. Nineveh stood on
the Tigris, the Hebraized name of which (viz. ^J^^n) points to
its rapid course and terrible rapids ; hence Assyria is com-
pared to a serpent moving in a rapid, impetuous, and long-
extended course (17)3 as in xliii. 14, for n'^a, following the
form V^V, — different from nna, a bar or bolt, xv. 5) ;
Babylon, on the other hand, is compared to a winding
serpent, i.e. one that moves in serpentine curves, because it
was situated on the Euphrates, which has many turns and
labyrinth-like windings, especially in the vicinity of Babyloa
Digitized by
Google
CIIAFTER XXVn. 2-S. 451
For the river, which formerly used to flow straight on, was
made to wind about through curves artificially formed, in
such a way that it had thrice to pass the same place (called
Arderikka), which, in the time of Herodotus, as he assures
us, every one who sailed down the river could not avoid
passing three times in three days.^ The peculiar feature of
the tortuous serpent symbolizes, it would seem, both the
longer duration of the one empire than the other, and the
more numerous complications in which it will involve Israel.
The empire on the Tigris soon pounces upon Israel, so that
the fate of this kingdom is quickly decided; whereas the
empire on the Euphrates advances by many windings, and
surrounds its prey with many folds. These windings are all
the more numerous because, in the view of the prophet,
Babylon is the final form in which the empire of the world
appears ; hence Israel continues to be entwined by this
serpent till the last days. The judgment on Assyria, Babylon,
and Egypt is the judgment on all the world - empires
together.
D. — The fourth echo : the fruitful vineyard under the protection
of Jehovah, chap. xxviL 2-6,
The prophecy now, in vers. 2-5, for the fourth time passes
into the form and spirit of a song. In the judgments on the
world, the Church recognises itself as Jehovah's carefully
protected and beloved vineyard.
" On that day, —
A merry vineyard, — sing of it !
I, Jehovah, its Tceeper, —
Every moment I icater it.
Thai nothing may visit it.
Day and night I keep it.
' In Greek, eevend rivers are called A^iitur ot'O^it ; moreover ^ti»fi,
the modem Greek name of the Eu&ioe^ is equivalent to 'O^ilifint. CL
Paul Casael's DrachmkWmpfe (1868X p. 106. The Books of the Augors
called the river Tiber colvbrvm Umquam flenuoBum (Serv. on Aen. viiL 96).
Moreover, both Aiatus {Phaen. 45) and Virgil {Georg. i. 244) compare the
constellation known by the name of the Dragon to a stream winding it*
way, flexu tmuoio, between the two Bean.
Digitized by
Google
452 ISiLIAH.
Wrath have I none —
0, had I thorns, thistles he/ore nu !
In battle would I Ifreak forth on them.
Bum them all together.
Men vxnUd then need to lay hold of my protection —
McJce peace with me.
Peace make with me."
Instead of introducing the song, as in )cxvi. 1, with "this
song shall be sung," or " they shall say," or similar words, the
prophecy at once makes a transition into the song : the case
is the same as in Ps. Ixxxvii. 7. It forms a descending scale
of strophes, — one of five lines (vers. 2, 3), one of four lines
(ver. 4), and one of three lines (ver. 5). The theme or
subject stands at the beginning, in the absolute case: 0*^1
"'pn may mean a vineyard (cf. nn O'la in Judg. xv. 5), and
this, too (for the term j,*st, which in Arabic means " wine '
— from its fermenting — is a choice poetic word in Hebrew),
one which produces fiery, generous wine ; perhaps, however,
the reading should be Tpn Diji, as indicated in xxxii. 12, the
LXX., Targum, and some MSS. The expression 5> >^}V (as in
Ex. xxxiL 18, and more frequently the Qal, Num. xxi. 17;
Hos. ii. 1 7 ; cf. our remarks on Ps. cxlviL 7) signifies to
strike up or begin a song regarding anything : it is a different
word from "3^ (yj**' <^8"*** ^'th ^^, to " meet," aiui-
fieaffai), to make a nasal sound, then to sing through the
nose (ue. in Oriental fashion). The term D"i3, " vineyard," is
feminine here, like iKa in the song of the well, Ntim. xxL 17 f-,
and like Israel, which is symbolized by the vineyard (iii. 14,
V. 1 f.), and is sometimes regarded as a masculine, sometimes
as a feminine (xxvi. 20). Jehovah Himself is introduced as
speaking. He is the keeper of this vineyard, who waters it
every moment when there is need (the plural form OV?^
being used distributively, instead of the doubled singular, —
like 0*^53?, " every morning," in xxxiii. 2), and watches it by
night as well as by day, so that nothing may " visit it," — the
expression 7}/ IgB, which is elsewhere used to signify visitation
by punishment, being here used of visitation through mis-
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXVU. 2-6. 463
fortune of any kind/ Because it is the Church which has
been purified through misfortunes, the feeling of Jehovah
towards it is one of pure love, without any admixture of
burning wrath (TOH)— a disposition which is displayed only
towards those who venture to injure this vineyard. It is by
way of challenge that Jehovah says. " Who, then, gives me
thorns, thistles ! " The form 'MR' is used instead of 7 I?', as .
in Jer. ix. 1 ; of. Josh. xv. 19. The unconnected "thorns,
thistles " instead of " thorns and thistles," which is the form
usually employed elsewhere, is quite in keeping with the
impassioned state of the great protector. If He had thorns,
thistles before Him, He would burst forth upon them (^3
being used in a neuter sense, — upon such a mass of bushes)
in war, and set them on fire (I'V? = OT?). The arrangement
of the strophes requires us, with Enobel, against the accents,
to connect norpsa with •'•{'^f^ ; the vocalisation of this word
(instead of which there is also found the reading ^V^^) is to
be decided in the same way as that of 'hso in ix. 3, and nn^
in G«n. ii. 23, fjvsa in 2 Kings iL 1, 11, etc In the very
choice of the expression npnpDa, we may plainly see that
thorns and thistles represent the enemies of the Church
(2 Sam. xxiiL 6 f.). In this sense the brief song concludes
with ver. 5 : only by giving themselves up to mercy will they
iind mercy. When Ik is followed by the voluntative, it
signifies " unless," as in Lev. xxvi 41 ; a P'rnn (as in 1 Kings
L 60, where it is applied to Adonijah, who seized the horns
of the altar) is here combined with tVo, in which are inter-
twined the mennings of a "strong rock" (from TTV) and a
" place of refuge " (from np, to hide oneself, flee for refuge ;
cf. the remarks on xxx. 2) ; ? tAy^ nfe^ is employed as in Josh,
ix. 16. Here ends the song. What the Church expresses in
it is her consciousness of the gracious protection of her God,
— a conviction that has been confirmed by her most recent
experience&
To the song of the vineyard the prophet adds, as if by way
* The rabbis of Tiberias (Menahem ben Seruk, etc.) read l|)EMt instead
of the form in the text ; and the older ezpoeitora (followed by Abarbanel)
explain the passage as if it read rhv 1j)B* {Bi " that its foliage may not be
found wanting : " see Ewald-Dukes, BeitrUge, ii. 146.
Digitized by
Google
454 IS.UAH.
of explanation, in ver. 6 : "In the fwhtn wiU JaetSb ttrihe
roots, Israd mil blossom and bud, and fili the turfau of the
earth toith fruits." That the peculiar language of prophecy
recommences here is seen even in the use of D*K3n (a temporal
accusative, as in Ecdes. ii 16, which in meaning is equivalent
to ) Q'to D'D* nsn, « behold, days are coming when . . ." Jer.
vii 32, etc.). On the employment of the active form ^*yO»,
cf. Jer. xiz. 4, Eeek. viii. 17, etc The divergent reading
ruun has arisen from an error of the scribea Some editors
have mc' as the Kethib, and nnEn as the Qert. The prophet
says, in figurative language (cf. xzxviL 31), the same as what
the apostle declares in Bom. xL 12, that Israel, when restored
to favour as a nation, will become " the riches of the Gentiles."
Jehovah's dxaunos with Isbasl fob theib Chastisbment
AND FOB THEIE SALVATION, ChaP. XXVII. 7-13.
The prophet does not now, even in ver. 7 ff., return to his
own actual present, but, certain that Israel will not be exalted
before it has been thoroughly humbled on account of its sins,
he places himself in the midst of this condition of punishment
And then,in full view of the glorious future of Israel, there comes
out clearly before his eyes the fact that the punitive dealings of
God towards Israel are quite different from those directed
against the world. Vers. 7, 8 : " Rath He smitten it like the
filing of its smiier, or hath it been stricken down, like the
ptriking of those stricken byitf In measure, when thou didst
drive it away, didst thou punish it, sifting with strong blast on
the day of the east wind." W3D, « its smiter," is the empire
that attacked Israel (x. 20), and vnn are the slain ones of
the empire who have fallen under the strokes of Jehovah.
The former smites unmercifully, and its slain ones are lying
without hope (xxvi. 14); Jehovah smites differently, and it
is different with the Church which was slain in the persons
of many of its righteous members. (On the two cases of
play upon words, cf. xxiv. 16, xxiL 18, x. 16.) When Jeho-
vah rejected Israel (as if by means of a " bill of divorcement,"
I 1), He contended against it (xlix. 25), i.e. punished it "in
measure " (nKBKpa = nxo nKpa), and only in measure (cf.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER xxvn. 9. 455
" peace, peace," xxvL 3), not in unmeasured wiath, but in a
manner conditioned by the terms of the covenant (c£ OB^a,
Jer. X. 24; OWsh) xxx. 11, xlvL 28). Hitzig, Ewald, and
Knobel read ^MOKDa (from a form KDKD, allied to ^ and also
KOMO, •' when thou didst disturb it," or, " didst drive it away ") ;
but the traditional text does not point to any various reading
showing n with maj^aiq (?[) ; and the early translations (except
the LXX., which has iM-xpii^evot) and expositors all regard the
word as a reduplication of nxp, which, as the third part of an
ephah, here indicates a pretty large measure. The clause
Imia njn is possibly to be regarded as an elliptical relative
clause, in which case also the transition into the third person
is best explained (" thou who sifted," etc.) ; but perhaps nlin
has been intended, nin here (as in Prov. xxiv. 4 f. ; see our
remarks on that passage) means to separate, remove (e.g. the
dross from silver, L 25). Jehovah sifted Israel (cf. the figure
of the threshing-floor in xxi. 10) when, appointing the
captivity for the nation. He blew upon it as violently as
if the east wind were raging (see our commentary on Job
xxvii. 21).
But He merely sifted. He did not destroy ; He was angry,
but not without love ; He punished, but this in order that He
might pardon again. Ver. 9 : " Therefore, in this way wiU the
iniquity of Jacob be atoned for ; and this iaaU the fruit of the
removal of his sin : when he makes all aitar-ttones like lime-atones
that have been broken to pieces, images of Astarte and sun-pillars
do not rise up again." With the word "therefore," a con-
clusion is drawn from the previous expression " in measure : "
God punishes Israel moderately ; His punishment is a remedial
measure, hence it gives way as soon as its end is attained,
and it will be removed even now if Israel completely re-
nounces sio, and, especially, the sin of all sins — idolatry.
mfta (" thus," or " in this way") points to the following to6?a
(" when he makes "), — by this, namely, the destruction of the
altars and the images of Ishtar (Ashera), and of the sun-god
(see the remarks on xvii. 8). By Israel's putting away the
fundamental cause of all evil, namely, idolatry (which still
continued to flourish among the exiles, Ezek. xi. 18, etc.), the
guilt for which it has now to suffer will be covered, ie. will
be esteemed by God as no longer existent (see the remarks on
Digitized by
Google
456 ISAIA.H.
xxii. 14).* The intermediate clause (cf. xxvi. 116) declares
that this which follows will be the very fruit, sought by
Jehovah, of the removal of Israel's sin, which He designed to
accomplish through chastisement
The prophet says this, speaking out from the midst of the
state of punishment ; and he can thus now further prove, by
the punishment which has followed the sin, that the punish-
ment will cease with the sin. Vers. 10, 11: "For the
fenced city is solitary, a dwdling given up aiid forsaken
like the icildemess ; there calves feed, and there they lie down
and devour its brandies. When its twigs become dry, they are
broken off; women come, make fires of them, for it is not an
intelligent nation ; there/ore its Creator pities it not, and its
Former shows it no favour." These chaptere (xxiv.— xxvii.)
everywhere present such a mixture of light and darkness
that it is a question whether by ^"^^va yj) is meant the capital
of the world-empire or the capital of the people of God ; our
opinion is that only Jerusalem can be meant, inasmuch as
Israel certainly is the people with no discernment (i. 3), the
nation of which Jehovah is called the Creator and Former
(xxii, 11). The standpoint of the prophet is therefore on the
other side of the destruction of Jerusalem, in the midst of the
exile. In spite of this, everything has an Isaian ring;
cf. generally xxxii. 13 f., v. 17, and in particular xvL 2, 9,
xi. 7, etc. The suffix in the expression " its branches " refers
to the city, whose ruins were overgrown with bushea
Synonymous with D'Byp, " branches " (always with Dagesh, to
distinguish it from D'P'V?, " clefts," ii, 21), is i^TJ, a « cutting,"
or sprig that can easily be cut off; this word has been
erroneously rendered " harvest " in the Vulgate, as well as
by Symmachus and Saadias, The form nnaB'n is not a
singular (as in xxviiL 3), but a plural (Ges. § 47, note 3),
referring to the separate twigs of which f^^ the brushwood
{i.e. dried branches) consists ; reference is made to this, in a
neuter sense, by nrris ; " women light it " C'^n^ as in MaL
i. 10), i.e. make with it a flame giving light (liK), and warm-
' The condition presupposes the prevalence of idolatiy at the time
among the people ; hence Smend, who brings down the date of chaps.
24-27 to the fourth century B.C., understands advance of the JeMrs towards
the heathen worship around them.
Digitized by
Google
CHAPTER XXVn. 12, 18. *57
fng fire (niK, xliv. 16). So waste will Jerusalem lie that in
places where men once swarmed, a calf will comfortably be
eating off the green foliage of the bashes growing between
the ruins ; and where hostile armies had been forced to
withdraw without having accomplished their object, women
come and take away, undisturbed, as much wood as they
require.
But when Israel repents, the grace of God will change
everything. Vers. 12, 13 : " And it will come to pass on that
day, a beating will Jehovah make from tlie swelling of the
Euphrates to the brook of Egypt, and ye shall he gathered one
to another, ye sons of Israel. And it will come to pass on
that day, there shall be a blowing with a great trumpet, and
those who are lost in the land of Assyria come, and the outcasts
in the land of Egypt, and cast themselves down before Jehovah,
in the holy mountain in Jerusalem." All those expositions
of ver. 12 which understand it as referring, like ver. 13, to
the return of the exiles, I r^;ard as false. The Euplirates
and the brook of Egypt {i.e. the Wady el-'Arish) are, of course,
the promised boundaries of the land of Israel on the north-
east and south-west (Gen. xv. 18 ; 1 Kings viii. 65); and it
is not stated that Jehovah will beat on the outside of these
boundaries, but within them. Hence Gesenins seems to be
pretty coiTect when he says that " the kingdom will be re-
peopled to the fullest extent that had been promised, and
that, too, as rapidly and as numerously as if human beings
were dropping like olives from the trees." The term 03n is
certainly applied in Deut xxiv. 20 to the beating of olives ;
but this figure does not suit the present passage, for olives,
before they can be beaten down from the trees, must already
be in existence, whereas the land of Israel is to be regarded
as desolate. What we expect is that Jehovah (as promised
in xxvi 19, 21) will make the dead to live within the whole
wide extent of the promised land. 03n (cf. ^xi-, to beat
something off, e.g. to beat a tree in order to shake off leaves
or fruit) is the word usually employed to indicate the beating
out of those husked fruits which are too tender and valuable
to be threshed ; these are carefully beaten with a stick, as
mentioned in xxviii 27, for they would be destroyed by
violent process of threshing. The large and extensive field
Digitized by
Google
458 ISAUff.
of the dead, stretching from the Euphrates to tbe Bhinoko-
loura, is compared to a threshing-floor covered with such fine
and tender fruit There lie true Israelites and apostate
Israelites mingled together ; but Jehovah will separate the
one company from the other. He will set a beating in
operation that the true members of the Church may appear,
separated from the false, as the grains are separated from
the husks and the straw. " Thy dead ones shall live," — to
this the prophet here returns. And with this view accords
the choice of the word rh'hv, which combines in itself tbe
meanings of " streaming" (Ps. Ixix. 3, 16), and an " ear " of
corn, ??e^ (to go, move on), being equally applicable to the
waters which flow along and to the elongated head of the
stalk of com grown up (cf. also Mb* in xlvii. 2). In this
passage the word, admitting of two meanings, presents a
beautiful dilogy (cf. a similar case in xix 18 and Hab. iL 7).
From the " ear " of the Euphrates to the Peninsula of Sinai,
Jehovah will beat — a great heap of ears, the grains of which
are to be gathered together into one IHK nnsp (a construct
form, without the genitival relation, as is frequently the case
with this numeral, e^. in 2 Sam. xviL 22), one, i.e. one to
the other, hence not in a slump, wholesale, but with careful
attention given to every individual (cf. JV»h nriK, Eccles. vii. 2 7).
To this risen Church there comes the still living scattered
ones, gathered by divine signal (cf. xviii. 3, xi. 12). Assyria
and Egypt are specifically named as lands in which the
banished ones are found, but these countries represent all the
lands of exile, as in xix. 23—25, cf. xi. 11. Both names
are emblematical, and hence are not to be used as a proof
that tbe prophecy lay within the horizon of Isaiah.
XND OF YOL L
Digitized by
Google
SeRIBNER & WEIsFORID'S
Catalogue
of tbe
Cj^roloiffual Pu&luationsi
OF
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
lESSES. SCRIBNER & WELFORD, Sole
Agents in the United States for the above
well-known house, invite the attention of
the Trade and the Public to the subjoined List of
valuable Books, embracing the widest range of sound
and useful Theological Thought and Discussion.
SCRIBNER & WELFORD,
743-745 Broadway, New York City.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Adam (J., D.D.) — Am Exposition of thb Epistle of James. 8vo, |3.60.
Ahlfeld (Dr.), etc. — Thb Voice fbom the Cross : Sermons on our Lord's
Passion by Eminent Living Preachers of Germany. Crown 8to, f2.00.
Alexander (Prof. W. Lindsay) — Systeu of Biblical Theoloot. Two vols.
8to, 88.00.
Bannerman (Prof.) — The Chubch of Christ. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
Bannerman (Bev. D.D.) — The Doctrine of the Church. 8vo, $4.50.
Banmgarten (Professor) — Apostolic History. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Beok (Dr.) — Outlines of Biblical Psychology. Crown 8vo, $1.60.
Pastoral Theology in the New Testament. Crown 8vo, $S.25.
Bengel— Gnomon of the New Testament. With Original Notes, Explana-
tory and Illustrative. Five vols. 8vo, $12.00.
Bible-OIaaB Handbooks. Crown 8vu.
BiNNXE (Prof.)— The Church, 60 cents.
Brown (Principal) — The Epistle to the Romans, 80 cents.
Candlish (Prof.)— The Christian Sacraments, 60 cents.
The Work of the Holy Spirit, 60 cents.
Christian Doctrine of God, 60 cents.
Davidson (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Hebrews, $1.00.
DoDS (Marcus, D.D.) — Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, 80 cents.
Book of Genesis, 80 cents.
Douglas ^Principal) — Book of Joshua, 60 cents.
Book of Judges, 50 cents.
Hamilton (T., D.D.)— Irish Presbyterian Church History, 80 cents.
Henderson (Archibald, M.A.) — Palestine, with Maps. The Map$ are
by Captain Conder, R-^-t of the Palalint Exploration Fund. $L0O.
Innes (A. T.)— Church and State. A Historical Handbook, $1.26.
KiLPATBiCK (T. B., B.D.)— Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature,
60 cents.
Lindsay (Prof.)— St Mark's Gospel, $1.00.
St Luke's Gospel, Two vols., $1.25.
The Reformation, 80 cents.
The Acts of the Apostles, Two vols., $1.26.
Macgregor (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Qalatians, 60 cents.
Exodus, Two vols., $1.60.
Macpherson (John, M.A-)— Presbji^rianism, 60 cents.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 80 cents.
The Sum of Saving Knowledge, 60 cents. ■
Murphy (Prof.) — The Books of Chronicles, 60 cents
Reith (George, M.A.) — St. John's Gospel, Two vols , $1.60.
ScRYHOEOUR (Wh.) — Lessons on the Life of Christ, $1.00.
Stalker (James, D.D.)— Life of Christ, 60 cents.
Life of St Paul, 60 cents.
Smith (George, LL.D.) — A Short History of Missions, $1.00.
Thomson (W. D., M.A.) — Christian Miracles and Conclusions of Science
80 cents.
Walker (Norman L., M.A.) — Scottish Church History, 60 cents.
Whyte (Alexander, D.D.)— The Shorter Catechism, $1.00.
Bible-Olass Primeis. Paper covers, 25 cents each.
Croskery (Prof.)— Joshua and the Conquest.
Given (Prof.)- The Kings of Judah.
Gloao (Paton J., D.D.)— Life of Paul.
IvERACH (James, M.A.)— Life of Moses.
Paterson (Prof. J. A.)— Period of the Judges.
RoBSON (John, D.D.)— Outlines of Protestant Missions.
Salmond (Prof.) — Life of Peter.
The Shorter Catechism, Three Parts.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Bible-CIaaB Frimen— con(tnue<2.
Salmond (ProfO — Life of Christ.
Scott (J. A.)— Life of Abraham.
Skinner (J., M.A.)— Historical Connection between the Old and
Smith (H. W., D.D.)— Outlines of Early Church History.
Thomson (P., M.A.>— Life of David.
Walker ( W., M.A.)— The Kings of Israel.
WiNTERBOTHAM (Rayner, M.A.) — Life and Reign of Solomon.
WiTHEROw (Prof.)— Jhe History of the Reformation.
BUikie (Prof. W. G.) — The Preachers op Scotland from the 6th to the
19th Century. Poat 8vo, $3.00.
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Bmoe (A. B., D.D.)— The Trainino op the Twelve ; exhibiting the Twelve
Disciples under Discipline for the Apostleship. Third Edition, 8vo, $4.00.
The Hduiuation op Christ, in its Physicail, Ethical, and OfBcial
Aspects. Second Edition, 8to, $4.00.
■ The Kingdom op God ; or, The Teaching of Christ according to the
Synoptical Gospels. Ex. crown 8vo, $2.00.
Calvin's Institutes op Christian Religion. (Translation.) Two vols.
8to, 95.60.
Galvini Institntio ChTisttanm Beligionis. A. Tholuck. T^vo vols. 8vo, 95.60.
Candlish (Prof. J. 8., D.D.) — The Kingdom op God Biblically and His-
TORICAI XY Co!»8inEKKD. 8V0, ||4.20.
Oaspari (0. B.) — A Chronological and Geographical Introduction to
THB LiKB OF Christ. 8vo, $3.00.
Gaspers (A) — The Footsteps op Christ. Crown 8vo, $3.00.
Cassel (Prof.) — Commentary on Esther. 8vo, $3.00.
Cave (Prof.) — The Scriptural Doctrine op Sacrifice. Second Edition,
8vo, $4.00.
An Introduction to Theology : Its Mnciplcs, its Branches, its
Uesults, and its Literature. 8vo, $4.60.
Cremer (Prof.)— Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek.
Third Edition, with Supplement, demy 4to, $13.50.
Orippen (Bev. T. O.)— A Popular Introduction to the History of
Cheistias Doctrine. 8vo, $3.00.
Onnningham (Principal)— Historical Theology. Review of the Principal
Doctrinal Discussions since the Apostolic Age. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
Discussions on Church Principles. 8vo, $420.
CnrtiH (Dr. B. L)— The Levitical Priests. Crown 8vo, $2 00.
Dftvidaon (Prof.) — An Introductory Hebrew Grammar. With Progressive
Exercises in Reading and Writing. Ninth Edition, 8to, $2.75.
Delitach (Prof.)— A System of Biblical Psychology. 8vo, $3.00.
New Commentary on Genesis. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Job. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Psalms. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
On the Proverbs op Solomon. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. 8vo, $3.00.
Old Testament History op Redemption. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Commentary on Isaiah. Two vole. 8vo, $6.00.
New Commentary on Isaiah. Vol. I. now ready, 8vo, $3.00.
On the Epistle to the Hebrews. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Iris : Studies in Colour and Talks about Flowers. Post 8vo, $2.00.
Messianic Prophecies. New Edition in the Pregg.
Doedea — Manual op New Testament Hermeneutics. Crown 8vo, $1.20.
Dollinger (Dr.) — Hippolytus and Callistus ; or, The Roman Church in the
First Half of the Third Oentnry. 8vo, $8.00.
Domer (Prof.) — History of the Development of the Doctrine of the
Pbrho!! or CHRisr. Five vols. 6vo, $16.00.
r System of Christian Doctrine. Four vols. 8vo, $12.00.
System op Christian Ethics. 8vo, $3.60.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
B»die (Prof.) — Couuentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to the EPHEsiAsa,
Phiuppiabs, C0L0.SSIAXS. New and Bevised Editions, Edited by Ber.
Wx Totmo, M.A. Three vols. 8to, %^lb each.
Ebrard (Dr. J. H. A.) — The Qosfbl Histort. 8to, $3.00.
COUUENTARY ON THE EpiSTLES OF ST. JoHN. 8V0, $3.00.
Apologetics. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Elliott — On the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. 8vo, $2.40.
Emeatl — Bibucal Interpretation of New Testament. Two vols., $3.20.
Ewald (Heinrich) — Syntax of the Hebhev Lanouaoe of the Old
TUTAMKHT. 8yo, fS.OO.
Revelation : Its Nature and Record. 8vo, $3.00.
Old and New Testament Theology. 8vo, $3.00.
Ttitbtim (Principal) — The Revelation of Law in Scripture. 8vo, $3.75.
EzEKiEL AND THE BooK OF HIS Pbophect. Fourth Edition, 8vo, $3.75.
Prophecy Viewed in its Distinctive Nature, its Special Fdnc-
nons, AND Fbopbb IirrKKPRETAnoifS. Second Edition, 8to, $8.76.
New Testament Hermeneutical Manual. 8vo, $3.75.
Pastoral Theology : A Treatise on the OflSce and Duties of the
Christian Pastor. With a Memoir of the Author. Crown 8to, $2.60.
Forbes (Prot)— Symmetrical Structure of Scripture. 8vo, $3.00.
Analytical Commentary on the Romans. 8vo, $4.00.
Studies in the Book of Psalms. 8vo, $3.00.
The Servant of the Lord in Isalah xl.-lxvi. reclaimed to Isaiah
AS TBI Author fkom Aroumskt, Structcbb, axu Date. $2.26.
Fnok (Prof. F. H.) — System of Christian Certainty. 8vo, $3.00.
Tjt« (James)— The Hereafter : Sheol, Hades, and Hell, the World to Come,
and the Scripture Doctrine of Retribution according to Law. 8to, 98.00.
Oebhart (H.) — The Doctrine of the Apocalypse and its relation to
THE DoOTBnCB OF THK GoSPBL. AKD EPISTLKS OF Joilll. 8V0, $8.00.
Qerlach — Commentary on the Pentateuch. 8vo, $3.75.
CMven (Bev. Prof. J. J.)— The Truths of Scripture in connection with
Kevklatiok, Inspibatios, Ain> tbz Canos. 8vo, (2.40.
Qlaagow (Prof.) — Apocalypse Translated and Expounded. 8vo, $4.00.
Oloag (Phton J., D.D.) — A Critical and Exeoetical Commentary on the
Acts of tub AposTt,is. Two vols. 8to, $8 40.
The Messianic Prophecies. Crown 8vo, $3.00.
>■ Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. 8vo, $450.
Introduction to the Catholic Epistles. 8vo, $400.
'■ — Exegetioal Studies. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Oodet (Piol)— Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Comment .vry on St. John's GtosPEL. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Commentary on Epibtle to the Romans. Two vole. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Ist Epistle to Corinthians. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith. Cr. 8vo, $2.40.
Goebel (Siegfried)— The Parables of Jesus. 8vo, $3.00.
Hagenbaoh (Dr. K. R.) — History of Doctrines. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
History of the Reformation. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Haft (B«v. Newman, XiL.B.) — The Lord's Prayer. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Harlen (Dr. 0. A.)— System of Christian Ethics. 8vo, $3.00.
Hanpt (Erich)— The First Epistle of St. John. 8vo, $3.00.
mvemiok (H. A. Ch.) — iNTRODuonoN to Old Testament. $3.00.
Heaid (Bev. J. B., K.A.)— The Tripartite Nature of Man— Spirit, Soul,
AHD Boot. Fifth Edition, crown 8vo, $2.00.
Old and New Theology. A Constructive Critique. Cr. Svo, $2.26.
Hefele (Bishop)— A History of the Councils of the Church. Vol. I.,
to A.D. 826 ; VoL II., a.d. 826 to 429. VoL IIL, AD. 481 to the close of the
Oonncil of Ohalcedon, 461. Svo, $4.60 eaoh.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Claris Publtcaiions.
Itengstenberg (Prof.) — Cohmentart ON Psalms. Tlirce vols. 8vo, 98.00.
CJoMMKNTARY ON THE BooK OF EccLKSiASTES. Treatises on the
Song of Solomon, Job, and on Iruiiah, etc 8to, $3.00.
The Prophecies of Ezekikl Eldcidated. 8vo, #3.00.
The Genuineness or Daniel, etc. 8vo, $4.80.
History op the Kingdom of God. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Christology of the Old Testament. Four vols. 8vo, $12.00.
On the Gospel of St. John. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Hutohiaon (John, S.D ) — Commentary on Thessalonianb. 8vo, $3.60.
Commentary on Philippianu. 8vo, $3.00.
Johnstone (Prof. E., D.D.)— Commentary on First Peter. 8vo, $4.00.
Jones (E. B. 0.) — Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions. 8vo,
S3.00.
Kant — The Metaphtsic of Ethics. Crown 8vo, $2.25.
Philosophy of Law. Trans, by W. Hastie, B.D. Cr. 8vo, $2.00.
Keil (P»f.) — Commentary on the Pentateuch. Thi'ee vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on the Books of Samuel. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on the Books of Kings. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on Chronicles. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on Jeremiah. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Ezekiel. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Daniel. 8vo, $3.00.
On the Books of the Minor Prophets. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical
SOBIPTURES OF THE Old Tbstamkst. Two vols. 8vo, $(i.OO.
— - — Handbook on Biblical Arch.«ology. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Killen (Prof.) — The Old Catholic Church ; or, The History, Doctrine,
Worship, and Polity of the Christians, tTiiC49d to A.M. 755. 8vo, $3.60.
The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious. Crown 8vo, $1.00.
The Framework of the Church. A Treatise on Church Govern-
ment, 8vo, $3.76.
EBnig (Dr. P. £.)— The Rklioious History of Israel. A Discussion of
the Chief Problems in Old Testament History as opposed to the Development
Theorists. Crown 8to, (il.50.
Xrummacher (Dr. P. W.) — The Suffering Saviour ; or, Meditations on the
Last Days of the Sufferings of Christ. Eighth Edition, crown 8vo, $2.40.
Da VXD, THE Kino of Israel : A Portrait drawn from Bible History
and the Book of Psalms. Second Edition, crown 8vo, $2.40.
Knrtc (Prof.) — Handbook of Church History. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
History of the Old Covenant. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
LaidUw (Prof.)— The Bible Doctrine of Man. 8vo, $4.00.
Leobler (Prof. O. V., D.D.) — The Apostouc and Post-Apostolio Times.
Their Diversity and Unity in Life and Doctrine. Two vols. cr. 8vo, $6.00.
Tiwhniwin (Pastor) — Scenes from the Life of Jesus. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
Liehtenberger's History of German Theology in the Nineteenth
Cbntcrt. Bevised and brought up to date, with important additions
specially prepared for this English Edition by the Author. 8vo, $5.00.
Lisoo (P. G.) — Parables of Jesus Explained. Fcap. 8vo, $2.00.
Lotze (Hermann) — Microcosmus : An Essay concerning Man and his Relation
to the World. 8vo (1460 pages), one vol., $8.00.
Lnthardt, Kabnis, and Briickner— The Church. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Lnthardt (Prof.) — St. John the Author op the Fourth Gospel. $3.00.
History of Christian Ethics. Vol. I. $3.00.
St. John's Gospel Described and Explained according to its
Pbcdliar Chakactkk. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Apologetic Lectures on the Fundamental Truths of Chris-
TiAHiTT {Seventh Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.U0.
Saving Truths of Christianity (Fifth Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Moral Truths of Christianity (Third Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark s Publications.
Ttaix (A., D.B.)— Studies in the Cbbishan Etioenobs. Second Edition,
orown 8yo, $2.00.
Kartenaen (Btohop)— Christian DoonATioa : A Compendiom of the Doctrines
ot Christianity. 8ro, $3.00.
Christian Ethics. (Gknkral Ethics.) 8vo, $3.00.
Christian Ethics. (Individual Ethics.) 8vo, $3.00.
Christian Ethics. (Social Ethics.) 8vo, $3.00.
Matheaon (a«o., D.D.) — Growth of the Spirit of Christianity, from the
First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Ero. Two vols. 8vo, $7.60.
Aids to the Study op German Theolooy. Third Edition, f 1.60.
Ueyer (Dr.) — Critical and Exeoetical Commentary on St. Matthew's
QospBU Two vols. 8yo, $6.00.
On Mark and Luke. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On St. John's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On the Epistle to the Romans. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On Corinthians. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On Galatians. 8vo, $3.00.
On Ephesians and Philemon. One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
On Phiufpians and Colosbians. One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
On Thkssalonians. {Dr. LUnemann.) One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
The Pastoral Epistles. (Dr. Huiher.) 8vo, $3.00.
The Epistle to the Hebrews. (Dr. LUnemann.) 8vo, $3.00.
St. James' and St. John's Epistles. {Hutker.) 8vo, $3.00.
Peter and Jode. (Or. Huther.) One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
*,* Thit tramtation ujrom the Uut edition revited by the late Dr. Meger.
mchie (Oharles, ILA.) — Bible Words and Phrases. 18mo, 40 cents.
Honrad (Dr. D. O.)— The World of Prayer. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Miiller (Dr. Jnlina) — The Christian Doctrine of Sin. An entirely New
Translation from the Fifth German Edition. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Naville (Emeat) — The Problem of Evil. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
The Christ. Translaterl by Rev. T. J. DssPRfe. Cr. 8vo, $1.80.
Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical, "rianslated
by Bey. Heukt Downtom, M.A. Crown 8yo, $2.00.
KiooQ (W. R, LL.D.) — The Incarnate Saviour : A Life of Jesus Christ
Crown 8vo, $2.40.
Oehler (Piot)— Theology of the Old Testament. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Ooateizee (Dr. Van)— The Year of Salvation. Words of Life for Every
Day. A Book of Honoehold Devotion. Two vols. Svo, $2.40 each.
Moses : A Biblical Study. Crown 8vo, $2.40.
OrelU— Old Testament Prophecy regarding the Consummation of the
KmuDOM OP God. 8vo, $8.00.
Prophecies of Isaiah. Demy Svo, $3.00.
Prophecies of Jeremiah. Svo, $3.00.
FUIippi (P. A.) — Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. From the
Third Improved Edition, by Key. Professor Bakks. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
PreMena^ (Edward de)— The Redeemer : Discourses. Crown Svo, $S.40.
Piiiuer (Bemhard) — History of the Christian Philosophy of Reuoion
FKOK THB Beformatioii TO Kaitt. 8yo, $5.26.
B£biger (Prof.)— ENCTCLOPiEDiA op Theology. Two vols. Svo, $6.00.
Baiay (Prindpal)— Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine.
{The IWh Seriet of the Cunningham Lectura.) 8vo, $4.00.
Beoach (Prof.) — Nature and the Bible : Lectures on the Mosaic History of
Creation in relation to Natural Science. Two vols. Svo, $7.60.
Biehm (Prof.)— Messlanic Prophecy. New Edition in the l^ess.
Bothe (Prof.) — Sermons for the Christian Year. Crown Svo, $1.50.
Salaaet — Manual of Modern Pantheism. Two vols. Svo, $4.00.
Sartocina (Dr. B.)— Doctrine of DrviNZ Lovx. 8vo, $3.00.
Digitized by
Google
Seliinld'i BiBUOAL Thbologit ok the New Testament. 8vo, $3.00.
Bohiiiex (Prof.)— History of the New Testament Times. Div. II. Thi'ee
vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Soott (Jm., ILA., O.D.) — Principles or New Testament Quotation
EsTABUSHED AKD APPLIED TO BiBUCAL Criticisu. Crown 8vo, 2nd
Edition, 91.^0.
Simon (Bev. Prof. D. W.) — The Bible ; An Outgrowth of Theocratic Life.
Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Redemption of Man. Discussions bearing on the Atonement.
Demy 8vo, $4.00.
- Smeaton (Prof.) — ^The Doctrine ok the Atonement as Taught by Christ
Himself. Second Edition, 8yo, $4.20.
On the Doctrine op the Holt Spirit. 2nd Edition. 8vo, 93.60.
Bmith (Prof. Thos., D.D.)— Medieval Missions. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
St&hlin (leonhard) — Kant, Lotze, and Ritsohl : A Critical Examination.
Sto, $3.00.
Stelker (Bev. Jaa., O.D.) — ^The Life of Jesus Christ. New Edition, in
larger type. Orown 8to, $1.60.
Life op St. Paul. Large Type Edition. Crown 8vo, 11.50.
Stanton (V. H., ILA.) — The Jewish and The Christian Messiah. A
Btndy in the Earliest History of Christianity. 8vo, $4.00.
Steinmeyer (Ih:. F. L.) — The Miracles of Our Lord : Examined in their
relation to Modem Criticism. 8to, $8.00.
The History of the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord,
considered in the Ught of Modem Criticism. 8vo, $8.00.
Sterenflon (Mia.^ — The Symbouc Parables : The Predicticms of the Apoca-
lypse in relation to the General Truths of Scriptnre. Crown «vo, $1.40.
Steward (Kev. G.) — Mediatorial Sovereignty : The Mystery of Christ and
the Bevelation of the Old and New Testaments. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
The Argument op the Epistle to the Hebrews. 8vo, 11420.
Stier (Dr. Enddph)— On the Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight vols. 8to. $24.00.
The Words of the Risen Saviour, and Commentary on the
Epmtle of St. Jamks. 8to, $8.00.
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. Svo, $3.00.
Tholnck (Prof.) — Light prom the Cross. Third Edition, crown Svo, $2.00.
Tophel (Partor G.)— The Work op the Holt Spirit. Crown Svo, fl.OO.
Tniniann (Dr. fturl) — Reformers before the Reformation, principally in
Germany and the Netherlands. Two vols. Svo, $6.00.
The Sinlessness of Jesus : An Evidence for Christianity. Fourth
Edition, crown Svo, $2.25.
Unrick (W., ILA.) — The Servant of Jehovah: A Comrocntaiy upon
Isaiah lii. 18-1iii. 12 : with Dissertations npon Isaiah xl.-lxvi. Svo, $2.40.
Vinet — Life of Alexander Vinet. By Laura M. Lane. Post Svo, $3.00.
Walker (J.. D.D.) — Theology and Theologians of Scotland. New
Edition, crown Svo, $1.40.
Watts (Prof.) — The JNewer Criticism and the Analogy of the Faith.
Third Edition, crown Svo, $2.00.
The Reign of Causalitt : A Vindication of the Scientific Principle
of Telle Causal Efficiency. Crown Svo, $2.40.
■ Weln (Prof.)— Biblical Theology of New Testament. 2 vols. Svo, $6.00.
Life of Christ. Three voK Svo, $9.00.
White (Bev. M.) — Symbolical Numbers of Scripture. Crown Svo, $1.60.
. Winer (Ihr. 6. B.) — A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament
Greek, regarded as the Basis of New Testament Exegesis. Third Editiim,
edited by W. F. MotJi.TOU, D.D. Ninth English Edition, Svo, $6.00
The Doctrines and Confessions of Christendom. Svo, $3.00.
Witheiow (Prof. T., D.D.) — The Form of the Christian Temple. Svo, $4.00.
Warkman (Prof. G. 0.) — The Text of Jeremiah ; or, A Critical Investigation
of the Greek and Hebrew, with the Variations in the L&X Retranslated into
the Original and Explained. Post Svo, $3.60.
Wright (0. H., D.D.)— Biblical Essays. Crown Svo, $2.00.
Digitized by
Google
M
ESSBS. SCRIBNER & WELFOSD specially invite particular attention to
the following valuable Works issued in the Series
"CLARK'S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY."
Banmgaitwi— Tlia History of the Olnirali In the ApostoUe Age. Three rol*.
Bleek— Introdnotlon to the New Tertamant. Two vols,
nmnl'n Oommentaiy on Either. One vol.
DallttMh— Oommontaiy on Job. Two vols.
Kaw OommaataiT on Oenaait. Two vola.
Oommantaiy on us Psalms. Three vols.
Oommantaiy on the Proverbs of Bolomott. Two vols.
Oommantaiy on 8ooc of Bolomon and Borilealastes. One vol.
Oommentaiy on ttaaPlophsales of Isaiah. Two vols.
Kew Oommentaiy on Isaiah. Vol I. now ready.
Oommentary on BplsUe to the Bebrews. Two vols.
A System of BibUaal PiyOholegy. One vol.
Domer— A System of Ohilstian Doctrine. Four vols.
History of the Development of the Dootrlne of the Person of Christ. Five vols.
Bbrard— Oommentary on the Epistles of St. John. One vol.
— — ns Oospel mstoiy. One vol.
AndOKetlcs. Three vols.
Bwald— Revelation: Its Mature and Raoord. One vol.
Old and Mew Testament Theology. One vol.
Flaak^ System of Ohrlstlan Oeitalnty. One vol.
Oebhaidt— Doctrine of the Apooalypae. One voL
Oodet— Oommentaiy on St. Lake's OospeL Two vol».
—— Oommentaiy on St. John's OcapeL Three vols.
Oommentaiy on the Bplstle to the Romans. Two vols.
Oommantaiy on First Ooillltlilaas. Two vols.
Ooebel— On the Parable*. One voL
Haganbaoh— History of the Refoimatlan. Two vols,
History of daiistlan Dootrtnea. Thne vols.
Harless— A System of Ohrlstlan Ethics. One vol.
Hanpt— Oommentary on the First Bplstle of St. John. One vol
Htvemlok— Oeneral Introduothm to the Old Testamuit. One vol.
Hengstenberg— Ohilstolosy of the Old Testament. Fonr vols.
Oommentary on the Psalms. Three vols.
On the Book of Eccleslastes, Etc. etc. One voL
:. Oommantaiy on the Oospei of St. John. Two vote.
Oommantaiy on BiekleL One voL
Ik* ""B''""' of Ood under the Old Oovenaat. Two vote.
KeU— Introduonon to the Old Testament Two vols.
Oommentary on the Penta t enOh. Three vols.
Oommentaiy on Jcsbna, Judges, and Ruth. One vol.
Oommentaiy on tha Books of Samuel. One vol.
Oommentary on the Booka of Kings. One voL
Oommentary on the Books of ObronlOles. One voL
Oommentary on Bira, Nehemlah, and Esther. One voL
Oommentary on Jeremiah and I<amentatlons. Two vols.
Oommentary on EsekleL Two vols.
Oommentary on the Book of Daniel. One voL
Oommentary on the Minor Prophets. Two vols.
BlbUoal ArwaOlogy. Two vols.
Knrts— History of the Old Oovenaat; or, Old Testament Dispensation. Thne vnu.
Lnthardt— Oommentaiy on the Oospei <ur St. John. Three vols.
-Individual. Threevols.
milar— The Ohilstlaa Oootiln* of Sin. Two vols.
Oehlar— BtbUoal Theology of the Old Testament. Two vols.
OrelU— PiaphMV rsgatdlng Oonsnmmatlon of Ood's Kingdom. One voL
Oommantary on Isuah. One vol
Oommentary on Jeremiah. One voL
Phllippl— Oommentary on Epistle to Romans. Two vote.
BSUger— BnoyOlopadla of Theology. Two vols.
Saitortns— The Dootrlne of Divine Love. One vol.
Sohttrer— Tha Jewish People In the Time of Ohrlst. Division I. VoL I. Dlvteionll. Thieevola
Stelnmeyer— History of the Passion and Besurreotlon of our Lord. One vol.
Stlar— The Words of the Lord Jesus. Elf;ht vols.
The Wonls of the Risen Saviour, and Oommantary on Bplstle of St. James. One vol.
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. One vol.
nilmaan— Befoimers belbre the Reformation. Two voK
Weiss— Bmuoal Theology of the Mew Testament. Two vote.
The LUh of Ohiut. Three vote.
Wtnsr— OoUeetleB of the Oo nft sslons of Ohrlstsndom. One vol.
*.* For Prices of the above Torks see preceding pages.
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by
Google
14 DAY USE
RfiTURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
This book is due on the last date starap>ed below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recalL
^
b^SS
t^'VED
m§ 1 5 ■
m 7'e8-;.^PM
66-5 PM
-At
LOA t ^l P& P T.
OAN DEPT
MAR 1 196/ 6 3
^
«
KK. .f iVr.i.')
APR 1 5 'C7 - 12 M
JUL 1 ^ ^979 ^
(ccaaju. ?
LOAN )Jb.Hl
r'- c
-MA^-
MRY 2 '67 -12 W
RECDLD JAN
T'
(F2aaa6l07l76B
-^A c^ VAU ^ -'
Uni».
Digitized by VjOQ
-a
-i
I-- ■■ -a
U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
C0M7MM3375
'■.!••- "'.
371501
V.I :
tINiVifclTY OF CAUFORNIA UBRAR"
/Google
^l
V
J-
T:
.'I
f'»» Tv
- *,\
]
^>
Bibli(
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
ALFRED C. BARNES.
NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
3 1924 070 685 874
Cornell University
Library
The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070685874
CLARK'S
FOREIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
FOUKTH SEJilES.
VOL. XV.
BtUt\ici) on ti)t $rop^(ciest of Jt^iataf).
VOL. II.
EDINBURGH:
T. AND T. OLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET.
MDCCCLXXXVI.
PRINTED BV MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDtiN, . HAMILTON, ADA3IS, AND CO.
DUEUN, GEO. HERBERT.
NEW YORK, . SCEIBNER AND WELFORD.
BIBLICAL COMMENTAEY
ON
THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
FRANZ OELITZSCH. D.D.,
PKOFESSOK OF THEOLOGY-
f lanslatelr front t^t (ileiman,
BT
THE EEV. JAMES MARTIN, B. A.
VOL. IL
EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38, QEOEGE STEEET.
MDCCCLXXXVI.
■^^
CONTENTS
PART V.
Book or Woes ; or, Histoeicai, Discourses relating to Asshuk
AND THE Egyptian Alliance (Chap, xxviii.-xxxiii.), . 1
The First Woe.— Judgment upon Samaria and Jerusalem,
and Consolation for both (Chap, xxviii.), . . 2
The Second Woe. — ^The Oppression and Deliverance of Ariel
(Chap, xxix.), ...... 17
The Third Woe. — The Momentous Result of the Alliance
■with Egypt (Chap, xxx.), .... 26
The Fourth Woe. — The False Help ; the Despised One pitied;
and the New Bra (Chap, xxxi.-xxxii. 1-8), . . 43
Against the Women of Jerusalem (Chap, xxxii. 9-20), . 50
The Fifth Woe. — Woe concerning Asshur ; Deliverance and
Glory of Jerusalem (Chap, xxxiii.), ... 57
PART VI.
Finale of the Judgment upon all the World (more espe-
CIALLT upon EdOM), AND REDEMPTION OF THE PEOPLE OF
Jehovah (Chap, xxxiv. xxxv.), ... 66
PART VII.
Fulfilments of Prophecy; and Prophecies belonging to
THE Fourteenth Year of Hezekiah's Reign, and the
Times immediately following (Chap, xxxvi.-xxxix.), . 80
A. First Assyrian Attempt to compel the Surrender ot Jeru-
salem (Chap, xxxvi.-xxxvii. 7), ... 84
B. Second Attempt of the Assyrians to force the Surrender
of Jerusalem. Its Miraculous Deliverance (Chap.
xxxvii. 8 sqq.), ...... S4
CONTENTS
C. Hezekiah's Illness. Isaiah assures him of his Recovery
(Chap, xxxviii.), . ■ • • •
D. Threatening of the Babylonian Captivity occasioned by
Hezekiah (Chap, xxxix.), ....
PAGE
111
122
SECOND HALF OF THE COLLECTION (CHAP. XJ..-LXVI.).
PART L
First Peophecy. — 'Words of Comfort, and the God of Comfort
(Chap, xl.), 139
Second Prophecy.— The God of the World's History, and of
Prophecy (Chap, xli.), . . . . .157
Third Prophecy. — The Mediator of Israel and Saviour of the
Gentiles (Chap. xlii. l-xliii. 13), . . .174
Fourth Prophecy. — Avenging and Deliverance ; and Outpouring
of the Spirit (Chap, xliii. 14-xUv. 5), . . . 195
Fifth Prophecy. — The Ridiculous Gods of the Nations ; and the
God of Israel, who makes His People to rejoice (Chap.
xliv. 6-23), .205
Sixth Pp.ophecy. — Cyrus, the Anointed of Jehovah, and Deliverer
of Israel (Chap. xliv. 24-x1t.), .... 214
Seventh Prophecy. — Fall of the Gods of Babel (Chap, xlvi.), . 231
Eighth Prophecy.— Fall of Babel, the Capital of the Empire of
the World (Chap, xlvii.), .... 237
Ninth Prophecy. — Deliverance from Babylon (Chap, xlviii.), . 245
PART II.
First Prophecy.— Self-attestation of the Servant of Jehovah.
The Despondency of Zion reproved (Chap, xlix.), . 256
Second Prophecy.— Israel's SeK-rejection ; and the Stedfastness
of the Servant of Jehovah (Chap. 1.), . . . 274
Third Prophecy.— The bursting forth of Salvation, and turning
away of the Cup of Wrath (Chap, li.), . . .281
Fourth Prophecy.— Jerusalem exchanges Servitude for Domi-
nion, and Imprisonment for Liberty (Chap. lii. 1-12), . 295
Fifth PitOPHECY.-Golgotha and Sheblimini, or the Exaltation
of the Servant of Jehovah out of deep Degradation fGhat)
Hi- 13-liii.), 301
CONTENTS. vii
PAGE
Sixth Prophecy.— The Glory of Jerusalem, the Church of the
Servants of Jehovah (Chap, liv.), . . . 342
Seventh Pkophect. — Come and take the sure Salvation of
Jehovah (Chap. Iv.), ..... 353
Eighth Pkophect. — Sabhatical Admonitions, and Consolation for
Proselytes and Eunuchs (Chap. Ivi. 1-8), . . 360
Ninth Prophecy. — Neglect of Duty hy the -.eaders of Israel ;
and Errors of the People (Chap. Ivi. 9-ivii.), . . 864
PART III.
First Prophecy. — The False Worship and the True, with the Pro-
mises helonging to the latter (Chap. Iviii.), . . 884
Second Pkophecy. — The existing Wall of Partition hroken down
at last (Chap, lix.), ..... 895
Third Prophecy. — The Glory of the Jerusalem of the Last Days
(Chap. Is.), . , . . . . .409
Fourth Prophecy. — The Glory of the Office committed to the
Servant of Jehovah (Chap. M.), .... 424
Fifth Prophecy — The gradual Extension of the Glory of Jeru-
salem (Chap. Ixii.), ..... 484
Sixth Prophecy. — Judgment upon Edom, and upon the whole
World that is hostile to the Church (Chap. Ixiii. 1-6), . 442
THE THREE CLOSING PROPHECIES.
First Closing Prophecy. — Thanksgiving, Confession, and Sup-
plication of the Church of the Captivity (Chap. Ixiii. 7-
IxiV.), 451
Second Closing Prophecy. — Jehovah's Answer to the Church's
Prayer (Chap. Ixv.), ..... 474
Third Closing Prophecy. — Exclusion of Scorners from the coming
Salvation (Chap. Ixvi.), ..... 493
APPENDIX, 519
Observations on Isaiah xxi. By J. G. Wetzstein, . . 525
THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
PAET V.
BOOK OF WOES;
OR HISTOKICAL DISCOUESES RELATING TO ASSHTJE AND
THE EGYPTIAN ALLIANCE.
Chap, xxviii.-xxxiii.
BHESE chapters carry us to the earliest years of
Hezekiah's reign, probably to the second and third ;
as Samaria has not yet been destroyed. They run
parallel to the book of Micah, which also takes its
start from the destruction of Samaria, and are as faithful a
mirror of the condition of the people under Hezekiah, as eh.
vii.-xii. were of their condition under Ahaz. The time of Ahaz
was characterized by a spiritless submission to the Assyrian yoke ;
that of Hezekiah by a casual striving after liberty. The people
tried to throw off the yoke of Assyria ; not with confidence in
Jehovah, however, but in reliance upon the help of Egypt.
This Egypticizing policy is traced step by step by Isaiah, in
ch. xxviii.-xxxii. The gradual rise of these addresses may be
seen from the fact, that they follow the gradual growth of the
alliance with Egypt through all its stages, until it is fully con-
cluded. By the side of this casual ground of trust, which
Jehovah will sweep away, the prophet exhibits the precious
comer-stone in Zion as the true, firm ground of confidence.
We might therefore call these chapters (xxviii.-xxxiii.) " the
book of the precious corner-stone," just as we called ch. vii.-xii.
" the book of Immanuel." But the prophecy in ch. xxviii. 16
VOL. II. A.
2 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
does not determine and mould the whole of this section, in
the same manner in which the other section is moulded a^d
governed by the prophecy of the Son of the Virgin We
Therefore prefer to call this cycle of prophecy « the book of
woes ;" for censure and threatening are uttered here m repeated
utterances of "woe," not against Israel only, but more especially
against Judah and Jerusalem, untH at last, in ch. xxxui., the
« hoi concerning Jerusalem" is changed into a « hoi concemmg
Asshur." All the independent and self-contained addresses in
this cycle of prophecy commence with hoi (" woe ;" ch. xsviii.,
xxix., XXX., xxxi.-xxxii., xxxiii.). The section which does not
begin with hoi (viz. ch. xxxii. 9-20) is the last and dependent part
of the long address commencing with ch. xxxi. 1. On the other
hand, ch. xxix. 15-24 also commences with hoi, though it does
not form a distinct address in itself, since ch. xxix. forms a com-
plete whole. The subdivisions of the sections, therefore, have
not a uniform commencement throughout ; but the separate
and independent addresses all commence with hoi. The climax
of these prophecies of woe is ch. xxx. Up to this point the
exclamation of woe gradually ascends, but in ch. xxxi.-xxxii.
it begins to fall ; and in ch. xxxiii. (which contains an epilogue
that was only added in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign)
it has changed into the very opposite. The prophet begins with
hoi, but it is a woe concerning the devastator. This utmost
woe, however, was not fulfilled at the point of time when the
fulfilment of " the utmost" predicted in ch. xxviii.— xxxii. was
apparently close at hand; but Jerusalem, though threatened
with destruction, was miraculously saved. Yet the prophet
had not merely to look on, as Jonah had. He himself pre-
dicted this change in the purpose of God, inasmuch as the
direction of the " woe" in his mouth is altered, like that of the
wrath of God, which turns from Jerusalem to Asshur, and
destroys it.
THE FIEST WOE.— JUDGMENT UPON SAMARTA AND JEEUSAIEM,
AND CONSOLATION FOE BOTE. — CHAP. XXVIII.
Isaiah, like Micah, commences with the fall of the proud
and intoxicated Samaxia. Ver. 1. « Woe to the proud crown of
th^ drunken of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of its splendid
CHAP. XXVIII. 1-4. 3
ornament, which is upon the head' of the luxuriant valley of those
slain with wine" The allusion is to Samaria, which is called (1)
" the pride-crown of the drunken of Ephraim," i,e. the crown
of which the intoxicated and blinded Ephraimites were proud
(ch. xxix. 9, xix. 14), and (2) "the fading flower" (on the
expression itself, compare ch. i. 30, xl. 7, 8) "of the ornament of
his splendour," i.e. the flower now fading, which had once been
the ornament with which they made a show. This flower stood
" upon the head- of the valley of fatnesses of those slain with
wine" (of. ch. xvi. 8), i.e. of the valley so exuberant with fruit-
fulness, belonging to the Ephraimites, who were thoroughly
enslaved by wine. Samaria stood upon a beautiful swelling
hill, which commanded the whole country round in a most
regal way (Amos iv. 1, vi. 1), in the centre of a large basin, of
about two hours' journey in diameter, shut in by a gigantic
circle of still loftier mountains (Amos iii. 9). The situation
was commanding ; the hill terraced up to the very top ; and the
surrounding country splendid and fruitful (Ritter, Erdkunde,
xvi. 660, 661). The expression used by the prophet is inten-
tionally bombastic. He heaps genitives upon genitives, as in
ch. X. 12, xxi. 17. The words are linked together in pairs.
Sh^mdnvm (fatnesses) has the absolute form, although it is-
annexed to the following word, the logical relation overruling
the syntactical usage (compare ch. xxxii. 13, 1 Ghron. ix. 13).
The sesquipedalia verba are intended to produce the impression
of excessive worldly luxuriance and pleasure, upon which the
woe is pronounced. Tie epithet nohhel (fading : possibly a
genitive, as in ver. 4), which is introduced here into the midst
of this picture of splendour, indicates that all this splendour is
not only destined to fade,, but is beginning to fade already.
In the next three verses the hoi is expanded. Vers. 2-4.
" Behold, the Lard holds a strong and mighty thing like a hail-
storm, a pestilent tempest; like a storm of mighty overflowing
loaters, He casts down to tlie earth with almighty hand. With
feet they tread down the proud crown of the drunken of Ephraim.
And it happens to the fading flower of its splendid ornament,
which is upon the head of the luxuriant valley, as to an early fig
before it is harvest, which whoever sees it looks at, and it is no
sooner in his hand than he swallows it." " A strong and mighty
thing :" y^^) Pl'l} we have rendered in the neuter (with the
4 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH
LXX and Targum) rather than in the masculine, as Lnther
does, although the strong and mighty thing which the Lord
holds in readiness is no donbt the Assyrian. He is simply the
medium of punishment in the hand of the Lord, which is called
ydd absolutely, because it is absolute in power,— as it were,
the hand of all hands. This hand hurls Samaria to the ground
(on the expression itself, compare ch. xxv. 12, xxvi. 5), so that
they tread the proud crown to pieces with their feet (terd-
masndk, the more pathetic plural form, instead of the singular
terdmes; Ges. § 47, Anm. 3, and Caspari on Obad. 13).
The noun saar, which is used elsewhere in the sense of shud-
dering, signifies here, like ""iVD, an awful tempest ; and when
connected with atpi?, a tempest accompanied with a pestilential
blast, spreading miasma. Such destructive power is held
by tlie absolute hand. It is soon all over then with the
splendid flower that has already begun to fade (^33 ns^i*, like
iiaijn '^3 in ch. xxii. 24). It happens to it as to a bikkurdh
(according to the Masora, written with mappik here, as dis-
tinguished from Hos. ix. 10, equivalent to Jifbldkkurdthdh ; see
Job xi. 9, " like an early fig of this valley ;" according to
others, it is simply euphonic). The gathering of figs takes
place about August. Now, if any one sees a fig as early as
June, he fixes his eyes upon it, and hardly touches it with
his hand before he swallows it, and that without waiting to
masticate it long. Like such a dainty bit will the luxm'iant
Samaria vanish. The fact that Shalmanassar, or his successor
Sargon, did not conquer Samaria till after the lapse of three
years (2 Kings xviii. 10), does not detract from the truth of the
prophecy ; it is enough that both the thii-st of the conqueror
and the utter destruction of Samaria answered to it.
The threat is now followed by a promise. This is essen-
tially the same in character as ch. iv. 2-6. The place of the
false glory thus overthrown is now filled by a glory that is
didne and true. Vers. 5, 6. " In that day will Jehovah of
hosts he the adorning crown and the splendid diadem to the
remnant of His people ; and the spirit of justice to them that sit on
the judgment-seat, and heroic strength to them that drive back loao^
at the gate." " The remnant of His people" {•\ii& with a fixed
kametz, as in ch. xxi. 17) is not Judah, as distinguished from
Ephraim that had utteriy perished ; but Judah and the remain-
CHAP. XXVIII. 5, 6.
ing portion of Ephraim, as distinguished from the portion
which had perished. After the perishable thing in which they
gloried had been swept away, the eternal person of Jehovah
Himself would be the ornament and pride of His people. He,
the Lord of the seven spirits (eh. xi. 2), would be to this rem-
nant of His people the spirit of right and heroic strength.
There would be an end to unjust judging and powerless sub-
. mission. The judges are called " those who sit 'al-hammishpdt"
in the sense of "on the seat of judgment" (Ps. ix. 5, cxxii. 5) ;
the warriors are called " those who press back milchdmdh
shd'rdh" (war at the gate), i.e. either war that has reached their
o^'n gate (ch. xxii. 7), or war which they drive back as far as
the gate of the enemy (2 Sam. xi. 23 ; 1 Mace. v. 22). The
promise in this last passage corresponds to Mic. v. 4, 5. The
athnach in ver. 6 ought to stand at hammishpdt; the second
clause of the verse may be completed from the fii'st, '"i"i!ia3p)
being equivalent to muj nnh, and '•TC'D to 'aiK'D^. We might
regard 2 Chron. xxx. as a fulfilment of what is predicted in
ver. 6, if the feast of passover there described really fell in the
age succeeding the fall of Samaria ; for this feast of passover
did furnish a representation and awaken a consciousness of
that national unity which had been interrupted from the time
of Eehoboam. But if we read the account in the Chronicles
with unprejudiced minds, it is impossible to shut our eyes to
the fact that this feast of passover took place in the second
month of the first year of Hezekiah's reign, and therefore not
after the depopulation of the northern kingdom by Shalmanassar,
but after the previous and partial depopulation by Tiglath-
pileser (see vol. i. p. 52). In fact, the fulfilment cannot be
looked for at all in the space between the sixth and fourteenth
years of Hezekiah, since the condition of Judah during that
time does not answer at all to the promises given above. The
prophet here foretells what might be hoped for, when Asshur
had not only humbled Ephraim, but Judah also. The address
consists of two connected halves, the promising beginnings of
which point to one and the same future, and lay hold of one
another.
With the words, " and they also," the prophet commences
the second half of the address, and passes from Ephraim to
Judah. Vers. 7, 8. "And they also reel with wine, and are
Q THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
giddi/ ivith metli; priest and prophet red with meth, are swal-
hived up ly wine : they are giddy with meth, reel tuhen seeing
visions, stagger when pronouncing judgment. For all tables are
full of filthy vomit, without any more place." The Judaans are
not Jess overcome with wine than the Ephrainiites, and espe-
cially the riilers of Judah. In wicked violation of the law of
God, which prohibited the priests from drinking strong drink
when performing priestly service, and that on pain of death
(Lev. X. 9, cf. Ezek. xliv. 21), they were intoxicated even in
the midst of their prophetic visions (^^^[}, literally " the thing
seeing," then the act of seeing ; equivalent to 'Nn , hke nth in
ver. 15 = nitn; Olshansen, § 176, c), and when passing judicial
sentences. In the same way Micah also charges the prophets
and priests with being drunkards (Mic. iii. 1 sqq., cf. ii. 11).
Isaiah's indignation is manifested in the fact, that in the words
which he uses he imitates the staggering and stumbling of the
topers ; like the well-known passage, Sta pes sta mi pes stas pes
ne lahere mi pes. Observe, for example, the threefold repetition
of shdgu — tdghu, shdgu — tdghu, shdgu — pdqu. The hereditary
priests and the four prophets represent the whole of the official
personages. The preterites imply that drunkenness had become
the fixed habit of the holders of these offices. The preposition
3 indicates the cause (" through," as in 2 Sam. xiii. 28 and
Esther i. 10), and min the effect proceeding from the cause (in
consequence of wine). In ver. 8 we can hear them vomit.
"We have the same combination of the p and S in the verb
kotzen, Gothic kozan. All the tables of the carousal are full,
without there being any further room (cf. ch. v. 8) ; everything
swims with vomit. The prophet paints from nature, here with-
out idealizing. He receives their conduct as it were in a mirror,
and then in the severest tones holds up this mirror before them'
adults though they were. '
Vers. 9, 10. " Whom then would he teach knowledge ? And to
whom make preaching intelligible? To those weaned from the milk^
To those removed from the breast? For precept upon precept, pre-
cept upon precept, line upon line, line upon Une, a little here, a little
there! They sneer at the prophet, that intolerable moralist.
\^Z wJ ^^^'.^^\ ^'' •' ^""^ ^' ^''' "°* "^^<i t° bring know-
ledge to them (da'ai/. as in ch. xi. 9), or make them understand
the proclamation. They know of old to what he would lead.
CHAP. SXVin. 11-13. 7
Are they little children that have just heen weaned (on the
confitructives, see ch. ix. 2, v. 11, sxx. 18 ; Ges. § 114, 1), and
who must let themselves T)e tutored ? For the things he
preaches are nothing l)ut endless petty teazings. The shoit
words {tsdv, as in Hos. v. 11), together with the diminutive
fll\ (equivalent to the Ai'abic sugayyir, mean, from ^agir,
small), are intended to ithrow ridicule upon the smsfllness and
vexatious character ctf the prophet's interminable and uninter-
rupted cliidings, as 7 (= 7J?, i"*? ; comp.? ^\, ch. xxvi. 15) im-
plies that they are ; just as the philosophers in Acts xvii. 18
call Paul a iTTre/o/toXo^o?, a collector of seeds, i.e. a dealer in
trifles. And in the repetition of 'the short words we may hear
the heavy babbling language of the drunken scoffers.
The prophflt takes the M (" for ") out of their mouths, and
carries it on in his own way. It was quite right that their
■ungodliness should show itself in such a way as this, for it
would meet with an appropriate punishment. Vers. 11-13.
" For through men stammering in speech, and through a strange
tongue, will He speak to this people. He who said -to -them. There
is re&t, gim rest to wea/ry ones, and there is refreshing ! But
they would not hear. Therefore the word of Jehovah becomes to
them precept wpon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line,
line -upon line, a little here, a little there, that they may go and
stumble baohwards, and be twecked to pieces, and be snared and
taken." Jehovah would speak to the scoffing people of stam-
mering tongue a language of the same kind, since He would
speak to them by a people that stammered in their estimation,
i,e. who talked as barbarians (cf. ^ap^apl^etv and balbutire;
see ch. xxxiii. 19, compared with Deut. xxviii. 49). The
Afisyrian Semitic had the same sound in the ear of an Israelite,
as Low Saxon (a provincial dialect) in the ear of an educated
German ; in addition to which, it was plentifully mixed up with
Iranian, and possibly also with Tatar elements. This people
■would practically interpret the will of Jehovah in its own patois
to the despisers of the prophet. Jehovah had directed them,
through His prophets, after the judgments which they had
experienced with sufficient severity (ch. i. 5 sqq.), into the true
way to rest and refreshing (Jer. vi. 16), and had exhorted them
tf) ^ive rest to the nation, which had suffered so much under
Ahaz through the calamities of war (2 Chron. xxviii.), and not
8 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
to drag it into another war by goading it on to rise against
Assyria, or impose a new burden in addition to the tribute to
Assyria by purchasing the help of Egypt. But they would not
hearken (KU« = 13K, ch. xxx. 15, 16; Ges. § 23, 3, Anm. 3).
Their policy was a very different one from being still, or be-
lieving and waiting. And therefore the word of Jehovah,
which they regarded as an endless series of trivial commands,
would be turned in their case into an endless series of painful
sufferings. To those who thought themselves so free, and lived
so free, it would become a stone on which they would go to
pieces, a net in which they would be snared, a trap in which
they would be caught (compare ch. viii. 14, 15).
The prophet now directly attacks the great men of Jeru-
salem, and holds up a Messianic prophecy before their eyes,
which turns its dark side to them, as ch. vii. did to Ahaz.
Vers. 14-17. " Therefore hear the ivord of Jehovah, ye scornful
lords, rulers of this people which is in Jerusalem ! For ye say,
We Imve made a covenant with death, and with Hades have we
come to an agreement. The swelling scourge, when it cometh hither,
will do us no harm ; for we have made a lie our shelter, and in
deceit have we hidden ourselves. Tlierefore thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, Behold, I am He who hath laid in Zion a stone, a
stone of trial, a precious comer-stone of well-founded founding •
whoever believes will not have to move. And I make justice the
line and righteousness the level; and hail sweeps away the refuqe
0/ kes, and the hiding-place is washed away ly waters." With
lakhen (therefore) the announcement of punishment is once
more suspended ; and in ver. 16 it is resumed again, the expo-
sition oi the sm being inserted between, before the punish-
ment :s declared. Their sin is Utson, and this free-thinkin.
^corn rests upon a proud and insolent self-confidence, which
magxnes that there is no necessity to fear death and he 1 and
tbs self-confidence has for its secret reserve the alliance 'to be
secretly entered into with Egypt against Assyria What the
prophet makes them say here, they df not indee'd y exact y in
proudly ignore Jehovah, or throw^i^o? ^^^
CHAP. XXVIII. 14-17. y
contrast ! Clwzeh, and clidzuili in ver. 18, signify an agree-
ment, either as a decision or completion (fi'om the radical
meaning of the verb cMzdh; see vol. i. p. 71), or as a choice,
beneplacitum (like the Arabic ray), or as a record, i.e. the means
of selecting (like the talmudic chdziih, a countersign, a rci&ydh, a
proof or argument: Luzzatto). In shot shoteph (" the swelling
scourge," chethib ti''.?'), the comparison of Asshur to a flood
(vers, 2, 8, 7), and the comparison of it to a whip or scourge, are
mixed together ; and this is all the more allowable, because a
whip, when smacked, really does move in waving lines (com-
pare Jer. viii. 6, where sJidtaph is applied to the galoping of a
war-horse). The chethib "13V in ver. 15 (for which the keri
reads li!|!, according to ver. 19) is to be read 1?y (granting
that it shall have passed, or that it passes) ; and there is no
necessity for any emendation. The Egyptian alliance for
which they are suing, when designated according to its true
ethical nature, is sheqer (lie) and kdzdbh (falsehood) ; compare
2 Kings xvii. 4 (where we ought perhaps to read sheqer for
qesher, according to the LXX.), and more especially Ezek.
xvii. 15 sqq., from which it is obvious that the true prophets
regarded self-willed rebellion even against heathen rule as a
reprehensible bi'each of faith. The Idkhen (therefore), which
is resumed in ver. 16, is apparently followed as strangely as
in ch. vii. 14, by a promise instead of a threat. But this
is only apparently the case. It is unquestionably a pi'omise ;
but as the last clause, " he that believeth will not flee," i.e. will
stand firm, clearly indicates, it is a promise for believers alone.
For those to whom the prophet is speaking here the promise is
a threat, a savour of death unto death. Just as on a former
occasion, when Ahaz refused to ask for a sign, the prophet
announced to him a sign of Jehovah's own selection ; so here
Jehovah opposes to the false ground of confidence on which the
leaders relied, the foundation stone laid in Zion, which would
bear the believing in immoveable safety, but on which the
unbelieving would be broken to pieces (Matt. xxi. 44). This
stone is called 'ebhen bochan, a stone of proving, i.e. a proved
and self-proving stone. Then follow other epithets in a series
commencing anew with pinnath = ' ebhen pinnath (compare Ps.
cxviii. 22) : anguliis h, e. lapis angularis pretiositatis fundationis
fundatce. It is a corner-stone, valuable in itself (on i/iqrath,
jQ THE PROPHECIES QF ISAIAH.
•P 1 Klnes V 31), and affording the strongest foundation
"7 llaSecm% to all that is built upon it {musad -
n the form of those of the verba cmtracta pe yod). TMs stone
Itt the Davidic sovereignty, hut the true.seed of Da.^
^hich appeared in Jesus (Kom. ix. 33 ; 1 Pet. n 6, 7). Ihe
fi^r of a stone is not opposed to the personal reference, smce
the prophet in ch. viii. 14 speaks even of Jehovah Mf
under the figure of a stone. The majestically unique descnp-
tion renders it quite impossible that Hezekiah can be intended.
Micah, whose book forms the side piece of this cycle ot pro-
phecy, also predicted, under similar historical circumstances,
the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem Ephratah (Mic. v. 1).
What Micah expresses in the words, « His goings forth are from
of old," is indicated here in the preterite yissad connected with
liin'ni (the construction is similar to that in Obad.^ 2, Ezek.
XXV. 7 ; compare ver. 2 above, and Jer. xlix. 15, xxiii. 19). It
denotes that which has been determined by Jehovah, and there-
fore is as good as accomplished. What is historically realized
has had an eternal existence, and indeed an ideal pre-existence
even in the heart of history itself (ch. xxii. 11, xxv. 1, xxxvii.
26). Ever since there had been a Davidic government at all,
this stone had lain in Zion. The Davidic monarchy not only
had in this its culminating point, but the ground of its con-
tinuance also. It was not only the Omega, but also the Alpha.
Whatever escaped from wrath, even under the Old Testament,
stood upon this stone. This (as the prophet predicts in
B'^nvt?!' i''0>«!3n : tyin^ the fut. kal) would be the stronghold of
faith in the midst of the approaching Assyrian calamities (cf.
ch. vii. 9) ; and faith would be the condition of life (Hab.
ii. 4). But against unbelievers Jehovah would proceed accord-
ing to His punitive justice. He would make this (justice and
righteousness, mislipat and is'ddqdJi) a norm, i.e. a line and
level. A different turn, however, is given to qdv, with a play
upon vers. 10, 11. What Jehovah is about to do is depicted
as a building which He is carrying out, and which He will carry
out, so far as the despisers are concerned, on no other plan than
that of strict retribution. His punitive justice comes like a
hailstorm and like a flood (cf. ver. 2, ch. x. 22). The hail
smites the refuge of lies of the great men of Jerusalem, and
CHAP. XXVni. 18, 19. 11
clears It away (W, hence VI, a shovel) ; and the flood buries
their hiding-place in the waters, and carries it away (the accen-
tuation should be ^^D tifchah, D?? mercha).
And ,the whip which Jehovah swings will not be satisfied
with one strskke, but will rain .strokes. Vers. 18, 19. " And
your covenant with death is struck out, and your agreement with
Hades will not stand ; the swelling scourge, when it comes, ye will
become a thing trodden down to it. As often as it passes it takes
you : for every morning it passes, by day and by night ; and it is
nothing but shuddering to hear such preaching. For the bed is
too short to stretch in, and the covering too tight when a man
wraps himself in it." Although b'rlth is feminine, the predi-
cate to it is placed before it in the masculine form (Ges. § 144).
The covenant is thought of as a document ; for hhuppar (for
which Hupfeld would read thuphar ; Ps. ii. 197) signifies here
obliterari (just as the kal is used in Gen. vi. 14 in the sense
of oblinere ; or in Prov. sxx. 20, the Targum, and the Syriac,
in the sense of ahstergere ; and in the Talmud frequently in
the sense of wiping off = qinneSch, or wiping out = mdohaq, —
which meanings all ;go back, along with the meaning negare, to
the primaiy meaning, tegere, obducere). The covenant will be
" struck out," as you strike out a wrong word, by crossing it
over with ink and rendering it illegible. They fancy that they
have fortified themselves against death and Hades; but Jehovah
gives to both of these unlimited power over them. When the
swelling scourge shall come, they will become to it as mirmds,
i.e. they will be overwhelmed by it, and their corpses become
like dirt of the streets (ch. x. 6, v. 5) ; Dn"D['. bas the mercha
upon the penult., according to the older editions and the smaller
Masora on Lev. viii. 26, the tone being drawn back on account
of the following i^. The strokes of the scourge come inces-
santly, and every stroke sweeps them, i.e. many of them, away.
'TO (from '1, constract '% Buificiency, abundance) followed by
the infinitive, quotiescunque irruet; Idqach, auferre, as in Jer.
XV. 15, and in the idiom Idqach nephesh. These scourgings
without end — what a painful lecture Jehovah is reading them !
This is the thought expressed in the concluding words : for
the meaning cannot be, that f'even (raq as in Ps. xxxii. 6)
the report (of such a fate) is alarming," as Grotius and others
explain it ; or the report is nothing but alarming, as Gussetius
J 2 THE PROPHECIES OP ISAIAH.
and Others interpret it, since in that case n^Dtf J/b^ (cf . cb.
xxiii. 5) would have been quite sufficient, instead of miof r^ri.
There is no doubt that the expression points back to the scorn-
ful question addressed by the debauchees to the prophet in
ver. 9, "To whom will he make preaching intelligible ?" i.e.
to whom will he preach the word of God in an intelligible
manner ? (as if they did not possess blnctli without this ; njtiDB',
iKorj, as in ch. liii. 1.) As ver. 11 affirmed that Jehovah would
take up the word against them, the drunken stammerers, through
a stammering people ; so here the scourging without end is called
the sli'mudh, or sermon, which Jehovah preaches to them. At
the same time, the word Mbhin is not causative here, as in ver.
9, viz. " to give to understand," but signifies simply " to under-
stand," or have an inward perception. To receive into one's
comprehension such a sermon as that which was now being
delivered to them, was raq-z'vd'dh, nothing but shaking or
shuddering (raq as in Gen. vi. 5) ; Wf (from which comes nyu,
or by transposition illVt.) is applied to inward shaking as well
as to outward tossing to and fro. Jerome renders it "tan-
tummodo sola vexatio intellectum dabit auditui," and Luther
follows him thus : " but the vexation teaches to take heed
to the word," as if the reading were fan. The alarming
character of the lecture is depicted in ver. 20, in a figure
which was probably proverbial. The situation into which
they are brought is like a bed too short for a man to stretch
himself in (mm as in 2 Kings vi. 1), and like a covering
which, according to the measure of the man who covers
himself up in it (or perhaps still better in a temporal sense,
"when a man covers or wraps himself up in it," cf. ch.
xviii. 4), is too narrow or too tight. So would it be in their
case with the Egyptian treaty, in which they fancied that
there were rest and safety for them. They would have to
acknowledge its insufficiency. They had made themselves a
bed, and procured bed-clothes; but how mistaken they had
been m the measure, how miserably and ridiculously they had
miscalculated !
It would be with them as it was with the Philistines when
c'n ^" n! *^''' '""^ '°^° ^^^'' ^* Baal-Perazim (2 Sam.
V 20 ' 1 Chron. xiv. 11), or when on another occasion he drove
them before him from Gibeon to Gezer (1 Chron. xiv 13
CHAP. XXVIII. 21, 22. 13
sqq.). Ver. 21. "For Jehovah will rise up as in the mountain
of Perazim, and he wroth as in the valley at Gibeon to work His
work : astonishing is His worJc ; and to act His act : strange is
His act." The Targum -wrongly supposes the first historical
reminiscence to refer to the earthquake in the time of Uzziah,
and the second to Joshua's victory over the Amorites. The
allusion really is to the two shameful defeats which David
infiicted upon the Philistines. There was a very good reason
why victories over the Philistines especially should serve as
similes. The same fate awaited the Philistines at the hands
of the Assyrians, as predicted by the prophet in ch, xiv. 28 sqq.
(cf. ch. XX.), And the strangeness and verity of Jehovah's
work were just this, that it would fare no better with the
magnates of Judah at the hand of Asshur, than it had with the
Philistines at the hand of David on both those occasious. The
vei'y same thing would now happen to the people of the house
of David as formerly to its foes. Jehovah would have to act
in opposition to His gracious purpose. He would have to act
towards His own people as He once acted towards their foes.
This was the most paradoxical thing of all that they would
have to experience.
But the possibility of repentance was still open to them,
and at least a modification of what had been threatened was
attainable. Ver. 22. " And new dnve ye not mockeries, lest your
fetters be strengthened ; for I have heard from the Lord, Jehovah
of hosts, a judgment of destruction, and an irrevocable one, upon
the whole earths It is assumed that they are already in fetters,
namely, the fetters of Asshur (Nah. i. 13). Out of these fetters
they wanted to escape by a breach of faith, and with the help
of Egypt without Jehovah, and consequently they mocked at the
warnings of the prophet. He therefore appeals to them at any
rate to stop their mocking, lest they should fall out of the
bondage in which they now were, into one that would bind
them still more closely, and lest the judgment should become
even more severe than it would otherwise be. For it was
coming without fail. It might be modified, and with thorough
repentance they might even escape ; but that it would come,
and that upon the whole earth, had been revealed to the pro-
phet by Jehovah of hosts. This was the slimudh which the
prophet had heard from Jehovah, and which he gave them to
14 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
hear and understand, though hitherto he had only been scoffed
at by their wine-bibbing tongues.
The address of the prophet is here apparently closed. But
an essential ingredient is still wanting to the second half, to
make it correspond to the first. There is still wanting the
fringe of promise coinciding with vers. 5, 6. The prophet has
not only to alarm the scoffers, that if possible he may pluck
some of them out of the fire through fear (Judg. v. 23) ; he
has also to comfort believers, who yield themselves as disciples
to him and to the word of Grod (ch. viii. 16). He does this
here in a very peculiar manner. He has several times assumed
the tone of the mashal, more especially in ch. xxvi. ; but here
the consolation is dressed up in a longer parabolical address,
which sets forth in figures drawn from husbandry the discipli-
nary and saving wisdom of God. Isaiah here proves himself
a master of the mashal. In the usual tone of a mashal song,
he first of all claims the attention of his audience as a teacher
of wisdom. Ver. 23. " Lend me your ear, and hear my voice ;
attend, and hear my address ! " Attention is all the more need-
ful, that the prophet leaves his hearers to interpret and apply
the parable themselves. The work of a husbandman is very
manifold, as he tills, sows, and plants his field. Vers. 24^26.
"Does the ploughman plough continually to sow ? to farrow and
to harrow his land? Is it not so: when he levels the surface
thereof, he scatters blackpoppy seed, and strews cummin, and puts
in wheat in rows, and barley in the appointed piece, and spelt on
its border? And Re has instructed him hoiu to act rightly:
his God teaches it him." The ploughing (chdrash) which
opens the soil, i.e. turns it up in furrows, and the harrowin<r
(sidded) which breaks the clods, take place to prepare for the
sowing, and therefore not interminably, but only so long as is
necessary to prepare the soil to receive the seed. When the
seed-furrows have been drawn in the levelled soi-face of the
ground (shvvdh), then the sowing and planting begin ; and
this also takes place in various ways, according to the different
Arab, habbe soda, so called from its black seeds), belonging
to the rannncdace^. Kammon was the cummin (cumLm
cyrmnum) with larger aromatic seeds, Ai-. kammun, neither of
them our common carraway (Kilmmel, carum). The wheat he
CHAP. SXYJUI. 27-29. 13
SOWS carefully in rows (sOrdh, ordo ; ad ondmem, as it Is trans-
lated by Jerome),, i.e. he does not scatter it about carelessly, like
tke other two,, but lays the grains carefully in the fuiTows,
because otherwise when they sprang up they would get massedi
together, and choke one another. Nismdn, like sordli, is an ace.
loci : the barley is sown in a piece of the field specially marked
off for it, or specially furnished with signs (simdnlm) ; and
kussemeth, the spelt (feta, also mentioned by Homer, Od. iv.
604, between wheat and barley), along the edge of it, so that
spelt forms the rim of the barlay field. It is by a divine
instinct that the husbandman acts in this manner ; for God,
who established agriculture at the creation (i.e. Jehovah, not
Osiris), has also given men understanding. This is the mean-
ing of v'yiss^rd lammislipdt : and (as we may see from all this)
He (his Grod : the subject is given afterwards in the second
clause) has led him (Prov. xxxi. 1) to tlie right (this is the
rendering adopted by Kimchi, whilst other commentators have
been misled by Jer. xxx. 11, and. last of all Malbim Luzzatto,
" Cosi Dio con giustisia corregge ;" he would have done better,
however, to say, con moderasione).
Again, the labour of the husbandman is just as manifold
after the reaping has been done. Vers. 27-29. " For the black
poppy is not threshed wii/i a threshing sledge, nor is a cart wheel
rolUed over cummin ; but black poppy is knocked out with a stick,
and cummin with a staff. Is bread corn crushed ? No ; he does not
go on threshing it for ever, and drive the wheel of his cart and his
horses over it: he does not crush it. This also, it goeth forth from
JehovaJu of hosts : He gives wonderful intelligence, Idgh under-
standing." Ki (for) introduces another proof that the husband-
man is instructed by God, from what he still further does.
He does- not use the liireshing machine (chdruts, syn. mOrag,
Ar. naweg, noreg), or the threshing cart (dgdMh : see Winer's
MealrWorterbuxih, art. Dreschen), which would entirely destroy
the more tender kinds of fruit, but knocks them out with a
staff (baculo excutit: see at ch. xxvii. 12). The sentence lechem
yuddq is to be accentuated as an interrogative : Is bread corn
crushed ? Oh no, he does not crush it. This would be the case
if he were to cause the wheel {i.e. the wheels, gilgal, constr. to
galgal) of the threshing cart with the horses harnessed in front
to rattle over it with all their might Qmmomii to set in noisy
Ig THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
violent motion). Lechem, like the Greek sitos, is corn from
which bread is made (ch. xxx. 23 ; Ps. cir. 14). B-ns is meta-
plastic (as if fi-om t^lN) for BnT (see Ewald, § 312, b). Instead
of Vf-iQi, the pointing ought to be VBnsfl (from m^ with kametz
before"the tone = Arab, faras, as distinguished from an^ with
Sifixsdihametz, equivalent to /arms, a rider) : "his horses," here
the threshing horses, which were prefeiTed to asses and oxen.
Even in this treatment of the fruit when reaped, there is an
evidence of the wonderful intelligence (K^Si?, as written NvSn)
and exalted understanding (on n>B^n, from ^'^\, see at Job xxvi.
3) imparted by God. The expression is one of such grandeur,
that we perceive at once that the prophet has in his mind the
wisdom of God in a higher sphere. The wise, divinely inspired
course adopted by the husbandman in the treatment of the field
and fruit, is a type of the wise course adopted by the divine
Teacher Himself in the treatment of His nation. Israel is
Jehovah's field. The punishments and chastisements of Je-
hovah are the ploughshare and harrow, with which He forcibly
breaks up, turns over, and furrows this field. But this does
not last for ever. When the field has been thus loosened,
smoothed, and rendered fertile once more, the painful process
of ploughing is followed by a beneficent sowing and planting
in a multiform and wisely ordered fulness of grace. Again,
Israel is Jehovah's child of the threshing-floor (see ch. xxi. 10).
He threshes it ; but He does not thresh it only : He also knocks ;
and when He threshes. He does not continue threshing for ever,
i.e. as Caspari has well explained it, " He does not punish all
the members of the nation with the same severity ; and those
whom He punishes with greater severity than others He does
not punish incessantly, but as soon as His end is attained,
and the husks of sin are separated from those that have been
punished, the punishment ceases, and only the worst in the
nation, who are nothing but husks, and the husks on the
nation itself, are swept away by the punishments" (compare
ch. 1. 25, xxix. 20, 21). This is the solemn lesson and
affectionate consolation hidden behind the veil of the parable
Jehovah punishes, but it is in order that He may be able to
Wess. He sifts, but He does not destroy. He does not thresh
His own people, but He knocks them; and even when He
threshes, they may console themselves in the face of the
CHAP. XXIX. 1. 17
approaching period of judgment, that they are never crushed
or injured.
THE SECOND TVOE : THE OPPRESSION AND DELIVERANCE
OF ARIEL. — CHAP. XXIX.
The prophecy here passes from the fall of Samaria, the
crown of flowers (ch. xxviii. 1-4), to its formal parallel. Jeru-
salem takes its place by the side of Samaria, the crown of
flowers, under the emblem of a hearth of God. 'Ariel might,
indeed, mean a lion of God. It occurs in this sense as the
name of certain Moabitish heroes (2 Sam. xxiii. 20 ; 1 Ohroii.
xi. 22), and Isaiah himself used the shorter form ?K"i5< for the
heroes of Judah (ch. xxxiii. 7). But as '^^''l^ (God's hearth, in-
terchanged with ''^?"!L!, God's height) is the name given in Ezelc.
xliii. 15, 16, to the altar of burnt-offering in the new temple,
and as Isaiah could not say anything more characteristic of
Jerusalem, than that Jehovah had a fire and hearth there (ch.
xxxi. 9) ; and, moreover, as Jerusalem the city and community
within the city would have been compared to a lioness rather
than a lion, we take ''^?'1^? in the sense of ara Dei (from 'TiKj.
to burn). The prophet commences in his own peculiar way
with a grand summary introduction, which passes in a few
gigantic strides over the whole course from threatening to
promise. Ver. 1. " Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the castle where
David pitched his tent! Add year to year, let the feasts revolve :
then I distress Ariel, and there is groaning and moaning; and so
she proves herself to me as Ariel." By the fact that David
fixed his headquarters in Jerusalem, and then brought the
sacred ark thither, Jerusalem became a hearth of God. Within
a single year, after only one more round of feasts (to be inter-
preted according to ch. xxxii. 10, and probably spoken at the
passover), Jehovah would make Jerusalem a besieged city, full
of sighs (yahatsiqOthi, perf. cons., with the tone upon the ulti-
mate) ; but " she becomes to me like an Artel," i.e., being
qualified through me, she will prove herself a hearth of God,
by consuming the foes like a furnace, or by their meeting with
their" destruction at Jerusalem, hke wood piled up on the altar
and then consumed in flame. The prophecy has thus passed
over the whole ground in a few majestic words. It now starts
VOL. ir. B
18 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
from the very beginning again, and first of all expands the
hoi. Vers. 3 and 4. "And I encamp in a circle round about thee,
and surround thee with watch-posts, and erect tortoises against
thee. And lohen brought down thou wilt speak from out of the
ground, and thy speaking will sound low out of the dust; and iliy
voice Cometh up like that of a demon from the ground, and thy
speaking loill whisper out of the dust'' It would have to go so
far with Ariel first of all, that it would be besieged by a hostile
force, and would lie upon the groimd in the greatest extremity,
and then would whisper with a ghostlike softness, like a dying
man, or hke a spirit without flesh and bones. Kaddur signifies
sphcera, orbis, as in ch. xsli. 18 and in the Talmud (from
kddar = kdthar ; cf. kudur iu the name Nabur-kudur-ussur,
Nebo protect the crown, KiBapiv), and is used here poetically
for 3Up. Jerome renders it quasi sphmram (from dur, orbis).
^•sn (from 3X3, 3S») might signify "£rmly planted" (Luzzatto,
immobilmente ; compare shuih, ch. xxii. 7) ; but according to
the parallel it signifies a military poist, like 3»D, 3*yj. MHsu-
roth (from mdtsor, Deut. xx. 20) are instruments of siege, the
nature of which can only be determined conjecturallv. On
'obh, see ch. viii. 19;^ there is no necessity to take it as standing
for bdal 'obh.
Thus far does the unfolding of the hoi reach. Now follows
an unfolding of the words of promise, which stand at the end
of ver. 1 : " And it proves itself to me as Ariel." "Vers. 5-8.
" And the multitude of thy foes will become like finely powdered
dust, and the multitude of the tyrants like chaff flying away; and
It will take place suddenly, very suddenly. From Jehovah of
hosts there comes a visitation with crash of thunder and eaHh-
quake and great noise, whirlwind and tempest, and the blazing up
of devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that
gather together against Ariel, and all those wlw storm and distress
Ariel and her stronghold, will be like a vision of the night in a
reed Il'thtf rr't^l '^7 '' ^'m^^^ent to anhlh, Arab, a knot on a
CHAP. XXIX. 6-^8. 19
dream. And it is just as a hungry mam, dfreams,.and behold he
eats; and when he wakes up his soul is empty.: and just as a thirsty
mam dreams, and ieliold he drinks; and when he wakes up, behold,
he is faint, and his soul is parched with tMrst : so will it be to the
inmiUitude of the nations which gather together against the moun-
tain of Zion." The hostile army, described four times as
hdmon, a groaning mnltitude, is utterly annihilated through the
terrible co-operatiou of the forces of nature which are let loose
upon them (ch. xxx. 30, cf. ch. xvii. 13). ^^ There comes a visi-
tation ;" tippdqSd might refer to Jerusalem in the sense of "it
will be visited" in mercy, viz. by Jehovah acting thus upon its
enemies. But it is better to take it in a neuter sense : " punish-
ment is inflicted." The simile of the dream is applied in two
different ways : (1.) Ver. 7. They will dissolve into jiothiog, as
if they had only the same apparent existence as a vision in a
dream. (2.) Ver. 8. Their plan for taking Jerusalem will be
put to shame, and as utterly brought to nought as the eating
or drinking of a dreamer, which turns out to be a delusion
as soon as he awakes. Just as the prophet emphatically com-
bines two substantives from the same verbal root in ver. 1, and
two adverbs from the same verb in ver. 5 ; so does he place K3S
and ri3S together in ver. 7, the former with ?? relating to the
crowdiug of an army for the purpose of a siege, the latter with
an objective suffix (compare Ps. liii. 6) to the attack made by
a crowded army. The mHsoddh of Ariel (i.e. the watch-tower,
specula, from tsud, to spy ^) is the mountain of Zion mentioned
afterwards in. ver. 8. 1|'?53, as if ; comp. Zech. x. 6, Job x. 19.
ais nani without am; the personal pronoun is frequently omitted,
not only in the leading participial clause, as in this instance
(compare ch. xxvi. 3, xl. 19 ; Ps. xxii. 29 ; Job xxv. 2 ; and
Kobler on Zech. ix. 12), but also with a minor participial clause,
as in Ps. vii. 10, Iv. 20, and Hab. ii. 10. The hungering and
thirsting of the waking man are attributed to his nephesh (soul :
cf . ch. xxxii. 6, v. 14 ; Prov. vi. 30), just because the soul is
the cause of the physical life, and without it the action of the
senses would be followed by no sensation or experience what-
ever. The hungry stomach is simply the object of feeling,
' In Arabic, ako, masad signifies a lofty hill or mountain-top, from
a Becondary form of tsud; and massara, to lay the foundations of a fortified
city Qlr matsor, Ps. xxxi. 22), Jrom tsur.
20 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
and everything sensitive in the bodily organism is merely the
medium of sensation or feeling ; that which really feds is the
soul. The soul no sooner passes out of the dreaming state into
a waking condition, than it feels that its desires are as unsatis-
fied as ever. Just like such a dream will the army of the
enemy, and that victory of which it is so certain before the
battle is fought, fade away into nothing.
This enigma of the future the prophet holds out before the
eyes of his contemporaries. The prophet received it by reve-
lation of Jehovah ; and without the illumination of Jehovah
it could not possibly be understood. The deep degradation of
Ariel, the wonderful deliverance, the sudden elevation from the
abyss to this lofty height,— all this was a matter of faith. But
this faith was just what the nation wanted, and therefore the
understanding depending upon it was wanting also. The
sh'mudh was there, but the bindh was absent ; and all nyiDB' pn
was wrecked on the obtuSeness of the mass. The prophet,
therefore, who had received the unhappy calling to harden his
people, could not help exclaiming (ver. 9a), « Stop, and stare;
blind yoursehes, and grow blind!" nonionn, to show one's self
delaying (from nno, according to Luzzatto the reflective of
'■='»no'?, an emphatic form which is never met with), is con-
nected with the synonymous verb ^m, to be stiff with astonish-
ment ,^ but to Vm, to be plastered up, i.e. incapable of seein^r
(ct ch. VI. 10), there is attached the hUhpalpel of the same
verb signifying «to place one's self in such circumstances,"
se oblmere (differently, however, in Ps. cxix. 16, 47, compare
ch. XI. 8, se permukere). They could not understand the word
of God, but they were confused, and their eyes were, so to
speak, festered up : therefore this self-induced condition would
become to them a God-appointed punishment. The impera-
tives are judicial words of command • ^
of oMn,.r"-^ °^ the self-hardening into a judicial sentence
CHAP. XXIX. 9-12. 21
mys, I cannot, it is sealed. And iliey give the writing to one
who does not understand writing, saying, Pray, read this ; but
he says, T do not understand writing." They were drunken
and stupid ; not, however, merely because they gave themselves
up to sensual intoxication (t", dependent upon '"i^E?, ehrii vino),
but because Jehovah had given them up to spiritual confusion
and self-destruction. All the punishments of God are inflicted
through the medium of His no less world-destroying than
world-sustaining Spirit, which, although not willing what is
evil, does make the evil called into existence by the creature
the means of punishing evil. Tardemdh is used here to signify
the powerless, passive state of utter spiritual insensibility. This
judgment had fallen upon the nation in all its members, even
upon the eyes and heads of the nation, i.e. the prophets. Even
they whose duty it was to see to the good of the nation, and
lead it, were blind leaders of the blind ; their eyes were fast
sliut (Q^J?, the Intensive form of the hal, ch. xxxiii. 15 ; Aram.
Dsy ; Talmud also J^V : to shut the eyes, or press them close),
and over their heads a cover was drawn, as over sleepers in the
night. Since the time of Koppe and Eichhorn it has become
a usual thing to regard CN^aanTiK and Cfnn as a gloss, and
indeed as a false one (compare ch. ix. 13, 14) ; but the reason
assigned — namely, that Isaiah's polemics are directed not against
the prophets, but against the stupid staring people — is utterly
groundless (compare ch. xxviii. 7, and the polemics of his con-
temporary Micah, e.g. ch. iii. 5-8). Moreover, the author of a
gloss would have been more likely to interpret D^^^^T ^y ^''II'l'
or CiLl'sn (compare Job ix. 24). And vers. 11 and 12 are also
opposed to this assumption of a gloss. For by those who under-
stood what was written {sepher), it is evident that the prophets
and rulers of the nation are intended ; and by those who did
not understand it, the great mass of the people. To both of
them, " the vision of all," i.e. of all and everything that God
had shown to His true prophets, was by the judgment of God
completely sealed. Some of them might have an outward
knowledge ; but the inward understanding of the revelation
was sealed to them. Some had not even this, but stared at the
word of the prophet, just as a man who cannot read stares at
what is written. The chethib has "iSBn ; the keri "ISD, though
without any ground, since the article is merely generic. In-
22 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Stead of nrs: inp, we should write m Hi-inp in both cases, as
certain codices' and old editions do.
This stupefaction was the self-inflicted punishment of the
dead works with which the people moclred God and deceived
themselves. Vers. 13, 14. " TJie Lord hath spoken : Because
this people approaches me with its mouth, and honours me with
its lips, and keeps' its heart far from me, and its reverence of
me has become a commandment learned from, men: therefore,
iehold, I ivill proceed wondrously with this people, wondrously
and marvellously strange ; and the wisdom of its wise men is lost,
and the understanding of its intelligent men becomes invisible'''
Ever since the time of Asaph (Ps. ]., cf. Ixxviii. 36, 37),
the lamentation and condemnation of hypocritical ceremonial
worship, without living faith or any striving after holiness, had
been a leading theme of prophecy. Even in Isaiah's intro-
ductory address (ch. i.) this complaint was uttered quite in
the tone of that of Asaph, In the time of Hezekiah it was
peculiarly called for, just as it was afterwards in that of Josiah
(as the book of Jeremiah shows). The people had been obliged
to consent to the abolition of the public worship of idols, but
their worship of Jehovah was hypocrisy. Sometimes it was-
conscious hypocrisy, arising from the fear of man and favour of
man ; sometimes unconscious, inasmuch as without any inward
conversion, but simply with work-righteousness, the people con-
tented themselves with, and even prided themselves upon, an
outward fulfilment of the law (Mic. vi. 6-8, iii. 11). Instead of
^ij (LXX., Vulg., Syr., Matt. xv. 8, Mark vii. 6), we also meet
with the reading mi,. « because this people harasses itself as with
tributary service ;" but the antithesis to richaq (LXX. iroppw
airixei) favours the former reading niggash, accedit; and b'phlv
(with its mouth) must be connected with this, though in oppo-
sition to the accents. This self-alienation and self-blinding,
Jehovah would punish with a wondrously paradoxical judgment'
namely, the judgment of a hardening, which would so completely
empty and confuse, that even the appearance of wisdom and
unity, which the leaders of Israel still had, would completely
disappear ^^Di^ (as in ch. xxxviii. 5) is not the third person
tut. hphl here (so that it could be rendered, according to ch.
.™. 16, "Behold, I am he who;" or more stiictly still.
Behold me, who;" which, however, would give a prominence
CHAP. XXIX. 15, 16. 23
to the subject that would be out of place here), bat the pa/rt. hal
for IDi'', That the laaguage really allowed of such a lengthen-
ing of the primary form, qattl into qatU, and especially in the
case of ^''Di'', is evident from Eccles. i. 18 (see at Ps. xvi. 5).
In NP2V iJsarij SPS. (cf. Lam. i. 9) alternates with the gerundive
(see at ch. xxli. 17) : the fifth example in this one address of
the emphatic juxtaposition of words having a similar sound and
the same derivation {vid. vers. 1, 5, 7, 9).
Their hypocrisy, which was about to be so wonderfully
punished according to the universal law (Ps. xviii. 26, 27),
manifested itself in their self-willed and secret behaviour,, which
would not inquire for Jehovah, nor suffer itself to be chastened
by His word. Vers. 15, 16. " Woe unto them timt hide plans
deep from JehovaJi, and their doing occurs in a darli place, and
they say, Wlu> saw us then, and who knew about us ? Oh for your
perversity! It is to be regarded as potters' clay; that a work
could say to it& maker, He has not made me ; and an image to. its
sculptor. He does, not understand: it .'" Jiust as Ahaz had carefully
kept his appeal to Asshur for help secret from the prophet ; so
did they try, as far as possible, to hide from the prophet the
plan for an. alliance with Egypt. I^Jjip? is a syncopated hiphil
for T'flQn^, as in ch. i. 12, iii. 8, xxi'ii. 11. pvpjjn- adds- the
adveaibial notion, according to our mode of expression (comp.
Joel ii. 20, and the opposite thought in Joel ii. 26 ; Ges. §
142). To liide from Jehovah is equivalent to hiding from
the prophet of Jehovah, that they might not have to listen to
reproof from the word of Jehovah. "We may see from ch.
viii. 12 how suspiciously they watched the prophet in such cir-
cumstances as these. But Jehovah saw them in their secrecy,
and the prophet saw through the whole in the light of Jehovah.
D33ari is an exclamation, hke 't'^yf^'ii in Jer. xlix. 16. They
are perverse, or ('I'm) "is it. not so?" They think they can
dispense with Jehovah, and. yet they are His creatures; they
attribute cleverness to themselves, and practically disown Jeho-
vah,, as if tiie pot should say to the potter who has turned it,
He does; not understand it.
But the prophet's God, whose omniscience, creative glory,
and- perfect wisdom they so basely mistook and ignored, would
very shortly turn the present state of the world upside down, and
make Himself a congregation out of the poor and wretched,
24 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
whilst He would entirely destroy this proud ungodly nation.
Vers 17-21 " Is it not yet a very littU, and Lebanon is turned
into a fruitful fieU, and the fruitful field esteemed as a forest?
And in that day the deaf hear scripture words, and the eyes of the
blind will see out of obscurity and out of darkness. And the joy
of the humble increases in Jehovah, and tlie poor among men will
rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For tyrants are gone, and it is
over with scoffers; and all who think evil are rooted out, who con-
demn a man for a word, and Uy snares for him that is free-spoken
in the gate, and overthrow the righteous through shameful lies."
The circumstances themselves, as well as the sentence passed,
will experience a change, in complete contrast with the present
state of things. This is what is affirmed in ver. 17 ; probably
a proverb transposed into a more literary style. What is now
forest becomes ennobled into garden ground; and what is.
garden ground becomes in general estimation a forest (-'013?,
iv'?, although we should rather expect ?, just as in ch. xxxii.
15). These emblems are explained in vers. 18 sqq. The
people that are now blind and deaf, so far as the word of
Jehovah is concerned, are changed into a people with open
ears and seeing eyes. Scripture words, like those which the
prophet now holds before the people so unsuccessfully, are
heard by those who have been deaf. The unfettered sight of
those who have been blind pierces through the hitherto sur-
rounding darkness. The heirs of the new future thus trans-
formed are the 'dndvim (" meek") and the 'ebhyunim (" poor").
Q"]s< (the antithesis of C^'^K, e.g. ver. 13) heightens the repre-
sentation of lowliness; the combination is a superlative one,
as in tKsn nw, Jer. xlix. 20, and [ssn ''ijy in Zech. xi. 7 (cf.
nvn f'13 in ch. XXXV. 9) : needy men who present a glaring
contrast to, and stand out from, the general body of men.
Such men will obtain ever increasing joy in Jehovah {ydsaph
as in ch. xxxvii. 31). Such a people of 'God would take the
place of the oppressors (cf. ch. xxviii. 12) and scoffers (cf.
ch. xxviii. 14, 22), and those who thought evil {shdqad, invigi-
late, sedulo agere), i.e. the wretched planners, who made a Niah
of every one who did not enter into their plans {i.e. who caUed
urn a ctefe-'; cf. Deut. xxiv. 4, Eccles. v. 5), and went to
law with the man who openly opposed them in the gate
(A.mos V. 10; y'qoshun, possibly the perf kal, cf. Jer. 1. 24;
CHAP. XXIX. 22-24. 25
according to the syntax, however, it is the fut, hal of qush =
yaqosh: see at oh. xxvi. 16; Ges. §44, Anm. 4), and thrust
away the righteous, i.e. forced him away from his just rights
(ch. X. 2), by tohu, i.e. accusations and pretences of the
utmost worthlessness ; for these would all have been swept
away. This is the true explanation of the last clause, as given
in the Targum, and not "into the desert and desolation," as
Knobel and Luzzatto suppose ; for with Isaiah tohu is the
synonym for all such words as signify nothingness, ground-
lessness, and fraud. The prophet no doubt had in his mind,
at the time that he uttered these words, the conduct of the
people towards himself and his fellow-prophets, and such as
were like-minded with them. The charge brought against him
of being a conspirator, or a traitor to his country, was a tohu
of this kind. All these conspirators and persecutors Jehovah
would clear entirely away.
Everything that was incorrigible would be given up to
destruction ; and therefore the people of God, when it came
out of the judgment, would have nothing of the same kind to
look for again. Vers. 22-24. " Therefore thus saith Jehovah
of the house of Jacob, He who redeemed Abraham : Jacob shall
not henceforth be ashamsd, nor sJiall his face turn pale any more.
For when he, when his children see the work of my hands in the
midst of him, they will sanctify my name, and sanctify the Holy
One of Jacob, and shudder before the God of Israel. And
those who were of an erring spirit discern understanding, and
murmurers accept instruction." With ?N (for which Luzzatto,
following Xiowth, reads ?N, " the God of the house of Jacob")
the theme is introduced to which the following utterance refers.
The end of Israel will correspond to the holy root of its origin.
Just as Abraham was separated from the human race that was
sunk in heathenism, to become the ancestor of a nation of
Jehovah, so would a remnant be separated from the great mass
of Israel that was sunk in apostasy from Jehovah ; and this
remnant would be the foundation of a holy community well
pleasing to God. And this would never be confounded or
become pale with shame again (on bosh, see at ch. i. 29;
chdvar is a poetical Aramaism) ; for both sins and sinners that
called forth the punishments of God, which had put them to
shame, would have been swept away (of. Zeph. iii. 11). In
2Q THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the presence of this decisive work of punishment {ma'dseh as
in ch. xxviii. 21, x. 12, v. 12, 19), which Jehovah would
perform in the heart of Israel, Israel itself would undergo a
thorough change. I'''!^''. is in apposition to the subject in inXTa,
" when he, namely his children" (comp. Job xxix. 3) ; and the
expression "his children" is intentionally chosen instead of
"his sons" (bdnim), to indicate that there would he a new
generation, which would become, in the face of the judicial
self-manifestation of Jehovah, a holy church, sanctifying Him,
the Holy One of Israel. Yaqdlshu is continued in v^Mqdishu :
the prophet intentionally repeats this most significant word,
and he'ents is the parallel word to it, as in ch. viii. 12, 13.
The new church would indeed not be a sinless one, or thoroughly
perfect; hut, according to ver. 24, the previous self-hardening in
error would have been exchanged for a willing and living appro-
priation of right understanding, and the former murmuring
resistance to the admonitions of Jehovah would have given
place to a joyful and receptive thirst for instruction. There is
the same interchange of Jacob and Israel here which we so
frequently meet with in ch. si. sqq. And, in fact, throughout
this undisputedly genuine prophecy of Isaiah, we can detect the
language of ch. xl.-kvi. Through the whole of the first part,
indeed, we may trace the gradual development of the thoughts
and forms which predominate there.
THE XHIED WOE: THE MOMENTOUS RESULT OF THE AIXIASTCE
WITH EGYPT. — CHAP. XXX.
The plan which, according to ch. xxix. 15, was already
projected and prepared in the deepest secrecy, is now much
further advanced. The negotiations by means of ambassadors
have already been commenced ; hut the prophet condemns what
he can no longer prevent. Vers. 1-5. « Woe to the stubborn
children, saitli Jehovah, to dnve plans, and not hy my impuhe,
and to phit alliance, and net according to my Spirit, to heap
smupon sm: that go away to travel down to Egypt, without
Juxvmg ashed my mouth, to fly to PharaoKs shelter, and to con-
ceal themselves under the shadow of Egypt. And Pharaoh's
shelur becomes a shame to them, and the concealment under the
shadow of Egypt a disgrace. For JudaK s princes have appeared
CITAP. XXr. 1-5. 27
m Zban, and Ms- ambassadors arrive in Hanes. They will all
have to he asliamed of a people useless to them, that brings no
lielp and. no use, but shame, and also reproach." Sor^nm is fol-
lowed by infinitives ■with Lamed (cf. ch. v. 22, iii. 8) : who are
bent upon it in their obstinacy. Massekhdh d-esignates the
alliance as a plait {massShhetli). According to Cappellus and
others,, it designates it as formed with a libation {cnrovZrj, from
a-irevSeaOat,) ; but the former is certainly the more correct view,
inasmuch as massekhdh (from ndsaleh, fundere) signifies a cast,
and hence it is more natural here to take wasaM as equivalent to
sdkhakh,plectere (Jerome : ordiremird telam). The context leaves
no doubt as to the meaning of the adverbial expressions ''3I2"X?1
and ''fflTKPI, viz. without its having proceeded from me, and
without my Spirit being there. "Sin upon sin :" inasmuch as
they carry out further and further to perfect realization the
thought which was already a sinful one in itself. The prophet
now follows for himself the ambassadors, who are already on
the road to the country of the Nile, valley. He sees them
arrive in Zoan, and watches them as they proceed thence into
Hanes. He foresees and foretells what a disgraceful opening
of their eyes will attend the reward of this untheocratical be-
ginning. On Id'oz h\ see at eh. x. 31 : 'os: is the infinitive
constr. of 'uz ; md'oz, on the contrary, is a derivative of
'dzaz, to be strong. The suffixes of 1''"iK? (his princes) and
1"i3«aa (his ambassadors) are supposed by Hitzig, Ewald, and
Knobel, who take a different view of what is said, to refer to
the princes and ambassadors" of Pharaoh. But this is by no
means warranted on the ground that the prophet cannot so
immediately transfer to Zoan and Hanes the ambassadors of
Judah, who were still on their journey according to ver. 2.
The prophet's vision overleaps the existing' stage of the desire
for this alliance ; he sees the great men of his nation already
suing for th^ favour of Egypt, first of all in Zoan, and then
still further in Hanes, and at once foretells the shameful ter-
mination of this self-desecration of the people of Jehovah.
The LXX. give for ^TS^W Dp.n, /jAttjp Koiriacrovaiv, i.e. ^V-f) i^,
and Knobel approves this reading ; but it is a misunderstand-
ing, which only happens to have fallen out a little better this
time than the' rendering w? AaviS given for "Viia in oh. xxix. '6.
If chinndm bad been the original reading, it would hardly have
2§ THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
entered any one's mind to change it into chdnes. The latter
was the name of a city on an island of the Nile in Central
Ecrypt, the later Heracleopolis (Eg. Hnes ; Ehnes), the Anysis
of°Herodotus (ii. 137). On Zoan, see at ch. xix. 11. At that
time the Tanitic dynasty was reigning, the dynasty preceding
the Ethiopian. Tanis and Anysis were the two capitals. tJ''''N3n
(= &2n, a metaplastic Uphil of ^^ = ^h a different word
from ^?) is incorrectly pointed for c'^Nan, like n^y^Nn (kei-i)
for m&lp^ in Josh. xxi. 10. ^'^'^'^ signifies elsewhere, "to
make'stinking" (to calumniate, Prov. xiii. 5), or " to come into
ill odour" (1 Sam. xxvii. 12) ; here, however, it means to be
put to shame (b'ns = ts-'ia).
The prophet's address is hardly commenced, however, when
a heading is introduced of the very same kind as we have
already met with several times in the cycle of prophecies
against the heathen nations., Gesenius, Hitzig, Umbreit, and
Knobel, rid themselves of it by pronouncing it a gloss founded
upon a misunderstanding. But nothing is more genuine in the
whole book of Isaiah than the words massa bahamoth negebh.
The heading is emblematical, like the four headings in ch. xxi.,
xxii. And the massed embraces vers. 6, 7. Then follows the
command to write it on a table by itself. The heading is an
integral part of the smaller whole. Isaiah breaks off his
address to communicate an oracle relating to the Egyptian
treaty, which Jehovah has specially commanded him to hand
down to posterity. The same interruption would take place if
we expunged the heading ; for in any case it was vers. 6, 7
that he was to write upon a table. This is not an address to
the people, but the preliminary text, the application of which
is determined afterwards. The prophet communicates in the
form of a citation what has been revealed to him by God, and
then states what God has commanded him to do with it. We
therefore enclose vers. 6, 7 in inverted commas as a quotation,
and render the short passage, which is written in the tone of
ch. xxi., as follows : Vers. 6, 7. " Oracle concerning the water-
oxen of the south: Through a land of distress and confinement,
whence the lioness and lion, adders and flying dragons; they can-y
their possessions on the shoulders of asses' foals, and their trea-
sures on the humps of camels, to a nation that profits nothing.
Aui Egypt, worthlessly and hollowly will they help; therefore
CHAP. XXX. 6, 7. 29
/ call this Egypt, Great-mouth that sits still" The " water-
ox of the south" is the Nile-horse; and this is the emblem of
Egypt, the land of the south (in Daniel and Zechariah Baby-
lonia is "the land of the north"). Bahdmoth is the construct
of b'hemoth (Job xl.), which is a Hebraized form of an Egyptian
word, p-ehe-mau (though the word itself has not yet been met
with), i.e. the ox of the water, or possibly p-ehe-mau-t (with the
feminine article at the close, though in hesmui, another name
for a female animal, mut = t. mau signifies " the mother :" see
at Job xl. 15). The animal referred to is the hippopotamus,
which is called bomarino in Italian, Ai-ab. the Nile-horse or
water-pig. The emblem of Egypt in other passages of the Old
Testament is tannin, the water-snake, or leviathan, the croco-
dile. In Ps. Ixviii. 31 this is called chayyath qdneh, "the
beast of the reed," though Hengstenberg supposes that the
Nile-horse is intended there. This cannot be maintained, how-
ever ; but in the passage before us this emblem is chosen, just
because the fat, swine-like, fleshy colossus, whose belly nearly
touches the ground as it walks, is a fitting image of Egypt, a
land so boastful and so eager to make itself thick and broad, and
yet so slow to exert itself in the interest of others, and so un-
willing to move from the spot. This is also implied in the name
rahabh-hem-shdbheth. Rahab is a name applied to Egypt in other
passages also (ch. li. 9 ; Ps. Ixxxvii. 4, Ixxxix. 11), and that in
the senses attested by the LXX. at Job xxvi. 12 (cf. ix. 13),
viz. KfjTO'i, a sea-monster, monsfrum marinum. Here the name
has the meaning common in other passages, viz. violence, domi-
neering pride, boasting {oKa^oveia, as one translator renders
it), on is a term of comparison, as in Gen. xiv. 2, 3, etc. ; the
plural refers to the people called rahabh. Hence the meaning
is either, " The bragging people, they are sit-still;" or, "Boast-
house, they are idlers." To this deceitful land the ambassadors
of Judah were going with rich resources {chaydllni, opes) on
the shoulder of asses' foals, and on the hump (dabbesheth, from
ddbhash, according to Luzzatto related to gdbhash, to be hilly)
of camels, without shrinking from the difficultifis and dangers of
the road through the desert, where lions and snakes spring ous
now here and now there (DHD, neuter, as in Zeph. ii. 7, comp,
ch. xxxviii. 16 ; see also Deut. viii. 15, Num. xxi. 6). Through
this very desert, l^hrough which God had led their fathers when
30
THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
He redeemed them out of the bondage of Egypt, they were
now marching to purchase the friendship of Egypt though
really, whatever might be the pretext which they offered, it
was only to deceive themselves ; for the vainglorious land would
never keep the promises that it made.
So runs the divine oracle to which the following command
refers. Ver. 8. " Now go, wriie it on a talk with them, and
note it in a book, and let it stand there for future days, for ever
to eternity." The suffixes of kothbdh (write it) and chuqqah
(note it) refer in a neuter sense to vers. 6, 7 ; and the expres-
sion " go" is simply a general summons to proceed to the matter
(cf. ch. xxii. 15). Sepher could be used interchangeably with
luach, because a single leaf, the contents of which were con-
cluded, was called sepher (Ex. xvii. 14). Isaiah was to write
the oracle upon a table, a separate leaf of durable material ; and
that " with them," i.e. so that his countrymen might have it
before their eyes (compare ch. viii. 1, Hab. ii. 2). It was to be
a memorial for posterity. The reading IV^ (Sept., Targ., Syr.)
for IJI^ is appropriate, though quite unnecessary. The three
indications of time form a climax : for futurity, for the most
remote future, for the future without end.
It was necessary that the worthlessness of the help of Egypt
should be placed in this way before the eyes of the people.
Vers. 9-11. "For it is a refractory people, lying children,
children who do not like to hear the instruction of Jehovah, who
say to the seers. See not ; and to the prophets. Prophesy not unto
us right things ! Speak flatteries to us ! Get out of the way,
turn aside from the path, remove from our face the Holy One of
Israel." On the expression 'am m'ri (a people of stubbornness),
see at ch. iii. 8. The vowel-pointing of D^B'na follows the same
rule as that of Dann. The prophet traces back their words to
an unvarnished expression of their true meaning, just as he
does in ch. sxviii. 15. They forbid the prophets of Jehovah to
prophesy, more especially n^khochoth, straight or true things
(things not agreeable to then? own wishes), but would rather
hear chaUqoth, i.e. smooth, insinuating, and flattering things,
and even mahathalloth (from hdthal, Talm. tal, ludere), i.e.
illusions or deceits. Their desire was to be entertained and
lauded, not repelled and instructed. The prophets are to adopt
another course (^3» only occurs here, and that twice, instead of
CHAP. SXX. 12-14. 31
the more usual *iii5 = |p, after the form *.^»!, \^y), and not trouble
them any more with the Ploly One of Israel, whom they (at
least Isaiah, who is most fond of calling Jehovah by this
name) have always in their mouths.
Thus do they fall out with Jehovah and the bearers of His
word. Yers, 12-14. " Tlierefore thus saith the Holy One of
Israel, Because ye dislike this word, and put your trust in force
and shufflings, and rely upon this ; therefore will this iniguity be
to you like a falling breach, bent forwa/rds in a high-towering
wall, wMch falls to ruin suddenly, very suddenly. And He
smites it to pieces, as a patterns vessel falls to pieces, lolien iliey
smash it without sparing, and of which, when it lies smashed to
pieces there, you cannot find a sherd to fetch fwe with from the
hearth, or to take water with out of a cistern." The " word "
towards which they cherished m'''ds (read mo'oskhem), was the
word of Jehovah through His prophet, which was directed
against their mrtheocratic policy of reckoning upon Egypt.
Ndloz, bent out or twisted, is the term used to denote this very
policy, which was ever resorting to bypaths and secret ways ;
whilst 'osheq denotes the squeezing out of the money required
to carry on the war of freedom, and to purchase the help of
Egypt (compare 2 Kings xv. 20). The guilt of Judah is
compared to the broken and overhanging part of a high wall
(m'J/j'eA,bent'forwards; compare WM, a term applied to a diseased
swelh'ng). Just as such a broken piece brings down the whole
of the injured wall along with it, so would the sinful conduct
of Judah immediately ruin the whole of its existing constitution.
Israel, which would not recognise itself as the image of Jehovah,
even when there was yet time (ch. xxix. 16), would be like a
vessel smashed into the smallest fragments. It is the captivity
which is here figuratively threatened by the prophet ; for the
smashing had regard to Israel as a state. The subject to i=i"i3B'i
in ver. 14 is Jehovah, who would make use of the hostile power
of man to destroy the wall, and break up the kingdom of Judah
into such a diaspora of broken sherds. The reading is not i^'O^]
(LXX., Targum), but ^'}^f'', et franget earn. Kdthoth is an
infinitive statement of the mode ; the participle MtJiuth, which
is adopted by the Targum, Kimchi, Norzi, and others, is less
suitable. It was necessary to proceed with Pbn* N? (without his
sparing), simply because the infinitive absolute cannot be con-
32
THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
nected with h<? (Ewald, § 350, a). ^^^'?'? (to be written thus
; rlw. both here and Hag. ii. 16) passes -m the prjma^
meaning nudare to that of scooping up, as n^V does to that of
^°"lntrsuch small sherds, a heap thus scattered hither and
thither, would the kingdom of Judah be broken up, m conse-
quence of its ungodly thirst for self-liberation. Vers 15-17
"For thus scdtk the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel,
Through turning and rest ye would be helped; your strength would
show itself in quietness and confidence; but ye would not. And
ye said. No, but we loillfly upon horses ; therefore ye shall flee :
and. We will ride upon racehorses; therefore your pursuers will
race. A thousand, ye will flee from the threatening of one, from
the threatening of five, until ye are reduced to a remnant, like
a pine upon the top of the mountain, and like a banner upon the
hill." The conditions upon which their salvation .depended,
and by complying with which they would attain to it, were
shubhdh, turning from their self-chosen way, and nachath, rest
from self-confident work of their own (from nuach, like rachaih,
ventilabrum, from ruach, and shachath, fovea, from shuOch).
Their strength {i.e. what they would be able to do in opposition
to the imperial power) would show itself (hdydh, arise, come to
the light, as in ch. xxix. 2) in hashqet, laying aside their busy
care and stormy eagerness, and bitchdh, trust, which cleaves to
Jehovah and, renouncing all self-help, leaves Him to act alone.
This was the leading and fundamental principle of the prophet's
politics even in the time of Ahaz (ch. vii. 4). But from the
very first they would not act upon it ; nor would they now that
the alliance with Egypt had become an irreversible fact. To
fly upon horses, and ride away upon racehorses (kal, like KeXrj<;,
celer^), had been and still was their proud and carnal ambition,
which Jehovah would answer by fulfilling upon them the
curses of the thorah (Lev. xxvi. 8, 36; Deut. xxviii. 25, xxxii.
30). One, or at the most five, of the enemy would be able
with their snorting to put to flight a whole thousand of the
men of Judah. The verb nus (ver. 16), which rhymes with sus,
is used first of all in its primaiy sense of "flying" (related to
1 We regard the Sanscrit hal, to drive or hunt, the Greek ,A>.T,(^ix.i^.>.y.iv,
and the Semitic qal, as all having the same root : cf . Curtius, Grundzlige der
griech. E'ymol. i. 116.
CHAP. XXX. 18. 33
nuts, cf. Ex. xiv. 27), and then in its more usual sense of
" fleeing." (Luzzatto, after Abulwalid : vogliamo far sui cavalU
gloriosa aomparsa, from 7ius, or rather ndsas, hence ndnos, from
which comes nes, excellere.) I?i31, the f ut. niphal, signifies to be
light, i.e. swift ; whereas Pi?)., the f ut. kal, had become a common
expression for light in the sense of despised or lightly esteemed.
The horses and chariots are Judah's own (ch. ii. 7 ; Mic. v. 9),
though possibly with the additional allusion to the Egyptian
cavalry, of world-wide renown, which they had called to their
help. In ver. 17a the subject of the first clause is also that
of the second, and consequently we have not ''JSO? (compare
the asyndeta in ch. xvii. 6). The insertion of r^bhdbJidh (ten
thousand) after chamissMh (five), which Lowth, Gesenius, and
others propose, is quite unnecessary. The play upon the words
symbolizes the divine law of retribution (talio), which would
be carried out with regard to them. The nation, which had
hitherto resembled a thick forest, would become like a lofty pine
(toren, according to the talmudic turnlthd', Pinus pined), stand-
ing solitary upon the top of a mountain, and like a flagstaff
planted upon a hill — a miserable remnant in the broad land so
fearfully devastated by war. For DN ^y followed by a preterite
(equivalent to the fut. exaetum), compare ch. vi. 11 and Gen.
xxiv. 19.
The prophet now proceeds with l??!, to which we cannot
give any other meaning than et propterea, which it has every-
where else. The thought of the prophet is the perpetually
recurring one, that Israel would have to be reduced to a small
remnant before Jehovah would cease from His wrath. Ver.
18. " And therefore will Jehovah wait till He inclines towards
you, and therefore will He withdraw Himself on high till He has
mercy upon you; for Jehovah is a God of right, salvation to those
who wait for Him" In other places Idkhen (therefore) deduces
the punishment from the sin ; here it infers, from the nature
of the punishment, the long continuance of the divine wrath.
Chikkdh, to wait, connected as it is here with Lamed, has at least
the idea, if not the actual signification, of delay (as in 2 Kings
is. 3 ; compare Job xxxii. 4). This helps to determine the
sense of ydrum, which does not mean. He will show Himself
exalted as a judge, that through judgment He may render it
possible to have mercy upon you (which is too far-fetched a
VOL. II. c
34 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
meaning) ; but, He will raise Himself up, so as to be far away
(cf. Num. xvi. 45, " Get you up from among this congrega-
tion ;" and Ps. x. 5, mdrom = " far above," as far as heaven,
out of his sight), that thus (after having for a long time with-
drawn His gracious presence ; cf. Hos. v. 6) He may bestow
His mercy upon you. A dark prospect, but only alarming to
unbelievers. The salvation at the remotest end of the future
belongs to believers even now. This is affirmed in the word
'ashre (blessed), which recals Ps. ii. 12. The prophet uses
chdkhdh in a very significant double sense here, just as he did
nus a short time before. Jehovah is waiting for the time when
He can show His favour once more, and blessed are they who
meet His waiting with their own waiting.
None but such are heirs of the grace that follows the
judgment — a people, newly pardoned in response to its cry for
help, conducted by faithful teachers in the right way, and re-
nouncing idolatry with disgust. Vers. 19-22. "For a people
continues dwelling in Zion, in Jerusalem ; thou shalt not weep
for ever : He will prove Himself gracious to tliee at the sound of
thy cry for help ; as soon as He hears, He answers thee. And
the Lord giveth you bread in penury, and water for your need ;
and thy teachers will not hide themselves any more, and thine eyes
come to see thy teachers. And thine ears will hear words behind
thee, saying, ' Tliis is the way, walk ye in it ! ' ichether ye turn to
the right hand or to the left. And ye defile the covering of thy
graven images of silver, and the clothing of thy molten images of
gold; thou wilt scatter them like a filthy thing : ' Get out!' thou
sayest to it." We do not render ver. 19a, " For O people that
dwelleth in Zion, in Jerusalem !" For although the personal
pronoun may be omitted after Vav in an apostrophizing con-
nection (Prov. viii. 5 ; Joel ii. 23), we should certainly expect
to find r\m here. The accent very properly marks these words
as forming an independent clause. The apparent tautology in
the expression, " in Zion, in Jerusalem," is emphatic and ex-
planatory. The fate of Zion-Jerusalem will not be the same
as that of the imperial city (ch. xiii. 20, xxv. 2) ; for it is the
city of Jehovah, which, according to His promise, cannot be-
come an eternally deserted ruin. After this promising decla-
ration, the prophet turns and addresses the people of the future
in the people of his own time : bdkho strengthens the verbal
CHAP. XXX. 19-22. 35
notion with the mark of duration ; cMnon with the mark of
certainty and fulness. I^nj, with an advanced S, as in Gen.
xliii. 29, for ^3!^^ | is the shortest expression used to denote
simultaneous occurrence ; answering and hearing would coin-
cide {shorn dh, nomen actionis, as in ch. xlvii. 9, Iv. 2 ; Ges. § 45,
16 ; 'dndhh, the pausal form here, as in Jer. xxiii. 37). From
this lowest stage of response to the penitential cry for help, the
promise rises higher and higher. The next stage is that in
which Jerusalem is brought into all the distress consequent
upon a siege, as threatened by the prophet in ch. xxix. 3, 4 ;
the besieged would not be allowed by God to die of starvation,
but He would send them the necessary support. The same ex-
pression, but very little altered, viz. "to give to eat lechem lachatz
umayim lachatz" signifies to put any one upon the low rations
of a siege or of imprisonment, in 1 Kings xxii. 27 and 2 Chron.
xviii. 26 ; but here it is a promise, with the threat kept in the
background. 1^ and KO? are connected with the absolute nouns
on? and D^Oj not as adverbial, but as appositional definitions (like
i^?!?"!? Tl, "wine which is giddiness," in Ps. Ix. 5; and D^3"!3 d;d,
" water which is knees," i.e. which has the measure of the knees,
where hirhayim is also in apposition, and not the accusative of
measurement) : literally, bread which is necessity, and water
which is afiliction; that is to say, nourishment of which there is
extreme need, the very opposite of bread and water in abundance.
TJmbreit and Drechsler understand this spiritually. But the
promise rises as it goes on. There is already an advance, in
the fact that the faithful and well-meaning teachers (morim)
no longer keep themselves hidden because of the hard-hearted-
ness and hatred of the people, as they have done ever since
the time of Ahaz (^^9^, a denoni. : to withdraw into ^33,
■jTTepv^, the utmost end, the most secret corner ; though hdnaph
in itself signifies to cover or conceal). Israel, when penitent,
would once more be able to rejoice in the sight of those whom
it longed to have back again. 1'''iiO is a plural, according to
the context (on the singular of the previous predicate, see Ges.
§ 147). As the shepherds of the flock, they would follow the
people with friendly words of admonition, whilst the people
would have their ears open to receive their instruction. lJ''I?Kri
is here equivalent to U''»)Pi, iJ^D^Jii. The abominations of ido-
latry (which continued even in the first years of Hezekiah's
3(3 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
reign : ch. xxxi. 7 ; Mic. i. 5, v. 11-13, vi. 16) would now be
regaicled as abominations, and put away. Even gold and
silver, with which the images that were either carved or cast
in inferior metal were overlaid, would be made unclean ^(see
2 Kings xxiii. 8 sqq.) ; that is to say, no use would be made of
them. Ddvdli is a shorter expression for kHi ddvdh, the cloth
worn by a woman at the monthly period. On zdrdh, to dis-
pense—to which ddodh would be inappropriate if understood
of the woman herself, as it is by Luzzatto— compare 2 Kings
xxiii. 6. With 13nT, the plural used in the general address
passes over into the individualizing singular ; iis is to be taken
as a neuter pointing back to the plunder of idols.
The promise, after setting forth this act of penitence, rises
higher and higher ; it would not stop at bread in time of need.
Vers. 23-25. "And He gives rain to thy seed, with ivhich thou
soivest the land ; and bread of the produce of the land, and it is
full of sap and fat : in that day your floclcs will feed in roomy
pastures. And the oxen and the young asses, which work the
land, salted mash will they eat, which is loinnowed with the,
winnowing shovel and ivinnoioing fork ! And upon every high
mountain, and every hill that rises high, there are springs, brooks
in the day of the great massacre, lohen the toioers fallV The
blessing which the prophet depicts is the reverse of the day of
judgment, and stands in the foreground when the judgment is
past. Tlie expression " in that day " fixes, as it were, the even-
ing of the day of judgment, which is followed by the depicted
morning of blessing. But the great mass of the Jewish nation
would be first of all murdered in war ; the towers must fall,
i.e. (though without any figure, and merely as an exemplifying
expression) all the bulwarks of self-confidence, self-help, and
j)ride (ch. ii. 15 ; Mic. v. 9, 10). In the place of the self-
induced calamities of war, there would now come the God-
given rich blessings of peace ; and in the place of the proud
towers, there would come fruitful heights abounding with
water. The field would be cultivated asjain, and produce
luxuriant crops of nutritious corn ; so that not only the labour
ot man, but that of the animals also, would receive a rich re-
ward " Rain to thy seed :" this is the early rain commencing
about the middle of October, l^-*? is an accusative, V^r being
construed with a double accusative, as in Deut. xxii o"^ T^PO
CHAP. XXX. 23-25. 37
might be the singular, so far as the form is concerned (see
i. 30, V. 12, xxii. 11) ; but, according to Ex. xvii. 3, it must
be taken as a plural, like I'lio. The '&ldphim are the oxen
used in ploughing and threshing ; the 'dydrlm, the asses used
for carrying manure, soil, the sheaves, or the grain. B'lil
chdmits is a mash (composed of oats, barley, and vetches, or
things of that hind) made more savoury with salt and sour
vegetables;^ that is to say, a farrago (from bdhxl, to mix; Joh,
vol. ii. p. 362). According to Wetzstein, it is ripe barley (un-
threshed during the harvest and threshing time, and the grain
itself for the rest of the year) mixed with salt or salt vege-
tables. In any case, Vlil is to be understood as referring to
the grain ; this is evident from the relative clause, " which has
been winnowed" (= m'zoreh, Ewald, § 169, d), or perhaps more
correctly, "which he (one) winnows" {part. haV), the parti-
ciple standing for the third person, with the subject contained
within itself (Ewald, § 200), i.e. not what was generally given
from economy, viz. barley, etc., mixed with chopped straw (tibii),
but pure grain (Jiabb mahd, as they say at the present day).
Racliath is a winnowing shovel, which is still used, according to
Wetzstein, in Merj, Gedur, and Hauran ; mizreli, on the other
hand, is the winnowing fork with six prongs. Dainty food,
such as was only given occasionally to the cattle, as something
especially strengthening, would then be their regular food, and
would be prepared in the most careful manner. "Who cannot
see," exclaims Vitringa, " that this is to be taken spiritually ? "
He appeals to what Paul says in 1 Cor. ix. 9, viz. that God
does not trouble Himself about oxen. But Paul did not mean
this in the same sense as Aristotle, who maintained that the
minima were entirely excluded from the providence of God.
What the Scriptures say concerning cattle, they do not say for
the sake of the cattle, but for the sake of men ; though it does
not follow that the cattle are to be understood figuratively, as
representing men. And this is the case here. What the pro-
phet paints in this idyllic style, in colours furnished by the
existing customs,^ is not indeed intended to be understood in
the letter ; and yet it is to be taken literally. In the age of
^ Such as Salsola kali, Salsola tragus, Salsoh. soda, and other plants of
the family of the chenopodiacese.
^ Asses particularly, even those of a guest, are genetally very much
38 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
glory, even on this side of eternity, a gigantic stride will be
taken forward towards the glorification of universal nature,
and towards the end of all those sighs which are so discernible
now, more especially among domestic animals. The prophecy
is therefore to be interpreted according to Eom. viii. 19 sqq. ;
from which we may clearly see that God does trouble Himself
about the sighing of an ox or ass that is overburdened with
severe toil, and sometimes left to starve.
The promise now rises higher and higher, and passes from
earth to heaven. Ver. 26. " And the light of the moon will be
as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be multiplied
sevenfold, like the light of seven days, in the day that Jehovah
bindeth the hurt of His people, and healeth the crushing of His
stroke'' Modern commentators from Lowth downwards for the
most part pronounce Q''l?^n nyae' "iiX3 a gloss ; and there is one
external evidence in favour of this, which is wanting in the case
of the other supposed glosses in Isaiah, namely, that the words
are omitted by the LXX. (though not by the Targum, the
Syriac, or Jerome). Even Luther (although he notices these
words in his exposition and sermons) merely renders thera, der
Sonnen schein wird siebenmal heller sein denn jtzt (the sunlight
will be seven times as bright as it is now). But the internal
evidence does not favour their spuriousness even in the case
before us ; for the fact that the regularity of the verse, as con-
sisting of four members, is thereby disturbed, is no evidence at
all, since the verse could be arranged in a pentastic quite as well
as in a tetrastic form. "We therefore decide in this instance
also in favour of the conclusion that the prophet composed the
gloss himself. But we cannot maintain, with Umbreit, that the
addition was necessary, in order to guard against the idea that
there would be seven suns shining in the sky ; for the prophet
does not predict a multiplication of the sun by seven, but
simply the multiplication of its light. The seven days are the
length of an ordinary week. Drechsler gives it correctly :
"The radiated light, which is sufficient to produce the daylight
for a whole week according to the existing order of things, will
then be concentrated into a single day." Luther renders it in
tahty If corn is given to the asses as well as to the hoi-ses.-WETzsTEiN.
CHAP. XXX. 27, 28. 39
this way, als loenn siehen tag ynn eynander gescMossen weren
(as if seven days were enclosed in one another). This also is
not meant figuratively, any more than Paul means it figu-
ratively, when he says, that with the manifestation of the
" glory " of the children of God, the " corruption" of universal
nature will come to an end. Nevertheless, it is not of the new
heaven that the prophet is speaking, but of the glorification of
nature, which is promised by both the Old Testament prophecy
and by that of the New at the closing period of the world's
history, and which will be the closing typical self-annunciation
of that eternal glory in which everything will be swallowed up.
The brightest, sunniest days then alternate, as the prophet
foretells, with the most brilliant moonlight nights. No other
miracles will be needed for this than that wonder-working
power of God, which even now produces those changes of
weather, the laws of which no researches of natural science
have enabled us to calculate, and which will then give the
greatest brilliancy and most unchangeable duration to what is
now comparatively rare, — namely, a perfectly unclouded sky,
with sun or moon shining in all its brilliancy, yet without any
scorching from the one, or injurious effects from the other.
Heaven and earth will then put on their sabbath dress ; for it
will be the Sabbath of the world's history, the seventh day in
the world's week. The light of the seven days of the world's
week will be all concentrated in the seventh. For the beginning
of creation was light, and its close will be light as well. The
darkness all comes between, simply that it may be overcome.
At last will come a boqer (morning), after which it will no
more be said, "And evening was, and morning was." The
prophet is speaking of the last type of this morning. What he
predicts here precedes what he predicted in ch. xxiv. 23, just as
the date of its composition precedes that of ch. xj^iv.-xxvii. ;
for there the imperial city was Babylon, whereas here the
glory of the latter day is still placed immediately after the fall
of Assyria.
Vers. 27, 28. " Beliold, the name of Jeliovali cometli from
far, burning His wrath, and quantity of smohe : His lips are full
of wrathful fcam, and His tongue like devouring fire. And His
breath is like an overflowing brook, which reaches half-way to the
neck, to sift nations in the sieve of nothingness ; and a misleading
40 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
hridle comes to the cheeks of the nations." Two figures are here
melted together,— namely, that of a storm coming up from the
farthest horizon, which turns the sky into a sea of fire, and
kindles whatever it strikes, so that there rises up a heavy
burden, or thick mass of smoke (kobhed massadh, like maseili in
Judg. XX. 40, cf. 38 ; on this attributive combination, burning
His wrath (Ewald, § 288, c) and a quantity, etc., see eh. xiii.
9) ; and that of a man burning with wrath, whose lips foam,
whose tongue moves to and fro like a flame, and whose breath
is a snorting that threatens destruction, which when it issues
from Jehovah swells into a stream, which so far covers a
man that only his neck appears as the visible half. We had
the same figure in ch. viii. 8, where Asshur, as it came upon
Judah, was compared to such an almost overwhelming and
drowning flood. Here, again, it refers to Judah, which the
wrath of Jehovah had almost though not entirely destroyed.
!For the ultimate object of the advancing name of Jehovah
(shem, name, relating to His judicial coming) is to sift nations,
etc. : lahdndphdh for Vhdnlph (like lahazdddh in Dan. v. 20),
to make it more like ndphdh in sound. The sieve of nothingness
is a sieve in which everything, that does not, remain in it as
good corn, is given up to annihilation ; NIB' is want of being,
i.e. of life from God, and denotes the fate that properly belongs
to such worthlessness. In the case of v'resen (and a bridle,
etc.) we must either supply in thought Liw'p (DB'), or, what is
better, take it as a substantive clause: " a misleading bridle" (or
a bridle of misleading, as Bottcher renders it, math'eh being
the form mashqeh) holds the cheeks of the nations. The nations
are regarded as wild horses, which could not be tamed, but
which were now so firmly bound and controlled by the wrath
of God, that they were driven down into the abyss.
This is the issue of the judgment which begins at the house
of God, then turns against the instrument employed, namely
the heathen, and becomes to the Israel that survives a counter-
part of the deliverance from Egypt. Ver. 29. « Your sang
will then sound as in the night, when the feast is celebrated; and
ye will have joy of heart like those who march with the playing
of flutes, to go vp to the mountain of Jehovah, to the Rock of
Israel In the word chdg (feast), which is generally used with
special reference to the feast of tabernacles, there is here an
CHAP. XXX. 30-33. 41
tiiimistakeable allusion to the passover, as wc may see from tlie
introduction of " the night," which evidently means the night
before the passover {lei shimmurtm, Ex. xii. 42), which was so
far a festal night, that it preceded and introduced the feast of
unleavened bread. The prophet has tal^en his figure from the
first passover-night in Egypt, when Israel was rejoicing in the
deliverance which it was just about to receive, whilst the de-
stroying angel was passing through the land. Such would be
the song which they would be able to sing, when Jehovah
poured out His judgment upon His people's enemies outside.
The church is shut up in its chamber (ch. xxvi. 20), and its
joy resembles the heartfelt joy of those who go on pilgrimage
on one of the three great feasts, or in the procession that
carries up the first-fruits to Jerusalem (Biccurim, iii. 3), going
up with the sound of flutes to the mountain of Jehovah, to
appear before Him, the Rock of Israel.
Israel is marching in such a joyful way to a sacred and
glorious height, whilst outside Jehovah is sweeping the world-
power entirely away, and that without any help from Israel.
Vers. 30-33. " And Jehovah causes His majestic voice to he
heard, and causes the lowering of His arm to he seen, with the
snorting of wrath and the hlazing of devouring fire, the bursting
of a cloud, and pouring of rain and hailstones. For Asshur will
he terrified at ike voice of Jehovah, when He smites with the staff.
And it will come to pass, emery stroke of the rod of destiny, which
Jehovah causes to fall upon Asshur, is dealt amidst the noise of
drums and the playing of guitars ; and in hattles of swinging
arm He fights it. For a place for the sacrifice of ahominations
has long heen made ready, even for the king is it prepared ; deep,
hroad has He made it : its funeral-pile has fire and wood in
abundance ; the breath of Jehovah like a stream of brimstone sets
it on fire." The imposing crash (on hod, see Job xxxix. 20)
of the cry which Jehovah causes to be heard is thunder (see
Ps. xxix.) ; for the catastrophe occurs with a discharge of all
the destructive forces of a storm (see ch. xxix. 6). Nephets
is the "breaking up" or "bursting," viz. of a cloud. It is
through such wrath-announcing phenomena of nature that
Jehovah'manifests the otherwise invisible letting down of His
arm to smite (nachath may possibly not be the derivative of
nuach, " a settling down," but of nachath, " the coming down,"
42 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
as in Ps. sxxviii. 3 ; just as skebheth in 2 Sam, xxiii, 7 is not
derived from sMhJi, but from shdbhath, to go to ruin). Ver, 31,
commencing with ki (for), explains tte terrible nature of wliat
occurs, from the object at which it is directed: Asshur is
alarmed at the voice of Jehovah, and thoroughly goes to pieces.
We must not render this, as the Targum does, " which smites
with the rod," i.e. which bears itself so haughtily, so tyi-anni-
cally (after ch. x. 24). The smitei* here is Jehovah (LXX.,
Vulg., Luther) ; and hasshehhet yakkeh is either au attributive
clause, or, better still, a circumstantial determining clause, eo
virga percutiente. According to the accents, v'hdydh in ver. 32
is introductory : " And it will come to pass, every stroke of the
punishing rod falls (supply nMi;) with an accompaniment of
drums and guitars" (the Beth is used to denote instrumental
accompaniment, as in ver. 29, ch. xsiv. 9, Ps. xlix. 5, etc.), —
namely, on the part of the people of Jerusalem, who have
only to look on and rejoice in the approaching deliverance.
Musdddh with matteh is a verbal substantive used as a genitive,
"an appointment according to decree" (comp. yasacZ in Hab.
i. 12, and yd'ad in Mic. vi. 9). The fact that drums and
guitars are heard along with every stroke, is explained in
ver. 32 & : " Jehovah fights against Asshur with battles of
swinging," i.e. not with darts or any other kind of weapon, but
by swinging His arm incessantly, to smite Asshur without its
being able to defend itself (cf. ch. xix. 16). Instead of na,
which points back to Asshur, not to matteh, the heri has D3,
which is not so harsh, since it is immediately preceded by V^J/.
This cutting down of the Assyrians is accounted for in
ver, 33, {ki, for), from the fact that it had long ago been
decreed that they should be burned as dead bodies. 'Ethmul in
contrast with mdchdr is the past : it has not happened to-day,
but yesterday, i.e., as the predestination of God is referred to,
"long ago." Tophteh is the primary form of toplieth (from
tuph, not in the sense of the Neo-Persian tdften, Zend, tap, to
kmdle or burn, from which comes tafedra, melting ; but in the
Semitic sense of vomiting or abhorring : see at Job xvii. 6),
the name of the abominable place where the sacrifices were
offered to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom: a Tophet-like place,
ihe word IS variously treated as both a masculine and feminine,
possibly because the place of abominable sacrifices is described
CHAP. XXXI. 1-3. 43
first as Mmdh in Jer. vli. 31. In the clause 1?^' "^1^ Sin-QJ, the
gam, which stands at the head, may be connected with lam-
melekh, " also for the king is it prepared" (see at Job ii. 10) ;
but in all probability lammelehh is a play upon lammolekli {e.g.
Lev. xviii. 2), " even this has been prepared for the Melekh,"
viz. the king of Asshur. Because he was to be burned there,
together with his army, Jehovah had made this Tophet-like
place very deep, so that it might have a far-reaching back-
ground, and very broad, so that in this respect also there might
be room for many sacrifices. And their m'durdh, i.e. their
pile of wood (as in Ezek. xxiv. 9, cf. 5, from dur, Talm. dayyBr,
to lay round, to arrange, pile), has abundance of fire and wood
(a hendiadys, like " cloud and smoke" in eh. iv. 5). Abundance
of fire : for the breath of Jehovah, pouring upon the funeral
pile like a stream of brimstone, sets it on fire. 3 "lya, not to
burn up, but to set on fire. i^S points back to topliteh, like the
suffix of m'dwrdihdh}
THE FOURTH WOE. — THE FALSE HELP ; THE DESPISED ONE
PITIED ; AND THE NEW ERA. — CHAP. XXXI.-XXXII. 1-8.
There is nothing to surprise us in the fact, that the prophet
returns again and again to the alliance with Egypt. After his
warning had failed to prevent it, he wrestled with it in spirit,
set before himself afresh the curse which would be its certain
fruit, brought out and unfolded the consolation of believers
that lay hidden in the curse, and did not rest till the cursed
fruit, that had become a real thing, had been swallowed up by
the promise, which was equally real. The situation of this
fourth woe is just the same as that of the previous one. The
alliance with Egypt is still in progress. Vers. 1-3. " Woe to
^ So far as the form of the text is concerned, kol has the disjunctive
yeihib before pashta, which occurs eleven times according to the Masora.
Nevertheless the word is logically connected in the closest manner with
what follows (comp. 'eth torath in ch. v. 24). The ah of musadah is rafa-
tumpro mappicato, according to the Masora ; in which case the suffix would
refer to Asshur. In the place of Sin Qi we also meet with ^sn D3, 'with
this chethib and keri reversed ; but the former, according to which pm is
equivalent to HiaiH, has many examples to support it in the Masora. pm
has kametz in correct MSS. in half pause ; whereas Kimchi (Michlol, 1176)
regards it as a participle.
44 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
them that go down to Egypt for help, and rdy upon horses, and
put their trust in chariots, that there are many of them; and m
horsemen, that there is a powerful multitude of them; and do not
look up to the Holy One of Israel, and do not inquire for Jehovah !
And yet He also is wise ; thus then He brings evil, and sets not
His words aside ; and rises up against the house of m.iscreants,
and against the help of evil-doers. And Egypt is man, and not
God; and its horses flesh, and not spirit. And when Jehovah
stretches out His hand, the helper stumbles, and he that is helped
falls, and they all perish together." The expression « them
that go down" (hayyor^dim) does not imply that the going down
was taking place just then for the first time. It is the participle
of qualification, just as God is called Nn>n. n-\\y'? with Lamed
of the object, as in ch. xx. 6. The horses, chariots, and horse-
men here, are those of Egypt, which Diodorus calls iTnrdcn/io<;,
on account of its soil being so suitable for cavalry (see Lepsius
in Herzog's Cyclopcedid). The participle is combined in the
finite verb. Instead of D'WD'pyi, we also find the reading pre-
ferred by Norzi, of ?V without Vav, as in ch. v. 11 (cf. 23).
The perfects, W^ N? and lB'"j'n NP, are used without any definite
time, to denote that which was always wanting in them. The
circumstantial clause, " whilst He is assuredly also wise," i.e.
will bear comparison with their wisdom and that of Egypt,- is a
touching fj,eiw(7i^. It was not necessaiy to think very highly
of Jehovah, in order to perceive the reprehensible and destruc-
tive character of their apostasy from Him. The fut. consec.
N'?'l is used to indicate the inevitable consequence of their
despising Him who is also wise. He will not set aside His
threatening words, but carry them out. The house of mis-
creants is Judah (ch. i. 4) ; and the help (abstr. pro concr., just
as Jehovah is frequently called "my help," 'ezrdthl, by the
Psalmist) of evil-doers is Egypt, whose help has been sought
by Judah. The latter is " man" (^dddm), and its horses " flesh"
(bdsdr) ; whereas Jehovah is God (El) and spirit (raach ; see
Psychol, p. 85). Hofmann expounds it correctly : " As ruach
has life in itself, it is opposed to the bdsdr, which is only
rendered living through the ruMi; and so El is opposed to the
coi-poreal 'dddm, who needs the spirit in order to live at all."
Thus have they preferred the help of the impotent and condi-
tioned, to the help of the almighty and all-conditioninff One.
CHAP. XXXI. 4. 4J5
Jehovah, who is God and spirit, only requires to stretch out
His hand (an anthropomorphism, by the side of which we find
the rule for interpreting it) ; and the helpers, and those who are
helped (i.e. according to the terms of the treaty, though not
in reality), that is to say, both the source of the help and the
object of help, are all cast into one heap together.
And things of this kind would occur. Ver. 4. " For thus
hath Jehovah spoken to me, As the lion groiols, and the young
lion over its prey, against which a whole crowd of shepherds is
called together; he is not alarmed at their cry, and does not
surrender at their noise ; so will Jehovah of hosts descend to the
campaign against the mountain of Zion, and against their hill."
There is no other passage in the book of Isaiah which sounds
so Homeric as this (yid. II. xviii. 161, 162, xii. 299 sqq.). It
has been misunderstood by Knobel, Umbreit, Drechsler, and
others, who suppose ?? ^53V? to refer to Jehovah's purpose to
fight for Jerusalem : Jehovah, who would no more allow His
city to be taken from Him," than a lion would give up a lamb
that it had taken as its prey. But how could Jerusalem be
compared to a lamb which a lion holds in its claws as tereph ?
(ch. V. 29.) We may see, even from ch. xxix. 7, what con-
struction is meant to be put upon ?V t?3S. Those sinners and
their protectors would first of all perish ; for like a fierce in-
domitable lion would Jehovah advance against Jerusalem, and
take it as His prey, without suffeiing Himself to be thwarted
by the Judseans and Egyptians, who set themselves in opposition
to His army (the Assyrians). The mountain of Zion was the
citadel and temple ; the hill of Zion the city of Jerusalem
(ch. X. 32). They would both be given up to the judgment of
Jehovah, without any possibility of escape. The commenta-
tors have been misled by the fact, that a simile of a promising
character follows immediately afterwards, without anything to
connect the one with the other. But this abrupt /nera/Sao-j?
was intended as a surprise, and was a true picture of the actual
fulfilment of the prophecy ; for in the moment of the greatest
distress, vi^hen the actual existence of Jerusalem was in question
(cf. ch. X. 33, 34), the fate of Ariel took suddenly and miracu-
lously a totally different turn (ch.xxix. 2). In this sense, a
pleasant picture is placed side by side with the terrible one
(compare Mic. v. 6, 7).
46 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jehovah suddenly arrests the -work of punishment, and the love
which the wrath enfolds within itself begins to appear. Ver. 5,
" Like fluttering birds, so will Jehovah of Hosts screen Jerusalem ;
screening and delivering, sparing and setting free." The prophet
uses the plural, " like fluttering birds," with an object — namely,
not so much to represent Jehovah Himself, as the tender care
and, as it were, maternal love, into which His leonine fierceness
would be changed. This is indicated by the fact, that he
attaches the feminine 'dphoth to the common gender tsippoHm,
The word pdsodch recals to mind the deliverance from Egypt
(as in ch. xxx. 29) in a very significant manner. The sparing
of the Israelites by the destroyer passing over their doors, from
which the passover derived its name, would be repeated once
more. We may see from this, that in and along ^^■ith Assyria,
Jehovah Himself, whose instrument of punishment Assyria was,
would take the field against Jerusalem (ch. xsix. 2, 3) ; but
His attitude towards Jerusalem is suddenly changed into one
resembling the action of birds, as 'they soar round and above
their threatened nests. On the inf. abs. hal (gdnon) after the
hiphil, see Ewald, § 312, b ; and on the continuance of the inf.
abs. in the finite verb, § 350, a. This generally takes place
through the future, but here through the preterite, as in Jer.
xxiii. 14, Gen. xxvi. 13, and 1 Sam. ii. 26 (if indeed v'gddel is
the third pers. preterite there).
On the ground of this half terrible, half comforting picture
of the future, the call to repentance is now addressed to the
people of the prophet's own time. Ver. 6. « Then turn, sons
of Israel, to Him from whom men have so deeply departed."
Strictly speaking, « to Him with regard to whom (^B'^?) ye are
deeply faUen away" (he'emlq, as in Hos. ix. 9, and sdrah, that
which IS alienated, alienation, as in ch. i. 5); the transition to
the thurd person is like the reverse in ch. i. 29. This call to
repentance the prophet strengthens by two powerful motives
drawn from the future.
_ The first is, that idolatry would one day be recognised in all
Its aboimnation, and put away. Ver. 7. " For in that day they
will abhor every one their silver idols and their gold idols, which
your hands have made you for a sin," i.e. to commit sin and
repent with the preponderance of the latter idea, as in Hos.
vm. 116 (compare 1 Kings xiii. 34). mn, a second accusative
CHAP. XXXI. 8, 9. 47
to liPy, indicating the result. The prospect is the same as that
held out in ch. xxx. 22, xxvii. 9, xvii. 8, ii. 20.
The second motive is, that Israel will not be rescued by
men, but by Jehovah alone ; so that even He from whom they
have now so deeply fallen will prove Himself the only true
ground of confidence. Vers. 8, 9. " And Asshur falls by a
sword not of a man, and a sword not of a man will devour Mm;
and lie flees before a sword, and his young men become tributary.
And his rock, for fear will it pass away, and his princes be
frightened away by the flags : the saying of Jehovah, who has His
fire in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem" The LXX. and
Jerome render this falsely (pev^ercu ovk (xi?) euro irpoawirov
fiay(aipaii. '!? is an ethical dative, and the prophet intentionally
writes "before a sword" without any article, to suggest the
idea of the unbounded, infinite, awful (cf. ch. xxviii. 2, Vydd;
Psalter, vol. i. p. 15). A sword is drawn without any human
intervention, and before this Asshur falls, or at least so many of
the Assyrians as are unable to save themselves by flight. The
power of Asshur is for ever broken ; even its young men will
henceforth become tributary, or perform feudal service. By
" his rock" most commentators understand the rock upon which
the fugitive would gladly have taken refuge, but did not dare
(Kosenmiiller, Gesenius, Knobel, etc.) ; others, again, the mili-
tary force of Asshur, as its supposed invincible refuge (Saad.,
etc.) ; others, the apparently indestructible might of Asshur
generally (Vulgate, Eashi, Hitzig). But the presence of " his
princes" in the parallel clause makes it most natural to refer
" his rock" to the king ; and this reference is established with
certainty by what ch. xxxii. 2 affirms of the king and princes of
Judah. Luther also renders it thus : undjr Fels wird fur furcht
wegzihen (and their rock will withdraw for fear). Sennacherib
really did hurry back to Assyria after the catastrophe in a
most rapid flight. Minnes are the standards of Asshur, which
the commanders of the army fly away from in terror, without
attempting to rally those that were scattered. Thus speaks
Jehovah, and this is what He decrees who has His 'ur and
tannUr in Jerusalem. We cannot suppose that the allusion
here is to the fire and hearth of the sacrifices ; for tannur does
not mean a hearth, but a furnace (from nur, to burn). The
reference is to the light of the divine presence, which was out-
4S THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
wardly a devouring fire for the enemies of Jerusalem, an unap-
proachable red-hot furnace (ignis et caminus qui devorat pecca-
tores et ligna, fcenuni stipulamque consumit : Jerome).
For Judah, sifted, delivered, and purified, there now begins
a new era. Eighteous government, as a blessing for the people,
is the first beneficent fruit. Ch. xxxii. 1, 2. " Behold, the king
will reign according to righteousness ; and the princes, according
to right will they command. And every one loill he like a shelter
from the -wind, and a covert from the storm ; like water-brooks in
a dry place, like tJie shadow of a gigantic rock in a languishing
land." The kingdom of Asshur is for ever destroyed ; but the
kingdom of Judah rises out of the state of confusion into
which it has fallen through its God-forgetting policy and dis-
regard of justice. King and princes now rule according to the
standards that have been divinely appointed and revealed. The
Lamed in uVsdrlm (and the princes) is that of reference {quod
attinet ad, as in Ps. xvi. 3 and Eccles. ix. 4), the exponent
of the usual casus abs. (Ges. § 146, 2) ; and the two other
Ziameds are equivalent to Kara, secundum (as in Jer. xxx. 11).
The figures in ver. 2 are the same as in ch. xxv. 4. The rock
of Asshur (i.e. Sennacherib) has departed, and the princes of
Asshur have deserted their standards, merely to save them-
selves. The kiug and princes of Judah are now the defence
of their uation, and overshadow it like colossal walls of rock.
This is the first fruit of the blessing.
The second is an opened understanding, following upon
the ban of hardening. Vers. 3, 4. " And the eyes of the
seeing no more are closed, and the ears of the hearing attend.
And ilie heart of the hurried understands to know, and the
tongue of stammerers speaks clear things with readiness." It
is not physical miracles that are predicted here, but a spiri-
tual change. The present judgment of hardening will be
repealed : this is what ver. 3 affirms. The spiritual defects,
from which many suffer who do not belong to the worst, will
be healed : this is the statement in ver. 4. The form ^'^"'Wn
is not the future of r\w here, as in ch. xxxi. 1, sxii!" 4,
xvn. 7, 8 (in the sense of, they will no longer stare about
restlessly and without aim), but of njJBJ = jjvbJ, a metaplastic
future of the latter, in the sense of, to be smeared over or
closed (see ch. xxix. 9, vi. 10 ; cf. tecA in ch. xliv. 18).
CHAP. XXXII. 5-8. 49
On qdsJiahh (the kal of which is only met with here), see at
ch. xxi. 7. The times succeeding the hardening, of which
Isaiah is speaking here, are " the last times," as ch. vi. clearly
shows ; though it does not therefore follow that the king men-
tioned in ver. 1 (as in ch. xi. 1 sqq.) is the Messiah Himself.
In ver. 1 the prophet merely affirms, that Israel as a national
commonwealth will then be governed in a manner well pleasing
to God ; here he predicts that Israel as a national congregation
will be delivered from the judgment of not seeing with seeing
eyes, and not hearing with hearing ears, and that it will be
delivered from defects of weakness also. The nimhdnm are
"those that fall headlong, the precipitate, hurrying, or rash ;
and the C^pV, stammerers, are not scoffers (ch. xxviii. 7 sqq.,
xxix. 20), as Knobel and Drechsler maintain, but such as
are unable to think and speak with distinctness and certainty,
more especially concerning the exalted things of God. The
former would now have the gifts of discernment (ydbhiri), to
perceive things in their true nature, and to distinguish under
all circumstances that which is truly profitable (Idda'ath) ; the
latter would be able to express themselves suitably, with refine-
ment, clearness, and worthiness. Tsachotli (old ed. tsdcJwtli}.
signifies that which is light, transparent; not merely intelli-
gible, but refined and elegant, "'i^on gives the adverbial idea«,
to Mahher (Ewald, § 285, a).
A third fruit of the blessing is the naming and treating of'
every one according to his true character. Vers. 5-8. " The
fool will no more be called a nohleman, nor the crafty a gentleman-.
For a fool speaks follies, and his heart does godless things, to prac-
tise tricks and to speak error against Jehovah, to leave the soul of'
hungry men empty, and to withhold the drink of thirsty ones. A nd
the craft of a crafty man is evil, who devises stratagems to destroy
suffering ones by lying words, even when the needy exhibits his right
But a noble man devises noble things, and to noble things he ad-
heres." Nobility of birth and wealth will give place to nobility
of character, so that the former will not exist or not be recog-
nised without the latter. Nddlbh is properly one who is noble in
character, and then, dropping the ethical meaning, one who is
noble by rank. The meaning of the word generosus follows the
same course in the opposite direction. Sho^ is the man who is
raised to eminence by the possession of property; the gentle-
VOL II. !>
50 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
mai], as in Job xxxiv. 19. The prophet explains for himself in
what sense he uses the words ndbJidl and kilai. We see from his
explanation that Mlai neither signifies the covetous, from kul
(Saad.), nor the spendthrift, from Mlldh (Hitzig). Jerome
o-ives the correct rendering, viz. fraudulentus ; and Rashi and
Kimchi very properly regard it as a contraction of n'khilai. It
is an adjective form derived from i"3=i''?|i, like S'E' = N'bji (Job
XX. 6). The form "'^3 in ver. 1 is used interchangeably with
this, merely for the sake of the resemblance in sound to 1v3
(machinatoris machince pravce). In ver. 6, commencing with ki
(for), the fact that the ndblidl (fool) and kilai (crafty man) will
lose their titles of honour, is explained on the simple ground
that such men are utterly unworthy of them. Ndhhdl is a scoffer
at religion, who thinks himself an enlightened man, and yet at
the same time has the basest heart, and is a worthless egotist.
The infinitives with Lamed show in what the immorality ('auen)
consists, with which his heart is so actively employed. In ver.
6, ubh'dahber (" and if he speak") is equivalent to, " even in the
event of a needy man saying what is right and well founded :"
Vdv^et in the sense of etiam (cf. 2 Sam. i. 23 ; Ps. xxxi. 12 ;
Hos. viii. 6 ; Eccles. v. 6) ; according to Knobel, it is equivalent
to et quidem, as in Eccles. viii. 2, Amos iii. 11, iv. 10 ; whereas
Ewald regards it as Vav conj. (§ 283, d), " and by going to law
with the needy," but !i''3K"ns would be the construction in this
case (vid. 2 Kings xxv. 6). According to ver. 8, not only does
the noble man devise what is noble, but as such (sin) he adheres
to it. We might also adopt this explanation, " It is not upon
gold or upon chance that he rises ;" but according to the Arabic
equivalents, qQm signifies persistere here.
AGAINST THE -WOMEN OF JERUSALEM.— CHAP. XXXII. 9-20.
APPENDIX TO THE FOURTH WOE.
This short address, although rounded off well, is something
more than a fragment complete in itself, like the short para-
bolic piece in ch. xxviii. 23-29, which commences in a similar
manner. It is the last part of the fourth woe, just as that was
the last part of the first. It is a side piece to the threatening
prophecy of the time of Uzziah-Jotham (ch. iii. 16 sqq.), and
chastises the frivolous self-security of the women of Jerusalem,
CHAP. XSXII. 9-14. 51
jast as the former chastises their vain and luxurious love of
finery. The prophet has now uttered many a woe upon Jeru-
salem, which is bringing itself to the verge of destruction ; but
notwithstanding the fact that women are by nature more delicate,
and more easily affected and alarmed, than men, he has made
no impression upon the women of Jerusalem, to whom he now
foretells a terrible undeceiving of their carnal ease, whilst he
holds out before them the ease secured by God, which can
only be realized on the ruins of the former. The first part
of the address proclaims the annihilation of their false ease.
Vers. 9-14. " Ye contented women, rise up, hear my voice ; ye
confident daughters, hearken to iny speech 1 Days to tlie year :
tlien will ye tremble, confident ones ! for it is all over with the
vintage, the fruit harvest comes to nought. Tremble, contented
ones ! Quake, ye confident ones ! Strip, make yourselves bare,
and gird your loins with sackcloth ! TMy smite upon their breasts
for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. On the land of my
people there come up weeds, briers ; yea, upon all joyous houses
of the rejoicing city. For the palace is m,ade solitary; the crowd of
the city is left desolate ; the of el and watch-tower serve as caves
for ever, for the delight of wild asses, for the tending of flocks."
The summons is the same as in Gen. iv. 23 and Jer. ix. 19 (comp.
eh. xxviii. 23) ; the attributes the same as in Amos vi. 1 (cf. ch.
iv. 1, where Isaiah apostrophizes the women of Samaria). JJf'B',
lively, of good cheer; and nD3, trusting, namely to nothing.
They are to rise up (qdmndh), because the word of God must
be heard standing (Judg. iii. 20). The definition of the time
" days for a year" (ydmlm 'al-shdndh) appears to indicate the
length of time that the desolation would last, as the word
tirgazndh is without any Vav apod. (cf. ch. Ixv. 24, Job i.
16-18) ; but ch. xxix. 1 shows us differently, and the Vav is
omitted, just as it is, for example, in Dan. iv. 28. Shdndh is
the current year. In an undefined number of days, at the
most a year from the present time (which is sometimes the
meaning of ydmlm), the trembling would begin, and there
would be neither grapes nor fruit to gather. Hence the spring
harvest of corn is supposed to be over when the devastation
begins. D''?^ is an ace. temporis ; it stands here (as in ch. xxvii. 6,
for example ; vid. Ewald, § 293, 1) to indicate the starting point,
not the period of duration. The milelriorms T\ms, ni'y, nnin,
52 THE PBOPHECIES OF ISAIAH,
are explained by Ewald, Drechsler, and Luzzatto, as plur. fern,
imper. with the Nun of the termination ndh dropped,— an elision
that is certainly never heard of. Others regard it as inf. with
He femin. (Credner, Joel, p. 141) ; but mO\> for tbf. infinitive
rhp^^ is unexampled ; and equally unexampled would be the
mf. with He indicating the summons, as suggested by Bottcber,
"to the shaking!" "to the stripping!" They are sing. masc.
imper., such as occur elsewhere apart from the pause, e.g. "3170
(for which the hri has na^JD) in Judg. ix. 8 ; and the singular
in the place of the plural is the strongest form of command.
The masculine instead of the feminine appears already in ^iTin,
which is used in the place of iijll". The prophet then pro-
ceeds in the singular number, comprehending the -women as a
mass, and using the most massive expression. The He intro-
duced into the summons required that the feminine forms, ''M'!)
etc., should be given up. nnV, from lllf, to be naked, to strip
one's self. n"iin absolute, as in Joel i. 13 (cf. ch. iii. 24), signi-
fies to gird one's self with sackcloth (saq). We meet with the
same remarkable enall. generis in ver. 12. Men have no breasts
(shddaim), and yet the masculine sopk'dlm is employed, inas-
much as the prophet had the whole nation in his mind, through-
out which there would be such a plangere uhera on account of
the utter destruction of the hopeful harvest of corn and wine.
Shddaim (breasts) and ''IB' (construct to sddotli) have the same
common ring as uhera and uhertas frugum. Li ver. 13 taalek
points back to qots shdmir, which is condensed into one neuter
idea. The ki in ver. 136 has the sense of the Latin imo
(Ewald, § 330, b). The genitive connection of nybv nnj? with
B'iB'D ••na (joy-houses of the jubilant city) is the same as in ch.
xxviii. 1. The whole is grammatically strange, jnst as in the
Psalms the language becomes all the more complicated, dis-
jointed, and difficult, the greater the wrath and indignation of
the poet. Hence the short shrill sentences in ver. 14 : palace
given up (cf. ch. siii. 22) ; city bustle forsaken (i.e. the city
generally so full of bustle, ch. sxii. 2). The use of njJ3 is the
same as in Prov. vi. 26, Job ii. 4. 'Ofel, i.e. the south-eastern
fortified slope of the temple mountain, and the bachan (i.e. the
watch-tower, possibly the flock-tower which is mentioned in
Mic. IV. 8 along with 'ofel), would be pro speluncis, i.e. would
be considered and serve as such. And in the very place where
CHAP. XXXir. 15-19. 53
the women of Jerusalem had once led their life of gaiety, wild
asses would now have their delight, and flocks their pasture (on
the wild asses, pVa'fjn, that fine animal of the woodless steppe,
see at Job xxiv. 5, xxxix. 5-8). Thus would Jerusalem, with its
strongest, proudest places, be laid in ruins, and that in a single
year, or even less than a year.
The state would then continue long, very long, until at last
the destruction of the false rest would be followed by the reali-
zation of the true. Vers. 15—19. " Until the Spirit is poured
out over us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful
field, and the fruitful field is counted as the forest. And justice
snakes its abode in the desert, and righteousness settles down upon
the fruit-field. And the effect of righteousness will he peace, and
Hie reward of righteousness rest and security for ever. And my
people dwells in a place of peace, and in trustworthy, safe dwell-
ings, and in cheerful resting-places. And it hails with the over-
throw of the forest, and into lowliness must the city be brought
low." There is a limit, therefore, to the " for ever ''of ver. 14.
The punishment would last till the Spirit, which Israel had not
then dwelling in the midst of it (see Hag. ii. 5), and whose
fulness was like a closed vessel to Israel, should be emptied out
over Israel from the height of heaven (compare the piel n"iy,
Gen. xxiv. 20), i.e. should be poured out in all its fulness.
When that was done, a great change would take place, the
spiritual nature of which is figuratively represented in the same
proverbial manner as in ch. xxix. 17. At the same time, a
different turn is given to the second half in the passage before
Tis. The meaning is, not that what was now valued as a fruit-
bearing garden would be brought down from its false eminence,
and be only regai-ded as forest ; but that the whole would be so
glorious, that what was now valued as a fruit-garden, would be
thrown into the shade by something far more glorious still, in
comparison with which it would have the appearance of a forest,
in which everything grew wild. The whole land, the unculti-
vated pasture-land as well as the planted fruitful fields of corn
and fruit, would then become the tent and seat of justice and
righteousness. " Justice and righteousness" (mishpdt and
ts'ddqdh) are throughout Isaiah the stamp of the last and
perfect time. As these advance towards self-completion, the
produce and result of these will be peace (md&seh and 'dbhoddh
54^ THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
are used to denote the fruit or self-reward of work and pains-
taking toil; compare n\VB). But two things must take place
before this calm, trustworthy, happy peace, of which the existing
carnal security is only a caricature, can possibly be realized.
In the Jirst place, it must hail, and the wood must fall, being
beaten down with hail. We already know, from ch. x. 34,
that " the wood" was an emblem of Assyria ; and in ch. xxx.
30 31 we find " the hail" mentioned as one of the forces of
nature' that would prove destructive to Assyria. And secondli/,
" the city" O'V^j, a play upon the word, and a counterpart to
njTl) must first' of all be brought low into lowliness {i.e. be deeply
humiliated). Kosenmiiller and others suppose the imperial
city to be intended, according to parallels taken from ch.
xxiv.-xxvii. ; hut in this cycle of prophecies, in which the
imperial city is never mentioned at all, " the city" must be
Jerusalem, whose course from the false peace to the true lay
through a humiliating punishment (ch. xxix. 2-4, xxx. 19 sqq.,
xxxi. 4 sqq.).
In the face of this double judgment, the prophet congratu-
lates those who will live to see the times after the judgment.
Ver. 20. " Blessed are ye that sow by all waters, and let the
foot of the oxen and asses rove in freedom." Those who lived
to see these times would be far and wide the lords of a quiet
and fruitful land, cleared of its foes, and of all disturbers of
peace. They would sow wherever they pleased, by all the
waters that fertiUzed the soil, and therefore in a soil of the
most productive kind, and one that required little if any trouble
to cultivate. And inasmuch as everything would be in the
most copious abundance, they would no longer need to watch
with anxiety lest their oxen and asses should stray into the
corn-fields, but would be able to let them wander wherever they
pleased. There cannot be the slightest doubt that this is the
correct explanation of the verse, according to ch. xxx. 23-25
(compare also ch. vii. 21 sqq.).
This concludes the four woes, from which the fifth, that
immediately follows, is distinguished by the fact, that in the
former the Assyrian troubles are still in the future, whereas
the fifth places us in the very midst of them. The prophet
commenced (ch. xxviii. 1-4) with the destruction of Samaria ;
he then threatened Judah and Jerusalem also. But it is un-
CHAP. XXXIL 20. 55
commonly difficult to combine the different features of the
threat into a complete picture. Sifting even to a small rem-
nant is a leading thought, which runs through the threat. And
we also read throughout the whole, that Asshur will meet with
its own destruction in front of that very Jerusalem which it is
seeking to destroy. But the prophet also knows, on the one
hand, that Jerusalem is besieged by the Assyrians, and will not
be rescued till the besieged city has been brought to the last
extremity (ch. xxix. 1 sqq., xxxi. 4 sqq.) ; and, on the other
hand, that this will reach even to the falling of the towers (ch.
XXX. 25), the overthrow of the wall of the state (cli. xxs. 13,
14), the devastation of the land, and the destruction of Jeru-
salem itself (ch. xxxii. 12 sqq.) ; and for both of these he fixes
the limit of a year (ch. xsix. 1, xxxii. 10). This double threat
may be explained in the following manner. The judgments
which Israel has still to endure, and the period of glory that
will follow them, lie before the mental eye of the prophet like
a long deep diorama. While threatening the existing generation,
he penetrates more or less deeply into the judgments which lie in
perspective before him. He threatens at one time merely a siege
that will continue till it is brought to the utmost extremity ; at
another time utter destruction. But the imperial power intended,
by which this double calamity is to be brought upon Judah,
must be Assyria ; since the prophet knew of no other in the
earliest years of Hezekiah, when these threatening addresses were
uttered. And this gives rise to another difficulty. Not only was
the worst prediction — namely, that of the destruction of Jerusa-
lem — not fulfilled ; but even the milder prophecy — namely, that
of a siege, which would bring them to the deepest distress — was
not accomplished. There never was any actual siege of Jerusa-
lem by the Assyrians. The explanation of this is, that, according
to Jer. xviii. 7, 8, and 9, 10, neither the threatenings of punish-
ment nor the promises of blessing uttered by the prophets were
so unconditional, that they were certain to be fulfilled and that
with absolute necessity, at such and such a time, or upon such
and such a generation. The threatened punishment might be
repealed or modified, if repentance ensued on the part of the
persons threatened (Jonah iii. 4 ; 1 Kings xxi. 29 ; 2 Kings
xxii. 15-20 ; 2 Chron. xii. 5-8). The words of the prophecy
did not on that account fall to ithe ground. If they produced re-
gg THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
pentance, tliey answered the veiy purpose for which they were
intended • bnt if the circumstances which called for punishment
should return, their force returned as well in all its fulness. If
the iudgment was one irrevocably determined, it was merely
delayed "by this, to be discharged upon the generation which
should be ripest for it. And we have also an express historical
testimony, which shows that this is the way in which the non-
fulfilmentof what Isaiah threatened as about to take place within
a year is to be accounted for. Not only Isaiah, but also his
contemporary Micah, threatened, that along with the judgment
upon Samaria, the same judgment would also burst upon
Jerusalem. Zion would be ploughed as a field, Jerusalem
would be laid in ruins, and the temple mountain would be turned
into a wooded height (]\Iic. iii. 12). This prophecy belongs
to the first year of Hezekiali's reign, for it was then that the
book of Micah was composed. But we read in Jer. xxvi.
18, 19, that, in their alarm at this prophecy, Hezekiah and all
Judah repented, and that Jehovah withdrew His threat in con-
sequence. Thus, in the very first year of Hezekiah, a change
for the better took place in Judah ; and this was necessarily
followed by the withdrawal of Isaiah's threatenings, just as
those threatenings had co-operated in the production of this
conversion (see Caspari, Micha, p. 160 sqq.). Not one of the
three threats (Isa. xxix. 1-4, xxxii. 9—14 ; Mic. iii. 12), which
form an ascending climax, was fulfilled. Previous threatenings
so far recovered their original force, when the insincerity of the
conversion became apparent, that the Assyrians did unques-
tionably march through Judah, devastating everything as they
went along. But because of Hezekiah's self-humiliation and
faith, the threat was turned from that time forward into a
promise. In direct opposition to his former threatening, Isaiah
now promised that Jerusalem would not be besieged by the
Assyrians (ch. xxxvii. 33-35), but that, before the siege was
actually established, Assyria would fall under the walls of
Jerusalem.
CHAP. XXXIII. 1. 57
THE FIFTH WOE. — WOE CONCEENING ASSHtJR; DELIVERANCE
AND GLORY OF JERUSALEM. — CHAP. XXXIII.
We are now in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign.
The threatenings of the first years, which the repentance of
the people had delayed, are now so far in force again, and so
far actually realized, that the Assyrians are already in Judah,
and have not only devastated the land, but are threatening
Jerusalem. The element of promise now gains the upper
hand, the prophet places himself between Asshur and his own
nation with the weapons of prophecy and prayer, and the woe
turns from the latter to the former. Ver. 1. " Woe, devastator,
and thyself not devastated ; and thou spoiler, and still not spoiled !
Hast thou done with devastating ? thou shalt he devastated. Hast
thou attained to roh ? men roh thee." Asshur is described as not
devastated and not spoiled (which could not be expressed by a
participle as with us, since hdgad is construed with Beth, and
not with the accusative of the person), because it had not yet
been visited by any such misfortune as that which had fallen
upon other lands and nations. But it would be repaid with
like for like as soon as (3 indicating simultaneousness, as in ch.
XXX. 19 and xviii. 5, fcr example) its devastating and spoiling
had reached the point determined by Jehovah. Instead of ^3,
we find in some codd. and editions the reading ia, which is
equally admissible. In Tp^JpOl (from Q?Jjl) the radical syllable
is lengthened, instead of having dagesh. in?jl3 is equivalent to
^nipjns, a hiphil syncopated for the sake of rhythm (as in ch.
iii. 8, Deut. i. 33, and many other passages), written here with
dagesh dirimens, from the verb ndldh, which is attested also
by Job XV. 29. The coincidence in meaning with the verb
\\j (fut. i and m), to acquire or attain (see Job, vol. i. 296, ii.
165), has been admitted by the earliest of the national gram-
marians, Ben-Koreish, Chayug, etc. The conjecture ini?32
(in addition to which Cappellus proposed iniN?33) is quite
unnecessary. The play upon the sound sets forth the punish-
ment of the hitherto unpunished one as the infallible echo of
its sin.
In ver. 2 the prophet's word of command is changed into a
58 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
believing prayer : " Jehovah, be gracious to us ; we wait for
Thee: be their arm with every morning, yea, our salvation in
time of need!" "Their arm,''' i.e. the power which shelters and
defends them, viz. Thy people and my own. " Yea," 'ap7i, is
emphatic. Israel's arm every morning, because the danger is
renewed every day; Israel's salvation, i.e. complete deliver-
ance (ch. XXV. 9), because the culminating point of the trouble
is still in prospect.
While the prophet is praying thus, he already sees the
answer. Vers. 3, 4. " At the sound of a noise peoples pass away ;
at Thy rising nations are scattered. And your booty is swept
away as a swarm of locusts sweeps away ; as beetles run, they run
■upon it." The indeterminate hdmon, which produces for that
very reason the impression of something mysterious and terrible,
is at once explained. The noise comes from Jehovah, who is
raisingHimself judicially above Assyria, and thunders as a judge.
Then the hostile army runs away (1V33^^ ^'33^ from the niphal
K^J, 1 Sam. xiii. 11, from J'Sa = pB3, from J'^s); and your booty
(the address returns to Assyria) is swept away, just as when a
swarm of locusts settles on a field, it soon eats it utterly away.
Jerome, Cappellus, and others follow the Septuagint rendering,
ov rpoTTov idv t<9 a-vvaydyrj d/cpt'Sa?. The figure is quite as
appropriate, but the article in hechdsil mates the other view the
more natural one ; and ver. 46 places this beyond all doubt.
Slidqaq, from which the participle shoqeq and the substantive
masshdq are derived, is used here, as in Joel ii. 9, to signify a
busy running hither and thither (diseursitare). The syntactic
use of shoqeq is the same as that of vSp (they call) in ch. xxi.
11, and soph'dim (they smite) in ch. xxxii. 12. The inhabits
ants of Jerusalem swarm in the enemy's camp like beetles ;
they are all in motion, and carry off what they can.
The prophet sees this as he prays, and now feasts himself
on the consequences of this victoiy of Jehovah, prophesying in
vers. 5, 6 : « Jehovah is exalted; for, dwelling on high. He has
filled Zion with justice and righteousness. And there will be
security of thy times, riches of salvation, of wisdom, and know-
ledge. Fear of Jehovah is then the treasure of Judah." Exalted :
for though highly exalted in Himself, He has performed an act
of justice and righteousness, with the sight and remembrance
of which Z.on IS filled as with an overflomng rich supply of
CHAP. XXXIII. 7-9. 59
instruction and praise. A new time has dawned for the people
of Judah. The prophet addresses them in ver. 6 ; for there is
nothing to warrant us in regarding the words as addressed to
Hezekiah. To the times succeeding this great achievement
there would belong '&nundh, i.e. durability (Ex. xvii. 12), — a
uniform and therefore trustworthy state of things (compare
ch. xxxix. 8, " peace and truth"). Secondly, there would also
belong to them ]oh^ a rich store of salvation, wisdom, and
knowledge (compare the verb in ch. xxiii. 18). We regard
these three ideas as all connected with chosen. The prophet
makes a certain advance towards the unfolding of the seven
gifts in cb. xi. 2, which are implied in " salvation ;" but he
hurries at once to the lowest of them, which forms the ground-
work of all the rest, when he says, thirdly, that the fear of
Jehovah will be the people's treasure. The construct form,
ehoMimaih, instead of choMvmdh, is a favourite one, which Isaiah
employs, even apart from the genitive relation of the words,
for the purpose of securing a closer connection, as ch. xxxv. 2,
li. 21 (compare pdrash in Ezek. xxvi. 10), clearly show. In
the case before us, it has the further advantage of consonance
in the closing sound.
The prophet has thus run through the whole train of thought
with a few rapid strides, in accordance with the custom which
we have already frequently noticed ; and now he commences
afresh, mourning over the present miserable condition of things,
in psalm-like elegiac tones, and weeping with his weeping
people. Vers. 7-9. " Behold, their heroes weep without ; the
messengers of peace weep bitterly. Desolate are roads, disap-
peared are travellers ; lie has broken covenant, insulted cities,
despised men. The land mourns, languishes; Lebanon stands
ashamed, parched; the meadow of Sharon has become like a
steppe, and Bashan and Carmel shake their leaves'' ^?|?"]^ is
probably chosen with some allusion to 'Ariel, the name of Jeru-
salem in cb. xxix. ; but it has a totdlly different meaning. "We
have rendered it " heroes," because %"1N is here synonymous
with i'N'iN in the Nibelung-\\ke piece contained in 2 Sam. xxiii.
20 and 1 Chron. xi. 22. This 'an' el, which is here contracted
into 'et^el (compare the biblical name 'Ar'eli and the post-
biblical name of the angels, 'Erellim), is compounded of 'an
(a Hon) and 'El (God), and therefore signifies " the lion of
gQ THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
God," but in this sense, that El (God) gives to the idea of
leonine courage merely the additional force of extraordinary or
wonderful ; and as a composite word, it contents itself with a
singular, with a collective sense according to circumstances,
without forming any plural at all. The dagesh is to be ex-
plained from the fact that the word (which tradition has erro-
neously regarded as a compound of rirh ns-jK) is pointed in
accordance with the form h^y^ (}S>Tra). The heroes^ intended
by the prophet were the messengers sent to Sennacherib to treat
with him for peace. They carried to him the amount of silver
and gold which he had demanded as the condition of peace
(2 Kings xviii. 14). But Sennacherib broke the treaty, by
demanding nothing less than the surrender of Jerusalem itself.
Then the heroes of Jerusalem cried aloud, when they arrived
at Jerusalem, and had to convey this message of disgrace and
alarm to the king and nation ; and bitterly weeping over such
a breach of faith, such deception and disgrace, the embassy,
which had been sent off, to the deep self-humiliation of Judali
and themselves, returned to Jerusalem. Moreover, Sennacherib
continued to storm the fortified places, in violation of his agree-
ment (on ma as 'dnm, see 2 Kings xviii. 13). The land was
more and more laid waste, the fields were trodden down ; and
the autumnal aspect of Lebanon, with its faded foliage, and of
Bashan and Carmel, with their falling leaves, looked like shame
and grief at the calamities of the land. It was in the autumn,
therefore, that the prophet uttered these complaints ; and the
definition of the time given in his prophecy (ch. xsxii. 10)
coincides with this. PDiJ is the pausal form for h^?^, just as in
other places an e with the tone, which has sprung from i, easily
passes into a in pause ; the sharpening of the syllable being
preferred to the lengthening of it, not only when the syllable
which precedes the tone syllable is an open one, but sometimes
even when it is closed {e.g. Judg. vi. 19, m^^). Instead of
nn-|J?3 we should read n2-ij?3 (without the article), as certain
codd. and early editions do.^ Isaiah having mourned in the
tone of the Psalms, now comforts himself with the words of a
1 We find the same in Zech. xiv. 10, and D''n-lJ?3 in cli. xliv. 4, whereas
we invariably have nmj?3 (see Michlol, 456), just as vre always find
D''J3X3, and on the other hand Di:3X3.
CHAP. XXXIII. 10-14. 61
psalm. Like David in Ps. xii. 6, he hears Jehovah speak.
The measure of Asshur's iniquity is full ; the hour of Judah's
redemption is come ; Jehovah has looked on long enough, as
though sitting still (ch. xviii. 4). Ver. 10. " Now will I arise,
saitli Jehovah, now exalt myself, now lift up myselfr Three
times does the prophet repeat the word 'attdh (now), which i?
so significant a word with all the prophets, but more especially
with Hosea and Isaiah, and which always fixes the boundary-
line and turning-point between love and wrath, wrath and love.
^?^"'?? (in half pause for Q»i"it?) is contracted from Oaiinx (Ges.
§ 54, 2, h). Jehovah would rise up from His throne, and show
Himself in all His greatness to the enemies of Israel.
After the prophet has heard this from Jehovah, he knows
how it will fare with them. He therefore cries out to them
in triumph (ver. 11), " Ye are pregnant with hay, ye bring
forth stubble ! Your snorting is the fire that will devour you."
Their vain purpose to destroy Jerusalem comes to nothing;
their burning wrath against Jerusalem becomes the fire of
wrath, which consumes them (for chashash and gash, see at
ch. v. 24).
The prophet announces this to them, and now tells openly
what has been exhibited to him in his mental mirror as the pur-
pose of God. Ver. 12. " And nations become as lime burnings,
thorns cut off, which are kindled with fire." The first simile sets
forth the totality of the destruction : they will be so com-
pletely burned up, that nothing hut ashes will be left, like the
lump of lime left at the burning of lime. The second contains
a figurative description of its suddenness : they have vanished
suddenly, like dead brushwood, which is cut down in con-
sequence, and quickly crackles up and is consumed (ch. v.
24, cf. ix. 17) : Msach is the Targum word for zdmar, ampu-
tare, whereas in Arabic it has the same meaning as sdchdh,
verrere.
But the prophet, while addressing Asshur, does not overlook
those sinners of his own nation who are deserving of punish-
ment. The judgment upon Asshur is an alarming lesson, not
only for the heathen, but for Israel also ; for there is no respect
of persons with Jehovah. Vers. 13, 14. " Hear, ye distant
ones, lohat I have accomplished; and perceive, ye near ones, my
omnipotence ! The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling seizes
g2 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the hypocrites : who of us can abide with devouring fire? who of
us abide with everlasting burnings V Even for the sinners in
Jerusalem also there is no ahiding in the presence of the
Almighty and Just One, who has judged Asshur (the act of
judgment is regarded by the prophet as having just occurred) ;
they must either repent, or they cannot remain in His presence.
Jehovah, so far as His wrath is concerned, is " a consuming
fire" (Dent. iv. 24, ix. 3) ; and the fiery force of His anger is
" everlasting burnings" {mo¥de 'oldm), inasmuch as it consists
of flames that are never extinguished, never hum themselves
out. And this God had His fire and His furnace in Jeru-
salem (ch. xxxi. 9), and had just shown what His fire could
do, when once it burst forth. Therefore do the sinners inquire
in their alarm, whilst confessing to one another (Idnu ; cf.
Amos is. 1) that none of them can endure it, " Who can dwell
with devouring fire?" etc. {gur with the ace. loci, as in Ps.
V. 5).
The prophet answers their question. Vers. 15, 16. "He
that walketh in righteousness, and speaheth uprightness ; he that
despiseth gain of oppressions, whose hand heepeth from grasping
bribes ; he that stoppeth his ear from hearing murderous counsel,
and shutteth his eyes from looking at evil ; he will dwell upon
high places ; rocky fastnesses are his castle; his bread is abundant,
his waters inexhaustible." Isaiah's variation of Ps. xv. and
xxiv. 3-6 (as Jer. xvii. 5-8 contains Jeremiah's variation of
Ps. i.). Ts'ddqoth is the accusative of the object, so also is
meshdrim: he who walks in all the relations of life in the full
measure of righteousness, i.e. who practises it continually, and
whose words are in perfect agreement with his inward feelings
and outward condition. The third quality is, that lie not only
does not seek without for any gain which injures the interests
of his neighbour, but that he inwardly abhors it. The fourth
is, that he diligently .closes his hands, his ears, and his eyes,
against all danger of moral pollution. Bribery, which others
force into his hand, he throws away (cf. Neh. v. 13) ; against
murderous suggestions, or such as stimulate revenge, hatred,
and violence, he stops his ear; and from sinful sights he closes
his eyes firmly, and that without even winking. Such a man
has no need to fear the wrath of God. Living according to
the will of God, he lives in the love of God; and in that he is
CHAP. XXSin. 17-19. 6b
shut in as it were upon the inaccessible heights and in the im-
pregnable walls of a castle upon a rock. He suffers neither
hunger nor thirst ; but his bread is constantly handed to him
(nittdn, partic), namely, by the love of God ; and his waters
never fail, for God, the living One, makes them flow. This is
the picture of a man who has no need to be alarmed at the
judgment of God upon Asshur.
Over this picture the prophet forgets the sinners in Zion,
and greets with words of promise the thriving church of the
future. Ver. 17. " Thine eyes will see the Mng in his beauty,
will see a land that is very far off." The king of Judah^
hitherto so deeply humbled, and, as Micah instances by way of
example, " smitten upon the cheeks," is then glorified by the
victory of his God ; and the nation, constituted as described in
vers. 15, 16, will see him in his God-given beauty, and see the
land of promise, cleared of enemies as far as the eye can reach
and the foot carry, restored to Israel without reserve, and
under the dominion of this sovereign enjoying all the blessed-
ness of peace.
The tribulation has passed away like a dream. Vers. 18, 19.
" Thy heart meditates upon the shuddering. Where is the valuer ?
where the weigher ? where he who counted the towers ? The rough
people thou seest no more, the people of deep inaudible lip, of
stammering unintelligible tongue." The dreadful past is so
thoroughly forced out of mind by the glorious present, that
they are obliged to turn back their thoughts (hdgdh, meditari,
as Jerome renders it) to remember it at all. The sopher who
had the management of the raising of the tribute, the shoqel
who tested the weight of the gold and silver, the sophSr 'eth
hammigddlim who drew up the plan of the city to be besieged
or stormed, are all vanished. The rough people (tV^3 op, the
niphal of tW, from tPJ), that had shown itself so insolent, so
shameless, and so insatiable in its demands, has become invisible.
This attribute is a perfectly appropriate one ; and the explana-
tion given by Eashi, Vitringa, Ewald, and Fiirst, who take it
in the sense of loez in Ps. cxiv. 1, is both forced and ground-
less. The expressions 'imke and nil'ag refer to the obscure and
barbarous sound of their language ; miss¥moa to the unintelli-
gibihty of their speech ; and nra liN to the obscurity of their
meaning. Even if the Assyrians spoke a Semitic language,
64 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
they were of so totally different a nationality, and their manners
were so entirely different, that their language must have sounded
even more foreign to an Israelite than Dutch to a German.
And how will Jerusalem look when Asshur has been dashed
to pieces on the strong fortress ? The prophet passes over here
into the tone of Ps. xlviii. (vers. 13, 14.) Ps. xlvi. and xlviii.
probably belong to the time of Jehoshaphat ; but they are
equally applicable to the deliverance of Jerusalem in the time
of Hezekiah. Yer. 20. " Look upon Zion, the castle of our
festal meeting. Tliine eyes loill see Jerusalem, a pleasant place,
a tent that does not wander about, whose pegs are never drawn,
and none of whose cords are ever broken." Jerusalem stands
there unconquered and inviolable, the fortress where the con-
gregation of the whole land celebrates its feasts, a place full of
good cheer (ch. xxxii. 18), in which everything is now arranged
for a continuance. Jerusalem has come out of tribulation
stronger than ever, — not a nomadic wandering tent (tsd'an,
a nomad word, to wander, lit. to pack up = td'an in Gen. xlv.
17), but one set up for a permanent dwelling.
It is also a great Lord who dwells therein, a faithful and
almighty defender. Vers. 21, 22. "No, there dwells for us a
glorious One, Jehovah; a place of streams, canals of luide
extent, into lohich no fleet of rowing vessels ventures, and which
no strong man of war shall cross. For Jehovah is our Judge ;
Jehovah is our ivar-Prince; Jehovah is our King; He will bring
us salvation." Following upon the negative clauses in ver. 20b,
the next verse commences with ki 'im (imo). Glorious ("addlr)
is Jehovah, who has overthrown Lebanon, i.e. Assyria (ch. x.
34). He dwells in Jerusalem for the good of His people,—
a place of streams, i.e. one resembling a place of streams, from
the fact that He dwells therein. Luzzatto is right in maintain-
ing, that 13 and ^i^^Vl point back to Dipp, and therefore that
m'kom IS neither equivalent to loco (tachath, instead of), which
would be quite possible indeed, as 1 Kings xxi. 19, if not Hos
n. 1, clearly proves (cf. ch. xxii. 38), nor used in the sense of
substitution or compensation. The meaning is, that, by virtue
of Jehovah's dwelling there, Jerusalem had become a place, or
equivalent to a place, of broad streams, like those which m
other instances defended the cities they surrounded (e.q. Baby-
lon, the " twisted snake," ch. xxvii. 1), and of broad canals,
CHAP. XXXIII. 23, 24. 65
which, kept off the enemy, like moats around a fortification.
The word CINI was an Egyptian word, that had become natu-
ralized in Hebrew ; nevertheless it is a very natural supposi-
tion, that the prophet was thinking of the No of Egypt, which
was surrounded by waters, probably Nile-canals (see Winer,
K.W. Nah. iii. 8). The adjective in which yddaim brings
out with greater force the idea of breadth, as in ch. xxii. 18
(" on both sides"), belongs to both the nouns, which are placed
side by side, aa-vvherai'i (because permutative). The presence
of Jehovah was to Jerusalem what the broadest streams and
canals were to other cities ; and into these streams and canals,
which Jerusalem had around it spiritually in Jehovah Himself,
no rowing vessels ventured (3 ^?n, ingredi). Luzzatto renders
the word " ships of roving," i.e. pirate ships ; but this is im-
probable, as shut, when used as a nautical word, signifies to
row. Even a majestic tsi, i.e. trieris magna, could not cross it :
a colossal vessel of this size would be wrecked in these mighty
and dangerous waters. The figure is the same as that in ch.
xxvi. 1. In the consciousness of this inaccessible and impene-
trable defence, the people of Jerusalem gloried in their God,
who watched as a sJwphst over Israel's rights and honour, who
held as m^choqeq the commander's rod, and ruled as melekJi in
the midst of Israel ; so that for every future danger it was
already provided with the most certain help.
Now indeed it was apparently very different from this. It
was not Assyria, but Jerusalem, that was like a ship about to
be wrecked ; but when that which had just been predicted
should be fulfilled, Jerusalem, at present so powerless and
sinful, would be entirely changed. Vers. 23, 24. " Thy ropes
hang loose; they do not hold fast the support of thy mast ; they
do not hold the flag extended : then is looty of plunder divided in
abundance ; even lame men share the prey. And not an inhabi-
tant will say, I am weak : the people settled there have their sins
forgiven." Nearly every commentator (even Luzzatto) has
taken ver. 23 as addressed to Assyria, which, like a proud
vessel of war, would cross the encircling river by which Jeru-
salem was surrounded. But Drechsler has very properly
given up this view. The address itself, with the suffix ayikh
(see at ch. i. 26), points to Jerusalem ; and the reference to
this gives the most appropriate sense, whilst the contrast
VOL. II. B
66 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
between the now and then closes the prophecy in the most
glorious manner. Jerusalem is now a badly appointed ship,
dashed about by the storm, the sport of the waves. Its rigging
hangs loose (Jerome, laxati sunt) ; it does not hold the ken
torndm fast, i.e. the support of their mast, or cross beam with a
hole in it, into which the mast is slipped (the mesodme of
Homer, Od. xv. 289), which is sure to go to ruin along with
the falling mast, if the ropes do not assist its bearing power
{malum sustinentes theece succurrant, as Vitruvius says). And
so the ropes of the ship Jerusalem do not keep the nes spread
out, i.e. the ima-rjfjLov of the ship, whether we understand by it
a flag or a sail, with a device worked upon it (see Winer, R. W.
s. V. Schiffe). And this is the case with Jerusalem now ; but
then Qdz) it will be entirely different. Asshur is wrecked, and
Jerusalem enriches itself, without employing any weapons, from
the wealth of the Assyrian camp. It was with a prediction of
this spoiling of Asshur that the prophet commenced in ver. 1 ;
so that the address finishes as it began. But the closing words
of the prophet are, that the people of Jerusalem are now strong
in God, and are PV NE'J (as in Ps. xxxii. 1), lifted up, taken
away from their guilt. A people humbled by punishment,
penitent, and therefore pardoned, would then dwell in Jeru-
salem. The strength of Israel, and all its salvation, rest upon
the forgiveness of its sins.
PART VI.
FINALE OF THE JUDGMENT UPON ALL THE WORLD (MORE
ESPECIALLY UPON EDOM), AND REDEMPTION OF THE
PEOPLE OF JEHOVAH.
Chap, xxxiv. xxxv.
These two chapters stand in precisely the same relation to
ch. xxvni.-xxxiii. as ch. xxiv.-xxvii. to ch. xiii.-xxiii. In both
instances the special prophecies connected with the history of
the prophet's own times are followed by a comprehensive /Jnafe
oi an apocalyptic character. We feel that we are cai-ried en-
CHAP. XXXIV. 67
tirely away from the stage of history. There is no longer that
foreshortening, by which the prophet's perspective was charac-
terized before the fall of Assyria, The tangible shapes of the
historical present, by which we have been hitherto surrounded,
are now spiritualized into something perfectly ideal. We are
transported directly into the midst of the last things ; and the
eschatological vision is less restricted, has greater mystical
depth, belongs more to another sphere, and has altogether more
of a New Testament character. The totally different impres-
sion which is thus made by ch. xxxiv. xxxv., as compared with
eh. xxviii.-xxxiii., must not cause any misgivings as to the
authenticity of this closing prophecy. The relation in which
Jeremiah and Zephaniah stand to ch. xxxiv. and xxxv., is quite
sufficient to drive all doubts away. (Read Oaspari's article,
" Jeremiah a Witness to the Genuineness of Isa. xxxiv., and
therefore also to the Genuineness of Isa. xl.-lxvi., xiii.-xiv. 23,
and xxi. 1—10," in the I/utherische Zeitschrift, 1843, 2 ; and
Nagelsbach's Jeremia und Babylon, pp. 107-113, on the rela-
tion of Jer. 1. li. more especially to Isa. xxxiv. xxxv.) There
are many passages in Jeremiah (viz. ch. xxv. 31, 33, 34, xlvi.
10, 1. 27, 39, li. 40) which cannot be explained in any other
way than on the supposition that Jeremiah had the prophecy of
Isaiah in ch. xxxiv, before him. We cannot escape from the
conclusion, that just as we find Jeremiah introducing earliar
prophecies generally into his cycle of prophecies against the
nations, and, in the addresses already mentioned, borrowing
from Amos and Nahum, and placing side by side with a
passage from Amos (compare Jer. xxv. 30 with Amos i. 2)
one of a similar character, and agreeing with Isa. xxxiv., so he
also had Isa. xxxiv. and xxxv. before him, and reproduced it
in the same sense as he did other and earlier models. It is
equally certain that Zeph. i. 7, 8, and ii. 14, stand in a depen-
dent relation to Isa. xxxiv. 6, 11 ; just as Zeph. ii. 15 was taken
from Isa. xlvii. 8, and Zeph. i. 7 fin. and iii. 11 from Isa. xiii. 3;
whilst Zeph. ii. 14 also points back to Isa. xiii. 21, 22. We
might, indeed, reverse the relation, and make Jeremiah and
Zephaniah into the originals in the case of the passages men-
tioned ; but this is opposed to the generally reproductive and
secondary character of both these prophets, and also to the
evident features of the passages in question. We might also
(53 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
follow Movers, De Wette, and Hitzig, who get rid of the testi-
mony of Isaiah by assuming that the passages resting upon
Isa. xxxiv., and other disputed prophecies of Isaiah, are inter-
polated ; but this is opposed to the moral character of all
biblical prophecy, and, moreover, it could only apply to Jere-
miah, not to Zephaniah. We must in this case " bring reason
into captivity to obedience" to the external evidence; though
internal evidence also is not wanting to set a seal upon these
external proofs. Just as eh. xxiv.-xxvii. are full of the clearest
marks of Isaiah's authorship, so is it also with ch. xxxiv. xxxv.
It is not difficult to understand the marked contrast which we
find between these two closing prophecies and the historical
prophecies of the Assyrian age. These two closing prophecies
were appended to ch. xiii.-xxiii. and xxviii.-xxxiii. at the time
when Isaiah revised the complete collection. They belong to
the latest revelations received by the prophet, to the last steps
by which he reached that ideal height at which he soars in
ch. xl.-lxvi., and from which he never descends again to the
stage of passing history, which lay so far beneath. After
the fall of Assyria, and when darkness began to gather on the
horizon again, Isaiah broke completely away from his own
times. "The end of all things" became more and more his
own true home. The obscure foreground of his prophecies is no
longer Assliur, which he has done with now so far as prophecy
is concerned, but Babel (Babylon). And the bright centre of
his prophecies is not the fall of Asshur (for this was already
prophetically a thing of the past, which had not been followed
by complete salvation), but deliverance from Babylon. And
the bright noon-day background of his prophecies is no longer
the realized idea of the kingdom of prophecy, — realized, that
is to say, in the one person of the Messiah, whose form had
lost the sharp outlines of ch. vii.-xii. even in the prophecies
of Hezekiah's time, — but the parousia of Jehovah, which all
flesh would see. It was the revelation of the mystery of the
incarnation of God, for which all this was intended to prepare
the way. And there was no other way in which that could be
done, than by completing the perfect portrait of the Messiah
in the light of the ultimate future, so that both the factors in
the prophecy might be assimilated. The spirit of Isaiah, more
than that of any other prophet, was the laboratory of this great
CHAP. XXXIV. 1-3. 69
process m the history of revelation. The prophetic cycles in
ch. xxiv.— xxvii. and xxxiv. xxxv. stand in the relation of pre-
ludes to it. In ch. xl.-lxvi. the process of assimilation is fully
at work, and there is consequently no book of the Old Testa-
ment which has gone so thoroughly into New Testament
depths, as this second part of the collection of Isaiah's pro-
phecies, which commences with a prediction of the parousia of
Jehovah, and ends with the creation of the new heaven and
new earth. Ch. xxxiv. and xxxv. are, as it were, the first pre-
paratory chords. Edom here is what Moab was in ch. xxiv.-xxvii.
By the side of Babylon, the empire of the world, whose policy
of conquest led to its enslaving Israel, it represents the world
in its hostility to Israel as the people of Jehovah. For Edom
was Israel's brother-nation, and hated Israel as the chosen
people. In this its unbrotherly, hereditary hatred, it repre-
sented the sum-total of all the enemies and persecutors of the
church of Jehovah. The special side-piece to ch. xxxiv. is
ch. Ixiii. 1-6.
What the prophet here foretells relates to all nations, and
to every individual within them, in their relation to the con-
gregation of Jehovah. He therefore commences with the
appeal in vers. 1-3 : " Come near, ye peoples, to hear ; and ye
nations, attend. Let the earth hear, and that which Jills it, the
world, and everything that springs from it. For the indignation
of Jehovah will fall upon all nations, and burning wrath upon
all their host ; lie has laid the ban upon them, delivered them to
the slaughter. And their slain are cast away, and their corpses —
their stench will arise, and mountains melt with their blood."
The summons does not invite them to look upon the completion
of the judgment, but to hear the prophecy of the future judg-
ment ; and it is issued to everything on the earth, because it
would all have to endure the judgment upon the nations (see
at ch. v. 25, xiii. 10). The expression qetseph layehovdh im-
plies that Jehovah was ready to execute His wrath (compare
yom layehovdh in ver. 8 and ch. ii. 12). The nations that are
hostile to Jehovah are slaughtered, the bodies remain uuburied,
and the streams of Wood loosen the firm masses of the moun-
tains, so that they melt away. On the stench of the corpses,
compare Ezek. xxxix. 11. Even if chdsam, in this instance,
does not mean " to take away the breath with the stench," there
,jQ THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
is no doubt that Ezekiel had this prophecy of Isaiah in his
mind, when prophesying of the destrnction of Gog and Magog
(Ezek. xxxix.). , , , , ^ ^-u i i.
The judgment foretold by Isaiah also belongs to the last
things ; for it takes place in connection with the simultaneous
destruction of the present heaven and the present earth. Ver. 4.
"And all the host of the heavens moulder away, and the heavens
are rolled up like a scroll, and all their host withers as a leaf
withers away from the vine, and like withered leaves from the
fig-tree." Ndmaq, to be dissolved into powdered mother (ch.
iii. 24, V. 24) ; ndgol (for ndgal, like ndsol in ch. Ixiii. 19, Ixiv. 2,
and ndrots in Eccles. xii. 6), to be rolled up,— a term apphed
to the cylindrical book-scroll. The heaven, that is to say, the
present system of the universe, breaks up into atoms, and is
rolled up like a book that has been read through ; and the stars
fall down as a withered leaf falls from a vine, when it is moved
by even the lightest breeze, or like the withered leaves shaken
from the fig-tree. The expressions are so strong, that they
cannot be understood in any other sense than as relating to the
end of the world (ch. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22 ; compare Matt. xxiv.
29). It is not sufficient to say that " the stars appear to fall
to the earth," though even Vitringa gives this explanation.
When we look, however, at the following Id (for), it un-
doubtedly appears strange that the prophet should foretell the
passing away of the heavens, simply because Jehovah judges
Edom. But Edom stands here as the representative of all
powers that are hostile to the church of God as such, and
therefore expresses an idea of the deepest and widest cosmical
signification (as ch. xxiv. 21 clearly shows). And it is not
only a doctrine of Isaiah himself, but a biblical doctrine uni-
versally, that God will destroy the present world as soon as the
measure of the sin which culminates in unbelief, and in the
persecution of the congregation of the faithful, shall be really
full.
If we bear this in mind, we shall not be surprised that the
prophet gives the following reason for the passing away of the
present heavens. Vers. 5-7. " For my sword has became
intoxicated in the heaven; behold, it comes down upon Edom,
and upon the people of my ban to judgment. The sword of
Jehovah fills itself with blood, is fattened with fat, with blood
CHAl'. XXXIV. 5-7. 71
of lambs and he-goats, with kidney-fat of rams ; for Jehovah has
a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
And buffaloes fall with them, and bullocks together with hulls ;
and their land becomes intoxicated with blood, and their dust
fattened with fat" Just as in ch. Ixiii. Jehovah is represented
as a treader of the wine-press, and the nations as the grapes ;
so here He is represented as offering sacrifice, and the nations
as the animals offered (zebhach : cf. Zeph. i. 7 ; Jer. xlvi. 10 ;
Ezek. xxxix. 17 sqq. : all three passages founded upon this).
Jehovah does not appear here in person as judge, as He does
there, but His sword appears ; jnst as in Gen. iii. 24, the
" sword which turned every way" is mentioned as an inde-
pendent power standing by the side of the cherub. The sword
is His executioner, which has no sooner drunk deeply of wrath
in heaven, i.e. in the immediate sphere of the Deity (rivvHhdh,
an intensive form of the kal, like pitteach, ch. xlviii. 8 ; Ewald,
§ 120, d), than it comes down in wild intoxication upon
Edom, the people of the ban of Jehovah, i.e. the people upon
whom He has laid the ban, and there, as His instrument of
punishment, fills itself with blood, and fattens itself with fat.
ri32nn is the hothpaal = fij'^'-'^'^j yfiih the n of the preformative
syllable assimilated (compare 13?n in ch. i. 16, and 'ISI^ in ch„
xiv. 14). The penultimate has the tone, the ndh being treated
as in the plural forms of the future. The dropping of the
dagesh in the V is connected with this. The reading ^PHD, in
ver. 6, is an error that has been handed down in modern copies
(in opposition to both codices and ancient editions) ; for 3?n
(primary form, chilF) is the only form met with in the Old
Testament. The lambs, he-goats, and rams, represent the
Edomitish nation, which is compared to these smaller sacrificial
animals. Edom and Bozrah are also placed side by side in ch.
Ixiii. 1. The latter was one of the chief cities of the Edomites
(Gen. xxxvi. 33 ; Amos i. 12 ; Jer. xlix. 13, 22), — ^not the
Bozrah in Auranitis {Haurdn), however, which is well known
in church history, but Bozrah in the mountains of Edom,
upon the same site as the village of Buzaire (i.e. Minor
Bozrah), which is still surrounded by its ruins. In con-
trast with the three names of the smaller animals in ver. 6,
the three names of oxen in ver. 7 represent the lords of Edom.
They also will fall, smitten by the sword (jjdr'du : cf . Jer. 1. 27,
Y2 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAUH.
li 40; also Jer. slviii. 15). The feast of the sword is so abun-
dant, that even the earth and the dust of the land of Edom are
satiated with blood and fat.
Thus does Jehovah avenge His church iipon Edom. Vers.
8- 10. " For Jehovah hath a day of vengeance, a year of recom-
pense, to contend for Zion. And the brooks of Edom are turned
into pitch, and its dust into brimstone, and its land becomes
burning pitch. Day and night it is not quenched; the smoke of
Edom goes up for ever : it lies waste from generation to genera-
tion ; no one passes through it for ever and ever." The one
expression, " to contend for Zion," is like a flash of lightning,
throwing light upon the obscurity of prophecy, both backwards
and forwards. A day and a year of judgment upon Edom
(compare ch. Ixi. 2, Ixiii. 4) would do justice to Zion against its
accusers and persecutors (rlbh, vindicare, as in ch. li. 22). The
everlasting punishment which would fall upon it is depicted in
figures and colours, suggested by the proximity of Edom to the
Dead Sea, and the volcanic character of this mountainous
country. The unquenchable fire (for which compai-e ch. Ixvi.
24), and the eternally ascending smoke (cf. Rev. xix. 3), prove
that the end of all things is referred to. The prophet meant
primarily, no doubt, that the punishment announced would
fall upon the land of Edom, and within its geographical boun-
daries ; but this particular punishment represented the punish-
ment of all nations, and all men who were Edomitish in their
feelings and conduct towards the congregation of Jehovah.
The land of Edom, in this geographical and also emble-
matical sense, would become a wilderness ; the kingdom of
Edom would be for ever destroyed. Vers. 11, 12. "And
pelican and hedgehog take possession of it, and eared-oiol and
raven dwell there ; and he stretches over it the measure of Tohu
and the level of Bohu. Its nobles — there is no lonaer a
monarchy which they elected ; and all its princes come to
nought." The description of the ruin, which commences in
ver. 11a with a list of animals that frequent marshy and soli-
tiry regions, is similar to the one in ch. xiii. 20-22, xiv. 23
(compare Zeph. ii. 14, which is founded upon this). Isaiah's
was the original of all such pictures of ruin which we meet
with in the later prophets. The qippod is the hedgehog,
although we find it here in the company of birds (from qdpJia'd,
CHAP. XXXIV. 11, 12. 73
to draw one's self together, to roll up; see ch. xiv. 23). HNiJ is
written here with a double hametz, as well as in Zeph. ii. 14,
according to codd. and Kimchi, W.B. (Targ. qdth, elsewhere
qdq; Saad. and Abulwalid, quq: see at Ps. cii. 7). Accord-
ing to well-established tradition, it is the long-necked pelican,
which lives upon fish (the name is derived either from sip, to
vomit, or, as the construct is nsp, from a word nsij, formed in
imitation of the animal's cry). Yanskuph is rendered by the
Targum qippOphin (Syr. kafufo), i.e. eared-owls, which are fre-
quently mentioned in the Talmud as birds of ill omen (Eashi, or
Berachoth 51b, cJiouette). As the parallel to qdv, we have 'J3S
(stones) here instead of ^^P?''?, the level, in ch. xxviii. 17. It is
used in the same sense, however, — namely, to signify the weight
used in the plumb or level, which is suspended by a line. The
level and the measure are commonly employed for the purpose
of building up ; but here Jehovah is represented as using these
for the purpose of pulling down (a figure met with even before
the time of Isaiah : vid. Amos vii. 7-9, cf. 2 Kings xxi. 13,
Lam. ii. 8), inasmuch as He carries out this negative reverse of
building with the same rigorous exactness as that with which
a builder carries out his well-considered plan, and throws
Edom back into a state of desolation and desert, resembling
the disordered and shapeless chaos of creation (compare Jer.
iv. 23, where iohu vdblwhu represents, as it does here, the state
into which a land is reduced by fire).. Wh has no dagesk lene;
and this is one of the three passages in which the opening
mute is without a dagesh, although the word not only follows,
but is closely connected with, one which has a soft consonant as
its final letter (the others are Ps. Ixviii. 18 and Ezek. xxiii. 42).
Thus the primeval kingdom with its early monarchy, which so
long preceded that of Israel, is brought to an end (Gen. xxxvi.
31). n^^H stands at the head as a kind of protasis. Edom was
an elective monarchy ; the hereditary nobility electing the new
king. But this would be done no more. The electoral princes
of Edom would come to nothing. Not a trace would be left
of all that had built up the glory of Edom.
The allusioii to the monarchy and the lofty electoral dignity
leads the prophet on to the palaces and castles of the land.
Starting with these, he carries out the picture of the ruins in
vers. 13--15. "And the palaces of Edom break out into thorns,
74 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
nettles and thistles in its castles; and it becomes the abode of
wild dogs, pasture for ostriches. And nuirtensrmet with jackals,
and a wood-devil runs upon its fellow ; yea, Lillth dwells there,
and finds rest for itself There the arrow-snake makes its nest,
and breeds and lays eggs, and broods in the shadow there; yea,
there vultures gather together one to another." The femmme
suffixes refer to Edom, as they did in the previons instance, as
Dini5-n3 or Di^^« PX- On the tannlm, tsiyylm, and 'iyyim, see at
ch.'xiii. 21, 22. It is doubtful whether chdt^r here corre-
sponds to the Arabic word for an enclosure (=1?"), as Gesenius,
Hitzig, and others suppose, as elsewhere to the Arabic for
green, a green field, or garden vegetable. We take it in
the latter sense, viz. a grassy place, such as was frequented
by ostriches, which live upon plants and fruits. The word
tsiyyim (steppe animals) we have rendered " martens," as the
context requires a particular species of animals to be named.
This is the interpretation given by Eashi (in loc.) and Kimchi
in Jer. 1. 39 to the Targum word tamvdn. We do not render
'iyyim " wild cats " (chattulln), but "jackals," after the Arabic.
X'lf with b;} we take in the sense of n"ii5 (as in Ex. v. 3). Lllith
(Syr. and Zab. lelitho), ht. the creature of the night, was a
female demon (sheddli) of the popular mythology ; according to
the legends, it was a malicious fairy that was especially hurtful
to children, like some of the fairies of our own fairy tales.
There is life in Edom still ; but what a caricature of that
which once was there ! In the very spot where the princes of
Edom used to proclaim the new king, satyrs now invite one
another to dance (ch. xiii. 21) ; and where kings and princes
once slept in their palaces and country houses, the lllith, which
is most at home in horrible places, finds, as though after a
prolonged search, the most convenient and most comfortable rest-
ing-place. Demons and serpents are not very far distant from
one another. The prophet therefore proceeds in ver. 15 to the
arrow-snake, or springing-snake (Arabic qiffdze, from qdphaz,
related to qdphats, Song of Sol. ii. 8, to prepare for springing,
or to spring ; a different word from qippod, which has the same
root). This builds its nest in the ruins ; there it hreeds (millet,
to let its eggs slide out) and lays eggs (bdqcC, to split, i.e. to
bring forth) ; and then it broods in the shade {ddgar is the
Targum word in Job xxxix. 14 for chimmem {ithpael in Lam.
CHAP. XXXIV. 16, 17. 75
i. 20 for "iDlon), and is also used in the ratbinical -writings for
fovere, as Jerome renders it here). The literal sense of the
word is probably to keep the eggs together (Targum, Jer. xvii.
11, rya E'??'?, LiXX. axwrjr^ar/ev), since 13'^ (syn. "i?n) signifies
" to collect." Eashi has therefore explained it in both passages
as meaning glousser, to cluck, the noise by which a fowl calls
its brood together. The dayydli is the vulture. These fowls
and most gregarious birds of prey also collect together there.
Whenever any one compared the prophecy with the fulfil-
ment, they would be found to coincide. Vers. 16, 17. " Search
in the book of Jehovah, and read! Not one of the creatures
fails, not one misses the other : for my mouth — it has commanded
it ; and His breath — it has brought them together. And He
has cast the lot for them, and His Imnd has assigned it (this land)
to them by measure : they will possess it for ever ; to generation
and generation they will dwell therein" The phrase ?J' 3n3 is
used for entering in a book, inasmuch as what is written there
is placed itpon the page ; and ?J?p En'i for searching in. a book,
inasmuch as a person leans over the book when searching in it,
and gets the object of his search out of it. The prophet applied
the title " The Book of Jehovah " to his collection of the pro-
phecies with which Jehovah had inspired him, and which He
had commanded him to write down. Whoever lived to see the
time when the judgment should come upon Edom, would have
only to look inquiringly into this holy scripture ; and if he com-
pared what was predicted there with what had been actually
realized, he would find the most exact agreement between them.
The creatures named, which loved to frequent the marshes and
solitary places, and ruins, would all really make their homes in
what had once been Edom. But the satyrs and the Mtth,
which were only the offspring of the popular belief — what of
them ? They, too, would be there ; for in the sense intended
by the prophet they were actual devils, which he merely calls
by well-known popular names to produce a spectral impression.
Edom would really become a rendezvous for all the animals
mentioned, as well as for such unearthly spirits as those which
he refers to here. The prophet, or rather Jehovah, whose
temporary organ he was, still further confirms this by saying,
" My mouth hath commanded it, and His breath has brought
them (all these creatures) together." As the first creating
76 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
word proceeded from the mouth of Jehovah, so also does the
word of prophecy, which resembles such a word ; and the
breath of the mouth of Jehovah, i.e. His Spirit, is the power
which accomplishes the fiat of prophecy, as it did that of crea-
tion, and moulds all creatures and their history according to
the will and counsel of God (Ps. xxxiii. 6). In the second
part of ver. 166 the prophet is speaking of Jehovah ; whereas
in the first Jehovah speaks through him, — a variation which
vanishes indeed if we read 1'S (Olshausen on Job ix. 20), or,
what would be better, liT'Si, but which may be sustained by a
hundred cases of a similar kind. There is a shadow, as it
were, of this change in the DH?, which alternates with ]\0 in
connection with the animals named. The suffix of cMll'qattdh
(without mappik, as in 1 Sam. i. 6) refers to the land of Edom.
Edom is, as it were, given up by a divine lot, and measured off
with a divine measure, to be for ever the horrible abode of
beasts and demons such as those described. A prelude of the
fulfilment of this swept over the mountainous land of Edom
immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem (see Kohler on
MaJ. i. 2-5) ; and it has never risen to its previous state of cul-
tivation again. It swarms with snakes, and the desolate moun-
tain heights and barren table-lands are only inhabited by wild
crows and eagles, and great flocks of birds. But the ultimate
fulfilment, to which the appeal in ver. 16 refers, is still in the
future, and will eventually fall upon the abodes of those who
spiritually belong to that circle of hostility to Jehovah (Jesus)
and His church, of which ancient Edom was merely the centre
fixed by the prophet.
Edom falls, never to rise again. Its land is turned into a
horrible wilderness. But, on the other hand, the wilderness
through which the redeemed Israel returns, is changed into a
flowery field. Ch. xxxv. 1, 2. « Gladness fills the desert and
the heath ; and the steppe rejoices, and flowers like the crocus. It
flowers abundantly, and rejoices; yea, rejoicing and singing: tlw
9 cry of Lebanon is given to it, the splendour of Carmel and
theplazn of Sharon; they will see the glory of Jehovah, the
splendour of our God." .anp aw (to be accentuated with
Uphchahmunach, not with mercha tiphchah) has been correctly
to the following Mem, just as pidyon in Num. iii. 49 is after--
CHAP. XXXV. 1, 2. 77
wards written pidyom (Ewald, § 91, b). The explanation given
by Rashi, Gesenius, and others (loetahuntur his), is unten-
able, if only because sus {sis) cannot be construed with the
accusative of the object (see at ch. viii. 6) ; and to get rid of
the form by correction, as Olshausen proposes, is all the more
objectionable, because " the old full plural in un is very
frequently met with before Mem" (Bottcher), in which case it
may have been pronounced as it is written here.^ According
to the Targum on Song of Sol. ii. 1 (also Saad., Abulw.),
the cli&bliatstseleili is the narcissus ; whilst the Targnm on the
passage before us leaves it indefinite — sicut lilia. The name (a
derivative of hdtsal) points to a bulbous plant, probably the
crocus and primrose, which were classed together.^ The sandy
steppe would become like a lovely variegated plain covered with
meadow flowers.' On gilatli, see at ch. xxxiii. 6 (cf. ch. Ixv. 18) :
the infiu. noun takes the place of an inf. abs., which expresses
the abstract verbal idea, though in a more rigid manner ; 'aph
(like gam in Gen. xxxi. 15, xlvi. 4) is an exponent of the
increased emphasis already implied in the gerunds that come
after. So joyful and so gloriously adorned will the barren
desert, which has been hitherto so mournful, become, on ac-
count of the great things that are in store for it. Lebanon,
Carmel, and Sharon have, as it were, shared their splendour
with the desert, that all might be clothed alike in festal dress,
when the glory of Jehovah, which surpasses everything else in
^ Bottcher calls um lihe oldest primitive form of the plural ; but it is
only a strengthening of Un ; cf. tannim = tannin, Hanameel = Hananeel,
and such Sept. forms as Gesem, Madiam, etc. (see Hitzig on Jer. xxxii. 7).
Wetzstein told me of a Bedouin tribe, in whose dialect the third pers.
prxt. regularly ended in m, e.g. akalum (they have eaten).
^ The crocus and the primrose (Nrf^i'DH in Syriac) may really be easUy
confounded, but not the narcissus and primrose, which have nothing in
common except that they are bulbous plants, like most of the flowers of
the East, which shoot up rapidly in the spring, as soon as the winter rains
arc over. But there are other colchicacese beside our colchicum autumnale,
which flowers before the leaves appear and is therefore called Jilius ante
patrem (e.g. the eastern colchicum variegatum).
2 Layard, in his Nineveh and Babylon, describes in several places the
enchantingly beautiful and spring-like variation of colours which occurs
:a the Mesopotamian " desert ; " though what the prophet had in his mind
was not the real midbar, or desert of pasture land, but, as the words tsiyah
and 'arcihdh show, the utterly barren sandy desert.
7g THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
its splendour, should appear ; that glory which they would not
only be privileged to behold, but of which they would be
honoured to be the actual scene. _
The prophet now exclaims to the afflicted church, m Ian.
guage of unmixed consolation, that Jehovah is coming. Vers.
3, 4. " Strengthen ye the weak hands, and make the trembling
knees strong! Say to those of a terrified heart, Be strong!
Fear ye not ! Behold, your God will come for vengeance, for a
divine retribution: He will come, and bring you salvation."
Those who have become weak in faith, hopeless and despairing,
are to cheer up; and the stronger are to tell such of their
brethren as are perplexed and timid, to be comforted now : for
Jehovah is coming ndqdm {i.e. as vengeance), and g'mul 'Elohim
(i.e. as retribution, such as God the highly exalted and Almighty
Judge inflicts ; the expression is similar to that in ch. xxx. 27,
xiii. 9, cf. xl. 10, but a bolder one ; the words in apposition
stand as abbreviations of final clauses). The infliction of
punishment is the immediate object of His coming, but the
ultimate object is the salvation of His people (^.y^. a con-
tracted future form, which is generally confined to the aorist).
Vers. 5-7. " Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the
ears of the deaf unstopped. Then loill the lame man leap as the
stag, and the tongue of the dumb man shout ; for waters break
out in the desert, and brooks in the steppe. And the mirage
becomes a fish-pond, and the thirsty ground gushing water-springs ;
in the place of jackals, lohere it lies, there springs up grass with
reeds and rushes." The bodily defects mentioned here there is
uo reason for regarding as figurative representations of spiritual
defects. The healing of bodily defects, however, is merely
the outer side of what Is actually effected by the coming of
Jehovah (for the other side, comp. ch. xxxii. 3, 4). And so,
also, the change of the desert into a field abounding with water
is not a mere poetical ornament ; for in the last times, the era
of redemption, nature itself will really share in the doaia which
proceeds from the manifested God to His redeemed. Shdrdbh
(Arab, sardb) is essentially the same thing as that which we
call in the western languages the mirage, or Fata morgana ; not
indeed every variety of this phenomenon of the refraction of
light, through strata of air of varying density lying one above
another, but more especially that appearance of water, which is
CHAP. XXXV. 8-10. 7P
produced as if by magic in the dry, sandy desert ' (literally
perhaps the " desert shine," just as we speak of the " Alpine
glow;" see ch. xlix. 10). The antithesis to this is ^Ugam (Ohald.
'agmcH, Syr. egmo, Ar. ag'am), a fish-pond (as in ch. xli. 18,
different from 'dgdm in ch. xix. 10). In the arid sandy desert,
where the jackal once had her lair and suckled her young (this
is, according to Lam. iv. 3, the true explanation of the permu-
tative ribhtsdh, for which ribhtsdm would be in some respects
more suitable), grass springs up even into reeds and rushes ; so
that, as ch. xliii. 20 affirms, the wild beasts of the desert praise
Jehovah.
In the midst of such miracles, by which all nature is
glorified, the people of Jehovah are redeemed, and led home to
Zion. Vers. 8-10. " And a highway rises there, and a road,
and it will he called the Holy Road; no unclean man will pass
along it, as it is appointed for them : whoever walks the road,
even simple ones do not go astray. There will be no lion there,
and the most ravenous beast of prey will not approach it, will not
he met with there ; and redeemed ones walk. And the ransomed
of Jehovah will return, an'd come to Zion with shouting, and ever-
lasting joy upon their head : they lay hold of gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing flee away." Not only unclean persons
from among the heathen, but even unclean persons belonging
to Israel itself, will never pass along that holy road ; none but
the church purified and sanctified through sufferings, and those
connected with it. io? N^n, to them, and to them alone, does
this road belong, which Jehovah has made and secured, and
which so readily strikes the eye, that even an idiot could not
miss it ; whilst it lies so high, that no beast of prey, however
powerful (jp'rlts chayyoth, a superlative verbal noun : Ewald,
§ 313, c), could possibly leap up to it : not one is ever encoun-
tered by the pilgrim there. The pilgrims are those whom
Jehovah has redeemed and delivered, or set free from captivity
and affliction (?«5, «, related to hn, solvere ; fTia, na, scindere,
abscindere). Everlasting joy soars above their head ; they lay
fast hold of delight and joy (compare on ch. xiii. 8), so that it
never departs from them. On the other hand, sorrow and
sighing flee away. The whole of ver. 10 is like a mosaic from
ch. li. 11, Lxd. 7, li. 3 ; and what is affirmed of the holy road,
^ See G. Eawlinson, Monarchies, i. p. 38.
gQ THE PROPHECIES OF ISAUH.
is also affirmed in ch. Hi. 1 of the holy city (compare ch. Ixii.
12 Isiii. 4). A prelude of the fulfilment is seen m what
Ezra speaks of with gratitude to God in Ezra viii. 31. We
have intentionally avoided crowding together the parallel
passages from ch. xl.-lxvi. The whole chapter is, in every
part, both in thought and language, a prelude of that book of
consolation for the exiles in their captivity. Not only m its
spiritual New Testament thoughts, but also in its ethereal lan-
guage, soaring high as it does in majestic softness^ and light,
the prophecy has now reached the highest point of its develop-
ment.
PART VII.
FULFILMENTS OF PEOPHECY; AND PROPHECIES BELONGING
TO THE FOUETEENTH YEAE OF HEZEKIAH'S REIGN, AND
THE TIMES IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING.
Chap, xxxvi.-xxxix.
To the first six books of Isaiah's prophecies there is now
appended a seventh. The six form three syzygies. In the
"Book of Hardening," ch. i.-vi. (apart from ch. i., which
belonged to the times of Uzziah and Jotham), we saw Israel's
day of grace brought to an end. In the " Book of Immanuel,"
ch. vii.-xii. (from the time of Aliaz), we saw the judgment of
hardening and destruction in its first stage of accomplishment >
but Immanuel was a pledge that, even if the great mass should
perish, neither the whole of Israel nor the house of David
would be destroyed. The separate judgments through which
the way was to be prepared for the kingdom of Immanuel, are
announced in the " Book concerning the Nations," ch. xiii.-xxiii.
(from the times of Ahaz and Hezekiah) ; and the general
judgment in which they would issue, and after which a new
Israel would triumph, is foretold in the "Book of the great
Catastrophe," ch. xxiv.-xxvii. (after the fifteenth year of Heze-
kiah). These two syzygies form the first great orbit of the
collection. A second opens with the " Book of Woes, or of
the Precious Corner-stone," ch. xxviii.-xxxiii. (xxviii.-xxxii.,
CHAP. XXXVI.- XXXIX. 81
from the first years of Hgzekiah, andxxxiii. from the fourteenth
year), by the side of which is placed the " Book of the Judgment
upon Edom, and of the Kestoration of Israel," eh. xxxiv. xxxv.
(after Hezekiah's fifteenth year). The former shows how
Ephraim succumbs to the power of Asshur, and Judah's trust
in Egypt is put to shame ; the latter, how the world, with its
hostility to the church, eventually succumbs to the vengeance
of Jehovah, whereas the church itself is redeemed and glorified.
Then follows, in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., a " Book of Histories," which
returns from the ideal distances of ch. xxxiv. xxxv. to the
historical realities of ch. xxxiii., and begins by stating that " at
the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's
field," where Ahaz had formerly preferred the help of Asshur
to that of Jehovah, there stood an embassy from the king of
Asshur with a detachment of his army (ch. xxxvi. 2), scorn-
fully demanding the surrender of Jerusalem.
Just as we have found throughout a well-considered suc-
cession and dovetailing of the several parts, so here we can see
reciprocal bearings, which are both designed and expressive ;
and it is a priori a probable thing that Isaiah, who wrote the
historical introduction to the Judseo-Assyrian drama in the
second book, is the author of the concluding act of the same
drama, which is here the subject of Book vii. The fact that
the murder of Sennacherib is related in ch. xxxvii. 37, 38, in
accordance with the prophecy in ch. xxxvii. 7, does not render
this impossible, since, according to credible tradition, Isaiah out-
lived Hezekiah (see vol. i. 34). The assertion made by Hitzig and
others — that the speciality of the prophecy, and the miraculous
character of the events recorded in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., preclude
the possibility of Isaiah's authorship, inasmuch as, "according to
a well-known critical rule," such special prophecies as these are
always vatioinia ex eventu, and accounts of miracles are always
more recent than their historical germ — rests upon a foregone
conclusion which was completed before any investigation took
place, and which we have good ground for rejecting, although
we are well acquainted with the valuable service that has been
rendered by this philosopher's stone. The statement that
accounts of miracles as such are never contemporaneous with
the events themselves, is altogether at variance with experience;
and if the advance from the general to the particular were to
VOL. II. V
g2 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
be blotted out of Isaiah's prophecy in relation to Asshur, this
would be not only unhistorical, but unpsychological also. _
The question whether Isaiah is the author of ch. xxxvi.-
xxxix or not, is bound up with the question whether the original
place of these histories is in the book of Isaiah or the book of
Kings, where the whole passage is repeated with the exception
of Hezekiah's psalm of thanksgiving (2 Kings xvm. 13-xx. 19).
We shall find that the text of the hook of Kings is m several
places the purer and more authentic of the two (though not so
much so as a biassed prejudice would assume), from which it
apparently follows that this section is not in its original position
in the book of Isaiah, but has been taken from some other
place and inserted there. But this conclusion is a deceptive
one. In the relation in which Jer. Hi. and 2 Kings xxiv. 18-
XXV. stand to one another, we have a proof that the text of a
passage may be more faithfully preserved in a secondary place
than in its original one. For in this particular instance it is
equally certain that the section relating to king Zedekiah and
the Chaldean catastrophe was written by the author of the
hook of Kings, whose style was formed on that of Deuteronomy,
and also, that in the hook of Jeremiah it is an appendix taken
by an unknown hand from the book of the Kings. But it is
also an acknowledged fact, that the text of Jer. lii. is incom-
parably the purer of the two, and also that there are many
other instances in which the passage in the book of Kings is
corrupt — that is to say, in the form in which it lies before us
now — whereas the Alexandrian translator had it in his possession
in a partially better, form. Consequently, the fact that Isa.
xxxvi.-xxxix. is in some respects less pure than 2 Kings xviii. 13-
XX. 19, cannot be any argument in itself against the originality
of this section in the book of Isaiah.
It is indeed altogether inconceivable, that the author of
the book of Kings should have written it ; for, on the one
hand, the liberality of the prophetic addresses communicated
point to a written source (see vol. i. 16) ; and, on the other hand,
it is wanting in that Deuteronomic stamp, by which the hand
of this author is so easily recognised. Nor can it have been
copied by him out of the annals of Hezekiah (dibJire hayydmim),
as is commonly supposed, since it is written in prophetic and
not in annalistic style. Whoever has once made himself
CHAP. SSXVI.-XXXIX. 83
acquainted with these two different kinds of historical compo-
sition, the fundamentally different characteristics of which we
have pointed out in the Introduction (vol. i. p. 2 sqq.), can
never by any possibility confound them again. And this
passage is written in a style so peculiarly prophetical, that, like
the magnificent historical accounts of Elijah, for example,
which commence so abruptly in 2 Kings xvii. 1, it must have
been taken from some special and prophetical source, which
had nothing to do with other prophetico-historical portions of
the book of Kings. And the following facts are sufficient to
raise the probability, that this source was no other than the
book of Isaiah itself, into an absolute certainty. In the first
place, the author of the book of Kings had the book of Isaiah
amongst the different sources, of which his apparatus was com-
posed ; this is evident from 2 Kings xvi. 5, a passage which
was written with Isa. vii. 1 in view. And secondly, we have
express, though indirect, testimony to the effect that this sec-
tion, which treats of the most important epoch in Hezekiah's
reign, is in its original place in the book of Isaiah. The
author of the book of Chronicles says, in 2 Chron. xxxii. 32 :
" Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and the gracious
occurrences of his life, behold, they are written in the vision
(chdzon) of Isaiah the son of Amoz, and in the book of the
kings of Judah and Israel." This notice clearly proves that a
certain historical account of Hezekiah had either been taken
out of the collection of Isaiah's prophecies, which is headed
chdzon (vision), and inserted in the " book of the kings of
Judah and Israel," or else had been so inserted along with the
whole collection. The book of the Kings was the principal
source employed by the chronicler, which he calls " the midrash
of the book of the Kings" in 2 Chron. xxiv. 27. Into this
Midrash, or else into the still earlier work upon which it was a
commentary, the section in question was copied from the book
of Isaiah ; and it follows from this, that the writer of the his-
tory of the kings made use of our book of Isaiah for one portion
of the history of Hezekiah's reign, and made extracts from it.
The chronicler himself did not care to repeat the whole section,
which he knew to be already contained in the canonical book
of Kings (to say nothing of the book of Isaiah). At the same
time, his own historical account of Hezekiah in 2 Chron. xxvii
84 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
clearly shows that he was acquainted with it, and also that the
historical materials, which the annals supplied to him through
the medium of the Midrash, were totally different both in sub-
stance and form from those contained in the section in question.
These two testimonies are further strengthened by the fact,
that Isaiah is well known to us as a historian through another
passage in the Chronicles, namely, as the author of a complete
history of Uzziah's reign (see vol. i. 38) ; also by the fact, that
the prophetico-historical style of ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., with their
fine, noble, pictorial prose, which is comparable to the grandest
historical composition to be met with in Hebrew, is worthy of
Isaiah, and bears every mark of Isaiah's pen ; thirdly, by the
fact, that there are other instances in which Isaiah has inter-
woven historical accounts with his prophecies (ch. vii. viii. and
XX.), and that in so doing he sometimes speaks of himself in
the first person (ch. vi. 1, viii. 1-4), and sometimes in the third
(ch. vii. 3 sqq., and xx.), just as in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix. ; and
fourthly, by the fact that, as we have already observed, ch. vii. 3
and xxxvi. 2 bear the clearest marks of having had one and
the same author ; and, as we shall also show, the order in which
the four accounts in ch. xxxvi.-xxxix. are arranged, corresponds
to the general plan of the whole collection of prophecies, —
ch. xxxvi. and xxxvii. looking back to the prophecies of the
Assyrian era, and ch. xxxviii. and xxxix. looking forwards to
those of the Babylonian era, which is the prophet's ideal pre-
sent from ch. xl. onwards.
A. FIRST ASSYRIAN ATTEMPT TO COMPEL THE SURRENDER
OE JERUSALEM. — CHAP. XXXVI.-XXXVII. 7.
Marcus v. Niebuhr, in his History of Asshur and Babel
(p. 164), says, " Why should not Hezekiah have revolted from
Asshur as soon as he ascended the throne? He had a motive
for doing this, which other kings had not, — namely, that as
he held his kingdom in fief from his God, obedience to a tem-
poral monarch was in his case sin." But this assumption,
which is founded upon the same idea as that in which the
question was put to Jesus concerning the tribute money, is not
at all in accordance with Isaiah's view, as we may see from
ch. xxviii.-xxxii. ; and Hezekiah's revolt cannot have occurred
CHAP. XXXVI. 1. 85
even in the sixth year of his reign (see vol. i. 51). For Shal-
manassar, or rather Sargon, made war upon Egypt and Ethiopia
after the destruction of Samaria (ch. xx. ; cf. Oppert, Les
Inscriptions des Sargonides, pp. 22, 27), without attempting
anything against Hezekiah. It was not till the time of Sargon,
who overthrew the reigning house of Assyiia, that the actual
preparations for the revolt were commenced, by the formation
of an alliance between the kingdom of Judah on the one hand,
and Egypt, and probably Philistia, on the other, the object of
which was the I'upture of the Assyrian yoke.^ The campaign
of Sennacherib the sou of Sargon, into which we are trans-
ported in the following history, was the third of his expeditions,
the one to which Sennacherib himself refers in the inscription
upon the prism : " dans ma 3' campagne je marchai vers la
Syrie" The position which we find Sennacherib taking up
between Philistia and Jerusalem, to the south-west of the latter,
is a very characteristic one in relation to both the occasion and
the ultimate object of the campaign. Oh. xxxvi. 1.^ " And it
came to pass in the (K. and in the) fourteenth year of king Hiz-
Myahu, Sanoherib king of Asshur came up against all the forti-
fied cities of Judah, and took them. (K. adds : Then Hizkiyah
king of Juda]i sent to the king of Asshur to Lachish, saying, I
have sinned, withdraw from me again ; what thou imposest upon
me I will raise. And the king of A sshur imposed upon Hizkiyah
king of Judah three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents
of gold. And Hizkiyah gave up all the silver that was in the
house of Jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house. At
the same time Hizkiyah mutilated the doors of the temple of
Jehovah, and the pillars which Hizkiyah king of Judah had
plated with gold, and gave it to the king of Asshur)." This long
addition, which is distinguished at once by the introduction of
n'prn in the place of Wptn, is probably only an annalistic
interpolation, though one of great importance in relation
to Isa. xxxiii. 7. What follows in, Isaiah does not dovetail
•
^ The name Amgarron upon the earthenware prism of Sennacherib
does not mean Migron (Oppert), but Ekron (Eawlinson).
2 We shall show the variations in the text of 2 Kings xviii. 13 sqq., as
far as we possibly can, in our translation. K. signifies the book of Kings.
But the task ot pronouncing an infallible sentence upon them all we shall
leave to those who know everything.
86 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
well into this addition, and therefore does not presuppose its
existence. Ver. 2. " Then the hing of Asshur sent Rabshdkeh
CK. : Tartan, and Eabsaris, and Jiabshakeh) from Lachish towards
Jerusalem to Mng HizUyahu with a great army, and he advanced
(K. : to Mng H. with a great army to Jerusalem; and they went
up and came to Jerusalem, and went up, and came and advanced)
to the conduit of the upper pool by the road of the fuller s field"
Whereas in K. the repeated 1X3^1 'hv'^^ (and went up and came)
forms a *' dittography," the names Tartan and Sab-saris have
apparently dropped out of the text of Isaiah, as ch. xxxvii. 6 and
24 presuppose a plurality of messengers. The three names are
not names of persons, but official titles, viz. the commander-in-
chief [Tartan, which really occurs in an Assyrian list of offices;
see Rawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 412), the chief eunuch (see the
plate in Kawlinson, ii. 118), and the chief cup-bearer (DpE'aT
with tzere = 4<t!^3"i). The situation of Lachish is marked by
the present ruins of Umm Lakis, to the south-west of £et-
Gibrin (Eleutheropolis) in the Shephelah. The messengers
come from the south-west with the ultima ratio of a strong
detachment (?'n a connecting form, from P'n, like nijllj ^%
Zech. xiv. 4 ; Ewald, § 287, a) ; they therefore halt on the
western side of Jerusalem (on the locality, see at ch. vii. 3,
xxii. 8-11 ; compare Keil on Kings).
Hezekiah's confidential ministers go there also. Ver. 3 (K.
" And they called to the Mng), and there went out to him (K. to
them) EliaUm son of HilUyahu, the house-minister, and Shebna
the chancellor, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder'' On the
office of the house-minister, or major-domo, which was now
filled by Eliakim instead of Shebna (sjnB', K. twice niDB'), see ch.
xxii. 15 sqq. ; and on that of sopher and mazhlr, see vol. i. pp.
7, 8. Eabshakeh's message follows in vers. 4-10 : " And Rab-
shaheh said to them. Say now to Hizkiyahu, Thus saith the great
king, the king of Asshur, What sort of confidence is this that
thou hast got? T say (K. thou sayest, i.e. thou talkest), vain talk
IS counsel and strength for war : now, then, in whom dost th<Mi
trust, that thou hast rebelled against me ? (K. Now) Behold
thoutrustest (K. % in this broken reed-staff there, in Egypt, on
which one leans, and it runs into his hand and pierces it ■ so
does Pharaoh Ung of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if
thou sayest to me (K. ye say), We trust in Jehovah our God;
CHAP. XXXVL 4-10. 87
is if not He whose high places and altars Hizhiyahu has removed,
and lias said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before
the altar (K. adds, in Jerusalem) ? And now take a viager with
my lord (K. with) the king of Asshur ; I will deliver thee two
thousand horses, if thou art able for thy part to give horsemen
upon them. And how couldst thou repel the advance of a single
satrap among the least of the servants of my lord ? ! Thou
puttest thy trust then in Egypt for chariots and riders ! And
(omitted in K.) now have I come up without Jehovah against
this land to destroy it (K. against this place, to destroy it) ?
Jehovah said to me. Go up to (K. against) this land, and destroy
it" The chronicler has a portion of this address of Eabshakeh
in 2 Chron. xxxii. 10-12. And just as the prophetic words in
the book of Kings have a Deuteronomic sound, and those in
the Chronicles the ring of a chronicle, so do Eabshakeh's words,
and those which follow, sound like the words of Isaiah himself.
" The great king " is the standing royal title appended to the
names of Sargon and Sennacherib upon the Assyrian monu-
ments (compare ch. x. 8). Hezekiah is not thought worthy of
the title of king, either here or afterwards. The reading
n"iDN in ver. 5 (thou speakest vain talk) is not the preferable
one, because in that case we should expect ^"jWl, or rather
(according to the usual style) IJ'lS'n ^I^. The meaning is, that
he must look upon Hezekiah's resolution, and his strength
(nnnjii nyy connected as in ch. xi. 2) for going to war, as mere
boasting (" lip-words," as in Prov. xiv. 23), and must therefore
assume that there was something in the background of which
he was well aware. And this must be Egypt, which would
not only be of no real help to its ally, but would rather do him
harm by leaving him in the lurch. The figure of a reed-staff
has been borrowed by Ezekiel in ch. xxix. 6, 7. It was a
very appropriate one for Egypt, with its abundance of reeds
and rushes (ch. xLx. 6), and it has Isaiah's peculiar ring (for
the expression itself, compare ch. xlii. 3 ; and for the fact
itself, ch. XXX. 5, and other passages), psn does not mean
fragile (Luzz. quella fragil canna), but broken, namely, in
consequence of the loss of the throne by the native royal
family, from whom it had been wrested by the Ethiopians
(ch. xviii.), and the defeats sustained at the hands of Sargon
(ch. XX.). The construction cui quis innititur et intrat is para-
88 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
tactic for cui si quis. In ver. 7 the reading Ipniiiin commends
itself, from the fact that the sentence is not continued with
ni'pn ; but as Hezekiah is addressed throughout, and it is to
him that the reply is to be made, the original reading was pro-
bably "loxn. The fact that Hezekiah had restricted the wor-
ship of Jehovah to Jerusalem, by removing the other places
of worship (2 Kings xviii. 4), is brought against him in a
thoroughly heathen, and yet at the same time (considering
the inclination to worship other gods which still existed in the
nation) a very crafty manner. In vers. 8, 9, he throws in his
teeth, with most imposing scorn, his own weakness as com-
pared with Asshur, which was chiefly dreaded on account of
its strength in cavaliy and war-chariots. N3 ^IVnn does not
refer to the performance and counter-performance which
follow, in the sense of "connect thyself" (Luzz. associati), but
is used in a similar sense to the Homeric /j,i/yrjvai, though with
the idea of vying with one another, not of engaging in war
(the synonym in the Talmud is himrdli, to bet, e.g. h. Sabbath
31a) : a bet and a pledge are kindred notions (Heb. Iia"iy, cf.
Lat. vadari). On pechdh (ior pachdh), which also occurs as an
Assyrian title in Ezek. xxiii. 6, 23, see vol. i. p. 267, note 3.
nns nns, two constructives, the first of which is to be explained
according to Ewald, § 286, a (compare above, ver. 2, 133 ^"n),
form the logical regens of the following servorum domini mei
minimorum ; and heshibh fne does not mean here to refuse a
petitioner, but to repel an antagonist (ch. xxviii. 6). The
fut. consec. HDani deduces a consequence : Hezekiah could not
do anything by himself, and therefore he trusted in Egypt,
from which he expected chariots and horsemen. In ver. 10
the prophetic idea, that Asshur was the instrument employed
by Jehovah (ch. x. 5, etc.), is put into the mouth of the
Assyrian himself. This is very conceivable, but the colouring
of Isaiah IS undeniable. The concluding words, in which the
Assyrian boasts of having Jehovah on his side, affect the
messengers of Hezekiah in the keenest manner, especially
because of the people present. Ver. 11. « Then said Eliahim
(K. the son of HUliyahu), and Shebna, and Joah, to Rabshaheh,
rray speak to thy servants in Aramcean, for we understand it ■
and do not speak to (K. with) us in Jewish, in the ears of the
people that are on the zvall." They spoke Y'huduh, i.e. the
CHAP. XXXVI. 12-20. 89
colloquial language of the kingdom of Judah. The kingdom
of Israel was no longer in existence, and the language of the
Israelitish nation, as a whole, might therefore already be called
Jndsean (Jewish), as in Neh. xiii. 24, more especially as there
may have been a far greater dialectical difference between the
popular speech of the northern and southern kingdoms, than we
can gather from the biblical books that were written in the one
or the other. Aramaean (^drdmiili), however, appears to have
been even then, as it was at a later period (Ezra iv. 7), the
language of intercourse between the empire of Eastern Asia and
the people to the west of the Tigris (compare Alex. Polyhistor
in Euseb. cliron. arm. i. 43, where Sennacherib is said to have
erected a monument with a Chaldean inscription) ; and conse-
quently educated Judseans not only understood it, but were able
to speak it, more especially those who were in the service of the
state. Assyrian, on the contrary, was unintelligible to Judeeans
(ch. xxviii. 11, xxxiii. 19), although this applied comparatively
less to the true Assyrian dialect, which was Semitic, and can
be interpreted for the most part from the Hebrew (see Oppert's
" Outhnes of an Assyrian Grammar" in the Journal Asiatique,
1859), than to the mdtley language of the Assyrian army,
which was a compound of Arian and Turanian elements. The
name Sennacherib (Sancherlbh = ^'iJfns'lDj LXX. Sennache-
reim, i.e. "Sin, the moon-god, had multiplied the brethren")
is Semitic ; on the other hand, the name Tartan, which cannot
be interpreted either from the Semitic or the Arian, is an
example of the element referred to, which was so utterly
strange to a Judsean ear.
The harsh reply is given in ver. 12. " TJien Rabshaheh
said (K. to them), Has my lord sent me to (K. 7Vn) thy lord and
to thee, not rather to (both texts, ?y) the men who sit upon the
wall, to eat their dung, and to drinh their urine together with
you ?" — namely, because their rulers were exposing them to a
siege which would involve the most dreadful state of famine.
After Eabshakeh had refused the request of Hezekiah's
representatives in this contemptuous manner, he turned in
defiance of them to the people themselves. Vers. 13-20.
" Then Eabshakeh went near, and cried with a loud voice in
the Jewish language (K. and spake), and said. Hear the words
(K. the word) of the great king, the king of Asshur. Thus saith
90 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the king, Let not Hizhiyahu practise deception upon you (NH^.,
K. N'^!) ; for he cannot deliver you (K. out of his hand). And
let not EizMy aim feed you with hope in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah
will deliver, yea, deliver us: (K. and) this city will not he delivered
into the hand of the king of Asshur. Hearken not to HizUyahu ;
for thus saith the king {hammelekh, K. inelekh) of Asshur, Enter
into a connection of mutual good wishes with me, and come out to
me : and enjoy every one his vine, and every one his fig-tree, and
drink every one the water of his cistern ; till I come and take you
away into a land like your land, a land of com and wine, a land
of bread-corn and vineyards (K. a land full of fine olive-trees and
honey, and live and do not die, and hearken not to Eizkiyahu) ;
that HizUyahu do not befool you (K. for he befools you), saying,
Jehovah will deliver us ! Have the gods of the nations delivered
(K. really delivered) every one his land out of the hand of the
ling of Asshur? Where are the gods of Hamaili and Arpad?
ivhere the gods of Sepharvayim (K. adds, Hena' and 'Ivah)"^. and
how much less (''3'!, K. ''3) have they delivered that Samaria out
of my hand ? Who loere they among all the gods of these (K. of
the) lands, who delivered their land out of my hand ? how much
less will Jehovah deliver Jerusalem out of my hand!?" The
chronicler also has this continiiation of Kabshakeh's address
in part (2 Chron. xxxii. 13-15), but he has fused into one the
Assyrian self-praise uttered by Kabshakeh on his first and
second mission. The encouragement of the people, by referring
to the help of Jehovah (2 Chron. xxxii. 6-8), is placed by him
before this first account is given by Isaiah, and forms a conclu-
sion to the preparations for the contest with Asshur as there
described. Kabshakeh now draws nearer to the wall, and
harangues the people. S^'E'n is construed here with a dative (to
excite treacherous hopes); whereas in 2 Chron. xxxii. 15 it is
written with an accusative. The reading iTD is altered from
■•"IJD in ver. 20, which is inserted still more frequently by the
chronicler. The reading "T'J'n'ns with psn is incorrect; it
would require ID?: (Ges. § 143, la). To make a b'rdkhdh with
a person was equivalent to entering into a relation of blessing,
i.e. into a state of mind in which each wished all prosperity to
the other. This was probably a common phrase, though we
only meet with it here. SSJ, when applied to the besieged, is
equivalent to surrendering (e.g. 1 Sam. xi. 3). If they did
CHAP. XXXVI. 21, 22.
91
that, they should remain in qiiiet possession and enjoyment,
until the Assyrian fetched them away (after the Egyptian cam-
paign was over), and transported them to a land which he
describes to them in the most enticing terms, in order to soften
down the inevitable transportation. It is a question whether
the expansion of this picture in the book of Kings is original
or not; since njyi yjn in ver. 19 appears to be also tacked on
here from Isa. xxxvii. 13 (see at this passage). On Hamaili
and Arpad (to the north of Haleb in northern Syria, and a
different place from Aroad^^ Arad), see ch. x. 9. S'pharvayim
(a dual form, the house of the S^pharvim, 2 Kings xvii. 31)
is the Sipphara of Ptol. v. 18, 7, the southernmost city of
Mesopotamia, on the left bank of the Euphrates ; Pliny's Hip-
parenum on the Narraga, i.e. the canal, n'har malkd'', the key
to the irrigating or inundating works of Babylon, which were
completed afterwards by Nebuchadnezzar (Pliu. h. n. vi. 30);
probably the same place as the sun-city, Sippara, in which
Xisuthros concealed the sacred books before the great flood
(see K. Miiller's Fragmenta Historicorum Gr. ii. 501-2). |S
in ver. 18 has a warning meaning (as if it followed 03? llDE'ri) ;
and both "'?1. and "'3 in vers. 19, 20, introduce an exclamatory
clause when following a negative interrogatory sentence: "and
that they should have saved," or *' that Jehovah should save,"
equivalent to " how much less have they saved, or will He
save" (Ewald, § 354, c; comp. ''3"1'?, 2 Ohron. xxxii. 15). Eab-
shakeh's words in vers. 18-20 are the same as those in Isa. x.
8-11. The manner in which he defies the gods of the heathen,
of Samaria, and last of all of Jerusalem, corresponds to the pro-
phecy there. It is the prophet himself who acts as historian
here, and describes the fulfilment of the prophecy, though
without therefore doing violence to his character as a prophet.
The effect of Kabshakeh's words. Vers. 21, 22. "But they
held tlieir -peace (K. and they, the people, held their peace), and
answered him not a word ; for it was the king's commandment,
saying, Ye shall not answer him. Then came Eliakim son of
SilMyahu (K. Hilkiyah), the house-minister, and Shebna the
chancellor, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hiskiyahu,
with torn clothes, and told him the words of JRabshakeh." It is
only a superficial observation that could commend the reading
in Kings, " They, the people, held their peace," which Hitzig
92 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
and Knobel prefer, but which Luzzatto very properly rejects.
As the Assyrians wished to speak to the king himself (2 Kings
xviii. 18), who sent the three to them as his representatives,
the command to hear, and to make no reply, can only have
applied to them (and they had already made the matter worse by
the one remark which they had made concerning the language);
and the reading ^V>'''\m in the text of Isaiah is the correct one.
The three were silent, because the king had imposed the duty
of silence upon them ; and regarding themselves as dismissed,
inasmuch as Rabshakeh had turned away from them to the
people, they hastened to the king, rending their clothes, in
despair and grief at the disgrace they had experienced.
The king and the deputation apply to Isaiah. Ch. xxxvii.
1-4. " And it came to pass, when king Hlzkiyahu liad heard,
he rent his clothes, and wrapped himself in mourning linen, and
went into the house of Jehovah. And sent EUahim the house-
minister, and Shehna (K. omits nx) the chancellor, and the eldest
of the priests, wrapped in mourning linen, to Isaiah son of Amos,
the prophet (K. has what is inadmissible : the prophet son of
Amos). And they said to him, Thus saith Hizkiyahu, A day
of affliction, and punishment, and blasphemy is this day ; for
children are come to the matrix, and there is no strength to bring
them forth. Perhaps Jehovah thy God will hear the words
(K. all the words) of Sabshakeh, with which the king of Asshur
his lord has sent him to revile the living God ; and Jehovah thy
God will punish for the words which He haili heard, and thou
wilt make intercession for the remnant that still exists." The
distinguished embassy is a proof of the distinction of the
prophet himself (Knobel). The character of the deputation
accorded with its object, which was to obtain a consolatory
word for the king and people. In the form of the instructions
we recognise again the flowing style of Isaiah, nnaln, as a
synonym of ip^D, Di53, is used as in Hos. v. 9 ; nsxi (from the
kal ni) according to ch. i. 4, v. 24, Hi. 5, like nSK3 (from the
piel r^}), Neh. ix. 18, 26 (reviling, i.e. reviling 'of God, or
blasphemy). The figure of there not being sufficient strength
to bring forth the child, is the same as in ch. Ixvi. 9. naB^
(from n?B^, syn. p.a, Gen. xxxviii. 29) does not signify "the
actual birth (Luzzatto, punto di dover nascere), nor the deliver-
ing-stool (Targum), like mashbgr shel-chayydh, the delivering-
CHAP. XXXVII. 5-7 93
stool of the midwife (Kelim xxiii. 4) ; but as the subject is the
children, and not the mother, the matrix or mouth of the
womb, as in Hos. xiii. 13, " He (Ephraim) is an unwise child ;
•when it is time does he not stop in the children's passage"
(mashber bdnlm), i.e. the point which a child must pass, not
only with its head, but also with its shoulders and its whole
body, for which the force of the pains is often not sufficient 1
The existing condition of the state resembled such unpromising
birth-pains, which threatened both the mother and the fruit of
the womb with death, because the matrix would not open to
give birth to the child, nn? like nj)^ in ch. xi. 9. The timid
inquiry, which hardly dared to hope, commences with 'ulai.
The following future is continued in perfects, the force of
which is determined by it : " and He (namely Jehovah, the
Targum and Syriac) will punish for the words," or, as we point
it, " there will punish for the words which He hath heard,
Jehovah thy God (hokhiach, referring to a judicial decision, as
in a general sense in ch. ii. 4 and xi. 4) ; and thou wilt lift up
prayer" {i.e. begin to offer it, ch. xiv. 4). " He will hear,"
namely as judge and deliverer ; " He hath heard," namely as
the omnipresent One. The expression, " to revile the living
God" (Ifchdreph 'Elohim chai), sounds like a comparison of
Eabshakeh to Goliath (1 Sam. xvii. 26, 36). The " existing
remnant" was Jerusalem, which was not yet in the enemy's
hand (compare ch. L 8, 9). The deliverance of the remnant is
a key-note of Isaiah's prophecies. But the prophecy would not
be fulfilled, until the grace which fulfilled it had been met by
repentance and faith. Hence Hezekiah's weak faith sues for
the intercession of the prophet, whose personal relation to God
is here set forth as a closer one than that of the king and
priests.
Isaiah's reply. Vers. 5-7. " And the servants of king
HizMyaliu came to Isaiah. And Isaiah said to them (Q^V*?.,
K. cn?). Speak thus to your lord, Thus saith Jehovah, Be not
afraid of the words which thou hast heard, tvith which the
servants of the king of Asshur have blasphemed me ! Behold, 1
will bring a spirit upon him, and he will hear a hearsay, and
return to his land ; and I cut him down with the sword in his own
land" Luzzatto, without any necessity, takes =00^*1 in ver. 3
in the modal sense of what they were to do (e dovevano dirgli) :
94 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
they were to say this to him, but he anticipated them at once
with the instructions given here. The fact, so far as the style
is concerned, is rather this, that ver. 5, while pointing back,
gives the gi-ound for ver. 6 : " and when they had come to
him (saying this), he said to them." ^"^Vi we render " servants"
(Knappen^) after Esth. ii. 2, vi. 3, 5 ; it is a more contemptuous
expression than ''t!?5?. The rudch mentioned here as sent by
God is a superior force of a spiritual kind, which influences
both thought and conduct, as in such other connections as ch.
xix. 14, xxviii. 6, xxix. 10 {Psychol, p. 295, Anm.).
The external occasion which determined the return of Sen-
nacherib, as described in ch. xxxvii. 36, 37, was the fearfnl
mortality that had taken place in his army. The sli'mudh
(rumour, hearsay), however, was not the tidings of this cata-
strophe, biit, as the continuation of the account in vers. 8, 9,
clearly shows, the report of the advance of Tirhakah, which
compelled Sennacherib to leave Palestine in consequence of
this catastrophe. The prediction of his death is sufficiently
special to be regarded by modern commentators, who will
admit nothing but the most misty figures as prophecies, as a
vaticinium post iventum. At the same time, the prediction of
the event which would drive the Assyrian out of the land is
intentionally couched in these general terms. The faith of the
king, and of the inquirers generally, stOl needed to be tested
and exercised. The time had not yet come for him to be
rewarded by a clearer and fuller announcement of the judg-
ment.
B. SECOND ATTEMPT OF THE ASSYRIANS TO FORCE THE
SURRENDER OF JERUSALEM. ITS MIRACULOUS DELI-
VERANCE. — CHAP. XXXVII. 8 SQQ.
Kabshakeh, who is mentioned alone in both texts as the
leading person engaged, returns to Sennacherib, who is induced
to make a second attempt to obtain possession of Jerusalem, as
a position of great strength and decisive importance. Vers.
8, 9. " Rdbshakeh thereupon returned, and found the king of
1 Knappe is the same word as " Knave ;" but we have no word in use
now which is an exact equivalent, and knave has entirely lost its original
sense of servant. — Te.
CHAP. XXXVII. 10-13. 95
Asshur wai'ving against lAbnah : for he had heard that he had
withdrawn from Lachish, And he heard say concerning Tirhakah
king of Ethiopia, (K. Behold), he has come out to make war with
thee ; and heard, and sent (K. and repeated, and sent) messen-
gers to Hizldyahu, saying" Tirhakah was cursorily referred to
in ch. xviii. The twenty-fifth dynasty of Manetho contained
three Ethiopian rulers : Sabakon, Sebichos (NiD = Klpj although,
so far as we know, the Egyptian names begin with Sh), and
Tarakos (Tarkos), Egypt. Taharha, or Heb. with the tone upon
the penultimate, Tirhdqdh. The only one mentioned by Hero-
dotus is Sabakon, to whom he attributes a reign of fifty years
(ii. 139), i.e. as much as the whole three amount to, when
taken in a round sum. If Sebichos is the biblical So\ to whom
the lists attribute from twelve to fourteen years, it is perfectly
conceivable that Tirhakah may have been reigning in the
fourteenth year of Hezekiah. But if this took place, as
Manetho affirms, 366 years before the conquest of Egypt by
Alexander, i.e. from 696 onwards (and the Apis-stele, No. 2037,
as deciphered by Vic. de Rougd, Revue arcMol. 1863, confirms
it), it would be more easily reconcilable with the Assyrian
chronology, which represents Sennacherib as reigning from
702-680 (Oppert and Rawlinson), than with the current biblical
chronology, according to which Hezekiah's fourteenth year is
certainly not much later than the year 714.^ It is worthy of
remark also, that Tirhakah is not described as Pharaoh here,
but as the king of Ethiopia (melekh Kush; see at ver. 36).
Libnah, according to the Onom. a place in regione Eleuthero-
politana, is probably the same as Tell es-Safieh (" hill of the
pure " = of the white), to the north-west of Bet Gibrin, called
Alba Specula (^Blanche Garde) in the middle ages. The ex-
pression J)0t5'>1 (" and he heard "), which occurs twice in the
text, points back to what is past, and also prepares the way for
what follows : " having heard this, he sent," etc. At the same
time it appears to have been altered from ^B*'!.
The message. Vers. 10-13. " Thus shallye say to Hizkiyahu
king of Judah, saying. Let not thy God in whom tlwu trustest
deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of
the king of Asshur. Behold, thou hast surely heard what (K.
1 On the still prevailing uncertainty with regard to the synchronism,
see KeU on Kings ; and Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums. pp. 713-4.
96 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
that wldcli) the kings of Asshur have done to all lands, to lay the
ban upon them; and thou, thou shouldst be delivered ? ! Have the
gods of the nations, which my fathers destroyed, delivered them:
Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the B'ne-'Eden, which
are in Telassar? Wliere is (K. where is he) the king of
Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of'Ir-Sepharvaim,
Hena', and 'IvahV Although p.? is feminine, Dni« (K. DHN),
Hke U>y'-\r\nb, points hack to the lands (in accordance with the
want of any thoroughly developed distinction of the genders in
Hebrew) ; likewise "it^'K quas pessumdederunt. There is his-
torical importance in the fact, that here Sennacherib attributes
to his fathers (Sargon and the previous kings of the Derketade
dynasty which he had overthrown) what Rabshakeh on the
occasion of the first mission had imputed to Sennacherib him-
self. On Gozan, see vol. i. p. 51. It is no doubt identical with
the Zuzan of the Arabian geographers, which is described as a
district of outer Armenia, situated on the Chabur, e.g. in the
Merasid. " The Chabur is the Chabur of el-Hasaniye, a district
of Mosul, to the east of the Tigris ; it comes down from the
mountains of the land of Zuzan, flows through a broad and
thickly populated country in the north of Mosul, which is
called outer Armenia, and empties itself into the Tigris."
Ptolemy, on the other hand (v. 18, 14), is acquainted with a
Mesopotamian Gauzanitis ; and, looking upon northern Meso-
potamia as the border land of Armenia, he says, KaTe^ei Be
rrj'i X'^P°^'^ '''°' f'^^ "■/'O' """^ 'Apfievla f) 'AvOefiovala (not far
from Edessa) v^' fjv r] Xa\KiTi<;, inro Se TavTrjv f] Fav^avin';,
possibly the district of Gulzan, in which Nisibin, the ancient
Nisibis, still stands.^ For Haran (Syr. Horon ; Joseph.
Charran of Mesopotamia), the present Harran, not far from
Charmelik, see Genesis, p. 327, The Harran in the Guta of
Damascus (on the southern arm of the Harus), which Beke
has recently identified with it, is not connected with it in any
way. Retseph is the Rhesapha of Ptol. v. 18, 6, below Thap-
sacus, the present Rusafa in the Euphrates-valley of ez-Zor,
between the Euphrates and Tadmur (Palmyra ; see Eobinson,
Pal). Telassar, with which the Targum (ii. iii.) and Syr.
confound the EUasar of Gen. xiv. 1, i.e. Artemita (Artamita),
is not the ThelsecB of the Itin. Antonini and of the Noiitia
^ See Oppert, Expedition, i. 60.
CHAP. XXXVII, 14-20. 97
dignitatum, — in which case the Bfne-Edm might be the tribe of
Bet Genn (Bettegene) on the southern slope of Lebanon (i.e.
the 'Eden of Coelesyria, Amos i, 5 ; the Paradeisos of Ptol. v.
15, 20; Paradisus, Plin, v. 19), — ^but the Thelser of the Tab.
Peuting., on the eastern side of the Tigris ; and B"nS 'Eden is
the tribe of the 'Eden mentioned by Ezekiel (xxvii. 23) after
Haran and Ctesiphon. Consequently the enumeration of the
warlike deeds describes a curve, which passes in a north-
westerly direction through Hamath and Arpad, and then
returns in Sepharvaim to the border of southern Mesopotamia
and Babylonia. ' Ir-S'plianaim is like 'Ir-N^chsish, 'Ir-Shemesh,
etc. The legends connect the name with the sacred books.
The form of the name is inexplicable ; but the name itself
probably signifies the double shore (after the Aramsean), as
the city, which was the southernmost of the leading places of
Mesopotamia, was situated on the Euphrates, The words
^)^\ S'5[?, if not taken as proper names, would signify, " he has
taken away, and overthrown ;" but in that case we should
expect 11?)) iVin or WVl "nVin. They are really the names of
cities which it is no longer possible to trace. Hend is hardly
the well-known Avaiko on the Euphrates, as Gesenius, v,
Niebuhr, and others suppose ; and 'IvaJi, the seat of the 'Avvlm
(2 Kings xvii, 31), agrees still less, so far as the sound of the
word is concerned, with "the province of Hebeh (? Hebeb:
Eitter, Erdk. xi 707), situated between Anah and the Chabw
on the Euphrates," with which v, Niebuhr combines it,-^
This intimidating message, which declared the God of Israel
to be utterly powerless, was conveyed by the messengers of
Sennacherib in the form of a letter. Vers, 14, 15, " And Hiz-
kiyahu took the tetter out of the hand of the messengers, and read it
(K, read them), and ivent up to the house of Jehovah; and Ilizki-
yahu spread it before Jehovah'' S'phdrtm (the sheets) is equiva-
lent to the letter (not a letter in duplo), like Uteres (cf. grammata).
insnpjl (changed by K, into D— ) is construed according to the
singular idea, Thenius regards this spreading out of the letter as
a naiveti; and Gesenius even goes so far as to speak of the praying
machines of the Buddhists, But it was simply prayer without
words — an act of prayer, which afterwards passed into vocal
prayer. Vers, 16-20. " And HizUyahu prayed to (K, before)
^ For other combinations of equal value, see Oppert, Expedition, i. 220.
VOL, II. O
98 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jehovah, saying (K. and said), Jehovah of hosts (K. omits ts'bhd-
'oth), God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim, TJiou, yea TJiou
alone, art God of all the kingdoms of the earth; Thou, Tliou hast
made the heavens and the earth. Incline Tliine ear, Jehovah, and
hear (VCB'l, various reading in both texts V^m^ \ Open Tliine
eyes (K. with Yod of the plural), Jehovah, and see; and hear the
(K. all the) words of Sennacherib, which he hath sent (K. with
which he hath sent him, i.e. Kabshakeh) to despise the living
God ! Truly, Jehovah, the Mngs of Asshur have laid ivaste
all lands, and their land (K. the nations and their land), and have
put (v'ndthm, K. v^ndth'nu) their gods into the fire ; for they were
not gods, only the work of inen's hands, wood and stone ; therefore
they have destroyed them. And now, Jehovah our God, help us
(K. adds pray) out of his hand, and all the kingdoms of the earth
may hnoio that Thou Jehovah (K. Jehovah Elohim) art it alone."
On Q''3'i3 (no doubt the same word as 7/)U7re9, though not
fabulous beings like these, but a symbolical representation of
heavenly beings), see my Genesis, p. 626 ; and on yoshebh hak-
k'rubhim (enthroned on the cherubim), see at Ps. xviii. 11 and
Ixxx. 2. Xin in SlirnriK is an emphatic repetition, that is to say
a strengthening, of the subject, like ch. xliii. 25, li. 12, 2 Sam.
vii. 28, Jer. xlix. 12, Ps. xliv. 5, Neh. ix. 6, 7, Ezra v. 11 :
tu ille (not tu es ille, Ges. § 121, 2) = tu, nuUus alius. Such
passages as ch. xli. 4, where SW is the predicate, do not
belong here. IV}! is not a singular (like *J*V in Ps. xxxii. 8,
where the LXX. have ''J^V), but a defective plural, as we should
expect after faqach. On the other hand, the reading sMldcho
(" hath sent him "), which cannot refer to d'bhdrim (the words),
but only to the person bringing the written message, is to be
rejected. Moreover, Knobel cannot help giving up his pre-
ference for the reading v^ndthon (compare Gen. xli. 43 ; Ges.
§ 131, 4a); just as, on the other hand, we cannot help regarding
the reading DSnxTlKI niinNn"73"nx as a mistake, when compared
with the reading of the book of Kings. Abravanel explains
the passage thus : " The Assyrians have devastated the lands,
and their own land" (cf. ch. xiv. 20), of which we may find
examples in the list of victories given above; compare also
Beth-Arbel in Hos. x. 14, if this li Irbil on the Tigris, from
which Alexander's second battle in Persia, which was really
fought at Gaugamela, derived its name. But how does this
CHAP. XXX Vn. 21-23. 99
tally with tlie fact that they threw the gods of these lands — that
is to say, of their own land also (for Df}'d''?*. could not possibly
refer to niXINn, to the exclusion of Dsns) — into the fire ? If we
read haggoylm (the nations), we get rid both of the reference
to their own land, which is certainly purposeless here, and also
of the otherwise inevitable conclusion that they burned th'e
gods of their own country. The reading nixixn appears to
have arisen from the fact, that after the verb annn the lands
appeared to follow more naturally as the object, than the tribes
themselves (compare, however, ch. Ix. 12). The train of
thought is the following : Th6 Assyrians have certainly de-
stroyed nations and their gods, because these gods were nothing
but the works of men: do Thou then help us, O Jehovah^
that the world may see that Thou alone art it, viz. God
{^Elohim, as K. adds, although, according to the accents,
Jehovah Elohim are connected together, as in the books of
Samuel and Chronicles, and very frequently in the mouth of
David : see Symholce in Psalmos, pp. 15, 16).
The prophet's reply. Vers. 21, 22a. "And Isaiah the son of
Amoz sent to Hizkiyahu, saying, Thus saith Jehovah the God
of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to me concerning Sen-
nacherib the king of Asshur (K. adds, / have heard) : this is the
utterance which Jehovah utters concerning him" He sent, i.e.
sent a message, viz. by one of his disciples {limmuckm, ch. viii.
16). According to the text of Isaiah, IB'N would commence the
protasis to I3^n nt (as for that which — this is the utterance) ;
or, as the Vav of the apodosis is wanting, it might introduce
relative clauses to what precedes (" I, to whom :" Ges. § 123, 1,
Anm. 1). But both of these are very doubtful. We cannot
dispense with ''iiiJ'OB' (I have heard), which is given by both
the LXX. and Syr. in the text of Isaiah, as well as that of
Kings.
The prophecy of Isaiah which follows here, is in all respects
one of the most magnificent that we meet with. It proceeds
with strophe-like strides on the cothurnus of the Deborah style :
Vers. 226, 23. " The virgin daughter of Zion despiseth thee,
laugheili thee to scorn ; the daughter of Jerusalem shaketh her head
after thee. WJiom hast thou reviled and blasphemed, and over
whom hast thou spoken loftily, that thou hast lifted up thine eyes
OH high ? Against tlie Holy One of Israel'' The predicate is
100 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
written at the head, in ver. 22b, in the masculine, i.e. without
any precise definition ; since nta is a verb n'b, and neither the
participle nor the third pers. f em. of na. Zion is called a virgin,
with reference to the shame with which it was threatened
though without success (ch. xxiii. 12) ; bHliulath bath are
subordinate appositions, instead of co-ordinate. With a con-
tented and heightened self-consciousness, she shakes her head
behind him as he retreats with shame, saying by her attitude,
as she moves her head backwards and forwards, that it must
come to this, and could not be otherwise (Jer. xviii. 16 ; Lam.
ii. 15, 16). The question in ver. 23 reaches as far as T.^'V,
although, according to the accents, ver. 23 is an affirmative
clause : " and thou turnest thine eyes on high against the Holy
One of Israel " (Hitzig, Ewald, Drechsler, and Keil). The
question is put for the purpose of saying to Asshur, that He
at whom they scoff is the God of Israel, whose pure holiness
breaks out into a consuming fire against all by whom it is dis-
honoured. The fut. cons. VWrys is essentially the same as in
ch. li. 12, 13, and DillO is the same as in ch. xl. 26.
Second turn, ver. 24. " By thy servants (K. thy messengers)
hast tliou reviled the Lord, in that thou sayest. With the multitude
(K. chethib 3313) of my chariots have I climbed the height of the
mountains, the inner side of Lebanon; and I shall fell the lofty
growth of its cedars, the choice (mibhchar, K. mibhohor) of its
cypresses : and I shall penetrate (K. and will penetrate) to the
height (K. the halting-place) of its uttermost border, the grove of
its orchard." The other text appears, for the most part, the
preferable one here. Whether mal'ahhekhd (thy messengers,
according to ch. ix. 14) or 'abhddekhd (thy servants, viz. Rab-
shakeh. Tartan, and Kabsaris) is to be preferred, may be left
undecided ; also whether »a3T 33-i3 is an error or a superlative
expression, "with chariots of my chariots," i.e. my countless
chariots ; also, thirdly, whether Isaiah wrote mibhchor. He •
uses mistor in ch. iv. 6 for a special reason ; but such obscure
forms befit in other instances the book of Kings, wdth its colour-
ing of northern Palestine; and we also meet with mibhchor in
2 Kings iil. 19, in the strongly Aramaic first series of histories
of Ehsha. On the other hand, ri'i^ Iii>p is certainly the original
readmg, in contrast with ivp nno. It is important, as bearing
upon the interpretation of the passage, that both texts have
CHAP. XXXVII. 25-27. 101
maw, not maw, and that the other text confirms this pointing,
inasmuch as it has fiNiasjl instead of waKI, The Lebanon here,
if not purely emblematical (as in Jer. xxii. 6 = the royal citv
Jerusalem ; Ezek. xvii. 3 = Judah-Jerusalem), has at any rate
a synecdochical meaning (cf. xiv. 8), signifying the land of
Lebanon, i.e. the land of Israel, into which he had forced a
way, and all the fortresses and great men of which he would
destroy. He would not I'est till Jerusalem, the most renowned
height of the land of Lebanon, was lying at his feet. Thenius
is quite right in regarding the "resting-place of the utmost
border" and "the pleasure-garden wood" as containing allu-
sions to the holy city and its royal citadel (compare the allegory
in ch. Y. vol. i. pp. 164-5).
Third turn, ver. 25. " /, 1 have digged and drunk (K.. foreign)
waters, and will make dry with the sole of my feet all the Nile-arms
C^.x;, K. 'liN';) of Matsor" If we take ''n\i'J' in ver. 24 as a per-
fect of certainty, ver. 25a would refer to the overcoming of the
difficulties connected with the barren sandy steppe on the way
to Egypt (viz. et-Tih) ; but the perfects stand out against the
following futures, as statements of what was actually past.
Thus, in places where there were no waters at all, and it might
have been supposed that his army would inevitably perish, there
he had dug them {qur, from which mdqor is derived, fodere ;
not seaturire, as Luzzatto supposes), and had drunk up these
waters, which had been called up, as if by magic, upon foreign
soil ; and in places where there were waters, as in Egypt (matsor
is used in Isaiah and Micah for mitsrayim, with a play upon the
appellative meaning of the word : an enclosing fence, a forti-
fying girdle : see Ps. xxxi. 22), the Nile-arms and canals of
which appeared to bar all fai'ther progress, it was an easy thing
for him to set at nought all these opposing hindrances. The
Nile, with its many arms, was nothing but a puddle to him,
which he trampled out with his feet.
And yet what he was able to do was not the result of his
own power, but of the counsel of God, which he subserved.
Fourth turn, vers. 26, 27. " Hast thou not heard ? 1 have
done it long ago, from (K. Vmin, since) the days of ancient time
have I formed it, and now brought it to pass (n''riX3n, K. n''ns''3n) :
that thou shouldst lay waste fortified cities into desolate stone
heaps ; and their inhabitants, powerless, were terrified, and viere
102 THE PEOPHECIEtj OF ISAIAH.
'put to shame (V:i*ai, K. W3>1): hecame herb of the field ami green
of the turf, herb of the house-tops, and a corn-field (™1B^- E.
and blighted corn) before the blades." UmeracUq (from afar) is
not to be connected with the preceding words, but according to
the parallel with those which follow. The historical reality, in
this instance the Assyrian judgment upon the nations, had had
from all eternity an ideal reality in God (see at ch. xxii. 11).
The words are addressed to the Assyrian ; and as his instru-
mentality formed the essential part of the divine purpose, ^^n?
does not mean " there should," hut " thou shouldest," e/ieWe'}
e^peiiaxyai (cf. ch. xliv. 14, 15, and Hah. i. 17). K. has
nitJ'n^ instead of nSmrh (though not as chethib, in which case
it would have to be pointed nityn^!), a singularly syncopated
hiphil (for nisa'^). The point of comparison in the four figures
is the facility with which they can be crushed. The nations in
the presence of the Assyrian became, as it were, weak, delicate
grasses, with roots only rooted in the surface, or like a corn-
field with the stalk not yet formed (sh'demdh, ch. svi. 8),
which could easily be rooted up, and did not need to be cut
down with the sickle. This idea is expressed still more
strikingly in Kings, "like corn blighted (sh'dephdh, compare
shidddphon, corn-blight) before the shooting up of the stalk ;"
the Assyrian being regarded as a parching east wind, which
destroys the seed before the stalk is formed.
Asshur is Jehovah's chosen instrument while thus casting
down the nations, which are " short-handed against him," i.e.
incapable of resisting him. But Jehovah afterwards places this
lion under firm restraint ; and before it has reached the goal set
before it. He leads it back into its own land, as if with a ring
through its nostril. Fifth turn, vers. 28, 29. " And thy sitting
down, and thy going out, and thy entering in, I know ; and thy
heating thyself against me. On account of thy heating thyself
against me, and because thy self-confidence has risen up into mine
ears, I put my ring into thy nose, and my muzzle into thy lips,
and lead thee back by the way by which thou hast come." Sitting
down and rising up (Ps. cxxxix. 2), going out and coming in
(Ps. cxxi. 8), denote every kind of human activity. AH
the thoughts and actions, the purposes and undertakings of
Sennacherib, more especially with regard to the people of
Jehovah, were under divine control. I5?l is followed by the
CHAP. XXXVII. 30. 103
infinitive, which is then continned in the finite verb, just as
in ch. XXX. 12. '^MS|B' (another reading, I^^Kl^) is used as a
substantive, and denotes the Assyrians' complacent and scornful
self-confidence (Ps. cxxiii. 4), and has nothing to do Tsith l^NK'
(Targum, Abulw., Eashi, Kimehi, Eosenmiiller, Luzzatto).
The figure of the leading away with a nose-ring (cJiachi with a
latent dagesh, sn to prick, hence chodcli, Arab, choch, chdcha,
a narrow slit, literally means a cut or aperture) is repeated in
Ezek. xxxviii. 4. Like a wild beast that had been subdued
by force, the Assyrian would have to return home, without
having achieved his purpose with Judah (or with Egypt).
The prophet now turns to Hezekiah. Ver. 30. " And let
this be a sign to thee, Men eat this year what is self-soivn ; and in
the second year what springs from the roots (shdchis, K. sdchisK) ;
and in the third year they sow and reap and plant vineyards, and
eat (chethib 7\3ii) their fruit." According to Thenius, AassAawaA
(this year) signifies the first year after Sennacherib's in-
vasion, hasshdndh hasshenith (the second year) the current
year in which the words were uttered by Hezekiah, hasshdndh
hasshHishlth (the third year) the year that was coming in which
the land would be cleared of the enemy. But understood in this
way, the whole would have been no sign, but simply a prophecy
that the condition of things during the two years was to come
to an end in the third. It would only be a " sign " if the
second year was also still in the future. By hasshdndh, there-
fore, we are to understand what the expression itself requires
(cf. ch. xxix. 1, xxxii. 10), namely the current year, in which
the people had been hindered from cultivating their fields by
the Assyrian who was then in the land, and therefore had been
thrown back upon the sdphiach, i.e. the after growth {avrofjuira,
LXX., the self-sown), or crop which had sprung up from the
fallen grains of the previous harvest (from sdphach, adjicere, see
at Hab. ii. 15 ; or, according to othei-s, effundere, see vol. i. 165).
It was autumn at the time when Isaiah gave this sign (ch.
xxxiii. 9), and the current civil year was reckoned from one
autunmal equinox to the other, as, for example, in Ex. xxiii. 16,
where the feast of tabernacles or harvest festival is said to fall
at the close of the year ; so that if the fourteenth year of
Hezekiah was the year 714, the current year would extend
from Tishui 714 to Tishri 713. But if in the next year also,,
104 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
713-712, there was no sowing and reaping, but the people were
to eat sMcMs, i.e. that which grew of itself {avro^vh, Aq.,
Theod.), and that very sparingly, not from the grains shed at
the previous harvest, but from the roots of the wheat, we need
not assume that this year, 713-712, happened to be a sabbatical
yeax, in which the law required all agricultural pursuits to be
suspended.^ It is very improbable in itself that the prophet
should have included a circumstance connected with the
calendar in his " sign ;" and, moreover, according to the existing
chronological data, the year 715 had been a sabbatical year
(see Hitzig). It is rather presupposed, either that the land
would be too thoroughly devastated and desolate for the fields
to be cultivated and sown (Keil) ; or, as we can hardly imagine
such an impossibility as this, if we picture to ourselves the
existing situation and the kind of agriculture common in
Palestine, that the Assyrian would carry out his expedition to
Egypt in this particular year (713-12), and returning through
Judah, would again prevent the sowing of the corn (Hitisig,
Knobel). But in the third year, that is to say the year
712-11, freedom and peace would prevail again, and there
would be nothing more to hinder the cultivation of the fields or
vineyards. If this should he the course of events during the
three years, it would be a sign to king Hezekiah that the fate
of the Assyrian would be no other than that predicted. The
year 712-11 would be the peremptory limit appointed him, and
the year of deliverance.
Seventh turn, vers. 31, 32. "And that which is escaped
of the house of Judah, that which remains will again take
root downward, and bear fruit upward. For from Jerusalem
will a remnant go forth, and a fugitive from Mount Zion ;
the seal of Jehovah of hosts (K. chethib omits ts'bhaoth)
will carry this out." The agricultural prospect of the third
year shapes itself here into a figurative representation of the
fate of Judah. Isaiah's watchword, "a remnant shall return,"
is now fulfilled ; Jerusalem has been spared, and becomes the
source of national rejuvenation. You hear the echo of ch.
v. 24, ix. 6, and also of cb. xxvii. 6. The word ts'bhaoth is
wanting in Kings, here as well as in ver. 17 ; in fact, this
^ There certainly is no necessity for a sabbatical year followed by a
year of jubilee, to enable us to explain the " sign," as Hofmann supposes.
CHAP. XXXVII. 33-35. 105
divine name is, as a rule, very rare in the book of Kings, where
it only occurs in the first series of accounts of Elijah (1 Kings
xviii. 15, xix, 10, 14 ; cf. 2 Kings iii. 14).
The prophecy concerning the protection of Jerusalem be-
comes more definite in the last turn than it ever has been
before. Vers. 33-35. " Tlierefore thus saitli Jehovah concerning
ike king of Asshur, He will not enter into this city, nor shoot off
an arrow there ; nor do they assault it with a shield, nor cast up
earthworks against it. By the way by which he came (K. will
come) will he return ; and he will not enter into this city, saith
Jehovah, And I shield this city (?J?, K. 7S), to help it, for mine
oion sake, and for the sake of David my servant" According to
Hitzig, this conclusion belongs to the later reporter, on account
of its " suspiciously definite character." Knobel, on the other
hand, sees no reason for disputing the authorship of Isaiah,
inasmuch as in all probability the pestilence had already set in
(ch. xxxiii. 24), and threatened to cripple the Assyrian army
very considerably, so that the prophet began to hope that
Sennacherib might now be unable to stand against the power-
ful Ethiopian king. To us, however, the words " Thus saith
Jehovah " are something more than a flower of speech ; and we
hear the language of a man exalted above the standard of the
natural man, and one who has been taken, as Amos says (iii. 7),
by God, the moulder of history, into " His secret." Here also
we see the prophecy at its height, towards which it has been
ascending from ch. vi. 13 and x, 33, 34 onwards, through
the midst of obstacles accumulated by the moral condition of
the nation, but with the same goal invariably in view. The
Assyrian will not storm Jerusalem ; there will not even be
preparations for a siege. The verb qiddem is construed with a
double accusative, as in Ps. xxi. 4 ; soPldh refers to the earth-
works thrown up for besieging purposes, as in Jer. xxxii. 24.
The reading Nh^ instead of ^53 has arisen in consequence of the
eye having wandered to the following sn\ The promise in
ver. 35a sounds like ch. xxxi. 5. The reading ?s for b^ is in-
correct. One motive assigned (" for my servant David's sake ")
is the same as in 1 Kings xv. 4, etc. ; and the other (" for mine
own sake") the same as in ch. xliii. 25, xlviii. 11 (compare,
however, ch. Iv. 3 also). On the one hand, it is in accordance
with the honour and faithfulness of Jehovah, that Jerusalem is
106 THE l-BOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
delivered ; and, on the other hand, it is the worth of David, or,
what is the same thing, the love of Jehovah turned towards
him, of which Jerusalem reaps the advantage.
To this culminating prophecy there is now appended an
account of the catastrophe itself. Vers. 36-38. " Then (K.
And it came to pass that night, that) the angel of Jehovah went
forth and smote {vayyakkeh, K. vayyahh) in the camp of Asshur
a hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when men rose up in the
morning, behold, they were all lifeless corpses. Then Sennacherib
king of Asshur decamped, and went forth and returned, and
settled down in Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was wor-
shipping in the temple of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and
Skarezer his sons (K. chethib omits ' his sons') smote him with
the sword; and when they escaped to the land of Ararat, Esar-
haddon ascended the throne in his stead" The first pair of
histories closes here with a short account of the result of the
Assyrian drama,in which Isaiah's prophecies were most gloriously
fulfilled : not only the prophecies immediately preceding, but
all the prophecies of the Assyrian era since the time of Ahaz,
which pointed to the destruction of the Assyrian forces {e.g.
X. 33-4), and to the flight and death of the king of Assyria
(ch. xxxi. 9, XXX. 33). If we look still further forward to the
second pair of histories (ch. xxxviii. xxxix.), we see from ch.
xxxviii. 6 that it is only by anticipation that the account of
these closing events is finished here ; for the third history carries
us back to the period before the final catastrophe. We may
account in some measure for the baste and brevity of this
closing historical fragment, from the prophet's evident wish to
finish up the history of the Assyrian complications, and the
prophecy bearing upon it. But if we look back, there is a gap
between ch. xxxvii. 36 and the event narrated here. For,
according to ver. 30, there was to be an entire year of trouble
between the prophecy and the fulfilment, during which the
cultivation of the land would be suspended. What took place
during that year ? There can be no doubt that Sennacherib
was engaged with Egypt; for (1) when he made his second
attempt to get Jerusalem into his power, he had received in-
telligence of the advance of Tirhakah, and therefore had with-
drawn the centre of his army from Lachish, and encamped
before Libnah (ch. xxxvii. 8, 9) ; (2) according to Josephus
CHAP. XXXVIL 36-38. 107
(J nt. X. 1, 4), there was a passage of Berosus, which has been
lost, in which he stated that Sennacherib " made an expedition
against all Asia and Egypt ;" (3) Herodotus relates (iL 14:1)
that, after Anyas the blind, who lost his throne for fifty years
in consequence of an invasion of Egypt by the Ethiopians
under Sabakoa, but who recovered it again, Sethon the priest
of Hephsestus ascended the throne. The priestly caste was so
oppressed by him, that when Sanacharibos, the king of the
Arabians and Assyrians, led a great army against Egypt, they
refused to perform their priestly functions* But the priest-
king went into the temple to pray, and his God promised to
help him. He experienced the fulfilment of this prophecy
before Pelusinm, where the invasion was to take place, and
where he awaited the foe with such as continued true to him.
"Immediately after the arrival of Sanacharibos, an army of
fi^eld-mice swarmed throughout the camp of the foe, and devoured
their quivers, bows, and shield-straps, so that when morning
came on they had to flee without arms, and lost many men in
consequence. Tliis is the origin of the stone of Sethon in the
temple of Hephsestus (at Memphis), which is standing there
still, with a mouse in one hand, and with this inscription :
Whosoever looks at me, let him fear the gods!" This Xedtai
(possibly the Zet whose name occurs in the lists at the close of
the twenty-third dynasty, and therefore in the wrong place)
is to be regarded as one of the Saitic princes of the twenty-
sixth dynasty, who seem to have ruled in Lower Egypt con-
temporaneously with the Ethiopians^ (as, in fact, is stated
in a passage of the Armenian Eusebins, ^thiopas et Saitas
regnasse aiunt eodem tempore), until they succeeded at length
in ridding themselves of the hateful supremacy. Herodotus
evidently depended in this instance upon the hearsay of Lower
Egypt, which transferred the central point, of the As^ian
history to their own native princely house. The question,
' A seal of Pharaoh Sabakon has been found among the ruins of the
palace of Kuynnpk. The colossal image of Tarakos is found among the
bas-reliefs of Medinet-Habu. He is; holding firmly a number of Asiatic
prisoners by the hair of their head, and threatening them -with a club.
There are several other stately monuments in imitation of the Egyptian
style in the ruins of 5repa,ta, the northern capital of the Meroitic state,
which belong to him (Lepsius, Denkmaler, p. 10 of the programme).
108 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
whether the disarming of the Assyrian army in front of Pelusium
merely rested upon a legendary interpretation of the mouse in
Sethon's hand/ which may possibly have been originally in-
tended as a symbol of destruction; or whether it was really
founded upon an actual occurrence which was exaggerated in
the legend,^ may be left imdecided. But it is a real insult to
Isaiah, when Thenins and G. Kawlinson place the scene of ver,
36 at Pelusium, and thus give the preference to Herodotus.
Has not Isaiah up to this point constantly prophesied that the
power of Asshur was to be broken in the holy mountain land of
Jehovah (ch. xiv. 25), that the Lebanon forest of the Assyrian
army would break to pieces before Jerusalem (ch. x. 32-34),
and that there the Assyrian camp would become the booty of
the inhabitants of the city, and that without a conflict f And
is not the catastrophe that would befal Assyria described in
ch. xviii. as an act of Jehovah, which would determine the
Ethiopians to do homage to God who was enthroned upon
Zion ? We need neither cite 2 Chron. xxxii. 21 nor Ps. Ixxvi.
(LXX. aSrj Trpo? rov 'Aaavpiov), according to which the wea-
pons of Asshur break to pieces upon Jerusalem ; Isaiah's pro-
phecies are quite sufficient to prove, that to force this Pelusiac
disaster^ into ver. 36 is a most thoughtless concession to
Herodotus. The final catastrophe occurred before Jerusalem,
and the account in Herodotus gives us no certain information
even as to the issue of the Egyptian campaign, which took
place in the intervening year. Such a gap as the one which
occurs before ver. 36 is not without analogy in the historical
writings of the Bible ; see, for example. Num. xx. 1, where
an abrupt leap is made over the thirty-seven years of the
wanderings in the desert. The abruptness is not affected
by the addition of the clause in the book of Kings, " It came
to pass that night." For, in the face of the "sign" men-
tioned in ver. 30, this cannot mean "in that very nicrht" (viz,
the night following the answer given by Isaiah) ; but (un-
^ This Sethoa monument has not yet been discovered (Brugsch, Reise-
berlcJite, p. 79). The temple of Phta was on the south side of Memphis ;
the site is marlced by the ruins at Mitrahenni.
^ The inhabitants of Troas worshipped mice, " because they gnawed the
strings of the enemies' bows" (see Wesseling on II. i. 39).
* G. Rawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 445.
CHAP. XXXVII. 36-38. 109
less it is a careless interpolation) it must refer to vers. 33, 34,
and mean ilia nocte, viz. the night in which the Assyrian
had encamped before Jerusalem. The account before us
reads just like that of the slaying of the first-bom in Egypt
(Ex. xii. 12, xi. 4). The plague of Egypt is marked as a
l^estilence by the use of the woi'd ndgaph in connection with
liikMli in Ex. xii. 23, 13 (compare Amos iv. 10, where it
seems to be alluded to under the name "in'ii) ; and in the case
before us also we cannot think of anything else than a divine
judgment of this kind, which even to the present day defies
all attempts at an setiologlcal solution, and which is described
in 2 Sam. xxiv. as effected through the medium of angels, just
as it is here. Moreover, tho concise brevity of the narrative
leaves it quite open to assume, as Hensler and others do, that
the ravages of the pestilence in the Assyrian army, which
carried off thousands in the night (Ps. xci. 6), even to the
number of 185,000, may have continued for a considerable
time.^ The main thing is the fact that the prophecy in ch.
xxxi. 8 was actually fulfilled. According to Josephus (Ant.
X. 1, 5), when Sennacherib returned from his unsuccessful
Egyptian expedition, he found the detachment of his army,
which he had left behind in Palestine, in front of Jerusalem,
where a pestilential disease sent by God was making great
havoc among the soldiers, and that on the very first night of
the siege. The three verses, " he broke up, and went away, and
returned home," depict the hurried character of the retreat,
like " dbiit excessit evasit erupit" (Cic. ii. Catil. init.). The
form of the sentence in ver. 38 places Sennacherib's act of
worship and the murderous act of his sons side by side, as
though they had occurred simultaneously. The connection
would be somewhat different if the reading had been W3>1 (cf.
Ewald, § 341, a). Nisroch apparently signifies the eagle-like, or
hawk-like (from nisr, nesher), possibly like 'Arioch from 'ari.
The LXX. transcribe it vaaapa'^, A aaapa^x^ X acrapaic (K
iaOpa'x,, where B has fieaepa^), and explorers of the monuments
imagined at one time that they had discovered this god as
^ The pestilence in Mailand in 1629 carried off, according to Tadino,
160,000 men ; that in Vienna, in 1679, 122,849 ; that in Moscow, at the end
of the last century, according to Mai-tens, 670,000 ; but this was during
the whole tune that the ravages of the pestilence lasted.
110 THE PBOFHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Asarak ;^hnt they have more recently retracted this, although
there really is a hawk-headed figure among tlie images of the
Assyrian deities or genii.^ The name has nothing to do with
that of the supreme Assyrian deity, Asur, Asshur. A better
derivation of Nisroch would be from V°, T^^, ^1?; and this is
confirmed by Oppert, who has discovered among the inscrip-
tions in the harem of Khorsabad a prayer of Sargon to Nisroch,
who appears there, like the Hymen of Greece, as the patron
of marriage, and therefore as a " uniter."^ The name 'Adram-
melekh (a god in 2 Kings xvii. 31) signifies, as we now know,
"ghriosus {'addir) est rex;" and Sharetser (for which we should
expect to find Saretser), dominator tuebitur. The Armenian
form of the latter name (in Moses Ohoren. i. 23), San-asar
(by the side of Adramel, who is also called Arcamozan), pro-
bably yields the original sense of " Lunus (the moon-god Sin)
tuebitur." Polyhistorus (in Euseb. cliron. arm. p. 19), on the
authority of Berosus, mentions only the former, Ardumuzan, as
the murderer, and gives eighteen years as the length of Sen-
nacherib's reign. The murder did not take place immediately
after his return, as Josephus says {Ant. x. 1, 5 ; cf. Tobit i.
21-25, Vulg.) ; and the expression used by Isaiah, he " dwelt
(settled down) in Nineveh," suggests the idea of a considerable
interval. This interval embraced the suppression of the rebel-
lion in Babylon, where Sennacherib made his son Asordan
king, and the campaign in Cilicia (both from Polyhistoms),*
and also, according to the monuments, wars both by sea and
land with Susiana, which supported the Babylonian thirst for
independence. The Asordan of Polyhistorus is Esar-haddon
(also written without the makhepli, Esarhaddon), which is gene-
rally supposed to be the Assyrian form of n''"nf<~i1B'N} Assur
fratrem dedit. It is so difficult to make the chronology tally
here, that Oppert, on Isa. sxxvi. 1, proposes to alter the four-
teenth year into the twenty-ninth, and Kawlinson would alter
it into the twenty-seventh.® They both of them assign to king
^ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xii. 2, pp. 426-7.
^ Eawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 265.
^ Expedition Scientifique en Mesopotamie, t. ii. p. 339.
* Vid. Eichter, Berosi quse supersunt (1825), p. 62 ; Miiller, Fragmenta
Hist. Gr. ii. 504.
^ Sargonides, p. 10, and Monarchies, ii. 434.
CHAP. XXXVIII. Ill
Sargon a reign of seventeen (eighteen) years, and to Senna-
cherib (in opposition to Polyhistorus) a reign of twenty-three
(twenty-four) years ; and they both agree in giving 680 as the
year of Sennacherib's death. This brings us down below the
first decade of Manasseh's reign, and would require a different
author from Isaiah for vers. 37, 38. But the accounts given by
Polyhistorus, Abydenus, and the astronomical canon, however
we may reconcile them among themselves, do not extend the
reign of Sennacherib beyond 693.-' It is true that even then
Isaiah would have been at least about ninety years old. But
the tradition which represents him as dying a martyr's death
in the reign of Manasseh, does really assign him a most unusual
old age. Nevertheless, vers. 37, 38 may possibly have been
added by a later hand. The two parricides fled to the " land
of Ararat," i.e. to Central Armenia. The Armenian history
describes them as the founders of the tribes of the Sassunians
and Arzerunians. From the princely house of the latter,
among whom the name of Sennacherib was a very common
one, sprang Leo the Armenian, whom Genesios describes as of
Assyrio- Armenian blood. If this were the case, there would be
no less than ten Byzantine emperors who were descendants of
Sennacherib, and consequently it would not be till a very late
period that the prophecy of Nahum was fulfilled.^
C. HEZEKIAH'S ILIiliTESS. ISAIAH ASSURES HIM OF HIS
EECOVEET. — CHAP. XXXVIII.
There is nothing to surprise us in the fact that we are
carried back to the time when Jerusalem was still threatened
by the Assyrian, since the closing verses of ch. xxxvii. merely
1 See Dnncker, Geseh. des AUerthums. i. pp. 708-9.
' Duncker, on the contrary (p. 709), speaks of the parricides as falling
very shortly afterwards by their brother's hand, and overlooks the Armenian
tradition (cf. Rawlinson, Monarchies, ii. 465), which transfers the flight
of the two, -who were to have been sacrificed, as is reported by their own
father, to the year of the world 4494, i.e. B.C. 705 (see the historical survey
of Prince Hubbof in the Miscellaneous Translations, vol. ii. 1834). The
Armenian historian Thomas (at the end of the ninth century) expressly
states that he himself had sprung from the Arzerunians, and therefore from
Sennacherib ; and for this reason his historical work is chiefly devoted to
Assyrian affairs (see Aucher on Euseb. chron. i. p. xv).
112 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
contain an anticipatory announcement, introduced for tlie pur-
pose of completing the picture of the last Assyrian troubles,
by adding the fulfilment of Isaiah's prediction of their ter-
mination. It is within this period, and indeed in the year of
the Assyrian invasion (ch. xxxvi. 1), since Hezekiah reigned
twenty-nine years, and fifteen of these are promised here, that
the event described by Isaiah falls, — an event not merely of
private interest, but one of importance in connection with the
history of the nation also. — Vers. 1-3. " In those days Eizkiyalm
became dangerously ill. And Isaiah son of Amoz, the prophet,
came to him, and said to him. Thus saiih Jehovah, Set thine
house in order : for thou wilt die, and not recover. Then Hizki-
yahu turned (K. om.) his face to the wall, and prayed to Jehovah,
and said (K. saying), Jehovah, remember this, I pray, that I
have walked before thee in truth, and with the whole heart, and
have done what was good in Thine eyes ! And Hizhiyahu wept
with loud weeping'' " Give command to thy house " (?, cf. PN,
2 Sam. xvii. 23) is equivalent to, " Make known thy last will to
thy family " (compare the rabbinical tsavvd'dh, the last will
and testament) ; for though tsivvdh is generally construed with
the accusative of the person, it is also construed with Lamed
(e.g. Ex. i. 22 ; cf. ?K, Ex. xvi. 34). n;^n in such a connection
as this signifies to revive or recover. The announcement of
his death is unconditional and absolute. As Vitringa observes,
"the condition was not expressed, because God would draw
it from him as a voluntary act." The sick man turned his
face towards the wall (VJS aoHj hence the usual fut. cons. 3B»lj
as in 1 Kings xxi. 4, 8, 14), to retire into himself and to God.
The supplicatory n|N (here, as in Ps. cxvi. 4, 16, and in all six
times, with n) always has the principal tone upon the last
syllable before nini = iJlX (Neh. i. 11). The metheg has some-
times passed into a conjunctive accent {e.g. Gen. 1. 17, Ex.
xxxii. 31). IK'S ns does not signify that which, but this, that,
as in Deut. ix. 7, 2 Kings viii. 12, etc. " In truth," i.e. without
wavering or hypocrisy. WB' n?3, with a complete or whole
heart, as in 1 Kings viii. 61, etc. He wept aloud, because it was
a dreadful thing to him to have to die without an heir to the
throne, in the full strength of his manhood (in the thirty-ninth
year of his age), and with the nation in so unsettled a state.
The prospect is now mercifully changed. Vers. 4-6. " And
CHAP. XXXVIII. 4-6, 21, 22. 113
it came to pass (K. Isaiah was not yet out of tlie inner city ; Tceri
"ixn, the forecourt, and) the word of Jehovah came to Isaiah (K.
to him) as follows : Go (K. turn again) and say to Hizkiyahu
(K. adds, to the prince of my people), Thus saith Jehovah, the
God of David thine ancestor, I have heard thy prayer, seen thy
tears; behold, I (K. will cure thee, on the third day thou
shalt go up to the house of Jehovah) add (K. and I add) to thy
days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out
of the hand of the king of Asshur, and will defend this city
(K. for mine own sake and for David my servants sake)" In
the place of T'^n (the city) the keri and the earlier translators
have "isn. The city of David is not called the "inner city"
anywhere else ; in fact, Zion, with the temple hill, formed the
upper city, so that apparently it is the inner space of the city
of David that is here referred to, and Isaiah had not yet passed
through the middle gate to return to the lower city, where he
dwelt (vol. i. pp. 70, 390). The text of Kings is the more
authentic throughout ; except that ''tSV T'M, " the prince of my
people," is an annalistic adorning which is hardly original.
"^vn in Isaiah is an inf. abs. used in an imperative sense ; 21E',
on the other hand, which we find in the other text, is im-
perative. On yosiph, see at ch. xxix. 14.
The text of Isaiah is not only curtailed here in a very
forced manner, but it has got into confusion ; for vers. 21 and
22 are removed entirely from their proper place, although even
the Septuagint has them at the close of Hezekiah's psalm.
They have been omitted from their place at the close of ver. 6
through an oversight, and then added in the margin, where
they now stand (probably with a sign, to indicate that they were
supplied). We therefore insert them here, where they properly
belong. Vers. 21, 22. " T7ien Isaiah said they were to bring
(K. take) a fig-cake ; and they plaistered (K. brougJii and covered)
the boil, and he recovered. And Hizkiyahu said (K. to Isaiah),
WJiat sign is there that (K. Jehovah will heal me, so that I go
up) I shall go up into the house of Jehovahf" As sh'chin never
signifies a plague-spot, but an abscess (indicated by heightened
temperature), more especially that of leprosy (cf. Ex. ix. 9,
Lev. xiii. 18), there is no satisfactory ground, as some suppose,
for connecting Hezekiah's illness (taken along with ch. xxxiii.
24) with the pestilence which broke out in the Assyrian army.
VOL. II. H
114 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
The use of the figs does not help us to decide whether we are
to assume that it was a boil (bubon) or a carbuncle {charbon).
Figs were a well-known emolliens or maturans, and were used
to accelerate the rising of the swelling and the subsequent dis-
charge. Isaiah did not show any special medical skill by order-
ing a softened cake of pressed figs to be laid upon the boil, nor
did he expect it to act as a specific, and effect a cure : it was
merely intended to promote what had already been declared to
be the wiU of God. bv ^T\-\m is probably more original than
the simpler but less definite ^? ICB'^. Hitzig is wrong in ren-
dering ''n% "that it (the boil) may get well;" and Knobel in
rendering it, " that he may recover." It is merely the antici-
pation of the result so common in the historical writings of
Scripture (see at ch. vii, 1 and xx. 1), after which the historian
goes back a step or two.
The pledge desired. Vers. 7, 8. "(K. TJien Isaiah said) and
(K. om.) let this be the sign to thee on the part of Jehovah, that
(IK'S, K. ''3) Jehovah will perform this (K. the) word which He has
spoken ; Behold, I make the shadow retrace the steps, zchich it has
gone down upon the sun-dial of Ahaz through the sun, ten steps
backward. And the sun went back ten steps upon the dial, which
it had gone down " (K. " Shall the shadow go forward [yl?^, read
"ipn according to Job xl. 2, or 'H?).!!!] ten steps, or shall it go back
ten steps ? Then Yechizkiyahu said, It is easy for the shadoio
to go down ten steps ; no, but the shadow shall go back ten steps.
Then Isaiah the prophet cried to Jehovah, and turned back the
shadow by the steps that it had gone down upon the sun-dial of
Ahaz, ten steps backward"). "Steps of Ahaz" was the name
given to a sun-dial erected by him. As ma'aldh may signify
either one of a flight of steps or a degree (syn. madrigdh), we
might suppose the reference to be to a dial-plate with a
gnomon ; but, in the first place, the expression points to an
actual succession of steps, that is to say, to an obelisk upon a
square or circular elevation ascended by steps, which threw the
shadow of its highest point at noon upon the highest steps, and
in the morning and evening upon the lowest, either on the
one side or the other, so that the obehsk itself served as a
gnomon. It is in this sense that the Targum on 2 Kings ix. 13
renders gerem hammdaloth by d'rag shaayyS, step (flight of
steps) o£ the snn-dial ; and the obehsk of Augustus, on the
CHAi". XXXVIII. 7, 8.
115
Field of Mars at Eome, was one of this kind,, which served as
a sun-dial. The going forward, going down,, or declining of
the shadow, and its going back, were regulated by the meridian
line, and under certain circumstances the same might be said
of a vertical dial, i.e. of a sun-dial with a vertical dial-plate ;
but it applies more strictly to a step-dial, i.e. to a sun-dial in
which the degrees- that measure definite periods of time are
really gradus. The step-dial of Ahaz may have consisted of
twenty steps or more, which measured the time of day by half-
hours, or even quarters. If the sign was given an hour before
sunset, the shadow, by going back ten steps of half-an-hour
each, would return to the point at which it stood at twelve
o'clock. But how was this effected ? Certainly not by giving
an opposite direction to the revolution of the earth upon its axis,
which would have been followed by the most terrible convul-
sions over the entire globe ; and in all probability not even by
an apparently retrograde motion of the sun (in which case the
miracle would be optical rather tham cosmical) ; but as the
intention was to give a sign that should serves as a pledge, and
therefore had no need whatever to be sunpernatural (vol. i. 214),
it may have been simply through a phenomenon of refraction,
since all that was required was that the shadow which was
down at the bottom in the afternoon should be carried upwards
by a sudden and unexpected refraction. Hammadloth (the
steps) in ver. 8 does not stand in a genitive relation to tsel
(the shadow), as the accents would make it appear, but is an
accusative of measure, equivalent to niPJJJsa in the sum of the
steps (2 Kings xx. 11). To this accusative of measure there
is appended the relative clause : quos {gradus) descendit (n^"}^ ;
PS being used as a feminine) in scala Ahasi per solem, i.e.
through the onward motion of the sun. When it is stated that
" the sun returned," this does not mean the sun in the heaven,
but the sun upon the sun-dial, upon which the illumined sur-
face moved upwards- as the shadow retreated ; for when the
shadow moved back, the sun moved back as- well. The event
is intended to be represented as a miracle ; and a miracle it
really was. The force of will proved itself to be a power
superior to all natural law ; the phenomenon followed upon the
prophet's prayer as an extraordinary result of divine power, not
effected through his astronomical learning, but, simply through
116 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
that faith which can move mountains, because it can set in
motion the omnipotence of God.
As a documentary proof of this third account, a psalm of
Hezekiah is added in the text of Isaiah, in which he celebrates
his miraculous rescue from the brink of death. The author
of the book of Kings has omitted it ; but the genuineness is
undoubted. The heading runs thus in ver. 9 : " Writing of
Hizhiyahu king of Judah, when he was sick, and recovered from
his sickness.'' The song which follows might be headed
Mikhtam, since it has the characteristics of this description of
psalm (see at Ps. xvi. 1). We cannot infer from bach&lotho
(when he was sick) that it was composed by Hezekiah during
his illness (see at Ps. li. 1) ; vayyechi (and he recovered) stamps
it as a song of thanksgiving, composed by him after his recovery.
In common with the two Ezrahitish psalms, Ps. Ixxxviii. and
Ixxxix., it has not only a considerable number of echoes of the
book of Job, but also a lofty sweep, which is rather forced
than lyrically direct, and appears to aim at copying the best
models.
Strophe 1 consists indisputably of seven lines :
Vers. 10-12. " I said, In quiet of my days shall I depart
into the gates of Hades :
I am mulcted of the rest of my years.
I said, I shall not see Jah, Jah, in the land of the living :
I shall behold man no more, with the inhabitants of the regions
of the dead.
My home is broken up, and is carried off from me like a
shepherds tent:
I rolled up my life like a weaver ; He would have cut me loose
from the roll :
From day to night Thou makest an end of me"
" In quiet of my days" is equivalent to, in the midst of the
quiet course of a healthy life, and is spoken without reference
to the Assyrian troubles, which still continued. ''O'n, from nD'n,
to be quiet, ht. to be even, for the radical form DT has the
primary idea of a flat covering, of something stroked smooth,
of that which is level and equal, so that it could easily branch
out into the different ideas of cequabilitas, equality of measure,
aquitas, equanimity, cequitas, equality, and also of destruction
CHAP. XXXVIII. 10-12. 117
= complanatio, levelling. On the cohortative, in the sense of
that which is to be, see Ewald, § 228, a ; HDPK, according to its
verbal idea, has the same meaning as in Ps. xxxix. 14 and
2 Ohron. xxi. 20 ; and the construction with 3 (= nxi^K) na^K)
is constructio prcegnans (Luzzatto). The pual WiSS does not
mean, " I am made to want" (Rashi, Knobel, and others),
which, as the passive of the causative, would rather be '''ii'ips?,
like wnjrij I am made to inherit (Job vii. 3) ; but, I am visited
with punishment as to the remnant, mulcted of the remainder,
deprived, as a punishment, of the rest of my years. The clause,
" Jah in the land of the living," Le. the God of salvation, who
reveals Himself in the land of the living, is followed by the
corresponding clause, ^in "'^^'''^V, " I dwelling with the in-
habitants of the region of the dead ;" for whilst ^J'^ signifies
temporal life (from chdlad, to glide imperceptibly away. Job
xi. 17), yy^ signifies the end of this life, the negation of all
conscious activity of being, the region of the dead. The body
is called a dwelling (dor, Arab, ddr), as the home of a man who
possesses the capacity to distinguish himself from everything
belonging to him {Psychol, p. 227). It is compared to a
nomadic tent. ''J'^ (a different word from that in Zech. xi. 17,
where it is the chireh compaginis) is not a genitive (— ny'i,
Ewald, § 151, b), but an adjective in i, like ''^''is nyn in Zech.
xi. 15. With nigldh (in connection with PSJ, as in Job iv.
21), which does not mean to be laid bare (Luzz.), nor to be
wrapt up (Ewald), but to be obliged to depart, compare the
New Testament eKh^iielv eic tov aco/j,aTo<; (2 Cor. v. 8). The
aTT. 767/3. t^\> might mean to cut off, or shorten (related to
qdphach) ; it is safer, however, and more appropriate, to take it
in the sense of rolling up, as in the name of the bp.dger (ch.
xiv. 23, xxxiv. 11), since otherwise what Hezekiah says of him-
self and of God would be tautological. I rolled or wound up
my life, as the weaver rolls up the finished piece of cloth : i.e.
I was sure of my death, namely, because God was about to
give me up to death ; He was about to cut me off from the
thrum (the future is here significantly interchanged with the
perfect). Dalldh is the thrum, licium, the threads of the warp
upon a loom, which becomes shorter and shorter the further
the weft proceeds, until at length the piece is finished, and the
weaver cuts through the short threads, and so sets it free (J!?f3,
118 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
cf. Job vi. 9, xxvii. 8). The strophe closes with the deep
lamentation which the sufferer poured out at that time : ne
could not help feeling that God would put an end to him
(sMlam, syn. kdldh, tdmam, gdmar) from day to night, i.e. in
the shortest time possible (compare Job iv. 20).
In strophe 2 the retrospective glance is continued. His
sufferings increased to such an extent, that there was nothing
left in his power but a whining moan — a languid look for
help.
Vers. 13, 14. " / waited patiently till the morning ; like the
lion,
So He broke in pieces all my bones :
From day to night Thou makest it all over with me.
Like a swallow, a crane, so I chirped;
I cooed like the dove :
Mine eyes pined for the height.
Lord, men assault me ! Be bail for me."
The meaning of shivvithi may be seen from Ps. cxxxi. 2, in
accordance with which an Arabic translator has rendered the
passage, " I smoothed, i.e. quieted (sdioeitu) my soul, notwith-
standing the sickness, aU night, until the morning." But the
morning brought no improvement ; the violence of the pain,
crushing him hke a lion, forced from him again and again the
mournful cry, that he must die before the day had passed, and
should not hve to see another. The Masora here has a remark,
which is of importance, as bearing upon Ps. xxii. 17, viz. that
nN3 occurs twice, and '<iv''b ^ni with two different meanings.
The meaning of 112^ D1D3 is determined by Jer. viii. 7, from
which it is evident that "lUV is not an attribnte of DID here, in
the sense of " chirping mournfully," or " making a circle in
its flight," but is the name of a particular bird, namely the
crane. For although the Targum and Syriac both seem to
render DID in that passage (keri D'D, which is the chethib here,
according to the reading of Orientals) by N^SIIS (a crane, Arab.'
Kurhi), and "1^5? by sn'SUD (the ordinary name of the swallow,
which Haji Gaon explains by the Arabic chuttaf), yet the
relation is really the reverse : sus (sis) is the swallow, and 'dgur
the crane. Hence Eashi, on b. Kiddusin Aia (" then cried
Ees Lakis like a crane"), gives 'dgur, Fr. gnie, as the rendering
CHAP. XXXVm. 15-17. 119
of S^aiia ; whereas Parchon (s.c. 'dgur) confounds the crane
with the hoarsely croaking stork (ciconia alba). The verb
' dtsaplitsepK answers very well not only to the flebile murmur
of the swallow (into wLich the penitential Pro^e was changed,
according to the Grecian myth), but also to the shrill shriek of
the crane, which is caused by the extraordinary elongation of
the windpipe, and is onomatopoelaeally expressed in its name
'dgur} Tsiphtseph, like rpi^eiv, is applied to every kind of
shrill, penetrating, inarticulate sound. The ordinary meaning
of dallu, to hang long and loose, has here passed over into
that of pining (syn. Mldh). The name of God in ver. 146
is Adonai, not JeJiovalt,' heing one of the 134 f*'^?, i-e. words
which are really written Adonai, and not merely to be read
so.^ It is impossible to take Y'ni^W as an imperative. The
pointing, according to which we are to read 'asJiqa, admits
this (compare sMmrdh in Ps. Ixxxvi. 2, cxix. 167 ; and on the
other hand, zochrdUi, in Neh. v. 19, etc.) ;^ but the usage of
the language does not yield any appropriate meaning for such
an imperative. It is either the third person, used in a neuter
sense, " it is sorrowful with me ;" or, what Luzzatto very
properly considers' still more probable, on account of the anti-
thesis of 'ashqdh and 'drbeni, a substantive QashqaJi for 'osheq),
" there is pressure upon me" (compare ''?"''n, ch. xxiv. 16), i.e.
it presses me hke an unmerciful creditor ; and to this there is
appended the petition. Guarantee me, i.e. be bail for me,
answer for me (see at Job xvii. 3).
In strophe 3 he now describes how Jehovah promised him
help, how this promise put new life into him, and how it was
fulfilled, and turned his sufferings into salvation.
VeL's. 15-17. " Wliat shall I say, that He promised me, and
He hath carried it out :
I should walk quietly all my years, on the frouble of my soul ? !
^ The call of tiie parent cxaneB, acearding to Namnann (^Vogel Deutsch-
Jands, ix. 364), is a rattlimg hrnh (_gruh), -whidi is uncommonly violeirt
when close, and has a trumpet-like sound, which makes it audible at a very
great distance. With the younger cranes it has a somewhat higher tone,
vhich often passes, so to speak, into a falsetto.
^ Vid. Bar, PsaMerium, p. 183.
» Vid. JBax, Thorath EmetTi, pp. 22, 23.
120 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
' Lord, hy such things men revive, and the life of my spirit
is always therein :
And so wilt Thou restore me, and make me to live !'
Behold, bitterness became salvation to me, bitterness ;
And Thou, Thou hast delivered my soul in love out of the pit
of destruction
Far Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy bach'.'
The question, "What shall I say?" is to be uaderstood as in
2 Sam. vii. 20, viz. What shall I say, to thank Him for having
promised me, and carried out His promise ? The Vav in 10K1
introduces the statement of his reason (Ges. § 155, 1, c). On
Tmj} (= <mm)j from 'rm (= K'J'^'^), see at Ps. xlii. 5. The
future here, in ver. 156, gives the purpose of God concerning
him. He was to walk (referring to the walk of life, not the
walk to the temple) gently (without any disturbance) all his
years upon the trouble of his soul, i.e. all the years that fol-
lowed upon it, the years that were added to his life. This is
the true explanation of ?y, as in ch. xxxviii. 5, xxxii. 10, Lev.
XV. 25 ; not "in spite of" (Ewald), or "with," as in Ps. xxxi.
24, Jer. vi. 14, where it forms an adverb. A better rendering
than this would be " for," or " on account of," i.e. in humble
salutary remembrance of the way in which God by His free
grace averted the danger of death. What follows in ver. 16
can only be regarded in connection with the petition in ver. 166,
as Hezekiah's reply to the promise of God, which had been
communicated to him by the prophet. Consequently the
neuters ^\y?V. and t^a (cf . ch. Ixiv. 4, Job xxii. 21, Ezek. xxxiii.
18, 19) refer to the gracious words and gracious acts of God.
These are the true support of life (?y as in Deut. viii. 3) for
every man, and in these does the life of his spirit consist, i.e.
his inmost and highest source of life, and that "on all sides"
(?3?, which it would be more correct to point ?3?, as in 1 Chron.
vii. 5 ; cf. bakkol, in every respect, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5). With this
explanation, the conjecture of Ewald and Knobel, that the
reading should be \T\r\, falls to the ground. From the general
truth of which he had made a personal application, that the
word of God is the source of all life, he drew this conclusion,
which he here repeats with a retrospective glance, " So wilt
Thou then make me whole (see the kal in Job xxxix. 4), and
CHAP. XXXVIII. 18-20. 121
keep me alive" (for ''^^'H^^ ; with the hope passing over into a
prayer). The praise for the fulfilment of the promise com-
mences with the word hinneh (behold). His severe illness had
been sent in anticipation of a happy deliverance (on the radical
signification of mar, which is here doubled, to give it a super-
lative force, see Job, vol. i. 279). The Lord meant it for good;
the suffering was indeed a chastisement, but it was a chastise-
ment of love. Casting all his sins behind Him, as men do
with things which they do not wish to know, or have no desire to
be reminded of (compare e.^.Neh. ix. 26), He "loved him out,"
i.e. drew him lovingly out, of the pit of destruction (chdshag,
love as a firm inward bond ; bHt, which is generally used as a
particle, stands here in its primary substantive signification,
from bdldh, to consume).
In strophe 4 he rejoices in the preservation of his life as
the highest good, and promises to praise God for it as long as
he lives.
Vers. 18-20. "For Hades does not praise Thee; death does
not sing praises to Thee:
They that sink into the grave do not hope for Thy truth.
The living, the living, he praises TJiee, as I do to-day ;
The father to the children makes known Thy truth.
Jehovah is ready to give me salvation ;
Therefore will we play my stringed instruments all the days
of my life
In the house of Jehovah."
We have here that comfortless idea of the future state,
which, is so common in the Psalms {vid. Ps. vi. 6, xxx. 10,
Ixxxviii. 12, 13, of. cxv. 17), and also in the book of Ecclesi-
astes (Eccles. ix. 4, 5, 10). The foundation of this idea, not-
withstanding the mythological dress, is an actual truth {vid.
Psychol, p. 409), which the personal. faith of the hero of Job
endeavours to surmount {Comment, pp. 150-153, and elsewhere),
but the decisive removal of which was only to be effected by
the progressive history of salvation. The verse is introduced
with "for" {ki), inasmuch as the gracious act of God is accounted
for on the ground that He wished to be still further glorified
by His servant whom He delivered. N^, in ver. 18a, is written
only once instead of twice, as in ch. xxiii. 4. They " sink
122 THE PEOPHEGIES OF ISAIAH
into the grave," i.e. are not thought of as dying, but as already
dead. " Truth" {'gmeth) is the sincerity of God, with which
He keeps His promises. Ver. 196 reminds us that Manasseh,
who was twelve years old when he succeeded iiis father, was
not yet bom (cf. eh. sxxix. 7). The 'iV'ft^^ nin^^, fi^XXei, o-wfetj/
fie, is the same as in ch. xxxvii. 26. The change in the number
in ver. 20b may be explained from the fact that the writer
thought of himself as the choral leader of his family ; ay is a
suffix, not a substantive termination (Ewald, § 164, p. 427).
The impression follows us to the end, that we have cultivated
rather than original poetry here. Hezekiah's love to the older
sacred literature is well known. He restored the liturgical
psalmody (2 Ohron. xxix. 30). He caused a further collection
of proverbs to be made, as a supplement to the older book of
Proverbs (Prov. xxv. 1). The "men of Hezekiah" resembled
the Pisistratian Society, of which Onomacritos was the head.
On vers. 21, 22, see the notes at the close o£ vers. 4-6,
where thesp two verses belong.
D. THREATENING OF THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OCCA-
SIONED BY HEZEKIAH. — CHAP. XXXIX.
From this point onwards the text of the book of Kings (2
Kings XX. 12-19, cf. 2 Ohron. xxxii. 24-31) runs parallel to
the text before us. Babylonian ambassadors have an interview
with the convalescent king of Jndah. Ver. 1. " At that time
Merodacli Bat adan (K, Berodach Bal'adan), son of BaFadan
king of Babel, sent writings and a present to Hizkiyahu, and
heard (K. for he had heard) that he (K. Hizkiyahu) had been sick,
and was restored again." The two texts here share the original
text between them. Instead of the unnatural i'OB'»1 (which
would link the cause on to the effect, as in 2 Sam. xiv. 5), we
should read V^^ ''3, whereas PIP'I in our text appears to be the
genuine word out of which iniptn in the other text has sprung,
although it is not indispensable, as ri?n has a pluperfect sense.
In a similar manner the name of the king of Babylon is given
here correctly as ^l^no (Nissel, Xpo without s, as in Jer. 1. 2),
whilst the book of Kings has ^li^ia (according to the Masora
with k), prohably occasioned by the othername Bal'adan, which
begins witli Beth. It cannot be maintained that the words
CHAP. XXXIX. 1. 123
ben BaV&ddn axe a mistake ; at the same time, Bal'adan (Jos.
Baladas) evidently cannot be a name by itself if M'rodakh
BaV&ddn signifies " Merodach (the Babylonian Bel or Jupiter ^)
jilium dedit."^ In the Canon Ptol. Mardokempados is preceded
by a Jugosus ; and the inscriptions, according to G. Kawlinson,
Mon. ii. 395, indicate Merodach-Baladan as the " son of YaKw."
They relate that the latter acknowledged Tiglath-pileser as his
feudal lord ; that, after reigning twelve years as a vassal, he
rose in rebellion against Sargon in league with the Susanians
and the Aramaean tribes above Babylonia, and lost everything
except his life ; that he afterwards rebelled against Sennacherib
in conjunction with a Chaldean prince named Susub, just after
Sennacherib had returned from his first^ Judsean campaign
to Nineveh ; and that having been utterly defeated, he took
refuge in an island of the Persian Gulf. He does not make
his appearance any more ; but Susub escaped from his place of
concealment, and being supported by the Susanians and cer-
tain Aramaean tribes, fought a long and bloody battle with
Sennacherib on the Lower Tigris. This battle he lost, and
Nebo-somriskun, a son of Merodach Baladan, fell into the hands
of the conqueror. In the midst of these details, as given by the
inscriptions, the statement of the Can. Ptol. may still be main-
tained, according to which the twelve years of Mardokempados
(a contraction, as Ewald supposes, of Mardohempalados) com-
mence with the year 721. From this point onwards the biblical
and extra-biblical accounts dovetail together ; whereas in Poly-
histor (Eus. chron. arm.) the following Babylonian rulers are
mentioned : " a brother of Sennacherib, Acises, who reigned
hardly a month ; Marodach Baladan, six months ; Elibus into
the third year; Asordan, Sennacherib's son, who was made
king after the defeat of Elibus." Now, as the Can. Ptolem.
also gives a Belibos with a three years' reign, the identity of
Mardokempados and Marodach Baladan is indisputable. The
Can. Ptol. seems only to take into account his legitimate reign
as a vassal, and Polyhistor (from Berosus) only his last act
of rebellion. At the same time, this is very far from removing
all the difficulties that lie in the way of a reconciliation, more
' Rawlmson, MennrcMes, i. 169.
^ Oppert, Expedition, ii. 855.
* The iascriptJonB mention two campaigns.
124 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
especially the chronological difficulties. Kawlinson, who places
the commencement of the (second) Judsean campaign in the
year 698, and therefore transfers it to the end of the twenty-
ninth year of Hezekiah's reign instead of the middle, sets
himself in opposition not only to ch. xxxvi. 1, hut also to
ch. xxxviii. 5 and 2 Kings xviii. 2. According to the biblical
accounts, as compared with the Can. FtoL, the embassy must
have been sent by Merodach Baladan during the period of his
reign as vassal, which commenced in the year 721. Apparently
it had only the harmless object of congratulating the king upon
his recovery (and also, according to 2 Chron. xxxii. 31, of
making some inquiry, in the interests of Chaldean astrology,
into the mopheth connected with the sun-dial) ; but it cer-
tainly had also the secret political object of making common
cause with Hezekiah to throw off the Assyrian yoke. All that
can be maintained with certainty beside this is, that the embassy
cannot have been sent before the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's
reign ; for as he reigned twenty-nine years, his illness must
have occurred, according to ch. xxxviii. 5, in the fourteenth
year itself, i.e. the seventh year of Mardokempados. Such
questions as whether the embassy came before or after the
Assyrian catastrophe, which was still in the future at the time
referred to in ch. xxxviii. 4-6, or whether it came before or
after the payment of the compensation money to Sennacherib
(2 Kings xviii. 14-16), are open to dispute. In all probability
it took place immediately before the Assyrian campaign,' as
Hezekiah was still able to show off the abundance of his riches
to the Babylonian ambassadors.
Ver. 2. "And Hezekiah rejoiced (K. heard, which is quite
inappropriate) concerning them, and showed them (K. all) his
storehouse : the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the fine oil
(Jiasshdmen, K. shemen), and all his arsenal, and all that was in
his treasures : there was nothing that Eezehiah had not shown
them, in his house or in all his kingdom." Although there were
' A reviewer in the Theol. L. Bl. 1857, p. 12, inqiiires : " How could
the prophet have known that all that Hezekiah showed to the Babylonian
ambassador would one day be brought to Babylon, when in a very short
time these treasures would all have been given by Hezekiah to the king of
Assyria ? " Answer : The prophecy is so expressed in ch. xxxis. 6, 7, that
this intervening occurrence does not prejudice its truth at all.
CHAf. XXXIX. 3-8. 125
spices kept in HSJ n''3, n33 is not equivalent to n^^^3 (from K33,
to break to pieces, to pulverize), which is applied to gum-dragon
and other drugs, but is the niplial nbJ from ffis {piel, Arab,
Jcayyata, to cram full, related to D13 (D''3), D33 (D33), and pos-
sibly also to DnSj katama (Hitzig, Knobel, Fiirst), and conse-
quently it does not mean " the house of his spices," as Aquila,
Symmachus, and the Vulgate render it, but his "treasure-
house or storehouse" (Targ., Syr., Saad.). It differs, however,
from bSth kelim, the wood house of Lebanon (ch. xxii. 8). He
was able to show them all that was worth seeing " in his whole
kingdom," inasmuch as it was all concentrated in Jerusalem,
the capital.
The consequences of this coqueting with the children of
the stranger, and this vain display, are pointed out in vers. 3—8 :
" Then came Isaiah the prophet to hing Hizkiyahu, and said to
him, What have these men said, and whence come they to thee ?
Hizkiyahu said. They came to me from a far country (K. omits
to me), out of Babel. He said further. What have they seen
in thy house ? Hizkiyahu said. All that is in my house have
they seen: there was nothing in my treasures that I had not
shown them. Then Isaiah said to Hizkiyahu, Hear the word of
Jehovah of hosts (K. omits ts'hhdSoth) ; Behold, days come, that all
that is in thy house, and all that thy fathers have laid up unto
this day, will be carried away to Babel (^^^ K. <^^rj^) : nothing will
be left behind, saith Jehovah. And of thy children that proceed
from thee, wJiom thou shalt beget, loill they take (K. chetliib, ' will
he take ') ; and they will be courtiers in the palace of tJie king of
Babel. Then said Hizkiyahu to Isaiah, Good is the word of
Jehovah which thou hast spoken. And he said further, Yea Q^,
K. Oii Nit'n), there shall be peace and stedfastness in my days."
Hezekiah's two candid answers in vers. 3 and 4 are an invo-
luntary condemnation of his own conduct, which was sinful in
two i-espects. This self-satisfied display of worthless earthly
possessions would bring its own punishment in their loss ; and
this obsequious suing for admiration and favour on the part
of strangers, would be followed by plundering and enslaving
on the part of those very same strangers whose envy he had
excited. The prophet here foretells the Babylonian captivity ;
but, in accordance with the occasion here given, not as the
destiny of the whole nation, but as that of the house of David.
126 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Even political shai'p-siglitedness might have foreseen, tliat some
such disastrous consequences would follow Hezekiah's impru-
dent course ; but this absolute certainty, that Babylon, which
was then struggling hard for independence, would really be
the heiress to the Assyrian government of the world, and that
it was not from Assyria, which was actually threatening Judah
with destruction for its rebellion, but from Babylon, that this
destruction would really come, was impossible without the spirit
of prophecy. We may infer from ver. 7 (cf. ch. xxxviii. 19,
and for the fulfilment, Dan. i. 3) that Hezekiah had no son as
yet, at least none with a claim to the throne ; and this is con-
firmed by 2 Kings xxi. 1. So far as the concluding words are
concerned, we should quite misunderstand them, if we saw
nothing in them hut common egotism. ''3 (for) is explanatory
here, and therefore confirmatory. D^ 5<i7n, however, does not
mean " yea, if only," as Ewald supposes (§ 324, b), but is also
explanatory, though in an interrogative form, " Is it not good
(i.e. still gracious and kind), if," etc. ? He submits with
humility to the word of Jehovah, in penitential acknowledgment
of his vain, shortsighted, untheocratic conduct, and feels that
he is mercifully spared by God, inasmuch as the divine bless-
ings of peace and stability (OOK a self-attesting state of things,
without any of those changes which disappoint our confident
expectations) would continue. "Although he desired the pros-
perity of future ages, it would not have been right for him
to think it nothing that God had given him a token of His
clemency, by delaying His judgment " (Calvin).
Over the kingdom of Judah there was now hanging the
very same fate of captivity and exile, which had put an end to
the kingdom of Israel eight years before. When the author of
the book of Kings prefaces the four accounts of Isaiah in 2
Kings xviii. 13-20, with the recapitulation in 2 Kings xviii.
9-12 (cf. ch. xvii. 5, 6), his evident meaning is, that the end
of the kingdom of Israel, and the beginning of the end of the
kingdom of Judah, had their meeting-point iu Hezekiah's time.
As Israel fell under the power of the Assyrian empire, which
foundered upon Judah, though only through a miraculous
manifestation of the grace of God (see Hos. i. 7) ; so did
Judah fall a victim to the Babylonian empii-e. The four
accounts are so arranged, that the first two, together with the
CHAP. XXXIX. 3-8. 127
epilogue in Isa. xxxvii. 36 sqq., which contains the account of
the fulfilment, bring the Assyrian period of judgment to a
close ; and the last two, with the eventful sketch in ch. xxxix.
6, 7, open the way for the great bulk of the prophecies which
now follow in ch. xl.-lxvi., relating to the Babylonian period
of judgment. This Janus-headed arrangement of the contents
of ch. xxxvi.-xxxix. is a proof that this histoiical section formed
an original part of the " vision of Isaiah." At any rate, it leads
to the conclusion that, whoever arranged the four accounts in
their present order, had ch. xl.-lxvi. before him at the time.
We believe, however, that we may, or rather, considering the
prophetico-historical style of ch. xxxvi.-xxxix., that we must,
draw the still further conclusion, that Isaiah himself, when he
revised the collection of his prophecies at the end of Hezekiah's
reign, or possibly not till the beginning of Manasseh'si, bridged
over the division between the two halves of the collection by the
historical trilogy in the seventh book.
SECOND HALF OF THE COLLECTION.
CHAP. XL.-LXYI.
The first half consisted of seven parts ; the second consists of
three. The trilogical arrangement of this cycle of prophecies
has hardly been disputed by any one, since Riickert pointed it
out in his Translation of the Hebrew Prophets (1831). And it
is equally certain that each part consists of 3 X 3 addresses.
The division of the chapters furnishes an unintentional proof
of this, though the true commencement is not always indi-
cated. The first part embraces the following nine addresses :
ch. xl. ; xli. ; xlii. 1-xliii. 13 ; xliii. 14-xliv. 5 ; xliv. 6-23 ;
xliv. 24-xlv. ; xlvi. ; xlvii. ; xlviii. The second part includes
the following nine : ch. xlix. ; 1. ; li. ; lii. 1-12 ; lii. 13-liii. ;
liv. ; Iv. ; Ivi. 1-8 ; Ivi. 9-lvii. The third part the following
nine : ch. Iviii. ; lix. ; Ix. ; Ixi. ; Ixii. ; Ixiii. 1-6 ; Ixiii. 7-lxiv. ;
Ixv. ; Ixvi. It is only in the middle of the first part that the
division is at all questionable. In the other two it is hardly
possible to err. The theme of the whole is the comforting
announcement of the approaching deliverance, and its attendant
summons to repentance. For the deliverance itself was for the
Israel, which remained true to the confession of Jehovah in
the midst of affliction and while redemption was delayed, and
not for the rebellious, who denied Jehovah in word and deed,
and thus placed themselves on the level of the heathen.
" There is no peace, saith Jehovah, for the wicked:" with these
words does the first part of the twenty-seven addresses close in
ch. xlviii. 22. ^he second closes in ch. Ivii. 21 in a more
excited and fuller tone : " There is no peace, saith my God, for
the ivicked." And at the close of the third part (ch. Ixvl. 24)
the prophet drops this form of refrain, and declares the miser-
able end of the wicked in deeply pathetic though horrifying
terms : " Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be
128
CHAP. XL.-LXVI. 129
quenched, andiliey sJiall he an abhorrence to all flesh;" just as, at
the close of the fifth book of the Psalms, the shorter form of
b'rakhdh (blessing) is dropt, and an entire psalm, the Hallelujah
(Ps. cl.), takes its place.
The three parts, which are thus marked off by the prophet
himself, are only variations of the one theme common to them
all. At the same time, each has its own leading thought, and
its own special key-note, which is struck in the very first words.
In each of the three parts, also, a different antithesis stands
in the foreground : viz. in the first part, ch. xl.-xlviii., the con-
trast between Jehovah and the idols, and between Israel and
the heathen ; in the second part, ch. xlix.-lvii., the contrast
between the present suffering of the Servant of Jehovah and
His future glory; in the third part, ch. Iviii.-lxvi., the con-
trast observable in the heart of Israel itself, between the hypo-
crites, the depraved, the rebellious, on the one side, and the
faithful, the mourning, the persecuted, on the other. The first
part sets forth the deliverance from Babylon, in which the
prophecy of Jehovah is fulfilled, to the shame and overthrow of
the idols and their worshippers ; the second part, the way of
the Servant of Jehovah through deep humiliation to exaltation
and glory, which is at the same time the exaltation of Israel to
the height of its world-wide calling ; the third part, the indis-
pensable conditions of participation in the future redemption
and glory. There is some truth in Hahn's opinion, that the
distinctive characteristics of the three separate parts are ex-
hibited in the three clauses of ch. xl. 2 : " that her distress is
ended, that her debt is paid, that she has received (according to
his explanation, ' will receive ') double for all Jier sins." For
the central point of the first part is really the termination of
the Babylonian distress ; that of the second, the expiation of
guilt by the self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah ; and that
of the third, the assurance that the sufferings will be followed
by "a far more exceeding weight of glory." The promise
rises higher and higher in the circular movements of the 3 X 9
addresses, until at length, it reaches its zenith in ch. Ixv. and
Ixvi., and links time and eternity together.
So far as the language is concerned, there is nothing more
finished or more elevated in the whole of the Old Testament
than this trilogy of addresses by Isaiah. In ch. i.-xxxix. of
VOL. II. I
130 THE PEOPHKCIES OF ISAIAH.
the collection, the prophet's language is generally more com-
pressed, chiselled (lapidarisch), plastic, although even there his
style passes through all varieties of colour. But here in ch.
xl.-lxvi., where he no longer has his foot upon the soil of his
own time, but is transported into the far distant future, as into
his own home, even the language retains an ideal and, so to
speak, ethereal character. It has grown into a broad, pellucid,
shining stream, which floats us over as it were into the world
heyond, upon majestic yet gentle and translucent waves.
There are only two passages in which it becomes more harsh,
turbid, and ponderous, viz. ch. liii. and Ivi. 9-lvii. 11a. In the
former it is the emotion of sorrow which throws its shadow
upon it; in the latter, the emotion of wrath. And in every
other instance in which it changes, we may detect at once the
influence of the object and of the emotion. In ch. Isiii. 7 the
prophet strikes the note of the liturgical fphillali ; in ch. Ixiii.
196-lxiv. 4 it is sadness which chokes the stream of words ; in
ch. Ixiv. 5 you hear, as in Jer. iii. 25, the key-note of the
liturgical vidduy, or confessional prayer.
And when we turn to the contents of his trilogy, it is
more incomparable still. It commences with a prophecy, which
gave to John the Baptist the great theme of his preaching.
It closes with the prediction of the creation of a new heaven
and new earth, beyond which even the last page of the New
Testament Apocalypse cannot go. And in the centre (ch. Iii.
13— liii.) the sufferings and exaltation of Christ are proclaimed
as clearly, as if the prophet had stood beneath the cross itself,
and had seen the Risen Saviour. He is transported to the very
commencement of the New Testament times, and begins just
like the New Testament evangelists. He afterwards describes
the death and resurrection of Christ as completed events, with
all the clearness of a Pauline discourse. And lastly, he clings
to the heavenly world beyond, like John in the Apocalypse.
Yet the Old Testament limits are not disturbed; but within
those limits, evangelist, apostle, and apocalyptist are all con-
densed into one. Throughout the whole of these addresses we
never meet with a strictly Messianic prophecy ; and yet they
have more christological depth than all the Messianic prophecies
taken together. The bright picture of the coming King, which
is met with in the earlier Messianic prophecies, undergoes a
CHAP. XL.-LXVI. 131
metamorphosis here, oat of which it issues enriched by many
essential elements, viz. those of the two status, the mors vicaria,
and the inunus triplex. The dark typical background of
suffering, which the mournful Davidic psalms give to the figure
of the Messiah, becomes here for the first time an object of
direct prediction. The place of the Son of David, who is only
a King, is now taken by the Servant of Jehovah, who is Prophet
and Priest by virtue of His self-sacrifice, and King as well ; the
Saviour of Israel and of the Gentiles, persecuted even to death
by His own nation, but exalted by God to be both Priest and
King. So rich and profound a legacy did Isaiah leave to the
church of the captivity, and to the church of the future also,
yea, even to the New Jerusalem upon the new earth. Heng-
stenberg has very properly compared these prophecies of Isaiah
to the Deuteronomic " last words " of Moses in the steppes
of Moab, and to the last words of the Lord Jesus, within the
circle of His own disciples, as reported by John. It is a
thoroughly esoteric book, left to the church for future inter-
pretation. To none of the Old Testament prophets who
followed him was the ability given perfectly to open the book.
Nothing but the coming of the Servant of Jehovah in the
person of Jesus Christ could break all the seven seals. But
was Isaiah really the author of this book of consolation ?
Modern criticism visits all who dare to assert this with the
double ban of want of science and want of conscience. It
regards Isaiah's authorship as being quite as impossible as any
miracle in the sphere of nature, of history, or of the spirit.
No prophecies find any favour in its eyes, but such as can be
naturally explained. It knows exactly how far a prophet can
see, and where he must stand, in order to see so far. But
we are not tempted at all to purchase such omniscience at the
price of the supernatural. We believe in the supernatural
reality of prophecy, simply because history furnishes indis-
putable proofs of it, and because a supernatural interposition
on the part of God in both the inner and outer life of man
takes place even at the present day, and can be readily put to
the test. But this interposition varies greatly both in degree
and kind ; and even in the far-sight of the prophets there were
the greatest diversities, according to the measure of their
charisma. It is quite possible, therefore, that Isaiah may
132 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
have foreseen the calamities of the Babylonian age and the
deliverance that followed " by an excellent spirit," as the spn of
Sirach says (Ecclus. xlviii. 24), and may have lived and moved
in these "last things," even at a time when the Assyrian
empire was still standing. But we do not regard all that is
possible as being therefore real. We can examine quite im-
partially whether this really was the case, and without our
ultimate decision being under the constraint of any unalterable
foregone conclusion, like that of the critics referred to. All
that we have said in praise of ch. xl.-lxvi. would retain its
fullest force, even if the author of the whole should prove to be
a prophet of the captivity, and not Isaiah.
We have already given a cursory glance at the general and
particular grounds upon which we maintain the probability, or
rather the certainty, that Isaiah was the author of ch. xl.-lxvi.
(vid. vol. i. pp. 57-62) ; and we have explained them more fully
in the concluding remarks to Drechsler's Commentary (vol. iii.
.pp. 361-416), to which we would refer any readers who wish
to obtain a complete insight into the pro and con of this critical
question. All false supports of Isaiah's authorship have there
been M'illingly given up ; for the words of Job to his friends
(xiii. 7, 8) are quite as applicable to a biblical theologian of
the present day.
We have admitted, that throughout the whole of the
twenty-seven prophecies, the author of ch. xl.-lxvi. has the
captivity as his fixed standpoint, or at any rate as a standpoint
that is only so far a fluctuating one, as the eventual deliverance
approaches nearer and nearer, and that without ever betraying
the difference between the real present and this ideal one ; so
that as the prophetic vision of the future has its roots in every
other instance in the soil of the prophet's own time, and springs
out of that soil, to all appearance he is an exile himself. But
notwithstanding this, the following arguments may be adduced
in support of Isaiah's authorship. In the first place, the de-
liverance foretold in these prophecies, with all its attendant
circumstances, is referred to as something beyond the reach of
human foresight, and known to Jehovah alone, and as some-
thing the occurrence of which would prove Him to be the God
of Gods. Jehovah, the God of the prophecy, knew the name
of Cyrus even before he knew it himself; and He demon'
CHAP. XL.-LXVI. 133
strated His Godhead to all the world, inasmuch as He caused
the name and work of the deliverer of Israel to be foretold (ch.
xlv. 4-7). Secondly, although these prophecies rest through-
out upon the soil of the captivity, and do not start with the
historical basis of Hezekiah's time, as we should expect them
to do, with Isaiah as their author ; yet the discrepancy between
this phenomenon and the general character of prophecy else-
where, loses its full force as an argument against Isaiah's
authorship, if we do not separate ch. xl.-lxvi. from ch. i.-xxxix.
and take it as an independent work, as is generally done. The
whole of the first half of the collection is a staircase, leading
up to these addresses to the exiles, and bears the same relation
to them, as a whole, as the Assyrian pedestal in ch. xiv. 24r-27 to
the Babylonian massd' in ch. xiii.-xiv. 26 (see vol. i. 317). This
relation between the two — namely, that Assyrian prophecies
lay the foundation for Babylonian — runs through the whole of
the first half. It is so arranged, that the prophecies of the
Assyrian times throughout have intermediate layers, which
reach beyond those times ; and whilst the former constitute the
groundwork, the latter form the gable. This is the relation in
which ch. xxiv.-xxvii. stand to ch. xiii.— xxiii., and ch. xxxiv.
XXXV. to ch. xxviii.-xxxiii. And within the cycle of prophecies
against the nations, three Babylonian prophecies — viz. ch.
xiii.-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10, and xxiii. — form the commencement,
middle, and end. The Assyrian prophecies lie within a circle,
the circumference and diameter of which consist of prophecies
that have a longer span. And are all these prophecies, that
are inserted with such evident skill and design, to be taken
away from our prophet? The oracle concerning Babel, in
ch. xiii.-xiv. 23, has all the ring of a prophecy of Isaiah's, as
we have already seen ; and in the epilogue, in ch. xiv. 24-27,
it has Isaiah's signature. The second oracle concerning Babel,
in ch. xxi. 1-10, is not only connected with three passages of
Isaiah's that are acknowledged as genuine, so as to form a
tetralogy ; but in style and spirit it is most intimately bound
up with them. The cycle of prophecies of the final cata-
strophe (ch. xxiv.-xxvii.) commences so thoroughly in Isaiah's
style, that nearly every word and every turn in the first three
verses bears Isaiah's stamp ; and in ch. xxvii. 12, 13, it dies
away, just like the book of Immanuel, ch. xi. 11 sqq. And
134 THE PBOFHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the genuineness of ch. xxxiv. and xxxv. has never yet been
disputed on any vahd grounds. Knobel, indeed, maintains
that the historical background of this passage establishes its
spuriousness ; but it is impossible to detect any background of
contemporaneous history. Edom in this instance represents
the world, as opposed to the people of God, just as Moab does
in ch. XXV. Consider, moreover, that these disputed prophecies
form a series which constitutes in eveiy respect a prelude to
ch. xl.-lxvi. Have we not in ch. xiv. 1, 2, the substance of
ch. xl.-lxvi., as it were, in nuce ? Is not the trilogy " Babel," in
ch. slvi.-xlviii., like an expansion of the vision in ch. xxi. 1-10 ?
Is not the prophecy concerning Edom in ch. xxxiv. the side-
piece to ch. Ixiii, 1-6 ? And do we not hear in ch. xxxv. the
direct prelude to the melody, which is continued in ch. xl.-lxvi. ?
And to this we may add still further the fact, that prominent
marks of Isaiah are common alike to the disputed prophecies,
and to those whose genuineness is acknowledged. The name
of God, which is so characteristic of Isaiah, and which we meet
with on every hand in acknowledged prophecies in ch, i.-xxxix.,
viz. " the Holy One of Israel," runs also through ch. xl.-lxvi.
(vol. i. 193). And so again do the confirmatory words, "Thus
saith Jehovah," and the interchange of the national names
Jacob and Israel (compare, for example, ch. xl. 27 with ch.
xxix. 23).^ The rhetorical figure called epanapliora, which
may be illustrated by an Arabic proverb,^ —
" Enjoy the scent of the yellow roses of Negd;
For when the evening is gone, it is over with the yellow roses,"
is very rare apart from the book of Isaiah (Gen. vi. 9 xxxv.
12 ; Lev. sxv. 41 ; Job xi. 7) ; whereas in the book of Isaiah
itself it runs Hke a favourite oratorical turn from beginning to
end {vid. ch. i. 7, iv. 3, vi. 11, xiii. 10, xiv. 25, xv. 8, xxx. 20,
xxxiv. 9, xl. 19, xlii. 15, 19, xlviii. 21, li. 13, liii. (J 7 ijv. 4
13, 1. 4, Iviii. 2, lix. 8,— a collection of examples which could
probably be still further increased). But there are still deeper
lines of connection than these. How strikingly for example
^ The remark which we made at vol. i. p. 117, to the effect that Isaiah
prefers Israel, is therefore to be qualified, inasmuch as in ch. xl.-lxvi. Jacob
takes precedence of Israel.
2 See Mehren, Rhetorik der Araber, p. 161 sqq.
CilAP. XL.-LXVI. 135
does cb. xxviii. 5 ring in harmony with ch. Ixii. 3, and ch.
xxix. 23 (cf. V. 7) with ch. Ix. 21 ! And does not the leading
thought which is expressed in ch. xxii. 11, xxxvii. 26 (cf. ch.
XXV. 1), viz. that whatever is realized in history has had its
pre-existence as an idea in God, run with a multiplied echo
through ch. xl.-lxvi. ? And does not the second half repeat,
in ch. Ixv. 25, in splendidly elaborate paintings, and to some
extent in the very same words (which is not unlike Isaiah),
what we have already found in ch. xi. 6 sqq., xxx. 26, and
other passages, concerning the future glorification of the earthly
and heavenly creation? Yea, we may venture to maintain
(and no one has ever attempted to refute it), that the second
half of the book of Isaiah (ch. xl.-lxvi), so far as its theme, its
standpoint, its style, and its ideas are concerned, is in a state
ci continuous formation throughout the whole of the first (ch.
i.-xxxix.). On the frontier of the two halves, the prediction in
ch. xxxix. 5, 7 stands like a sign-post, with the inscription, " To
Babylon." There, viz. in Babylon, is henceforth Isaiah's spi-
ritual home ; there he preaches to the church of the captivity
the way of salvation, and the consolation of redemption, but to
the rebellious the terrors of judgment.
That this is the case, is confirmed by the reciprocal relation
in which ch. xl.-lxvi. stand to all the other literature of the
Old Testament with which we are acquainted. In ch. xl.-lxvi.
we find reminiscences from the book of Job (compare ch. xl.
23 with Job xii. 24 ; xliv. 25 with Job xii. 17, 20; xliv. 24 with
Job ix. 8 ; xl. 14 with Job xxi. 22 ; lix. 4 with Job xv. 35 and
Ps. vii, 15). And the first half points back to Job in just the
same manner. The poetical words VJ^, la^rin, t3''SSKV, are only
met with in the book of Isaiah and the book of Job. Once at
least, namely ch. lix. 7, we are reminded of mishle (Prov. i. 16) ;
whilst in the first half we frequently met with imitations of
the mdshdl of Solomon. The two halves stand in exactly the
same relation to the book of Micah ; compare ch. Iviii. 1 with
Mic. iii. 8, like ii. 2-4 with Mic. iv. 1-4, and xxvi. 21 with
Mic. i. 3. And the same relation to Nahum runs through the
two ; compare Nah. iii. 4, 5 with ch. xlvii., ii. 1 with Hi. 7a, lb,
and ii. 11 with xxiv. 1, iii. 13 with xix. 16. "We leave the
question open, on which side the priority lies. But when we
find in Zephaniah and Jeremiah points of contact not only with
136 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ch. xl.-]xvi., but also with ch. xiii.-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10, xxxiv.-
XXXV., which preclude the possibility of accident, it is more than
improbable that these two prophets should have been imitated
by the author of ch. xl.-lxvi., since it is in them above all
others that we meet with the peculiar disposition to blend the
words and thoughts of their predecessors with their own. Not
only does Zephaniah establish points of contact with Isa. xiii.
and xxxiv. in by no means an accidental manner, but compare
ch. ii. 15 with Isa. xlvii. 8, 10, and ch. iii. 10 with Isa. Ixvi.
20. The former passage betrays its derivative character by
the fact that vb^ is a word that belongs exclusively to Isaiah j
whilst the latter is not only a compendium of Isa. Ixvi. 20,
but also points back to Isa. xviii. 1, 7, in the expression
CT3-nn5^ lavD. In Jeremiah, the indication of dependence upon
Isaiah comes out most strongly in the prophecy against Babylon
in Jer. 1. li. ; in fact, it is so strong, that Movers, Hitzig,
and De Wette regard the anonymous author of ch. xl.-lxvi.
as the interpolator of this prophecy. But it also contains echoes
of Isa. xiii., xiv., xxi., and xxxiv., and is throughout a Mosaic
of earlier prophecies. The passage in Jer. x. 1-16 concern-
ing the nothingness of the gods of the nations, sounds also
most strikingly like Isaiah's ; compare more especially Isa. xliv.
12-15, xli. 7, xlvi. 7, though the attempt has also been made
to render this intelligible by the interpolation hypothesis. It
is not only in vers. 6-8 and 10, which are admitted to be
Jeremiah's, that we meet with the peculiar characteristics of
Jeremiah ; but even in passages that are rejected we find such
expressions of his as nai, DniS for DriX, "ij??:, D''j;rij;ri, iTniJS, a
penal visitation, such as we never meet with in Isaiah ii. And
the whole of the consolatory words in Jer. xxx. 10, 11, and
again in xlvi. 27, 28, which sound so much like the deutero-
Isaiah, are set down as having been inserted in the book of
Jeremiah by Isaiah II. But Caspari has shown that this is im-
possible, because the concluding words of the promise, " I will
correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether
unpunished," would have no meaning at all if uttered at the
close of the captivity ; and also, because such elements as are
evidently Jeremiah's, and in which it coincides with prophecies
of Jeremiah that are acknowledged to be genuine, far outweigh
those of the deutero-Isaiah. And yet in this passage, when
CHAP. XL-LXVI. 137
Israel is addressed as "my servant," we hear the tone of the
deutero-Isaiah. Jei-emiah fuses in this instance, as in many
other passages, the tones of Isaiah with his own. There are
also many other passages which coincide with passages of the
second part of Isaiah, both in substance and expression, though
not so conclusively as those already quoted, and in which we
have to decide between regarding Jeremiah as an imitator, or
Isaiah ii. as an interpolator. But if we compare Jer. vi. 15
with Isa. Ivi. 11, and Isa. xlviii. 6 with Jer. xxxiii. 3, where
Jeremiah, according to his usual custom, gives a different turn
to the original passages by a slight change in the letters, we
shall find involuntary reminiscences of Isaiah in Jeremiah, in
such parallels as Jer. iii. 16, Isa. Ixv. 17 ; Jer. iv. 13, Isa. Ixvi,
15; Jer. xi. 19, Isa. liii. ; and shall hear the ring of Isa. li.
17-23 in Jeremiah's qinoth, and that of Isa. Ivi. 9-lvii. 11a in
the earlier reproachful addresses of Jeremiah, and not vice versa.
In conclusion, let us picture to ourselves the gradual de-
velopment of Isaiah's view of the captivity, that penal judgment
already threatened in the law. (1.) In the UzziaJi-Jotham age
the prophet refers to the captivity, in the most general terms that
can be conceived, in ch. vi. 12, though he mentions it casually
by its own name even in ch. v. 13. (2.) In the time of Ahaz
we already see him far advanced beyond this first sketchy
reference to the captivity. In ch. xi. 11 sqq. he predicts a
second deliverance, resenibling the Egyptian exodus. Asshur
stands at the head of the countries of the diaspora, as the
imperial power by which the judgment of captivity is carried
out. (3.) In the early years of Hezekiah, ch. xxii. 18 appears to
indicate the carrying away of Judah by Asshur. But when
the northern kingdom had succumbed to the judgment of the
Assyrian banishment, and Judah had been mercifully spared
this judgment, the eyes of Isaiah were directed to Babylon as
the imperial power destined to execute the same judgment upon
Judah. We may see this from ch. xxxix. 5-7. Micah also
speaks of Babylon as the future place of punishment and
deliverance (Mic. iv. 10). The prophecies of the overthrow
of Babylon in ch. xiii. 14, 21, are therefore quite in the spirit
of the prophecies of Hezekiah's time. And ch, xl.— Ixvi.
merely develop on all sides what was already contained in germ
in ch. xiv. 1, 2, xxi. 10. It is well known that in the time of
138 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Hezekiah Babylon attempted to break loose from Assyria ; and
so also the revolt of the Modes from Asshur, and the union of
their villages and districts under one monarch named Deyoces,
occurred in the time of Hezekiah.^ It is quite characteristic of
Isaiah that he never names the Persians, who were at that time
still subject to the Modes. He mentions Madai in ch. xiii. 17
and xxi. 2, and Koresh (Kurus), the founder of the Persian
monarchy ; but not that one of the two leading Iranian tribes,
which gained its liberty through him in the time of Astyages,
and afterwards rose to the possession of the imperial sway.
But how is it possible that Isaiah should have mentioned
Cyrus by name centuries before this time (210 years, according
to Josephus, Ant. xi. 1, 2) ? Windischmann answers this
question in his Zoroastrische Studien, p. 137. " No one," he
says, " who believes in a living, personal, omniscient God, and
in the possibility of His revealing future events, will ever deny
that He possesses the power to foretell the name of a future
monarch." And Albrecht Weber, the Indologian, finds in this
answer " an evidence of self-hardening against the scientific
conscience," and pronounces such hardening nothing less than
" devilish."
It is not possible to come to any understanding concerning
this point, which is the real nerve of the prevailing settled con-
clusion as to ch. xl.-lxvi. We therefore hasten on to our ex-
position. And in relation to this, if we only allow that the prophet
really was a prophet, it is of no essential consequence to what
age he belonged. For in this one point we quite agree with
the opponents of its genuineness, namely, that the standpoint
of the prophet is the second half of the captivity. If the author
is Isaiah, as we feel constrained to assume for reasons that we
have already stated here and elsewhere, he is entirely carried
away from his own times, and leads a pneumatic life among the
exiles. There is, in fact, no more " Johannic " book in the
whole of the Old Testament than this book of consolation. It
is like the product of an Old Testament gift of tongues. The
fleshly body of speech has been changed into a glorified body;
and we hear, as it were, spiritual voices from the world beyond,
or world of glory.
* Spiegel (Eran, p. 313 sqq.) places the revolt of the Medes in the year
714, and Deyoces in the year 708.
CHAP. XL. 1. 2. 139
PART I.
FIRST PROPHECY.— Chap, xl.
WORDS OF COMFORT, AND THE GOD OF COMPORT.
In this first address the prophet vindicates his call to be the
preacher of the comfort of the approaching deliverance, and
explains this comfort on the ground that Jehovah, who called
him to this comforting proclamation, was the incomparablj''
exalted Creator and Euler of the world. The first part of this
address (vers. 1-11) may be regarded as the prologue to the
whole twenty-seven. The theme of the prophetic promise, and
the irresistible certainty of its fulfilment, are here " declared.
Turning to the people of the captivity, whom Jehovah has
neither forgotten nor rejected, the prophet commences thus in
ver. 1 : " Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saitli your God."
This is the divine command to the prophets. NacJi&mu (piel,
li+erally, to cause to breathe again) is repeated, because of its
ui'gency (anadiplosis, as in ch. xli. 27, xliii. 11, xxv., etc.). The
word "ipN'', which does not mean " will say " here (Hofmann,
Stier), but " saith " (LXX., Jerome), — as, for example, in 1
Sam. xxiv. 14, — affirms that the command is a continuous one.
The expressiop " saith your God " is peculiar to Isaiah, and
common to both parts of the collection (ch. i. 11, 18, xxxiii. 10,
xl. 1, 25, xli. 21, Ixvi. 9). The future in all these passages is
expressive of that which is taking place or still continuing.
And it is the same here. The divine command has not been
issued once only, or merely to one prophet, but is being con-
tinually addi'essed to many prophets. " Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people," is the continual charge of the God of the exiles,
who has not ceased to be their God even in the midst of wrath,
to His messengers and heralds the prophets.
The summons is now repeated with still greater emphasis,
the substance of the consoling proclamation being also given
Ver. 2. " Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her,
that her affliction is ended, tJiat her debt is paid, that she has re-
ceived from, the hand of Jehovah double for all her sins." The
140 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAUH.
holy city is thought of here in connection with the population
belonging to it. 3^"^J' 13'! (to speak to the heart) is an expres-
sion applied in Gen. xxxiv. 3 and Judg. xix. 3 to words
adapted to win the heart ; in Gen. 1. 21, to the words used by
Joseph to inspire his brethren with confidence ; whilst here it
is used in precisely the same sense as in Hos. ii. 16, and possibly
not without a reminiscence of this eai'lier prophecy. 7N Niij
(to call to a person) is applied to a prophetic announcement
made to a person, as in Jer. vii. 27, Zech. i. 4. The announce-
ment to be made to Jerusalem is then introduced with ''3, oti,
which serves as the introduction to either an indirect or a direct
address (Ges. § 155, 1, e). (1.) Her affliction has become full,
and therefore has come to an end. N3S, military service, then
feudal service, and hardship generally (Job vii. 1) ; here it
applies to the captivity or exile — that unsheltered bivouac, as
it were, of the people who had been transported into a foreign
land, and were living there in bondage, restlessness, and in-
security. (2.) Her iniquity is atoned for, and the justice of
God is satisfied : nirtsdh, which generally denotes a satisfactory
reception, is used here in the sense of meeting with a satis-
factory payment, like fiy nST in Lev. xxvi. 41, 43, to pay off
the debt of sin by enduring the punishment of sin. (3.) The
third clause repeats the substance of the previous ones with
greater emphasis and in a fuller tone : Jerusalem has already
suffered fully for her sins. In direct opposition to "nip?, which
cannot, when connected with two actual perfects as it is here,
be taken as a perfect used to indicate the certainty of some
future occurrence, Gesenius, Hitzig, Ewald, Umbreit, Stier,
and Hahn suppose Mphlayim to refer to the double favour that
Jerusalem was about to receive (like mishneh in ch. Ixi. 7, and
possibly borrowed from Isaiah in Zech. ix. 12), instead of to
the double punishment which Jerusalem had endured (like
mishneh in Jer. xvi. 18). It is not to be taken, however, in a
judicial sense ; in which case God would appear over-rigid,
and therefoi'e unjust. Jerusalem had not suffered more than
its sins had deserved ; but the compassion of God regarded
what His justice had been obliged to inflict upon Jerusalem as
superabundant. This compassion also expresses itself in the
words " for all" (b'hhol, c. Beth pretii) : there is nothing left for
fiu'ther punishment. The turning-point from wrath to love
CHAP. XL, 8. 141
has arrived. The wrath has gone forth in double measure.
With what intensity, therefore, will the love break forth, which
has been so long restrained !
There is a setJmme in the text at this point. The first two
verses form a small parashah by themselves, the prologue of the
prologue. After the substance of the consolation has been given
on its negative side, the question arises. What positive salvation
is to be expected ? This question is answered for the prophet,
inasmuch as, in the ecstatic stillness of his mind as turned
to God, he hears a marvellous voice. Ver. 3. " Harh, a crier !
In the wilderness prepars ye a way for Jehovah, rrmke smooth in
the desert a road for our God." This is not to be rendered " a
voice cries" (Ges., Umbreit, etc.) ; but the two words are in
the construct state, and form an iiiterjectional clause, as in ch.
xiii. 4, lii. 8, Ixvi. 6 : Voice of one crying ! Who the crier is
remains concealed ; his person vanishes in the splendour of his
calling, and falls into the background behind the substance of
his cry. The cry sounds like the long-drawn trumpet-blast of
a herald (cf. ch. xvi. 1). The crier is like the outrider of a
king, who takes care that the way by which the king is to go
shall be put into good condition. The king is Jehovah ; and
it is all the more necessary to prepare the way for Him in a
becoming manuer, that this way leads through the pathless
desert. Bammidbdr is to be connected with pannu, on account
of the parallelism, according to the accents (^akeph katan has a
stronger disjunctive force here than zdkq)h gadol, as in Dent.
xxvi. 14, xxviii. 8, 2 Kings i. 6), though without any conse-
quent collision with the New Testament description of the ful-
filment itself. And so also the Targum and Jewish expositors
take laiDl Nllp b^p together, like the LXX., and after this the
Gospels. We may, or rather apparently we must, imagine the
crier as advancing into the desert, and summoning the people
to come and make a road through it. But why does the way
of Jehovah lie through the desert, and whither does it lead ?
It was through the desert that He went to redeem Israel out
of Egyptian bondage, and to reveal Himself to Israel from
Sinai (Deut. xxxiii. 2 ; Judg. v. 4 ; Ps. Ixviii. 8) ; and in Ps.
Ixviii. 4 (5) God the Redeemer of His people is called Mrohhebh
bd'ardbhoth. Just as His people looked for Him then, when
they were between Egypt and Canaan ; so was He to be looked
142 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
for by His people again, now that they were in the " desert of
the sea" (ch. xxi. 1), and separated by Arabia deserta from
their fatherland. If He were coming at the head of His
people, He Himself would clear the hindrances out of His way;
but He was coming through the desert to Israel, and therefore
Israel itself was to take care that nothing should impede the
rapidity or detract from the favour of the Coming One. The
description answers to the reality ; hut, as we shall frequently
find as we go further on, the literal meaning spiritualizes itself
in an allegorical way.
The summons proceeds in a commanding tone. Yer. 4.
" Let every valley be exalted, and every mountain and hill made
low ; and let the nigged be m,ade a plain, and the ledges of rocks
a valley." nsni, which takes its tone from the two jussive verbs,
is also itself equivalent to 'n''). Instead of S^J (from ^<13), the
pointing in Zeeh. xiv. 4, we have here (according to Kimchi)
the vowel-pointing N''i! ; at the same time, the editions of Brescia,
Pesaro, Venice 1678, have f^''? (with tzere), and this is also the
reading of a codex of Luzzatto without Masoretic notes. The
command, according to its spiritual interpretation, points to the
encouragement of those that are cast down, the humiliation of
the self-righteous and self-secure, the changing of dishonesty
into simplicity, and of unapproachable haughtiness into sub-
mission (for 'dqobh, hilly, rugged,' compare Jer. xvii. 9 together
with Hab. ii. 4). In general, the meaning is that Israel is to
take care, that the God who is coming to deliver it shall find it
in such an inward and outward state as befits His exaltation
and His purpose.
The cry of the crier proceeds thus in ver. 5 : " And the
glory of Jehovah will be revealed, and all flesh seeth together: for
the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it." The pret. cons. npiJl is
here apodosis imper. When the way is prepared for Jehovah
the Coming One, the glory of the God of salvation will unveil
itself (on the name Jehovah, which is applied to God, the abso-
lute I, as living and revealing Himself in history, more espe-
cially in the history of salvation, see vol. i. p. 67). His parousia
is the revelation of His glory (1 Pet. iv. 13). This revelation
is made for the good of Israel, but not secretly or exclusively ;
^ In tliis ethical sense Essex applied the word to Queen Elizabeth. See
Hefele, Ximenes, p. 90 (ed. 2).
CHAP. XL. 6-8. 143
for all the human race, called here designedly " all flesh " {kol
bdsdr), will come to see it (compare Luke iii. 6, " the salvation
of God"). Man, because he is flesh, cannot see God without
dying (Ex. xxxiii. 20) ; but the future will fill up this gulf of
separation. , The object to the verb "see" is not what follows,
as Rosenmiiller supposes, viz. " that the mouth of Jehovah hath
spoken," for the word of promise which is here fulfilled is not
one addressed to all flesh ; nor does it mean, " see that Jehovah
hath spoken with His own mouth," i.e. after having become
man, as Stier maintains, for the verb required in this case would
be laiD, not la'n. The clause, " for the mouth of Jehovah hath
spoken it," is rather Isaiah's usual confirmation of the fore-
going prophecy (see vol. i. p. 425). Here the crier uses it to
establish the certainty of what he foretells, provided that Israel
will do what he summons it to perform.
The prophet now hears a second voice, and then a third,
entering ife^e^^onversation with it. Vers. 6-8. " Harh, one
speakinff, Ojof A^ i he answers, Wliat shall I cry ? All flesh
is grass, aT^AalH g beauty as the flower of the field. Grass
is witheret'^^W ,er faded : for the breath of Jehovah has blown
upon itf^^^'^ely grass is the people; grass withereth, flower
fadetli: '^''yithe word of our God will stand for ever." A second
voice celebrates the divine word of promise in the face of the
approaching fulfilment, and appoints a preacher of its eternal
duration. The verb is not "lOi^l^ {et dixi, LXX., Vulg.), but
1!2K1 ; so that the person asking the question is not the prophet
himself, but an ideal person, whom he has before him in vision-
ary objectiveness. The appointed theme of his proclamation
is the perishable nature of all flesh (ver. 5 iraa-a a-dp^, here
7r«<7ft 17 o-dp^), and, on the other hand, the imperishable nature
of the word of God. Men living in the flesh are universally
impotent, perishing, limited ; God, on the contrary (ch. xxxi. 3),
is the omnipotent, eternal, all-determining ; and like Himself, so
is His word, which, regarded as the vehicle and utterance of His
willing and thinking, is not something separate from Himself,
and therefore is the same as He. Chasdo is the charm or grace-
fulness of the outward appearance (LXX. ; 1 Pet. i. 24, Bo^a :
see Schott on the passage, Jas. i. 11, einrpeTreta). The com-
parison instituted with grass and flower recals ch. xxxvii. 27
and Job viii. 12, and still more Ps. xc. 5, 6, and Job xiv. 2.
144 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Ver. la describes what happens to the grass and flower. The
preterites, like the Greek aoristus gnomicus (cf. ch. xxvi. 10),
express a fact of experience sustained by innumerable examples:
exaruit gramen, emarcuit flos ■} consequently the ''3 which follows
is not hypothetical (granting that), but explanatory of the
reason, viz. " because ru&cli Jehovah hath blown upon it," i.e.
the "breath" of God the Creator, which pervades the crea-
tion, generating life, sustaining life, and destroying life, and
whose most characteristic elementary manifestation is the wind.
Every breath of wind is a drawing of the breath of the whole
life of nature, the active indwelling principle of whose existence
is the ruaeh of God. A fresh verse ought to commence now
with t3X. The clause DVn Tisn pS is genuine, and thoroughly
in Isaiah's style, notwithstanding the LXX., which Gesenius
and Hitzig follow, px is not equivalent to a comparative 15
(Ewald, § 105, a), but is assuring, as in ch. xlv. 15, xlix. 4,
liii. 4 ; and ha dm (the people) refers to men ^359>«:ally, as in
ch. xlii. 5. The order of thought is in the fonthisf a tiiolet.
The explanation of the striking simile commencic with 'dkhen
(surely) ; and then in the repetition of the ■^ pds, " grass
withereth, flower fadeth," the men are intended, ■\Simiresemble
the grass and the flower. Surely grass is the hTi.^h race ;
such grass withereth and such flower fadeth, but the word of
our God (Jehovah, the God of His people and of sacred history)
ydqum Foldm, i.e. it rises up without withering or fading, and
endures for ever, fulfilling and verifying itself through all
times. This general truth refers, in the present instance, to
the word of promise uttered by the voice in the desert. If the
word of God generally has an eternal duration, more especially
is this the case with the word of the parousia of God the
Redeemer, the word in which all the words of God are yea
and amen. The imperishable nature of this word, however,
has for its dark foil the perishable nature of all flesh, and all
the beauty thereof. The oppressors of Israel are mortal, and
their chesed with which they impose and bribe is perishable ;
but the word of God, with which Israel can console itself, pre-
^ pa: has munach here and in ver. 8 attached to the penultimate in
all correct texts (hence mikl, on account of the monosyllable ■which fol-
lows), and metlieg on the tzers to sustain the lengthening.
CHAP. XL. 9. 145
serves the field, and ensures it a glorious end to its history.
Thus the seal, which the first crier set upon the promise of
Jehovah's speedy coming, is inviolable ; and the comfort which
the prophets of God are to bring to His people, who have now
been suffering so long, is infallibly sure.
The prophet accordingly now takes, as his standpoint, the
time when Jehovah will already have come. Ver. 9. " Upon
a high mountain get thee up, O evangelistess Zion ; lift up thy
voice with strength, evangelistess Jerusalem : lift up, be not
afraid ; say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God" Knobel
and others follow the LXX. and Targum, and regard Zion
and Jerusalem as accusatives of the object, viz. " preacher of sal-
vation (i.e. a chorus of preachers) to Zion-Jerusalem ;" but
such parallels as ch. lii. 7 and Ixii. 11 are misleading here.
The words are in apposition (A. S. Th. evaryyeXL^ofievr} ^uov).
Zion-Jerusalem herself is called an evangelistess : the personi-
fication as a female renders this probable at the outset, and it
is placed beyond all doubt by the fact, that it is the cities of
Judah (the daughters of Zion-Jerusalem) that are to be evan-
gelized. The prophet's standpoint here is in the very midst
of the parousia. When Jerusalem shall have her God in the-
midst of her once more, after He has broken up His home-
there for so long a time ; she is then, as the restored mother-
community, to ascend a high mountain, and raising her voice-
with fearless strength, to bring to her daughters the joyful
news of the appearance of their God. The verb bissSr signifies
literally to smooth, to unfold, then to make glad, more espe-
cially with joyful news.^ It lies at the root of the New Testa-
ment evar/yeKi^eiv (evangehze), and is a favourite word of the
^ The verb Usser signifies primarily to stf oke, rub, shave, or scratch
the surface of anything ; then to stroke off or rub off the surface, or any-
thing which covers it ; then, suggested by the idea of " rubbing smooth "
(glatt), "to smooth a person" {Jemanden glatten; compare the English, to
gladden a person), i.e. vultum ejus diducere, to make him friendly and
cheerful, or " to look smoothly upon a person," i.e. to show him a friendly
face ; and also as an intransitive, " to be glad" to he friendly and cheerful ;
and lastly, in a general sense, aliquid attingere, tractare, attreetare, to
grasp or handle a thing (from which comes bdsdr, the flesh, as something
tangible or material). In harmony with the Hebrew bisser (Jer. xx. 15),
they say in Arabic basardhu (or intensive, bassarahu) bi-maulMin, he has
gladdened him with the news of the birth of a son.
VOL. II. K
146 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
author of ch. xl.-lxvi., that Old Testament evangelist, though
it is no disproof of Isaiah's authorship (cf. Nahum ii. 1).
Hitherto Jerusalem has been in despair, bowed down under
the weight of the punishment of her sins, and standing in need
of consolation. But now that she has Jehovah with her again,
she is to lift up her voice with the most joyful confidence,
without further anxiety, and to become, according to her true
vocation, the messenger of good tidings to all Judaaa.
In ver. 10 the prophet goes back from the standpoint of
the fulfilment to that of the prophecy. " Belwld the Lord.,
Jelwvah, as a mighty one will He come, His arm ruling for Him;
behold, His reward is with Him, and His retribution before Him''
We must not render the first clause " with strong," i.e. with
strength, as the LXX. and Targum do. The Beth is Beth
essentice (cf. ch. xxvi. 4; Ges. § 154, 3, a). He will come in the
essence, strength, and energy of a strong one ; and this is still
further defined by the participial, circumstantial clause, " His
arm ruling for Him" (brachio suo ipsi dominante). It is His
arm that rules for Him, i.e. that either brings into subjection
to Him, or else overthrows whatever opposes Him. Never-
theless, ver. 10& does not present Him merely in one aspect,
namely as coming to judge and punish, but in both aspects,
viz. that of the law and that of the gospel, as a righteous
rewarder; hence the double name of God, Adonai Jehovah
(compare ch. iii. 15, xxviii. 16, xxx. 15, all in the first part),
which is used even in the Pentateuch, and most frequently by
Amos and Ezekiel, and which forms, as it were, an anagram.
n|VS is already met with in Lev. xix. 13 as a synonym of
132', passing from the general idea of work to that of some-
thing earned and forfeited. Jehovah brings with Him the
penal reward of the enemies of His people, and also the gracious
reward of the faithful of His people, whom He will compensate
for their previous sufferings with far exceeding joys (see ch.
Ixii. 11).
The prophet dwells upon this, the redeeming side not the
judicial, as he proceeds to place the image of the good shepherd
by the Side of that of the Lord Jehovah. Yer. 11. " He will
feed His flock like a shepherd, take the lambs in His arm, and
carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are giving
suck." The flock is His people, now dispersed in a foreign
CHAP. XI, 12. 147
land. The love with which Ho tends this flock is shown, by-
way of example, in His conduct towards the l^''^'^t? (= Cvt? from
79 ^^ V 9)5 *^^ young lambs that have not long been born,
and the OvV, those giving suck, lactantes (Vulg. fetce), not
those that are sucking, sugentes (from ^^j; med. Vav, to nourish,
of, vol. i. p. 138). Such as cannot keep pace with the flock he
takes in his arms, and carries in the bosom of his dress ; and
the mothers he does not overdrive, but bT}i\ (see at Ps. xxiii. 2),
lets them go gently along, because they require care (Gen.
xxxiii. 13). With this loving picture the prologue in vers. 1-11
is brought to a close. It stands at the head of the whole, like
a divine inauguration of the prophet, and like the quintessence
of what he is commanded to proclaim. Nevertheless it is also
an integral part of the flrst address. For the questions which
follow cannot possibly be the commencement of the prophecy,
though it is not very clear how far they form a continuation.
The connection is the following : The prophet shows both
didactically and parsenetically what kind of God it is whose
appearance to redeem His people has been prophetically an-
nounced in vers. 1-11. He is the incomparably exalted One.
This incomparable exaltation makes the ignorance of the wor-
shippers of idols the more apparent, but it serves to comfort
Israel. And Israel needs such consolation in its present banish-
ment, in which it is so hard for it to comprehend the ways of
God.
In order to bring His people to the full consciousness of the
exaltation of Jehovah, the prophet asks in ver. 12, " WJio hath
measured the waters with the hollow of his luxnd, and regulated
the heavens with a span, and taken up the dust of the earth in a
third measure, and weighed the mountains with a steelyard, and
hills with balances ? " Jehovah, and He alone, has given to all
these their proper quantities, their determinate form, and their
proportionate place in the universe. How very little can a man
hold in the hollow of his hand (sho'al) V how very small is the
space which a man's span will cover ! how little is contained in
' The root ^^ J^ has the primary meaning of easily moving or being
easily moved ; then of being loose or slack, of hanging down, or sinking,
—a meaning which we meet with in i)J)a' and ^KK'- Accordingly, sMal
signifies the palm (i.e. the depression made by the hand), and s7i«'oZ not
literally a hollowing or cavity, but a depression or low ground.
148 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the third of an ephah {shdllsli; see at Ps. Ixxx. 6) ! and how
trifling in either bulls or measure is the quantity you can weigh
in scales, whether it be a peles, i.e. a steelyard (staterd), or
md z'nayim, a tradesman's balance (bilances), consisting of two
scales.^ But what Jehovah measures with the hollow of His
hand, and with His span, is nothing less than the waters beneath
and the heavens above. He carries a scoop, in which there is
room for all the dust of which the earth consists, and a scale
on which He has weighed the great colossal mountains.
A second question follows in vers. 13, 14. " W7w regulated
the Spirit of Jehovah, and (who) instructed Him as His counsel-
lor ? With whom took He counsel, and who would have explained
to Him and instructed Him concerning the path of right, and
taught Him knowledge, and made known to Him a prudent course?"
The first question called to mind the omnipotence of Jehovah ;
this recalls His omniscience, which has all fulness in itself, and
therefore precludes all instruction from without. " The Spirit
of Jehovah " is the Spirit which moved upon the waters at the
creation, and by which chaos was reduced to order. " Who,"
inquires this prophet, — "who furnished this Spirit with the
standard, according to which all this was to be done ?" }2n as
in ver. 12, to bring into conformity with rule, and so to fit for
regulated working. Instead of mercha tifchah athnach, which
suggests the Targum rendering, " guis direxit spiritum ? Jehova"
(vid. Prov. xvi. 2), it would be more correct to adopt the
accentuation tifchah munach athnach (cf. Ex. xxi. 24, xxiii. 9),
and there are certain codices in which we find this (see Dach-
selt). In ver. 13& we might follow the Septuagint translation,
Kol Tt's avTov av/ji^ovko's iyivero, os a-vfi^ij3a (Rom. xi. 34 ;
1 Cor. ii. 16, a-VfijSi^daei) ainov, but in this case we miss the
verb T^li}. The rendering we have given above is not so harsh,
and the accentuation is indifferent here, since silluk is never
written without tifchah if only a single word precedes it. In
ver. 14 the reciprocal fVii is connected with OS ^ DS. The
futt. cons, retain their literal meaning : with whom did He
' According to the meaning, to level or equalize, which is one meaning
of pilUs, the noun peUs is appKed not only to a level used to secure equili-
brium, which is called mishqeleth in ch. xxviii. 17, but also to a steelyard
used for weighing, the beam of which consists of a lever with unequal
arms, which flies up directly the weight is removed.
CHAP. XL. 15, 16. 149
consult, so that he supplied Him with understanding in con-
sequence (Jiehhln, generally to understand, here in a causative
sense). The verbs of instruction are sometimes construed with
3 of the lesson taught, sometimes with a double accusative.
In reply to the questions in vers. 13, 14, which are essentially
one, Israel must acknowledge that its God is the possessor of
absolute might, and also of absolute wisdom.
From His exaltation as Creator, the prophet now proceeds
to His exaltation as Governor of the world. Ver. 15. " Behold,
nations like a little drop on a bucket, and like a grain of sand in
a balance, are they esteemed ; behold, islands like an atom of dust
that rises in the air." Upon Jehovah, the King of the world,
does the burden rest of ruling over the whole human race,
which is split up into different nations ; but the great masses of
people over whom Jehovah rules are no more burden to Him
than a drop hanging upon a bucket is a burden to the man who
carries it (min is used in the same sense as in Song of Sol.
iv. 1, vi. 5), no more than the weight in a balance is perceptibly
increased or diminished by a grain of sand that happens to lie
upon it (shachaq, from shdchaq, to grind to powder). The
islands, those fragments of firm ground in the midst of the
ocean Qii = ivy, from niN, to betake one's self to a place, and
remain there), upon which the heathen world was dispersed
(Gen. X.), are to Him who carries the universe like the small
particle of dust (PI from PiP'n, to crush or pulverize), which is
lifted up, viz. by the slightest breath of wind (?ii3'. metaplastic
fut. niph. of tul= natal, ch. Ixiii. 9). The rendering of
Knobel, " dust which is thrown," would require "ISV (ch. xli. 2) ;
and neither that of Gesenius, viz. " He takes up islands like a
particle of dust," nor that of Hitzig, " He carries islands," etc.,
is admissible, for ?lt3 = ?^J signifies tollere, not portare ; and the
former, viz. insulas tollit, furnishes no answer to the question,
■" How so, and to what end ?"
By the side of this vanishing diminutiveness on the part of
man as contrasted with Jehovah, everything by which man
could express his adoration of the exalted One comes incom-
parably short of His exaltation. Ver. 16. " And Lebanon is
not a sufficiency of burning, nor its game a sufficiency of bumt-
offenngs" i.e. there is not enough wood to sustain the fire, nor a
sufficient supply of sacrificial animals to be slaughtered, and to
150 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH,
ascend in fire. ''^ (constr. ^l) signifies that which suffices (and
then that which is plentiful) ; it differs therefore from to Biov,
what is requisite.^
From the obverse of the thought in ver. 15 the prophet
returns to the thought itself, and dwells upon it still further.
Ver. 17. "All the nations are as nothing before Him; they are
regarded by Him as belonging to nullity and emptijiess." ^Ephes
is the end at which a thing ceases, and in an absolute sense
that at which all being ceases, hence non-existence or nullity.
Tohu (from tdhdh, related to shd'dh; vid. Job, vol. ii. p. 296), a
horrible desolation, like the chaos of creation, where there is
nothing definite, and therefore as good as nothing at all (see
p. 25); min is hardly comparative in the sense of "more
nothing than nothing itself " (like Job. xi. 17, where " brighter"
is to be supplied, or Mic. vii. 4, where " sharper " is similarly
required), but is used in the same partitive sense as in ch. xli. 24
(cf. xliv. 11 and Ps. Ixii. 10).
The conclusion drawn from ver. 17, that Jehovah is there-
fore the matchless Being, shapes itself into a question, which is
addressed not to idolaters, but to such of the Israelites as needed
to be armed against the seductive power of idolatry, to which
the majority of mankind had yielded. Ver. 19. " And to
whom can ye liken God, and what hind of im,age can ye place
beside Him ! " The 1. before ?ff1 is conclusive, as in ch.
xxviii. 26, and the futures are modi potent. : with what can ye
bring into comparison (7N as in ch, xiv. 10) El, i.e. God, the
one Being who is absolutely the Mighty? and what kind of
d'muth (i.e. divine, like Himself) can ye place by His side ?
Least of all can an idol bear comparison with Him. Ver.
19. " Tlie idol, wJien the smith has cast it, the melter plates it
with gold, and melteth silver chains for it" The object (Jiappesel,
the idol), which is here placed first as the theme in the accusa-
tive (lit. the image hewn out), denotes in this instance an idol
generally. ^r\ is as comprehensive as faber. ann vjpn signifies
here to cover over with a a^J JJi3"i {lamind auri), the verb being
used in a denominative sense, and not in its primary meaning,
^ The derivation of I'n is still more oTDSCure than that of h7, which sig-
nifies, according to Benfey {WurzelwSrterlmcli, ii. 205), " there needs ; "
according to Sonne, " it binds, scil. ^ dudyxvi.'"
CHAP. XL. 20, 21. 151
As we must assume, according to ver. 20, that the prophet
intends to carry us into the midst of the process of manufac-
turing the idol, the paratactic expression is to be pointed as
above, viz. " after the (a) smith has cast it (compare Arab.
nasik, a piece of cast metal), the (a) melter' (goldsmith) covers
it with gold plate ; " and tsoreph, which is palindromically re-
peated, according to Isaiah's custom (p. 134), is not the third pers.
poel (on ihepoel of strong stems, see at Job ix. 15 and Ps. cix.
10), but a participle, equivalent to Xin K})'^ (as in ch. xxix. 8,
which see ; and also, according to the accents, ch. xxxiii. 5),
" and he melteth chains of silver," viz. to fasten the image.
This is the origin of a metal idol. The wooden idol is
described in ver. 20 : " The man who is impoverished iv, obla-
tions, he chooseth a block of wood that will not rot ; he seeketh
for himself a skilful smith, to prepare an idol that will not
shake" He who has fallen into such poverty that he can only
offer to his God a poor oblation {frunidh, accusative, accord-
ing to Ewald, § 284, c), has an idol cut for himself out of a
block of wood. That sdhhan (Arab, sakana or sakuna) ■* is an
ancient word, is evident from Deut. viii. 9. The verb yimmot,
like yittol in ver. 15, is a fut. niphal, to be made to shake.
A wooden image, which is planed at the bottom, and made
heavier below than above, to prevent its falling over with every
shock, is to be a god ! The thing carries its own satire, even
when described with the greatest seriousness.
Having thus depicted in a few strokes the infatuation of
idolatry, the prophet addresses the following question to such
of the Israelites as are looking at it with longing eyes, even if
they have not already been deluded by it. Ver. 21. "i)o ye
not know ? Do ye not hear ? Is it not proclaimed to you from
the beginning ? Have ye not obtained an insight into the founda-
tions of the earth'?" We have here four questions chiastically
1 Bott fonns occur in this sense, accordiug to tlie evidence of original
sources, witii the common imperative yaskunu, the infinitive suMne passed
over by Freytag, the verbal substantive maskane, and the adjective tniskin
or vieskin, primarily to be forced to inactivity through weakness, destitution,
or outward influences, not to be able to move and exert one's self ; or, more
particularly, not to be able to defend one's self (as it were to be obliged to
«it still or keep stUl). Hence more especially opibtis et facuUatibtis carens,
being in distress, destitute, poor.
152 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
arranged. The absolute being of God, which is above all
created things, is something which may be either inferred
per ratiocinationem, or learned per traditionem. When Israel
failed to acknowledge the absolute distinctness and unequalled
supremacy of Jehovah its God, it hardened itself against the
knowledge which it might acquire even in a natural way (of.
Ps. xix. and Rom. i. 20), and shut its ears against the teaching
of revelation and tradition, which had come down from the
very beginning of its history. The first two questions are
construed with futures, the other two with perfects; the former
refer to what is possible, the latter to what is an actual fact.
Have you — this is the meaning of the four questions — have
you obtained no knowledge of the foundations of the earth,
namely, as to the way in which they were laid ?
The prophet now proceeds to describe the God whom both
His works and word proclaim. The participles which follow
are predicates of the subject, which filled the consciousness of
the prophet as well as that of every believer. Ver. 22. " Tie
who is enthroned above the vault of the earth, and its inhabitants
resemble grasshoppers ; who has spread out the heavens like gauze,
and stretched them out like a tent-roof to dwell in." He, the
manifested and yet unknown, is He who has for His throne
the circle of the heavens (chug shdmayim, Job xxii. 14), which
arches over the earth, and to whom from His inaccessible
height men appear as diminutive as grasshoppers (Num.
xiii. 33) ; He who has spread out the blue sky like a thin
transparent garment {dug, a thin fabric, like daq, fine dust, in
ver. 15), and stretched it out above the earth like a tent for
dwelling in Qohel^ Idshebheth). The participle brings to view
the actions and circumstances of all times. In the present
instance, where it is continued in the historical sense, it is to
be resolved into the perfect ; in other cases, the preservation of
the world is evidently thought of as a creatio continua (see
Psychol, p. 111).
1 The noun ''ohel is derived from the root ^s, from which come AS,
coaluit, colisssit, to thicken -within or gain consistency (hence, regarded on
another side, to lose in outward extent or outward bulk, to shrink ; to go
back to its original or essential condition ; to issue in something as the
final result ; or generally, to draw back or return from a distance), and
bsl, to attach one's self or accustom one's seK to a person or thing, equiva-
CHAP. XL. 23, 24. 153
This is followed by a series of predicates of God the Ruler
of the universe. Vers. 23, 24. " He who givetli up rulers to
annihilation ; maketh judges of the earth like a desolation. They
are hardly planted, hardly sown, their stem lias hardly taken
root in the earth, and He only blows upon them, and they dry up,
and the storm carries them away like stubble." There is nothing
so high and inaccessible in the world, that He cannot bring it
to nothing, even in the midst of its most self-confident and
threatening exaltation. lioz'mm are solemn persons, ae/Mvoi,
possessors of the greatest distinction and influence (vol. i. p. 207) ;
shoph'tim, those who combine in themselves the highest judicial
and administrative power. The former He gives np to annihila-
tion ; the latter He brings into a condition resembling the
negative state of the tolm out of which the world was produced,
and to which it can be reduced again. We are reminded here
of such descriptions as Job xii. 17, 24 (p. 135). The sudden-
ness of the catastrophe is depicted in ver. 24. ?3 ^IX (which
only occui's here), when followed by D31. in the apodosis (cf.
2 Kings XX. 4), signifies that even this has not yet taken place
when the other also occurs : hence vixdum plantati sunt, etc.
The niphal ViSJ and the pual Vlf denote the hopeful com-
mencement ; the poel B'lB' the hopeful continuation. A layer
or seed excites the hope of blossom and frnit, more especially
when it has taken root ; but nothing more is needed than a
breath of Jehovah, and it is all over with it (the verb ndshaph
is used in this verse, where plants with stems are referred to ;
a verb with a softer labial, ndshabh, was employed above in
connection with grass and flowers). A single withering breath
lays them at rest ; and by the power of Jehovah there rises a
stormy wind, which carries them away like light dry stubble
(NB'3 ; compare, on the other hand, the verb used m ver. 15, viz.
tul= natal, to lift up, to keep in the air).
lent to alifa and anisa ; to take up one's abode in a place, or absolutely, to
commence housekeeping by marrying, like the Italian accasarsi, Turkish
ewhnmek (from ew, a house) ; or, when applied to a place itself, to be
habitable, inhabited, and cultivated (=pass. uMla, more especially in the
participle ahil, =:'amir = mdmur). Hence ahl, one who belongs to a person
or place, with its numerous applications, and also iiriN, a tent (primarily a
dwelling generally, Engl, abode), which stands at the end of this etymo-
logical series.
154 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
The thought of ver. 18 now recurs like a refrain, a con-
clusion being appended to the premises by means of l, as was
the case there. Ver. 25. "And to whom will ye compare me,
to whom I can he equal ? saith the Holy One." Not hagqddosh,
because a poetical or oratorical style omits the article wherever
it can be dispensed with. The Holy One asks this, and can
ask it, because as such He is also exalted above the whole
world (Job XV. 15, xxv. 5).
After the questions in vers. 18 and 25, which close syllo-
gistically, a third start is made, to demonstrate the incomparable
nature of Jehovah. Ver. 26. " Lift up your eyes on high, and
see : who hath created these things ? It is He who hringeth out
their host by number, calleth them, all by names, because of the
greatness of (His) might, and as being strong in power : there is
not one that is missing." Jehovah spoke in ver. 25 ; now the
prophet speaks again. We have here the same interchange
which occurs in every prophetic book from Deuteronomy down-
wards, and in which the divine fulness of the prophets is dis-
played. The answer does not begin with N''ViBL', in the sense
of " He who brings them out has created them ;" but the
participle is the predicate to the subject of which the prophet's
soul is full : Jehovah, it is He who bnngs out the army of
stars upon the plane of heaven, as a general leads out his army
upon the field of battle, and that Vmispdr, by number, counting
the innumerable stars, those children of light in armour of
light, which meet the eye as it looks up by night. The finite
verb ^1\>\ denotes that which takes place every night. He calls
them all by name (comp. the derivative passage, Ps. cxlvii. 4) :
this He does on account of the greatness and fulness of His
might (^onlm, vires, virtus), and as strong in power, i.e. because
He is so. This explanation is simpler than Ewald's (§ 293, c),
viz. " because of the power (to Kparepov) of the Strong One."
The call addressed to the stars that are to rise is the call of the
Almighty, and therefore not one of all the innumerable host
remains behind. B'''^ individualizes ; "nVi (participle), as in
ch. xxxiv. 16, suggests the idea of a sheep that is missed from
the flock through staying behthd. The second part of the
address closes here, having demonstrated the folly of idolatry
from the infinite superiority of God ; and from this the third
part deduces consolation for Israel in the midst of its despair.
CHAP. XL. 27, 28. 155
Such of the Israelites as require first of all to be brought to
a consciousness of the folly of idolatry are not called Israel at
all, because they place themselves on a par with the goylm.
But now the prophet addresses those of little faith, who never-
theless desire salvation ; those who are cast down, but not in
utter despair. Ver. 27. " Why sayest thou, Jacob, and
speakest, Israel, My way is hidden from Jehovah, and my right
is overlooked by my God ? " The name Jacob stands here at
the head, as in ch. xxix. 22, as being the more exquisite name,
and the one which more immediately recalled their patriarchal
ancestor. They fancied that Jehovah had completely turned
away from them in wrath and weariness. " My way" refers
to their thorny way of life ; " my right" (mishpdti) to their
good right, in opposition to their oppressors. Of all this He
appeared to take no notice at all. He seemed to have no
thought of vindicating it judicially (on the double min, away
from him, see Ges. § 154, 3, c).
The groundlessness of such despondency is set before them
in a double question. Ver. 28. " Is it not known to thee, or hast
thou not heard, an eternal God is Jehovah, Creator of the ends
of the earth : lie fainteth not, neither becomes weavy ; His under-
standing is unsearchable." Those who are so desponding ought
to know, if not from their own experience, at least from infor-
mation that bad been handed down, that Jehovah, who created
the earth from one end to the other, so that even Babylonia
was not beyond the range of His vision or the domain of His
power, was an eternal God, i.e. a God eternally the same and
never varying, who still possessed and manifested the power
which He had displayed in the creation. Israel had already
passed through a long history, and Jehovah had presided over
this, and ruled within it ; and He had not so lost His power in
consequence, as to have now left His people to themselves. He
does not grow faint, as a man would do, who neglected to take
the repeated nourishment requisite to sustain the energy of his
vital power ; nor does He become weary, hke a man who has
exhausted his capacity for work by over-exertion. And if He
had not redeemed His people till then. His people were to know
that His course was pure fbhundh or understanding, which was
in the possession of infallible criteria for determining the right
point of time at which to interpose with His aid.
156 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH
Jehovah is so far from becoming faint, that it is Ho who
gives strength to the fainting. Ver. 29. " Giving power to the
faint, and to the incapable He giveth strength in abundance"
D'Jix pxb is equivalent to i3''JiX TK It^'N-' ; P?? is used exactly like
a privative to form a negative adjective (e.g. Ps. Ixxxviii. 5 ;
Prov. XXV. 3).
Faith is all that is needed to ensure a participation in the
strength (iipV? after the form f^9?i7), which He so richly bestows
and so powerfully enhances. Vers. 30, 31. "And youths grow
faint and weary, and young men suffer a fall. But they ivho
wait for Jehovah gain fresh strength ; lift up their wings like eagles ;
run, and are not weary ; go forward, and do not faint." Even
youths, even young men in the early bloom of their morning of
life (bachurlm, youths, from "iHiij related to "i?|, 1^3), succumb
to the effects of the loss of sustenance or over-exertion (both
futures are defective, the first letter being dropped), and any
outward obstacle is sufficient to cause them to fall (/^^^ with
inf. ahs. Teal, which retains what has been stated for contempla-
tion, according to Ges. § 131, 3, Anm. 2). In ver. 30a the verb
stands first, ver. 30 being like a concessive clause in relation to
ver. 31. " Even though this may happen, it is different with
those who wait for Jehovah," i.e. those who believe in Him ;
for the Old Testament applies to faith a number of synonyms
denoting trust, hope, and longing, and thus describes it according
to its inmost nature, as fiducia and as hope, directed to the mani-
festation and completion of that which is hoped for. The Vav
cop. introduces the antithesis, as in ver. 8. IyPJ!!, to cause one
to pursue, or new to take the place of the old (Lat. recentare).
The expression '131 v^^ is supposed by early translators, after the
Sept., Targ. Jer., and Saad., to refer to the moulting of the
eagle and the growth of the new feathers, which we meet with
in Ps. ciii. 5 (cf. Mic. i. 16) as a figurative representation of
the renewal of youth through grace. But Hitzig correctly
observes that '^il^J), is never met with as the causative of the
kal used in eh. v. 6, and moreover that it would require fisiJ
instead of "i^N. The proper rendering therefore is, " they cause
their wings to rise, or lift their wings high, like the eagles" (^shher
as in Ps. Iv. 7). Their course of life, which has Jehovah for
its object, is as it were possessed of wings. They draw from
Him strength upon strength (see Ps. Ixxxiv. 8) ; running does
CHAP. SLI. 1, 157
not tire them, nor do they become faint from going ever further
and further.
The first address, consisting of three parts (vers. 1-11,
12-26, 27-31), is here brought to a close.
SECOND PROPHECY.— Chap. xli.
THE GOD OF THE WOELD'S HISTORY, AND OF PROPHECY.
Jehovah comes forward here, and spealdng in the tone in
■which He already began to speak in ch. xl. 25, invites the
idolatrous nations to contend with Him, declares the raising up
of the conqueror from the east to be His work, and adduces this
as the sign that He has been the Author and Guider of the
world's history from the beginning. But what if the question
■ should be asked on the part of the nations. With what right
does He do this ? The acts of the conqueror prove themselves
to be a work of the God who is exalted above the idols, from
the fact that they bring destruction to the idolatrous nations,
and to the people of Jehovah the long-desired redemption. It
is in this that the conclusiveness of the illustration lies. The
argument, however, presupposes that Cyrus has already en-
tered upon his victorious course. It is evident at the outset
that future events, or events still unfulfilled, would have no
force as present proofs. And the words also clearly imply, that
the work which Jehovah attributes to Himself, in opposition to
the gods of the nations, is already in progress.
Ver. 1. Summons to the contest: ^^ Be silent to me, ye
islands ; and let the nations procure fresh strength : let them come
near, then speak; we will enter into contest together." The words
are addressed to the whole of the heathen world, and first of
all to the inhabitants of the western islands and coasts. This
was the expression commonly employed in the Old Testament
to designate the continent of Europe, the solid ground of which
is so deeply cut, and so broken up, by seas and lakes, that
it looks as if it were about to resolve itself into nothing but
islands and peninsulas. '^^ B'''inn is a pregnant expression for
turning in silence towards a person ; just as in Job xiii. 13 it
is used with m.in, in the sense of forsaking a person in silence.
That they may have no excuse if they are defeated, they are
158 THS PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
to put on fresh strength ; just as in ch. xl. 31 believers are
spoken of as drawing fresh strength out of Jehovah's fulness.
They are to draw near, then speak, i.e. to reply after hearing
the evidence, for Jehovah desires to go through all the forms
of a legal process with them in pro et contra. The mishpdt is
thought of here in a local sense, as a forum or tribunal. But
if Jehovah is one party to the cause, who is the judge to pro-
nounce the decision 1 The answer to this question is the same
as at ch. v. 3. " The nations," says Rosenmiiller, " are called
to judgment, not to the tribunal of God, but to that of
reason." The deciding authority is reason, which cannot fail
to recognise the facts, and the consequences to be deduced
from them.
The parties invited are now to be thought of as present,
and Jehovah commences in ver. 2 : " Who hath raised up the
man from the rising of the sun, whom justice meets at his foot, '
He giveth up nations before him, and kings He subdues, giveih
men like the dust to his sword, and like driven stubble to
his bow'?" The sentence governed by "who" (ml) ends at
Praglo (at his foot) ; at the same time, all that follows is spoken
with the echo of the interrogative accent. The person raised
up is Cyrus, who is afterwards mentioned by name. The
coming one (if, that is to say, we adhere to the belief in Isaiah's
authorship of these addresses) first approaches gradually within
the horizon of the prophet's ideal present ; and it is only little
by little that the prophet becomes more intimately acquainted
with a phenomenon which belongs to so distant a future, and
has been brought so close to his own eyes. Jehovah has raised
up the new great hero "from the east" (mimmizrdch), and,
according to ver. 25, " from the north" also. Both of these
were fulfilled ; for Cyrus was a Persian belonging to the clan
of Achsemenes (Hakhdmanis), which stood at the head of the
tribe, or of the Pasargadse. He was the son of Cambyses; and
even if the Median princess Mandane were not his mother, yet,
according to nearly all the ancient accounts, he was connected
with the royal house of Media ; at any rate, after Astyages was
dethi'oned, he became head and chief of the Medes as well as
of the Persians (hence the name of "Mule" which was given
to him by the oracle, and that given by Jerome, "agitator
bigce"). Now Media was to the north of Babylonia, and Persia
CHAP. XvJ. 2. 159
to the east 5 so that his victorious march, in which, even before
the conquest of Babylon, he subjugated all the lands from
the heights of Hinduku to the shores of the JEgean Sea, had
for its starting-point both the east and north.^ The clause
vyy? WK'ip pnv is an attributive clause, and as such a virtual
object : "him whom (supply "i^'N'flN) justice comes to meet (Nnj?
= ^1^1, Ges. § 75, vi.) on his track" (cf. Gen. xxx. 30 ; Job
xviii. 11; Hab. iii. 5). The idea of tsedeq is determined by what
follows : Jehovah gives up nations before him, and causes
kings to be trodden down (causative of rdddh). Accordingly,
tsedeq is either to be understood here in an attributive sense, as
denoting the justice exercised by a person (viz. the justice exe-
cuted successfully by Cyrus, as the instrument of Jehovah, by
the force of arms) ; or objectively of the justice awarded to a
person (to which the idea of "meeting" is more appropriate),
viz. the favourable result, the victory which procures justice
for the just cause of the combatant. Rosenmiiller, Knobel,
and others, are wrong in maintaining that tsedeq (ts'daqdli) in
ch. xl.-lxvi. signifies primarily justice, and then prosperity and
salvation as its reward. The word means straightness, justice,
righteousness, and nothing more (from tsddaq, to be hard, firm,
extended, straight, e.g. rumh-un-tsadq, a hard, firm, and straight
lance) ; but it has a double aspect, because justice consists,
according to circumstances, of either wrath or favour, and
therefore has sometimes the idea of the strict execution of
justice, as in this instance, sometimes of a manifestation of
justice in fidelity to promises, as in ver. 10. I?^ is repeated
here in ver. 2 (just like imo!'''! in ch. xl. 14) with the same
subject, but in a different sense. To make sword and bow the
subject, in the sense of " his sword gives {sc. ' the foe '),"
is a doubtful thing in itself ; and as cherebh and qesheth are
feminines, it is by no means advisable. Moreover, in other
instances, the comparative 3 leaves it to the reader to carry
out the figure indicated according to his own fancy. And
this is the case here: He (Jehovah) makes his sword as if
there were dust, his bow as if there were hunted stubble
(Bottcher), i.e. pounding the enemy like dust, and hunting
it like flying stubble. Our text has "iSVa, but in certain
codices we find "ISJ/S with tzere ; and this reading, which is
1 See Pahle's Geschichte des Oriental. Alterihums. (1864), p. 170 sqq.
160 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
contrary to rule, has in its favour the express testimony of
Moses the punctuator.*
The conqueror is now still further described in futures,
which might be defined by T'V!?, and so express a simultaneous
past (synchronistic imperfects), but which it is safer to take as
standing traits in the picture drawn of the conqueror referred
to. Ver. 3. " He pursueih them, and marcheth in peace by a
course which he never trod with his feetr He marches victori-
ously further and further, " shdlom" i.e. " in safety" (or, as an
adjective, safely ; Job xxi. 9), without any one being able to
do him harm, by a course (accus. Ges. § 138, 1) which he has
not been accustomed to tread with his feet (ingredi).
The great fact of the present time, which not one of the
gods of the heathen can boast of having brought to pass, is now
explained. Jehovah is its author. Ver. 4. " Who hath wrought
and executed it ? He who calleth the generations of men from
the beginning, I Jehovah am first, and with the last am, I He."
The synonyms ?VS and nb'jj are distinguished from each other in
the same way as " to work" (or bring about) and " to realize"
(or carry out). Hence the meaning is. Who is the author to
whom both the origin and progress of such an occurrence are
to be referred ? It is He who " from the beginning," i.e. ever
since there has been a human history, has called into existence
the generations of men through His authoritative command.
And this is no other than Jehovah, who can declare of Him-
self, in contrast with the heathen and their gods, who are of
yesterday, and to-morrow will not be : I am Jehovah, the very
first, whose being precedes all history ; and with the men of the
latest generations yet to come " I am it." sin is not introduced
here to strengthen the subject, ego ille (" I and no other," as in
ch. xxxvii. 16, which see) ; but, as in ch. xliii. 10, 13, xlvi. 4,
xlviii. 12, it is a predicate of the substantive clause, ego sum is
(ille), viz. 'Elohlm ; or even as in Ps. cii. 28 (cf . Job iii. 19 and
Heb. xiii. 8), ego sum idem (Hitzig). They are both included,
witliout any distinction in the assertion. He is this, viz. God
throughout all ages, and is through all ages He, i.e. the Being
who is ever the same In this His deity. It is the full meaning
of the name Jehovah which is unfolded here ; for God is called
^ In his nipjn ''3T1 (rules of pointing), with which the Masora Jinalis
is surrounded.
CHAP. XLI. 5-7. 161
Jehovah as the absolute I, the absolutely free Being, pervading
all history, and yet above all history, as He who is Lord of His
own absolute being, in revealing which He is purely self-deter-
mined ; in a word, as the unconditionally free and unchangeably
eternal personality.
In the following verse we have not a description of the
impression made upon the heathen by the argument of Jehovah,
but the argument itself is continued. Ver. 5. " Islands have
seen it, and shuddered; the ends of the earth trembled; they have
approached, and drawn near" We have here a description of
the effects which the victorious course of Cyrus had begun to
produce in the heathen world. The perfects denote the past,
and the futures a simultaneous past ; so that we have not to
compare ver. 5a with Hab. iii, 10 so much as with Ps. Ixxvii. 17.
The play upon, the words 15<"1''^1 • • ■ 1N"i pairs together both seeing
and fearing. The Cumseans, when consulting the oracle, com-
menced thus : i7yu.6is Se Setyctawoi/res T-qv Tlepa-easv Svvafuv. The
perfect with the aorist following in ver. 5b places the follow-
ing picture upon the stage : They have approached and drawn
near (from all directions) to meet the threatening danger ; and
how ? Vers. 6, 7. " One helped his companion, and lie said to
his brother, Only firm,! The caster put firmness into the melter,
the hammer-smoother into the anvil-smiter, saying of the solder-
ing. It is good ; and made him firm with nails, that he should not
shake." Him, viz. the idol. Everything is in confusion, from
the terror that prevails ; and the gods from which they expect
deliverance are not made till now, the workmen stimulating
one another to work. The chdrdsh, who casts the image, en-
courages the tsoreph, whose task it is to provide it with the
plating of gold and silver chains (ch. xl. 19), to work more
bravely ; and the man who smooths with the hammer (pattish,
instrumentalis) does the same to the man who smites the anvil
(D^in with seghol, whereas in other cases, e.g. Ezek, xxii. 25,
the tone generally gives way without any change in th» vowel-
pointing). The latter finds the soldering all right, by which
the gold plates of the covering are fastened together, so as to
give to the golden idol a massive appearance. He is the last
into whose hands it comes ; and nothing more is wanting, than
that he should forge upon the anvil the nails with which it is
fastened, to prevent it from falling. To such foolish, fruitless
VOL. II, L
162 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
proceedings have the nations resorted when threatened with
subjugation by Cyrus.
The proof adduced by Jehovah of His own deity closes
here. But instead of our hearing whether the nations, with
which He has entered upon the contest, have any reply to make,
the address turns to Israel, upon which deliverance dawns from
that very quarter, from which the others are threatened with
destruction. Vers. 8-10. " And thou, Israel my servant, Jacob
lohom J Iiave chosen, seed of Abraham mi/ friend, thou lohom I
have laid hold of from the ends of the earth, and called from the cor-
ners thereof, and said to thee, Thou art my servant, I have chosen
and not despised thee ; fear thou not, for I am with thee ; be not
afraid, for I am thy God : I have chosen thee, I also help thee, I
also hold thee with the right hand of my nghteousness." The 1
before HPiNI connects together antitheses, which show themselves
at once to be antitheses. Whereas the nations, which put their
trust in idols that they themselves h&d made, were thrown into
alarm, and yielded before the world-wide commotions that had
originated with the eastern conqueror, Israel, the nation of
Jehovah, might take comfort to itself. Every word here
breathes the deepest affection. The address moves on in soft
undulating lines. The repetition of the suffix % with which
"IK'S forms a relative of the second person, for which we have no
equivalent in our language (Ges. § 123, Anm. 1), gives to the
address a pressing, clinging, and, as it were, loving key-note.
The reason, which precedes the comforting assurance in ver. 10,
recals the intimate relation in which Jehovah had placed Him-
self towards Israel, and Israel towards Himself. The leading
thought, " servant of Jehovah," which is characteristic of ch.
jd.-xlvi., and lies at the root of the whole spirit of these addresses,
more especially of their Christology, we first meet with here,
and that in a popular sense. It has both an objective and a
subjective side. On the one hand, Israel is the servant of
Jehovah by virtue of a divine act ; and this act, viz. its election
and call, was an act of pure grace, and was not to be traced, as
the expression "I have chosen and not despised thee" indicates,
to any superior excellence or merit on the part of Israel. On
the contrary, Israel was so obscure that Jehovah might have
despised it ; nevertheless He had anticipated it in free un-
merited love with this stamp of the character indelibilis of a
CHAP. XLI. 8-10. 163
servant of Jehovah. On the other hand, Israel was the servant
of Jehovah, inasmuch as it acted out what Jehovah had made
it, partly in reverential worship of this God, and partly in active
obedience. '''l"ns< 135!, i.e. "serving Jehovah," includes both
liturgical service (also 1?y absolutely, ch. xix. 23) and the ser-
vice of works. The divine act of choosing and calling is dated
from Abraham. From a Palestinian po'int of view, Ur of
Chaldsea, within the old kingdom of Nimrod, and Haran in
northern Mesopotamia, seemed like the ends and corners of the
earth Qatsilim, remote places, from 'dtsal, to put aside or apart).
Israel and the land of Israel were so inseparably connected, that
whenever the origin of Israel was spoken of, the point of view
could only be taken in Palestine. To the far distant land of
the Tigris and Euphrates had Jehovah gone to fetch Abraham,
" the friend of God" (Jas. ii. 23), who is called in the East
even to the present day, cIiaKl ollah, the friend of God. This
calhng of Abraham was the furthest terminus a quo of the
existence of Israel as the covenant nation ; for the leading of
Abraham was providentially appointed with reference to the
rise of Israel as a nation. The latter was pre-existent in him
by virtue of the counsel of God. And when Jehovah adopted
Abraham as His servant, and called him " my servant" (Gen.
xxvi. 24), Israel, the nation that was coming into existence in
Abraham, received both the essence and name of a " servant
of Jehovah." Inasmuch then as, on looking back to its past
history, it could not fail to perceive that it was so thoroughly
a creation of divine power and grace, it ought not to be fearful,
and look about with timidity and anxiety ; for He who had
presented Himself at the very beginning as its God, was still
always near. The question arises, in connection with the word
'q'nVBK, whether it means to strengthen (ch. xxxv. 3; Ps. Ixxxix.
22), or to lay firm hold of, to attach firmly to one's self, to choose.
We decide in favour of the latter meaning, which is established
by ch. xliv. 14, cf. Ps. kxx. 16, 18. The other perfects affirm
what Jehovah has ever done, and still continues to do. In the
expression " by the right hand of my righteousness," the justice
or righteousness is regarded pre-eminently on its brighter side,
the side turned towards Israel ; but it is also regarded on its
fiery side, or the side turned towards the enemies of Israel. It
is the righteousness which aids the oppressed congregation
164 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
against its oppressors. Tiie repeated IN heaps one synonym
upon another, expressive of the divine love ; for 1 simply con-
nects, D3 appends, ^?< heaps up {cumulat). Language is too
contracted to hold all the fulness of the divine love ; and for
this reason the latter could not find words enough to express
all that it desired.
With the exclamation hen (behold) the eyes of Israel are
now directed to the saving interposition of Jehovah in the
immediate future. Vers. 11-13. "Behold, all they that were
incensed against thee must he ashamed and confounded ; the men
of thy conflict become as nothing, and perish. Thou wilt seek
them, and not find them, the m,en of thy feuds ; the m,en of thy
warfare become as nothing, and nonentity. For I, Jehovah thy
God, lay hold of thy right hand. He who saith to thee. Fear not ;
I will help thee." The comprehensive expression omnes injlam-
mati in te (niphal, as in ch. xlv. 24) stands at the head ; and
then, in order that every kind may be included, the enemies are
called by a different name every time. The three substantives
bear much the same relation to one another as lis, rixa, bellum
{milchdmdh, lit. throng = wai'-tumult, like the epic kXwo?),
hence adversarii, inimici, hostes. The suffixes have the force
of objective genitives. We have founded our translation
upon the reading l^niSD. The three names of the enemies are
;placed emphatically at the close of the sentences, and these are
long drawn out, whilst the indignation gives vent to itself;
-whereas in ver. 13 there follows nothing but short sentences,
in which the persecuted church is encouraged and affectionately
- embraced. Two clauses, which are made to rhyme with em,
announce the utter destruction of their foes; then the inflective
rhyme ekha is repeated five times ; and the sixth time it passes
■ over into liha.
The consolatory words, "Fear not," are now repeated, for
the purpose of once more adding the promise that Israel will
.not succumb to its foes, but will acquire power over its ene-
mies. Vers. 14-16. " Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and handful
Israel: I will help thee, saith Jehovah ; and thy Redeemer is the
Holy One of Israel. Behold, I have made thee a threshing roller,
■a sharp new one, with double edges: thou wilt thresh mountains,
■and pound them ; and hills thou loilt make like chaff. Thou wilt
winnow them, and wind carries them away, and tempest scatters
CHAP. XLI. 14-20. 1&5
them: and tliou wilt rejoice in Jeliovali, and glory in thi'Holyi
One of Israel." Isi'ael, which is now helplessly oppressed, is
called " worm of Jacob " (gen. appos.) in compassion, i.e.
Jacob that is like a worm, probably with some allusion to
Ps. xxii. 7 ; for the image of the Messiah enriches itself in
these discourses, inasmuch as Israel itself is looked upon in a
Messianic light, so that the second David does net stand by
the side of Israel, but appears as Israel's heart, or true and
inmost essence. The people are then addressed as the " people
of Israel," with some allusion to the phrase isp» ''riD ({.e. few
men, easily numbered) in Gen. xxxiv, 30, Deut. iv. 27 (LXX.
oXi7oo-T09 'IcrparjX ; Luther, Ir armer liauffe Israel, ye poor
crowd of Israel). They no longer formed the compact mass of
a nation ; the band of the commonwealth was broken : they
were melted down into a few individuals, scattered about hither
and thither. But it would not continue so. " I help thee "
(perfect of certainty) is Jehovah's solemn declaration ; and the
Redeemer (redemtor, Lev. xxv. 48, 49) of His now enslaved
people is the Holy One of Israel, with His love, which per-
petually triumphs over wrath. Not only will He set it free,
but He will also endow it with might over its oppressors; samtikh
is a perfect of assurance (Ges. § 126, 4) ; mOrag (roller) signi-
fies a threshing-sledge (Arab, naiireg, noreg), which has here
the term p^^ (ch, xxviii. 27) as a secondary name along with
t^'in, and is described as furnished on the under part of the
two arms of the sledge not only with sharp knives, but with
two-edged knives (nva^a a reduplication, like nxDXD in ch.
xxvii. 8, whereas ''?''0 is a double plural). Just like such a
threshing machine would Israel thresh and grind to powder
from that time forth both mountains and hills. This is evi-
dently a figurative expression for proud and mighty foes, just
as wind and tempest denote the irresistible force of Jehovah's
aid. The might of the enemy would be broken down to the
very last remnant, whereas Israel would be able to rejoice and
gloiy in its God.
At the present time, indeed, the state of His people was a
helpless one, but its cry for help was not in vain. Vers. 17-20.
" The poor and needy, who seek for water and there is none, their
tongue faints for thirst. I Jehovah loill hear them, I the God of
Israel will not forsake them. I open streams upon hills of the
1G6 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
field, and springs in the midst of valleys ; 1 make tJie desert
into a pond, and dry land into fountains of water. I give in
the desert cedars, acacias, and myrtles, and oleasters ; T set in the
steppe cypresses, plane-trees, and sherbin-trees togeHier, tliat they
may see, and know, and lay to heart and understand all together,
that the hand of Jehovah hath accomplished this, and the Holy
One of Israel hath created it." Kimchi, Hitzig, and others
refer these promises to the returning exiles ; but there is also a
description, without any restriction to the I'eturn home, of the
miraculous change which would take place in the now comfort-
less and helpless condition of the exiles. The sh^phdyim, i.e.
bare, woodless hills rising up from the plain, Jer. xii. 12, the
b'qaoth, or deep valleys, by the sides of which there rise preci-
pitous mountains, and the 'erets tsiyydh, the land of burning
heat or drought (cf. Ps. Ixiii. 2), depict the homeless condition
of Israel, as it wandered over bald heights and through water-
less plains about a land with parched and gaping soil. For
the characteristics of the object, which is placed before Q.^VS?,
we may therefore compare such passages as ch. xliv. 3, Iv. 1.
nnrj is either a pausal form for nnB*:, and therefore the niphal
of nriB* (to set, become shallow, dry up), or a pausal form for
nriE^J, and therefore the kal of T\m with dagesh affectuosum, like
«ni'in Ezek. xxvii. 19 (Olshausen, § 83, h). The form r\r\m in
Jer. li. 30 may just as well be derived from nnc' (Ges. § 67,
Anm. 11) as from fiE'J, whereas ifiEfJ may certainly be taken as
the niphal of nriE' after the form fej, inj (Ges. § 67, Anm. 5),
though it would be safer to refer it to a Ml nuo, which seems
to be also favoured by lE'ns'' in Jer. xviii. 14 as a transposition
of inM'.. The root CJ, of which T\m would be a further ex-
pansion, really exhibits the meaning to dry up or thirst, in the
Arabic nassa ; whereas the verbs E'lJ, E'Jtv, DDJ (ch. x, 18), ne*:
Syr. nas', nos, Arab, ndsa, nasnasa, with the primaiy meanino-
to slacken, lose their hold, and XB'j, nm, ypi, to deceive de-
range, and advance, form separate families. Just when they
are thus on the point of pining away, they receive an answer
to their prayer : their God opens streams, i.e. causes streams to
break forth on the hills of the field, and springs in the midst
of the valleys. The desert is transformed into a lake, and the
steppe of burning sand into fountains of water. What was
predicted in ch. xxxv. 6, 7 is echoed again here, — a figurative
CHAP. XLI. 21-23. 1 67
representation of the manifold fulness of refreshing, consola-
tion, and marvellous help which was to burst all at once upon
those who were apparently forsaken of God What is de-
picted in vers. 19, 20, is the effect of these. It is not merely a
scanty vegetation that springs up, but a corresponding mani-
fold fulness of stately, fragrant, and shady trees ; so that the
steppe, where neither foot nor eye could find a resting-place,
is changed, as by a stroke of magic, into a large, dense, well-
watered forest, and shines with sevenfold glory, — an image of
the many-sided manifestations of divine grace which are ex-
perienced by those who are comforted now. Isaiah is espe-
cially fond of such figures as these (vid. ch. v. 7, vi. 13,
xxvii. 6, xxxvii. 31). There are seven (4 + 3) trees named;
seven indicating the divine character of this manifold develop-
ment (Psj/ehol. p. 188). 'Erez is the generic name for the
cedar ; shittdh, the acacia, the Egyptian spina {aKavOa), Copt.
shont ; h&das, the .myrtle ; 'ets shemen, the wild olive, as dis-
tinguished from zayiih (fj ap/pieXaio<;, opposed to 17 ikala in
Rom. xi. 17) ; Vrosh, the cypress, at any rate more especially
this ; tidhdr we have rendered the " plane-tree," after Saad. ;
and tfasshur the " sherbin " (a kind of cedar), after Saad. and
Syr. The crowded synonyms indicating sensual and spiritual
perception in ver. 20a (y>yV1^ sc. D3p, ver. 22) are meant to
express as strongly as possible the irresistible character of the
impression. They will be quite unable to regard all this as
accidental or self-produced, or as anything but the production
of the power and grace of their God.
There follows now the second stage in the suit. Vers. 21-23.
" Bring hither your cause, saiih Jehovah ; bring fonoard your
proofs, saith the king of Jacob. Let them bring forward, and
make known to us what loill happen : make known the beginning,
what it is, and we will fix our heart upon it, and take knowledge
of its issue; or let us hear what is to come. Make known what is
coming later, and we will acknowledge that ye are gods : yea, do
good, and do evil, and we will measure ourselves, and see together."
In the first stage Jehovah appealed, in support of His deity, to
the fact that it was He who had called the oppressor of the
nations upon the arena of history. In this second stage He
appeals to the fact that He only knows or can predict the
future. There the challenge was addressed to the worshippers
168 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of idols, here to the idols themselves ; but in both cases both
of these are ranged on the one side, and Jehovah with His
people upon the other. It is with purpose that Jehovah is
called the " King of Jacob," as being the tutelar God of Israel,
in contrast to the tutelar deities of the heathen. The challenge
to the latter to establish their deity is first of all addressed to
them directly in ver. 21, and then indirectly in ver. 22a, where
Jehovah connects Himself with His people as the opposing
party; but in ver. 22& He returns again to a direct address.
niDSy are evidences (lit. rohora, cf. o^xypaj/Mara, 2 Cor. x. 4,
from Dsy, to be strong or stringent ; mishn. DSVn:, to contend
with one another pro et contra) ; here it signifies proofs that
they can foresee the future. Jehovah for His part has dis-
played this knowledge, inasmuch as, at the very time when He
threatened destruction to tJie heathen at the hands of Cyrus,
He consoled His people with the announcement of their de-
liverance (vers. 8-20). It is therefore the turn of the idol
deities now : " Let them bring forward and announce to us the
things that will come to pass." The general idea of what is in
the future stands at the head. Then within this the choice
is given them of proving their foreknowledge of what is after-
wards to happen, by announcing either niiyt^"], or even niX3.
These two ideas, therefore, are generic terms within the range
of the things that are to happen. Consequently nwc'sin cannot
mean "earlier predictions," pnws ^rcBcZicia, as Hitzig, Knobel,
and others suppose. This explanation is precluded in the
present instance by the logic of the context. Both ideas lie
upon the one line of the future ; the one being more imme-
diate, the other more remote, or as the expression alternating
with nisan implies "linsp ni»nNn, ventura in posterum (" in later
times," compare ch. xlii. 23, " at a later period ; " from the
participle nriN, radical form "'Hi', vid. Ges. § 75, Anm. 5, pro-
bably to distinguish it from nink). This is the explanation
adopted by Stier and Hahn, the latter of whom has correctly
expounded the word, as denoting " the events about to happen
first in the immediate future, which it is not so difficult to
prognosticate from signs that are discernible in the present."
The choice is given them, either to foretell " things at the
beginning" (haggidu in our editions is erroneously pointed with
kadma instead of geresh), i.e. that which will take place first or
CHAP. XLI. 24. " 169
next, "what they ie" (quce et qualia sint), so that now, when
the ach&nth, "the latter end" (i.e. the issue of that which is
held out to view), as prognosticated from the standpoint of the
present, really occurs, the prophetic utterance concerning it
may be verified ; or " things to come," i.e. things further off,
in later times (in the remote future), the prediction of which
is incomparably more difficult, because without any point of
contact in the present. They are to choose which they like (is
from njSj like velivora velle): "yea, do good, and do evil" i.e. (ac-
cording to the proverbial use of the phrase ; cf. Zeph. i. 12 and
Jer. X. 5) only express yourselves in some way ; come forward,
and do either the one or the other. The meaning is, not that
they are to stir themselves and predict either good or evil, but they
are to show some sign of life, no matter what. " And we loill
measure ourselves (i.e. look one another in the face, testing and
measuring), and see together," viz. what the result of the contest
will be. rivmr} like ns-inn in 2 Kings xiv. 8, 11, with a co-
hortative dh, which is rarely met with in connection with verbs
n"'?, and the tone upon the penultimate, the ah being attached
without tone to the voluntative VP}p^ in ver. 5 (EwaJd, § 228, c).
For the chethib nx")31, the keri has the voluntative ^^3.1.
Jehovah has thus placed Himself in opposition to the
heathen and their gods, as the God of history and prophecy.
It now remains to be seen whether the idols will speak, to prove
their deity. By no means ; not only are they silent, but they
cannot speak. Therefore Jehovah breaks out into words of
wrath and contempt. Ver. 24. " Behold, ye are of nothing, and
your doing of nought : an abomination , whoever chooseth you."
The two p are partitive, as in ch. xl. 17 ; and JIBtJt? is not an
error of the pen for D3t<D, as Gesenius and others suppose, but
J?3S from J?DS = na (from which comes ns), njjs, ch. xlii. 14
(from which comes nyss, ch. lix. 5), to breathe, stands as a
synonym to t).?, '^^\!, 6". The atti-ibutive clause D33 ini';
(supply IB"*? s<in) is a virtual subject (Ewald, § 333, b) : ye and
your doings are equally nil ; and whoever chaoses you for pro-
tectors, and makes yon the objects of his worship, is morally
the most degraded of beings.
The more conclusively and incontrovertibly, therefore, does
Jehovah keep the field as the moulder of history and foreteller
of the future, and therefore as God above all gods. Ver. 25.
170 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
" T have raised up from the north, and he came : from the rising
of the sun one who invokes my name ; and he treads upon satraps
as mud, and like a potter kneadeth clay." The object of the
verb hairothi (I have wakened up) is he who came when
wakened up by Jehovah from the north and east, i.e. from
Media and Persia (ON^l = riK^ for HN^l, with evasion of the auxi-
liary pathach, Ges. § 76, 2, c), and, as the second clause affirms,
who invokes 'or will invoke the name of Jehovah (at any rate,
qui invocabit is the real meaning of qui invocai). For although
the Zarathustrian religion, which Cyrus followed, was nearest
to the Jehovah religion of all the systems of heathenism, it
was a heathen religion after all. The doctrine of a great God
{baga vazarha), the Creator of heaven and earth, and at the same
time of a great number of Bagas and Yazatas, behind whose
working and worship the great God was thrown into the shade,
is (apart from the dualism condemned in ch. xlv. 7) the sub-
stance of the sacred writings of the Magi in our possession, as
confirmed by the inscriptions of the Achemenides.^ But the
awakened of Jehovah would, as is here predicted, " call with
the name, or by means of the name, of Jehovah," which may
mean either call upon this name (Zeph. iii. 9 ; Jer. x. 25), or
call out the name (compare Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxsiv. 5, with Ex.
XXXV. 30) in the manner in which he does make use of it in the
edict setting the exiles free (Ezra i. 2). The verb K3J which
follows (cf. ver. 2) designates him still further as a conqueror
of nations ; the verb construed with an accusative is used
here, as is very frequently the case, in the sense of hostile
attack. The word Sdgdn, which is met with first in Ezekiel —
apart, that is to say, from the passage before us — may have
owed its meaning in the Hebrew vocabulary to its similarity
in sound to sohhen (ch. xxii. 15) ; at any rate, it is no doubt a
Persian word, which became naturalized in the Hebrew (Xay^a-
VT)<; in Athenseus, and Neo-Pers. sichne, a governor : see Ges.
Thes.), though this comparison is by no means so certain^ as
' 'Windisohmann, Zoroaslrisdhe Studien, pp. 134, 135.
^ Spiegel has the following remarks upon the subject : There is tut very
little probability in the etymologies ■which can be suggested for the word
sdgan through the help of the old Persian. The new Persian shihne cannot
be traced beyond Neo-Persian, and even there it is somewhat suspicious on
account of the _ which it contains, and which is not Persian. The only
CHAP. XLI. 26-28. 171
that <TaTpd'iT7}<; is the same as the Ksatrapdvan of the inscrip-
tions, i.e. protector of the kingdom.-^ Without at all overlook-
ing the fact that this word s^gdnlm, so far as it can really be
supposed to be a Persian word, favours the later composition
of this portion of the book of Isaiah, we cannot admit that it
has any decisive weight, inasmuch as the Persian word pardes
occurs even in the Song of Solomon. And the indications
which might be found in the word s^gdmm unfavourable to
Isaiah's authorship are abundantly counterbalanced by what
immediately follows.
As ver. 25 points back to the first charge against the heathen
and their gods (vers. 2-7), so vers. 26-28 point back to the
second. Not only did Jehovah manifest Himself as the Uni-
versal Euler in the waking up of Cyrus, but as the Omniscient
Euler also. Vers. 26-28. " Who liatJi made it known from the
beginning, we ivill acknowledge it, and from former time, we will
say He is in the right ? ! Yea, there was none that made known ;
yea, none that caused to hear ; yea, none that heard your words..
As the first I said to Zion, Behold, behold, there it is : and I
bestoio evangelists upon Jerusalem. And I looked, and there was
no man ; and of these there was no one ansivering whom I could
ask, and who would give me an answer^ If any one of the
heathen deities had foretold this appearance of Cyrus so long
before as at the very commencement of that course of history
real Persian word to which I could think of tracing it is shahr, a city (old
Bactrian hhshathra, or shoitlira, a place of abode) ; or it might possibly have
sprung from shoithraka, a supposititious word, in the sense of governor of
a district, but with the r changed into n (a change which only occurs in
Huzvaresh) and the Ji into _. There are also difficulties in the compari-
son of the old Bactrian ganh, to say or express solemnly. An adjective
qanhana (expressing, commanding), formed from this verb, would be pro-
nounced gahana or even gdna in old Persian ; and from this Sagan would
have to be obtained, so that we should still want the n to take the place of
the Gimel. At the same time, there is a still harsher form of the root qanli
in the Gatha dialect, namely gak (not the same as the Sanskrit gak, to be
strong, as Haug supposes), from which the Neo-Persian sachan, sachun, a
word, is derived; so that it appears to have been also current in old
Persian. Accordingly, the form gakana may also have been used in the
place of qanhana, and this might suit in some degree for sagan.
> See H. Eawlinson, Asiatic Journal, xi. 1, p. 116 ss. ; and Spiegel, KeiU
inschriften, p. 194.
172 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
which had thus readied its goal, Jehovah with His people,
being thus taught by experience, would admit and acknow-
ledge their divinity. E'Kip is used in the same sense as in
ch. xh-iii. 16 : and also in ch. xli. 4 and xl. 21, where it refers,
according to the context in each case, to the beginning of the
particular line of history. P'''=!V signifies either " he is right," i.e.
in the right (compare the Arabic siddik, genuine), or in a neuter
sense, " it is right" (= true), i.e. the claim to divine honours is
really founded upon divine performances. But there was not
one who had proclaimed it, or who gave a single sound of him-
self; no one had heard anything of the kind from them. T'"*
receives a retrospective character from the connection ; and
bearing this in mind, the participles may be also resolved into
imperfects. The repeated ^i?, passing beyond what is set down
as possible, declares the reality of the very opposite. What
Jehovah thus proves the idols to want, He can lay claim to for
Himself. In ver. 27 we need not assume that there is any
hyperbaton, as Louis de Dieu, EosenmiiHer, and others liave
done : " I first will give to Zion and Jerusalem one bringing
glad tidings : behold, behold them." After what has gone
before in ver. 26 we may easily supply ''fl"]?5J, " I said," in ver.
27a (compare ch. viii. 19, xiv. 16, xxvii. 2), not ^!0«, for the
whole comparison drawn by Jehovah between Himself and the
idols is retrospective, and looks back from the fulfilment in
progress to the prophecies relating to it. The only reply that
we can look for to the question in ver. 26 is not, "I on the
contraiy do it," but " I did it." At the same time, the render-
ing is a correct one : " Behold, behold them" (ilia ; for the
neuter use of the masculine, compare ch. xlviii. 3, xxxviii. 16,
xlv. 8). " As the first," Jehovah replies (i.e. without any one
anticipating me), " have I spoken to Zion : behold, behold, there
it is," pointing with the finger of prophecy to the coming sal-
vation, which is here regarded as present ; " and I gave to
Jerusalem messengers of joy;" i.e. long ago, before what is
now approaching could be known by any one, I foretold to my
church, through the medinm of prophets, the glad tidings of
the deliverance from Babylon. If the author of ch. xl.-lxvi.
were a prophet of the captivity, his reference here would be
to such prophecies as Isa. xi. 11 (where Shinar is mentioned
as a land of dispersion), and more especially still Mic. iv. 10,
CHAP. XLI. 29. 173
" There in Babylon wilt thou be delivered, there will Jehovah
redeem thee out of the hand of thine enemies ;" but if Isaiah
were the author, he is looking back from the ideal standpoint
of the time of the captivity, and of Gyrus more especially, to
his own prophecies before the captivity (such as ch. xiii, 1-xiv.
23, and xxi. 1-10), just as Ezekiel, when prophesying of Gog
and Magog, looks back in ch. xxxviii. 17 from the ideal stand-
point of this remote future, more especially to his own prophe-
cies in relation to it. In that case the in^bhasser, or evangelist,
more especially refen'ed to is the prophet himself (Grotius
and Stier), namely, as being the foreteller of those prophets to
whom the commission in ch. xl. 1, "Comfort ye, comfort ye,"
is addressed, and who are greeted in ch. Hi. 7, 8 as the bearers'
of the joyful news of the existing fulfilment of the deliverance
that has appeared, and therefore as the m'hliasser or evangelist
of the future dnrao. In any case, it follows from vers.
26, 27 that the overthrow of Babylon and the redemption of
Israel had long before been proclaimed by Jehovah through
His prophets; and if our exposition is, correct so far, tho
futures in ver. 28 are to be taken as imperfects : And I looked
round (^l^l, a voluntative in the hypothetical protasis, Ges.
§ 128, 2), and there was no one (who announced anydiing of
the kind) ; and of these (the idols) there was no adviser (with
regard to the future. Num. xxiv. 14), and none whom I could
ask, and who answered me (the questioner). Consequently,
just as the raising up of Cyrus proclaimed the sole omnipotence
of Jehovah, so did the fact that the deliverance of Zion-
Jerusalem, for which the raising up of Cyrus prepared the
way, had been predicted by Him long before, proclaim His
sole omniscience.
This closing declaration of Jehovah terminates with similar
words of wrath and contempt to those with which the judicial
process ended in ver. 24. Ver. 29. " See them all, vanity ;
nothingness are their productions, tvind and desolation their
molten images." ^\}'''^V^ are not the works of the idols, but, as
the parallel shows, the productions (plural, as in Ezek. vi. 6, Jer.
i. 16) of the idolaters, — in other words, the idols themselves, —
a parallel expression to DiTSDJ (from ^Di, as in ch. xlviii, 5 =
massekhdh, ch. xlii. 17). DDK IJX is an emotional asyndeton
(Ges. § 155, 1, «). The address is thus rounded off by return-
174 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ing to the idolaters, with whom it first started. The first part,
vers. 1-24, contains the judicial pleadings ; the second part,
vers. 25 sqq., recapitulates the evidence and the verdict.
THIRD PROPHECY.— Chap. xlii. l-xun. 13.
THE MEDIATOR OF ISRAEL AND SAVIOUR OF THE GENTILES.
The hen (behold) in ch. xli. 29 is now followed by a second
hen. With the former, Jehovah pronounced sentence upon the
idolaters and their idols ; with the latter. He introduces His
" servant." In ch. xh. 8 this epithet was applied to the nation,
which had been chosen as the servant and for the service of
Jehovah. But the servant of Jehovah who is presented to us
here is distinct from Israel, and has so strong an individuality
and such marked personal features, that the expression cannot
possibly be merely a personified collective. Nor can the prophet
himself be intended ; for what is here affirmed of this servant
of Jehovah goes infinitely beyond anything to which a prophet
was ever called, or of which a man was ever capable. It must
therefore be the future Christ ; and this is the view taken in
the Targum, where the translation of our prophecy commences
thus : " Hd" 'abhdi M'shichd'." Still there must be a connection
between the national sense, in which the expression " servant
of Jehovah" was used in ch. xli. 8, and the personal sense in
which it is used here. The coming Saviour is not depicted as
the Son of David, as in ch. vii.-xii., and elsewhere, but appears
as the embodied idea of Israel, i.e. as its truth and reality
embodied in one person. The idea of " the servant of Jehovah "
assumed, to speak figuratively, the form of a pyramid. The
base was Israel as a whole ; the central section was that Israel,
which was not merely Israel according to the flesh, but accord-
ing to the spirit also ; the apex is the person of the Mediator of
salvation springing out of Israel. And the last of the three is
regarded (1) as tbe centre of the circle of the promised kino--
dom — the second David; (2) the centre of the circle of the
people of salvation — the second Israel; (3) the centre of the
circle of the human race — the second Adam. Throughout the
whole of these prophecies in ch. xl.— Ixvi. the knowledge of
salvation is still in its second stage, and about to pass into the
CHAP. Xm. 1-3. 175
third. Israel's true nature as a servant of God, which had its
roots in the election and calling of Jehovah, and manifested
itself in conduct and action in harmony with this calling, is
all concentrated in Him, the One, as its ripest fruit. The
gracious purposes of God towards the whole human race, which
were manifested even in the election of Israel, are brought by
Him to their full completion. Whilst judgments are inflicted
upon the heathen by the oppressor of the nations, and display
the nothingness of idolatry, the servant of Jehovah brings to
them in a peaceful way the greatest of all blessings. Ver. 1.
" Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect, whom my soul
loveth : I have laid my Spirit upon Him ; He will bring out right
to the Gentiles^ "We must not render the first clause "by
whom I hold." TdmaM, V means to lay firm hold of and keep
upright (sustinere). ''^3? '^0^7t (^"^PP^y i^ °^ ^^^j ^°'^ xxxiii. 26)
is an attributive clause. The amplified subject extends as far
as naphshl ; then follows the predicate : I have endowed Him
with my Spirit, and by virtue of this Spirit He will carry out
mishpdt, i.e. absolute and therefore divine right, beyond the
circle in which He Himself is to be found, even far away to the
Gentiles. Mishpdt is the term employed here to denote true
religion regarded on its practical side, as the rule and authority
for life in all its relations, i.e. religion as the law of life, j/o/tds.
The prophet then proceeds to describe how the servant of
Jehovah will manifest Himself in the world outside Israel by
the promulgation of this right. Ver. 2. " He ivill not cry, nor
lift up, nor cause to be heard in the street. His voice." " His
voice " is the object of " lift up," as well as " cause to be heard."
With our existing division of the verse, it must at least be sup-
plied in thought. Although he is certain of His divine call,
and brings to the nations the highest and best. His manner of
appearing is nevertheless quiet, gentle, and humble ; the very
opposite of those lying teachers, who endeavoured to exalt
themselves by noisy demonstrations. He does not seek His
own, and therefore denies Himself ; He brings what commends
itself, and therefore requires no forced trumpeting.
With this unassuming appearance there is associated a
tender pastoral care. Ver. 3. " A bruised reed He does not
break, and a glimmering wick He does not put out : according to
truth He brings out fight." " Bruised : " rdtsuts signifies here,
176 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
as in ch. xxxvi. 6, what is cracked, and therefore half-broken
already. Glimmering : keJieh (a form indicative of defects,
like lliy), that which is burning feebly, and very nearly ex-
tinguished. Tertullian understands by the " bruised reed "
(arundinem contusam) the faith of Israel, and by the " glim-
mering wick" (linum ardens) the momentary zeal of the
Gentiles. But the words hardly admit of this distinction ; the
reference is rather a general one, to those whose inner and outer
life is only hanging by a slender thread. In the statement
that in such a case as this He does not completely break or ex-
tinguish, there is more implied than is really expressed. Not
only will He not destroy the life that is dying out, but He will
actually save it ; His course is not to destroy, but to save. If
we explain the words that follow as meaning, " He will carry
out right to truth," i.e. to its fullest efficacy and permanence
(LXX. eh aXrjBeiav; instead of which we find eh vlkoi, "unto
victory," in Matt. xii. 20,^ as if the reading were nsap^ as in
Hab. i. 4), the connection between the first and last clauses of
ver. 3 is a very loose one. It becomes much closer if we take
the h as indicating the standard, as in ch. xi. 3 and xxxii. 1,
and adopt the rendering " according to truth " (Hitzig and
Knobel). It is on its subjective and practical side that truth
is referred to here, viz. as denoting such a knowledge, and
acknowledgment of the true facts in the complicated affairs of
men, as will promote both equity and kindness.
The figures in ver. 3a now lead to the thought that the
servant of God will never be extinguished or become broken
Himself. Ver. 4. " He loill not become faint or broken, till He
establish right upon earili, and the islands wait for His instruc-
tion." As nna'' (become faint) points back to nna nDE'a (the
faint or glimmering wick), so p"i^ must point back to psn nap
(the bruised or broken reed) ; it cannot therefore be derived
from yn (to run) in the sense of " He will not be rash or impe-
tuous, but execute His calling with wise moderation," as Heng-
stenberg supposes, but as in Eccles. xii. 6, from f->"} = f''i*^ (Ges.
§ 67, Anm.. 9), in the neuter sense of infringetur (will break).
His zeal will not be extinguished, nor will anything break His
strength, till He shall have secured for right a firm standing on
the earth (^''^\ is &fut. ex. so far as the meaning is concerned,
^ "^d victortam enim x.pi(iiii perducit qui ad veritaiem perdiKit." — Anger.
CHAP. XLH. 5-7. 177
like ysa'. in cli. x. 12). Tlie question arises now, whether what
follows is also governed by IJ?, in the sense of "and until the
islands shall have believed his instruction," as Hitzig supposes ;
or whether it is an independent sentence, as rendered by the
XiXX. and in Matt. xii. 21. We prefer the latter, both
because of ch. li. 5, and also because, although 'n lyv bn) may
certainly mean to exercise a believing confidence in the word
of God (Ps. cxix. 74, 81), ilTiinp ?n^ can only mean "to wait
with longing for a person's instruction " (Job xxix. 23), and
especially in this case, where no thought is more naturally sug-
gested, than that the messenger to the Gentile world will be
welcomed by a consciousness of need already existing in the
heathen world itself. There is a gratia prceparans at work in
the Gentile world, as these prophecies all presuppose, in perfect
harmony with the Gospel of John, with which they have so
much affinity; and it is an actual fact, that the cry for redemp-
tion runs through the whole human race, i.e. an earnest longing,
the ultimate object of which, however unconsciously, is the ser-
vant of Jehovah and his instruction from Zion (ch. ii. 3), — in
other words, the gospel.
The words of Jehovah are now addressed to His servant
himself. He has not only an exalted vocation, answering to
the infinite exaltation of Him from whom he has received his
call ; but by virtue of the infinite might of the caller, he may
be well assured that he will never be wanting in power to.
execute his calling. Vers. 5-7. " Thus saith God, Jeliovah,.
who created tlie heavens, and stretched them out; who spread tlue^
earth, and its productions ; who gave the spirit of life to the people
upon it, and the breath of life to them that walk upon it : I,
Jehovah, I have called thee in righteousness, and grasped thy-
hand; and I keep thee, and make thee the covenant of the people,,
the light of the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners-
out of the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the prisort-
house." The perfect 'dmar is to be explained on the ground'
that the words of God, as compared with the prophecy which
announces them, are always the earlier of the two. ?i?n (the
absolutely Mighty) is an anticipatory apposition to Jehovah
(Ges. § 113**). The attributive participles we have resolved
into perfects, because the three first at least declare facts of
creation, which have occurred once for all. DniDii is not to ho
VOL. II. M
178 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
regarded as a p]ural, after ch. liv. 5 and Job xxxv. 10 ; but as
N'lia precedes it, we may take it as a singular with an original
quiescent Yod, after ch. v. 12, xxii. 11, xxvi. 12 (cf . vol. i. p. 108).
On Vpj (construct of J?i?^), see ch. xl. 19. The 1 of n''??,?',?! (a
word fonnd both in Job and Isaiah, used here in its most direct
sense, to signify the vegetable world) must be taken in accord-
ance with the seuse, as the Vav of appurtenance; since J/pl
may be afErmed of the globe itself, but not of the vegetable
productions upon it (cf. Gen. iv. 20 ; Judg. vi. 5 ; 2 Chron.
ii. 3). N'slidmdh and ruacli are epithets applied to the divine
principle of life in all created corporeal beings, or, what is the
same thing, in all beings with living souls. At the same time,
n'shdmali is an epithet restricted to the self-conscious spirit of
man, which gives him his personality (Psycliol. p. 76, etc.) ;
whereas ru&cli is applied not only to the human spirit, but to
the spirit of the beast as well. Accordingly, oy signifies the
human race, as in ch. xl. 7. What is it, then, that Jehovah,
the Author of all being and all hfe, the Creator of the heaven
and the earth, says to His servant here ? "I Jehovah have
called thee ' in righteousness' " (hHsedeq : cf. ch. xlv. 13, where
Jehovah also says of Cyrus, " I have raised him up in right-
eousness"). p'lS, derived from piy, to be rigid, straight, denotes
the observance of a fixed rule. The righteousness of God is
the stringency with which He acts, in accordance with the will
of His holiness. This will of holiness is, so far as the human
race is concerned, and apart from the counsels of salvation, a
will of wrath ; but from the standpoint of these counsels it is
a wiU of love, which is only changed into a will of wrath
towards those who despise the grace thus offered to them.
Accordingly, fsedeq denotes the action of God in accordance
with His purposes of love and the plan of salvation. It sig-
nifies just the same as what we should call in New Testament
phraseology the Jioly love of God, which, because it is a Ao/y
love, has wrath against its despisers as its obverse side, but
which acts towards men not according to the law of works,
but according to the law of grace. The word has this evan-
gelical sense here, where Jehovah says of the Mediator of His
counsels of love, that He has called Him in strict adhereuce to
the will of His love, which wiU show mercy as right, but at
the same time wiU manifest a right of double severity towards
CHAP. XLII. 5-7. 179
tliose who scornfully repel the offered mercy. That He had
been called in righteousness, is attested to the servant of Je-
hovah by the fact that Jehovah has taken Him by the hand
(ptntil contracted after the manner of a future of sequence),
and guards Him, and appoints Him 0^13 ^iNp DJ? n'''i3p. These
words are a decisive proof that the idea of the expression
" servant of Jehovah" has been elevated in ch. xlii. 1 sqq., as
compared with ch. xli. 8, from the national base to the pei'sonal
apex. Adherence to the national sense necessarily compels a
resort to artifices which carry their own condemnation, such as
that DJ? irina signifies the " covenant nation," as Hitzig sup-
poses, or " the mediating nation," as Ewald maintains, whereas
either of these would require rTina DJ) ; or " national covenant"
(Knobel), in support of which we are referred, though quite
inconclusively, to Dan. xi. 28, where ^p fTina does not mean
the covenant of the patriots among themselves, but the cove-
nant religion, with its distinctive sign, circumcision ; or even
that DJ? is collective, and equivalent to D'>DJ? (Kosenmiiller),
whereas Oil and D^U, when standing side by side, as they do
here, can only mean Israel and the Gentiles ; and so far as the
passage before us is concerned, this is put beyond all doubt by
ch. xlix. 8 (cf. ver. 6). An unprejudiced commentator must
admit that the " servant of Jehovah" is pointed out here, as
He in whom and through whom Jehovah concludes a new
covenant with His people, in the place of the old covenant
that was broken, — namely, the covenant promised in ch. liv. 10,
Ixi. 8, Jer. xxxi. 31-34, Ezek. xvi. 60 sqq. The mediator of
this covenant with Israel cannot be Israel itself, not even the
true Israel, as distinguished from the mass (where do we read
anything of this kind ?) ; on the contrary, the remnant left
after the sweeping away of the mass is the object of this cove-
nant.^ Nor can the expression refer to the prophets as a body,
or, in fact, have any collective meaning at all : the form of the
' This is equally applicable to V. F. Oehler (Der Knecht Jehova's iiii
Deuterojesaia, 2 Theile, 1865), ■who takes the " servant of Jehovah'' as
far as ch. Hi. 14 in a national sense, and supposes " the transition from
the 'servant' as a collective noun, to the 'servant' as an individual," to be
effected there ; whereas two younger theologians, E. Schmutz (Ze Serviteur
de Je'Jiova, 1858) and Ferd. Philippi (Die bibl. Lehre vom Knechte Gottes,
1864), admit that the individualizing commences as early asch. xlii. 1,
180 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
word, whicli is so strongly personal, is in itself opposed to this.
It cannot, in fact, denote any other than that Prophet who ia
more than a prophet, namely, Malachi's " Messenger of the
covenant" (eh. iii. 1). Amongst those who suppose that the
" servant of Jehovah" is either Israel, regarded in the light of
its prophetic calling, or the prophets as a body, Umbreit at any
rate is obliged to admit that this collective body is looked at
here in the ideal unity of one single Messianic personality ; and
he adds, that " in the holy countenance of this prophet, which
shines forth as the ideal of future realization, we discern
exactly the loved features of Him to whom all prophecy points,
and who saw Himself therein." This is very beautiful ; but
why this roundabout course 1 Let us bear in mind, that the
servant of Jehovah appears here not only as one who is the
medium of a covenant to the nation, and of light to the Gen-
tiles, but as being himself the people's covenant and heathen's
light, inasmuch as in his own person he is the band of a new
fellowship between Israel and Jehovah, and becomes in his own
person the light which illumines the dark heathen world. This
is surely more than could be affirmed of any prophet, even of
Isaiah or Jeremiah. Hence the " servant of Jehovah" must
be that one Person who was the goal and culminating point
to which, from the very first, the history of Israel was ever
pressing on ; that One who throws into the shade not only all
that prophets did before, but all that had been ever done by
Israel's priests or kings ; that One who arose out of Israel, for
Israel and the whole human race, and who stood in the same
relation not only to the wider circle of the whole nation, but
also to the inner circle of the best and noblest within it, as the
heart to the body which it animates, or the head to the body
over which it rules. All that Cyrus did, was simply to throw
the idolatrous nations into a state of alarm, and set the exiles
free. But the Servant of Jehovah opens blind eyes ; and
therefore the deliverance which He brings is not only redemp-
tion from bodily captivity, but from spiritual bondage also.
He leads His people (cf. ch. xlix. 8, 9), and the Gentiles also,
out of night into light ; He is the Eedeemer of all that need
redemption and desire salvation.
Jehovah pledges His name and honour that this work of
the Servant of Jehovah will be carried into effect. Ver. 8. " I
CHAP. XLII. 8-13. 181
am Jehovah; that is my name, and my glory I give not to another,
nor my renown to idols'' That is His name, which affirms how
truly He stands alone in His nature, and recals to mind the
manifestations of His life, His power, and His grace from the
very eai-liest times (of. Ex. iii. 15). He to whom this name
belongs cannot permit the honour due to Him to be perma-
nently transferred to sham gods. He has therefore made pre-
parations for putting an end to idolatry. Cyrus does this
provisionally by the tempestuous force of arms ; and the Ser-
vant of Jehovah completes it by the spiritual force of His
simple word, and of His gentle, unselfish love.
First the overthrow of idolatry, then the restoration of
Israel and conversion of the Gentiles : this is the double work
of Jehovah's zeal which is already in progress. Ver. 9. " The
first, behold, is come to pass, and new things am I proclaiming ;
before it springs vp, I let you hear it." The " first " is the rise
of Cyrus, and the agitation of the nations which it occasioned,
— events which not only formed the starting-point of the pro-
phecy in these addresses, whether tlia captivity was the pro-
phet's historical or ideal standpoint, but which had no less
force in themselves, as the connection between the first and
second halves of the verse before us imply, as events both
foreknown and distinctly foretold by Jehovah. The " new
things '' wiiich Jehovah now foretells before their visible deve-
lopment (eh. xliii. 19), are the restoration of Israel, for which
the defeat of their oppressors prepares the way, and the con-
version of the heathen, to which an impulse is given by the
fact that God thus glorifies Himself in His people.
The prediction of these " new things,'' which now follows,
looks away from all human mediation. They are manifestly
the work of Jehovah Himself, and consist primarily in the
subjugation of His enemies, who are holding His people in
captivity. Vers. 10-13. " Sing ye to Jehovah a new song.
His praise from the end of the earth, ye navigators of the sea,
and its fulness ; ye islands, and their inhabitants. Let the
desert and the cities thereof strike up, the villages that Kedar
doth inhabit ; the inhabitants of the rochncity may rejoice, shout
from the summits of the mountains. Let them give glory to
Jehovah, and proclaim His praise in the islands. Jehovah, like
a hero will He go forth, hindle jealousy like a man of war ; He
182 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
loUl break forth into a war-cry, a yelling war-cry^ prove HiriiBelf
a hero upon His enemies^ The "new things" furnish the
impulse and materials of " a new song," such as had never
been heard in the heathen world before. This whole group of
verses is like a variation of ch. xxiv. 14, 15. Tiie standing-
place, whence the summons is uttered, is apparently Ezion-
geher, at the head of the Elanitic Gulf, that seaport town
from which in the time of the kings the news of the nations
reached the Holy Land through the extensive commerce of
Israel. From this point the eye stretches to the utmost circle
of the earth, and then returns from the point where it meets
with those who " go down to the sea," i.e. who navigate the
ocean which lies lower than the solid ground. These are to
sing, and everything that lives and moves in the sea is to join
in the sailors' song. The islands and coast lands, that are
washed by the sea, are likewise to sing together with their
inhabitants. After the summons has drawn these into the net
of the song of praise, it moves into the heart of the land. The
desert and its cities are to lift up (viz. " their voice "), the
villages which Kedar inhabits. The reference to Sela , the
rock-city of Edomitish Nabatsea, which is also mentioned in
ch. xvi. 1 (the Wadi Musa, which is still celebrated for its
splendid ruins), shows by way of example what cities arc in-
tended. Their inhabitants are to ascend the steep mountains
by which the city is surrounded, and to raise a joyful crv
{yitsvdchu, to cry out with a loud noise ; cf. ch. xxiv. 11).
Along with the inhabitants of cities, the stationary Arabs, who
arc still called Hadariye in distinction from Wahariye, the
Arabs of the tents, are also summoned ; hadar (^chdtser) is a
fixed abode, in contrast to ledH, the steppe, where the tents are
pitched for a short time, now in one place and now in another.
In ver. 12 the summons becomes more general. The subject
is the heathen universally and in evcrj' place ; they are to give
Jehovah the glory (Ps. Ixvi. 2), and declare His praise upon
the islands, i.e. to the remotest ends of the whole world of
nations. In ver, 13 there follows the reason for this summons,
and the theme of the new song in honour of the God of Israel,
viz. His victory over His enemies, the enemies of His people.
The description is anthropomorphically dazzling and bold, such
as the self-assurance and vividness of the Israelitish idea of
CHAP. XLII. 14. 183
God permitted, without any danger of misunderstanding.
Jeliovah goes out into the conflict like a hero; and like a "man
of war," i.e. like one who has already fought many battles, and
is therefore ready for war, and well versed in warfare. He stirs
up jealousy (see at ch. ix. 6). His jealousy has slumbered as
it were for a long time, as if smouldering under the ashes ; but
now He stirs it up, i.e. makes it burn up into a bright flame.
Going forward to the attack, J?'*"]*^, " He breaks out into a cry,"
D''"!Vri??, " yea, a yelling cry " (kal Zeph. i. 14, to cry with a
yell; liiphil, to utter a yelling cry). In the words, "He will
show Himself as a hero upon His enemies," we see Plim already
engaged in the battle itself, in which He proves Himself to
possess the strength and boldness of a hero (Jiiiligabhar only
occurs again in the book of Job). The overthrow which
heathenism here suffers at the hand of Jehovah is, according
to our prophet's view, the final and decisive one. The re-
demption of Israel, which is thus about to appear, is redemption
from the punishment of captivity, and at the same time from
all the troubles that arise from sin. The period following the
captivity and the New Testament times here fioW into one.
The period of punishment has now lasted sufficiently long ;
it is time for Jehovah to bring forth the salvation of His
people. Ver. 14. " I have been silent eternally long, was still,
restrained myself ; like a travailing woman, I now breathe again,
snort and snuff together'' The standpoint of these prophecies
has the larger half of the captivity behind it. It has already
lasted a long time, though only for several decades ; but in the
estimation of Jehovah, with His love to His people, this time of
long-suffering towards their oppressors is already an "eternity"
(see ch. Ivii. 11, Iviii. 12, Ixi. 4, Ixiii. 18, 19, Ixiv. 4, cf. vers.
10, 11). He has kept silence, has still forcibly restrained
Himself, just as Joseph is said to have done to prevent himself
from breaking out into tears (Gen. xliii. 31). Love impelled
Him to redeem His people ; but justice was still obliged to pro-
,ceed with punishment.
Three real futures now take the place of imperfects regu-
lated by '^'^y^^y}.. They are not to be understood as denoting
the violent breathing and snorting of a hero, burning with
rage and thirsting for battle (Knobel) ; nor is DE'N to be derived
from DI2K', as Hitzig supposes, through a mistaken comparison
134 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of Ezek. xxxvi. 3, though the latter does not mean to
waste, but to be waste (see Hitzig on Ezek. xxxvi. 3). G
true derivation is from D'^J, related to ^l^^^, mi, SB^J. To
figure of a hero there is now added that of a travailing womi
nj?a is short breathing (with the glottis closed) ; QK-J the snc
ing of violent inspiration and expiration ; ^l^^ the earn
longing for deliverance pressing upon the burden in the won
and "in^ expresses the combination of all these several strainii
of the breath, which are associated with the so-called labo
pains. Some great thing, with which Jehovah has, as it ws
long been pregnant, is now about to be born.
The delivery takes place, and the whole world of nati
undergoes a metamorphosis, which is subservient to the gr
work of the future. Ver. 15. " I make loaste mountains c
Mils, and all their herbage I dry up, and change streams i
islands, and lakes I dry up.'' Here is another example
Isaiah's favourite palindromy, as Nitzsch calls this return tc
word that has been used before, or linking on the close o\
period to its commencement (see p. 134). Jehovah's panting
labour is His almighty fiery breath, which turns mountains a
hills into heaps of ruins, scorches up the vegetation, conden
streams into islands, and dries up the lakes ; that is to s
turns the strange land, in which Israel has been held capti
into a desert, and at the same time removes all the hindran
to His people's return, thus changing the present condition
the world into one of the very opposite kind, which displi
His righteousness in wrath and love.
The great thing which is brought to pass by means of t
catastrophe is the redemption of His people. Ver. 16. " A
I lead the blind by a way thai they know not ; by steps that t
know not, I make them walk : I turn dark space before them i
light, and rugged places into a plain. Tliese are the things t
I caivy out, and do not leave." The " blind " are those v
have been deprived of sight by their sin, and the consequ
punishment. The unknown ways in which Jehovah le
tliem, are the ways of deliverance, which are known to B
alone, but. which have now been made manifest in the fuln
of time. The " dark space " (machshak) is their existing st
of hopeless misery; the "rugged places" {ma aqasshlm)
hindrances that met them, and dangers that threatened th
CHAP. XLII. 17-19. 185
on all sides in the foreign land. The mercy of Jehovah adopts
the blind, lights up the darkness, and clears every obstacle
away. " These are the things " (liaddfbhdnm) : this refers to
the particulars already sketched out of the double manifestation
of Jehovah in judgment and in mercy. The perfects of the
attributive clause are perfects of certainty.
In connection with this, the following verse declares what
effect this double manifestation will produce among the heathen.
Ver. 17. " They fall back, are put deeply to shame, that trust in
molten images, that say to the molten image. Thou art our God."
Bosheth takes the place of an inf. intens. ; cf. Hab. iii. 9.
Jehovah's glorious acts of judgment aud salvation unmask the
false gods, to the utter confusion of their worshippers. And
whilst in this way the false religions fall, the redemption of Israel
becomes at the same time the redemption of the heathen. The
first half of this third prophecy is here brought to a close.
The thought which connects the second half with the first
is to be found in the expression in ver. 16, "I will bring the
blind by a way." It is the blind whom Jehovah will lead into
the light of liberty, the blind who bring upon themselves not
only His compassion, but also His displeasure ; for it is their
own fault that they do not see. And to them is addressed the
summons, to free themselves from the ban which is resting
upon them. Ver. 18. " Ye deaf, hear ; and ye blind, look up,
that ye may see." ^^''a'nnn and C^Wn (this is the proper pointing,
according to the codd. and the Masora^) are vocatives. The
relation in which tO'an and nsn stand to one another is that of
• • T T
design and accomplishment (ch. Ixiii. 15, Job xxxv. 5, 2 Kings
iii. 14, etc.) ; and they are used interchangeably with VJ''!? nj^a
and nsT (^e.g. 2 Kings xix. 16), which also stand in the same
relation of design and result.
The next verse states who these self-willed deaf and blind
are, and how necessary this arousing was. Ver. 19. " Who is
blind, but my servant ? and deaf, as my messenger whom, I send ?
who blind as the confidant of God, and blind as the servant of
Jehovah ?" The first double question implies that Jehovah's
servant and messenger is blind and deaf in a singular and un-
1 The Masora observes expressly pnnsi pISI t^^^D ^3, omnes c^ci
raphati et pathachati ; but our editions have both here and in 2 Sam. v. 6, 8,
Dniyn.
186 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
paralleled way. The words are repeated, the questioner dwell-
ing upon the one predicate 'wver, " blind," in which every-
thing is affirmed, and, according to Isaiah's favourite custom,
returning palindromically to the opening expression "servant
of Jehovah" (cf. ch. xl. 19, xlii. 15, and many other passages).
dW'd does not mean " the perfect one," as Vitringa renders it,
nor " the paid, i.e. purchased one," as Eosenmiiller supposes,
but one allied in peace and friendship, the confidant of God.
It is the passive of the Arabic muslim, one who trusts in God
(compare the hophal in Job v. 23). It is impossible to read
the expression, " My messenger whom I send," without thinking
of ch. xlii. 1 sqq., where the " servant of Jehovah " is repre-
sented as a messenger to the heathen. (Jerome is wrong in
following the Jewish commentators, and adopting the render-
ing, ad quern nuntios meos misi.) With this similarity both of
name and calling, there must be a connection between the
" servant" mentioned here, and the "servant" referred to there.
Now the " servant of Jehovah" is always Israel. But since
Israel might be regarded either according to the character of
the overwhelming majority of its members (the mass), who
had forgotten their calling, or according to the character of
those living members who had remained true to their calling,
and constituted the kernel, or as concentrated in that one
Person who is the essence of Israel in the fullest truth and
highest potency, statements of the most opposite kind could
be made with respect to this one homonymous subject. In ch.
xli. 8 sqq. the "servant of Jehovah" is caressed and com-
forted, inasmuch as there the true Israel, which deserved and
needed consolation, is addressed, without regard to the mass
who had forgotten their calling. In ch. xlii. 1 sqq. that One
person is referred to, who is, as it were, the centre of this inner
circle of Israel, and the head upon the body of Israel. And in
the passage before us, the idea is carried from this its highest
point back again to its lowest basis; and the servant of Jehovah
is blamed and reproved for the harsh contrast between its
actual conduct and its divine calling, between the reality and
the idea. As we proceed, we shall meet again with the " ser-
vant of Jehovah" in the same systole and diastole. The ex-
pression covers two concentric circles, and their one centre.
The inner circle of the " Israel according to the Spirit" forms
CHAP. XLII. 20-22. 187
the connecting link between Israel in its widest sense, and
Israel in a personal sense. Here indeed Israel is severely
blamed as incapable, and .unworthy of fulfilling its sacred
calling ; but the expression " whom I send " nevertheless
affirms that it will fulfil it, — namely, in the person of the ser-
vant of Jehovah, and in all those members of the " servant of
Jehovah" in a national sense, who long for deliverance from
the ban and bonds of the present state of punishment (see ch.
xxix. 18). For it is really the mission of Israel to be the
medium of salvation and blessing to the nations ; and this is
fulfilled by the servant of Jehovah, who proceeds from Israel,
and takes his place at the head of Israel. Aad as the history
of the fulfilment shows, when the foundation for the accom-
plishment of this mission had been laid by the servant of
Jehovah in person, it was carried on by the servant of Jehovah
in a national sense ; for the Lord became " a covenant of the
people" through His own preaching and that of His apostles.
But " a light of the Gentiles" He became purely and simply
through the apostles, who represented the true and believing
Israel.
The reproof, which affects Israel a potiori, now proceeds
still further, as follows. Vers. 20-22. " Thou hast seen much,
and yet heepest not; opening the ears, he yet doth not hear.
Jehovah was pleased for His righteousness' sake : He gave a
thorah great and glorious. And yet it is a people robbed and
plundered; fastened in holes all of them, and they are hidden in
prison-houses : they have become booty, %oithout deliverers ; a
spoil, without any one saying, Give it up again ! " In ver. 20
"thou" and "he" alternate, like "they" and "ye" in ch. i.
29, and « I" and " he" in ch. xiv. 30. n^Nn, which points back
to the past, is to be preserved. The reading of the heri is rii8<n
(inf. abs. like ninB-, ch. xxii. 13, and nhJJ, Hab. iii. 13), which
makes the two half-verses uniform. Israel ■ has had many and
great things' to see, but without keeping the admonitions they
contained; opening its ears, namely to the earnestness of the
preaching, it bears, and yet does not hear, i.e. it only hears
outwardly, but without taldng it into itself. Ver. 21 shows us
to what ver. 20 chiefly refers. K?" is followed here by the
future instead of by Lamed with an infinitive, just as in ch. liiL
10 it is followed by the perfect (Ges. § 142, 3, h). Jehovah
188 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
was pleased for His righteousness' sake (which is mentioned
here, not as that which recompenses for works of the law, but
as that which bestows mercy according to His purpose, His
promise, and the plan of salvation) to make thordli, i.e. the
direction, instruction, revelation which He gave to His people,
great and glorious. The reference is primarily and chiefly to
the Sinaitic law, and the verbs relate not to the solemnity of
the promulgation, but to the riches and exalted character of the
contents. But what a glaring contrast did the existing condi-
tion of Israel present to these manifestations and purposes of
mercy on the part of its God ! The intervening thought ex-
pressed by Hosea (Hos. viii. 125), viz. that this condition was
the punishment of unfaithfulness, may easily be supplied. The
inf. abs. nsn is introduced to give life to the picture, as in ch.
xxii. 13. Hahn renders it, "They pant {hipliil of piX&ch) in
the holes all of them," but kidldm (all of them) must be the
accusative of the object ; so that the true meaning is, " They
have fastened (Jiiphil of pdchach) all of them," etc. (Ges. § 131,
4, b). Schegg adopts the rendering, " All his youths fall into
traps," which is wrong in two respects ; for bachurim is the
plural of chiir (ch. xi. 8), and it is parallel to the double plural
^''^?? ''??, houses of custodies. The whole nation in all its
members is, as it were, put into bonds, and confined in prisons
of all kinds (an allegorizing picture of the homelessness and
servitude of exile), without any one thinking of demanding it
back (3B'n = 3K'n, as in Ezek. xxi. 35 ; a pausal form here :
vid. Ges. § 29, 4 Anm.).
When they ceased to be deaf to this crying contradiction,
they would recognise with penitence that it was but the merited
punishment of God. Vers. 23-25. " Who among you will give
<MT to this, attend, and hear for tlie time to come ? Who lias
given up Jacob to plundering, and Israel to the spoilers ? Is it not
Jehovah, against whom we have sinned ? and they would not walk
in His ways, and hearkened not to His law. Tlien He poured
upon it in burning heat His wrath, and the strength of the fury
of war: and this set it in flames round about, and it did not come
to be recognised ; it set it on fire, and it did not lay it to heart."
The question in ver. 23 has not the force of a negative sen-
tence, "ISTo one does this," but of a wish, "0 that one would" (as
in 2 Sam. xxiii. 15, xv. 4 ; Ges. § 136, 1). If they had but an
CHAP. XLIII. 1, 2. 189
imTard ear for the contradiction which the state of Israel pre-
sented to its true calling, and the earlier manifestations of
divine mercy, and would but give up their previous deafness
for the time to come : this must lead to the knowledge and
confession expressed in ver. 24. The names Jacob and Israel
here follow one another in the same order as in ch. xxix. 23,
xl. 27 (compare ch. xli. 8, where this would have been imprac-
ticable). It belongs to i^ in the sense of cui. Tlie punctua-
tion does not acknowledge this relative use of IT (on which, see
at ch. xliii. 21), and therefore puts the athnach in the wrong
place (see Kaslii). In the words " we have sinned" the pro-
phet identifies himself with the exiles, in whose sin he knew and
felt that he was really involved (cf. ch. vi. 5). The objective
affirmation which follows applies to the former generations, who
had sinned on till the measure became full, '^'on takes the
T
place of the object to 13S< (see ch. i. 17) ; the more usual ex-
pression would be 'roj> ; the inverted order of the words makes
the assertion all the more energetic. In ver. 25 the genitive
relation iSi? rion is avoided, probably in favour of the similar
rine of nnn and non^D. non is either the accusative of the
object, and iSX a subordinate statement of what constituted the
burning heat (cf. Ewald, § 287, A), or else an accusative, of more
precise definition = nona in ch. Ixvi. 15 (Ges, § 118, 3). The
outpouring is also connected by zeugma with the " violence of
war." The milchdmdli then becomes the subject. The war-
fury raged without result. Israel was not brought to reflection.
The tone of the address is now suddenly changed. The
sudden leap from reproach to consolation was very significant.
It gave them to understand, that no meritorious work of their
own would come in between what Israel was and what it was
to be, but that it was God's free grace which came to meet it.
Oh. xliii. 1, 2. " But now thus saith Jehovah thy Creator,
Jacob, and thy Former, Israel ! Fear not, for I have redeemed
thee ; I have called thee by name, thou art mine. When thou goest
through the water, I am with thee ; and through rivers, they shall
not drown thee : when thou goest into fire, thou shalt not be
burned; and the flame shall not set thee on fire" The punish-
ment has now lasted quite long enough ; and, as nnj;i affirms,
tlie love which has hitherto retreated behind the wrath returns
to its own prerogatives again. He who created and formed
190 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Israel, by giving Abraham the son of the promise, and caused
the seventy of Jacob's family to grow up into a nation in
Egypt, He also will shelter and preserve it. He bids it be of
good cheer ; for their early history is a pledge of this. The
perfects after ''3 in ver. lb stand out against the promising
futures in ver. 2, as retrospective glances : the expression " I
have redeemed thee" pointing back to Israel's redemption out
of Egypt ; " I have called thee by thy name" (lit. I have called
with thy name, i.e. called it out), to its call to be the peculiar
people of Jehovah, who therefore speaks of it in cli. xlviii. 12
as " My called." This help of the God of Israel will also
continue to arm it against the destructive power of the most
hostile elements, and rescue it from the midst of the greatest
dangers, from which there is apparently no escape (cf . Ps. Ixvi.
12 ; Dan. iii. 17, 27 ; and Ges. § 103, 2).
Just as in ver. lb, M. (for), with all that follows, assigns the
reason for the encouraging " Fear not ;" so here a second ki
introduces the reason for the promise which ensures them
against the dangers arising from either water or fire. Vers. 3, 4.
" For I Jehovah am thy God ; (/) the Holy One of Israel, thy
Saviour : J give up Egypt as a ransom for thee, Ethiopia and
Seba in thy stead. Because thou art dear in my eyes, highly
esteemed, and I loved thee; I give up men in thy stead, and
peoples for thy life." Both " Jehovah" and " the Holy One
of Israel" are in apposition to " Z" ('ctni), the force of which is
continued in the second clause. The preterite ndthatti (I have
given), as the words " I will give " in ver. 46 clearly show,
states a fact which as yet is only completed so far as the pur-
pose is concerned. " A ransom ;" kopher (KvTpov) is literally
the covering (see vol. i. 397 and ii. 11), — the person making the
payment, or the person for whom he makes it, being covered
by the payment. saD is the land of Iferoe, which is enclosed
between the White and Blue Nile, the present Ddr Senndr,
district of Sennar {Sen-drti, i.e. island of Send), or the ancient
Meroitic priestly state settled about this enclosed land, probablv
iHclnded in the Mudrdya (Egypt) of the Achsemenidian arrow-
headed inscriptions ; though it is uncertain whether the Kusiya
(Heb. Kushim) mentioned there are the predatory tribe of
archers called Kotrtraht, (Strabo, xi. 13, 6), whose name has
been preserved in the present Ohuzistan, the eastern Ethiopians
CHAP. XLIII. 5-7. 191
of the Greeks (as Lasseu and Eawlinson suppose), or the
African Ethiopians of the Bible, as Oppert imagines. The
fact that Egypt was only conquered by Oambyses, and not by
Cyrus, who merely planned it (Herod, i. 153), and to whom it
is only attributed by a legend (Xen. Cyr. viii. 6, 20, \ejeTai
KaTaa-Tpey^cuiBai, Aiyvn-Top), does no violence to the truth of
the promise. It is quite enough that Egypt and the neigh-
bouring kingdoms were subjugated by the new imperial power
of Persia, and that through that empire the Jewish people
recovered their long-lost liberty. The free love of God was
the reason for His treating Israel according to the principle
laid down in Prov. xi. 8, xxi. 18. "i?'^?? does not signify ex quo
tempore here, but is equivalent to "lE'N V.?? in Ex. xix. 18, Jer.
xliv. 23 ; for if it indicated the terminus a quo, it would be
followed by a more distinct statement of the fact of their
election. The personal pronoun " and I" (vciani) is intro-
duced in consequence of the change of persons. In the place
of '''?n^'! {psff- cons.), \^^\ com.mended itself, as the former had
already been used in a somewhat different function. All that
composed the chosen nation are here designated as " man"
(addm), because there was nothing in them but what was
derived from Adam, nnri has here a strictly substitutionary
meaning throughout.
The encouraging " Fear not " is here resumed, for the pur-
pose of assigning a still further reason. Vers. 5-7. " Fear not;
for I am, with thee : I bring thy seed from the east, and from, the
west will I gather them ; I will say to the north. Give up ,' and
to the south. Keep not hack : bring my sons from far, and my
daughters from the end of the earth; everything that is called
by my name, and I have created for my glory, that I have
formed, yea finished!" The fact that Jehovah is with Israel
will show itself in this, that He effects its complete restoration
from all quarters of the heaven (compare the lands of the
diaspora in all directions already mentioned by Isaiah in
ch. xi. 11, 12). Jehovah's command is issued to north and
south to give up their unrighteous possession, not to keep
it back, and to restore His sons and daughters (compare the
similar change in the gender in ch. xi. 12), which evidently
implies the help and escort of the exiles on the part of
the heathen (ch. xiv. 2). The four quarters and four winds
192 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAUa
are of the feminine gender. In ver. 7 the object is more pre-
cisely defined from the standpoint of sacred history. The
three synonyms bring out the might, the freeness, and the
riches of grace, with which Jehovah called Israel into existence,
to glorify Himself in it, and that He might be glorified by it.
They form a climax, for N"i3 signifies to prodnce as a new
thing ; IS), to shape what has been produced ; and n^v, to
make it perfect or complete, hence creavi, formavi, perfeci.
We come now to the third turn in the second half of this
prophecy. It is linked on to the commencement of the first
turn (" Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see "),
the summons being now addressed to some one to bring forth
the Israel, which has eyes and ears without seeing or hearing ;
whilst, on the other hand, the nations are all to come together,
and this time not for the purpose of convincing them, but of
convincing Israel. Vers. 8-10. " Bring out a blind people, and
it has eyes ; and deaf people, and yet furnished with ears ! All
ye heathen, gather yourselves together, and let peoples assemble !
V/ho among you can proclaim such a thing? And let them cause
former things to be heard, appoint their witnesses, and be justi-
fied. Let these hear, and say, True ! Ye are my witnesses, saith
Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen ; that ye may know
and believe me, and see that it is I: before me loas no God
formed, and there will be none after me" " Bring out " does
not refer here to bringing out of captivity, as in Ezek. xx. 34,
41, xxxiv. 13, since the names by which Israel is called are
hardly applicable to this, but rather to bringing to the place
appointed for judicial proceedings. The verb is in the impera-
tive. The heathen are also to gather together en masse; 'ivapJ
is also an imperative here, as in Joel iv. 11 = 1V3pn (cf. 'w'i,
Jer. 1. 5 ; Ewald, § 226, c). In ver. 96 we have the commence-
ment of the evidence adduced by Jehovah in support of His
own divine right : Who among the gods of the nations can pro-
claim this ? i.e. anything like my present announcement of the
restoration of Israel ? To prove that they can, let them cause
" former things" to be heard, i.e. any former events which they
had foretold, and which had really taken place ; and let tbem
appoint witnesses of such earlier prophecies, and so prove them-
selves to be gods, that is to say, by the fact that these witnesses
have publicly heard their declaration and confirm the truth
CHAP. XLIII. 11-13. 193
thereof. The subject to 'U1 ^V^m (they may hear, etc.) is the
•witnesses, not as now informing themselves for the first time,
but as making a public declaration. The explanation, " that
men may hear,'' changes the subject without any necessity.
But whereas the gods are dumb and lifeless, and therefore
cannot call any witnesses for themselves, and not one of all the
assembled multitude can come forward as their legitimate wit-
ness, or as one able to vindicate them, Jehovah can call His
people as witnesses, since they have had proofs in abundance
that He possesses infallible knowledge of the future. It is
generally assumed that " and my servant " introduces a second
subject : " Ye, and (especially) my servant whom I have
chosen." In this case, "my servant" would denote that por-
tion of the nation which was so, not merely like the mass of
the people according to its divine calling, but also by its own
fidelity to that calling ; that is to say, the kernel of the nation,
which was in the midst of the mass, but had not the manners
of the mass. At the same time, the sentence which follows is
much more favourable to the unity of the subject ; and why
should not " my servant " be a second predicate ? The ex-
pression " ye " points to the people, who were capable of seeing
and hearing, and yet both blind and deaf, and who had been
brought out to the forum, according to ver. 8. Ye, says
Jehovah, are my witnesses, and ye are my servant whom I have
chosen ; I can appeal to what I have enabled you to experi-
ence and to perceive, and to the relation in which I have in
mercy caused you to stand to myself, that ye may thereby be
brought to consider the great difference that there is between
what ye have in your God and that which the heathen (here
present with you) have in their idols. " I am He," Le. God
exclusively, and God for ever. His being has no beginning and
no end ; so that any being apart from His, which could have
gone before or could follow after, so as to be regarded as divine
(in other words, the deity of the artificial and temporal images
which are called gods by the heathen), is a contradiction in itself.
The address now closes by holding up once more the object
and warrant of faith. Vers. 11-13. "/, / am Jehovah; and
beside me there is no Saviour. I, I have proclaimed and
irought salvation, and given to perceive, and there was no other
god among you : and ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and I
VOL II. N
194 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
am God. Even from the day onwards I am so ; and there is
no deliverer out of my hand : I act, and loho can turn it back ?"
The proper name "Jehovah" is used here (ver. 13) as a name
indicating essence : " I and no other am the absolutely existing
and living One," i.e. He who proves His existence by His
acts, and indeed by His saving acts. V't^'iO and Jehovah are
kindred epithets here ; just as in the New Testament the
name Jehovah sets, as it were, but only to rise again in, the
name Jesus, in which it is historically fulfilled. Jehovah's
previous self-manifestation in history furnished a pledge of
the coming redemption. The two synonyms ^Jjl'isn and *n;ypfn
have 'nv^n in the midst. He proclaimed salvation, brought
salvation, and in the new afflictions was still ever preaching
salvation, without there having been any zdr, i.e. any strange
or other god in Israel (Deut. xxxii. 16; see above, ch. xvii.
10), who proved his existence in any such way, or, in fact,
gave any sign of existence at all. This they must them-
selves confess ; and therefore (Vav in sense equivalent to
ergo, as in ch. xl. 18, 25) He, and He alone, is EI, the abso-
lutely mighty One, i.e. God. And from this time forth He
is so, i.e. He, and He only, displays divine nature and divine
life. There is no reason for taking Di'D in the sense of
Di' ni^HD, " from the period when the day, i.e. time, existed "
(as the LXX., Jerome, Stier, etc., render it). Both the gam
(also) and the future 'eph'al (I will work) require the meaning
supported by Ezek. xlviii. 35, " from the day onwards," i.e.
from this time forth (syn. Di^'^JSp, ch. xlviii. 7). The con-
cluding words give them to understand, that the predicted sal-
vation is coming in the way of judgment. Jehovah will go
forward with His work ; and if He who is the same yesterday
and to-day sets this before Him, who can turn it back, so that
it shall remain unaccomplished? The prophecy dies away,
like the massd' Bdbhel with its epilogue in ch. xiv. 27. In the
first half (ch. xlii. 1-17) Jehovah introduced His servant, the
medium of salvation, and proclaimed the approaching work of
salvation, at which all the world had reason to rejoice. The
second half (ch. xlii. 18-xliii. 13) began with reproaching, and
sought to bring Israel through this predicted salvation to re-
flect upon itself, and also upon its God, the One God, to whom
there was no equal.
CHAP. XLIII. U IS. 195
FOURTH PROPHECY.-^Chap. xliii. 14-xliv. 5. ,
AVENGING AND DELIVEKANCE ; AND OUTPOUEING OF THE
SPIRIT.
In close Gonnection with the foregoing prophecy, the present
one commences with the dissolution of the Chaldean empire.
Vers. 14, 15. " Thus saiih Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy
One of Israel, For your sake I have sent to Babel, and will hurl
them all down as fugitives, and the Chaldeans into the ships of
their rejoicing. I, Jehovah, am your Holy One ; (/) Israel's
Creator, your King." Hitzig reads nVJND, and adopts the ren-
dering, " and drowned the shouting of the Chaldeans in groan-
ing." Ewald also corrects ver. 14a thus : " And plunge their
guitars into groanings, and the rejoicing of the Chaldeans into
sighs." We cannot see any good taste in this un-Hebraic bom-
bast. Nor is there any more reason for altering DTTiia (LXX.
^eirjovrai) into DTina (Jerome, vectes), as timbreit proposes :
" and make all their bolts^ fall down, and the Chaldeans, who
rejoice in ships" (bddniyoth). None of these alterations effect
any improvement. For your sakes, says Jehovah, i.e. for the
purpose of releasing you, I have sent to Babylon (sc. the agents
of my judgments, ch. xiii. 3), and will throw them all down
(viz. the -Trdfi/j.iKTO'} oy(\o^ of this market of the world ; see ch.
xiii. 14, slvii. 15) as fugitives (bdrlchlm with a fixed hametz,
equivalent to harnchim), i.e. into a hurried flight; and the
Chaldeans, who have been settled there from a hoary antiquity,
even they shall be driven into the ships of their rejoicing
{bdSniyoth, as in Prov. xxxi. 14), i.e. the ships which were
previously the object of their jubilant pride and their jubilant
rejoicing. '''?1'!!iiT! stands in the perf. consec, as indicating the
object of all the means already set in motion. The ships of
pleasure are not air-balloons, as Hitzig affirms. Herodotus
(i. 194) describes the freight ships discharging in Babylon;
and we know from other sources that the Chaldeans not only
navigated the Euphrates, but the Persian Gulf as well, and
employed vessels built by Phoenicians for warlike purposes
1 This would require n''n''"i3"i'3.
196 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAM
also.' l^^in itself might indeed signify " to hurl to the ground"
(Ps. Ivi. 8, lix. 12) ; bnt the allusion to ships shows that 3 l^^in
are to be connected (cf. ch. Ixiii. 14), and that a general driving
down both by land and water to the southern coast is intended.
By thus sweeping away both foreigners and natives out of
Babylon into the sea, Jehovah proves what He is in Himself,
according to ver. 15, and also in His relation to Israel ; wa
must supply a repetition of *3X here (ver. 15h), as in ver. 3a.
The congregation which addresses Him as the Holy One, the
people who suffer Him to reign over them as their King,
cannot remain permanently despised and enslaved.
There now follows a second field of the picture of redemp-
tion ; and the expression " for your sake" is expounded in vers.
16-21 : " Thus saitk Jehovah, who giveth a road through the
sea, and a path through tumultuous tvaters ; who bringeth out
chariot and horse, army and hero ; they lie down together, they
never rise : they have flickered away, extinguished like a wicL
Remember not things of olden time, nor meditate upon those of
earlier times I Behold, I ivork out a neto thing: will ye not live
to see it ? Yea, 1 make a road through the desert, and streams
through solitudes. The beast of the 'field will praise me, wild
dogs and ostriches : for I give water in the desert, streams in soli-
tude, to give drink to my people, my cfiosen. The people tliat I
formed for myself, they shall shoio forth my praise." What
Jehovah really says commences in ver. 18. Then in between
He is described as Eedeemer out of Egypt ; for the redemption
out of Egypt was a type and pledge of the deliverance to be
looked for out of Babylon. The participles must not be ren-
dered qui dedit, eduxit ; but from the mighty act of Jehovah
in olden time general attributes are deduced : He who makes a
road in the sea, as He once showed. The sea with the tumul-
tuous waters is the Red Sea (Neh. ix. 11) ; 'izzuz which
rhymes with vdsus, is a concrete, as iu Ps. sxiv. 8, the army
with the heroes at its head. The expression " bringeth out,"
etc., is not followed by " and suddenly destroys them," bnt we
are transported at once into the very midst of the scenes of
destruction. 133B'> shows them to us entering upon the sleep
of death, in which they lie without hope (ch. sxvi. 14), The
close {kappishtdh khabhu) is iambic, as in Judf. v. 27. The
' See G. Bawlinson, monarchies, i. 128, ii. 448.
CHAP. XLIII. 10-21. 107
admonition in ver. 18 does not commend utter forgetfulness
and disregard (see ch. xlvi. 9) ; but that henceforth they are to
look forwards rather than backward. The new thing which
Jehovah is in the process of working out eclipses the old, and
deserves a more undivided and prolonged attention. Of this
new thing it is affirmed, " even now it sprouts up ;" whereas in
ch. xlii. 9, even in the domain of the future, a distinction was
drawn between "the former things" and " new things," and it
could be affirmed of the latter that they were not yet sprouting
up. In the passage before us the entire work of God in the
new time is called cli&ddslidh (new), and is placed in contrast
with the ri' sJionotJi, or occurrences of the olden time; so that as
the first part of this new thing had already taken place (ch.
xlii. 9), and there was only the last part still to come, it might
very well be affirmed of the latter, that it was even now sprouting
up (not already, which nny may indeed also mean, but as in
ch. xlviii. 7). In connection vi'ith this, fJWin Sipn (a verbal
form with the suffix, as in Jer. xiii. 17, with kametz in the
syllable before the tone, as in ch. vi. 9, xlvii. 11, in pause) does
not mean, " Will ye then not regard it," as Ewald, Umbreit,
and others render it ; but, " shall ye not, i.e. assuredly ye will,
experience it." The substance of the cliSddshdh (the new
thing) is unfolded in ver. 19Z». It enfolds a rich fulness of
wonders : ^*i> affirming that, among other things, Jehovali will
do this one very especially. He transforms the pathless, water-
less desert, that His chosen one, the people of God, may be
able to go through in safety, and without fainting. And the
benefits of this miracle of divine grace reach the animal world
as well, so that their joyful cries are an unconscious praise of
Jehovah. (On the names of the animals, see vol. i. 305 ; and
Kohler on Mai. i. 3.) In this we can recognise the prophet,
who, as we have several times observed since ch. xi. (compare
especially ch. xxx. 23, 24, xxxv. 7), has not only a sympathizing
heart for the woes of the human race, but also an open ear for
the sighs of all creation. He knows that when the sufferings
of the people of God shall be brought to an end, the sufferings
of creation will also terminate ; for humanity is the heart of
the universe, and the people of God (understanding by this
the people of God according to the Spirit) are the heart of
humanity. In ver. 21 the promise is brouglit to a general
198 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
close : the people that (zu personal and relative, as in ch. xlii.
24^) I have formed for myself will have richly to relate how I
glorified myself in them.
It would be the praise of God, however, and not the merits
of their own works, that they would have to relate ; for there
was nothing at all that could give them any claim to reward.
There were not even acts of ceremonial worship, but only the
guilt of grievous sins. Vers. 22-24. " And thou hast not called
upon me, Jacoh, that thou shouldst have wearied thyself for
me, Israel ! Thou hast not brought me sheep of thy hurnt-
offerings, and thou hast not honoured me with thy slain-offerings.
I have not burdened thee with meat-offerings, and have not
troubled thee about incense. Thou hast bought me no spice-cane
for silver, nor hast thou refreshed me loith fat of thy slain-
offerings. No ; thou hast weaned me with thy sins, troubled me
with thine iniquities." We cannot agree with Stier, that these
words refer to the whole of the previous worship of Israel,
which is treated here as having no existence, because of its
heartlessness and false-holiness. And we must also not forget,
that all these prophecies rested on either the historical or the
ideal soil of the captivity. The charge commences with the
worship of prayer (with calling upon Jehovah, as in Ps. xiv. 4,
xviii. 7), to which the people were restricted when in exile, since
the law did not allow them to offer sacrifice outside the holy
land. The personal pronoun ''nx, in the place of the suffix, is
written first of all for the sake of emphasis, as if the meaning
were, " Israel could exert itself to call upon other gods, but
not upon Jehovah." The follo%ving k'l is equivalent to ut (Hos.
i. 6), or 'ad-M in 2 Sam. xxiii. 10, adeo ut laborasses me colendo
(so as to have wearied thyself in worshipping me). They are
also charged with having offered no sacrifices, inasmuch as in a
foreign land this duty necessarily lapsed of itself, together with
1 The pointing connects iiroj? with malcJceph, so that the rendering
■would be, "The people there I have formed for myself;" but according
to our view, ajj should be accented with yethib, and zu with munach. In
just the same way, zu is connected with the previous noun as a demonstra-
tive, by means of makkepTi, in Ex. xv. 13, 16, Ps. ix. 16, Ixii. 12 cxlii. 4
cxliii. 8, and by means of a subsidiary accent in Ps. x. 2, xii. 8. The idea
■which underlies ch. xlii. 24 appears to be, " This is the retribution that
•we have met with from him." But in none of these can we be bound by
the nunctuation.
CHAP. XLIII. 22-24. 199
the self-denial that it involved. The spelling ri'^''?? (as in
Num. xiv. 31) appears to have been intended for the pronun-
ciation ns'i^n (compare the pronunciation in 2 Kings xlx. 25,
which comes between the two). The 'oloili (burnt-offerings)
stand first, as the expression of adoration, and are connected
with sell, which points to the daily morning and evening sacri-
fice (the tdmld). Then follow the z'hhdchvm (slain-offei'ings),
the expression of the establishment of fellowship with Jehovah
(I'lnati) is equivalent to H^napi, like npn = HDHa, ,ch. xliii. 25).
The " fat" (cJielebh) in ver. 24 refers to the portions of fat
that were placed upon the altar in connection with this kind
of sacrifice. After the z'hhdchim comes the minchdh, the ex-
pression of desire for the blessing of Jehovah, a portion of
which, the so-called remembrance portion {'askdrdh), was placed
upon the altar along with the whole of the incense. And
lastly, the qdneh (spice-cane), i.e. some one of the Amoma,^
points to the holy anointing oil (Ex. xxx. 23), or if it refer to
spices generally, to the sacred incense, though qdneh is not
mentioned as one of the ingredients in Ex. xxx. 34. The
nation, which Jehovah was now redeeming out of pure nn-
mingled grace, had not been burdened with costly tasks of this
description (see Jer. vi. 20) ; on the contraiy, it was Jehovah
only who was burdened and troubled. He denies that there
was any " causing to serve" (T'?vn, lit. to make a person a
servant, to impose servile labour upon him) endured by Israel,
but affirms this rather of Himself. The sins of Israel pressed
upon Him, as a burden does upon a servant. His love took
upon itself the burden of Israel's guilt, which derived its gravi-
tating force from His own holy righteous wrath ; but it was
a severe task to bear this heavy burden, and expunge it, — a
thoroughly divine task, the significance of which was first
brought out in its own true light by the cross on Golgotha.
When God creates. He expresses His Jiat, and what He wills
comes to pass. But He does not blot out sin without balancing
1 The qdneh is generally supposed to be the Calamus ; but the calamus
forms no stalk, to say nothing of a cane or hoUow stalk. It must be some
kind of aromatic plant, with a stalk lilte a cane, either the Cardamum,
higher, or Curcuma ; at any rate, it belonged to the species Amomum.
The aroma of this -was communicated to the anointing oil, tlie latter being
infused, and the resinous parts of the former being thereby dissolved.
200 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
His love witli His justice ; and this equalization is not effected
without conflict and victory.
Nevertheless, the sustaining power of divine love is greater
than the gravitating force of divine wrath. Ver. 25. " /, /
alone, blot out thy transgressions for my own sake, and do not
remember thy sins" Jehovah Himself here announces the sola
gratia and sola fides. We have adopted the rendering " I
alone," because the threefold repetition of the subject, " I, I,
He is blotting out thy transgressions," is intended to affirm
that this blotting out of sin is so far from being in any way
merited by Israel, that it is a sovereign act of His absolute
freedom ; and the expression " for my own sake," that it has
its foundation only in God, namely, in His absolute free grace,
that movement of His love by which wrath is subdued. For
the debt stands written in God's own book. Justice has
entered it, and love alone blots it out {mdehdh, e^dXeii^ei, as in
ch. xliv. 22, Ps. li. 3, 11, cix. 14) ; but, as we know from the
actual fulfilment, not without paying with blood, and giving
the quittance with blood.
Jehovah now calls upon Israel, if this be not the case, to
remind Him of any merit upon which it can rely. Ver. 26.
" Call to my remembrance ; we will strive ivith one another : tell
noio, that thou mayst appear just." Justification is an actus
forensis (see ch. i. 18). Justice accuses, and grace acquits. Or
has Israel any actual merits, so that Justice would be obliged
to pronounce it just? The object to hazlcireni and sapper,
which never have the closed sense of pleading, as Bottcher
supposes, is the supposed meritorious works of Israel.
But Israel has no such works ; on the contrary, its history
has been a string of sins from the very first. Ver. 27. " Thy
first forefather sinned, and thy mediators have fallen away from
me." By the first forefather, Hitzig, Umbreit, and Knobel
understand Adam; but Adam was the forefather of the human
race, not of Israel ; and the debt of Adam was the debt of man-
kind, and not of Israel. The reference is to Abraham, as the
first of the three from whom the origin and election of Israel
were dated; Abraham, whom Israel from the very first had
called with pride " our father" (Matt. iii. 9). Even the history
of Abraham was stained with sin, and did not shine in the licrht
of meritorious works, but in that of grace, and of faith laying
CHAl'. XLIII. 28-XLIV. i. 201
hold of grace. The m'lUsim, interpreters, and mediators
generally (2 Ohron. xxxii. 31; Job xxxiii. 23), are the prophets
and priests, who stood between Jehovah and Israel, and were
the medium of intercourae between the two, both in word and
deed. They also had for the most part become unfaithful to
God, by resorting to ungodly soothsaying and false worship.
Hence the sin of Israel was as old as its very earliest origin ;
and apostasy had spread even among those who ought to have
been the best and most godly, because of the office they sus-
tained.
Consequently the all-holy One was obliged to do what had
taken place. Ver. 28. " Then I profaned holy princes, and
gave up Jacob to the curse, and Israel to blasphemies" PPnsi
might be an imperfect, like 73X), " I ate," in ch. xliv. 19, and
I3'3X1, " I looked," in ch. Ixiii. 5 ; but nmxi by the side of it
• shows that the pointing sprang out of the future interpretation
contained in the Targum; so tiiat as the latter is to be rejected,
we must substitute h^m^ nmxi (Ges. § 49, 2). The " holy
princes" {sdre qodesh) are the hierarclis, as in 1 Chron. xxiv.
5, the supreme spiritual rulers as distinguished from the tem-
poral rulers. The profanation referred to was the fact that
they were ruthlessly hurried off into a strange land, where
their official labours were necessarily suspended. This was the
fate of the leaders of the worship; and the whole nation, which
bore the honourable names of Jacob and Israel, was given up
to the ban (cherem) and the blasphemies (giddupMm) of the
nations of the world.
The pi'oph^t cannot bear to dwell any longer upon this dark
picture of their state of punishment ; the light of the promise
breaks through again, and in this third field of the fourth pro-
phecy in all the more intensive form. Ch. xliv. 1-4. " And
now hear, Jacob my servant, a7id Israel whom I have chosen
Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, and thy Former from the
womb, who cometh to thy help ; Fear not, my servant Jacob; and
Jeshurun, whom I have chosen ! For I will pour out water upon
thirsty ones, and brooks upon the dry ground; will pour out my
Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine after-grovjth ;
and they shoot up among the grass, as willows by flowing waters."
In contrast with the cherem, i.e. the setting apart for destruc-
tion, there is here presented the promise of the pouring out of
202 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the Spirit and of blessing; and in contrast with the gidduphlm,
the promise of general eagerness to come and honour Israel
and its God (ver. 5). The epithets by which Jehovah desig-
nates Himself, and those applied to Israel in vers. 1, 2, make
the claim to love all the more urgent and emphatic. The
accent which connects l^iap Tli'^l, so as to make '^'})^\ by itself
an attributive clause like i3 'flina, is confirmed by ver. 24
and ch. xlix. 5 : Israel as a nation and all the individuals
within it are, as the chosen servant of Jehovah (ch. xlix. 1),
the direct formation of Jehovah Himself from the remotest
point of their history. In ver. 26, Jeslmrun is used inter-
changeably with Jacob. This wo^d occurs in three other
passages (viz. Deut. xxxii. 15, xxxiii. 5, 26), and is always
written with kibhuts, just as it is here. The rendering 'lapaeX-
ia-Ko<; in Gr. Vcn. is founded upon the supposition that the
word is equivalent to ivSyi'';, — a strange contraction, which is
inadmissible, if only on account of the substitution of C* for '&.
The ^ points back to "iB"', to be straight or even ; hence A. S.
Th. €vdv<! (elsewhere evdvTiXTO';), Jerome reclissimus (though in
Deut. xxxii. 15 he renders it, after the LXX., dileetus). It is
an offshoot of lE'': = if (Ps. xxv. 21), like llbr, l^DT, from bl,
"7'; and un (=on) does not stamp it as a diminutive (for
iic"Xj which Kamphausen adduces in opposition to Hengsten-
berg and Volck, does not stand in the same relation to B'''N as
mannikin to man, but rather as the image of a man to a man
himself; compare the Arabic imdn). We must not render it
therefore as an affectionate diminutive, as Gesenius does, the
more especially as Jehovah, though speaking in loving terms,
does not adopt the language of a lover. The relation of
Jeslmrun to IB*', is rather the same as that of nb^B" to Di^E', so
that the real meaning is " gentleman," or one of gentlemanly
or honourable mind, though this need not appear in the trans-
lation, since the very nature of a proper name would obliterate
it. In ver. 3, the blessings to be expected are assigned as the
reason for the exhortation to be of good cheer. In ver. 3a
water is promised iu the midst of drought, and in ver. 36 the
Spirit and blessing of God, just as in Joel the promise of rain
is first of all placed in contrast with drought ; and this is fol-
lowed by the promise of the far surpassing antitype, namely,
the outpouring of the Spirit. There is nothing at variance with
CHAP. XLIV. 1-4. 203
this in the fact that we have not the form ^^^"^ in the place of
N»X (according to the analogy ofna':J|ns, % "?^?, Ps. Ixviii.
10). By '^^iV we understand the inhabitants of the land who
are thirsting for rain, and by yabhdshdh the parched land itself.
Further on, however, an express distinction is made between the
abundance of water in the land and the prosperous growth of
the nation planted by the side of water-brooks (Ps. i. 3). We
must not regard 3a, therefore, as a figure, and 35 as the ex-
planation, or turn 3a into a simile introduced in the form of a
protasis, although unquestionably water and mountain streams
are made the symbol, or rather the anagogical type, of spiritual
blessings coming down from above in the form of heavenly
gifts, by a gradual ascent from D^o and DvfiJ (from ?TJ, to trickle
downwards. Song of Sol. iv. 15, Jer. xviii. 14) to 'n n^n and
'n n3"i3 (riina). When these natural and spiritual waters flow
down upon the people, once more restored to their home, they
spring up among (r^a only met with here, LXX. and Targum
paa) the grass, like willows by water-brooks. The willows ^
^ " The garab," says Wetzstein, " was only met with by me in one locality,
or, at any rate, I only noticed it once, namely in the Wady So'eb, near to
a ford of the river which is called the Hod ford, from the chirbet el-Hod, a
miserable ruin not far off. It is half an hour to the west of Nimrin {Nim-
rim, ch. xv. 6), or, speaking more exactly, half an hour above (i.e. to the
east of) Zafdt Nimrin, an antique road on the northern bank of the river,
hewn in a precipitous wall of rock, like the ladder of Tyre. I travelled
through the valley in June 1860, and find the following entry in my diary :
' At length the ravine opened up into a broader valley, so that we could
get dpwn to the clear, copious, and rapid stream, and were able to cross
it. Being exhausted by the heat, we lay down near the ford among the
oleanders, which the mass of flowers covered with a rosy glow. The reed
grows here to an unusual height, as in the Wady Yarmuk, and willows
(zafzaf) and garab are mingled together, and form many-branched trees
of three or four fathoms in height. The vegetation, which is fresh and
luxuriant by the water-side, is scorched up with the heat in the valley
within as little as ten paces from the banks of the stream. The farthest
off is the 'osar plant, with its thick, juicy, dark green stalks and leaves, and
its apple-like fruit, which is of the same colour, and therefore not yet ripe.
The garab tree has already done flowering. The leaves of this tree stand
quite close around the stem, as in the case of the Sindiana (the Syrian oak),
and, like the leaves of the latter, are fringed with little thorns; but, like
the willow, it is a water plant, and our companions Abdallah and Nasrallah
assured ns that it was only met with near flowing water and in hot low-
lands. Its bimches of flowers are at the points of the slender branches, and
204 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
are the nation, ivliicb has hitherto resembled withered plants in
a barren soil, but is now restored to all the bloom of youth
through the Spirit and blessing of God. The grass stands for
the land, which resembles a green luxuriant plain ; and the
water-brooks represent the abundant supply of living waters,
which promote the prosperity of the land and its inhabitants.
When Jehovah has thus acknowledged His people once
more, the heathen, to whose gidduphim (blasphemies) Israel has
hitherto been given up, will count it the greatest honour to
belong to Jehovah and His people. Ver. 5. " One %oill say, I
belong to Jehovah; and a second will solemnly name the name of
Jacob ; and a third will inscribe himself to Jehovah, and name
the name of Israel ivith honour." The threefold seh i-efers to
the heathen, as in Ps. Ixxxvii. 4, 5. One will declare himself
assume an umbelliferous form. This is tlie my of the Bible.' Conse-
TT
qnently tlie garah or (as novi. unitatis) the garaha cannot be regarded as a
species of willow ; and lYincr's assumption (^Real-Worterhucli, s.v. Weideti),
that the weeping willow is intended at any rate in Ps. cxxxvii. 2, is au
error. In Arabic the weeping willow is always cailed sha/sJiaf mustacld
(the drooping tree). At the same time, we may render D^3iy ' willows,'
since the garab loves running water as weU as the willow, and apparently
they seek one another's society ; it is quite enough that the difference should
be clearly pointed out in the commentary. The reason why the garah did
not find its way into my herbarium was the following. On my arrival in
Salt, I received the first intelligence of the commencement of the slaughter
of the Christians on Antilibanns, and heard the report, which was then
commonly believed, that a command had been sent from Constantinople to
exterminate Christianity from Syria. This alarming report compelled me
to inquire into the actual state of aiiairs ; therefore, leaving my luggage and
some of my companions behind, I set off with all speed to Jerusalem, where
I hoped to obtain reliable information, accompanied by Herr Dorgen, my
kavas, and two natives, viz. Abdallali the smith, from Salt, and Nasrallah
the smith, from Ain Genna. For a ride like this, which did not form part
of the original plau of my jonrney, everything but weapons, even a her
barinm, would have been in the way. Still there are small caravans going
«very week between Salt and Jerusalem, and they must always cross the
Hod ford, so that it would be easy to get a twig of the garab. So far as
I remember, the remains of the blossom were of a dirty white colour."
•(Compare vol.'i. 828, where we have taken naclial ha arablilm, according to
the meaning of the words, as a synonym of Wady Sufsaf, or, more correctly
Hafsaf. From the description given above, the garab is a kind of viburnum
with indented leaves. This tree, which is of moderate height, is found by
the side of streams along with the wiUow. According to Spreno-el (Gesch.
df.r Botanik. i. 25), the safsafi% the salix subserrata of Wildenow).
CHAP. XLIV. 6. 205
to belong to Jeliovah ; another will call with the nanae of Jacob,
i.e. (according to the analogy of the phrase 'n D55'3 N^i?) make
it the medium and object of solemn exclamation ; a third will
write with his hand (i^^, an ace. of more precise definition,
like n»n in ch. xlii. 25, and T'nar in ch. xhii. 23), " To Jehovah,"
thereby attesting that he desires to belong to Jehovah, and
Jehovah alone. This is the explanation given by Gesenius,
Hahn, and others; whereas Hitzig and Knobel follow the LXX.
in the rendering, " he will write upon his hand ' lay'lmvdh,' i.e.
mark the name of Jehovah upon it." But apart from the fact
that kdtluxbh, with an accusative of the writing materials, would
be unprecedented (the construction required would be i''!|."''J'),
this view is overthrown by the fact that tattooing was prohibited
by the Israelitish law (Lev. xix. 28 ; compare the mark of the
beast in Eev. xiii. 16). Dtra sni? is interchanged with t3B'3 n33j
to surname, or entitle (the Syriac and Arabic are the same ;
compare the Arabic hunye, the name given to a man as the
father of such and such a person, e.g. Abu-Muhammed, rhetori-
cally called metonymy). The name Israel becomes a name or
title of honour among the heathen. This concludes the fourth
prophecy, which opens out into three distinct fields. With
nfiyi in ch. xliv. 1 it began to approach the close, just as the
third did in ch. xliii. 1, — a well-rounded whole, which leaves
nothing wanting.
FIFTH PEOPHECY.— Chap. xliv. 6-23.
THE KIDICULOUS GODS OF THE NATIONS ; AND THE GOD OF
ISKAEL, WHO MAKES HIS PEOPLE TO KEJOICE.
A new pledge of redemption is given, and a fresh exhorta-
tion to trust in Jehovah ; the wretchedness of the idols and
their worshippers being pointed out, in contrast with Jehovah,
the only speaking and acting God. Ver. 6. " Thus saitli
Jeliovah the King of Israel, and, its Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts ;
I am first, and I last ; and beside me there is no God" The
fact that His deity, which rules over not only the natural
world, but history as well, is thus without equal and above
all time, is now proved by Him from the fact that He alone
manifests Himself as God, and that by the utterance of pro-
20f) THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
jhecy. Yer. 7. "And who preaches as I do? Let him make it
Jcnown, and show it to me ; since I founded the people of ancient
time! And future things, and what is approaching, let them
only make known." Jehovah shows Himself as the God of
prophecy since the time that He founded DPiV'QJ' ('^'Jij'! refers
to the continued preaching of prophecy). 'Am 'oldm is the
epithet apphed in Ezek. xxvi. 20 to the people of the dead,
who are sleeping the long sleep of the grave ; and here it does
not refer to Israel, which could neither be called an " eternal "
nation, nor a people of the olden time, and which would have
been more directly named; but according to ch. xl. 7 and xlii. 5,
where 'am signifies the human race, and Job xxii. 15 sqq., where
'oldm is the time of the old world before the flood, it signifies
humanity as existing from the very earliest times. The pro-
phecies of Jehovah reach hack even to the history of paradise.
The parenthetical clause, "Let him speak it out, and tell it me,"
is like the apodosis of a hypothetical protasis : " if any one
thinks that he can stand by my side." The challenge points to
earlier prophecies ; with ni'nsi it takes a turn to what is future,
nvriK itself denoting what is absolutely future, according to
ch. xli. 23, and nasan nK'K what is about to be realized imme-
diately ; Idmo is an ethical dative.
Of course, none of the heathen gods could in any way answer
to the challenge. So much the more confident might Israel be,
seeing that it had quite another God. Ver. 8. "Despair ye not,
neither tremble : have not I told thee long ago, and made known,
and ye are my witnesses : is there a God beside me? And nowliere
a rock; I know of none" The Jewish lexicographers derive liTiFi
(with the first syllable closed) from nnn (m) ; whereas modern
lexicographers prefer some of them to read iniRj tlr'hu, from
'■^T, (Ges., Knobel), and others iNVn (Ewald). 'JBut the possi-
bility of there being a verb nm, to tremble or fear, cannot for
a moment be doubted when we think of such words as XT jn\
compare also ^1 (applied to water moving to and fro). It was
not of the heathen deities that they were directed not to be
afraid, as in Jer. x. 5, but rather the great catastrophe coming
upon the nations, of which Cyrus was the instrument. In the
midst of this, when one nation after another would be over-
thrown, and its tutelar gods would prove to be worthless, Israel
CHAP. XLIV. 9-11. 207
would have nothing to fear, since its God, who was no dumb
idol, had foretold all this, and that indeed long ago (tSO, cf.
B'NID, ch. xli. 26), as they themselves, must bear witness. Pro-
phecies before the captivity had foretold the conquest of Baby-
lon by Medes and Elamites, and the deliverance of Israel from
the Babylonian bondage; and even these prophecies themselves
were like a spirit's voice from the far distant past, consoling
the people of the captivity beforehand, and serving to support
their faith. On the gi'oiind of such well-known self-manifes-
tations, Jehovah could well ask, " Is there a God beside me ? "
— a virtual denial in the form of an interrogation, to which the
categorical denial, " There is no rock (i.e. no ground of trust,
ch. xxvi. 4, xvii. 10), I know of none (beside me)," is attached.
The heathen gods are so far from being a ground of trust,
that all who trust in them must discover with alarm how they
have deceived themselves. Vers. 9-11. " The makers of idols,
they are all desolation, and their bosom-children worthless ; and
those who bear witness for them see nothing and know nothing,
that they may be put to shame. Who hath formed the god, and
cast the idol to no profit? Behold, all its folloioers will be put to
shame ; and the workmen are men: let them all assemble together,
draw near, be alarmed, be all put to shame together." The
chamudim (favourites) of the makers of idols are the false gods,
for whose favour they sue with such earnestness. If we retain
the word Hsn, which is pointed as critically suspicious, and
therefore is not accentuated, the explanation might possibly be,
" Their witnesses {i.e. witnesses against themselves) are they
(the idols) : they see not, and are without consciousness, that
they (those who trust in them) may be put to shame." In any
case, the subject to yehhoshu (shall be put to shame) is the
worshippers of idols. If we erase nan^ Dnny will be those who
come forward as witnesses for the idols. This makes the words
easier and less ambiguous. At the same time, the Septuagint
retains the word (koX [idprvpe'; avrwv elaiv). As " not seeing"
here signifies to be blind, so " not knowing " is also to be under-
stood as a self-contained expression, meaning to be irrational,
just as in ch. xlv. 20, Ivi. 10 (in ch, i. 3, on the other hand, we
have taken it in a different sense). JJ^P? implies that the will of
the sinner in his sin has also destruction for its object ; and this
is not something added to the sin, but growing out of it. The
208 THE PKOPEECIES of ISAIAH.
question in ver. 10 summons the maker of idols for the pur-
pose of announcing his fate, and in ^^JJin '"ijiP?? (to no profit) this
announcement is already contained. Ver. 11 is simply a de-
velopment of this expression, " to no profit." "iS*, like yt33 in
ver. 14, is contrary to the rhythmical law milra which prevails
elsewhere, vnan (Its followers) are not the fellow-workmen of
the maker of idols (inasmuch as in that case the maker himself
would be left without any share in the threat), but the associates
(i.e. followers) of the idols (Hos. iv. 17 ; 1 Cor. x. 20). It is a
pernicious work that they have thus had done for them. And
what of the makers themselves ? They are numbered among
the men. So that they who ought to know that they are
made by God, become makers of gods themselves. What an
absurdity ! Let them crowd together, the whole guild of god-
makers, and draw near to speak to the works they have made.
All their eyes will soon be opened with amazement and alarm.
The prophet now conducts us into the workshops. Vers,
12, 13. " The iron-smith has a chisel, and works with red-hot
coals, and shapes it with hammers, and works it with his poiaerful
arm. He gets hungry thereby, and his strength fails ; if he
drink no ivater, he becomes exhausted. The carpenter draivs the
line, marks it ivith the pencil, carries it out with planes, and
makes a drawing of it with the compass, and carries it out like
the figure of a man, like the beauty of a man, ivhich may dwell
ill the house." The two words chdrash barzel are connected
together in the sense of faber ferranus, as we may see from
the expression chdrash 'etsim (the carpenter, faber lignarius),
which follows in ver. 13. Chdrash is the construct of chdrash
{=charrdsh), as in Ex. xxviii. 11, The second kametz of this
form of noun does indeed admit of contraction, but only to the
extent of a full short vowel ; consequently the construct of the
plural is not "'t?'']", but "'trjn (ch. xlv. 16, etc.). Hence ver. 12
describes how the smith constructs an idol of iron, ver. 13 liow
the carpenter makes one of wood. But the first clause, ^na B'ln
■jy?^", is enigmatical. In any case, IWD is a smith's tool of some
kind (from TO, related to Tin). And consequently Gesenius,
Umbreit, and others, adopt the rendering, " the smith an axe
that does he work, . , . ;" but the further account of the origin
of an idol says nothing at all about this axe, which the smith
supplies to the carpenter, that he may hew out an idol with it.
CHAP. XLIV. 14-17. 209
Hitzig renders it, " The smith, a hatchet does he work, and
forms it (viz. into an idol) ;" but what a roundabout way !
first to make a hatchet and then make it into an idol, which
would look very slim when made. Knobel translates it, " As
for the cutting-smith, he works it ;" but this guild of cutting-
smiths certainly belongs to Utopia. The best way to render
the sentence intelligible, would be to supply 'h : " The smith
has (uses) the ma'atsdd." But in all probability a word has
dropped out ; and the Septuagint rendering, on w^vvev reicrcov
a-lhrjpov crKeKapvtp elpydcraTO, k.t.X., shows that the original
reading of the text was Tana ijna cnn lin, and that '\'^n got
lost on account of its proximity to in\ The meaning therefore
is, " The smith has sharpened, or sharpens (chidded, syn. shinnen)
the ma'atsdd" possibly the chisel, to cut the iron upon the
anvil ; and works with redrhot coals, making the iron red-hot
by blowing the fire. The piece of iron which he cuts off is the
future idol, and this he shapes with hammers (lil^V^ the future
of "IS^). And what of the carpenter ? He stretches the line
upon the block of wood, to measure the length and breadth of
tbe idol ; he marks it upon the wood with red-stone (sered,
vubrica, used by carpenters), and works it with planes {jnaqtsu otli,
a feminine form of ViSpD, from J)Vi5, to cut off, pare off, plane ;
compare the Arabic miktd), and with the compasses {m^chugdh,
the tool used, Idchug, i.e. for making a circle) he draws the
outline of it, that is to say, in order that the different parts of
the body may be in right proportion ; and he constructs it in
■such a manner that it acquires the shape of a man, the beautiful
appearance of a man, to be set up like a human inmate in
either a temple or private house. The piel "if?Pi ("i^'?), from
which comes y^td&rehu, is varied here (according to Isaiah's
custom ; cf . eh. xxix. 7, xxvi. 5) with the poel "if?'^, which is to
be understood as denoting the more exact configuration. The
preterites indicate the work for which both smith and cai-penter
have made their preparations ; the futures, the work in which
they are engaged.
The prophet now traces the origin of the idols still further
back. Their existence or non-existence ultimately depends
upon whether it rains or not. Vers. 14-17. " One prepares to
cut down cedars, and takes hohn and oak-tree, and chooses for
himself among the trees of the forest. He lias planted a fig, and
VOL. II. O
210 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the rain draws it up. And it serves the man for firing : he takes
thereof, and warms himself; he also heats, and bakes bread; he
also works it into a god, and prostrates himself; makes an idol of
it, and falls down before it. The half of it he has burned in the
fire : over the half of it he eats flesh, roasts a roast, and is satis-
fied; he also warms himself, and says, Hurrali, 1 am getting
vjarm, I feel the heat. And the rest of it he makes into a god,
into his idol, and says. Save me, for thou art my god." The
subject of the sentence is not the carpenter of the previous
verse, but " any one." CH^? apparently stands first, as indi-
cating the species ; and in the Talmud and Midrash the trees
named are really described as D'tlN *3''0. But tirzdh (from
tdraz, to be hard or firm) does not appear to be a coniferous
tree ; and the connection with 'allon, the oak, is favourable to
the rendering dypio^aXavo<; (LXX., A. Th.), ilex (Vulg.).
On 'immets, to choose, see eh. xli. 10. H^ (with Niiii minuscic-
lum), plur. n^iilK {b. Ros-ha Sana 23a)' or Ci^X {Para iii. 8),
is explained by the Talmud as '"JP, sing. X'ly, i.e. according to
Aruch and Rashi, laurier, the berries of which are called baies.
We have rendered it "fig," according to the LXX. and Jerome,
since it will not do to follow the seductive guidance of the
similarity in sound to omus (which is hardly equivalent to
6peiv6<;)} The description is genealogical, and therefore moves
retrogressively, from the felling to the planting, njn'i in ver.
15a refers to the felled and planted tree, and primarily to the
ash. DHD (of such as these) is neuter, as in ch. xxx. 6 ; at the
same time, the prophet had the D'VJ? (the wood, both as produce
and material) in his mind. The repeated ^K lays emphasis
upon the fact, that such different things are done with the veiy
same wood. It is used for warming, and for the pi-eparation
of food, as well as for making a god. On the verbs of adora-
tion, hisktachavdh (root shach, to sink, to settle down) and
sdgad, which is only applied to idolatrous worship, and from
which mes'gid, a mosque, is derived, see Holemann's Bibel-
studien, i. 3. iOT may no doubt be taken as a plural (= Dn^,
as in ch. xxx. 5), " such, things {talia) does he worship," as
Stier supposes ; but it is probably pathetic, and equivalent to
^ The dpiix, of Theophiastus is probably quercits ilex, which is still called
dpia- the laurus nobilis is now called /SceiVa, from the branches which serve
instead of palm-branches.
CHAP. XLIV. 18, 19. 211
\b, as in ch. liii. 8 (compare Ps. xi. 7 ; Ewald, § 247, a). Ac-
cording to the double application of the wood mentioned in ver.
15, a distinction is drawn in vers. 16, 17 between the one half
of the wood and the other. The repeated chetsyo (the half of
it) in ver. 16 refers to the first half, which furnishes not only
fuel for burning, but shavings and coals for roasting and baking
as well. And as a fire made for cooking warms quite as much
as one made expressly for the purpose, the prophet dwells upon
this benefit which the wood of the idol does confer. On the
tone upon the last syllable of cliammoila, see at Job xix. 17 ;
and on the use of the word nsT as a comprehensive term,
embracing every kind of sensation and perception, see my
Psycliologie, p. 234. Diagoras of Melos, a pupil of Democritus,
once threw a wooden standing figure of, Hercules into the fire,
and said Jocularly, " Come now, Hercules, perform thy thir-
teenth labour, and help me to cook the turnips."
So irrational is idolatry ; but yet, through self -hardening,
they have fallen under the judgment of hardness of heart (ch.
vi. 9, 10, xix. 3, xxix. 10), and have been given up to a repro-
bate mind (Kom. i, 28). Vers, 18, 19. " They perceive not,
and do not understand : for their eyes are smeared over, so that
they do not see ; their hearts, so that they do not understand.
And men take it not to heart, no perception and no understanding,
that men should say, The half of it I have burned in the fire,
and also baked bread upon the coals thereof; roasted flesh, and
eaten : and ought I to make the rest of it an abomination, to fall
down before the produce of a tree V Instead of no, Lev. xiv.
42, the third person is written riD (from tdchach, Ges, § 72^
Anm. 8) in a circumstantial sense : their eyes are, as it were,
smeared over with plaster. The expression 3r?« l''E'n or ^J?V
(ch. xlvi, 8), literally to carry back into the heart, which we
find as well as 3^"^J? D^j to take to heart (ch. xlii. 25), answers
exactly to the idea of reflection, here with reference to the
immense contrast between a piece of wood and the Divine
Being. The second and third ih in ver, 19 introduce substan-
tive clauses, just as verbal clauses are introduced by TKI, "ibxp
is used in the same manner as in ch. ix. 8 : "perception and insight
showing themselves in their saying." On bul, see Job xl. 20 ;
the meaning " block " cannot be established : the talmudic bul,
a lump or piece, which Ewald adduces, is the Greek ^coXo<;.
212 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
This exposure of the infatuation of idolatry closes with an
epiphonem in the form of a gnome (cf. ch. xxvi. 7, 10). Ver.
20. " He who striveili after ashes, a befooled heart lias led him
astray, and he does not deliver his soul, and does not think. Is
there not a lie in my right hand ?" We have here a complete
and self-contained sentence, which must not be broken up in
the manner proposed by Knobel, " He hunts after ashes ; his
heart is deceived," etc. He who makes ashes, i.e. things easily
scattered, perishable, and worthless, the object of his effort and
striving (compare rudch in Hos. xii. 2), has been led astray
from the path of truth and salvation by a heart overpowered
by delusion ; he is so certain, that he does not think of saving
his soul, and it never occurs to him to say, " Is there not a lie
in my right hand ?" All that belongs to idolatry is sheqer — a
fabrication and a lie. nj)"i means primarily to pasture or tend,
hence to be concerned about, to strive after. ^Tfin is an attribu-
tive, from tdlal ^^ hdihal, ludere, ludificare (see at ch. xxx. 10).
The second half of the prophecy commences with ver. 21.
It opens with an admonition. Ver. 21. "Remember this,
Jacob and Israel; for thou art my servant : I have formed thee;
thou art servant to me, Israel : thou art not forgotten by me."
The thing to which the former were blind, — namely, that
idolatry is a lie, — Jacob was to have firmly impressed upon its
mind. The words " and Israel," which are attached, are a
contraction for " and remember this, O Israel " (compare the
vocatives after Vdv in Prov. viii. 5 and Joel ii. 23). In the
reason assigned, the tone rests upon 7ny in the expression " my
servant," and for this reason " servant to me " is used inter-
changeably with it. Israel is the servant of Jehovah, and as
such it was formed by Jehovah ; and therefore reverence was
due to Him, and Him alone. The words which follow are
rendered by the LXX., Targum, Jerome, and Liither as
though they read ''JB'^n N?, though Hitzig regards the same
rendering as admissible even with the reading ''^t!'|n inasmuch
as the nipJial HE'J has the middle sense of eTrtXav6dvecr6ai obli-
visci. But it cannot be shown that niskar is ever used in the
analogous sense of /j,i/j,v^<TKe<T6ai, recordari. The niphal which
was no doubt originally reflective, is always used in Hebrew
to indicate simply the passive endurance of something which
originated with the subject of the action referred to so that
CHAP. XLIV. 22. 213
nissJidh could only signify " to forget one's self," We must
indeed admit the possibility of the meaning " to forget one's
self" having passed into the meaning " to be forgetful," and
this into the meaning " to forget." The Aramaean ''E'^riK also
signifies to be forgotten and (with an accent following) to for-
get, and the connection with an objective suffix has a support
in ''^I0n?;i in Ps. cix. 3. But the latter is really equivalent
to ■'flN 1l3n?''1j so that it may be adduced with equal propriety
in support of the other rendering, according to which ''3B'3P1 is
equivalent to v nEJ':n (Ges., Umbr., Ewald, Stier). There are
many examples of this brachyological use of the suffix (Ges.
§ 121, 4), so that this rendering is certainly the safer of the
two. It also suits the context quite as well as the former,
"Oh, forget me not;" the assurance "thou wilt no); be for-
gotten by me" (compare ch. xlix. 15 and the lamentation of
Israel in ch. xl. 27) being immediately followed by an
announcement of the act of love, by which the declaration is
most gloriously confirmed. — Ver. 22. " / have blotted out thy
transgressions as a mist, and thy sins as clouds : return to me ;
for I have redeemed thee'' We have adopted the rendering
" mist" merely because we have no synonym to " cloud;" we
have not translated it " thick cloud," because the idea of dark-
ness, thickness, or opacity, which is the one immediately sug-
gested by the word, had become almost entirely lost (see ch.
XXV. 5). Moreover, ^?_ 3J? is evidently intended here (see ch.
xix. 1), inasmuch as the point of comparison is not the dark,
heavy multitude of sins, but the facility and rapidity with
which they are expunged. Whether we connect with '•n^riD
the idea of a stain, as in Ps. li. 3, 11, or that of a debt entered
in a ledger, as in Col. ii. 14, and as we explained it in ch. xliii.
25 (cf. mdchdh, Ex. xxxii. 32, 33), in any case sin is regarded
as something standing between God and man, and impeding
or disturbing the intercourse between them. This Jehovah
clears away, just as when His wind sweeps away the clouds,
and restores the blue sky again (Job xxvi. 13). Thus does
God's free grace now interpose at the very time when Israel
thinks He has forgotten it, blotting out Israel's sin, and
proving this by redeeming it from a state of punishment.
What an evangelical sound the preaching of the Old Testa-
ment evangelist has in this passage also ! Forgiveness and
214 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
redemption are not offered on condition of conversion, but
the mercy of God comes to Israel in direct contrast to what
its works deserve, and Israel is merely called upon to recipro-
cate this by conversion and renewed obedience. The perfects
denote that which has essentially taken place. Jehovah has
blotted out Israel's sin, inasmuch as He does not impute it any
more, and thus has redeemed Israel. All that yet remains is
the outward manifestation of this redemption, which is already
accomplished in the counsel of God.
There is already good ground, therefore, for exuberant re-
joicing ; and the reply of the church to these words of divine
consolation is as follows : Ver. 23. "Exult, heavens; for
Jehovah hath accomplished it : shout, ye depths of the earth ;
break out, ye mountains, into exulting; thou forest, and all the
wood therein : for Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob, and He showeth
Himself glorious upon Israel'' All creation is to rejoice in the
fact that Jehovah has completed what He pui-posed, that He
has redeemed His people, and henceforth will show Himself
glorious in them. The heavens on high are to exult ; also the
depths of the earth, i.e. not Hades, which would be opposed
to the prevailing view of the Old Testament (Ps. Ixvi., cf.
Ixxxviii. 13), but the interior of the earth, with its caves, its
pits, and its deep abysses (see Ps. cxxxix. 15) ; and the moun-
tains and woods which rise up from the earth towards heaven —
all are to unite in the exultation of the redeemed : for the
redemption that is being accomplished in man will extend its
effects in all directions, even to the utmost limits of the natural
world.
This exulting finale is a safe boundar^'-stone of this fifth
prophecy. It opened with "Thus saith the Lord," and the
sixth opens- with the same.
SIXTH PROPHECY.— Chap. xux. 24-xlv.
CYRUS, THE ANOINTED OF JEHOVAH, AND DELIVEREE OF
ISRAEL.
The promise takes a new turn here, acquiring greater and
greater speciality. It is introduced as the word of Jehovah
who first gave existence to Israel, and has not let it go to ruin.
CHAP. XLIV, 24-28. 215
Vers. 24-28. " Thus saiih Jehovah, thy Medeemer, and He that
formed thee from the womb, I Jehovah am Be that accom-
plisheth all ; who stretched out the heavens alone, spread out the
earth by Himself; who bringeth to nought the signs of the pro-
phets of lies, and exposeth the soothsayers as raging mad ; who
tuvneth hack the loise men, and malceth their science folly ; who
realizeth the word of His servant, and accomplisheth the predic-
tion of His messengers ; who saith to Jerusalem, She shall be
inhabited ! and to the cities of Judah, They sliall be built, and
their ruins I raise up again ! who saith to the whirlpool, Dry
up ; and I dry its streams ! who saith to Koresh, My shepherd
and he will perform all my will; and will say to Jerusalem, She
shall be built, and the temple founded ! " The prophecy which
commences with ver. 24a is carried on through this group of
verses in a series of participial predicates to ''2JS (I). Jehovah
is 'oseh hoi, accomplishing all (^perficiens omnia), so that there
is nothing that is not traceable to His might and wisdom as
the first cause. It was He who alone, without the co-operation
of any other being, stretched out the heavens, who made the
earth into a wide plain by .Himself, i.e. so that it proceeded from
Himself alone : ''Jjit^^j as in Josh. xi. 20 (compare ''3C), ch. xxx.
1 ; and mimmenni in Hos. viii. 4), chethib ''J?!? ''O, " who was
with me," or " who is it beside me ? " The Targum follows
the Jceri; the Septuagint the chethib, attaching it to the fol-
lowing words, Tt? erepo'i Siaa/ceSdaei. Ver. 25 passes on from
Him whom creation proves to be God, to Him who is proving
Plimself to be so in history also, and that with obvious refer-
ence to the Chaldean soothsayers and wise men (ch. xlvii. 9,
10), who held out to proud Babylon the most splendid and
hopeful prognostics. " Who brings to nought (inepher, opp.
meqiin) the signs," i.e. the marvellous proofs of their divine
mission which the false prophets adduced by means of fraud
and witchcraft. The LXX. render baddlm, if^aaTpifivOoiv,
Targ. hidin (in other passages = 'ob, Lev. xx. 27 ; 'oboth. Lev,
xix. 31 ; hence = ttvOcov, Trvdcove';). At ch. xvi. 6 and Job
xi. 3 we have derived it as a common noun from nna = SD3,
to speak at random ; but it is possible that nna may originally
have signified to produce or bring forth, without any reference
to ^aTToT^jeiv, then to invent, to fabricate, so that haddim as
a personal name (as in Jer. 1. 36) would be synonymous with
216 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
baddd'im, mendaces. On qos'inlm, see ch. iii. 2 (vol. i. 131) ; on
y'holel, Job xii. 17, where it occurs in connection with a similar
predicative description of God according to His works. In
ver. 26 a contrast is drawn between the heathen soothsayers
and wise men, and the servant and messengers of Jehovah,
whose word, whose 'etsdh, i.e. determination or discksure con-
cerning the future (cf. yd'ats, ch. xli. 28), he realizes and per-
fectly fulfils. By " his servant" we are to understand Israel
itself, according to ch. xlii. 19, but only relatively, namely, as
the bearer of the prophetic word, and therefore as the kernel
of Israel regarded from the standpoint of the prophetic mission
which it performed; and consequently "his messengers" are
the prophets of Jehovah who were called out of Israel. The
singular " his servant" is expanded in " his messenger" into
the plurality embraced in the one idea. This is far more
probable than that the author of these prophetic words, who
only speaks of himself in a roundabout manner even in ch. xl.
6, should here refer directly to himself (according to ch. xx. 3).
In ver. 266 the predicates become special prophecies, and hence
their outward limits are also defined. As we have 3E'in and
not ''3OTn, we must adopt the rendering liabitetur and cedificentur,
with which the continuation of the latter et vastata ejus erigam
agrees. In ver. 27 the prophecy moves back from the restora-
tion of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah to the conquest of
Babylon. The expression calls to mind the drying up of the
Ked Sea (ch. li. 10, xliii. 16) ; but here it relates to something
future, according to ch. xlii. 15, 1. 2, — namely, to the drying up
of the Euphrates, which Cyrus turned into the enlarged basin
of Sepharvaim, so that the water sank to the depth of a sinf^le
foot, and men could "go through on foot" (Herod, i. 191).
But in the complex view of the prophet, the possibility of the
conqueror's crossing involved the possibility of the exiles' depart-
ing from the prison of the imperial city, which was surrounded
by a natural and artificial line of waters (ch. xi. 15). fh^'i
(from i"iX = %, to whiz or whirl) refers to the Euphrates,
just as m'tsuldh in Job xli. 23, Zech. x. 11, does to the Nilej
n^nnnj is used in the same sense as the Homeric 'flKeavoio
peeOpa. In ver. 28 the special character of the promise reaches
its highest shoot. The deliverer of Israel is mentioned by
name : " That saith to Koresh, My shepherd (i.e. a ttoiutiu
CHAP. XLIV. 24-28, 217
\a&v appointed by me), and he who performs all my will"
(chephets, 9e\ri/j,a, not in the generalized sense of TrpayiMo), and
that inasmuch as he (Cyrus) saith to (or of) Jerusalem, It shall
be built (tibbdneh, not the second pers. tibhdni), and the foun-
dation of the temple laid (liehhdl a masculine elsewhere, here a
feminine). This is the passage which is said by Josephus to
have induced Cyrus to send back the Jews to their native land :
** Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the divine
power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfil
what was so written" (Jos. Ant. xi. 2). According to Ctesias
and others, the name of Cyrus signifies the sun. But all that
can really be affirmed is, that it sounds like the name of the
sun. For in Neo-Pers. the sun is called char, in Zendic livare
(kare), and from this proper names are formed, such as cliars'id
(Sunshine, also the Sun) ; but Cyrus is called Kuru or Khuru
upon the monuments, and this cannot possibly be connected
with our cliur, which would be uwara in Old Persian (Rawlin-
son, Lassen, Spiegel), and Koresli is simply the name of Kuru
(Ku/j-o?) Hebraized after the manner of a segholate. There is
a marble-block, for example, in the Murghab valley, not far
from the mausoleum of Cyrus, which contained the golden
coffin with the body of the king (see Strabo, xv. 3, 7) ; and on
this we find an inscription that we also meet with elsewhere,
viz. adam. k'ur'us. hhsdya \ ikiya. hakhdmanisiya, i.e. I am Kuru
the king of the Achaamenides.^ This name is identical with
the name of the river Kur {Kvpo<;; see i. 393, note) ; and what
Strabo says is worthy of notice, — namely, that " there is also a
river called Cyrus, which flows through the so-called cave of
Persis near Pasargadse, and whence the king took his name,
changing it from Agradates into Cyrus" (Strab. xv. 3, 6). It
is possible also that there may be some connection between the
name and the Indian princely title of Kuru.
' The first strophe of the first half of this sixth prophecy
^ See the engraving of this tomb of Cyrus, which is now called the
" Tomb of Solomon's mother," in Vaux's Nineveh and PersepoKs (p. 345).
On the identity of Murghab and Pasargadee, see Spiegel, Keil-inschriften,
pp. 71, 72 ; and with regard to the discovery of inscriptions that may still
be expected' around the tomb of Cyrus, the Journal of the Asiatic Society,
X. 46, note 4 (also compare Spiegel's Geschichte der Entzifferung der Keil-
tchrift, im '' Ausland," 1866, p. 413).
218 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
(cli. xliv. 24 sqq.), the subject of which is Cyrus, the predicted
restorer of Jerusalem, of the cities of Judah, and of the
temple, is now followed by a second strophe (ch. xlv. 1-8),
having for its subject Cyrus, the man through whose irre-
sistible career of conquest the heathen would be brought to
recognise the power of Jehovah, so that heavenly blessings
would come down upon the earth. The naming of the great
shepherd of the nations, and the address to him, are continued
in ch. xlv. 1-3 : " Thus saiili Jehovah to His anointed, to Koresh,
lohoni I have taken by his right hand to subdue nations before
him ; and the loins of kings I ungird, to open before him doors
and gates, that they may not continue shut. I shall go before
thee, and level what is heaped up : gates of brass shall I break
in ■pieces, and bolts of iron shall I smite to the ground. And I
shall give thee treasures of darkness, and jewels of hidden places,
that thou m.ayest know that I Jehovah am He viho called out
thy name, (even) the God of Israel." The words addressed to
Cyrus by Jehovah commence in ver. 2, but promises applying
to him force themselves into the introduction, being evoked by
the mention of his name. He is the only king of the Gentiles
whom Jehovah ever calls m'shichi (my anointed ; LXX. t&
■X^piaro) fiov). The fundamental principle of the politics of
the empire of the world was all-absorbing selfishness. But the
politics of Cyrus were pervaded by purer motives, and this
brought him eternal honour. The very same thing which the
spirit of Darius, the father of Xerxes, is represented as saying
of him in the Persce of ^schylus (v. 735), 0eo? yap ovk
rp(67}aev, ui'i ev^pcav e^v (for he was not hateful to God, be-
cause he was well-disposed), is here said by the Spirit of reve-
lation, -which by no means regards the virtues of the heathen
as splendida vitia. Jehovah has taken him by his right hand,
to accomplish great things through him while supporting him
thus. (On the inf. rad for rod, from rddad, to tread down,
see Ges. § 67, Anm. 3.) The dual d^ldthaim has also a plural
force: "double doors" {fores) in great number, viz. those of
palaces. After the two infinitives, the verb passes into the
finite tense : " loins of kings I ungird " (discingo ; pitteach,
which refers primarily to the loosening of a fastened garment,
is equivalent to depriving of strength). The gates — namelv,
those of the cities which he storms — will not be shut, sc. in
CHAP. XLV. 4-7. 219
perpetuity, ttat is to say, they will have to open to him.
Jerome refers here to the account given of the elder Cyrus
in Xenophon's Cyropoedia. A general picture may no douht
be obtained from this of his success in war ; but particular
statements need support from other quarters, since it is only a
historical romance. Instead of IB'iS (lE'iX?) in ver. 2, the heri
has itsJ^S ; just as in Ps. v. 9 it has iB/in instead of "lE'in. A
hipMl T'B'in cannot really be shown to have existed, and the
abbreviated future form 1t?'i^5 would be altogether without
ground or object here. d''"i1in (tumida; like D'9'5'?; amwna,
and others) is meant to refer to the difficulties piled up in the
conqueror's way. The "gates of brass" (n'dhushdh, brazen,
poetical for n'cJiosheth, brass, as in the derivative passage, Ps.
cvii. 16) and "bolts of iron" remind one more especially of
Babylon with its hundred " brazen gates," the very posts and
lintels of which were also of brass (Herod, i. 179) ; and the
treasures laid up in deep darkness and jewels preserved in
hiding-places, of the riches of Babylon (Jer. 1. 37, li. 13), and
especially of those of the Lydian Sardes, " the richest city of
Asia after Babylon" (Cyrop. vii. 2, 11), which Cyrus con-
quered first. On the treasures which Cyrus acquired through
his conquests, and to which allusion is made in the Persw of
JEschylus, V, 327 (" O Persian, land and harbour of many
riches thou"), see Plin. h. n. xxxiii. 2. Brerewood estimates
the quantity of gold and silver mentioned there as captured by
him at no less than £126,224,000 sterling. And all this suc-
cess is given to him by Jehovah, that he may know that it is
Jehovah the God of Israel who has called out with his name,
i.e. called out his name, or called him to be what he is, and as
what he shows himself to be.
A second and third object are introduced by a second and
third IJ?P^. Vers. 4-7. "For the sake of my servant Jacob, and
Israel my cJiosen, I called thee hither by name, surnamed thee
lohcn thou knewest me not. I Jehovah, and there is none else,
beside me no God : I equipped thee when thou knewest me not ;
that they may know from the rising of the sun, and its going
down, that there is none without me : I Jehovah, and there is
none else, former of the light, and creator of the darkness;
founder of peace, and creator of evil : 1 Jehovah am He who
worJceth all this." The '<'^i?^) which follows the second reason
220 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
assigned like an apodosis, is construed doubly : " I called to
thee, calling thee by name." The parallel 13?« refers to such
titles of honour as " my shepherd " and " my anointed," which
had been given to him by Jehovah. This calling, distinguish-
ing, and girding, i.e. this equipment of Cyrus, took place at a
time when Cyrus knew nothing as yet of Jehovah, and by this
very fact Jehovah made known His sole Deity. The meaning
is, not that it occurred while he was still worshipping false gods,
but, as the refrainAike repetition of the words " though thou
hast not known me " affirms with strong emphasis, before he
had been brought into existence, or could know anything of
Jehovah. The passage is to be explained in the same way as
Jer. i. 5, " Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee "
(see Psychol, pp. 36, 37, 39) ; and what the God of prophecy
here claims for Himself, must not be questioned by false criti-
cism, or weakened down by false apologetics (i.e. by giving up
the proper name Cyrus as a gloss in ch. xliv. 28 and xlv. 1 ; or
generalizing it into a king's name, such as Pharaoh, Abime-
lech, or Agag). The third and last object of this predicted
and realized success of the oppressor of nations and deliverer
of Israel is the acknowledgment of Jehovah, spreading over
the heathen world from the rising and setting of the sun, i.e.
in every direction. The ah of '"'3"13))3D1 is not a feminine termi-
nation (LXX., Targ., Jer.), but a feminine suffix with He
raphaio pro mappic (Kimchi) ; compare ch. xxiii. 17, 18, xxxiv.
17 (but not nS3 in ch. xviii. 5, or fTiDiD in ch. xxx. 32).
Shemesh (the sun) is a feminine here, as in Gen. xv. 17, Nah.
iii. 17, Mai. iii. 20, and always in Arabic ; for the west is
invariably called y}V}P (Arab, magrib). In ver. 7 we are led
by the context to understand by darkness and evil the penal
judgments, through which light and peace, or salvation, break
forth for the people of God and the nations generally. But as
the prophecy concerning Cyrus closes with this self-assertion
of Jehovah, it is unquestionably a natural supposition that
there is also a contrast implied to the dualistic system of
Zarathustra, which divided the one nature of the Deity into
two opposing powers (see Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien,
p. 135). The declaration is so bold, that Marcion appealed to
this passage as a proof that the God of the Old Testament was
CHAP. XLV. 8. 221
a different being from the God of the New, and not the Gcd
■of goodness only. The Valentinians and other gnostics also
regarded the words « There is no God beside me " in Isaiah,
as deceptive words of the Demiurgus. The early church met
them with Tertullian's reply, " de his creator projitefur malis
quce congniunt judici," and also made use of this self-attestation
of the God of revelation as a weapon with which to attack
Manicheeism. The meaning of the words is not exhausted by
those who content themselves with the assertion, that by the
evil (or darkness) we are not to understand the evil of guilt
(malum culpce), but the evil of punishment (malum pcence).
Undoubtedly, evil as an act is not the direct working of God,
but the spontaneous work of a creature endowed with freedom.
At the same time, evil, as well as good, has in this sense its
origin in God, — that He combines within Himself the first
principles of love arid wrath, the possibility of evil, the self-
punishment of evil, and therefore the consciousness of guilt as
well as the evil of punishment in the broadest sense. When
the apostle celebrates the glory of free grace in Eom. ix. 11
sqq., he stands on that giddy height, to which few are able
to follow him without falling headlong into the false conclu-
sions of a decretum absolutum, and the denial of all creaturely
freedom.
In the prospect of this ultimate and saving purpose of the
mission of Cyrus, viz. the redemption of Israel and the con-
version of the heathen, heaven and earth are now summoned to
bring forth and pour down spiritual blessings in heavenly gifts,
according to the will and in the power of Jehovah, who has in
view a new spiritual creation. Ver. 8. '^ Cause to trickle down,
ye heavens above, and let the blue sky rain down righteousness ;
let the earth open, and let salvation blossom, and righteousness ;
let them sprout together : I Jehovah have created it." What the
heavens are to cause to trickle down, follows as the object to
^i'l*. And what is to flower when the earth opens (pdthach as
in Ps. cvi. 17; compare aprilis and the Neo-Greek anoixis,
spring), is salvation and righteousness. But tzedek (righteous-
ness) is immediately afterwards the object of a new verb ; so
tliat '■'ij'iS!! il^l, which are thought of as combined, as the word
in^l (together) shows, are uncoupled in the actual expression.
Knobel expresses a different opinion, and assumes that J'?'.! is
222 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH..
regarded as a collective noun, and therefore construed with a
plural, like nnipN in Ps. cxix. 103, and "■nan in Hag. ii. 7. But
the use of yacliad (together) favours the other interpretation.
The suffix of vrisna points to this fulness of righteousness and
salvation. It is a creation of Jehovah Himself. Heaven and
earth, when co-operating to effect this, are endowed with their
capacity through Him from whom cometh every good and
perfect gift, and obey now, as at the first. His creative flat.
This "rorate cceli desuper et nuhes pluant justum" as the
Vulgate renders it, is justly regarded as an old advent cry.
The promise is now continued in a third strophe (ch.
xlv. 9-13), and increases more and more in the distinctness of
its terms; but just as in ch. xxix. 15-21, it opens with a re-
proof of that pusillanimity (ch. xl. 27 ; cf. ch. li. 13, xlix. 24,
Iviii. 3), which goes so far to complain of the ways of Jehovah.
Vers. 9, 10. " Woe to Mm that quarrelleth with his Maker — a
pot among the pots of earthemvare ? Can the clay indeed say to
him that shapeth it, What makest thou ? and thy work, He hath
no hands ? Woe to him that saith to his father, What hegettest
thou ? and to the woman. What bringest thou forth ? " The
comparison drawn between a man as the work of God and the
clay-work of a potter suggested itself all the more naturally,
inasmuch as the same word yotser was applied to God as
Creator, and also to a potter {figidus). The word cheres sig-
nifies either a sherd, or fragment of earthenware (ch. xxx. 14),
or an earthenware vessel (Jer. xix. 1 ; Prov. xxvi. 23). In the
passage before us, where the point of comparison is not the
fragmentary condition, but the earthen character of the material
('addmdh), the latter is intended : the man, who complains of
God, is nothing but a vessel of clay, and, more than that, a
perishable vessel among many others of the very same kind.''
The questions which follow are meant to show the folly of this
complaining. Can it possibly occur to the clay to raise a com-
plaint against him who has it in hand, that he has formed it
in such and such a manner, or for such and such a purpose
(compare Eom. ix. 20, " Why hast thou made me thus ") ? To
the words " or thy work " we must supply num dicet (shall it
^ Tlie Septuagint reads shin for sin in both instances, and introduces
here the very unsuitable thought abeady contained in ch. xxviii. 24, " Shall
the ploughman plough the land the whole day ? "
CHAP. XLV. 11, 12. 223
say) ; -pQ^al is a manufacture, as in ch. i. 31. The question is
addressed to the maker, as those in ch. vii. 25 are to the
liushandman : Can the thing made by thee, man, possibly
say in a contemptuous tone, " He has no hands % " — a supposi-
tion the ridiculous absurdity of which condemns, it at once ; and
yet it is a very suitable analogy to the conduct of the man who
complains of God. In ver. 10, a woe is denounced upon those
who resemble a man who should say to his own father, What
children dost thou beget % or to a wife. What dost thou bring
forth ? (fcliilln an emphatic, and for the most part pausal, fut.
parag., as in Euth ii. 8, iii. 18.) This would be the rudest and
most revolting attack upon an inviolably tender and private
relation ; and yet Israel does this when it makes the hidden
providential government of its God the object of expostulation.
After this double woe, which is expressed in general terms,
but the application of which is easily made, the words of
Jehovah are directly addressed to the presumptuous criticizers.
Ver. 11. " Thus saitli Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and its
Maker, Ask me wliat is to come ; let my sons and the work of
my hands he committed to me!" The names by which He
calls Himself express His absolute blamelessness, and His
absolute right of supremacy over Israel. "'TO^^ is an im-
perative, like ''3!|J>»B' in Gen. xxiii. 8 ; the third person would
be written ''lil''???^'. The meaning is : If ye would have any
information or satisfaction concerning the future (" things to
come," ch. xli. 23, xliv. 7), about which ye can neither know
nor determine anything of yourselves, inquire of me. TP!^ with
an accusative of the person, and pV of the thiag, signifies to
commit anything to the care of another (1 Chron. xxii. 12).
The fault-finders in Israel were to leave the people of whom
Jehovah was the Maker (a retrospective allusion to vers. 10 and
9), in the hands of Him who has created everything, and on whom
everything depends. Ver. 12. "/, / have made the earth, and
created men upon it ; I, my hands have stretched out the heavens,
and all thsir host have I called forth." ''1\ ''?«, according to
Ges. § 121, 3, is equivalent to my hands, and mine alone, —
a similar arrangement of words to those in Gen. xxiv. 27, 2
Ohron. xxviii. 10, Eccles. ii. 15. Hitzig is wrong in his render-
ing, "all their host do I command." That of Ewald is the
correct one, " did I appoint ; " for tsivvdh, followed by an
224 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
accusative of the person, means to give a definite order or com-
mand to any one, the command in this case being the order to
come into actual existence (= esse jussi, of. Ps. xxxiii. 9).
He who created all things, and called all things into exist-
ence, had also raised up this Cyrus, whose victorious career had
increased the anxieties and fears of the exiles, instead of leading
them to lift up their heads, because their redemption was draw-
ing nigh. Ver. 13. "/, T have raised Jiim up in righteousness,
■and all his loays shall I make smooth : He will build my city,
and release my banished ones, not for price nor for reward, saith
Jehovah of hosts." All the anxieties of the exiles are calmed by
the words " in righteousness," which trace back the revolutions
that Cyrus was causing to the righteousness of Jehovah, i.e. to
His interposition, which was determined by love alone, and
tended directly to tlie salvation of His people, and in reality to
that of all nations. And they are fully quieted by the promise,
which is now expressed iu the clearest and most unequivocal
words, that Cyrus would build up Jerusalem again, and set the
captivity free (^gdluth, as in ch. xx. 4), and that without re-
-demption with money (ch. lii. 3), — a clear proof that Jehovah
had not only raised up Cyrus himself, but had put his spirit
within him, i.e. had stirred up within him the resolution to do
this (see the conclusion to the books of Chronicles, and the
introduction to that of Ezra). This closes the first half of our
sixth prophecy.
The second half is uttered in the prospect, that the judg-
ment which Cyrus brings upon the nations will prepare the way
for the overthrow of heathenism, and the universal acknow-
ledgment of the God of Israel. The heathen submit, as the
first strophe or group of verses (ch. xlv. 14-17) affirms, to the
congregation and its God ; the idolatrous are converted, whilst
Israel is for ever redeemed. With the prospect of the release
•of the exiles, there is associated in the prophet's perspective the
prospect of an expansion of the restored church, through the
entrance of " the fulness of the Gentiles." Ver. 14. " 77ms
saith Jehovah, The productions of Egypt, and gain of Ethiopia, and
the Sabwajis, men of tall stature, will come over to thee, and belong
to thee : they will come after thee; in chains they will come over,
■and cast themselves down to thee ; they pray to thee, Surely God
is in thee, and there is none else ; no Deity at all." Assumincf
CHAP. XLV. 14. 225
that llby^ has the same meaning in both cases, the prophet's
meaning appears to be, that the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and
Meroites (see ch. xHii. 3), who had been enslaved by the im-
perial power of Persia, would enter the miraculously emanci-
pated congregation of Israel (Ewald). But if they wer&
thought of as in a state of subjugation to the imperial power
of Asia, how could the promise be at the same time held out
that their riches wonld pass over into the possession of the
church ? And yet, on the other hand, the chains in which
they come over cannot be regarded, at least in this connection,
where such emphasis is laid upon the voluntary character of the
surrender, as placed upon them by Israel itself (as in ch. Ix. 11
and Ps. cxlix. 8). We mnst therefore suppose that they put
chains upon themselves voluntarily, and of their own accord,
and thus offer themselves spontaneously to the church, to be
henceforth its subjects and slaves. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Saba
are the nations that we meet with in other passages, where the
hcereditas gentium is promised to the church, and generally in
connection with Tyre (yid. Ps. Ixviii. 32, Ixxii. 10 ; compare
ch. xviii. 7, xix. 16 sqq., xxiii. 18). Whilst the labour of
Egypt (i.e. the productions of its labour) and the trade of
Ethiopia (i.e. the riches acquired by trade) are mentioned ; in
the case of Saba the prophecy looks at tiie tall and handsome
tribe itself, a tribe which Agatharchides describes as having
crcofMTa d^io'Koyayrepa, These would place themselves at the
service of the church with their invincible strength. The
voluntary character of the surrender is pointed out, not only
ill the expression " they will come over," but also in the con-
fession with which this is accompanied. In other cases the
words liithpallel 'el are only used of prayer to God and idols ;
but here it is to the church that prayer is offered. In the
prophet's view, Jehovah and His church are inseparably one
(compare 1 Cor. xii. 12, where " Christ" stands for the church
as one body, consisting of both head and members ; also the
use of the word " worship" in Eev. iii. 9, which has all the
ring of a passage taken from Isaiah). ^^ is used here in its
primary affirmative sense, as in Ps. Iviii. 12. There can be no
doubt that Paul had this passage of Isaiah in his mind when
writing 1 Cor. xiv. 24, 25, dircvyyeWcov oti 6 0eo? oWco? iv vjuv
ea-Ti, or, according to a better arrangement of the words, ot»
VOL. II. P
226 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ovrio'} (= ^^?) o 0eo? iv vfuv ia-rw. 'Ephes does not signify
prcBter (as a synonym of "'!]5!??, '''??') either here or anywhere
else, but is a substantive used with a verbal force, which stands
in the same relation to px as " there is not at all (absolutely
not)" to " there is not ;" compare ch. v, 8, xlv. 6, xlvi. 9, also
Deut. xxxii. 36 (derivative passage, 2 Kings xiv. 26), and
Amos vi. 10, 2 Sam. ix, 3 ; vid. ch, xlvii. 8.
What follows in ver. 15 is not a continuation of the words
of the Gentiles, but a response of the church to their con-
fession. The nations that have been idolatrous till now, bend
in humble spontaneous worship before the church and its God ;
and at the sight of this, the church, from whose soul the prophet
is speaking, bursts out into an exclamation of reverential amaze-
ment, Ver, 15. " Verily Thou art a mysterious God, Thou God
of Israel, Thou Saviour." Literally, a God who hides Himself
(mistatter: the resemblance to fivarr]p-icoSTj<! is quite an acci-
dental one ; the e is retained in the participle even in pause).
The meaning is, a God who guides with marvellous strange-
ness the history of the nations of the earth, and by secret ways,
which human eyes can never discern, conducts all to a glorious
issue. The exclamation in Eom. xi. 33, " O the depth of the
riches," etc., is a similar one.
The way in which this God who hides Himself is ultimately
revealed as the God of salvation, is then pointed out in vers.
16, 17 : " They are put to shame, and also confounded, all of
them ; they go away into confusion together, tJie forgers of idols,
Israel is redeemed hy Jehovah with everlasting redemption: ye
are not put to shame nor confounded to everlasting eternities^
The perfects are expressive of the ideal past. Jehovah shows
Himself as a Saviour by the fact, that whereas the makers
of idols perish, Israel is redeemed an everlasting redemption
(ace. obj. as in ch. xiv. 6, xxii. 17 ; Ges. § 138, 1, Anm, 1),
i.e. so that its redemption is one that lasts for aeons (auovia
XvT/3wo-t9, Heb, ix. 12) :— observe that fshudh does not literally
signify redemption or rescue, but transfer into a state of wide
expanse, i.e. of freedom and happiness. The plural 'oldmlm
(eternities =aiFwi;e?, wva) belongs, according to Knobel, to the
later period of the language ; but it is met with as early as in
old Asaphite psalms (Ps. Ixxvii. 6), When the further promise
is added. Ye shall not be put to shame, etc, this clearly shows,
CHAP. XLV. 18, 19. 227
what is also certain on other grounds, — namely, that the re-
demption is not thought of merely as an outward and bodily
one, but also as inward and spiritual, and indeed (in dccordanco
with the prophetic blending of the end of the captivity with
the end of all things) as a final one. Israel will never bring
upon itself again such a penal judgment as that of the capti-
vity by falling away from God ; that is to say, its state of sin
will end with its state of punishment, even 1^ ''»?ij)"1J?, i.e.,
since 1J? has no plural, eis al&va^ t&v alavasv.
The second and last strophe of this prophecy commences
with ver. 18. By the fulfilment of the promise thus openly
proclaimed, those of the heathen who have been saved from
the judgment will recognise Jehovali as the only God ; and the
irresistible will of Jehovah, that all mankind should worship
Him, be carried out. The promise cannot remain unfulfilled.
Vers. 18, 19. " For thus saiih Jehovah, the creator of the
heavens (He is the Deity), the former of the earth, and its finisher;
He has established it (He has not created it a desert, He has
formed it to be inhabited) : / am Jehovah, and there is none
else. I have not spoken in secret, in a place of the land of
darkness; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, Into the desert
seek ye me ! I Jehovah am speaking righteousness, proclaiming
upright things." The athnach properly divides ver. 18 in half.
Ver. 18a describes the speaker, and what He says commences
in ver. 186. The first parenthesis affirms that Jehovah is God
in the fullest and most exclusive sense ; the second that He has
created the earth for man's sake, not " as a desert " (tohu : the
LXX., Targum, and Jerome render this with less accuracy,
non in vanum), i.e. not to be and continue to be a desert, but to
be inhabited. Even in Gen. i. 2, chaos is not described as of
God's creation, because (whatever may be men's opinions con-
cerning it in other respects) the creative activity of God merely
made use of this as a starting-point, and because, although it
did not come into existence without God, it was at any rate not
desired by God for its own sake. The words of Jehovah com-
mence, then, with the assertion that Jehovah is the absolute
One ; and from this two thoughts branch off : (1.) The first is,
that the prophecy which emanates from Him is an affair of
light, no black art, but essentially different from heathen sooth-
saying. By " a dark place of the earth" we are to understand,
228 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
according to Ps. cxxxix. 15, the interior of the earth, and
according to Job x. 21, Hades ; the intention being to point
out the contrast between the prophecies of Jehovah and the
heathen cave-oracles and spirit-voices of the necromancists,
which seemed to rise up from the interior of the earth (see ch.
Ixv. 4, viii. 19, xxix. 4). (2.) The second thought is, that the
very same love of Jehovah, which has already been displayed
in the creation, attests itself in His relation to Israel, which He
has not directed to Himself "into the desert" (tohu), just as
He did not create the earth a tohu. Meier and Knobel suppose
that baqsliuni, which is written here, according to a well-supported
reading, with Koph raphatum (whereas in other cases the dagesh
is generally retained, particularly in the imperative of hiqqSsh),
refers to seeking for disclosures as to the future ; but the word
''JIB'1'7 would be used for this, as in ch. viii. 19. He has not said,
" Seek ye me (as in Zeph. ii. 3) into the desert," i.e. without
the prospect of meeting with any return for your pains. On
the contrary. He has attached pi'omises to the seeking of Him-
self, which cannot remain unfulfilled, for He is " one speaking
righteousness, declaring things that are right;" i.e. when He
promises. He follows out the rule of His purpose and of His
plan of salvation, and the impulse of sincere desire for their
good, and love which is ever true to itself. The present word
of prophecy points to the fulfilment of these promises.
The salvation of Israel, foretold and realized by Jehovah,
becomes at the same time the salvation of the heathen world.
Vers. 20, 21. "Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together,
ye escaped of the heathen! Irrational are they who burden
themselves ivith the wood of their idol, and pray to a god that
bringeth no salvation. Make known, and cause to draw near ;
yea, let them take counsel together : Who has made such things
known from the olden time, proclaimed it long ago ? Itave not 1,
Jehovah? and there is no Deity beside me; a God just, and bring-
ing salvation : there is not without me ! " The fulness of the
Gentiles, which enters into the kingdom of God, is a remnant of
the whole mass of the heathen : for salvation comes through judg-
ment ; and it is in the midst of great calamities that the work
of that heathen mission is accomplished, which is represented in
these prophecies on the one hand as the mission of Cyrus, and
on the other hand as the mission of Jehovah and His servant
CHAP. XLV. 20, 21. 229
Hence tins summons to listen to the self-assertion of tlie God
of revelation, is addressed to the escaped of the heathen, who
are not therefore the converted, but those who are susceptible
of salvation, and therefore spared. By "the heathen"
ijiaggoyirri) Knobel understands the allies and auxiliaries of
the Babylonians, whom Cyrus put to flight (according to the
Cyropcedia) before his Lydian campaign. But this is only an
example of that exaggerated desire to turn everything into
liistory, which not only prevented his seeing the poetry of the
form, but obscured the fact that prophecy is both human and
divine. For the future was foreshortened to the telescopic
glance of the prophet, so that he could not see it in all its
length and breadth. He saw in one mass what history after-
wards unrolled ; and then behind the present he could just see
as it were the summit of the end, although a long eventful
way still lay between the two. Accordingly, our prophet here
takes his stand not at the close of any particular victory of
Cyrus, but at the close of all his victories ; and, in his view,
these terminate the whole series of catastrophes, which are
outlived by a remnant of the heathen, who are converted to
Jehovah, and thus complete the final glory of the restored
people of God. Throughout the whole of these prophecies we
see immediately behind the historical foreground this eschato-
logical background lifting up its head. The heathen who have
been preserved will assemble together ; and from the fact that
Jehovah proves Himself the sole foreteller of the events that
are now unfolding themselves, they will be brought to the
conviction that He is the only God. The Idilipael Idtlinaggesh
does not occur anywhere else. On the absolute PT N?, see at
ch. xliv. 9 (cf. i. 3). To the verb haggishu we must supply,
as in ch. xli. 22, according to the same expression in ver. 21,
Oa'-ribsj? (your proofs). " This" refers to the fall of Babylon
and redemption of Israel— salvation breaking through judg-
ment. On me^dz, from the olden time, compare ch. xliv. 8.
God is " a just God and a Saviour," as a being who acts most
strincrently according to the demands of His hohness, and
wherever His wrath is not wickedly provoked, sets in motion
His loving will, which is ever concerned to secure the salvation
of men.
It is in accordance with this holy loving will that the cry is
aaO THE PEOPHECIES OK ISAIAH.
published in ver. 22 : " Turn unto me, and be ye saved, all ye
ends of the earth ; for I am God, and none else." The first
imperative is hortatory, the second promising (cf. ch. xxxvi. 16
and viii. 9) : Jehovah desires both, viz. the conversion of all
men to Himself; and through this their salvation, and this
His gracious will, which extends to all mankind, will not rest
till its object has been fully accomplished. Ver. 23. "By
myself have I sworn, a word has gone out of a mouth of rightr
eousness, and will not return. That to me every knee shall bend,
every tongue swear" Swearing by Himself (see Gen. xxii. 16),
God pledges what He swears with His own life (compare
Eom. xiv. 11, "as I live"). Parallel to 'mp. '3 is the
clause aity; N^l "lai nijnv isp nx;. Here Rosenmiilier connects
"lyi npTi together as if with a hyphen, in the sense of a truth-
word (Jerome, jiistitia verbum). But this is grammatically
impossible, since it would require npiv nn^ ; moreover, it is
opposed both to the accents, and to the dagesh in the DaletJi.
Hitzig's rendering is a better one : " Truth (LXX. BiKaio-
avvrj), a word that does not return," — the latter being taken
as an explanatory permutative ; but in that case we should
require N? for O, and ts'ddqdh is not used in the sense of
truth anywhere else (compare tsaddiq, however, in ch. xli. 26).
On the other hand, T\pn might be equivalent to nplXD ("in
righteousness;" cf. ch. xlii. 25, npn = nona), if it were not
incomparably more natural to connect together npix 'BD as a
genitive construction ; though not in the sense in which 'BD
mujn is used in post-biblical writings, — namely, as equivalent to
" out of the mouth of God" (see Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. Col. 385),
— but rather in this way, that the mouth of God is described
attributively as regulated in its words by His holy will (as
"speaking righteousness," ver. 196). A word has gone forth
from this mouth of righteousness ; and after it has once gone
forth, it does not return without accomplishing its object (ch.
Iv. 11). What follows is not so much a promising prediction
(that every knee will bend to me), as a definitive declaration of
will (that it shall or must bend to me). According to ch. xix.
18, xliv. 5, " to me" is to be regarded as carried forward, and
so to be supplied after " shall swear" (the Septuagint rendering,
ofielrai . . . rbv Qeov, is false ; that of Paul in Rom. xiv. 11,
€^ojM)\oryi](7eTai rw Qew, is correct ; and in this case, as in
CHAP. XLVI. 231
others also, the Cod. Al. of the Sept. has been corrected from
the New Testament quotations).
This bending of the knee, this confession as an oath of
homage, will be no forced one. Ver. 24. " Only in Jehovah,
da men say of me, is fulness of righteousness and strength ; they
come to Him, and all that were incensed against Him are put to
shame" The parenthetical insertion of ^0^? 7 (?> with refer-
ence to, as in ch. xli. 7, xliv. 26, 28) is the same as in Ps.
cxix. 57. ^K has a restrictive sense here, which springs out of
the affirmative (cf. Ps. xxxix. 7, Ixxiii. 1), just as, in the case
of raq, the affirmative grows out of the primary restrictive
sense. ,The " righteousness " is abounding (superabundant)
righteousness (Eom. v. 15 sqq.). T'y is the strength of sancti-
fication, and of the conquest of the world. The subject to
Kil^ (which is not to be changed, according to the Masora, into
the more natural 1K3J, as it is by the LXX., Syr., and Vulg.)
is, whoever has seen what man has in Jehovah, and made con-
fession of this ; such a man does not rest till he has altogether
come over to Jehovah, whereas all His enemies are put to
shame. They separate themselves irretrievably from the men
who serve Him, the restoration of whom is His direct will, and
the goal of the history of salvation. Ver. 25. "In Jehovah
all the seed of Israel shall become righteous, and shall glory.''
Euetschi has very properly observed on this verse, that the
reference is to the Israel of God out of all the human race, i.e.
the church of the believers in Israel expanded by the addition
of the heathen ; which church is now righteous, i.e. reconciled
and renewed by Jehovah, and glories in Him, because by-
grace it is what it is.
This brings the sixth prophecy to a close. Its five strophes
commence with " Thus saith the Lord ;" at the same time, the
fifth strophe has two " woes" {hoi) before this, as the ground
upon which it rests.
SEVENTH PROPHECY.— Chap. xlvi.
PALL OF THE GODS OF BABEL.
There follows now a trilogy of prophecies referring to
Babylon. After the prophet has shown what Israel has to
232 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
expect of Cyrus, he turns to wliat awaits Babylon at tlie
hands of Cyrus. Vers. 1, 2. " Bel sinketh down, Nebo stoopeth;
its images come to the beast of burden and draught cattle : your
litters are laden, a burden for the panting. They stooped, sank
down all at once, and could not get rid of the burden ; and their
own self went into captivity." Tlie reference to Babylon comes
out at once in the names of the gods. Bel was the Jupiter of
the Babylonians and, as Bel-Merodach, the tutelar deity of
Babylon; Nebo was ]\Iercury, the tutelar deity of the later
Chaldean royal family, as the many kings' names in which it
appears clearly show {e.g. Nabonassar, Nabo-polassar, etc.).
The pyramidal heap of ruins on the right bank of the
Euphrates, which is now called Birs Nimrud, is the ruin of
the temple of Bel, of which Herodotus gives a description in
i. 181-183, and probably also of the tower mentioned in Gen. xi.,
which was dedicated to Bel, if not to El = Saturn. Herodotus
describes two golden statues of Bel which were found there
(cf. Diodorus, ii. 9, 5), but the way in whibh Nebo was repre-
sented is still unknown. The judgment of Jehovah falls upon
these gods through Cyrus. Bel suddenly falls headlong, and
Nebo stoops till he also falls. Their images come to (fall to
the lot of) the chayydh, i.e. the camels, dromedaries, and ele-
phants ; and Vhemdh, i.e. horses, oxen, and asses. Your n^B'Jj
gestamina, the prophet exclaims to the Babylonians, i.e. the
'images hitherto carried by you in solemn procession (ch. xlv.
20 ; Amos v. 26 ; Jer. x. 5), are now packed up, a burden for
that which is wearied out, i.e. for cattle that has become weary
with carrying them. In ver. 1, as the two participial clauses
show, the prophet still takes his stand in the midst of the
catastrophe ; but in ver. 2 it undoubtedly lies behind him as a
completed act. In ver. 2a he continues, as in ver. 1, to enter
into the delusion of the heathen, and distinguish between the
numina and simulacra. The gods of Babylon have all stooped
at once, have sunken down, and have been unable to save their
images which were packed upon the cattle, out of the hands of
the conquerors. In ver. 2b he destroys this delusion : they are
going into captivity (Hos. x. 5 ; Jer. xlviii. 7, xlix. 3), even
" their ownself " (naphshdm), since the self or personality of the
beingless beings consists of nothing more than the wood and
metal of which their images are composed.
CHAP. XLVI. 3-6. 233
From this approaching reduction of the gods of Babylon
to their original nothingness, several admonitions are now de-
rived. The first admonition is addressed to all Israel. Vers.
3-5. '■'■ Heavken unto me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant
0/ the home of Israel : ye, lifted up from the womb ; ye, carried
from the mother's lap! And till old age it is I, and to grey. hair
I shall bear you on my shoulder : I have done it, and I shall
carry ; and I put upon my shoulder, and deliver. To whom can
ye compare me, and liken, and place side by side, that we should
be equal?" The house of Jacob is Judah here, as in Obad.
■18 (see Caspari on the passage), Nah. ii. 3, and the house of
Israel the same as the house of Joseph in Obadiah ; whereas in
Amos iii. 13, vi. 8, vii. 2, Jacob stands for Israel, in distinction
from Judah. The Assyrian exile was earlier than the Baby-
Ionian, and had already naturalized the greater part of the
exiles in a heathen land, and robbed them of their natural
character, so that there was only a remnant left by whom there
was any hope that the prophet's message would be received.
What the exiles of both houses were to hear wasthe question
in ver. 5, which called upon them to consider the incomparable
nature of their God, as deduced from what Jehovah. could say
of Himself in relation to all Israel, and what He does say from
D'DDyn onwards. Babylon carried its idols, bnt all in vain:
they were carried forth, without being able to save themselves ;
but Jehovah carried His people, and saved them. The expres-
sions, " from the womb, and from the mother's lap," point back
to the time when the nation which had been in process of for-
mation from the time of Abraham onwards came out of Egypt,
and was bom, as it were, into the light of the world. From
this time forward it had lain upon Jehovah like a willingly
adopted burden, and He had carried it as a nurse carries a
suckling (Num. xi. 12), and an eagle its young (Deut, xxxii.
11). In ver, 4 the attributes of the people are carried on in
■direct (not relative) self-assertions on the part of Jehovah.
The senectus and canities are obviously those of the people, —
not, however, as though it was already in a state of dotage (as
Hitzig maintains, appealing erroneously to ch. xlvii. 6), but as
denoting the future and latest periods of its history. Even
till then Jehovah is He, i.e. the Absolute, and always the same
(see ch. xli. 4). As He has acted in the past, so will He act
234 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
at all times — supporting and saving His people. Hence He
could properly ask, Whom could you place by the side of me,
so that we should be equal ? ( Vav consec. as in eh. xl. 25.)
The negative answer to this question is the direct result of
what precedes, but a still further proof is given in vers. 6, 7.
" The^ who pour gold out of the bag, and weigh silver with tlie
balance, hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, that they may fall
down, yea, throw themselves down. They lift it up, carry it
away upon their shoulder, and set it down in its place : there it
stands ; from its place it does not move : men also cry to it, but it
does not answer ; it saves no one out of distress" There is no
necessity for assuming that DyJO is used in the place of the
finite verb, as Hitzig imagines, or as equivalent to OvJ an, as
Rosenmiiller and Gesenius suppose ; but up to 'n3B') the whole
is subject, and therefore vpB'l is the point at which the change
into the finite verb occurs (Ges. § 131, 2). The point in haz-
zdlim is not the extravagant expenditure, as Ewald thinks, hut
the mean origin of the god, which commences with the pouring
out of gold from a purse (zul = zdlal, to shake, to pour out).
Qdneh is the lever of the scales (Kavcov). The metal weighed
out is given to a goldsmith, who plates the idol with the gold,
and makes the ornaments for it of silver. When it is finished,
they lift it up, or shoulder it (1'1$'|'* with a distinctive Great
Telisha), carry it home, and set it down in the place which it
is to have under it (y^^P}). There it stands firm, immoveable,
and also deaf and dumb, hearing no one, answering no one,
and helping no one. The subject to PVi) is any PVV. The first
admonition closes here. The gods who are carried fall without
being able to save themselves, whereas Israel's God carries and
saves His people ; He, the Incomparable, more especially in
contrast with the lifeless puppets of idols.
The second admonition is addressed to those who would
imitate the heathen. Vers. 8-11. "Remember this, and become
firm ; take it to heart, ye rebellious ones ! Remember the be-
ginning from the olden time, that I am God, and none else :
Deity, and absolutely none like me ; proclaiming the issue from
the beginning, and from ancient tim^s what has not yet taken
place, saying. My counsel shall stand, and all my good pleasure
I carry out : calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of
my counsel from a distant land : not only have I spoken, I also
CHAP. XLVI. 8-11. 235
bring it ; I have purposed it, Talso execute it." The object to
■which "this" points back is the nothingness of idols and
idolatry. The persons addressed are the D"'JJB'ia (those aposta-
tizing), but, as !iE'B'i«nn shows, ■. whether it mean av^pS^eade or
KpwraiovaOe (1 Cor. xvi. 13), such as have not yet actually
carried out their rebellion or apostasy, but waver between
Jehovahism and heathenism, and are inclined to the latter.
IK'K'Nnn is hardly a denom, hithpalel of ^^^ in the sense of "man
yourselves," since ^^^, whether it signifies a husband or a social
being, or like tM3N, a frail or mortal being, is at any rate equi-
valent to Si'JK, and therefore never shows the modification u.
WN (pf^) signifies to be firm, strong, compact ; in the piel
(rabb.), to be well-grounded ; nithpael, to be fortified, estab-
lished ; here hithpoel, " show yourselves firm " (Targ., Jer. :
fundamini ne rursum subitus idololatrice vos turbo subvertat).
That they may strengthen themselves in faith and fidelity,
they are referred to the history of their nation ; nlab'Kn are
not prophecies given at an earlier time, — a meaning which
the priora only acquire in such a connection as ch. xliii. 9,
— but former occurrences. They are to pass before their
minds the earlier history, and indeed " from the olden time."
" Remember :" zikhru is connected with the accusative of the
object of remembrance, and "'3 points to its result. An
earnest and thoughtful study of history would show them
.that Jehovah alone was El, the absolutely Mighty One, and
'JEloMm, the Being who united in Himself all divine majesty by
which reverence was evoked. The participles in vers. 10, 11
are attached to the " I " of ''|iiD3, It is Jehovah, the Incom-
parable, who has now, as at other times from the very com-
mencement of the new turn in history, predicted the issue to
which it would lead, and miqqedem, i.e. long before, predicted
things that have not yet occurred, and which therefore lie
outside the sphere of human combination, — another passage
like ch. xli. 26, xlv. 21, etc., in which what is predicted in these
prophecies lays claim to the character of a prediction of long
standing, and not of one merely uttered a few years before.
The n^tJ'NI, in which the nut^NT are already in progress (ch.
xlii. 9), is to be regarded as the prophet's ideal present ; for
Jehovah not only foretells before the appearance of Cyrus
what is to be expected of. him, but declares that His determi-
236 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
nation must be realized, that He will bring to pass everything
upon which His will is set, and summons the man upon the
stage of history as the instrument of its accomplishment, so
that He knew Cyrus before he himself had either conscious-
ness or being (ch. xlv. 4, 5). The east is Persis (ch. xli. 2) ;
and the distant land, the northern part of Media (as in ch.
xiii. 5). Cyrus is called an eagle, or, strictly speaking, a bird
of prey (ayit^), just as in Jer. xlix. 22 and Ezek. xvii. '6
Nebuchadnezzar is called a nesher. According to Cyrop. vii.
1, 4, the campaign of Cyrus was oero? j(^pv(Tov<i iirl So/aaro?
/laKpov avaTeraiievo'i. Instead of invjJ t}*'!*, the heri reads
more clearly, though quite unnecessarily, ''HW {{''K (see e.g. ch.
xliv. 26). The correlate fl5< (ver. 11&), which is only attached
to the second verb the second time, affirms that Jehovah does
not only the one, but the other also. His word is made by
Him into a deed, His idea into a reality. 1V^ is a word used
particularly by Isaiah, to denote the ideal preformation of the
future in the mind of God (cf. ch. xxii. 11, xxxvii. 26). The
feminine suffixes refer in a neuter sense to the theme of the
prophecy — the overthrow of idolatrous Babel, upon which
Cyrus comes down like an eagle, in the strength of Jehovah.
So far we have the nota bene for those who are inclined to
apostasy. They are to lay to heart the nothingness of the
heathen gods, and, on the other hand, the self-manifestation of
Jehovah from the olden time, that is to say, of the One God
who is now foretelling and carrying out the destruction of the
imperial city through the eagle from the east.
A third admonition is addressed to the forts esprits in vers.
12, 13. "Hearken to me, ye strong-hearted, that are far from
righteousness t I have brought my righteousness ttear ; it is not
far off, and my salvation tarrieth not : and I give salvation in
Zion, my glory to Israel." All that is called in Hellenic and
Hellenistic vow, X0709 avveihnrjcrui, 6v/i6<;, is comprehended in
KapSia; and everything by which bdsdr and nephesh are affected
comes into the light of consciousness in the heart (PsycAoi. p. 251).
1 The resemblance to aSToj (alero;) is merely accidental. This name
for the eagle is traceable, like avis, to a root vd, to move with the swift-
ness of the wind. This was shown by Passow, compare Kuhn's Zeitsclirift,
I. 29, where we also find at 10, 126 another but less probable derivation
from a root i, to go (compare eva, a course).
CHAP. XLVII. 237
According to this biblico-psychological idea, 37 'T3N may signify
either the courageous (Ps. Ixxvi. 6), or, as in this instance, the
strong-minded ; but as a synonym of 3? "'ptn (Ezek. ii. 4) and
•''I? "'ir'i? (Ezek. iii. 7), viz. in the sense of .those who resist the im-
pressions of the work and grace of God in their consciousness of
mental superiority to anything of the kind, and not in tlie sense
of those who have great mental endowments. These are " far
from righteousness" {ts'ddqdli), that is to say, they have despaired
of the true, loving fidelity of Jehovah, and have no wish for
any further knowledge of it. Therefore they shall hear, and
possibly not without impression, that this loving fidelity is about
to manifest itself, and salvation is about to be realized. Jehovah
has given salvation in Zion, that is to say, is giving it even now,
so that it will become once more the centre of the renovated
nation, and impart its glory to this, -so that it may shine in the
splendour bestowed upon it by its God. We have here the side
of light and love, turned towards us by the two-faced ts^ddqdh,
as a parallel word to th'shudh, or salvation. With this admo-
nition to the indifferent and careless, to whom the salvation of
which they have given up all hope is proclaimed as at the door,
this prophecy is brought to a close. In three distinct stages,
commencing with "hearken," "remember," " hearken," it has
unfolded the spiritual influences which the fact declared in
vers. 1, 2 ought to have upon Israel, and resembles a pastoral
sermon in its tone.
EIGHTH PEOPHECY.— Chap, xlvii.
JFALL OF babel; THE CAPITAL OF THE EMPIRE OF THE WORLD.
From tlie gods of Babylon the proclamation of judgment
passes on to Babylon itself. Vers. 1-4. " Come down, and sit
in the dust, virgin daughter Babel ; sit on the ground loithout
a throne, Chaldoeans-daughter ! For men no longer call thee
delicate and voluptuous. Take the mill, and grind meal : throw
hack thy veil, lift up the train, uncover the thigh, wade through
streams. Let thy nakedness be uncovered, even let thy shame be
seen; I shall take vengeance, and not spare men. Our Redeemer,
Jehovah of hosts is His name. Holy One of Israel." This is the
first strophe in the prophecy. As ver. 36 clearly shows, what
238 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
precedes is a penal sentence from Jehovah. Both n? in rela-
tion to n.^ina (ch. xxiii. 12, xxxvii. 22), and b^'^ and O'^.f? in
relation to ri3, are appositional genitives ; Babel and Chaldeans
(Dntya as in ch. xlviii. 20) are regarded as a woman, and that
as one not yet dishonoured. The unconqnered oppressor is
threatened with degradation from her proud eminence into
shameful humiliation ; sitting on the ground is used in the same
sense as in ch. iii. 26. Hitherto men have called her, with
envious admiration, rahhali va'dnuggdh (from Deut. xxviii. 56),
mollis et delicata, as having carefully kept everything disagree-
able at a distance, and revelled in nothing but luxury (compare
'oneg, ch. xiii. 22). Debauchery with its attendant rioting
(ch. xiv. 11, XXV. 5), and the Mylitta worship with its licensed
prostitution (Herod, i. 199), were current there ; but now all
this was at an end. ''?''?in, according to the Masora, has only
one pashta both here and in ver. 5, and so has the tone upon
the last syllable, and accordingly metlieg in the antepenult.
Isaiah's artistic style may be readily perceived both in the three
clauses of ver. 1 that are comparable to a long trumpet-blast
(compare ch. xl. 9 and xvi. 1), and also in the short, rugged, in-
voluntarily excited clauses that follow (compare vol. i. 427). The
mistress becomes the maid, and has to perform the low, menial
service of those who, as Homer says in Od. vii. 104, dXerpevova-t
fivXr]'; eVrt fiip^Tra Kap-rrov (grind at the mill the quince-coloured
fruit ; compare at Job xxxi. 10). She has to leave her palace
as a prisoner of war, and, laying aside all feminine modesty,
to wade through the rivers upon which she borders. Chespl has
g instead of t, and, as in other cases where a sibilant precedes,
the mute p instead of /(compare 'I'spi, Jer. x. 17). Both the
prosopopeia and the parallel, " thy shame shall be seen," require
that the expression " thy nakedness shall be uncovered " should
not be understood literally. The shame of Babel is her shame-
ful conduct, which is not to be exhibited in its true colours,
inasmuch as a stronger one is coming upon it to rob it of its
might and honour. This stronger one, apart from the instru-
ment employed, is Jehovah: vindictam sumam, non parcam
liomini. Stier gives a different rendering here, namely, " I will
run upon no man, i.e. so as to make him give way;" Hahn,
" I will not meet with a man," so destitute of population will
Babylon be ; and Euetschi, " I will not step in as a man."
CHAP. XLVII. 5-7. 239
Gesenius and Rosenmiiller are nearer to the mark when they
suggest non pangam (paciscar) cum liomine ; but this would
require at any rate D']?"n^, even if tlie verb WS really had the
meaning to strike a treaty. It means rather to strike against a
person, to assault any one, then to meet or come in an opposite
direction, and that not only in a hostile sense, but, as in this
instance, and also in ch. Ixiv. 4, in a friendly sense as well.
Hence, " I shall not receive any man, or pardon any man "
(Hitzig, Ewald, etc.). According to an old method of writing
the passage, there is a pause here. But ver. 4 is still connected
with what goes before. As Jehovah is speaking in ver. 5, but
, Israel in ver. 4, and as ver. 4 is unsuitable to form the basis of
the words of Jehovah, it must be regarded as the antiphone
to vers. 1-3 (cf. ch. xlv. 15). Our Eedeemer, exclaims the
church in joyfully exalted self-consciousness. He is Jehovah of
hosts, the Holy One of Israel ! The one name affirms that He
possesses the all-conquering might ; the other that He possesses
the will to carry on the work of redemption, — a will influenced
and constrained by both love and wrath.
In the second strophe the penal sentence of Jehovah is
continued. Vers. 5-7. " Sit silent, and creep into the dark-
ness, Clialdeans-daughter I for men no longer call thee lady
of kingdoms. I was wroth with my people ; I polluted mine
inheritance, and gave them into thy hand : thou hast shown them
no mercy ; upon old men thou laidst thy yoke very heavily. And
thou saidst, I shall be lady for ever ; so that Hiou didst not
take these things to heart : thou didst not consider the latter end
thereof." Babylon shall sit down in silent, brooding sorrow,
and take herself away into darkness, just as those who have
fallen into disgrace shrink from the eyes of men. She is
looked upon as an empress (cli. xiii. 9 ; the king of Babylon
called himself the king of kings, Ezek. xxvi. 7), who has been
reduced to the condition of a slave, and durst not show herself
for shame. This would happen to her, because at the time
when Jehovah made use of her as His instrument for punish-
ing His people, she went beyond the bounds of her authority,
showing no pity, and ill-treating even defenceless old men.
According to Koppe, Gesenius, and Hitzig, Israel is here called
edqen, as a decayed nation awakening sympathy ; but according
to the Scripture, the people of God is always young, and never
240 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
decays ; on the contrary, its ziqndli, i.e. the latest period of its
history (eh. xlvi. 4), is to be like its youth. The words are to
be understood literally, like Lam. iv. 16, v. 12 : even upon old
men, Babylon had placed the heavy yoke of prisoners and
slaves. But in spite of tliis inhumanity, it flattered itself that
it would last for ever. Hitzig adopts the reading ^3? ^l"!).^?) and
renders it, " To all future times shall I continue, mistress to all
eternity." This may possibly be correct, but it is by no means
necessary, inasmuch as it can be shown from 1 Sam. xx. 41,
and Job xiv. 6, that ^y is used as equivalent to "l!?'^< ^y, in the
sense of " till the time that ;" and g'l/hereth, as the feminine
of gdblier = gebher, may be the absolute quite as well as the
construct. The meaning therefore is, that the confidence of
Babylon in the eternal continuance of its power was such, that
" these things," i.e. such punishments as those which were
now about to fall upon it according to the prophecy, had never
come into its mind ; such, indeed, that it had not called to
remembrance as even possible " the latter end of it," i.e. the
inevitably evil termination of its tyranny and presumption.
A third strophe of this proclamation of punishment is
opened here with nnvi^ on the ground of the conduct censured.
Vers. 8-11. " And now hear this, thou voluptuous one, she who
sitteth sO securely, who sayeth in her heart, I am it, and none
else: I shall not sit a widow, nor experience bereavement of
children. And these two loill come upon thee suddenly in one
day : bereavement of children and widowlwod ; they come upon
thee in fullest measure, in spite of the multitude of thy sorceries,
in spite of the great abundance of thy witchcrafts. Thou trustedst
in thy wickedness, saidst. No one seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy
knowledge, they led thee astray ; so that thou saidst in thy heart,
I am it, and none else. And misfortune cometh upon thee, which
thou dost not understand how to charm away : and destruction
will fall upon thee, which thou canst not atone for ; there will come
suddenly upon thee ruin which thou suspectest not." In the sur-
names given to Babylon here, a new reason is assigned for the
judgment, — namely, extravagance, security, and self-exaltation.
TIV is an intensive form of OJ? (LXX. Tpv^epd). The i of
''DBX is regarded by Halm as the same as we meet with in
■'WK = nx ; but this is impossible here with the first person.
Eosenmiiller, Ewald, Gesenius, and others, take it as chiret
CHAP. XLVII. 8-11. 241
compaginis, and equivalent to IIS' T^, wliich would only occup
in this particular formula. Hitzig supposes it to be the suffix
of the word, which is meant as a preposition in the sense of et
prater me ultra (nemo) ; but this nemo would be omitted, which
is improbable. The more probable explanation is, that DBS
signifies absolute non-existence, and when used as an adverb,
" exclusively, nothing but," e.g. WSij DBS, nothing, the utmost
extremity thereof, i.e. only the utmost extremity of it (Num.
xxiii. 13 ; of. xxii. 35). But it is mostly used with a verbal
force, like psj (t^X), (utique) non est (see ch. xlv. 14) ; hence
»OSN, like 'J'i?, (utique) non sum. The form in wliich the pre-
sumption of Babylon expresses itself, viz. " I (am it), and I am
absolutely nothing further," sounds like self-deification, by the
side of similar self-assertion on the part of Jehovah (ch. xlv. 5,
6, xviii. 22 ; cf. vers. xxi. 14 and ch. xlvi. 9). Nineveh speaks
in just the same way in Zeph. ii. 15 (on the secondary character
of this passage, see p. 67) ; compare Martial : " Terrarum Dea
gentiumque Moma cui par est nihil et nihil secundum." Babylon
also says still further (like the Babylon of the last days in Eev.
xviii. 7) : "I shall not sit as a widow (viz. mourning thus in
solitude. Lam. i. 1, iii. 28 ; and .secluded from the world. Gen.
xxxviii. 11), nor experience the loss of children" (orbitatem).
She would become a widow, if she should lose the different
nations, and " the kings of the earth who committed fornication
with her" (Rev. xviii. 9) ; for her relation to her own king
cannot possibly be thought of, inasmuch as the relation in
which a nation stands to its temporal king is never thought of
as marriase, like that of Jehovah to Israel. She would also be
a mother bereaved of her cliildren, if war and captivity robbed
her of her population. But both of these would happen to her
suddenly in one day, so that she would succumb to the weight
of the double sorrow. Both of them would come upon her
kHhummdm (secundum integritatem eorum), i.e. so that she would
come to learn what the loss of men and the loss of children
signified in all its extent and in all its depth, and that in spite
of (3, with, equivalent to "notwithstanding," as in ch. v. 25;
not " through = on account of," since this tone is adopted for
the first time in ver. 10) the multitude of its incantations, and
the very great mass (dtsmdh, an inf. noun, as in ch. xsx. 19,
Iv. 2, used here, not as in ch. xl. 29, in an intensive sense, but,
VOL. II. Q
242 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAUH,
like 'dtsum, as a parallel word to rabh in a numerical sense)
of its witchcrafts {chebher, binding by means of incantations,
jcaTdSea-fiosi). Babylonia was the birth-place of astrology, from
which sprang the twelve-fold division of the day, the horoscope
and sun-dial (Herod, ii. 109); but it was also the home of magic,
which pretended to bind the course of events, and even the
power of the gods, and to direct them in whatever way it pleased
(Diodorus, ii. 29). Thus had Babylon trusted in her wicked-
ness (ch. xiii. 11), viz. in the tyranny and cunning by which
she hoped to ensure perpetual duration, with the notion that
she was exalted above the reach of any earthly calamity. She
thought, " None seeth me" (non est videns me), thus suppressing
the voice of conscience, and practically denying the omnipo-
tence and omnipresence of God. ''JNT (with a verbal suffix,
videns me, whereas ^kt in Gen. xvi. 13 signifies videns mei =
mens), also written ^3i?"i, is a pausal form in half pause for ''?KT
(ch. xxix. 15). Tzere passes in pause both into pathach (e.g;
ch. xlii. 22), and also, apart from such Jdthpael forms as ch.
xli. 16, into kametz, as in I30*i? (Job xxii. 20, which see). By
the " wisdom and knowledge" of Babylon, which had turned
her aside from the right way, we are to understand her policy,
strategy, and more especially her magical arts, i.e. the mysteries
of the Chaldeans, their eTn)((opioi (j>iX6tTO(J3oi (Strabo, xxi. 1, 6)»
On Jwvdh (used here and in Ezek. vii. 26, written havvdh else-
where), according to its primary meaning, " yawning," 'x^alvov,
then a yawning depth, '^da-fia, utter destruction, see at Job
xxxvii. 6. nst^ signifies primarily a desert, or desolate place,
here destruction ; and hence the derivative meaning, waste
noise, a dull groan. The perfect consec. of the first clause
precedes its predicate nj/n in the radical form S3 (Ges, § 147, a).
With the parallelism of •T^fl', it is not probable that i^'jnB',
which rhymes with it, is a substantive, in the sense of " from
which thou wilt experience no morning dawn" (i.e. after the
night of calamity), as Umbreit supposes. The suffix also causes
some difficulty (hence the Vulgate rendering, ortum ejus, sc.
mall) ; and instead of ''y'ln, we should expect ''K'lri, In any
case, sJiachrdh is a verb, and Hitzig renders it, " which thou
wilt not know how to unblacken ;" but this privative use of
shicher as a word of colour would be without example. It
would be better to translate it, " which thou wilt not know how
CHAP. XLVii. ,12-ia. 243
to spy out" (as in ch. 3cxvi. 9), but better stilly " which thou wilt
not know how to conjure away" (shicher = ^js^, as it were
incantitare, and here incantando averruncare). The last relative
clause affirms what shachrdk would state, if understood accord-
ing to ch. xxvi. 9 : destruction which thou wilt not know, i.e.
which will come suddenly and unexpectedly.
Then follows the concluding strophe, which, like the first,
announces to the imperial city in a triumphantly sarcastic tone
its inevitable fate ; whereas the intermediate strophes refer
rather to the sins by which this fate has been brought upon it.
Vers. 12-15. " Come near, then, with thine encliantments, and
ivith the multitude of thy witchcrafts, wherein thou hast laboured
from, thy youth : perhaps thou canst profit, perhaps thou wilt
inspire terror. Thou art viearied through the multitude of thy
consultations ; let the dissectors of the heavens come near, then, and
save thee, the star-gazers, they who with every new moon bring
things to light tJiat will come upon thee. Behold, they have become
like stubble : fire lias consumed them : there is not a red-hot coal
to warm themselves, a hearth-fire to sit before. So is it with thy
people, for whom thou hast laboured : thy partners in trade from
thy youth, they wander away every one in his own direction ; no
one who brings salvation to thee" Hitzig and others adopt the
simple rendering, " Persevere, then, with thine enchantments."
It is indeed true, that in Lev. xiii. 5 2 n»y signifies " to remain
standing by anything," i.e. to persevere with it, just as in
Ezek. xiii. 5 it signifies to keep one's standing in anything ; in
2 Kings xxiii. 3, to enter upon anything ; and in Eccles. viii. 3,
to engage in anything ; but there is no reason for taking it here
in any other sense than in ver. 13. Babylon is to draw near
with all the processes of the black art, wherein ("•E'N3, according
to our western mode of expression, equivalent to tina •l^^?J
Ges. 123, 2*) it had been addicted to abundance of routine
from its youth upwards (IjiWJ with an auxiliary pathach for
"WJ) ; possibly it may be of some use, possibly it will terrify,
Le. make itself so terrible to the approaching calamity, as to
cause it to keep off. The prophet now sees in spirit how
Babylon draws near, and how it also harasses itself to no pur-
pose ; he therefore follows up the «J"'"!»J', addressed inpleno to
Babylon, with a second challenge commencing with W"fl»Jf\
244 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Tlieii' astrologers are to draw near, and try that power over the
future to which they lay claim, by bringing it to bear at once upon
the approaching destruction for the benefit of Babylon. 'Hinsj?
is a singular form connected with a feminine plural suffix, such
as we find in Ps. ix. 15, Ezek. xxxv. 11, Ezra ix. 15, connected
with a masculine plural suffix. Assuming the coiTectness ot
the vowel-pointing, the singular appears in such cases as these
to have a collective meaning, like the Arahic pi. fractus ; for
there is no ground to suppose that the AramaBan plural form
'etsdth is used here in the place of the Hebrew. Instead of
O^bty nan (which would be equivalent to nan ncx), the keri
reads D^DB* nah, cutters up of the heavens, i.e. planners or
dissectors of them, from hdbliar, dissecare, resecare (compare
the rabbinical habhdrdJi, a syllable, i.e. segmentum vocabuli, and
possibly also the talmudic 'ebJtdnm, limbs of a body). The
correction proposed by Knobel, viz. chobh're, from cMbhdr, to
know, or be versed in, is unnecessary. Chdzdli V signifies here,
as it generally does, to look with pleasure or with interest at any-
thing; hence Luther has rendered it correctly, die Sterniucier
(Eng. ver. star-gazers). They are described still further as those
who make known with every new moon (leclwddsliim, like
labb'qdflm, every morning, ch. xxxiii. 2, etc.), things which,
etc. IK'ND is used in a partitive sense : out of the great mass
of events they select the most important, and prepare a calendar
or almanack (aXfievt'^iaKd in Plutarch) for the state every
month. But these very wise men cannot save themselves, to
say nothing of others, out of the power of that flame, which is
no comforting coal-fire to warm one's self by, no hearth-fir«>
(ch. xliv. 16) to sit in front of, but a devouring, eternal, i.e.
peremptory flame (ch. xxxiii. 14). The rendering adopted by
Grotius, Vitringa, Lovvth, Gesenius, and others, " non supererit
prima ad calendum" is a false one, if only because it is not
in harmony with the figure. " Thus shall they be unto thee,"
he continues in ver. 15, i.e. such things shall be endured to
thy disgrace by those about whom thou hast wearied thyself
(ib-'n = Dna IB'N). The learned orders of the Chaldeans had
their own quarter, and enjoyed all the distinction and privileges
of a priestly caste. What follows cannot possibly be under-
stood as relating to these masters of astrology and witchcraft,
as Ewald supposes; for, according to the expression PnnB' in
CHAP. XLVIII. 1, 2. 245
ver. 11, they would be called ^HOB'. Moreover, if they became
a prey of the flames, and therefore were unable to flee, we
should have to assume that they were burned while taking
flight (Umbreit). 'HJinb are those who carried on commercial
intercourse with the great " trading city " (Ezek. xvii. 4), as
Berossos says, " In Babylon there was a great multitude of men
of other nations who had settled in Ohaldea, and they lived in
disorder, like the wild beasts;" compare ^schylus, Pers. 52-3,
Ba^vXwv S' rj 7ro\i5^i;o-09 irdfifiiKTOv o')(Kov ■jrefiTrei,. All of
these are scattered in the wildest flight, iiaV^K tJ'''K, every one
on his own side, viz. in the direction of his own home, and do
not trouble themselves about Babylon.
NINTH PROPHECY.— Chap, xlviii.
DELIVERANCE TEOM BABYLON.
This third portion of the trilogy (cli. xlvi. xlvii. xlviii.)
stands in the same relation to ch. xlvii., as ch. xlvi. 3 sqq. to
ch. xlvi. 1, 2. The prophecy is addressed to the great body of
the captives. Vers. 1, 2. "Hear ye this, house of Jacob, who
are called hy the name of Israel, and have flowed out of the
waters of Judah, who swear hy the name of Jehovah, and extol
the God of Israel, not in truth, and not in righteousness ! For
they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the
God of Israel, Jehovah of hosts His name." The summons
to hear is based upon the Israelitisli nationality of those who
are summoned, to which they still cling, and upon the relation
in which they place themselves to the God of Israel. This
gives to Jehovah the right to turn to them, and imposes upon
them the duty to hearken to Him. The blame, inserted by the
way, points at the same time to the reason for the address which
follows, and to. the form which it necessarily assumes. " The
house of Jacob" is not all Israel, as the following words clearly
show, but, as in ch. xlvi. 3, the house of Judah, which shared
in the honourable name of Israel, but have flowed out of the
waters, i.e. the source of Judah. The summons, therefore, is
addressed to the Judsean exiles in Babylon, and that inasmuch
as they swear by the name of Jehovah, and remember the
God of Israel with praise (hizklr b' as in Ps. xx. 8), though not
246 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
in truth and not in righteousness (1 Kings iii. 6 ; Zech. viii. 8),
i.e. without their state of mind (cf. ch. xxxviii. 3, Jer. xxxii. 41)
or mode of action corresponding to their confession, so as to
prove that it was sincerely and seriously meant. The praise
bestowed upon the persons summoned, which is somewhat
spoiled by this, is explained in ver. 2 ; they call themselves
after the holy city (this title is applied to Jerusalem both
here and in ch. Iii. 1, as well as in the books of Daniel and
Nehemiah). We may easily supply here, that the holiness
of the city laid an obligation upon its citizens to be holy in
their character and conduct. They also relied upon the God
of Israel, whose name is Jehovah Zebaoth ; and therefore
He could require of them the fullest confidence and deepest
reverence.
After this summons, and description of those who are sum-
moned, the address of Jehovah begins. Vers. 3-5. " T/ie first
I have long ago proclaimed, and it has gone forth out of my
mouth, and I caused it to he heard. I carried it out suddenly,
and it came to pass. Because I knew that thou art hard, and thy
neck an iron clasp, and thy brow of brass; I proclaimed it to thee
long ago ; before it came to pass, I caused thee to hear it, that
thou mightest not say. My idol has done it, and my graven image
and molten image commanded it." The word n^J'U'N'in in itself
signifies simply priora ; and then, according to the context, it
signifies prius facta (ch. xlvi. 9), or prius prcedicta (ch. xliii. 9),
or prius eventura (ch. xli. 22, xlii. 9). In the present passage
it refers to earlier occurrences, which Jehovah had foretold,
and, when the time fixed for their accomplishment arrived,
which He had immediately brought to pass. With a retro-
spective glance at this, we find plural masc. suflSxes (cf. ch. xli.
27) used interchangeably with plural fem. (cf. ver. 7 and ch.
xxxviii. 16) ; the prophet more frequently uses the sine. fem.
in this neuter sense (ch. xh. 20, xlii. 23, etc.), and also, though
very rarely, the sing. masc. (ch. xlv. 8). On gid, a band, a
sinew, but here a clasp (cf. Arab, kaid, a fetter), see Psychology,
p. 233. N'chushdh is a poetical equivalent for n'chosheth, as in
ch. xlv. 2. The heathen cravings of Israel, which reached into
the captivity, are here presupposed. Hengstenberg is mistaken
in his supposition, that the prophet's standpoint is always
interior to the captivity when he speaks in condemnation "of
CHAP. XLVIII. 6-8. 247
idolatry. We cannot draw any conclusion from the character
of the community that returned, with regard to that of the
people of the captivity generally. The great mass even of
Judah, and still more of Israel, remained behind, and became
absorbed into the heathen, to whom they became more and
more assimilated. And does not Ezekiel expressly state in ch.
XX. 30 sqq., that the golah by the Chaboras defiled themselves
with the same abominations of idolatry as their fathers, and
that the prevailing disposition was to combine the worship of
Jehovah with heathenism, or else to exchange the former
altogether for the latter ? And we know that it was just the
same with the exiles in Egypt, among whom the life and
labours of Jeremiah terminated. Wherever the prophet speaks
of D'JJti'B and D^jJcn, these names invariably include a tendency
or falling away to Babylonian idolatry, to which he describes
the exiles as having been addicted, both in ch. Ixvi. 17 and
elsewhere.
But in order to determine exactly what "the former things"
were, which Jehovah had foretold in order that Israel might
not ascribe them to this idol or the other, we must add vers.
6-8 : " Thou hast heard it, look then at it all; and ye, must ye not
confess it ? I give thee new things to hear from this time forth,
and hidden things, and what thou didst not know. It is created
now, and not long ago ; and thou hast not heard it before, that
thou mightest not say. Behold, Ihneio it. Thou hast neither heard
it, nor known it, nor did thine ear open itself to it long ago : for
I knew thou art altogether faithless, and thou art called rebellious
from the womb." The meaning of the question in ver. 6a is
very obvious : they must acknowledge and attest, even though
against their will (ch. xliii. 10, xliv. 8), that Jehovah has
foretold all that is now confirmed by the evident fulfilment.
Consequently the " former things " are the events experienced
by the people from the very earliest times (ch. xlvi. 9) down to
the present times of Cyrus, and more especially the first half
or epoch of this period itself, which expired at the time that
formed the prophet's standpoint. And as the object of the
prediction was to guard Israel against ascribing to its idols that
which had taken place (which can only be understood of events
that had occurred in favour of Israel), the " former things "
must include the preparation for the redemption of Israel from
2-18 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the Babylonian captivity through the revolution brought to
pass by Cyrus. Hence the "new things" will embrace the
redemption of Israel with its attendant circumstances, and that
not merely on its outward side, but on its spiritual side as weW;
also the glorification of the redeemed people in the midst of
a world of nations converted to the God of Israel, and the
creation of a new heaven and a new earth ; in short, the New
Testament seon (compare oy ri'"]3p, LXX. et? 8ui,6ijKr]v yevovj,
ch. xlii. 6), with the facts which contribute to its ultimate com-
pletion (cf. ch. xlii. 9). The announcement and realization of
these absolutely new and hitherto secret things (cf. Eom. xvi. 25)
take place from this time forward ; Israel has not heard of
them " before to-day" (compare Di'p, " from this day forward,"
ch. xliii. 13), that it may not lay claim to the knowledge
conveyed to it by prophecy, as something drawn from itself.
This thou2;ht is carried to a climax in ver. 8 in three cor-
related sentences commencing with "j-ea" (gaiii). nPiS signifies
patescere here, as in ch. Ix. 11 (Ewald, § 120, a). Jehovah had
said nothing to them of this before, because it was to be feared
that, with their faithlessness and tendency to idolatry, which
had run through their entire histoiy, they would only abuse
it. This is strange ! On the one hand, the rise of Cyrus is
spoken of here as predicted from of old, because it belonged to
the " former things," and as knowable through prophecy, — a
statement which favours the opinion that these addresses were
written before the captivity; and, on the other hand, a dis-
tinction is drawn between these "former things" and certain
" new things " that were intentionally not predicted before the
expiration of these " former things," which certainly seems to
preclude the possibility of their having been composed before
the captivity ; since, as Euetschi observes, if " the older Isaiah
had predicted this, he would have acted in direct opposition to
Jehovah's design." But in actual fact, the dilemma in which
the opponents of the authenticity of these prophecies find them-
selves, is comparatively worse than this. For the principal
objection — namely, that a prophet before the captivity could not
possibly have known or predicted anything concernino- Cyrus
cannot be satisfactorily removed by attributing these prophecies
to a prophet of the time of the captivity, since they expressly
and repeatedly affirm that the rise of Cyrus was an event fore-
CHAP. XLVIII. 9-11. 249
known and predicted by the God of prophecy. Now, if it is
Isaiah who thus takes his stand directly in the midst of the
captivity, we can understand both of these : viz. the retro-
spective glance at previous prophecies, which issued in the
rise of Cyrus that prepared the way for the redemption from
Babylon, since, so far as the prophet was concerned, such pro-
phecies as ch. xiii.-xiv. 23, xxi. 1-10, and also ch. xi. 10-12
(Mic. iv. 10), are fused into one with his present predictions ;
and also the prospective glance at prophecies which are now
first to be uttered, and events which are now for the first
time about to be accomplished ; inasmuch as the revelations
contained in these prophecies concerning Israel's pathway
through suffei'ing to glory, more especially so far as they
grew out of the idea of the " servant of Jehovah," might
really be set down as absolutely new to the prophet himself,
and never heard of before. Meanwhile our exposition is not
affected by the critical question ; for even we most firmly
maintain, that the prophet who is speaking here has his
standpoint in the midst of the captivity, on the boundary
line of the condition of suffering and punishment and its
approaching termination.
The people now expiating its offences in exile has been
from time immemorial faithless and inclined to apostasy ;
nevertheless Jehovah will save it, and its salvation is therefore
an unmerited work of His compassion. Vers. 9-11. " For my
name^s sake I lengthen out my lorath, and for my praise I hold
hack totoards thee, tJiai I may not cut thee off. Behold, I have
refined thee, and not in the manner of silver : T have proved thee
in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, for mine own
sake I accomplish it (for how is it profaned !), and my glory
I give not to another." The futures in ver. 9 afiirm what
Jehovah continually does. He lengthens out His wrath, i.e.
He retards its outbreak, and thus shows Himself loug-suffei'ing.
He tames or chains it (Dipn, like Ja»-, root Dt2, compare domare,
root Sansci-. dam, possibly also to dam or damp) for the sake
of Israel, that He may not exterminate it utterly by letting
it loose, and that for the sake pf His name and His praise,
which require the carrying out of His plan of salvation,
on which the existence of Israel depends. What Isi-ael has
250 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
hitherto experienced has been a melting, the object of which
was not destruction, but testing and refinement. The Beth of
P1D33 ^b\ is not Beth pretii in the sense of " not to gain silver,"
or " not so that I should have gained silver as operce pretium"
as Umbreit and Ewald maintain (and even Knobel, who
explains it however as meaning " in the accompaniment of
silver," though in the same sense). Such a thought would be
out of place and purposeless here. Nor is Kosenmiiller's ex-
planation admissible, viz. " not with silver, i.e. with that force
of fire which is necessary for the smelting out of silver." This
is altogether unsuitable, because the sufferings inflicted upon
Israel did resemble the smelting out of the precious metal (see
ch. i. 25). The Beth is rather the Beth essentice, which may be
rendered by tanquam, and introduces the accusative predicate
in this instance, just as it introduces the nominative predicate
in the substantive clause of Job xxiii. 13, and the verbal clause
of Ps. xxxix. 7. Jehovah melted Israel, but not like silver
(not as men melt silver) ; the meaning of which is, not that
He melted it more severely, i.e. even more thoroughly, than
silver, as Stier explains it, but, as the thought is positively
expressed in ver. \0b, that the afflictions which fell upon
Israel served as a smelting furnace (kur as in Dent. iv. 20).
It was, however, a smelting of a superior kind, a spiritual
refining and testing (bdchar is Aramaic in form, and equiva-
lent to hdclian). The manifestation of wrath, therefore, as
these expressions affirm, had a salutary object ; and in this very
object the intention was involved from the very first, that it
should only last for a time. He therefore puts an end to it
now for His own sake, i.e. not because He is induced to do so
by the merits of Israel, but purely as an act of grace, to satisfy
a demand made upon Him by His own holiness, inasmuch as,
if it continued any longer, it would encourage the heathen to
blaspheme His name, and would make it appear as though He
cared nothing for His own honour, which was inseparably
bound up with the existence of Israel. The expression here
is curt and harsh throughout. In ver. 9&, wh and "'BN are to
be supplied in thought from ver. 9a ; and in the parenthetical
exclamation, hr\\ :]''K (iiiphal of i'?n, as in Ezek. xxii. 26), the
distant word 'DK' (my name), also from ver. 9a. " I will do it"
refers to the carrying out of their redemption (cf. ch. xliv. 23).
CHAP. XLVIII. 12-16. 251
In Ezek, xxxvi. 19-23 we have, as it were, a commentaiy upon
ver. 11.
The prophecy opened with " Hear ye ;" and now the second
half commences with " Hear," Three times is the appeal made
to Israel : Hear ye ; Jehovah ailone is God, Creator, shaper of
history, God of prophecy and of fulfilment. Vers. 12-16.
" Hearken to me, Jacob, and Israel my called ! I am it, I
first, also I last. My hand also hath laid the foundation of the
earth, and my t^ht hand hath spanned the heavens : I call to
them, and they stand'' there together. All ye, assemble yourselves,
and hear : Who among them hath proclaimed this ? He whom
JehovaJi loveth will accomplish his will upon Babel, and his
arm upon the Chaldeans. I, I have spoken, have also called
him, have brought him here, and his way prospers. Come ye
near to me ! Hear ye this i I have not spoken in secret, from the
beginning: from the timt that it takes place, there am I: and
now the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and His Spirit" Israel is
to hearken to the call of Jehovah. The obligation to this
exists, on the one hand, in the fact that it is the nation called
to be the servant of Jehovah (cli. xli. 9), the people of sacred
history ; and on the other hand, in the fact that Jehovah is
xin (ever since Deut. xxxii. 39, the fundamental clause of the
Old Testament credo), i.e. the absolute and eternally unchange-
able One, the Alpha and Omega of all history, more especially
of that of Israel, the Creator of the earth and heavens (tippach,
like ndtdh elsewhere, equivalent to the Syriac fphach, to spread
out), at whose almighty call they stand ready to obey, with all
the beings they contain, ''il^f sVp is virtually a conditional
sentence (Ewald, § 357, b). So far everything has explained
the reason for the exhortation to listen to Jehovah. A further
reason is now giveu, by His summoning the members of His
nation to assemble together, to hear His own self-attestation,
and to confirm it : Who among them (the gods of the heathen)
has proclaimed this, -or anything of the kind? That which no
one but Jehovah has ever predicted follows immediately, in
the form of an independent sentence, the subject of which is
lans rm\ (cf . ch. xli. 24) : He whom Jehovah loveth will
accomplish his will upon Babylon, and his arm (accomplish it)
upon the Chaldeans. iV'itl is not an accusative (as Hitzig,
Ewald, Stier, and others maintain) ; for the expression " accom-
252 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
plish Ill's arm" (? Jehovah's or his own) is a phrase that is
quite unintelligible, even if taken as zeugmatic; it is rather
the nominative of the subject, whilst a'''nB'2 = D'''iB'33, like
Ti^nn = 'n^nn \]}o'? in ver. 9. Jehovah, He alone, is He who
has proclaimed such things ; He also has raised up in Cyrus
the predicted conqueror of Babylon. The prosperity of his
career is Jehovah's work. As certainly now as i^fpijn in ver.
14 is the word of Jehovah, so certain is it that vN laijp is the
same. He summons to Himself the members of His nation,
that they may hear still further His own testimony concerning
Himself. Trom the beginning He has not spoken in secret
(see ch. xlv. 19) ; but from the time that all wliicli now lies
before their e_ves — namely, the victorious career of Cyrus — has
unfolded itself. He has been there, or has been by (sham, there,
as ill Prov. viii. 27), to regulate what was coming to pass, and
to cause it to result in tlie redemption of Israel. Hofmann
gives a different explanation, viz. : " 1 have not spoken in secret
from tlie beginning ; not from the time when it came to pass
(not then for the first time, but long before) ; I was then
(wlieii it occurred)." But the arrangement of the words is
opposed to this continued force of the ti)>, and the accents are
opposed to this breaking off of the '?N D^, which affirms that,
at the time when the revolution caused by Cyrus was preparing
in the distance. He caused it to be publicly foretold, and
thereby proclaimed Himself the present Author and Lord of
what was then occurring. Up to this point Jehovah is speaking ;
but who is it that now proceeds to say, " And now — namely,
now tliat the redemption of Israel is about to appear (HW
being here, as in many other instances, e.g. ch. xxxiii. 10, the
turning-point of salvation) — now hath the Lord Jehovah sent,
me and His Spirit?" The majority of the commentators as-
sume that the prophet comes forward here in his own person,
behind Him whom he has introduced, and interrupts Him.
But although it is perfectly true, that in all prophecy, from
Deuteronomy onwards, words of Jehovah through the prophet
and words of the prophet of Jehovah alternate in constant,
and often harsh transitions, and that our prophet has this mark
of divine inspiration in common with all the other prophets
(cf. ch. Ixli. 5, 6), it must also be borne in mind, that hitherto
he has not spoken once objectively of himself, except quite
CHAP. XLVIU. 12-16. 253
indirectly (vid. ch. xl. 6, xliv. 26), to say nothing of actually
coming forward in his own person. "Whether this takes place
further on, more especially in ch. Ixl., we will leave for the
present; but here, since the prophet has not spoken in his own
person before, whereas, on the other hand, these words are
followed in ch. xlix. 1 sqq. by an address concerning himself
from that servant of Jehovah who announces himself as the
restorer of Israel and light of the Gentiles, and who cannot
therefore be either Israel as a nation or the author of these
prophecies, nothing, is more natural than to suppose that the
words, " And now hath the Lord," etc., form a prelude to the
words of the One unequalled servant of Jehovah concerning
Himself which occur in ch. xlix. The surprisingly mysterious
way in which the words of Jehovah suddenly pass into those
of His messenger, which is only comparable to Zech. ii. 12
sqq., iv. 9 (where the speaker is also not the prophet, but a
divine messenger exalted above him), can only be explained in
this manner. And in no other way can we explain the nnjfi,
which means that, after Jehovah has prepared the way for the
redemption of Israel by the raising up of Cyrus, in accordance
with prophecy, and by his success in arms. He has sent him,
the speaker in this case, to carry out, in a mediatorial capacity,
the redemption thus pi:epared, and that not by force of arras,
but in the power of the Spirit of God (ch. xlii. 1 ; cf. Zech.
iv. 6). Consequently the Spirit is not spoken of here as join-
ing in the sending (as TJmbreit and Stier suppose, after Jerome
and the Targum : the Septuagint is indefinite, koL to "jrvevfia
avTov) ; nor do we ever find the Spirit mentioned in such
co-ordination as this (see, on the other hand, Zech. vii. 12, per
spiritum suurn). The meaning is, that it is also sent, i.e. sent
in and with the servant of Jehovah, who is speaking here. To
convey this meaning, there was no necessity to write either
imil ^riN nbf or iniTnsi '^irhvf, since the expression is just the
same as that in ch. xxix. 7, PinYvni nuV; and the Vav may be
(regarded as the Vav of companionship {Mitsohaft, lit. with-ship,
«s the Arabs call it ; see at ch. xlii. 5).
The exhortation is now continued. Israel is to learn the
incomparable nature of Jehovah from the work of redemption
thus prepared in word and deed. The whole future depends
'Upon the attitude which it henceforth assumes to His command-
254 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ments. Vers. 17-19. " Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel ; I, Jehovah thy God, am He that teacheth
thee to do that which profiteth, and leadeth thee hy the way that
thou shouldst go. that thoii hearhenedst to my commandments !
then thy peace becomes like Hie river, and thy righteousness like
waves of tlie sea; and thy seed becomes like the sand, and the
children of thy body like the grains thereof: its name will not be
cut off nor destroyed away from, my countenanced Jehovah is
Israel's rightful and right teacher and leader. P^JJin? is used in
the same sense as in ch. xxx. 5 and xliv. 10, to furnish what
is useful, to produce what is beneficial or profitable. The
optative Vfh is followed, as in ch. Ixiii. 19, by the preterite
utinam attenderis, the idea of reality being mixed up with the
wish. Instead of "'H)! in the apodosis, we should expect ^7^1
(so would), as in Deut. xxxii. 29. The former points out the
consequence of the wish regarded as already realized. Shalom,
prosperity or health, will thereby come upon Israel in such
abundance, that it will, as it were, bathe therein ; and ts'ddqdh,
rectitude acceptable to God, so abundantly, that it, the sinful
one, will be covered by it over and over again. Both of these,
shdlom and ts'ddqdh, are introduced here as a divine gift, not
merited by Israel, but only conditional upon that faith which
gives heed to the word of God, especially to the word which
promises redemption, and appropriates it to itself. Another
consequence of the obedience of faith is, that Israel thereby
becomes a numerous and eternally enduring nation. The play
upon the words in vnijJDS ''J^jip is very conspicuous. Many
expositors (e.g. Eashi, Gesenius, Hitzig, and Knobel) regard
niyp as synonymous with D''yp, and therefore as signifying the
viscera, i.e. the beings that fill the heart of the sea ; but it is
much more natural to suppose that the suffix points back to chol.
Moreover, no such metaphorical use of viscera can be pointed
out ; and since in other instances the feminine plural (such
as ¥ndphoth, ^rdnoili) denotes that which is artificial as dis-
tinguished from what is natural, it is impossible to see why the
interior of the sea, which is elsewhere called lebh {Vbhabh the
heart), and indirectly also beten, should be called nijJD instead
of cya. To all appearance vnijJD signifies the grains of sand
(LXX., Jerome, Targ.) ; and this is confirmed by the fact that
NV» (Neo-Heh. njjp numulus) is the Targum word for nnj, and
CHAP. XLVIII. 20-22. 255
the Semitic root Pp, related to jo ; pD, melted, dissolved, signifies
to be soft or tender. The conditional character of the con-
cluding promise has its truth in the word ^JSpl?. Israel remains
a nation even in its apostasy, but fallen under the punishment
of hareth (pi cutting off), under which individuals perish when
they wickedly transgress the commandment of circumcision,
and others of a similar kind. It is still a people, but rooted
out and swept away from the gracious countenance of Gbd,
who no more acknowledges it as His own people.
So far the address is hortatory. In the face of the ap-
proaching redemption, it demands fidelity and faith. But in
the certainty that such a faithful and believing people will not
be wanting within the outer Israel, the prophecy of redemption
clothes itself in the form of a summons. Vers. 20-22. " Go
out of Bahel, flee from Chaldcea with voice of sJiouting : declare
ye, preach ye this, carry it out to the end of the earth I Say ye,
Jehovah hath redeemed Jacob His servant. And they thirsted
not : He led them through dry places ; He caused water to trickle
out of rocks for them; He split rocks, and waters gushed out.
There is no peace, saith Jehovah, for the wicked." They are to
go out of Babylon, and with speed and joy to leave the land of
slavery and idolatry far behind. Bdrach does not mean literally
to flee in this instance, but to depart with all the rapidity of
flight (compare Ex. xiv. 5). And what Jehovah has done to
them, is to be published by them over the whole earth ; the
redemption experienced by Israel is to become a gospel to all
mankind. The tidings which are to be sent forth (N''Sin as in
ch. xlii. 1), extend from h^i to the second D^D, which is repeated
palindromically. Jehovah has redeemed the nation that He
chose to be the bearer of His salvation, amidst displays of love,
in which the miracles of the Egyptian redemption have been
renewed. This is what Israel has to experience, and to preach,
so far as it has remained true to its God. But there is no
peace, saith Jehovah, to the r'shd'im : this is the name given
to , loose men (for the primary meaning of the verbal root is
laxity and looseness), i.e. to those whose inward moral nature is
loosened, without firm hold, and therefore in a state of chaotic
confusion, because they are without God. The reference is to
the godless in Israel. The words express the same thought
negatively which is expressed positively in Gal. vi. 16, "Peace
256 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
upon the Israel of God." Shalom is the significant and com-
prehensive name given to the coining salvation. From this the
godless exclude themselves ; they have no part in the future
inheritance ; the sabbatical rest reserved for the people of God
does not belong to them. With this divine utterance, which
pierces the conscience like the point of an arrow, this ninth
prophecy is brought to a close ; and not that only, but also the
trilogy concerning " Babel " in eh. xlvi.-xlix., and the whole of
the first third of these 3x9 addresses to the exiles. From
this time forth the name Koresh (Cyrus), and also the name
Babel, never occur again ; the relation of the people of
Jehovah to heathenism, and the redemption from Babylon, so
far as it was foretold and accomplished by Jehovah, not only
proving His sole deity, but leading to the overthrow of the
idols and the destruction of their worshippers. This theme is
now exhausted, and comes into the foreground no more. The
expression D^;^* 1V»B', in its connection with 'BV 10n3_, points at
once to the diversity in character of the second section, which
rommences here.
PART II.
FIRST PROPHECY.— Chap. xlix.
SELF-ATTESTATION OP THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. THE
DESPONDENCY OF ZION llEPKOVED.
The very same person who was introduced by Jehovah in ch.
xlii. 1 sqq. here speaks for himself, commencing thus in vers.
1-3: "Listen, isles, unto me; and hearhen, ye nations afar off :
Jeliovah hath called me from the womb ; from my mothers lap
hath He remembered my name. A nd He made my mouth like
a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me,
and made me into a polished shaft ; in His quiver hath He con-
cealed me. And He said to me. Thou art my servant, Israel,
thou in whom I glorify myself." Although the speaker is called
Israel in ver. 35, he must not be regarded as either a collective
person representing all Israel, or as the collective personality
CHAP. XLIX. 1-3. 257
of the kernel of Israel, which answered to its true idea. It is
not the former, because in ver. 5 he is expressly distinguished
froni the nation itself, which Is the immediate object of his
special work as restorer and (according to ver. 8 and ch. xlii. 6)
covenant-mediator also; not the latter, because the nation,
whose restoration he effects, according to ver. 5, was not some-
thing distinct from the collective personality of the "servant
of Jehovah" in a national sense, but rather the entire body
of the "servants of Jehovah" or remnant of Israel (see, for
example, ch. Ixv. 8-16). Moreover, it cannot be either of
these, because what he afBi-ms of himself is expressed in such
terms of individuality, that they cannot be understood as em-
ployed in a collective sense at all, more especially where he
speaks of his mother's womb. In every other case in which
Israel is spoken of in this way, we find only " from the womb "
(inibbeten, ch. xliv. 2, 24 ; xlvi. 3, along with minm-racliam ;
also ch. xlviii. 8), without the addition of Ds? (mother), which
is quite unsuitable to the collective body of the nation (except
in such allegorical connections as ch. li. 1, 2, and Ezek. xvi. 3).
Is it then possibly the prophet, who is here speaking of himself
and refers in ver. 16 to his own mother (compare ''tSN in Jer.
XV. 10, XX. 14, 17) ? This is very improbable, if only because
the prophet, who is the medium of the word of God in these-
prophecies, has never placed himself in the foreground before.
In ch. xl. 6 he merely speaks of himself indirectly ; in ch. xliv.
26, even if he refer to himself at all (which we greatly doubt),
it is only objectively; and in ch. xlviii. 16, the other person,
into whose words the words of Jehovah pass, cannot be the
prophet, for the simple reason that the transition of the words
of Jehovah into those of His messenger is essentially different
in this instance from the otherwise frequent interchange of the
words of Jehovah and those of His pi'ophet, and also because
the messenger of Jehovah speaks of himself there, after the
"former things" have come to pass, as the mediator (either in
word or deed) of the " new things " which were never heard of
before, but are to be expected now; whereas the author of these
addresses was also the pi'ophet of the " former things," and
therefore the messenger referred to rises up within the course
of sacred history predicted by the author of these prophecies.
Moreover, what the speaker in this case (ch. xlix. 1, 2) says of
VOL. ir. K
258 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
himself is so unique, so glorious, that it reaches far beyond the
vocation and performance of any single prophet, or, in fact, of
any individual man subject to the limitations of human life and
human strength. There is nothing else left, therefore, than
to suppose that the idea implied in the expression " servant of
Jehovah" is condensed in this instance, as in ch. xlii. 1 sqq.,
into that of a single person. When it is expanded to its
widest circumference, the " servant of Jehovah " is all Israel ;
when it only covers its smaller and inner circle, it is the true
people of Jehovah contained within the entire nation, like the
kernel in the shell (see the definition of this at ch. li. 7, Ixv. 10;
Ps. xxiv. 6, Ixxiii. 15) ; but here it goes back to its very centre.
The " servant of Jehovah," in this central sense, is the heart
of Israel. From this heart of Israel the stream of salvation
flows out, first of all through the veins of the people of God,
and thence through the veins of the nations generally. Just
as Cyrus is the world-power in person, as made subservient to
the people of God, so the servant of Jehovah, who is speak-
ing here, is Israel in person, as promoting the glorification of
Jehovah in all Israel, and in all the world of nations : in other
words, it is He in whom the true nature of Israel is concentrated
like a sun, in whom the history of Israel is coiled up as into
a knot for a further and final development, in whom Israel's
world-wide calling to be the Saviour of mankind, including
Israel itself, is fully carried out ; the very same who took up the
word of Jehovah in ch, xlviii. 16b, in the full consciousness of
His fellowship with Him, declaring Himself to be His messen-
ger who had now appeared. It must not be forgotten, more-
over, that throughout these prophecies the breaking forth of
salvation, not for Israel only, but for all mankind, is regarded
as bound up with the termination of the captivity ; and from
this its basis, the restoration of the people who were then in
exile, it is never separated. This fact is of great importance in
relation to the question of authorship, and favours the conclu-
sion that they emanated from a prophet who lived before the
captivity, and not in the midst of it. Just as in ch, vii. Isaiah
sees the son of the virgin grow up in the time of the Assyrian
oppressions, and then sees his kingdom rising up on the ruins
of the Assyrian (cf. vol. i, p. 227) ; so does he here behold the
servant of Jehovah rising up in the second half of the captivity,
CHAP. XLIX. 1-3. 259
as if born in exile, in the midst of the punishment borne by
his people, to effect the restoration of Israel. At the present
time, when he begins to speak, coming forward without any
further introduction, and speaking in his own name (a unique
instance of dramatic style, which goes beyond even Ps. ii.), he
has already left behind him the commencement of his work,
which was directed towards the salvation of mankind. His
appeal is addressed to the " isles," which had been frequently
mentioned already when the evangelization of the heathen
was spoken of (ch. xlii. 4, 10, 12 ; cf. ch. xxiv. 15), and
to the " nations from afar," i.e. the distant nations (as in ch.
V. 26; compare, on the other hand, Jer. xxiii. 23). They are
to hear what he says, not merely what he says in the words
that follow, but what he says generally. What follows is
rather a vindication of his right to demand a hearing and
obedience, than the discourse itself, which is to be received with
the obedience of faith ; at the same time, the two are most
intimately connected. Jehovah has called him ab utero, has
thought of his name from the bowels of his mother QVO as in
Ps. Ixxi. 6), i.e. even before he was bom ; ever since his con-
ception has Jehovah assigned to him his calling, viz. his saving
calling, and solemnly announced his name in relation to this
calling. We call to mind here Jer. i. 5, Luke i. 41, Gal. i. 15,
but above all the name Immanuel, which is given by anticipa-
tion to the Coming One in ch. vii. 14, and the name Jesus,
which God appointed through the mouth of angels, when the
human life of Him who was to bear that name was still ripening
in the womb of the Virgin (Matt. i. 20-23). It is worthy of
notice, howeverj that the great Coming One, though he is
described in the Old Testament as one who is to be looked for
" from the seed of David," is also spoken of as " born of a
woman," whenever his entrance into the world is directly
referred to. In the Protevangelium he is called, though not in
an individual sense, "the seed of the woman;" Isaiah, in the
time of Ahaz, mentions " the virgin " as his mother ; Micah
(v. 2) speaks of his rrhv ; even the typical psalms, as in Ps.
xxii. 10, 11, give prominence to the mother. And is not this a
sign that prophecy is a work of the Spirit, who searches out
the deep things of the counsel of God ? In ver. 2 the speaker
says still further, that Jehovah has made his mouth ¥cherebh
2 GO THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
chadddh (like a sharp sword), namely, that he may overcome
everything that resists him as if with a sliarp sword, and sever
asunder things that are bound up together in a pernicious
bond (ch. xi. 4 ; Kev. i. 16 ; Heb. iv. 12) ; also that He has
made him into diets hdrUr (not /SeXo? eKkeKzov, LXX., but, as
in Jer. h. 11, cleaned,^ polished, sharpened, pointed), namely, to
pierce the hearts (Ps. xlv. 6), and inflict upon them the most
wholesome wounds ; and again, that Jehovah has hidden him
under the shadow of His almighty hand, and kept him con-
cealed in the quiver of His loving counsel, just girt as men keep
their swords and arrows in sheaths and quivers ready for the
time when they want to use them, in order that in the fulness of
time He might draw out this His sword, and put this His arrow
to the bow. The question whether the allusion here is to the
time preceding the foreknown period of his coming, or whether
it is to eternity that the words refer, does not present any
great dilemma ; at the same time, the prophecy in this instance
only traces back the being of the person, who now appears, to
the remotest point of his historical coming. Ver. 3 describes,
without any figure, what Jehovah has made him. Pie has said
to him (cf . Ps. ii. 75) : Thou art my servant ; thou art Israel,
in whom (in quo, as in ch. xliv. 23) I glorify mj'self. Schenkel's
exposition is grammatically impossible : " (It is) in Israel that
I will glorify myself through thee." The servant himself is
called Israel. We call to mind here the expression in Matt,
xvi. 18, "Thou art Peter;" and the use of the name "Israel," as
the individuation of a generic name, reminds us of the fact that
the kings of a nation are sometimes called by the name of the
nation itself (e.g. Asshur, ch. x. 5 sqq.). But Israel was from
the very first the God-given name of an individual. Just as
the name Israel was first of all given to a man, and then after
that to a nation, so the name which sprang from a personal
root has also a personal crown. The servant of Jehovah is
Israel in person, inasmuch as the purpose of mercy, upon the
basis of which and for the accomplishment of which Jehovah
made Jacob the father of the twelve-tribed nation, is brought
by him into full and final realization. We have already seen
that Israel, as an entire nation, formed the basis of the idea
' The comparison to purus is one that naturally suggests itself ; but
this, like putuSf is derived from a root pu.
CHAP. XLIX. 4. 261
contained in the term " servant of Jehoval] ;" Israel, regarded
as a people faithful to its calling, the centre ; and the personal
servant of Jehovah its apex. In the present instance, where
he is called distinctly " Israel," the fact is clearly expressed,
that the servant of Jehovah in these prophecies is regarded as
the kernel of the kernel of Israel, as Israel's inmost centre, as
Israel's highest head. He it is in whom (i.e. on whom and
through whom) Jehovah glorifies Himself, inasmuch as He
carries out through him the counsels of His love, which are the
self-glorification of His holy love, its glory and its triumph.
In the next verse the speaker meets the words of divine
calling and promise with a complaint, which immediately
silences itself, however. Ver. 4. " And I, I said, I have
wearied myself in vain, and throion away my strength for
■nothing and to no purpose ; yet my right is with Jehovah, and my
reward with my God." The Vav with which the verse opens
introduces the apparent discrepancy between the calling he had
received, and the apparent failure of his work. ISSJ, however,
denies the conclusion which might be drawn from this, that
there was neither reality nor truth in his call. The relation
between the clauses is exactly the same as that in Ps. xxxi. 23
and Jonah ii. 5 (where we find 'H^, which is more rarely used
in this adversative sense) ; compare also Ps. xxx. 7 (but I said),
and the psalm of Hezekiah in ch. xxxviii. 10 with the antithesis
in Ps. xxxviii. 15. In the midst of his activity no fruit was to
be seen, and tlie thought came upon him, that it was a failure ;
but this disturbance of his rejoicing in his calling was soon
quieted in the confident assurance that his mishpdt (i.e. his
good right in opposition to all contradiction and resistance)
and his " work" (i.e. the result and fruit of the work, which is
apparently in vain) are with Jehovah, and laid up with Him
until the time when He will vindicate His servant's right, and
crown his labour with success. We must not allow ourselves
to be led astray by such parallels as ch. xl. 10, Ixii. 11. The
words are not spoken in a collective capacity any more than
in the former part of the verse ; the lamentation of Israel as a
people, in ch. xl. 27, is expressed very differently.
The expression " and now " (nnj/)), which follows, evidently
indisates a fresh turn in the official life of the person speaking
here. At the same time, it is evident that it is the failure of
262 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
his labours within his own people, which has forced out the
lamentation, in ver. 4a. For his reason for addressing his
summons in ch. xlix. 1 to the world of nations, is that Jehovah
has not guaranteed to him, the undaunted one, success to his
labours among his own people, but has assigned him a mission
extending far beyond and reaching to all mankind. Vers. 5, 6.
" And now, saith Jehovah, that formed me from the womb to be
His servant, to bring back Jacob to Him, and that Israel may
be gathered togeilier to Him; and I am honoured in the eyes of
Jehovah, and my God has become my strength. He saith, It is
only a small thing that thou becomest my servant, to set up the
tribes of Jacob, and to bring bach the preserved of Israel. I
have set thee for the light of the Gentiles, to become my salvation
to the end of the earth" Both shobhebh and hdshlbh unite
within themselves the meanings reducere (Jer. 1. 19) and resti-
tuere. On Np=:i? generally, see at ch. ix. 2, Ixiii. 9. Jerome
is wrong in his rendering, et Israel qui non congregabitur (what
could a prophecy of the rejection of the Jews do here ?) ; so
also is Hitzig's rendering, "since Israel is not swept away;"
and Hofmann's, " Israel, which is not swept away." In the
present instance, where the restoration of Israel is the event
referred to, ^aa must signify " the gathering together of Israel,"
as in ch. xi. 12. "h (parallel IvN) points to Jehovah as the
author of the gathering, and as the object of it also. The
transition from the infinitive of design to the finite verb of
desire, is the same as in ch. xiii. 9, xiv. 25. The attributive
clause, added to the name Jehovah, expresses the lofty mission
of the servant of God with regard to Israel. The parenthesis,
" I have honour in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God has he-
come my strength, i.e. has become mighty in me, the apparently
weak one," looks beyond to the still loftier mission, by which
the former lofty one is far surpassed. On account of this
parenthetically inserted praise of Jehovah, the ION is resumed
in ipN'l. Instead of ini'^n b\>\ (compare 1 Kings xvi. 31), i.e.
it is a small thing that thou shouldst be, we have it here, as
in Ezek. viii. 17, with a comparative min, which must not,
however, be logically pressed: "It is smaller than that," i.e.
it is too small a thing that tliou shouldst be. The nHslre
{Keri, nHsure) of Israel are those who have been preserved
in exile (Ezek. vi. 12) ; in other cases, we find "iXD", nnxE', or
CHAP. XLIX. 7. 263
riEJpS. Not only is the restoration of the remnant of Israel
the work of the servant of Jehovah ; bnt Jehovah has ap-
pointed him for something higher than this. He has given
or set him for the light of the heathen (" a light to lighten
the Gentiles," Lnke ii. 32), to become His salvation to the
end of the earth (LXX. : tov elvat ere ei<; cranrjpiav eiaj?
icf^aTov TJjs 7^s). Those who regard Israel as a nation as
speaking here (^e.g. Hitzig, Ewald, Umbreit, etc.) go right
away from this, which is the most natural sense of the words,
and explain them as meaning, " that my salvation may be,
reach, or penetrate to the end of the earth." But inasmuch as
the servant of Jehovah is the light of the world, he is through
that very fact the salvation of the world ; and he is both of
these through Jehovah, whose counsels of nj/W'; are brought by
him into historical realization and visible manifestation.
The words of the servant of God, in which he enforces
his claim upon the nations, are now lost in words of Jehovah
to him, which are no longer reported by him, but are appended
as an independent address. His present condition is one of the
deepest humiliation. Ver. 7. " Thus saith Jehovah, the Re-
deemer of Israel, His Holy One, to him of contemptible soul, to
the abhorrence of the people, to the servant of tyrants : kings shall
see and arise ; princes, and prostrate themselves for the sake of
Jehovah, who is faithful, the Holy , One of Israel, that He hath
chosen theeP As bdzoh with a changeable kametz (cf . chdmots, ch.
i. 17) has, if not exactly a passive force, yet something very like
a passive circumstantial meaning, tyajTita must mean the man
who is contemptible as regards his soul, i.e. held in contempt,
or, as Hofmann explains it, whom men do not think worthy to
live (though he follows Ewald, and takes Vzoh as an infinitive
treated as a substantive). Accordingly 3VnD is also to be taken
personally. The meaning abhorring is unsuitable ; but aW is
also used in a causative sense, to cause to abhor, i.e. to make a
thing an abomination (Ezek. xvi. 25), or to excite abhorrence :
hence, " to him who excites the people's abhorrence," which is
the same, so far as the sense is concerned, as " to the object of
their abhorrence." But even as a participial substantive ^WD
would literally mean the thing exciting abhorrence, Le. the
abhorrence, just as m'khasseh in ch. xxiii. 18 signifies the thing
covering, i.e. the covering. All these participial substantives
264 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of the piel indicate the thing, place, or instrument accomplish-
ing that which the piel affirms. We need not raise the question
whether goi refers to Israel or to the heathen. It signifies the
mass of men, the people, like 'dm in Ps. Ixii. 9, and in those
passages in which it is used hy our prophet for the human race
generally. Tlie mosJiHlm, of whom the person here addressed is
the servant or enslaved one, are obviously heathen tyrants. What
is here affii'med of the " one servant of Jehovah " was no doubt
also applicable to the nation generally, and more especially to
that portion of the nation which was true to its calling and
confession. He in whom Israel's relation of servant to
Jehovah was fully realized, did indeed spring out of His own
nation, when it was under the oppression of the powers of this
world; and all the shame and persecution which those who
remained faithful among His people had to endure from the
heathen oppressors, and also from tlie ungodly among their
own countrymen (see, for example, ch. Ixvi. 5), discharge their
force like a violent storm upon Him as an individual. When,
therefore, we find the sufferings of the people and the glory of
which they became partakers described in other passages in
just the same terms, we must not infer from this that "servant
of Jehovah " is a collective epithet in the passage before us.
The person addressed here is the Eestorer of Israel, the Light
of the Gentiles, the Salvation of Jehovah for all mankind.
When kings and princes shall behold Him who was once
brought so low, delivered from His humiliation, and exalted
to the glorious height of the work to which He has been called,
they will rise up with reverence from their thrones, and pros-
trate themselves upon the ground in worship for the sake of
Jehovah, as before Him who ("it^'y emphatic, utpote qui) is
faithful, showing Himself sincere in His promises, and for the
sake of the Holy One of Israel, in that, as is now made mani-
fest, " He hath chosen thee." Tlie fat. consec. particularizes
the general motive assigned, and carries it still further.
The next two verses describe (though only with reference
to Israel, the immediate circle) what is the glory of the voca-
tion to which Jehovah, in accordance with His promise, exalts
His chosen One. Vers. 8, 9a. " Thus saitli Jehomh, In a time
of favour have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I
helped thee : and I form thee, and set thee for a covenant of the
CHAP. XLIX. 9-12. 265
people, to raise up the land, to apportion again desolate inherit-
ances, saying to prisoners. Go ye out : to those who are in dark-
ness. Come ye to the light." Jehovah lieard His servant, and
came to bis help when he prayed to Him out of the condition
of bondage to the world, wiiich he shared with his people. He
did it at the time for tlie active display of His good pleasure,
and for the realizing of salvation, which had been foreseen by
Him, and had now arrived. The fntures which follow are to
be taken as such. The fact that Jehovah makes His servant
" a covenant of the people," i.e. the personal bond which unites
Israel and its God in a new fellowship (see ch. xlii. 6), is the
fruit of his being heard and helped. Tiie infinitives with
Lamed affirm in what way the new covenant relation will be
made manifest. The land that has fallen into decay rises into
prosperity again, and the desolate possessions return to their
former owners. This manifestation of the covenant grace, that
has been restored to the nation again, is effected through the
medium of the servant of Jehovah. The rendering of the LXX.
is quite correct : tov KaTaarrjaai Trfv lyrjv Kal K\7]povofi^aat
Kkripovofiiai; ipijfJLOv^ XeyovTa. ""3^'.? is a dicendo governed by
both infinitives. The prisoners in the darkness of the prison
and of affliction are the exiles (ch. xlii. 22). The mighty word
of the servant of Jehovah brings to them the light of liberty,
in connection with which (as has been already more than once
observed) the fact should be noticed, that the redemption is
viewed in connection with the termination of the captivity, and,
in accordance with the peculiar character of the Old Testament,
is regarded as possessing a national character, and therefore is
purely external.
The person of the servant of Jehovah now falls into the
background again, and the prophecy proceeds with a descrip-
tion of the return of the redeemed. Vers. 96-12. " They shall
feed by the ways, and there is pasture for them upon all field-
hills. They shall not hunger nor thirst, and the mirage and sun
shall not blind them : for He that hath mercy on them shall lead
them, and guide them by bubbling water-springs. And I make
all my mountains ways, and my roads are exalted. Behold
these, they come from afar; and, behold, these from the north and
from the sea; and these from the land of the Sinese." The people
returning home are represented as a flock. By the roads that
266 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
they take to their homes, they are able to obtain sufficient pas-
ture, without being obliged to go a long way round in order to
find a sufficient supply ; and even upon bare sandy hills (ch.
xli. 18) there is pasture found for them. Nothing is wanting ;
even the sMrdhh (see ch. xxxv. 7, p. 79) and the sun do not
hurt them, the former by deceiving and leading astray, the
latter by wearying, them with its oppressive heat : for He
whose compassion has been excited by their long pining misery
(ch. xli. 17-20) is leading them, and bringing them along in
comfort by bubbling springs of real and refreshing water (-"l?:^,
as Petrarch once says of shepherds. Move la scJiiSra sua soave-
mente). Jehovah also makes all the mountains into roads for
those who are returning home, and the paths of the desert are
lifted up, as it were, into well-made roads {y'rumun, Ges. § 47,
Anm. 4). They are called my mountains and my highways
(differently from ch. xiv. 25), because they are His creation ;
and therefore He is also able to change them, and now really
does change them for the good of His people, who are returning
to the land of their forefathers out of every quarter of the globe.
Although in Ps. cvii. 3 yam (the sea) appears to stand for the
south, as referring to the southern pai't of the Mediterranean,
which washes the coast of Egypt, there is no ground at all in
the present instance for regarding it as employed in any other
than its usual sense, namely the west ; merdchoq (from far) is
therefore either the south (cf. ch. xliii. 6) or the east, according
to the interpretation that we give to ^erets Slrdm, as signifying a
land to the east or to the south. The Phoenician Sinim (Gen.
x. 17), the inhabitants of a fortified town in the neighbourhood
of Area, which has now disappeared, but which was seen not
only by Jerome, but also by Marino Sanuto (de castro AracJias
ad dimidiam leucam est oppidum Sin), cannot be thought of, for
the simple reason that this Sin was too near, and was situated
to the west of Babylon and to the north of Jerusalem ; whilst
Sin (=Pelusium) in Egypt, to which Ewald refers, did not
give its name to either a tribe or a land. Arias Montanus was
among the first to suggest that the Sinim are the Sinese
(Chinese) ; and since the question has been so thoroughly dis-
cussed by Gesenius (in his Commentary and Thesaurus), most
of the commentators, and also such Orientalists as Lan^les (in
his Seclierches asiatiques). Movers (in his Phcenicians), Lassen
CHAP. XLIX. 9-12. 267
(in his Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 856-7), have decided in
faTour of this opinion. The objection brought against the
supposition, that the name of the Chinese was known to the
nations of the west at so early a period as this, viz. that this
eould not have been the case till after the reign of the emperor
Shi-hoang-ti, of the dynasty of Thsin, who restored the empire
that had been broken up into seven smaller kingdoms (in the
year 247 B.C.), and through whose celebrated reign the name
of his dynasty came to be employed in the western nations as
the name of China generally, is met by Lassen with the simple
fact that the name occurs at a much earlier period than this',
and in many different forms, as the name of smaller states into
which the empire was broken up after the reign of Wu-wang
(1122-1115 B.C.). " The name @2vm (Strabo), Tivai (Ptol.),
T^iviT^a (Kosmas), says the Sinologist Neumann, did not obtain
currency for the first time from the founder of the great dynasty
of Tsin ; but long before this, Tsin was the name of a feudal
kingdom of some importance in Shen-si, one of the western
provinces of the Sinese land, and Fei-ise, the first feudal king
of Tsin, began to reign as early as 897 B.C." It is quite pos-
sible, therefore, that the prophet, whether he were Isaiah or any
other, may have heard of the land of the Sinese in the far east,
and this is all that we need assume ; not that Sinese merchants
visited the market of the world on the Euphrates (Movers and
Lassen), but only that information concerning the strange
people who were so wealthy in rare productions, had reached
the remote parts of the East through the medium of com-
merce, possibly from Ophir, and through the Phoenicians.
But Egli replies : " The seer on the streams of Babel certainly
could not liave described any exiles as returning home from
China, if he had not known that some of his countrymen
were pining there in misery, and I most positively affirm that
this was not the ease." What is here assumed — namely, that
there must have been a Chinese diaspora in the prophet's own
time — is overthrown by what has been already observed in ch.
xi. 11 ; and we may also see that it is not purely by accident
that the land of the Sinese is given as the farthest point to the
east, from my communications concerning the Jews of China
in the History of the Post-biblical Poetry of the Jews (1836, pp.
58-62, cf. p. 21). I have not yet seen Sionnet's work, which
268 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
has appeared since, viz. Essai sur les Jidfs de la Chine et sur
{influence, quils ont eite sur la literature de ce vaste empire,
avant I'h-e chretienne ; but I have read the Mission of Enquiry
to the Jews in China in the Jewish Intelligence, May 1851,
wliere a fac-simile of tlieir thorah is given. The immigration
took place from Persia (cf. 'Eldm, cli. xi. 11), at tlie latest,
under the Han dynasty (205 B.C.-220 A.D.), and certainly
before the Christian era.
In this return of the exiles from every quarter of the globe
to their fatherland, and for this miglity work of God on behalf
of His church, which has been scattered in ail directions, the
whole creation is to praise Him. Ver. 13. " Sing, heavens;
and shout, earth ; and breakout into singing, mountains ! for
Jehovah hath comforted His people, and He hath compassion
upon His afflicted ones" The phrase njn nva, like ir.l nss
(which occurs in Ps. xcviii. 4 as well as in Isaiah), is peculiarly
Isaiah's (ch. xiv. 7, and several times in ch. xl.-lxvi.). "The
afflicted ones" (dniyylm) is the usual Old Testament name for
the ecclesia militans. The future alternates with the perfect:
th? act of consolation takes place once for all, but the com-
passion lasts for ever. Here again the glorious liberty of the
children of God appears as the focus from which the whole
world is glorified. The joy of the Israel of God becomes the
joy of heaven and earth. With the summons to this joy the
first half of the prophecy closes ; for the word "l»^^n, which
follows, shows clearly enough that the prophecy has merely
reached a resting-point here, since this word is unsuitable for
commencing a fresh prophecy.
The prophet, looking back at the period of suffering from
the standpoint of the deliverance, exclaims from the midst of
this train of thought : Ver. 14. " Zion said, Jehovah hath
forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me." The period
■of suffering which forces out this lamentation still continues.
What follows, therefore, applies to the church of the present,
i.e. of the captivity. Vers. 15, 16. " Does a icoman forget her
sucking child, so as not to have compassion upon the child of her
womb ? Even though mothers should forget, I loill not forget
thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands ;
thy walls stand continually before me." In reply to the com-
plaining church, which knows that her home is in Zion-
CHAP. XLIX. 17, 18. 269
Jerusalem, and wliicli has been kept so long away from her
home, Jehovah sets forth His love, which is as inalienable as a
mother's love, yea, far greater than even maternal love. On
?15?, see vol. i. p. 139 ; the min in merachem is equivalent to
wffTe (iTj, as in ch. xxiii. 1, xxiv. 10, xxxiii. 15, etc. Q3, so far
as the actual sense is concerned, is equivalent to 'a'D? (Ewald,
§ 362, h) : " granted that such (mothers) should forget, i.e. dis-
own, their love." The picture of Zion (not merely the name,
as ver. 165 clearly shows) is drawn in the inside of Jehovah's
hands, just as men are accustomed to burn or puncture orna-
mental figures and mementoes upon the hand, the arm, and the
forehead, and to colour the punctures with alhenna or indigo
(see Tafel, xii., in vol. ii. pp. 33-35 of Lane's Manners and
Customs of the Modern Egyptians). There is the figure of
Zion, unapproachable to every creature, as close to Him as He
is to Himself, and facing Him amidst all the emotions of His
divine life. There has He the walls of Zion constantly before
Him (on neged, see at ch. i. 16, xxiv. 23) ; and even if for a
time they are broken down here below, with Him they have an
eternal ideal existence, which must be realized again and again
in an increasingly glorious form.
It is this fact of a renewed glorification which presents itself
afresh to the prophet's mind. Vers. 17, 18. " TJiy children make
haste, thy destroyers and wasters draio out from thee. Lift up
thine eyes round about, and see : all these assemble themselves
together, and come to thee. As truly as I live, saith Jehovah, thou
loiltput them all on like jewellery, and gird them round thee like
a bride." The pointing adopted by the LXX., Targ., Jer.,
and Saad., is ^JJ'a. The antithesis favours this reading ; but
^;J3 suits vers. 18, 19 better; and the thought that Zion's
children come and restore her fallen walls, follows of itself
from the very antithesis : her children come ; and those who
destroyed their maternal home, and made it a desolate ruin,
have to depart from both city and land. Zion is to lift up her
eyes, that have been cast down till now, yea, to lift them up
round about ; for on all sides those whom she thought she had
lost are coming in dense crowds v (cf . i6 = )'? with IVK, ch.
xlix. 5), to her, i.e. henceforth to belong to her again. Jehovah
pledges His life (chai 'am, t,o)v eja, Ewald, § 329, a) that a
time of glory is coming for Zion and her children. '3 in the
270 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
affirmative sense, springing out of the confirmative after an
affirming oath, equivalent to l6-a« elsewhere {e.c/. ch. v. 9).
The population which Zion recovers once more, will he to her
like the ornaments which a woman puts on, like the orna-
mental girdle (ch. iii. 20) which a bride fastens round her
wedding dress.
Thus will Zion shine forth once more vith the multitude of
her children as with a festal adorning. Vers. 19, 20. ^-For thy
ruins and thy waste places and thy land full of ruin, — yea, now
thou ivilt be too narrow for the inhabitants, and thy devourers are
far away. Thy children, that were formerly taken from thee,
shall say in thine ears. The space is too narrow for me ; give way
for me, that I may have room." The word " for" (M) intro-
duces the explanatory reason for the figures just employed of
jewellery and a hridal girdle. Instead of the three subjects,
" thy ruins," etc., the comprehensive " thou" is employed per-
mutatively, and the sentence commenced afresh. '3 is repeated
emphatically in nnj? '3 (for now, or yea now) ; this has essen-
tially the same meaning as in the apodosis of hypothetical
protasis (e.g. Gen. xxxi. 42, xliii. 10), except that the sense is
more decidedly affirmative than in the present instance, where
one sees it spring out of the confirmative. Zion, that has been
hitherto desolate, now becomes too small to hold her inhabitants ;
and her devourers are far away, i.e. those who took f oi'cible pos-
session of the land and cities, and made them untenable, lij? is
to he understood in accordance with Ps. xlii. 6, and ^JJTSa in
accordance with Ps. xliv. 2 (see at ch. v. 9). It will even come
to this, that the children of which Zion was formerly robbed
will call to one another, so that she becomes a witness with her
ears to that which they have so clearly seen : the space is too
narrow, give way (g'shdh, from ndgash, to advance, then to move
generally, also to move in an opposite direction, i.e. to fall back,
as in Gen. xix. 9) for me, that I may be able to settle down.
The words that sound in the ears of Zion are now followed
by the thought of astonishment and surprise, that rises up in her
heart. Ver. 21. " And thou wilt say in thy heart. Who hath
home me these, seeing I was robbed of children, and barren,
bardshed, and thrust away ; and these, who hath brought them
up? Behold, I was left alone ; these, where were they ?" She
sees herself suddenly surrounded by a great multitude of
CHAP. XLIX. 22. 271
children, and yet she was robbed of children, and galmuddh (lit.
hard, stony, Arab, 'galmad, 'gulmud, e.g. es-sachr el 'gulmud,
the hardest stone, mostly as a substantive, stone or rock, from
gdlam, from which comes the Syriac gHomo, stony ground,
related to chdlam, whence challdmish, gravel, root gal, gam, to
press together, or heap up in a lump or mass), i.e. one who
seemed utterly incapacitated for bearing children any more.
She therefore asks. Who hath borne me these (not, who hath
begotten, which is an absurd question) ? She cannot believe
that they are the children of her body, and her children's
children. As a tree, whose foliage is all faded away, is called
nobheleih itself in ch. i. 30, so she calls herself goldJi v'siirdh,
extorris et remota (sur = musdr, like sug in Prov. xiv. 14 =
ndsog or mussdg), because her children have been carried away
into exile. In the second question, the thought has dawned
upon her mind, that those by whom she finds herself sur-
rounded are her own children ; but as she was left alone,
whilst they went forth, as she thought to die in a foreign land,
she cannot comprehend where they have been hitherto concealed,
or where they have grown up into so numerous a people.
The prophecy now takes a step backward in the domain of
the future, and describes the manner in which the children of
Zion get back to their home. Ver. 22. " Thus saiili the Lord
Jehovah, Behold, I lift up my hand to nations, and set up my
standard to peoples : and they bring thy sons in their bosom ; and
thy daughters, upon shoulders are they carried^ The setting up
of a standard (ch. v. 26, xi. 12, xviii. 3, cf. Ixii. 10) is a favourite
figure with Isaiah, as well as swaying the hand. Jehovah gives
a sign to the heathen nations with His hand, and points out to
them the mark that they are to keep in view, with a signal pole
which is set up. They understand it, and carry out His instruc-
tions, and bring Zion's sons and daughters thither, and that as
a foster-father (omen) carries an infant in the bosom of his
dress (chotsen, as in Neh. v. 13 ; Arabic as in Ps. cxxix. 7,
hidn, from hadana, to embrace, to press tenderly to one's self ;
vid. Num. xi. 12), or upon his arms, so that it reclines upon
his shoulder {'al-kd.theph ; cf. 'aUtsad, ch. Ix. 4, Ixvi. 12).
Such affectionate treatment does the church receive, which
is assembling once more upon its native soil, whilst kings and
their consorts hasten to serve the re-assembled community.
272 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Ver. 23. " And kings become thy foster-fathers, and their prin-
cesses thy nurses : they how down their face to thee to the earth,
and they lick the dust of thy feet ; and thou leamest that I am
Jehovah, He ichose hoping ones are not put to shame." As
foster-fathers devote all their strength and care to those en-
trusted to them, and nurses nourish children from the very
marrow of their own life, so will kings become the shelterers
of Zion, and princesses the sustainers of her growth. All that is
true in the regal headship of the church will be realized, and all
that is false in regal territorialism will condemn itself: "vultu
in terram demisso adorahunt te et pulverem pedum tuorum, lingent'
(Jerome). They do homage to the church, and kiss the ground
upon which she stands and walks. According to eh. xlv. 14,
this adoration belongs to the God who is present in the church,
and points the church itself away from all thought of her own
merits to Jehovah, the God of salvation, cui qui confidimt non
pudefient (^'^T^. with an auxiliary pai/tac7t, like PiWJ in ch. xlvii.
15 ; Ges. § 65, 2 : ^^'^< with the first person made into a relative
as in ch. xli. 8 ; Ges. § 123, 1, Anm. 1). Observe, however,
that the state will not be swallowed up by the church, — a thing
which never will occur, and is never meant to occur ; but by
the state becoming serviceable to the church, there is realized a
prelude of the perfected kingdom of God, in which the dualism
of the state and the church is entirely abolished.
There follows now a sceptical question prompted by weak-
ness of faith ; and the divine reply. The question, ver. 24 :
" Can the booty indeed be wrested from a giant, or ivill the cap-
tive host of the righteous escape?" The question is logically
one, and only divided rhetorically into two (Ges. § 153, 2).
The giant, or gigantically strong one, is the Chaldean. Knobel,
in opposition to Hitzig, who supposes the Persian to be referred
to, points very properly to ch. li. 12, 13, and lii. 5. He is
mistaken, however, in thinking that we must read T"iV ''3B' in
ver. 24^*, as Ewalddoes after the Syriac and Jerome, on account
of the parallelism. The exiles are called sh^bhl tsaddlq, not,
however, as captives wrested from the righteous (the congre-
gation of the righteous), as Meier thinks, taking tsaddlq as the
gen. obj. ; still less as captives carried off by the righteous one,
i.e. the Chaldean, for the Chaldean, even regarded as the
accomplisher of the righteous judgment of God, is not tsaddlq.
CHAP. XLIX. 25, 26. 273
'but " wicked " (Hab. i. 13) ; but merely as a bost of captives
consisting of rigiiteous men (Hitzig). The divine answer,
vers. 25, 26: " Yea, thus saith Jehovah, Even the captive hosts
of a giant are wrested from him, and the booty of a tyrant escapes :
and I will make war upon him that warreth with thee, and I will
bring salvation to thy children. And I feed them that pain thee
toith their own flesh ; and they shall be drunken with their own
blood, as if with new luine ; and all flesh sees that I Jehovah am
thy Saviour, and that thy liedeewer is the Mighty One of JacobT
We might take the hi in ver; 25a as a simple affirmative, but
it is really to be taken as preceded by a tacit intermediate
thought. Eosenmuller's explanation is the correct one : " that
which is hardly credible shall take place, for thus hath Jehovah
said." He has also given the true interpretation of gam :
" although this really seems incredible, yet I will give it effect."
Ewald, on the contrary, has quite missed the sense of vers. 24,
25, which he gives as follows : " The booty in men which a
hero has taken in war, may indeed be taken from him again ;
but Jehovah will never let the booty that He takes from
the Chaldean (viz. Israel) be wrested from Him again." This
is inadmissible, for the simple reason that it presupposes the
emendation J*nj? *3B'; and this 'ants is quite unsuitable, partly
because it would be Jehovah to whom the case supposed re-
ferred, and still more, because the correspondence in character
between ver. 24 and ver. 14 is thereby destroyed. The gibbor
and 'drlts is called "^^1] in ver. 25b, with direct reference to
Zion. This is a noun formed from the future, like Jareh in
Hos. V. 13 and x. 6, — a name chosen as the distinctive epithet
of the Asiatic emperor (probably a name signifying "king
Fighting-cock"). The self-laceration threatened against the
Chaldean empire recals to mind ch. ix. 1 9, 20, and Zech. xi. 9,
and has as revolting a sound as Num. xxiii. 24 and Zech.
ix. 15, — passages which Daumer and Ghillany understand in
the cannibal sense which they appear to have, whereas what
they understand literally is merely a hyperbolical figure.
Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the Old Testament
church was a nation, and that the spirit of revelation in the
Old Testament assumed the national form, which it afterwards
shattered to pieces. Knobel points to the revolt of the Hyr-
canians and several satraps, who fought on the side of Cyrus
VOL. II. a
274 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
against their foitner rulers {Cyrop. iv. 2, 6, v. 1-3) All this
will be subservient to that salvation and redemption, which
form the historical aim of Jehovah and the iri'esistihle work of
the Mighty One of Jacob. The name of God which we meet
with here, viz. the Mighty One of Jacob, only occurs again in
ch. i. 24, and shows who is the author of the prophecy which
is concluded here. The first half set forth, in the servant of
Jehovah, the mediator of Israel's restoration and of the con-
version of the heathen, and closed with an appeal to the heaven
and the earth to rejoice with the ransomed church. The
second half (vers. 14—26) rebukes the despondency of Zion,
which fancies itself forgotten of Jehovah, by pointing to
Jehovah's more than maternal love, and the superabundant
blessing to be expected from Him. It also rebukes the doubts
of Zion as to the possibility of such a redemption, by pointing
to the faithfulness and omnipotence of the God of Israel, who
will cause the exiles to be wrested from the Chaldean, and their
tormentors to devour one another. The following chapter
commences a fresh train of ideas.
SECOND PROPHECY.— Chap. l.
Israel's self-kbjection ; and the stedfastness op the
servant op jehovah.
The words are no longer addressed to Zion, but to her
children. Ver. 1. " Tims saith Jehovah, WJiere is your mother's
hill of divorce, with which I put her away ? Or where is one of
my creditors, to whom I sold you ? Behold, for your iniquities
are ye sold, and for your transgressions is your mother put away."
It was not He who had bi-oken off the relation in which He
stood to Zion ; for the mother of Israel, whom Jehovah had
betrothed to Himself, had no bill of divorce to show, with
which Jehovah had put her away and thus renounced for
ever the possibility of receiving her again (according to Dent,
xxiv. 1-4), provided she should in the meantime have married
another. Moreover, He had not yielded to outward constraint,
and therefore given her up to a foreign power ; for where
was there one of His creditors (there is not any one) to whom
He would have been obliged to relinquish His sons, because
CHAP. L. 2, 8. 275
unable to pay His debts, and in this way to discharge them ?
— a harsh demand, which was frequently made by unfeeling
creditors of insolvent debtors (Ex. xxi. 7 ; 2 Kings iv. 1 ; Matt.
xviii. 25). On nosheh, a creditor, see at ch. xxiv. 2. Their
present condition was indeed that of being sold and put away ;
but this was not the effect of despotic caprice, or the result of
compulsion on the part of Jehovah. It was Israel itself that
had broken off the relation in which it stood to Jehovah ; they
had been sold through their own faults, and " for your trans-
gressions is your mother put away." Instead of nijJB'Mi we
have D5''VB'S3i. This may be because the church, although on
the one hand standing higher and being older than her children
(i.e. her members at any particular time), is yet, on the other
hand, morally affected by those to whom she has given birth,
who have been trained by her, and recognised by her as her own.
The radical sin, however, which has lasted from the time
of the captivity down to the present time, is disobedience to the
word of God. This sin brought upon Zion and her children
the judgment of banishment, and it was this which made it
last so long. Vers. 2, 3. " WJiy did I come, and there was no
one there? Why did I call, and there was no one who answered'?
Is my hand too short to redeem ? or is there no strength in me to
deliver'? Behold, through my threatening I dry up the sea; turn
streams into a plain : their fish rot, because there is no water, and
die for thirst, I clothe the heavens in mourning, and rhake sach-
cloth their covering." Jehovah has come, and with what ? It
follows, from the fact of His bidding them consider, that His
hand is not too short to set Israel loose and at liberty, that He
is not so powerless as to be unable to draw it out; that He is
the Almighty, who by His mere threatening word (Ps. cvi. 9,
civ. 7) can dry up the sea, and turn streams into a hard and
barren soil, so that the fishes putrefy for want of water (Ex.
vii. 18, etc.), and die from thirst (thdmoth a voluntative used as
an indicative, as in ch. xii. 1, and very frequently in poetical
composition) ; who can clothe the heavens in mourning, and
make sackcloth their (dull, dark) covering (for the expression
itself, compare ch. xxxvii. 1, 2) ; who therefore, fiat applicatio,
can annihilate the girdle of waters behind which Babylon
fancies herself concealed (see ch. xhi. 15, xliv. 27), and cover
the empire, which is now enslaving and torturing Israel, with
276 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
a sunless and starless night of destruction (ch. xlii, 10). It
follows from all this, that He has come with a gospel of deliver-
ance from sin and punishment; but Israel has given no answer,
has not received this message of salvation with faith, since faith
is assent to the word of God, And in whom did Jehovah
come ? Knobel and most of the commentators reply, " in His
prophets," This answer is not wrong, but it does not suffice
to show the connection between what follows and what goes
before. For there it is one person who speaks ; and who is
that, but the servant of Jehovah, who is introduced in these
prophecies with dramatic directness, as speaking in his own
name ? Jehovah has come to His people in His servant. We
know who was the servant of Jehovah in the histoi'ical fulfil-
ment. It was He whom even the New Testament Scriptures
describe as tov TralSa tov Kvpiov, especially in the Acts (iii,
13, 26, iv. 27, 30). It was not indeed during the Babylonian
captivity that the servant of Jehovah appeared in Israel with
the gospel of redemption ; but, as we shall never be tired of
repeating, this is the human element in these prophecies, that
they regard the appearance of the " servant of Jehovah," the
Saviour of Israel and the heathen, as connected with the cap-
tivity : the punishment of Israel tei'minating, according to the
Jaw of the perspective foreshortening of prophetic vision, with
the termination of the captivity ; and the final glory of Israel
and the final salvation of all mankind beginning to dawn on
the border of the captivity, — a connection which we regard as
one of the strongest confirmations of the composition of these
addresses before the captivity, as well as of Isaiah's authorship.
But this avOpoiinvov does not destroy the 6etov in them, inas-
much as the time at which Jesus appeared was not only similar
to that of the Babylonian captivity, but stood in a causal con-
nection with it, since the Roman empire was the continuation
of the Babylonian, and the moral state of the people under the
iron arm of the Roman rule resembled that of the Babylonian
■exiles (Ezek. ii. 6, 7), At the same time, whatever our opinion
on this point may be, it is perfectly certain that it is to the ser-
vant of Jehovah, who was seen by the prophet in connection
with the Babylonian captivity, that the words " wherefore did I
come" refer.
He in whom Jehovah came to His nation, and proclaimed
CHAP. L. 4, 277
to it, in the midst of its self-induced misery, the way and work
of salvation, is He who speaks in ver. 4 : " The Lord JeJwvah
Jiaili given me a disciples tongue, that I may know how to set up
the wearied with words : He waheneth every morning ; wakeneth
mine ear to attend in disciple^s manner." The word limmudlm,
which is used in the middle of the verse, and which is the older
word for the later talmidlm, fiaOrirai, as in ch. viii. 16, liv. 13,
is repeated at the close of the verse, according to the fig^ire of
palindroniy, which is such a favourite figure in both parts of
the book of Isaiah ; and the train of thought, " He wakeneth
morning by morning, wakeneth mine ear," recals to mind the
parallelism with reservation which is very common in the
Psalms, and more especially the custom of a "triolet-like"
spinning out of the thougiits, from which the songs of " de-
grees " (or ascending steps, sMr hamma aloth) have obtained
their name. The servant of Jehovah affords us a deep insight
here into His hidden life. The prophets received special
revelations from God, for the most part in the night, either in
dreams or else in visions, which were shown them in a waking
condition, but yet in the more susceptible state of nocturnal
quiet and rest. Here, however, the servant of Jehovah re-
ceives the divine revelations neither in dreams nor visions of
the night; but every morning (hahhoqer babhoqer as in ch,
xxviii. 19), i.e. when his sleep is over, Jehovah comes to him,
awakens his ear, by making a sign to him to listen, and then
takes him as it were into the school after the manner of a
pupil, and teaches him what and how he is to preach. Nothing
indicates a tongue befitting the disciples of God, so much as
the gift of administering consolation; and such a gift is pos-
sessed by the speaker here. " To help with words him that is
exhausted " (with suffering and self-torture) : nij?, Arab, ^^[i
med. Vav, related to B^V, E^n, signifies to spring to a person
with words to help, Aq. iiirocrTTjpiaai, Jer. sustentare. The
Arabic i^-Lc 'fned. Je, to rain upon or water (Ewald, Umbreit,
etc.), cannot possibly be thought of, since this has no support
in the Hebrew ; still less, however, can we take niV as a denom.
from ny, upon which Luther has founded his rendering, "to
speak to the weary in due season " (also Eng. ver.). "ijn is an
278 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
accusative of more precise definition, like '^B'N. in ver. 1 (cf. ch,
xlii. 25, xliii. 23). Jerome has given the correct rendering :
"that I may know how to sustain him that is weary with a word."
His calling is to save, not to destroy ; and for this calling
he has Jehovah as a teacher, and to Him he has submitted
himself in docile susceptibility and immoveable obedience.
Ver. 5. " The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear ; and I, I
was not rebellious, and did not turn back." He put him into a
position inwardly to discern His will, that he might become
the mediator of divine revelation ; and he did not set himself
against this calling (mdrdh, according to its radical meaning
stringere, to make one's self rigid against any one, dvnreiveiv),
and did not draw back from obeying the call, which, as he well
knew, would not bring him earthly honour and gain, but
rather shame and ill-treatment. Erer since he had taken the
path of his calling, he had not drawn timidly back from the
sufferings with which it was connected, but had rather cheer-
fully taken them upon him. Ver. 6. " F offered my back to
smiters, and my cheeks to them that pluck off the hair ; I hid
not my face from shame and spitting." He offered his back to
such as smote it, his cheeks to such as plucked out the hair
of his beard (mdrat as in Neh. xiii. 25). He did not hide his
face, to cover it up from actual insults, or from being spit
upon (on kflimmoth with roq, smiting on the cheek, KoXa^i^eiv,
strokes with rods, pa-rri^eiv, blows upon the head, rinrreiv ej?
TTjv Ke^aXi^v with if^iTrrveiv, compare Matt. xsvi. 67, xxvii. 30,
John xviii. 22). The way of his calling leads through a
shameful condition of humiliation. What was typified in Job
(see ch. xxx. 10, xvii. 6), and prefigured typically and pro-
phetically in the Psalms of David (see Ps. xxii. 7, Ixix. 8),
finds in him its perfect antitypical fulfilment.
But no shame makes him faint-hearted ; he trusts in Him
who hath called him, and looks to the end. Ver. 7. "But the
Lord Jehovah will help me ; therefore have I not suffered myself
to be overcome by mockery: therefore did 1 make my face like the
Jlint, and knew that I should not be put to shame." The 1 intro-
duces the thought with which his soul was filled amidst all
his sufferings. In '^w^J N? he affirms, that he did not suffer
himself to be inwardly overcome and overpowered by kHimmdh.
The consciousness of his high calling remained undisturbed;
CHAP. L. 8, 9. 279
he was never ashamed of that, nor did he turn away from it.
The two tSvV stand side by side upon the same line. He made
his face kachalldmish (from chdlam, related to gdlam in ch.
xlix. 21, with the substantative termination ish: see Jeshurun,
p. 229), i.e. he made it as unfeeling as a flint-stone to the
attacks of his foes (cf. Ezek. iii. 8, 9). The LXX. renders
this edrjKa to •jrpoaai'TTov fiov to? (rrepeav irerpav ; but ia-rijpi^a
TO TTjOoo-., which is the rendering given to ''3S CtJ' in Jer. xxi. 10,
would have been just the proper rendering here (see Luke
ix. 51). In " holy hardness of endurance," as Stie^ says, he
turned his face to his antagonists, without being subdued or
frightened away, and was well assured that He whose cause
he represented would never leave him in the lurch.
In the midst of his continued sufferings he was still
certain of victory, feeling himself exalted above every human
accusation, and knowing that Jehovah would acknowledge
him ; whereas his opponents were on the way to that destruc-
tion, the germ of which they already carried within them.
Vers. 8, 9. " ITe is near that justifieili me; toJio will contend with
me?! We will draw near together! Who is my adversary in
judgment'? ! Let liim draw near to me! Behold, tlie 'Lord Jehovali
will help me; wlio is he tliat could condemn me?! Behold, they
all sliallfall to pieces like a garment; the motJi shall eat tJiem up."
p'l'nyn and V''p']i} are forensic antitheses : the former signifies
to set one forth, both practically and judicially, as righteous
(2 Sam. XV. 4 ; Ps. Ixxxii. 3) ; the latter as guilty, Hf] (Deut.
XXV. 1 ; Ps. cix. 7). fl"jpy^, which has lost the principal tone
on account of the following ^^J (inj), has munach instead of
metheg in the antepenultimate. Baal mislipdtl means, " he who
has a judicial cause or lawsuit against me," just as in Roman
law the dominus litis is distinguished from the procurator, i.e.
from the person who represents him in court (syn. hdal
d'bhdrim, Ex. xxiv. 14, and 'isli ribJil in Job xxxi. 35 ; compare
ch. xli. 11). N^n"iD are connected, and form an emphatic rt'?,
Eom. viii. 34 (Ewald § 325, a). "All of them" (kulldm): this
refers to all who are hostile to him. They fall to pieces like a
worn-out garment, and fall a prey to the motli which they
already carry within them : — a figure which we meet with
again in ch. li. 8 (cf. Job xiil. 28, Hos. v. 12), and one which,
although apparently insignificant, is yet really a temble one,
280 THE rEOPftECIES OF ISAIAH.
inasmuch as it points to a power of destruction working im-
perceptibly and slowly, but yet effecting the destruction of the
object selected with all the greater certainty.
Thus far we have the words of the servant. The prophecy
opened with words of Jehovah (vers. 1-3), and with such words
it closes, as we may see from the expression, " this shall ye
have at my hand," in ver. lib. The first word of Jehovah is
addressed to those who fear Him, and hearken to the voice
of His servant. Ver. 10. " Who among you is fearing JehovaJi,
hearkening to the voice of His servant ? He that walketh in dark-
ness, and without a ray of light, let him trust in the name of
Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God." The question is
asked for the purpose of showing to any one who could reply,
" I am one, or wish to be such an one," what his duty and his
privileges are. In the midst of the apparent hopelessness of his
situation (chashekhim the accusative of the object, and plural
to chSshekhdh, ch. viii. 22), and of his consequent despondency
of mind, he is to trust in the name of Jehovah, that firmest
and surest of all grounds of trust, and to stay himself upon his
God, who cannot forsake or deceive him. He is to believe (ch.
vii. 9, xxviii. 16 ; Hah. ii. 4) in God and the word of salva-
tion, for ntD3 and ])l^i are terms applied to that Jiducia Jidei
which is the essence of faith. The second word of Jehovah is
addressed to the despisers of His word, of which His servant is
the bearer. Ver. 11. "Behold, all ye that kindle fire, that equip
yourselves with burning darts, away into the gloio of your fire,
and into the burning darts that ye have kindled ! This comes to
you from my hand ; ye shall lie doion in sorroiv." The fire is
not the fire of divine wrath (Jer. xvii, 4), but the fire of
wickedness (rish'dh, ch. ix. 17), more especially that hellish
fire with which an evil tongue is set on fire (Jas. iii. 6) ; for
the zlqoth (equivalent to ziqqoth, from zeq = zinq, from zdnaq,
to spring, to let fly, Syr. to shoot or hurl), i.e. shots, and
indeed burning arrows (Ps. vii. 14), are figurative, and stand
for the blasphemies and anathemas which they cast at the ser-
vant of Jehovah. It is quite unnecessary to read ^l''^<^? instead
of ^'i!?^*?' ^^ Hitzig, Ewald, and Knobel propose, or even, con-
trary to all usage of speech, '''^^'O. The former is the more
pictorial : they gird burning darts, accingunt malleolos, i.e.
they equip or arm themselves with them for the purpose of
CHAP. LI. X-3. 281
attack (ch. xlv. 5). But tbe destruction which they prepare
for the servant of Jehovah becomes their own. They them-
selves have to go into the midst of the burning fire and tiie
burning darts, that they have set on fire. The liand of Jehovah
suddenly inverts the position ; the fire of wrath becomes the
fire of divine judgment, and this fire becomes their bed of
torment. The LXX. has it correctly, eV Xvirrj KoifirjO^a-eaOe.
The Lamed indicates the situation (Ewakl, § 217, d). ii^SB'n
with the tone upon the last syllable gives a dictatorial con-
clusion. It has a terrible sound, but still more terrible (apart
from the future state) is the historical fulfilment that presents
itself to the eye.
THIRD PROPHECY.— CuAP. li.
THE BURSTING FORTH OF SALVATION, AND TURNING AWAY
OF THE CUP OF WRATH.
The prophetic address now turns again from the despisers
of the word, whom it has threatened with the torment of fire,
to those who long for salvation. Vers. 1-3. " Hearken to me,
ye that are in pursuit of righteousness^ ye that seek Jehovah.
Look up to the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hollow of the
pit whence ye are dug. Look up to Abraham your forefather,
and to Sara who bare you, that he was one ichen I called him,
and blessed him, and multiplied him. For Jehovah hath com-
forted, Zion, comforted all her ruins, and turned her desert like
Eden, and her steppe as into the garden of God ; joy and gladness
are found in her, thanksgiving and sounding music" The
prophecy is addressed to those who are striving after the right
kind of life and seeking Jehovah, and not turning from Him
to make earthly things and themselves the object of their pur-
suit ; for such only are in a condition by faitli to regard that as
possible, and in spirit to beliold that as real, which seems im-
possible to human understanding, because the very opposite is
lying before the eye of the senses. Abraham and Sarah they
are mentally to set before them, for they are types of the sal-
vation to be anticipated now. Abraham is the rock whence
the stones were hewn, of which the house of Jacob is composed j
282 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAR
and Sarah with her maternal womb the hollow of the pit out
of which Israel was brought to the light, just as peat is dug
out of a pit, or copper out of a mine. The maiTiage of Abra-
ham and Sarah was for a long time unfruitful ; it was, as it
were, out of hard stone that God raised up children to Himself
in Abraham and Sarah. The rise of Israel was a miracle of
di\Tne power and grace. In antithesis to the masculine Uur,
lor is made into a feminine through maqqebheili, which is
chosen with reference to n'qehhdh. To Qiii^sn we must supply
«Bp . . . ■iB'N, and to Dnn]?:, nssp . . . ncx. Ver. 2a informs
them who the rock and the hollow of the pit are, viz. Abraham
jour forefather, and Sarah fcIwIelJchem, who bare you with all
the pains of childbirth : " you" for the birth of Isaac, the
son of promise, was the birth of the nation. The point to be
specially looked at in relation to Abraham (in comparison with
whom Sarah falls into the background) is given in the words
quod unum vocavi eum (that he was one when I called him).
The perfect ^''nX'Ji? relates the single call of divine grace, which
removed Abraham from the midst of idolaters into the fellow-
ship of Jehovah. The futures that follow (with Vav cop.)
point out the blessing and multiplication that were connected
with it (Gen. xii. 1, 2). He is called one (^eclidd as in Ezek.
xxxiii. 24, ilal. ii. 15), because he was one at the time of his
call, and yet through the might of the divine blessing became
the root of the whole genealogical Lrce of Israel, and of a great
multitude of people that branched off from it. This is what
those who are now longing for salvation are to remember,
strengthening themselves by means of the olden time in their
faith in the future which so greatly resembles it. The corre-
sponding blessing is expressed in preterites (nicJiam, ■oayydsem),
inasmuch as to the eye of faith and in prophetic vision the future
has the reality of a present and the certainty of a completed fact.
Zion, the mother of Israel (ch. 1. 1), the counterpart of Sarah,
the ancestress of the nation, — Zion, which is now mourning so
bitterly, because she is lying waste and in ruins, — is comforted
by Jehovah. Tlie comforting word of promise (ch. xl. 1)
becomes, in her case, the comforting fact of fulfilment (ch.
xlix. 13). Jehovah makes her waste like Eden (LXX. <»?
"TrapdBeicrov), like a garden, as glorious as if it had been directly
planted by Himself (Gen. xiii. 10; Num. xsiv. 6). And this
CHAP. LI. 4, 6. 283
paradise is not without human occupants ; but when you enter
it you find joy and gladness therein, and hear thanksgiving
at the wondrous change that has taken place, as well as the
voice of melody (zimrdh as in Amos v. 23). The pleasant
land is therefore full of men in the midst of festal enjoyment
and activity. As Sarah gave birth to Isaac after a long
period of barrenness, so Zion, a second Sarah, will be sur-
rounded by a joyous multitude of children after a long period
of desolation.
But the great work of the future extends far beyond the
restoration of Israel, which becomes the source of salvation to
all the world. Vers. 4, 5. " Hearken unto me, my people, and
give ear unto me, my congregation ! for instruction will go
forth from me, and I make a place for my rigid, to be a light of
the nations. My righteousness is near, my salvation is drawn
out, and my arms will judge nations ; the hoping of the islands
looks to me, and for mine arm is their waiting.^' It is Israel
which is here summoned to hearken to the promise introduced
with hi. ''EilS<? is only used here of Israel, like lis in Zepli. ii. 9 ;
and the LXX. (jcal oi l3acn'Xeii) have quite misunderstood
it. An address to the heathen would be quite out of harmony
with the character of the whole prophecy, which is carried out
quite consistently throughout. ''DV and '•DIN^', therefore, are
not plurals, as the Syriac supposes, although it cannot be dis-
puted that it is a rare thing to meet with the plural form
apocopated thus, after the form of the talmudic Aramsean
(see, for example, p. 89 ; and see also at Ps. xlv. 9).
What ch. xlii. 1 sqq. describes as the calling of the servant of
Jehovah, viz. to carry out justice among the nations, and to
plant it on the earth, appears here as the act of Jehovah ; but,
as a comparison of 'J?5<D with ti'SD (ch. ii. 3) clearly shows, as
the act of the God who is present in Israel, and works from
Israel outwards. Out of Israel sprang the Saviour; out of
Israel the apostleship ; and when God shall have mercy upon
Israel again, it will become to the whole world of nations " life
from the dead." The tliordh referred to here is that of Sion,
as distinguished from that of Sinai, the gospel of redemption,
and mislvpdt the new order of life in which Israel and the
nations are united. Jehovah makes for this a place of rest, a
firm standing-place, from which its light to lighten the nations
284 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
streams fortli in all directions. V^p as in Jer. xxxi. 2, 1. 34,
from VJ"i, in the sense of the Arabic 7-j>-j, to return, to procure
return, entrance, and rest ; a different word from W"J in ch. H,
15, which signifies the very opposite, viz. to disturb, literally to
throw into trembhng. P^V and VK'', which occur in ver. 5a,
are synonyms throughout these prophecies. The meaning of
the former is determined by the character of the thorah, which
gives " the knowledge of salvation" (Luke i. 77), and with that
"the righteousness of God" (Kom. i. 17; cf. Isa. liii. 11).
This righteousness is now upon the point of being revealed;
this salvation has started on the way towards the fullest realiza-
tion. The great mass of the nations fall under the judgment
which the arms of Jehovah inflict, as they cast down to the
ground on the right hand and on the left. When it is stated
of the islands, therefore, that they hope for Jehovah, and
wait for His arm, the reference is evidently to the remnant of
the heathen nations which outlives the judgment, and not only
desires salvation, and is susceptible of it, but which actually
receives salvation (compare the view given in John xi. 52,
which agrees with that of Isaiah, and which, in fact, is the
biblical view generally, e.g. Joel iii. 5). To these the saviug
arm (the singular only was suitable here ; cf. Ps. xvi. 11) now
brings that salvation, towards which their longing was more or
less consciously directed, and which satisfied their inmost need.
Observe in ver. 5 the majestic and self-conscious movement of
the rhythm, with the effective tone of y'yachelun.
The people of God are now summoned to turn their eyes
upwards and downwards : the old world above their heads and
under their feet is destined to destruction. Ver. 6. " Lift up
your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath : for the
heavens will pass away like smoke, and the earth fall to pieces
like a garment, and its inhabitants die out like a nonentity ; and
my salvation will last for ever, and my righteousness does not go
to ruin." The reason for the summons follows with M. The
heavens will be resolved into atoms, like smoke : nimldchu from
mdlach, related to mdrach, root mal, from which comes nidlal
(see at Job xiv. 2), to rub to pieces, to crumble to pieces, or
mangle ; Aquila, ■^'Ko^6rjcrav, from oKoav, to thresh. As
m'ldchim signifies rags, the figure of a garment that has fallen
CHAP. LI. 6. 285
to pieces, which was then quite ready to hand (ch. 1. 9), pre-
sented itself from the natural association of ideas. I?"il33, how-
ever, cannot mean " in like manner" (LXX., Targ., Jerome) ;
for if we keep to the figure of a garment falling to pieces, tlie
figure is a vei-y insipid one ; and if we refer it to the fate of
the earth generally, the thought which it offers is a very tame
one. The older expositors were not even acquainted with what
is now the favourite explanation, viz. " as gnats perish" (Hitzig,
Ewald, Umhreit, Knobel, Stier, etc.) ; since the singular of
kinnlm is no more ken than the singular of D'V? is )*!?• The
gnat (viz. a species of stinging gnat, probably the diminutive
but yet very troublesome species which is called akol usJeut,
" eat and be silent," in Egyptian) is called kinndh, as the
talmudic usage shows, where the singular, which does not
happen to be met with in the Old Testament, is found in the
case of kinnlm as well as in that of betsim.^ We must explain
the word in the same manner as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, Num. xiii.
33, Job ix. 35. In all these passages ken merely signifies
" so" (ita, sic) ; but just as in the classical languages, these
words often derive their meaning from the gesture with which
they are accompanied (e.g. in Terence's Eunuch : Cape hoc
flahellum et ventulum sic facito). This is probably Eiickert's
opinion, when he adopts the rendering : and its inhabitants
" like so" (so wie so) do they die. But " like so" is here equi-
valent to " like nothing." That the heavens and the earth do
not perish without rising again in a renewed form, is a thought
which may naturally be supplied, and which is distinctly ex-
pressed in ver. 16, ch. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22. Righteousness
(ts'ddqdh) and salvation (y'shudh) are the heavenly powers,
which acquire dominion through the overthrow of the ancient
world, and become the foundations of the new (2 Pet. iii. 13).
That the ts'ddqdh will endure for ever, and ihe'y'shudh will
not be broken (yecJiath, as in ch. vii. 8, confringetur, whereas
in ver. 7 the meaning is consternemini), is a prospect that opens
after the restoration of the new world, and which indirectly
1 Kinnam, in Ex. viii. 13, 14, whether it be a collective plural or a sin-
gulax, also proves nothing in support of ken, any more than midddh in
Job xi. 9 (which see) in favour of mad, in the sense of measure. It does
not follow, that because a certain form lies at the foundation of a deri-
vative, it must have been current in ordinary usage.
286 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
applies to men who survive the catastrophe, having become
partakers of righteousness and salvation. For righteousness
and salvation require beings in whom to exert their power.
Upon this magnificent promise of the final triumph of the
counsel of God, an exhortation is founded to the persecuted
church, not to he afraid of men. Vers. 7, 8. " Hearken unto
me, ye that know about righteousness, thou people with my law in
the heart ; fear ye not the reproach of mortals, and be ye not
alarmed at their revilings. For the moth will devour them like a
garment, and the ivorm devour them like woollen cloth ; and my
righteousness will stand for ever, and my salvation to distant
generations." The idea of the "servant of Jehovah," in its
middle sense, viz. as denoting the true Israel, is most clearly
set forth in the address here. They that pursue after righteous-
ness, and seek Jehovah (ch. li. 1), that is to say, the servants
of Jehovah (ch. Ixv. 8, 9), are embraced in the unity of a
" people," as in ch. Ixv. 10 (cf. ch. x, 24), i.e. of the true
people of God in the people of His choice, and therefore of the
kernel in the heart of the whole mass, — an integral intermediate
link in the organism of the general idea, which Havernick and,
to a certain extent, Hofmann eliminate from it,^ but not with-
out thereby destroying the typical mirror in which the prophet
beholds the passion of the One. The words are addressed to
those who know from their own experience what righteousness
* Havernick, in his lectures on the Theology of the Old Testament,
published by H. A. Hahn, 1848, and in a second edition by H. Schultz,
1868 ; Drechsler, in his article on the Servant of Jehovah, in the Luih.
Zeitschrift, 1852 ; v. Hofmann, in his Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 147. The first
two vinderstand by the servant of Jehovah as an individual, the true Israel
personified : the idea has simply Israel as a whole at its base, i.e. Israel
which did not answer to its ideal, and the Messiah as the summit, in whom
the ideal of Israel was fully realized. Drechsler goes so far as to call the
central link, viz. an Israel true to its vocation, a modem abstraction that has
no support in the Scriptures. Hofmann, however, says that he has no wish
to exdude this central idea, and merely wishes to guard against the notion
that a number of individuals, whether Israelites generally or pious Israelites,
are ever intended by the epithet " servant of Jehovah." " The nation,"
he says himself at p. 145, " was called as a nation to be the servant of
God, but it fulfilled its calling as a church of believers." And so say we •
but we also add that this church is a kernel always existing within the
outer ecclesia mixta, and therefore always a number of individ^^alsJ though
they are only known to God.
CHAP. LI. 9-11.' 287
is as a gift of grace, and as conduct in harmony with the plan
of salvation, i.e. to the nation, which bears in its heart the
law of God as the standard and impulse of its life, the church
which not only has it as a letter outside itself, but as a vital
power within (cf. Ps. xl. 9). None of these need to be afraid
of men. Their despisers and blasphemers are men (^&ios7i ; cf .
ver. 12, Ps. ix. 20, x. 18), whose pretended omnipotence, exalta-
tion, and indestructibility, are an unnatural self-convicted lie.
The double iigui'e in ver. 8, which forms a play upon words
that cannot well be reproduced, affirms that the smallest exer-
tion of strength is quite sufficient to annihilate their sham
greatness and sham power ; and that long before they are
actually destroyed, they carry the constantly increasing germ
of it within themselves. The sds, says a Jewish proverb, is
brother to the 'dsJi. The latter (from 'dshesJi, collahi, Arab.
'atJitJia, trans, corrodere) signifies a moth ; the former (like the
Arabic sus, ause, Gr. 0-775) a moth, and also a weevil, curcuUo.
The relative terms in Greek are 0-57? (Armen. tzetz) and kii.
But whilst the persecutors of the church succumb to these
powers of destruction, the righteousness and salvation of God,
which are even now the confidence and hope of His church,
and the full and manifest realization of which it will hereafter
enjoy, stand for ever, and from " generation to generation," Mor
dorlm, i.e. to an age which embraces endless ages within itself.
But just as such an exhortation as this followed very naturally
from the grand promises with which the prophecy commenced,
so does a longing for the promised salvation spring out of this
exhortation, together with the assurance of its eventual realiza-
tion. Vers. 9-11. ''Awake, awake, clothe thyself in might,
arm of Jehovah ; awake, as in the days of ancient time, the ages
of the olden world ! Was it not thou that didst split Rahab in
pieces, and pierced the dragon ? Was it not thou that didst dry
up the sea, the waters of the great billow ; that didst turn the
depths of the sea into a way for redeemed to pass through ? And
the emancipated of Jehovah will return, and come to Zion with
sJiouting, and everlasting joy upon their head: they grasp at glad-
ness and joy, and sorrow and sighing flee awayP The para-
disaical restoration of Zion, the new world of righteousness
and salvation, is a work of the arm of Jehovah, i.e. of the
manifestation of His might. His arm is now in a sleeping
288 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
state. It is not lifeless, indeed, but motionless. Therefore
the church calls out to it three times, "Awake" (Cirl: to avoid
'monotony, the miha and milel tones are interchanged, as in
Judg. V. 12).^ It is to arise and put on strength out of the
fulness of omnipotence (Idhliesh as in Ps. xciii. 1; cf. Xa/jL^dveiv
Svva/Miv, Kev. xi. 17, and Svaeo aXicrjv, arm thyself with strength,
in II. xix. 36, ix. 231). The arm of Jehovah is able to accom-
plish what the prophecy affirms and the church hopes for; since
at has already miraculously redeemed Israel once. lialiahh is
Egypt represented as a monster of the waters (see ch. xxx. 7),
and tannin is the same (cf. xxvii. 1), but with particular refer-
ence to Pharaoh (Ezek. xxix. 3). ^'H"'!'^, tu illud, is equivalent
to "thou, yea thou" (see at cb. xxxvii. 16). The Bed Sea is
.described as the " waters of the great deep " {fhom rabhdli),
because the great storehouse of waters that lie below the solid
ground were partially manifested there (see Genesis, p. 259).
nipl'ri has double pasJita ; it is therefore milel, and therefore
the third pr. = nDb -^m (Ges. § 109, Anf.). Ch. xxxv. 10 is
repeated in ver. 11, being attached to D^nSJ of the previous
verse, just as it is there. Instead of ^D3 V>i''^!^_, which we find
here, we have there 'IDJI Wtj'l; ; in everything else the two
passages are word for word the same. Hitzig, Ewald, and
Knobel suppose that ver. 11 was not written by the author of
these addresses, but was interpolated by some one else. But
in ch. Ixv. 25 we meet with just the same kind of repetition
from ch. i.-xxxix. ; and in the first part we find, at any rate,
repetitions in the form of refrains and others of a smaller kind
(like ch. xix. 15, cf. ch. ix. 13). And ver. 11 forms a con-
clusion here, just as it does in ch. xxxv. 10. An argument is
founded upon the olden time with reference to the things to
be expected now ; the look into the future is cleared and
strengthened by the look into the past. And thus will the
emancipated of Jehovah return, being liberated from the
present calamity as they were delivered from the Egyptian
then. The first half of this prophecy is here broutrht to a
close. It concludes with expressions of longing and of hope,
the echo of promises that had gone before.
In the second half the promise commences again, but with
more distinct reference to the oppression of the exiles and the
' See Norzi and Luzzatto's Grammatica della Lingua Ebr. § 513.
CHAP. LI. 12-16. 289
sufferings of Jerusalem. Jehovah Himself begins to speak
now, setting His seal upon what is longed and hoped for.
Vers. 12-15. " /, I am your comforter : who art thou, that thou
shouldst be afraid of a mortal who will die, and of a son of man
who is made a Made of grass ; that thou shouldst forget Jehovah
thy Creator, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth;
that thou shouldst be afraid continually all the day of the fury
of the tormentor, as he aims to destroy ? and where is the fury of
the tormentor left ? He that is bowed down is quickly set loose,
and does not die to the grave, and his bread does not fail him ;
as truly as T Jehovah am thy God, who frighteneth up the sea, so
that its waves roar : Jehovah of hosts is His name." NW after
''aJK ''aJK is an emphatic repetition, and therefore a strengthen-
ing of the subject (avTO'i iyco), as above, in ver. 10, in N'H'Jjis.
From this major, that Jehovah is the comforter of His church,
and by means of a minor, that whoever has Him for a com-
forter has no need to fear, the conclusion is drawn that the
church has no cause to fear. Consequently we cannot adopt
Knobel's explanation, " How small thou art, that thou art
afraid." The meaning is rather, " Is it really the case with
thee (i.e. ai't thou then so small, so forsaken), that thou hast
any need to fear" (fut. consec, according to Ges. § 129, 1 ; cf.
ki, Ex. iii. 11, Judg. ix. 28)? The attributive sentence tdmuth
(who will die) brings out the meaning involved in the epithet
applied to man, viz. '&i6sh (compare in the Persian myth
Gayomard, from the old Persian gaya meretan, mortal life) ;.
T'Sn — "I'Vns (Ps. xxxvii. 2, xc. 5, ciii. 15 ; compare above, ch.
xl. 6-8) is an equation instead of a comparison. In ver. 12&
the address is thrown into a feminine form, in ver. 13a into a
masculine one ; Zion being the object in the former, and (what
is the same thing) Israel in the latter : that thou forgettest thy
Creator, who is also the almighty Maker of the universe, and
soarest about in constant endless alarm at the wrath of the
tormentor, whilst he is aiming to destroy (pichad, contremiscere,
as in Prov. xxviii. 14 ; ha'dsher as in Ps. Ivi. 7, Num. xxvii.
14, lit. according as ; Iconen, viz. his arrows, or even his bow, as
in Ps. xi. 2, vii. 13, cf. xxi. 13). We must not translate this
quasi disposuisset, which is opposed to the actual fact, although
syntactically possible (Job x. 19 ; Zech. x. 6). The question
with which the fear is met, " And where is the fury of the
VOL. II. T
290 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
tormentor ?" looks into the future : " There is not a trace of
him to be seen, he is utterly swept away." If hammetslq sig-
nifies the Chaldean, ver. 14, in which the warning passes into
a promise, just as in the first half the promise passed into a
warning, is not to be understood as referring to oppression by
their own countrymen, who were more heathenish than Israel-
itish in their disposition, as Knobel supposes ; but tsoeh (from
tsadh, to stoop or bend) is an individualizing description of the
exiles, who were in captivity in Babylon, and some of them
actually in prison (see ch. xlii. 7, 22). Those who were lying
there in fetters, and were therefore obliged to bend, hastened
to be loosed, i.e. would speedily be set at liberty (the conquest
of Babylon by Cyrus may be referred to here) ; they would
not die and fall into the pit (constr. prcegnans), nor would their
bread fail ; that is to say, if we regard the two clauses as the
dissection of one thought (which is not necessary, however,
though Hitzig supports it), " he will not die of starvation."
The pledge of this is to be found in the all-sufficiency of
Jehovah, who throws the sea into a state of trembling (even by
a threatening word, g^drdh ; WT is the construct of the parti-
ciple, with the tone upon the last syllable, as in Lev. xi. 7, Ps.
xciv. 9 : see Bar's Psalter, p. 132, from rdgd, tremefacere), go
that its waves roar (cf. Jer. xxxi. 35, and the original passage
in Job xxvi. 12).
The promise, as the pledge of which Jehovah has staked
His absolute power, to which everything must yield, now rises
up to an eschatological height, from the historical point at
which it began. Ver. 16. " And I put my words into thy mouth,
and in the sJiaduw of my hand have I covered thee, to plant
heavens, and to found an earth, and to say to Zion, Thou art my
people." It is a lofty calling, a glorious future, for the prepa-
ration and introduction of which Israel, although fallen as low
as ver. 7 describes, has been equipped and kept in the shadow
of unapproachable omnipotence. Jehovah has put His words
into the mouth of this Israel — His words, the force and cer-
tainty of which are measured by His all-determining absolute-
ness. And what is the exalted calling which it is to subserve
through the medium of these words, and for which it is pre-
served, without previously, or indeed at any time, passing
away ? We must not render it, " that thou mayest plant,"
CHAP. LI. 16. 291
etc., with which the conclusion does not harmonize, viz. " that
thou mayest say," etc. ; for it is not Israel who says this to
Israel, but Jehovah says it to Israel. The planter, founder,
speaker, is therefore Jehovah. It is God's own work, to which
Israel is merely instrumentally subservient, by means of the
words of God placed in its mouth, viz. the new creation of the
world, and the restoration of Israel to favour ; both of them,
the former as well as the latter, regalia of God. The reference
is to the last times. The Targum explains it thus : " to restore
the people of whom it is said. They will be as numerous as the
stars of heaven ; and to perfect the church, of which it is
said. They will be as numerous as the dust of the earth."
Knobel understands by this a completion of the theocracy, and
a new arrangement of the condition of the world ; E^ald, a
new spiritual creation, of which the liberation of Israel is the
first corner-stone. But the prophecy speaks of a new heaven
and a new earth, in something more than a figurative sense, as
a new creation of God (ch. Ixv. 17). Jehovah intends to
create a new world of righteousness and salvation, and practi-
cally to acknowledge Zion as His people. The preparation for
this great and all-renewing work of the future is aided by the
true Israel, which is now enslaved by the heathen, and dis-
owned and persecuted by its own countrymen. A future of
salvation, embracing Israel and the heaven and the earth, is
implied in the words placed by Jehovah in the mouth of His
diurch, which was faithful to its calling. These words in
their mouth are the seed-corns of a new world in the midst of
the old. The fact that the very same thing is said here of the
true spiritual Israel, as in ch. xlix. 2 of the one servant of
Jehovah, may be explained in the same manner as when the
apostles apply to themselves, in Acts xiii. 47, a word of God
relating to the one Servant of Jehovah, by saying, " So hath
the Lord commanded us." The One is, in fact, one with
this Israel ; He is this Israel in its highest potency ; He towers
above it, biit only as the head rises above the members of the
body, with which it forms a living whole. There is no necessity,
therefore, to assume, as Hengstenberg and Philippi do, that
ver. 13 contains an address from the One who then stood before
the mind of the prophet. " There is no proof," as Vitringa
affirms, " of any change in the object in this passage, nor any
292 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
solid reason for assuming it." The circumference of the idea is
always the same. Here, however, it merely takes the direction
towai'ds the centre, and penetrates its smaller inner circle, but
does not go back to the centre itself.
Just as we found above, that the exclamation "awake" ('ilj-i),
which the church addresses to the arm of Jehov ah, grew out of
the preceding great promises ; so here there grows out of the
same another "awake" {Mth'or'n), which the prophet addresses
to Jerusalem in the name of his God, and the reason for which is
given in the form of new promises. Vers. 17-23. " Wake thyself
up, wake thyself up, stand up, Jerusalem, thou that hast drunk
out of the hand of Jehovah the goblet of His firy : the goblet cup
of reeling hast thou drunk, sipped out. There teas none who
guided her of all the children that she had brought forth; and none
who took her by the hand of all the children that she had brought
up. There were two things that happened to thee; who should,
console thee? Devastation, and ruin, and famine, and the sword:
how should I comfort thee ? Thy children were benighted, lay at
the comers of all the streets like a snared antelope : as those who
were full of the fury of Jehovah, the rebuke of thy God. There-
fore hearken to this, wretched and drunken, but not viith wine .*
Thus saith thy Lord, Jehovah, and thy God that defendeth His
people. Behold, I take out of thine hand the goblet of reeling, the
goblet cup of viy fury : thou shalt not continue to drink it any
more. A nd I put it into the hand of thy tormentors ; who said to
thy soul. Bow down, that loe may go over ; and thou madest thy
back like the ground, and like a public way for those who go over
it." In ver. 17, Jerusalem is regarded as a woman lying on
the ground in the sleep of faintness and stupefaction. She has
been obliged to drink, for her punishment, the goblet filled
with the fury of the wrath of God, the goblet which throws those
who drink it into unconscious reeling ; and this goblet, which
is called qiibba'aih kos (jcvireXKov -jrorripiov, a genitive construc-
tion, though appositional in sense), for the purpose of giving
greater prominence to its swelling sides, she has not only had
to drink, but to drain quite clean (of. Ps. Ixxv. 9, and more
especially Ezek. xxiii. 32-34). Observe the plaintive falling
of the tone in shdthith mdtsith. In this state of unconscious
stupefaction was Jerusalem lying, without anj' help on the
part of her children ; there was not one who came to guide the
CHAP. LI. 17-23. 293
stupefied one, or took her by the hand to lift her up. The
consciousness of the punishment that their sins had deserved,
and the greatness of the sufferings that the punishment had
brought, pressed so heavily upon all the members of the con-
gregation, that not one of them showed the requisite cheerful-
ness and strength to rise up on her behalf, so as to make her
fate at any rate tolerable to her, and ward off the worst
calamities. What elegiac music we have here in the deep
cadences : rnikkol-bdnim ydldddh, mikkol-bdmm giddeldh ! So
terrible was her calamity, that no one ventured to break the
silence of the terror, or give expression to their sympathy.
Even the prophet, humanly speaking, is obliged to exclaim,
" How (ml, literally as who, as in Amos vii. 2, 5) should I com-
fort thee!" He knew of no equal or greater calamity, to which
he could point Jerusalem, according to the principle which
experience confirms, solamen miseris socios Jiabuisse malorum.
This is the real explanation, according to Lam. ii. 13, though
we must not therefore take ml as an accusative = h'nil, as
Hitzig does. The whole of the group is in the tone of the
Lamentations of Jeremiah. There were two kinds of things
(i.e. two kinds of evils : mishpdclioili, as in Jer., xv. 3) that had
happened to her (N"ii7 — iTii?, with which it is used interchange-
ably even in the Pentateuch), — namely, the devastation and ruin
of their city and their land, famine and the sword to her chil-
dren, their inhabitants. In ver. 20 this is depicted with special
reference to the famine. Her children were veiled (uUapIi,
deliqiiiiim pati, lit. obvelari), and lay in a state of unconscious-
ness like corpses at the corner of every street, where this
horrible spectacle presented itself on every hand. They lay
kHIio' mikhmdr (rendered strangely and with very bad taste in
the LXX., viz. like a half-cooked turnip ; but given correctly
. by Jerome, sicut oryx, as in the LXX. at Deut. xiv. 5, illaque-
atiis), i.e. like a netted antelope (see at Job xxxix. 9), i.e. one
that has been taken in a hunter's net and lies there exhausted,
after having almost strangled itself by ineffectual attempts to
release itself. The appositional 'Wl CK^pp, which refers to
■];J3, gives as a quippe qui the reason for all this suffering. It
is the punishment decreed by God, which has pierced their very
heart, and got them completely in its power. This clause
assigning the reason, shows that the expression " thy children"
294 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
(bdnayikh) is not to be taken here in the same manner as in
Lam.ii. 11, 12, iv. 3, 4, viz. as refen-ing to children in distinc-
tion from adults ; the subject is a general one, as in ch. v. 25.
With Idkhen (therefore, ver. 21) the address turns from the
picture of sufferings to the promise, in the view of which the
cry was uttered, in ver. 17, to awake and arise. Therefore,
viz. because she had endured the fall measure of God's wrath,
she is to hear what His mercy, that has now begun to move,
purposes to do. The connecting form sh'khurath stands here,
according to Ges. § 116, 1, notwithstanding the (epexegetical)
Vav which comes between. We may see from ch. xxix. 9
how thoroughly this " drunk, but not with wine," is in Isaiah's
own style (from this distinction between a higher and lower
sphere of related facts, compare ch. xlvii. 14, xlviii. 10). The
intensive plural '(Idonim is only applied to human lords in
other places in the book of Isaiah; but in this passage, in which
Jerusalem is described as a woman, it is used once of Jehovah.
Ydrlbh 'ammo is an attributive clause, signifying " who con-
ducts the cause of His people," i.e. their advocate or defender.
He takes the goblet of reeling and wrath, which Jerusalem has
emptied, for ever out of her hand, and forces it newly filled
upon her tormentors. There is no ground whatever for read-
ing ii)3iD (from n3Jj to throw down, related to t!!j, whence comes
I).''^, a precipitate or sediment) in the place of "i^ijo (pret. hi. of
ny, (laborare, dolere), that favourite word of the Lamentations
of Jeremiah (ch. i. 5, 12, iii. 32, cf. i. 4), the tone of which we
recognise here throughout, as Lowth, Ewald, and Umbreit
propose after the Targam ^v iji» i^ni. The words attributed
to the enemies, sJi'cJii v'na ahhordJi (from shdchdh, the kal of
which only occurs here), are to be understood figuratively, as
in Ps. cxxix. 3. Jerusalem has been obliged to let her children
be degraded into the defenceless objects of despotic tyranny
and caprice, both at home in their own conquered country, and
abroad in exile. But the relation is reversed now. Jerusalem
is delivered, after having been punished, and the instruments
of her punishment are given up to the punishment which their
pride deserved.
CHAP. LII. 1, 2,. 295
FOURTH PROPHECY.— Chap. ui. 1-12.
JERUSALEM EXCHANGES SERVITUDE FOR DOMINION, AND
IMPRISONMENT FOR LIBERTY.
The same call, which was addressed in eh. li. 9 to the arm
of Jehovah that was then represented as sleeping, is here ad-
dressed to Jerusalem, which is represented as a sleeping woman.
Vers. 1, 2. " Awake, awake ; clothe thyself in thy might, Zion ;
clothe thyself in thy state dresses, Jerusalem, thou holy city :
for henceforth there will no more enter into thee one undrcumcised
and unclean ! Shake thyself from the dust ; arise, sit down,
Jerusalem : loose thyself from the chains of thy neck, captive
daughter of Zion!" Jerusalem is lying upon the ground
stupefied with the wrath of God, and exhausted with grief;
but this shameful prostration and degradation will now come
to an end. She is to rise up and put on her might, which
has long been broken down, and apparently has altogether
disappeared, but which can and must be constantly renewed,
because it rests upon the foundation of an inviolable promise.
She is to wake up and recover her ancient power, and put on
her state robes, i.e. her priestly and royal ornaments, which
belong to her as a " royal city," i.e. as the city of Jehovah and
His anointed one. For henceforth she will be what she was
always intended to be, and that, without any further desecra-
tion. Heathen, uncircumcised, and those who were unclean in
heart and flesh (Ezek. xliv. 9), had entered her by force, and
desecrated her : heathen, who had no right to enter the con-
gregation of Jehovah as they were (Lam. i. 10). But she
should no longer be defiled, not to say conquered, by such
invaders as these (Joel iv. 17 ; Nahum ii. lb; compare ver. 7
with Nahum ii. lo). On the construction non perget intrahit
'=intrare, see Ges. § 142, 3, c. In ver. 2 the idea of the city
falls into the background, and that of the nation takes its
place. D^BnTi UE' does not mean "captive people of Jerusa-
lem," however, as Hitzig supposes, for this would require njaE'
in accordance with the personification, as in ver. 26. The ren-
dermg supported by the LXX. is the true one, " Sit down, O
Jerusalem ;" and this is also the way in which it is accentuated.
296 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
The exhortation is the counterpart of ch. xlvii. 1. Jerusalem
is sitting upon the ground as a prisoner, having no seat to sit
upon; but this is only that she may be the more highly exalted;
— whereas the daughter of Babylon is seated as a queen upon a
throne, but only to be the more deeply degraded. The former
is now to shake herself free from the dust, and to rise up and
sit down (viz. upon a throne, Targum). The captive daughter
of Zion {sh'bliiyydh, al^dXcoro<}, Ex. xii. 29, an adjective
written first for the sake of emphasis, as in ch. x. 30, liii. 11)
is to undo for herself (sibi laxare according to vol. i. p. 94
note, like Milinachel, ch. xiv. 2, sibi possidendo capere) the
chains of her neck (the chethib innsnn, they loosen themselves,
is opposed to the beautiful parallelism) ; for she who was mourn-
ing in her humiliation is to be restored to honour once more,
and she who was so shamefully laden with fetters to liberty.
The reason for the address is now given in a well-sustained
promise. Vers. 3-6. "For thus saith Jehovah, Ye have been
sold for nothing, and ye shall not be redeemed with silver. For
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, My people went down to Egypt in
the beginning to dwell there as guests; and Asshur has oppressed
it for nothing. Aiid noiv, lohat have I to do here ? saith
Jehovah: for my people are taken away for not/nng; their oppres-
sors shriek, saith Jehovah, and my name is continually blasphemed
all the day. Therefore my people shall learn my name ; there-
fore, in that day, that I am He who saith. There am /." Ye
have been sold (this is the meaning of ver. 3) ; but this selling
is merely a giving over to a foreign power, without the slightest
advantage accruing to Ilim wlio had no other object in view
than to cause them to atone for their sins (ch. 1. 1), and with-
out any other people taking their place, and serving Him in
their stead as an equivalent for the loss He sustained. And
there would be no need of silver to purchase the favour of
Him who had given them up, since a manifestation of divine
power would be all that would be required (ch. xlv. 13). For
whetlier Jehovah show Himself to Israel as the Righteous One
or as the Gracious One, as a Judge or as a Redeemer, He alwavs
acts as the Absolute One, exalted above all earthly affairs,
having no need to receive anything, but able to give every-
thing. He receives no recompense, and gives none. Whether
punishing or redeeming. He always guards His people's honour,
CHAP. LII. 3-6. 297
proving Himself in tlie one case to be all-sufficient, and in the
other almighty, but acting in both cases freely from Himself.
In the train of thought in vers. 4-6 the reason is given for
the general statement in ver. 3. Israel went down to Egypt,
the country of the Nile valley, with the innocent intention of
sojourning, i.e. living as a guest (gur) there in a foreign land ;
and yet (as we may supply from the next clause, according
to the law of a self-completing parallelism) there it fell into
the bondage of the Pharaohs, who, whilst they did not fear
tlehovah, but rather despised Him, were merely the blind
instruments of His will. Asshur then oppressed it b'ephes, i.e.
not " at last " (ultimo tempore, as Havernick renders it), but
(as DSN is the synonym of f.^ in ch. xl. 17, xli. 12) "for
nothing," i.e. without having acquired any right to it, but
ratlier serving in its unrighteousness simply as the blind in-
strument of the righteousness of Jehovah, who through the
instrumentality of Asshur put an end first of all to the king-
dom of Israel, and then to the kingdom of Judah. The two
■references to the Egyptian and Assyrian oppressions are ex-
pressed in as brief terras as possible. But with, the words
" now therefore " the prophecy passes on in a much more
copious strain to the present oppression in Babylon. Jehovab
inquires. Quid mihi hie (What have I to do here) ? Hitzig
supposes poll (here) to refer to heaven, in the sense of, " What
pressing occupation have I here, that all this can take place
without my interfering?" But such a question as this would
be far more appropriate to tlie Zeus of the Greek comedy than
to the Jehovah of prophecy. Knobel, who takes poh as refer-
ring to the captivity, in accordance with the context, gives a
ridiculous turn to the question, viz., " What do I get here in
Babylonia, from the fact that my people are carried off for
nothing! Only loss." He observes himself that there is a
certain wit in the question. But it would be silly rather than
witty, if, after Jehovah had just stated that He had given up
His people for nothing, the prophet represented Him as pre-
paring to redeem it by asking, " What have I gained by it ? "
The question can have no other meaning, according to ch. xxii.
16, than " What have I to do here ?" Jehovah is thought of as
present with His people (cf . Gen, xlvi. 4), and means to inquire
whether He shall continue tliis penal condition of exile any
298 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
longer (Targum, Rashi, Rosenmiiller, Ewald, Stier, etc.). The
question implies an intention to redeem Israel, and the reason
for this intention is introduced with ki. Israel is taken away
(ablatus), viz. from its own native home, chinndm, i.e. without
the Chaldeans having any human claim upon them whatever.
The words l^'i'^T. V^E'D (hm) are not to be rendered, "its
singers lament," as Euetschi and Eosenmiiller maintain, since
the singers of Israel are called m'shor^nm ; nor " its (Israel's)
princes lament," as Vitringa and Hitzig supposed, since the
people of the captivity, although they had still their national
sdrim, had no other moshHim than the Chaldean oppressors
(ch. xlix. 7, xiv. 5). It is the intolerable tyranny of the oppres-
sors of His people, that Jehovah assigns in this sentence as
the reason for His interposition, which cannot any longer be
deferred. It is true that we do meet with helll (of which we
have the future here without any syncope of the first syllable)
in other passages in the sense of ululare, as a cr'y of pain ; but
just as V''"}n, t^"], nn signify a yelling utterance of either joy or
pain, so helil may also be applied to the harsh shrieking of the'
capricious tyrants, like Lucan's leetis ululare triumphis, and the
Syriac ailel, which is used to denote a war-cry and other noises
as well. In connection with this proud and haughty bluster,
there is also the practice of making Jehovah's name the butt of
their incessant blasphemy : K^^P is a part, hithpoel with an
assimilated n and a pausal a for e, although it might also be a
passive hithpoal (for the o in the middle syllable, compare ■'XJOj
Mai. i. 7 ; ^nac", Esth. viii. 14). In ver. 6 there follows the
closing sentence of the whole train of thought : therefore His
people are to get to learn His name, i.e. the self -manifestation
of its God, who is so despised by the heathen ; therefore (Idkhen
repeated with emphasis, like ?J?3 in ch. lix. 18, and possibly
min in Ps. xlv. 9) in that day, the day of redemption, (supply
" it shall get to learn ") that " I am he who saith, Here am I,"
i.e. that He who has promised redemption is now present as the
True and Omnipotent One to carry it into effect.
The first two turns in the prophecy (vers. 1-2, 3-6) close
here. The third turn (vers. 7-10) exults at the salvation which
is being carried into effect. The prophet sees in spirit, how
the tidings of the redemption, to which the fall of Babylon,
which is equivalent to the dismission of the prisoners, gives the
CHAP. Lll. 7, 8. 299
finishing stroke, are carried over the mountains of Judah to
Jerusalem. Ver. 7. " Hew lovely upon the mountains are the
feet of them that bring good tidings, that publish peace, that
bring tidings of good, that publish salvation, tJiat say unto
Zion, Thy God reigneth royally ! " The words are addressed to
Jerusalem, consequently the mountains are those of the Holy
Land, and especially those to the north of Jerusalem : m'bhasser
is collective (as in the primary passage, Nahum ii. 1 ; cf. xli. 27,
Ps, Ixviii. 12), " whoever brings the glad tidings to Jerusalem."
The exclamation " how lovely " does not refer to the lovely
sound of their footsteps, but to the lovely appearance presented
by their feet, which spring over the mountains with all the
swiftness of gazelles (Song of Sol. ii. 17, viii. 14). Their feet
look as if they had wings, because they are the messengers of
good tidings of joy. The joyful tidings that are left indefinite
in m'bhasser, are afterwards more particularly described as a
proclamation of peace, good, salvation, and also as containing
the announcement "thy God reigneth," i.e. has risen to a right
royal sway, or seized upon the government (J\>fO in an in-
choative historical sense, as in the theocratic psalms which
commence with the same watchword, or like e^aaiXevae in
Rev. six. 6, cf. xi. 17). Up to this time, when His people
were in bondage. He appeared to have lost His dominion (ch.
Ixiii. 19); but now He has ascended the throne as a Eedeemer
with greater glory than ever before (ch. xxiv. 23). The
gospel of the swift-footed messengers, therefore, is the gospel of
the kingdom of God that is at hand ; and the application which
the apostle makes of this passage of Isaiah in Rom. x. 15, is
justified by the fact that the prophet saw the final and uni-
versal redemption as though in combination with the close of
the captivity.
How will the prophets rejoice, when they see bodily before
them what they have already seen from afar ! Ver. 8.
^'■Ear'k, thy watchers! Tfiey lift up the voice together; they
rejoice : for they see eye to eye, how Jehovah bringeth Zion home."
i>ip followed by a genitive formed an interjectional clause, and
had almost become an interjection itself (see Gen. iv. 10).
The prophets are here called tsophlm, spies, as persons who
looked into the distance as if from a watch-tower {specula, ch.
xxi. 6, Hab. ii. 1), just as in ch. Ivi. 10. It is assumed that
300 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the people of the captivity would still have prophets among
tliem : in fact, the very first word in these prophecies (ch, xl.
]) is addressed to them. Tliey who saw the redemption from
afar, and comforted the church therewith (different from
m'bhasser, the evangelist of the fulfilment), lift up their voice
together with rejoicing ; for they see Jehovah bringing back
Zion, as closely as one man is to another when he looks directly
into his eyes (Num. xiv. 14). a is the same as in the construc-
tion 3 nsT ; and y^y has the transitive meaning rediicere, resti-
tuere (as in Ps. xiv. 7, cxxvi. 1, etc.), which is placed beyond all
doubt by "31E' in Ps. Ixxxv. 5.
Zion is restored, inasmuch as Jehovah turns away her
misery, brings back her exiles, and causes tiie holy city to rise
again from her ruins, Ver. 9. "Break out into exultation, sing
together, ye ruins of Jerusalem : for Jehovah hath comforted His
people, lie hath redeemed Jerusalem." Because the word of
consolation has become an act of consolation, i.e. of redemption,
the ruins of Jerusalem are to break out into jubilant shouting
as they rise again from the ground.
Jehovah has wrought out salvation through judgment in the
sight of all the world. Ver. 10. "Jehovah hath made bare His
holy arm before the eyes of all nations, and all the ends of the
earth see the salvation of our God." As a warrior is accustomed
to make bare his right arm up to the shoulder, that he may
fight without encumbrance (exsertare humeros nudamque laces-
sere pugnan, as Statins says in Theb. i. 413), so has Jehovah
made bare His holy arm, that arm in which holiness dwells,
which shines with holiness, and which acts in holiness, that
arm which has been hitherto concealed and therefore has
appeared to be powerless, and that in the sight of the whole
world of nations ; so that all the ends of the earth come to see
the reality of the work, which this arm has already accom-
plished by showing itself in its unveiled glory — in other words,
^' the salvation of our God."
This salvation in its immediate manifestation is the libera-
tion of the exiles ; and on the ground of what the prophet sees
in spirit, he exclaims to them (as in ch. xlviii. 20), in vers. 11,
12 : " Go ye forth, go ye forth, go out from thence, lay ho^d of
no unclean thing ; go ye out of the midst of her, cleanse your-
selves, ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah. For ye shall not go
CHAP. LII. 13-Lin. 301
out in confusion, and ye shall not go forth inflight : for Jehovah
goeth before you, and the God of Israel is your rear-guard."
When they go ont from thence, i.e. from Babylon, they are not
to touch anything unclean, i.e. they are not to enrich them-
selves with the property of their now subjugated oppressors, as
was the case at the exodus from Egypt (Ex. xii. 36). It is to
be a holy procession, at which they are to appear morally as
well as corporeally unstained. But those who bear the vessels
of Jehovah, i.e. the vessels of the temple, are not only not to
defile themselves, but are to purify themselves (liibbdru with
the tone upon the last syllable, a regular imperative niphal of
bdrar). This is an indirect prophecy, and was fulfilled in the
fact that Cyrus directed the golden and silver vessels, which
Nebuchadnezzar had brought to Babylon, to be restored to the
returning exiles as their rightful property (Ezra i. 7-11).
It would thus be possible for them to put themselves into the
right attitude for their departure, since it would not take place
in precipitous haste {¥chippdzon), as the departure from ^gypt
did (Deut. xvi. 3, cf. Ex. xii. 39), nor like a flight, but they
would go forth under the guidance of Jehovah, ddddnd (with
the e changed into the original i) does not mean, " He bringeth
you, the scattei-ed ones, together," but according to Num. x. 25,
Josh. vi. 9, 13, "He closes your procession," — He not only goes
before you to lead you, but also behind you, to protect you (as
in Ex. xiv. 19). For the m^'asseph, or the rear-guard of an army,
is its keystone, and has to preserve the compactness of the whole.
The division of the chapters generally coincides with the
several prophetic addresses. But here it needs emendation.
Most of the commentators are agreed that the words " Behold
my servant," etc. (hinneh yasMl 'abhdi) commence a new sec-
tion, like hen 'abhdl (behold my servant) in ch. xlii. 1.
FIFTH PROPHECY.— Chap. lii. 13-Lni.
GOLGOTHA AND SHEBLIMINI,^ OE THE EXALTATION OP THE
SERVANT OF JEHOVAH OUT OF PEEP DEGRADATION.
Victor F. Oehler has recently attempted to establish an
opinion, to which no one had given expression before, viz. that
' 'J*D^^ 3t? : " sit thou at my right hand."— Tk.
302 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the transition from the collective idea of the servant of God to
the " Servant of God" as an individual takes place in ver. 14,
where Israel is addressed in the first clause, and the Messiah
referred to in the second. But our view is a totally different
one. In every case, thus far, in which another than Jehovah
has spoken, it has been the one " Servant of Jehovah " who
was the centre of the circle, the heart and head of the body of
Israel. And after having heard him speaking himself in ch.
1. 4-9, xlix. 1-6, xlviii. 166, and Jehovah speaking concerning
him in ch. 1. 10, 11, xlix. 7-9, xlii. 1-7, it does not come upon
us at all unexpectedly, that Jehovah begins to speak of him
again here. Nor does it surprise us, that the prophet should
pass in so abrupt a manner, from the exaltation of the church
to the exaltation of the servant of Jehovah. If we look back,
we find that he has not omitted anything, that could preclude
the possibility of our confounding this servant of Jehovah with
Israel itself. For although Israel itself, in its relation to
Jehovah, is spoken of frequently enough as "my servant"
and " his servant ; " yet the passage before us is preceded by
the same representation of Israel the community as a female,
which has been sustained from ch. li. 17 onwards; and although
in ch. li. 1-16 the national idea of the "servant of Jehovah"
is expressed in the most definite manner possible (more espe-
cially in ch. li. 7), the name employed is not that which the
personal " Servant," whom no one can possibly mistake in ch.
1. 4-9, already bears in eh. 1. 10. It is this personal Servant
who is spoken of here. It is his portrait that is here filled out
and completed, and that as a side-piece to the liberation and
restoration of Zion- Jerusalem as depicted just before. It is the
servant of Jehovah who conducts His people through suffer-
ing to glory. It is in his heart, as we now most clearly discern,
that the changing of Jehovah's wrath into love takes place.
He suffers with his people, suffers for them, suffers in their
stead ; because he has not brought the suffering upon himself,
like the great mass of the people, through sin, but has volun-
tarily submitted to it as the guiltless and righteous one, in
order that he might entirely remove it, even to its roots, i.e. the
guilt and the sin which occasioned it, by his own sacrifice of
himself. Thus is Israel's glory concentrated in him like a
sun. The glory of Israel has his glory for a focus. He is the
CHAP. LII. 13-LIIl. 303
seed-corn, which is buried in the earth, to bring forth much
fruit ; and this " much fruit" is the glory of Israel and the sal-
vation of the nations.
*' Christian scholars," says Abravanel, " interpret this pro-
phecy as referring to that man who was crucified in Jerusalem
about the end of the second temple, and who, according to
their view, was the Son of God, who became man in the womb
of the Virgin. , But Jonathan ben Uziel explains it as relating
to the Messiah who has yet to come ; and this is the opinion of
the ancients in many of their Midrashim." So that even the
synagogue could not help acknowledging that the passage of
the Messiah through death to glory is predicted here.^ And
what interest could we have in understanding by the " servant
of Jehovah," in this section, the nation of Israel generally, as
many Rabbis, both circumcised and uncircumcised, have done ;
whereas he is that One Israelite in whom Jehovah has effected
the redemption of both Israel and the heathen, even through
the medium of Israel itself ? Or what interest could we have
in persuading ourselves that Jeremiah, or some unknown
martyr-prophet, is intended, as Grotius, Bunsen, and Ewald
suppose ; whereas it is rather the great unknown and misinter-
preted One, whom Jewish and Judaizing exegesis still con-
tinues to misinterpret in its exposition of the figure before us,
just as His contemporaries misinterpreted Him when He actu-
ally appeared among them. How many are there whose eyes
have been opened when reading this " golden passional of the
Old Testament evangelist," as Polycarp the Lysian calls it !
In how many an Israelite has it melted the crust of his heart !
It looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Gol-
gotha, and was illuminated by the heavenly brightness of the
full ''J''D^^ 3K'. It is the unravelling of Ps. xxii. and Ps. ex.
It forms the' outer centre of this wonderful book of consolation
(ch. xl.-lxvi.), and is the most central, the deepest, and the
loftiest thing that the Old Testament prophecy, outstripping
itself, has ever achieved.
And yet it does not belie its Old Testament origin. For
the prophet sees the advent of " tlie servant of Jehovah," and
1 See A. M. M'Caul's tract on Isa. liii., and the " Old Jewish Midrash
of the Suffering Redeemer" in our Mag. Saat auf Hoffnung, i. 3, pp.
87-39.
304 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
His rejection by His own people, bound up as it were with the
duration of the captivity. It is at the close of the captivity
that he beholds the exaltation of tiie Servant of Jehovah, who
has died and been buried, and yet lives for ever ; and with His
exaltation the inward and outward return of Israel, and the
restoration of Jerusalem in its renewed and final glory ; and
with this restoration of the people of God, the conversion of the
nations and the salvation of mankind.^
In this sense there follows here, immediately after the cry,
" Go ye out from Babylon," an index pointing from the suffer-
ing of the Servant to His reward in glory. Ch. lii. 13. "Behold,
my servant will act wisely ; he will come forth, and arise, and be
very high." Even apart from ch. xlii. 1, hinneh {hen) is a
favourite commencement with Isaiah ; and this very first verse
contains, according to Isaiah's custom, a brief, condensed ex-
planation of the theme. The exaltation of the Servant of
Jehovah is the theme of the prophecy which follows. In ver.
13a the way is shown, by which He reaches His greatness ; in
ver. 136 the increasing greatness itself. '''SK'n by itself means
simply to gain, prove, or act with intelligence (LXX. avvi^crei) ;
1 I cannot refrain from repeating here a passage taken from my closing
remarks on Dreohsler (iii. 376), simply because I cannot find any better
way of expressing what I have to say upon this point: "When Isaiah
sang his dying song on the border line of the reigns of Hezekiah and
Manasseh, all the coming sufferings of his people appeared to be concen-
trated in the one view of the captivity in Babylon. And it was in the
midst of this period of suffering, which formed the extreme limit of his
range of vision, that he saw the redemption of Israel beginning to appear.
He saw the servant of Jehovali working among the captives, just as at His
coming He actually did appear in the midst of His people, when they were in
bondage to the imperial power of the world ; he also saw the Servant of
Jehovah passing through death to glory, and Israel ascending with Him,
as in fact the ascension of Jesus was the completion of the redemption of
Israel ; and it was only the unbelief of the gireat mass of Israel which occa-
sioned the fact, that this redemption was at first merely the spiritual
redemption of believers out of the nation, and not the spiritual and
physical redemption of the nation as a whole. So far, therefore, a broad
gap was made in point of time between the exaltation of the servant of
Jehovah and the glorious restoration of Israel which is still in the future ;
and this gap was hidden from the prophet's view. It is only the coming
of Christ in glory which will fully realize what was not yet realized when
He entered into.glory after the sufferings of death, on account of Israel'*
unbelief."
CHAP. LII. 13. 305
and then, since intelligent action, as a rule, is also effective, it
is used as synonymous with n''^yri, l''B'3n, to act with result, i.e.
so as to be successful. Hence it is only by way of sequence
that the idea of " prosperously" is connected with that of
" prudently" (e.g. Josh. i. 8 ; Jer. x. 21). The word is never
applied to such prosperity as a man enjoys without any effort of
his own, but only to such as he attains by successful action,
i.e, by such action as is appropriate to the desired and desirable
result. In Jer. xxiii. 2, where MsMl is one feature in the
picture of the dominion exercised by the Messiah, the idea of
intelligent action is quite suiEcient, without any further sub-
ordinate meaning. But here, where the exaltation is derived
from y^^y as the immediate consequence, without any inter-
vening p"?y, there is naturally associated with the idea of wise
action, i.e. of action suited to the great object of his call, that
of effective execution or abundant success, which has as its
natural sequel an ever-increasing exaltation. Rosenmiiller
observes, in ver. 136, " There is no need to discuss, or even to
inquire, what precise difference there is in the meaning of the
separate words ;" but this is a very superficial remark. If we
consider that rum signifies not only to be high, but to rise up
(Prov, xi. 11) and become exalted, and also to become manifest
as exalted (Ps. xxi. 14), and that NM, according to the imme-
diate and original reflective meaning of the niphal, signifies to
raise one's self, whereas gdbliah expresses merely the condition,
without the subordinate idea of activity, we obtain this chain
of thought : he will rise up, he will raise himself still higher,
he will stand on high. The three verbs (of which the two
perfects are defined by the previous future) consequently de-
note the commencement, the continuation, and the result or
climax of the exaltation ; and Stier is not wrong in recalling
to mind the three principal steps of the exaltatio in the his-
torical fulfilment, viz. the resurrection, the ascension, and the
sitting down at the right hand of God. The addition of the
word INl? shows very clearly that nnJI is intended to be taken
as the final result : the servant of Jehovah, rising from stage
to stage, reaches at last an Immeasurable height, that towers
above everything besides (comp. inrepw^axre in Phil. ii. 9, with
%i!^m6ei<; in Acts ii. 33, and for the nature of the vTrepvyp-coae,
'Eph. i. 20-23).
VOL. II. U
306 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
The prophecy concerning him passes now into an address
to him, as in eh. xlix. 8 (cf. ver. 7), which sinks again imme-
diately into an objective tone. Vers. 14, 15. " Just as many
were astonished at thee : so disfigured., his appearance was not
human, and his form not like that of the children of men : so
will he make many nations to tremble ; kings will shut their mouth
at him : for they see what has not been told them, and discover
what they have not heard." Both Oehler and Hahn suppose
that the first clause is addressed to Israel, and that it is here
pointed away from its own degradation, which excited such
astonishment, to the depth of suffering endured by the One
man. Hahn's principal reason, which Oehler adopts, is the
sudden leap that we should otherwise have to assume from the
second person to the third, — an example of " negligence "
which we can hardly impute to the prophet. But a single
glance at ch. xlii. 20 and i. 29 is sufficient to show how little
force there is in this principal argument. We should no doubt
expect 057?! or =1;?^ after what has gone before, if the nation
were addressed ; but it is difficult to see what end a comparison
between the sufferings of the nation and those of the One man,
which merely places the sufferings of the two in an external
relation to one another, could be intended to answer ; whilst
the second ken (so), which evidently introduces an antithesis,
is altogether unexplained. The words are certainly addressed
to the servant of Jehovah ; and the meaning of the sicut (just
as) in ver. 14, and of the sic (so) which introduces the prin-
cipal sentence in ver. 15, is, that just as His degradation was
the deepest degradation possible, so His glorification would be
of the loftiest kind. The height of the exaltation is held up
as presenting a perfect contrast to the depth of the degrada-
tion. The words, " so distorted was his face, more than that
of a man," form, as has been almost unanimously admitted
since the time of Vitringa, a parenthesis, containing the reason
for the astonishment excited by the servant of Jehovah. Stier
is wrong in supposing that this first " so" (ken) refers to ka'dsher
(just as), in the sense of " If men were astonished at thee,
there was ground for the astonishment." Ver. 15 would not
stand out as an antithesis, if we adopted this explanation ;
moreover, the thought that the fact corresponded to the im-
pression which men received, is a very tame and unnecessary
CHAP, LII. 14, 15. 307
one; and the change of persons in sentences related to one
another in this manner is intolerably harsh ; whereas, with
our view of the relation in which the sentences stand to one
another, the parenthesis prepares the way for the sudden change
from a direct address to a declaration. Hitherto many had
been astonished at the servant of Jehovah : skdmem, to be
desolate or waste, to be thrown by anything into a desolate or
benumbed condition, to be startled, confused, as it were petri-
fied, by paralyzing astonishment (Lev. xxvi. 32 ; Ezek. xxvi,
16). To such a degree (ken, adeo) was his appearance misJi-
chath meHsh, and his form miblfne 'dddm (sc. mishchath). We
might take mishchath as the construct of mishchath, as Hitzig
does, since this connecting form is sometimes used {e.g. xxxiii. 6)
even without any genitive relation ; but it may also be the
absolute, syncopated from nnntyD = nnna'D (Havernick and
Stier), like moshchath in Mai. i. 14? or, what we prefer, after
the form mirmas (ch. x. 6), with the original &, without the
usual lengthening (Ewald, § 160, c, Anm. 4). His appearance
and his form were altogether distortion (stronger than moshchath,
distorted), away from men, out beyond men, i.e. a distortion that
destroys all likeness to a man ; ^ 'ish does not signify man as
distinguished from woman here, but a human being generally.
The antithesis follows in ver. 15: viz. the state of glory in which
this form of wretchedness has passed away. As a parallel
to the '' many" in ver. 14, we have here " many nations," indi-
cating the excess of the glory by the greater fulness of the
expression ; and as a parallel to " were astonished at thee,"
" he shall make to tremble " (jjazzeh), in other words, the effect
which He produces by what He does to the effect produced by
what He suffers. The hiphil hizsdh generally means to spirt
or sprinkle (adspergere), and is applied to the sprinkling of the
1 The church before the time of Constantine pictured to itself the
Lord, as He walked on earth, as repulsive in His appearance ; whereas the
chnrch after Constantine pictured Him as having quite an ideal heaiuty
(see my tract, Jesus and HilUl, 1865, p. 4). They were hoth right : un-
attractive in appearance, though not deformed. He no doubt was in the
days of His flesh ; but He is ideally beautiful in His glorification. The
body in which He was bom of Mary was no royal form, though faith could
see the doxa shining through. It was no royal form, for the suffering of
death was the portion of the Lamb of God, even from His mother's womb ;
but the glorified One is infinitely exalted above all the ideal of art.
308 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
blood with the finger, more especially upon the capporerh and
altar of incense on the day of atonement (differing in this re-
spect from zdraq, the swinging of the blood out of a bowl),
also to the sprinkling of the water of purification upon a leper
with the bunch of hyssop (Lev. xiv. 7), and of the ashes of the
red heifer upon those defiled through touching a corpse (Num.
xix. 18) ; in fact, generally, to sprinkling for the purpose of
expiation and sanctification. And Vitringa, Hengstenberg,
and others, accordingly follow the Syriac and Vulgate in adopt-
ing the rendering adsperget (he will sprinkle). They have
the usage of the language in their favour ; and this explana-
tion also commends itself from a reference to JflJi in ch. liii. 4,
and W3 in ch. liii. 8 (words which are generally used of leprosy,
and on account of which the suffering Messiah is called in
b. Sanhedrin 98b by au emblematical name adopted from the
old synagogue, "the leper of Kabbi's school"), since it yields
the significant antithesis, that he who was himself resarded as
unclean, even as a second Job, would sprinkle and sanctify whole
nations, and thus abolish the wall of partition between Israel
and the heathen, and gather together into one holy church
with Israel those who had hitherto been pronounced "unclean"
(ch. lii. 1). But, on the other hand, this explanation has so far
the usage of the language against it, that liizzdh is never con-
strued with the accusative of the person or thing sprinkled (like
adspergere aliqua re aliquem ; since 'etli in Lev. iv. 6, 17 is a
preposition like 'al, 'el elsewhere) ; moreover, there would be
something very abrupt in this sudden representation of the
servant as a priest. Such explanations as " he will scatter
asunder" (disperget, Targum, etc.), or "he will spill" (sc. their
blood), are altogether out of the question ; such thoughts as
these would be quite out of place in a spiritual picture of sal-
vation and glory, painted upon the dark ground we have here.
The verb ndzdh signified primarily to leap or spring ; hence
hizzdli, with the causative meaning to sprinkle. The kal com-
bines the intransitive and transitive meanings of the word
"spirt," and is used in the former sense in ch. Ixiii. 3, to
signify the springing up or sprouting up of any liquid scattered
about in drops. The Arabic jiazd (see Ges. Thes.) shows that
this verb may also be applied to the springing or leaping of
living beings, caused by excess of emotion. And accordingly
CHAP. LIII. 1. 309
we follow the majority of tlie commentators in adopting the
rendering exsilire faciei. The faet that whole nations are the
object, and not merely individuals, proves nothing to the con-
trary, as Hab. iii. 6 clearly shows. The reference is to their
leaping up in amazement (LXX. OavfidaovTui) ; and the verb
denotes less an external than an internal movement. They
will tremble with astonishment within themselves (cf. pdchSdu
v'rdg'zu in Jer. xxxiii. 9), being electrified, as it were, by the
surprising change that has taken place in the servant of Je-
hovah. The reason why kings " shut their mouths at him" is
expressly stated, viz. what was never related they see, and what
was never heard of they perceive ; i.e. it was something going
far beyond all that had ever been reported to them outside the
world of nations, or come to their knowledge within it. Hitzig's
explanation, that they do not trust themselves to begin to speak
before him or along with him, gives too feeble a sense, and
would lead us rather to expect VjBp than IvV. The shutting of
the mouth is the involuntary effect of the overpowering impres-
sion, or the manifestation of their extreme amazement at one
so suddenly brought out of the depths, and lifted up to so great
a height. The strongest emotion is that which remains shut
up within ourselves, because, from its very intensity, it throws
the whole nature into a suffering state, and drowns all reflec-
tion in emotion (cf. yacharish in Zeph. iii. 17). The parallel
in cli. xlix. 7 is not opposed to this ; the speechless astonish-
ment, at what is unheard and inconceivable, changes into ador-
ing homage, as soon as they have become to some extent
familiar with it. The first turn in the prophecy closes here :
The servant of Jehovah, whose inhuman sufferings excite such
astonishment, is exalted on high ; so that from utter amazement
tlie nations tremble, and their kings are struck dumb.
But, says the second turn in ch. liii. 1-3, the man of sor-
rows was despised among us, and the prophecy as to his future
was not believed. We hear the first lamentation (the question
is. From whose mouth does it come 1) in ver. 1 : " Who hath
believed our preaching ; and the arm of Jehovah, over whom has
it been revealed ?" " I was formerly mistaken," says Hofmann
(Schriftbeiveis, ii. 1, 159, 160), "as to the connection between
ch. liii. 1 and ch. Iii. 13-15, and thought that the Gentiles
were the speakers in the former, simply because it was to them
310 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
that the latter referred. But I see now that I was in en-or.
It is affirmed of the heathen, that they have never heard before
the things which they now see with their eyes. Consequently
it cannot be they who exclaim, or in whose name the inquiry is
made, Who hath believed our preaching ?" Moreover, it can-
not be they, both because the redemption itself and the exalta-
tion of the Mediator of the redemption are made known to
them from the midst of Israel as already accomplished facts,
and also because according to ch. lii. 15 (cf. ch. xlix. 7, xlii. 4,
li. 5) they hear the things unheard of before, with amazement
which passes into reverent awe, as the satisfaction of their own
desires, in other words, with the glad obedience of faith. And
we may also add, that the expression in ch. liii. 8, " for the
transgression of my people," would be quite out of place in the
mouths of Gentiles, and that, as a general rule, words attri-
buted to Gentiles ought to be expressly introduced as theirs.
Whenever we find a " we " inti-oduced abruptly in the midst of
a prophecy, it is always Israel that speaks, including the pro-
phet himself (ch. xlii. 24, Ixiv. 5, xvi. 6, xxiv. 16, etc.). Hof-
mann therefore very properly rejects the view advocated by
many, from Calvin down to Stier and Oehler, who suppose
that it is the prophet himself who is speaking here in connec-
tion with the other heralds of salvation ; " for," as he says,
"how does all the rest which is expressed in the 1st pers.
plural tally with such a supposition ? " If it is really Israel,
which confesses in vers. 2 sqq. how blind it has been to the
calling of the servant of Jehovah, which was formerly hidden
in humiliation but is now manifested in glory ; the mournful
inquiry in ver. 1 must also proceed from the mouth of Israel.
The references to this passage in John xii. 37, 38, and Kom.
X. 16, do not compel us to assign ver. 1 to the prophet and his
comrades in office. It is Israel that speaks even in ver. 1. The
nation, which acknowledges with penitence how shamefully it
has mistaken its own Saviour, laments that it has put no faith
in the tidings of the lofty and glorious calling of the servant of
God. We need not assume, therefore, that there is any change
of subject in ver, 2 ; and (what is still more decisive) it is
necessary that we should not, if we would keep up any close
connection between ch. liii. 1 and ch. lii. 15. The heathen
receive with faith tidings of things which had never been heard
CHAP. LIII. 1. 311
of before ; whereas Israel has to lament that it put no faith in
the tidings which it had heard long, long before, not only with
reference to the person and work of the servant of God, but
with regard to his lowly origin and glorious end. nyiDB' (a
noun after the form rivv^]^ nj)33E', a different form from that of
PY}^, which is derived from the adjective ?^|) signifies the hear-
,say (oLKO'^), i.e. the tidings, more especially the prophetic an-
nouncement in ch. xxviii. 9; andlJnvDB', according to the primary
subjective force of the suffix, is equivalent to 13J)DB' "lE'tj! nysiDB'
^cf. Jer. xlix. 14), i.e. the hearsay which we have heard.
•There were some, indeed, who did not refuse to believe the
tidings which Israel heard : aW' ov irdme<s im'^Kovaav rp
evar/yeXim (Rom. x. 16) ; the number of the believers was
vanishingly small, when compared with the unbelieving mass of
,the nation. And it is the latter, or rather its remnant which
had eventually come to its senses, that here inquires, Who hath
believed our preaching, i.e. the preaching that was common
among us ? The substance of the preaching, which had not
beei^ believed, was the exaltation of the servant of God from a
State of deep degradation. This is a work performed by the
" arm of Jehovah," namely. His holy arm that has been made
bare, and that now effects the salvation of His people, and of
the nations generally, according to His own couAsel (ch. lii. 10,
li. 5). This arm works down from on high, exalted far above
all created things ; men have it above them, and it is made
manifest to those who recognise it in what is passing around
them. Who, asks Israel, has had any faith in the coming
exaltation of the servant of God? who has recognised the omni-
potence of Jehovah, which has set itself to effect his exaltation?
All that follows is the confession of the Israel of the last times,
to which this question is the introduction. We must not over-
look the fact that this golden " passional " is also one of the
greatest prophecies of the future conversion of the nation,
which has rejected the servant of God, and allowed the Gentiles
to be the first to recognise him. At last, though very late, it
will feel remorse. And when this shall once take place, then
and not till then will this chapter— which, to use an old epithet,
will ever be carnificina Rabhinorum — receive its complete his-
torical fulfilment.
The confession, which follows, grows out of the great
312 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
lamentation depicted by Zecharlali in Zecli. xii. 11 sqq. Ver.
2. " And he sprang up like a layer-shoot before Him, and like a
root-sprout out of dry ground: he had no form, and no beauty; and
we looked, and there was no look, such that we could have found
pleasure in him!' Ver. 2, as a sequel to ver. lb, looks back to the
past, and describes how the arm of Jehovah manifested itself in
the servant's course of life from the very beginning, though im-
perceptibly at first, and unobserved by those who merely noticed
the outside. The suffix of Vjsp cannot refer to the subject of
the interrogative sentence, as Hahn and Hofmann suppose, for
the answer to the quis there is nemo ; it relates to Jehovah, by
which it is immediately preceded. Before Jehovah, namely,
so that He, whose counsel thus began to be fulfilled, fixed His
eye upon him with watchfulness and protecting care, he grew
up PP.i'3, like the suckling, i.e. (in a horticultural sense) the
tender twig which sucks up its nourishment from the root and
stem (not as Hitzig supposes, according to Ezek. xxxi. 16, from
the moisture in the soil) ; for the tender twig upon a tree, or
trunk, or stalk, is called npp^ (for which we have p}y here) :
vid. Ezek. xvii. 22, the twig of a cedar ; Ps. Ixxx. 12 (11), of a
vine ; Job viii. 16, of a liana. It is thought of here as a layer,
as in Ezek. xvii. 22 ; and, indeed, as the second figure shows
when taken in connection with eh. xi. 1, as having been laid
down after the proud cedar of the Davidic monarchy from
which it sprang had been felled ; for elsewhere it is compared
to a shoot which springs from the root left in the ground after
the tree has been felled. Both figures depict the lowly and
unattractive character of the small though vigorous begin-
ning. The expression " out of dry ground," which belongs to
both figures, brings out, in addition, the miserable character of
the external circumstances in the midst of which the birth and
growth of the servant had taken place. The " dry ground "
is the existing state of the enslaved and degraded nation ; i.e.
he was subject to all the conditions inseparable from a nation
that had been given up to the power of the world, and
was not only enduring all the consequent misery, but was
in utter ignorance as to its cause ; in a word, the dry ground
is the corrupt character of the age. In what follows, the
majority of the commentators have departed from the accents,
and adopted the rendering, " he had no form and no beauty,
CHAP. LIU. 8. 313
that we should look at Him" (should have looked at Him), viz.
with fixed looks that loved to dwell upon Him. This rendering
was adopted by Symmachus and Vitringa (tW eiBwfiev avrov ;
ut ipsum respiceremus). But Luther, Stier, and others, very
properly adhere to the existing punctuation ; since the other
would lead us to expect i3 '^^^\ instead of ii^??']3l, and the close
reciprocal relation of nN"iD"N7l ^nsnjl, wliich resembles a play
upon the words, is entirely expunged. The meaning therefore
is, " We saw Him, and there was nothing in His appearance
to make us desire Him, or feel attracted by Him." The literal
rendering of the Hebrew, with its lively metliod of transferring
you into the precise situation, is ut concupisceremus eum (delec-
iaremur eo) ; whereas, in our oriental style, we should rather
have written ut concupivissemus, using the pluperfect instead of
the imperfect, or the tense of the associated past. Even in this
sense 'i^^?131 is veiy far from being unmeaning : He dwelt in
Israel, so that they had Him bodily before tlieir eyes, but in
His outward appearance there was nothing to attract or delight
the senses.
On tiie contrary, the impression produced by His appear-
ance was rather repulsive, and, to those who measured the great
and noble by a merely worldly standard, contemptible. Ver. 3.
" He was despised and forsaken by men ; a man of griefs, and
well acquainted with disease ; and like one from whom men hide
their face: despised, and we esteemed Him not." All these dif-
ferent features are predicates of the erat that is latent in non
species ei neque decor and non adspectus. Nihhzeh is introduced
again palindromically at the close in Isaiah's peculiar style;
consequently Martini's conjecture 'Wl ^«7 intap is to be rejected.
This nihhzeh (cf. bdzoh, ch. xlix. 7) is tiie keynote of the
description which looks back in this plaintive tone. The pre-
dicate chadal 'ishtm is misunderstood by nearly all the com-
mentators, inasmuch as they take CB"'}? as synonymous with
ms-'n, whereas it is rather used in the sense of B'''K"i33 (lords),
as distinguished from b^ne 'dddm, or people generally (see ch.
ii. 9, 11, 17). The only other passages in which it occurs are
Prov. viii. 4 and Ps. cxli. 4 ; and in both instances it signifies
persons of rank. Hence Cocceius explains it thus : " wanting
in men, i.e. having no respectable men with Him, to support
Him with their authority." It migiit also be understood as
314 ^HE PROPHECIES OF ISAIaH.
meaning the ending one among men, i.e. the one who takes the
last place (S. i\d'^icrTO<;, Jer. novissimus) ; but in this case
He Himself would be described as ^^f^, whereas it is absohately
affirmed that He had not the appearance or distinction of such
an one. But the rendering defidens (wanting) is quite correct;
compare Job xix. 14, " my kinsfolk have failed " (defecerunt,
ehddHu, ccgnati mei). The Arabic cliadhaldim or chadhala
'anhu (he left him in the lurch, kept back from him, forsook
him) also points to the true meaning ; and from this we have
the derivatives chddliil, refusing assistance, leaving without
help ; and maehdhul, helpless, forsaken (see Lane's Arabic
Lexicon). In Hebrew, cliddal has not only the transitive mean-
ing to discontinue or leave off a thing, but the intransitive, to
cease or be in want, so that chadal 'ishlm may mean one in
want of men of rank, i.e. finding no sympathy from such men.
The chief men of His nation who towered above the multitude,
the great men of this world, withdrew their hands from Him,
drew back from Him : He had none of the men of any distinc-
tion at His side. Moreover, He was rii3N3D {y'X, a man of sorrow
of heart in all its forms, i.e. a man whose chief distinction was,
that His life was one of constant painful endurance. And He
was also y^ JJfl^, that is to say, not one known through His
sickness (according to Dent. i. 13, 15), which is hardly suffi-
cient to express the genitive construction ; nor an acquaintance
of disease (S. 71'sxTTo? vda-o), familiaris morbd), which would
be expressed by S''l!)p or VliO ; but sdtus morbi, i.e. one who
was placed in a state to make the acquaintance of disease.
The deponent passive WT, acquainted (like bdtuach, confisus ;
zdklmr, mindful ; peritus, pervaded, experienced), is supported
by VWp = 5/!|1J"no ; Gr. ti' fia6a>v. The meaning is not, that
He had by nature a sickly body, falling out of one disease into
another ; but that the wrath instigated by sin, and the zeal of
self-sacrifice (Ps, Isix. 10), burnt like the fire of a fever in His
soul and body, so that even if He had not died a violent death.
He would have succumbed to the force of tlie powers of destruc-
tion that were innate in humanity in consequence of sin, and of
His own self-consuming conflict with them. Moreover, He was
If master pdnlm mimmennu. This cannot mean, " like one
hiding his face from us," as Hengstenberg supposes (with an
allusion to Lev. xiii. 45) ; or, what is comparatively better,
CHAP. LIII. 4. 315
"like one causing the hiding of the face from him :" for although
the feminine of the participle is written fTnripo, and in the plural
CnriDO for ia''"i''PiDD is quite possible, we never meet with master
for mastlr, like liaster for hastlr in the infinitive (ch. xxix. 15,
of. Deut. xxvi. 12). Hence master must be a noun (of the form
marhets, marheq, mashcheth) ; and the words mean either " like
the hiding of the face on our part," or like one who met with
this from us, or (what is more natural) like the hiding of the
face before his presence (according to ch. viii. 17, 1. 6, liv. 8,
lix. 2, and many other passages), i.e. like one whose repulsive
face it is impossible to endure, so that men turn away their
face or cover it with their dress (compare ch. 1. 6 with Job
XXX. 10). And lastly, all the predicates are summed up in the
expressive word nibhzeh : He was despised, and we did not think
Him dear and worthy, but rather "esteemed Him not," or rather
did not estimate Him at all, or as Luther expresses it, " esti-
mated Him at nothing" (chdshabh, to reckon, value, esteem, as
in cb. xiii. 17, xxxiii. 8, Mai. iii. 16).
The second turn closes here. The preaching concerning
His calling and His future was not believed ; but the Man of
sorrows was greatly despised among, us.
Those who formerly mistook and despised the Servant of
Jehovah on account of His miserable condition, now confess
that His sufferings were altogether of a different character
from what they had supposed. Ver. 4. " Verily He hath
hoiiie our diseases and our pains : He hath laden them upon
Himself; but we regarded Him, as one stricken, smitten of God,
and afflicted." It might appear doubtful whether J^N (the
fuller form of ^f?) is affirmative here, as in ch. xl. 7, xlv. 15,
or adversative, as in ch. xlix. 4. The latter meaning grows
out of the former, inasmuch as it is the opposite which is
strongly affirmed. We have rendered it affirmatively (Jer.
vei'e), not adversatively (verum, ut vero), because ver. 4 itself
consists of two antithetical halves, — a relation which is ex-
pressed in the independent pronouns sin and '^naSj that answer
to one another. The penitents contrast themselves and their
false notion with Him and His real achievement. In Matthew
(viii. 17) the words are rendered freely and faithfully thus :
avTov ra? aa-6ei'eia<s '^/jlwv eXa/Se, Kul ra<} vo<rov<i e^daraaev.
Even the fact that the relief which Jesus afforded to all kinds
316 THE FKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of bodily diseases is regarded as a fulfilment of what is here
affirmed of the Servant of Jehovah, is an exegetical index
worth noticing. ' In 4a it is not really sin that is spoken of,
but the evil which is consequent upon human sin, although not
always the direct consequence of the sins of individuals (John
ix. 3). But in the fact that He was concerned to relieve this
evil in all its forms, whenever it came in His way in the exer-
cise of His calling, the relief implied as a consequence in ver.
4a was brought distinctly into view, though not the bearing
and lading that are primarily noticed here.) Matthew has
very aptly rendered KB*: by eXa^e, and 730 by i^dcnaae. For
whilst ?3D denotes the toilsome bearing of a burden that has
been taken up, NK'3 combines in itself the ideas of tollere and
ferre. When construed with the accusative of the sin, it signi-
fies to take tlie debt of sin upon one's self, and carry it as one's
own, i.e. to look at it and feel it as one's own {e.g. Lev. v. 1, 17),
or more frequently to bear the punishment occasioned by sin,
i.e. to make expiation for it (Lev. xvii. 16, xx. 19, 20, xxiv. 15),
and in any case in which the person bearing it is not himself
the guilty person, to bear sin in a mediatorial capacity, for the
purpose of making expiation for it (Lev. x. 17). The LXX.
render this sbJ both in the Pentateucli and Ezekiel Xa^elv
afiaprtav, once ava<f>ipeiv ; and it is evident that both of these
are to be understood in the sense of an expiatory bearing, and
not merely of taking away, as has been recently maintained
in opposition to the satisfactio vicaria, as we may see clearly
enough from Ezek. iv. 4-8, where the I'W r\iW is represented
by the prophet in a symbolical actioji. But in the case before
us, where it is not the sins, but " our diseases " (is.vn is a de-
fective plural, as tha singular would be written 13vn) and "our
pains" that are the object, this mediatorial sense remains
essentially the same, f The meaning is not merely that the Ser-
vant of God entered into the fellowship of our sufferings, but
that He took upon Himself the sufferings which we had to
bear and deserved to bear, and therefore not only took them
away (as Matt. viii. 17 might make it appear), but bore them
in His own person, that He might deliver us from tliemj But
when one person takes upon himself suffering which another
would have had to bear, and therefore not only endures it with
him, but in his stead, this is called substitution or representation.
CHAP. LIII. & 317
— an idea Which, however uninteUigible to the understanding,
belongs to the actual substance of the common consciousness
of man, and the realities of the ilivine government of the world
as brought within the range of our experience, and one which
has continued even down to the present time to have much
greater vigour in the Jewish nation, where it has found its
true expression in sacrifice and the kindred institutions, than
in any other, at least so far as its nationality has not been
entirely annulled.^ Here again it is Israel, which, having been
at length better instructed, and now bearing witness against
itself, laments its former blindness to the mediatorially vica-
rious character of the deep agonies, both of soul and- body, that
were endured by the great Sufferer. They looked upon them
as the punishment of His own sins, and indeed — inasmuch as,
like the friends of Job, they measured the sin of the Sufferer
by the sufferings that He endured — of peculiarly great sins.
They saw in Him yWJ, " one stricken" i.e.. afBicted with a
hateful, shocking disease (Gen. xii. 17 ; 1 Sam. vi. 9), — such,
for example, as leprosy, which was called Vi^, kut i^. (2 Kings
XV. 5, A. a.(l)'^iJi,evov, S. iv a.(j}y ovTa=leprosum, Th. /xe/iaariyai-
(jLevov, cf. /ia(7Tf769, Mark iii. 10, scourges, i.e. bad attacks) ;
also Q'p?*| fi3^, " one smitten of God " (from ndkhdh, root
li, j5; see Jol, vol. ii. p. 146), and n3V», bowed down (by
God), i.e. afflicted with sufferings. The name Jehovah would
have been out of place here, where the evident intention is to
point to the all-determining divine power generally, whose
vengeance appeared to have fallen upon this particular suf-
ferer. The construction mukkeh 'UloJilm signifies, like the
Arabic muqdtal rabbuh, one who has been defeated in conflict
with God his Lord (see Job, vol. i. p. 267) ; and 'Elohim has
the syntactic position between the two adjectives, which it
necessarily must have in order to be logically connected with
them both.
In ver. 5, S<W1, as contrasted with 13™^l, continues the true
state of the case as contrasted with their false judgment.
Ver. 5. " Whereas He was pierced for our sins, bruised for our
iniquities: the punishment was laid upon Him for our peace; and
through His stripes we were healed." The question is, whether
ver. 5o describes what He was during His life, or what He was
' See my Jesus und IliUel, pp. 26, 27.
318 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
in His death. The words decide in favour of the latter. For
although cMMl is applied to a person mortally wounded but
not yet dead (Jer. li. 52 ; Ps. Ixix. 27), and ahdlal to a heart
wounded to death (Ps. cix. 22) ; the pure passives used here,
which denote a calamity inflicted by violence from without,
more especially m'choldl, which is not the participle polal of
cJiil (made to twist one's self with pain), but the participle peal
of clidlal (pierced, transfossus, the passive of m'cholel, ch. li. 9),
and the substantive clauses, which express a fact that has
become complete in all its circumstances, can hardly be nnder-i
stood in any other way than as denoting, that " the servant of
God " floated before the mind of the speaker in all the suffer-
ings of death, just as was the case with Zechariah in Zech.
xii. 10. There were no stronger expressions to be found in
the language, to denote a violent and painful death. As min,
with the passive, does not answer to the Greek vTro, but to
WTTO, the meaning is not that it was our sins and iniquities that
had pierced Him through like swords, and crushed Him like
heavy burdens, but that He was pierced and crushed on account
of our sins and iniquities. It was not His own sins and ini-
quities, but ours, which He had taken upon Himself, that He
might make atonement for them in our stead, that were the
cause of His having to suffer so cruel and painful a death.
The ultimate cause is not mentioned; but fhv UD^^B* "IDID which
follows points to it. His suffering was a musdr, which is an
indirect affirmation that it was God who had inflicted it upon
Him, for who else could the yoser (jn'yasser) be ? We have
rendered musdr "punishment;" and there was no other word in
the language for this idea ; for though Qi^3 and n^jpa (to which
Hofmann refers) have indeed the idea of punishment associated
with them, the former signifies eKSiKrja-i';, the latter eViWei/rt?,
whereas musdr not only denotes iraiBeia, as the chastisement
of love (Prov. iii. 11), but also as the infliction of punishment
(=Tifia)pia, AToXao-t?, Prov. vii. 22, Jer. xxx. 14), just as
David, when he prayed that God might not punish him in His
anger and hot displeasure (Ps. vi. 2), could not find a more
suitable expression for punishment, regarded as the execution
of judgment, than IB'; (n'pin). The word itself, which follows
the form of musdd (ch. xxviii. 16), signified primarily beino'
chastised (from ydsar = vdsar, constringere, coercere), and
CHAP. LIII. 6. 319
included from the very outset the idea of practical chastise-
ment, which then passed over into that of admonition in words,
of warning by example, and of chastity as a moral quality.
In the case before us, in which the reference is to a sufferer,
and to a Tnusdr resting upon him, this can only mean actual
chastisement. If the expression had been IvJ? 13'iDlO, it would
merely mean that God had caused Him, who had taken upon
Himself our sins and iniquities and thus made Himself repre-
sentatively or vicariously guilty, to endure the chastisement
which those sins deserved. But it is iJDiPB' "IDID, The con-
nection of the words is the same as that of Q^^n nnain in Prov.
XV. 31. As the latter signifies "reproof leading to life," so
the former signifies " the chastisement which leads to our
peace." It is true that the sulBx belongs to the one idea, that
that has grown up through this combination of the words, like
Vrlth sMloml, " my peace-covenant" (ch. liv. 10) ; but what else
could our " peace-chastisement " be, than the chastisement that
brings us peace, or puts us into a state of salvation ? This is
the idea involved in Stier's rendering, "restoring chastisement,"
and Hofmann's, " the chastisement wholesome for us." Th^
difference in the exposition simply lies in the view entertained
of the musdr, in which neither of these commentators will
allow that there is any idea of a visitation of justice here.
But according to our interpretation, the genitive iJBiPCJ', which
defines the musdr so far as its object and results are concerned,
clearly shows that this manifestation of the justice of God, this
satisfaction procured by His holiness, had His love for its
foundation and end. It was our peace, or, what is more in
accordance with the full idea of the word, our general well-
being, our blessedness, which these sufferings arrived at and
secured (the synonyms of shdlom are tobli and y^shudh, ch.
lii. 7). In what follows, " and by His stripes {cMhliurdh =
chabburdh, ch. i. 6) we have been healed," shdlom is defined as
a condition of salvation brought about by healing. " Venustis'
simum 'o^vficopov" exclaims Vitringa here. He means the
same as Jerome when he says, suo vulnere vulnera nostra
curavit. The stripes and weals that were inflicted upon Him
have made us sound and well (the LXX. keeps the collective
singular, and renders it very aptly t& /j-wXcotto airov; cf. 1 Pet.
ii. 24). We were sick unto death because of our sins; but He,
320 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the sinless one, took upon Himself a suffering unto death,
which was, as it were, the concentration and essence of the woes
that we had deserved ; and this voluntary endurance, this sub-
mission to the justice of the Holy One, in accordance with the
■counsels of divine love, became the source of our healing.
Thus does the whole body of the restored Israel confess with
penitence, that it has so long mistaken Him whom Jehovah,
as is now distinctly affirmed, had made a curse for their good,
when they had gone astray to their own ruin. Ver. 6. " All
we like sheep went astray ; we had turned every one to his oion
toay ; and Jehovah caused the iniquity of us "all to fall on Him''
It is the state of exile, upon which the penitent Israel is here
looking back ; but exile as being, in the prophet's view, the
final state of punishment before the final deliverance. Israel
in its exile resembled a scattered fiock without a shepherd ; it
had lost the way of Jehovah (ch. Ixiii. 17), and every one had
turned to his own way, in utter selfishness and estrangement
from God (ch. Ivi. 11). But whereas Israel thus heaped up
guilt upon guilt, the Servant of Jehovah was He upon whom
Jehovah Himself caused the punishment of their guilt to fall,
that He might make atonement for it through His own suffer-
ing. Many of the more modern expositors endeavour to set
aside the pcena vicaria here, by giving to J?''??!! a meaning
which it never has. Thus Stier renders it, " Jehovah caused
the iniquity of all to strike or break upon Him." Others, again,
give a meaning to the statement which is directly at variance
with the words themselves. Thus Hahn renders it : Jehovah
took the guilt of tlie whole into His service, causing Him to die
a violent deatli through their crime. Hofmann very properly re-
jects botli explanations, and holds fast to the fact that 3 3/''23n,
regarded as a causative of 3 yJBj signifies " to cause anything
to strike or fall upon a person," which is the rendering adopted
by Symmachus : Kvpio<; KaTavrrja-ai, i-Trolrja-ev eh aiirov ttjv avo-
(iiav TTuvTcav rjfjitav. " Just as the blood of a murdered man
comes upon the murderer, when the bloody deed committed
comes back upon him in the form of blood-guiltiness inflicting
vengeance ; so does sin come upon, overtake (Ps. xl. 13), or
meet with the sinner. It went forth from him as his own act ;
it returns with destructive effect, as a fact by which he is con-
xiemned. But in this case God does not suffer those who have
CHAP. LIU 6. 821
sinned to be overtaken by the sin they have committed ; but it
falls upon His servant, the righteous One." These are Hof-
mann's words. But if the sin turns back upon the sinner in
the shape of punishment, why should the sin of all men, which
the Servant of God has taken upon Himself as His own, over-
take Him in the form of an evil, which, even if it be a punish-
ment, is not punishment inflicted upon Him ? For this is just
the characteristic of Hofmann's doctrine of the atonement,
that it altogether eliminates from the atoning work the recon-
ciliation of the purposes of love with the demands of righteous-
ness. Now it is indeed perfectly true, that the Servant of
God cannot become the object of punishment, either as a ser-
vant of God or as an atoning Saviour ; for as servant of God
He is the beloved of God, and as atoning Saviour He undertakes
a work which is well pleasing to God,' and ordained in God's
eternal counsel. So that the wrath which pours out upon
Him is not meant for Him as the righteous One who voluntarily
offers up Himself; but indirectly it relates to Him, so far as He
has vicariously identified Himself with sinners, who are deserv-
ing of wrath. How could He have made expiation for sin, if
He had simply subjected Himself to its cosmical effects, and not
directly subjected Himself to that wrath which is the invariable
divine correlative of human sin? And what other reason could
there be for God's not rescuing Him from this the bitterest cup
of death, than the ethical impossibility of acknowledging the
atonement as really made, without having left the representa-
tive of the guilty, who had presented Himself to Him as though
guilty Himself, to taste of the punishment which they had
deserved ? It is true that vicarious expiation -and poena vicaria
are not coincident ideas. The punishment is but one element
in the expiation, and it derives a peculiar character from the
fact that one innocent person voluntarily submits to it in His
own person. It does not stand in a thoroughly external rela-
tion of identity to that deserved by the many who are guilty ;
but the latter cannot be set aside without the atoning indivi-
dual enduring an intensive equivalent to it, and that in such
a manner, that this endurance is no less a self-cancelling of
wrath on the part of God, than an absorption of wrath on the
part of the Mediator ; and in this central point of the atoning
work, the voluntarily forgiving love of God and the voluntarily
VOt. II. X
322 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
self-sacrificing love of the Mediator meet together, like hands
stretched out to grasp one another from the midst of a dark
cloud. Hermann Schultz also maintains that the suffering,
which was the consequence of sin and therefore punishment to
the guilty, is borne by the Redeemer as suffering, without being
punishment. But in this way the true mystery is wiped out of
the heart of the atoning work ; and this explanation is also at
variance with the expression " the chastisement of our peace "
in ver. 5b, and the equally distinct statement in ver. 66, " He
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." It was the sin of all
Israel, as the palindromically repeated kulldnu emphatically
declares, which pressed upOn Him with such force when His
atoning work was about to be decided. But fiy is used to
denote not only the transgression itself, but also the guilt
incurred thereby, and the punishment to which it gives rise.
All this great multitude of sins, and mass of guilt, and weight
of punishment, came upon the Servant of Jehovah according to
the appointment of the God of salvation, who is gracious in
holiness. The third turn ends here. It was our sins that He
bore, and for our salvation that God caused Him to suffer on
our account.
The fourth turn describes how He suffered and died and
was buried. Ver. 7. " He was ill treated ; ivhilst He suffered
willingly, and opened not His mouth, like the sheep that is led to
ilie slaughter-bench, and like a lamb that is dumb before its
shearers, and opened not His mouth" The third pers. niphal
stands first in a passive sense : He has been hard pressed (1
Sam. xiii. 6) : He is driven, or hunted (1 Sam. xiv. 24),
treated tyrannically and unsparingly ; in a word, plagued
(vewatus ; compare the niphal in a reciprocal sense in ch.
iii. 5, and according to the reading mi in ch. xxix. 13 in a
reflective sense, to torment one's self). Hitzig renders the
next clause, "and although tormented. He opened not His
mouth." But although an explanatory subordinate clause may
precede the principal clause which it more fully explains, no
example can be found of such a clause with (a retrospective)
'^^ni explaining what follows ; for in Job ii. 8 the circumstantial
clause, " sitting down among the ashes," belongs to the princi-
pal fact which stands before. And so here, where nsw (from
which comes the participle njw, usually met with in circum-
CHAP. LIII. 8. 323
stantial clauses) has not a passive, but a reflective meaning, as
in Ex. X. 3 : " He was ill treated, whilst He bowed Himself
(= suffered voluntarily), and opened not His mouth" (the
regular leap from the participle to the finite). The voluntary
endurance is then explained by the simile " like a sheep that is
led to the slaughter" (an attributive clause, like Jer. xi. 19) ;
and the submissive quiet bearing, by the simile " like a lamb
that is dumb before its shearers." The commentators regard
nD?N3 as a participle ; but this would have the tone upon the
last syllable (see ch. i. 21, 26, Nah. iii. 11 ; cf. Job, vol. i.
p. 393, note). The tone shows it to be the pausal form for
flDpsJ, and so we have rendered it ; and, indeed, as the inter-
change of the perfect with the future in the attributive clause
must be intentional, not quw obmutescit, but obmutuit. The
following words, Va nns; NP1, do not form part of the simile,
which would require tiphtach, for nothing but absolute necessity
would warrant us in assuming that it points back beyond ^nn
to HB'j as Eashi and others suppose. The palindromical repe-
tition also favours the unity of the subject with that of the
previous nns'' and the correctness of the delicate accentut
tion, with which the rendering in the LXX. and Acts viii. 32
coincides. /All the references in the New Testament to the
Lamb of God (with which the corresponding allusions to the
passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the book
of Isaiah.J
The description of the closing portion of the life of the
Servant of Jehovah is continued in ver. 8. " He has been taken
away from prison and from judgment ; and of His generation
who considered : ' He was snatched away out of the land of the
living ; for the wickedness of my people punishment fell upon
Him'?" )The principal emphasis is not laid upon the fact that
He was tai:en away from suffering, but that it was out of the
midst of suffering that He was carried offJ The idea that is
most prominent in luqqdch (with a in half pause) is not that of
being translated (as in the accounts of Enoch and Elijah), but
of being snatched or hurried away (abreptus est, ch. Iii. 5,
Ezek. xxxiii. 4, etc.). The parallel is abscissus (cf. nikhrath,
Jer. xi. 19) a terra viventium, for which "itJJ by itself is supposed
to be used in the sense of carried away (i.e. out of the sphere
of the living into that of the dead. Lam. iii. 54.; cf. Ezek.
324 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
xxxvii. 11, "It is all over with us"). ">V5J (from W) compescere)
is a violent constraint; here, as in Ps. cvii. 39, it signifies a
persecuting treatment which restrains by outward force, such
as that of prison or bonds ; and mishpdt refers to the judicial
proceedings, in which He was put upon His trial, accused and
convicted as worthy of death, — in other words, to His unjust
judgment. The min might indeed be understood, as in ver. 5a,
not as referring to the persons who swept Him away (= vtto),
but, as in Ps. cvii. 39, as relating to the ground and cause of
the sweeping away. But the local sense, which is the one
most naturally suggested by luqqach (e.g. ch. xlix. 24), is to be
preferred :1 hostile oppression and judicial persecution were the
circumstances out of which He was carried away by deathJ
With regard to what follows, we must in any case adhere torthe
ordinary usage, according to which dor (= Arab, daur, daJir,
a revolution or period of time) signifies an age, or the men
living in a particular age ; also, in an ethical sense, the entire
body of those who are connected together by similarity of dis-
position (see, for example, Ps. xiv. 5) ; or again (= Arab, ddr)
a dwelling, as in ch. xxxviii. 12, and possibly also (of the
grave) in Ps. xlix. 20. Such meanings as length of life
(Luther and Grotius), course of life (Vitringa), or fate
(Hitzig), it is impossible to sustain. Hence the Sept. render-
ing, Tr]v lyeveav avroO Tt? Si7]y^creTat, which Jerome also adopts,
can only mean, so far as the usage of the language is con-
cerned, '•' who can declare the number of His generation" (i.e.
of those inspired by His spirit, or filled with His life) ; but in
this connection such a thought would be premature. More-
over, the generation intended would be called iVH rather than
1"in, as springing from Him. Still less can we adopt the mean-
ing " dwelling," as Knobel does, who explains the passage thus :
" who considers how little the grave becomes Him, which He has
received as His dwelling-place." The words do not admit of
this explanation. Hofmann formerly explained the passage as
meaning, " No one takes His dwelling-place into his mind or
mouth, so as even to think of it, or inquire what had become
of Him ; " but in His Sclirifibewds he has decided in favour of
the meaning. His contemporaries, or the men of His generation.
It is only with this rendering that we obtain a thought at all
suitable to the picture of suffering given here, or to the words
CHAP. LIII. 8. 325
Tvhich follow (compare Jer. ii. 31, ye men of this generation).
IliTHNI in that case is not the object to 0D^«!'1, the real object to
which is ratlier the clause introduced by ''3, but an adverbial
accusative, which may serve to give emphatic prominence to
the subject, as we may see from ch. Ivii. 12, Ezek. xvii. 21,
Neh, ix. 34 (Ges. § 117, Anm.) ; for HK cannot be a preposi-
tion, since inter cequales ejus would not be expressed in Hebrew
by lin-riN, but by nna. The pilel socJieScJi with b' signifies
in Ps. cxliii. 5 a thoughtful consideration or deliberation, in
a word, mediiationem alicujus rei (compare the ial with the
accusative, Ps. cxlv. 5). The following M is an explanatory
guod ; with regard to His contemporaries, who considered that,
etc. The words introduced- with kl are spoken, as it were, out
of the heart of His contemporaries, who ought to have con-
sidered, but did not. We may see from ''13V that it is intended
to introduce a direct address ; and again, if we leave kl untrans-
lated, like oTi recitativum (see, for example. Josh. ii. 24 ; com-
pare di, Dan. ii. 25), we can understand why the address, which
has been carried on thus far in such general terms, assumes all
at once an individual form. It cannot be denied, indeed, that
we obtain a suitable object for the missing consideration, if we
adopt this rendering: " He was torn away (Sdprcet.) out of the
land of the living, through (min denoting the mediating cause)
the wicked conduct of my people (in bringing Him to death ^,
to their own punishment ; i.e. none of the men of His age
(like mi in ver. 1, no one = only a very few) discerned what
had befallen them on account of their sin, in ridding them-
selves of Him by a violent death." Hofmann and V. F,
Oehler both adopt this explanation, saying, " Can the prophet
have had the person of the Ecce Homo before his eye, without
intimating that his people called down judgment upon them-
selves, by laying violent hands upon the Servant of God?"
We cannot, however, decide in favour of this explanation ; since
the impression produced by this to? Vii ''»?? VB'BD is, that it is
intended to be taken as a rectification of Vtii in33B'n ums^ in ver,
4&, to which it stands in a reciprocal relation. This reciprocal
relation is brought out more fully, if we regard the force of
the min as still continued {oh plagam qiuB illis dehehatur, Seb.
Schmid, Kleinert, etc.) ; though not in the sense of " through
the stroke proceeding from them* my people" (Hahn), which
326 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
would be opposed to the general usage of WJ ; or taking ibp W3
as a relative clause, populi mei quibus plaga debebatur (Heng-
stenberg, Havernick). But the most natural course is to take
Idmo as referring to the Servant of God, more especially as our
prophet uses Idmo pathetically for Id, as ch. xliv. 15 unques-
tionably shows (notwithstanding the remonstrance of Stier,
who renders the passage, " He was all plague, or smiting, for
them"). W3 always signifies suffering as a calamity proceeding
from God (e.g. Ex. xi. 1, Ps. xxxix. 11, and in every other
passage in which it does not occur in the special sense of
leprosy, which also points back, however, to the generic idea of
a plague divinely sent) ; hence Jerome renders it, " for the sin
of my people have I smitten Him." The text does not read so ;
but the smiter is really Jehovah. Men looked upon His Ser-
vant as a J?U3 ; and so He really was, but not in the sense in
which men regarded Him as such. Yet, even if they had been
mistaken concerning Him during His lifetime ; now that He
no longer dwelt among the living, they ought to see, as they
looked back upon His actions and His sufferings, that it was
not for His own wickedness, but for that of Israel, viz. to make
atonement for it, that such a visitation from God had fallen
upon Him (? as in ch. xxiv. 16 and ch. xxvi. 16, where the
sentence is in the same logical subordination to the previous one
as it is here, where Dachselt gives this interpretation, which is
logically quite correct: propter prcBvaricationem populi mei
plaga ei contingente).
After this description in ver. 7 of the patience with which
He suffered, and in ver. 8 of the manner in which He died,
there follows a retrospective glance at His burial. Ver. 9.
" And tliey assigned Him His grave with sinners, and with a rich
man in His martyrdom, because He had done no wrong, and there
was no deceit in His mouth." The subject to I^'l (assigned) is
not Jehovah, although this would not be impossible, since Wp. has
Jehovah as the latent subject ; but it would be irreconcilable
with ver. 10, where Jehovah is introduced as the subject with
antithetical prominence. It would be better to assume that " my
people" is the subject; but as this would make it appear as if the
statement introduced in ver. Sb with ki (for) were continued here,
we seem compelled to refer it to doro (His generation), which
occurs in the principal clause. No objection could be offered
CHAP. Lin. 9. 327
to our regarding " His own generation" as the subject ; but
dOro is somewhat too far removed for this ; and if the prophet
had had the contemporaries of the sufferer in his mind, he
would most likely have used a plural verb {yayyitfnu). Some,
therefore, supply a personal subject of the most general kind
to yitten (which occurs even with a neuter subject, like the
German es gibt, Fr. ily a, Eng. " there is;" cf. Prov. xiii.
10) : " they (on) gave ;" and looking at the history of the
fulfilment, we confess that this is the rendering we prefer. In
fact, without the commentary supplied by the fulfilment, it
would be impossible to understand ver. 9a at all. The earlier
translators did great violence to the text, and yet failed to bring
out any admissible thought. And the explanation which is most
generally adopted now, viz. that T'K'J? is the synonymous parallel
to QW"! (as even Luther rendered it, " and died like a rich
man," with the marginal gloss, " a rich man who sets all his
heart upon riches, i.e. a wicked man"), is also untenable ; for
even granting that 'dshlr could be proved by examples to be
sometimes used as synonymous with J>Bn, as ''3J? and I^''3K are
as synonyms of i^"^^, this would be just the passage in which
it would be least possible to sustain any such use of the word j
since he who finds his grave v.'ith rich men, whether with the
godly or the ungodly, would thereby have received a decent,
and even honourable burial. This is so thoroughly sustained
by experience, as to need no confirmation from such passages
as Job xxi. 32. Hitzig has very good ground, therefore, for
opposing this " synonymous" explanation ; but when he adopts
the rendering lapsator, after the Arabic jjjui, this is quite as
much in opposition to Arabic usage (according to which
this word merely signifies a person who falls into error, and
makes a mistake in speaking), as it is to the Hebrew. Ewald
changes T'K'y into ?''^V (a word which has no existence) ; and
Bottcher alters it into V] ''K'y, which is comparatively the best
suggestion of all. Hofmann connects the two wdrds vnioa T'E'yj
" men who have become rich through the murders that they
have treacherously caused" (though without being able to ad-
duce any proof that motli is ever applied to the death which one
person inflicts upon another). At any rate, all these attempts
spring from the indisputable assumption, that to be rich is not
328 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
in itself a sin wliicli deserves a dishonourable hui-ial, to say
nothing of its receiving one. If, therefore, D''j;Bn and '\''^y are
not kindred ideas, they must be antithetical ; but it is no easier
to establish a purely ethical antithesis than an ethical coinci-
dence. If, however, we take the word D'yiy'T as suggesting the
idea of persons found guilty, or criminals (an explanation which
the juridical context of the passage well sustains ; see at ch.
1. 9), we get a contrast which our own usage of speech also
draws between a rich man who is living in the enjoyment of
his own possessions, and a delinquent who has become im-
poverished to the utmost, through hatred, condemnation, ruin.
And if we reflect that the Jewish rulers would have given to
Jesus the same dishonourable burial as to the two thieves, but
that the Roman authorities handed over the body to Joseph the
Arimathsean, a " rich man" (Matt, xxvii. 57), who placed it
in the sepulchre in his own garden, we see an agreement at
once between the gospel history and the prophetic words, which
could only be the work of the God of both the prophecy and
its fulfilment, inasmuch as no suspicion could possibly arise of
there having been any human design of bringing the former
into conformity with the latter. But if it be objected, that
according to the parallel the 'dsJdr must be regarded as dead,
quite as much as the r^shd'lm, we admit the force of this
objection, and should explain it in this way : " They assigned
Him His grave with criminals, and after He had actually died
a martyr's death, with a rich man ;" i.e. He was to have lain
where the bodies of criminals lie, but He was really laid in a
grave that was intended for the corpse of a rich man.^ The
rendering adopted by Vitringa and others, " and He was with
a rich man in his death," is open to this objection, that such a
clause, to be quite free from ambiguity, would require T'B'VnNl
vmoa t<in. Hengstenberg and Stier very properly refer both
iri'l and nap, which must be repeated in thought, to the second
clause as well as the first. The rendering tumulum ejus must
be rejected, since hdmdii never has this meaning; and ''''^ba,
which is the pointing sustained by three Codd., would not be
mausolea, but a lofty burial-hill, after the fashion of the
Hiinengrdber (certain " giants' graves," or barrows, in Holstein
^ A clairvoyant once said of the Lord : " Died like a criminal ; buried
like a prince of the earth" (yid. Psychol, pp. 2C2, 364).
CHAP. LIII. 10. 329
and Saxony).^ 'n^D is a plur, exaggerativus here, as in Ezek.
xxviii. 10 (compare m'mothe in Ezek. xxviii. 8 and Jer. xvi. 4) ;
it is applied to a violent death, the very pain of which makes it
like dying again and again. The first clause states with whom
they at first assigned Him His grave ; the second with whom it
was assigned Him, after He had really died a painful death.
" Of course," as F. Philippi observes, " this was not a tliorough
compensation for the ignominy of having died the death of a
criminal ; but the honourable burial, granted to one who had
been ignominiously put to death, showed that there must be
something very remarkable about Him. It was the beginning
of the glorification which commenced with His death." If we
have correctly interpreted the second clause, tliere can be no
doubt in our minds, since we cannot shake the word of God
like a kaleidoscope, and multiply the sensus complex, as Stier
does, that ^^ ?V (= N? iK'N'i'y) does not mean " notwithstanding
that not," as in Job xvi. 17, but " because not," like 73"?J? in
Gen. xxxi. 20. The reason why the Servant of God received
such honourable treatment immediately after His ignominioosi
martyrdom, was to be found in His freedom from sin, in the
fact that He had done no wrong, and there was no deceit in
His mouth (LXX. and 1 Pet. ii. 22, where the clause is
correctly rendered ovBe evpedr) S6\o? iv rm aroftaTi avrov).
His actions were invariably prompted by pure love, and His
speech consisted of unclouded sincerity and truth.
The last turn in the prophecy, which commences here, carries
out ver. 6b still further, and opens up the background of His
fate. The gracious counsel of God for our salvation was
accomplished thus. Ver, 10. "And it pleased Jeliovah to bruise
Him, to afflict Him loith disease; if His soul would pay a tres-
pass-offering. He should see posterity, sJiould live long days, and
' The usage of the language shows clearly that hdmdh had originally
the meaning of " height" (e.g. 2 Sam. i. 19). The primary meanmg sug-
gested by Bottcher, of locus claustcs, septus (from DU = Dn3, j*€^), cannot
he sustained. We still hold that D3 is the expanded N3, and na3 an
ascent, steep place, or stair. In the Talmud, bdmdJi is equivalent to ^ufto;,
an altar, and nD''3 (Syr. him) equivalent to the fi^/ict of the orator and
judge ; liafioi, root /3«, like the Hebrew hdmdh, signifies literally an eleva-
tion, and actually occurs in the sense of a sepulchral hill, which this never
has, not even in Ezek. xliii. 7.
330 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the purpose of Jehovah should prosper through His hand. ' "TTIj?.
cannot possibly be equivalent to YHrij as Hitzig supposes. An
article appended to a noun never obliterates the fundamental
character of its form (not even in P.?!?). Nor does Bottcher's
suggestion, that we should read vnjl as an accusative of more
precise definition, commend itself ; for what would the article
do in that case % It is the hiphil of njn, like the Syriac agli
from gHo ; or rather, as even in Syriac this v^^ is equivalent to
a^biK, of N^n, 2 Chron. xvi. 12 (cf. D'Nii'nri), like 'ann in 2 Kings
xiii. 6 aud Jer. xxxii. 35, from KOn. iK3T is placed under N3'l
(=iK3'i with Dag. dirimens) in Gesenius' Lexicon ; but this
substantive is a needless fiction. 1N3T is an inf. piel : conterere
"um (Jerome), not KaOapiaai aiirov (LXX. from N3'n = n3f).
According to Mic. vi. 13 (^nian ^n^^nn, I hurt to smite thee, i.e.
I smite thee with a painful blow), vnn iss'n are apparently con-
nected, in the sense of " And it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him
painfully." But both logically and syntactically this would
require the opposite construction, viz. 1X3T Wn. iS3'n must
therefore be an infinitive, depending upon Y^^, according to
Job xxxiii. 32 (^evSoKTjcre; the LXX. thoughtlessly renders it
fiovKerai). The infinitive construction is then changed into the
finite; for even "hnn is subordinate to |'sn, as in Hos. v. 11 (cf. ch.
xlii. 21 ; Ges. § 142, 3); "he would, made ill," being equiva-
lent to " he would make ill," i.e. he would plunge into distress.
There is no necessity to repeat 1N3T after '^nn, in the sense of
"he caused sore evil therewith," viz. with the 1K^^. It was
men who inflicted upon the Servant of God such crushing
suffering, such deep sorrow ; but the supreme caiisa efficiens in
the whole was God, who made the sin of men subservient to
His pleasure. His will, and predetermined counsel. The suffer-
ing of His Servant was to be to Him the way to glory, and this
way of His through suffering to glory was to lead to the estab-
lishment of a church of the redeemed, which would spring
from Him; in other words, it would become the commencement
of that fulfilment of the divine plan of salvation which He, the
ever-living, ever-working One, would carry out to completion.
We give up the idea that D''KW is to be taken as addressed by
Jehovah to " His Servant." The person acting is the Servant,
and it is to Jehovah that the action refers. But Hofmann's
present view, viz. that tdsim is addressed to the people, is still
CHAP. LIII. 10. 331
less admissible. It is the people who are speaking here ; and
although the confession of the penitent Israel runs on from
ver. 11 (where the confessing retrospective view of the past
becomes a prospective and prophetic glance at the futui'e) in a
direct prophetic tone, and ver. 10 might form the transition to
this ; yet, if the people were addressed in this word tdsim, it
would be absolutely necessary that it should be distinctly men-
tioned in this connection. And is it really Israel which makes
the soul of the Servant an 'dshdm, and not rather the Servant
Himself? No doubt it is true, that if nothing further were
stated here than that " the people made the life of the Servant
of God , an 'dshdm, inasmuch as it treated Him just as if it
had a pricking in its conscience so long as it suffered Him to
live," — which is a natural sequel in Hofmann's case to his false
assumption, that the passion described in ch. liii. was merely
the culminating point in the sufferings which the Servant was
called to endure as a prophet, whereas the prophet falls into the
background here behind the sacrifice and the priest, — we should
no doubt have one scriptural testimony less to support the
satisfactio vicaria} But if we adopt the following rendering,
which is the simplest, and the one least open to exception : if
His soul offered (placed, i.e. should have placed; cf. Job xiv. 14,
si mortuus fuerit) an 'dshdm, — it is evident that 'dshdm has
here a sacrificial meaning, and indeed a very definite one, inas-
much as the 'dshdm (the trespass-offering) was a sacrifice, the
character of which was very sharply defined. It is self-evident,
however, that the 'dshdm paid by the soul of the Servant must
consist in the sacrifice of itself, since He pays it by submitting
to a violent death ; and a sacrifice presented by the nephesh (the
soul, the life, the very self) must be not only one which pro-
^ In the first edition of Hofmann's Schriffbeweis (i. 2, 137), in -which
he regarded taslm as addressed to God, he set aside the orthodox view with
the remark, that God Himself makes good the injury that men have done
to Him by giving up the life of His Servant. In the second edition (i. 2,
208) he supposes the people to be addressed, and it is therefore the people
who make the Servant's life an 'dshdm. The iirst edition contained the
following correct definition oi' dshdm: "In general, it denotes what one
person pays to make good an injury done by him to another." Thfe ex-
position which follows above will show how we are forced to adopt the
orthodox view, if we adhere to this definition and regard the Servant Him-
self as presenting the 'dshdm.
332 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ceeds from itself, but one which consists in itsell. If, then, we
would understand the point of view in which the self-sacrifice
of the Servant of God is placed when it is called an ^dshdm, we
must notice very clearly the characteristic distinction between
this kind of sacrifice and every other. Many of the ritual
distinctions, however, may be indicated superficially, inasmuch
as they have no bearing upon the present subject, where we
have to do with an antitypical and personal sacrifice, and not
with a typical and animal one. The 'usJtdin was a sanctissimum,
like that of the sin-offering (Lev. vi. 10, 17, and xiv. 13), and
according to Lev. vii. 7 there was " one law" for them both.
This similarity in the treatment was I'estricted simply to the
fact, that the fat portions of the trespass-offering, as well as
of the sin-offering, were placed upon the altar, and that the
remainder, as in the case of those sin-offerings the blood of
which was not taken into the interior of the holy place, was
assigned to the priests and to the male members of the priestly
families (see Lev. vi. 22, vii. 6). There were the following
points of contrast, however, between these two kinds of sacrifice:
(1.) The material of the sin-offerings varied considerably, consist-
ing sometimes of a bullock, sometimes of a pair of doves, and
even of meal without oil or incense; whereas the trespass-offering
always consisted of a ram, or at any rate of a male sheep. (2.) The
choice of the victim, and the course adopted with its blood, was
regulated in the case of the sin-offering according to the condi-
tion of the offerer ; but in the case of the trespass-offering they
were neither of them affected by this in the slightest degree.
(3.) Sin-offerings were presented by the congregation, and upon
holy days, whereas trespass-offerings were only presented by
individuals, and never upon holy days. (4.) In connection with
the trespass-offering there was none of the smearing of the
blood (n'thindh) or of the sprinkling of the blood (Jiazzd'dli)
connected with the sin-offering, and the pouring out of the
blood at the foot of the altar (sh'phikhdli) is never mentioned.
The ritual for the blood consisted purely in the swinging out
of the blood {sfnqdii), as in the case of the whole offering and
of the peace-offerings. There is only one instance in which
the blood of the trespass-offering is ordered to be smeared, viz.
upon certain portions of the body of the leper (Lev. xiv. 14),
for which the blood of the sin-offering that was to be applied
CHAP. LIU. 10. 333
exclusively to the altar could not be used. And in general we
find that, in the case of the trespass-offering, instead of the
altar-ritual, concerning which the law is very brief (Lev. vii.
1-7), other acts that are altogether peculiar to it are brought
prominently into the foreground (Lev. v. 14 sqq. ; Num. v.
5-8). These are all to be accounted for from the fact that a
trespass-offering was to be presented by the man who had un-
intentionally laid hands upon anything holy, e.g. the tithes or
first-fruits, or who had broken any commandment of God " in
ignorance" (if indeed this is to be taken as the meaning of the
expression " and wist it not" in Lev. v. 17-19) ; also by the man
who had in any way defrauded his neighbour (which was re-
garded as unfaithfulness towards Jehovah), provided he antici-
pated it by a voluntary confession, — this included the violation
of another's conjugal rights in the case of a bondmaid (Lev.
xix. 20-22) ; also by a leper or a Nazarite defiled by contact
with a corpse, at the time of their purification, because their
uncleanness involved the neglect and interruption of the duties
of worship which they were bound to observe. Wherever a
material restitution was possible, it was to be made with the
addition of a fifth ; and in the one case mentioned in Lev. xix.
20-22, the trespass-offering was admissible even after a judicial
punishment had been inflicted. But in every case the guilty
person had to present the animal of the trespass-offering "ac-
cording to thy valuation, O priest, in silver shekels," i.e. accord-
ing to the priest's taxation, and in holy coin. Such was the
prominence given to the person of the priest in the ritual of
the trespass-offering. In the sin-offering the priest is always
the representative of the offerer ; but in the trespass-offering
he is generally the representative of God. The trespass-offer-
ing was a restitution or compensation made to God in the
person of the priest, a payment or penance which made amends
for the wrong done, a satisfactio in a disciplinary sense. And
this is implied in the name : for just as nxLin denotes first the
sin, then the punishment of the sin and the expiation of the
sin, and hence the sacrifice which cancels the sin ; so 'dslidm
signifies first the guilt or debt, then the compensation or
penance, and hence (cf. Lev. v. 15) the sacrifice which dis-
charges the debt or guilt, and sets the man free. Every species
of sacrifice had its own primary idea. The fundamental idea
334 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of the "oldh (burnt-offering) was ablatio, or the offering of
worship ; that of the shHdmlm (peace-offerings), conciliatio, or
the knitting of fellowship ; that of the minchdh (meat-offering),
donatio, or sanctifying consecration ; that of the chattdHK (sin-
offering), expiatio, or atonement ; that of the 'dshdm (trespass-
offering), mulcta (satisfactio), or a compensatory payment. The
self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah may be presented under
all these points of view. It is the complete antitype, the truth,
the object, and the end of all the sacrifices. So far as it is the
antitype of the " whole offering," the central point in its anti-
typical character is to be found in the offering of His entire
personality (Trpoa-^opa tov a-wfiaro^, Heb. x. 10) to God for a
sweet smeUing savour (Eph. v. 2) ; so far as it is the antitype
of the sin-offering, in the shedding of His blood (Heb. ix. 13,
14), the « blood of sprinkling" (Heb. xii. 24 ; 1 Pet. i. 2) ; so
far as it is the antitype of the sh'ldmim, and especially of the
passover, in the sacramental participation in His one self-sacri-
fice, which He grants to us in His courts, thus applying to us
His own redeeming work, and confirming our fellowship of
peace with God (Heb. xiii. 10 ; 1 Oor. v. 7), since the shHdmim
derive their name from shdlom, pax, communio ; so far as it is
the antitype of the trespass-offering, in the equivalent rendered
to the justice of God for the sacrileges of our sins. The idea
of compensatory payment, which Hofmann extends to the
whole sacrifice, understanding by Upper the covering of the
guilt in the sense of a debt (debilum), is peculiar to the 'dshdm ;
and at the same time an idea, which Hofmann cannot find in
the sacrifices, is expressed here in the most specific manner,
viz. that of satisfaction demanded by the justice of God, and
of poena outweighing the guilt contracted (cf. nirtsdh, ch. xl.
2) ; in other words, the idea of satisfactio vicaria in the sense
of Anselm is brought out most distinctly here, where the soul
of the Servant of God is said to present such an atoning sacri-
fice for the whole, that is to say, where He offers Himself as
such a sacrifice by laying down the life so highly valued by
God (ch. xlii. 1, xlix. 5). As the verb most suitable to the
idea of the 'dshdm the writer selects the verb sini, which is
generally used to denote the giving of a pledge (Job xvii. 3),
and is therefore the most suitable word for every kind of satis-
factio that represents a direct solutio. The apodoses to " if His
CHAP. LIII. 11. 335
soul shall have paid the penalty (poenam or mulctamy are ex-
pressed in the future, and therefore state what would take
place when the former should have been done. He should see
posterity (vid. Gen. 1. 23 ; Job xlii. 16), i.e. should become
possessed of a large family of descendants stretching far and
wide. The reference here is to the new " seed of Israel," the
people redeemed by Him, the church of the redeemed out of
Israel and all nations, of which He would lay the foundation.
Again, He should live long days, as He says in Eev. i. 18, "J
was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore." ^ Thirdly,
the pleasure of Jehovah should prosper " in His hand," i.e.
through the service of His mediation, or (according to the
primary meaning of tsdlach) should go on advancing inces-
santly, and pressing on to the final goal. His self-sacrifice,
therefore, merely lays the foundation for a progressively self-
realizing " pleasure of the Lord," i.e. (cf. eh. xliv. 28) for the
realization of the purpose of God according to His determinate
counsel, the fuller description of which we had in ch. xlii. and
xlix., where it was stated that He should be the mediator of a
new covenant, and the restorer of Israel, the light of the Gen-
tiles and salvation of Jehovah even to the ends of the earth.
This great work of salvation lies as the great object of His
calling in the hand of the deceased and yet eternally living One,
and goes on victoriously through His mediation. He now reaps
the fruit of His self-sacrifice in a continuous priestly course.
Ver. 11. "Because of the travail of His soul, He will see, and
be refreshed; through His knowledge will He procure justice,
my righteous servant, for the many, and will take their iniquities
upon Himself" The prophecy now leaves the standpoint of
Israel's retrospective acknowledgment of the long rejected Ser-
vant of God, and becomes once more the prophetic organ of
God Himself, who acknowledges the servant as His own. The
min of ^DJ?? might be used here in its primary local significa-
tion, "far away from the trouble" (as in Job xxi. 9, for
example) ; or the temporal meaning which is derived from the
^ Knobel observes here : " The statement that a person &st offers
himself as a trespass-offermg, and then still lives for a long time, and still
continues working, is a very striking one ; but it may be explained on the
ground that the offerer is a plurality." But how are we to explain the
striking expression in our creed, " rose again from the dead ? "
336 THE PBOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
local would te also admissible, viz. " from the time of the
trouble," i.e. immediately after it (as in Ps. Ixxiii. 20) ; but
the causal sense is the most natural, viz. on account of, in
consequence of (as in Ex. ii. 23), which not only separates
locally and links together temporarily, but brings into intimate
connection. The meaning therefore is, "In conseqnence of the
trouble of His soul (i.e. trouble experienced not only in His
body, but into the inmost recesses of His soul). He will see,
satisfy Himself." Hitzig supphes 3il33 (Jer. xxix. 32) ; Knobel
connects W13, in opposition to the accents (like A. S. Th.
i/j,Tr\7)a-6^crerai iv rf} ryvwcrei, avrov), thus : " He looks at His
prudent work, and has full satisfaction therewith." But there
is nothing to supply, and no necessity to alter the existing
punctuation. The second verb receives its colouring from the
first ; the expression " He will see, will satisfy Himself," being
equivalent to " He will enjoy a satisfying or pleasing sight "
(cf. Ps. xvii. 15), whicli will consist, as ver. 106 clearly shows,
in the successful progress of the divine work of salvation, of
which He is the Mediator, inyia belongs to p^"^)^. as the medium
of setting right (cf. Prov. xi. 9). This is connected with ? in
the sense of "procure justice," like ? f<S"i (ch. vi. 10) ; ? n''jn in
ch. xiv. 3, xxviii. 12 (cf. Dan. xi. 33, p r?[?, to procure intelli-
gence; Gen. xlv. 7, ? n^nn, to prolong life, — a usage which leads
on to the Aramaean combination of the dative with the accusa-
tive, e.g. Job xxxvii. 18, corapai'e v. 2). Tsaddlq 'ablidi do not
stand to one another in the relation of a proper name and a
noun in apposition, as Plofmann thinks, nor is this expression
to be interpreted according to 11'n ^?l|i] (Ges. § 113) ; but " a
righteous man, my servant," with the emphatic prominence
given to the attribute (cf. ch. x. 30, xxlii. 12, Ps. Ixxxix. 51), is
equivalent to " my righteous servant." But does inyiD mean
per cognitioneni siti, or per cognitionem sitam ? The former
gives a sense which is both doctrinally satisfying and prac-
tically correct : the Righteous One makes others partakers of
righteousness, through their knowledge of Him, His person,
and His work, and (as the biblical V"]), which has reference not
only to the understanding, but to personal experience also,
clearly signifies) through their entrance into living fellowship
with Him. Nearly all the commentators, who understand by
the servant of God the Divine Kedeemer, give the preference
CHAP. LIII. 11. 337
to this explanation {e.g. Vitringa, Hengstenbei'g, and Stier).
But the meaning preferred is not always the correct one. The
subjective rendering of the suffix (cf. Prov. xxii. 17) is favoured
by Mai. ii. 7, where it is said that "the priest's lips should keep
daath (knowledge) ;" by Dan. xii. 3, where faithful teachers are
called matsdiqe hdrabblm (they that turn many to righteous-
ness) ; and by ch. xi. 2, according to which " the spirit of
knowledge " (rudch daath) is one of the seven spirits that de-
scend upon the sprout of Jesse ; so that " knowledge" (daath)
is represented as equally the qualification for the priestly, the
prophetic, and the regal calling. It is a very unseemly remark,
therefore, on the part of a modern commentator, when he
speaks of the subjective knowledge of the Servant as " halting
weakly behind in the picture, after His sacrificial death has
already been described." We need only recal to mind the
■words of the Lord in Matt. xi. 27, which are not only recorded
both. by the synoptists and by John, but supported by testi-
moay outside the Gospels also : " No man knoweth the Son, but
the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." Let us
remember also, that the Servant of Jehovah, whose priestly
mediatorial work is unfolded before us here in ch. liii., upon
the ground of which He rises to more tlian regal glory (ch. Hi.
15, compare liii. 12), is no other than He to whom His God has
given the tongue of the learned, "to know how to speak a word
in season to him that is weary, i.e. to raise up the weary and
heavy laden" (ch. 1. 4). He knows God, with whom He
stands in loving fellowship ; He knows the counsels of His
love and the will of His grace, in the fulfilment of which His
own life ascends, after having gone down into death and come
forth from death ; and by virtue of this knowledge, which rests
upon His own truest and most direct experience, He, the
righteous Oce, will help "the many," i.e. the great mass
{hdrabblm as in Dan. ix. 27, xi. 33, 39, xii. 3 ; cf. Ex. xxiii. 2,
where rabhlm is used in the same sense without the article),
hence all His own nation, and beyond that, all mankind (so far
as they were susceptible of salvation; = roh 7roXXo?9, Eom.
V. 19, cf. TToXX&v, Matt. xxvi. 28), to a right state of life and
conduct, and one that should be well-pleasing to God. The
primary reference is to the righteousness of faith, which is the
VOL. U. T
338 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
consequence of justification on the ground of His atoning work,
when this is believingly appropriated ; but the expression also
includes that righteousness of life, which springs by an inward
necessity out of those sanctifying powers, that are bound up
with the atoning work which we have made our own (see Dan.
ix. 24). The ancients recognised this connection between the
justitia fidei et vitce better than many of the moderns, who look
askance at the Komish justitia infusa, and therewith boast of
advancing knowledge. Because our righteousness has its roots
in the forgiveness of sins, as an absolutely unmerited gift of
grace without works, the prophecy returns once more from the
justifying work of the Servant of God to His sin-expunging
work as the basis of all righteousness : " He shall bear their
iniquities." This yisbol (He shall bear), which stands along
with futures, and therefore, being also future itself, refers to
something to be done after the completion of the work to which
He is called in this life (with which Hofmann connects it),
denotes the continued operation of His s'ihdldm (ver. 4),
through His own active mediation. His continued lading of
our trespasses upon Himself is merely the constant presence
and presentation of His atonement, which has been offered once
for all. The dead yet living One, because of His one self-
sacrifice, is an eternal Priest, who now lives to distribute the
blessings that He has acquired.
The last reward of His thus working after this life for the
salvation of sinners, and also of His work in this life upon
which the former is founded, is victorious dominion. Ver. 12.
" Therefore I give Him a portion among the great, and with strong
ones will He divide spoil; because He has poured out His soul
into death: and He let Himself be reckoned among transgressors;
whilst He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the
transgressors." I The promise takes its stand between humiliation
and exaltation, and rests partly upon the working of the exalted
One, and partly upon the doing and suffering of One who was
so ready to sacrifice Himself.) Luther follows the LXX. and
Vulgate, and adopts the rendering, " Therefore will I give
Him a great multitude for booty;" and Havernick, Stier, and
others adopt essentially the same rendering, " Therefore will I
apportion to Him the many." But, as Job xxxix. 17 clearly
shows, this clause can only mean, " Therefore will I give Him
CHAP. LIII. 12. 339
a portion in the many." If, however, chillSq b' means to have
a portion in anything, and not to give the thing itself as a por-
tion, it is evident that Jidrabblm here are not the many, but the
great ; and this is favoured by the parallel clause. The ideas
of greatness and force, both in multitude and might, are bound
up together in rabh and 'dtsum (see ch. viii. 7), and the context
only can decide which rendering is to be adopted when these
ideas are separated from one another. What is meant by
" giving a portion bdrahhim," is clearly seen from such passages
as ch. lii. 15, xlix. 7, according to which the great ones of the
earth will be brought to do homage to Him, or at all eVents to
submit to Him. The second clause is rendered by Luther,
" and He shall 'have the strong for a prey." This is at any
rate better than the rendering of the LXX. and Vulgate, " et
fortium dividet spoUa" But Prov. xvi. 19 shows that DN is a
preposition. Strong ones surround Him, and fight along with
Him. The reference here is to the people of which it is said
in Ps. ex. 3, " Thy people are thorough devotion in the day of
Thy power ;" and this people, which goes with Him to battle,
and joins with Him in the conquest of the hostile powers of
the world (Rev. xix. 14), also participates in the enjoyment of
the spoils of His victory. With this victorious sway is He
rewarded, because He has poured out His soul unto death,
having not only exposed His life to death, but " poured out "
{lieSrdh, to strip or empty, or pour clean out, even to the very
last remnant) His life-blood into death (lammdvetJi like the
Lamed in Ps. xxii. 16), and also because He has suffered Him-
self to be reckoned with transgressors, i.e. numbered among
them (niph. tolerativum), namely, in the judgment of His
countrymen, and in the unjust judgment (mishpdt) by which
He was delivered up to death as a wicked apostate and trans-
gressor of the law. With KWl there is attached to D''Jff S-riKI^
njDJ (He was numbered with the transgressors), if not in a
subordinate connection (Hke Kini in ver. 5 ; compare ch. x. 7),
the following antithesis : 'lie submitted cheerfully to the death
of a sinner, and yet He was no sinner, but " bare the sin of
many (cf. Heb. ix. 28), and made intercession for the trans-
gressors.y Many adopt the rendering, "and He takes away
the sin of many, and intervenes on behalf of the transgressors."
But in this connection the preterite ii^^ can only relate to some-
340 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
tiling antecedent to tlie foregoing future, so that J?''iS^ denotes a
connected past ; and thus have the LXX. and Vulg. correctly
rendered it. Just as 3 V^^'} in ver. 6b signifies to cause to fall
upon a person, so in Jer. xv. 11 it signifies to make one ap-
proach another (in supplication). Here, however, as in ch. lix.
16, the hipMl is not a causative, hut has the intensive force of
the kal, viz. to press forward vv'ith entreaty, hence to intercede
(with a Lamed of the person on whose hehalf it occurs). Ac-
cording to the cons, temporum, the reference is not to the inter-
cession (eVreM^t?) of the glorified ,One, but to that of the suffering
One, on behalf of His foes. Every word stands here as if
written beneath the cross on Golgotha. And this is the case
with the clause before us, which was fulfilled (though not exclu-
sively) in the prayer of the crucified Saviour: "Father, forgive
them ; for they know not what they do " (Luke xxiii. 34).
" The prophetic view," says Oehler, who agrees with us in
the general opinion that the idea of the Servant of Jehovah has
three distinct stages, " ascends in these discourses step by step,
as it were, from the one broad space covered by the foundation-
walls of a cathedral up to the very summit with its giddy height,
on which the cross is planted ; and the nearer it reaches the
summit, the more conspicuous do the outlines of the cross
itself become, until at last, when the summit is reached, it rests
in peace, having attained what it desired when it set its foot
upon the first steps of the temple tower." There is something
very striking in this figure. Here, in the very centre of this
book of consolation, we find the idea of the Servant of Jehovah
at the very summit of its ascent. It has reached the goal. The
Messianic idea, which was hidden in the general idea of the
nation regarded as "the servant of Jehovah," has gradually
risen up in the most magnificent metamorphosis from the
depths in which it was thus concealed. And this fusion has
generated what was hitherto altogether strange to the figure of
the Messiah, viz. the unio mystica capitis et corporis. Hitherto
Israel has appeared simply as the nation governed by the
Messiah, the army -uhich He conducted into battle, the com-
monwealth ordered by Him. But now, in the person of the
Servant of Jehovah, we see Israel itself in personal self-mani-
festation : the idea of Israel is fully realized, and the true
nature of Israel shines forth in all its brilliancy. Israel is
CHAP. LIU. 12. 341
the tody, and He the head, towering above it. Another
element, with which we found the Messianic idea enriched
even before ch. liii., was the munus triplex. As eariy as
eh. vii.-xit. the figure of the Messiah stood forth as the
figure of a King ; but the Prophet like unto Moses, promised
in Deut. xviii. 15, was still wanting. But, according to ch.
xlii., xlix., 1., the servant of Jehovah is first a prophet, and as
the proclaimer of a new law, and the mediator of a new cove-
nant, really a second Moses; at the close of the work appointed
Him, however. He receives the homage of kings, whilst, as
ch. liii. clearly shows, that self-sacrifice lies between, on the
ground of which He rules above as a Priest after the order of
Melchizedek, — in other words, a Priest and also a King. From
this point onward there are added to the Messianic idea the
further elements of the status duplex and the satisfactio vicaria.
David was indeed the type of the twofold state of his antitype,
inasmuch as it was through suffering that he reached the
throne ; but where have we found, in all the direct Messianic
prophecies anterior to this, the suffering path of the JEcce Homo
even to the grave I But the Servant of Jehovah goes through
shame to glory, and through death to life. He conquers when
He falls ; He rules after being enslaved ; He lives after He
has died ; He completes His work after He Himself has been
apparently cut off. His glory streams upon the dark ground of
the deepest hnmiliation, to set forth which the dark colours were
supplied by the pictures of suffering contained in the Psalms
and in the book of Job. And these sufferings of His are
not merely the sufferings of a confessor or a martyr, like those
of the ecclesia pressa, but a vicarious atoning suffering, a sacri-
fice for sin. To this the chapter before us returns again and
again, being never tired of repeating it. " Spiritus Sanctus"
says Brentius, " non delectatur inani ^arroKojia, et tamen quum
in hoc cap. videatur ^arToXoyo? Kal ravroXoyoqesse, dubium non
est, quin tractet rem cognitu maxime necessariam." The banner
of the cross is here set up. The curtain of the most holy is
lifted higher and higher. The blood of the typical sacrifice,
which has been hitherto dumb, begins to speak. Faith, which
penetrates to the true meaning of the prophecy, hopes on not
only for the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but also for the Lamb
of God, which beareth the sin of the world. And in pro-
342 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
phecy itself we see the after-effect of this gigantic advance.
Zechariah no longer prophesies of the Messiah merely as a
king (eh. vi. 13) ; He not only rules upon His throne, but is
also a priest upon His throne : sovereignty and priesthood go
hand in hand, being peacefully united in Him. And in Zech.
xii. 13 the same prophet predicts in Him the good Divine
Shepherd, whom His people pierce, though not without thereby
fulfilling the counsel of God, and whom they afterwards long
for with bitter lamentation and weeping. The penitential and
believing confession which would then be made by Israel is
prophetically depicted by Isaiah's pen — "mourning in bitter
sorrow the lateness of its love."
SIXTH PEOPHHCY.— Chap, liv,
THE GLOKT OF JERUSALEM, THE CHURCH OF THE SERVANTS
OF JEHOVAH.
After the " Servant of God" has expiated the sin of His
people by the sacrifice of Himself, and Israel has acknowledged
its fault in connection with the rejected One, and entered into
the possession and enjoyment of the salvation procured by Him,
the glory of the church, which has thus become a partaker of
salvation through repentance and faith, is quite ready to burst
forth. Hence the prophet can now exclaim, ver. 1 : " Exult,
harren one, thou that didst not bear ; break forth into exulting, and
cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child : for there are more
children of the solitary one than children of the married wife, saith
Jehovah" The words are addressed to Jerusalem, which was a
counterpart of Sarah in her barrenness at first, and her fruit-
fulness afterwards (ch. li. 1-3). She is not ^5??? ^ '^'^iJJ'. (Job
xxiv. 21), but rrh\ ^ n-jijSJ (Judg. xiii. 2) ; not indeed that she
had never had any children, but during her captivity and exile
she had been robbed of her children, and as a holy city had
given birth to no more (ch. xlix. 21). She was shomemdhy
rendered solitary (2 Sam. xiii. 20 ; the allusion is to her de-
population as a city), whereas formerly she was ™V3, i.e.
enjoyed the fellowship of Jehovah her husband (ba'al). But
this condition would not last (for Jehovah had not given her
a divorce) : she was therefore to exult and shout, since the
CHAP. LIV. 2, 8. 343
number of children which she would now have, as one desolate
and solitary, would be greater than the number of those which
she had as a married wife.
With this prospect before her, even her dwelling-place
would need enlarging. Ver. 2. " Enlarge the space of thy tent,
and let them stretch out the curtains of thy habitations ; forhid
not I lengthen thy cords j and fasten tJiy plitgs." She is to widen
out the space inside her tent, and they (113^ has no definite sub-
ject, which is often the case where some subordinate servant is
to be thought of) are to spread out far and wide the coverings
of the framework of her dwelling, which is called mishFnoth
(in the plural) on account of its roominess and magnificence :
she is not to forbid it, thinking in her weakness of faith, " It is
good enough as it is ; it would be too large." The cords whic^i
hold up the walls, she is to lengthen ; and the plugs, to which
the cords are fastened, she is to ram fast into the earth : the
former because the tent (i.e. the holy city, Jer. xxxi. 38-40,
and the dwelling-place of the churcli generally, ch. xxvi. 15)
has to receive a large number of inhabitants; the latter be-
cause it will not be broken up so soon again (ch. xxxiii. 20).
The reason why the tent is to be so large and strong is
given in ver. 3 : " For thou wilt break forth on the right and on
. the left ; and thy seed will take possession of nations, and they
will people desolate cities." " On the right and on the left" is
equivalent to "on the south and north" (Ps. Ixxxix. 13, the
speaker being supposed to have his face turned towards the
east : compare the . Sanscrit apdn, situated at the back, i.e.
towards, the west). We must supply both west and east, since
the promises contained in such passages as Gen. xv. 18-21
remained unfulfilled even in the age of David and Soloqion.
Jerusalem will now spread out, and break through all her
former bounds {pdrats is used in the same sense in Gen.
xxviii. 14) ; and her seed (i.e. the seed acquired by the Servant
of Jehovah, the dead yet eternally living One, the a-Tripfia,
whose airepfia He Himself is) will take possession of nations
(ydrash, ydresh, capessere, occupare ; more especially Kk'qpovo-
(leiv, syn. ndchal); and they (i.e. the children born to her) will
people desolate cities (JwsMbh, the causative of ydshabh, to be
inhabited, ch. xiii. 20). Thus will the promise be fulfilled, that
" the meek shall inherit the earth," — a promise not confined to
344 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the Preacher on the mount, but found also in Ps. xxxvii. 9-11,
and uttered by our own prophet in ch. Ix. 21, Ixv. 9.
The encouraging promise is continued in ver. 4 : " Fear
not, for thou wilt not be put to shame; and hid defiance to
reproach, for thou wilt not Mush: no, thou wilt forget the shame
of thy youth, and wilt no more remember the reproach of thy
widowhood^ Now that redemption was before the door, Israel
was not to fear any more, or to be overcome (as the niphal
nikhlam implies) by a feeling of the shfime consequent upon
her state of punishment, or so to behave herself as to leave no
room for hope. For a state of things was about to commence,
in which she would have no need to be ashamed (on bosh and
chdpher or heehpir, see vol. i. p. 108, note), but which, on the
contrary ('?, imo, as in ch. x. 7, Iv. 9), would be so glorious
that she would forget the shame of her youth, i.e. of the Egyp-
tian bandage, in which the national community of Israel was
still but like a virgin Qalmdh), who entered into a betrothal
when redeemed by Jehovah, and became His youthful wife
through a covenant of love (ehe = b'nth) when the law was
given at Sinai (Jer. ii. 2 ; Ezek. xvi. 60) ; so glorious indeed,
that she would never again remember the shame of her widow-
hood, i.e. of the Babylonian captivity, in which she, the wife
whom Jehovah had taken to Himself, was like a widow whose
husband had died.
It was no real widowhood, however, but only an apparent
one (Jer. h. 5), for the husband of Jerusalem was living still.
Ver. 5. "For thy husband is thy Creator ; Jehovah of hosts is
His name ; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel ; God of
the whole earth is He called'' The plurals 'HvW and ^^.VV (see
at ch. xxii. 11) are to be explained from the plural 'Elohlm,
which is connected with plural attributes in Josh. xxiv. 19,
1 Sam. xvii. 26, Ps. Iviii. 12 (compare W'lD in ch. x. 15),
and with plural predicates in Gen. xx. 13, xxxv. 7, and 2 Sam.
vii. 23. By such expressions as these, which represent all
the plurality of the divine nature as inherent in the One, the
religion of revelation, both Israelitish and Christian, exhibits
itself as embodying all that is true in polytheism. He who
has entered into the relation of husband to Jerusalem (^vVb,
not ^vV?? ch. i. 3) is the very same through whom she first
came into existence, the God whose bidding the heavenly.
CUAP. LIV. 6-8. 345
hosts obey ; and the Eedeemer of Jerusalem, the Holy One of
Israel, is called the God of the whole earth, and therefore has
both the power and the means to help her, as prompted by the
relation of love which exists between them.
And this relation He now renews. Ver. 6. " For Jefiovah
calleth thee as a wife forsaken and burdened loith sorrow, and as
a wife of youth, when once she is despised, saith thy God." The
verb N"JiJ, which is the one commonly used in these prophecies
to denote the call of grace, on the ground of the election of
grace, is used here to signify the call into tliat relation, which
did indeed exist before, but had apparently been dissolved.
^^?'^ij' is used here out of pause (cf. ch. Ix. 9) ; it stands, how-
ever, quite irregularly for the form in ekJi, which is the one
commonly employed (Judg. iv. 20 ; Ezek. xxvii. 26). " And
as a wife :" HB'SI is equivalent to ^E'sai. The hypothetical
DNsn '3 belona;s to the figure. Jehovah calls His church back
to Himself, as a husband takes back the wife he loved in his
youth, even though he may once have been angry with her.
It is with intention that the word npsni is not used. The
future (imperfect) indicates what partially happens, but does
not become an accomplished or completed fact : He is dis-
pleased with her, but He has not cherished aversion or hatred
towards her.
Thus does Jehovah's displeasure towards Jerusalem pass
quickly away ; and all the more intense is the manifestation of
love which follows His merely momentary anger. Vers. 7, 8.
" For a small moment have I forsaken thee, and with great mercy
will I gather tJiee. In an effusion of anger I hid my face from
tliee for a moment, and with everlasting grace I have compassion
upon thee, saith Jehmali thy Redeemer." " For a small moment"
carries us to the time of the captivity, which was a small moment
in comparison with the duration of the tender and merciful love,
with which Jehovah once more received the church into His
fellowship in the person of its members. Vr>, in ver. 8a is not
an adverb, meaning momentarily, as in ch. xlvii. 9, but an accu-
sative of duration, signifying a single moment long. Ketseph
signifies wrath regarded as an outburst (fragor), like the
violence of a storm or a clap of thunder; shetseph, which
rhymes with it, is explained by A. Schultens, after the Arabic,
as signifying durum et asperum esse : and hence the rendering
346 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
adopted by Hitzig, " in hard harshness." But this yields no
antithesis to " everlasting kindness," which requires that shetseph
should be rendered in some way that expresses the idea of some-
thing transitory or of short duration. The earlier translators
felt this, when, like the LXX. for example, they adopted the
rendering ev Ovfiai fiiKpm, and others of a similar kind ; and
Ibn Labrit, in his writing against Menahem b. Zeruk, who
gives chffri, burning heat, as a gloss to shetseph, explains it by
t3VD (as Kimchi and others did afterwards). But, as Jakob Tarn
correctly observes, " this makes the sense purely tautological."
In all probability, shdisaph is a form allied to shdtaph, as
ndsJiabh (ch. xl. 7) is to ndshaph (ch. xl. 24), and qdmat (Job
xvi. 8) to qdmats, which stand in the same relation to one
another, so far as the sense is concerned, as bubbling over to
flowing over : so that the proper rendering would not be " in
the overflowing of glowing heat," as Umbreit thinks, which
would require ^^Sp ^l^B"! (Prov. xxvii. 4), but in the gushing up
of displeasure, the overflowing of indignation (Meier). The
ketseph is only a shetseph, a vanishing moment (Jer. in momento
indignationis), when compared with the true feeling of Jehovah
towards Jerusalem, which is chesed 'oldra, everlasting kindness.
The ground of this '^ everlasting kindness " is given in
ver. 9 : " For it is now as at the waters of Noah, when I swore
that the waters of Noah sJwuld not overflow the earth any more ;
so have I sworn not to be wroth with thee, and not to threaten
thee." The commencement of this verse has been a fluctuating
one from the earliest times. The Sept. reading is ''B'O ; that of
the Targ., S., Jerome, Syriac, and Saad., "'D'3 ; and even the
Codd. read sometimes "'?"'3, sometimes "'D^3 (compare Matt.
xxiv. 37, Sjcnrep at ■^fiepat tov N&e, oSto)?, k.t.X., — a passage
which appears to derive its shape from the one before us, with
the reading ^D'a, and which is expounded in Luke xvii. 26).
If we read ^D^J, the word riNt must refer to the present, as the
turning-point between wrath and mercy ; but if we read iD'iJ,
riNt denotes the pouring out of wrath in connection with the
captivity. Both readings are admissible ; and as even the
Septuagint, with its airo tov vBaTo<; (from the water), gives an
indirect support to the reading "'??"'? as one word, this may
probably merit the preference, as the one best sustained. IK'N
is uM, quum, as in Num. xx. 13, Ps. xcv. 9, etc., although it
CHAP. LIV. 9. 347
might also be taken as the correlate of the hen which follows,
as in Jer. xxxiii. 22 (cf. xlviii. 8) ; and in accordance with the
accents, we prefer the former. The present turning-point
resembles, in Jehovah's esteem, the days of Noah, — those days
in which He swore that a flood should not any more come upon
the earth (min as in ch. v. 6 and many other passages) : for
so does. He now confirm with an oath His fixed purpose that
no such jndgment of wrath as that which has just been
endured shall ever fall upon Jerusalem again (ly^ denotes
threatening with a judicial word, which passes at once into
effect, as in ch. li. 20). Hendewerk has the following quibbling
remark here : " What the comparison with the fiood is worth,
we may gather from the later history, which shows how soon tbe
new Jerusalem and the renovated state succumbed to the judicial
wrath of God again." To this we reply : (1.) That the prophecy
refers to the converted Israel of the last days, whose Jerusalem
will never be destroyed again. These last days appear to the
prophet, according to the general character of all prophecy, as
though linked on to the close of the captivity. For tlirougliout
all prophecy, along with the far-sightedness imparted by the
Spirit, there was also a short-sightedness which the Spirit did
not remove; that is to say, the directly divine element of insight
into the future was associated with a human element of hope,.
which was nevertheless also indirectly divine, inasmuch as it
subserved the divine plan of salvation ; and this hope brought,
as it were, the far distant future into the closest proximity with
the troubled present. If, then, we keep this in mind, we shall
see that it was quite in order for the prophet to behold the final
future on the very edge of the present, and not to see the long
and undulating way between. (2.) The Israel which has been
plunged by the Romans into the present exile of a thousand
years is that part of the nation (Rom. xi. 25), which has thrust
away the eternal mercy and the unchangeable covenant of
peace ; but this rejection has simply postponed, and not pre-
vented, the full realization of the salvation promised to Israel
as a people. The covenant still exists, primarily indeed as an
offer on the part of Jehovah, so that it rests with Israel whether
it shall continue one-sided or not ; but all that is wanted on the
part of Israel is faith, to enable it to exchange the shifting soil
of its present exile for the rocky foundation of that covenant
348 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of peace which has encircled the ages since the captivity (see
Hag. ii. 9), as the covenant with Noah encircled those after
the flood with the covenant sign of the rainbow in the cloud,
Ver. 10. "For the mo.mtains may depart, and ilie hills may
shake ; my grace will not depart from thee, and my covenant of
peace will not shake, saith Jehovah who hath compassion on
thee" Jehovah's grace and covenant of peace (cf. Num.
sxv. 12) stand as firm as the mountains of God (Ps. xxxvi. 7),
without departing from Jerusalem (^PiNl? instead of the usual
TinsD) and without shaking ; and they will be fulfilled. This
fulfilment will not take place either by force or by enchant-
ment; but the church which is to be glorified must pass through
sufferings, until it has attained the form which answers to the
glory promised to it on oath. And this will also take place; for
the old Jerusalem will come forth as a new one out of the
furnace of afiliction. Vers. 11, 12. " thou afflicted, tossed
with tempest, not comforted, behold, I lay thy stones in stibium,
and lay thy foundations with sapjjhires ; and make thy minarets
of ruby, and thy gates into carbuncles, and all thy botmdary into
jewels" At the present time the church, of which Jerusalem
is the metropolis, is sunk in misery, driven with tempest like
chaff of the threshing-floor (Hos, xiii. 3), without comfort ;
because till now it has waited in vain for any act of consolation
on the part of God, and has been scorned rather than com-
forted by man (iTiyb is a, part, kal, not pual ; and nonp 3d pers.
prcBt. like n3r3;3,'ch. Ixii. 12, and nom, Hos. i. 6, iC'6). But
this will be altered ; Jerusalem will rise again from the dust,
like a glorious building of God. Jerome makes the following
apt remark on ver. 11&; "in stibio, i.e. in the likeness of an
elegant woman, who paints her eyes with stibium ; referring
to the beauty of the city." Pukh is eye-black (kohl, cf. kdchal,
Ezek. xxiii. 40), i.e. a sooty compound, the chief component of
which was powdered antimony, or else manganese or lead, and
with which oriental women coloured their eyebrows, and more
particularly the eyelids both above and below the eyes, that the
beauty of the latter might be all the more conspicuous (2 Kings
ix. 30). The classic ^vko<;, fucus, has a meaning foreign to the
Hebrew word, viz. that of rouge for the cheeks. If, then,
stibium (antimony), or any blackening coUyrium generally,
Bei-ved the purpose of mortar in the rebuilding of Jerusalem,
CHAP. LIV. 11, 12. 349
the stones of its walls (not its foundation-stones, ^)^^^, which is
the reading adopted by Ewald, but, on the contrary, the visible
stones of its towering walls) would look like the eyes of a
woman shining forth from the black framework of their
painted lids, i.e. they would stand out in splendour from their
dark ground. The Beth in bassapplrim indicates the means
employed. Sapphires serve as foundation-stones, for the
foundation of Jerusalem stands as immoveably- firm as the
covenant of God. The sapphire blue is the colour of the
heaven, of revelation, and of the covenant. The sh^mdslioth,
however, i.e. the minarets which, stand out like rays of the sun,
and also the gates, have a red appearance. Red is the colour
of blood, and hence of life and of imperishableness ; also the
colour of fire, and of ligbtning, and hence of wrath and victory.
Jehovah makes the minarets of " ruby." The Sept. and
Jerome adopt the rendering iaspidem (a jasper) ; at any rate,
lb"]! (which is the proper way of writing the word : Ewald,
§ 48, c^) is a red sparkling jewel (from kidked; cf. Mdod, scin-
tilla). The arches of the gates He forms of TiipK ija^j stones
of fiery splendour (from qddacli, to burn : hence qaddacliath,
Tcvperoi), that is to say, of carbuncle stones (from carhunculus,
a small red-hot coal), like ruby, garnet, etc. Jerome has
adopted the false rendering lapides sculptos, after Symra. \idoi
'yXv<j)r]i (from nip = 'l1p, findere?). The accusative of the
predicate 1313 is interchanged with mpN ''J3K7, and then with
}"sn"'J3Np, to denote the materia eoa qua. The whole territory
(precinct) of Jerusalem is turned by Jehovah into precious
stones, that is to say, it appears to be paved with such stones,
just as in Tobit xiii. 17 the streets are said to be "paved with
beryl, and carbuncle, and stones of Ophir," i.e. to be covered
with a mosaic formed of precious stones. It is upon the
passage before us that Tobit xiii. 16, 17, and Eev. xxi. 18-21,
are founded. The motley colours of the precious stones, with
which the new Jerusalem is adorned, are something more than
* The first 3 is dagessatum, the second raphatum : see Norzi. The word
forms one of the eighteen which have a dagesh after a word ending with
a vowel sound (i)123D Ni'3 XV'n' 1)13 \''t>:'^) : see Masora Magna on Dan.
T. 11, and Heidenheim's D''Dj;t2n ''DpB'D, 41a. The object is to secure
greater euphony, as in B>iD2133 (N?n), ch. x. 9, which is one of the
eighteen words.
350 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
a mere childish fancy. "Whence, then, do the precious stones
derive their charm? The ultimate ground of this charm is
the fact, that in universal nature everything presses to the
light, and that in the mineral world the jewels represent the
highest stage of this ascending process. It is the self-unfold-
ing process of the divine glory itself, which is reflected typo-
logically in the several gradations of the manifold play of
colours and the transparency of the precious stones. For this
reason, the high priest wore a breastplate with twelve precious
stones, upon which were the names of the twelve tribes of
Israel ; and for this same reason, the author of the Apocalypse
carries out into detail in ch. xxi. the picture of the new
Jerusalem, which is here sketched by the prophet of the Old
Testament (without distinguishing time from eternity), adding
crystals and pearls to the precious stones which he there men-
tions one by one. How can all this be explained, except on
the ground that even the mineral world reflects the glory of
those eternal lights from which God is called the " Father of
lights," or except on the assumption that the saints in light will
one day be able to translate these stony types into the words
of God, out of which they have their being ?
The outward glory of the city is only the manifestation,
which strikes the senses, of the spiritual glory of the church
dwelling therein. Ver. 13. '* And all thy children loill he the
learned of Jehovah ; and great the peace of thy children^ We
translate both halves of the verse as substantive clauses, al-
though they might be accusatives of both the object and pre-
dicate, dependent upon ''Rl??'. 'H '''}y^. are disciples of Jehovah,
but, as in ch. 1. 4, with the subordinate idea of both docility and
learning. The children of Jerusalem will need no instruction
from man, but carry within them the teaching of heaven, as
those who are " taught of God" (hihaKTol Qeov, John vi. 45 ;
BeohihaKToo, 1 Thess. iv. 9). Essentially the same promise is
given in Joel iii. 1, 2, and Jer. xxxi. 34 ; and represented in
1 John ii. 20 (" Ye have the anointing of the Holy One, and
know all things") as already fulfilled. In the place of the
former inward and outward distress, there has now entered
shdlom, perfect inward and outward peace, complete salva-
tion, and blessedness as its result. ST is an adjective, for
this form cannot be shown to have existed as a syncopated
CHAP. LIV. 14-17. 351
third pers. prcBt, like nE', in (= iin). The verse closes palin-
dromically.
In perfect keeping with this grace through righteousness,
Jerusalem will then stand firm and impregnable. Vers. 14, 15.
" Through righteousness wilt thou he fortified : he far from
anxiety, for thou hast nothing to fear; and from terror, for it will
not come near thee. Behold, men crowd together in crowds ; my
will is not there. Who crowd together against thee ? — Jie shall fall
hy thee." Both the thought and action of Jerusalem will be
righteousness then, and it will thereby acquire strength ; 'Mian
is a pausal future hithpalel, with the n of the reflective opening
syllable assimilated (Ges. § 53, 2, b). With this reciprocal in-
fluence of its moral character and imparted glory, it can, and
is to keep far away from all thought of oppression and terror ;
for, through divine grace and a corresponding divine nature, it
has nothing to fear. ][} (ver. 15a), when pointing to any trans-
action as possible (as, for example, in Job xii. 14, xxiii. 8),
acquires almost the significance of a conditional particle (Ewald,
§ 103, g). The equally hypothetical parallel clause is clothed in
the form of an interrogative. For the verb gur, the meaning
" to gather together " (related to l?^), more especially to join
together with hostile intention (cf. a-uvdrjeadai,, Rev. xix. 19,
XX. 8), is sustained by Ps. Ivi. 7, lix. 4 ; and with nna, lacessere,
it has nothing to do (Hitzig and Ewald). '^IPlS has the force of
contra te, as in the case of verbs of combat. The first apodosis
is this : " but it takes place entirely away from me," i.e. with-
out and against my will ; 'nif'O = 'J?''?? (as in ch. lix. 21), and
DniK = DHSj are no sure signs of a later usage; for this alter-
nation of the two forms of nx is met with as early as Josh. xiv. 12.
The second apodosis is, " he will fall upon (or against) thee,"
or, as we should say, " founder," or " be wrecked." It is far
more likely that this is the meaning of the words, than that^
they mean "he will fall to thy lot " (!>? ^P^, like \ hQ': elsewhere,'
to fall to a person) ; for the context here is a totally different
one from ch. xlv. 14, and we look for nothing more than a
declaration of the utter failure and ruin of the undertaking.
Jerusalem will be thus invincible, because Jehovah, the
Almighty One, is its protector. Vers. 16, 17. "BeJiold, I have
treated the smith who hloweth the coal-fire, and hrings to the light
It weapon according to his trade ; and I have created the destroyer
352 TUE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
to destroy. Every weapon formed against thee lias no success,
and every tongue that cometh before the judgment with thee thou
wilt condemn. Tliis the inheritance of the servants of Jehovah; and
their righteousness from me, saith Jehovah^ If Jeliovah has
created the armourer, who forges a weapon intJ'JJDP (i.e. accord-
ing to his trade, or according to the thing he has to finish,
whether an arrow, or a sword, or ' a spear ; not " for his own
use," as Kimchi supposes), to be used in the hostile army
against Jerusalem, He has also created a destroyer (?5n?) to
destroy. The very same creative might, to which the origin of
the weapon is to be traced as its primary cause, has opposed
to it beforehand a defender of Jerusalem. And as every
hostile weapon fails, Jerusalem, in the consciousness of its
divine right, will convict every accusing tongue as guilty and
deserving of utter condemnation (V'B'in as in ch. 1. 9, cf. 1
Sam. xiv. 47, where it denotes the punishment of the guilty).
The epiphonem in ver. 176, with the retrospective nt<t and the
words "saith the Lord," which confirm the certainty of the
fulfilment, forms an unmistakeable close to the prophecy.
This is the position in which Jehovah has placed His servants
as heirs of the future salvation ; and this the righteousness
which they have received as His gift, and which makes them
strong within and victoiious without. The individual idea of
the church, which we find elsewhere personified as " the servant
of Jehovah," equivalent to " the people in whose heart is my
law" (ch.li. 7), or "my people that have sought me" (ch. Ixv.
10), is here expanded into "the servants of Jehovah" (as in
ch. Ixv. 8, 9 ; compare ch. lix. 21 with ch. li. 16). But totally
different colours are employed in ch. Hi. 13-ch. liii. to depict
the exaltation of the one "Servant of Jehovah," from those
used here to paint the glory of the church of the " servants of
Jehovah," — a proof that the ideas do not cover one another.
That which is the reward of suffering in the case of the former,
is the experience of divine mercy in that of the latter: it becomes
a partaker of the salvation purchased by the other. The one
" Servant of Jehovah" is the heart of the church, in which the
crisis which bursts forth into life is passing ; the righteousness
of the "servants of Jehovah" is the fruit of the sufferings
of this one "Servant of Jehovah," who is Himself piis and
pnvD. He is the Mediator of all the salvation of the
CHAP. LV. 1, 3. 353
church. He is not only its " head," but its " fulness "
(vXijpoyfia) also.
SEVENTH PROPHECY.— Chap. lv.
COME AND TAKE THE SURE SALVATION OF JEHOVAH.
All things are ready ; the guests are ipvited ; and nothing
is required of them except to come. Vers. 1, 2. "Alas, all ye
tliirsty ones, come ye to the watei'; and ye that have no silver, come
ye, buy, and eat ! Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money
and loithout payment ! Wherefore do ye iveigh silver for that
which is not bread, and the result of your labour for that which
satisfeth not f hearken ye to me, and eat the good, and let
your soul delight itself in fat." Hitzig and Knobel understand
by water, wine, and milk, the rich material blessings which
awaited the exiles on their return to their fatherland, whereas
they were now paying tribute and performing service in Babylon
without receiving anything in return. But the prophet was
acquainted with something higher than either natural water
(ch. xliv. 3, cf. xli. 17) or natural wine (ch. sxv. 6). He
knew of an eating and drinking which reached beyond the
mere material enjoyment (ch. Ixv. 13) ; and the expression
'n 31L5, whilst it includes material blessings (Jer. xxxi. 12), is
not exhausted by them (ch. Ixiii. 7, cf. Ps. xxvii. 13), just as
33ynn in ch. Iviii. 14 (cf. Ps. xxxvii. 4, 11) does not denote a
feeling of worldly, but of spiritual joy. Water, wine, and
milk, as the fact that water is placed first clearly shows, are
not the produce of the Holy Land, but figurative representations
of spiritual revival, recreation, and nourishment. (cf. 1 Pet. ii.2,
" the sincere milk of the word"). The whole appeal is framed
accordingly. When Jehovah summons the thirsty ones of His
people to come to the water, the summons must have reference
to something more than the water to which a shepherd leads
his flock. And as buying without money or any other medium
of exchange is an idea which neutralizes itself in the sphere of
natural objects, wine and milk are here blessings and gifts of
divine grace, which are obtained by grace (j^a/jtrt, gratis),
their reception being dependent upon nothing but a sense of
need, and a readiness to accept the blessings offered. Again,
VOL. II. z
354 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the use of the verb 113B', which is confined in other passages to
the purchase of cereals, is a sufficient proof that the reference is
not to natural objects, but to such objects as could properly be
compared to cereals. The bread and other provisions, which Israel
obtained in its present state of punishment, are called "not
bread," and " not serving to satisfy," because that which truly
satisfies the soul comes from above, and being of no earthly
nature, is to be obtained by those who are the most destitute of
earthly supplies. Can any Christian reader fail to recal, when
reading the invitation in ver. 1, the words of the parable in
Matt. xxii. 4, "All things are now ready?" And does not
ver. 2 equally suggest the words of Paul in Eom. xi. 6, " If
by grace, then is it no more of works ? " Even the exclama-
tion hoi (alas ! see ch. xviii. 1), with which the passage com-
mences, expresses deep sorrow on account of the unsatisfied
thirst, and the toilsome labour which affords nothing but
seeming satisfaction. The way to true satisfaction is indicated
in the words, " Hearken unto me : " it is the way of the obe-
dience of faith. In this way alone can the satisfaction of the
soul be obtained.
And in this way it is possible to obtain not only the satis-
faction of absolute need, but a superabundant enjoyment, and
an overflowing fulfilment of the promise. Vers. 3-5. " Incline
your ear, and come to me : liear, and let your soul revive ; and I
will make an everlasting covenant with you, the true mercies of
David. Belwld, I have set him, as a witness for nations, a prince
and commander of nations. Behold, thou wilt call a mass of
people that thou knowest not ; and a mass of people that knoweth
thee not will hasten to thee, for the sake of Jehovah thy God, and
for the Holy One of Israel, that He hath made thee glorious."
The expression "make a covenant" (kdrath h'rith) is not
always applied to a superior in relation to an inferior (compare,
on the contrary, Ezra x. 3) ; but here the double-sided idea
implied in pactio is confined to one side alone, in the sense of a
spontaneous sponsio having all the force of a covenant (ch.
Ixi. 8; compare 2 Chron. vii. 18, where kdrath by itself signifies
" to promise with the force of a covenant "), and also of the
offer of a covenant or anticipated conclusion of a covenant, as
in Ezek. xxxiv. 25, and in the case before us, where " the true
mercies of David " are attached to the idea of offering or grant-
CHAP. LV. 3-S. 355
iDg involved in the expression, "I will make an everlasting
covenant with you," as a more precise definition of the object.
All that is required on the part of Israel is hearing, and coming,
and taking: let it do this, and it will be pervaded by new
life ; and Jehovah will meet it with an everlasting covenant,
viz. the unchangeable mercies of David. Our interpretation
of this must be dependent chiefly upon whether ver. 4 is re-
garded as looking back to the history of David, or looking for-
ward to something future. In the latter case we are either to
understand by "David" the second David (according to Hos.
iii. 5, Jer. xxx. 9, Ezek. xxxiv. 24), so that the allusion is to
the mercies granted in the Messiah, and according to ch. ix. 7,
enduring "from henceforth even for ever;" or else David is
the son of Jesse, and " the mercies of David " are the mercies
bestowed upon him, which are called " the true mercies " as
mercies promised and running into the future (Ps. Ixxxix. 50 ;
2 Chron. vi. 42), in which case ver. 4 explains what David
will become in the person of his antitype the second David.
The directly Messianic application of the name " David " is to
be objected to, on the ground that the Messiah is never so
called without further remark ; whilst the following objections
may be adduced to the indirectly Messianic interpretation of
ver. 4 (David in the Messiah) : (1.) The change of the tense in
vers. 4, 5, which requires that we should assume that ver. 4
points backwards into the past, and ver. 5 forwards into the
future : ^ (2.) That the choice of the expression in vers. 4, 5
is designed to represent what Israel has to look for in the future
as going beyond what was historically realized in David ; for in
ver. 5 the mass of the heathen world, which has hitherto stood
' F. Philippi observes that p, whicli refers to the future ill ver. 5 at
any rate, must be taken as referring to the same sphere of time as that
which inmiediately precedes. But hen in Isaiah points sometimes back-
wards (ch. 1. 1, l3dv. 4), sometimes forwards; and where two follow
one another, of which the one points backwards and the other forwards,
the former is followed by the perfect, the latter by the future (ch. 1. 1, 2).
But if they both point to the future, the future tense is used m both
instances (ch. 1. 9). A better argument in favour of the prophetic inter-
pretation of ver. 4 might be drawn from the fact that ipinj [il niay mean
" I give (set, lay, or mate) even now " (e.g. Jer. i. 9). But what we have
said above is sufficient proof that this is not the meaning here (if this were
the meaning, we should rather expect VnOi jj}).
356 TUE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
out of all relation to Israel, answers to the C'SKp : (3.) Tliat
the juxtaposition of the Messiah and Israel would be altogether
without parallel in these prophecies (eh. xl.-lxvi.), and contrary
to their peculiar character ; for the earlier stereotype idea of
the Messiah is here resolved into the idea of the " servant of
Jehovah," from which it returns again to its primary use, i.e.
from the national basis to the individual, by means of tlie
ascending variations through which this expression passes, and
thus reaches a more comprehensive, spiritual, and glorified
form. The personal " servant of Jehovah " is undoubtedly
no other than the " Son of David " of the earlier prophecy ;
but the premises, from which we arrive at this conclusion in
connection with our prophet, are not that the " servant of
Jehovah " is of the seed of David and the final personal reali-
zation of the promise of a future king, but that he is of the
nation of Israel, and the final personal realization of the idea
of Israel, both in its inward nature, and in its calling in relation
to the whole world of nations. Consequently vers. 4 and 5 stand
to one another in the relation of type and antitype, and the
" mercies of David " are called " the true mercies " (probably
with an allusion to 2 Sam. vii. 16 ; cf. Ps. Ixxxix. 29, 30), as
being inviolable, — mercies which had both been realized in
the case of David himself, and would be realized still further,
inasmuch as they must endure for an everlasting future, and
therefore be further and further fulfilled, until they have
reached that lofty height, on the summit of which they will
remain unchangeable for ever. It is of David the son of
Jesse that Jehovah says in ver. 4, " I have given him for a
witness to peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples."
So far as the sense is concerned, T'33 is as much a construct as
'IIVP- In the application to David of the term 1J?, which never
means anything but testis, witness, in these prophecies, we may
clearly see the bent of the prophet's mind towards what is
spiritual. David had subdued nations by the force of arms,
but his true and loftiest greatness consisted in the- fact that he
was a witness of the nations, — a witness by the victorious power
of his word, the conquering might of his Psalms, the attractive
force of his typical life. What he expresses so frequently in
the Psalms as a resolution and a vow, viz. that he will proclaim
the name of Jehovah among the nations (Ps. xviii. 50, Ivii. 10),
CHAP. LV. 6, 7. 357
he has really fulfilled : he has not only overcome them by
bloody warfare, but by the might of his testimony, more
especially as " the sweet psalmist of Israel " (2 Sam. xxiii. 1),
What David himself was able to say in Ps. xviii. 43, " People
that I did not know served me," will be fulfilled to a still wider
extent in the experience of Israel. Having been presented
with the promised " inviolable mercies of David," it will effect
a spiritual conquest over the heathen world, even over that por-
tion which has hitherto stood in no reciprocal relation to it,
and gain possession of it for itself for the sake of Jehovah,
whom it has for its God, and to the Holy One of Israel (? of
the object, in relation to which, or at the instigation of which,
anything is done), because He hath glorified it (His people :
?inxs is not a pausal form for W}^P, cf. ch. liv. 6, but for
Ti^P, Ti^r)) hence r^TiNS, cf. '^^'S, ch. xxx. 19) ; so that joining
themselves to Israel is the same as joining themselves to God
and to the church of the God of revelation (cf. ch. Ix. 9, where
ver. 55 is repeated almost word for word).
So gracious is the offer which Jehovah now makes to His
people, so great are the promises that He makes to it, viz, the
regal glory of David, and the government of the world by
virtue of the religion of Jehovah. Hence the exhortation is
addressed to it in vers. 6 and 7 : " Seek ye Jelwvah while He
may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts :
and let him return to Jehovah, and He will have compassion upon
him ; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." They
are to seek to press into the fellowship of Jehovah (ddrash
with the radical meaning terei'e, to acquire experimental know-
ledge or confidential acquaintance with anything) now that He
is to be found (ch. Ixv. 1, compare the parallelism of words
and things in Jer. xxix. 14), and to call upon Him, viz. for a
share in that superabundant grace, now that He is near, i.e.
now that He approaches Israel, and offers it. In the admoni-
tion to repentance introduced in ver. 7, both sides of tlie /tera-
voka find expression, viz. turning away from sinful self-will, and
turning to the God of salvation. The apodosis with its pro-
mises commences with li"i?n7.''l — then will He have compassion
upon such a man ; and consequently mUP naT-'a (with ''3 be-
cause the fragmentary sentence U'ripS'i'Xil did not admit of the
358 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
continuation witli 1) has not a general, but an individual mean-
ing (vid. Ps. cxxx. 4, 7), and is to be translated as a future (for
the expression, compare ch. xxvi. 17).
The appeal, to leave their own way and their own thoughts,
and yield themselves to God the Redeemer, and to His word,
is now urged on the ground of the heaven-wide difference be-
tween the ways and thoughts of this God and the despairing
thoughts of men (ch. xl. 27, xlix. 24), and their aimless laby-
rinthine ways. Vers. 8, 9. "For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah : no,
heaven is high above the earth ; so high are my ways above your
ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts'' The M (imo)
introduces the undeniable statement of a fact patent to the
senses, for the purpose of clearly setting forth, by way of com-
parison, the relation in which the ways and thoughts of God
stand to those of man. There is no necessity to supply 1B'X3 after
''3, as Hitzig and Knobel do. It is simply omitted, as in ch, Ixii. 5
and Jer. iii. 20, or like t? in Prov. xxvi. 11, etc. On what side
the heaven-wide elevation is to be seen, is shown in what follows.
They are not so fickle, so unreliable, or so powerless.
This is set forth under a figure drawn from the rain and the
snow. Vers. 10, 11. "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow
from heaven, and retumeth not thither, till it has moistened the
earth, and fertilized it, and made it green, and offered seed to the
sower and bread to the eater; so ivill my word be which goeth forth
out of my mouth: it will not return to me fruitless, till it has
accomplished tJiat which I willed, and prosperously carried out that
for which I sent it" The rain and snow come down from the
sky, and return not thither till they have . . . The perfects
after ON '3 are all to be understood as such (Ewald, § 356, a).
Rain and snow return as vapour to the sky, but not without
having first of all accomplished the purpose of their descents.
And so with the word of Jehovah, which goeth forth out of His
mouth (^5.V.''., not t*i.'J, ch, xlv. 23, because it is thought of as still
going on in the preaching of the prophet) : it will not return with-
out having effected its object, i.e. without having accomplished
what was Jehovah's counsel, or "good pleasure" — without having
attained the end for which it was sent by Jehovah (constr. as
in 2 Sam. xi, 22, 1 Kings xiv, 6). The word is represented in
other places as the messenger of God (ch, ix. 8 ; Ps. cvii. 20.
CHAP. LV. 12, 13. 359
cxlvii. 15 sqq.). The personification presupposes that it is not
a mere sound or letter. As it goeth forth out of the month of
God it acquires shape, and in this shape is hidden a divine
life, because of its divine origin ; and so it runs, with life from
God, endowed with divine power, supplied with divine commis-
sions, like a swift messenger through nature and the world of
man, there to melt the ice, as it were, and here to heal and to
save; and does not return from its course till it has given
effect to the will of the sender. This return of the word to
God also presupposes its divine nature. The will of God,
which becomes concrete and audible in the word, is the utter-
ance of His nature, and is resolved into that nature again as
soon as it is fulfilled. The figures chosen are rich in analogies.
As snow and rain are the mediating causes of growth, and
therefore the enjoyment of what is reaped ; so is the soil of the
human heart softened, refreshed, and rendered productive or
prolific by the word out of the mouth of Jehovah ; and this
word furnishes the prophet, who resembles the sower, with the
seed which he scatters, and brings with it bread which feeds
the souls : for every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God is bread (Dent. viii. 3).
The true point of comparison, however, is the energy with
which the word is realized. Assuredly and irresistibly will the
word of redemption be fulfilled. "Vers. 12, 13. " For ye will
go out with joy, and he led forth in peace : the movmiains and
the hills will hredk out before you into shouting, and all the trees
of the field loill clap their hands. Instead of the thorn will
cypresses shoot up, and instead of the fleabane will myrtles shoot
up : and it will he to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting
memorial that will not he swept away." " With joy," i.e. with-
out the hurry of fear (ch. lii. 12) ; " in peace," i.e. without
having to fight their way through or flee. The idea of the
sufferer falls back in i'?in behind that of a festal procession
(Ps, xlv. 15, 16). In applying the term kaph (hand) to the
trees, the prophet had in his mind their Hppoi/i, or branches.
The psalmist in Ps. xcviii. 8 transfers the figure created by
our prophet to the waves of the streams. Na dtsuts (from
naats, to sting) is probably no particular kind of thorn, such,
for example, as the fuller's thistle, but, as in ch. vii. 19, briers
and thorns generally. On sirpad, see Ges. Thes.; we have
360 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
followed the rendering, Kovv^a, of the LXX. That this trans-
formation of the vegetation of the desert is not to be taken
literally, any more than in ch. xli. 17-20, is evident from the
shouting of tlie mountains, and the clapping of hands on the part
of the trees. On the other hand, however, the prophet says some-
thing more than that Israel will return home with such feelings
of joy as will cause everything to appear transformed. Such pro-
mises as those which we find here and in ch. xli. 19 and xxxv.
1, 2, and such exhortations as those which we find in ch. xli v.
23, xlix. 13, and lii. 9, arise from the consciousness, which was
common to both prophets and apostles, that the whole creation
will one day share in the liberty and glory of the children of
God (Rom. viii. 21). This thought is dressed up sometimes in
one form, and sometimes in another. The psalmists after the
captivity borrowed the colours in which they painted it from
our prophet (see at Ps. xcvi. and xcviii.). n\ii is constrned as
a neuter (cf. ''''O^"^?, ch. xlv. 8), referring to this festal transfor-
mation of the outer world on the festive return of the redeemed.
niN is treated in the attributive clause as a masculine, as if it
came from JTIN, to make an incision, to crimp, as we have
already indicated in vol. i. p. 213 ; but the Arabic XjTj dyat,
shows that it comes from nis, to point out, and is contracted
from &w&yat, and therefore was originally a feminine.
EIGHTH PROPHECY. —Chap. lvi. 1-8.
PROSELYTES AND EUNUCHS.
The note of admonition struck in the foregoing prophecy
is continued here, the sabbatical duties being enforced with
especial emphasis as part of the general righteousness of life.
Vers. 1, 2. " Tims saith Jehovah, Keep ye right, and do right-
eousness : for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness
to reveal itself. Blessed is the mortal that doeth this, and the son
of man that layeth fast hold thereon ; who keepeth the Sabbath,
that he doth not desecrate it, and keepeth his hand from doing any
kind of evil." Jehovah and Israel have both an objective standard
in the covenant relation into which they have entered : tSStye
CHAP. LVI. 3. Sni
(right) is practice answering to tliis ; nvVii'' (salvation) the
performance promised hy God ; nijIS (righteousness) on botli
sides such personal activity as is in accordance with the cove-
nant relation, or what is the same thing, with the purpose and
plan of salvation. The nearer the full realization on the part
of Jehovah of vphat He has promised, the more faithful ought
Israel to be in everything to which it is bound by its relation to
Jehovah. DNt (this) points, as in Ps. vii. 4, to what follows ;
and so also does 33, which points back to riNt. Instead of "liDK'
or "ibty.? we have here lOtJ', the riKt being described personally
instead of objectively. naB" is used as a masculine in vers. 2 and 6
(cf. ch. Iviii. 13), although the word is not formed after the same
manner as i"^?, but is rather contracted from nnsB' (a festive
time, possibly with nv = rilV understood), and therefore was
originally a feminine ; and it is so personified in the language
employed in the worship of the synagogue.^ The prophet here
thinks of naB* as natS'n Di', and gives it the gender of Di\
The ^"ICK (blessed) of ver. 2 is now extended to those who
might imagine that they had no right to console themselves
with the promises which it contained. Ver. 3. " And let not
the foreigner, who hath not joined himself to Jehovah, speak thus :
Assuredly Jehovah will cut me off from His people ; and let not
the eunuch say, I am only a dry tree." As V/hi is not pointed
as a participle ('"11??), but as a 3d pers. pres., the n of nipan is
equivalent to IK'S, as in Josh. x. 24, Gen. xviii. 21, xxi. 3,
xlvi. 27, 1 Kings xi. 9 (Ges. § 109). By the eunuchs we are
to understand those of Israelitish descent, as the attributive
clause is not repeated in their case. Heathen, who professed
the religion of Jehovah, and had attached themselves to Israel,
might be afraid lest, when Israel should be restored to its
native land, according to the promise, as a holy and glorious
community with a thorougiily priestly character, Jehovah would
no longer tolerate tliem, i.e. would forbid their receiving full
citizenship. 'r?^1?! has the connecting vowel a, as in Gen.
xix. 19, xxix. 32, instead of the usual e. And the Israelitish
^ According to 6. Sabbath 119a, R. Chanina dressed himself on Friday
evening in his sabbath-clothes, and said, " Come, and let us go to meet
Queen Sabbath." And so did also Jannai, saying, " Come, bride ; come,
bride." Hence the customary song with wluch the Sabbath was greeted
had nisaPJ natJ' ^as n^a r\Vr\p^ nin nai> as its commencement and refrain.
T ; -J »- ••; »- -J* * »»
362 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
eunuchs, who had been mutilated against their will, that they
might serve at heathen courts or in the houses of foreign lords,
and therefore had not been unfaithful to Jehovah, might be
afraid lest, as unfruitful trees, they should be pronounced un-
worthy of standing in the congregation of Jehovah. There
was more ground for the anxiety of the latter than for that of
the former. For the law in Deut. xxiii. 4-7 merely prohibits
Ammonites and Moabites for all time to come from reception
into the congregation, on account of their unbrotherly conduct
towards the Israelites as they came out of Egypt, whilst that
in Deut. xxiii. 8, 9 prohibits the reception of Edomites and
Egyptians to the third generation ; so that there was no prohi-
bition as to other allies — such, for example, as the Babylonians.
On the other hand, the law in Deut. xxiii. 2 expressly declares,
as an expression of the horror of God at any such mutilation
of nature, and for the purpose of precluding it, that no kind of
emasculated person is to enter the congregation of Jehovah.
But prophecy breaks through these limits of the law. Vers.
4, 5. " For thus saitk JeJiovah to the circumcised, Those who
keep my Sabbaths, and decide for that in tohich I take pleasure,
and take fast hold of my covenant ; I give to them in my house
and within my walls a memorial and a name better tlian sons and
daughters : I give such a man an everlasting name, tliat shall not
be cut off." The second condition after the sanctification of
the Sabbath has reference to the regulation of life according
to the revealed will of God ; the third to fidelity with regard
to the covenant of circumcision. 1^ also means a side, and
hence a place (Deut. xxiii. 13) ; but in the passage before us,
where QB*! T form a closely connected pair of words, to which
niaapi C^IP is appended, it signifies the memorial, equivalent
to naSD (2 Sam. xviii. 18 ; 1 Sam. xv. 12), as an index lifted
up on high (Ezek. xxi. 24), which strikes the eye and arrests
attention, pointing like a signpost to the person upon whom it
is placed, like monumentum a monendo. They are assured that
they will not be excluded from close fellowship with the church
(" in my house and within my walls"), and also promised, as
a superabundant compensation for the want of posterity, long
life in the memory of future ages, by whom their long tried
attachment to Jehovah and His people in circumstances of
great temptation will not be forgotten.
CHAP. LVI. 6. 7. 363
The fears of proselytes from among the heathen are also
removed. Vers. 6, 7. " And the foreigners, wJio have joined
themselves to Jehovah, to serve Him, and to love the name of
Jehovah, to be His servants, whoever keepeth the Sabbath from
desecrating it, and those who hold fast to my covenant, I bring
them to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of
prayer; their whole-offerings and their slain-offerings are well-
pleasing upon mine altar : for my house, a house of prayer shall
it be called for all nations.^' The proselytes, who have attached
themselves to Jehovah ('jT^JJ?),^ the God of Israel, with the pure
intention of serving Him with love, are not to be left behind
in the strange land. Jehovah will bring them along with His
people to the holy mountain, upon which His temple rises once
more ; there will He cause them to rejoice, and all that they
place upon His altar will fiud a most gracious acceptance. It
is impossible that the prophet should be thinking here of the
worship of the future without sacrifice, although in ch, liii. he
predicts the self-sacrifice of the " Servant of JehoVah," which
puts an end to all animal sacrifices. But here the temple is
called "the house of prayer," from the prayer which is the
soul of all worship. It will be called a house of prayer for all
nations ; and therefore its nature will correspond to its name.
This ultimate intention is already indicated in Solomon's dedi-
catory prayer (1 Kings viii. 41-43) ; butfour prophet was the
first to give it this definite universal expression. Throughout
this passage the spirit of the law is striving to liberate itself
from its bondage. Nor is there anything to surprise us in the
breaking down of the party wall, built up so absolutely between
the eunuchs on the one hand and the congregation on the
other, or the one partially erected between the heathen and the
congregation of Israel^] as we may see from ch. Ixvi. 21, where
it is affirmed that Jehovah will even take priests and Levites
out of the midst of the heathen whom Israel will bring back
with it into its own land.
The expression ^'saying of the Lord" (N"um Jehovah),
which is so solemn an expression in itself, and which stands
^ The oriental reading, not in ver. 3, but here in ver. 6, is 'iTPy ; the
western, 'n'bti- The Masora follows the western (i^mjID), »'•«• the Pales-
tinian, and reckons this passage as one of the 31 ^iybs in the Old Testa-
ment Scriptures.
364 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
here at the head of the following declaration, is a proof that it
contains not only something great, but something which needs
a solemn confirmation because of its strangeness. Not only is
there no ground for supposing that Gentiles who love Jehovah
will be excluded from the congregation ; but it is really
Jehovah's intention to gather some out of the heathen, and add
them to the assembled diaspora of Israel. Ver. 8. " Word of
the Lord, Jehovah : gathering the outcasts of Israel, I will
also gather beyond itself to its gathered ones." We only find
'n DXJ at the commencement of a sentence, in this passage and
Zech. xii. 1. The double name of God, Adonai Jehovah, also
indicates something great. V?y (to it) refers to Israel, and
VSaipjp is an explanatory permutative, equivalent to VV3pj"?i' ; or
else PJ? denotes the fact that the gathering will exceed the limits
of Israel (cf. Gen. xlviii. 22), and ? the addition that will be
made to the gathered ones of Israel. The meaning in either
case remains the same. Jehovah here declares what Jesus says
in John x. 16 : "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold:
them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there
shall be one fold and one Shepherd ;" " Jehovah one, and His
name one," as it is expressed in Zech. xiv. 9. Such are the
views and hopes that have grown up out of the chastisement
inflicted by tiieir captivity. God has made it a preparatory
school for New Testament times. It has been made subser-
vient to the bursting of the fetters of the law, the liberation
of the spirit of the law, and the establishment of friendship
between Israel and the Gentile world as called to one common
salvation.
NINTH PEOPHECY.— Chap. lvi. 9-lyii. 21.
NEGLECT OF DUTY BY THE LEADERS OF ISRAEL ; AND ERRORS
OF THE PEOPLE.
It is a question whether ch. lvi. 9 forms the commencement
of a fresh prophecy, or merely the second half of the prophecy
contained in ch. lvi. 1-8. We decide, for our part, in favour
of the former. If ch. lvi. 9 sqq. formed an antithetical second
half to the promising first half in ch. lvi. 1-8, we should expect
to find the prophets and leaders of Israel, whose licentiousness
CHAP. LVI. 9. 365
and want of principle are here so severely condemned,
threatened with destruction in the heathen land, whilst true
proselytes and even eunuchs were brought to the holy moun-
tain. But we meet with this antithesis for the first time in
ch. Ivii. 13, where we evidently find ourselves in the midst of
another prophetic address. And where can that address com-
mence, if not at ch. Ivi. 9, from which point onwards we have
that hard, dull, sharp, and concise language of strong indigna-
tion (see p. 130), which recals to mind psalms written " in a
thundering style" (Psalter, i. 80) and the reproachful addresses
of Jeremiah, and which passes again in ch. Ivii. 11 sqq. into
the lofty crystalline language peculiar to our prophet's " book
of consolation?" The new prophetic address commences, like
ch. Iv. 1, with a summons. Ver. 9. " All ye beasts of the field,
come near ! To devour, all ye beasts in the forest !" According
to the accentuation before us Qinab mercha, inTT^J tiphchah),
the beasts of the field are summoned to devour the beasts in the
forest. This accentuation, however, is false, and must be
exchanged for another which is supported by some -mss., viz.
'?2i6 tiphchah, WU'bs mercha, and nya Beth raphatum. It is
true that even with these accents we might still adhere to
the view favoured by Jewish commentators, viz. that the
beasts of the field are to be devoured by the beasts of the
forest, if this view yielded any admissible sense (compare, for
example, that supported by Meyer, " Ye enemies, devour the
scattered ones of my congregation "), and had not against it the
synonymous parallelism of ''f\i> wn and nva inTi (ch. xliii. 20 ;
Ps. civ. 11, 20 ; cf. Gen. iii. 14). But there remains another
view, according to which nya inTT^a is a second vocative answer-
ing to nty inTrb. According to the Targum, what is to be
devoured is the great body of heathen kings attacking Jerusa-
lem ; according to Jerome, Oyril, Stier, etc., the pasture and
food provided by the grace of God. But what follows teaches
us something different from this. Israel has prophets and
shepherds, who are blind to every coming danger, and therefore
fail to give warning of Its approach, because they are sunken
in selfishness and debauchery. It resembles a flock without a
keeper, and therefore an easy prey (Ezek. xxxiv. 5) ; and the
meaning of the appeal, which is certainly addressed to the
nations of the world, the enemies of the people of God, is this:
366 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
" Ye have only to draw near ; ye can feed undisturbed, and
devour as much as ye please." This is the explanation adopted
by most of the more modern commentators. In Jer. xii. 9,
which is founded upon this (" Assemble all ye beasts of the
field, bring them hither to devour"), it is also Jerusalem which
is assigned as food to the heathen. The parallel in ver. 9 is
both synonymous and progressive. The writer seeks for rare
forms, because he is about to depict a rare inversion of the
proper state of things, ^n^n (with the first syllable loosely
closed) is the antiquated form of connection, which was
admissible even with IJ/!? following (cf. ch. v. 11, ix. 1, 2 ;
2 Sam. i. 21). On vns (=ins), see at ch. xxi. 12 (cf.
ver. 14).
The prophet now proceeds with ISV 0''?'V) : the suffix refers
to Israel, which was also the object to ?3J|7. Vers. 10, 11.
" His watchmen are blind : they (are) all ignorant, they (are) all
dumb dogs that cannot bark ; raving, lying down, loving to slum-
ber. And the dogs are mightily greedy, they know no satiety ;
and such are shepherds ! They know no understanding ; they
have all turned to their own ways, every one for Ms own gain
throughout his border." The " watchmen " are the prophets
here, as everywhere else (ch. lii. 8, cf. ch. xxi. 6, Hab. ii. 1 ,
Jer. vi. 17 ; Ezek. iii. 17). The prophet is like a watchman
(tsopheh) stationed upon his watch-tower {specula), whose duty
it is, when he sees the sword come upon the land, to blow the
shophdr, and warn the people (Ezek. xxxiii. 1-9). But just as
Jeremiah speaks of bad prophets among the captives (Jer.
xxix. 1—32), and the book of Ezekiel is full of reproaches at
the existing neglect of the ofiice of watchman and shepherd ;
so does the prophet here complain that the watchmen of the
nation are blind, in direct opposition to both their title and
their calling; they are all without either knowledge or the
capacity for knowledge {vid. ch. xliv. 9, xlv. 20). They ought
to resemble watchful sheep-dogs (Job xxx. 1), which bark
when the flock is threatened ; but they are dumb, and cannot
bark (ndbhach, root naF), and leave the flock to all its danger,
[nstead of being " seers " {chozim), they are ravers (hozim ; cf .
ch. xix. 18, where we have a play upon Cinn in D"inn). D''l'n,
from ntrij to rave in sickness, n. act. hadhajan (which Kimchi
compares to parlare in sonno) ; hence the Targum po^J, LXX.
CHAP. LVI. 10, 11. 367
ivvrrvia^ofiepoi, A (j^avTa^o/ievoi, S opajJMTKnai, Jer. vidmfes
vana. The predicates which follow are attached to the leading
word hdsim (raving), if not precisely as adjectives, yet as more
minutely descriptive. Instead of watching, praying, wrestling,
to render themselves susceptible of visions of divine revelations
for the good of their people, and to keep themselves in readi-
ness to receive them, they are idle, loving comfortable ease,
talkers in their sleep. And the dogs, viz. those prophets who
resemble the worst of them (see at ch. xl. 8, p. 144), are B'Sp. \iy,
of violent, unrestrained soul, insatiable. Their soul lives and
moves in the lowest parts of their nature ; it is nothing but
selfish avarice, self-indulgent greediness, violent restlessness of
passion, that revolves perpetually around itself. With the
words " and these are shepherds," the range of the prophet's
vision is extended to the leaders of the nation generally ; for
when the prophet adds as an exclamation, "And such (Jii = tales)
are shepherds!" he applies the glaring contrast between calling
and conduct to the holders of both offices, that of teacher and
that of ruler alike. For, apart from the accents, it would be
quite at variance with the general use of the personal pronoun
nan, to apply it to any other persons than those just described
(viz. in any such sense as this : " And those, who ought to be
shepherds, do not know "). Nor is it admissible to commence
an adversative minor clause with DDm, as Knobel does,
" whereas they are shepherds ;" for, since the principal clause
has D'aisan (dogs) as the subject, this would introduce a hetero-
geneous mixture of the two figures, shepherds' dogs and shep-
herds. We therefore take Win nnni as an independent clause :
" And it is upon men of such a kind, that the duty of watching
and tending the nation devolves !" These d'yT (for which the
Targum reads Q'V'i) are then still further described : they
know not to understand, i.e. they are without spiritual capacity
to pass an intelligible judgment (compare the opposite com-
bination of the two verbs in ch. xxxii. 4) ; instead of caring
for the general good, they have all turned to their own waj
(Vdarhdm), i.e. to their own selfish interests, every one bent
upon his own advantage (VV? from VSa, abscindere, as we say,
. ieinen Schnitt zu machen, to reap an advantage, lit. to make an
incision). I^Xisp, from his utmost extremity (i.e. from that of
his own station, including all its members), in other words.
368 THE PKOPHECIKS OF ISAIAH.
"throughout the length and breadtli of his own circle;" qdtseh,
the end, being regarded not as the terminal point, but as the
circumference (as in Gen. xi.\. 4, xlvii. 21, and Jer. li. 31).
An office-bearer of the kind described is now introduced
per mimesin as speaking. Ver. 12. " Come here, I will fetch
wine, and let us drink meth ; and to-morrow shall be like to-day,
great, excessively abundant." He gives a banquet, and pro-
mises the guests that the revelry shall be as great to-morrow
as to-day, or rather much more glorious, "ino Di'' is the day of
to-morrow, to iiravpiov, for mdchdr is always without an article ;
hence et fiet uti hie (dies) dies crastinus, viz. magnus supra
modum valde. I??.'!? or "'i?.^ (as it is to be pointed here according
to Kimchi, Michlol 1676, and Worterbuch), signifies super-
abundance ; it is used here adverbially in the sense of extra-
ordinarily, beyond all bounds (differing therefore from "irii*,
" more," or " singularly," in the book of Ecclesiastes).
Whilst watchmen and shepherds, prophets and rulers,
without troubling themselves about the flock which they have
to watch and feed, are thus indulging their own selfish desires,
and living in debauchery, the righteous man is saved by early
death from the judgment, which cannot fail to come with such
corruption as this. Ch. Ivii. 1, 2. " The righteous perisheth,
and no man taketh it to heart ; and pious men are swept away,
without any one considering that the righteous is swept away from,
misfortune. He entereth into peace : they rest upon their beds,
whoever has walked straight before him." With " the righteous"
the prophet introduces, in glaring contrast to this luxurious
living on the part of the leading men of the nation, the standing
figure used to denote the fate of its best men. With this pre-
vailing demoralization and worldliness, the righteous succumbs
to the violence of both external and internal sufferings. 1?N,
he dies before his time (Eccles. vii. 15) ; from the midst of
the men of his generation he is canned away from this world
(Ps. xii. 2 ; Mic. vii. 2), and no one lays it to heart, viz. the
divine accusation and threat involved in this early death. Men
of piety (chesed, the love of God and man) are swept away,
without there being any one to understand or consider that
{ki unfolds the object to be considered and laid to heart, viz.
what is involved in this carrying away when regarded as a
providential event) the righteous is swept away " from the
CHAP. LVII. 8, 4. 369
evil," i.e. that he may be saved from the approaching pimish-
ment (compare 2 Kings xxii, 20). For the prevaihng corrup-
tion calls for punishment from God ; and what is first of all to
be expected is severe judgment, through which the coming sal-
vation will force its way. In ver. 2 it is intimated that the
righteous man and the pious do not lose the blessings of this
salvation because they lose this life : for whereas, according
to the prophet's watchword, there is no peace to the wicked,
it is true, on the other hand, of the departing righteous man,
that " he enters into peace " {sMlom, ace. loci s. status ; Ges.
118, 1) ; " they rest upon their beds," viz. the bottom of tlie
grave, which has become their mishJcdbh (Job xvii. 13, xxi. 26),
" whoever has walked in that which lay straight before him,"
i.e. the one straight plain path which he had set before him
(in^J ace. obj. as in ch. xxxiii. 15, 1. 10, Ewald, § 172, b,
from nb3, that which lies straight before a person ; whereas nai
with naa inaj, signifying probably fixedness, steadiness of look,
related to ,-sa^', to pierce, naj^ percutere, is used as a preposi-
tion : compare Prov. iv. 25, HiiiP, straight or exactly before
him). The grave, when compared witli the restlessness of this
life, is therefore "peace." He who has died in faith rests in
God, to whom he has committed himself and entrusted his
future. We have here the glimmering liglit of the New Testa-
ment consolation, that the death of the righteous is better than
life in this world, because it is the entrance into peace.
The reproachful language of the prophet is now directed
acrainst the mass of the nation, who have occasioned the " evil"
from which the righteous is swept away, i.e. the generation that
is hostile to the servants of Jehovah, and by whom those sins
of idolatry are still so shamelessly carried on, which first led to
the captivity. Vers. 3, 4. " And ye, draw nearer hither, children
cf the sorceress, seed of the adulterer, and of her that committed
whoredom! Over whom do ye make yourselves meiry? Over
whom do ye open the mouth wide, and put the tongue out long ?
Are ye not the brood of apostasy, seed of lying ?" They are to
draw nearer hither (Iienndh as in Gen. xv. 16), to the place
where God is speaking through His prophet, to have themselves
painted, and to hear their sentence. Just as elsewhere the
moral character of a man is frequently indicated by the men-
VOL. II. - 2 A
370 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
tion of his father (2 Kings vi. 32), or his mother (1 Sam. xx.
30), or both parents (Job xxx. 8), so here the generation of
the captivity, so far as it continued to practise the idolatry by
which its ancestors had brought upon themselves the Chaldean
catastrophe, is called first nMj) ''33 (or more correctly fiJ^V), sons
of the sorceress (possibly the maker of clouds or storm, ch. ii.
6, vol. i. 118 : Jer. auguratricis), one who made heathen and
superstitious customs her means of livelihood, viz. the commu-
nity as it existed before the captivity, which really deserved no
better name, on account of the crying contradiction between
its calhng and its conduct ; and secondly, with regard to both
the male and female members of the community, '"iJTni f)SjD jnr,
semen aduUeri et fornicaricB (Jer.), though Stier, Hahn, and
others adopt the rendering semen adulterum et quod (qui) scor-
taris. A better rendering than this would be, "Seed of an
adulterer, and one who committest adultery thyself," viz. (what
would be indicated with this explanation by the fut. consec.) in
consequence of this descent from an adulterer. But as jnt
(seed, posterity), wherever it is more minutely defined, is con-
nected with a genitive, and not with an adjective, the presump-
tion is that ruini fiNJD denotes the father and mother, njtril is
an attributive clause regarded as a genitive (Ges. § 123, 3,,
Anm. 1), and more closely connected with «1K3D than if it was
vreitten njtni (= njin, ch. i. 21) : Seed of an adulterer, and
consequently (Ewald, § 351, 6), or similarly, of one who gave
herself up to whoredom. Idolatry, prostitution, and magic are
most closely allied. The prophet now asks, " Over whom do
ye find your pleasure ? For whom are your common contemp-
tuous actions intended?" Ji!J?nn is only used here, and denotes
the feeling which finds pleasure in the sufferings of another.
The objects of this malicious contemptuous pleasure (Ps. xxii.
8 sqq., XXXV. 21) are the servants of Jehovah ; and the ques-
tion, as in ch. xxxvii. 23, is one of amazement at their impu-
dence, since the men over whom they make merry are really
deserving of esteem, whereas they themselves are the refuse of
Israel : Are ye not a brood of apostasy, seed of lying ? As
apostasy and lying, when regarded as parents, can only produce
something resembling themselves ; the character of those from
whom they are descended is here imputed to the men them-
selves, even moi'e clearly than before. The genitives of origin
CHAP. LVII. 6, 6. 371
are also genitives of attribute. Instead of '''yl (e.g. ch. ii. 6)
we have here ''tifl before mahkeph, with the shortening of a
into i.
The participles which follow in the next verse are in appo-
sition to OWN, and confirm the predicates already applied to
them. They soon give place, however, to independent sen-
tences. Vers. 5, 6. " Ye that inflame yourselves' hy the tere-
binths, under every green tree, ye slayers of children in the valleys
under the clefts of the rochs. By the smooth ones of the brook
was thy portion ; they, they were thy lot : thou also pouredst out
libations to them, thou laidst meat-offerings upon them. Shall I
be contented with this f" The people of the captivity are ad-
dressed, and the idolatry handed down to them from their
ancestors depicted. The prophet looks back from the stand-
point of the captivity, and takes his colours from the time in
which he himself lived, possibly from the commencement of
Manasseh's reign, when the heathenism that had for a long
time been suppressed burst forth again in all its force, and the
measure of iniquity became full. The part. nipJial 0!'13mr} is
formed like tTJ in Jer. xxii. 23, if the latter signifies miserandum
esse. The primary form is OH?, which is doubled like l|3 from
TiS in Job XX. 28, and from which Onj is formed by the reso-
lution of the latent reduplication. Stier derives it from onj ;
but even if formed from this, Dn?. would still have to be ex-
plained from DHJ, after the form riS3. 'Ellm signifies either
gods or terebinths (see vol. i. 108, note 1). But although
it might certainly mean idols, according to Ex. xv. 11, Dan.
xi. 36 (LXX,, Targ., and Jerome), it is never used directly
in this sense, and Isaiah always uses the word as the name of
a tree (ch. i. 29, Ixi. 3). The terebinths are introduced here,
exactly as in ch, i. 29, as an object of idolatrous lust : " who
inflame themselves with the terebinths;" 3 denotes the object
with which the lust is excited and inflamed. The terebinth
(^eldh) held the chief place in tree-worship (hence D3^N, lit.
oak-trees, together with DiJN, is the name of one of the Phoeni-
cian gods'), possibly as being the tree sacred to Astarte ; just
as the Samura Acacia among the heathen Arabs was the tree
sacred to the goddess ' Uzza? The following expression, "under
1 See Levy, Phonizische Studien, i. 19.
2 Rrehl, Religion der vorisl. Araier, p. 74 sqq.
372 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
every green tree," is simply a permutative of the words " with
the terebinths" in the sense of " with the terebinths, yea, under
every green tree" (a standing expression from Deut. xii. 2 down-
wards), — one tree being regarded as the abode and favourite of
this deity, and another of that, and all alluring you to your
carnal worship. From the tree-worship with its orgies, which
was so widely spread in antiquity generally, the prophet passes
to the leading Canaanitish abomination, viz. human sacrifices,
which had been adopted by the Israelites (along with "'tsnc' we
find the false reading ^tSHB', which is interpreted as signifying
self-abuse). Judging from the locality named, "under the
clefts of the rocks," the reference is not to the slaying of chil-
dren sacrificed to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, but to those
offered to Baal upon his bdmoth or high places (Jer. xix. 5 ;
Ezek. xvi. 20, 21; Hos. xiii. 2; Ps. cvi. 37, 38). As we
learn from the chronique scandaleuse many things connected
with the religious history of Israel, which cannot be found
in its historical books, there is nothing to surprise us in the
stone-worship condemned in ver. 6. The dagesh of ''p?n is in
any case dagesh dirimens. The singular is either P7n after the
form ^oan (cf. 'y^, ch. Iviii. 3), or p^n after the' form n^.
But p?n, smoothness, never occurs ; and the explanation, " in
the smoothnesses, i.e. the smooth places of the valley, is thy
portion," has this also against it, that it does not do justice to
the connection 3 pprij in which the preposition is not used in a
local sense, and that it leaves the emphatic 2n Dn quite unex-
plained. The latter does not point to places, but to objects of
worship for which they had exchanged Jehovah, of whom the
true Israelite could say 'n "ppn^ Ps. cxix. 57, etc., or 'na 7 ppn^
Josh. xxii. 25, and "h^}^ i]'!?in nns (Thou art He that maintained
my lot), Ps. xvi. 5. The prophet had such expressions as these
in his mind, and possibly also the primary meaning of h'Wi. =
xXrjpo'i, which may be gathered from the rare Arabic word
'garal, gravel, stones worn smooth by rolling, when he said, " In
the smooth ones of the valley is thy portion ; they, they are thy
lot." In the Arabic also, acJilaq (equivalent to chdldq, smooth,
which forms here a play upon the woi'd with pPn^ chdldq)
is a favourite word for stones and rocks, ^^r^^^, however,
according to 1 Sam. xvii. 40 (where the intensive form pl?n,
like ^IS?*, is used), are stones which the stream in the valley
CHAP. LVII. 7, 8. 373
lias Wiished smooth with time, and rounded into a pleasing shape.
The mode of the worship, the pouring out of libations,^ and
the laying of meat-offerings upon them, confirm this view. In
Carthage such stones were called abbadires (= "nx, ps) ; and
among the ancient Arabs, the asndm or idols consisted for the
most part of rude blocks of stone of this description. Herodotus
(iii. 8) speaks of seven stones which the Arabs anointed, calling
upon the god Orotal. Suidas (s.v. ©eO? dpr]<i) states that the
idol of Ares in Petra was a black square stone ; and the black
stone of the Ka'aba was, according to a very inconvenient tra-
dition for the Mohammedans, an idol of Saturn {zuhal)? Stone-
worship of this kind had been practised by the Isi-aelites before
the captivity, and their heathenish practices had been trans-
mitted to the exiles in Babylon. The meaning of the question.
Shall I comfort myself concerning such things? — i.e. Shall I
be contented with them (Dn^N nipJial, not hitlvpael) 1 — is, that it
was impossible that descendants who so resembled their fathers
should remain unpunished.
The prophet now proceeds with perfects, like l???^ and fT'pSJrj
(addressed to the national community generally, the congrega-
tion regarded as a woman). The description is mostly retro-
spective. Vers. 7, 8. " Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou
set up thy bed ; thou also ascendedst thither to offer slain offerings.
' Compare the remarks made in the Comm. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p.
283, on the heathen worship of anoiBted stones, and the Bsetuhan worship.
^ See Krehl, p. 72. In the East Indies also we find stone-worship not
only among the Vindya trihes (Lassen, A.K. i. 376), hut also among the
Vaishnavas, who worship Vishnu in the form of a stone, viz. the salagrama,
a kind of stone from the river Gandak (see Wilson's Sanscrit Lexicon s.h.v.
and Vishnu- Purana, p. 163). The fact of the great antiquity of stone and
tree worship has been used in the most ridiculous manner by Dozy in his
work on the Israelites at Mecca (1864). He draws the following conclu-
sion from Deut. xxxii. 18 : " Thus the Israelites sprang from a divine
block of stone ; and this is, in reality, the true old version of the origin of
the nation," From Isa. li. 1, 2, he infers that Abraham and Sara were
not historical persons at all, but that the former was a block of stone, and
the latter a hollow ; and that the two together were a block of stone in a
hollow, to which divine worship was paid. " This fact," he says, " viz.
that Abraham and Sarah in the second Isaiah are not historical persons,
but a block of stone and a hollow, is one of great worth, as enabling us to
determine the time at which the stories of Abraham in Genesis were
written, and to form a correct idea of the spirit of those stories."
374 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
A'nd behind the door and the post thou didst place thy reminder:
for thou uncoveredst away from me, and ascendedst ; thou madest
thy bed broad, and didst stipulate for thyself what they Itad to
do: thou lovedst their lying with thee; thou sawest their manJiood,"
The lovers that she sought for herself are the gods of the
heathen. Upon lofty mountains, where they are generally
worshipped, did she set up her bed, and did all that was needed
to win their favour. The zikkdron, i.e. the declaration that
Jehovah is the only God, which the Israelites were to write
upon the posts of their houses, and upon the entrances (Deut.
vi. 9, xi. 20), for a constant reminder, she had put behind the
door and post, that she might not be reminded, to her shame,
of her unfaithfulness. That this explanation, which most of
the commentators adopt, is the true one, is proved by the
expression ''JjiKD ''3 which follows, and according to which ^P.^l3t
is something inconvenient, which might and was intended to
remind them of Jehovah. '''?^5??, away, far from me, as in Jer.
iii. 1, and like ''^CJ?!?, which is still more frequently used. It
is unnecessary to take gillUh with 'nOn^ understood (Ezek.
xxiii. 18) as equivalent to " thou makest thyself naked," or
with reference to the clothes = avacrvpei<i. 'H???'? is the common
object of all three verbs, even of vjjni (with double metheg),
after Gen. xlix. 4. On '*T13J?1 for W^JJi!! (cf. Jer. iii. 5), see
Ewald, § 191, b. The explanation " thou didst bind," or " thou
didst choose (some) of them to thyself," is contrary to the
general usage, according to which ? Tis signifies spondere
(2 Chron. vii. 18), and DV TTa pacisci (1 Sam. xxii. 8), in both
cases with n''"}3 to be supplied, so that p (n'''n2) rn3 would
mean stipulari ab aliquo, i.e. to obtain from a person a solemn
promise, with all the force of a covenant. What she stipulated
from them was, either the wages of adultery, or the satisfaction
of her wanton lust. What follows agrees with this ; for it is
there distinctly stated, that the lovers to whom she offered
herself gratified her lust abundantly : adamasti concubitum
eorum (mishkdbh, cubile, e.g. Prov. vii. 17, and concubitus, e,g.
Ezra xxiii. 17), manum conspexisti. The Targum and Jewish
commentators adopt this explanation, hco quern delegisti, or
(postquam) locum delegisti. This also is apparently the meaning
of the accents, and most of the more modem commentators
have adopted it, taking T in the sense of place or side. But
CHAP. LVII. 9, 10. 375
this yields only a very lame and unmeaning thought. Doeder-
lein conjectured that IJ was employed here in the sense of
l6v(f>aWo<s ; and this is the explanation adopted by Hitzig,
Ewald, and others. The Arabic furnishes several analogies to
this obscene use of the word ; and by the side of Ezek. xvi. 26
and xxiii. 20, where the same thing is affirmed in even plainer
language, there is nothing to astonish in the passage before us.
The meaning is, that after the church of Jehovah had turned
away from its God to the world and its pleasures, it took more
and more delight in the pleasures afforded it by idolatry, and
indulged its tastes to the full.
In the closest reciprocal connection with this God-forgetting,
adulterous craving for the favour of heathen gods, stood their
coquetting with the heathen power of the world. Vers. 9, 10.
" Aoid iliou wentest to the king with oil, and didst measure
copiousli/ thy spices, and didst send thy messengers to a go-eat
distance, and didst deeply abase thyself, even to Hades. Thou
didst become weary of iJie greatness of thy loay ; yet thou saidst
not, It is unattainable : thou obtainedst the revival of thy strength :
therefore thou wast not pained" The first thing to be noticed
here, is one that has been overlooked by nearly all the modem
commentators, viz. that we have here a historical retrospect
before us. And secondly, a single glance at ver. 11 is suffi-
cient to show that the words refer to a servile coquetry from
the fear of man, and therefore to a wicked craving for the
favour of man ; so that " the king" is not Baal, or any heathen
god whatever (according to ch. viii. 21 and Zeph. i. 5), but the
Asiatic ruler of the world. Ahaz sent messengers, as we read
in 2 Kings xvi. 7 sqq., to Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria,
to say to him, " I am thy servant and thy son." And Ahaz
took the silver and gold that were in the house of Jehovah, and
in the treasures of the palace, and sent a bribe to the king of
Assyria. And again, at vers. 10 sqq., Ahaz went to Damascus
to meet the king of Assyria, and there he saw an altar, and
sent a model of it to Jerusalem, and had one like it put in the
place of the altar of burnt-offering. Such acts as these are
here described in the figure of Israel travelling with oil to the
king, and taking a quantity of choice spices with it to gain his
favour, and also sending messengers, and not only bowing
itself to the earth, but even stooping to Hades, that is to say,
376 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
standing as it were on its head in its excessive servility, for
the purpose of obtaining allies. It seems most natural to take
)0tS|3 as equivalent to p^^ riTOB'D : thou wentest in oil (dripping
with pomade), and didst apply to thyself many spices; but
Beth after verbs of going signifies to go with anything, to take
it with one and bring it, so that the oil and spices are thought
of here as presents, which she took with her as sensual stimu-
lants, with a view to the amorous pleasures she was seeking
(Ezek. xxiii. 41, cf. Hos. xii. 2). -'''3?'']' signifies to go deep
down in Jer. xiii. 18 ; the meaning here is, to bow very low,
or to degrade one's self. By " the greatness or breadth of the
way" (a similar expression to that in Josh. ix. 13), all the great
sacrifices are intended which it cost her to purchase the favour
of the heathen ruler. Although they were a great trouble to
her, yet she did not say B'^i^, " it is hopeless ;" the niphal of
C'n* signifies in 1 Sam. xxvii. 1 , to betake one's self to a thing with
despair of its success. The participle in Job vi. 26 means a
despairing person ; it also occurs in a neuter sense in Jer.
ii. 25, xviii. 12, viz. given up, i.e. absolutely in vain. She did
not give up hope, although the offerings nearly exhausted her
strength ; on the contrary, she gained *1' ri>n, " life of-her arm,"
i.e. (according to the use of ""I'n in the sense of reviving, and
n^nrij to bring to life again) new life in her arm, in other words,
" the renewing of her strength " {recentem vigorem virium
suarum). Thus, without noticing the sighs and groans forced
from her by the excessive toil and fatigue, but stirring herself
up again and again, she pursued the plan of strengthening her
alliances with the heathen. Ezekiel's picture of Aholah and
Aholibah is like a commentary on vers. 3-10 (see Ezek. xxiii.).
From fear of man, Israel, and still more Judah, had given
up the fear of Jehovah. Ver. 11a. "And of loliom hast thou
been afraid, and {whom) didst thou fear, that thou becamest a Uar,
and didst not continue mindful of me, and didst not take it to-
heart ? " It was of men — only mortal men, with no real power
(ch.li. 12) — that Israel was so needlessly afraid, that it resorted
to lies and treachery to Jehovah (ki, ut, an interrogative sen-
tence, as in 2 Sam. vii. 18, Ps. vili. 5) : purchasing the favour
of man out of the fear of man, and throwing itself into the
arms of false tutelar deities, it banished Jehovah its true
shelter out of its memory, and did not take it to heart, viz. the
CHAP. LVII. 11-13. 377
sinfulness of snch infidelity, and the eventful consequences by
which it was punished (compare eh. xlvii. 7 and xlii. 25).
With ver. 116 the reproaches are addressed to the present.
The treachery of Israel had been severely punished in the
catastrophe of which the captivity was the result, but without
effecting any improvement. The great mass of the people
were as forgetful of God as ever, and would not be led to
repentance by the long-suffering of God, which had hitherto
spared them from other well-merited punishments. Ver. 115.
" Am I not silent, and that for a long time, whereas thou wast
not afraid of me ? " A comparison with ch. xlii. 14 will show
that the prophecy returns here to its ordinary style. The
LXX. and Jerome render the passage as if the reading were
DpyD (viz. ^J'y = irapopSiv, quasi non videns), and this is the
reading which Lowth adopts. We may see from this, that
the original text had a defective chva\ which was intended,
however, to be read Djyoi. The prophet applies the term 'oldm
(see ch. xlii. 14) to the captivity, which had already lasted a
long time — a time of divine silence : the silence of His help so
far as the servants of Jehovah were concerned, but the silence
of His wrath as to the great mass of the people.
But this silence would not last for ever. Vers. 12, 13.
"/, I will proclaim thy righteousness; and thy works, they will not
profit thee. When thou criest, let thy heaps of idols save thee .*
but a wind carries them all away ; a breath takes them off; and
whoever putteth trust in me will inherit the land, and take posses-
sion of my holy mountain." According to the context, 'HDiTlV
cannot be a synonym of nsic''^ here. It is neither salvation nor
the way of salvation that is intended; nor is this even included,
as Stier supposes. But the simple reference is to what Israel
in its blindness regarded as righteousness ; whereas, if it had
known itself, it wonld have seen that it was the most glaring
opposite. This lying-righteousness of Israel would be brought
to a judicial exposure by Jehovah. t]^iJ'j?D"nxi is not a second
accusative to n^|N,for in that case we should have y'^lD'i inpivnx;
but it commences a second sentence, as the accents really indi-
cate. When Jehovah begins thus to speak and act, the im-
potence of the false gods which His people have made for
themselves will soon be exposed ; and " as for thy works (i.e.
thine idols, ch. xli. 29, of. ch. i. 31), they will do thee no good"
373 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
(ch. xliv. 9, 10, compare Jer. xxiii. 33; for the question
SB'D'nD, here an emphatic elevation of the subject, compare ch.
liii. 8, lilTnxi, Ewald, § 277, p. 683). This determines the
meaning of 'n!?i3i?, which Kuobel supposes to refer to the large
army of the Babylonians, with which the apostates among the
exiles had formed an offensive and defensive alhance. But the
term is really applied to the heaps (qibbuts, collectio, not an adjec-
tive of the form limmud) of different idols, with which Israel-
. had furnished itself even in its captivity (compare qibbdtsdh in
Mic. i. 17). It was in vain for them to turn to these pan-
theons of theirs ; a single ruSch would cany them all away, a
hebJiel would sweep them off, for they themselves were nothing
but liebhel and ruach (ch. xli. 29). The proper punctuation
here is ?3n"ni5^_; the first syllable of np'', which is attached to a
word with a disjunctive accent, has a so-called heavy Gaya, the
second a euphonic Gaya, according to rules which are too little
discussed in onr grammars. When Knobel supports his ex-
planation of n^i'Up on the ground that the idols in ver. 13a and
the worshippers of Jehovah in ver. 136 do not form a fitting
antithesis, the simple reply is, that the contrast lies between
the idols, which cannot save, and Jehovah, who not only saves
those who trust in Him, but sends them prosperity according
to His promises. With the promise, " Whoso trusts in me will
inherit the land," this prophecy reaches the thought with
which the previous prophecy (ch. Ivi. 7, 8) closed; and possibly
what is here affirmed of 'HlV'^p forms an intentional antithesis
to the promise there, 1''S3ip3? VPy f^p^. liP : when Jehovah gathers
His faithful ones from the dispersion, and gathers others to
them (from among the heathen), then will the plunder which
the faithless have gathered together be all scattered to the
winds. And whilst the latter stand forsaken by their power-
less works, the former will be established in the peaceful in-
heritance of the promised land.
The first half of the prophecy closes here. It is full of
reproach, and closes with a brief word of promise, which is
merely the obverse of the threat. The second half follows an
opposite course. Jehovah will redeem His people, provided it
has been truly humbled by the sufferings appointed, for He
has seen into what errors it has fallen since He has withdrawn
His mercy from it. "But the wicked," etc. The whole closes
CHAP. IVII. 14, 16. 379
here with words of threatening, which are the obverse of the
promise. Ver. 136 forms the transition from the first half to
the second.
The promise is now followed by an appeal to make ready
the way which the redeemed people have to take. Ver. 14.
" And He saitli, Heap up, heap up, prepare a way, tahe away
every obstruction from the way of my people" This is the very
Same appeal which occurs once in all three books of these pro-
phecies (ch. xl. 3, 4, Ivii. 14, Ixii. 10). The subject of the
verb (^dmar) is not Jehovah ; but the prophet intentionally
leaves it obscure, as in ch. xl. 3, 6 (cf. xxvi. 2). It is a heavenly
cry ; and the crier is not to be more precisely named.
The primary ground for this voice being heard at all is, that
the Holy One is also the Merciful One, and not only has a mani-
festation of glory on high, but also a manifestation of grace below.
Yer. 15. "For thus saith the high and lofty One, the eternally dwell-
ing One, He whose name is Holy One; I dwell on high and in the
holy place, and with the contrite one and him that is of a humbled
spirit, to revive the spirit of humbled ones, and to revive the heart of
contrite ones," He inflicts punishment in His wrath; but to those
who suffer themselves to be urged thereby to repentance and the
desire for salvation. He is most inwardly and most effectually near
with His grace. For the heaven of heavens is not too great for
Him, and a human heart is not too small for Him to dwell in.
And He who dwells upon cherubim, and among the praises of
Seraphim, does not scorn to dwell among the sighs of a poor
human soul. He is called ram (high), as being high and
exalted in Himself ; ^<fe'3 (the lofty One), as towering above all
besides ; and ^J? pE'. This does not mean the dweller in eternity,
which is a thought quite outside the biblical range of ideas; but,
since IJ? stands to pl^ not in an objective, but in an attributive
or adverbial relation (Ps. xlv. 7, cf. Prov. i. 33), and t?B', as
opposed to being violently wrested from the ordinary sphere of
life and work (cf. Ps. xvi. 9, cii. 29), denotes a continuing life,
a life having its root in itself, 1^ lij'B' must mean the eternally
(= IV?) dwelling One, i.e. He whose life lasts for ever and is
always the same. He is also called qddosh, as One who is
absolutely pure and good, separated from all the uncleanness
and imperfection by which creatures are characterized. This
is not to be rendered sanctum nomen eju^, but sanctus ; this
380 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
name is the fadt of His revelation of Himself in the history of
salvation, which is accomplished in love and wrath, grace and
judgment. This God inhabits mdrom v'qddosh, the height and
the Holy Place (accusatives of the object, like mdrom in eh.
xxxiii. 5, and m'rdmlm in ch. xxxiii. 16), both together being
equivalent to ^w? airpoaiTOV (1 Tim. vi. 16), since qddosh
(neuter, as in Ps. xlvi. 5, Ixv. 5) answers to ^w?, and mdrom to
airpoffiTov. But He also dwells with (ns as in Lev. xvi. 16)
the crushed and lowly of spirit. To these He is most inti-
mately near, and that for a salutary and gracious purpose,
namely " to revive . . ." njnn and njn always signify either to
keep tliat which is living alive, or to restore to life that which
is dead. The spirit is the seat of pride and humility, the heart
the seat of all feeling of joy and sorrow ; we have therefore
spiritum humilium and cor contrilorum. The selfish egotism
which repentance breaks has its root in the heart; and the self-
consciousness, from whose false elevation repentance brings
down, has its seat in the spirit (^PsycJiol. p. 199).
The compassion, by virtue of which God has His abode
and His work of grace in the spirit and heart of the penitent,
is founded in that free anticipating love which called man and
his self-conscious spirit-soul into being at the first. Ver. 16.
" For I do not contend for ever, and I am not angry for ever :
for the spirit would pine away before me, and the souls of men
ivhich I have created." The early translators (LXX., Syr., Jer.,
possibly also the Targum) give to ^by^_ the meaning egredietur,
which certainly cannot be established. And so also does Stier,
so far as the thought is concerned, when he adopts the render-
ing, " A spirit from nie will cover over, and breath of life will
I make ;" and so Hahn, " When the spirit pines away before
me, I create breath in abundance." But in both cases the
writer would at any rate have used the perf. consec. 'ip'W, and
the last clause of the verse has not the syntactic form of an
apodosis. The rendering given above is the only one that is
unassailable both grammatically and in fact. ''3 introduces the
reason for the self-limitation of the divine wrath, just as in
Ps. Ixxvili. 38, 39 (cf. Ps. ciii. 14) : if God should put no
restraint upon His wrath, the Consequence would be the entire
destruction of human life, which was His creative work at first.
The verb ^l?y, from its primary meaning to bend round (Job,
CHAP. LVII. 17, 18. 381
11. p. 8), has sometirces the transitive meaning to cover, and
sometimes the meaning to wrap one's self round, i.e. to become
faint or weak (compare fllt3J>, fainted away. Lam. ii. 19 ; and
fjisynn in Ps. cxlii. 4, which is applied to the spirit, like the kal
here). 'JS|D is equivalent to " in consequence of the wrath
proceeding from me." nmfi (a plural only met with here)
signifies, according to the fixed usage of the Old Testament
,.(ii. 22, xlii. 5), the souls of men, the origin of which is de-
scribed as a creation in the attributive clause (with an emphatic
■•J^?.), just as in Jer. xxxviii. 16 (cf. Zech. xii. 1). Whether the
accents are intended to take 'iT'^'y iJS in this attributive sense
or not, cannot be decided from the tiphchah attached to niDB'JI.
The prophet, who refers to the flood in other passages also (e.g.
eh. liv. 9), had probably in his mind the promise given after
the flood, according to which God would not make the existing
and inherited moral depravity an occasion for utterly destroy-
ing the human race.
This general law of His action is most especially the law of
His conduct towards Israel, in which such grievous effects of
its well-deserved punishment are apparent, and effects so diffe-
rent from those intended, that the compassion of God feels
impelled to put an end to the punishment for the good of all
that are susceptible of salvation. Vers. 17, 18. " And because
of the iniquity of its selfishness, I was wroth, and smote it; hiding
myself, and being angry : then it went on, turning away in the
way of its own heart. I have seen its ways, and will heal it ;
and will lead it, and afford consolations to it, and to its mourning
ones." The fundamental and chief sin of Israel is here called
VVa, lit. a cut or slice (= gain, ch. Ivi. 11); then, like TrXeove^la,
which is "idolatry" according to Ool. iii. 5, or like (piXapjvpia,
which is " the root of all evil" according to 1 Tim. vi. 10, greedy
desire for worldly possession, self-seeking, or worldliness gene-
rally. The future li^?^!, standing as it does by the side of the
perfect here, indicates that which is also past ; and ^'vpNI stands
in the place of a second gerund : abscondendo (viz. pdnai, my
face, eh. liv. 8) et stomachando. When Jehovah had thus
wrathfully hidden His gracious countenance from Israel, and
withdrawn His gracious presence out of the midst of Israel
<Hos. V. 6, t:n» J'lin), it went away from Him (naiL^ with 331^',
like i'l'iJ' with i'^iJ'), going its own ways like the world of nations
382 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
that had been left to themselves. But Jehovah had not seen
these wanderings without pity. The futures which follow are
promising, not by virtue of any syntactic necessity, but by
virtue of an inward necessity. He will heal His wounded (ch.
i. 4-6) and languishing people, and lead in the right way those
that are going astray, and afford them consolation as a recom-
pense for their long sufferings (CDinj is derived from the piel
onJ, and not, as in Hos. xi. 8, from the niplial hinndchem, in the
sense of "feelings of sympathy"), especially (Vav epexeget.;
Ges. § 155, 1) its mourning ones (ch. Ixi. 2, 3, Ixvi. 10), i.e.
those whom punishment has brought to repentance, and ren-
dered desirous of salvation.
But when the redemption comes, it will divide Israel into
two halves, with very different prospects. Vers. 19-21.
" Creating fruit of the lips ; Jehovah saith, ' Peace, peace to
those that are far off, and to those tliat are near ; and I heal it.'
But the wicked are like the sea that is cast up ; for it cannot rest,
and its waters cast out slime and mud. There is no peaxe, saith
my God, for the wicked." The words of God in ver. 19 are
introduced with an interpolated " inquit Jehova" (cf . ch. xlv.
24, and the ellipsis in ch. xli. 27); and what Jehovah effects by
speaking thus is placed first in a determining participial clause:
" Creating fruit (3U = 3W, 313, keri 3''3) of the lips," Kapirov
■)(ei\emv (LXX., Heb. xiii. 15), i.e. not of His own lips, to
which S<li3 would be inapplicable, but the offering of praise
and thanksgiving springing from human lips (for the figure,
see Psychol, p. 214, transl. ; and on the root 33, to press upon
forward, Gen. p. 635) : " Jehovah saith shdlom, shdlom," i.e.
lasting and perfect peace (as in ch. xxvi. 3), " be the portion
of those of my people who are scattered far and near" (ch. xliii.
5-7, xlix. 12 ; compare the application to heathen and Jews in
Eph. ii. 17) ; " and I heal it" (viz. the nation, which, although
scattered, is like one person in the sight of God). But the
wicked, who persist in the alienation from God inherited from
the fathers, are incapable of the peace which God brings to
His people : they are like the sea in its tossed and stormy state
(E'lM pausal third pers. as an attributive clause). As this cannot
rest, and as its waters cast out slime and mud, so has their
natural state become one of perpetual disturbance, leading to
the uninterrupted production of unclean and ungodly thoughts,
CHAP. LVII. 19-21. 383
words, and works. Thus, then, there is no peace for them,
saith my God. With these words, which have even a more
pathetic sound here than in ch. xlviii. 22, the prophet seals the
second book of his prophecies. The " wicked" referred to are
not the heathen outside Israel, but the heathen, i.e. those
estranged from God, within Israel itself.
The transition fi'om the first to the second half of this
closing prophecy is formed by ittijl in ch. Ivii. 14. In the
second half, from ch. Ivii. 116, we find the accustomed style of
our pi-ophet ; but in ch. Ivi. 9-lvii. 11a the style is so thoroughly
different, that Ewald maintains that the prophet has here
inserted in his book a fragment from some earlier writer of
the time of Manasseh. But we regard this as very improbable.
It is not required by what is stated concerning the prophets
and shepherds, for the book of Ezekiel clearly shows that the
prophets and shepherds of the captivity were thus debased.
Still less does what is stated concerning the early death of the
righteous require it ; for the fundamental idea of the suffering
servant of Jehovah, which is peculiar to the second book, is
shadowed forth therein. Nor by what is affirmed as to the
idolatrous conduct of the people; for in the very centre (vei*. 4)
the great mass of the people are reproached for their contemp-
tuous treatment of the servants of Jehovah. Nor does the
language itself force us to any such conjecture, for ch. liii. also
differs from the style met with elsewhere ; and yet (although
Ewald regards it as an earlier, borrowed fragment) it must be
written by the author of the whole, since its grandest idea
finds its fullest expression there. At the same time, we may
assume that the prophet described the idolatry of the people
under the influence of earlier models. If he had been a pro-
phet of the captives after the time of Isaiah, he would have
rested his prophecies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For just as
ch. li. 18 sqq. has the ring of the Lamentations of Jeremiah,
so does ch. Ivii. 3 sqq. resemble in many respects the earlier
reproaches of Jeremiah (compare Jer. v. 7-9,. 29, ix. 8, with
the expression, " Should I rest satisfied with this ? ") ; also ch.
ii. 25 (tS'NU), ii. 20, iii. 6, 13 (" upon lofty mountains and under
green trees") ; also the night scene in Ezek. xxiii.
384 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
PART III.
FIRST PROPHECY.— Chap, lviii.
THE FALSE WORSHIP AND THE TRUE, WITH THE PROMISES
BELONGING TO THE LATTER.
As the last prophecy of the second book contained all the three
elements of prophetic addresses — reproach, threat, and promise,
— so this, the first prophecy of the third book, cannot open in
any other way than with a rehearsal of one of these. The
prophet receives the commission to appear as the preacher of
condemnation ; and whilst Jehovah is giving the reason for
this commission, the preaching itself commences. Vers. 1, 2.
" Cry with full throat, hold not hack ; lift up thy voice like a
bugle, and proclaim to my people their apostasy, and to the house
of Jacob their sins. And they seek me day by day, and desire to
learn my ways, like a nation which has done righteousness, and
has not forsaken the right of their God: they ask of me judgments
of righteousness ; they desire the drawing near of Elohim." As
the second prophecy of the first part takes as its basis a text
from Micah (ch. ii. 1—4), so have we here in ver. lb the echo
of Mic. iii. 8. Not only with lisping lips (1 Sam. i. 13), but
with the throat (Ps. cxv. 7, cxlix. 6) ; that is to say, with all
the strength of the voice, lifting up the voice like the shophdr
(not a trumpet, which is called fTiyifri, ^^^ ^^ f^ct any metallic
instrument, but a bugle or signal horn, like that blown on new
year's day : see at Ps. Ixxxi. 4), i.e. in a shrill shouting tone.
With a loud voice that must be heard, with the most unsparing
publicity, the prophet is to point out to the people their deep
moral wounds, which they may indeed hide from themselves
with hypocritical opus operatum, but cannot conceal from the
all-seeing God. The 1 of ''TY^H] does not stand for an explana-
tory particle, but for an adversative one : " their apostasy
their sins ; and yet (although they are to be punished for these)
they approach Jehovah every day" (Di^ D^' with mahpacli
under the first Di', and pasek after it, as is the general rule
between two like -sounding words), "that He would now
CHAP. LTIII. 3, 4. 385
speedily interpose." They also desire to know the ways which
He intends to take for their deliverance, and by which He
desires to lead them. This reminds us of the occurrence
between Ezekiel and the elders of Gola (Ezek. xx. 1 sqq. ;
compare also Ezek. xxxiii. 30 sqq.). As if they had been a
people whose rectitude of action and fidelity to the commands
of God warranted them in expecting nothing but what was
good in the future, they ask God (viz. in prayer and by in-
quiring of the prophet) for mislip'le tsedeq, " righteous mani-
festations of judgment," i.e. such as will save them and destroy
their foes, and desire qirbath 'Elohim, the coming of God, i.e.
His saving parousia. The energetic futures, with the tone
upon the last syllable, answer to their self-righteous pre-
sumption ; and I'Ssni is repeated, according to Isaiah's most
favourite oratorical figure (see p. 134), at the close of the
verse.
There follow now the words of the work-righteous them-
selves, who hold up their fasting before the eyes of God, and
complain that He takes no notice of it. And how could He ? !
Vers. 3, 4. " ' Wherefore do we fast and Thou seest not, afflict
our soul and Thou regardest not?' Behold, on the day of your
fasting ye carry on your business, and ye oppress all your
labourers. Behold, ye fast with strife and quarrelling, and with
smiting with the fist maliciously closed : ye do not fast now to
make your voice audible on high" By the side of dIS (root DV,
to press, tie up, constrain) we have here the older expres-
sion found in the Pentateuch, t^SJ nay, to do violence to the
natural life. In addition to the fasting on the day of atone-
ment (the tenth of the seventh month Tizri), the only fast
prescribed by the law, other fasts were observed according to
Zech. vii. 3, viii. 19, viz. fasts to commemorate the commence-
ment of the siege of Jerusalem (10th Tebeth), its capture (17th
Tammuz), its destruction (9th Abib), and the murder of Geda-
liah (3d Tizri). The exiles boast of this fasting here; but it is
a heartless, dead work, and therefore worthless in the sight ot
God. There is the most glaring contrast between the object of
the fast and their conduct on the fast-day : for they carry on
their work-day occupation ; they are then, more than at any
other time, true taskmasters to their work-people (lest the ser-
vice of the master should suffer from the service of God) ; and
VOL II 2 B
386 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
because when fasting they are doubly irritable and ill-tempered,
this leads to quaiTelling and strife, and even to striking with
angry fist (1'iJ???, from ^IJ, to collect together, make into a
ball, clench). JHence in their present state the true purpose
of fasting is quite unknown to them, viz. to enable them to
draw near with importunate prayer to God, who is enthroned
on high (ch. Ivii. 15).^ The only difficulty here is the phrase
J'sn NVD. In the face of ver. 13, this cannot have any other
meaning than to stretch one's hand after occupation, to carry
on business, to occupy one's self with it, — ^^D combining the
three meanings, apphcation or affairs, striving, and trade or
occupation. t<^tt, however, maintains its primary meaning, to
lay hold of or'grasp (cf. ch. x. 14; Targ. p'^-rs ryan pnx,
ye seek your livehhood). This is sustained by what follows,
whether we derive n3''3sy (cf. 'ppH, ch. Ivii. 6) from 3SJ? (et
omnes Idbores vestros graves rigide exigitis), '^\\ (from which
we have here I^JW for ^^it}, Deut. xv. 3) being construed as
in 2 Kings xxiii. 35 with the accusative of what is peremptorily
demanded ; or (what we certainly prefer) from yiV ; or better
still from 3W (like ?tty) : omnes operanos vestros adigitis (urgetis),
B'M being construed with the accusative of the person oppressed,
as in Deut. xv. 2, where it is applied to the oppression of a
debtor. Here, however, the reference is not to those who owe
money, but to those who owe labour, or to obligations to labour ;
and 3SJJ does not signify a debtor (an idea quite foreign to
this verbal root), but a labourer, one who eats the bread of
sorrows, or of hard toil (Ps. cxxvii. 2). The prophet paints
throughout from the life ; and we cannot be persuaded by
Stier's false zeal for Isaiah's authorship to give up the opinion,
that we have here a figure drawn from the life of the exiles in
Babylon.
Whilst the people on the fast-day are carrying on their
worldly, selfish, everyday business, the fasting is perverted from
a means of divine worship and absorption in the spiritual
character of the day to the most thoroughly selfish purposes : it
is supposed to be of some worth and to merit some reward.
^ The ancient churcli called a fast statio, because he who fasted had to
wait in prayer day and night like a soldier at his post. See on this and
what follows, the Shepherd of Hermas, iii. Sim. 5, and the Epistle of Bar-
nabas, c. iii.
CHAP. LVIII. 5-7. 387
This work-holy delusion, behind which self-righteousness and
unrighteousness were concealed, is met thus by Jehovah
through His prophet : Vers. 5-7. " Can such tilings as these
pass for a fast that I have pleasure in, as a day for a man to
afflict his soul? To bow down his head like a bulrush, and
spread sackcloth and ashes under him — dost thou call this a
fast and an acceptable day for Jehovah ? Is not this a fast that
T have pleasure in : To loose coils of wickedness, to untie the
bands of the yoke, and for sending away the oppressed as free,
and that ye break every kind of yoke ? Is it not this, to break
thy bread to the hungry, and to take the poor and houseless to thy
home ; when thou seest a naked man that thou clothest him, and
dost not deny thyself before thine own flesh ?" The second part
of the address commences with ver. 5. The true worship,
which consists in works of merciful love to one's brethren, and
its great promises are here placed in contrast with the false
worship just described, ntan points backwards : is such a fast
as this a fast after Jehovah's mind, a day on which it can be
said in truth that a man afflicts his soul (Lev. xvi. 29) ? The
l! of ^3?n is resumed in njpn ; the second ? is the object to X'^ipn
expressed as a dative. The first ? answers to our preposition
" to" with the infinitive, which stands here at the beginning
like a casus absol. (to hang down ; for which the inf. abs.
Slisan might also be used), and as in most other cases passes
over into the finite (et quod saccum et cinerem substemit, viz.
sibi: Ges. § 132, Anm. 2). To hang down the head and sit in
sackcloth and ashes — this does not in itself deserve the name of
fasting and of a day of gracious reception (ch. Ivi. 7, Ixi. 2) on
the part of Jehovah (niiT'P for a subjective genitive). Vers.
6 and 7 affirm that the fasting which is pleasant to Jehovah
consists in something very different from this, namely, in re-
leasing the oppressed, and in kindness to the helpless ; not in
abstinence from eating as such, but in sympathetic acts of that
self-denying love, which gives up bread or any other possession
for the sake of doing good to the needy.^ There is a bitter
irony in these words, just as when the ancients said, " not eating
is a natural fast, but abstaining from sin is a spiritual fast."
During the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans a general
• The ancient church connected fasting with ahnsgiving by law. Dressd,
Pair. Ap. p. 493.
THE PEOPIIECIES OF ISAIAH.
emancipation of the slaves of Israelitish descent (who were to
be set free, according to the law, every three years) was resolved
upon and carried out ; but as soon as the Chaldeans were gone,
the masters fetched their liberated slaves back into servitude
again (Jer. xxxiv. 8-22). And as ver. 6 shows, they carried
the same selfish and despotic disposition with them into
captivity. The HT which points forwards is expanded into infin.
absolutes, which are carried on quite regularly in the finite
tense. Motdh, which is repeated palindromically, signifies in
both cases a yoke, lit. vectis, the cross wood which formed th&
most important part of the yoke, and which was fastened to the
animal's head, and so connected with the plough by means of
a cord or strap (Sir. xxx. 35, xxxiii. 27).^ It is to this that
nilJNj knots, refers. We cannot connect it with mutteh, a state
of perverted right (Ezek. ix. 9), as Hitzig does. D'V''^. are
persons unjustly and forcibly oppressed even with cruelty; YT^
is a stronger synonym to PE'V (^e.g, Amos iv. 1). In ver. 7 we
have the same spirit of general humanity as in Job xxxi. 13-23,
Ezek. xviii. 7, 8 (compare what James describes in ch. i. 27 as
" pure religion and undefiled"). Dn? (^^) D"1S is the usual
phrase for kXuv (xXd^ew) aprov. D'HllD is the adjective to
D\V^j and apparently therefore must be derived from "T]0 :
miserable men who have shown themselves refractory towards
despotic rulers. But the participle mdrud cannot be found
elsewhere; and the recommendation to receive political fugitives
has a modern look. The parallels in Lam. i. 7 and iii. 19 are
conclusive evidence, that the word is intended as a derivative
of ir\, to wander about, and it is so rendered in the LXX.,
Targ., and Jerome (vagos). But 1i"i», pi. Cl^""?, is no adjective;
and there is nothing to recommend the opinion, that by " wan-
derers" We are to understand Israelitish men. Ewald supposes
that D^llD may be taken as a part, liopli. for Cll^'^j hunted
away, like t3'mnnn in 2 Kings xi. 2 {keri U'^n'Om) ; but it cannot
* I have already observed at ch. xlvii. 6, in vindication of what was
stated at ch. x. 27, that the yoke was not in the form of a collar. I
brought the subject under the notice of Prof. Schegg, who wrote to me
immediately after his return from his journey to Palestine to the following
effect : " I saw many oxen ploughing in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the
neigUbourhood of Ephesus ; and in every case the yoke was a cross piece
of wood laid upon the neck of the animal, and fastened to the pole of the
plough by a cord which passed under the neck of the animal."
CHAP. LVIII. 8, 9. 389
be shown that the language allowed of this shifting of a vowel-
sound. We prefer tg assume that wyno (persecuted) is re-
garded as part, pass., even if only per metaplasmum, from T^ip,
a secondary form of Tn (cf. D3D, yho^ nxp, makuna). Ver. 76
is still the virtual subject to W"in3S DiS, The apodosis to the
hypothetical '3 commences with a perf. consec, which then
passes into the pausal future Dp^nn. In ^'iB'Sp (from thine own
flesh) it is presupposed that all men form one united whole as
being of the same flesh and blood, and that they form one
family, owing to one another mutual love.
The prophet now proceeds to point out the reward of divine
grace, which would follow such a fast as this, consisting of
self-renouncing, self-sacrificing love ; and in the midst of the
promise he once more reminds of the fact, that this love is
the condition of the promise. This divides the promises into
two. The middle promise is linked on to the first; the morning
dawn giving promise of the "perfect day" (Prov. iv. 18). The
first series of promises we have in vers. 8, 9a. " Then will thy
light break forth as the morning dawn, and thy healing will
sprout up speedily, and thy righteousness will go before thee, the
glory of Jehovah will follow thee. TJien ivilt thou call and
Jehovah will answer ; thou wilt beseech, and He will say. Here
am /.'" The love of God is called "light" in contrast with His
wrath ; and a quiet cheerful life in God's love is so called, In
contrast with a wild tronbled life spent in God's wrath. This
life in God's love has its dawn and its noon-day. When it is
night both witliin and around a man, and he suffers himself to
lae awakened by the love of God to a reciprocity of love ; then
does the love of God, like the rising sun, open for itself a way
through the man's dark night and overcome the darkness of
wrath, but so gradually that the sky within is at first only
streaked as it were with the red of the morning dawn, the
herald of the sun. A second figure of a promising character
follows. The man is sick unto death ; but when the love of
God stimulates him to reciprocal love, he is filled with new
vigour, and his recovery springs up suddenly ; he feels within
him a new life working through with energetic force like a
miraculous springing up of verdure from the earth, or of
growing and flowering plants. The only other passages in
which nanx occurs are in the b(')oks of Jeremiah, Chronicles,
390 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
and Nehemiah. It signifies recovery (LXX. here, ra Idfiard
a-ov ravv dvareXel, an old mistake for IfjMTia, vestimenta), and
hence general prosperity (2 Chron. xxiv. 13). It always
occurs with the predicate nnijy (causative npjjn, cf. Targ. Ps.
cxlvii. 3, ^!^1^! pBS<, another reading r^llX)^ oritur (for which
we have here poetically germinat) alicui saniias; hence Gesenius
and others have inferred, that the word originally meant the
binding up of a wound, bandage (imponitur alicui fascia).
But the primary word is Tl^ ~ T\.% to set to rights, to restore
or put into the right condition (e.g. b. Sabbath 335, " he cured
his wounded flesh "), connected with ^l''"!*?, Arab, drak, accommo-
datus; so that nanx, after the form naiPDj Arab, (though rarely)
arika, signifies properly, setting to rights, i.e. restoration.
The third promise is : " thy righteousness will go before
thee, the glory of Jehovah will gather thee, or keep thee to-
gether," i.e. be thy rear-guard (LXX. Trepia-reXei ae, enclose
thee with its protection ; ^DK as in ^BXD, ch. Hi. 12). The
figure is a significant one : the first of the mercies of God is
SiKaiovv, and the last Bo^d^etv, When Israel is diligent in the
performance of works of compassionate love, it is like an army
on the march or a travelling caravan, for which righteousness
clears and shows the way as being the most appropriate gift of
God, and whose rear is closed by the glory of God, which so
conducts it to its goal that not one is left behind. The fourth
promise assures them of the immediate hearing of prayer, of
every appeal to God, every cry for help.
But before the prophet brings his promises up to their cul-
minating point, he once more lays down the condition upon
which they rest. Vers. 96-12. " If thou put away from the
midst of thee the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking of
evil, and offerest up thy gluttony to the hungry, and satisfest the
soul that is bowed down : thy light will stream out in the dark-
ness, and thy darkness become like the brightness of noon-day.
And Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in
droughts, and refresh thy bones; and thou wilt become like a well-
watered garden, and like a fountain, whose waters never deceive.
And thy people will build ruins of the olden time, foundations of
earlier generations wilt thou erect; and men will call thee repairers
of breaches, restorers of habitable streets," >^^'>^, a yoke, is here
equivalent to yoking or oppression, as in ver. 6a, where it
CHAP. LVIII. 9-12. 391
stands by the side of VBH. yasxTlpB' (only met with here, for
n?B', Gres. § 65, 1, a), the stretching out of the finger, signifies
a scornful pointing with the fingers (Prov. vi. 13, SaxTuXo-
BeiKTetv) at humbler men, and especially at such as are
godly (ch. Ivii. 4). ij?"'^'!, the utterance of things which are
wicked in themselves and injurious to one's neighbour, hence
sinful conversation in general. The early commentators looked
for more under ^fpl, than is really meant (and so does even
Stier : " thy soul, thy heart, all thy sympathetic feelings," etc.).
The name of the soul, which is regarded here as greedily long-
ing (ch. Ivi. 11), is used in Deut. xxiv. 6 for that which nourishes
it, and here for that which it longs for ; the longing itself
(appetitus) for the object of the longing (^Psychol, p. 204).
We may see this very clearly from the choice of the verb P^f\
(a voluntative in a conditional clause, Ges. § 128, 2), which,
starting from the primary meaning educere (related to PS3, Arabic
anfaqa, to give out, distribute, nafaqa, distribution, especially
of alms), signifies both to work out, acquire, carry off (Prov.
iii. 13, viii. 35, etc.), and also to take out, deliver, offer, ex-
promere (as in this instance and Ps. cxl. 9, cxliv. 13). The
soul " bowed down " is bowed down in this instance through
abstinence. The apodoses commence with the ^er/. cons. Tntl.
n^as is the darkness caused by the utter absence of light (Arab.
afalat esh-shemsu, " the sun has become invisible ") ; see at
Job X. 22. This, as the substantive clause affirms, is like the
noon-day, which is called ^^Iv^-^, because at that poiut the day-
light of both the forenoon and afternoon, the rising and setting
light, is divided as it were into two by the climax which it has
attained. A new promise points to the fact, that such a man
may enjoy without intermission the mild and safe guidance of
divine grace, for which nnj (nmn, syn. ?nj) is the word com-
monly employed; and another to the communication of the
most copious supply of strength. The uTra^ y^yp- '^i'^?^?^
does not state with what God will satisfy the soul, as Hahn
supposes (after Jerome, "splendoribus"), but according to nn''ns
(Ps. Ixviii. 7) and such promises as ch. xliii. 20, xlvlii. 21,
xlix. 10, the kind of satisfaction and the circumstances under
which it occurs, viz. in extreme droughts (Targ. "years of
drought "). In the place of the peif. cons, we have then the
future, which facilitates the elevation of the object : " and thy
392 ^ THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
bones will He make strong," T^'H*., for which Hupfeld wodld
read fl'^n*, « will He rejuvenate." y'prm is a denom. of p^n,
expeditus; it raay, however, be directly derived from a verb pn,
presupposed by OWn, not, however, in the meaning " to be fat"
(LXX. TTiavOriaeTM, and so also Kimchi), but " to be strong,"
lit. to be loose or ready for action ; and h. Jebamoth 1026
has the very suitable gloss ''013 *mt (making the bones strong).
This idea of invigorating is then unfolded in two different
figures, of which that of a well-watered garden sets forth the
abundance received, that of a spring the abundance possessed.
Natural objects are promised, but as a gift of grace ; for this
is the difference between the two testaments, that in the Old
Testament the natural is ever striving to reach the spiritual,
whereas in the New Testament the spiritual lifts up the natural
to its own level. The Old Testament is ever striving to give
inwardness to what Avas outward ; in the New Testament this
object is attained, and the further object now is to make the
outward conformed to the inward, the natural life to the
spiritual. The last promise (whether the seventh or eighth,
depends upon whether we include the growing of the morning
light into the light of noon, or not) takes its form from the
pining of the exiles for their home : " and thy people (^SD)
build" (Ewald, § 295, c) ; and Bottcher would read lOD 13fl=i ; but
IP with a passive, although more admissible in Hebrew than in
Arabic, is very rarely met with, and then more frequently in the
sense of airo than in that of vtto, and 133 followed by a plural
of the thing would be more exact than customary. Moreover,
there is no force in the objection that 1^0 with the active can
only signify " some of thee," since it is equivalent to lOD nU'N,
those who sprang from thee and belong to thee by kindred
descent. The members born to the congregation in exile will
begin, as soon as they return to their home, to build up again
the ruins of olden time, the foundations of earlier generations,
i.e. houses and cities of which only the foundations are left
(eh. Ixi. 4) ; therefore Israel restored to its fatherland receives
the honourable title of "builder of breaches," "restorer of streets
(i.e. of places much frequented once) naB*? " (for inhabiting),
i.e. so that, although so desolate now (ch. xxxiii. 8), they become
habitable and populous once more.
The third part of the prophecy now adds to the duties of
CHAP LVIII. 13, 14. 393
human love the duty of keeping the Sabbath, together with
equally great promises; i.e. it adds the duties of the first table to
those of the second, for the service of works is sanctified by the
service of worship. Vers. 13, 14. " Jf thou hold back thy foot
from the Sabbath, from doing thy business on my holy day, and
callest the Sabbath a delight, the holy of Jehovah, reverer, and
honourest it, not doing thine owii ways, not pursuing thy business
and speaking words : then wilt thou have delight in Jehovah, and
I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the land, and
make thee enjoy the inheritance of Jacob thy forefather, for
the mouth of JehovaJi hath spoken it" The duty of keeping the
Sabbath is also enforced by Jeremiah (ch. xvii. 19 sqq.) and
Ezekiel (ch. xx. 12 sqq., xxii. 8, 26), and the neglect of this
duty severely condemned. Ch. Ivi. has already shown the im-
portance attached to it by our prophet. The Sabbath, above
all other institutions appointed by the law, was the true means
of uniting and sustaining Israel as a religions community, more
especially in exile, where a great part of the worship necessarily
fell into abeyance on account of its intimate connection with
Jerusalem and the holy land ; but whilst it was a Mosaic insti-
tution so far as its legal appointments were concerned, it rested,
in a way which reached even beyond the rite of circumcision,
upon a basis much older than that of the law, being a cere-
monial copy of the Sabbath of creation, which was the divine
rest established by God as the true object of all motion; for
God entered into Himself again after He had created the world
out of Himself, that all created things might enter into Him.
In order that this, the great end set before all creation, and
especially before rtiankind, viz. entrance into the rest of God,
might be secured, the keeping of the Sabbath prescribed by the
law was a divine method of education, which put an end every
week to the ordinary avocations of the people, with their secular
influence and their tendency to fix the mind on outward things,
and was designed by the strict prohibition of all work to force
them to enter into themselves and occupy theii* minds with
God and His word. The prophet does not hedge round this
commandment to keep the Sabbath with any new precepts, but
merely demands for its observance full truth answering to the
.spirit of the letter. " If thou turn away thy foot from the
Sabbath " is equivalent to, if thou do not tread upon its holy
394 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
ground with a foot occupied with its everyday work. T\'(VV.
which follows is not elliptical ( = nibSJO answering to rDB^Dj
an unnecessary and mistaken assumption), but an explanatory
permutative of the object "thy foot:" "turn away thy foot,"
viz. from attending to thy business (a defective plural) on my
holy day. Again, if thou call (i.e. from inward contemplation
and esteem) the Sabbath a pleasure (^oneg, because it leads thee
to God, and not a burden because it leads thee away from
thine everyday life; of. Amos viii. 5) and the holy one of
Jehovah (on this masculine personification of the Sabbath, see
ch. Ivi. 2), " m'khubbdd," honoured == honourable, honorandus
(see vol. i. p. 128), and if thou truly honourest him, whom
Jehovah has. invested with the splendour of His own glory
(Gen. ii. 3: "and sanctified it"), "not" (IP = wo-re fit)) "to
perform thy ways " (the ordinary ways which relate to self-
preservation, not to God), " not to attend to thine own business"
(see at ver. 3) " and make words," viz. words of vain useless
character and needless multitude ("i^Via'i as in Hos. x. 4,
denoting unspiritual gossip and boasting) ; ^ then, just as the
■ Sabbath is thy pleasure, so wilt thou have thy pleasure in
Jehovah, i.e. enjoy His delightful fellowship ('n"py iiVTiPi, a
promise as in Job xxii. 26), and He will reward thee for thy
' Hitzig observes, that " the law of the Sabbath has already received
the Jewish addition, ' speaking is work.' " But from the premiss that the
sabbatical rest of God was rest from speaking His creating word (Ps.
xxxiii. 6), all the conclusion that tradition has ever drawn is, that on the
Sabbath men must to a certain extent rest iniriD as well as nt^JJOD j sJid
when R. Simon b. Jochai exclaimed to his loquacious old mother on the
Sabbath, "Keeping the Sabbath means keeping silence," his meaning was
not that talking in itself was working and therefore all conversation was
forbidden on the Sabbath. Tradition never went as far as this. The
rabbinical exposition of the passage before us is the following : " Let not
thy talking on the Sabbath be the same as that on working days ;" and
when it is stated once in the Jerusalem Talmud that the Rabbins could
hardly bring themselves to allow of friendly greetings on the Sabbath, it
certainly follows from this, that they did not forbid them. Even the
author of the nV'tJ* (n^an nref? ije!) with its excessive ceremonial strin-
gency goes no further than this, that on the Sabbath men must abstain
from 'pm inan. And is it possible that our prophet can have been more
stringent than the strictest traditionalists, and wished to make the keeper
of the Sabbath a Carthusian monk ? There could not be a more thorougU
perversion of the spirit of prophecy than this.
CHAP. LIX. 1, 2. 395
renunciation of earthly advantages with a victorious reign, with
an unapproachable possession of the high places of the land —
i.e. chiefly, though not exclusively, of the promised land, which
shall then be restored to thee, — and with the free and undisputed
usufruct of the inheritance promised to thy forefather Jacob
(Ps. cv. 10, 11 ; Deut. xxxii. 13 and xxxiii. 29) ; — this will be
thy glorious reward, for the month of Jehovah hath spoken it.
Thus does Isaiah confirm the predictions of ch. i. 20 and si. 25
(compare ch. xxiv. 3 and the passages quoted at vol. i. p. 425).
SECOND PROPHECY.— Chap. lix.
THE EXISTING WALL OF PARTITION BROKEN DOWN AT LAST.
This second prophetic address continues the reproachful
theme of the first. In the previous prophecy we found the
virtues which are well-pleasing to God, and to which He pro-
mises redemption as a reward of grace, set in contrast with
those false means, upon which the people rested their claim to
redemption. In the prophecy before us the sins which retard
redemption are still more directly exposed. Vers. 1, 2. " Be-
hold, Jehovah's hand is not too short to help, nor His ear too heavy
to hear ; bvt your iniquities have become a party-wall between
you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from
you, so that He does not hear." The reason why redemption is
delayed, is not that the power of Jehovah has not been suffi-
cient for it (cf. ch. 1. 2), or that He has not been aware of
their desire for it, but that their iniquities (D^'Tl^i?! with the
second syllable defective) have become dividers (Dv'naD, defec-
tive), have grown into a party-wall between them and their
God, and their sins (cf. Jer. v. 25) have hidden pdnlm from
them. As the " hand" (yarf.) in ch. xxviii. 2 is the absolute
hand ; so here the " face" (pdnim) is that face which sees
everything, which is everywhere present, whether uncovered or
concealed; which diffuses light when it unveils itself, and
leaves darkness when it is veiled ; the sight of which is blessed-
ness, and not to see which is damnation. This absolute coun-
teuance is never to be seen in this life without a veil ; but the
rejection and abuse of grace make this veil a perfectly im-
penetrable covering. And Israel had forfeited in this way the
396 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
liofht and sight of this countenance of God, and had raised a
party-wall between itself and Him, and that Jfiof'P, so that He
did not hear, i.e. so that their prayer did not reach Him (Lam.
iii. 44) or bring down an answer from Him.
The sins of Israel are sins in words and deeds. Ver. 3.
" For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with
iniquity ; your lips speak lies, your tongue murmurs wickedness."
The verb 7^i, to spot (see ch. Ixiii. 3), is a later softening down
of 7Vi {e.g. 2 Sam. i. 21) ; and in the place of the niphal ?W3
(Zeph. iii. 1), we have here, as in Lam. iv. 14, the double passive
form ?KJ3, compounded of niphal and pual. The post-biblical
nithpael, compounded of the niphal and the hithpael, is a mixed
form of the same kind, though we also meet with it in a few
biblical passages (Deut. xxi. 8 ; Prov. xxvii. 15 ; Ezek. xxiii.
48). The verb hdgdh (LXX. /leXera) combines the two
meanings of " thought" (meditation or reflection), and of a
light low " expression," half inward half outward.
The description now passes over to the social and judicial
life. Lying and oppression universally prevail. Vers. 4-6.
" No one speaks with justice, and no one pleads with faithfulness ;
men trust in vanity, and speak with deception; they conceive
trouble, and bring forth ruin. They hatch basilisks' eggs, and
weave spiders' icebs. He that eateth of their eggs must die ; and
if one is trodden upon, it splits into an adder. Their loebs do
not sufiice for clothing, and men cannot cover themselves with
their works : their ivorks are works of ruin, and the practice of
injustice is in their hands." As K^iJ is generally used in these
prophetic addresses in the sense of Krjpvaaeiv, and the judicial
meaning, citare, in jus vocare, litem intendere, cannot be sus-
tained, we must adopt this explanation, " no one gives public
evidence with justice" (LXX. ovhel'i "KaXel SiKaia). PlS is firm
adherence to the rule of right and truth ; HJ^iDX a conscientious
reliance which awakens trust ; tDSB'D (in a reciprocal sense, as
in ch. xliii. 26, Ixvi. 16) signifies the commencement and pur-
suit of a law-suit with any one. The abstract infinitives which
follow in ver. 4J express the general characteristics of the
social life of that time, after the manner of the historical in-
finitive in Latin (cf. ch. xxi. 5 ; Ges. § 131, 4, b). Men trust
in tohu, that which is perfectly destitute of truth, and speak
^I'f'j what i" morally corrupt and worthless. The double figure
CHAP. UX. 4-7. 397
J1K n^jsini hav hn is taken from Job xv. 35 (cf. Ps, vii. 15).
^"in (compare the poel in ver. 13) is only another form for nnn
(Ges. § 131, 4, b) ; and nvin (the western or Palestinian reading
liere), or ^?l^ (the oriental or Babylonian reading), is the usual
form of the inf. abs. Jdpli. (Ges. § 53, Anm. 2). What they
carry about with them and set in operation is compared in
ver. 5a to basilisks' eggs CJ^VSy, sei'pens regulus, as in ch. xi. 8)
and spiders' webs (B'''?3y, as in Job viii. 14, from 33J?, possibly
in the sense of squatter, sitter still, with the substantive ending
ish ; see Jeshurun, p. 228). They hatch basilisks' eggs (^153
like V\>^, ch. xxxiv. 15, a perfect, denoting that which has
hitherto always taken place and therefore is a customary
thing) ; and they spin spiders' webs (J']^? possibly related to
apd'^-VT) ;* the future denoting that which goes on occurring).
The point of comparison in the iirst figure is the injurious
nature of all they do, whether men rely upon it, in which case
" he that eateth of their eggs dieth," or whether they are bold
or imprudent enough to try and frustrate their plans and per-
formances, when that (the egg) which is crushed or trodden
upon splits into an adder, i.e. sends out an adder, which snaps
at the heel of the disturber of its rest, lit as in Job xxxix. 15,
here the part. pass. fern, like nniD (ch. xlix. 21), with — instead
of — , like n37j the original a of the feminine (zurath) having
returned from its lengthening into a to the weaker lengthening
into e. The point of comparison in the second figure is the
worthlessness and deceptive character of their works. What
they spin and make does not serve for a covering to any man
(iDsn^ with the most general subject : Ges. § 137, 3), but has
simply the appearance of usefulness ; their works are ijij"''!'?/.'?
(with metheg, not munach, under the Mem), evil works, and their
act^ are all directed to the injury of their neighbour, in his
right and his possession.
This evil doing of theirs rises even to hatred, the very
opposite of that love which is well-pleasing to God. Ver. 7.
" Their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed innocent blood t
1 Neither xxlpog nor eipaxiti has hitherto been traced to an Indian root
in any admissible way. Benfey deduces the former from the root dJivri
(to twist) ; but this root has to perform an immense number of services
M. Miiller deduces the latter from rak; but this means to make, not
to spin.
398 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness ; wasting and destruction
are hi their paths." Paul has interwoven this passage into his
description of the universal corruption of morals, in Rom. iii.
15-17. The comparison of life to a road, and of a man's con-
duct to walking, is very common in proverbial sayings. The
prophet has here taken from them both his simile and his
expressions. We may see from ver. 7a, that during the cap-
tivity the true believers were persecuted .even to death by their
countrymen, who had forgotten God, The verbs Wnj and IIH^'I
(the proper reading, with metheg, not munach, under the d)
depict the pleasure taken in wickedness, when the conscience is
thoroughly lulled to sleep.
Their whole nature is broken np into discord. Ver. 8.
" The way of peace they know not, and there is no right in their
roads : they make their paths crooked : every one who treads upon
them knows no peace.'' With T}^,, the way upon which a man
goes, the prophet uses interchangeably (here and in ver. 7)
npDD, a high-road thrown up with an embankment ; '?iVO (with
the plural in im and 6th), a carriage-road ; and i^^'riJ, a footpath
formed by the constant passing to and fro of travellers.
Peaceable conduct, springing from a love of peace, and aiming
at producing peace, is altogether strange to them ; no such
thing is to be met with in their path as the recognition or
practice of right : they make their paths for themselves (D^K
dat. ethicus), i.e. most diligently, twisting about ; and whoever
treads upon them (bah, neuter, as in ch. xxvii. 4), forfeits all
enjoyment of either inward or outward peace. Shalom is
repeated significantly, in Isaiah's peculiar style, at the end of
the verse. The first strophe of the prophecy closes here : it
was from no want of power or willingness on the part of God,
that He had not come to the help of His people ; the fault
lay in their own sins.
In the second strophe the prophet includes himself when
speaking of the people. They now mourn over that state of
exhaustion into which they have been brought through the
perpetual straining and disappointment of expectation, and
confess those sins on account of which the righteousness and
salvation of Jehovah have been withheld. The prophet is
speaking communicatively here ; for even the better portion of
the nation was involved in the guilt and consequences of the
CHAP. LIX. 9-11. 399
corruption which prevailed among the exiles, inasmuch as a
nation forms an organized whole, and the delay of redemption
really affected them. Vers. 9-11. " Therefore right remains
far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us ; we hope for
light, and behold darkness; for brightness — we walk in thick dark-
ness. We grope along the wall like the blind, and like eyeless
men we grope : we stumble in the light of noon-day as in the dark-
ness, and among the living like the dead. We roar all like bears,
and moan deeply like doves : we hope for right, and it cometh not;
for salvation — it remaineih far off from us'' At the end of this
group of verses, again, the thought with which it sets out is
palindromically repeated. The perfect Hi^nn denotes a state of
things reaching from the past into the present ; the future
«J''^ri a state of things continuing unchangeable in the present.
By mishpdt we understand a solution of existing inequalities or
incongruities through the judicial interposition of God ; by
ts'ddqdh the manifestation of justice, which bestows upon Israel
grace as its right in accordance with the plan of salvation
after the long continuance of punishment, and pours out
merited punishment upon the instruments employed in punish-
ing Israel. The prophet's standpoint, whether a real or an
ideal one, is the last decade of the captivity. At that time,
about the period of the Lydian war, when Cyrus was making
one prosperous stroke after another, and yet waited so long
before he turned his arms against Babylon, it may easily be
supposed that hope and despondency alt ernated incessantly in
the minds of the exiles. The dark fut ' ire, which the prophet
penetrated in the light of the Spirit, was indeed broken up by
rays of hope, but it did not amount to light, i.e. to a perfect
lighting up (n'gohoth, an intensified plural of n'gohdh, like
n'khochoth in ch. xxvi. 10, pi. of n'khochdh in ver. 14) ; on the
contrary, darkness was still the prevailing state, and in the deep
thick darkness ('dpheloth) the exiles pined away, without the
promised release being effected for them by the oppressor of
the nations. "We grope," they here complain, "like blind
men by a wall, in which there is no opening, and like eyeless
men we grope.'' E'B'3 (only used here) is a synonym of the
older B'B'D (Deut. xxviii. 29) ; ^ffii (with the elision of the
reduplication, which it is hardly possible to render audible, and
which comes up again in the pausal HE'B'Ji) has the ah of force,
400 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
here of the impulse to self-preservation, which leads them to
grope for an outlet in this diropia ; and O):''}! fS is not quite
synonymous with Q''"!!?, for there is such a thing as blindness
with apparently sound eyes (cf. ch. xliii. 8) ; and there is also a
real absence of eyes, on account of either a natural malforma-
tion, or the actual loss of the eyes through either external
injury or disease. In the lamentation which follows, " we
stumble in the light of noon-day (Q)l^'>, meridies = mesidies,
the culminating point at which the eastern light is separated
from the western) as if it were darkness, and D''3DB'N3, as if
we were dead men," we may infer from the parallelism that
since CJDB'Ka must express some antithesis to D'nS3, it cannot
mean either in caliginosis (Jer., Luther, etc.), or "in the graves"
(Targ., D. Kimchi, etc.), or "in desolate places" (J. Kimchi),
Moreover, there is no such word in Hebrew as DE'X, to be dark,
although the lexicographers give a Syriac word NJDniSj thick
darkness (possibly related to ^uic, which does not mean the
dark night, but late in the night) ; and the verb shdmeii, to be
fat, is never applied to " fat, i.e. thick darkness," as Knobel
assumes, whilst the form of the word with : c. dagesh precludes
the meaning a solitary place or desert (from DB'K = DO^'). The
form in question points rather to the verbal stem ]'0f, which
yields a fitting antithesis to DTIM, whether we explain it as
meaning "in luxuriant fields," or "among the fat ones, i.e. those
who glory in their abundant health." We prefer the latter,
since the word mishmannlm (Dan. xi. 24 ; cf. Gen. xxvii. 28)
had already been coined to express the other idea ; and as a rule,
words formed with X prosth. point rather to an attributive than
to a substantive idea. IDB'X is a more emphatic form of Iiot^
(Judg. iii. 29) ; ' and D''?0?'N indicates indirectly the very same
tiling which is directly expressed by D''??'^'K) in ch. x. 16. Such
explanations as "m opimis rebus" (Stier, etc.), or "in fat-
' The name of the Phoenician god of health and prosperity, viz. Esmoun,
which Alois Muller (Esmun, ein Beitrag zur Myiliologie des orient. Alter-
thums. 1864) traces to JDB'n (Ps. Ixviii. 32) from DE'N = DC'n, "the
splendid one (illustris)," probably means "the healthy one, or one of full
health " (after the form "liinE'K, miDB'S), which agrees somewhat better
with the accoimt of Photios : "Ev/iovnoi/ i/tto ^omixuv auona-ui^in}/ M rij
CHAP. LIX. 12, 13. 401
ness of body, i.e. fulness of life" (Bottch^r), are neither so
suitable to the form of the word, nor do they answer to the
circumstances referred to here, where all the people in exile
are speaking. The true meaning therefore is, *'we stumble
(reel about) among fat ones, or those who lead a merry life," as
if we were dead. "And what," as Dcederlein observes, "can
be imagined more gloomy and sad, than to be wandering about
like shades, while others are fat and flourishing?" The growl-
ing and moaning in ver. 11 are expressions of impatience and
pain produced by longing. The people now fall into a state of
impatience, and roar like bears (Iidmdh like fremere), as when,
for example, a bear scents a flock, and prowls about it (vesper-
tinus circumgemit ursus ovile : Hor. Ep. xvi. 51) ; and now
again they give themselves up to melancholy, and moan in a
low and mournful tone like the doves, quarum blanditias ver-
baque murmur hahet (Ovid). nJHj hke murmurare, expresses
less depth of tone or raucitas than non. AH their looking
for righteousness and salvation turns out again and again to
be nothing but self-deception, when the time for their coming
seems close at hand.
The people have already indicated by 15"?y in ver. 9 that
this benighted, hopeless state is the consequence of their pre-
vailing sins ; they now come back to this, and strike the note
of penitence (yiddui), which is easily recognised by the recur-
ring rhymes dnu and Snu. The prophet makes the confession
(as in Jer. xiv. 19, 20, cf. iii. 21 sqq.), standing at the head of
the people as the leader of their prayer (ba'al fpldlldii) : Vers.
12, 13. " For our transgressions are many before Thee, and our
sins testify against us ; for our transgressions are hnoivn to us, and
our evil deeds viell known : apostasy and denial of Jehovah, and
turning back from following our God, oppressive and false speak-
ing, receiving and giving out from the heart words of falsehood."
The people acknowledge the multitude and magnitude of their
apostate deeds, which are the object of the omniscience of
God, and their sins which bear witness against them (i^O?^ the
predicate of a neuter plural ; Ges. § 146, 3). The second '3
resumes the first : " our apostate deeds are with us (ns as in
Job xii. 3 ; cf . DVj Job xv. 9), i.e. we are conscious of them ;
and our misdeeds, we know them" (0155(7-1 ^°^ P^J'''^ ^s i" Gren.
xli. 23, cf. 6, and with J(, as is always the case with verbs ]f'?
VOL. II. 8 C
400 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
here of the impulse to self-preservation, which leads them to
grope for an outlet in this airopia ; and D^^'Jf f^ is not quite
synonymous with Q^I^V, for there is such a thing as blindness
with apparently sound eyes (of. eh. xliii. 8) ; and there is also a
real absence of eyes, on account of either a natural malforma-
tion, or the actual loss of the eyes through either external
injury or disease. In the lamentation which follows, " we
stumble in the light of noon-day (O)!?^', meridies = mesidies,
the culminating point at which the eastern light is separated
from the western) as if it were darkness, and D'3K){5'N3j as if
we were dead men," we may infer from the parallelism that
since D'SDE'Na must express some antithesis to Clisa, it cannot
mean eWa&r in caliginosis (Jer., Luther, etc.), or "in the graves"
(Targ., D. Kimchi, etc.), or " in desolate places " (J. Kimchi).
Moreover, there is no such word in Hebrew as DB'Xj to be dark,
although the lexicographers give a Syriac word f'JOroSj tliick
/ / '
darkness (possibly related to ^,«ac, which does not mean the
dark night, but late in the night) ; and the verb shdmen, to be
fat, is never applied to " fat, i.e. thick darkness," as Kuobel
assumes, whilst the form of the word with : c. dagesh precludes
the meaning a solitary place or desert (from DB'^ = DDE'). The
form in question points rather to the verbal stem \'0'V, which
yields a fitting antithesis to DTiDa, whether we explain it as
meaning "in luxuriant fields," or "among the fat ones, i.e. those
who glory in their abundant health." We prefer the latter,
since the word mishmannim (Dan. xi. 24 ; cf. Gen. xxvii. 28)
had already been coined to express the other idea ; and as a rule,
words formed with K prostJi. point rather to an attributive than
to a substantive idea. lOfN is a more emphatic form of I»B'
(Judg. iii. 29) ; ^ and Q^3»f ^? indicates indirectly the very same
thing which is directly expressed by D'^DB'p in ch. x. 16. Such
explanations as "in opimis rebus" (Stier, etc.), or "in fat-
* The name of the Phoenician god of health and prosperity, viz. Esmoun
which Alois MUller (Esmun, ein Beitrag zur Myihologie des orient. Alter-
tliums. 1864) traces to |DE'n (Ps. Ixviii. 32) from DCN = Dtyn "the
splendid one (illttstris)," probably means " the healthy one, or one of full
health" (after the form -\'^np^, nniDE'S), which agrees somewhat better
with the account of Photios : "Etrfeouncu vm ^oii/ikuii auoftxttfchr^u M t?
CHAP. LIX. 12, 13. 401
ness of body, le. fulness of life" (Bottch^r), are neither so
suitable to the form of the word, nor do they answer to the
circumstances referred to here, where all the people in exile
are speaking. The true meaning therefore is, "we stumble
(reel about) among fat ones, or those who lead a merry life," as
if we were dead. " And what," as Doederlein observes, " can
be imagined more gloomy and sad, than to be wandering about
like shades, while others are fat and flourishing ? " The growl-
ing and moaning in ver. 11 are expressions of impatience and
pain produced by longing. The people now fall into a state of
impatience, and roar like bears (lidmdli like fremere), as when,
for example, a bear scents a flock, and prowls about it {vesper-
tinus circumgemit ursus ovile : Hor. Ep. xvi. 51) ; and now
again they give themselves up to melancholy, and moan in a
low and mournful tone like the doves, quarum hlanditias ver-
baque murmur habet (Ovid), rijrij like murmurare, ex^jresses
less depth of tone or raucitas than ^'0T\, All their looking
for righteousness and salvation turns out again and again to
be nothing but self-deception, when the time for their coming
seems close at hand.
The people have already indicated by tl'PJJ in ver. 9 that
this benighted, hopeless state is the consequence of their pre-
vailing sins ; they now come back to this, and strike the note
of penitence (viddui), which is easily recognised by the recur-
ring rhymes drtu and inu. The prophet makes the confession
(as in Jer. xiv. 19, 20, cf. iii. 21 sqq.), standing at the head of
the people as the leader of their prayer (ba'al fpliillali) : Vers.
12, 13. ^^ For our transgressions are many before Thee, and our
sins testify against us ; for our transgressions are known to us, and
our evil deeds well known : apostasy and denial of Jelwvali, and
turning back from following our God, oppressive and false speak-
ing, receiving and giving out from the heart words of falsehood"
The people acknowledge the midtitude and magnitude of their
apostate deeds, which are the object of the omniscience of
God, and their sins which bear witness against them (fi^^V the
predicate of a neuter plural ; Ges. § 146, 3). The second ''S
resumes the first : '* our apostate deeds are with us (riK as in
Job xii. 3 ; cf. 03?, Job xv. 9), i.e. we are conscious of them ;
and our misdeeds, we know them " (QlJy.T.''. for payT", as in Gen.
xli. 23, cf. 6, and with J{, as is always the case with verbs D'i"
VOL. II. 3 C
402 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
before i, and with a suffix; Ewald, § 60). The sins are now
enumerated in ver. 13 in abstract infinitive forms. At the
head stands apostasy in thought and deed, which is expressed
as a threefold sin. 'n? (of Jehovah) belongs to both the
"apostasy" (treachery; e.g. ch. i. 2) and the "denial" (Jer. v.
12). 3iD3 is an inf. abs. (different from Ps. Ixxx. 19). Then
follow sins against the neighbour : viz. such speaking as leads
to oppi'ession, and consists of sdrdh, that which deviates from or
is opposed to the law and truth (Deut. xix. 16) ; also the con-
ception (concipere) of lying words,' and the utterance of them
from the heart in which they are conceived (Matt. xv. 18, xii.
35). inh and iJ'n are the only poel infinitives which occur in
the Old Testament, just as ''flB'iB' (ch. x. 13) is the only example
of a. poel perfect of a verb n"i'. The poel is suitable through-
out this passage, because the action expressed affects others,
and is intended to do them harm. According to Ewald, the
poel indicates the object or tendency: it is the conjugation
employed to denote seeking, attacking, or laying hold of ; e.g.
l^n?, lingua petere, i.e. to calumniate ; \'!)ll, oculo petere, i.e. to
envy.
The confession of personal sins is followed by that of the
sinful state of society. Vers. 14, 15a. ^^ And right is forced
hach, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in
the market-place, and honesty finds no admission. And truth
became missing, and he who avoids evil is outlawed." In con-
nection with mishpdt and ts'ddqdh here, we have not to think
of the manifestation of divine judgment and justice which is
prevented from being realized ; but the people are here con-
tinuing the confession of their own moral depravity. Eight
has been forced back from the place which it ought to occupy
(hissig is the word applied in the law to the removal of boun-
daries), and righteousness has to look from afar off at the
unjust habits of the people, without being able to interpose.
And why are right and righteousness — that united pair so
pleasing to God and beneficial to man — thrust out of the
nation, and why do they stand without ? Because there is no
truth or uprightness in the nation. Truth wanders about, and
stands no longer in the midst of the nation ; but upon the open
street, the broad market-place, where justice is administered,
and where she ought above all to stand upright and be pre-
CHAP. LIX. 15-18. 403
served upright, she has stumbled and fallen down (cf. ch.
iii. 8) ; and honesty {ifhhochdJi), which goes straight forward,
would gladly enter the limits of the forum, but she cannot :
people and judges alike form a barrier which keeps her back.
The consequence of this is indicated in ver. 15a : truth in its
manifold practical forms has become a missing thing; and who-
ever avoids the existing voice is misJitoUl {part, hithpoel, not
hithpoal), one who is obliged to let himself be plundered and
stripped (Ps. Ixxvi. 6), to be made a sheldl (Mic. i. 8), Arab.
maslub, with a passive turn given to the reflective meaning,
as in '5'Bnrin, to cause one's self to be spied out = to disguise
one's self, and as in the so-called niphal tolerativum (Ewald,
133, h, 2).
The third strophe of the prophecy commences at ver. 156
or ver. 16. It begins with threatening, and closes with pro-
mises ; for the true nature of God is love, and every manifes-
tation of wrath is merely one phase in its development. In
consideration of the fact that this corrupt state of things fur-
nishes no prospect of self-improvement, Jehovah has already
equipped Himself for judicial interposition. Vers. 156-18.
^^ And Jehovah saw it, and it was displeasing in His eyes,, that
there was no right. And He saw that there was not a man any-
where, and was astonished that there was nowhere an intercessor :
then His arm brought Him help, and His righteousness became
His stay. And He put on righteousness as a coat of mail, and
the helmet of salvation upon His head ; and put on garnfients of
vengeance as armour, and clothed Himself in zeal as in a cloak.
According to the deeds, accordingly He will repay : burning
wrath to His adversaries, punishment to His foes ; the islands
He will repay with chastisement." The prophet's language has
now toilsomely worked its way through the underwood of keen
reproach, of dark descriptions of character, and of mournful
confession which has brought up the apostasy of the great
mass in all the blacker colours before his mind, from the fact
that the confession proceeds from those who are ready for
salvation. And now, having come to the description of the
approaching judgment, out of whose furnace the church of
the future is to spring, it rises again like a palm-tree that has
been violently hurled to the ground, and shakes its head as
if restored to itself in the transforming ethei* of the future*
404 tHE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jehovah saw, and it excited His displeasure (" it was evil in
His eyes," an antiquated phrase from the Pentateuch, e.g.
Gen. xxxviii. 10) to see that right (which He loves, ch. Ixi. 8;
Ps. xxxvii. 28) had vanished from the life of His nation. He
saw that there was no man there, no man possessing either the
disposition or the power to stem this corruption (E''*? as in Jer.
V. 1, cf. 1 Sam. iv. 9, 1 Kings ii. 2, and the old Jewish say-
ing, " Where there is no man, I strive to be a man "). He was
astonished (the sight of such total depravity exciting in Him
the highest degree of compassion and displeasure) that there
was no V'^S^, i.e. no one to step in between God and the people,
and by his intercession to press this disastrous condition of the
people upon the attention of God (see ch. liii. 12) ; no one to
form a wall against the coming ruin, and cover the rent with
his body ; no one to appease the wrath, like Aaron (Num. xvii.
12, 13) or Phinehas (Num. xxv. 7). What the fut. consec.
affirms from VB'ini onwards, is not something to come, buf
something past, as distinguished from the coming events an-
nounced from ver. 18 onwards. Because the nation was so
utterly and deeply corrupt, Jehovah had equipped Himself
for judicial interposition. The equipment was already com-
pleted ; only the taking of vengeance remained to be effected.
Jehovah saw no man at His side who was either able or willing
to help Him to His right in opposition to the prevailing abomi-
nations, or to support His cause. Then His own arm became
His help, and His righteousness His support (cf. ch. Ixiii. 5) ;
so that He did not desist from the judgment to which He felt
Himself impelled, until He had procured the fullest satisfac-
tion for the honour of His holiness (ch. v. 16). The armour
which Jehovah puts on is now described. According to the
scriptural view, Jehovah is never unclothed ; bixt the free
radiation of His own nature shapes itself into a garment of
light. Light is the robe He wears (Ps. civ. 2). When the
prophet describes this garment of light as changed into a suit
of armour, this must be understood in the same sense as when
the apostle in Eph. vi. speaks of a Christian's panoply. Just
as there the separate pieces of armour represent the manifold
self-manifestations of the inward spiritual life, so here the
pieces of Jehovah's armour stand for the manifold self-mani-
festations of His holy nature, which consist of a mixture of
CHAP. LIX. 15-18. 405
wratli and love. He does not arm Himself from any outward
armoury; but the armoury is His infinite wrath and His
infinite love, and the might in which He manifests Himself
in such and such a way to His creatures is His infinite will.
He puts on righteousness as a coat of mail (t)"!^ in half pause,
as in 1 Kings xxii. 34 in full pause, for fi''']^, 6 passing into
the broader a, as is generally the case in f'sn^, t^an). ; also in
Gen, xliii. 14, 'rh^tff; xlix. 3, Tj; ; xlix. 27, riO'), so" that His
appearance on every side is righteousness ; and on His head
He sets the helmet of salvation : for the ultimate object for
which He goes into the conflict is the redemption of the
oppressed, salvation as the fruit of the victory gained by
righteousness. And over the coat of mail He draws on clothes
of vengeance as a tabard (LXX, irepi^oKaiov), and wraps
Himself in zeal as in a war-cloak. The inexorable justice of
God is compared to an impenetrable brazen coat of mail ; His
joyful salvation, to a helmet which glitters from afar ; His
vengeance, with its manifold inflictions of punishment, to the
clothes worn above the coat of mail ; and His wrathful zeal
(njSJip from Wi?, to be deep red) with the fiery-looking chlamys.
No weapon is mentioned, neither sword nor bow ; for His
own arm procures Him help, and this alone. But what will
Jehovah do, when He has armed Himself thus with justice
and salvation, vengeance and zeal ? As ver. 18 aflSrms, He
will carry out a severe and general retributive judgment. 7^'Oi
and nPDS signify accomplishment of (on gdmal, see at ch, iii, 9)
a prjfjLa /Mecrov ; nipDJ, which may signify, according to the con-
text, eitlier manifestations of love or manifestations of wrath,
and either retribution as looked at from the side of God, or
forfeiture as regarded from the side of man, has the latter
meaning here, viz. the works of men and the double-sided
g^mul, . i.e. repayment, and that in the infliction of punish-
ment, ?Jf3, as if, as on account of, signifies, according to its
Semitic use, in the measure (?) of that which is fitting (?V) ;
cf, ch, Ixiii. 7, uti par est propter. It is repeated with em-
phasis (like 15? in ch. Iii. 6) ; the second stands without rectum,
as the correlate of the first. By the adversaries and enemies,
we naturally understand, after what goes before, the rebellious
Israelites. The prophet does not mention these, however, but
" the islands," that is to say, the heathen world. He hides the
406 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
special judgment upon Israel in the general judgment upon
the nations. The very same fate falls upon Israel, the salt of
the world which has lost its savour, as upon the whole of the
ungodly world. The purified church will have its place in the
midst of a world out of which the crying injustice has been
swept away.
The prophet now proceeds to depict the nj?lB'», the symbol
of which is the helmet upon Jehovah's head. Vers. 19, 20.
" And they will fear the name of Jehovah from the west, and
His ghry from the rising of the sun : for He will come like a
stream dammed up, which a tempest of Jehovah drives away.
And a Redeemer comes for Zion, and for those who turn from
apostasy in Jacob, saith Jehovah^ Instead of ''*'!*1, Knobel
would strike out the metheg, and read '^T.S "and they will see;"
but " seeing the name of Jehovah " (the usual expression is
"seeing His glory") is a phrase that cannot be met with,
though it is certainly a passable one ; and the relation in
which ver. 196 stands to 19a does not recommend the altera-
tion, since ver. 196 attributes that general fear of the name of
Jehovah (cf . Deut. xxviii. 58) and of His glory (see the parallel
overlooked by Knobel, Ps. cii. 16), which follows the manifes-
tation of judgment on the part of Jehovah, to the manner in
which this manifestation occurs. Moreover, the true Masoretic
reading in this passage is not 'iN"i|'.1 (as in Mic. vii. 17), but
^X^^|'.1 (see Norzi). The two !» in a'^J'^o (with the indispens-
able metheg before the chateph, and a second to ensure clear-
ness of pronunciation) ^ and B'DB'TinttSDi (also with the so-called
strong metheg^ indicate the terminus a quo. From all quarters
of the globe will fear of the name and of the glory of Jehovah
become naturalized among the nations of the world. For
when God has withdrawn His name and His glory from the
world's history, as during the Babylonian captivity (and also at
the present time), the return of both is all the more intense and
extraordinary ; and this is represented here in a figure which
recals ch. xxx. 27, 28, x. 22, 23 (cf. Ezek. xliii. 2). The
accentuation, which gives pashta to 1^33, does indeed appear to
make "IX the subject, either in the sense of oppressor or adver-
sary, as in Lam. iv. 12, or in that of oppression, as in ch. xxv. 4,
' See the law in Bar's Metheg-Setzung, § 29.
» See idem, § 28.
CHAP. LIX. 19, 20. 407
xxvi. 16, xsx. 20. The former is quite out of the question,
since no such transition to a human instrument of the retri-
butive judgment could well take place after the V"iS^ nipn in
ver. 18. In support of the latter, it would be possible to quote
ch. xlviii. 18 and Ixvi. 12, since nv is the antithesis to shdlom.
But according to such parallels as ch. xxx. 27, 28, it is incom-
parably more natural to take Jehovah (His name. His gloiy)
as the subject. Moreover, ia, which must in any case refer to
■)n33, is opposed to the idea that nv is the subject, to which u
would have the most natural claim to be referred, — an explanar-
tion indeed which Stier and Hahn have really tried, taking
nODIJ as in Ps. Ix. 4, and rendering it "The Spirit of Jehovah
holds up a banner against him, viz. the enemy." If, however,
Jehovah is the subject to N3^, IV inaa must be taken together
(like D'MD , , . D^sa, ch. xi. 9; naiD 'qmn, Ps. cxhii. 10; Ges. § 111,
2, J), either in the sense of " a hemming stream," one causing
as it were a state of siege (from tsur, ch. xxi. 2, xxix. 3), or,
better still, according to the adjective use of the noun "iV (here
with tzaheph, 1^ from "ilX) in ch. xxviii. 20, Job xli. 7, 2 Kings
vi. 1, a closely confined stream, to whose waters the banks form
a compressing dam, which it bursts through when agitated by a
tempest, carrying everything away with it. Accordingly, the
explanation we adopt is this: Jehovah will come like the stream,
a stream hemmed in, which a wind of Jehovah, Le. (like " the
mountains of God," " cedars of God," " garden of Jehovah,"
ch. li. 3, cf. Num. xxiv. 6) a strong tempestuous wind, sweeps
away (13 nODJ, nos'sa-b-ho, with the tone drawn back and dagesTi
forte conj. in the monosyllable, the pilel of nus with Beth : to
hunt into, to press upon and put to flight), — a figure which
also indicates that the Spirit of Jehovah is the driving force in
this His judicially gracious revelation of Himself. Then, when
the name of Jehovah makes itself legible once more as with
letters of fire, when His glory comes like a sea of fire within
the horizon of the world's history, all the world from west to
east, from east to west, will begin to fear Him. But the true
object of the love, which bursts forth through this revelation of
wrath, is His church, which includes not only those who have
retained their faith, but all who have.been truly converted to Him.
And He comes (K31 a continuation of Kaj) for Zion a Eedeemer,
i.e. as a Eedeemer (a closer definition of the predicate), and for
408 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
those who turn away from apostasy (VB'B '5^, compare ch. i. 27,
and for the genitive connection Mic. ii. 8, '^?0r''? ''^'^^> *^°^^ "^^^
have turned away from the war). The Vav here does not signify
"and indeed," as in ch. Ivii. 18, but "more especially." He comes
as a Redeemer for Zion, i.e. His church which has remained true,
including those who turn again to Jehovah from their previous
apostasy. In Rom. xi. 26 the apostle quotes this word of God,
which is sealed with " Thus saith Jehovah," as a proof of the
final restoration of all Israel ; for nin* (according to the Apo-
calypse, o oiv KOI 6 rjv Kol 6 ip'xpfievo';) is to him the God who
moves on through the Old Testament towards the goal of His
incarnation, and through the New Testament towards that of
His parousia in Christ, which will bring the world's history to
a .close. But this final close does not take place without its
having become apparent at the same time that God " has con-
cluded all in unbelief, that He may have compassion upon all"
(Rom. xi. 32).
Jehovah, having thus come as a Redeemer to His people,
who have hitherto been lying under the curse, makes an ever-
lasting covenant with them. Ver. 21. " And I, this is my
covenant with them, saith Jehovah : My Spirit which is upon thee,
and my word which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of
thy mouth, and out of the mouth of thy seed, and out of the mouth
of thy seed's seed, saith Jehovah, from henceforth and for ever."
In the words, "And I, this is my covenant with them," we have
a renewal of the words of God to Abram in Gen. xvii. 4, " As
for me, behold, my covenant is with tliee." Instead of Dijix we
have in the same sense DHX (not DOiK, as in cli. liv. 15) ; we
find this very frequently in Jeremiah. The following prophecy
is addressed to Israel, the " servant of Jehovah," which has
been hitherto partially faithful and partially unfaithful, "but
which has now returned to fidelity, viz. the " remnant of
Israel," which has been rescued through the medium of a
general judgment upon the nations, and to which the great
body of all who fear God from east to west attach themselves.
This church of the new covenant has the Spirit of God over it,
for it comes down upon it from above; and the comforting
saving words of God are not only the blessed treasure of its
heart, but the confession of its mouth which spreads salvation
all around. The words intended are those which prove, accord-
CHAP. LX. 1. 409
ing to ch. li. 16, the seeds of the new heaven and the new
earth. The church of the last days, endowed with the Spirit
of God, and never again forsaking its calling, carries them as
the evangelist of God in her apostolic mouth. The subject
of the following prophecy is the new Jerusalem, the glorious
centre of this holy church.
THIRD PROPHECY.— Chap. lx.
THE GLORY OP THE JERUSALEM OP THE LAST DATS.
It is still night. The inward and outward condition of the
church is night ; and if it is night followed by a morning, it is
so only for those who " against hope believe in hope." The
reality which strikes the senses is the night of sin, of punish-
ment, of suffering, and of mourning, — a long night of nearly
seventy years. In this night, the prophet, according to the
command of God, has been prophesying of the coming light.
In his inward penetration of the substance of his own preach-
ing, he has come close to the time when faith is to be turned
to sight. And now in the strength of God, who has made
him the mouthpiece of His own creative fiat, he exclaims to
the church, ver. 1 : " Arise, grow light ,- for thy light cometk,
and the glory of Jehovah riseth upon thee." The appeal is
addressed to Zion-Jerusalem, which is regarded (as in ch.
xlix. 18, I. 1, lii. 1, 2, liv. 1) as a woman, and indeed as the
mother of Israel. Here, however, it is regarded as the church
redeemed from banishment, and settled once more in the holy
city and the holy land, the church of salvation, which is now
about to become the church of glory. Zion lies prostrate on
the ground, smitten down by the judgment of God, brought
down to the ground by inward prostration, and partly over-
come by the sleep of self-security. She now hears the cry,
"Arise" (qumi). This is not a mere admonition, but a word of
power which puts new life into her limbs, so that she is able to
rise from the ground, on which she has lain, as it were, under
the ban. The night, which has brought her to the ground
mourning, and faint, and intoxicated with sleep, is now at an
end. The taighty word qumi, "arise," is supplemented by a
second word : 'ori. What creative force there is in these two
410 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
trochees, qumi 'Ort, which hold on, as it were, till what they
express is accomplished ; and what force of consolation in the
two iambi, ki-bhd 'orekh, which affix, as it were, to the acts of
Zion the seal of the divine act, and add to the ap<n<! (or eleva-
tion) its 0ea-i<; (or foundation) ! Zion is to become light ; it is
to, because it can. But it cannot of itself, for in itself it has
no light, because it has so absolutely given itself up to sin ; but
there is a light which will communicate itself to her, viz. the
light which radiates from the holy nature of God Himself.
And this light is salvation, because the Holy One loves Zion: it
is also glory, because it not only dispels the darkness, but sets
itself, all glorious as it is, in the place of the darkness. Zdrach
is the word commonly applied to the rising of the sun (Mai,
iii. 20). The sun of suns is Jehovah (Ps. Ixxxiv. 12), the God
who is coming (ch. lix. 20).
It is now all darkness over mankind ; but Zion is the east,
in which this sun of suns will rise. Ver. 2. " For, behold, the
darkness covereth the earth, and deep darkness the nations ; and
Jehovah riseth over thee, and His glory becomes visible over thee''
The night which settles upon the world of nations is not to be
understood as meaning a night of ignorance and enmity against
God. This prophecy no doubt stands in progressive connection
with the previous one ; but, according to ch. lix. 19, the mani-
festation of judgment, through which Zion is redeemed, brings
even the heathen from west to east, i.e. those who survive the
judgment, to the fear of Jehovah. The idea is rather the
following : After the judgments of God have passed, darkness
in its greatest depth still covers the earth, and a night of clouds
the nations. It is still night as on the first day, but a night
which is to give place to light. Where, then, will the san rise,
by which this darkness is to be lighted up ? The answer is,
" Over Zion, the redeemed church of Israel." But whilst dark-
ness still covers the nations, it is getting light in the Holy
Land, for a sun is rising over Zion, viz. Jehovah in His
unveiled glory. The consequence of this is, that Zion itself
becomes thoroughly light, and that not for itself onlv, but for
all mankind. When Jehovah has transformed Zion into the
likeness of His own glory, Zion transforms all nations into the
likeness of her own. Ver. 3. " And nations walk to thy light,
and kings to the shining of thy rays." Zion exerts such an
CHAP. LX. 4, 5. 411
attractive force, that nations move towards her light {'? ^?n as
in in^57 l]pn and other similar expressions), and kings to the
splendour of her rays, to share in them for themselves, and
enjoy them with her. All earthly might and majesty station
themselves in the light of the divine glory, which is reflected
by the church.
Zlon is now exhorted, as in ch. xlix. 18, to lift up her eyes,
and turn them in all directions ; for she is the object sought by
an approaching multitude. Ver. 4. " Lift up thine eyes round
about, and see : they all crowd together, they come to thee : thy
sons come from afar, and thy daughters are carried hither upon
arms." The multitude that are crowding together and coming
near are the diaspora of her sons and daughters that have been
scattered far away (ch. xi. 12), and whom the heathen that are
now drawing near to her bring with them, conducting them
and carrying them, so that they cling " to the side " (ch. Ixvi.
12) of those who are carrying them upon their arms and
shoulders (ch. xlix. 22). riJONn is softened from nsoND, the
pausal form for n3»Nn (compare the softening in Euth i. 13),
from ION, to keep, fasten, support ; whence )0S, njDNj a foster-
father, a nurse who has a child in safe keeping.
When this takes place, Zion will be seized with the greatest
delight, mingled M'ith some trembling. Ver. 5. " Then ivilt
thou see and shine, and thine heart will tremble and expand ; for
the abundance bf the sea will be turned to thee, the ivealth of the
nations cometh to thee." It is a disputed question whether the
proper reading is '^l^, ''^!'.^, or ''N'i''n — all three point to NT —
or ''Nin, from nsn. The last is favoured by the LXX., Targ.,
Syr., Jerome, Saad,, and all the earlier Jewish commentators
except AE, and is also the Masoretic reading ; for the Masora
Jinalis (f. 1, col. 6) observes that this 'Nin is the only instance
of such a form from HNT (differing therefore from ''X'lri in Zeph.
iii. 15, where we also find the readings ''^f'^. and '^^y]) ; and
there is a note in the margin of the Masora, tiDH ri''^, to the
effect that this 'Nin is the only one with chateph, i.e, Sheva.
Moreover, 'Niri (thou shalt see) is the more natural reading,
according to ch. Ixvi. 14 and Zech. x. 7 ; more especially as N|i'
IS not a suitable word to use (like pdchad and rdgaz in Jer,
xxxiii. 9) in the sense of trembling for joy (compare, on the
contrary, VT^, ch, xv. 4, and nriT in ch. xliv. 8). The true ren-
414 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
toneless contracted suffix, as in ch. xlvii. 10), and ascend livy?^^
according to good pleasure = acceptably (with the pV used to
form adverbs, Ewald, § 217, i; cf. Vrdtson in oh. Ivi. 7), the
altar of Jehovah (^dldh with the local object in the accusative,
as in Gen. xlix. 4, Num. xiii. 17). The meaning is, that
Jehovah will graciously accept the sacrifices which the church
offers from the gifts of the Nabatasans (and Kedarenes) upon
His altar. It would be quite wrong to follow Antistes Hess
and Baumgarten, and draw the conclusion from such prophe-
cies as these, that animal sacrifices will be revived again. The
sacrifice of animals has been abolished once for all by the self-
sacrifice of the " Servant of Jehovah ; " and by the spiritual
revolution which Christianity, i.e. the Messianic religion, has
produced, so far as the consciousness of modern times is con-
cerned, even in Israel itself, it is once for all condemned (see
Holdheim's Schrift uber das Ceremonial-gesetz im Messiasreich^
1845). The prophet, indeed, cannot describe even what belongs
to the New Testament in any other than Old Testament
colours, because he is still within the Old Testament limits.
But from the standpoint of the New Testament fulfilment, that
which was merely educational and preparatoiy, and of which
there will be no revival, is naturally transformed into the truly
essential purpose at which the former aimed ; so that all that
was real in the prophecy remains unaffected and pure, after
the deduction of what was merely the unessential medium em-
ployed to depict it. The very same Paul who preaches Christ
as the end of the law, predicts the conversion of Israel as the
topstone of the gracious counsels of God as they unfold them-
selves in the history of salvation, and describes the restoration
of Israel as "the riches of the Gentiles;" and the very same
John who wrote the Gospel was also the apocalyptist, by whom
the distinction between Israel and the Gentiles was seen in
vision as still maintained even in the New Jerusalem. It
must therefore be possible (though we cannot form any cleai"
idea of the manner in which it will be carried out), that the
Israel of the future may have a very prominent position in the
perfect church, and be, as it were, the central leader of its
worship, though without the restoration of the party-wall of
particularism and ceremonial shadows, which the blood of the
crucified One has entirely washed away. The house of God
CHAP. LX. 8, ». 415
in Jerusalem, as the prophet has already stated in ch. Ivi. 7,
will be a house of prayer Q}eth fphilldli) for all nations. Here
Jehovah calls the house built in His honour, and filled with
His gracious presence, "the house of my glory." He will
make its inward glory like the outward, by adorning it with
the gifts presented by the converted Gentile world.
From the mainland, over which caravans and flocks are
coming, the prophet now turns his eyes to the sea. Vers. 8, 9.
" Wlio are these who fly hither as a cloud, and like the doves to
their windows ? Yea, the islands wait for me ; and the ships of
Tarshish come fl^rst, to bring thy children from far, their silver
and gold with them, to the name of thy Ood, and to the holy
One of Israel, because He hath ornamented thee'' Upon the
sea there appear first of all enigmatical shapes, driving along
as swiftly as if they were light clouds flying before the wind
(ch. xix. 1, xliv.- 22), or like doves flying to their dovecots
{celeres cavis se turribus abdunt, as Ovid says), i.e. to the round
towers with their numerous pigeon-holes, which are provided
for their shelter. The question is addressed to Zion, and the
answer may easily be anticipated^ — namely, that this swarm of
swiftly flying figures are hurrying to a house which they long
to reach, as much as pigeons do to reach their pigeon-house.
The ki which follows is explanatory : this hurrying presents
itself to thine eyes, because the isles wait for me. The reason
for all this haste is to be found in the faith of those who are
hurrying on. The Old Testament generally speaks of faith as
hope {'? n^i? as in ch. li. 5, xlii. 4) ; not that faith is the same
as hope, but it is the support of hope, just as hope is the com-
fort of faith. In the Old Testament, when the true salvation
existed only in promise, this epithet, for which there were many
synonyms in the language, was the most appropriate one. The
faith of the distant lands of the west is now beginning to work.
The object of all this activity is expressed in the word ^5''3^|'.
The things thus flying along like clouds and doves are ships;
with the Tartessus ships, which come from the farthest ex-
tremity of the European insular quarter of the globe, at their
head (nj^Kna with munach instead of metheg, in the same sense
as in Num. x. 14 ; LXX. eV Tr/jcoTots ; Jerome, in principio,
in the foremost rank), i.e. acting as the leaders of the fieet
■which is sailing to Zion and bringing Zion's children from
416 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
afar, and along with them the gold and silver of the owners of
the vessels themselves, to the name {^^, to the name, dative,
not equivalent to IVO^ ; LXX. Bia, as in ch. Iv. 5) of thy God,
whom they adore, and to the Holy One of Israel, because He
hath ornamented thee, and thereby inspired them with reve-
rence and love to thee {Tl^^ for T}.^^., as in ch. liv. 6, where it
even stands out of pause).
The first turn (vers. 1-3) described the glorification of Zion
through the rising of the glory of Jehovah ; the second (vers.
4-9) her glorification through the recovei-y of her scattered
children, and the gifts of the Gentiles who bring them home ;
and now the third depicts her glorification through the service
of the nations, especially of her former persecutors, and gene-
rally through the service of all that is great and glorious in
the world of nature and the world of men. Not only do the
converted heathen offer their possessions to the church on
Zion, but they offer up themselves and their kings to pay her
homage and render service to her. Vers. 10-12. "And sons of
strangers build thy walls, and their kings sei've thee : for in my
ivrath I have smitten thee, and in my favour I have had mercy
upon thee. And thy gates remain orpen continually day and
night, they shall not be shut, to bring in to thee the possessions of
the nations and their Tangs in triumph. For the nation and the
kingdom tvhich will not serve thee will perish, and the nations be
certainly laid waste." The walls of Zion (^''Hbh doubly defec-
tive) rise up from their ruins through the willing co-operation
of converted foreigners (ch. Ivi. 6, 7), and foreign kings place
themselves at the service of Zion (ch. xlix. 23) ; the help ren-
dered by the edicts of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes Longi-
nij^nus being only a prelude to events stretching on to the end
of time, though indeed, in the view of the prophet himself, the
period immediately succeeding the captivity really would be the
end of time. Of the two perfects in ver. 10b, 'JI^n''3n points to
the more remote past; ^^ijipDn to the nearer past, stretching
forward into the present (cf. ch. liv. 8). On pittedcli, patescere,
hiscere, see ch._ xlviii. 8, where it is applied to the ear, as in
Song of Sol. vii. 13 to a bud. The first clause of ver. 11a
closes with nWj ; tiphchah divides more strongly than tehir,
which is subordinate to it. At the same time, " day and night"
may be connected with " shall not be shut," as in Rev. xxi.
CHAP. LX. 13. 417
25, 26. The gates of Zion may always be left open, for tliere
is no more fear of a hostile attack ; and they must be left open
ad importaiidum, that men may bring in the possession of , the
heathen through them (a thing which goes on uninterruptedly),
a^lina Dn^apa^ The last words are rendered by Knobel, " and
their kings are leaders (of the procession) ; " but ndhug would
be a strange substantive, having nothing to support it but the
obscure B'ipJ from B'ip;, for Tins in Cant. iii. 8 does not mean a
support, but amplexus (¥i\v3\A, § 149, d). The rendering " and
their kings escorted," i.e. attended by an escort, commends
itself more than this ; but in the passage quoted in support of
this use of ndhag, viz. Nah. ii. 8, it is used as a synonym of
hdgdh, signifying gemere. It is better to follow the LXX. and
Jerome, and render it, " and their kings brought," viz., accord-
ing to ch. XX. 4, 1 Sam. xxx. 2, as prisoners (Targ. z'qiqin, i.e.
I'ziqqlm, in fetters), — brought, however, not by their several
nations who are tired of their government and deliver them
up (as Hitzig supposes), but by the church, by which they
have been irresistibly bound in fetters, i.e. inwardly conquered
(compare ch. xlv. 14 with Ps. cxlix. 8), and thus suffer them-
selves to be brought in a triumphal procession to the holy city
as the captives of the church and her God. Ver. 12 is con-
nected with this n'hugim; for the state of every nation and
kingdom is henceforth to be determined by its subjection to the
church of the God of sacred history (^"^V, BovXeveiv, in distinc-
tion from sheretJi, BiaKoveiv, Oepaireveiv), and by its entrance
into this church — the very same thought which Zechariah
carries out in ch. xiv. 16 sqq. Instead of 'lirr'a, ''3 is more
properly pointed according to certain MSS. with munach (with-
out makkeph) ; the article before haggoyim is remonstrative,
and the inf. intens. clidrobli makes the thing threatened un-
questionable.
From the thought that everything great in the world of
man is to be made to serve the Holy One and His church,
the prophet passes to what is great in the world of hatiire.
Ver. 13. " The glory of Lebanon will come to thee, cypresses,
plane-trees and Sherbin-trees all together, to beautify the place of
my sanctuary, and to make the place of my feet glorious." The
splendid cedars, which are the glory of Lebanon, and in fact
the finest trees of all kinds, will be brought to Zion, not as
VOL. II. 2 D
418 THE PEOPHKCIES OF ISAIAH,
trunks felled to be used as building materials, but dug up with
their roots, to ornament the holy place of the temple (Jer. xvii.
12), and also to this end, that Jehovah may glorify the " holy
place of His feet," i.e. the place where He, who towers above
the heaven of all heavens, has as it were to place His feet.
The temple is frequently called His footstool (hadurn ragldiv),
with especial reference to the ark of the covenant (Ps. xcix, 5,
cxxxii. 7 ; Lam. ii. 1 ; 1 Chron. xxviii. 2) as being the central
point of the earthly presence of God (cf. ch. Ixvi. 1). The
trees, that is to say, which tower in regal glory above all the rest
of the vegetable world, are to adorn the environs of the temple,
so that avenues of cedars and plane-trees lead into it ; a proof
that there is no more fear of any further falling away to
idolatry. On the names of the trees, see ch. xh. 19. Three
kinds are mentioned here ; we found seven there. The words
nn'' nityKni imn wn are repeated verbatim from ch. xli. 19 (on
these repetitions of himself, see p. 288).
The prophecy now returns to the world of man. Ver. 14.
" The children also of thy tormentors come bending unto thee, and
all thy despisers stretch themselves at the soles of thy feet, and call
thee ' City of Jehovah, Zion of the Holy One of Israel' " The
persecutors of the church both in work and word are now no
more (ch. xxvi. 14), and their children feel themselves dis-
armed. They are seized with shame and repentance, when
they see the church which was formerly tormented and despised
so highly exalted. They come sh'cho&ch (an inf. noun of the
form lintJ, Lam. v. 13 ; used here as an accusative of more pre-
cise definition, just as nouns of this kind are frequently con-
nected directly with the verb Tjpn, Ewald, § 279, c), literally a
bow or stoop, equivalent to bowing or stooping (the opposite to
romdh in Micah ii. 3), and stretch themselves " at the soles of
thy feet," i.e. clinging to thee as imploringly and obsequiously
as if they would lay themselves down under thy very feet, and
were not worthy to lie anywhere but there (as in ch. xlix. 23) ;
and whereas formerly they called thee by nicknames, they now
give thee the honourable name of " City of Jehovah, Zion of
the Holy One of Israel," not " Sanctuary of Israel," as Meier
supposes, since q'dosh Israel is always a name of Jehovah in
the book of Isaiah. It is a genitive construction like Bethle-
hem of Judah, Gibeah of Saul, and others.
CHAP. LX. 15-18. 419
■ The fourtli turn (vers. 15-18) describes the glorification of
Zion through the growth and stability of its community both
without and within. A glorious change takes place in the
church, not only in itself, but also in the judgment of the
nations. Vers. 15, 16. " Whereas thou wast forsaken, and
hated, and no one walked through thee, I make thee now into
eternal splendour, a rapture from generation to generation. And
thou suckest the milk of nations, and the breast of kings thou
wilt suck, and learn that I Jehovah am thy Saviour and thy Re-
deemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." Of the two ideas of a
church (the mother of Israel) and a city (metropolis) involved
in the term Zion, the former prevails in ver. 15, the latter in
ver. 16. For although naij? and nxWB' are equally applicable
to a city and a church (ch. liv. 6, 11), the expression "no one
walked through thee" applies only to the desolate city as she
lay in ruins (see ch. xxxiv. 10). The fusion of the two ideas
in ver. 15 is similar to ch. xlix. 21. Jerusalem will now become
thoroughly a splendour, and in fact an eternal splendour, a
rapture of successive generations so long as the history of this
world continues. The nations and their kings give up their
own vital energy to the church, just as a mother or nurse gives
the milk of her breasts to a child ; and the church has thereby
rich food for a prosperous growth, and a constant supply of
fresh material for grateful joy. We cannot for a moment
think of enriching by means of conquest, as Hitzig does ; the
sucking is that of a child, not of a vampyre. We should expect
mHdkhoih (ch. xlix. 23) instead of mHdkhlm (kings) ; but by "W
(as in ch. Ixvi. 11 for ''IE') the natural character of what is
promised is intentionally spiritualized. The figure proves itself
to be only a figure, and requires an ideal interpretation. The
church sees in all this the gracious superintendence of her God;
she learns from experience that Jehovah is her Saviour, that
He is her Kedeemer, He the Mighty One of Jacob, who has
conquered for her, and now causes her to triumph Q^^. ''p with
munach yethib, as in ch. xlix. 266, which passage is repeated
almost verbatim here, and ch. Ixi. 8).
The outward and inward beauty of the new Jerusalem is
now depicted by the materials of her structure, and the powers
which prevail within her. Vers. 17, 18. " For copper I bring
gold, and for iron I bring silver, and for wood capper, and for
420 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
stones iron, and make peace thy magistracy, and righteousness
thy bailiffs. Injustice is no more seen in thy land, wasting and
destruction in thy borders ; and thou callest salvation thy walls,
and renown thy gates^ Wood and stone are not used at all in
the building of the new Jerusalem. Just as in the time of
Solomon silver was counted as nothing (1 Kings x. 21) and
had only the value of stones (1 Kings x. 27), so here Jehovah
gives her gold instead of copper, silver instead of iron ; whilst
copper and iron are so despised with this superabundance of
the precious metals, that they take the place of such building
materials as wood and stones. Thus the city will be a massive
one, and not even all of stone, but entirely built of metal, and
indestructible not only by the elements, but by all kinds of foes.
The allegorical continuation of the prophecy shows very clearly
that the prophet does not mean his words to be taken literally.
The LXX., Saad., and others, are wrong in adopting the ren-
dering, " I make thy magistracy peace," etc. ; since shdlom and
ts'ddqdh are not accusatives of either the predicate or the object,
but such personifications as we are accustomed to in Isaiah {vid.
ch. xsxii. 16, 17, lix. 14; cf. ch. xlv. 8). Jehovah makes
peace its p'qudddh, i.e. its " overseership " (like g'bhurdh, hero-
ship, in ch. iii. 25, and 'ezrdh, helpership, in ch. xxxi. 2), or
magistracy ; and righteousness its bailiffs. The plural "^"p^i
is no disproof of the personification ; the meaning is, that
ts'ddqdh (righteousness) is to Jerusalem what the whole body
of civil officers together are : that is to say, righteousness is a
substitute for the police force in every form. Under such
magistracy and such police, nothing is ever heard within the
land, of which Jerusalem is the capital, of either chdmds, i.e. a
rude and unjust attack of the stronger upon the weaker, or of
shod, i.e. conquest and devastation, and shebher, i.e. dashing to
pieces, or breaking in two. It has walls (ver. 10) ; but in truth
"salvation," the salvation of its God, is regarded as its im-
pregnable fortifications. It has gates (ver. 11) ; but fhilldh, the
renown that commands respect, with which Jehovah has in-
vested it, is really better than any gate, whether for ornament
or protection.
The fifth turn celebrates the glorifying of Jerusalem,
through the shining of Jehovah as its everlasting light and
through the form of its ever-growing membership, which is so
CHAP. LX. 19, 20. 421
well-pleasing to God. The prophecy returns to the thought
with which it set out, and by which the whole is regulated, viz.
that Jerusalem will be light. This leading thought is now un-
folded in the most majestic manner, and opened up in all its
eschatological depth. Vers. 19, 20. " The sun will he no more
thy light by day, neither for brightness loill the moon shine upon
thee : Jehovah will be to thee an everlasting light, and thy God
thy glory. Thy sun will no more go down, and thy moon will
not be icithdrawn; for Jehovah will be to thee an everlasting
light, and the days of thy mourning will be fulfilled'' Although,
in the prophet's view, the Jerusalem of the period of glory in
this world and the Jerusalem of the eternal glory beyond
flow into one another ; the meaning of this prophecy is not
that the snn and moon will no longer exist. Even of the
Jerusalem which is not to be built by Israel with the help of
converted heathen, but which comes down from heaven to
earth, the seer in Rev. xxi. 23 merely says, that the city needs
neither the shining of the sun nor of the moon (as the Targum
renders the passage before us, "thou wilt not need the shining
of the sun by day"), for the glory of God lightens it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof, i.e. God Himself is instead of a sun
to her, and the Lamb instead of a moon. Consequently we
do not agree with Stier, who infers from this passage that
" there is a final new creation approaching, when there will be
no more turning round into the shadow (Jas. i. 17), when the
whole planetary system, including the earth, will be changed,
and when the earth itself will become a sun, yea, will become
even more than that, in the direct and primary light which
streams down upon it from God Himself." We rather agree
with Hofmann, that "there will still be both sun and moon, but
the Holy Place will be illumined without interruption by the
manifestation of the presence of God, which outshines all
besides." The prophet has here found the most complete
expression, for that which has already been hinted at in such
prophecies in ch. iv. 5, xxx. 26, xxi v. 23. As the city receives
its light I neither from the sun nor from the moon, thi.s implies,
what Eev. xxi. 25 distinctly affirms, that there will be no
more night there. The prophet intentionally avoids a m'f? lisp
parallel to DOi'' lisp. We must not render the second clause in
ver. 19, " ani it will not become light to thee with the shining
422 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
of the moon," for "I't^sn never means to get liglit ; nor " and as
for the shining of the moon, it does not give the light," as
Hitzig and Knobel propose, for i^JJ?' is used alone, and not
nn^T Wii'l as the antithesis to DOV Tik!*, in the sense of " to light
up the night" (compare PiJJ as applied to the shining of the
moon in eh. xiii. 10, and PiJi to the glittering of the stars in
Joel ii. 10), and even the use of n7''?n is avoided. The true
rendering is either, " and for lighting, the moon will not shine
upon thee" (Stier, Hahn, etc.) ; or, what is more in accordance
with the accentuation, which would have given T\iy?\ tifchah and
not tsakeph gadol, if it had been intended to indicate the object,
"and as for the lighting" (? as in ch. xxxii. 16). The glory
of Jehovah, which soars above Jerusalem, and has come down
into her, is henceforth her sun and her moon, — a sun that never
sets, a moon H?^! '<■' which is not taken in towards morning,
like a lamp that has been hung out at night (compare ^DNJ, eh.
xvi. 10, withdrawn, disappeared). The triumph of light over
darkness, which is the object of the world's history, is con-
centrated in the new Jerusalem. How this is to be under-
stood, is explained in the closing clause of ver. 20. The sum of
the days of mourning allotted to the church is complete. The
darkness of the corruption of sin and state of punishment is
overcome, and the church is nothing but holy blessed joy with-
out change or disturbance ; for it walks no longer in sidereal
light, but in the eternally unchangeable light of Jehovah,
which with its peaceful gentleness and perfect purity illumines
within as well as without. The seer of the Apocalypse also
mentions the Lamb. The Lamb is also known to our prophet ;
for the " Servant of Jehovah" is the Lamb. But the light of
transfiguration, in which he sees this exalted Lamb, is not
great enough to admit of its being combined with the light of
the Divine Nature itself.
The next verse shows how deep was his consciousness of
the close connection between darkness, wrath, and sin. Ver.
21. " And thy people, iliey are all righteous; they possess the
land for ever, a sprout of my plantations, a work of my hands
for glorification" The church of the new Jerusalem consists
of none but righteous ones, who have been cleansed from guilt,
and keep themselves henceforth pure from sinning, and there-
fore possess the land of promise for ever, without having to
CHAP. LX. 22. 423
fear repeated destruction and banishment: a "sprout" (nStser
as in ch. xi, 1, xiv. 19 ; Arab, nadr, the green branch) " of my
plantations" QV^'O cheiliib, erroneously iJ?BD or l^l??); »•«• of my
creative acts of grace (cf. ch. v. 7), a " work of my hands"
(cf. ch. xix. 25), " to glorify me," i.e. in which I possess that in
which I gloiy ("isann? as in ch. Ixi. 3).
The life of this church, which is newly created, new-bom,
throui^h judgment and grace, gradually expands from the most
unassuming centre in ever widening circles until it has attained
the broadest dimensions. Ver. 22a. " The smallest one will
become thousands, and the meanest one a powerful nation." " The
small and mean one," or, as the idea is a relative one, " the
smallest and meanest one" (Ges. § 119, 2), is either a childless
one, or one blessed with very few children. At the same time,
the reference is not exclusively to growth through the blessing
of children, but also to growth through the extension of fel-
lowship. We have a similar expression in Mic. iv. 7 (cf . v.
1), where 'eleph is employed, just as it is here, in the sense of
fl^N^, " to thousands (or chihads)."
The whole of the puophetic address is now sealed with this
declaration : Ver. 22b. " I, Jehovah, mil hasten it in His time."
The neuter na- (as in ch. xliii. 13, xlvi. 11) refers to every-
thing that has been predicted from ver. 1 downwards. Jehovah
will fulfil it rapidly, when the point of time («atjOo?) which He
has fixed for it shall have arrived. As this point of time is
known to Him only, the predicted glory will burst all at once
with startling suddenness upon the eyes of those who have
waited believingly for Him.
This chapter forms a connected and self-contained whole,
as we may see very clearly from the address to Zion-Jerusalem,
which is sustained throughout. If we compare together such
passages as ch. li. 17-23 ("Awake, awake, stand up, O Jeru-
salem"), ch. lii. 1, 2 ("Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O
Zion"), and ch. liv. (" Sing, O barren"), which are all closely
related so far as their contents are concerned, we shall find that
these addresses to Zion form an ascending series, ch. Ix. being
the summit to which they rise, and that the whole is a com-
plete counterpart to the address to the daughter of Babylon in
ch. xlvii.
424 THE PEOPHECIES CF ISAIAH.
FOURTH PKOPHECY.— Chap. lxj.
THE GLORY OF THE OFFICE COMMITTED TO THE SERVANT OF
JEHOVAH.
The words of Jehovah Himself pass over here into the
words of anothei', whom He has appointed as the Mediator of
His gracious counsel^ Vers. 1-3. " The Spirit of the Lord
Jehovah is over me, Lecause Jelwvah hath anointed me, to hring
glad tidings to sufferers, hath sent me to bind up broken-hearted
ones, to proclaim liberty to those led captive, and emancipation to
the fettered ; to proclaim a year of grace from Jehovah, and a
day of vengeance from our God ; to comfort all that mourn ; to
put upon the mourners of Zion, to give them a head-dress for
ashes, oil of joy for mourning^ a wrapper of renown for an
expiring spirit, that they may be called terebinths of righteousness,
a planting of Jehovah for glorification^ Who is the person'
speaking here? The Targum introduces the passage with
N>3ji ^DN. Nearly all the modern commentators support this
view. Even the closing remarks to Dreclisler (iii. 381) express
the opinion, that the prophet who exhibited to the church the
summit of its glory in ch. Ix., an evangelist of the rising from
on high, an apocalyptist who sketches the painting which the
New Testament apocalyptist is to carry one in detail, is here
looking up to Jehovah with a grateful eye, and praising Him
with joyful heart for his exalted commission. But this view,
when looked at more closely, cannot possibly be sustained. It
is open to the following objections : (1.) The prophet never
speaks of himself as a prophet at any such length as this ; on
the contrary, with the exception of the closing words of ch.
Ivii. 21, " saitli my God," he has always most studiously let
his own person fall back into the shade. (2.) Wherever any
other than Jehovah is represented as speakiug, and as referring
to his own calling, or his experience in connection with that
calling, as in ch. xlix. 1 sqq., 1. 4 sqq., it is the very same
" servant of Jehovali" of whom and to whom Jehovah speaks
in ch. xlii. 1 sqq., Iii. 13-liii., and therefore not the prophet
himself, but He who had been appointed to be the Mediator
of a new covenant, the light of the Gentiles, the salvation of
CHAP. LXI. 1-8. 425
Jehovah for the whole world, and who would reach this glorious
height, to whicli He had been called, through self-abasement
even to death. (3.) All that the person speaking here says of
himself is to be found in the picture of the unequalled " Servant
of Jehovah," who is highly exalted above the prophet. He is
endowed with the Spirit of Jehovah (ch. xlii. 1) ; Jehovah has
sent Him, and with Him His Spirit (ch. xlviii. 16b) ; He has a
tongue taught of God, to help the exhausted with words (ch.
1. 4) ; He spares and rescues those who are almost despairing
and destroyed, the bruised reed and expiring wick (ch. xlii. 7).
" To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from tlie prison,
and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house :" this is
what He has chiefly to do for His people, both in word and
deed (ch. xlii. 7, xlix. 9). (4.) We can hardly expect that,
after the. prophet has described the Servant of Jehovah, of
whom he prophesied, as coming forward to speak with such
dramatic directness as in ch. xlix. 1 sqq., 1. 4 sqq. (and even
ch. xlviii. 16Z»), he will now proceed to put himself in the fore-
ground, and ascribe to himself those very same official attributes
which he has already set forth as characteristic features in his
portrait of the predicted One. For these reasons we have no
doubt that[we have here the words of the Servant of Jehovah^
The glory of Jerusalem is depicted in ch. Ix. in the direct
words of Jehovah Himself, which are well sustained through-
out. And new, just as in ch. xlviii. 166, though still more
elaborately, we have by their sid^ the words of His servant,
who is the mediator of this glory, and who above all others
is the pioneer thereof in his evangelical predictions. Just as
Jehovah says of him in ch. xhi. 1, " I have put my Spirit
upon him ;" so here he says of himself, " The Spirit of
■ Jehovah is upon me." And when he continues to explain this
still further by saying, "because" QV] from.njy, intention, pur-
pose ; here equivalent to '^^^_ ]^1) " Jehovah hath anointed me"
{mdshach 'otht, more emphatic than m^sJidchdm), notwithstand-
ing the fact that mdshach is used here in the sense of prophetic
and not regal anointing (1 Kings xix. 16), we may find in the
choice of this particular word a hint at the fact, that (the Servant
of Jehovah and the Messiah are one and the same person^ So
'also the account given in Luke iv. 16-22 — viz. that when Jesus
was in the synagogue at Nazareth, after reading the opening
426 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
words of this address, He closed the book with these words,
" This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears " — cannot be
interpreted more simply in any other way, than on the supposi-
tion that, Jesus here declares Himself to be the predicted and
divinely anointed Servant of Jehovah, who brings the gospel
of redemption to His peoplei Moreover, though it is not
decisive in favour of our explanation, yet this explanation is
favoured by the fact that the speaker not only appears as the
herald of the new and great gifts of God, but also as the
dispenser of them (" non prceco tantum, sed et dispensator"
Vitringa). The combination of the names of God ('Adonai
Yehov^h) is the same as in ch. 1. 4-9. On hissSr, evar/yeXi^etv
{-ecrOai), see p. 145. He comes to put a bandage on the
hearts' wounds of those who are broken-hearted : ? Ban (E'sn)
as in Ezek. xxxiv. 4, Ps. cxlvii. 3 ; cf . r" S3'i («Eil.), vol. i. p. 200;
'? P'lVn, p. 336. lilT tnp^ is the phrase used in the law for
the proclamation of the freedom brought by the year of jubilee,
which occurred every fiftieth year after seven sabbatical periods,
and was called sh'nath liaddfror (Ezek. xlvi. 17) ; d'ror from
ddrar, a verbal stem, denoting the straight, swift flight of a
swallow (see at Ps. Ixxxiv. 4), and free motion in general, such
as that of a flash of lightning, a liberal self-diffusion, like that
of a superabundant fulness. P^gach-qoacli is written like two
words (see at ch. ii. 20). The Targum translates it as if p'qach
were an imperative : " Oome to the light," probably meaning
undo the bands. But qo&ch is not a Hebrew word ; for the
qlchoili of the Mishna (the loops through which the strings of
a purse are drawn, for the purpose of lacing it up) cannot be
adduced as a comparison. Parchon, AE, and A, take p'qach-
qoach as one word (of the form ?mT\^^ in^D?'), in the sense of
throwing open, viz. the prison. But as pdqacli is never used
like pdthach (ch. xiv. 17, li. 14), to signify the opening of a
room, but is always applied to the opening of the eyes (ch.
XXXV. 5, xlii. 7, etc.), except in ch. xhi. 20, where it is used for
the opening of the ears, we adhere to the strict usage of the
language, if we understand by p'qachqo&cli the opening up of
the eyes (as contrasted with the dense darkness of the prison) ;
and this is how it has been taken even by the LXX., who
have rendered it Koi TV(pXoi<; avd^ei^LV, as if the reading had
been Q''"i)y?l (Ps. cxlvi. 8). Again, he is sent to promise with
CHAP. LXI. 1-3. 427
a loud proclamation a year of good pleasure (rdtson: syn.
ytshudli) and a day of vengeance, which Jehovah has ap-
pointed ; a promise which assigns the length of a year for the
thorough accomplishment of the work of grace, and only the
length of a day for the work of vengeance. The vengeance
applies to those who hold the people of God in fetters, and
oppress them ; the grace to all those whom the infliction of
punishment has inwardly humbled, though they have been
strongly agitated by its long continuance (ch. Ivii. 15). The
'Uhhellm, whom the Servant of Jehovah has to comfort, are the
" mourners of Zion," those who take to heart the fall of Zion.
In ver. 3, 012'^ . . . nn?, he corrects himself, because what he
brings is not merely a diadem, to which the word sum (to set)
would apply, but an abundant supply of manifold gifts, to
which only a general word like ndtJian (to give) is appropriate.
Instead of "13^, the ashes of mourning or repentance laid upon
the head, he brings ^Na, a diadem to adorn the head (a trans-
position even so far as the letters are concerned, and therefore
the counterpart of nsN) ; the " oil of joy" (from Ps. xlv. 8 ;
compare also 10'?*? there with "'flN riB'D here) instead of mourn-
ing; " a wrapper (cloak) of renown" instead of a faint and
almost extinguished spirit. The oil with which they henceforth
anoint themselves is to be joy or gladness, and renown the
cloak in which they wrap themselves (a genitive connection, as
in ch. Hx. 17). And whence is all this ? The gifts of God,
though represented in outward figures, are really spiritual, and
take effect within, rejuvenating and sanctifying the inward
man ; they are the sap and strength, the marrow and impulse
of a new life. The church thereby becomes " terebinths of
righteousness" (f^^: Targ., Symm., Jer., render this, strong
ones, mighty ones ; Syr. dechre, rams ; but though both of these
are possible, so far as the letters are concerned, they are un-
suitable here), i.e. possessors of righteousness, produced by God
and acceptable with God, having all the firmness and fulness
of terebinths, with their strong trunks, their luxuriant verdure,
and their perennial foliage, — a planting of Jehovah, to the
end that He may get glory out of it (a repetition of ch. Ix. 21).
Even in ver. 35 with nn? K'JP'! a perfect was introduced in
the place of the infinitives of the object, and affirmed what was
to be accomplished through the mediation of the Servant of
428 THE PUOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jeliovali. Tlie second turn in the address, which follows in
vers. 4-9, continues the iise of such perfects, which afterwards
pass into futures. But the whole is still governed by the com-
mencement in ver. 1. The Servant of Jehovah celebrates the
glorious office committed to him, and expounds the substance
of the gospel given him to proclaim. It points to the restora-
tion of the promised land, and to the elevation of Israel, after
its purification in the furnace of judgment, to great honour
and dignity in the midst of the world of nations. Vers. 4-6.
" And they loill build up wastes of the olden time, raise up deso-
lations of the forefathers, and renew desolate cities, desolations of
former generations. And strangers stand and feed your flocks,
and foreigners become your ploughmen and vinedressers. But
ye will he called priests of Jehovah ; Servants of our God, will
men say to you : ye roill cat the riches of the nations, and pride
yourselves in their glory." The desolations and wastes of 'oldm
and dor vddor, i.e. of ages remote and near (ch. Iviii. 12), are
not confined to what had lain in ruins during the seventy years
of the captivity. The land will be so thickly populated, that
the former places of abode will not suffice (ch. xlix. 19, 20) ; so
that places must be referred to which are lying waste beyond
the pi'esent bounds of the promised land (ch. liv. 3), and which
will be rebuilt, raised up, and renewed by those who return
from exile, and indeed by the latest generations (ch. Iviii. 12,
'^KiD ; cf. ch. Ix. 14). Chorebh, in the sense of desolation, is a
word belonging to the later period of the language (Zeph., Jer.,
and Ezek.). The rebuilding naturally suggests the thought of
assistance on the part of the heathen (ch. Ix. 10). But the
prophet expresses the fact that they will enter into the service
of Israel (ver. 5), in a new and different form. They " stand
there" (viz. at their posts ready for service, ' al-mishmartdm,
2 Chron. vii. G), " and feed your flocks" ([NV singularetantum, cf.
Gen. XXX. 43), and foreigners are your ploughmen and vine-
dressers. Israel is now, in the midst of the heathen who have
entered into the congregation of Jehovah and become the
people of God (ch. xix. 25), what the Aaronites formerly were
in the midst of Israel itself. It stands upon the height of its
primary destination to be a kingdom of priests (Ex. xix. 6).
They are called " priests of Jehovah," and the heathen call
them " servants of our God ;" for even the heathen speak with
CHAP. LXI. 4-6. 429
believing reverence of tlie God, to whom Israel renders priestly
service, as " our God." This reads as if the restored Israelites
■were to stand in the same relation to the converted heathen as
the clergy to the laity ; but it is evident, from ch. Ixvi. 21, that
the prophet has no such hierarchical separation as this in his
mind. All that we can safely infer from his prophecy is, that
the nationality of Israel will not be swallowed up by the
entrance of the heathen into the community of the God of
revelation. The people created , by Jehovah, to serve as the
vehicle of the promise of salvation and the instrument in pre-
paring the way for salvation, will also render Him special service,
even after that salvation has been really effected. At the same
time, we cannot take the attitude, which is here assigned to the
people of sacred history after it has become the teacher of the
nations, viz. as the leader of its worship also, and shape it into
any clear and definite form that shall be reconcilable with the
New Testament spirit of liberty and the abolition of all national
party-walls. The Old Testament prophet utters New Testa-
ment prophecies in an Old Testament form. Even when he
continues to say, " Ye will eat the riches of the Gentiles, and
pride yourselves in their glory," i.e. be proud of the glorious
things which have passed from their possession into yours, this
is merely colouring intended to strike the eye, which admits of
explanation on the ground that he saw the future in the mirror
of the present, as a complete inversion of the relation in which
the two had stood before. The figures present themselves to
him in the form of contrasts. The New Testament apostle, on
the other hand, says in Kom. xi. 12 that the conversion of all
Israel to Christ will be " the riches of the Gentiles." But if
even then the Gentile church should act according to the words
of the same apostle in Kom. xv. 27, and show her gratitude to
the people whose spiritual debtor she is, by ministering to them
in carnal things, all that the prophet has promised here will be
amply fulfilled. We cannot adopt the explanation proposed by
Hitzig, Stier, etc., "and changing with them, ye enter into
their glory" {Jiithyammer from ydmar = mur, Hiph. : hemir, Jer.
ii. 11 ; lit. to exchange with one another, to enter into one
another's places) ; for ydmar = 'dmar (cf . ydchad = 'dchad ;
ydsham = 'dsham; ydlaph = 'dlaph), to press upwards, to rise
up (related to tdmar, see at ch. xvii. 9 ; sdmar, Symm. opdorpir-
430 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
yeti', possibly also 'dmar with the liithpael Mth'ammSr, LXX.
KaTuBwaa-Teveiv), yields a much simpler and more appropriate
meaning. From this verb we have hith'ammer in Ps. xciv. 4,
"to lift one's self up (proudly)," and here Mtliyammer ; and it
is in this way that the word has been explained by Jerome
(superbietis), and possibly by the LXX. (^BavnacrBijcrecrOe, in
the sense of spectabiles eritis), by the Targum, and the Syriac,
as well as by most of the ancient and modern expositors.
The shame of banishment will then be changed into an
excess of joy, and honourable distinction. Vers. 7-9. "In-
stead of shame ye will have double, and (instead) of insult they
rejoice at their portion : thus in their land they will possess
double; everlasting joy will they have. For IJehovah love right,
hate robbery in wickedness ; and give them their reward in faith-
fulness, and conclude an everlasting covenant with them. And
their family will be known among the nations, and their offspring
in the midst of the nations : all who see them will recognise them,
for they are a family that Jehovah hath blessed" The enigma-
tical first half of ver. 7 is explained in the second, where mishneh
is shown to consist of double possession in the land of their
inheritance, which has not only been restored to them, but
extended far beyond the borders of their former possession ;
and ydronnu chelqdm (cf. ch. Ixiv. 14) denotes excessive re-
joicing in the ground and soil belonging to them (according to
the appointment of Jehovah) : chelqdm as in Mic. ii. 4 ; and
mishneh as equivalent not to ^i^^ nJE'p, but to ^^y, WE'D.
Taking this to be the relation between ver. lb and 7a, the
meaning of laklien is not, " therefore, because they have hitherto
suffered shame and reproach ;" but what is promised in ver. la
is unfolded according to its practical results, the effects con-
sequent upon its fulfilment being placed in the foreground (cf.
vol. i. p. 448) ; so that there is less to astonish us in the ellipti-
cally brief form of ver. la which needed explanation. The
transition from the form of address to that of declaration is the
same as in ch. i. 29, xxxi. 6, hi. 14, 15. ntsb? is a concise
expression for n»7a nnni, just as ''n^nn^i in ch. xlviii. 9 is for
'•nprin ])lm. Chelqdm is either the accusative of the object,
according to the construction of t)!"!, which occurs in Ps. li. 16:
or what I prefer, looking at non in ch. xlii. 25, and T'nan in
ch. xliii. 23, an adverbial accusative = Dp^na. The LXX.,
CHAP. LXI. 7-9. 431
Jerome, and Saad. render the clause, in opposition to the
accents, " instead of your double shame and reproach ;" but
in that case the principal words of the clause would read
D2i3pn la'iri. The explanation adopted by the Targura, Saad.,
and Jerome, " shame on the part of those who rejoice in their
portion," is absolutely impossible. The great majority of the
modern commentators adopt essentially the same explanation
of ver. la as we have done, and even A. E. Kimchi does the
same. Hahn's modification, " instead of your shame is the
double their portion, and (instead) of the insult this, that they
will rejoice," forces a meaning upon the syntax which is abso-
lutely impossible. The reason for the gracious recompense for
the wrong endured is given in ver. 8, "Jehovah loves the
right," which the enemies of Israel have so shamefully abused.
" He hates n?^W 7M, i.e. not rapinam in Jiolocausto (as Jerome,
Talmud b. Succa 30a, Luther, and others render it ; Eng. ver.
" robbery for burnt-offering "), — for what object could there
be in mentioning sacrifices here, seeing that only heathen
sacrifices could be intended, and there would be something
worse than gdzel to condemn in them? — but robbery, or, strictly
speaking, " something robbed in or with knavery " (LXX.,
Targ., Syr., Saad.), which calls to mind at once the cruel
robbery or spoihng that Israel had sustained from the Chal-
deans, its boz'zim (ch. xhi. 24), — a robbery which passed all
bounds. r^ViV is softened from n))^ (from b\V, ^IJ?), like nn^j) in
Job V. 16, and fhSv in Ps. Iviii. 3 and Ixiv. 7 ; though it is
doubtful whether the punctuation assumes the latter, as the
Targum does, and not rather the meaning holocaustum sup-
ported by the Talmud. For the very reason, therefore, that
Israel had been so grievously ill-treated by the instruments of
punishment employed by Jehovah, He would give those who
had been ill-treated their due reward, after He had made the
evil, which He had not approved, subservient to His own salu-
tary purposes. H^JIS is the reward of work in Lev. xix. 13, of
hardship in Ezek. xxix. 20 ; here it is the reward of suffering.
This reward He would give n»N3, exactly as He had promised,
without the slightest deduction. The posterity of those who
have been ill-treated and insulted will be honourably known
(Tni as in Prov. xxxi. 23) in the world of nations, and men
will need only to catch sight of them to recognise them (by
432 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
prominent marks of blessing), for tliey are a family blessed of
God. '3, not quod (because), although it might have this
meaning, but nam (for), as in Gen. xxvii. 23, since hikhlr in-
cludes the meaning agnoscere (to recognise).
This is the joyful calling of the Servant of Jebovah to be
the messenger of such promises of God to His people. Vers.
10, 11. '■^Joyfully T rejoice in Jehovah; my soul shall be joyful
in my God, that He hath given 7ne garments of salvation to put
on, hath wrapped me in the robe of righteousness, as a bride-
groom who wears the turban like a priest, and as a bride who
puts on her jewellery. For like the land which brings forth its
sprouts, and as a garden which causes the things sown in it
to sprout up ; so the Lord Jehovah bringeth righteousness to
sprouting, and rencfion before all nations" The Targum pre-
cedes this last turn with "Thus saith Jerusalem." But as
vers. 4-9 are a development of the glorious prospects, the reali-
zation of which has to be effected through the instrumentality
of the person speaking in vers. 1-3 both in word and deed,
the speaker here is certainly the same as there. Nor is it even
the fact that he is here supposed to commence speaking again ;
but he is simply continuing his address by expressing at the
close, as he did at the beginning, the relation in which he
stands in his own person to the approaching elevation of His
people. Exalted joy, which impels him to exult, is what he
experiences in Jehovah his God (2 denoting the ground and
orbit of his experience) : for the future, which so abounds in
grace, and which he has to proclaim as a prophet and as the
evangelist of Israel, and of which he has to lay the foundation
as the mediator of Israel, and in which he is destined to parti-
cipate as being himself an Israelite, consists entirely of salva-
tion and righteousness ; so that he, the bearer and messenger
of the divine counsels of grace, appears to himself as one to
whom Jehovah has given clothes of salvation to put on, and
whom He has wrapped in the robe of righteousness. Ts'ddqdh
(righteousness), looked at from the evangelical side of the idea
which it expresses, is here the parallel word to y'shudh (sal-
vation). The figurative representation of both by different
articles of dress is similar to ch. lix. 17 ; yd' at, which only occui-s
here, is synonymous with 'dtdh, from which comes md&teh,
a wrapper or cloak (ver. 3). He appears to himself, as lie
CHAP. LXI. 10, 11. 433
stands there hoping such things for his people, and preaching
such things to liis people, to resemble a bridegroom, who makes
his turban in priestly style, i.e. who winds it round his head
after the fashion of the priestly mighaoth (Ex. xxix. 9), which
are called □''"ixs in Ex. xxxix. 28 (cf. Ezek. xliv. 18). Kashi
and others think of the mitsnepheth of the high priest, which
was of purple-blue ; but pa^ does not imply anything beyond
the migladh, a tall mitra, which was formed by twisting a
long linen band round the head so as to make it stand up in
a point, ps is by no means equivalent to Jconen, or hehhin,
as Hitzig and Halm suppose, since the verb Jcdhan = hun
only survives in JcoJien. Kilien is a denom., and signifies
to act or play the priest ; it is construed here with the
accusative 1^3, which is either the accusative of more precise
definition ("who play the priest in a turban;" A. w^ vvfi<piov
leparevofievov OTe^dva), or what would answer better to the
parallel member, " who makes the turban like a priest." As
often as he receives the word of prorriise into his heart and
takes it into his mouth, it is to him like the turban of a bride-
groom, or like the jewellery which a bride puts on {tddeh, half
as in Hos. ii. 15). For the substance of the promise is nothing
but salvation and renown, which Jehovah causes to sprout up
before all nations, just as the earth causes its vegetation to
sprout, or a garden its seed (3 as a preposition in both in-
stances, instar followed by attributive clauses ; see ch. viii. 23).
The word in the mouth of the servant of Jehovah is the seed,
out of which great things are developed before all the world.
The ground and soil (erets) of this development is mankind ;
the enclosed garden therein (ganndh) is the church ; and the
great things themselves are ts'ddqdh, as the true inward nature
of His church, and fhilldh as its outward manifestation. The
force which causes the seed to germinate is Jehovah ; but the
bearer of the seed is the servant of Jehovah, and the ground
of his festive rejoicing is the fact that he is able to scatter the
seed of so gracious and glorious a f'jtnre.
VOL. .11. 2 E
434 THE PKOPHECIES of ISAIAH.
FIFTH PKOPHECY.— Chap. lxii.
THE GRADTTAL EXTENSION OF THE GLORY OF JERUSALEM.
Nearly all the more recent commentators regard the pro-
phet himself as speaking here. Having given himself up to
praying to Jehovah and preaching to the people, he will not
rest or hold his peace till the salvation, which has begun to be
reahzed, has been brought fully out to the light of day. It is,
however, really Jehovah who commences thus : Vers. 1-3.
" For Zion's sake I shall not he silent, and for JerusalevnUs sake
I shall not rest, till her righteousness breaks forth like morning
brightness, and her salvation like a blazing torch. And nations
will see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory ; and men
will call thee by a new name, which the mouth of Jehovah will
determine. And thou wilt be an adorning coronet in the hand
of Jehovah, and a royal diadem in the lap of thy God." It is
evident that Jehovah is the speaker here, both from ver. 6 and
also from the expression used ; for chdshdh is the word com-,
monly employed in such utterances of Jehovah concerning
Himself, to denote His leaving things in theii- existing state
without interposing (eh. Ixv. 6, Ivii. 11, Ixiv, 11). Moreover,
the arguments which may be adduced to prove that the author
of ch. xl.-lxvi. is not the speaker in ch. Ixi., also prove that it
is not he who is continuing to speak of himself in ch. lxii.
Jehovah, having now begun to speak and move on behalf of
Zion, will " for Zion's sake," i.e. just because it is Zion, His
own church, neither be silent nor give Himself rest, till He
has gloriously executed His work of grace. Zion is now in
the shade, but the time will come when her righteousness will
go forth as nogah, the light which bursts through the night
(ch. Ix. 19, lix. 9 ; here the morning sunlight, Prov. iv. 18 ;
compare shachar, the morning red, ch. Iviii. 8) ; or till her
salvation is hke a torch which blazes. "iW* belongs to *i''Bp3
(mercha) in the form of an attributive clause = "lys, although
it might also be assumed that "iW stands by attraction for
ivan (cf. ch. ii. 11 ; Ewald, § 317, c). The verb "ij??, which
is generally applied to wrath (^e.g. ch. xxx. 27), is here used in
connection with salvation, which has wrath towards the enemies
CHAP. LXII. 4, 5. 435
of Zion as its obverse side : Zion's tsedeq (righteousness) shall
become like the morning sunlight, before which even the last
twilight has vanished; and Zion's y'sMdh is like a nightly
torch, which sets fire to its own material, and everything that
comes near it. The force of the conjunction *1J? (until) does
not extend beyond ver. 1. From ver. 2 onwards, the condition
of things in the object indicated by '^V is more fully described.
The eyes of the nations will be directed to the righteousness of
Zion, the impress of which is now their common property ; the
eyes of all kings to her glory, with which the glory of none
of them, nor even of all together, can possibly compare. And
because this state of Zion is a new one, which has never existed
before, her old name is not sufficient to indicate her nature.
She is called by a new name ; and who could determine this
new name ? He who makes the church righteous and glorious.
He, and He alone, is able to utter a name answering to her
new nature, just as it was He who called Abram Abraham, and
Jacob Israel. The mouth of Jehovah will determine it (3i?3,
to pierce, to mark, to designate in a signal and distinguishing
manner, nuncupare ; cf. Amos vi. 1, Num. i. 17). It is only
in imagery that prophecy here sees what Zion will be in the
future : she will be " a crown of glory," " a diadem," or rather
a tiara (ts'niph; Chethib t^nuph = mitsnepheth, the head-dress
of the high priest, Ex. xxviii. 4, Zech. iii. 5 ; and that of the
king, Ezek. xxi. 31) " of regal dignity," in the hand of her
God (for want of a synonym of " hand," we have adopted the
rendering "in the lap " the second time that it occurs). Meier
renders nirT" l*a (^133) Jovce sub prcesidio, as though it did not
form part of the figure. But it is a main feature in the figure,
that Jehovah holds the crown in His hand. Zion is not the
ancient crown which the Eternal wears upon His head, but
the crown wrought out in time, which He holds in His hand,
because He is seen in Zion by all creation. The whole history
of salvation is the history of the taking of the kingdom, and
the perfecting of the kingdom by Jehovah ; in other words, the
history of the working out of this crown.
Zion will be once more the beloved of God, and her home
the bride of her children. Vers. 4, 5. " Men will no more call
thee 'Forsaken one;' and thy land they will no more call
* Desert : ' hut men will name thee ' My delight in Iier,' and ihv
436 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
liome ' Married one :' for JelwvaJi liath delight in thee, and thy
land is married. For the young man marrieth the maiden, thy
children will marry thee ; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth in the
bride, thy God will rejoice in thee." The prophecy mentions
new names, which will now take the place of the old ones ;
but these names indicate what Zion appears to be, not her true
nature which is brought to the light. In the explanatory
clause ^? stands at the head, because the name of Zion is given
first in distinction from the name of her land. Zion has
hitherto been called 'Szubhah, forsaken by Jehovah, who for-
merly loved her; but she now receives instead the name of
ehephtsl-bhdh (really the name of a woman, viz. the wife of
Hezekiah, and mother of Manasseh, 2 Kings xxi. 1), for she
is now the object of true affection on the part of Jehovah.
With the rejoicing of a bridegroom in his bride (the accusa-
tive is used here in the same sense as in n?lj nnp'K' noii' ; Ges.
§ 138, 1) will her God rejoice in her, turning to her again
with a love as strong and deep as the first love of a bridal pair.
And the land of Zion's abode, the fatherland of her children,
was hitherto called sUmdmdh ; it was turned into a desert by
the heathen, and the connection that existed between it and
the children of the land was severed ; but now it shall be
called V'uldh, for it will be newly married. A young man
marries a virgin, thy children will marry thee : the figure and
the fact are placed side by side in the form of an emble-
matical proverb, the particle of comparison being omitted (see
Herzog's Cyclopcedia, xiv. 696, and Ges. § 155, 2, h). The
church in its relation to Jehovah is a weak but beloved woman,
which has Him for its Lord and Husband (ch. liv. 5) ; but in
relation to her home she is the totality of those who are lords
or possessors (ba&le, 2 Sam. vi. 2) of the land, and who call
the land their own as it were by right of marriage. Out of
the loving relation in which the church stands to its God,
there flows its relation of authority over every earthly thing of
which it stands in need. In some MSS. there is a break here.
Watchmen stationed upon the walls of Zion (says the third
strophe) do not forsake Jehovah till He has fulfilled all His
promise. Vers. 6, 7. " Upon thy walls, Jerusalem, Jiave I
stationed watchmen; all the day and all the night continually they
are not silent. ye who remember Jehovah, leave yourselves no
CHAP. LXII. 6, 7. 437
rest ! And give Him no rest, till He raise up, and till He set
Jerusalem for a praise in the earth." As the phrase hiphqld 'al
signifies to make a person an overseer (president) over any-
thing, it seems as though we ought to render the sentence
before us, " I have set watchmen over thy walls." But hiphqld
by itself may also mean "to appoint" (2 Kings xxv. 23), and
therefore tl]nbin"?y may indicate the place of appointment
(LXX. eVt t5)v Tiiykosv crov, upon thy walls ; 'lepovadKrifji,
Karecnrjcra (j}v\aKa<s). Those who are stationed upon the walls
are no doubt keepers of the walls ; not, however, as persons
whose exclusive duty it is to keep the walls, but as those who
have committed to them the guarding of the city both within
and without (Song of Sol. v. 7). The appointment of such
watchmen presupposes the existence of the city, which is thus
to be watched from the walls. It is therefore inadmissible to
think of the walls of Jerusalem as still lying in ruins, as the
majority of commentators have done, and to understand by the
watchmen pious Israelites, who pray for their restoration, or
(according to b. Meriachoth 87a ; cf. Zech. i. 12) angelic inter-
cessors. The walls intended are those of the city, which,
though once destroyed, is actually imperishable (ch. xlix. 16)
and has now been raised up again. And who else could the
watchmen stationed upon the walls really be, but prophets who
are called tsophim (e.g. ch. lii. 8), and whose calling, according to
Ezek. xxxiii., is that of watchmen? And if prophets are meant,
who else can the person appointing them be but Jehovah Him-
self ? The idea that the author of these prophecies is speaking
of himself, as having appointed the shom'rim, must therefore
be rejected. Jehovah gives to the restored Jerusalem faithful
prophets, whom He stations upon the walls of the city, that
they may see far and wide, and be heard afar off. And from
those walls does their warning cry on behalf of the holy city
committed to their care ascend day and. night to Jehovah,
and their testimony go round about to the world. For after
Jerusalem has been restored and re-peopled, the further end to
be attained is this, that Jehovah should build up the newly
founded city within (conen the consequence of Idndh, Num.
xxi. 27, and 'dsdh, ch. xlv. 18, Deut. xxxii. 6 ; cf. ch. liv. 14,
and Ps. Ixxxvii. 5), and help it to attain the central post of
honour in relation to those without, which He has destined
438 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
for it. Such prophets of the times succeeding the captivity
{n'bhilm 'acMronim ; cf. Zech. i. 4) were Haggai, Zechariah,
and Malachi. Haggai stauds upon the walls of Jerusalem,
and proclaims the glory of the second temple as surpassing that
of the first. Zechariah points from Joshua and Zerubbabel
onwards to the sprout of Jehovah, who is priest and prince in
one person, and builds the true temple of God. Malachi pre-
dicts the coming of the Lord to His temple, and the rising of
the Sun of righteousness. Under the eyes of these prophets
the city of God rose up again, and they stand upon its pin-
nacles, and look thence into the glorious future that awaits it,
and hasten its approach through the word of their testimony.
Such prophets, who carry the good of their people day and
night upon their anxious praying hearts, does Jehovah give to
the Jerusalem after the captivity, which is one in the prophet's
view with the Jerusalem of the last days ; and in so lively a
manner does the prophet here call them up before his own
mind, that he exclaims to them, " Ye who I'emind Jehovah, to
finish gloriously the gracious work which He has begun," give
yourselves no rest (dUmi from ddmdh = ddmam, to grow dumb,
i.e. to cease speaking or working, in distinction from chdshdh,
to be silent, i.e, not to speak or work), and allow Him no rest
till He puts Jerusalem in the right state, and so glorifies it, that
it shall be recognised and extolled as glorious over all the earth.
Prophecy here sees the final glory of the church as one that
gradually unfolds itself, and that not without human instru-
mentality. The prophets of the last times, with their zeal in
prayer, and in the exercise of their calling as witnesses, form a
striking contrast to the blind, dumb, indolent, sleepy hirelings
of the prophet's own time (ch. Ivi. 10).
The following strophe expresses one side of the divine
promise, on which the hope of that lofty and universally
acknowledged glory of Jerusalem, for whose completion the
watchers upon its walls so ceaselessly exert themselves, is
founded. Vers. 8, 9. " Jehovah hath sworn by His right Imnd,
and by His powerful arm, Surely I no more give thy com for
food to thine enemies ; and foreigners will not drink thy must, for
which thou hast laboured hard. No, they that gather it in shall
eat it, and praise Jehcmah ; and they that store it, shall drink it
in the courts of my sanctuary," The church will no more sue-
CHAP. LXII. 10-12. 439
cumb to the tyranny of a worldly power. Peace undisturbed,
and unrestricted freedom, reign there. With praise to Jehovah
are the fruits of the land enjoyed by those who raised and
reaped them, t^^i) (with an auxiliary pathach, as in ch. xlvii.
12, 15) is applied to the cultivation of the soil, and includes
the service of the heathen who are incorporated in Israel (ch.
Ixi. 5) ; whilst ^BX (whence I'Sp^O with D raphatum) or ^p_i^
(poel, whence the reading Vap^D, cf. Ps. ci. 5, mHoshnl; cix. 10,
v^-dorshu, for which in some codd. and editions we i5nd VDDSD,
an intermediate form between piel audi poel; see at Ps. Ixii. 4)
and I*?!? stand in the same relation to one another as condere
(Jiorreo) and colligere (cf. ch. xi. 12). The expression Vchats-
roili qodshi, in the courts of my sanctuary, cannot imply that
the produce of the harvest will never be consumed anywhere
else than there (which is inconceivable), but only that their
enjoyment of the harvest-produce will be consecrated by festal
meals of worship, with an allusion to the legal regulation that
two-tenths (mddser slieni) should be eaten in a holy place
(lipline Jehovah) by the original possessor and his family, with
the addition of the Levites and the poor (Deut. xiv. 22^27 :
see Saalschiitz, Mosaisches RecJit, cap. 42). Such thoughts, as
that all Israel will then be a priestly nation, or that all Jeru-
salem will be holy, are not implied in this promise. All that
it affirms is, that the enjoyment of the harvest-blessing will
continue henceforth undisturbed, and be accompanied with the
grateful worship of the giver, and therefore, because sanctified
by thanksgiving, will become an act of worship in itself. This
is what Jehovah has sworn " by His right hand," which He
only lifts up with truth, and " by His powerful arm," which
carries out what it promises without the possibility of resist-
ance. The Talmud (b. Nazir 36) understands by try ynt the
left arm, after Dan. xii. 7 ; but the 1 of JJPtai is epexegetical.
The concluding strophe goes back to the standpoint of the
captivity. Vers. 10-12. " Go forth, go forth through the gates,
clear the way of the people. Cast up, cast up the road, clean it
.of stones ; lift up a banner above the nations ! Behold, JehovcJi
hath caused tidings to sound to the end of the earth. Say to the
.daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh ; behold, His
reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him. And men
will call them the holy people, the redeemed of Jehovah ; and men
440 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
will call thee, Striven after, A city tJiat will not be forsaken." We
cannot adopt the rendering proposed by Gesenius, " Go ye into
the gates," whether of Jerusalem or of the temple, since the
reading would then be Dnyg' 1X3 (Gen. xxiii. 10) or D''"!J?f'3
(Jer. vii. 2). For although 3 laj? may under certain circum-
stances be applied to entrance into a city (Judg. ix. 26), yet it
generally denotes either passing through a land (ch. viii. 21,
xxxiv. 10; Gen. xli. 46; Lev. xxvi. 6, etc.), or through a
nation (2 Sam. xx. 14), or through a certain place (ch. x. 28) ;
so that the phrase "IJJE'|1 "laV, which does not occur anywhere
else (for in Mic. ii. 13, which i-efers, however, to the exodus
of the people out of the gates of the cities of the captivity,
"tW ^"OV^X do not belong together), must refer to passing
through the gate ; and the cry D'li'E'a 113J) means just the same
as i'33p 1NV (« Go ye forth from Babylon") in ch. xlviii. 20, lii.
11. The call to go out of Babylon forms the conclusion of the
prophecy here, just as it does in ch. xlviii. 20, 21, lii. 11, 12.
It is addressed to the exiles ; but who are they to whom the
command is given, " Throw up a way," — a summons repeat-
edly found in all the three books of these propliecies (ch. xl. 3,
Ivii. 14) ? They cannot be the heathen, for this is contra-
dicted by the conclusion of the charge, "Lift ye up a banner
above the nations;" nor can we adopt what seems to us a use-
less fancy on the part of Stier, viz. that ver. 10 is addressed to
the watchmen on the walls of Zion. We have no hesitation,
therefore, in concluding that they are the very same persons
who are to march through the gates of Babylon. The van-
guard (or pioneers) of those who are coming out are here
summoned to open the way by which the people are to march,
to throw up the road (viz. by casting up an embankment,
hamsilldh, as in ch. xi. 16, xlix. 11 ; maslcd, ch. xxxv. 8), to
clear it of stones {siqqel, as in ch. v. 2 ; cf. Hos. ix. 12, shikkel
ine'dddm), and lift up a banner above the nations (one rising
so high as to be visible far and wide), that the diaspora of all
places may join those who are returning home with the
friendly help of the nations (ch. xi. 12, xlix. 22). For Jehovah
hath caused tidings to be heard to the end of the earth, i.e. as
we may see from what follows, the tidings of their liberation ;
in other words, looking at the historical fulfilment, the procla-
mation of Cyrus, which he caused to be issued throughout his
CHAP. LXII. 10-12, 441
empire at the instigation of Jehovah (Ezra i. 1). Hitzig
regards J^'pipn as expressing what had actually occurred at the
time when the prophet uttered his predictions ; and in reality
the standpoint of the prophets was so far a variable one, that
the fulfilment of what was predicted did draw nearer and
nearer to it ev -Trvevftari, (p. 123). But as hinneh throughout
the book of Isaiah (vol. i. 425), even when followed by a perfect
(p. 10), invariably points to something future, all that can be
said, is, that the divine announcement of the time of redemp-
tion, as having now arrived, stands out before the soul of the
prophet with ail the certainty of a historical fact. The conclu-
sion which Knobel draws from the expression " to the end of
the earth," as to the Babylonian standpoint of the prophet, is a
false one. In his opinion, "the end of the earth" in such pas-
sages as Ps. Ixxii. 8, Zech. ix. 10 {'aphsS-drets), and eh. xxiv.
16 (Fnaph hd'drets), signifies the western extremity of the orbis
onentalis, that is to say, the region of the Mediterranean, more
especially Palestine; whereas it was rather a term. applied to
the remotest lands which bounded the geographical horizon
(compare oh. xlii. 10, xlviii. 20, with Ps. ii. 8, xxii. 28, and
other passages). The words that follow (" Say ye," etc.) might
be taken as a command issued on the ground of the divine
Mslimid ("the Lord hath proclaimed"); h\xt hishmlijC itself is
a word that needs to be supplemented, so that what follows is
the divine proclamation : Men everywhere, i.e. as far as the
earth or the dispersion of Israel extends, are to say to the
daughter of Zion — that is to say, to the church which has its
home in Zion, but is now in foreign lands — that " its salvation
Cometh," i.e. that Jehovah, its Saviour, is coming to bestow a
rich reward upon His church, which has passed through severe
punishment, but has been so salutarily refined. Those to whom
the words " Say ye," etc., are addressed, are not only the pro-
phets of Israel, but all the mourners of Zion, who become
m'bhass'rim, just because they respond to this appeal (compare
the meaning of this " Say ye to the daughter of Zion" with
Zech. ix. 9 in Matt. xxi. 5). The whole of the next clause,
" Behold, His reward," etc., is a repetition of the prophet's own
words in ch. xl. 10. It is a question whether the words " and
they shall call thee," etc., contain the gospel which is to be
proclaimed according to the will of Jehovah to the end of the
442 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
earth (see ch. xlviii. 20), or whether they are a continuation of
the prophecy which commences with " Behold, Jehovah hath
proclaimed." The latter is the more probable, as the address
here passes again into an objective promise. The realization of
tba gospel, which Jehovah causes to be preached, leads men to
call those who are now still in exile " the holy people," " the
redeemed" (lit. ransomed, ch. li. 10 ; like p'duye in ch. xxxv.
10). " And thee" — thus does the prophecy close by returning
to a direct address to Zion-Jerusalem — " thee will men call
d'rushdh" sought assiduously, i.e. one whose welfare men, and
still more Jehovah, are zealously concerned to promote (com-
pare the opposite in Jer. xxx. 17), — "a city that will not be
forsaken," i.e. in which men gladly settle, and which will nevei
be without inhabitants again (the antithesis to 'Szublidh in ch.
Ix. 15), possibly also in the sense that the gracious presence of
God will never be withdrawn from it again (the antithesis to
'Hzubhdh in ver. 4). riDtW is the third pers. pr., like nuchdmdh
in ch. liv. 11 : the perfect as expressing the abstract present
(Ges. § 126, 3).
The following prophecy anticipates the question, how Israel
can possibly rejoice in the recovered possession of its inherit-
ance, if it is still to be surrounded by such malicious neigh-
bours as the Edomites.
SIXTH PROPHECY.— Chap. lxhi. 1-6.
JUDGMENT UPON EDOM, AND UPON THE AVHOLE WORLD THAT
IS HOSTILE TO THE CHURCH.
Just as the Ammonites had been characterized by a thirst
for extending their territory as well as by cruelty, and the
Moabites by boasting and a slanderous disposition, so were the
Edomites, although the brother-nation to Israel, characterized
from time immemorial by fierce, implacable, bloodthirsty hatred
towards Israel, upon which they fell in the most ruthless and
malicious manner, whenever it was surrounded by danger or
had suffered defeat. The knavish way in which they acted
in the time of Joram, when Jerusalem was surprised and
plundered by Philistines and Arabians (2 Chron. xxi. 16, 17),
has been depicted by Obadiah. A large part of the inhabitants
CHAP. LXIII. 1-6. 443
of Jerusalem were then taken prisoners, and sold by the
conquerors, some to the Phoenicians and some to the Greeks
(Obad. 20 ; Joel iv. 1-8) ; to the latter through the medium of
the Edomites, who were in possession of the port and com-
mercial city of Elath on the Elanitic Gulf (Amos i. 6). Under
the rule of the very same Joram the Edomites had made them-
selves independent of the house of David (2 Kings viii. 20 ;
2 Ohron. xxi. 10), and a great massacre took place among the
Judseans settled in Idumsea ; an act of wickedness for which
Joel threatens them with the judgment of God (eh. iv. 19),
and which was regarded as not yet expiated even in the time of
Uzziah, notwithstanding the fact that Amaziah had chastised
them (2 Kings xiv. 7), and Uzziah had wrested Elath from
them (2 Kings xiv. 22). " Thus saith Jehovah," was the pro-
phecy of Amos (i. 11, 12) in the first half of Uzziah's reign,
"for three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not take
it back, because he pursued his brother with the sword, and stifled
his compassion, so that his anger tears in pieces for ever, and he
keeps his fierce wrath eternally: And I let fire loose upon Teman,
and it devours the palaces of Bozrah." So also at the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and the carrying away of the
people, Edom took the side of the Chaldeans, rejoiced over
Israel's defeat, and flattered itself that it should eventually
rule over the territory that had hitherto belonged to Israel.
They availed themselves of this opportunity to slake their
thirst for revenge upon Israel, placing themselves at the service
of its enemies, delivering up fugitive Judseans or else mas-
sacring them, and really obtaining possession of the southern
portion of Judsea, viz. Hebron (1 Mace. v. 65 ; cf. Josephus,
Wars of the Jews, iv. 9, 7). "With a retrospective glance at
these, the latest manifestations of eternal enmity, Edom is
threatened with divine vengeance by Jeremiah in the prophecy
contained in Jer. xlix. 7-22, which is taken for the most part
from Obadiah; also in the Lamentations (iv. 21, 22), as well as
by Ezekiel (xxv. 12-14, and especially xxxv.), and by the author
of Ps. cxxxvii., which looks back upon the time of the captivity.
Edom is not always an emblematical name for the imperial
power of the world : this is evident enough from Ps. cxxxvii.,
from Isa. xxi., and also from Isa. xxxiv. in connection with
ch. xiii., where the judgment upon Edom is represented as a
444: THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
different one from the judgment upon Babylon. Babylon and
Edom are always to be taken literally, so far as the primary
meaning of the prophecy is concerned; but they are also le-
])resentative, Babylon standing for the violent and tyrannical
world-power, and Edom for the world as cherishing hostility
and manifesting hostility to Israel as Israel, i.e. as the people
of God. Babylon had no other interest, so far as Israel was
concerned, than to subjugate it like other kingdoms, and
destroy every possibility of its ever rising again. But Edom,
which dwelt in Israel's immediate neighbourhood, and sprang
from the same ancestral house, hated Israel with hereditary
mortal hatred, although it knew the God of Israel better than
Babylon ever did, because it knew that Israel had deprived it
of its birthright, viz. the chieftainship. If Israel should have
such a people as this, and such neighbouring nations generally
round about it, after it had been delivered from the tyranny of
the mistress of the world, its peace would still be incessantly
threatened. Not only must Babylon fall, but Edom also must
be trodden down, before Israel could be redeemed, or be
regarded as perfectly redeemed. The prophecy against Edom
which follows here is therefore a well-chosen side-piece to the
prophecy against Babel in ch. xlvii., at the point of time to
which the prophet has been transported.
This is the smallest of all the twenty-seven prophecies.
In its dramatic style it resembles Ps. xxiv. ; in its visionary
and emblematical character it resembles the tetralogy in ch.
xxi.-xxii. 14. The attention of the seer Is attracted by a
strange and lofty form coming from Edom, or more strictly
from Bozrah ; not the place in Auranitis or Hauran (Jer.
xlviii. 24) which is memorable in church history, but the place
in Edomitis or Gebal, between Petra and the Dead Sea, which
still exists as a village in ruins under the diminutive name of
el-Busaire. Ver. 1. " Who is this that cometh from Edom, in
deep red clothes from Bozrah ? This, glorious in his apparel,
bending to and fro in the fulness of his strength f" The verb
chdmats means to be sharp or bitter ; but here, where it can
only refer to colour. It means to be glaring, and as the Syriac
shows, in which It is generally applied to blushing from shame
or reverential awe, to be a staring red (o|e«»5). The question,
what is it that makes the clothes of this new-comer so strik-
CHAP. Lxm. 1. 445
ingly red? is answered afterwards. But apart from the colour,
they are splendid in their general arrangement and character.
The person seen approaching is ity'inpa "iiin (cf. .jja- and
^JJi, to rush np, to shoot np luxuriantly, ahdar used for a
swollen body), and possibly through the medium of hdddr
(which may signify primarily a swelling, or pad, oyKO';, and
secondarily pomp or splendour), "to honour or adorn ;" so that
Mdur signifies adorned, grand (as in Gen. xxiv. 65 ; Targ.
II. LXX. cDpaloi), splendid. The verb tsd'dJi, to bend or
stoop, we have already met with in ch. li. 14. Here it is used
to deuote a gesture of proud self-consciousness, partly with or
without the idea of the proud bending back of the head (or
bending forward to listen), and partly with that of swaying to
and fro, i.e. the walk of a proud man swinging to and fro upon
the hips. The latter is the sense in which wo understand tsdeh
here, viz. as a syn. of the Arabic mutamail, to bend proudly
from one side to the other (Vitringa: se hue illuc motitans).
The person seen here produces the impression of great and
abundant strength ; and his walk indicates the corresponding
pride of self-consciousness.
"Who is this?" asks the seer of a third person. But the
answer comes from the person himself, though only seen in the
distance, and therefore with a voice that could be heard afar off.
Ver. 16. " I am he that speaketh in righteousness, mighty to aidJ^
Hitzig, Knobel, and others, take righteousness as the object of
the speaking ; and this is grammatically possible (3 = irepi,
e.g. Dent. vi. 7). But our prophet uses p1S3 in ch. xlii. 6, xlv.
13, and r\pn2 in an adverbial sense: "strictly according to
the rule of truth (more especially that of the counsel of mercy
or plan of salvation) and right." The person approaching says
that he is great in word and deed (Jer. xxxii. 19). He speaks
in righteousness ; in the zeal of his holiness threatening judg-
ment to the oppressors, and promising salvation to the oppressed;
and what he threatens and promises, he carries out with mighty
power. He is great (3"!, not 3T ; S. tnrep/iaxSiv, Jer. pro-
pugnator) to aid the oppressed against their oppressors. This
alone might lead us to surmise, that it is God from whose
mouth of righteousness (ch. xlv. 23) the consolation of redemp-
446 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
tion proceeds, and whose holy omnipotent arm (ch. lii. 10, h'x.
16) carries out the act of redemption.
The seer surmises this also, and now inquires still further,
whence the strange red colour of his apparel, which does not
look like the purple of a king's talar or the scarlet of a chlamys.
Ver. 2. " Whence the red on thine apparel, and thy clothes like
those .of a wine-presser ?" Vlll? inquires the reason and cause;
nis?, in its primary sense, the object or purpose. The seer asks,
" Why is there red (adorn, neuter, like rabh in ver. 7) to thine
apparel?" The Lamed, which might be omitted (wherefore is thy
garment red?), implies that the red was not its original colour,
but something added (cf. Jer. xsx. 12, and Idmo in ch. xxvi.
16, liii. 8). This comes out still more distinctly in the second
half of the question : " and (why are) thy clothes like those of
one who treads (wine) in the wine-press '' (Ifgath with a pausal
a not lengthened, like laz in ch. viii. 1), i.e. saturated and
stained as if with the juice of purple grapes ?
The person replies : Vers. 3-6. " I have trodden tlie wine-
trough alone, and of the nations no one was with me : and I trode
them in my wrath, and trampled them, down in my fury ; and their
life-sap spirted upon my clothes, and all my raiment was stained.
For a day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my
redemption was come. And 1 looked round, and there was no
helper ; and I wondered there was no supporter : tJien mine own
arm helped me; and my fury, it became my support. And I trode
down nations in my wrath, and made them drunk in my fury,
and made their life-blood run down to the earthP He had indeed
trodden the wine-press (purdh = gath, or, if distinct from this,
the pressing-trough as distinguished from the pressing-house or
pressing-place ; according to Fiirst, something hollowed out ;
but according to the traditional interpretation trom pur = par ar,
to crush, press, both different from yeqebh : see at ch. v. 2), and
he alone ; so that the juice of the grapes had saturated and
coloured his clothes, and his only. When he adds, that of the
nations no one was with him, it follows that the press which 'he
trode was so great, that he might have needed the assistance of
whole nations. And when he continues thus : And I trod them
in my wrath, etc., the enigma is at once explained. It was to
the nations themselves that the knife was applied. They were
cut off like grapes and put into the wine-press (Joel iv. 13); and
CHAP. LXIII. 3-6. 447
this heroic figure, of which there was no longer any doubt that
it was Jehovah Himself, had trodden them down in the impulse
and strength of His wrath. The red upon the clothes was the
life-blood of the nations, which had spirted upon them, and with
which, as He trode this wine-press. He had soiled all His gar-
ments. Netsach, according to the more recently accepted de-
rivation from ndtsach, signifies, according to the traditional idea,
which is favoured by Lam. iii. 18, vigor, the vital strength and
life-blood, regarded as the sap of life. Tl (compare the his-
torical tense T*1 in 2 Kings ix. 33) is the future used as an im-
perfect, and it spirted, from ndzdJi (see at ch. Iii. 15). ''fipjJJ*?
(from ?K3 — pya, ch. lix. 3) is the perfect Jiiphil with an Ara-
maean inflexion (compare the same Aramaism in Ps. Ixxvi. 6,
2 Ohron. XX. 35 ; and ''^.^?{}, which is half like it, in Job xvi. 7);
the Hebrew form would be wWn.^ AE and A regard the form
as a mixture of the perfect and future, but this is a mistake.
This work of wrath had been executed by Jehovah, because
He had in His heart a day of vengeance, which could not
be delayed, and because the year (see at ch. Ixl. 2) of His
promised redemption had arrived. vNJ (this is the proper read-
ing, not ■'h^'-i, as some codd. have it; and this was the reading
which Rashi had before him in his comm, on Lam. i. 6) is
the plural of the passive participle used as an abstract noun
(compare 0"n vivi, vitales, or rather viva, vitalia = vita). And
He only had accomplished this work of wrath. Ver. 5 is the
expansion of ""!??, and almost a verbal repetition of ch. lix. 16.
The meaning is, that no one joined Him with conscious free-
will, to render help to the God of judgment and salvation in
His purposes. The church that was devoted to Him was itself
the object of the redemption, and the great mass of those who
were estranged from Him the object of the judgment. Thus
He found Himself alone, neither human co-operation nor the
natural course of events helping the accomplishment of His
purposes. And consequently He renounced all human help,
and broke through the steady course of development by a
marvellous act of His own. He trode down nations in His
wrath, and intoxicated them in His fury, and caused their life-
1 The Babylonian MSS. have Tl^KiK with chirek, since the Babylonian
(Assyrian) system of punctuation has no segliol.
448 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
blood to flow down to the ground. The Targum adopts the
rendering " et tnturaho eos," as if the reading were D'il^B'l'J,
which we find in Sonc. 1488, and certain other editions, as well
as in some codd. Many agree with Oappellus in preferring
this reading ; and in itself it is not inadmissible (see Lam. i.
15). But the LXX. and all the other ancient versions, the
Masora (which distinguishes DiaE'NI with 3, as only met with
once, from D'QB'KI with 3 in Deut. ix. 17), and the great ma-
jority of the MSS., support the traditional reading. There is
nothing surprising in the transition to the figure of the cup of
wrath, which is a very common one with Isaiah. Moreover, all
that is intended is, that Jehovah caused the nations to feel the
full force of this His fury, by trampling them down in His
fury.
Even in this short and highly poetical passage we see a
desire to emblematize, just as in the emblematic cycle of pro-
phetical night-visions in ch. xxi.-xxii. 14. For not only is the
name of Edom made covertly into an emblem of its future fate,
thii becoming D"l^ upon the apparel of Jehovah the aveuger,
when the blood of the people, stained with blood-guiltiness
towards the people of God, is spirted out, but the name of
Bozrah also ; for bdtsar means to cut off bunches of grapes
(vindemiare), and botsrdh becomes hdtsir, i.e. a vintage, which
Jehovah treads in His wrath, when He punishes the Edomitish
nation as well as all the rest of the nations, which in their
hostility towards Him and His people have taken pleasure in
the carrying away of Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem,
and have lent their assistance in accomplishing them. Kuobel
supposes that the judgment referred to is the defeat which
Cyrus inflicted upon the nations under Croesus and their allies ;
but it can neither be shown that this defeat affected the
Edomites, nor can we understand why Jehovah should appear
as if coming from Edom-Bozrah, after inflicting this judgment,
to which ch. xli. 2 sqq. refers. Knobel himself also observes,
that Edom was still an independent kingdom, and hostile to
the Persians (Diod. xv. 2) not only under the reign of Cam-
byses (Herod, iii. 5 sqq.), but even later than that (Diod. xiii.
46). But at the time of Malachi, who lived under Artaxerxes
liongimanus, if not under his successor Darius Nothus, a judg-
ment of devastation was inflicted upon Edom (Mai. i. 3-5),
CHAP. LXIII. 3-6. 449
from whicli it never recovered. The Chaldeans, as Caspar!
has shown (^Obad. p. 142), cannot have executed it, since the
Edomites appear throughout as their accomplices, and as still
maintaining their independence even under the first Persian
kings ; nor can any historical support be found to the conjec-
ture, that it occurred in the wars between the Persians and
the Egyptians (Hitzig and Kbhler, Mai. p. 35). What the
prophet's eye really saw was fulfilled in the time of the
Maccabseans, when Judas inflicted a total defeat upon them,
John Hyrcanus compelled them to become Jews, and Alex-
ander Jannai completed their subjection ; and in the time of
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, when Simon of
Gerasa avenged their cruel conduct in Jerusalem in combina-
■ tion with the Zelots, by ruthlessly turning their well-cultivated
land into a horrible desert, just as it woiild have been left by a
swarm of locusts (Jos. Wars of the Jeios, iv. 9, 7).
The New Testament counterpart of this passage in Isaiah
is the destruction of Antichrist and his army (Rev. xix. 11
sqq.). He who effects this destruction is called the Faithful
and True, the Logos of God ; and the seer beholds Him sitting
upon a white horse, with eyes of flaming fire, and many diadems
upon His head, wearing a blood-stained garment, like the person
seen by the prophet here. The vision of John is evidently
formed upon the basis of that of Isaiah ; for when it is said of
the Logos that He rules the nations with a staff of iron, this
points to Ps. ii. ; and when it is still further said that He treads
the wine-press of the wrath of Almighty God, this points back
to Isa. Ixiii. The reference throughout is not to the first
coming of the Lord, when He laid the foundation of His king-
dom by suffering and dying, but to His final coming, when He
will bring His regal sway to a victorious issue. Nevertheless
ch. Ixiii. 1-6 has always been a favourite passage for reading
in Passion week. It is no doubt true that the Christian cannot
read this prophecy without thinking of the Saviour streaming
■ with blood, who trode the wine-press of wrath for us without
the help of angels and men, i.e. who conquered wrath for us.
But the prophecy does not relate to this. The blood upon the
garment of the divine Hero is not His own, but that of His
enemies ; and His treading of the wine-press is not the conquest
of wrath, but the manifestation of wrath. This section can
VOL. II. 2 F
450 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
only be properly used as a lesson for Passion week so far as
this, that Jehovah, who here appears to the Old Testament
seer, was certainly He who became man in His Christ, in the
historical fulfilment of His purposes ; and behind the first advent
to bring salvation there stood with warning form the final coming
to judgment, which will take vengeance upon that Edom, to
whom the red lentil-judgment of worldly lust and power was
dearer than the red life-blood of that loving Servant of Jehovah
who offered Himself for the sin of the whole world.
There follows now in ch. Ixiii. 7-lxiv. 11 a prayer com-
mencing with thanksgiving as it looks back to the past, and
closing with a prayer for help as it turns to the present. Hitzig
and Knobel connect this closely with ch. Ixiii. 1-6, assuming
that through the great event which had occurred, viz. the over-
throw of Edom, and of the nations hostile to the people of God
as such, by which the exiles were brought one step nearer to
freedom, the prophet was led to praise Jehovah for all His
previous goodness to Israel. There is nothing, however, to
indicate this connection, which is in itself a very loose one.
The prayer which follows is chiefly an entreaty, and an entreaty
appended to ch. Ixiii. 1—6, but without any retrospective allu-
sion to it : it is rather a prayer in general for the realization of
the redemption already promised. Ewald is right in regarding
ch. Ixiii. 7-lxvi. as an appendix to this whole book of consola-
tion, since the traces of the same prophet are unmistakeable ;
but the whole style of the description is obviously different,
and the historical circumstances must have been still further
developed in the meantime.
The three prophecies which follow are the finale of the
whole. The announcement of the prophet, which has reached
its highest point in the majestic vision in ch. Ixiii. 1—6, is now
drawing to an end. It is standing close upon the threshold of all
that has been promised, and nothing remains but the fulfilment
of the promise, which he has held up like a jewel on every side.
And now, just as in the finale of a poetical composition, all the
melodies and movements that have been struck before are
gathered up into one effective close ; and first of all, as in Hab.
iii., into a prayer, which forms, as it were, the lyrical echo of
the preaching that has gone before.
CHAP. LXIII. 7. 451
THE THREE CLOSING PROPHECIES.
FIRST CLOSING PEOPHECY.— Chap, lxiii. 7-lxiv.
THANKSGIVING, CONFESSION, AND SUPPLICATION OF THE
CHURCH OF THE CAPTIVITY.
The prophet, as the leader of the prayers of the church, here
passes into the expanded style of the tephillah. Ver. 7. "/
will celebrate the mercies of Jehovah, the praises of Jehovah, as
is seemly for all that Jehovah hath shown us, and the great
goodness towards the house of Israel, which He haifi shown them
according to His pity, and the riches of His mercies," The
speaker is the prophet, in the name of the church, or, what is
the same thing, the church in which the prophet includes
himself. The prayer commences with thanksgiving, according
to the fundamental rule in Ps. 1. 23. The church brings to
its own remembrance, as the subject of praise in the presence
of God, all the words and deeds by which Jehovah has dis-
played His mercy and secured glory to Himself, ''ipn (this is
the correct pointing, with 1 protected by gaya ; cf, la'ia in ch.
liv. 12) are the many thoughts of mercy and acts of mercy into
which the grace of God, i.e. His one purpose of grace and His
one work of grace, had been divided. They are just so many
fhilloth, self-glorifications of God, and impulses to His glori-
fication. On ^3?3, as is seemly, see at ch. lix, 18. There is no
reason for assuming that aiD'ani is equivalent to 31l3"an ?yo\ as
Hitzig and Knobel do. aiD-an commences the second object
to l''3?K, in which what follows is unfolded as a parallel to the
first. BabJi, the much, is a neuter farmed into a substantive,
as in Ps, cxlv. 7 ; robh, plurality or multiplicity, is an infinitive
used as a substantive. , Tubh is God's benignant goodness ;
rachdmlm, His deepest sympathizing tenderness ; chesed (root
on, used of violent emotion ; cf. Syr. ch&sad, ch&sam, cemulari;
Arab, u^^^, to be tender, full of compassion), grace which
condescends to and comes to meet a sinful creature. After
452 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
this introit, the prayer itself commences with a retrospective
glance at the time of the giving of the law, when the relation
of a child, in which Israel stood to Jehovah, was solemnly pro-
claimed and legally regulated. Ver. 8. " He said, They are
my people, children who will not lie; and He became their
Saviour" ^K is used here in its primary affirmative sense.
lipBi] is the future of hope. When He made them His people,
His children. He expected from them a grateful return of His
covenant grace in covenant fidelity; and whenever they needed
help from above, He became their Saviour (moshi^). We
can recognise the ring of Ex. xv. 2 here, just as in ch. xii. 2.
MoshliC is a favourite word in ch. xl.-lxvi. (compare, however,
ch. xix. 20 also)
The next verse commemorates the way in which He
proved Himself a Saviour in heart and action. Ver. 9. " In
all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His face
brought them salvation. In His love and in His pity He re-
deemed them, and lifted them up, and bare them all the days of
the olden time." This is one of the fifteen passages in which
the chethib has N^, the keri 'h. It is only with diflSculty that
we can obtain any meaning from the chethib : " in all the
affliction which He brought upon them He did not afflict, viz.
according to their desert " (Targ., Jer., Eashi) ; or better still,
as tsar must in this case be derived from tsur, and tsdr is only
met with in an intransitive sense, " In all their distress there
was no distress" (Saad.), with which J. D. Michaelis compares
2 Cor. iv. 8, "troubled on every side, yet not distressed."
The oxymoron is perceptible enough, but the onj (IS v6),
which is indispensable to this expression, is wanting. Even
with the explanation, "In all their affliction He was not an
enemy, viz. Jehovah, to them" (Doderlein), or " No man perse-
cuted them without the angel immediately," etc. (Oocceius and
Kosenmiiller), we miss Dn? or DHJ*. There are other still more
twisted and jejune attempts to explain the passage with vh,
which are not worth the space they occupy. Even the older
translators did not know how to deal with the vh in the text.
The Sept. takes ts&r as equivalent to tsir, a messenger, and
renders the passage according to its own peculiar interpunc-
tuation : ov irpia^v<! ovBk ayye\o<!, aXK' avTo<! eawa-ev avTov<!
(neither a messenger nor an angel, but His face, i.e. He
CHAP. LXIII. 9. 453
Himself helped them : Ex. xxxiii. 14, 15 ; 2 Sam. xvii. 11).
Everything forces to the conclusion that the heri "b is to be
preferred. The Masora actually does reckon this as one of the
fifteen passages in which ii" is to be read for vh} Jerome was
also acquainted with this explanation. He says : " Where we
have rendered it, ' In all their affliction He was not afflicted,'
which is expressed in Hebrew by LO, the adverb of negation,
we might read ipse ; so that the sense would be, ' In all their
affliction He, i.e. God, was afflicted.'" If we take the sentence
in this way, " In all oppression there was oppression to Him,"
it yields a forcible thought in perfect accordance with the Scrip-
ture (compare e.g. Judg. x. 16), an expression in harmony with
the usage of the language (compare tsar-li, 2 Sam. i. 26), and
a construction suited to the contents (iii = ipsi). There is
nothing to surprise us in the fact that God should be said to
feel the sufferings of His people as His own sufferings ; for
the question whether God can feel pain is answered by the
Scriptures in the affirmative. He can as surely as everything
originates in Him, with the exception of sin, which is a free
act and only originates in Him so far as the possibility is con-
cerned, but not in its . actuality. Just as a man can feel pain,
and yet in his personality keep himself superior to it, so God
feels pain without His own happiness being thereby destroyed.
And so did He suffer with His people ; their affliction was
reflected in His own life in Himself, and shared Him in-
wardly. But because He, the all-knowing, all-feeling One,
is also the almighty will, He sent the angel of His face, and
brought them salvation. " The angel of His face," says
Knobel, " is the pillar of cloud and fire, in which Jehovah was
'present with His people in the march through the desert, with
His protection, instruction, and guidance, the helpful presence
of God in the pillar of cloud and fire." But where do we ever
read of this, that it brought Israel salvation in the pressure of
1 There are fifteen passages in which the keri substitutes 1^5 for k^).
See Masora magna on Lev. xi. 21 (Psalter, ii. 60). If we add Isa. xlix. 5,
1 Chion. xi. 20, 1 Sam. ii. 16, there are eighteen (Job, vol. i. p. 213). But
the first two of these are not reckoned, because they are doubtful ; and in
the third, instead of ij) being substituted for xi), s^ is substituted for ^"5
(Ges. Thes. 735, 6). 2 Sam. xix. 7 also is not a case in point, for there
the keri is ^i> for m^.
454 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
great dangers ? Only on one occasion (Ex. xiv. 19, 20) does
it cover the Israelites from their pursuers ; hut in that very
instance a distinction is expressly made hetween the angel of
God and the pillar of cloud. Consequently the cloud and
the angel were two distinct media of the manifestation of
the presence of God. They differed in two respects. The
cloud was a material medium — the veil, the sign, and the site
of the revealed presence of God. The angel, on the other
hand, was a personal medium, a ministering spirit (XenovpryiKov
■7rvevjj,a), in which the name of Jehovah was indwelling for the
purpose of His own self-attestation in connection with the his-
torical preparation for the coming of salvation (Ex. xxiii. 21).
He was the mediator of the preparatory work of God in both
word and deed under the Old Testament, and the manifesta-
tion of that redeeming might and grace which realized in
Israel the covenant promises given to Ahraham (Gen. xv.).
A second distinction consisted in the fact that the cloud was a
mode of divine manifestation which was always visible; whereas,
altliough the angel of God did sometimes appear in human
shape both in the time of the patriarchs and also in that of
Joshua (Josh. v. 13 sqq.), it never appeared in such a form
during the history of the exodus, and therefore is only to be
regarded as a mode of divine revelation which was chiefly dis-
cernible in its effects, and belonged to the sphere of invisi-
bility : so that in any case, if we search in the history of the
people that was brought out of Egypt for the fulfilment of
such promises as Ex. xxiii. 20-23, we are forced to the conclu-
sion that the cloud was the medium of the settled presence of
God in His angel in the midst of Israel, although it is never so
expressed in the thorah. This mediatorial angel is called " the'
angel of His face," as being the representative of God, for
" the face of God" is His self-revealiug presence (even though
only revealed to the mental eye) ; and consequently the pre-
sence of God, which led Israel to Canaan, is called directly
"His face" in Dent. iv. 37, apart from the angelic mediation
to be understood; and "my face" in Ex. xxxiii. 14, 15, by the
side of " my angel " in Ex. xxxii. 34, and the angel in Ex.
xxxiii. 2, appears as something incomparably higher than the
presence of God through the mediation of that one angel, whose
personality is completely hidden by his mediatorial instrumen-
CHAP. LXIII. 10. 455
tality. The genitive ViS, therefore, is not to be taken objec-
tively in the sense of " the angel who sees His face," but as
explanatory, " the angel who is His face, or in whom His face
is manifested." The SW which follows does not point back to
the angel, but to Jehovah, who reveals Himself thus. But
although the angel is regarded as a distinct being from
Jehovah, it is also regarded as one that is completely hidden
before Him, whose name is in him. He redeemed them by
virtue of His love and of His chemldh, i.e. of His forgiving
gentleness (Arabic, with the letters transposed, chilm; compare,
however, chamul, gentle-hearted), and lifted them up, and
carried them (S'B'3 the consequence of 7^3, which is similar in
sense, and more Aramsean ; cf . tollere root tal, and ferre root
bJiar, perf . tult) all the days of the olden time.
The prayer passes now quite into the tone of Ps. Ixxviii.
and cvi., and begins to describe how, in spite of Jehovah's
grace, Israel fell again and again away from Jehovah, and yet
was always rescued again by virtue of His grace. For it is
impossible that it should leap at once in neni to the people who
caused the captivity, and 13^1 have for its subject the peniten-
tial church of the exiles which was longing for redemption
(Ewald). The train of thought is rather this: From the proofs
of grace which the Israel of the olden time had experienced,
the prophet passes to that disobedience to Jehovah into which
it fell, to that punishment of Jehovah which it thereby brought
upon itself, and to that longing for the renewal of the old
Mosaic period of redemption, which seized it in the midst of its
state of punishment. But instead of saying that Jehovah did
not leave this longing unsatisfied, and responded to the peni-
tence of Israel with ever fresh help, the prophet passes at once
from the desire of the old Israel for redemption, to the prayer
of the existing Israel for redemption, suppressing the inter-
mediate thought, that Israel was even now in such a state of
punishment and longing.
Israel's ingratitude. Ver. 10. " But iliey resisted and vexed
His Holy Spirit : then He turned to be their enemy ; He made
war upon them'' Not only has OSJ)) (to cause cutting pain)
S&yD niTriN as its object, but 'no has the same (on the primary
meaning, see at ch. iii. 8). In other cases, the object of m'roth
Qiamroth) is Jehovah, or His word, His promise, His providence,
456 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
hence Jehovah himself in the revelations of His natuie in word
and deed ; here it is the spirit of holiness, which is distinguished
from Him as a personal existence. For just as the angel who
is His face, i.e. the representation of His natur^i, is designated
as a person both by His name and also by the redeeming
activity ascribed to Him ; so also is the Spirit of holiness, by
the fact that He can be grieved, and therefore can feel grief
(compare Eph. iv. 30, " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God ").
Hence Jehovah, and the angel of His face, and the Spirit of
His holiness, are distinguished as three persons, but so that the
two latter derive their existence from the first, which is the
absolute ground of the Deity, and of evei'ything that is divine.
Now, if we consider that the angel of Jehovah was indeed an
angel, but that he was the angelic anticipation of the appear-
ance of God the Mediator " in the flesh," and served to fore-
shadowHim "who, as the image of the invisible God" (Col. i. 15),
as "the reflection of His glory and the stamp of His nature"
(Heb. i. 3), is not merely a temporary medium of self-manifesta-
tion, but the perfect personal self-manifestation of the divine
pdnlm, we have here an unmistakeable indication of the mystery
of the triune nature of God the One, which was revealed in
history in the New Testament work of redemption. The subject
to 'n?!^'! is Jehovah, whose Holy Spirit they troubled. He who
proved Himself to be their Father (cf. Deut. xxxii. 6), became,
through the reaction of His holiness, the very reverse of what
He wished to be. He turned to be their enemy; xin. He, the most
fearful of all foes, made war against them. This is the way in
which we explain ver. 10Z>, although with this explanation it
would have to be accentuated differently, viz. "iBnil mahpach,
Qrh pashta, yMih zakeph, Nin tiphchah, u^'Urhi silluh. The
accentuation as we find it takes D3"Dn^3 Nin as an attributive
clause : " to an enemy, who made war against them."
Israel being brought to a right mind in the midst of this
state of punishment, longed for the better past to return.
Vers. 11-14. " Then His people remembered the days of the olden
time, of Moses : Where is He who brought them up out of the sea
with the shepherd of his flock ? where is He who put the spirit of
His holiness in the midst of them ; who caused the arm of His
majesty to go at the right of Moses ; who split the waters before
them, tc make Himself an everlasting name ; who caused them
CHAP. Lxm. 11-14. 457
to pass through abysses of the deep, like the horse upon the plain,
loithout their stumbling ? Like the cattle xohich goeili down
into the valley, the Spirit of Jehovah brought them to rest : thus
hast Thou led Tliy people, to make Thyself a majestic name"
According to the accentuation before us, ver. llct should be
rendered thus : " Then He (viz. Jehovah) remembered the
days of the olden time, the Moses of His people" (LXX.,
Targ., Syr., Jerome). But apart from the strange expression
" the Moses of His people," which might perhaps be regarded
as possible, because the proper name mosheh might suggest the
thought of its real meaning in Hebrew, viz. eatrahens^Uberator,
but which the Syriac rejects by introducing the reading 'abhdo
(Moses, His servant), we have only to look at the questions of
evidently human longing which follow, to see that Jehovah
cannot be the subject to "I3I|5 (remembered), by which these
reminiscences are introduced. It is the people which begins its
inquiries with n'X, just as in Jer. ii. 6 (cf. ch. li. 9, 10), and
recals " the days of olden time," according to the admonition in
Deut. xxxii. 7. Consequently, in spite of the accents, such
Jewish commentators as Saad. and Eashi regard "his people"
(ammo) as the subject; whereas others, such as AE, Kimchi,
and Abravanel, take account of the accents, and make the
people the suppressed subject of the verb " remembered," by
rendering it thus, "Then it remembered the days of olden time,
(the days) of Moses (and) His people," or in some similar way.
But with all modifications the rendering is forced and lame.
The best way of keeping to the accents is that suggested by
Stier, " Then men (indef . ma7i, the French on) remembered the
days of old, the Moses of His people." But why did the
prophet not say 1"i2t>1, as the proper sequel to ver. 10 ? We
prefer to adopt the following rendering and accentuation : Then
remembered (zakeph gadol) the days-of-old (mercha) of Moses
(tiphchah) His people. The object stands before the subject,
as for example in 2 Kings v. 13 (compare the inversions in
ch. viii. 22 extr., xxii. 2 init); and mosheh is a genitive belong-
ing to the composite "days of old" (for this form of the construct
state, compare ch. xxviii. 1 and Euth ii. 1). The retrospect
commences with " Where is He who led them up ?" etc. The
suffix of Q^J?!?!] (for D^Von, like Dnn in Ps. Ixviii. 28, and there-
fore with the verbal force predominant) refers to the ancestors ;
458 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
and altliough the word is determined by the suffix, it has the
article as equivalent to a demonstrative pronoun (ille qui sur-
sum duxit, eduxit eos). "The shepherd of his flock" is added
as a more precise definition, not dependent upon vayyizhor, as
even the accents prove. HN is rendered emphatic by yethib,
since here it signifies una cum. The Targum takes it in the
sense of instar pastoris gregis sui ; but though D? is sometimes
used in this way, riN never is. Both the LXX. and Targum
read nji ; Jerome, on the other hand, adopts the reading
'V'l, and this is the Masoretic reading, for the Masora in Gen.
xlvii. 3 reckons four nj/n^ without including the present passage.
Kimchi and Abravanel also support this reading, and Norzi
very properly gives it the preference. The shepherds of the
flock of Jehovah are Moses and Aaron, together with Miriam
(Ps. Ixxvii. 21 ; Mic. vi. 4). With these {i.e. in their company
or under their guidance) Jehovah led His people up out of
Egypt through the Red Sea. With the reading "'J|% the question
whether b'qirbo refers to Moses or Israel falls to the ground. Into
the heart of His people (Neh. ix. 20) Jehovah put the spirit
of His holiness : it was present in the midst of Israel, inasmuch
as Moses, Aaron, Miriam, the Seventy, and the prophets in the
camp possessed it, and inasmuch as Joshua inherited it as the
successor of Moses, and all the people might become possessed
of it. The majestic might of Jehovah, which manifested itself
majestically, is called the " arm of His majesty ;" an anthropo-
morphism to which the expression " who caused it to march at
the right hand of Moses " compels us to give an interpretation
worthy of God. Stier will not allow that in"issn vnr is to be
taken as the object, and exclaims, " What a marvellous figure
of speech, an arm walking at a person's right hand !" But the
arm which is visible in its deeds belongs to the God who is
invisible in His own nature; and the meaning is, that the active
power of Moses was not left to itself, but the overwhelming
omnipotence of God went by its side, and endowed it with
superhuman strength. It was by virtue of this that the
elevated staff and extended hand of Moses divided the Red
Sea (Ex. xiv. 16). V\^^ has mahpach attached to the 3, and
therefore the tone drawn back upon the penultimate, and
metheg with the tsere, that it may not be slipped over in the
pronunciation. The clause 'W1 ni(5'J)P affirms that the absolute
CHAP. LXIII. 16. 459
purpose of God is in Himself, But He is holy love, and whilst
willing for Himself, He wills at the same time the salvation of
His creatures. He makes to Himself an " everlasting name,"
by gloiifying Himself in such memorable miracles of redemp-
tion, as that performed in the deliverance of His people out of
Egypt. According to the general order of the passage, ver. 13
apparently refers to the passage through the Jordan ; but the
psalmist, in Ps. cvi. 9 (cf. Ixxvii. 17), understood it as referring
to the passage through the Red Sea. The prayer dwells upon
this chief miracle, of which the other was only an after-play.
" As the horse gallops over the plain," so did they pass through
the depths of the sea ^^^'^\ **' (a circumstantial minor clause),
i.e. without stumbling. Then follows another beautiful figure :
" like the beast that goeth down into the valley," not " as the
beast goeth down into the valley," the Spirit of Jehovah
brought it (Israel) to rest, viz. to the m'nuchdli of the Canaan
flowing with milk and honey (Dent. xii. 9 ; Ps. xcv. 11), where
it rested and was refreshed after the long and wearisome march
through the sandy desert, like a flock that had descended from
the bare mountains to the brooks and meadows of the valley.
The Spirit of God is represented as the leader here (as in Ps.
cxliii. 10), viz. through the medium of those who stood, en-
lightened and instigated by Him, at the head of the wandering
people; The following 15 is no more a correlate of the fore-
going particle of comparison than in ch. Hi. 14, It is a recapi-
tulation, and refers to the whole description as far back as
ver. 9, passing with ^i^. into the direct tone of prayer.
The way is prepared for the petitions for redemption which
follow, outwardly by the change in ver. 14J, from a mere
description to a direct address, and inwardly by the thought,
that Israel is at the present time in such a condition, as to cause
it to look back with longing eyes to the time of the Mosaic
redemption. Ver. 15. " Look from hecven and see, from the
habitation of Thy holiness and majesty ! Where is Thy zeal and
Thy display of might ? The pressure of Thy bowels and Thy
compassions are restrained towards me." On the relation between
B^an, to look up, to open the eyes, and HKl, to fix the eye upon
a thing, see p. 185. It is very rarely that we meet with the
words in the reverse order, D''3ni nst (yid. Hab. i. 5 ; Lam. i.
11). In the second clause of ver, 15a, instead of m'^shdmayim
460 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
(from heaven), we have " from the dwelHng-place (mizs'bhut)
of Thy holiness and majesty." The all-lioly and all-glorious
One, who once revealed Himself so gloriously in the history of
Israel, has now withdrawn into His own heaven, where He is
only revealed to the spirits. The object of the looking and
seeing, as apparent from what follows, is the present lielpless
condition of the people in their sufferings, to which there does
not seem likely to be any end. There are no traces now of the
Mn'dli (zeal) with which Jeliovah used to strive on behalf of
His people, and against their oppressors (ch. xxvi. 11), or of the
former displays of His g'bhurdh {j\rm2^^, as it is correctly written
in Ven. 1521, is a defective plural). In ver. 15b we have not
a continued question (" the sounding of Thy bowels and Thy
mercies, which are restrained towards me?"), as Hitzig and
Knobel suppose. The words 'elai hitliappdqu have not the
appearance of an attributive clause, either according to the new
strong thought expi'essed, or according to the order of the words
(with vi? written first). On strepitus visceriim, as the effect
and sign of deep sympathy, see at ch. xvi. 11. cpn"! and
n;5?D, or rather D^VS (fi'om nj/D, of the form njin), both signify
primarily crirXd'y^va, strictly speaking the soft inward parts
of the body ; the latter from the root J)D, to be pulpy or soft,
the former from the root m, to be slack, loose, or soft, ti^n, as
the plural of the predicate shows, does not govern 1''?n'i also.
It is presupposed that the love of Jehovah urges Him towards
His people, to relieve their misery ; but His compassion and
sympathy apparently put constraint upon themselves (Jdth'appeq
as in ch. xlii. 14, lit. se supei'are, from 'dvhaq, root pD), to abstain
from working on behalf of Israel.
The ])rayer for help, and the lamentation over its absence,
are now justified in ver. 16: " For Thou art our Father; for
Abraham is ignorant of us, and Israel Jcnoweth us not. Thou,
Jehovah, art our Father ; our Redeemer is from olden time
Thy name." Jehovah is Israel's Father (Dent, xxxii. 6). His
creative might, and the gracious counsels of His love, have
called it into being : 13''3>? has not yet the deep and uni'estricted
sense of the New Testament " Our Father." The second M
introduces the reason for this confession that Jehovah was
Israel's Father, and could therefore look for paternal care and
help from Him alone. Even the dearest and most honourable
CHAP. LXIII. 17-19. 461
men, the forefathers of the nation, could not help it. Abraham
and Jacob-Israel had been taken away from this world, and
were unable to interfere on their own account in the history
of their people. JCi; and l"'3n suggest the idea of participating
notice and regard, as in Deut. xxxiii. 9 and Eutfi ii. 10, 19.
IJ^S* has the vowel a (pausal for a, ch. Ivi. 3) in the place of e,
to rhyme with "^"1* (see Ges. § 60, Anm. 2). In the conclud-
ing clause, according to the accents, D^ijip W.^N3 are connected
together ; but the more correct accentuation is 13^N3 tipkchah,
DPIJfO mercha, and we have rendered it so. From the very-
earliest time the acts of Jehovah towards Israel had been such
that Israel could call Him IJ^KJ.
But in the existing state of things there was a contrast
which put their faith to a severe test. Ver. 17. "0 Jehovah,
why leadest Thou us astray from Thy ways, hardenest our heart,
so as not to fear TJiee ? Return for Thy servants sake, the tribes
of Thine inheritance^ When men have scornfully and obsti-
nately rejected the grace of God, God withdraws it from them
judicially, gives them up to their wanderings, and makes their
heart incapable of faith (hiqshidch, which only occurs again in
Job xxxix. 16, is here equivalent to hiqshdh in Ps. xcv. 8,
Deut. ii. 30). The history of Israel from ch. vi. onwards has
been the history of such a gradual judgment of hardening, and
such a curse, eating deeper and deeper, and spreading its in-
fluence wider and wider round. The great mass are lost, but
not without the possibility of deliverance for the better part of
the nation, which now appeals to the mercy of God, and sighs
for deliverance from this ban. Two reasons are assigned for
this petition for the return of the gracious presence of God :
first, that there are still " servants of Jehovah" to be found,
as this prayer itself actually proves; and secondly, that the
divine election of grace cannot perish.
Bat the existing condition of Israel looks like a withdrawal
of this grace ; and it is impossible that these contrasts should
cease, unless Jehovah comes down from heaven as the deliverer
of His people. Vers. 18, 19 (Ixiv. 1), "For a little time Thy
holy people was in possession. Our adversaries have trodden
down Thy sanctuary. We have become such as He who is from
everlasting has not ruled over, upon whom Thy name was not
called. that Thou wouldst rend the heaven, come down, the
462 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
mountains would shake before thy countenance." It is very natural
to try whether ydr'shu may not have tsdrenu for its subject (cf .
Jer. xlix. 2) ; but all the attempts made to explain the words
on this supposition, show that lammitsdr is at variance with the
idea that ydr"shu refers to the foes. Compare, for example,
Jerome's rendering " qitasi nihilum (i.e. ad nihil et absque alio
labore) possederunt populum sanctum tuum;" that of Oocceius,
"propemodum adhcereditatem;" and that of Stier, " for a little
they possess entirely Thy holy nation." Mits'dr is the harsher
form for mizdr, which the prophet uses in ch. x. 25, xvl. 14,
xxix. 17 for a contemptibly small space of time ; and as p is com-
monly used to denote the time to which, towards which, within
which, and through which, anything occurs (cf. 2 Ohron. xi.
17, xxLx. 17 ; Ewald, § 217, d), lammits'dr may signify for a
(lit. the well-known) short time {per breve tempus ; like et?, iir,
Kai^ eviavTov, a year long). If miqddsh could mean the holy
land, as Hitzig and others suppose, miqddshekhd might be the
common object of both sentences (Ewald, § 351, p. 838). But
miqdash Jehovah (the sanctuary of Jehovah) is the place of
His abode and worship ; and " taking possession of the temple "
is hardly an admissible expression. On the other hand, ydrash
hd^drets, to take possession of the (holy) land, is so common a
phrase (e.g. ch. Ix. 21, Ixv. 9 ; Ps. xliv. 4), that with the words
" Thy holy people possessed for a little (time) " we naturally
supply the holy land as the object. The order of the words in
the two clauses is chiastic. The two strikingly different sub-
jects touch one another as the two inner members. Of the
perfects, the first expresses the more remote past, the second
the nearer past, as in ch. Ix. 106. The two clauses of the versa
rhyme, — the holiest thing in the possession of the people, which
was holy according to the choice and calling of Jehovah, being
brought into the greatest prominence ; boses = irareiv, Luke
xxi. 24, Rev. xi. 2. Hahn's objection, that the time between
the conquest of the land and the Chaldean catastrophe could
not be called mits'dr (a little while), may be answered, from the
fact that a time which is long in itself shrinks up when looked
back upon or recalled, and that as an actual fact from the time
of David and Solomon, when Israel really rejoiced in the pos-
session of the land, the coming catastrophe began to be fore-
boded by many significant preludes. The lamentation in ver.
CHAP. LXIII. 18, 19. 463
19 proceeds from the same feeling -which caused the better
portion of the past to vanish before the long continuance of
the mournful present (compare the reverse at p. 346). Hitzig
renders ^i'')!^ " we were ; " Hahn, " we shall be ; " but here,
where the speaker is not looking back, as in ch. xxvi. 17, at a
state of things which has come to an end, but rather at one
which is still going on, it signifies "we have become." The
passage is rendered correctly in S. : iyev^Orjfiep (or better, 7670-
vafiev) <B? air al5)vo^ &v ovk e^ovaiaaa<; oiiBe iwiKXi^drj to ovofia
crov fflUTOt?. The virtual predicate to hdylnu commences with
me'oldm: "we have become such (or like such persons) as,"
etc. ; which would be fully expressed by "IK'S Dys, or merely
iB'Na, or without l.B'N, and simply by transposing the words,
'W1 'rJ7m S'S (cf. Obad. 16) : compare the virtual subject
iariN nin'' in ch. xlviii. 14, and the virtual object ''IOB'2 vrv?^^ in
ch. xli. 25 (Ewald, § 333, b). Every form of " as if '" is inten-
tionally omitted. The relation in which Jehovah placed Him-
self to Israel, viz. as its King, and as to His own people called
by His name, appears not only as though it had been dissolved,
but as though it had never existed at all. The existing state
of Israel is a complete practical denial of any such relation.
Deeper tones than these no lamentation could possibly utter,
and hence the immediate utterance of the sigh which goes up
to heaven : " O that Thou wouldst rend heaven ! " It is ex-
tremely awkward to begin a fresh chapter with nipB (" as when
the melting fire burneth ") ; at the same time, the Masoretic
division of the verses is unassailable.^ For ver. 196 (ch. Ixiv. 1)
could not be attached to ch. Ixiv. 1, 2, since this verse would
be immensely overladen ; moreover, this sigh really belongs to
ver. 19a (ch. Ixiii. 19), and ascends out of the depth of the
lamentation uttered there. On utinam discideris = disdnderes,
see at ch. xlviii. 18. The wish presupposes that the gracious
presence of God had been withdrawn from Israel, and that
Israel felt itself to be separated from the world beyond by a
thick party-wall, resembling an impenetrable black cloud. The
closing member of the optative clause is generally rendered
{utinam) a facie tm monies diffluerent {e.g. Kosenmiiller after
1 In the Hebrew Bibles, chap. Ixiv. commences at the second verse of
our version ; and the first veise is attached to ver. 19 of the previous
chapter. — Tr.
464 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH. .
the LXX. TaKrjcrovTat), or more correctly, defluerent (Jerome),
as nazal means to flow down, not to melt. The meaning there-
fore would be, " O that they might flow down, as it were to
the ground melting in the fire " (Hitzig). The form ndzollu
cannot be directly derived from nazal, if taken in this sense ;
for it is a pure fancy that ndzollu may be a modification of the
pausal =i?M with 6 for a, and the so-called dagesh affectuosum).
Stier invents a verb med. o. ^'J. The more probable supposi-
tion is, that it is a niphal formed from sdMl = ndzal (Ewald,
§ 193, c). But zdlal signifies to hang down slack, to sway to
and fro (hence zoUl, lightly esteemed, and zalzallim, ch. xviii. 5,
pliable branches), like zul in ch. xlvi. 6, to shake, to pour down ;^
and ndzollu, if derived from this, yields the appropriate sense
concuterentur (compare the Arabic zalzala, which is commonly
applied to an earthquake). The nearest niphal form would be
vt3 (or resolved, vW, Judg. v. 5) ; but instead of the a of the
second syllable, the niphal of the verbs V"V has sometimes o,
like the verb V'V (e.g. ^^JJ, ch. xxxiv. 4 ; Ges. § 67, Anm. 5).
The similes which follow cannot be attached to this ndzollu,
however we may explain it. Yet ch. Ixiv. 1 (2) does not form
a new and independent sentence ; but we must in thought
repeat the word upon which the principal emphasis rests in ch.
Ixiii. 196 (ch. Ixiv. 1). Ch. Ixiv. 1, 2 (2, 3). " ( Wbuldst come
down) as fire kindles hrushwood, fire causes water to boil; to make
known Thy name to Thine adversaries, that the heathen may tremble
before Tliy face! When Thou doest terrible things which we hoped
not for ; wouldst come down, (and) mountains shake before Thy
countenance!" The older expositors gave themselves a great
deal of trouble in the attempt, to trace h&mdslm. to mdsas, to
melt. But since Louis de Dieu and Albert Schultens have
followed Saadia and Abulwilid in citing the Arabic /^.^j!!, to
crack, to mutter, to mumble, etc., and *;Jji, to break in pieces,
confringere, from which comes hashim, broken, dry wood, it is
generally admitted that hamdsim is from hemes (lit. crackling,
rattling, Arab, hams), and signifies " dry twigs," arida sarmenta.
The second simile might be rendered, "as water bubbles up
1 Just as the Greek has in addition to aa'h-eieiii the much simpler and
more root-hke ati-iiv ; so the Semitic has, besides jf, the roots Nti Vt '• com-
pare the Arabie ^tbtj VtNTi JJtVt) *'l three denoting restless motion.
OHAP. LXIV. 1, 2. 465
in the fire ;" and in that case mayim would be treated as a
feminine (according to the rule in Ges. § 146, 3), in support
of which Job xlv. 19 may be adduced as an unquestionable
example (although in other cases it is masculine), and tJ'N = W3.
would be used in a local sense, like lehdbhdh, into flames, in ch.
V. 24. But it is much more natural to take vJ'K, which is just as
often a feminine as D''D is a masculine, as the subject of nj?3rij and
to give to the verb njfBj which is originally intransitive, judging
from the Arabic ^, to swell, the Chald. S?^3, to spring up
(compare nijJayaK, blisters, pustules), the Syr. Wa, to bubble up,
etc., the transitive meaning to cause to boil or bubble up, rather
than the intransitive to boil (comp. ch. xxx. 13, n^33, swollen =
bent forwards, as it were protumidus). Jehovah is to come down
with the same irresistible force which fire exerts upon brushwood
or water, when it sets the former in flames and makes the latter
boil ; in order that by such a display of might He may make
His name known (viz. the name thus judicially revealing
itself, hence " in fire," ch. xxx. 27, Ixvi. 15) to His adver-
saries, and that nations (viz. those that are idolaters) may
tremble before Him (1'JBI? : cf. Ps. Ixviii. 2, 3). The infinitive
clause denoting the purpose, like that indicating the com-
parison, passes into the finite (cf. ch. x. 2, xiii. 9, xiv. 25).
Modern commentators for the most part now regard the
optative fe' (O that) as extending to ver. 2 also ; and, in fact,
although this continued influence of lu appears to overstep the
bounds of the possible, we are forced to resort to this ex-
tremity. Ver. 2 cannot contain a historical retrospect '■ the
word " formerly" would be introduced if it did, and the order of
the words would be a different one. Again, we cannot assume
that l^fj dnn 1''3sp rpy^ contains an expression of confidence,
or that the perfects indicate certainty. Neither the context,
the foregoing r\\vr\Si '^niB'Jfa (why not nfe'V?), nor the paren-
thetical assertion njpJ ^h, permits of this. On the other hand,
'1J1 imfc'ya connects itself very appropriately with the purposes
indicated in ver. 1 (2): "may tremble when Thou doest terrible
things, which we, i.e. such as we, do not look for," i.e. which
surpass our expectations. And now nothing remains but to
recognise the resumption of ch. Ixiii. 19 (Ixiv. 1) in the clause
^* The mountains shake at Thy presence," in which case ch.
VOL. II. 2 G
466 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Ixiii. 196-lxiv. 2 (Ixiv. 1-3) forms a grand period rounded off
palindromically after Isaiah's peculiar style.
The following clause gives the reason for this ; 1 being very
frequently the logical equivalent for ki (e.g. ch. iii. 7 and
xxxviii. 15). The justification of this wish, which is forced
from them by the existing misery, is found in the incomparable
acts of Jehovah for the good of His own people, which are to
be seen in a long series of historical events. Ver. 3 (4). " For
from olden time men have not heard, nor perceived, rwr hath an
eye seen, a God beside Thee, who acted on hehalf of him that
waiteth for Him'' No ear, no eye has ever been able to perceive
the existence of a God who acted like Jehovah, i.e. really
interposed on behalf of those who set their hopes upon Him.
This is the explanation adopted by Knobel ; but he wrongly
supplies niNIU to nt^V^, whereas nb'^ is used here in the s^me
pregnant sense as in Ps. xxii. 32, xxxvii. 5, Hi. 11 (cf. gdmar
in Ps. Ivii. 3, cxxxviii. 8). It has been objected to this explana-
tion, that fTSn is never connected with the accusative of the
person, and that God can neither be heard nor seen. But what
is tenable in relation to V'o^ in Job xlii. 5 cannot be untenable
in relation to l''tKn. Hearing and seeing God are here equiva-
lent to recognising His existence through the perception of His
works. The explanation favoured by Kosenmiiller and Stier,
viz., " And from olden time men have not heard it, nor per-
ceived with ears, no eye has seen it, O God, beside Thee, what
(this God) doth to him that waiteth for Him," is open to still
graver objections. The thought is the same as in Ps. xxxi. 20j
and when so explained it corresponds more exactly to the free
quotation in 1 Cor. ii. 9, which with our explanation there is
no necessity to trace back to either ch. Hi. 15, 16, or a lost
book, as Origen imagined (see Tischendorf's ed. vii. of the
N. T. on this passage). This which no ear has heard, no eye
seen, is not God Himself, but He who acts for His people, and
justifies their waiting for Him (cf. Hofmann, Die h. Schrift
Neuen Testaments, ii. 2, 51). Another proof that Paul had no
other passage than this in his mind, is the fact that the same
quotation is met with in Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians
(ch. xxxiv.), where, instead of " those that love Him," we have
" those that wait for Him," a literal rendering of iPTianiDP. The
quotation by Paul therefore by no means leads us to take
CHAP. LXIV. 4. 467
EloMm as a vocative or '131 TVC^V"^ as the object, althougli it must
not be concealed that this view of the passage and its reference
to the fulness of glory in the eternal life is an old rabbinical
one, as Rashi expressly affirms, when he appeals to E. Jose
(Joseph Kara) as authority for the other (see h. Sanhedrin
99a). Hahn has justly objected to this traditional explanation,
which regards Elohim as a vocative, that the thought, that
God alone has heard and perceived and seen with His eye
what He intends to do to His people, is unsuitable in itself,
and at variance with the context, and that if 'lJ1 riE'j)'' was
intended as the object, "){}>« (flK) would certainly be inserted.
And to this we may add, that we cannot find the words Elohim
zuldih^khd (God beside Thee) preceded by a negation anywhere
. in ch. xl.— Ixvi. without receiving at once the impression, that
they affirm the sole deity of Jehovah (comp. ch. xlv. 5, 21).
The meaning therefore is, " No other God beside Jehovah has
ever been heard or seen, who acted for (ageret pro) those who
waited for Him." M^chakkeh is the construct, according to Ges.
§ 116, 1 ; and yd&seh has tsere here, according to Kimchi
(Michhl 1256) and other testimonies, just as we meet with
rwvn four times (in Gen. xxvi. 29; Josh. vii. 9; 2 Sam. xiii. 12;
Jer. xl. 16) and najyai once (Josh. ix. 24), mostly with a dis-
junctive accent, and not without the influence of a whole oir
half pause, the form with tsere being regarded as more eraphatio
than that with seghol}
After the long period governed by k6 has thus been fol-
lowed by the retrospect in ver. 3 (4), it is absolutely impossible
that ver. 4a (5a) should be intended as an optative, in the
sense of " O that thou wouldst receive him that," etc., as Stier
and others propose. The retrospect is still continued thus, ver.
4a (5a) : " TJwu didst meet Mm that rejoiceth to work righteous-
ness, when they remembered Thee in Thy ways." plV ntyjll W is
one in whom joy and right action are paired, and is therefore
1 In addition to the examples given above, we have the following forms
of the same kind in kal: nVBI (with tiphchah) in Jer. xvii. 17 ; HKIPI (with
tsakepJi) in Dan. i. 13, conipare Hjijri (with athnach) in Lev. xviii. 7, 8,
and n^jn (with the smaller disjunctive tiphchah) in vers. 9-11 ; nipV (with
athnach) in Nah. i. 3; nitS (with tsakeph) in Bzek. v. 12. This influence
of the accentuation has escaped the notice of the more modem grammariang
{e.g. Ges. § 75, Anm. 17).
468 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
equivalent to niB*!!^. '^^. At the same time, it may possibly be
more correct to take P^S as the object of both verses, as Hof-
mann does in the sense of "those who let what is right be
their joy, and their action also;" for though 'm\ff (f^'^) cannot
be directly construed, with the accusative of the object, as we
have already observed at oh. viii. 6 and xxxv. 1, it may be
indirectly, as in this passage and ch. Ixv. 18. On pdgd, " to
come to meet," in the sense of " coming to the help of," see at
ch. xlvii. 3 ; it is here significantly interchanged with l^^^")? of
the minor clause bidrdkhehhd yiz¥rukhd, " those who remember
Thee in Thy ways" (for the syntax, compare ch. i. 5 and xxvi.
16) : "When such as love and do right, walking in Thy ways,
remembered Thee (i.e. thanked Thee for grace received, and
longed for fresh grace), Thou camest again and again tp meet
them as a friend."
But Israel appeai'ed to have been given up without hope to
the wrath of this very God. Ver. 46 (56). " Behold, Thou, 1 hou
art enraged, and ice stood as sinners there ; already have we been
long in this state, and shall we be saved?" Instead of hen 'attdh
(the antithesis of now and formerly), the passage proceeds with
hen 'attdh. There was no necessity for 'attdh with qdtsaphtd; so
that it is used with special emphasis: "Behold, Thou, a God who
so faithfully accepts His own people, hast broken out in wrath"
(see p. 345). The following word ^^T}}! cannot mean "and
we have sinned," but is a fut. consec, and therefore must mean
at least, "then we have sinned" (the sin infen-ed from the
punishment). It is more correct, however, to take it, as in
Gen. xliii. 9, in the sense of, "Then we stand as sinners, as
guilty persons :" the punishment has exhibited Israel before
the world, and before itself, as what it really is (consequently
the fut. consec. does not express the logical inference, but the
practical consequence). As HOmy has tsakeph, and therefore the
accents at any rate preclude Schelling's rendering, " and we
have wandered in those ways from the very earliest times," we
must take the next two clauses as independent, if indeed Dna
is to be understood as referring to Tisna. Stier only goes half-
way towards this when he renders it, " And indeed in them (the
ways of God, we sinned) from of old, and should we be helped?"
This is forced, and yet not in accordance with the accents.
Rosenmiiller and Hahn quite satisfy this demand when they
CHAP. LXIV. i. 469
render it, " Tamen in viis tuis cetemitas ut salvemur ;" but 'oldm,
alcov, in this sense of atmi'toTij?, is not scriptural. . The render-
ing adopted by Besser, Grotius, and Starck is a better one :
" (aSi vet'o) in illis (yiis tuis) perpetuo (mansissemus), tunc servati
fuerimus" (if we had continued in Thy ways, then we should
have been preserved). But there is no succession of tenses
here, which could warrant us in taking VB'JJI as a paulo-pqst
future ; and Hofraann's view is syntactically more correct, "In
them {i.e. the ways of Jehovah) eternally, we shall find salva-
tion, after the time is passed in which He has been angry and
we have sinned" (or rather, been shown to be guilty). But we
question the connection between XS\1 and 'X'S^ in any form. In
our view the prayer suddenly takes a new turn from lien (be-
hold) onwards, just as it did with M (O that) in ch. Ixiv. 1 ;
and "xyn in ver. 5a stands at the head of a subordinate clause.
Hence Dna must refer back to Ntanr nsvp (" in Thine anger
and in our sins," Schegg). There is no necessity, however,
to search for nouns to which to refer 0^3. It is rather to be
taken as neuter, signifying "therein" (Ezek. xxxiii. 18, cf. Ps.
xc. 10), like cnipj;, thereupon = thereby (ch. xxxviii. 16), pa
therein (xxxviii. 16), cnp thereout (ch. xxx. 6), therefrom (ch.
xliv. 15). The, idea suggested by such expressions as these is
no doubt that of plurality (here a plurality of manifestations
of wrath and of sins), but one which vanishes into the neuter
idea of totality. Now we do justice both to the clause without
a verb, which, being a logical copula, admits simply of a pre-
sent sumus ; and also to 'oldm, which is the accusative of
duration, when we explain the sentence as meaning, " In this
state we are and have been for a long time." 'Oldm is used in
other instances in these prophecies to denote the long continu-
ance of the state of punishment (see ch. xlii. 14, Ivii. 11), since
it appeared to the exiles as an eternity (a whole aeon), and
what lay beyond it as but a little while {mits'dr, ch. Ixiii. 18).
The following word VE'UI needs no correction. There is no
necessity to change it into yn.?5, as Ewald proposes, after the
LXX. ical i7rXavi]6vH'^v ("and we fell into wandering"), or
what would correspond still more closely to the LXX. (cf. ch.
xlvi. 8, ti''V^Ss, LXX. "TrerrXav^fievoi), but is less appropriate
here, into VC-Sjil ("and we fell izito apostasy"), the reading
supported by Lowth and others. If it were necessary to alter
470 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
the text at all, we might simply transpose the letters, and read
V)m\ « and cried for help." But if we take it as a question,
" And shall we experience salvation — find help ? " there is
nothing grammatically inadmissible in this (compare ch. xxviii.
28), and psychologically it is commended by the state of mind
depicted in ch. xl. 27, lix. 10-12. Moreover, what follows
attaches itself quite naturally to this.
The people who ask the question in ver. 5 do not regard
themselves as worthy of redemption, as their self-righteousness
has been so thoroughly put to shame. Ver. 5 (6). " We all
became like the unclean thing, and all our virtues like a garment
soiled with blood; and we all faded away together like the leaves ;
and our iniquities, like the storm they earned us away." The
whole nation is like one whom the law pronounces unclean,
like a leper, who has to cry " tarns', tarns' " as he goes along,
that men may get out of his way (Lev. xiii. 45). Doing right
in all its manifold forms (ts"ddqoth, like ch. xxxiii. 15, used
elsewhere of the manifestations of divine righteousness), which
once made Israel well-pleasing to God (ch. i. 21), has disap-
peared and become like a garment stained with menstruous
discharge (cf. Ezek. xxxvi. 17); (LXX. w? pdKo<} aTroKaOrjfievrji
= ddvdh, ch. xxx. 22 ; nidddh. Lam. i. 17 ; fms'dh. Lev. xv.
33). 'Iddlm (used thus in the plural in the Talmud also) signi-
fies the monthly period (menstrua). In the third figure, that
of fading falling foliage, the form vanndbhel is not kal (= van-
nihbol ovvanibbal; Ewald, § 232, 6), which would be an impossi-
bility according to the laws of inflexion ; still less is it niphal
= vanninndbhel (which Kimchi suggests as an alternative) ; but
certainly a hiphil. It is not, however, from ndbhsl = vannabbel,
" with the reduplication dropped to express the idea of some-
thing gradual," as Bottcher proposes (a new and arbitrary
explanation in the place of one founded upon the simple laws
of . inflexion), but either from bdlal (compare the remarks on
bHil in ch. xxx. 24, which hardly signifies " ripe barley" how-
ever), after the form «'^1 (from ??3), ^p*l (from =!?p)j or from bul,
after the form Dp*1., etc. In any case, therefore, it is a meta-
plastic formation, whether from bdlal or bul = ndbhsl, like "^^^
in 1 Ohron. xx. 3, after the form ID*}, from "lib = "iB'J, or after
the form jnjl, from I'lE' = "lE'J (compare the rabbinical expla-
nation of the name of the month Bul from the falling of the
CHAP. LXIV. 6. 471
leaves, in Buxtorf, Lex. talm. col. 271). The UpMl bn or
T?!? is to be compared to Ci^ll!?n, to stream out red (= to be
red) ; ^''INn, to make an extension (= to be long) ; B'^'iB'n, to
strike root (= to root), etc., and signifies literally to produce a
fading (= to fade away). In the fourth figure, WJIJ; (as it is
also written in ver. 6 according to correct codices) is a defec-
tive plural (as in Jer. xiv. 7, Ezek. xxviii. 18, Dan. ix. 13)
for the more usual "'nJlJ? (eh. lix. 12). fiS is the usual term
applied to sin regarded as guilt, which produces punishment of
itself. The people were robbed by their sins of all vital strength
and energy, like dry leaves, which the guilt and punishment
springing from sin carried off as a very easy prey.
Universal forgetfulness of God was the consequence of this
self-instigated departure from God. Ver. 6 (7). "And there
was no one who called upon Thy name, who aroused himself to lay
firm hold of Thee : for Thou hadst hidden Thy face from us, and
didst melt us into the hand of our transgressions" There was
no one (see ch. lix. 16) who had risen up in prayer and inter-
cession out of this deep fall, or had shaken himself out of the
sleep of security and lethargy of insensibility, to lay firm hold
of Jehovah, i.e. not to let Him go till He blessed him and his
people again. The curse of God pressed every one down ; God
had withdrawn His grace from them, and given them up to the
consequences of their sins. The form ^^p.iOTl is not softened
from the pilel 1333001, but is a hal like WJW^I in Job xxxi. 15
(which see), JID being used in a transitive sense, as hun is there
(cf. shubh, ch. lii. 8 ; mush, Zech. iii. 9). The LXX., Targ.,
and Syr. render it et tradidisti nos ; but we cannot conclude
from this with any certainty that they read 13p3Dni, which
Knobel follows Ewald in correcting into the incorrect form
iUUDPll. The prophet himself had the expression miggen h'yad
(Geii. xiv. 20, cf. Job viii. 4) in his mind, in the sense of
liquefecisti nos in manum, equivalent to liquefecisti et tradidisti
{vapeSmica's, Eom. i. 28), from which it is evident that l^a is
not a mere Sid (LXX.), but the "hand" of the transgressions
is their destructive and damning power.
This was the case when the measure of Israel's sins had
become full. They were carried into exile, where they sank
deeper and deeper. The great mass of the people proved them-
selves to be really mxissa perdita, and perished among the
472 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
heathen. But there were some, though a vanishingly small
number, who humbled themselves under the mighty hand of
God, and, when redemption could not be far off, wrestled in
such prayers as these, that the nation might share it in its
entirety, and if possible not one be left behind. With nnjn the
existing state of sin and punishment is placed among the
things of the past, and the petition presented that the present
moment of prayer may have all the significance of a turning-
point in their history. Vers. 7, 8 (8, 9). " And now, Jehovah,
Thou art our Father : toe are the clay, and Thou our Maker ;
and we are all the work of Thy hand. Be not extremely angry,
Jehovah, and remember not the transgression for ever! Behold,
consider, we beseech T/iee, we are all Thy people." The state of
things must change at last ; for Israel is an image made by
Jehovah ; yea, more than this, Jehovah is the begetter of Israel,
and loves Israel not merely as a sculptor, but as a father
(compare ch. xlv. 9, 10, and the unquestionable passage of
Isaiah in ch. xxix. 16). Let Him then not be angry nNO'iy,
" to the utmost measure" (cf. Ps. cxix. 8), or if we paraphrase
it according to the radical meaning of IND, " till the weight
becomes intolerable." Let Him not keep in mind the guilt for
ever, to punish it ; but, in consideration of the fact that Israel
is the nation of His choice, let mercy take the place of justice.
;n strengthens the petition in its own way (see Gen. xxx. 34),
just as K3 does ; and ti''3n signifies here, as elsewhere, to fix the
eye upon anything. The object, in this instance, is the existing
fact expressed in " we are all Thy people." Hitzig is correct
in regarding the repetition of " all of us " in this prayer as
significant. The object throughout is to entreat that the whole
nation may participate in the inheritance of the coming salva-
tion, in order that the exodus from Babylonia may resemble
the exodus from Egypt.
The re-erection of the ruins of the promised land requires
the zeal of every one, and this state of ruin must not continue.
It calls out the love and faithfulness of Jehovah. Vers. 9-11.
" The cities of Thy holiness have become a pasture-ground ; Zion
has become a pasture-ground, Jerusalem a desert. The house of
our holiness and of our adorning, where our fathers praised Thee,
is given up to the fire, and everything that was our delight given
up to devastation. Wilt Thou restrain Thyself in spite of this.
CHAP. LXIV. 9-11. 473
Jehovah, he silent, and leave us to suffer the utmost ?" Jeru-
salem by itself could not possibly be called " cities" (are), say
•with reference to the upper and lower cities (Vitringa). It is
merely mentioned by name as the most prominent of the many
cities which were all " holy cities," inasmuch as the whole of
Canaan was the land of Jehovah (ch. xiv. 25), and His holy
territory (Ps. Ixxviii. 54). The word midbdr (pasture-land,
heath, different from tsiyydh, the pastureless desert, ch. xxxv.
1) is repeated, for the purpose of showing that the same
fate had fallen upon Zion-Jerusalem as upon the rest of the
cities of the land. The climax of the terrible calamity was
the fact, that the temple had also fallen a prey to the burn-
ing of the fire (compare for the fact, Jer. Hi. 13). The people
call it " house of our holiness and of our glory." Jehovah's
qodesh and tiph'ereth have, as it were, transplanted heaven
to earth in the temple (compare ch. Ixiii. 15 with ch. Ix. 7) ;
and this earthly dwelling-place of God is Israel's possession,
and therefore Israel's qodesh and tiph'ereth. The relative
clause describes what sublime historical reminiscences are
attached to the temple : IK'S is equivalent to D2' "i^'N, as in
Gen. xxxix. 20, Num. xx. 13 (compare Ps. Ixxxiv. 4), Dent.
viii. 15, etc. Iwn has cliateph-pathach, into which, as a
rule, the vocal sheva under the first of two similar letters is
changed. Machdmaddenu (our delights) may possibly include
favourite places, ornamental buildings, and pleasure grounds ;
but the parallel leads us rather to think primarily of things
associated with the worship of God, in which the people found
a holy delight. ^3, contrary to the usual custom, is here fol-
lowed by the singular of the predicate, as in Prov. xvi. 2, Ezek.
xxxi. 15 (cf. Gen. ix. 29). Will Jehovah still put restraint
upon Himself, and cause His merciful love to keep silence,
nxr^y, with such a state of things as this, or notwithstanding
this state of things (Job x. 7) ? On pa^nn, see ch. Ixiii. 15,
xhi. 14. The suffering would indeed increase INonj? (to the
utmost), if it caused the destruction of Israel, or should not be
followed at last by Israel's restoration. Jehovah's compassion
cannot any longer thus forcibly restrain itself ; it must break
forth, like Joseph's tears in the recognition scene (Gen. xlv. 1).
474 THK PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
SECOND CLOSING PROPHECY.— Chap. lxv.
Jehovah's answer to the church's prayer.
After the people have poured out their heart before Je-
hovah, He announces what they may expect from Him. But
instead of commencing with a promise, as we might anticipate
after the foregoing prayer. He begins with reproach and threat-
ening ; for although the penitential portion of the community
had included the whole nation in their prayer, it was destruc-
tion, and not deliverance, which awaited one portion of the
nation, and that portion was the greater one. The great mass
were in that state of " sin unto death" which defies all inter-
cession (1 John v. 16), because they had so scornfully and
obstinately resisted the grace which had been so long and so
incessantly offered to them. Vers. 1, 2. " I was discernible to
those who did not inquire, discoverable by those who did not seek
me. I said, ' Here am I, here am /,' to a nation where my name
was not called. I spread out my hands all the day to a refractory
people, who walked in the way that was not good, after their own
thoughts." The LXX. (A) render ver. la, " I was found by
those who did not seek me, I became manifest to those who did
not ask for me" (B reverses the order) ; and in Eom. x. 20, 21,
Paul refers ver. 1 to the Gentiles, and ver. 2 to Israel. The
former, to whom He has hitherto been strange, enter into
fellowship with Him ; whilst the latter, to whom He has con-
stantly offered Himself, thrust Him away, and lose His fellow-
ship. Luther accordingly adopts this rendering : " I shall be
sought by those who did not ask for me, I shall be found by
those who did not seek me. And to the heathen who did not
call upon my name, I say, Here am I, here am I." ZwingU,
again, observes on ver. 1, " This is an irresistible testimony to
the adoption of the Gentiles." Calvin also follows the apostle's
exposition, and observes, that " Paul argues boldly for the
calling of the Gentiles on the ground of this passage, and says
that Isaiah dared to proclaim and assert that the Gentiles had
been called by God, because he announced a greater thing,
and announced it more clearly than the reason of those times
would bear." Of all the Jewish expositors, there is only one.
CHAP. LXV. 1, 2. 475
viz. Gecatilia, who refers ver. 1 to the Gentiles ; and of all the
Christian expositors of modern times, there is only one, viz.
Hendewerk, who interprets it in this way, without having been
influenced by the quotation made by Paul. Hofmann, how-
ever, and Stier, feel obliged to follow the apostle's exposition,
and endeavour to vindicate it. But we have no sympathy with
any such untenable efforts to save the apostle's honour. In
Eom. ix. 25, 26, he also quotes Hos. ii. 25 and ii. 1 in support
of the calling of the Gentiles ; whereas he could not have
failed to know, that it is the restoration of Israel to favour
which is alluded to there. He merely appeals to Hos. ii. in
support of the New Testament fact of the calling of the Gen-
tiles, so far as it is in these words of the Old Testament prophet
that the fact is most adequately expressed. And according to
1 Pet. ii. 10, Peter received the same impression from Hosea's
words. But with the passage before us it is very different.
The apostle shows, by the way in which he applies the Scrip-
ture, how he depended in this instance upon the Septuagint
translation, which was in his own hands and those of his readers
also, and by which the allusion to the Gentiles is naturally
suggested, even if not actually demanded. And we may also
assume that the apostle himself understood the Hebrew text,
with which he, the pupil of Rabban Gamaliel, was of course
well acquainted, in the same sense, viz. as relating to the calling
of the Gentiles, without being therefore legally bound to adopt
the same interpretation. The interchange of '13 (cf. ch. Iv. 5)
and Dy ; the attribute ''»B'a STp i6, which applies to heathen,
and heathen only ; the possibility of interpreting ch. Ixv. 1, 2, in
harmony with the context both before and after, if ver. 1 be
taken as referring to the Gentiles, on the supposition that
Jehovah is here contrasting His success with the Gentiles and
His failure with Israel : all these certainly throw weight into
the scale. Nevertheless they are not decisive, if we look at the
Hebrew alone, apart altogether from the LXX. For nidrashtl
does not mean " I have become manifest;" but, regarded as
the so-called nipJial tolerativum (according to Ezek. xiv. 3, xx.
3, 31, xxxvi. 37), " I permitted myself to be explored or found
out ;" and consequently "'n^SD), according to ch. Iv. 6, " I let
myself be found." And so explained, ver. 1 stands in a parallel
relation to ch. Iv. 6 : Jehovah was searchable, was discoverable
476 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAUH.
(cf. Zeph. i. 6) to those who asked no questions, and did not
seek Him (Ni^^ = ^<^ ->^^^, Ges. § 123, 3), i.e. He displayed to
Israel the fulness of His nature and the possibility of His
fellowship, although they did not bestir themselves oi' trouble
themselves in the least about Him, — a view which is confirmed
by the fact that ver. lb merely refers to offers made to them,
and not to results of any kind. Israel, how^ever, is called
''DB'3 Nnp'si" *U, not as a nation that was not called by Jehovah's
name (which would be expressed by N'^p3, ch. xliii. 7 ; cf . 'NnpD,
/cXt^to? fiov, ch. xlviii. 12), but as a nation where (supply ^(isher)
Jehovah's name was not invoked (LXX. " who called not
upon my name"), and therefore as a thoroughly heathenish
nation ; for which reason we have goi (LXX. eOvoi;) here, and
not 'am (LXX. \a6<;). Israel was estranged from Him, just
like the heathen ; but He still turned towards them with
infinite patience, and (as is added in vei*. 2) with ever open
arras of love. He spread out His hands (as a man does to draw
another towards him to embrace him) all the day (i.e. conti-
nually, cf. ch. xxviii. 24) towards an obstinate people, who
walked in the way that was not good (cf. Ps. xxxvi. 5, Prov.
xvi. 29 ; here with the article, which could not be repeated
with the adjective, because of the ii7), behind their own
thoughts. That which led them, and which they followed, was
not the will of God, but selfish views and purposes, according
to their own hearts' lusts ; and yet Jehovah did not let them
alone, but they were the constant thought and object of His love,
which was ever seeking, alluring, and longing for their salvation.
But through this obstinate and unyielding rejection of His
love they have excited wrath, which, though long and patiently
suppressed, now bursts forth with irresistible violence. Vers,
3-5. " The people that continually provoketh me by defying me
to my face, sacrificing in the gardens, and burning incense vpon
the tiles ; who sit in the graves, and spend the night in closed
places ; to eat the flesh of swine, and broken pieces of abomina-
tions is in their dishes ; who say. Stop ! come not too near me ;
for I am holy to thee : they are a smoke in my nose, a fire
blazing continually." n?K (these) in ver. 5b is retrospective,
summing up the subject as described in vers. 3-5a, and what
follows in ver. 5b contains the predicate. The heathenish
practices of the exiles are here depicted, and in ver. 7 they are
CHAP. LXV. 3-5. 477
expressly distinguished from those of their fathers. Hence
there is something so peculiar in the description, that we look
in vain for parallels among those connected with the idolatry
of the Israelites before the time of the captivity. There is
only one point of resemblance, viz. the allusion to gardens as
places of worship, which only occurs in the book of Isaiah, and
in which our passage, together with ch. Ivii. 5 and Ixvi. 17,
strikingly coincides with ch. i. 29. "Upon my face" (al-
pdmi) is equivalent to "freely and openly, without being
ashamed of me, or fearing me ; " cf. Job i. 11, vi. 28,
xxi. 31. " Burning incense upon the bricks " carries us to
Babylonia, the true home of the cocti later es (laterculi). The
tlwrah only mentions Pbhemm in connection with Babylonian
and Egyptian buildings. The only altars that it allows are
altars of earth thrown up, or of unhewn stones and wooden
beams with a brazen covering. " They who sit in the graves,"
according to Vitringa, are they who sacrifice to the dead. He
refers to tbe Greek and Eoraan inferice and februationes, or
expiations for the dead, as probably originating in the East.
Sacrifices for the dead were offered, in fact, not only in India
and Persia, but also in Hither Asia among the Ssabians, and
therefore probably in ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia.
But were they offered in the graves themselves, as we must
assume from Q^'i^i??' (not dnnp-ij^) ? Nothing at all is known
of this, and Bottcher (de inferis, § 234) is correct in rendering
it " among (inter) the graves," and supposing the object to be
to hold intercourse there with the dead and with demons. The
next point, viz. passing the night in closed places (i.e. places
not accessible to every one : nHsurlm, custodita = clausa, like
n''imim, arnosna), may refer to the mysteries celebrated in
natural caves and artificial crypts (on the mysteries of the
Ssabians, see Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier u. der Ssabismus, ii. 332
sqq.). But the LXX. and Syriac render it iy toi'; cirr^'kaioi'i
Koin&vrai, Bi' ivvirvia, evidently understanding it to refer to
the so-called incubare, iyKoi/xacrdai ; and so Jerome explains it.
" In the temples of idols," he says, " where they were accus-
tomed to lie upon the skins of the victims stretched upon the
ground, to gather future events from their dreams." The
expression ubhannHsurlm points not so much to open temples,
as to inaccessible caves or subterraneous places. Gr. Eawlinson
478 THE PROPHECIES-0F ISAIAH.
{Monarchies, ii. 269) mentions the discovery of " clay idols in
holes below the pavement of palaces." From the next charge,
" who eat tiere the flesh of the swine," we may infer that the
Babylonians offered swine in sacrifice, if not as a common
thing, yet like the Egyptians and other heathen, and ate their
flesh (" the flesh taken from the sacrifice," 2 Mace. vi. 21) ;
whereas among the later Ssabians (Harranians) the swine was
not regarded as either edible or fit for sacrifice. On the
synecdochical character of the sentence QnYfi Q7.5S Pl^S see
at ch. V. 12a, cf. Jer. xxiv. 2. Knobel's explanation, " pieces"
(but it is not ''i?."!?') " of abomfnations are their vessels, i.e. those
of their iepocTKOiria" is a needless innovation. 7^:13 signifies a
stench, puti-efaction (Ezek. iv. 14, 1/sar piggul), then in a con-
crete sense anything corrupt or inedible, a thing to be abhorred
according to the laws of food or the law generally (syn. 71BS,
^IDS) ; and when connected with ^"^^ {chetliib), which bears
the same relation to PIB as crumbs or pieces (from P"i3, to
crumble) to broth (from p"]B, to rub off or scald off), it means
a decoction, or broth made either of such kinds of flesh or such
parts of the body as were forbidden by the law. The context
also points to such heathen sacrifices and sacrificial meals as
were altogether at variance with the Mosaic law. For the five
following words proceed from the mouths of persons who fancy
that they have derived a high degree of sanctity either from
the mysteries, or from their participation in rites of peculiar
sacredness, so that to ^every one who abstains from such rites,
or does not enter so deeply into them as they do themselves,
they call out their "ocii profanum vulgus et arceoV IvX aip^
keep near to thyself, i.e. stay where you ai'e, like the Arabic
idliah ileiJca, go away to thyself, for take thyself off. '•a'E'SPi'PK
(according to some mss. with mercJia tifchaJi), do not push
against me (equivalent to n^?i)'"t5'-! or ipTiB'Sj get away, make
room ; Gen. xix. 9, Isa. xlix. 20), for q'dashtiklid, I am holy to
thee, i.e. unapproachable. The verbal sufiix is used for the
dative, as in ch. xliv. 21 (Ges. § 121, 4), for it never occurred
to any of the Jewish expositors (all of whom give sanctus prce
te as a gloss) that the Kal qddash was used in a transitive sense,
like cMzaq in Jer. xx. 7, as Luther, Calvin, and even Hitzig
suppose. Nor is the exclamation the well-meant warning
against the communication of a burdensome cfdusslidh, which
CHAP. LXV. 6, 7 479
had to be removed by washing before a man could proceed to
the duties of every-day life (such, for example, as the ^dusshdh
of the man who had touched the flesh of a sin-offering, or been
sprinkled with the blood of a sin-offering; Lev. vi. 20, cf. Ezek.
xliv. 19, xlvi. 20). It is rather a proud demand to respect the
sacro-sanctus, and not to draw down the chastisement of the
gods by the want of reverential awe. After this elaborate
picture, the men who are so degenerate receive their fitting
predicate. They are fuel for the wrath of God, which mani-
fests itself, as it were, in smoking breath. This does not now
need for the first time to seize upon them ; but they are already
in the midst of the fire of wrath, and are burning there in
inextinguishable flame.
The justice of God will not rest till it has procured for
itself the fullest satisfaction. Vers. 6, 7. " BeJiold, it is
written before me : I will not keep silence without having recom-
pensed, and I will recompense into their bosom. Your offences,
and the offences of your fathers together, saith Jehovah, that they
have burned incense upon the mountains, and insulted me upon
the hills, and I measure their reward first of all into their bosom."
Vitringa has been misled by such passages as ch. x. 1, Job
xiii. 26, Jer. xxii. 30, in which Mthabh (kitiebh) is used to
signify a written decree, and understands by khHhubhdh the sen-
teuce pi'onounced by God ; but the reference really is to their
idolatrous conduct and contemptuous deflance of the laws of
God. This is ever before Him, written in indelible characters,
waiting for the day of vengeance ; for, according to the figura-
tive language of Scripture, there axe heavenly books, in which
the good and evil works of men are entered. And this agrees
with what follows : " I will not be silent, without having first
repaid," etc. The accentuation very properly places the tone
upon the penultimate of the first shillam.it as being a pure
perfect, and upon the last syllable of the second as a perf
consec. DK '? preceded by a future and followed by a perfect
signifies, "but if (without having) first," etc. (ch. Iv. 10; Gen.
xxxii. 27 ; Lev. xxii. 6 ; Kuth iii. 18 ; cf. Judg. xv. 7). The
original train of thought was, " I will not keep silence, for I
shall first of all keep silence when," etc. Instead of 'al cheqdm,
"upon their bosom," we might have 'el cheqdm, into their
bosom, as in Jer. xxxii. 18, Ps. Ixxix. 12. In ver. 7 the keri
480 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
really has 'el instead of 'al, whilst in ver. 6 the chethib is 'al
without any heri (for the figure itself, compare Luke vi. 38,
" into your bosom "). The thing to be repaid follows in ver.
7a ; it is not governed, however, by shillamtl, as the form of
the address clearly shows, but by 'Ashallem understood, which
may easily be supplied. Whether 'Aslier is to be taken in the
sense of qui or quod (that), it is hardly possible to decide ; but
the construction of the sentence favours the latter. Sacrificing
"upon mountains and hills" (and, what is omitted here, "under
every green tree ") is the well-known standing phrase used to
describe the idolatry of the times preceding the captivity (cf.
ch. Ivii. 7 ; Hos. iv. 13 ; Ezek. vi. 13). ''ri"l»^ points back to
v^sldllamti in ver. 6&, after the object has \>p°n more precisely
defined. Most of the modern expositors take notrs"] Dnpys
together, in the sense of " their former wages," i.e. the recom-
pense previously deserved by their fathers. But in this case
the concluding clause would only aflarm, by the side of ver. la,
that the sins of the fathers would be visited upon them. More-
over, this explanation has not only the accents against it, but
also the parallel in Jer. xvi. 18 (see Hitzig), which evidently
stands in a reciprocal relation to the passage before us. Con-
sequently ri'shondh must be an adverb, and the meaning evi-
dently is, that the first thing which Jehovali had to do by virtue
of His holiness was to punish the sins of the apostate Israelites;
and He would so punish them, that inasmuch as the sins of the
children were merely the continuation of the fathers' sins, the
punishment would be measured out according to the desert of
both together.
As the word n'shondli (first of all) has clearly intimated
that the work of the future will not all consist in the execution
of penal justice, there is no abruptness in the transition from
threatening to promises. Vers. 8, 9. " Thus saitli Jehovali, As
when the must is found in the cluster, men say, Do not destroy it,
for there is a blessing within it, so will I do for the sake of my
servants, that I may not destroy the whole. And I will bring
forth a seed out of Jacob, and an heir of my mountains out of
Judah, and my cJiosen ones shall inherit it, and my servants shall
dwell there." Of the two co-ordinate clauses of the protasis
(ver. 8a), the first contains the necessary condition of the
second. Hattirosh (must, or the juice of the grapes, from
CHAP. LXV. 10. 481
ydrasJi, possibly primarily nothing more than receipt, or the
produce of labonr) and bd'eskkol have both of them the article
generally found in comparisons (Ges. § 109, Anm. 1) ; 1»X1
signifies, as in ch. xlv. 24, " men say," with the most general
and indefinite subject. As men do not destroy a juicy cluster
of grapes, because they would thereby destroy the blessing
of God which it contains ; so will Jehovah for His servants'
sake not utterly destroy Israel, but preserve those who are the
clusters in the vineyard (ch. iii. 14, v. 1-7) or upon the vine
(Ps. Ixxx. 9 sqq.) of Israel. He will not destroy liakkol, the
whole without exception ; that is to say, keeping to the figure,
not " the juice with the skin and stalk," as Knobel and Halm
explain it, but " the particular clusters in which juice is con-
tained, along with the degenerate neglected vineyard or vine,
which bears for the most part only sour grapes (ch. v. 4)
or tendrils without fruit (cf. ch. xviii. 5). The servants of
Jehovah, who resemble these clusters, remain preserved.
Jehovah brings out, causes to go forth, calls to the light of
day (K"'Sin as in ch. liv. 16; here, however, it is by means of
sifting : Ezek. xx. 34 sqq.), out of Jacob and Judah, i.e. the
people of the two captivities (see ch. xlvi. 3), a seed, a family,
that takes possession of His mountains, i.e. His holy mountain-
land (ch. xiv. 25, cf. Ps. cxxi. 1, and har qodsld, which is used
in the same sense in ch. xi. 9, Ixv. 25). As " my mountain "
is equivalent in sense to the " land of Israel," for which Ezekiel
is fond of saying " the mountains of Israel" {e.g. ch. vi. 2, 3), the
promise proceeds still further to say, " and my chosen ones will
take possession thereof" (viz. of the land, ch. Ix. 21, cf. viii. 21).
From west to east, i.e. in its whole extent, the land then
presents the aspect of prosperous peace. Ver. 10. " And the
plain of Sharon becomes a meadow for flocks, and the valley of
Achor a resting-place for oxen, for my people that asketh for me."
Hasshdron (Sharon) is the plain of rich pasture-land which
stretches along the coast of the Mediterranean from Yafo to
the neighbourhood of Oarmel. 'Emeq 'Akhor is a valley which
became renowned through the stoning of Achan, in a range of
hills running through the plain of Jericho (see Keil on Josh,
vii. 24 sqq.). From the one to the other will the wealth in
flocks extend, and in the one as well as in the other will that
peace prevail which is r.ow enjoyed by the people of Jehovah,
482 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
who inquired for Him in the time of suffering, and therefore
bear this name in truth. The idylhc picture of peace is
thoroughly characteristic of Isaiah : see, for example, ch. xxxii.
20 ; and for rebhets with ndveh, compare ch. xxxv. 7.
The prophecy now turns again to those already indicated
and threatened in vers. 1-7. Vers. 11, 12. " And ye, who are
enemies to Jehovah, ye that are unmindful of my holy moun-
tain, who prepare a table for Gad, and fill up mixed drink for
the goddess of destiny, — / have destined you to the sword, and ye
will all bow down to the slaughter, because I have called and ye
have not replied, I have spoken and ye have not heard; and ye did
evil in mine eyes, and ye chose that which I did not like." It
may be taken for granted as a thing generally admitted, that
ver. 116 refers to two deities, and to the lectisternia (meals of
the gods, of. Jer, vii. 18, li. 44) held in their honour. ^IV
inPB' is the other side of the tectum sternere, i.e. the spread-
ing of the cushions upon which the images of the gods were
placed during such meals of the gods as these. In the passage
before us, at any rate, the lectus answering to the shulchdn (like
the sella used in the case of the goddesses) is to be taken as a
couch for eating, not for sleeping on. In the second clause,
therefore, ^Dlpp ''jp? cspapni (which is falsely accentuated in
our editions with tifchah mercha silluk, instead of mercha tifchah
silluk), IDOD Xpp signifies to fill with mixed drink, i.e. with
wine mixed with spices, probably oil of spikenard. K?B may be
connected not only with the accusative of the vessel filled, but
also with that of the thing with which it is filled (e.g. Ex.
xxviii. 17). Both names have the article, like ?5?an, nan is
perfectly clear ; if used as an appellative, it would mean
" good fortune." The word has this meaning in all the three
leading Semitic dialects, and it also occurs in this sense in
Gen. XXX. 11, where the chethib is to be read IJ? (LXX. iv
Tvy(r)). The Aramaean definitive is N'^S (not ^"^i), as the Arabic
'gadd evidently shows. The primary word is TiJ (Arab, 'gadda),
to cut off, to apportion; so that jj-^, like the synonymous
l^.^, signifies that which is appointed, more especially the
good fortune appointed. There can be no doubt, therefore,
that Gad, the god of good fortune, more especially if the nam©
CHAP. LXV. 11, 12 483
of the place Baal-Gad is to be explained in the same way as
Baal-hammdn, is Baal (Bel) as the god of good fortune.
Grecatilia (Mose ha-Cohen) observes, that this is the deified
planet Jupiter. This star is called by the Arabs " the greater
luck " as being the star of good fortune ; and in all proba-
bility it is also the rabb-el-bacht (lord of good fortune) wor-
shipped by the Ssabians (Ohwolsohn, ii. 30, 32). It is true
that it is only from the passage before us that we learn that
it was worshipped by the Babylonians; for although H.
Eawlinson once thought that he had found the names Gad
and Menni in certain Babylonian inscriptions (Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, xii. p. 478), the Babylonian Pantheon in
G. Kawlinson's Monarchies contains neither of these names.
With this want of corroborative testimony, the fact is worthy
of notice, that a Rabbi named ' Ulla, who sprang from Babylon,
explains the ty'jTl of the Mishna by XIJT Kmjr (a sofa dedicated
to -the god of prosperity, and often left unused) (h. Nedarim
56a ; cf. Sanhedrin 20a)} But if Gad is Jupiter, nothing is
more probable than that 3£eni is Venus ; for the planet Venus is
also regarded as a star of prosperity, and is called by the Arabs
" the lesser luck." The name Meni in itself, indeed, does not
necessarily point to a female deity; for m'ni from mdndh, if taken
as a passive participial noun (like ''"13 ^''^^, a creature), signifies
"that which is apportioned;" or if taken as a modification
of the primary form many, like '"IJ, 7^3, ''3S, and many others,
allotment, destination, fate. We have synonyms in the Arabic
manor-n and meniye, and the Persian hacht (adopted into the
Arabic), which signify the general fate, and from which bago-
bacht is distinguished as signifying that which is exceptionally
allotted by the gods. The existence of a deity of this name
m'ni is also probably confirmed by the occurrence of the per-
1 The foreign formula of incantation given in b. Sabbath 67a, nj 1J
^3E5'U1 "iDtyiN vh pU'DI (according to the glosses, " Fortune, give good
fortune, and be not tardy day and night"), also belongs here ; whereas the
aame of a place not far from Siloah, called Gad-yavan (Gad of Greece), con-
tains some allusion to the mythology of Greece, which we are unable to
trace. In the later usage of the language Gad appears to hare acquired
the general meaning of numen (e.g. b. ChulUn 40a ; im K1J, the mountain-
spirit) ; and this helps to explain the fact that in Pehlewi [onj signifies
majesty in a royal, titular sense (see Vuller's Lex.; and Spiegel in the
Indische Studien, 3, 412).
484 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
sonal name 'jonny on certain Aramseo-Persian coins of the
AchsBmenides,^ with which Fiirst associates the personal name
AcUman (see his Lex.), combining JD with MrjV, and '3D with
Mrivr}, as Movers (Phonizier, i. 650) and Knobel have also
done, p and 'JD would then be Semitic foims of these Indo-
Germanic names of deities ; for Mrjv is Deus Lunus, the
worship of which in Carrse {Charran) is mentioned by Spartian
in ch. vi. of the Life of Caracalla, whilst Strabo (xii. 3, 31, 32)
speaks of it as being worshipped in Pontus, Phiygia, and other
places ; and Mijinj is Dea Luna (cf . TeveiTr} Mdvy in Plut.
qucest. rom. 52, Genita Mana in Plin. h. n. 29, 4, and Dea
Mena in Augustine, Civ. 4, 11), which was worshipped, accord-
ing to Diodorus (iii. 56) and Nonnus (Dionys. v. 70 ss.), in
Phoenicia and Africa. The rendering of the LXX. may be
quoted in favour of the identity of the latter with ''3D (eroi/xa-
foi'Te? Tw SaifiovLO) (another reading Balfiovi) Tpdire^av koX
ifKrjpovvTe'i ttj tu^jj Kepacrfia), especially if we compare with this
what Macrobius says in Saturn, i. 19, viz. that " according to
the Egyptians there are four of the gods which preside over the
birth of men, Aalfimv, Tv'^r], "Epco';, 'Avar/icr]. Of these Daimon
is the sun, the author of spirit, of warmth, and of light. Tyche
is the moon, as the goddess through whom all bodies below the
moon grow and disappear, and whose ever changing course
accompanies the multiform changes of this mortal life."^ In
perfect harmony with this is the following passage of Vettius
Valens, the astrologer of Antioch, which has been brought to
light by Selden in his Syntagma de Diis Syris : KX^poi rrj<{
TV'XT]'; Koi Tov Sai/jLOVoi arj/jLaivovcriv (viz. by the signs of
nativity) ^\iov re koi a-eKrjvqv. Eosenmiiller very properly
traces back the Sept. rendering to this Egyptian view, accord-
ing to which Gad is the sun-god, and M'ni the lunar goddess
as the power of fate. Now it is quite true that the passage
before us refers to Babylonian deities, and not to Egyptian ;
at the same time there might be some relation between the two
views, just as in other instances ancient Babylonia and Egypt
coincide. But there are many objections that may be offered
to the combination of ''JD (MenI) and Mtj'w; : (1) The Baby-
lonian moon-deity was either called Sin, as among the ancient
^ See Rodiger in the concluding part of the thes. p. 97.
' See Ge. Zoega's Abliandlungen, edited by AYelcker (1817), pp. 39, 40,
CHAP. LXV. 11, 12. 485
Shemites generally, or else by other names connected with rn^
(nn;) and chdrmr. (2) The moon is called mas in Sanscrit,
Zendic mdo, Neo-Pers. mdh (maJi) ; but in the Arian languages
we meet with no such names as could be traced to a root man
as the expansion of md (to measure), like fi'^v (fiijvr]), Goth.
meim ; for the ancient proper names which Movers cites, viz.
'ApM/iivrj';, 'ApTafiivri<;, etc., are traceable rather to the Arian
manas = /tew?, mensy with which Minerva {Menerva, endowed
with mind) is connected. (3) If m'ni were the Semitic form
of the name for the moon, we should expect a closer reciprocal
relation in the meanings of the words. We therefore subscribe
to the view propounded by Gesenius, who adopts the pairing
of Jupiter and Venus common among the Arabs, as the two
heavenly bodies that preside over the fortunes of men ; and un-
derstands by M'ni Venus, and by Gad Jupiter. There is nothing
at variance with tliis in the fact that 'Ashtoreth (Ishtar, with
'Asherdh) is the name of Venus (the morning star), as we have
shown at ch. xiv. 12. M'ni is her special name as the bestower
of good fortune and the distributor of fate generally; probably
identical with Mandt, one of the three leading deities of the
prae-Islamitish Arabs.^ The address proceeds with umdnith'i
(and I have measured), which forms an apodosis and contains
a play upon the name of Meni, ver. 11 being as it were a protasis
indicating the principal reason of their approaching fate. Be-
cause they sued for the favour of the two gods of fortune
(the Arabs call them es-sa'ddni, " the two fortunes ") and put
Jehovah into the shade, Jehovah would assign them to the
sword, and they would all have to bow down (V13 as in ch. x.
4). Another reason is now assigned for this, the address thus
completing the circle, viz., because when I called ye did not
reply, when I spake ye did not hear (this is expressed in the
same paratactic manner as in ch. v. 4, xii. 1, 1. 2), and ye have
done, etc. : an explanatory clause, consisting of four members,
which is'repeated almost word for word in ch. Ixvi. 4 (cf. Ivi. 4).
On the ground of the sin thus referred to again, the
proclamation of punishment is renewed, and the different fates
awaiting the servants of Jehovah and those by whom He is
despised are here announced in five distinct theses and anti-
1 See Krehl, Religion der vorislamischen Araber, p. 78. Sprenger in his
Life of Mohammad, 1862, compares the Arabic Mandt with <3D.
486 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
theses. Vers. 13-16. " Tlierefore thus saith the Lord, Jehovah:
Behold my servants will eat, hut ye will hunger ; behold my ser-
vants will drink, but ye will thirst ; behold my senants will rejoice,
but ye will be put to sJiame ; behold my servants will exult for
delight of heart, but ye will cry for anguish of heart, and ye will
lament for brolcetiness of spirit. And ye will leave your name
for a curse to my chosen ones, and the Lord, Jelwvah, will slay
thee ; but His servants He will call by another name, so that who-
ever blesseth himself in the land will bless himself by the God of
truthfulness, and whoever sweareth in the land will swear by the
God of truthfulness, because the former troubles are forgotten,
and because they have vanished from mine eyes." The name
Adonai is connected with the name Jehovah for the purpose of
affirming that the God of salvation and judgment has the
power to carry His promises and threats into execution.
Starving, confounded hy the salvation they had rejected (^t^'^n
as in ch. Ixvi. 5), crying and wailing (1?Y_''n, fut. hiph, as in ch.
XV. 2, with a double preformative ; Ges. § 70, 2 Anm.) for
sorrow of heart and crushing of spirit {shebher, rendered very
well by the LXX. awTpi^rj, as in ch. Ixi. 1, a-uvTerpififievovii),
the rebellious ones are left behind in the land of captivity,
whilst the servants of Jehovah enjoy the richest blessings from
God in the land of promise (ch. Ixii. 8, 9). The former, perish-
ing in the land of captivity, leave their name to the latter as
sh'bhudh, i.e. to serve as a formula by which to swear, or rather
to execrate or curse (Num v. 21), so that men wiU say, "Jehovah
slay thee, as He slew them." This, at any rate, is the meaning
of the threat ; but the words 'Ul in''On'i cannot contain the
actual formula, not even if we drop the Vav, as Knobel pro-
poses, and change ''"iTia? into V"i'n3P ; for, in the first place, al-
though in the doxologies a Hebrew was in the habit of saying
" b'rukh sh'mo " (bless his name) instead of y'hl sh'mo bdrukh
(his name be blessed), he never went so far as the Arab with
his i^ .Uj <d!lj tut said rather ^^an''. Still less could he make
use of the perfect (indicative) in such sentences as " may he
slay thee," instead of the future (voluntative) ^n"'!?"'., unless the
perfect shared the optative force of the previous future by
virtue of the consecutio temporum. And secondly, the indispens-
able Ona or n?{<3 would be wanting (see Jer. ssix. 22, cf. Gen.
CHAP. LXV. 13-19. 487
xlviii. 20). We may therefore assume, that the prophet has
before his mind the words of this imprecatory formula, though
he does not really express them, and that he deduces from it
the continuation of the threat. And this explains his passing
from the plural to the singular. Their name will hecome an
execration; but Jehovah will call His servants by another
name (cf. ch. Ixii. 2), so that henceforth it will be the God of
the faithfully fulfilled promise whose name men take into their
mouth when they either desire a blessing or wish to give as-
surance of the truth (hithbdrekh h', to bless one's self with any
one, or with the name of any one ; Ewald, § 133, Anm. 1).
No other name of any god is now heard in the land, except
this gloriously attested name ; for the former troubles, which
included the mixed condition of Israel in exile and the perse-
cution of the worshippers of Jehovah by the despisers of
Jehovah, are now forgotten, so that they no longer disturb the
enjoyment of the present, and are even hidden from the eyes
of God, so that all thought of ever renewing them is utterly
remote from His mind. This is the connection between ver.
16 and vers. 13-15. "lE^t? does not mean eo quod here, as in
Gen. xxxi. 49 for example, but ita ut, as in Gen. xiii. 16.
What follows is the result of the separation accomplished and
the promise fulfilled. For the same reason God is called
Eloke 'amen, "the God of Amen," i.e. the God who turns what
He promises into Yea and Amen (2 Oor. i. 20). The epithet
derived from the confirmatory Amen, which is thus applied to
Jehovah, is similar to the expression in Kev. iii. 14, where
Jesus is called " the Amen, the faithful and true witness."
The explanatory h (for) is emphatically repeated in '31., as in
Gen. xxxiii. 11 and 1 Sam. xix. 4 (compare Job xxxviii. 20).
The inhabitants of the land stand in a close and undisturbed
relation to the God who has proved Himself to be true to His
promises ; for all the former evils that followed from the sin
have entirely passed away.
The fact that they have thus passed away is now still
further explained ; the prophet heaping up one kl (for) upon
another, as in ch. ix. 3-5- Vers. 17-19. "For behold I create
a new heaven and a new earth ; and men will not remember the
first, nor do they come to any one's mind. No, be ye joyful
and exult for eve/' at that which I create : for behold I turn
488 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jerusalem into exulting, and her people into joy. And I shall
exult over Jerusalem, and he joyous over my people, and the voice
of weeping and screaming will be heard in her no more." The
promise here reaches its culminating point, which had already
been seen from afar in ch. li. 16. Jehovah creates a new
heaven and a new earth, which hind so fast with their glory,
and which so thoroughly satisfy all desires, that there is no
thought of the former ones, and no one wishes them back
again. Most of the commentators, from Jerome to Hahn,
suppose the rCshonoth in ver. 16 to refer to the former sorrow-
ful times. Calvin says, " The statement of the prophet, that
there will be no remembrance of former things, is supposed
by some to refer to the heaven and the earth, as if he meant,
that henceforth neither the fame nor even the name of either
would any more be heard ; but I prefer to refer them to the
former times." But the correctness of tlie former explanation
is shown by the parallel in Jer. iii. 16, which stands in by no
means an accidental relation to this passage, and where it is
stated that in the future tliere will be no ark of the covenant,
"neither shall it come to mind, neither shall they remember it,"
inasmuch as all Jerusalem will be the throne of Jehovah, and
not merely the capporeth with its symbolical cherubim. This
promise is also a glorious one ; but Jeremiah and all the other
prophets fall short of the eagle-flight of Isaiah, of whom the
same may be said as of John, "voht avis sine meta." Luther
(like Zwingli and Stier) adopts the correct rendering, " that
men shall no more remember the former ones (i.e. the old
heaven and old earth), nor take it to heart." But 'dldh 'al-lehh
signifies to come into the mind, not " to take to heart," and is
applied to a thing, the thought of whicli " ascends " within us,
and with which we are inwardly occupied. There is no neces-
sity to take the futures in ver. 176 as commands (Hitzig) ; for
5b*B'-DS ^3 (O with munach, as in Veu. 1521, after the Masora
to Num. XXXV. 33) fits on quite naturally, even if we take them
as simple predictions. Instead of such a possible, though not
actual, calling back and wishing back, those who survive the
new times are called upon rather to rejoice for ever in that
which Jehovah is actually creating, and will have created then.
"lE'K, if not regarded as the accusative-object, is certainly re-
garded as the object of causality, "in consideration of that
CHAP. LXV. 20. 489
which" (cf. ch. xxxi. 6, Gen. iii. 17, Judg. ^m. 15), equiva-
lent to, " on account of that which " (see at ch. Ixiv. 4, xxxv. 1).
The imperatives sisu v'gilu are not words of admonition so
much as words of command, and M gives the reason in this
sense : Jehovah makes .Jerusalem gildh and her people mdso?
(accusative of the predicate, or according to the terminology
adopted in Becker's syntax, the " factitive object," Ges. § 139,
2), by making joy its perpetual state, its appointed condition of
life both inwardly and outwardly. Nor is it joy on the part
of the church only, but on the part of its God as well (see the
primary passage in Deut. xxx. 9). When the church thus
rejoices in God, and God in the church, so that the light of
the two commingle, and each is reflected in the other ; then
will no sobbing of weeping ones, no sound of lamentation, be
heard any more in Jerusalem (see the opposite side as expressed
in ch. li. 36).
There will be a different measure then, and a much greater
one, for measuring the period of life and grace. Ver. 20.
" And there shall no more come thence a suckling of a few days,
and an old man ivho has not lived out all his days ; for the youth
in it will die as one a hundred years old, and the sinner be
smitten with the curse as one a hundred years old." Our
editions of the text commence ver. 20 with nin''-s<^, but ac-
cording to the Masora (see Mas. finalis, p. 23, col. 7), which
reckons five nST-S^I at the commencement of verses, and
includes our verse among them, it must read n\T'"N?1, as it is
also rendered by the LXX. and Targum. The meaning and
connection are not affected by this various reading. Hence-
forth there will not spring from Jerusalem (or, what hdydh
really means, " come into existence ;" " thence" misshdm, not
"from that time," but locally, as in Hos. ii. 17 and elsewhere,
cf. ch. Iviii. 12) a suckling (see vol. i. p. 138) of days, i.e. one
who has only reached the age of a few days (ydmim as in Gen.
xxiv. 55, etc.), nor an old man who has not filled his days, i.e.
has not attained to what is regarded as a rule as the full
measure of human life. He who dies as a youth, or is re-
garded as having died young, will not die before the hundredth
year of his life ; and the sinner («E)inri1 with seghol, as in Eccl.
viii. 12, ix. 18 ; Ges. § 75, Anm. 21) upon whom the curse of
God falls, and who is overwhelmed by the punishment, will not
490 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
be swept away before the hundredth year of his life. We can-
not maintain with Hofmann {Sclirifibeweis, ii. 2, 567), that it
is only in appearance that less is here affirmed than in ch.
XXV. 8. The reference there is to the ultimate destruction of
the power of death ; here it is merely to the limitation of its
power.
In the place of the threatened curses of the law in Lev.
xxvi. 16 (of. Deut. xxviii. 30), the very opposite will now
receive their fullest realization. Vers. 21-23. " And they will
build houses and inhabit them, and plant vineyards and enjoy
the fruit thereof. They will not build and another inhabit, nor
plant and another enjoy ; for Uke the days of trees are the days
of my people, and my chosen ones will consume the work of their
hands. They will not weary themselves in vain, nor bring forth
for sudden disaster; for they are a family of the blessed of
Jehovah, and their offspring are left to them." They themselves
will enjoy what they have worked for, without some one else
stepping in, whether a countryman by violence or inheritance,
or a foreigner by plunder or conquest (ch. Ixii. 8), to take pos-
session of that which they have built and planted (read IVD^
without dagesK) ; for the duration of their life will be as great
as that of trees (i.e. of oaks, terebinths, and cedars, which live
for centuries), and thus they will be able thoroughly to enjoy
in their own person what their hands have made. JBilldh does
net mean merely to use and enjoy, but to use up and consume.
Work and generation will be blessed then, and there will be
no more disappointed hopes. They will not weary themselves
(Wil with a preformative ' without that of the root) for failure,
nor get children labbehdldh, i.e. for some calamity to fall sud-
denly upon them and carry them away (Lev. xxvi. 16, cf. Ps.
Ixxviii. 33). The primary idea of bdhal is either acting, per-
mitting, or bearing, with the characteristic of being let loose,
of suddenness, of overthrow, or of throwing into confusion.
The LXX. renders it eh xardpav, probably according to the
Egypto-Jewish usage, in which behdldh may have signified
cursing, like bahle, buhle in the Arabic (see the Appendices).
The two clauses of the explanation which follows stand in a
reciprocal relation to the two clauses of the previous promise.
They are a family of the blessed of God, upon whose labour
CHAP. LXV. 24, 26. 491
the blessing of God rests, and their offspring are with them,
without being lost to them by premature death. This is the
true meaning, as in Job xxi. 8, and not " their offspring with
them," i.e. in like manner, as Hitzig supposes.
All prayer will be heard then. Ver. 24. "And it will come
to pass : before they call, I will answer ; they are still speaking,
and I already hear." The will of the church of the new Jeru-
salem will be so perfectly the will of Jehovah also, that He
will hear the slightest emotion of prayer in the heart, the half-
uttered prayer, and will at once fulfil it (cf. ch, xxx. 19),
And all around will peace and harmony prevail, even in
the animal world itself. Ver. 25. " Wolf and lamb then feed
together, and the lion eats chopped straw like the ox, and the
serpent^— dust is its bread. They will neither do harm nm'
destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah." We have fre-
quently observed within ch. xl.-lxvi. (last of all at ch. Ixv. 12,
cf. Ixvi. 4), how the prophet repeats entire passages from tlie
earlier portion of his prophecies almost word for word. Here
he repeats ch. xi. 6-9 with a compendious abridgment, Ver.
25& refers to the animals just as it does there. But whilst this
eustom of self-repetition favours the unity of authorship, ^^N^
for nn^ = una, which only occurs elsewhere in Ezra and Eccle-
siastes (answering to the Chaldee '17^3), might be adduced as
evidence of the opposite. The only thing that is new in the
picture as here reproduced, is what is said of the serpent. This
will no longer watch for human life, but will content itself
with the food assigned it in Gen. iii. 14. It still continues to
wriggle in the dust, but without doing injury to man. The
words affirm nothing more than this, although Stier's method
of exposition gets more out, or rather puts more in. The
assertion of those who regard the prophet speaking here as one
later than Isaiah, viz. that ver. 25 is only attached quite loosely
to what precedes, is unjust and untrue. The description of the
new age closes here, as in ch. xi., with the peace of the world of
nature, which stands throughout ch. xl.-lxvi. in the closest reci-
procal relation to man, just as it did in ch. i.-xxxix. If we follow
Hahn, and change the animals into men by simply allegorizing,
we just throw our exposition back to a standpoint that has been
long passed by. But to what part of the history of salvation
are we to lc<jk for a place for the fulfilment of such prophecies
492 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
as these of the state of peace prevailing in nature around the
church, except in the millennium ? A prophet was certainly
no fanatic, so that we could say, these are beautiful dreams.
And if, what is certainly true, his prophecies are not intended
to be interpreted according to the letter, but according to the
spirit of the letter ; the letter is the slieath of the spirit, as
Luther calls it, and we must not give out as the spirit of the
letter what is nothing more than a quid-pro-quo of the letter.
The prophet here promises a new age, in which the patriarchal
measure of human life will return, in which death will no more
break off the life that is just beginning to bloom, and in which
the war of man with the animal world will be exchanged for
peace without danger. And when is all this to occur ? Cer-
tainly not in the blessed life beyond the grave, to which it
would be both absurd and impossible to refer these promises,
since they presuppose a continued mixture of sinners with the
righteous, and merely a limitation of the power of death, not
its utter destruction. But when then ? This question onght
to be answered by the anti-millenarians. They throw back
the interpretation of prophecy to a stage, in which commenta-
tors were in the habit of lowering the concrete substance of
the prophecies into mere doctrinal lod communes. They take
refuge behind the enigmatical character of the Apocalypse,
without acknowledging that what the Apocalypse predicts
under the definite form of the millennium is the substance of
all prophecy, and that no interpretation of prophecy on sound
principles is any longer possible from the standpoint of an
orthodox antichiliasm, inasmuch as the anticliiliasts twist the
word in the months of the prophets, and through their perver-
sion of Scripture shake the foundation of all doctrines, every
one of which rests upon the simple interpretation of the words
of revelation. But one objection may be made to the supposi-
tion, that the prophet is hei'e depicting the state of things in
the millennium ; viz. that this description is preceded by an
account of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.
The prophet appears, therefore, to refer to that Jerusalem,
which is represented in the Apocalypse as coming down from
heaven to earth after the transformation of the globe. But to
this it may be replied, that the Old Testament prophet was not
yet able to distinguish from one another the things which the
CHAP. LXVI. 1-4. 493
author of the Apocalypse separates into distinct periods. Trom
the Old Testament point of view generally, nothing was known
of a state of blessedness beyond the grave. Hades lay beyond
this present life ; and nothing was known of a heaven in which
men were blessed. Around the throne of God in heaven
there were angels and not men. And, indeed, nntil the risen
Saviour ascended to heaven, heaven itself was not open to men,
and therefore there was no heavenly Jerusalem whose descent
to earth could be anticipated then. Consequently in the pro-
phecies of the Old Testament the eschatological idea of the
new Cosmos does unquestionably coincide with the millennium.
It is only in the New Testament that the new creation inter-
venes as a party-wall between this life and the life beyond ;
whereas the Old Testament prophecy brings down the new
creation itself into the present life, and knows nothing of any
Jerusalem of the blessed life to come, as distinct from the new
Jerusalem of the millennium. We shall meet with a still
further illustration in eh. Ixvi. of this Old Testament custom
of reducing the things of the life to come within the limits of
this present world.
THIRD CLOSING PROPHECY.— Chap. lxvi.
EXCLUSION OP SCOENEES FROM THE COMING SALVATION.
Although the note on which this prophecy opens is a
different one from any that has yet been struck, there are many
points in which it coincides with the preceding prophecy. For
not only is ch. Ixv. 12 repeated here in ver. 4, but the sharp
line of demarcation drawn in ch. Ixv., between the servants of
Jehovah and the worldly majority of the nation with reference
to the approaching return to the Holy Land, is continued here.
As the idea of their return is associated immediately with that of
the erection of a new temple, there is nothing at all to surprise
us, after what we have read in ch. Ixv. 8 sqq., in the fact that
Jehovah expresses His abhorrence at the thought of having a
temple built by the Israel of the captivity, as the majority then
were, and does so in such words as those which follow in vers.
1-4: " Thus saith Jelwvali: The heaven is my throne, and the
earth my footstool. What End of house is it that ye would build
494 THE PKOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
me, and what hind of place for my rest ? My hand hath made
all these things ; then all these things arose, saith Jehovah ; and
at such persons do I look, at the miserable and broken-hearted,
and him that trembleth at my word. lie that slaughtereth the
ox is the slayer of a man ; he tJiat sacrijiceth the sheep is a
strangler of dogs ; he that offereth a meatroffering, it is swinis
blood ; he that causeth incense to rise up in smoke, blesseth idols.
As they have chosen their ways, and their soul cherisheth pleasure
in their abominations ; so will I choose their ill-treatments, and
bring their terrors upon them, because I called and no one replied,
I spake and they did not hear, and they did evil in mine eyes, and
chose that in which I took no pleasure." Hitzig is of opinion
that the author has broken off here, and proceeds quite unex-
pectedly to denounce the intention to build a temple for Jehovah.
Those who wish to build he imagines to be those who have made
up their minds to stay behind in Chaldea, and who, whilst their
brethren who have returned to their native land are preparing
to build a temple there, want to have one of their own, just as
the Jews in Egypt built one for themselves in Leontopolis (see
vol. i. pp. 362-366). Without some such supposition as this,
Hitzig thinks it altogether impossible to discover the thread which
connects the different verses together. This view is at any rate
better than that of TJmbreit, who imagines that the prophet
places us here " on the loftiest spiritual height of the Christian
development." " In the new Jerusalem," he says, " there will
be no temple seen, nor any sacrifice ; Jehovah forbids these
in the strongest terms, regarding them as equivalent to mortal
sins." But the prophet, if this were his meaning, would involve
himself in self-contradiction, inasmuch as, according to ch. Ivi.
and Ix., there will be a temple in the new Jerusalem with
perpetual sacrifice, which this prophecy also presupposes in
vers. 20 sqq. (cf. ver. 6) ; and secondly, he would contradict
other prophets, such as Ezekiel and Zechariah, and the spirit
of the Old Testament generally, in which the statement, that
whoever slaughters a sacrificial animal in the new Jerusalem
will be as bad as a murderer, has no parallel, and is in fact
absolutely impossible. According to Hitzig's view, on the
other hand, ver. 3a affirms, that the worship which they would
be bound to perform in their projected temple would be an
abomination to Jehovah, however thoroughly it might be made
CHAP. LXVI. 1-4. 495
to conform to the Mosaic ritual. But there is nothing in the
text to sustain the idea, that there is any intention here to
condemn the building of a temple to Jehovah in Ohaldaea,
nor is such an explanation by any means necessary to make the
text clear. The condemnation on the part of Jehovah has
reference to the temple, which the returning exiles intend to
build in Jerusalem. The prophecy is addressed to the entire
body now ready to return, and says to the whole without
exception, that Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth, does
not stand in need of any house erected by human hands, and
then proceeds to separate the penitent from those that are at
enmity against God, rejects in the most scornful manner all
offerings in the form of worship on the part of the latter, and
threatens them with divine retribution, having dropped in
vers. 36-4 the form of address to the entire body. Just as in
the Psalm of Asaph (Ps. 1.) Jehovah refuses animal and other
material offerings as such, because the whole of the animal
world, the earth and the fulness thereof, are His possession,
so here He addresses this question to the entire body of the
exiles : What kind of house is there that yd could build, that
would be worthy of me, and what kind of place that would
be worthy of being assigned to me as a resting-place? On
mdqom rn'riuclidthl, locus qui sit requies mea (apposition instead
of genitive connection), see p. 35. He needs no temple ; for
heaven is His throne, and the earth His footstool. He is the
Being who fiUeth all, the Creator, and therefore the possessor,
of the ujiiverse; and if men think to do Him a service by build-
ing Him a temple, and forget His infinite majesty in their
concern for their own contemptible fabric. He wants no temple
at all. "All these" refer, as if pointing with the finger, to
the world of visible objects that surround us. Vm (from n^n,
existere, fieri) is used in the same sense as the ''njl which
followed the creative ''n'.. In this His exaltation He is not con-
cerned about a temple ; but His gracious look is fixed upon
the man who is as follows (seh pointing forwards as in ch.
Iviii. 6), viz. upon tlie mourner, the man of broken heart, who
is filled with reverential awe at the word of His revelation.
We may see from Ps. li. 9 what the link of connection is
between vers. 2 and 3. So far as the mass of the exiles were
concerned, who had not been humbled by their sufferings, and
496 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
whom the preaching of the prophet could not bring to reflec-
tion, He did not want any temple or sacrifice from them. The
sacrificial acts, to which such detestable predicates are here
applied, are such as end with the merely external act, whilst
the inward feelings of the person presenting the sacrifice are
altogether opposed to the idea of both the animal sacrifice and
the meat-offering, more especially to that desire for salvation
which was symbolized in all the sacrifices; in other words, they
are sacrificial acts regarded as veKpa epya, the lifeless works of
men spiritually dead. The articles of hasshor and hasseh are
used as generic with reference to sacrificial animals. The
slauehter of an ox was like the slaying (makheh construct
with tzere) of a man (for the association of ideas, see Gen.
xlix. 6) ; the sacrifice {zohhe&cli like slidchat is sometimes applied
to slaughtering for the purpose of eating; here, however, it
refers to an animal prepared for Jehovah) of a sheep like the
strangling of a dog, that unclean animal (for the association of
ideas, see Job xxx. 1) ; the offerer up (m''oleIi) of a meat-
offering (like one who offered up) swine's blood, i.e. as if he
was offering up the blood of this most unclean animal npon the
altar ; he who offered incense as an 'azkdrdh (see at ch. i. 13a)
like one who blessed 'dven, i.e. godlessness, used liere as in
1 Sam. XV. 23, and also in Hosea in the change of the name of
Bethel into Beth ^Aven, for idolatry, or rather in a concrete
sense for the worthless idols themselves, all of which, according
to ch. xli. 29, are nothing but 'dven. Rosenmiiller, Gesenius,
Hitzig, Stier, and even Jerome, have all correctly rendered it
in this way, " as if he blessed an idol " (quasi qui benedicat
idolo) ; and Vitringa, " eultum exhibens vano numini" (offering
worship to a vain god). Such explanations as that of Luther,
on the other hand, viz. " as if he praised that which was wrong,"
are opposed to the antithesis, and also to the presumption of
a concrete object to "p^a (blessing) ; whilst that of Knobel,
" praising vainly" ('dven being taken as an ace. adv.), yields too
tame an antithesis, and is at variance with the usa^e of the
language. In this condemnation of the ritual acts of worship,
the closing prophecy of the book of Isaiah coincides with the
first (ch. i. 11-15). But that it is not sacrifices in themselves
that are rejected, but the sacrifices of those whose hearts are
divided between Jehovah and idols^ and who refuse to offer
CHAP. LXVI. s. 497
to Him the sacrifice that is dearest to Him (Ps, li, 19, ef,
1. 23), is evident from the correlative double-sentence that
follows in vers. 3b and 4, which is divided into two masoretic
verses, as the only means of securing symmetry. Gam . . .
t/am, which means in other cases, " both . . . and also," or in
negative sentences " neither . . . nor," means here, as in Jer. li. 12,
"as assuredly the one as the other," in other words, "as . . . so."
They have chosen their own ways, which are far away from
those of Jehovah, and their soul has taken pleasure, not in the
worship of Jehovah, but in all kinds of heathen abominations
{sliiqqutsehem, as in many other places, after Deut. sxix. 1 6) ;
therefore Jehovah wants no temple built by them or with their
co-operation, nor any restoration of sacrificial worship at their
hands. But according to the law of retribution. He chooses
tha dlulehem, vexationes eorum (LXX. to, e/MTravyfiara avraiv :
see at ch. iii. 4), with the suffix of the object : fates that
will use them ill, and brings their terrors upon them, i.e. such
a condition of life as will inspire them with terror {m'gurotli, as
in Ps. xxxiv. 5).
From the heathenish majority, with their ungodly hearts,
the prophet now turns to the minority, consisting of those who
tremble with reverential awe when they hear the word of God.
They are called to hear how Jehovah will accept them in
defiance of their persecutors. Ver. 5. " Hear ye the word of
Jehovah, ye that tremble at His word : your brethren that hate
you, that thrust you from them for my name's sake, say, ' Let
Jehovah get honour, that we may see your joy :^ they tuill be put
to shame." They that hate them are their own brethren, and
(what makes the sin still greater) the name of Jehovah is the
reason why they are hated by them. According to the accents,
indeed (DDnJD rebia, ''DK' pashta), the meaning would be.
" your brethren say ' for my name's sake (i.e. for me = out
of goodness and love to us) will Jehovah glorify Himself,'— then
we shall see your joy, but— they will be put to shame." Eashi
and other Jewish expositors interpret it in this or some similar
way ; but Eosenmiiller, Stier, and Hahn are the only modern
Christian expositors who have done so, following the precedent
of earher commentators, who regarded the accents as binding.
Luther, however, very properly disregarded them. If "'atJ' \V^'?
be taken in connection with "ijy, it gives only a forced sense,
VOL. II. 2 I
498 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
which disturbs the relation of all the clauses ; whereas this is
preserved in all respects in the most natural and connected
manner if we combine iDty W^'? with Dy';im DD''X3tJ', as we must
do, according to such parallels as Matt. xxiv. 9. H'HJ i^li^ to
scare away or thrust away (Amos vi. 3, with the object in the
dative), corresponds to d^opl^eiv in Luke vi. 22 (compare John
xvi. 22, " to put out of the synagogue"). The practice of
excommunication, or putting under the ban (niddui), reaches
beyond the period of the Herodians (see Eduyoih v. 6),^ at any
rate as far back as the times succeeding the captivity ; but in
the passage before us it is quite sufEcient to understand nidddh
in the sense of a defamatory renunciation of fellowship. To
the accentuators this <db' \ilKh DanjD appeared quite unintelli-
gible. They never considered that it had a confessional sense
here, which certainly does not occur anywhere else : viz. " for
my name's sake, which ye confess in word and deed." With
unbelieving scorn they say to those who confess Jehovah, and
believe in the word of the true redemption : Let Jehovah glorify
Himself (lit. let Him be, i.e. show Himself, glorious = yikhdbhed,
cf. Job. xiv. 21), that we may thoroughly satisfy ourselves with
looking at your joy. They regard their hope as deceptive, and
the word of the prophet as fanaticism. These are they, who,
when permission to return is suddenly given, wiU desire to
accompany them, but will be disappointed, because they did
not rejoice in faith before, and because, although they do now
rejoice in that which is self-evident, they do this in a wrong
way.
The city and temple, to which they desire to go, are nothing
more, so far as they are concerned, than the places from which
just judgment will issue. Ver. 6. " Sound of tumult from the
city ! Sound from the temple ! Sound of Jehovah, who repays
His enemies with punishm£nt." All three ?lp, to the second of
which liKB' must be supplied in thought, are iu the form of
interjectional exclamations (as in ch. hi. 8). In the third, how-
ever, we have omitted the note of admiration, because here the
interjectional clause approximates very nearly to a substantive
clause (" it is the sound of Jehovah"), as the person shouting
announces here who is the originator and cause of the noise
' Compare Wiesner : Der Barm in seiner gesch. Entwickelung auf dem
Boden des Judenthums, 1864.
CHAP. LXVI. 7-9. 499
which was so enigmatical at first. The city and temple are in-
deed still lying in ruins as the prophet is speaking ; but even in
this state they both preserve the holiness conferred upon them.
They are the places where Jehovah will take up His abode
once more ; and even now, at the point at which promise and
fulfilment coincide, they are in the very process of rising again.
A loud noise (like the tumult of war) proceeds from it. It is
Jehovah, He who is enthroned in Zion and rules from thence
(ch. xxxi. 9), who makes Himself heard in this loud noise
(compare Joel iv. 16 with the derivative passage in Amos i. 2) ;
it is He who awards punishment or reckons retribution to His
foes. In other cases ?1!33 (a''B'n) DW generally means to repay
that which has been worked out (what has been deserved ;
e.g. Ps. cxxxvii. 8, compare ch. iii. 11); but in ch. lix. 13
^mul was the parallel word to chemdh, and therefore, as in ch.
XXXV. 4, it did not apply to the works of men, but to the retri-
bution of the judge, just as in Jer. li. 6, where it is used quite
as absolutely. We have therefore rendered it " punishment ;"
" merited punishment" would express both sides of this double-
sided word. By " His enemies," according to the context, we
are to understand primarily the mass of the exiles, who were
so estranged from God, and yet withal so full of demands and
expectations.
All of these fall victims to the judgment ; and yet Zion is
not left either childless or without population. Vers. 7-9.
" Before she travailed she brought forth ; before pains came upon
her, she was delivered of a boy. Who hath heard such a thing ?
Wlio hath seen anything Me it f Are men delivered of a land in
one day ? or is a nation begotten at once ? For Zion hath travailed,
yea, liath brought forth her children. Should I bring to the birth,
and not cause to bring forth f saith Jehovah : or should I, who
cause to bring forth, shut up ? saith thy God." Before Zion
travaileth, before any labour pains come upon her (chebhel with
tzere), she has already given birth, or brought with ease into
the world a male child (JiimlU like millst, in ch. xxxiv. 15, to
cause to glide out). This boy, of whom she is dehvered with
such marvellous rapidity, is a whole land full of men, an entire
nation. The seer exclaims with amazement, like Zion herself
in ch. xlix. 21, " who hath heard such a thing, or seen anything
like it ? is a land brought to the birth {h&yuchal followed by
500 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
'erets for hailiQcTial, as in Gen. xiii. 6, Isa. ix. 18 ; Ges. § 147),
i.e. the population of a whole land (as in Judg. xviii. 30), and
that in one day, or a nation born all at once {yivvdled, with
munach attached to the kametz, and meiheg to the tzere) ?
This unheard-of event has taken place now, for Zion has
travailed, yea, has also brought forth her children," — not one
child, but her children, a whole people that calls her mother.'
" For" (Ja) presupposes the suppressed thought, that this un-
exampled event has now occurred : ydVddh follows cMldh with
gam, because chil signifies strictly parturire; ydlad, parere.
Zion, the mother, is no other than the woman of the sun in
Rev. xii. ; but the child born of her there is the shepherd of the
nations, who proceeds from her at the end of the days, whereas
here it is the new Israel of the last days ; for the church,
which is saved through all her tribulations, is both the mother
of the Lord, by whom Babel is overthrown, and the mother of
that Israel which inherits the promises, that the unbelieving
mass have failed to obtain. Ver. 9 follows with an emphatic
confirmation of the things promised. Jehovah inquires : "Should
I create the delivery (cause the child to break through the
matrix) and not the birth (both liiphil, causative), so that
although the child makes an effort to pass the opening of the
womb, it never comes to the light of day ? Or should I be one
to bring it to the birth, and then to have closed, viz. the womb,
so that the work of bringing forth should remain ineffectual,
when all that is required is the last effort to bring to the light
the fruit of the womb ?" From the expression " thy God," we
see that the questions are addressed to Zion, whose faith they
are intended to strengthen. According to Hofmann (Schrift-
beweis, ii. 1, 149, 150), the future "i?N* affirms what Jehovah
will say, when the time for bringing forth arrives, and the
perfect ^K)^J what He is saying now : " Should I who create
the bringing forth have shut up ? " And He comforts the now
barren daughter Zion (ch. liv. 1) with the assurance, that her
barrenness is not meant to continue for ever. " The prediction,"
^ There is a certain similarity in the saying, -with which a tahnudic
teacher roused up the sleepy scholars of the Beth ha-Midrash : " There
■was once a woman, who was delivered of 600,000 children in one day,"
viz. Jochebed, who, when she gave birth to Moses, brought 600,000 to the
light of freedom (Ex. xii. 37).
CHAP. LXVI. 10, 11. 501
says Hofmann, " which is contained in 'h IDS"', of the ultimate
issue of the fate of Zion, is so far connected with the consola-.
tion administered for the time present, that she who is barren
now is exhorted to anticipate the time when the former promise
shall be fulfilled." But this change in the standpoint is arti-
ficial, and contrary to the general use of the expression 'n IDS"'
elsewhere (see at ch. xl. 1). Moreover, the meaning of the
two clauses, which constitute here as elsewhere a disjunctive
double question in form more than in sense, really runs into
one. The first member affirms that Jehovah will complete the
bringing to the birth ; the second, that He will not ultimately
frustrate what He has almost brought to completion : an ego
sum is qui parere facial et (uterum) occluserim (occludani) ?
There is no other difference between n»s<"i and iKiH, than that
the former signifies the word of God which is sounding at the
present moment, the latter the word that has been uttered and
is resounding still. The prophetic announcement of our prophet
has advanced so far, that the promised future is before the door.
The church of the future is already like the fruit of the body
ripe for the birth, and about to separate itself from the womb
of Zion, which has been barren until now. The God by whom
everything has been already so far prepared, will suddenly
cause Zion to become a mother ; — a boy, viz. a whole people
after Jehovah's own heart, will suddenly he in her lap, and
this new-born Israel, not the corrupt mass, will build a temple
for Jehovah.
In the anticipation of such a future, those who inwardly
participate in the present sufferings of Zion are to rejoice
beforehand in the change of all their suffering into glory.
Vers. 10 11. " Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and exult over her, all
ye that love her ; be ye delightfully glad with her, all ye that
mourn over her, that ye may suck and he satisfied with the breast
of her consolations, that ye may sip and delight yourselves in
the abundance of her glory." Those who love Jerusalem (the
abode of the church, and the church itself), who mourn over
her {hith'abbel, inwardly mourn, 1 Sam. xv. 35, prove and show
themselves to be mourners and go into mourning, J. Moed
Man 20b, the word generally used in prose, whereas b?N, to be
thrown into mourning, to mourn, only occurs in the higher
style ; compare Ii»V \^3«, ch. Ivii. 18, Ixi. 2, 3, Ix. 20), these are
502 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
even now to rejoice in spirit with Jerusalem and exult on her
account (lah), and share her ecstatic delight with her (ittdh),
in order that when that in which they now rejoice in spirit
shall be fulfilled, they may suck and be satisfied, etc. Jeru-
salem is regarded as a mother, and the rich actual consolation,
which she receives (ch. li. 3), as the milk that enters her breasts
(shod as in ch. Ix. 16), and from which she now supplies her
children with plentiful nourishment. 1% which is parallel to
"i^ (not Vf, a reading which none of the ancients adopted), sig-
nifies a moving, shaking abundance, which oscillates to and fro
like a great mass of water, from KJKt, to move by fits and starts,
for pellere movere is the radical meaning common in such com-
binations of letters as XT, VT, Nl, Ps. xlii. 5, to which Bernstein
and Knobel have correctly traced the word ; whereas the
meaning emicans fluxus (Schroder), or radians copia (Kocher),
to pour out in the form of rays, has nothing to sustain it in the
usage of the language.
The reason is now given, why the church of the future
promises such abundant enjoyment to those who have suffered
with her. Ver. 12. " For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I guide
peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like an
overflowing stream, that ye may suck ; ye shall be borne upon
arms, and fondled upon knees." Jehovah guides or turns (Gen.
xxxix. 21) peace to Jerusalem, the greatest of all inward bless-
ings, and at the same time the most glorious of all the outward
blessings, that are in the possession of the Gentile world (kdbhod
as in ch. Ixi. 6), both of them in the richest superabundance
(" like a river," as in ch. xlviii. 18), so that {perf cons.) " ye
may be able to suck yourselves full according to your heart's
desire" (ch. Ix. 16). The figure of the new maternity of
Zion, and of her children as quasimodogeniti, is still preserved.
The members of the church can then revel in peace and
wealth, like a child at its mother's breasts. The world is now
altogether in the possession of the church, because the church
is altogether God's. The allusion to the heathen leads on to the
thought, which was already expressed in a similar manner in
ch. xlix. 22 and Ix. 4: "on the side (arm or shoulder) will ye be
carried, and fondled (VW, pulpal of the pilpel VWV^, ch. xi. 8)
upon the knees," viz. by the heathen, who will vie with one another
in the effort to show you tenderness and care (ch. xlix. 23).
CHAP. LXVI. 13, U. 503
The prophet now looks upon the members of the church as
having grown up, as it were, from childhood to maturity : they
suck like a child, and are comforted like a gi"own-up son. Ver.
13. " lAke a man whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort
you, and ye shall he comforted in Jerusalem" Hitzig says that
'ish is not well chosen ; but how easily could the prophet have
written ben (son), as in oh. xlix. 15 1 He writes '%sh, however,
not indeed in the unmeaning sense in which the LXX. has
taken it, viz. ta? el' Tiva fi'^rrjp irapaKciXmei, but looking upon
the people, whom he had previously thought of as children, as
standing before him as one man. Israel is now like a man
who has escaped from bondage and returned home from a
foreign land, full of mournful recollections, the echoing sounds
of which entirely disappear in the maternal arms of divine love
there in Jerusalem, the beloved home, which was the home of
its thoughts even in the strange land.
Wherever they look, joy now meets their eye. Ver. 14.
" A nd ye will see, and your heart will be joyful, and your bones
will flourish like young herbage ; and thus does the hand of
Jehovah make itself known in His servants, and fiercely does
He treat His enemies." They will see, and their heart will
rejoice, i.e. (cf. ch. liii. 11, Ix. 5) they will enjoy a heart-
cheering prospect, and revive again with such smiling scenery
all around. The body is like a tree. The bones are its
branches. These will move and extend themselves in the
fulness of rejuvenated strength (compare ch, Iviii. 11, et
ossa tua expedita faciei) ; and thus will the hand of Jehovah
practically become known (v'nod^' ah, perf. cons.) in His ser-
vants, — that hand under whose gracious touch all vernal life
awakens, whether in body or in mind. And thus is it with
the surviving remnant of Israel, whereas Jehovah is fiercely
angry with His foes. The first ON is used in a prepositional
sense, as in Ps. Ixvii. 2, viz. "in His servants, so that they
come to be acquainted with it ;" the second in an accusative
sense, for zaam is either connected with ?J?, or as in Zech.
i. 12, Mai. i. 4, with the accusative of the object. It is quite
contrary to the usage of the language to take both ns accord-
ing to the phrase (dj?) DN (nj)n) naiD rwv.
The prophecy now takes a new turn with the thought
expressed in the words, "and fiercely does He treat His
504 THE PEOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
enemies." The judgment of wrath, which prepares the way
for the redemption and ensures its continuance, is described
more minutely in ver. 15 : "For behold Jehovah, in tliefire loill
He come, and His chariots are like the whirlwind, to pay out His
wrath in burning heat, and His threatening passeth into flames of
fire" Jehovah comes ba'esh, in igne (Jerome ; the LXX., on
the contraiy, render it arbitrarily w? ttu/), kd'esJi), since it
is the fiery side of His glory, in which He appears, and fire
pours from Him, which is primarily the intense excitement of
the powers of destruction within God Himself (ch. x. 17, xxx.
27 ; Ps. xviii. 9), and in these is transformed into cosmical
powers of destruction (ch. xxix. 6, xxx. 30 ; Ps. xviii. 13).
He is compared to a warrior, driving along upon war-chariots
resembling stormy wind, which force eveiything out of their
way, and crush to pieces whatever comes under their wheels.
The plural 1'''^'3310 (His chariots) is probably not merely
amplifying, but a strict plural ; for Jehovah, the One, can
manifest Himself in love or wrath in different places at the
same time. The very same substantive clause vnaaiD HDloai
occurs in Jer. iv. 13, where it is not used of Jehovah, how-
ever, but of the Chaldeans. Observe also that Jeremiah there
proceeds immediately with a derivative passage from Hab. i. 8.
In the following clause denoting the object, iSS nona 3''K'npj we
must not adopt the rendering, " to breathe out His wrath in
burning heat" (Hitzig), for heshlbh may mean respirare, but not
exspirare (if this were the meaning, it would be better to read
3''B'np from aB'J, as Lowth does); nor "iit iram mam furore sedet"
(Meier), for even in Job ix. 13, Ps. Ixxviii. 38, ISK 2<^r\ does not
mean to still or cool His wrath, but to turn it away or take it
back; not even "to direct His wrath in burning heat" (Ges,,
Kn.), for in this sense hSshlbh would be connected with an object
with {), % (Job XV. 13), '?V (i. 25). It has rather the meaning
reddere in the sense of retribuere (Arab, athdba, syn. shillem),
and "to pay back, or pay out, His wrath" is equivalent to
heshlbh ndqdm (Deut. xxxii. 41, 43). Hence 1QS nonn does not
stand in a permutative relation instead of a genitive one (viz.
in fervore, ird sua = irw sucb), but is an adverbial definition,
just as in ch. xlii. 25. That the payment of the wrath deserved
takes place in burning heat, and His rebuke {g^'drdh) in flames
of fire, are thoughts that answer to one another.
CHAP. LXVI. 16. 17. 505
Jehovah appears with these warlike terrors because He is
coming for a great judgment. Ver. 16. '■'■For in the midst of
fire Jehovah holds judgment, and in the midst of His sword with
all flesh; and great will be the multitude of those pierced through
by Jehovah." The fire, which is here introduced as the medium
of judgment, points to destructive occurrences of nature, and
the sword to destructive occurrences of history. At the same
time all the emphasis is laid here, as in eh. xxxiv. 5, 6 (cf.
ch. xxvii. 1), upon the direct action of Jehovah Himself. The
parallelism in ver. 16a is progressive. Nishpat 'eth, "to go
into judgment with a person," as in Ezek. xxxviii. 22 (cf. DV in
ch. iii. 14, Joel iv. 2, 2 Ohron. xxii. 8; ^jbeTo,, Luke xi. 31, 32).
We find a resemblance to ver. 16S in Zeph. ii. 12, and this is
not the only resemblance to our prophecy in that strongly
reproductive prophet.
The judgment predicted here is a judgment upon nations,
and falls not only upon the heathen, but upon the-great mass
of Israel, who have fallen away from their election of grace
and become like the heathen. Ver. 17. " They that consecrate
themselves and purify themselves for the gardens behind one in
the midst, who eat sioines flesh and abomination and the field-
mouse — they all come to an end together, saith Jehovah." The
persons are first of all described ; and then follows the judg-
ment pronounced, as the predicate of the sentence. They sub-
ject themselves to the heathen rites of lustration, and that with
truly bigoted thoroughness, as is clearly implied by the com-
bination of the two synonyms hammithqadd'shlm and ham-
mittah&nm (hithpael with an assimilated tav), which, like the
Arabic qadusa and tahura, are both traceable to the radical idea
^opiKeiv. The b'^. of rii3an-i)N is to be understood as relating
to tlie object or behoof : their intention being directed to the
gardens as places of worship (ch. i. 29, Ixv. 3), ad sacra in
iucis obeunda, as Schelling correctly explains. In the chethib
'^m3 nns ins, the in?? (for which we may also read ir\«, the form
of connection, although the two pathachs of the text belong to the
keri) is in all probability the hierophant, who leads the people in
the performance of the rites of religious worship ; and as he is
represented as standing in the midst CHJ^i?) of the worshipping
crowd that surrounds him, 'achar (behind, after) cannot be un-
derstood locally, as if they formed his train or tail, but tempo-
506 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
rallv or in the way of imitation. He who stands in their midst
performs the ceremonies before them, and they follow him,
i.e. perform them after him. This explanation leaves nothing
to be desired. The keri, 'achath, is based upon the assumption
that 'acJiad must refer to the idol, and substitutes therefore the
feminine, no doubt with an allusion to 'dslierdh, so that battdvekh
(in the midst) is to be taken as referring not to the midst of
the worshipping congregation, but to the midst of the gardens.
This would be quite as suitable ; for even if it were not ex-
pressly stated, we should have to assume that the sacred tree
of Astarte, or her statue, occupied the post of honour in the
midst of the garden, and 'achar would correspond to the phrase
in the Pentateuch, Dnns D'ntiN nqx PM. But the foregoing
expression, sanctijicantes et mundantes se (consecrating and puri-
fying), does not favour this sense of the word ^acliar (why not
? = ^i33p T), nor do we see why the name of the goddess should
be suppressed, or why she should be simply hinted at in the
word nriK (one), ins (101?) has its sufficient explanation in
the antithesis between the one choir-leader and the many
followers ; but if we take 'achath as referring to the goddess,
we can find no intelligible reason or object. Some again have
taken both 'achad and 'achath to be the proper name of the idol.
Ever since the time of Scaliger and Grotius, 'achad has been
associated with the Phoenician "AScdSo? ^aaiXeii? Beav men-
tioned by Sanchuniathon in Euseb. ^r^gp. ev. 1, 10, 21, or with
the Assyrian sun-god Adad, of whom Macrobius says (^Saturn.
1, 23), Ejiis notninis interpretatio signijicat unus; but we should
expect the name of a Babylonian god here, and not of a
PhcBuician or Assyrian (Syrian) deity. Moreover, Macrobius'
combination of the Syrian Hadad with 'achad- was a mere
fancy, arising from an imperfect knowledge of the language.
Clericus' combination of 'achath with Hecate, who certainly
appears to have been worshipped by the Harranians as a
monster, though not under this name, and not in gardens
(which would not have suited her character), is also untenable.
Now as 'achath cannot be explained as a proper name, and the
form of the statement does not favour the idea that 'achar
'aclwih or 'achar 'achad refers to an idol, we adopt the reading
'achad, and understand it to refer to the hierophant or mysta-
gogue. Jerome follows the keri. and renders it post unam
CHAP. LXVI. 18. 507
intrinsecus. The reading post januam is an ancient correction,
which is not worth tracing to the Aramsean interpretation of
^achar 'ackad, " behind a closed door," and merely rests upon
some rectification of the unintelligible post unam. The Targum
renders it, " one division after another," and omits battdvekk.
The LXX., on the other hand, omits 'acJiar 'achad, reads
ubhattdvehh, and renders it «al iv to4s irpo6vpoi<i (in the inner
court). Symmachus and Theodoret follow the Targum and
Syriac, and render it cnrlcreo aXXTjXwi', and then pointing the next
word ^ina (which Schelling and Bottcher approve), render the
rest iv fjAaco ea-Oiovrav ro Kpea? to j(ptpelov (in the midst of
those who eat, etc.). But vai? commences the further descrip-
tion of those who were indicated first of all by their zealous
adoption of heathen customs. Whilst, on the one hand, they
readily adopt the heathen ritual ; they set themselves on the
other hand, in the most daring way, altogether above the law
of Jehovah, by eating swine's flesh (ch. Ixv. 4) and reptiles
(sheqets, abomination, used for disgusting animals, such as
lizards, snails, etc.. Lev. vii. 21, xi. 11^), and more especially
the mouse (Lev. xi. 29), or according to Jerome and Zwingli
the dormouse (glis esculentus), which the Talmud also mentions
under the name ^5^3^ N133J/ (wild mouse) as a dainty bit with
epicures, and which was fattened, as is well known, by the
Eomans in their gliraria? However inward and spiritual may
be the interpretation given to the law in these prophecies, yet,
as we see here, the whole of it, even the laws of food, were
regarded as inviolable. So long as God Himself had not taken
away the hedges set about His church, every wilful attempt to
break through them was a sin, which brought down His wrath
and indignation.
The prophecy now marks out clearly the way which the
history of Israel will take. It is the same as that set forth by
Paul, the prophetic apostle, in Rom. ix.-xi. as the winding but
memorable path by which the compassion of God will reach its
all-embracing end. A universal judgment is the turning-point.
Ver. 18. " And /, thdr works and their thoughts it comes to
1 See Levysohn, Zoohgie des Talmuds, pp. 218-9.
2 See Levysolm, id. pp. 108-9. A special delicacy was glires isicio
porcino, dormice with pork stuffing ; see BriUat-SaTarin's Physiologie des
Geschmacks, by C. Vogt, p. 253.
508 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
pass that all nations and tongues are gathered together, that they
come and see my ghry" This verse commences in any case
with a harsh elhpsis. Hofmann, who regards ver. 17 as refer-
ring not to idolatrous Israelites, but to the idolatrous world
outside Israel, tries to meet the difficulty by adopting this ren-
dering : "And I, saith Jehovah, when their thoughts and
actions succeed in bringing together all nations and tongues
(to march against Jerusalem), they come and see my glory
(i.e. the alarming manifestation of my power)." But what is
the meaning of the opening ''^JNl (and I), which cannot possibly
strengthen the distant ''li^S, as we should be obliged to assume?
Or what rule of syntax would warrant our taking ^n^^W
ns3 Dn'nbB'noi as a participial clause in opposition to the
accents? Again, it is impossible that '33W should mean "ei
contra me;" or DnTiaB'nD"! nrT'b'yD, "in spite of their works and
thouglits," as Hahn supposes, which leaves ''3JN1 quite unex-
plained; not to mention other impossibilities which Ewald,
Knobel, and others have persuaded themselves to adopt. If
we wanted to get rid of the ellipsis, the explanation adopted by
Hitzig would recommend itself the most strongly, viz. " and as
for me, their M'orks and thoughts have come, i.e. have become
manifest (rjKacriv, Susanna, ver. 52), so that I shall gather to-
gether." But this separation of Yl^^f i^?? (it is going to gather
together) is improbable : moreover, according to the accents, the
first clause reaches as far as nrr'narnm (with the twin-accent
zakeph-munach instead of zakeph and metheg) ; whereupon the
second clause commences with nN3, which could not have any
other disjunctive accent than zakeph gadol according to well-
defined rules (see, for example. Num. xiii. 27). But if we
admit the elliptical character of the expression, we have not to
supply ''J^^']\ (I know), as the Targ., Syr., Saad., Ges., and others
do, but, what answers much better to the strength of the emotion
which explains the ellipsis, npSN (I will punish). The ellipsis
is similar in character to that of the " Quos ego " of Virgil (Aen.
i. 139), and comes under the rhetorical figure aposiopesi^ : " and
I, their works and thoughts (I shall know how to punish)."
The thoughts are placed after the works, because the reference
is more especially to their plans against Jenisalem, that work
of theirs, which has still to be carried out, and which Jehovah
turns into a judgment upon them. The passage might have
CHAP. LXVI. 19, 20. 509
been continued with hi mishpdti (for my judgment), like the
derivative passage in Zeph. iii. 8 ; but the emotional hurry of
the address is still preserved : nsa (properly accented as a par-
ticiple) is equivalent to nyn (K3) ns3 in Jer. li. 33, Ezek. vii.
7, 12 (cf. ^''^an, ch. xxvii. 6). At the same time there is no
necessity to supply anything, since nsn by itself may also be
taken in a neuter sense, and signify venturum (futurum) est
(Ezek. xxxix. 8). The expression " peoples and tongues " (as in
the genealogy of the nations in Gen. ch. x.) is not tautological,
since, although the distinctions of tongues and nationalities
coincided at first, yet in the course of history they diverged
from one another in many ways. All nations and all com-
munities of men speaking the same language does Jehovah
bring together (including the apostates of Israel, cf.. Zecli. xiv.
14) : these will come, viz. as Joel describes it in ch. iv. 9 sqq.,
impelled by enmity towards Jerusalem, but not without the
direction of Jehovah, who makes even what is evil subservient
to His plans, and will see His glory, — not the glory manifest in
grace (Ewald, Umbreit, Stier, Hahn), but His majestic mani-
festation of judgment, by which they, viz. those who have been
encoiled by sinful conduct, are completely overthrown.
But a remnant escapes ; and this remnant is employed by
Jehovah to promote the conversion of the Gentile world and
the restoration of Israel. Vers. 19, 20. " And I set a sign upon
tJiem, and send away those that have escaped from them to the
Gentiles to Tarshish, Phul, and Lud, to the stretchers of the how,
Tubal and Javan — the distant islands that have not heard my
fame and have not seen my glory, and they will proclaim my
glory among the Gentiles. And they will bring your brethren
out of all hea€ien nations, a sacrifice for Jehovah, upon horses and
upon chariots, and upon litters and upon mules and upon drome-
daries, to my holy mountain, to Jerusalem, saith Jehovah, as the
children of Israel bring the meat-offering in a clear vessel to the
house of Jehovah." The majority of commentators understand
v'samti bdhem 'oth (and I set a sign upon them) as signify-
ing, according to Ex. x. 2, that Jehovah will perform such a
miraculous sign upon the assembled nations as He formerly
performed upon Egypt (Hofmann), and one which will out-
weigh the ten Egyptian 'othoth and complete the destruction
commenced by them. Hitzig supposes the 'oth to refer directly
510 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
to the horrible wonder connected with the battle, in which
Jehovah fights against them with fire and sword (compare the
parallels so far as the substance is concerned in Joel iv. 14^16,
Zeph. iii. 8, Ezek. xxxviii. 18 sqq., Zech. xiv. 12 sqq.). But
since, according to the foregoing threat, the expression " they
shall see my glory " signifies that they will be brought to ex-
perience the judicial revelation of the glory of Jehovah, if
v'samti bdhem 'oth (and I set a sign upon them) were to be un-
derstood in this judicial sense, it would be more ajipropriate for
it to precede than to follow. Moreover, this v'samti bdhem 'oth
would be a very colourless description of what takes place in
connection with the assembled army of nations. It is hke a
frame without a picture ; and consequently Ewald and TJm-
breit are right in maintaining that what follows directly after
is to be taken as the picture for this framework. The 'oth
(or sign) consists in the unexpected and, with this universal
slaughter, the surprising fact, that a remnant is still spared,
and survives this judicial revelation of glory. This marvellous
rescue of individuals out of the mass is made subservient in
the midst of judgment to the divine plan of salvation. Those
who have escaped are to bring to the far distant heathen world
the tidings of Jehovah, the God who has been manifested in
judgment and grace, tidings founded upon their own experience.
It is evident from this, that notwithstanding the expression
" all nations and tongues," the nations that crowd together
against Jerusalem and are overthrown iii the attempt, are not
to be understood as embracing all nations without exception,
since the prophet is able to mention the names of many nations
which were beyond the circle of these great events, and had
been hitherto quite unaffected by the positive historical reve-
lation, which was concentrated in Israel. By Tarshish Knobel
understands the nation of the Tyrsenes, Tuscans, or Etruscans ;
but there is far greater propriety in looking for Tarshish, as
the opposite point to 'Ophir, in the extreme west, where the
name of the Spanish colony Tartessus resembles it in sound.
In the middle ages Tunis was combined with this. Instead
of l^ij] b\t>i we should probably read with the LXX. 11^1 D19,
as in Ezek. xxvii. 10, xxx. 5. Stier decides in favour of
this, whilst Hitzig and Ewald regard ha as another form of
tiia. The epithet JV^^_ 'y^ (drawers of the bow) is ad-
CHAP. LXVI. 19, 20. 511
mirably adapted to the inhabitants of Piit, since this people
of the early Egyptian Phet (Phaiat) is i-epresented ideogra-
phically upon the monuments by nine bows. According to
Josephus, Ant. i. 6, 2, a river of Mauritania was called Phout,
and the adjoining country Phoute ; and this is confirmed by
other testimonies. As Lud is by no means to be understood as
referring to the Lydians of Asia Minor here, if only because
they could not well be included among the nations of the
faithest historico-geographical horizon in a book which traces
prophetically the victorious career of Cyrus, but signifies rather
the undoubtedly African tribe, the T)^ which Ezekiel mentions
in ch. XXX. 5 among the nations under Egyptian rule, and in
ch. xxvii. 10 among the auxiliaries of the Tyrians, and which
Jeremiah notices in ch. xlvi. 9 along with Put as armed with
bows ; Put and Lud form a fitting pair in this relation also,
whereas Pul is never met with again. The Targum renders it
by ''SfiS, i.e. (according to Bochart) inhabitants of ^tXal, a
Nile island of Upper Egypt, which Straho (xvii. 1, 49) calls
" a common abode of Ethiopians and Egyptians" (see Parthey's
work, De Philis insula) ; and this is at any rate better than
Knohel's supposition, that either Apulia (which was certainly
called Pul by the Jews of the middle ages) or Lower Italy is
intended here. Tubal stands for the Tibarenes on the south-
east coast of the Black Sea, the neighbours of the Moschi
(^ty'D), with whom they are frequently associated by Ezekiel
(ch. xxvii. 13, xxxviii. 2, 3, xxxix. 1) ; according to Josephus
{Ant. i. 6, 1), the (Caucasian) Iberians. Javan is a name
given to the Greeks, from the aboriginal tribe of the 'IaFove<;.
The eye is now directed towards the west : the " isles afar off"
are the islands standing out of the great western sea (the
Mediterranean), and the coastlands that project into it. To
all these nations, which have hitherto known nothing of the
God of revelation, either through the hearing of the word or
through their own experience, Jehovah sends those who have
escaped ; and they make known His glory there, that glory the
judicial manifestation of which they have just seen for them-
selves. The prophet is speaking here of the ultimate completion
of the conversion of the Gentiles ; for elsewhere this appeared
to him as the work of the Servant of Jehovah, for which
Cyrus the oppressor of the nations prepared the soil. His
512 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
standpoint here resembles that of the apostle in Eom. xi. 25,
who describes the conversion of the heathen world and the
rescue of all Israel as facts belonging to the future ; although
at the time when he wrote this, the evangelization of the
heathen foretold by our prophet in ch. xlii. 1 sqq. was already-
progressing most rapidly. A direct judicial act of God Him-
self will ultimately determine the entrance of the Pleroma of
the Gentiles into the kingdom of God, and this entrance of the
fulness of the Gentiles will then lead to the recovery of the
diaspora of Israel, since the heathen, when won by the testi-
mony borne to Jehovah by those who have been saved, " bring
your brethren out of all nations." On the means employed to
carry this into effect, including kirkdroth, a species of camels
(female camels), which derives its name from its rapid swaying
motion, see the Lexicons.' The words are addressed, as in ver.
5, to the exiles of Babylonia. The prophet presupposes that
his countiymen are dispersed among all nations to the farthest
extremity of the geographical horizon. In fact, the commerce
of the Israelites, which had extended as far as India and Spain
ever since the time of Solomon, the sale of Jewish prisoners as
slaves to Phoenicians, Edomites, and Greeks in the time of
king Joram (Obad. 20 ; Joel iv. 6 ; Amos i. 6), the Assyrian
captivities, the free emigrations, — for example, of those who
stayed behind in the land after the destruction of Jerusalem
and then went down to Egypt, — had already scattered the Is-
raelites over the whole of the known world (see at ch. xlix. 12).
Umbreit is of opinion that the prophet calls all the nations
who had turned to Jehovah " brethren of Israel," and repre-
sents them as marching in the most motley grouping to the
holy city. In that case those who were brought upon horses,
chariots, etc., would be proselytes ; but who would bring them ?
This explanation is opposed not only to numerous parallels in
Isaiah, such as ch. Ix. 4, but also to the abridgment of the
passage in Zeph. iii. 10 : " From the other side of the rivers of
Ethiopia (taken from Isa. xviii.) will they offer my worshippers,
1 The LXX. render it aKtaitaii, i.e. probably palanquins. Jerome
observes on this, qusi nos dormitoria interpretari possumus vel hasternas.
(On this word, with which the name of the Bastamians as 'A^»|o'/3/o; ia
conneeted, see Hahnel's Bedeutung der Bastamer fur da» german. Alter-
ikum, 1865, p. 34.)
CHAP. LXVI. 21. 513
the daughters of my dispersed ones, to me for a holy offering."
It is the diaspora of Israel to which the significant name " my
worshippers, the daughters of my dispersed ones," is there ap-
phed. The figure hinted at in minchdihi (my holy offering) is
given more elaborately here in the book of Isaiah, viz. " as the
children of Israel are accustomed {fut. as in ch. vi. 2) to offer
the meat-offering" {i.e. that which was to be placed upon the
altar as such, viz. wheaten flour, incense, oil, the grains of the
first-fruits of wheat, etc.) " in a pure vessel to the house of
Jehovah," not in the house of Jehovah, for the point of com-
parison is not the presentation in the temple, but the bringing
to the temple. The minchdh is the diaspora of Israel, and the
heathen who have become vessels of honour correspond to the
clean vessels.
The latter, having been incorporated into the priestly con-
gregation of Jehovah (ch. Ixi. 6), are not even excluded from
the priestly and Levitical service of the sanctuary. Ver. 21,
f And I will also add some of them to the priests, to the Levites,
saith Jehovahr Hitzig and Knobel suppose meheni to refer to
the Israelites thus brought home. But in this case something
would be promised, which needed no promise at all, since the
right of the native cohen and Levites to take part in the priest-
hood and temple service was by no means neutralized by their
sojourn in a foreign land. And even if the meaning were that
Jehovah would take those who were brought home for priests
and Levites, without regard to their Aaronic or priestly descent,
or (as Jewish commentators explain it) without regard to the
apostasy, of which through weakness they had made themselves
guilty among the heathen ; this ought to be expressly stated.
But as there is nothing said about any such disregard of priestly
descent or apostasy, and what is here promised must be some-
thing extraordinary, and not self-evident, mehem must refer to
the converted heathen, by whom the Israelites had been brought
home. Many Jewish commentators even are unable to throw off
the impression thus made by the expression mehem (of them) ;
but they attempt to get rid of the apparent discrepancy be-
tween this statement and the Mosaic law, by understanding
by the Gentiles those who had been originally Israehtes of
Levitical and Aaronic descent, and whom Jehovah would
single out again. David Friedlander and David Ottensosser
VOL. II. 2 K
514 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
interpret it quite correctly thus : " Meliem, i.e. of those heathen
who bring them home, will He take for priests and Levites,
for all will be saints of Jehovah ; and therefore He has just
compared them to a clean vessel, and the Israelites offered by
their hand to a minchdh." The majority of commentators do
not even ask the question, in what sense the prophet uses
lakkdh&nim laVviyyim (to the priests, to the Levites) with the
article. Joseph Kimchi, however, explains it thus : " TilS?
D'jnan, to the service of the priests, the Levites, so that they
(the converted heathen) take the place of the Gibeonites (cf.
Zech. xiv. 216), and therefore of the former Canansean nHhinlm"
(see Kohler, Nach-esoil. Proph. iii. p. 39). But so interpreted,
the substance of the promise falls behind the expectation
aroused by Dn» DJi. Hofmann has adopted a more correct
explanation, viz. : " God rewards them for this offering, by
taking priests to Himself out of the number of the offering
priests, who are added as such to the Levitical priests." Apart,
however, from the fact that h'''^ Cina;) cannot well signify " for
Levitical priests" according to the Deuteronomic D'1?n D'jnan,
since this would require D'liri D''jn35' (inasmuch as such permu-
tative and more precisely defining expressions as Gen. xix. 9,
Josh. viii. 24 cannot be brought into comparison) ; the idea
" in addition to the priests, to the Levites," is really implied in
the expression (cf. ch. Ivi. 8), as they would say HE'NP ni?? and
not ncN?, and would only use CE'a? np? in the sense of adding
to those already there. The article presupposes the existence of
priests, Levites (asyndeton, as in ch. xxxviii. 14, xli. 29, Ixvi. 5),
to whom Jehovah adds some taken from the heathen. When
the heathen shall be converted, and Israel brought back, the
temple service will demand a more numerous priesthood and
Levitehood than ever before ; and Jehovah will then increase
the number of those already existing, not only from the D'N21D,
but from the Q"'N''3D also. The very same spirit, which broke
through all the restraints of the law in ch. Ivi., is to be seen at
work here as well. Those who suppose mehem to refer to the
Israeh'tes are wrong in saying that there is no other way, in
which the connection with ver. 22 can be made intelligible.
Triedlander had a certain feeling of what was right, when he
took ver. 21 to be a parenthesis and connected ver. 22 with
ver. 20. There is no necessity for any parenthesis, however.
CHAP. LXVI. 22, 23. 515
The reason which follows, relates to the whole of the previous
promise, including ver. 21 ; the election of Israel, as Hofmann
observes, being equally coniirmed by the fact that the heathen
exert themselves to bring back the diaspora of Israel to their
sacred home, and also by the fact that the highest reward
granted to them is, that some of them are permitted to take
part in the priestly and Levitical service of the sanctuary.
Ver. 22. " For as the new heaven and the new earth, which lam
about to make, continue before me, saiih Jehovah, so will your
family and your name continue." The great mass of the world-
of nations and of Israel also perish ; but the seed and name
of Israel, i.e. Israel as a people with the same ancestors
and an independent name, continues for ever, like the new
heaven and the new earth ; and because the calling of Israel
towards the world of nations is now fulfilled and everything
has become new, the former fencing off of Israel from other
nations comes to an end, and the qualification for priest-
hood and Levitical office in the temple of God is no longer
merely natural descent, but inward nobility. The new heaven
and the new earth, God's approaching creation (^quce facturus
sum), continue eternally before Him (Vphdnai as in ch. xlix.
16), for the old ones pass away because they do not please God ;
but these are pleasing to Him, and are eternally like His love,
whose work and image they are. The prophet here thinks of
the church of the future as being upon a new earth and undsr
a new heaven. Bnt he cannot conceive of the eternal in the
form of eternity; all that he can do is to conceive of it as the
endless continuance of the history of time. Ver. 23. " And
it will come to pass : from new moon to new moon, and from
Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come, to worship before me,
saith Jehovah." New moons and Sabbaths will still be cele-
brated therefore ; and the difference is simply this, that just as
all Israel once assembled in Jerusalem at the three great feasts,
all flesh now journey to Jerusalem every new moon and every
Sabbath. . '"I (construct '^) signifies that which suffices, then
that which is plentiful (see ch. xl. 16), that which is due or
fitting, so that (n3E') B^n '''ip (with a temporal, not an explana-
tory min, as Gesenius supposes) signifies "from the time when,
or as often as what is befitting to the new moon (or Sabbath)
occurs " (cf. xxviii. 19). If (nnB'n) Bnn3 be added, a is that of
516 THE PBOPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
exchange: as often as new moon (Sabbath) for new moon
(Sabbath) is befitting, i.e. ought to occur : 1 Sam. vii. 16 ;
Zech. xiv. 16 (cf. 1 Sam. i. 7, 1 Kings v, 25, 1 Chron. xxvii.
1: "year by year," "month by month"). When we find
(inaeia) wim as we do here, the meaning is, " as often as it
has to occur on one new moon (or Sabbath) after the other,"
{.e. in the periodical succession of one after another. At the
same time it might be interpreted in accordance with 1 Kings
viii. 59, ioi^a Di' 13'n, "which does not mean the obligation of
one day after the other, but rather " of a day on the fitting
day " (cf . Num. xxviii. 10, 14), although the meaning of change
and not of a series might be sustained in the passage before
us by the suffixless mode of expression which occurs in con-
nection with it.
They who go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem every new moon
and Sabbath, see there with their own eyes the terrible punish-
ment of the rebellious. Ver. 24. " And they go out and look at
iJie corpses of the men that have rebelled against me, for their
worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched, and they
become an abomination to all fiesh" The perfects axGperf. cons.
regulated by the foregoing f'UJ. ^Ny^^J! (accented with pashta
in our editions, but more correctly with munach) refers to their
going out of the holy city. The prophet had predicted in ver.
18, that in the last times the whole multitude of the enemies of
Jerusalem would be crowded together against it, in the hope
of getting possession of it. This accounts for the fact that the
neighbourhood of Jerusalem becomes such a scene of divine
judgment. 3 ns"i always denotes a fixed, lingering look directed
to any object ; here it is connected with the grateful feeling of
satisfaction at the righteous acts of God and their own gracious
deliverance, f^^lp., which only occurs again in Dan. xii. 2, is
the strongest word for " abomination." It is very difficult to
imagine the picture which floated before the prophet's mind.
How is it possible that all flesh, i.e. all men of all nations,
should find room in Jerusalem and the temple ? ' Even if the
city and temple should be enlarged, as Ezekiel and Zechariah
predict, the thing itself still remains inconceivable. And again,
how can corpses be eaten by worms at the same time as they
are being burned, or how can they be the endless prey of worms
and fire without disappearing altogether from the sight of man I
CHAP. LXVI. 24. 51 T
It is perfectly obvious, that the thing itself, as here described,
must appear monstrous and inconceivable, however we may
suppose it to be realized. The prophet, by the very mode of
description adopted by him, precludes the possibility of our
conceiving of the thing here set forth as realized in any material
fonn in this present state. He is speaking of the future state,,
but in figures drawn from the present world. The object of
his prediction is no other than the new Jerusalem of the world
to come, and the eternal torment of the damned ; but the way
in which he pictures it, forces us to translate it out of the
figures drawn from this life into the realities of the life to
come ; as has already been done in the apocryphal books of
Judith (xvi. 17) and Wisdom (vii. 17), as well as in the New
Testament, e.g. Mark ix. 43 sqq., with evident reference to this
passage. This is just the distinction between the Old Testa-
ment and the New, that the Old Testament brings down the
life to come to the level of this life, whilst the New Testament
lifts up this life to the level of the life to come ; that the Old
Testament depicts both this life and the life to come as an end-
less extension of this life, whilst the New Testament depicts it
as a continuous line in two halves, the last point in this finite
state being the first point of the infinite state bej'ond ; that the
Old Testament preserves the continuity of this life and the life
to come by transferring the outer side, the form, the appear-
ance of this life to the life to come, the new Testament by
making the inner side, the nature, the reality of the life to come,
the Bvvd/j,eK /J,eWovTo<; almvoi, immanent in this life. The
new Jerusalem of our prophet has indeed a new heaven above
it and a new earth under it, but it is only the old Jerusalem
of earth lifted up to its highest glory and happiness ; whereas the
new Jerusalem of the Apocalypse comes down from heaven,
and is therefore of heavenly nature. In the former dwells the
Israel that has been brought back from captivity ; in the latter,
the risen church of those who are written in the book of life.
And whilst our prophet transfers the place in which the rebel-
lious are judged to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem itself ; in
the Apocalypse, the lake of fire in which the life of the ungodly
is consumed, and the abode of God with men, are for ever
separated. The Hinnom-valley outside Jerusalem has become
Gehenna, and this is no longer within the precincts of the new
518 THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Jerusalem, because there is no need of any such example to the
righteous who are for ever perfect.
In the lessons prepared for the synagogue ver. 23 is re-
peated after ver. 24, on account of the terrible character of the
latter, " so as to close with words of consolation." ^ But the
prophet, who has sealed the first two sections of these prophetic
orations with the words, "there is no peace to the wicked,"
intentionally closes the third section with this terrible picture
of their want of peace. The promises have gradually soared
into the clear light of the eternal glory, to the new creation in
eternity ; and the threatenings have sunk down to the depth
of eternal torment, which is the eternal foil of the eternal
light. More than this we could not expect from our prophet.
His threefold book is now concluded. It consists of twenty-
seven orations. The central one of the whole, i,e. the four-
teenth, is ch. lii. 13-liii. ; so that the cross forms the centre
of this prophetic trilogy. Per crucem ad lucem is its watch-
word. The self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah lays the
foundation for a new Israel, a new human race, a new heaven
and a new earth.
■■ Isaiah is therefore regarded as an exception to the rule, that the
prophets close their orations n^Dinjni naty ^nna (6. Berachoth 31a),
although, on the other hand, this exception is denied by some, on the
ground that the words " they shall be an abhorring '' apply to the Gentiles
{]. Berachoth c. V. Anf . Midras Tillim on Ps. iv. 8).
APPENDIX.
VoE. I. PAGE 66. — In the commentary on the second half of
chap. xl.-lxvi., I have referred here and there to the exposi-
tions of J. Heinemann (Berlin 1842) and Isaiah Hochstadter
(Oarlsruhe 1827), hoth written in Hehrew, — the former well
worthy of notice for criticism of the text, the latter provided
with a German translation. For the psalm of Hezekiah (ch.
xxxviii.) Professor Sam. David Luzzatto of Padua lent me his
exposition in manuscript. Since then this great and noble-
minded man has departed this life (on the 29th Sept. 1865). His
commentary on Isaiah, so far as it has heen printed, is full of
information and of new and stirring explanations, written in
plain, lucid, rabbinical language. It would be a great mis-
fortune for the second half of this valuable work to remain un-
printed. I well remember the assistance which the deceased
afforded me in my earlier studies of the history of the post-
biblical Jewish poetry (1836), and the affection which he dis-
played when I renewed my former acquaintance with him on
the occasion of -his publishing his Isaiah ; so that I lament his
loss on my own account as well as in the interests of science.
" Why have you allowed twenty-five years to pass," he wrote to
me on the 22d Feb. 1863, "without telling me that you re-
membered me? Is it because we form different opinions of the
riD^J? and the U^ I'y ih'' of Isaiah ? Are you a sincere Chris-
tian ? Then you are a hundred times dearer to me than so
many Israelitish scholars, the partizans of Sjiinoza, with whom
our age swarms." These words indicate very clearly the stand-
point taken in his writings.
Of the commentaries written in English, I am acquainted
not only with Lowth, but with the thoroughly practical commen-
519
520 APPENDIX.
taiy of Henderson (1857), and that of Joseph Addison Alexander,
Prof, in Princeton (1847, etc.), which is very much read as an
exegetical repertorium in England also. But I had neither of
them in my possession.
Vol. I. PAGE 70. — What I have said here on ch. i. 1 as the
heading to the whole book, or at any rate to ch. i.-xxxix., has
been said in part by Photios also in his Amphilochia, which
Sophocles the M.D. has published complete from a MS. of
Mount Athos (Athens 1858, 4).
Vol. I. PAGE 203, on Ch. vi. 13. — Hofmann in his
Schrifibeweis (ii. 2, 541) maintains with Knobel, that n35f»
cannot be shown to have any other meaning than " plant."
It is never met with in this sense, which it might have (after
3V3^y^3), though it is in the sense of statua and cippus, which,
when applied to a tree deprived of its crown, can only mean
stipes or truncus. — We take this opportunity of referring to a
few other passages of his work : — Ch. viii. 22. " And the deep
darkness is scared away : m'nudddch with the accusative of the
object used with the passive." But this is only possible with the
finite verb, not with the passive participle. Ch. ix. 2. "By the fact
that Thou hast made the people many, Thou hast not made the
joy great ; but now they rejoice before Thee (who hast appeared)."
It is impossible that nunn and rh^in, when thus surrounded
with perfects relating to the history of the future, should itself
relate to the historical past. — Ch. xviii. " It is Israel in its dis-
persion which is referred to here as a people carried away and
spoiled, but which from that time forward is an object of
reverential awe, — a people that men have cut in pieces and
trampled under foot, whose land streams have rent in pieces."
But does not this explanation founder on nvbm Kirrjo K11J? In
the midst of attributes which point to ill-treatment, can this
passage be meant to describe the position which Israel is hence-
forth to hold as one commanding respect (see our exposition) ?
— Ch. xix. 28. " Egypt the land of cities will be reduced to five
cities by the judgment that falls upon it." But how can the
words affirm that there will be only five cities in all, when there is
nothing said about desolation in the judgment predicted before?
— Ch. xxi. 1-10. " What the watchman on the watch-tower sees
APPENDIX. 521
is not the hostile army marching against Babel, but the march
of the people of God returning home from Babel." Conse-
quently tsemed pdrdsMnf, does not mean pairs of horsemen, but
carriages full of men and drawn by horses. But we can see what
tsemed pdrdshim is from 2 Kings ix. 25 {rohh'bhim ts'mddim),
and from the combination of rehhebli and pdrdshim (chariots and
horsemen) in ch. xxii. 7, xxxi. 1. And the rendering " car-
riages " will never do for ch. xxi. 7, 9. Carriages with camels
harnessed to them would be something unparalleled ; and
rekhehh gdmdl (cf. 1 Sam. xxx. 17) by the side of tsemed
pdrdshim has a warlike sound.
Vol. I. PAGE 279, on Ch. x. 28-32.— Professor Schegg
travelled by this very route to Jerusalem (cf. p. 560, Anm. 2) :
From Gifneh he went direct to Tayibeh (which he imagined
to be the ancient Ai), and then southwards through Muchmas,
Geha, Hizmeh, 'Anata, and el-Isatoiye to Jerusalem.
Vol. II. PAGE 65. — No (No 'Amon in Nahum iii. 8) is
the Egyptian nu-A7nun=^i6cr7ro\i<! (mm the spelling of the
hieroglyphic of the plan of the city, with which the name of
the goddess Nu. t = Rhea is also written). The ordinary
spelling of the name of this city corresponds to the Greek
Vol. II. PAGE 66, on Ch. xxxiii. 23. — (Compare Grashof,
Ueber das Schiff bei Homer und Hesiod, Gymnasial-prog'ramm
1834, p. 23 sqq.). The fieaoSfj/r/ (= fieaoSo/Mrf) is the cross
plank which connects the two sides of the ship. A piece is cut
out of this on the side towards the rudder, in which the mast
is supported, being also let into a hole in the boards of the keel
(iVroTreSiy) and there held fast. The mast is also prevented
from falling backwards by ropes or stays carried forward to
the bows (irpoTovoi). On landing, the mast is laid back into a
hollow place in the bottom of the ship (laToSoKr)). If the stays
are not drawn tight, the mast may easily fall backwards, and
so slip not only out of the jieaohfj/q but out of the laTOTriSrf
also. This is the meaning of the words ^P^'P. Ipfn]'-'?. It
would be better to understand ken as referring to the iaroireBij
than to the fieaohfir). The latter has no " hole," but only a
522 APPENDIX.
notch, i.e. a semicircular piece cut out, and serves as a support
to the mast; the former, on the contrary, has the mast inserted
into it, and serves as a ken, i.e. a basis, theca, loculamentum.
Vitringa ohserves (though without knowing the difference
between fieaoSfj/r) and laTOTreSrj) : " Oportet accedere fanes, qui
thecam firmmt, h. e. qui malum sustinentes theccB sueeurrant, qui
quod theca sola per se prcestare nequit absque funibus cum ea
veluti concurrentes efficiant."
Vol. II. PAGE 75, on Ch. xxxiv. 16. — This transition
from words of Jehovah concerning Himself to words relating
to Him, may also be removed by adopting the following ren-
dering: "For my mouth, it has commanded it, and its (my
mouth's) breath, it has brought it together" (rucho =ru&ch jn,
Ps. XXX. 6, Job XV. 30).
Vol. II. PAGE 104. — I am wrong in describing it here as
improbable that the land would have to he left uncultivated
during the year 713-12 in consequence of the invasion that
had taken place, even after the departure of the Assyrians.
Wetzstein has referred me to his Appendix on the Monastery
of Job (see Comm. on Job, vol. ii. 416), where he has shown
that the fallow-land (wdgihci) of a community, which is sown
in the autumn of 1865 and reaped in the summer of 1866,
must have been broken up, i.e. ploughed for the first time, in
the winter of 1864—65. " If this breaking up of the fallow
{el-Bur) were obliged to be omitted in the winter of 1864-65,
because of the enemy being in the land, whether from the
necessity for hiding the oxen in some place of security, or from
the fact that they had been taken from the peasants and con-
sumed by the foe, it would be impossible to sow in the autumn
of 1865 and reap a harvest in the summer of 1866. And if
the enemy did not withdraw till the harvest of 1865, only the
few who had had their ploughing oxen left by the war would find
it possible to break up the fallow. But neither the one nor the
other could sow, if the enemy's occupation of the land had pre-
vented them from ploughing in the winter of 1864-65. If
men were to sow in the newly broken fallow, they would reap
HP harvest, and the seed would only be lost. It is only in the
volcanic and therefore fertile region of Haurdn (Bashan) that
APPENDIX. 523
the sowing of the newly broken fallow (es-sikak) yields a
harvest; and there it is only when the winter brings a large
amount of rain ; so that even in HaurSn nothing but necessity
leads any one to sow upon the sikak In western Palestine, even in
the moat fruitful portions of it (round Samaria and Nazareth),
the farmer is obliged to plough three times before he can sow ;
and a really good farmer follows up the breaking up of the
fallow (sikak) in the winter, the second ploughing (thdnia) in
the spring, and the third ploughing (tethlith) in the summer,
with a fourth (terbia) in the latter part of the summer. Con-
sequently no sowing could take place in the autumn of 713, if
the enemy had been in the land in the autumn of 714, in con-
sequence of his having hindered the farmer from the sikak in
the winter of 714-8, and from the thdnia and tethlith in the
spring and summer of 713. ■ There is no necessity, therefore,
to assume that a second invasion took place, which prevented
the sowing in the autumn of 713."
Vol. II. PAGE 114, on 2 Kings xx. 9. — Even !]^n is
syntactically admissible in the sense of iveritne; see Gen. xxi. 7,
Ps. xi. 3, Job xii. 9.
Vol. II. PAGE 244. — a\fievty(^MKd in Plut., read Porph.,
viz. in the letter of Porphyries to the Egyptian Anebo in
Euseb. prcej). iii. 4, init.: tck re et? Toiig SeKavot)^ TOfiav; koI Toii<;
capovKOTTOv; Kol tou? Xeyofiivov; KpaTaiov<; ^7e/ioWs, Siv koI
ovofiara iv TOig a\fievty(^iaKoT'; (peperar, compare Jamblichos,
de Mysteriis, viii. 4: ra re hi rots aakfie<y)(^iviaKoi<; /^pog rt
fipayxnwrov irepikyei tS>v 'Ep/iaiKoiv Stard^ecav. This reading
<raXfie<ryivt,aKot<s has been adopted by Parthey after two
codices and the text in Salmasius, de annis dim. 605. But
d\iJbevi')(iaKoi<; is favoured by the form Almanach (Hebr. pim^,
see Steinschneider, Catal. Codd. Lugduno-Batav. p. 370), in
which the word was afterwards adopted as the name of an
astrological handbook or year-book. In Arabic the word ap-
pears to me to be equivalent to -IJuJlj t^e encampment (of the
stars) ; but to all appearance it was originally an Egyptian
word, and possibly the Coptic monk (old Egyptian mench), a
form or thing formed, is hidden beneath it.
524 APPENDIX.
Vol. II. PAGE 376, on Ch. lvii. 10, V^^S^.— Fleischer says:
" Just as in ^\ and U>- . the meaning of hope springs out of
the idea of stretching and drawing out, so do ^juA and ^juM^
(spem deposuit, desperavit) signify literally to draw in, to com-
press ; hence the old Arabic " \,:= T, consumption, phthisis.
And the other old Arabic word . ^^ lit. squeezing, res angustce
=fahr wa-faka, want, need, and penury, or in a concrete sense
the need, or thing needed, is also related to this."
Vol. II. PAGE 483-4, on Oh. lxv. 11. — Mrjvr) appears in
fiTjvarfvpTr)'} = firjrparfvprr)^ as the name of Cybele, the mother
of the gods. In Egyptian, Menhi is a form of Isis in the city
of Hat-uer. The Ithyphallic Min, the cognomen of Amon,
which is often written in an abbreviated form with the spelling
men (Copt. MHIN, signum), is further removed.
Vol. II. PAGE 490, on Oh. lxv. 23. — n^iriaK Fleischer says:
" ?n3 and J^ are so far connected, that the stem '?n2, like
r)?3, signifies primarily to let loose, or let go. This passes over
partly into outward overtaking or overturning, and partly into
internal surprise and bewildering, and partly also (in Arabic)
into setting free on the one hand, and outlawing on the other
(compare the Azazel-goat of the day of atonement, which was
sent away into the wilderness) ; hence it is used as an ec[ulva-
/ / /
lent for ^x! {eaiecrare)."
OBSEEYATIONS ON ISAIAH XXI.
By J. G. WETZSTEIN,
|F we look upon the last two oracles of ch. xxi. as
neither connected together, nor associated with the
first, we remain in utter ignorance as to their pur-
port ; whereas they admit of the most satisfactory
explanation if we take ch. xxi. as a whole, and regard it as con-
taining a description of the storming of Babylon, and its con-
sequences, so far as the tribes of the desert and the Edomites are
concerned. Let the following serve as an introduction. With
the complete conquest of Syria and what appeared to be the
voluntary subjection of Edom, the Chaldean empire found itself
in possession of all the cultivated lands, which surround the
desert both to the east and to the west ; and as it was strong
enough, at all events from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, to defend
the harvests of the villages against the nomads, whilst the
latter could not exist without the former, there must have been
forcible contributions levied by the tribes, and bloody reprisals
on the part of the Chaldeans. At the same time, one single
appeal, like that contained in Jer. xlix. 28-33, may well have
sufficed to compel the Arabs to seek their safety in alliance
with Babylon. This ultimate alliance, of the actual completion
of which we have no doubt, from the situation of Babylon itself
(Jer. xxvii. 6), was very advantageous to both parties ; for
whilst it furnished the Kedarenes under the fiag of the Chal-
deans with the best opportunity of satisfying their thirst for
rapine and plunder in distant lands (for the most part, probably
in wealthy Egypt), it supplied the Chaldeans with new forces,
always ready for battle and therefore inexpensive, and opened
and secured to the caravan trade of the gigantic capital, which
was already certainly very extensive, all the roads of the desert.
fi25
526 APPENDIX.
It may safely be maintained that the splendour of the city
dates first from the time when she became the queen of the
desert, and as such the capital of the Semitic nations. As for
the Edomites, their policy was determined by that of their
hereditary foes, the Judseans. The latter allied themselves to
Egypt both in the Chaldean and the Assyrian wars ; and con-
sequently the former attached themselves to Babel (Obad.
11 sqq.), — and they had thereby chosen the better part, for
during the continuance of the Chaldean empire Edom appears
to have reached its greatest extent and most flourishing condition,
even though its princes may have been nominally subject to the
king of Babel (Jer. xxvii. 3). Not only have we to include
among the mountains of Seir, according to the usage of speech
of the later times, their southern extension, viz. the HizmaJi
mountains ; but the Edomites also obtained possession of por-
tions of the land of Judsea (Ezek. xxxvi. 5, cf. xxxv. 10) ; yea,
and certain of their tribes emigrated even into Trachonitis (in
the wider sense of the word, i.e. into Haur^n or northern Gilead),
if, according to Josephus and Eusebius, it was here that the
Aramaean Uzzite tribes had their home (Lam. iv. 21). In like
manner, all the Hadir, as far east as the mountains of Aga,
may have been ceded to them by the Chaldeans, namely, the
cities of Dedan, TemaJi, Duma in the Goph, and others which
are not mentioned in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar and his
successors may have been especially compelled by the wars with
Egypt to secure the attachment of the Edomites, who lived so
near to the borders of this land, by great concessions; and
the latter will, no doubt, have remained true to their avengers
upon Judah, even till the conquest of Babylon. In the war
with Cyrus, the city not only obtained help from Syria, but
from the desert and the mountains of Seir also.'^
We now return to ch. xxi. When the barbarians threaten
Babel, the eyes of all are directed in anxious expectation
towards the east, from the mountains of Judaea as well as from
Seir; inasmuch as, for the one, there is being accomplished
there a divine judgment upon the foes of its oppressed people,
' Isa. Ixiii. 1-6 shows retrospectively how correct this is, — a proof of the
instructive character of this and the following observations, although the
point of ultimate fulfilment fixed in ch. xxi. 16 is at variance with the
direct and close connection of the three massah {JDeiy
OBSERVATIONS ON ISAIAH XXI. 527
whilst the other sees the approach of a national calamity. At
length Babylon falls. Horsemen bring the tidings to the west.
They are either Arabs flying from the scene, or the victors
themselves, who are coming to chastise such tribes as were
hostile in their disposition, after Babylon itself had fallen. In
that flat arid desert, without any fortified places, there lies the
great enchanting oasis of el-Goph with the city of Bumah,
four Z>eZM^marches to the south-west of Babylon. On a
general flight from the localities of the Sawad and the tents on
the Euphrates, this would be the first place in which men and
flocks could find a permanent rest. Now, since it is extremely
probable that Cyrus would send his troop of camel-riders
against the Arabs immediately after the conquest of Babylon,
to secure the respect of these troublesome neighbours at the
very outset ; Dumah, the most important Hadirah of the Ish-
maelites, is hardly likely to have been spared. One proof of
its importance at that time is the fact, that it was thought
worthy of a separate massa. The cry from Seir (ver. 11)
may be accounted for from the fact, that Edom and Dumah
were then standing in the very close relation to one another
which we have already spoken of as probable. The answer
given to those who inquire whether the evil has not come to
an end with the fall of Babel and Dumah, is that it has only
just begun. "The morning came, but also the night;" i.e.
your morning of prosperity was the existence of the Chaldean
empire, your night of calamity has begun with its overthrow.
" Would ye know more, only inquire ! Come back once
more !" These words are words of sarcasm. The persons in-
quiring knew quite enough when they heard the answer, " The
morning came, and also the night;" but the prophet calls after
them : " Is my reply not clear enough ? Do ye want to know
something more definite about this night and what else it will
bring you ?" Assuming the connection between Massa 1 and
2, this is the explanation.
In the, third massa the war spreads over the rest of the
desert, as far west as to the neighbourhood of the mountains
of Seir. It begins by scaring away the caravans from the
foads of commerce. As their flight went past Temah, we are
tempted to regard their owners the Dedanim as inhabitants of
the before-mentioned city of Dedan (Jer. xlix. 8), which is
528 APPENDIX.
associated with Temah in Jer. xxv. 23, and must be regarded
as the principal seat of the Ketursean tribe of the same name
(Gen. xxv. 3). The sixteen Ketursean tribes formed a com-
plex of small kindred peoples, who, to use an antiquated term,
inhabited Arabia Petrsea (Stony Arabia), i.e. the land of the
Harra from the borders of Edom to Medina, and from the
Elanitic Gulf to the mountains of Aga, having villages and
small towns in spots capable of cultivation, and carrying on the
rearing of camels in the valleys of the mountains and in Wa'r
and commerce on the Red Sea, and who, with the great
poverty of their land, will most likely have engaged in the
transport of such articles of commerce as they found in the
neighbouring harbours and the different stations on the inland
roads. The latter is affirmed in Isa. Ix, 6 of Midian and
Ephak, and in Gen. xxxvii. 36 of Medan; and caravans of
Dedan might therefore be intended here. But these are not
mentioned anywhere else ; and as the city itself was certainly
not one of sufficient importance for the driving away of its
caravans to be regarded as the event of great moment, with
which the massa would evidently introduce the great desert
war, we have rather to think simply of the Dedan who are
mentioned in Gen. x. 7 in the table of nations, and therefore
belonged to the great nations of the ancient world within the
circle of the biblical history. These Dedan, also called Beni
Dedan in Ezek. xxvii. 15, were not Shemites, but a branch of
the Cushite stem of Ra'ma. Another branch was called Sheba.
The name Cusli is generally regarded as a very wide geogra-
phical term. It was once thought that the Israelites in-
cluded under this one name all the southern lands of the then
known world — that is to say, not only Ethiopia, but also
southern Arabia and the eastern lands as far as India, — so that
Oushites were found on the coasts of the Persian Gulf, and
even in the Higaz. But there is really nothing at all in those
passages of the Bible which bear upon this question, to compel
us to go beyond the limits of north-eastern Africa. According
to Gen. ii. 13 (if we take the Gihon to be the southern Nile,
the Baclfr el-abyad, and understand 3310 in its true signifi-
cation, " to flow round"), the complex of tribes called Cw/i
inhabited the eastern country washed by the upper Nile as far
as the southern frontier of Egypt, i.e. to the city of Swen (Ezek.
OBSEKVATIONS ON ISAIAH XXI. 529
xxix. 10), the present Asw^n,' including tlie adjoining stretch
of coast (Ezek. xxx. 9), i.e. the interior and coast-lands of
Nuba, Bigga, 'Aiwa, Habesh, Berber a, and Zeng, As the three
different tribes of Rama, Dedan, and Seba carried on trading
operations with Syria, their settlements must certainly have
reached to the sea-coast, and therefore embraced the Troglo-
dytice of the ancients almost from Berenice to the promontory
of Deire. If they stretched still farther over a portion of the
Berbera coast beyond the straits, it was very likely the Rama
who dwelt there ; for the Bible only mentions them once, and
that apparently with the intention of naming a people very far
off, who carried on trade with Tyre.^
We should be brought to the same conclusion, if /among the
different productions mentioned in Ezek. xxvii. 22 we had to
refer "the best of all spices" to Rdrna, for the whole of the
coast-land on both sides of the promontory of 'Apcofiara (Ptol.
Wilb. p. 300) was celebrated in antiquity for its costly spices.^
The Sheba, on the other hand, must have dwelt upon the
Abyssinian Gulf, for Strabo (xvii. 4) mentions as in close
proximity to the present seaport town of Massaua, not only a
harbour called Saba, which he describes after ArtemMorus as
the very great city of Saba, but also a Sabsean mouth; and
* According to Yakut, this town is more properly called SwSn in
Arabic, which approaches more nearly to the Hebrew JID and the Latin
Syene. Hence arose the name Aswan in the mouths of the people.
2 There are some who seek the iJa'ma-people in the 'Fiyafta mJii;
(Ptol. Wilb. p. 405) on the north-east coast of 'Oman, and place the
Dedan to the north of this towards Bahrein. But the city of Ptol. answers
rather to the (•^~J of the Arabian geographers, whereas nojJT written in
Greek would read 'FifiaSxy 'Fx/iiTx, or 'Fxy^nTsi. Moreover, if we put
the Ra'ma and Dedan on the Persian Gulf, would it not be necessary to put
the closely related Sheha there as well ? Do we not find them associated
with Ra'ma in Ezek. xxvii. 22, and with Dedan in Ezek. xxxviii. 13 V
But the K3tl' (Sheba) again are closely bound up with their cousins the
K3D (Seba) ; and, according to Ps. Ixxii. 10, must not be separated from
them. Now, happily, in Isa. xlv. 14 we have a statement concerning the
latter which proves them to be Nubians. How can there be any doubt,
therefore, as to the land to which the whole fraternity must be assigned ?
^ In Yakut under Bahar Zeng we read : The coast of the Zeng Sea,
as far as the land of Berbera in the neighbourhood of Aden, and the
adjacent islands have a luxuriant growth of sandal-wood, of black and
VOL. II. 2 L
530 APPENDIX.
although it may ijossibly be a rare thing for the name of a
great people to be given to a city or a river, this is easily
conceivable in the case of a harbour or the mouth of a river,
inasmuch as the harbour and river of the Shdba may have been
the river and harbour /car' e^oxn'" to foreign sailors, as being
either the only ones there, or at any rate those of greatest im-
portance. This port with its surrounding country must have
constituted an integral, because an indispensable, part of the
primeval state of Meroe, so memorable in the history of civilisa-
tion ; and the Shehd {^^f) will have been not only the in-
habitants of the line of coast, but also those of the insular
Idngdom, for the queen of this people (1 ICings x. 1 sqq.) is
called in Jos. Ant. viii. 6, 5 the ruler of Ethiopia. There is no
ground whatever for the favourite combination of Meroe with
K3p (Seha!),^ or for assigning the queen of Sheba (ii2V~T)D'70,
1 Kings X.) to the Sabseans of Yemen (Gen. x. 28). The
latter were probably at all times cultivators of the soil in the
mountains, and poor breeders of camels (nomads) in the desert.
The export of incense alone could never bring them wealth, with
the strong competition of other lands; and with the few wants
of the southern Arabian they never attained a high degree of
cultivation, even in the most flourishing period of the Arabian
tribes. The ruins of ancient buildings, which are met with in
western Yemen, recal with their colossal forms the temples and
r)yramids of Nubia, and can only be regarded as witnesses of
Ethiopian culture, since this part of the Arabian peninsula
was frequently subject to the neighbouring country, and even
■white ebony, and of Icana ; on the coast they also gather amber, which is
found here and nowhere else. The iJerSero-land lies between the Habesh
and Zeng, and the people must not be confounded with the Berberians of
the west. The neighbouring island of Sokotra exports myrrh and the
Dem-el-acMwen, a gum, which is only found upon this island, and is there
called katir. It is sold in two different qualities, viz. as a natural un-
adulterated resinous dropping of a red colour, and also as an artificial
production with spurious additions.
^ This combination is made on the strength of the passage in Jos. Ant.
ii. 10, 2 ; but then Josephus is not speaking of Seha, but of Sheba. Q'he
LXX. place Sela in northern Nubia. The name seems also to have beeu
pointed Sola; and this calls to mind Strabo's ' Aaraaolia; (" Soba-river"),
which appears to have fallen into the Nile to the west of the Abyssinian
mountains.
OBSERVATIONS ON ISAIAH XXI. 531
received colonies from thence. The romantic statements of
the ancients concerning the treasures of the Sabseans of Arabia
may be accounted for, partly from the utter ignorance of a
land, which passed under the name of Arabia Eudcemon (pro-
bably the Greek form of lD^n= Yemen) as the embodiment of
all that was valuable, partly from the fact that the Cushite
Sabseans were confounded with the Joktanite tribe of the same
name, and partly from the simple fact that statements relating
to the former were transferred to the latter. And even where
the distinction was preserved by the ancients, modern writers
have confounded them, as the articles SJieba and Seba in
Winer's Real-Worterbuch will show. As the Jewish nation
apparently came into close contact with none of the Joktanitish
tribes (except perhaps on the voyages to OpJiir), the Arabian
Seba are mentioned much less frequently in the Bible than is
commonly supposed. It is different with the Cushites, who
must have been brought down to the sea very early by their
river-navigation (compare Isa. xviii. 1, 2), and who would
command the Red Sea down to the time of the Nabatseans.
The queen of Sheba certainly came to Solomon partly with the
intention of connecting herself with a monarch, through whose
harbours on the Elanitic Gulf the trade of her own people with
Palestine, Syria, Gaza, Tyre, and the Mediterranean was to a
great extent, and during war with Egypt exclusively, carried
on. The principal exports of the Ethiopian harbours were
negro slaves of both sexes, ivory, ebony, cinnamon, amber,
myrrh, sandal-wood (aloe), incense, topaz, emeralds, and, above
all, refined gold (compare Strabo's Beschreibung von Trog-
lodytice und Meroe ; also Ydkubi liber regionum, ed. A. W. 2\
Yuynboll, 1861, p. 121 sqq.). According to the latter authority,
the gold mines of Ethiopia excited the same attractive power in
the earUest times of Islam as those of California in our own
day. Nearly all these articles of commerce are associated in
the Bible with the Cushite tribes already named, and most
frequently with the Sheba (the chief of these tribes, the
Cushites par excellence) and the Dedan.
The latter are placed, along with Sheba, among the rich
and powerful nations carrying on a maritime trade in Ezek.
xxxviii. 13 ; and in ch. xxvii. 15, 20, they are described as
trading with Tyre in ivory, ebony, and tapestry. The first
532 APPENDIX.
two articles are still specifically articles of Ethiopian export,
and not Indian at all, as those who look for the Dedan on the
Persian Gulf suppose. Strabo (xvii. 2) calls ebony a common
]iroduction of Meroe. In the earliest period of Islam, 'Aidab,
to the south of Berenice, was an important harbour for the
export of Nubian ivory and gold (yid. Ya'kubi ut sup.). And
the tapestries were either of Ethiopian or Egyptian manufac-
ture. The Nubian wool was peculiarly suitable for tapestries,
because it was not loose, but more of the nature of hair, like
that of the Angola sheep. The Egyptian tapestries, which
were probably made of this wool, were highly valued in ancient
times ; and we even find them mentioned in the tariff of
Diocletian (compare W. H. Waddington, Edit de Diocletien,
Paris 1864, p. 20, with note 6, where testimonies of ancient
writers to the value of these tapestries are given).
If we take the Dedan to be the most northerly of these
Cushites, it is because we find their caravans in Syria. It is
true that articles of commerce belonging to the Dedanians
might be taken by ship to Suez or ^la, and when transported
thence by camels to Tyre or Babylon be called caravans of the
Dedanians, just as at the present day the caravan which travels
periodically from Bagdad to Damascus is called the Persian
caravan, because it carries Persian goods. But we assume that
the Dedanian caravans came from Africa itself, which was by
no means impossible, if the people on the northern frontier of
Nubia dwelt upon the Gulf of Berenice, under the Allaki
mountains. Their settlements may even have extended, either
originally or at the time to which the massa of Isaiah refers,
still farther north over a portion of the Mokattam (i.e. the
mountain range running from Aswan to Suez). As all the
world of all ages desired to possess " the golden calf" (Jer.
xlvi. 20) of Egypt, so did also, and even pre-eminently, its
southern neighbour. Egypt had often Ethiopian rulers, and
several times during the existence of the Israelitish kingdoms.
A dynasty of this kind would be sustained by such of their
tribe as had established themselves with armed force in the
land, and would rule there till they were forced out by another
invasion, or decimated and lost amongst a new people. We
miglit assume, even if the Bible said nothing about it, that in
this way an Ethiopian population gradually covered the whole
OESERVATIOXS ON ISAIAH XX[. 533
of the Mohattam, and possibly tlie peninsula of Sinai also, just
as even at the present day the more important tribes of the
latter are regarded as immigrants and Egyptians. But tlie
Bible also mentions these Cushites. The places and encamp-
ments plundered by Asa, according to 2 Chron. xiv. 14, 15, on
the south-western frontier of Judsea, must from the context
have been Oushite ; for it is not stated there, that even Philis-
tines or Arabians had made common cause with the Zerah who
invaded Judah out of Egypt (or, as others suppose, across the
Mokattam out of Nubia), and had been chastised by Asa on
that account. Later still, under Jorarris reign, the Philistines
and Arabs there did indeed plunder Jerusalem (2 Chron. xxi.
16), but they did so 'al-yad Kushim, " in alliance with the
Cushites," who had found their permanent settlements on the
N.E. frontier of Egypt, and probably passed as subjects of that
land. If we confine the true land of the Egyptians to tlie
banks of the Nile and the Delta, as we ought, the eastern
mountains of Cushite Cabilse (called Arabes, " nomads," even
by the ancients; cf. "the tents of Cushan" in Hab. iii. 7)
and the harbours of the Red Sea from Suez downwards be-
longed to trading tribes of Cushites.
The massd' ba'rdbh in ch. xxi. 13-15 agrees with this view
of the land and population of the Dedanians. The caravans are
on the road to Babylon, bringing the productions of Ethiopia as
contributions towards the demand made for articles of luxury
in the enormous capital. The road leads by Petra, Ma'an,
and Korakir, and one somewhat farther south by Duma and
Sukdka. There, probably not far from Duma, they learn how
near the enemy are, and flee, leaving the open road and taking
the direction towards Tema through the protecting labyrinth
of the Downs. Between this city and Duma, as many from
both places have assured me in the most trustworthy manner,
there is no direct road, nor has there ever been one.^ And
over all this ground you do not find a single drop of water
either in winter or summer, since the flying sand itself renders
it impossible to provide cisterns for collecting the rain-water.
Yet the distance between the two is not more than forty hours,
1 The road led from Tema, by Korakir, Ezrak, and Kasam, to the
north ; at Ezrak one branehed off to the west {Bozrah and Amman), at
Kasam another branehed off to Damascus.
534 APPENDIX.
since Tema lies to the n.e. of Tehuh, and not to the S.E., as
marked upon our maps ; and for this reason the Arabian
geographers do not even reckon it as belonging to the Penin-
sula, but place it in the Syrian desert, and some even in Syria
itself.' Now if the yaar (ver. 13), into v?hich the Dedanians
fled, was the Arabian ^.c^, their flight ended at Tema ; for the
great TFa'V of Arabia, i.e. the land of the Harra, commences
there. And if it is " forest," the prophet had no doubt the
western coast mountains in his mind ; for since the mountains
of Seir certainly derived their name from their original forests
(even now, according to Burckhardt and others, there are still
many holm-oaks there), the Hisma were very likely wooded as
well. According to a statement in Yakfit's Geograph. Lexicon
(s. V. Irani), the higher portions of them, the Gehel Iram, were
covered with firs (Snobar) even in later times. Their seeking
for a hiding-place in the Wa'^r or forest is contrasted with
their spending the night by the wells of the free open steppe,
where the caravans encamp when there is no danger appre-
hended.
A few words in conclusion as to ver. 13 according to the
LXX. The rendering of the words C^m mniN by eV ry
oSc3 AaiSdv seems to have been influenced by a circumstance,
to which it may not be uninteresting to call attention. There
lies to the west of Tema a city in ruins called Dedan, which
was probably inhabited at the time of the Seventy and well
known to them, so that the 'or'choth I/ddmm suggested to
their minds the road which runs from Tema to this city. It
is the same road of which the Onomasticon says, AaiBdv, iv ry
'ISovfiaia, w? 'Iepefiia<;. iraponceerat, rfj ^ava w? diro crTjfielwv
S' TTpo? /3oppav. Only if Eusebius understood by 0avd the
place called Punon in Num. xxxiii. 42, in the northern half of
the valley of the Araba, he had not formed a correct idea of
the actual situation of this city ; for in Yakut's Geographical
Lexicon it is said that " Dedan was formerly a fine city on the
border of the Belka towards the Higaz, which is now desolate."
The Kitab el-merdsid, in which, as is well known, there are
inniimerable typographical errors, substitutes for the name of
' See my paper on " Northern Arabia and the Syrian Desert," in the
Zeitschrift fur d. allg. Erdkunde, 1865.
OBSERVATIONS ON ISAIAH XXL 535
the city the Persian word Dcdcban, and reads incorrectly
" road " instead of " frontier." The true reading must have
been either " in the Belka, on the high road, near to Higaz;'
or " belonging to Higaz, on the road to the Bellca ; " but in
either case Yakut would have expressed himself differently.
N'ow, as neither the ^raSa-valley, nor G^al and the Serah
mountains (of Bm^ were reckoned as belonging to the Belha,
whereas the more easterly places, such as Ma an, Edruh, Gerla,
Muta, and others, were, the statement made by Yakut leads us
to assume that a traveller from Muta to Teb%h would have the
city of Dedan on one side, and that the right side, since all
cultivation ceases to the left of the road. It is very natural to
connect it with Dedan, the Keturasan city mentioned above ;
and the fact that the latter is mentioned twice in connection
with Edom (viz. in Jer. xlix. 8 and Ezek. xxv. 1 3, probably
because it was associated with Edom during the continuance
of the Chaldean empire) may have led Eusebius to place it in
the ArabaTh. The idea of its having belonged originally to
Edom may be dismissed without hesitation ; for all the settle-
ments of the Keturaeans are certainly to be thought of as
beyond the ancient limits of Edom, and even Dedan is not
mentioned in Gen. xxxvi. among the kindred and districts of
Edom, whereas in Jer. xxv. 21, 23, it is expressly separated
from Edom and connected with two other cities of the desert,
viz. Tema and Bus, because, even if temporarily belonging to
Edom, it may have had much in common with the latter in
position, mode of life, municipal constitution, and history.
The farther it was removed from Edom proper, i.e. the more
it lay to the south of Aila, the more does its situation agree
with Ezek. xxv. 1 3, where it is placed in contrast with Teman,
which was situated, according to Eusebius, to the north of
Petra. Although it cannot be affirmed of any place lying
farther south than Aila that it was situated in the Belka, the
Arabian geographers, on the other hand, by no means unfre-
quently represented the Higaz as beginning at a line drawn
in the latitude of Median ; and I am therefore inclined to look
for the ruins of Dedan at the eastern foot of the mountains of
Ilismah, especially as there is a valley of Meddn there, which
slopes off towards the east. This name is not met with any-
where else in the geography of Arabia, and is too striking in
536 APPENDIX.
this particular country for it to he possible to avoid conjecturing
that it oricrinally belonged to a ruined city situated there, which
is called MaStcim (read MaSdva) in Ptol. {Wilb. p. 408), and
was most probably the principal place belonging to the Ketu-
raean tribe of Meddn (Gen. xxv. 2).
Assuming the identity of 1"J'=] and ^^IjojJl, the only question
that remains is, how the second could arise from the first, and
how it could get the article? Both these questions are
answered by the assumption that the word dfddn, "Arhich was
almost intolerable (at any rate to an Arabic ear), was traced
back to a root nn by the extension of the first syllable, and
thus the termination became the forming syllable. In this
way they got the form ^^^, which is very frequent in Arabic
names of places, with a really appellative signification, and
such a word would very properly receive the article.*^ Euse-
bius adopts a shorter course. He imagines that there were
originally two different names, viz. !"!?. (a defective !"i''l) the
name of the Keturrean city, and I"i"i (probably according to the
form y^V, equivalent to ^'■^•>) that of the Cushite tribe, which he
supposes to have lived in the Syrian desert ; for in a different
article of the Onomasticon from the one mentioned before he
says, AaBav, ev yfj KrjSap a>', 'lepefiia^. Whatever we may
think of his double orthography, the distinction which he
draws between the two tribes is at any rate supported by the
biblical account, and is by no means rendered obsolete by the
more modern assumption of mixed races or the variations of
genealogies. The Bible calls the Cushites, Dedan and Sheba,
very ancient tribes, and the two Keturseans of the same name
very youthful tribes. Now if we are to take this as undeniable
testimony, why may we not assume, as the real explanation of
1 Words formed from the root TT are rare even in Arabic ; but among
the wandering tribes of the Syrian desert dtd in the usual name given to
the breast of a woman. As the Arab used the names of all the outward
parts of the body at any rate as designations to be applied to the soil,
there might be some hilly formation near Dedan which led to the adoption
of this etymon here, although the people needed no such motive as this for
giving a native sound to a foreign word.
OBSERVATION? ON ISAIAH XXI. 537
the sameness of the names, that the father of the latter called
the two brothers by the names of two flourishing tribes, since
the name of the genealogical founder of any people was re-
garded by the Shemites as a name of good omen 1 Or why
may not the mother have been a Cushite, who called her two
sons by the names of the most powerful tribes of her own
people ? The Keturseans with their uninterrupted intercourse
with the African coast, like the modern dwellers upon the Eed
Sea, are sure to have had a large number of Cushite wives,
who would often give exotic names to their children. More-
over, there is an Arabic proverb which warns us against
inquiring too minutely into the why and wherefore of Semitic
proper names. Such inquiries are of very doubtful worth
from a scientific point of view, and only lead to frivolities.
Any one, however, who thinks similarity of names quite a
sufficient reason for trying to combine the most heterogeneous
elements, can show his skill in this art of cookery in the most
splendid manner upon the genealogies of the Arabs. Even at
the present day there are probably thirty tribes or branches of
tribes called Sad in the Peninsula, in Syria, in Mesopotamia,
and in Egypt, who have nothing whatever in common except
the name; and quite as many with the names Hamddn, Chdlid,
All, Gdnim, Uasan, Muhammed, and so forth.
EXD OF VOL. II.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Just published, in Two Volumes, 8vo (1600 pages), price 24s.,
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
A Critical, Historical, and Dogmatic Ikquirt into the Origin
AND Nature of the Old and New Testaments.
By GEORGE T. LADD, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, YALE COLLEGE.
' It is not very easy to give an account of this very considerable and important work
within the compase of one short notice. . . . It is one which will certainly he studied
by all scientific theologiana, and the general reader will probably find here a better
summary of the whole subject than in any other work orseriea of works.' — Church Bells.
' A scientific method of treating the phenomena and place of the Bible such as thia
will have special value in these days; as such we very heartily commend it to all
interested in the great question of Divine revelation through Jesus Christ of which the
Bible is the medium, and in which all its teachings find their reason and inspiration and
relations.' — British Quarterly Review.
' This important work is pre-eminently adapted for students, and treats in an exhaustive
manner nearly every important Bubject of Biblical criticism which ie agitating the
religious mind at the preseut day.' — Contemporary Review.
Just publislied, in demy Svo, price 10s. Qd.,
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
BIBLICALLY AND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.
{TENTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.)
By JAS. S. CANDLISH, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW.
' As to the ability of this volume there can be no question : it is of profound interest,
touches on time-present subjecta, ia free from all rhetorical display, is in no senae super-
ficial, hut scholarly and able, and is worthy of the reputation and position of its author.'
— Evangdical Magazine.
'Able and learned. . . . Theological students will find it valuable, and to their
attention we most earnestly commend it.' — Watchman.
'Dr. Candlish treata his subject with an admirable combination of scholarly com-
prehensiveness, hiatorical candour, and regard to the practical demauds of mankind.' —
Christian World.
'Dr. Candlish has in the present volume given evidence of great freshness of
thought, broad mental graep, careful acholarahip, and keen logical acumen, lighted up by
imaginative beauty, and quickened by fervent emotion. ... Its historical review ie clear,
succinct, and comprehensive; its hermeneutica are sound and judicious; ita theology is
evangelical; its tone is healthy and inapiring; and altogether, it ia a volume which is
sure to become a classic' — Baptist Magazine.
' A charming book, written with unaffected ease and perfect lucidity, and therefore to
be read with delight. Perhaps a magic pen belongs to the house of dandliah. . . . The
book is poaitively good, and ought to be thoroughly popular with the lai-ger religious
public.'- — Monthly Interpreter.
' An able, historical, and dispassionate account of the working of the various theories
of Church unity in earlier ages.' — Literary Churchman.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Just piiblished, in One Volume, %vo, 64:0 pp., price 15s.,
HISTORY OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By Professor E. EEUSS, D.D.
translated from the fifth revised and enlarged edition.
CONTENTS. — Introduction. Book First :— History of the Origin of the New
Testament Writings — History of the Literature. Book Second : — History
of the Collection of the New Testament AVritings — History of the Canon.
Book Third : — History of the Preservation of the New Testament Writings
— History of the Text. Book Fourth : — History of the Circulation of
the New Testament Writings — History of the Versions. Book Fifth : —
History of the Theological Use of the .New Testament Writings— History
of Exegesis.
' It would be hard to name any single volume which containB so much that is helpful
to the student of the New Testament. . . . Considering that so much ground is covered,
the fulness and accuracy of the information given are remarkable. Professor Reuse's
work is not that of a compiler, but of an original thinker, who throughout thie encyclo-
psedic volume depends much more on hie own research than on the labours of his
predecessors. . . . The translation is thoroughly well done, accurate, and full of life.' —
Expositor.
'One of the most valuable volumes of Messrs. Clark's valuable publicatione. ... Its
usefulness is attested by undiminisbed vitality. . . . His method is admirable, and he
unites German exbaustiveness with French lucidity and brilliancy of expression. . . .
The sketch of the great exegetic epochs, their chief characteristics, and the critical
estimates of the most eminent writers, is given by the author with a compression and
a mastery that have never been surpassed.' — Archdeacon Faerae.
'I think the work of Reuss exceedingly valuable.' — Professor C. A. Beiggs, D.D.
' I know of no work on the same topic more scholarly and at the same time readable,
and I regard the work as one of real value to scholars.' — President Alvah Hovby,
Newton Theological Institute.
'A work of rare and long-tested merit. ... I am sure that every theological teacher
will be glad to be able to refer his students to it' — Professor P. H. Seenstea,
Cambridge. Mass.
Just published in ex. 8vo, price Ss.,
THE OLDEST CHURCH MANUAL
CALLED THE
^eacbing of tbe twelve apostles.
The Didachh and Kindred Documents in the Original, with Translations and
Discussions of Post-Apostolic Teaching, Baptism, Worship, and Discipline,
and with Illustrations and Fac-Similes of the Jerusalem Manuscript.
By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.
' The best work on the Didac hfe which has yet appeared.' — Churchman.
Just published, in crown 8vo, price bs. Qd.,
CREATION;
OR, THE BIBLICAL COSMOGONY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE.
yyiTH ILLUSTRATIONS.
By Professor ARNOLD GUYOT, LL.D.
' "Written witli much knowledge and tact, . . . suggestive and stimulating.' — British
Quarterly Review. , . ^ , ^.j. , ,„■,.,.■,
' The issue of this book is a fitting conclusion to a beautiful career. . . . This, his last
book, coming from tbe author's deathbed, will serve two causes ; it will aid science by
showing that it is a friend of tbe faith, and it will aid Christianity by showing that it
need not fear the test of the latest ecientifio research.'— PresJy^eWara Review.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Tweniy Handsome 9,vo Volumes, Subscription Peice £5, 58.,
MEYER'S
Commentary on the New Testament.
unrlvaUed as an interpreter of the grammatical and "stortoal maaning of the SMrea
writers. The Puhllehers have now rendered another seasonable and important somoe to
English students in producing this translation.'— Gnarfian.
Each Volume will he sold separately at 10s. 6d. to Non^Subscriben.
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL
COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By Dr. H. A. W. MEYER,
Oberconsistorialrath, Hannover.
The portion contributed by Dr. Meyek has been placed under the editorial
care of Rev. Dr. Dickson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow ;
Rev. Dr. Ckombie, Professor of Biblical Criticism, St. Mary's College, St.
Aodrews; and Rev. Dr. Stewart, Professor of Biblical Criticism, University
of Glasgow.
1st Year — Romans, Two Volumes.
Galatians, One .Volume.
St. John's Gospel, Vol. I.
2d Year— St. John's Gospel, Vol. 11.
Philippians and Colossians, One Volume.
Acts of the Apostles, Vol. I.
Corinthians, Vol. I.
Sd Year— Acts of the Apostles, Vol. II.
St. Matthew's Gospel, Two Volumes.
Corinthians, Vol. II.
4th Year — Mark and Luke, Two Volumes.
Epbesians and Fhilemon, One Volume.
Thessalonians. {Dr. Lunemann.)
8th Year — Timothy and Titus. (Dr. Ilulher.)
Peter and Jude. {Dr. Huther.)
Hebrews. {Dr. Lunemann.)
James and John. {Dr. Huther. )
The series, as written by Meyer himself, is completed by the publication of Ephesians
with Philemon in one volume. But to this the Publishers heme thought it right to add
Thessalonians and Hebrews, by Dr. lAlnemnnn, and the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles,
by Dr. Huther. So few, however, of the Subscribers heme expressed a desire to have Dr.
Dilsterdieek's Commentary on Revelation included, that it lias been resolved in the mean-
time not lo undertake it.
' I need hardly add that tha last edition of the accurate, perspicnons, and learned com-
mentary of Dr. Meyer hae been most carefully consulted throughout ; and I must again,
as in the preface to the Galatians, avow my great obligatione to the acumen and scholar-
ship of the learned editor.' — Bishop Ellicott in Preface to his ' Commentary on Ephesiaiis.'
' The ablaet grammatical exegete of the age.' — Philip Schapf, D.D.
' In accuracy of scholarship and fraedom from prejudice, he is aquallad hy few.' —
Literary Churchman.
' We have only to repeat that it remains, of its own kind, the very best Commentary
of the New Testament which we poesess.' — Church Bells.
* No axegetical work is on the whole more valuable, oi stands in higher public esteem.
As a critic he is candid and cautious; exact to minuteness in philology ; a master of the
grammatical and historical method of interpretation.' — Princeton Review.
T. and T. ClarMs Publications.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 1-100. In Two Divisions. Ex. demy 8vo, price 2l8.
ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 100-325. In Two Divisions. Ex. demy 8vo,
price 21s.
NICENE and POST-NICENE CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 325-600. In Two DivisionB. Ex.
demy 8vo, price 21e.
MEDIEVAL CHEISTIANITY, A.D. 590-1073. In Two Divisions. Ex. demy 8vo,
price 21s.
'No student, and indeed no critic, can with fairness overlook a work like the present,
written with such evident candour, and, at the same time, with so thorough a knowledge
of the sources of early Christian history.' — Scotsman.
' I trust that thia very instructive volume will find its way to the libral-y tahle of every
minister who caree to investigate thoroughly the foundations of Christianity. I cannot
refrain from congratulating you on having carried through the press this noble contn-
hution to historical literature. I think that there is no other work which equals it in
many important excellences.' — Eev. Prof. Fisher, D.D.
'In no other work of its kind with which I am acquainted will students and genera)
readers find so much to instruct and interest them.'— Rev. Prof. Hitchc ock. D.D.
In deviy ito, Third Edition, with Supplement, price 38s.,
BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL LEXICON OF NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK.
By HERMANN CEEMEE, D.D.,
PEOFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GRKIFSWALD.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF THE SECOND EDITION
By WILLIAM URWICK, M.A.
THE SUPPLEMENT, WHICH IS INCLUDED IN THE ABOVE, MAY BE HAD
SEPARATELY, price Us.
'Dr Cremer's work is highly and deservedly esteemed in Germany. It gives with
care and thoroughness a complete history, as far as it goes, of each word a^d phrase
that it deals with . . Dr. Cremer's explanations are most lucidly set ouL'-Ctmirdtan.
'i is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this work to the student of the Greek
Testament . . The translation is accurate and idiomatic, and the additions to the
later edition are considerable and important.'— CAMrcABeKs. ,,,•,,• *
'We cannot find an important word in our Greek New Testament which is not
discussed with a fulness and discrimination which leaves nothing to he desired. -
Nonconformist.
In demy 8vo, price 9s.,
GREEK AND ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT.
By Prof. EDWAED EOBINSON, D.D.
•We reeard this Lexicon as a valuable addition to philological science and ou the
whole! tlTblf Lexicon ^von the Ne^ Testament which a student could purchase.'-
baptist Magazine.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Just published, in demy Sco, price 10s. 6d.,
THE THEORY OF MORALS.
By PAUL JANET, Member of the Institute, Paris.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION.
CONTENTS.— Book I. :— Pleasure and Good— Good and Law -The Principle^ of
Excellence, or of Perfection — The Principle of Happineee- Impersonal Goods— The
True, the Good, and the Beautiful— Absolute Good. Book II. :— Nature and Basis
of the Moral Law— Good and Duty— Definite and Indefinite Duties— Bight and Duty —
Division of Duties— Goufliot of Dutiee. Book III. :— The Moral Consciousness- Moral
Intention— Moral Probabilisni— Universality of Moral Principles- The Moral Sentiment
— Liberty— Kant's Theory of Liberty— Virtue — Moral Progress — Sin — Merit and
Demerit, the Sanctions of the Moral Law — Religion.
' As remarkable for the force and beauty of its form of expression as for its vast and
varied learning, its philosophical acumen, and its uniform attitude of reverence toward
religious and moral problems of the most transcendent interest to mankind.' — Literary
World.
' This book Is really a valuable addition to tho literature of the subject. . . . Let
the student of morals and religion read it for himself. It is pleasant reading, aud the
translation seems to us in every respect admirable.' — Watchman.
By the same Author.
In One Volume, 8vo, Second Edition, price 12s.,
FINAL CAUSES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION'
By WILLIAM AFFLECK, B.D.
CONTENTS.- Prkliminary Chapter- The Problem. Book I.— The Law of
Finality. Book II. — The i'irst Cause of Finality. Appesdix.
^This very learned, accurate, and, within its prescribed limits, exhaustive work. . . .
The book as a whole abounds in matter of the highest interest, and is a model of learn-
ing and iudicious treatment.' — Guardian,
'A great contribution to the literature of this subject. M. Janet has mastered the
conditions of the problem, is at home in the literature of science and philosophy, and hae
that faculty of felicitous expression which makes French books of the highest class such
delightful reading ; ... in clearness, vigour, and depth it has been seldom equalled, and
more seldom excelled, in philosophical literature.' — Spectator.
' A wealth of scientific knowledge and a logical acumen which will win the admiration
of every reader.' — Church Quarterly Review.
In demy %vo, price 10s. 6rf.,
THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF MAN.
{SEVENTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.)
■ By JOHK LAIDLAW, D.D.,
Professor of Systematic Theology, New College, Edinburgh.
'An important and valuable contribution to the discussion of the anthropology of the
sacred writings, perhaps the most considerable that has appeared in our own language.'
— Lit&rary Churchman.
'The work is a thoughtful contribution to a subject which must always have deep
interest for the devout student of the Bible.' — British Quarterly Remew.
' Dr. Laidlaw's work is scholarly, able, interesting, and valuable. . . . Thoughtful
and devout minds will find much to stimulate, and not a little to assist, their meditations
in this learned and, let us add, charmingly printed volume.' — Record
' On the whole, we take this to be the most sensible and reasonable statement of the
Biblical psychology of man we have met.' — Expositor,
T. and T. Clark s Publications.
PROFESSOR GODET'S WORKS.
In Three Volumes, 8vo, price 31s. 6cl.,
A COMMENTARY ON
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
By F. GODET, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, NEUCHATEL.
' Thia work forms one of the batile-flelds of modern inquiry, and ia itself so rich in
Bpiritual truth that it ie impoBBible to examine it too closely ; and we welcome thie treatit-e
from the pen of Dr. Godet. We have no more competent exegete, and thie new volume
ahowa all the learning and vivacity for which the Author is distinguished.' — Freeman.
In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.,
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.
CranglateB frnra tJje SjcnnB JFtencji ffiittion.
' Marked by clearnesB and good sense, it will be found to possees value and interest as
one of the most recent and copious works specially designed to illustrate this Gospel.' —
Guardian,
In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.,
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.
'We have looked through it with great care, and have been charmed not less by the
clearness and fervour of its evangelical principles than by the carefulness of its exegesis,
its fine touches of spiritual intuition, and ite appositenese of historical illustration.' —
Baptist Magazine.
In crown 8ro, Second Edition, price 6s.,
DEFENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
TRANSLATED BT THE
Hon. and Rev. Canon LYTTELTON, M.A.,
KECTOK OF HAGLEY.
' This volume is not unworthy of the great reputation which Profeesor Godet enjoys.
It shows the same breadth of reading and extent of learning as his previous works, and
the eanie power of eloquent utterance.' — Church Bells.
'Professor Godet is at once eo devoutly evangelical in his spirit, and so profoundly
intelligent in hie apprehension of truth, that we shall all welcome these contributions to
the study of much-debated sub jects with the utmost satisfaction.'— CAi-tgfe'am World.
In demy 8vo, Fourth Edition, price 10s. 6d.,
MODERN DOUBT AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF.
A Series of Apologetic Lectures addressed to Earnest
Seekers after Truth.
By THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D.D.,
UNIVERSITY PKEACHEB AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT BOSN.
Translated, with the Author's sanction, chiefly by the Rev. H. U. VVeitbrecht,
Ph.D., and Edited by the Kev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A.
' We recommend the volume ae one of the most valuable and important among recent
contributions to our apologetic literature. . ._. We are heartily thankful both to the
learned Author and to his translators.' — Guardian.
'We express our unfeigned admiration of the ability displayed in this work, and of
the snirit of deep piety which pervades it; and whilst we commend it to the careful
Ti^^usal of our reada-s, we heai-tily rejoice that in these days of reproach and blasphemy
scTable a champion has come forward to contend earnestly for the faith which was once
delivered to the aa.ints.''— Christian Observer.
Just published, in crown Swo, price 6s.,
OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY:
A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE.
By Eev. J. B. HEARD, M.A.
' We can promise all real students of Holy Scripture who have found their way out
of some of the woret of the scholastic byelanes and rate, and are striving to reach the
broad and firm high road that leads to the Eternal City, a real treat from the perusal of
these pages. Progressive theologians, who desire tn find " the old in the new, and the
new in the old," will be deeply grateful to Mr. Heard for this courageous and able
work.' — Christian World.
' Among the many excellent theological works, whether English or German, published
by Messrs. Clark, there are few that deserve more careful study than this book. ... It
cunnot fail to charm by its grace of Btyle, and to supply food for solid thought.' — Dublin
Express.
' We predict an earnest welcome for this volume. . . . We could wish that the principles
and sentiments of this book were widely diffused among Christian people, in all Churches.'
— Literary Wo7'ld.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Fifth Edition, in crown 8vo, price 6s.,
THE TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN:
SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.
Applied to Illiislrate and Explain the Doctrines of Original Sin, the New
Birth, the Disembodied State, and the Spiritual Body.
' The author has got a striking and consistent theory. Whether agreeing or disagree-
inpr with that theory, it is a book which any student of the Bible may read with pleasure.'
— Guardian.
' An elaborate, ingenious, and very able book.' — London Quarterly Eeview.
* The subject is discussed with much ability and learning, and the style is sprightly
and readable. It ie candid in its tone, and original both iu thought and illustration.' —
Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
Just published, in demy 8vo, price 9s.,
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
{NINTH SERIES OF THE CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.)
By Rev. GEO. SMEATON, D.D.,
Professor of Exegetioal Theology, New College, Edinburgh.
' A valuable monograph. . . . The masterly exposition of doctrifle given in these
lectures has been augmented in value by the wise references to current needs and
common misconceptions.' — British and Foreign Evangelical Rtview.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Second Edition, in demy ivo, price 10s. 6rf.,
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
AS TAUGHT BY CHRIST HIMSELF;
Or, The Sayings of Jesus Exegetically Expounded and Classified.
'We attach very great value to this seasonable and scholarly production. The idea
of the work is most happy, and the execution of it worthy of the idea. On a scheme
of truly Baconian exegetical induction, he presents us with a complete view of the
various positions or propositions which a full and sound doctrine of the atonement
embraces.' — British and Foreign Evangelical Heview.
' The plan of the book is admirable. A monograph and exegesis of our Lord's own
sayings on this greatest of subjects concerning Himself, must needs be valuable to all
ibeologians. And the execution is thorough and painstakiog — exhaustive as far as the
completeness of ran^e over these sayin2;s is concerned.' — Contemporary Review.
PUBLICATIONS OF
T. Sc T. C Xj J^ I^ lEC,
38 GEORGE STREET EDINBURGH.'
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
Adam (J., D.D.) — An Exposition of the Epistle of James. 8vo, 9s.
Ahlfeld (Dr.), etc. — The Voice from the Cross : Sermons on our
Lord's Passion hf Eminent Living Preachers of Germany. Cr. 8vo, price 5s.
Alexander (Prof. W. Lindsay) — System of Biblical Theology.
' Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Alexander (Dr. J. A.) — Commentary on Isaiah. Two vols. 8vo, 17s.
Ante-Nicene Christian Library — A Collection of all the Works
OF THE Fathers of the Christian Chttrch prior to the Council of
'NiCMA. Twenty- four vols. 8vo, Subscription price, £6, 6s.
Augustine's Works— Edited by Marcus Dods, D.D. Fifteen vols.
8vo, Subscription price, £S, 19s.
Bannerman (Prof.) — The Church of Christ. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Bannerman (Rev. D.D.) — The Doctrine of the Church. 8vo, 12s.
Baumgarten (Professor) — Apostolic History. Tliree vols. 8vo, 27s.
Beck (Dr.)— Outlines of Biblical Psychology. Crown 8vo, 4s.
Pastoral Theology in the New Testament. .Crown 8vo, 6s.
Bengel — Gnomon of the New Testament. With Original Notes,
Explanatory and Illustrative. Five vols. 8vo, Subscription price, 31s. 6d.
Cheaper Edition, the five volumes hound in three, 24s.
Besser's Christ the Life of the World. Price 6s.
Bible-Class Handbooks. Crown 8vo.
BiNNiE (Prof.)— The Church, Is. 6cl.
Brown (Principal)— The Epistle to the Romans, 2s.
Candlish (Prof.) — The Christian Sacraments, Is. 6d.
The Work of the Holy Spirit, Is. 6d.
Christian Doctrine of God. Is. 6d.
Davidson (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Hebrews, 2s. 6d. "
DoDS (Makcds, D.D.)— Post-Exilian Prophets, 2s. Book of Genesis, 2s.
Douglas (Principal)— Book of Joshua, Is. 6d. Book of Judges, Is. 3d.
Hamilton (T., D.D.)— Irish Presbyterian Church History, 2s.
Henderson (Archibald, M.A.)— Palestine, with Maps. The maps are by
Captain Conder, R. E., of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Price 2s. 6d.
Kilpatrick (T. B., B.D.)— Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature. Is. 6d.
Lindsay (Prof.)— St. Mark's Gospel, 2s. 6d.
St. Luke's Gospel, Part I., 2s. ; Part XL, Is. 3d.
The Reformation, 2s.
- The Acts of the Apostles, Two vols., Is. 6d. each.
Macgeegoe (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Galatians, Is. 6d.
Macpheuson (John, M.A.)— Presbyterianism, Is. 6d.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 2s.
■ The Sum of Saving Knowledge, Is. 6d.
MuEPHT (Prof.)— The Books of Chronicles, Is. 6d,
Smith (George, LL.D.)— A Short History oi missionB,_..B. ou.
Thomson (WD M.A.)— Christian Miracles and Conclusions of Science. 2s.
Walker (Noeman L., M.A.)-Scottish Church History, Is 6d.
Whyte (Alexander, D.D.)-The Shorter Catechism, 2s. 6d.
Bible-Class Primers. Paper covers, 6d. each ; free by post, 7d, In
SoirfPATON J D.D.)-Life of Paul. Ivebach (James, M.A.>-Life of Moses.
Patebson (Prof. J. A.)-Period of the Judges.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Bible-Class Primers — continued.
EoBSONfJoHN, CDO— Outlines of Protestant Missions. j r>i, • <-
SalXd (ProfO-Life of Peter. The Shorter Catechism, 3 Parts. Life of Chnst.
Smith rH W., D.C)— Outlines of Early Church History.
Thomson (P,M.A.)-Life of David. Valkbr(W M A.>_The Kings of Israel.
WrsTBREOTHAM (RATHER, M.A.)— Life and Reign of Solomon.
WiTHBKOW (Prof.)— The History of the Eeformation.
BlaiMe (Prof. W. G.)— The Preachers of Scotland from the 6th
TO THE 19th Cbntukt. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d..
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testasient. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Bowman (T., M.A.)— Easy and Complete Hebrew Course. 8vo.
Part I., 7s. 6d. ; Part II:, 10s. 6d. ,,-,■,
Briggs (Prof.)— Biblical Study: Its Principles, Methods, and
History. Second Edition, post 8vo, 7s. 6d,
American Presbyterianism. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Messianic Prophecy. Post Svo, 7s. 6d.
Brown (David, D.D.) — Christ's Second Coming: Will it be Pre-
Millennial ? Seventh Edition, crown Svo, 7s. 6d.
Bruce (A. B., D.D.)— The Training of the Twelve ; exhibiting. the
Twelve Disciples under Discipline for the Apostleshlp. 3rd Ed., Svo, 10s. 6d.
The Humiliation of Christ, in its Physical, Ethical, and
Ofia.cial Aspects. Second Edition, Svo, 10s. 6d.
Buchanan (Professor) — The Doctrine of Justification. Svo, 10s. 6d.
On Comfort in Affliction. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d.
On Improvement of Affliction. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d.
Bungener (Felix) — Rome and the Council in 19th Century. Cr.Svo,5s.
Calvin'slNSTiTUTESOF Christian Religion. (Translation.)2vols.8vo,14s.
Calvini Institutio Christianae ReUgionis. Curavit A. Tholuck.
Two vols. Svo, Subscription price, 14s.
CandHsh (Prof. J. S., D.D.) — The Kingdom of God, Biblically and
Historically Considered. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Caspari (C. E.) — A Chronological and Geographical Introduc-
tion TO THE Life of Christ. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Gaspers (A.)— The Footsteps of Christ. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d.
Cassel (Prof.) — Commentary on Esther. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Cave (Prof) — The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice. Svo, 12s.
An Introduction to Theology : Its Principles, its Branches,
its Results, and its Literature. Svo, 12s.
ChristUeb (Dr.)— Modern Doubt and Christian Belief. Apologetic
Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. Svo, IDs. 6d.
Cotterill — PeregRINUS Proteus : Clement to the Corinthians, etc. Svo, 12s.
Modern Criticism : Clement's Epistles to Virgins, etc. Svo, 5s.
Cremer (Professor) — Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testa-
ment Greek. Third Edition, with Supplement, demy 4to, 3Ss. SUPPLE-
MENT, separately, 14s.
Crippen (Eev. T. G.) — A Popular Introduction to the History
OF Christian Doctrine. Svo, 9s.
Cunningham (Principal)— Historical Theology. Eeview of the
Principal Doctrinal Discussions since the Apostolic Age. Two vols. Svo 2Is.
— — — Discussions on Church Principles. Svo, 10s 6d
Curtiss (Dr. S I.)_The Levitical Priests. Crown Svo, 5s.
NinSeen;;, c"-"-^~^"^ SeNSUALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE
-^^i^^~l.X=..Sl7^^-^a.^.^ With
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Delitzsch(Prof.)— NewCommentakyonGenesis. TwoVo1s.,8vo. Vol.1.
— . ppMMENTAEY pN JOB. TVo vols. 8vO, 21s. I'O-OW ready, 10a. 6d.
— OoMMENTAEY ON PsALMS. Three vdIs. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
• On the Proverbs of Solomon. Two vols, 8vo, 21s.
On THE Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Old Testament History of Redemption. Or. Svo, 4s. 6d.
-^ Commentary on Isaiah. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
■ ', ",, ., ■ On the Epistle to the Hebrews. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Doedes^MANUAL of New Testament Hekmeneutics. Cr. 8vo, 3s.
Bollinger (Dr.)— Hippolytus and Callisttjs ; or. The Eoman Church
in the First Half of the Third Century. 8to, 7s. 6d.
Domer (Professor)— History of the Development of the Doctrine
OF THB Pekson OF Cheist. Five vols. Svo, £2, 12s. 6d.
System of Cheistlan Doctrine. Four vols. Svo, £2, 2s.
System of Christian' Ethics. Svo, 14s.
Eadie (Professor) — Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to the
EpHBSiANSf Philippians, Colossians. New and Revised Editions, Edited
by ilev. Wm. Youko, M.A. Three vols. 8vo, 10s. 6d. each ; or set, 18s. netti
Ebrard (Dr. J. H. A.)— The Gospel History. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on the Epistles of St. John. Svo, 10s. 6d.
-Apologetics. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Elliott — On the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Svo, 6s.
Emesti — Biblical Interpretation of New Testament. Twovo1s.,8s.
Ewald (Heinrich) — Syntax of the Hebrew Language of the Old
- Testament. Svo, 8s. 6d.
Revelation : Its Nature and Record. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Old and New Testament Theology. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Fairbaim (Principal) — Typology of Scripture, viewed in connection
with the series of Divine Dispensations. Sixth Edition, Two vols. Svo, 21s.
The Revelation of Law in Scripture, Svo, 10s. 6d.
EzEKiEL AND THE Book OFrHis Prophecy. 4thEd.,8vo, 10s. 6d.
— Prophecy Viewed in its Distinctive Nature, its Special
Functions, and Pkoper Interpebtations. Second Edition, Svo, 10s. 6d.
New Testament Hermeneutical Manual. Svo, 10s. 6d.
— r- The Pastoral Epistles, The Greek Text and Translation.
With Introduction, Expository Notes, and Dissertations. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Pastoral Theology : A Treatise on the. Office and Duties of
the Christian Pastor. With a Memoir of the Author. Crown Svo,,
Forbes (Prof.) — Symmetrical Structure of Scripture. Svo.Ss. 6d.
. Analytical Commentary on the Romans. Svo, 10s. 6d.
-^^ r- Studies in the Book of Psalms. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Prank (Prof.F. H.)— System of Christian Evidence. Svo, 10s. 6d.
G-ebhardt (H.) — The Doctrine of the Apocalypse, and its Relation
TO THE Doctrine of the Gospel and Epistles of John. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Grerlach^ — Commentary. on the Pentateuch. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Gieseler(Dr. J. C.L.) — Ecclesiastical History. Four vols. Svo, £2, 2s.
Crifford (Canon) — ^Voices of the Prophets. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Given (Kev. Prof J. J.)— The Truths of Scripture in connection
WITH Revelation, Inspiration, and' the Canon. Svo, 6s.
Glasgow (Prof.)— Apocalypse Translated and Expounded.
Svo, lOs. 6d.
Gloag (Paton J., D.D.)— A Critical and Exegetical. Commentary
ON THB Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
._ The Messianic Prophecies. Crown Svo, price 7s. 6d.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Gloag(P. J.jD.D.) — Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. 8vo, 12s.
- — '■ — Introduction to the Catholic Epistles. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Exegetical Studies. Crown 8vo, 5s.
Godet (Prof.) — Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols. Bvo, 21s.
■ Commentary on St. John's Gospel. Three vols. Bvo, 31s, 6d.
■ Commentary ON Epistle TO THE Eomans. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Commentary ON 1st Epistle TO Corinthians. 2vo1s.8vo, 21s.
Lectures in Defence or the Christian Faith. Cr. 8vo, 6s.
Goebel (Siegfried) — The Parables of Jesus. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Gotthold's Emblems ; or, Invisible Things Understood by Things
THAT AEE MADE. Crown 8vo, 5s.
Grimm's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Trans-
lated, Revised, and Enlarged by Joseph H. Thatee, D.D. Demy 4to, 36s.
Guyot (Arnold, LL.D.) — Creation; or, The Biblical Cosmogony in the
Light of Modern Science. "Witli Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 5s. 6d. '
Hagenbach (Dr. K.E.)— History of Doctrines. Three vols. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
— History of the Eeformation. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
HaU (Rev. Newman, LL.B.)— The Lord's Prayer. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Hamilton (T., D.D.) — Beyond the Stars; or, Heaven, its Inhabitants,
Occupations, and Life. Crown 8vo, 5s.
Harless (Dr. 0. A.) — System of Christian Ethics. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Harris (Rev. S., D.D.)— The Philosophical Basis of Theism. 8vo, 1 2s.
The Self-Revelation of God. 8vo, 12s.
Haupt (Erich)— The First Epistle of St. John. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Havemick (H. A. Ch.)— Introduction to Old Testament. 10s. 6d.
Heard (Rev. J. B., M.A.)— The Tripartite Nature of Man— Spirit,
SoTJL, AND Body. Fifth Edition, crown 8vo, 6s.
— — — Old AND New Theology. A Constructive Critique. Cr.8vo,6s.
Hefele (Bishop)— A History of the Councils of the Church
1 -^Vi" ^"- ^?,^ ' ^°^- "■' ^■'^- 326 to 429. Vol. TIL, a.d. 431 to the
close of the Council of Chalcedon, 451. 8 vo, 12s. each.
Hengstenberg (Professor)— Commentary on Psalms. 3 vols. 8vo, 33s.
Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Treatises on
the Song of Solomon, Job, and on Isaiah, etc. 8vo, 9s.
The Prophecies of Ezekiel Elucidated. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
- The Genuineness of Daniel, etc. 8vo, 12s.
- History of the Kingdom of God. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
- Christology of the Old Testament. Four vols. 8vo, £2, 2s.
On the Gospel of St. John. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Herzog— Encyclopedia of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and
PKACTiCAt Theology. Based on the Real-Enaiklopadie of Herzoq, Plitt
andHauck. Edited by Prof. Schaff, D.D. In Three vols., price 24s. each.
Encyclopedia op Living Divines, btc, op all Denominations
IN EuKOPE AND America. (SupplementtoHerzog'sEncyclopcedia.) Imp;8vo,8s,
Hutchison (John, D.D.)— Commentary on Thessalonians. 8vo, 9s.
Commentary on Philippians. 8vo, 7s. 6d
Janet (Paul) Final Causes. By Paul Janet, Member of the In-
^*'*:?,*'- Translated from the French. Second Edition, demy 8vo, 12s.
— — - The Theory of Morals. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d
loTed.*^ ■ ^•' I'-I'-)-C0MMENTARY ON FlRST PeiER. SvO,
S.'if °^-^?''^oso™iCAL Essays. Fcap. 8vo, 5s.
itant— The Metaphysic OF Ethics. Crown 8 vo 6s
Philosophy of Law. Tran.. l>v W. Hastie, B.D. Cr 8vo 5s
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Keil (Prof.)— Commentary on the Pentateuch. 3 vols. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Huth. 8vo, 10s.-6d.
■ Commentary on the Books' of Samuel. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on the Books of Kings. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on Chronicles. Svo, 10s. 6d.
rr- Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on Jeremiah. Two vols. 8vo, 21s..'
'■ Commentary on Ezekiel. Two vols. Svo, 21s. ■
^ Commentary ON Daniel. Svo, 10s. 6d.
On the Books of the Minor Prophets. Two vols' Svo, 21s.
Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the
Canonical ScSiptukes of the Old Testament. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Handbook of Biblical Archeology,. Two, vols. Svo, 21s.
Keymer (Rev. N., M. A.)— Notes on Genesis. Crown Svo, Is. 6d.
Killen (Prof.)— The Old Catholic Church ; or, The History, Doc-
trine, Worship, and Polity of the Christians, traced to a.d. 755. Svo, 9s.
The IgnatianEpistles Entirely Spurious. Cr. Svo, 2s. 6d.
Konig (Dr. F. B.)— The Eeligious History of Israel. A Discussion
of the Chief Problems in Old Testament History' as opposed to the
Development Theorists. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Knimmacher (Dr. F. W.) — The Suffering Saviour ; or, Meditations
on the Last Days of the Sufferings of Christ. Eighth Edition, crown Svo, 6s.
David, the King of Israel : A Portrait drawn from Bible
History and the Book of Psalms. Second Edition, crown Svo, 6s.
Autobiography. Crown Svo, 6s.
Eiirtz (Prof.) — Handbook of Church History. Two vols. Svo, 15s.
History of the Old Covenant. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Ladd (Prof. G. T.) — The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture : A
Critical, Historical, and Dogmatic Inquiry into the Origin aid Nature of the
Old and New Testaments. Two vols. Svo, 1600 p'p., 24s.
Laidlaw (Prof.) — The Bible Doctrine of Man. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Lange (J. P., D.D.) — The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Edited,_
;with additional Notes, by Maecus Dods, D.D.- .Second Edition, in Four'
vols. Svo, Suljscription price 28s.
— Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. Edited
by Philip Schapf, D.D. Old Testament, 14 vols. ; New Testament, 10
vols. ; Apocktpha, 1 vol. Subscription price, nett, 15s. each.
On St. Matthew and St. Mark. Three vols; Svo, 31s. 6d.
On the Gospel of St. Luke. Two vols. Svo, ISs.
On the Gospel of St. JofiN. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Lechler (Prof. G. V., D.D.)— The Apostolic and Post- Apostolic
Times. Their Diversity and Unity in Life and Doctrine. 2 vols. cr. Svo, 16s.
Lehmann (Pastor) — Scenes from the Life of Jesus. Cr. Svo, 3s. 6d.
Lewis (Tayler, LL.D.) — The Six Days of Creation. ' Cr. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Lisco (F. 'G.) — Parables of Jesus Explained. Fcap. Svo, 5s. '
Lotze (Hermann) — Microcosmus : An Essay, concerning Man and his
relation to the World. Second Edition, two vols. Svo (1450 pages), 36s. |
Luthardt, Kahnis, and Bruckner — The Church. Crown Svo, 5s.
liiithkrdt (Prof )^St. John the Author of theFourth Gospel. 7s. 6d.
: — St. John's Gospel Described and Explained a,ccording
TO ITS Peculiar Chakacteb. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d. , . .
, Apologetic Lectures on the Fundamental {Sixth
Edition), Saving [Fifih Edition), Mokal Tkuths of, Chkistianitt (Third
Edition). Three vols, crown Svo, 6s. each.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Macdonald — Introduction to Pentateuch. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
: The Creation and Fall. 8vo, 12s.
M'Lauchlan (T., D.D., LL.D.)— The Early Scottish Church. To
the Middle of the Twelfth Century. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Mair (A., D.D.)— Studies in the Christian Evidences. Cr. 8vo, 6s.
Martensen (Bishop) — Christian Dogmatics : A Compendium of the
Doctrines of Christianity. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Christian Ethics. (General Ethics.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Christian Ethics. (Individual Ethics.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Christian Ethics. (Soclajl Ethics.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Matheson (Geo., D.D.)— Growth of the Spirit of Christianity, from
the First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Aids to the Study of German Theology. 3rd Edition, 4s. 6d.
Meyer (Dr.) — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on St.
Matthew's Gospel. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
On Mark and Luke. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On St. John's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On the Epistle to the Eomans. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Corinthians. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Galatians. 8vo, lOs. 6d.
On Ephesians and Philemon. One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
On Philippians and Colossians. One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
On Thessalonians. {Br. Liinemann.) One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
The Pastoral Epistles. (Br. Huther.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
The Epistle TO THE Hebrews. {Br. Liinemann.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
St. James' and St. John's Epistles. {Huther.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Peter and Jude. {Br. Huther.) One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Michie (Charles, M.A.) — Bible Words and Phrases. 18mo, Is.
Monrad (Dr. D. G.) — 'The World of Prayer. Crown Svo, 4s. 6d.
Morgan (J., D.D.) — Scripture Testimony to the Holy Spirit. 7s. 6d.
Exposition of the First Epistle of John. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Milller (Dr. Jtdius) — The Christian Doctrine of Sin. An entirely
New Translation from the Fifth German Edition. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Murphy (Professor) — Commentary on the Psalms. 8vo, 12s.
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Exodus. 9s.
Naville (Ernest) — The Problem of Evil. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d.
The Christ. Translated by Rev. T. J. Despr^s. Cr.8vo,4s.6d.
Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical.
Translated by Rev. Henry Downton, M.A. Crown Svo, 5s.
Nicoll (W. B,, M.A.)— The Incarnate Saviour: A Life of Jesus
Christ. Crown Svo, 6s.
Neander (Dr.) — General History of the Christian Religion and
Church. Nine vols. Svo, £3, 7s. 6d.
Novalis— Hymns and Thoughts on Religion. Crown 8vo, 4s.
Oehler (Prof.) — Theology of the Old Testament. 2 vols. 8vo, 21s.
Oosterzee (Dr. Van)— The Year of Salvation. Words of Life for
Every Day. A Book of Household Devotion. Two vols. Svo, 6s. each.
Moses : A Biblical Study. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Olshausen (Dr. H.) — Biblical Commentary on the Gospels and
Acts. Four vols. Svo, £2, 2s. Cheaper Edition, four vols, crown Svo, 24s.
Romans. One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Olshausen (Dr. H.) — Corinthians. One vol. 8vo, 9s.
Philippians, Titus, and First Timothy. One vol. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Orelli — Old Testament Prophecy regarding the Consummation
OF THE Kingdom of God. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Owen (Dr. John) — Works. Best and only Complete Edition. Edited
by Rev. Dr. Goold. Twenty-four vols. 8vo, Subacription price, £4, 4s.
The ' Hebrews ' may be bad separately, in Seven vols., £2, 2s. nett.
Philippi (F. A. ) — Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. From
the Third Improved Edition, by Rev. Profosaor Banks. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Kper — Lives of Leaders of Church Universal. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Popular Commentary on the New Testament. Edited by Philip
ScHAFF, D.D. With Illustrations and Maps. Vol. I. — The Synoptical
Gospels. Vol. II. — St. John's Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles.,
Vol. III. — Romans to Philemon. Vol. IV. — Hbbbews to Revelation.
In Four vols, imperial Svo, 12s. 6d. each.
Pressens6 (Edward de) — The Eedeemer : Discourses. Crown Svo, 6s.
Piiajer (Bemhard) — History of the Christian Philosophy of
Religion fkom the Reformation to Kant. Svo, 16s.
Eabiger (Prof.)^ENCYCLOP^DiA of Theology. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Rainy (Principal) — Delivery and Development of Christian
DooTKiNE. {The Fifth Series of the Cunningham Lectures.) Svo, lOs. 6d.
Reusch (Prof.) — Nature and the Bible : Lectures on the Mosaic
History of Creation in Relation to Natural Science. Two vols, Svo, 2l3.
Reuss (Professor) — History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New
Testament. 640 pp. Svo, 15s.
Riehm (Dr. E.) — Messianic Prophecy : Its Origin, Historical Charac-
ter, and Relation to New Testament Fulfilment. Crown Svo, 5s.
Ritter (Carl) — The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the
SiNAiTic Peninsula. Four vols. Svo, 263.
Robinson (Rev. S., D.D.) — Discourses on Eedemption. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Robinson (Edward, D.D.) — Greek and English Lexicon of the
New Testament. Svo, 9s.
Rothe (Prof )^Sermons for the Christlan Year. Or. Svo, is. 6d.
Saisset — Manual of Modern Pantheism. Two vols. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Sartorius (Dr. E.) — Doctrine of Divine Love. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Schaff (Professor) — History of the Christian Church. (New
Edition, thoroughly Revised and Enlarged. )
Apostolic Christianity, a.d. 1-100. 2 vols. Ex. Svo, 2I3.
Ante-Nicene Christianity, a. d. 100-325. 2 vols. Ex. Svo, 2is.
PosT-NiCENE Christianity, A.D. 325-600. 2 vols. Ex. Svo, 2is.
Medieval Christianity, A.D. 590-1073. 2 vols. Ex.Svo,2is.
[Completion of this Period, 1073-1517, in preparation).
Modern Christianity, A.D. 1517-1530. 2 vols. Ex. Svo, 2is.
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The Didach^
and Kindred Documents in the Original. Second Edition, ex. Svo,
Schmid's Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Schiirer (Prof.) — History of the New Testament Times. Div. II.
Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Scott (Jas., M.A., D.D.) — Principles of New Testament Quotation
Established and Applied to Biblical Ckiticism. Cr. Svo, 2nd Edit., 43.
Shedd — History of Christian Doctrine. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
. Sermons to the Natural Man. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Sermons to the Spiritual Man. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Simon (Rev. Prof. D. W.) — The Bible; An Outgrowth of Theocratic
Life. Crown Svo, 4s. 6d.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Smeaton (Professor)— The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught
BY Christ Himself. Second Edition, 8vo, 10s. 6d.
On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 8vo, 9s.
Smith (Professor Thos., D.D.)— Medieval Missions. Or. 8vo, 4s. 6d.
Stalker (Rev. Jas., M.A.)— The Life of Jesus Christ. New Edition,
in larger Type. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Life of St. Paul. Large Type Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Stanton (V. H., M.A.).— The Jewish and The Christian MESSLiH.
A Study in the Earliest History of Christianity. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Steinmeyer (Dr. F. L.) — The Miracles of Our Lord : Examined in
their relation to Modern Criticism. 8to, 7s. 6d.
The History of the Passion and Resukrection of our
Lord, considered in the Light of Modern Criticism. 8to, 1 Os. 6d.
Stevenson (Mrs.) — The Symbolic Parables : The Predictions of the
Apocalypse in relation to the General Truths of Scripture. Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Steward (Hev. G.) — Mediatorial Sovereignty : TheMystery of Christ
and the Eevdation of the Old and Wew Testaments. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
The Argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Svo, 10s.6d.
Stier (Dr. Rudolph) — On the Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight
vols. Svo, Subscription price of £2, 2s. Separate volumes, price 10s. 6d.
The Words of the Eisen Saviour, and Commentary on
THE Epistle of St. James. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Tholuck (Prof. ) — The Epistle to the Romans. Two vols. fcap. Svo, Ss.
Light from the Cross. Third Edition, crown Svo, 5s.
Tophel (Pastor G.) — The Work of the Holy Spirit. Cr. Svo, 2s. 6d.
TJhlhorn(G.) — Christian CharityintheAncientChurch. Cr. Svo, 6s.
TJllmann (Dr. Carl) — Reformers before the Reformation, princi-
pally in Germany and the Netherlands. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
The Sinlessness of Jesus : An Evidence for Christianity.
Fourth Edition, crown 8vo, 6s.
Urwlck (W., M.A.)— The Servant of Jehovah : A Commentary
upon Isaiah Hi. 13-liii. 12; with Dissertations upon Isaiah xl.-lxvi. 8vo, 63.
Vinet (Professor) — Studies on Blaise Pascal. Crown Svo, 5s.
Pastoral Theology. Second Edition, post Svo, 3s. 6d.
Walker (J., D.D.)— Theology and Theologians of Scotland.
New Edition, crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Watts (Professor) — The Newer Criticism and the Analogy of
THE Faith. Third Edition, crown 8vo, 5s.
The Reign of Causality : A Vindication of the Scientific
Principle of Telic Causal EflBciency. Crown Svo. 6s.
Weiss(Prof) — Biblical Theology of NewTestament. 2 vols. Svo 21s.
Life of Christ. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
White (Rev. M.) — Symbolical Numbers of ScRrPTURE. Cr. Svo, 4s.
Williams — Select Vocabulary of Latin Etymology. Fcap. svo, is'. 6d.'
Winer (Dr. G. B.)— A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testa-
ment Greek, regarded as the Basis of New Testament Exegesis. Third
Edition, edited hy "W. F. Moulton, D.D. Ninth English Edition, Svo, 15s.
TheDoCTRINESANdCoNFESSIONSOfChRISTENDOM. Svo,10s.6d.
Witherow(Prof . T. ,D. D. ) —The Form of the Christian Temple. 8vo, 10/6.
Workman (Prof. G. C.)— The Text of JeremiaS; or, A Critical Investi-
gation of the Greek and Hehrew with the Variations in the LXX Eetrans-
lated into the Original, and Explained. Post Svo, 9s.
Wright (C. H., D.D.)— Biblical Essays. Crown Svo, 5s.
Wuttke (Professor) — Christian Ethics. Two vols. Svo, 12s. 6d.
Bi
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
PRESENTET1 BY
ALFRED C. BARNES.
NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM.
fS'L'] JIIlVEKStTV I tBBjpv
3 1924 070 685 882
Cornell University
Library
The original of this bool< is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070685882
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In crown 8ro, Fourth Edition, price 6s.,
THE METAPHYSIC OF ETHICS.
By IMMANUEL KANT.
Translated by J. "W". SEMPLE, Advocate.
Edited, with Introduction, by Peofessoe H. CALDERWOOD, D.D., LL.D.
Summary of Contents: — List of Kant's Works. — Preface. — Introduction. Boole I.
Groundwork of tlie Metaphysic of Ethics. Book II. Inquiry into the d priori
Operations of the Will. Book III. Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Jurisprudence — Introduction to the Metaphysic of Law — Appendix to the Intro-
duction of Law EquiTOcal — General Introduction of Jurisprudence. Book IV.
The Metaphysical Elements of the Doctrine of Virtue — Elementology of Ethics.
(1) On the Duties owed by Man to himself ; (2) Of the Duties owed to others.
Methodology of Ethics.
'Mr. Semple's translation has been accepted by scholars as a real success.' — Co!i-
iemporary Review.
Just published, in crown 8vo, price 5s.,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW.
An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the
Science of Right.
By IMMANUEL KANT.
Translated feom the German by W. HASTIE, B.D.
'Mr. Hastie has done a valuable service to the study of jurisprudence by the
production of tliis work. His translation is admirably done, and his introductory
chapter gires all the information necessary to enable a student to approach the main
body of the work with sympathy and intelligence. The work supplies a defect hitherto
regretted in the literature of jurisprudence of this country.' — Scotsman.
Recently puUisTied, in demy 8vo, price 16s.,
HISTORY OF THE
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
FROM THE REFORMATION TO KANT
By BEENHAED PUNJEE.
Tkanslated from the German by W. HASTIE, B.D.
With a Preface by Professor FLINT, D.D., LL.D.
' The merits of Piinjer's history are not difficult to discover ; on the contrary, they
are of the kind which, as the French say, sautent aux yeux. The language is almost
everywhere as plain and easy to apprehend as, considering the nature of the matter
conveved it could he made. The style is simple, natural, and direct ; the only sort of
atvle anpropriate to the subject. The amount of information imparted is most exten-
sive and strictly relevant. Nowhere else will a student get nearly so much knowledge
as to what has been thought and written, within the area of Chnstendom, on the philo-
sophy of religion. He must be an excessively learned man m that department who has
nothine-toleamfromthisbook.'— £'a;«rac«/TOm<Ae Pre/ace. , ., , .
' A book of wide and most detaOed research, showing true philosophic grasp.'—
Professor H. Caldeewood. . ., .. . ,,- , . ^ , . ,.
'We consider Dr. Piinjer's work the most valuable contribution to this subject which
has vet appeared.'— CtereA Bells. i .. i , .j-i
'Remarkable for the extent of ground covered, for systematic arrangement, lucidity
of expression, and judicial impartiality.'— ioneiom Quarterly Review.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
nF.UTZSCH-S NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS.
Now complete, in Two Vols., 8to, price 21s.,
A NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS.
By Pkofessor FEANZ DELITZSCH, D.D., Leipzig.
Translated by SOPHIA TAYLOR.
j^QTE. Wlijle preparing the translation, the translator has heen favoured hy
Prof. Dolitzsch mth such numerous improvements and additions, that it may
be regarded as made from a revised version of the New Commentary on Genesis.
' Thirty-five years have elapsed since Prof. Delitzsch's Commentary on Genesis first
appoarod; fifteen years since tho fourth edition was published in 1872. Ever in the van
of historical and philological research, the venerahle author now comes forward with
another fresli edition in which he incorporates what fifteen years have achieved for
illustration and criticism of the text of Genesis.. . . . We congratulate Prof. Delitzsch
on this now edition, and trust that it may appear before long in an English dress. By
it, not less than by his other commentaries, he has earned tho gratitude of every lover
of biblical science, and wo shall bo surprised if, in the future, many do not acknowledge
that they have found in it a welcome help and guide.' — Professor S. K. Dkiveb, in The
Academy.
' Every reader of tboological and, we may add, of missionary literature, knows that
Ili(> cause of Christ has no stouter cliampion living than the aged Professor at Leipzig.
Tho present work at onco takoe its place as by far the most learned Commentary on
Genesis existing in (ho English and, probably, in any language. It is marked, like all
others of tho author's writings, by sn tmdercurrent of deep spirituality which sgain and
again comes to tho surface in a full wave of enthusiastic utterance.' — The Record.
' Wo wish it were in our power to follow in detail the contents of Dr. DeUtzsch's most
interesting introduction, snd to give specimens of the admirable, concise, and lucid
notes in hie exposition ; but we have said enough to show our readers our high estimate
of tho value of the work.' — Church Bells.
' The work of a reverent mind and a sincere believer, and not seldom there are touches
of great beauty and of spiritual insight in it.' — Guardian.
Just puUished, in demy 8vo, price 10s. &d.
THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH.
Expounded by De. C. VOK OEELLI, Basel
AUTnOK OF ' OLD TESTAMENT PBOPHEOY ' BTQ '
Translated by Professor J. s. BANKS
Note.— This work is part of a 'Compendious Commentary' ou the wl 1
Scripture, by different writers, now appearing under the editorshin „7 ?.
Strack of Berlin aud 0. Zcickler of Greifswald. The plan of the co
embraces a division of the book into sections according to the sub' °'"'^°*'*''y
regard to the chapters, a careful translation, an exposition of eachLcT-"^""*
paragraph with all necessary illustrative information, and footnotes whi v,°''-°'"
suggested new readings and more detailed historical and grammatical crit ^'^^
CLARK'S
FOREIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBEAEY.
FOUETH SERIES.
YOL. XL.
JSnl on tl)t 33ropIj«u3 of 35e«mtaS.
VOL. L
EDIKBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38, GEOEGE STEEET.
1889.
"hr
PRINTED BY MOBRISOK ASD GIBB,
FOR
T. k T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, . . HAMILTON', ADAilS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, . OEOaOE HERBERT.
NEW VORK, . . aCRIBNER AND WELFORD.
BIBLICAL COMMENTARY
ON
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
BY
C. E. KEIL, D.D., AND F. DELITZSCH, D.D..
PROFESSORS OF THEOLOGY.
THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH,
BY
0. F. KEIL, D.D. .
VOL. I.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BT
DAVID PATEICK, M.A., B.D.
EDIlSrBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38, GEOEGE STEEET.
1889.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGB
§ 1. The Times of Jeeemiah, ..... 1
§ 2. The Person of the Prophet, . . . . .11
§ 3. The Book of the Prophecies of Jeeemiah, ... 21
§ 4. The Genuineness of the Book and the Integrity of the
Masoeetic Text, ...... 30
EXPOSITION.
Chap. i. — Heading. Call and Consecration of Jeresiiah to be
Prophet, ....... 37
I. General Admonitions and Reproofs BELONGme to the Time
OF Josiah. — Chap, ii.-xxii., ... 47
Chap. ii. 1-iii. 6. — The Love and Faithfulness of the Lord, and
Israel's Disloyalty and Idolatry, .... 49
Chap. iii. 6-vi. 30. — The Rejection of Impenitent Israel, . 81
Chap, yii.-x. — The Vanity of putting trust in the Temple and in
the Sacrificial Service, and the "Way to Safety and Life, . 150
Chap, xi.-xiti. — Judah's Faithlessness to Covenant Obligations,
and the Conseq[uences thereof, . . . 208
Chap, xiv.-xvii. — The Word concerning the Droughts, . . 242
Chap, xviii.-xx.— The Figures of the Potter's Clay and of the
Earthen Pitcher, ...... 292
vili CONTENTS.
11. Special Phedictions of the Judgment to be accomplished
BY THE Chaldeans, and of the Messianic Salvation.—
Chap, xxi.-xxsiil, ...•••
323
A. The Predictions of Judgment on Judah and the Nations. —
Chap, xxi.-xxix., ...... 323
Chap. xxi.-xxiv. — The Shepherds and Leaders of the People, 324
Chap. XXV. — The Judgment on Judah and all Nations, . 369
Chap. xxvi. — Accusation and Acquittal of Jeremiah in the
matter of his prophesying Threatenings. The Prophet
Urijah put to death, ..... 388
Chap, xxvii.— xxix. — The Yoke of Babylon upon Judah and the
neighbouring Peoples, . • . . 395
THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. THE TI3IES OF JEEEMIAH.
|T was in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah,
^J B.C. 629, that Jeremiah was called to be a prophet.
^1 At that time the kingdom of Judah enjoyed un-
broken peace. Since the miraculous destruction of
Sennacherib's host before the gates of Jerusalem in the four-
teenth year of Hezekiah's reign, B.C. 714, Judah had no longer
had much to fear from the imperial power of Assyria. The
reverse then sustained before Jerusalem, just eight years after
the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel, had terribly crushed
the might of the great empire. It was but a few years after
that disaster till the Medes under Deioces asserted their inde-
pendence against Assyria ; and the Babylonians too, though
soon reduced to subjection again, rose in insurrection against
Sennacherib. Sennacherib's energetic son and successor Esar-
haddon did indeed succeed in re-establishing for a time the
tottering throne. While holding Babylon, Elam, Susa, and
Persia to their allegiance, he restored the ascendency of the
empire in the western provinces, and brought Lower Syria,
the districts of Syria that lay on the sea coast, under the
Assyrian yoke. But the rulers who succeeded him, Samuges
and the second Sardanapalus, were wholly unable to offer any
effective resistance to the growing power of the Medes, or to
check the steady decline of the once so mighty empire. Cf. M.
Duncker, Gescli. des Alterth. i. S. 707 ff. of 3 Aufl. Under
Esarhaddon an Assyrian marauding army again made an inroad
into Judah, and carried King Manasseh captive to Babylon ;
VOL. I. A
2 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
but, under what circumstances we know not, he soon regained
his freedom, and was permitted to return to Jerusalem and
remount his throne (2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-13). From this time
forward the Assyrians appeared no more in Judah. Nor did
it seem as if Judah had any danger to apprehend from Egypt,
the great southern empire ; for the power of Egypt had been
greatly weakened by intestine dissensions and civil wars. It is
true that Psammetichus, after the overthrow of the dodecarchy,
began to raise Egypt's head amongst the nations once more, and
to extend his sway beyond the boundaries of the country ; but
we learn much as to his success in this direction from the state-
ment of Herodotus (ii. 157), that the capture of the Philistine
city of Ashdod was not accomplished until after a twenty-nine
years' siege. Even if, with Duncker, we refer the length of
time here mentioned to the total duration of the war against the
Philistines, we are yet enabled clearly to see that Egypt had
not then so far recovered her former might as to be able to
menace the kingdom of Judah with destruction, had Judah but
faithfully adhered to the Lord its God, and in Him sought its
strength. This, unhappily, Judah utterly failed to do, notwith-
standing all the zeal wherewith the godly King Josiah. laboured
to secure for his kingdom that foremost element of its strength.
In the eighth year of his reign, " while he was yet youn","
i.e. when but a lad of sixteen years of age, he began to seek
the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year of his
reign he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high
places and Astartes, and the carved and molten images (2 Chron.
xxxiv. 3). He carried on the work of reforming the public
worship without intermission, until every public trace of idolatry
was removed, and the lawful worship of Jahveh was re-estab-
lished. In the eighteenth year of his reign, upon occasion of
some repairs in the temple, the book of the law of Moses was
discovered there, was brought and read before him. Deeply
agitated by the curses with which the transgressors of the law-
were threatened, he then, together with the elders of Judah
and the people itself, solemnly renewed the covenant with the
Lord. To set a seal upon the renewal of the covenant, he
instituted a passover, to which not only all Judah was invited
but also all remnants of the ten tribes that had been left behind
INTPwODUCTION. 3
in the land of- Israel (2 Kings sxii. 3-xxiii. 24; 2 Cliron. xxxiv.
4-xxxv. 19). To Josiah there is given in 2 Kings xxiii. 25 the
testimony that like nnto him there was no king before him, that
turned to Jahveh with all his heart, all his soul, and all his
might, according to all the law of Moses ; yet this most godly
of all the kings of Judah was unable to heal the mischiefs which
his predecessors Manasseh and Amon had by their wicked
government created, or to crush the germs of spiritual and
moral corruption which could not fail to bring about the ruin
of the kingdom. And so the account of Josiah's reign and of
his efforts towards the revival of the worship of Jahveh, given
in 2 Kings xxiii. 26, is concluded: "Yet Jahveh ceased not
from His great wrath wherewith He was kindled against Judah,
because of all the provocations wherewith Manasseh provoked
Him ; and Jahveh said : Judah also will I put away from my
face as I have put away Israel, and will cast off this city which
I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said. My
name shall dwell there."
The kingdom of Israel had come to utter ruin in consequence
of its apostasy from the Lord its God, and on account of the
calf-worship which had been established by Jeroboam, the
founder of the kingdom, and to which, from political motives, all
his successors adhered. The history of Judah too is summed
up in a perpetual alternation of apostasy from the Lord and
return to Him. As early as the time of heathen-hearted Ahaz
idolatry had raised itself to all but unbounded ascendency-; and
through the untheocratic policy of this wicked king, Judah had
sunk into a dependency of Assyria. It would have shared the
fate of the sister kingdom even then, had not the accession of
Hezekiah, Ahaz's godly son, brought about a return to the
faithful covenant God. The reformation then inaugurated not
only turned aside the impending ruin, but converted this very
ruin into a glorious deliverance such as Israel had not seen since
its exodus from Egypt. The marvellous overthrow of the vast
Assyrian host at the very gates of Jerusalem, wrought by the
angel of the Lord in one night by means of a sore pestilence,
abundantly testified that Judah, despite its littleness and in-
considerable earthly strength, might have been able to hold its
own against all the onsets of the great empire, if it had only
4 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
kept true to the covenant God and looked for its support from
His almighty hand alone. But the repentant loyalty to tiie
faithful and almighty God of the covenant hardly lasted until
Hezekiah's death. The heathen party amongst the people
gained again the upper hand under Hezekiah's son Manasseh,
who ascended the throne in his twelfth year ; and idolatry,
which had been only outwardly suppressed, broke out anew
and, during the fifty-five years' reign of this most godless of all
the kings of Israel, reached a pitch Judah had never yet known.
Manasseh not only restored the high places and altars of Baal
which his father had destroyed, he built altars to the whole
host of heaven in both courts of the temple, and went so far as
to erect an image of Asherah in the house of the Lord ; he de-
voted his son to Moloch, practised witchcraft and soothsaying
more than ever the Amorites had done, and by his idols seduced
Israel to sin. Further, by putting to death such prophets and
godly persons as resisted his impious courses, he shed very much
innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem therewith from
end to end (2 Kings xxi. 1—16; 2 Chron. xsxiii. 1-10). His
humbling himself before God when in captivity in Babylon,
and his removal of the images out of the temple upon his return
to Jerusalem and to his throne (2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 ff., 15 ff.),
passed by and left hardly a trace behind; and his godless son
Amon did but continue his father's sins and multiply the guilt
(2 Kings xxi. 19-23; 2 Chron. xsxiii. 21-23). Thus Judah's
spiritual and moral strength was so broken that a thorough-
going conversion of the people at large to the Lord and His law
was now no longer to be looked for. Hence the godly Josiah
accomplished by his reformation nothing more than the sup-
pression of the grosser forms of idol-worship and the restoration
of the formal temple-services ; he could neither put an end to
the people's estrangement at heart from God, nor check with
any effect that moral corruption which was the result of the
heart's forsaking the living God. And so, even after Josiah's
reform of public worship, we find Jeremiah complaining ; " As
many as are thy cities, so many are thy gods, Judah ; and as
many as arc the streets in Jerusalem, so many altars have ye
made to shame, to burn incense to Baal " (ii. 28, si. 13). And
godlessness showed itself in all classes of the people. « Q-g
INTEODUCTION. 5
about m the streets of Jerusalem," Jeremiah exclaims, " and
look and search if there is one that doth riglit and asks after
honesty, and I will pardon her (saith the Lord). I thought, it
is but the meaner sort that are foolish, for they know not the
way of Jahveh, the judgment of their God. I will then get me
to the great, and will speak with them, for they know the way of
Jahveh, the right of their God. But they have all broken the
yoke, burst the bonds " (Jer. v. 1-5). " Small and great are
greedy for gain ; prophet and priest use deceit" (vi. 13). This
being the spiritual condition of the people, we cannot wonder
that immediately after the death of Josiah, unblushing apostasy
appeared again as well in public idolatry as in injustice and sin
of every kind. Jehoiakim did that which was evil in the eyes
of Jahveh even as his fathers had done (2 Kings xxiii. 37 ;
2 Chron. xxxvi. 6). His eyes and his heart were set upon
nothing but on gain and on innocent blood, to slied it, and on
oppresssion and on violence, to do it, Jer. xxii. 17. And his
successors on the throne, both his son Jehoiachin and his brother
Zedekiah, walked in his footsteps (2 Kings xxiv. 5, 19 ; 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 9, 12), although Zedekiah did not equal his brother
Jehoiakim in energy for carrying out evil, but let himself be
ruled by those who were about him. For Judah's persistence in
rebellion against God and His law, the Lord ceased not from His
great wrath; but carried out the threatening proclamation to king
and people by the prophetess Hulda, when Josiah sent to con-
sult her for himself, and for the people, and for all Judah, con-
cerning the words of the newly found book of the law : " Behold,
I bring evil in this place, and upon its inhabitants, all the words
of the book which the king of Judah hath read : because that
they have forsaken me, and burnt incense to other gods, to
provoke me with all the works of their hands; therefore my
wrath is kindled against tliis place, and shall not be quenched "
(2 Kings xxii. 16 ff.).
This evil began to fall on the kingdom in Jehoiakim's days.
Josiah was not to see the coming of it. Because, when he
heard the curses of the law, he humbled himself before the
Lord, rent his raiment and wept before Him, the Lord vouch-
safed to him the promise that He would gather him to his fathers
in peace, that his eyes should not look on the evil God would
6 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
brincr on Jerusalem (2 Kings xxii. 19 f.) ; and tins pledge God
fulfilled to him, although they that were to execute God's
righteous justice were already equipped, and though towards
the end of his reign the storm clouds of judgment were gather-
ing ominously over Judah.
While Josiah was labouring in the reformation of public
worship, there had taken place in Central Asia the events which
brought about the fall of the Assyrian empire. The younger
son of Esarhaddon, the second Sardanapalus, had been succeeded
in the year 626 by his son Saracus. Since the victorious pro-
gress of the Medes under Cyaxares, his dominion had been
limited to the cradle of the empire, Assyria, to Mesopotamia,
Babylonia, and Cilicia. To all appearance in the design of
preserving Babylonia to the empire, Saracus appointed Nabo-
polassar, a Babylonian by birth and sprung from the Chaldean
stock, to be governor of that province. This man found oppor-
tunity to aggrandize himself during a war between the Medes
and the Lydians. An eclipse of the sun took place on the
30th September 610, while a battle was going on. Both armies
in terror gave up the contest ; and, seconded by Syennesis, who
governed Cilicia under the Assyrian supremacy, Nabopolassar
made use of the favourable temper which the omen had excited
in both camps to negotiate a peace between the contending
peoples, and to institute a coalition of Babylonia and Media
against Assyria. To confirm this alliance, Amytis, the
daughter of Cyaxares, was given in marriage to Nebuchad-
nezzar, the son of Nabopolassar ; and the war against Assyria
was opened without delay by the advance against Nineveh in
the spring of 609 of the allied armies of Medes and Baby-
lonians. But two years had been spent in the siege of that
most impregnable city, and two battles had been lost, before
'hey succeeded by a night attack in utterly routing the
Assyrians, pursuing the fugitives to beneath the city walls.
The fortification would long have defied their assaults, had not
a prodigious spring flood of the Tigris, in the third year of the
war, washed down a part of the walls lying next the river
and so made it possible for the besiegers to enter the citv, to
take it, and reduce it to ashes. The fall of Nineveh in the year
607 overthrew the Assyrian empire ; and when the conquerors
INTEODUCTION. 7
proceeded to distribute their rich booty, all the land lyinfc on
the western bank of the Tigris fell to the share of Nabopolassar
of Babylon. But the occupation by the Babylonians of tiie
provinces which lay west of the Euphrates was contested by
the Egyptians. Before the campaign of the allied Medes and
Babylonians against Nineveh, Pharaoh Necho, the warlike son
of Psammetichus, had advanced with his army into Palestine,
having landed apparently in the bay of Acco, on his way to
war by the Euphrates with Assyria, Egypt's hereditary enemy.
To oppose his progress King Josiah marched against the
Egyptian ; fearing as he did with good reason, that if Syria
fell into Necho's power, the end had come to the independence
of Judah as a kingdom. A battle was fought in the plain near
Megiddo ; the Jewish army was defeated, and Josiah mortally
wounded, so that he died on the way to Jerusalem (2 Kings
xxiii. 29 f.; 2 Chron. ssxv. 20 f.)- In his stead the people of
the land raised his second son Jehoahaz to the throne ; but
Pharaoh came to Jerusalem, took Jehoahaz prisonei', and had
him carried to Egypt, where he closed his life in captivity, im-
posed a fine on the country, and set up Eliakim, Josiah's eldest
son, to be king as his vassal under the name of Jehoiakim (2
Kings xxiii. 30-35; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1-4). Thereafter Necho
pursued his march through Syria, and subjected to himself the
western provinces of the Assyrian empire ; and he had pene-
trated to the fortified town of Carchemish (Kirkesimi) on the
Euphrates when Nineveh succumbed to the imited Medes and
Babylonians. — Immediately upon the dissolution of the Assyrian
empire, Nabopolassar, now an old man no longer able to sustain
the fatigues of a new campaign, entrusted the command of the
army to his vigorous son Nebuchadnezzar, to the end that he
migiit wage war against Pharaoh Necho and wrest from the
Egyptians the provinces they had possessed themselves of (cf.
Berosi fragm. in Joseph. Antt. x. 11. 1, and e. Ap. i. 19). In
the year 607, the third year of Jehoiakim's reign, Nebuchad-
nezzar put the army entrusted to him in motion, and in the
next year, the fourth of Jehoiakim's reign, B.C. 606, he crushed
Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish on the Euphrates. Pursuing
the fleeing enemy, he pressed irresistibly forwards into Syria
and Palestine, took Jerusalem in the same year, made Jehoiakim
8 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
his dependant, and carried off to Babel a number of the Jewish
youths of highest rank, young Daniel amongst them, to-
gether witli part of the temple furnitnre (2 Kings xxiv. 1 ;
2 Chron. xxxvi. 6 f. ; Dan. i. 1 f.). He had gone as far on his
march as the boundaries of Egypt when he heard of the death
of his father Nabopolassar at Babylon. In consequence of
this intelligence he hastened to Babylon the shortest way
through the desert, with but few attendants, with the view of
mounting the throne and seizing the reins of government,
while he caused the army to follow slowly with the prisoners
and the booty (Beros. I.e.).
This, the first taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, is the
commencement of the seventy years of Jndah's Ciialdean
bondage, foretold by Jeremiah in xxv. 11, shortly before the
Chaldeans invaded Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim ;
and with the subjection of Judah to Nebuchadnezzar's supre-
macy the dissolution of the kingdom began. For tliree years
Jehoiakim remained subject to the king of Babylon ; in the
fourth year he rebelled against him. Nebuchadnezzar, wlio
with tlie main body of his army was engaged in the interior of
Asia, lost no time in sending into the rebellious country such
forces of Chaldeans as were about the frontiers, together with
contingents of Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites ; and these
troops devastated Judah throughout the remainder of Jehoi-
akim's reign (2 Kings xxiv. 1, 2). But immediately upon the
death of Jehoiakim, just as his son had mounted the throne,
Nebuchadnezzar's generals advanced against Jerusalem with a
vast army and invested the city in retribution for Jehoiakim's
defection. During the siege Nebuchadnezzar joined the army.
Jehoiachin, seeing the impossibility of holding out any longer
against the besiegers, resolved to go out to the king of Babvlon,
taking with him the queen-mother, tlie princes of tlie kino-dom,
and the officers of the court, and to make unconditional sur-
render of himself and tlie city. Nebuchadnezzar made tlie
king and his train prisoners ; and, after pluuderincr the treasures
of the royal palace and the temple, carried captive to Babylon
the king, the leading men of the country, the soldiers, the
smiths and artisans, and, in short, every man in Jerusalem wjio
was capable of bearing arms. He left in tlie land only the
INTRODUCTION. 9
poorest sort of the people, from whom no insnr-rectionary
attempts were to be feared ; and having taken an oath of fealty
from Mattaniah, the nncle of the captive king, he installed him,
under the name of Zedekiah, as vassal king over a land that
had been robbed of all that was powerful or noble amongst its
inhabitants (2 Kings xxiv. 8-17 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10). Nor
did Zedekiah either keep true to the oath of allegiance he had
sworn and pledged to the king of Babylon. In the fourth year
of his reign, ambassadors appeared from the neighbouring states
of Edora, Ammon, Moab, Tyre, and Sidon, seeking to organize
a vast coalition against the Chaldean supremacy (Jer. xxvii. 3,
xxviii. 1). Their mission was indeed unsuccessful ; for Jere-
miah crushed the people's hope of a speedy return of the exiles
in Babylon by repeated and emphatic declaration that the
Babylonian bondage must last seventy years (Jer. xxvii .-xxix.).
In the same year Zedekiah visited Babylon, apparently in order
to assure his liege lord of his loyalty and to deceive him as to his
projects (Jer. li. 59). But in Zedekiah's ninth year Hophra
(Apries), the grandson of Necho, succeeded to the crown of
Egypt ; and when he was arming for war against Babylon, Zede-
kiah, trusting in the help of Egypt (Ezek. xvii. 15), broke the
oath of fealty he had sworn (Ezek. xvii. 16), and tried to shake
off the Babylonian yoke. But straightway a mighty Chaldean
army marched against Jerusalem, and in the tenth month of
that same year established a blockade round Jerusalem (2
Kings XXV. 1). The Egyptian army advanced to relieve the
beleaguered city, and for a time compelled the Chaldeans to raise
the siege; but it was in the end defeated by the Chaldeans in
a pitched battle (Jer. xxxvii. 5 ff.), and the siege was again
resumed with all rigour. For long the Jews made stout re-
sistance, and fought with the courage of despair, Zedekiah and
his advisers being compelled to admit that this time Nebuchad-
nezzar would show no mercy. The Hebrew slaves were set
free that they might do military service ; the stone buildings
were one after another torn down that their materials might
serve to strengthen the walls ; and in this way for about a year
and a half all the enemy's efforts to master the strong city were
in vain. Famine had reached its extremity when, in the fourth
month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the Chaldean batter-
10 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMUH.
ing rams made a breach in the northern wall, and through this
the besiegers made their -ivay into the lower city. The de-
fenders withdrew to the temple hill and the city of Zion ; and,
when the Chaldeans began to storm tliese strongholds during
the night, Zedekiah, under cover of darkness, fled with the rest
of liis soldiers by the door between tlie two walls by the king's
garden. He was, however, overtaken in the steppes of Jericho
by the pursuing Chaldeans, made prisoner, and carried to
Kiblah in Coele-Syria. Here Nebuchadnezzar had his head-
quarters during the siege of Jerusalem, and here he pronounced
judgment on Zedekiah. His sons and the leading men of Judah
were put to death before his eyes ; he was then deprived of eye-
sight and carried in chains to Babylon, where he remained a
prisoner till his death (2 Kings xxv. 3—7 ; Jer. xxxix. 2-7,
lii. 6-11). A month later Nebuzar-adan, the captain of the
king of Babylon's guard, came to Jerusalem to destroy the re-
bellious city. The principal priests and officers of the kingdom
and sixty citizens were sent to the king at Eiblah, and executed
there. Everything of value to be found amongst the utensils
of the temple was carried to Babylon, the city with the temple
and ])alace was burnt to the ground, the walls were destroyed,
and what able-bodied men were left amongst the people were
carried into exile. Nothing was left in the land but a part of
the poorer people to serve as vinedressers and husbandmen;
and over this miserable remnant, increased a little in numbers
by the return of some of those who had fled during the war
into the neighbouring countries, Gedaliah the son of Ahikam
was appointed governor in the Chaldean interest. Jeremiah
chose to stay with him amidst his countrymen. But three
months afterwards Gedaliah was murdered, at the institration of
Baalis the king of the Ammonites, by one Ishmael, who was
sprung from the royal stock ; and thereupon a great part of
tlie remaining population, fearing the vengeance of the Chal-
deans, fled, against the prophet's advice, into Eo-ypt (Jer. xl.-
xliii.). And so the banishment of the people was now a total
one, and throughout the whole period of the Chaldean
domination the land was a wilderness.
Judah was now, like the ten tribes, cast out amono-st the
heathen out of the land the Lord had given them for an inherit-
INTRODUCTION. . 11
ance, because tliey had forsaken Jahveh, their God, and had
despised His statutes. Jerusalem, tlie city of the great King
over all the earth, was in ruins, the house which the Lord had
consecrated to His name was burnt with fire, and the people of
His covenant had become a scorn and derision to all peoples.
But God had not broken His covenant with Israel. Even in
the law — Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxx. — He had promised that even
when Israel was an outcast from his land amongst the heathen,
He would remember His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and not utterly reject the exiles ; but when they had
borne the punishment of their sins, would turn again their cap-
tivity, and gather them together out of the nations.
§ 2. THE PERSON OF THE PROPHET.
Concerning the life and labours of the prophet Jeremiah, we
have fuller information than we have as to those of many of
the other prophets. The man is very clearly reflected in his
prophecies, and his life is closely interwoven with the history
of Judah. We consider first the outward circumstances of the
prophet's life, and then his character and mental gifts.
a. His Outward Circumstances. — Jeremiah O^'ip'^l, con-
tracted n^DT, 'Iepe/j,ia<;, Jeremias) was the son of Hilkiah, one
of the priests belonging to the priest-city Anathoth, situated
about five miles north of Jerusalem, now a village called Anata.
This Hilkiah is not the high priest of that name, mentioned in
2 Kincs xxii. 4 ff. and 2 Ohron. xxxiv. 9, as has been sup-
posed by some of the Fathers, Rabbins, and recent commen-
tators. This view is shown to be untenable by the indefinite
D'':nbn id, i. 1. Besides, it is hardly likely that the high priest
could have lived with his household out of Jerusalem, as was
the case in Jeremiah's family (Jer. xxxii. 8, xxxvii. 12 ff.) ;
and we learn from 1 Kings ii. 26 that it was priests of the
house of Ithamar that lived in Anathoth, whereas the high
priests belonged to the line of Eleazar and the house of
Phinehas (1 Ohron. xxiv. 3). Jeremiah, called to be prophet
at an early age pJ?3, i. 6), laboured in Jerusalem from the thir-
teenth year of Josiah's reign (B.C. 629) until the fall of the
kingdom ; and after the destruction of Jerusalem he continued
12 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEKEMUH.
Ills work for some years longer amidst the iniins of .Tudab, and
ill Egypt amongst tliose of his countrymen who had fled
tliither (i. 2 f., xxv. 3, xl.-xliv.). His prophetic ministry falls,
consequently, into the period of the internal dissolution of the
kingdom of Judah, and its destruction hy the Chaldeans. He
had himself received a mission from the Lord to peoples and
kingdoms, as well to break down and destroy, as to build and
plant (1. 10). He was to fulfil this mission, in the first place,
in the case of Judah, and then to the heathen peoples, in so
far forth as they came in contact with the kingdom of God in
Judah. The scene of his labours was Jerusalem. Here he
proclaimed the word of the Lord in the courts of the temple
{e.g. vii. 2, xxvi. 1) ; at the gates of the city (xvii. 19) ; in the
king's palace (xxii. 1, xxxvii. 17); In the prison (xxxli. 1); and
in other places (xviii. 1 £f., xlx. 1 ff., xxvii. 2). Some com-
mentators think tliat he first began as prophet in his native
town of Anathoth, and that he wrought tliere for some time
ere he visited Jerusalem ; but this is in contradiction to the
statement of ii. 2, tliat he uttered almost his very first dis-
course " before the ears of Jerusalem." Nor does this assump-
tion find any support from xi. 21, xii. 5 ff. All that can he
gathered from these passages is, that during his ministry he
occasionally visited his native town, which lay so near Jeru-
salem, and preached tlie word of the Lord to his formtr fellow-
citizens.
When he began his work as prophet, King Josiah had already
taken in hand tlie extirpation of idolatry and the restoration of
the worship of Jahveh in the temple; and Jeremiah was set
apart by the Lord to be a prophet that he might support the
godly king in this work. His task was to bring back the
hearts of the people to the God of their fathers by preaching
God's word, and to convert that outward return to the service
of Jahveh into a thorough turning of the heart to Him, so as
to rescue from destruction all who were ■willing to convert and
be saved. Encouraged by Manasseh's sins, backsliding from
the Lord, godlessness, and unrighteousness had reached in Judah
such a pitch, that it was no longer possible to turn aside the
judgment of rejection from the face of the Lord, to save tiie
backsliding race from being delivered into the power of the
INTRODUCTION. IJ
heatlien. Yet the faithful covenant God, in divine long-suffer-
ing, granted to His faithless people still another gracious oppor-
tunity for repentance and return to Him ; He gave them
Josiah's reformation, and sent the prophets, because, though
resolved to punish the sinful people for its stiff-necked apostasy,
He would not jooake an utter end of it. This gives us a view
point from which to consider Jeremiah's mission, and looking
hence, we cannot fail to find sufficient light to enable us to
understand the whole course of his labours, and the contents
of his discourses.
Immediately after his call, he was made to see, under the
emblem of a seething caldron, the evil that was about to
break from out of the north upon all the inhabitants of the
land : the families of the kingdoms of the north ai'e to come
and set their thrones before the gates of Jerusalem and the
cities of Judah, and through them God is to utter judgment
upon Judah for its idolatry (i. 13-16). Accordingly, from
the beginning of his work in the days of Josiah onwards, the
prophet can never be driven from the maintenance of his posi-
tion, that Judah and Jerusalem will be laid waste by a hostile
nation besetting them from the north, that the people of
Judah will fall by the enemy's sword, and go forth into cap-
tivity ; cf. iv. 5 ff., 13 ff., 27 £f. ; v. 15 ff., vi. 22 ff., etc.
This nation, not particularly specified in the prophecies of tlie
earlier period, is none other than that of the Chaldeans, the
king of Babylon and his hosts. It is not the nation of the
Scythians, as many commentators suppose ; see the connn. on
iv. 5 ff. Nevertheless he unremittingly calls upon all ranks
of his people to repent, to do away with the abominable idols,
and to cease from its wickedness ; to plough up a new soil and
not sow among thorns, lest the anger of the Lord break forth
in fire and burn unquenchably (iv. 1-4; cf. vi. 8, 16, vii. 3 f.,
etc.). He is never weary of holding up their sins to the view
of the people and its leaders, the corrupt priests, the false
prophets, the godless kings and princes ; this, too, he does amidst
much trial both from within and from without, and without
seeing any fruit of his labours (cf. xxv. 3-8). After twenty-
three years of indefatigable expostulation with the people, the
judgment of which he had so long warned them burst upon
14 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the incorrigible race. The fourth year of Jehoiakim's reigu
(B.C. 606) forms a turning point not only in the history of the
kingdom, but also in Jeremiah's work as prophet. In the year
in which Jerusalem was taken for the first time, and Judah
made tributary to the Chaldeans, those devastations began
with which Jeremiah had so often threatened his hardened
hearers ; and together with it came the fulfilment of what
Jeremiah had shortly before foretold, the seventy years' domi-
nion of Babylon over Judah, and over Egypt and the neigh-
bouring peoples (Jer. xxv. 19). For seventy years these
nations are to serve the king of Babylon ; but when these
years are out, the king and land of the Chaldeans shall be
visited, Judah shall be set free from its captivity, and shall
return into its own land (xxv. 11 f., sxxvii. 6 f., xxix. 10).
The progressive fulfilment of Jeremiah's warning prophecies
vindicated his character as prophet of the Lord ; yet, notwith-
standing, it was now that the sorest days of trial in his callin"
were to come. At the first taking of Jerusalem, Nebuchad-
nezzar had contented himself with reducing Jehoiakim under
his sway and imposing a tribute on the land, and king and
people but waited and plotted for a favourable opportunity to
shake off the Babylonian yoke. In this course they were en-
couraged by the lying prophecies of the false prophets, and the
work done by these men prepared for Jeremiah sore contro-
versies and bitter trials. At the very beginning of Jehoiakim's
reign, the priests, the prophets, and the people assembled in the
temple, laid hands on Jeremiah, because. he had declared that
Zion should share the fate of Sliiloh, and that Jerusalem should
be destroyed. He was by them found worthy of death, and he
escaped from the power of his enemies only by the mediation
of the princes of Judah, who hastened to his rescue, and re-
minded the people that in Hezekiah's days the prophet Micah
had uttered a like prophecy, and yet had suffered nothintr at
the hand of the king, because he feared God. At the same
time, Uriah, who had foretold the same issue of affairs, and
who had fled to Egypt to escape Jehoiakim's vengeance, was
forced back thence by an envoy of the king and put to death
(Jer. xxvi.). Now it was that Jeremiah, by command of God
caused his assistant Baruch to write all the discourses he had
INIRODUCTION. 15
delivered into a roll-boot, and to read it before the assembled
people on the day of the fast, observed in the ninth month of
the fifth year of Jehoiakim's reign. When the king had word
of it, he caused the roll to be brought and read to him. But
when two or three passages had been read, he cut the roll in
jjieces and cast the fragments into a brasier that was burning
before him. He ordered Jeremiah and Baruch to be brought ;
but by the advice of the friendly princes they had concealed
themselves, and God hid them so that they were not found
(chap, xxxvi.). It does not appear that the prophet suffered
any further persecution under Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin. Two
years after the fast above mentioned, Jehoiakim rose against
Nebuchadnezzar. The result was, that Jerusalem was besieged
and taken for the second time in the reign of the next king ;
Jehoiakim, the leading men, and the flower of the nation were
carried into exile to Babylon ; and so Jeremiah's prophecy was
yet more strikingly affirmed. Jerusalem was saved from de-
struction this time again, and in Zedekiah, the uncle of the
exiled king, who had, of course, to take the oath of fealty, the
country had again a king of the old stock. Yet the heavy
blow that had now fallen on the nation was not sufficient to
bend the stiff neck of the infatuated people and its leaders.
Even yet were found false prophets who foretold the speedy
overthrow of Chaldean domination, and the return, ere long,
of the exiles (chap, xxviii.). In vain did Jeremiah lift up his
voice in warning against putting reliance on these prophets, or
on the soothsayers and sorcerers who speak like them (chap,
xxvii. 9 f., 14). When, during the first years of Zedekiah's
reign, ambassadors had come from the bordering nations, Jere-
miah, in opposition to the false prophets, declares to the king
that God has given all these countries into the hand of the
king of Babylon, and that these peoples shall serve him and
his son and his grandson. He cries to the king, " Put your
necks into the yoke of the king of Babylon, and ye shall live ;
he that will not serve him shall perish by sword, famine, and
pestilence" (chap, xxvii. 12 ff.). This announcement he
repeated before the people, the princes, and the king, during
the siege by the Chaldeans, which followed on Zedekiah's
treacherous insurrection against his liege lord, and he chose for
IG THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
it the particular time at which the Clialdeans liad temporarily
raised the siege, in order to meet the Egyptian king in the field,
Pharaoh Hoplira Jiaving advanced to the help of the Jews
(Jer. xxxiv. 20 ff.). It was then that, when going out by the
city gate, Jeremiali was laid hold of, beaten by the magistrates,
and thrown into prison, on the pretext that he wanted to desert
to the Chaldeans. After he had spent a long time in prison, the
king had him brought to him, and inquired of him secretly for
a word of Jaliveh ; but Jeremiah had no other word from God
to give him but, " Thou shalt be given into the hand of the
king of Babylon." Favoured by this opportunity, he com-
plained to the king about his imprisonment. Zedekiah gave
order that he should not be taken back to the prison, but placed
in the court of the prison, and that a loaf of bread should be
given him daily until all the bread in Jerusalem was consumed
(chap, xxxvii.). -Shortly thereafter, however, some of the
princes demanded of the king the death of the prophet, on the
ground that he was paralysing the courage of soldiers and
people by such speeches as, " He that remains in this city shall
die by sword, famine, and pestilence ; but he that goeth out
to the Chaldeans shall carry off his life as a prey from them."
They alleged he was seeking the hurt and not the weal of the
city ; and the feeble king yielded to their demands, with the
words : " Behold, he is in your hand, for the king can do
nothing against you." Upon this he was cast into a deep pit in
the court of the prison, in the slime of which he sank deep, and
would soon have perished but for the noble-minded Ethiopian
Ebed-melech, a royal chamberlain, who made application to the
king on his behalf, and procured his removal out of the dun-
geon of mire. When consulted privately by the king yet ao-ain,
he had none other than his former answer to give him, and so
he remained in the court of the prison until the capture of
Jerusalem by the Chaldeans (chap, xxxviii.). After this he
was restored to freedom by Nebuzar-adan, the captain of
Nebuchadnezzar's guard, at the command of the king ; and
being left free to choose his place of residence, he decided to
remain at Mizpah with Gedaliah, appointed governor of the
land, amongst his own people (chap, xxxix. 11-14, and xl. 1-6).
Now it was that he composed the Lamentations upon the fail
INTEODUCTION. 17
of Jerusalem and Judali. After tlie foul murder of Gedaliah,
the people, fleeing through fear of Chaldean vengeance, com-
pelled him to accompany them to Egypt, although lie had
expressly protested against the flight as a thing displeasing
to God (xli. 17 — xliii. 7). In Egypt he foretold the con-
quest of the land by Nebuchadnezzar (xliii. 8-13) ; and,
further on, the judgment of God on his countrymen, who had
attached themselves to the worship of the Queen of Heaven
(xliv.). Beyond this we are told nothing else about him
in Bible records. Neither the time, the place, nor the manner
of Lis death is known. We cannot confidently assert from
chap. xliv. that he was still living in B.C. 570, for this [last]
discourse of the prophet does not necessarily presume the death
of King Hophra (b.C. 570). Only this much is certain, that
he lived yet for some years in Egypt, till about 585 or 580 ;
that his labours consequently extended over some fifty years,
and so that, presuming he was called to be prophet when a
youth of 20 to 25 years old, he must have attained an age of
70 to 75 years. As to his death, we are told in the fathers
Jerome, Tertull., Epiph., that he was stoned by the people at
Tahpanhes {Daphne of Egypt), and accordingly his grave used
to be pointed out near Cairo. But a Jewish tradition, in the
Seder ol. rabb. c. 26, makes him out to have been carried off
with Baruch to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at the conquest
of Egypt, in the 27tli year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
Isidor Pelusiota, epist. i. 298, calls him TroKviraQeaTaTo^ rwv
"TrpocpTjTcov ; but the greater were the ignominy and suffering
endured by Jeremiah in life, the higher was the esteem in
which he was held by posterity, chiefly, doubtless, because of
the exact fulfilment of his prophecy as to the seventy years'
duration of the Babylonian empire (of. Dan. ix. 2, 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 20 f., Ezra i. 1). Jesus Sirach, in his Praise of the
Prophets, Ecclus. c. xlix. 7, does not go beyond what we already
know from Jer. i. 10 ; but as early as the second book of the
IV&ccabees, we have traditions and legends which leave no
doubt of the profound veneration in which he was held, espe-
cially by the Alexandrian Jews.^
1 Thus the vision reported of Judas Maccabjeus in 2 Mace. xv. 12 ff., to
the effect that in a dream a man appeared to him, standing beside the high
VOL. I. B
18 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
b. His Character and Mental Qualities. — If we gatlier
togetlier in one the points of view that are discovered in a sum-
mary glance over Jeremiah's work as a prophet, we feel the
truth of Ed. Vilmar's statement at p. 38 of his essay on the
prophet Jeremiah in the periodica], Der Beiceis des Glauhens.
Bd. V. Giitersloh 18G9. "Wlien we consider tlie prophet's
faith in the imperishableness of God's people, in spite of the
inevitable ruin which is to overwlielm the race then living, and
his conviction, firm as the rock, that the Chaldeans are invincible
until the end of the period allotted to them by Providence, it is
manifest tliat his work is grounded in something other and
higher than mere political sharp-siglitedness or human sagacity."
Nor is the unintermitting stedfastness with which, amidst the
sorest difficulties from ■without, he exercised his office to be
explained by the native strength of his character. Naturally
of a yielding disposition, sensitive and tinaid, it was with
trembling that he bowed to God's call (i. 6) ; and afterwards,
when borne down by the burden of them, he repeatedly enter-
tained the wish to be relieved from his jiard duties. ''Thou
hast persuaded me. Lord," he complains in xx. 7 ff., "and I
let myself be persuaded ; Thou hast laid hold on me and hast
prevailed. I am become a laugliing-stock all the day long : the
word of Jaliveh is become a reproach and a derision. And I
thought: I will think no more of Him nor speak more in His
name ; and it was in my head as burning fire, shut up in my
bones, and I become weary of bearing up, and cannot."
Though filled with glowing love that sought the salvation of
his people, he is compelled, while he beholds their moral corrupl^
priest Onias, while he prayed for his people, — a man marked by his hoary
liair and venerableness, engirded by wondrous and glorious majesty, and
that Onias said : " This is the (pA«S=xipof that has prayed so much for the
people and the holy city, Jeremiah, the prophet of God ; " that Jeremiah
held out to Judas a golden sword, with the words, " Take this holy sword
as a gift from God ; therewith thou shalt smite the adversaries." Further
we have in 2 Mace. ii. 4 ff., that at the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah
hid the ark, the holy fire, the incense with its altar and the tabernacle in a
cave of the mountain from which Moses saw the promised land and that
this place wiU not be found again till the Lord gathers His people and is
gracious to it. Hence arose the expectation which we find in Matt. xvi. 14
that Jeremiah will appear again as the forerunner of the Messiah.
INTKODUCTION. 19
ness, to cry out : " O that I had in the wilderness a lodging-
l)lace of wayfarers ! then would I leave my people, and go from
them; for they are all adulterers, a crew of faithless men" (ix. 1).
And his assurance that the judgment about to burst on the
land and people could not be turned aside, draws from him the
sigh : " O that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain
of tears ! then would I weep day and night for the slain of my
people" (viii. 23). "He was no second Elijah," as Hgstbg.
Christol. ii. p. 370 happily puts it. " He had a soft nature, a sus-
ceptible temperament ; his tears flowed readily. And he who
was so glad to live in peace and love with all men, must needs,
because he has enlisted in the service of truth, become a second
Ishmael, his hand against every man, and every man's hand
against him ; he whose love for his people was so glowing, was
doomed to see that love misconstrued, to see himself branded
as a traitor by those who were themselves the traitors to the
people." Experiences like these raised bitter struggles in his
soul, repeatedly set forth by him, especially in xii. and xx.
Yet he stands immovably stedfast in the strife against all the
powers of wickedness, like " a pillar of iron and a wall of brass
against the whole land, the kings of Judah, its rulers and
priests, and against the common people," so that all who strove
against him could effect nothing, because the Lord, according
to His promise, i. 18 f., was with him, stood by his side as a
terrible warrior (xx. 11), and showed His power mighty in the
prophet's weakness.
This character of Jeremiah is also reflected in his writings.
His speech is clear and simple, incisive and pithy, and, though
generally speaking somewhat diffuse, yet ever rich in thought.
If it lacks the lofty strain, the soaring flight of an Isaiah, yet
it has beauties of its own. It is distinguished by a wealth of
new imagery which is wrought out with great delicacy and deep
feeling, and by " a versatility that easily adapts itself to the most
various objects, and by artistic clearness" (Ewald). In the
management of his thoughts Jeremiah has more recourse than
other prophets to the law and the older sacred writings (cf.
Koenig, das Deuteronom it. der Propli. Jeremia, Heft ii. of the
A Ittstl. Studien ; and A. Kiiper, Jeremias librorum sacrr. interpres
atque vindex). And his style of expression is rich in repetitions
20 THE PFwOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAII.
and standing plirases. These peculiarities are not, liowever, to be
regarded as signs of the progressive decline of the prophetic gift
(E\v.),butare tobe derivedfrom deeper foundatIons,froin positive
and fundamental causes. The continual recurrence to the law,
and the frequent application of the prophetic parts of Deu-
teronomy, was prompted by the circumstances of the time.
The wider the people's apostasy from God's law extended itself,
so much the greater became the need for a renewed preach.ing
of the law, that should point to the sore judgments there
threatened against hardened sinners, now about to come into
fulfilment. And as against the guile of false prophets whose
influence with the infatuated people became ever greater, the
true witnesses of the Lord could have no more effective means
of showing and proving the divineness of their mission and the
truth of their testimony than by bringing strongly out their
connection with the old prophets and their utterances. Oil
this wise did Jeremiah pnt in small compass and preserve the
spiritual inheritance which Israel had received from Moses a
thousand years before, and thus he sent it with the people into
exile as its better self (E. Vilm. as above). The numerous
repetitions do unquestionably produce a certain monotony, but
this monotony is nothing else than the expression of the bitter
grief that penetrates the soul ; the soul is full of the one thought
which takes entire possession of its elastic powers, and is never
weary of ever crying out anew the same truth to the people, so
as to stagger their assurance by this importunate expostulation
(cf. Haevern. Inirod. p. 196). From the same cause comes
the neglirjence in diction and style, on which Jerome in
Prol. in Jer. passed this criticism : Jeremias propheta sennorie
apud IJebrceos Jesaia et Osea et qidhusdam aliis proplietis videtur
esse rusticior, sed sensihus par est; and further in the ProcBm.
to lib. iv. of the Comment.: quantum in verhis simplex etfacilis,
tantum in majesiate sensmtm profundissimus. An unadorned
style is the natural expression of a lieart filled with grief and
sadness. " He that is sad and downcast in heart, whose eyes
run over with tears (Lam. ii. 2), is not the man to deck and
trick himself out in frippery and fine speeches" (Hgstb. as above
p. 372). Finally, as to the language, the influence of the
Aramaic upon the Hebrew tongue is already pretty evident.
INTKODUCTIOU. : ;j 21
§ 3. THE BOOK OP THE PROPHECIES OF JEHEMIAH.
a. Contents and Arrangement. — The prophecies of
Jeremiah divide themselves, in accordance witli their subjects,
into tliose that concern Judah and the kingdom of God, and
those regarding foreign nations. The former come first in the
book, and extend from cliap. i.-xlv. ; tlie latter are comprised in
cliap. xlvi.-li. Tlie former again fall into three groups,
clearly distinguishable by their form and subjects. So that the
wliole book may be divided into four sections ; while cliap. i.
contains the account of the prophet's consecration, and chap,
lii. furnishes an historical supplement.
The first section occupies chap, ii.-xx., and comprises six
lengthy discourses which contain the substance of Jeremiah's
oral preaching during the reign of Josiah. In these the people
is brought face to face with its apostasy from the Lord into
idolatry ; its unrighteousness and moral corruption is set before
it, the need of contrition and repentance is brought home, and
a race of hardened sinners is threatened with the devastation
of their land by a barbarous people coming from afar : while
to the contrite the prospect of a better future is opened up.
By means of headings, these discourses or compilations of
discourses are marked off from one another and gathered into
continuous wholes. The first discourse, chap, ii. 1-iii. 5, sets
forth, in general terms, the Lord's love and faithfulness towards
Israel. The second, chap. iii. 6-vi. 30, presents in the first
half of it (iii. 6-iv. 2) the fate of the ten tribes, tlieir dis-
persion for their backsliding, and the certainty of their being
received again in the event of their repentance, all as a warning
to faithless Judah ; and in the second half (iv. 3— vi. 30),
announces that if Judah holds on in its disloyalty, its land will
be ravaged, Jerusalem will be destroyed, and its people cast
out amongst the heathen. The third discourse, chap, vi.-x.,
admonishes against a vain confidence in the temple and the
sacrifices, and threatens the dispersion of Judah and the spolia-
tion of the country (vii. 1-viii. 3) ; chides the people for
being obstinately averse to all reformation (viii. 4-ix. 21) ;
shows whei'ein true wisdom consists, and points out the folly
of idolatry (ix. 22-x. 2.5). The fourth discourse, chap
22 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
xi.-xiil,, exhibits the people's disloyalty to the covenant
(xi. 1-17) ; shows by concrete examples their utter corruptness,
and tells them tliat the doom pronounced is irrevocable
(xi. 18-xii. 17); and closes with a symbolical action adumbrating
the expulsion into exile of the incorrigible" race (xiii.). The
fifth, cliap. xiv.-xvii., "the word concerning the droughts,"
gives illustrative evidence to show that the impending judg-
ment cannot be turned aside by any entreaties; that Judaii,
for its sins, will be driven into exile, but will yet in the
future be brought back again (xiv. 1— xvii. 4) ; and closes
with general animadversions upon the root of the mischief, and
the way by which punishment may be escaped (xvii. 5-27).
Tlie sixth discourse, chap, xviii.-xx., contains two oracles from
God, set forth in symbolical actions, which signify the judgment
about to burst on Judah for its continuance in sin, and wliicli
drew down persecution, blows, and harsh imprisonment on the
prophet, so that he complains of his distress to the Lord, and
curses the day of his birth. All these discourses have this in
common, tliat threatening and promise are alike general in their
terms. Most emphatically and repeatedly is threatening made
of the devastation of the land by enemies, of the destruction of
Jei'usalem, and the dispersion of Judah amongst the heathen ;
and yet nowhere is it indicated who are to execute this judg-
ment. Not until the threatening addressed to Pashur in
XX. 4 are we told that it is the king of Babylon into whose
hand all Judah is to be given, that he may lead them away to
Babylon and smite them with the sword. And be3-oud the
general indication, iii. 6, "in the days of Josiah," not even
the lieadings contain any hint as to the date of the several
propliecies or of portions of them, or as to the circumstances
that called them forth. Tlie quite general character of the
heading, iii. 6, and the fact that the tone and subject
remain identical throngliout the whole series of chapters that
open tiie collected prophecies of Jeremiah, are sufficient to
justify Hgstbg. (as above, p. 373) in concluding that " we have
here before us not so much a series of prophecies which were
delivered precisely as we have them, each on a particular oc-
casion during Josiah's reign, but rather a resumdoi Jeremiali's
entire public work as pi'ophet during Josiah's reign ; a summary
INTEODUCTION. 23 '
of, all that, taken apart from the special circumstances of tlie
time, had at large the aim of giving deeper stability to the
reformatory efforts Josiah was carrying on in outward affairs."
This view is most just, only it is not to be limited to chap,
ii.-vii., but is equally applicable to the whole of the first section
of the collected pro])hecies.
The second section, chap, xxi.-xxxii., contains special pre-
dictions ; on the one hand, of the judgment to be executed by
the Clialdeans (xxvii.— xxix.) ; on tlie other, of Messianic sal-
vation (xxx.-xxxili.). The predictions of Judgment fall into
three groups. The central one of these, the announcement of
the seventy years' dominion of the Chaldeans over Judah and
all nations, passes into a description of judgment to come
npon the whole world. As introductory to this, we have it
announced in xsi. that Judah and its royal family are to
be given into the hands of the king of Babylon ; we liave
in xxii. and xxiii. the word concerning the sliepherds and
leaders of the people ; while in xxiv. comes the statement,
illustrated by the emblem of two baskets of figs, as to the cha-
racter and future fortunes of the Jewish people. The several
parts of this group are of various dates. The intimation of
the fate awaiting Judah in xxi. is, according to the heading,
taken from the answer given to Zedekiah by Jeremiah during
the last siege of Jerusalem, when the king had inquired of him
about the issue of the war ; the denunciation of the people's
corrupt rulers, the wicked kings and false prophets, together
with the promise that a rigliteous branch is yet to be raised to
David, belongs, if we may judge from what is therein said of
the kings, to the times of Jelioiakim and Jelioiachin : while
the vision of the two baskets of figs in xxiv. dates from the
first part of Zedekiah's reign, shortly after Jelioiachin and
the best part of the nation had been carried off to Babylon.
As this group of prophecies Is a preparation for the central
jjredietlon of judgment in xxv., so tlie group that follows,
xxvi.-xxis., serves to show reason for tlie universal judg-
ment, and to maintain it against tlie contradiction of the false
prophets and of the people deluded by their vain expecta-
tions. To the same end we are told in xxvi, of the accu-
sation and acquittal of Jeremiah on the charge of llis having
24 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
foretold the destruction of Jerusalem : tliis and tlie supple-
mentary notice of the prophet Urijah fall within the reign of
Jehoiakiin. The same aim is yet more clearly to be traced
in the oracle in xxvii., regarding the j^oke of the king of
Babylon, \Yhich God will lay on the kings of Edoni, Moab,
Ammon, and Phoenicia, on King Zedekiah, the priests and
people of Judah ; in the threatening against the lying prophet
Hananiah in xxviii.; and in Jeremiah's letter to the exiles
in Babylon in xxix., dating from the earlier years of Zede-
kiah's reign. From the dark background of these threaten-
ings stands out in chap, xxx.-xxxiii. the comforting promise
of the salvation of Israel. The prediction of grace and
glory yet in store for Israel and Judah through the Messiah
occupies two long discourses. The first is a complete whole,
both in matter and in form. It begins with intimating tlie
recovery of both houses of Israel from captivity and the cer-
tainty of their being received again as the people of God
(xxx. 1-22), while the wicked fall before God's wrath ; then
xxxi. promises grace and salvation, first to the ten tribes
(vers. 1-22), then to Judah (vers. 23-36) ; lastly, we have
(vers. 27-40) intimation that a new and everlasting covenant
will be concluded with the whole covenant people. The second
discourse in chaps, xxxii. and xxxiii. goes to support the first, and
consists of two words of God communicated to Jeremiah in the
tenth year of Zedekiah, i.e. in prospect of the destruction of
Jerusalem ; one being in emblematic shape (xxxii.), the other
is another explicit prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem,
and of blessings yet in store for the race of David and for the
Levitical priesthood (xxiii.).
The third section of the book, chap, xxxiv.-xliv., has in
the first place, brief utterances of the prophet, dating from
the times of Zedekiah and Jehoiachin, totrether with the
circumstances that called them forth, in xxxiv.-xxxvi.-
secondlj', in xxxvii.-xxxix., notice of the prophet's experi-
ences, and of the counsels given by him durin<T the sietre
in Zedtkiah's reign up till the taking of the city; finally
in xl.-xlv. are given events that lia]ipened and "prophecies
that were delivered after the siege. So that here there is
gathered together by way of supplements all that was of
IKTRODUCTION. 25
cardinal importance in Jeremiah's efforts in belialf of the un-
happy people, in so far as it had not found a place in tlie
previous sections.
In the /oiir^/t section, chap, xlvi.-li., follow propliecies against
foreign nations, uttered partly in the fourtli year of Jehoiakim,
or rather later, partly in the first year of Zedekiah. And last
of all, the conclusion of the whole collective book is farmed by
chap, lii., an historical supplement which is not the work of
Jeremiah himself. In it are notices of the destruction of the
city, of the number of the captives taken to Babylon, and of
what befell King Jehoiachin there.
b. Origin of the Compilation or Book of the Propliecies
of Jeremiah. — Regarding the composition of the book, ail sorts
of ingenious and arbitrary hypotheses have been propounded.
Almost all of them proceed on the assumption that the longer
discourses of the first part of the book consist of a greater or
less number of addresses delivered to the people at stated times,
and have been arranged partly clironologically, but partly also
without reference to any plan whatever. Hence the conclu-
sion is drawn that in the book a hopeless confusion reigns.
In proof of this, see the hypotheses of Movers and Ilitzig.
From the summary of contents just given, it is plain that in
none of the four sections of the book has chronological succes-
sion been the princijile of arrangement ; this has been had
regard to only in so far as it fell in with the plan chiefly kept
in view, which was that of grouping tlie fragments accord-
ing to their subject-matter. In the three sections of the
prophecies concerning Israel, a general chronological order has
to a certain extent been observed thus far, namely, that in the
first section (ii.-xx.) are the discourses of the time of Josiali ;
in the second (xxi.-xxxiii.), tlie prophecies belonging to the
period between the fourth year of Jehoiakim and the siege
of Jerusalem under Zedekiah ; in the third (xxxiv.-xlv.),
events and oracles of the time before and after the siege and
capture of the city. But even in those passages in the second
and third sections which are furnished with liistorical references,
order in time is so little regarded tliat discourses of the time
of Zedekiah pi'ecede those of Jehoiakiin's time. And in the
2G- THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
first section the date of tlie several discourses is a matter of
so secondary importance that, bejond the indefinite intimation in
iii. 6, tliere is not to be found in any of the lieadings any hint of
the date ; and here, upon tlie wlioie, we have not the individual
discourses in the form in wliich they were under various cir-
cumstances delivered to the people, but only a resume of his
oral addresses arranged with reference to the subject-matter.
The first notice of a written collection of the prophecies
occurs in xxxvi. Here we are told that in the fourth year
of Jehoiakim's reign, Jeremiah, by divine command, caused
his assistant Baruch to write in a roll all the words he had
spoken concerning Israel and Judah and all nations from the
day he was called up till that time, intending them to be
read by Baruch to the assembled people in the temple on the
approaching fast. And after the king had cut up the roll and
cast it into the fire, the prophet caused the words Baruch had
taken down to his dictation to be written anew in a roll, with
the addition of many words of like import. This fact suggests
the idea that the second roll written by Baruch to Jeremiah's
dictation formed the basis of the collected edition of all Jere-
miah's prophecies. The history makes it clear that till then the
prophet had not committed his prophecies to writing, and that
in the roll written by Baruch they for the first time assumed
a written form. The same account leads us also to suppose
that in this roll the prophet's discourses and addresses were not
transcribed in the precise words and in the exact order in which
he had from time to time delivered them to the people, but
that they were set down from memory, the substance only being
preserved. The design with which they were committed to
writing was to lead the people to humble themselves before
the Lord and turn from their evil ways (xxxvi. 3, 7), by
means of importunately forcing upon their attention all God's
commands and warnings. And we may feel sui'e that this
parenetic aim was foremost not only in the first document
(burnt by the king), but in the second also ; it was not proposed
here either to give a complete and authoritative transcription
of all the prophet's sayings and speeches. The assumption of
recent critics seems justifiable, that the document composed in
Jehoiakim's reign was the foundation of the book handed down
INTKODUCTION. 27
to US, and that it was extended to the compass of the canonical
book by the addition of revelations vouciisafed after that time,
and of the historical notices that most illustrated Jeremiah's
labours. But, however great be the probability of this view, we
are no longer in a position to point out the original book in
that which we have received, and as a constituent part of the
same. At first sight, we might indeed be led to look on the
first twenty chapters of our book as the original document,
since the character of these chapters rather favours the hypo-
thesis. For they are all lengthy compositions, condensed from
oral addresses with the view of reporting mainly the substance
of them;'- nor is there in them anything that certainly carries
us beyond the time of Josiah and the beginning of Jelioiakim's
reign, except indeed the heading of the book, 1. 1-3, and
this was certainly prefixed only when the book was given
forth as a whole. But according to the statement in xxxvi. 2,
the original manuscript prepared by Baruch contained not only
the words of the prophet which he had up to that time spoken
concerning Israel and Judah, but also his words concerning
all nations, that is, doubtless, all the prophecies concern-
ing the heathen he had till now uttered, viz. xxv. 15-xxxi.,
xlvi.-xlix. 33. Nor can the most important discourse, chap,
xxv., belonging to the beginning of the fourth year of Jelioiakim,
have been omitted from the original manuscript; certainly not
from the second roll, increased by many words, which was put
together after the first was burnt. For of the second manu-
script we may say with perfect confidence what Ewald says of
the first, that nothing of importance would be omitted from it.
If then we may take for granted that the discourse of chap.
xxv. was included in the book put together by Baruch, it fol-
lows that upon the subsequent expansion of the work that
chapter must have been displaced from its original position by
' As to the putting together of the seven pieeeswhieh oeeupy ehap. ii.-xxiv.,
Ewald (Proph. ii. S. 81, der 2 Ausg.) aptly remarks : " In tracing out these
pieees from memory, the prophet manifestly started from a discourse, im-
portant in itself or its consequonees, which he had delivered in some par-
ticular place ; this remembrance then became the centre of the piece to be
vrritteu, and to it he was easily able to attach much that was of kiudred
import."
28 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
tlie intercalation of cliap. xxi. and xxiv., wliich are both of
tlie time of Zudekiah. But the displacement of xxv. by pro-
]>hecies of Zedekiah's time, and the arrangement of the several
fragments which compose the central sections of the book now
in our hands, show conclusively that the method and nature of
this book are incompatible with the hypothesis that the existing
book arose from the work written down by Baruch to Jere-
miah's dictation by the addition and interpolation of later pro-
phetic utterances and historical facts (Ew., Graf). The
contents of chap, xxi.-xlv. were unmistakeably disposed ac-
cording to a definite uniform plan which had regard chiefly
to the subject-matter of those chapters, even though we are no
longer in a position confidently to discriminate the several
constituent parts, or point out the reason for the place assigned
to them. The same plan may be traced in the arrangement of
the longer compositions in chap, ii.-xx. The consistency of
the plan goes to show that the entire collection of the prophecies
was executed by one editor at one time. Ew., Umbr., and
Graf conclude that the original book attained its final form by
a process of completion immediately after the destruction of
the city and the deportation of the people ; but it is impossible
to admit tlieir conclusion on the grounds they give, namely,
the heading at chap. i. 3 : " until the carrying away of Jeru-
salem in tlie fifth month ;" and the fact that what befell the
prophet, and what was spoken by him after the city was de-
stroyed, liave found a place immediately after chap, xxxix. in
chap, xl.-xliv. Both circumstances are sufficiently explained
by the fact that with the destruction of Jerusalem, Jere-
miah's work as a prophet, though not absolutely finished,
had yet anticipatively come to an end. His later labours
at Mizpah and in Egypt were but a continuation of secondary
importance, which migiit consequently be passed over in the
heading of the book. See the Comment, on i. 3. We are
not sure that the period between the fifth and seventh months
-nH. 1, during which Jeremiah and Baruch remained with the
governor Gedaliah at Mizpah, was more suitable than any
other for looking back over his work which had now extended
over more than forty-one years, and by expanding the book he
had at an earlier period written, for leaving behind him a
INTEODUCTION. 29
monument for posterity in the record of his most memorable
utterances and experiences — a monument that might serve to
warn and instruct, as well as to comfort in present suffering
means of the treasure of hopes and promises which he has
thus laid up (Graf). But, judging from Jeremiah's habit of
mind, we imagine that at that time Jeremiah would be disposed
rather to indite the Lamentations than to edit his prophecies.
Arguments for repeated editings and transformations of par-
ticular chapters have been founded partly on the subject-matter,
partly on peculiarities in the form of certain passages, e.g. the
alternation, in the headings, of the formulas ibNP ''PK mn'' "laT •<m
or "'^X n»N*1 and -K)i6 inw i'S mn' 121 ■'m ; and the title ^n^OT,
NUarij which occurs only in certain chapters, xx. 2, xxv. 2, xxviii.
5, 6, and often, xxix. 1, 29, xxxii. 2, But on deeper investiga-
tion these arguments appear inconclusive. If we are desirous
not to add by new and uncertain conjectures to the already large
number of arbitrary hypotheses as to the compilation and origin
of the book before us, we must abide by what, after a careful
scrutiny of its subject-matter and form, proves to be certainly
established. And the result of our examination may be epito-
mized in the following propositions : — 1. The book in its canoni-
cal form has been arranged according to a distinct, self-consistent
plan, in virtue of which the preservation of chronological order
has been made secondary to the principle of grouping together
cognate subjects. 2. The book written by Baruch in the fifth
year of Jehoiakim's reign, which contained the oracles spoken
by Jeremiah up till that time, is doubtless the basis of the book
as finally handed down, without being incorporated with it as a
distinct work ; but, in accordance with the plan laid down for
the compilation of the entire series, was so disposed that the
several portions of it were interspersed with later portions,
handed down, some orally, some in writing, so that the result
was a uniform whole. For that prophecies other than those
in Baruch's roll were straightway written down (if they were
not first composed in writing), is expressly testified by xxx. 2,
xxix. 1, and li. 60. 3. The complete edition of the whole was
not executed till after the close of Jeremiah's labours, probably
immediately after his death. This work, together with the
supplying of the historical notice in chap. Hi., was probably the
30 TUE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEJIIAII.
work of Jeremiah's colleague Barucli, wlio may have survived
the last event mentioned in tiie book, lii. 31 ff., the restora-
tion of Jehoiakim to freedom after Nebuchadnezzar's death,
B.C. 563.
§ 4. THE GENUINENESS OF THE COOK AND THE INTEGRITY OF
THE MASOKETIC TEXT.
Jeremiah's prophecies bear everywhere so plainly npon the
face of them the impress of this prophet's strongly marked in-
dividuality, that their genuineness, taken as a whole, remains
unimpugned even by recent criticism. Hitzig, e.g., holds it to
be so undoubted that in the prolegomena to his commentary he
simply takes the matter for granted. And Ewald, after ex-
poundinor his view of the contents and origin of the book,
observes tliat so striking a similarity in expression, attitude, and
colouring obtains throughout every portion, that from end to
end we hear the same prophet speak. Ewald excepts, indeed, the
oracle against Babylon in chap. 1. and li., which he attributes
to an anonymous disciple who had not confidence to write in
his own name, towards the end of the Babylonian captivity,
lie admits that he wrote after the manner of Jeremiah, but
with this marked difference, that he gave an entirely new refer-
ence to words which he copied from Jeremiah ; for example,
according to Ewald, the description of the northern enemies,
who were in Jeremiah's view first the Scythians and then the
Chaldeans, is applied by him to the Medes and Persians, who
were then at war with the Chaldeans. But with Ewald, as
with his predecessors Eichh., Maur., Knobel, etc., the cliief
motive for denying the genuineness of this prophecy is to be
found in the dogmatic prejudice which leads them to suppose it
impossible for Jeremiah to have spoken of the Chaldeans as he
does in chap. 1. f., since his expectation was that the Chaldeans
were to be the divine instruments of carrying out the judcrment
near at hand upon Judah and the other nations. Others such
as Movers, de Wette, Hitz., have, on the contrary, proposed to
get rid of what seemed to them out of order in this prediction
by assuming interpolations. These critics believe themselves
further able to make out interpolations, on a greater or less
scale, in other passages, such as x., xxv., xxvii..
INTKODUCTION. 31
xxsiii'., yet without throwing doubt on the genuineness of
the book at large. See details on this head in my Manual of
Introduction^ § 75 ; and the proof of the assertions in the
commentary upon the passages in question.
Besides this, several critics have denied the integrity of the
Hebrew text, in consideration of the numerous divergencies
from it which are to be found in the Alexandrine translation ;
and they have proposed to explain the discrepancies between
the Greek and the Hebrew text by the hypothesis of two re-
censions, an Alexandrine Greek recension and a Babylonian
Jewish. J. D. Mich., in the notes to his translation of tlie
New Testament, i. p. 285, declared the text of the LXX. to be
the original, and purer than the existing Hebrew text; and
Eichh., Jahn, Bertholdt, Dahler, and, most confident of all.
Movers (de utriusque recensionis vaticiniorum Jer. grcecw
Alexandr. et Jiebraicce Masor., indole et origine), have done what
they could to establish this position ; while de Wette, Hitz., and
Bleek (in hhlntrod.) have adopted the same view in so far that
they propose in many places to correct the Masoretic text from
the Alexandrine. But, on the other hand, Kiiper (Jerem.
libronim ss. inferpres), Haevern. (Jntrod.), J. V/ichelhaus {de
JeremioB versione Alexandr.), and finally, and most thoroughly,
Graf, in his Comment, p. 40, have made comparison of the two
texts throughout, and have set the character of the Alexandrine
text in a clear light; and their united contention is, that almost
all the divergencies of this text from the Hebrew have arisen
from the Greek translator's free and arbitrary way of treating
the Plebrew original. The text given by the Alexandrine is
very much shorter. Graf says tliat about 2700 words of the
Masoretic text, or somewhere about the eighth part of the whole,
have not been expressed at all in the Greek, while the few
additions that occur there are of very trifling importance. The
Greek text very frequently omits certain standing phrases, forms,
and expressions often repeated throughout the book : e.g. Cix:
niiT is dropped sixty-four times; instead of the frequently re-
curring nisnv ni.T or i'S'JK". ■'n'Ss 'S nirr' there is usually found
but ninv In the historical portions the name of the father of
the principal person, regularly added in the Hebrew, is often
not given; so with the title N'^jn, when Jeremiah is mentioned;
32 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
in speaking of the king of Babylon, the name Nebuchadnezzar,
wiiicii we find thirty-six times in tlie Hebrew test, appears only
thirteen times. Such expressions and clauses as seemed synony-
mous or pleonastic are often left out, frequently to the destruc-
tion of the parallelism of the clauses, occasionally to the marring
of the sense; so, too, longer passages which had been given before,
either literally or in substance. Still greater are the discrep-
ancies in detail ; and they are of such a sort as to bring plainly
out on all hands the translator's arbitrariness, carelessness, and
want of apprehension. All but innumerable are the cases in
which gender, number, person, and tense are altered, synony-
mous expressions intei-ciianged, metaphors destroyed, words
transposed ; we find frequently inexact and false translations,
erroneous reading of the unpointed text, aud occasionally, when
the Hebrew word was not understood, we have it simply tran-
scribed in Greek letters, etc. See copious illustration of this
in Kiiper, Wichelh., and Graf, 11. cc, and in my Manual of
Inlrod. § 175, N. 14. Such being the character of the
Alexandrine version, it is clearly out of the question to talk
of the s]iecial recension on which it has been based. As
Hgstb. Christol. ii. p. 461 justly says : " Where it is notorious
that the rule is carelessness, ignorance, arbitrariness, and utterly
defective notions as to what the translator's province is, then
surely those conclusions are beside the mark that take the con-
trary of all this for granted." None of those who maintain the
theory that the Alexandrine translation has been made from a
special recension of the Hebrew text, has taken the trouble to
investigate the cliaracter of that translation with any minute-
ness, not even Ewald, though he ventures to assert that the
mass of slight discrepancies between the LXX. and the existing
text shows how far the MSS. of this book diverged from one
another at the time the LXX. originated. He also holds that
not infrequently the original reading has been preserved in the
LXX., though he adds the caveat: "but in very many, or
indeed most of these places, the translator has but read and
translated too hastily, or again, has simply abbreviated the text
arbitrarily." Plence we can only subscribe the judgment
passed by Graf at the end of his examination of the Alexandr.
translation of the present book : "The proofs of self-confidence
INTRODUCTION. 33
and arbitrariness on the part of the Alexandrian translator being
innumerable, it is impossible to concede any critical authority
to his version, — for it can hardly be called a translation, — or to
draw from it conclusions as to a Hebrew text differinfj in form
from that which lias been handed down to us."
We must maintain this position against Nagelsbach'^
attempt to explain, by means of discrepancies amongst the
original Hebrew authorities, the different arrangement of the
prophecies against foreign nations adopted in the LXX., these
being here introduced in chap. xxv. between ver. 12 and ver.
14. For the arguments on which Nag., like Movers and Hitz.,
lays stress ia his dissertations on Jeremiah in Lange's Blhel-
werk. p. 13, and in the exposition of xxv. 12, xxvii. 1, xlix.
34, and in the introduction to chap, xlvi.-li., are not conclusive,
and I'est on assumptions that are erroneous and quite illegiti-
mate. In the first place, he finds in vers. 12-14, which, like
Mov., Hitz., etc., he takes to be a later interpolation,' a proof
that the Book against the Nations must have stood in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of chap. xxv. To avoid anticipating
the exposition, we must here confine ourselves to remarking
that the verses adduced give no such proof : for the grounds
for this assertion we must refer to the comment on xxv.
12-14. But besides, it is proved, he says, that the prophecies
against the nations must once have come after chap. xxv. and
before chap, xxvii., by the peculiar expression to, AlXd/j- at the
end of chap. xxv. 13 (Septuag.), by the omission of xxvii. 1
^ The difference in arrangement may be seen from the following table : —
Septuagint. Masoretic Text.
Chap. xxv. 15 ff., Prophecy against Elam, Chap. xlix. 31.
xxvi.,
))
Egypt,
j»
xlvi.
xxvii. and xxviii.,
?)
Babylon,
jj
1. and li.
xxix. 1-7,
,j
the Philistines,
J)
xlvii. 1-7.
xxix. 7-29,
ij
Edom,
1)
xlix. 7-22.
sxx. 1-5,
,}
Ammon,
)j
xlix. 1-6.
XXX. 6-11,
»)
Kedar,
1)
xlix. 28-33.
XXX. 12-16,
f,
Damascus,
)i
xlix. 23-27.
xxxi.,
))
Moab,
>j
xlviii.
xxxii.,
t>
xxv. 15-38.
After -which chap, xxxiii.-li. of the LXX. run parallel with chap, xxvi.-
xlv. of the Masoretic text.
VOL, I. C
34 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
in Sept., and by the somewhat unexpected date given at xlis
34. Now the date, " in the beginning of the reign of Zede-
kiah," in the heading of the prophecy against Elam, xlix. 34,
found not only in the Masoretic text, but also in the Alexandr.
version (where, however, it occurs as a postscript at the end
of the prophecy in xxvi. 1), creates a difficulty only if the
prophecy be wrongly taken to refer to a conquest of Elam by
Nebuchadnezzar. Tlie other two arguments, founded on the
TO. AlXd/M of XXV. 13, and the omission of the heading at
xxvii. 1 (Heb.) in the LXX., stand and fall with the assump-
tion that the Greek translator adhered closely to the Hebrew
text and rendered it with literal accuracy, the very reverse
of which is betrayed from one end of the translation to the
other. The heading at xxvii. 1, "In the beginning of the
reign of Jehoiakhn the son of Josiah king of Jndah, came this
word to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying," coincides word
for word with the heading of xxvi. 1, save that in the latter
tiie words " to Jeremiah'' do not occur ; and this former head-
ing the Greek translator has simply omitted, — holding it to be
incorrect, since the prophecy belongs to the time of Zedekiah,
and is addressed to him. On the other hand, he has appended
TO. AVkajM to the last clause of xxv. 13, " which Jeremiah
prophesied against the nations," taking this clause to be the
heading of Jeremiah's prophecies against the nations; this
appears from the ra AlXd/j,, manifestly imitated from the iirl
TO, edvr]. His purpose was to make out the following oracle as
iigainst Elam ; but he omitted from its place the full title of the
prophecy against Elam, because it seemed to him unsuitable to
have it come immediately after the (in his view) general head-
ing, a eirpo^rjTevae 'Iepe/xia<i eTrl rd e6vr], while, however, he
introduced it at the end of the prophecy. It is wholly wrong
to suppose that the heading at xxvii. 1 of the Hebrew text,
omitted in the LXX., is nothing but the postscript to the
prophecy against Elam (xxvi. 1 in the LXX. and xlix. 34
in the Heb.) ; for this postscript runs thus : iv dpyfj ^acxCkev-
ovTO'i ^eSeKLOv /SacrtXeo)? iyevero, k.t.X., and is a literal trans-
lation of the heading at xlix. 34 of the Heb. It is from
(his, and not from xxvii. 1 of the Heb., that the translator
has manifestly taken his postscript to the prophecy ao-ainst
INTRODUCTION. 35
Elam ; and if so, the postscript is, of course, no kind of proof
that in the original text used by the Greek translator the pro-
phecies against the nations stood before chap, xxvii. The
notion we are combating is vitiated, finally, by the fact that it
does not in the least explain why these prophecies are in the
LXX. placed after xsv. 13, but rather suggests for them a
wholly unsuitable position between xxvi. and xxvii., where
they certainly never stood, nor by any possibility ever could
have stood. From what has been said it will be seen that we
can seek the cause for the transposition of the prophecies
against the nations only in the Alexandrian translator's arbi-
trary mode of handling the Hebrew text.
For the exegetical literature on the subject of Jeremiah's
prophecies, see my Introduction to Old Testament, vol. i. p.
332, English translation (Foreign Theological Library). Be-
sides the commentaries there mentioned, there have since
appeared : K. H. Graf, der Proph. Jeremia erkldrt, Leipz.
1862 ; and 0. W. E. Naegelsbach, der Proph. Jeremia, Theo-
logisch-homiletisch bearbeitet, in J. P. Lange's Bibelwerh, Biele-
feld and Leipz. 1868; translated in Dr. Schaff's edition of
Lange's Bibelwerh, and published by Messrs. Clark.
EIPOSITIOK
CHAP. I. — HEADING. CALL AND CONSECEATION OF JEEEMIAH
TO BE PEOPHET.
|ERS. 1-3 contain the heading to the whole hook of
the prophecies of Jeremiali. The heading runs
thus : " Sayings of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of
the priests at Anathoth, in the land of Benj;imin, to
■wliom hefell the word of Jaliveh in the days of Josiali the son
of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteentli year of his reign,
and in the days of Jehoiaklm the son of Josiali king of Judah,
unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah tlie son of Josiah
king of Judali, until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in
the fifth month." Tlie period mentioned in these verses includes
the time of Jeremiah's principal lahours, wliile no reference is
here made to the work he at a later time wrought amidst the
ruins of Judah and in Egypt; this being held to be of but
subordinate importance for the theocracy. Similarly, when the
names of the kings under whom he laboured are given, the
brief reigns of Jelioahaz and of Jehoiachin are omitted, neither
reign having lasted over three months. His prophecies are
called Ci''"]^'^, words or speeches, as in xxxvi. 10 ; so with the
prophecies of Amos, Am. i. 1. More complete information as to
the person of tlie prophet is given by the mention made of his
father and of his extraction. The name ^^J'p"'^' " Jahveh throws,"
was in very common use, and is found as the name of many
persons; cf. 1 Chron. v. 24, xii. 4, 10, 13, 2 Kings xxiii. 31,
Jer. XXXV. 3, Neh. x. 3, xii. 1. Plence we are hardly entitled
to explain the name with Hengstb. by Ex. xv. 1, to the effect
that whoever bore it was consecrated to the God who with
almighty hand dashes to the ground all His foes, so that in his
37
38 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
name the nature of our prophet's mission would be held to be
set forth. His father Hilkiah is taken by Clem. Alex., Jerome,
and some Rabbins, for the high priest of that name who is
mentioned in 2 Ghron. xxii. 4 ; but without sufficient grounds.
For Hilkial), too, is a name that often occurs ; and the high
priest is sure to have had his home not in Anathoth, but in
Jerusalem. Bat Jeremiah and his father belonged to the
priests who lived in Anathoth, now called Andta, a town of the
priests, lying l^ liours north of Jerusalem (see on Josh. xxi.
18;, in the land, i.e. the tribal territory, of Benjamin. In ver.
2 V^S* belongs to IB'X : " to whom befell (to whom came) the
word of Jahveh in the days of Josiah, ... in the thirteenth
year of his reign." This same year is named by Jeremiah in
chap. XXV. 3 as the beginning of his prophetic labours, ^'^ll
in ver 3 is the continuation of n^n in ver. 2, and its subject is
nin' 13T : and then (further) it came (to him) in the days of
Jehoiakim, ... to the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, etc.
In the fifth month of the year named, the eleventh of the reign
of Zedekiah, Jerusalem was reduced to ashes by Nebuzar-adan,
and its inhabitants carried away to Babylon ; cf. lii. 12 ff.,
2 Kings XXV. 8 ff. Shortly before. King Zedekiah, captured
when in flight from the Chaldeans during the siege of Jeru-
salem, had been deprived of eyesight at Eiblah and carried to
Babylon in chains. And thus his kingship was at an end,
though the eleventh year of his reign might not be yet quite
completed.
Vers. 4-19. TnE Call and Consecration of Jeremiah
TO BE a Peophet OF THE LoED. — The investiture of Jeremiah
with the prophetic offi-:e follows in four acts : the call on the
part of tlie Lord, vers. 4-8 ; Jeremiah's consecration for his call-
ing in vers. 9-10 ; and in two signs, by means of which the Lord
assures him of certain success in his work and of powerful
support in the exercise of his office (vers. 11-19). The call
was given by a word of the Lord wliich came to him in this
form : Ver. 5. " Before I formed thee in the womb I have known
tliee, and before thou wentest forth from the belly have I con-
secrated thee, to be prophet to the nations have I set thee. Ver.
6. Then said I, Ah, Lord Jahveh ! behold, I know not how to
CHAP. 1. 4-19. 31i
speak ; for I am too young. Ver. 7. Then said Jaliveh to ine,
Say not, I am too young; but to all to whom I send thee shalt
thou go, and all that I command thee shalt thou speak. Ver. 8.
Fear not before them : for I am with thee, to save thee, saith
Jahveh." This word came to Jeremiah by means of inspiration,
and is neither the product of a reflective musing as to what his
calling "was to be, nor the outcome of an irresistible impulse, felt
within him, to come forward as a prophet. It was a supernatural
divine revelation vouchsafed to him, which raised his spiritual
life to a state of ecstasy, so that he both recognised the voice
of God and felt his lips touched by the hand of God (ver. 9).
Further, he saw in spirit, one after another, two visions which
God interpreted to him as confirmatory tokens of his divine
commission (vers. 11—19). Jeremiah's appointment to be a
prophet for the nations follows upon a decree of God's, fixed
before he was conceived or born. God in His counsel has not
only foreordained our life and being, but has predetermined
before our birth what is to be our calling upon this earth ; and
He has accordingly so influenced our origin and our growth in
the womb, as to prepare us for what we are to become, and for
what we are to accomplish on behalf of His kingdom. This is
true of all men, but very especially of those who have been
chosen by God to be the extraordinary instruments of His grace,
whom He has appointed to be instruments for the carrying out
of the redemptive schemes of His kingdom ; cf. Jer. xliv. 2, 24,
xlix. 5, Gal. i. 15. Thus Samson was appointed to be a
Nazarite from the womb, this having been revealed to Ids
mother before he was conceived. Judges xiii. 3 ff. To other
men of God such divine predestination was made known for
the first time when they were called to that office to which God
had chosen them. So was it with our prophet Jeremiah. In
such a case a reminder by God of the divine counsel of grace,
of old time ordained and provided with means for its accom-
plishment, should be accepted as an encouragement willingly to
take upon one the allotted calling. For the man God has
chosen before his birth to a special office in His kingdom He
equips with the gifts and graces needed for the exercise of his
functions. The three clauses of ver. 5 give the three moments
whereof the choosing consists : God has chosen him, has con-
40 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
secrated him, and has installed liiin as prophet. The reference
of the words " I have known thee," Calvin limited to the ofBce,
quasi dlceret, priusgnam te formarem in utero, desdnavi te in
hunc usum, nempe ut suhires docendi munus in populo meo.
Divine knowing is at the same time a singling out; and of this,
clioosing is the immediate consequence. But the choosing
takes place by means of ti''"\!i?'7, sanctifying, i.e. setting apart
and consecrating for a special calling, and is completed by
institution to the office. " To be propliet for the nations have
I set thee" (tOJ, ponere, not only appoint, but install). The
sense has been briefly put by Calv. tlius : (Jer.) fuisse hac lege
creatum liominem, ut sito tempore manifestareiur propheta. CiS?,
to the nations =: for the nations; not for Judah alone, but for
the heatlien peoples too ; cf. vers. 10, xxv. 9, xlvi. ff. The
Chethihh ?iTiVX should apparently be read ^?^'^?, from n^iS,
equivalent to IV); the root-form "ilif being warranted by Ex.
xsxii. 4, 1 Kings vii. 15, and being often found in Aramaic.
It is, however, possible that the Chet. may be only scrip)tio plena
of I'SN, a radice ">V), since the scriptio pi. is found elsewhere,
e.g. Hos. viii. 12, Jer. xllv. 17, Ezek. xxi. 28, etc. — Ver. 6. The
divine call throws Jeremiah into terror. Knowing well his too
i;reat weakness for such an office, he exclaims : Ah, Lord
Jahveh ! I know not how to speak ; for I am IVJ, i.e. young and
inexjierienced; cf. 1 Kings iii. 7. This excuse shows that
"inT ■'rij)']^ W means something else than Ci''"i3'n V'^'^ ^!P, by which
Moses sought to repel God's summons. Moses was not ready
of speech, he lacked the gift of utterance ; Jeremiah, on the
other hand, only thinks himself not yet equal to the task by
reason of his youth and want of experience. — Ver. 7. This
execuse God holds of no account. As prophet to the nations,
Jeremiah was not to make known his own thoughts or human
wisdom, but the will and counsel of God which were to be
revealed to him. This is signified by the clauses : for to all to
whom I send thee, etc. The ?y belonging to 'nbri stands for
?X, and does not indicate a hostile advance against any one.
^3 after ?y is not neuter, but refers to persons, or rather peoples ;
since to the relative T^'^. in this connection, ^[f'^V is quite a
natural completion; cf. Isa. viii. 12, and Ew. § 331, c. Only
to those men or peoples is he to go to whom God sends him ;
CHAP. I. 4-19. 41
and to tliem he is to declare only what God commands him.
And so he needs be in no anxiety on this liead, that, as a youth,
he has no experience in the matter of speaking. — Ver. 8. Just
as little needs youthful bashfulness or shy unwillingness to
speak before high and mighty personages stand as a hindrance
in the way of his accepting God's call. The Lord will be with
him, so that he needs have no fear for any man. The suffix
in Dri''?3'? refers to all to whom God sends him (ver. 7). These,
enraged by the threatenings of punishment which he must
proclaim to them, will seek to persecute him and put him to
death (cf. ver. 19) ; but God promises to rescue him from
every distress and danger which the fulfilment of his duties can
bring upon him. Yet God does not let the matter cease with
this pledge ; but, further. He consecrates him to his calling.
Vers. 9 and 10. 27te Consecration. — Ver. 9. " And Jahveh
stretched forth His hand, and touched my mouth, and Jahveh
said to me. Behold, I put my words into thy mouth. Ver. 10.
Behold, I set thee this day over the nations, and over the king-
doms, to root up and to ruin, to destroy and to demolish, to build
and to plant." In order to assure him by overt act of His support,
the Lord gives him. a palpable pledge. He stretches out His
hand and causes it to touch his mouth (cf. Isa. vi. 7) ; while, as
explanation of this symbolical act. He adds : I have put my words
in thy mouth. The hand is the instrument of making and doing ;
the touching of Jeremiah's mouth by the hand of God is con-
sequently an emblematical token that God frames in liis mouth
what lie is to speak. It is a tangible pledge of e/iTri'evcrt?,
inspiratio, embodiment of that influence exercised on the human
spirit, by means of which the holy men of God speak, being
moved by the Holy Ghost, 2 Pet. i. 21 (Nagelsb.). The act
is a real occurrence, taking place not indeed in the earthly,
corporeal sphere, but experienced in spirit, and of the nature of
ecstasy. By means of it God has consecrated him to be Plis
prophet, and endowed him for the discharge of his duties ; He
may now entrust him with His commission to the peoples and
kingdoms, and set him over them as His prophet who
proclaims to them His word. The contents of this proclaiming
are indicated in the following infinitive clauses. With the
words of the Lord he is to destroy and to build up peoples and
42 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
kingdoms. The word of God is a power that carries out His
will, and accomplishes that whereto He sends it, Isa. Iv. 10 ff.
Against this power nothing earthly can stand ; it is a hammer
that breaks rocks in pieces, xxiii. 29. What is here said
of the word of Jahveh to be preached by Jeremiah is said of
Jahveh Himself in xxxi. 28. Its power is to show itself in
two ways, in destroying and in building up. The destroy-
ing is not set down as a mere preliminary, but is expressed
by means of four different words, whereas the building is
given only in two words, and these standing after the four ;
in order, doubtless, to indicate that the labours of Jeremiali
should consist, in the first place and for the most part, in pro-
claiming judgment upon the nations. The assonant verbs ^r>i
and yni are joined to heighten the sense ; for the same reason
Dhn^ is added to "i'?Nn^, and in the antithesis V'^^f? is joined
with nijaK^
Vers. 11-16. The Confirmatory Tokens. — The first is given in
vers. 11 and 12 : " And there came to me the word of Jahveh,
saying, What seest thou, Jeremiah ? And I said, I see an almond
rod. Then Jahveh said to me. Thou hast seen aright : for I
will keep watch over my word to fulfil it." With the consecra-
tion of the prophet to his office are associated two visions, to
give him a surety of the divine promise regarding the discharge
of the duties imposed on liim. First, Jeremiah sees in spirit
a rod or twig of an almond tree. God calls his attention to
this vision, and interprets it to him as a symbol of the swift
fulfilment of His word. The choice of this symbol for the pur-
pose given is suggested by tlie Hebrew name for the almond
tree, liP.B', the wakeful, the vigilant ; because this tree begins to
blossom and expand its leaves in January, when the other trees
are still in their winter's sleep {florat omnium prima mense
Januario, Marlio vero poma maturat. Plin. h. n. xvi. 42, and
Von Schubert, Reise iii. S. 14), and so of all trees awakes
earliest to new life. Without any sufficient reason Graf has
combated this meaning for ^i?K', proposing to change Ij^B' into
' The LXX. have omitted ti\vh, and hence Hitz. infers the spuriousness
of this word. But in the parallel passage, xxxi. 28, the LXX. have
rendered all the four words by the one xaSaipuu ; and Hitz. does not then
pronounce the other three spurious.
CHAP. I. 4-19. 43
I^b', and, with Aqiiil., Sym., and Jerome, to translate
'^i?.'^ 'S? watchful twig, virga vigilans, i.e. a twig whose eyes
are open, whose buds have opened, burst; but he lias not
even attempted to give any authority for the use of the verb
niJB' for the bursting of buds, mucii less justified it. In the
explanation of this symbol between the words, thou hast seen
aright, and the grounding clause, for I will keep watch, there
is omitted the intermediate thought : it is indeed a li?.B'. The
twig thou hast seen is an emblem of what I shall do ; for I
will keep watch over my word, will be watchful to fulfil it.
This interpretation of the symbol shows besides that PiUl? is not
here to be taken, as by Kimchi, Vatabl., Seb. Schmidt,
Niigelsb., and others, for a stick to beat with, or as a threaten-
ing rod of correction. The reasons alleged by Nagelsb. for
this view are utterly inconclusive. For his assertion, that ?i50
always means a stick, and never a fresh, leafy branch, is
proved to be false by Gen. xxx. 37 ; and the supposed climax
found by ancient expositors in the two symbols : rod — boiling
caldron, put thus by Jerome : qui noluevint percutiente virga
emendari, mittentur in ollam ceneam atque succensam, is forced into
the text by a false interpretation of the figure of the seething
pot. The figure of the almond rod was meant only to afford to
the prophet surety for the speedy and certain fulfilment of the
word of God proclaimed by him. It is the second emblem alone
that has anything to do with the contents of his preaching.
Vers. 13-16. The Seetldng Pot. — ^Ver. 13. " And there came
to me the word of Jahveh for the second time, saying,
What seest thou? And I said: I see a seething-pot ; and it
looketh hither from the north. Ver. 14. Then said Jahveh to
me : From the north will trouble break forth upon all inhabi-
tants of the land. Ver. 15. For, behold, I call to all families
of the kingdoms towards the north, saith Jahveh; that they
come and set each his throne before the gates of Jerusalem,
and against all her walls round about, and against all
cities of Judah. Ver. 16. And I will pronounce judgment
against them for all their wickedness, in that they have forsaken
me, and have offered odours to other gods, and worshipped the
work of their hands." TD is a large pot or caldron in which
can be cooked vegetables or meat for many persons at once;
4i THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
cf. 2 Kings iv. 38 ff., Ezek. xxiv. 3 ff. rasj, fanned, blown
upon, used of fire, Ezek. xxi. 36, xxii. 20 f. ; tlien by transfer-
ence, seething, steaming, since the caldron under which fire is
fanned steams, its contents boil ; cf. Job xH. 12. The D'^S of
the pot is the side turned to the spectator (the prophet), the
side towards the front. This is turned from the iiortli this
way, i.e. set so that its contents will run thence this way. njiSX,
properly : towards the north ; then, that which lies towards
the north, or the northerly direction. In the interpretation
of this symbol in ver. 14, nnsri, assonant to TOSJ, is intro-
duced, just as in Amos viii. 2 T.i? is explained by X\>_; so that
there was no occasion for the conjecture of Houbig. and Graf :
nsn, it is fanned up ; and against this we have Hitzig's objec-
tion that the Hophal of n33 never occurs. Equally uncalled for
is Hitzig's own conjecture, n«n, it will steam, fume, be kindled;
while against this we have the fact, that as to nsj no evidence
can be given for the meaning be kindled, and that we have
no cases of such a mode of speaking as : the trouble is fuming,
steaming up. The Arabian poetical saying : their pot steams or
boils, i.e. a war is being prepared by them, is not sufficient to
justify such a figure. We hold then nri£r) for the correct
reading, and decline to be led astray by the paraphrastic
iKKavOrjcreTat of the LXX., since nnsri gives a suitable sense.
It is true, indeed, that nri3 usually means open ; but an open-
ing of the caldron by the removal of the lid is not (with Graf)
to be thought of. But, again, nria has the derived sig. let loose,
let off (cf. nri*3 nns, Isa. xlv. 17), from which there can be no
difficulty in inferring for the Niph. the sig. be let loose, and in
the case of trouble, calamity : break forth. That which is in
the pot runs over as the heat increases, and pours itself on the
hearth or ground. If the seething contents of the pot represent
disaster, their running over will point to its being let loose, its
breaking out. I'^xn 15B'"' are the inhabitants of the land of Judah,
as the interpretation in ver. 15 shows. In ver. 15 reference to
the figure is given up, and the further meaning is given in direct
statement. The Loid will call to all families of the kintrdoms
of the north, and they will come ( = that they are to come). The
kingdoms of the north are not merely the kingdoms of Syria
but in general those of Upper Asia; since all armies marchinf
CHAP. L 4-19. 45
from the Euphrates towards Palestine entered the land from the
north. ninsiK'b, families, are the separate races of nations, hence
often used in parallelism with D'.la ; cf. x. 25, Nahum iii. 4.
"We must not conclude from this explanation of the vision seen
that the seething pot symbolizes the Chaldeans themselves or
the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar; such a figure would be too un-
natural. The seething pot, whose contents boil over, symbolizes
the disaster and ruin which the families of the kinedoms of the
north will pour out on Judah. — Ver. 15 is not the precise inter-
pretation of the picture seen, but a direct statement of the afflic-
tions about to fall on the inhabitants of Judah. " They will
set each his throne." The representatives of the kingdoms are
meant, the kings and generals. To set one's throne (jnj or
Wfe'; cf. xliii. 10, xlix. 38) is a figure for the establishing of
sovereignty. XQS, seat or throne, is not the seat of judgment,
but the throne of the sovereign ; cf. the expression : set the
throne upon these stones, xliii. 10; where a passing of judg-
ment on the stones being out of the question, the only idea
is the setting up of dominion, as is put beyond doubt by the
parallel clause : to spread out his state carpet upon the stones.
" Before the gates of Jerusalem : " not merely in order to
besiege the city and occupy the outlets from it (Jerome and
others), but to lord it over the city and its inhabitants. If we
take the figurative expression in this sense, the further statement
fits well into it, and we have no need to take refuge in Hitzig's
unnatural view that these clauses are not dependent on 'W1 WJIJ,
but on ^N^''- ■^°i' the words : they set up their dominion against
the walls of Jerusalem, and against all cities of Judah, give
the suitable sense, that they will use violence against the walls
and cities. — Ver. 16. God holds judgment upon the inhabitants
of Judah in this very way, viz. by bringing these nations and
permitting them to set up their lordship before the gates of
Jerusalem, and against all cities of Judah. The suffix in DniN
refers to ^^^^ ''3?'', ver. 14, and Dnis< stands by later usage for
nm, as frequently in Jer.; cf. Ew. § 264, b. 's-riK D''L13B'd na'i,
speak judgment, properly, have a lawsuit with one, an expres-
sion peculiar to Jeremiah, — cf. iv. 12, xii. 1, xxxix. 5, Hi. 9,
and 2 Kings xxv. 6, — is in substance equivalent to HK t:£)B'3,
plead with one, cf. xii. 1 with ii. 35, Ezek. xx. 35 ff., and
46 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
signifies not only remonstrating against wrong doing, but also
the passing of condemnation, and so comprehends trial and
sentencing ; cf. xxxix. 5, Hi. 9. " All their wickedness " is
more exactly defined in the following relative clauses ; it con-
sists in their apostasy from God, and their worship of heathen
gods and idols made by themselves; cf. xix. 4, 1 Kings xi.
33, 2 Kings xxii. 17. i??i?, offer odours, cause to rise in smoke,
used not of the burning of incense alone, but of all offerings
upon the altar, bloody offerings and meat-offerings ; hence fre-
quently in parallelism with naj ; cf . Hos. iv. 13, xi. 2, etc. In
the Pentateuch the Hiphil is used for this sense. Instead of
the plural ''ij'JJD, many MSS. give the singular ntJ'JJD as the ordi-
nary expression for the productions of the hand, handiwork; cf.
XXV. 6, 7, 14, xxxii. 30, 2 Kings xxii. 17, etc. ; but the plural
too is found in xliv. 8, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 25, and is approved by
tliese passages. The sense is no way affected by this variation.
Vers. 17-19. The interpretation of the symbols is followed
by a charge to Jeremiah to address himself stoutly to his duties,
and to discharge them fearlessly, together with still further and
f nller assurance of powerful divine assistance. — Ver. 17. " But
tiiou, gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak to them all
that I command thee: be not dismayed before them, lest I
dismay thee before them. Ver. 18. And I, behold I make
thee this day a strong city, an iron pillar, a brazen wail
against the whole land, the kings of Judah, its princes, its
priests, and the people of the land. Ver. 19. They shall
strive against thee, but not prevail against thee ; for I am
with thee, saith Jahveh, to save thee." To gird up the loins,
i.e. to fasten or tuck up with the girdle the long wide garment,
in order to make oneself fit and ready for labour, for a journey,
or a race (Ex. xii. 11; 1 Kings xviii. 46; 2 Kings iv. 29, ix. 1),
or for battle (Job xxxviii. 3, xl. 7). Meaning: equip thyself
and arise to preach my words to the inhabitants of the land.
In 'd nnn-?x and ? IRHw^ there is a play on words. The Nipli.
sig. broken in spirit by terror and anxiety ; the Hiph. to throw
into terror and anguish. If Jer. appears before his adversaries
in terror, then he will have cause to be terrified for them ; only
if by unshaken confidence in the power of the word he preaches
in the name of the Lord, will he be able to accomplish anythinn-.
CHAP. IL 47
Sucli confidence he has reason to cherish, for God will furnish
him with the strength necessary for making a stand, will make
liim strong and not to be vanquished. This is the meaning of
the pictorial statement in ver. 18. A strong city resists the
assaults of the foes; the storm cannot shatter an iron pillar; and
walls of brass defy the enemy's missiles. Instead of the plural
nioh, the parallel passage xv. 20 has the sing, noin, the plural
being used as frequently as the singular to indicate the wall
encircling the city ; cf. 2 Kings xxv. 10 with 1 Kings iii. 1,
Neh. ii. 13, iv. 1 with i. 3, and ii. 17, iv. 10. "With such
invincible power will God equip Plis prophet " against the whole
land," i.e. so that he will be able to hold his own against the
whole land. The mention of the component parts of " all the
land," i.e. the several classes of the population, is introduced
by ''^'to^, so that " the kings," etc., is to be taken as an apposi-
tion to "against all the land." Kings in the plural are
mentioned, because the pi'ophet's labours are to extend over
several reigns. D''"1B' are the chiefs of the people, the heads of
families and clans, and officers, civil and military. " The people
of the land" is the rest of the population not included in these
three classes, elsewhere called men of Judah and inhabitants of
Jerusalem, xvii. 25, xxxii. 32, and frequently. IvN for ^vj? ;
so in XV. 20, and often. With the promise in ver. 196, cf.
ver. 8.
I.— GENERAL ADMONITIONS AND REPROOFS BELONGING TO
THE TIME OF JOSIAH— Chap. II.-XXII.
If we compare the six longer discourses in these chapters with
the sayings and prophecies gathered together in the other
portions of the book, we observe between them this distinction
in form and matter, that the former are more general in their
character than the latter. Considered as to their form, these
last prophecies have, with few exceptions, headings in which
we are told both the date of their composition and the circum-
stances under which they were uttered; while in the headings
of these six discourses, if we except the somewhat indefinite
notice, "in the days of Josiah^' (iii. 6), we find nowhere
mentioned either their date or the circumstances which led to
48 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
their composition. Again, both the sliorter sayings and the
lengthier propiiecies between chap. xxi. and the end of the book
are unmistakeably to be looked upon as prophetic addresses,
separately rounded off; but the discourses of our first part
give us throughout the impression that they are not discourses
delivered before the people, but treatises compiled in writing
from the oral addresses of the prophet. As to their matter, too,
we cannot fail to notice the difference that, whereas from chap,
xxi. onwards the king of Babylon is named as the executor of
judgment upon Judah and the nations, in the discourses of
chap, ii.-xx. the enemies who are to execute judgment are
nowhere defined, but are only generally described as a powerful
and terrible nation coming from the north. And so, in rebuking
the idolatry and the prevailing sins of the people, no reference
is made to special contemporary events; but there are introduced
to a great extent lengthy general animadversions on their
moral degeneracy, and reflections on the vanity of idolatry and
the nature of true wisdom. From these facts we infer the
probable conclusion that these discourses are but comprehensive
summaries of the prophet's labours in the days of Josiah. The
probability becomes certainty when we perceive that the matters
treated in these discourses are arranced according to their
subjects. The first discourse (chap. ii. 1-iii. 5) gives, so to
speak, the programme of the subjects of all the following dis-
courses : that disloyal defection to idolatry, with which Israel
has from of old requited the Lord for His love and faithfulness,
brings with it sore chastening judgments. In the second
discourse (chap. iii. 6-vi. 30) faithless Judah is shown, in the
fall of the ten tribes, what awaits itself in case of stiff-necked
persistence in idolatry. In the third (chap, vii.-x.) is torn from
it the support of a vain confidence in the possession of the
temple and in the offering of the sacrifices commanded by the
law. In the fourth (chap, xi.-xiii.) its sins are characterized
as a breach of the covenant; and rejection by the Lord is
declared to be its punishment. In the fifth (chap, xiv.-xvii.)
the hope is destroyed that the threatened chastisement can be
turned aside by intercession. Finally, in the sixth (chap,
xviii.-xx.) the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem and of
the kingdom of Judah is exhibited in symbolical acts. In this
CHAP. II. 49
arrangement and distribution of what the prophet had to
announce to the people in his endeavours to save them, if
possible, from destruction, we can recognise a progression from
general admonitions and threatenings to more and more definite
announcement of coming judgments; and when, on the other
hand, we see growing greater and bitterer the prophet's com-
plaints against the hatreds and persecutions he has to endure
(cf. xii. 1-6, XV. 10, 11, 15-21, xvii. 14-18, xviii. 18-23,
XX.), we can gather that the expectation of the people's being
saved from impending destruction was growing less and less,
that their obduracy was increasing, and that judgment must
inevitably come upon them. These complaints of the prophet
cease with chap, xx., though later he had much fiercer hatred
to endure.
None of these discourses contains any allusions to events that
occurred after Josiah's death, or stand in any relation to such
events. Hence we believe we are safe in taking them for a
digest of the quintessence of Jeremiah's oral preaching in the
days of Josiah, and this arranged with reference to the subject-
matter. It was by this preaching that Jeremiah sought to give
a firm footing to the king's reformatory efforts to restore and
inspire new life into the public worship, and to develope the
external return to the legal temple worship into an inward con-
version to the living God. And it was thus he sought, while
the destruction of the kingdom was impending, to save all that
would let themselves be saved; knowing as he did that God,
in virtue of His unchangeable covenant faithfulness, would
sharply chastise His faithless people for its obstinate apostasy
from Him, but had not determined to make an utter end
of it.
CHAP. II. l-III. 5. THE LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS OF THE
LORD, AND Israel's disloyalty and idolatry.
The Lord has loved Israel sincerely (ii. 2, 3), but Israel
has fallen from the Lord its God and followed after imagi-
nary gods (vers. 4-8) ; therefore He will yet further punish
it for this unparalleled sin (vers. 9-19). From of old Israel
has been renegade, and has by its idolatry contracted fear-
VOL. I. I>
50 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
ful guilt, being led not even by afilictions to return to the
Lord (vers. 20-30) ; therefore must the Lord chastise (vers.
31-37), because they will not repent (iii. 1-5). This discourse
is of a quite general character; it only sketches the main
thoughts which are extended in the following discourses and
prophecies concerning Judah. So that by most critics it is held
to be the discourse by which Jeremiah inaugurated his ministry;
for, as Hitzig puts it, "in its finished completeness it gives
the impression of a first-uttered outpouring of the heart, in
which are set forth, without restraint, Jahveh's list of griev-
ances against Israel, which has long been running up." It un-
questionably contains the chief of the thoughts uttered by the
prophet at the beginning of his ministry.
Vers. 1-3. "And then came to me the word of Jahveh,
saying : Go and publish in the ears of Jerusalem, saying : I
have remembered to thy account the love of thy youth, the
lovingness of thy courtship time, thy going after me in the
wilderness, in a land unsown. Holy was Israel to the Lord,
his first-fruits of the produce : all who would have devoured
him brought guilt upon themselves : evil came upon him, is the
saying of Jahveh." The vers. 2 and 3 are not " in a certain
sense the text of the following reproof " (Graf), but contain
" the main idea which shows the cause of the [following]
rebuke " (Hitz.) : The Lord has rewarded the people of Israel
with blessings for its love to Him. 13T with h pers. and accus.
rei means : to remember to one's account that it may stand
him in good stead afterwards, — cf. Neh. v. 19, xiii. 22, 31, Ps.
xcviii. 3, cvi. 45, etc., — that it may be repaid with evil, Isfeh.
vi. 14, xiii. 29, Ps. Ixxix. 8, etc. The perfect 'J?"!?! is to be
noted, and not inverted into the present. It is a thing com-
pleted that is spoken of ; what the Lord has done, not what He
is going on with. He remembered to the people Israel the
love of its youth. IDn, ordinarily, condescending love, gracious-
ness and favour ; here, the self-devoting, nestling love of Israel
to its God. The youth of Israel is the time of the sojourn in
Egypt and of the exodus thence (Hos. ii. 17, xi. 1) ; here the
latter, as is shown by the following : lovingness of the court-
ship. The courtship comprises the time from the exodus out
of Egypt till the concluding of the covenant at Sinai (Ex. xix.
CHAP. 11. 1-3. 51
8"). When the Lord redeemed Israel with a strong hand out
of the power of Egypt, He chose it to be His spouse, whom He
bare on eagles' wings and brought unto Himself, Ex. xix. 4.
The love of the bride to her Lord and Husband, Israel proved
by its following Him as He went before in the wilderness, the
land where it is not sown, i.e. followed Him gladly into the
parched, barren wilderness. " Thy going after me'' is decisive
for the question so much debated by commentators, whether IDn
and nans? stand for the love of Israel to its God, or God's love
to Israel. The latter view we find so early as Chrysostom,
and still in Rosenm. and Graf; but it is entirely overthrown
by the ''"in^ ^^-P^j whioh Chrysost. transforms into Trotijcra?
i^aKoKovdricrai, (lov, while Graf takes no notice of it. The
reasons, too, which Graf, after the example of Eosenm. and
Dathe, brings in support of this and against the only feasible
exposition, are altogether valueless. The assertion that the
facts forbid us to understand the words of the love of Israel to
the Lord, because history represents the Israelites, when vixdum
Aegypto egressos, as refractarios et ad aliorum deorum cultum
pronos, cannot be supported by a reference to Dent. ix. 6, 24,
Isa. xlviii. 8, Amos v. 25 f., Ps. cvi. 7. History knows of no
apostasy of Israel from its God and no idolatry of the people
during the time from the exodus out of Egypt till the arrival
at Sinai, and of this time alone Jeremiah speaks. All the
rebellions of Israel against its God fall within the time after
the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, and during the march
from Sinai to Canaan. On the way from Egypt to Sinai the
people murmured repeatedly, indeed, against Moses; at the
Red Sea, when Pharaoh was pursuing with chariots and horse-
men (Ex. xiv. 11 ff.) ; at Marah, where they were not able
to drink the water for bitterness (xv. 24) ; in the wilder-
ness of Sin, for lack of bread and meat (xvi. 2 ff.) ; and
at Massah, for want of water (xvii. 2 ff.). But in all these
cases the murmuring was no apostasy from the Lord, no re-
bellion against God, but an outburst of timorousness and want
of proper trust in God, as is abundantly clear from the fact that
in all these cases of distress and trouble God straightway
brings help, with the view of strengthening the confidence of
the timorous people in the omnipotence of His helping grace.
52 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Their backsliding from the Lord into heathenism begins with
the worship of the golden calf, after the covenant had been
entered into at Sinai (Ex. xxxii.), and is continued in the
revolts on the way from Sinai to the borders of Canaan, at
Taberah, at Kibroth-hattaavah (Num. xi.), in the desert of
Paran at Kadesh (Num. xiii., xx.); and each time it was
severely punished by the Lord. Neither are we to conclude,
with J. D. Mich., that God interprets the journey through the
desert in meliorem partem, and makes no mention of their
offences and revolts ; nor with Graf, that Jeremiah looks
steadily away from all that history tells of the march of the
Israelites through the desert, of their discontent and refractori-
ness, of the golden calf and of Baal Peor, and, idealizing the
past as contrasted with the much darker present, keeps in view
only the brighter side of the old times. Idealizing of this sort
is found neither elsewhere in Jeremiah nor in any other prophet;
nor is there anything of the kind in our verse, if we take up
rightly the sense of it and the thread of the thought. It
becomes necessary so to view it, only if we hold the whole forty
years' sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness to be the
espousal time, and make the marriage union begin not with the
covenanting at Sinai, but with the entrance of Israel into
Canaan. Yet more entirely without foundation is the other
assertion, that the words rightly given as the sense is, " stand
in no connection with the following, since then the point in hand
is the people's forgetfulness of the divine benefits, its thank-
lessness and apostasy, not at all the deliverances wrought by
Jahveh in consideration of its former devotedness." For in
ver. 3 it is plainly enough told how God remembered to the
people its love. Israel was so shielded by Him, as His sanc-
tuary, that whoever touched it must pay the penalty, c'lp are
all gifts consecrated to Jahveh. The Lord has made Israel a
lioly offering consecrated to Him in this, that He has separated
it to Himself for a n^Jtp, for a precious possession, and has
chosen it to be a holy people: Ex. xix. 5 f.; Dent. vii. 6,
xiv. 2. We can explain from the Torah of offering the further
designation of Israel : his first-fruits ; the first of ''the produce
of the soil or yield of the land belonged, as '^p, to the Lord :
Ex. xsiii. 19; Num. viii. 8, etc. Israel, as the chosen people
CHAP. n. 4-8. 53
of God, was sncli a consecrated firstling. Inasmuch as Jahveli
is Creator and Lord of the whole world, all the peoples are His
possession, the harvest of His creation. But amongst the peoples
of the earth He has chosen Israel to Himself for a firstlins-
people (DliJn n''B'N7, Amos vi. 1), and so pronounced it His
sanctuary, not to be profaned by touch. Just as each laic who
ate of a firstling consecrated to God incurred guilt, so all who
meddled with Israel brought guilt upon their heads. The
choice of the verb 1v3S< is also to be explained from the figure
of firstling-offerings. The eating of firstling-fruit is appro-
priation of it to one's own use. Accordingly, by the eating of
the holy people of Jaliveh, not merely the killing and destroy-
ing of it is to be understood, but all laying of violent hands
on it, to make it a prey, and so all injury or oppression of Israel
by the heathen nations. The practical meaning of IKJK'N"' is
given by the next clause : mischief came upon them. The
verbs IDB'X''. and N3Pi are not futures ; for we have here to do
not with tlie future, but with what did take place so long as
Israel showed the love of the espousal time to Jahveh. Hence
rightly Hitz. : " he that would devour it must pay the penalty."
An historical proof of this is furnished by the attack of the
Amalekites on Israel and its result, Ex. xvii. 8-15.
Vers. 4-8. But Israel did not remain true to its first love ;
it has forgotten the benefits and blessings of its God, and has
fallen away from Him in rebellion. — Ver. 4. " Hear the word
of Jahveh, house of Jacob, and all families of the house of
Israel. Ver. 5. Thus saith Jahveh, What have your fathers
found in me of wrongfulness, that they are gone far from me,
and have gone after vanity, and are become vain ? Ver. 6. And
they said not. Where is Jahveh that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, that led us in the wilderness, in the land of
steppes and of pits, in the land of drought and of the shadow
of death, in a land that no one passes through and where no
man dwells ? Ver. 7. And I brought you into a land of fruitful
fields, to eat its fruit and its goodness : and ye came and de-
filed my land, and my heritage ye have made an abomination.
Ver. 8. The priests said not, Where is Jahveh? and they that
handled the law knew me not : the shepherds fell away from
me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and after them that
54 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
profit not are they gone." The rebuke for ungrateful, faithless
apostasy is directed against the whole people. The " house of
Jacob" is the people of the twelve tribes, and the parallel
member, " all families of the house of Israel," is an elucidative
apposition. The "fathers" in ver. 5 are the ancestors of the
now living race onwards from the days of the Judges, when
the generation arising after the death of Joshua and his con-
temporaries forsook the Lord and served the Baals (Judg. ii.
10 ff.). ^.1V> perversity, wrongfulness, used also of a single
wicked deed in Ps. vii. 4, the opposite to acting in truth and
good faith. Jahveh is a God of faithfulness (™»S) ; in Him
is no iniquity (^W f??), Dent, xxxii. 4. The question, what
have they found ... 1 is answered in the negative by ver. 6.
To remove far from me and follow after vanity, is tantamount
to forsaking Jahveh and serving the false gods (Baals), Judg.
ii. 11. ^3ri, lit. breath, thence emptiness, vanity, is applied so
early as the song of Moses, Deut. xxxii. 21, to the false gods, as
being nonentities. Here, however, the word means not the gods,
but the worship of them, as being groundless and vain ; bring-
ing no return to him who devotes himself to it, but making
him foolish and useless in thought and deed. By the apostle
in Kom. i. 21 vani is expressed by i/MaTaito9riaav. Cf. 2 Kings
xvii. 15, where the second hemistich of onr verse is applied to
the ten tribes. — Ver. 6. They said not. Where is Jahveh?
i.e. they have no longer taken any thought of Jahveh ; have not
recalled Plis benefits, though they owed to Him all they had
become and all they possessed. He has brought them out of
Egypt, freed them from the house of bondage (Mic. vi. 4), and
saved them from the oppression of the Pharaohs, meant to
extirpate them (Ex. iii. 7 ff.). He has led them through path-
less and inhospitable deserts, miraculously furnished them with
bread and water, and protected them from all dangers (Deut.
viii. 15). To show the greatness of His benefits, the wilderness
is described as parched unfruitful land, as a land of deadly
terrors and dangers, nani) ps, land of steppes or heaths, cor-
responds to the land unsown of ver. 2. " And of pits," i.e. full
of dangerous pits and chasms into which one may stumble un-
awares. Land of drought, where one may have to pine through
thirst. And of the shadow of death : so Sheol is named in Job
CHAP. II. 4-8. 55
X. 21 as being a place of deep darkness; here, the wilderness,
as a land of the terrors of death, which surround the traveller
with darkness as of death : Isa. viii. 22, ix. 1 ; Job xvi. 16. A
land through which no one passes, etc., i.e. which offers the
traveller neither path nor shelter. Through this frightful
desert God has brought His people in safety. — Ver 7. And He
has done yet more. He has brought them into a fruitful and
well-cultivated land, '^l'?' fmitful fields, the opposite of wilder-
ness, chap. iv. 26; Isa. xxix. 17. To eat up its fruit and its
good; cf. the enumeration of the fruits and useful products
of the land of Canaan, Deut. viii. 7-9. And this rich and
splendid land the ungrateful people have defiled by their sins
and vices (cf. Lev. xviii. 24), and idolatry (cf . Ezek. xxxvi. 18) ;
and the heritage of Jahveh they have thus made an abomina-
tion, an object of horror. The land of Canaan is called " my
heiitage," the especial dom.ain of Jahveh, inasmuch as, being
the Lord of the earth, He is the possessor of the land and has
given, it to the Israelites for a possession, yet dwells in the midst
of it as its real lord. Num. xxv. 34. — In ver. 8 the complaint
briefiy given in ver. 6 is expanded by an account of the conduct
of the higher classes, those who gave its tone to the spirit of the
people. The priests, whom God had chosen to be the ministers
of His sanctuary, asked not after Him, i.e. sought neither Him
nor His sanctuary. They who occupy themselves with the
law, who administer the law : these too are the priests as
teachers of the law (Mic. iii. 11), who should instruct the
people as to the Lord's claims on them and commandments
(Lev. X. 11 ; Deut. xxxiii. 10). They knew not Jahveh, i.e.
they took no note of Him, did not seek to discover what His
will and just claims were, so as to instruct the people therein,
and press them to keep the law. The shepherds are the civil
authorities, princes and kings (cf. xxiii. 1 ff.) : those who by
their lives set the example to the people, fell away from the
Lord ; and the prophets, who should have preached God's
word, prophesied ?Jf3a, by Baal, i.e. inspired by Baal. Baal is
here a generic name for all false gods; cf. xxiii. 13. vJJV K?.
those who profit not, are the Baals as unreal gods; cf. Isa. xliv.
9, 1 Sam. xii. 21. The utterances as to the various ranks form
a climax, as Hitz. rightly remarks. The ministers of public
56 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
worship manifested no desire towards me ; those learned in tlie
law took no knowledge of me, of my will, of the contents of the
book of the law ; the civil powers went the length of rising
up against my law ; and the prophets fairly fell away to false
gods, took inspiration from Baal, the incarnation of the lying
spirit.
Vers. 9-13. Such backsliding from God is unexampled and
appalling. Ver. 9. " Therefore will I further contend with
you, and with your children's children will I contend. Ver.
10. For go over to the islands of the Chittim, and see; and send
to Kedar, and observe well, and see if such things have been ;
Ver. 11. whether a nation hath changed its gods, which indeed
are no gods ? but my people hath changed its glory for that
which profits not. Ver. 12. Be horrified, ye heavens, at this,
and shudder, and be sore dismayed, saith Jahveh. Ver. 13.
For double evil hath my people done ; me have they forsaken,
the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water." In the preceding verses
the fathers were charged with the backsliding from the Lord ; in
ver. 9 punishment is threatened against the now-living people
of Israel, and on their children's children after them. For the
people in its successive and even yet future generations con-
stitutes a unity, and in this unity a moral personality. Since
the sins of the fathers transmit themselves to the children and
remoter descendants, sons and grandsons must pay the penalty
of the fathers' guilt, that is, so long as they share the dis-
position of their ancestors. The conception of this moral unity
is at the foundation of the threatening. That the present race
persists in the fathers' backsliding from the Lord is clearly
expressed in ver. 17 ff. In " I will further chide or strive," is
intimated implicite that God had chidden already up till now,
or even earlier with the fathers. 3''"!, contend, when said of
God, is actual striving or chastening with all kinds of punish-
ment. This must God do as the righteous and holy one; for
the sin of the people is an unheard of sin, seen in no other
people. " The islands of the Chittim " are the isles and coast
lands of the far west, as in Ezek. xxvii. 6 ; Cns having originally
been the name for Cyprus and the city of Cition, see in Gen.
X. 4. In contrast with these distant western lands, Kedar is
CHAP. 11. 9-13. 57
mentioned as representative of the races of the east. The
Kedarenes lived as a pastoral people in the eastern part of tlie
desert between Arabia Petrsea and Babylonia ; see in Gen. xxv.
13 and Ezek. xxvii. 21. Peoples in the two opposite regions of
the world are individualizingly mentioned instead of all peoples.
WJianrij give good heed, serves to heighten the expression.
tn = DS introduces the indirect question ; of. Ew. § 324, c. Tiie
unheard of, that which has happened amongst no people, is put
interrogatively for rhetorical effect. Has any heathen nation
changed its gods, which indeed are not truly gods? No; no
heathen nation has done this ; but the people of Jahveh, Israel,
has exchanged its glory, i.e. the God who made Himself known
to it in His glory, for false gods that are of no profit. 1133 is
the glory in which the invisible God manifested His majesty in
the world and amidst His people. Cf. the analogous title given
to God, i>t<lB': iiN3, Amos viii. 7, Hos. v. 5. The exact anti-
thesis to ilU3 would be HE^a, cf. iii. 24, xi. 13 ; but Jeremiah
chose -'''Jli'' X7 to represent the exchange as not advantageous.
God showed His glory to the Israelites in the glorious deeds
of His omnipotence and grace, like those mentioned in vers. 5
and 6. The Baals, on the other hand, are not D'HPK, but ^VVS^,
nothings, phantoms without a being, that bring no help or profit
to their worshippers. Before the sin of Israel is more fully set
forth, the prophet calls on heaven to be appalled at it. The
heavens are addressed as that part of the creation where the
glory of God is most brightly reflected. The rhetorical aim is
seen in the piling up of words. 3in, lit. to be parched up, to be
deprived of the life-marrow. Israel has committed two crimes :
a. It has forsaken Jahveh, the fountain of living water. D^D
D''>n, living water, i.e. water that originates and nourishes life, is
a significant figure for God, with whom is the fountain of life
(Ps. xxxvi. 10), i.e. from whose Spirit all life comes. Fountain
of living water (here and xvii. 13) is synonymous with well
of life in Prov. x. 11, xiii. 14, xiv. 27, Sir, xxi. 13. b. The
other sin is this, that they hew or dig out wells, broken, rent,
full of crevices, that hold no water. The delineation keeps to
the same figure. The dead gods have no life and can dispense
no life, just as wells with rents or fissures hold no water. Tlie
two sins, the forsaking of the living God and the seeking out
58 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of dead gods, cannot really be separated. Man, created by God
and for God, cannot live without God. If he forsakes the
living God, he passes in spite of himself into the service of dead,
unreal gods. Forsaking the living God is eo ipso exchanging
Him for an imaginary god. The prophet sets the two moments
of the apostasy from God side by side, so as to depict to the
people with greater fulness of light the enormity of their
crime. The fact in ver. 11 that no heathen nation changes its
gods for others, has its foundation in this, that the gods of the
heathen are the creations of men, and that the worship of them
is moulded by the carnal-mindedness of sinful man ; so that
there is less inducement to change, the gods of the different
nations being in nature alike. But the true God claims to be
worshipped in spirit and in truth, and does not permit the
nature and manner of His worship to depend on the fancies of
His worshippers ; He makes demands upon men that run
counter to carnal nature, insisting upon the renunciation of
sensual lusts and cravings and the crucifixion of the flesh, and
against this corrupt carnal nature rebels. Upon this reason for
the fact adduced, Jeremiah does not dwell, but lays stress on
the fact itself. This he does with the view of bringing out the
distinction, wide as heaven, between the true God and the false
gods, to the shaming of the idolatrous people ; and in order, at
the same time, to scourge the folly of idolatry by giving pro-
minence to the contrast between the glory of God and the
nothingness of the idols.
Vers. 14-19. By this double sin Israel has drawn on its own
head all the evil that has befallen it. Nevertheless it will not
cease its intriguing with the heathen nations. Ver. 14, "Is
Israel a servant? is he a horae-born slave? why is be be-
come a booty? Ver. 15. Against him roared the young lions,
let their voice be heard, and made his land a waste ; hTs cities
were burnt up void of inhabitants. Ver. 16. Also the sons of
Noph and Tahpanes feed on the crown of thy head. Ver. 17.
Does not this bring it upon thee, thy forsaking Jahveh thy
God, at the time when He led thee on the way ? Ver. 18. And
now what hast thou to do with the way to Egypt, to drink the
waters of the Nile? and what with the way to Assur to
drink the waters of the river? Ver, 19, Thy wifkodness
CHAP. II. U-19, 59
chastises tLee, and thy backsliclings punish thee ; then know
and see that it is evil and bitter to forsake Jahveh thy God,
and to have no fear of me, saith the Lord Jahveh of hosts."
The thought from vers. 14-16 is this : Israel was plundered
and abused by the nations like a slave. To characterize such
a fate as in direct contradiction to its destiny is the aim of the
question : Is Israel a servant ? i.e. a slave or a house-born serf.
'Oy is he who has in any way fallen into slavery, n^? T'?'' a
slave born in the house of his master. The distinction between
these two classes of slaves does not consist in the superior value
of the servant born in the house by reason of his attachment to
the house. This peculiarity is not here thought of, but only
the circumstance that the son of a slave, born in the house, re-
mained a slave without any prospect of being set free ; while
the man who has been forced into slavery by one of the vicis-
situdes of life might hope again to acquire his freedom by some
favourable turn of circumstances. Another failure is the
attempt of Hitz. to interpret "^^V as servant of Jahveh, wor-
shipper of the true God ; for this interpretation, even if we
take no account of all the other arguments that make against
it, is rendered impossible by T\\2 Iv'. That expression never
means the son of the house, but by unfailing usage the slave
born in the house of his master. Now the people of Israel
had not been born as serf in the land of Jahveh, but had be-
come ^5??) «•«• slave, in Egypt (Deut. v. 15) ; but Jahveh has
redeemed it from this bondage and made it His people. The
questions suppose a state of affairs that did not exist. This is
shown by the next question, one expressing wonder : Why then
is he [it] become a prey? Slaves are treated as a prey, but
Israel was no slave ; why then has such treatment fallen to his
lot ? Proplieta per admirationem quasi de re nova et ahsurda
sciscitatur. An semis est Israel ? atqui erat liber proe cunctis
gentibus, erat enim filius primogenitus Dei ; necesse est igitur
qucerere aliam causam, cur adeo miser sit (Calv.). Of. the
similar turn of the thought in ver. 31. How Israel became a
prey is shown in vers. 15 and 16. These verses do not treat of
future events, but of what has already happened, and, accord-
ing to vers. 18 and 19, will still continue. The imperff. IJNB'^
<md ^IJJT. alternate consequently with the perff. wnj and nnsJ,
60 THE PROPHECIES 01' JEREMIAH.
and are governed by T?^ n;n, so that they are utterances re-
garding events of tlie past, wliich have been and are still re-
peated! Lions are a figure that frequently stands for enemies
thirsting for plunder, who burst in upon a people or land; cf.
Mic. V. 7, Isa. v. 29, etc. Eoared V^Vj against him, not, over
him : the lion roars when he is about to rush upon his prey,
Amos iii. 4, 8 ; Ps. civ. 21 ; Judg. xiv. 5 ; when he has pounced
upon it he growls or grumbles over it ; cf . Isa. xxxi. 4. in
ver. 15b the figurative maimer passes into plain statement.
They made his land a waste ; cf. iv. 7, xviii. 16, etc., where
instead of n'<\ff we have the more ordinary DW. The Cheth.
nm-3 from nv;, not from the Etiiiop. nvj (Graf, Hitz.), is to
be retained; the Keri here, as in xxii. 6, is an unnecessary
correction ; cf. Ew. § 317, a. In this delineation Jeremiah has
in his eye chiefly the land of the ten tribes, which had been
ravaged and depopulated by the Assyrians, even although
Judah had often suffered partial devastations by enemies; cf.
1 Kin<Ts xiv. 25. — Ver. 16. Israel has had to submit to spolia-
tion at the hands of tlie Egyptians too. The present reference
to the Egyptians is explained by the circumstances of the pro-
phet's times, — from tlie fact, namely, that just as Israel and
Judah had sought the help of Egypt against the Assyrians
(cf. Hos. vii, 11, 2 Kings xvii. 4, and Isa. xxx. 1-5, xxx. 1) in
the time of Hezekiaii, so now in Jeremiah's times Judah was
expecting and seeking help from the same quarter against the
advancing power of the Chaldeans ; cf. xxxvii. 7. Noph and
Tahpanes are two former capitals of Egypt, here put as repre-
senting the kingdom of the Pharaohs. «):, in Hos. ix. 6 fib
contracted from ^l^D, Manoph or Menoph, is Memphis, the old
metropolis of Lower Egypt, made by Psammetichus the capital
of the whole kingdom. Its ruins lie on the western bank of
the Nile, to the south of Old Cairo, close by the present village
of Mitrahenny, which is built amongst the ruins ; cf. Brugsch
Reiseberichte aiis Egypten, § 60 ff., and the remarks on Hos.
ix. 6 and Isa. xix. 13. D3Snn, elsewhere spelt as here in the
Keri Driisnn, — cf. xliii. 7 ff., xliv. 1, xlvi. 14, Ez. xxx. 18,—
was a strong border city on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile,
called by the Greeks Aaj>vai (Herod, ii. 20), by the LXX.
Tdfvai ; see iu Ezek. xxx. 18. A part of the Jews who had
CHAP. II. 14-19. 61
remained in the land fled hither after the destruction of
Jerusalem, xliii. 7 ff. ^i''"'.i^ WJI, feed upon thy crown (lit.
feed on thee in respect of thy crown), is a trope for igno-
minious devastation ; for to shave one bald is a token of dis-
grace and sorrow, cf. xlvii. 5, xlviii. 37, Isa. iii. 17 ; and
with this Israel is threatened in Isa. vii. 20. ny"!, to eat up by
grazing, as in Job xx. 26 and xxiv. 21 ; in the latter passage
in the sense of depopulari. We must then reject the conjec-
tures of J. D. Mich., Hitz., and others, suggesting the sense :
crush thy head for thee ; a sense not at all suitable, since crush-
ing the head would signify the utter destruction of Israel. — The
land of Israel is personified as a woman, as is shown by the
fern. sufSx in "^Vy.. Ijike -a land closely cropped by herds, so
is Israel by the Egyptians. In vi. 3 also the enemies are re-
presented as shepherds coming with their flocks against Jeru-
salem, and pitching their tents round about the city, while each
flock crops its portion of ground. In xii. 10 shepherds lay
the vinej'ard waste.
In ver. 17 the question as to the cause of the evil is answered.
riNt is the above-mentioned evil, that Israel had become a prey
to the foe. This thy forsaking of Jahveh makes or prepares
for thee. HB'JJFI is neuter; the infin. 'n5?V is the subject of the
clause, and it is construed as a neuter, as in 1 Sam. xviii. 23.
The fact that thou hast forsaken Jahveh thy God has brought
this evil on thee. At the time when He led thee on the way.
The participle ^viD is subordinated to T\V in the stat. constr. as
a partic. standing for the praterit. durans ; cf. Ew. § 337, c.
'^y}^ is understood by Eos. and Hitz. of the right way (Ps. xxv.
8) ; but in this they forget that this acceptation is incompatible
with the ri3J3, which circumscribes the leading within a definite
time. God will lead His people on the right way at all times.
The way on which He led them at the particular time is the
way through the Arabian desert, cf. ver. 6, and Tjina is to be
understood as in Deut. i. 33, Ex. xviii. 8, xxiii. 20, etc. Even
thus early their fathers forsook the Lord : at Sinai, by the wor-
ship of the golden calf ; then when the people rose against Moses
and Aaron in the desert of Paran, called a rejecting (Y^^) of
Jahveh in Num. xiv. 11 ; and at Shittim, where Israel Joined
himself to Baal Peor, Num. xxv. 1-3. The forsaking of
62 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Jahveh is not to be limited to direct idolatry, but comprehends
also the seeking of help from the heathen ; this is shown by
the following 18th verse, in which the reproaches are extended
to the present bearing of the people. '131 V^^ ^^'^^, ht. what is
to thee in reference to the way of Egypt (for the expression,
see Hos. xiv. 9), i.e. what hast thou to do with the way of
Egypt? Why dost thou arise to go into Egypt, to drink the
water of the Nile? linB', the black, turbid stream, is a name
for the Nile, taken from its dark-grey or black mud. The
Nile is the life-giving artery of Egypt, on whose fertilizing
waters the f ruitf ulness and the prosperity of the country depend.
To drink the waters of the Nile is as much as to say to procure
for oneself the sources of Egypt's life, to make the power of
Egypt useful to oneself. Analogous to this is the drinking the
waters of the river, i.e. the Euphrates. What is meant is seek-
ing help from Egyptians and Assyrians. The water of the
Nile and of the Euphrates was to be made to furnish them
with that which the fountain of living water, i.e. Jahveh (ver.
14), supplied to them. This is an old sin, and with it Israel of
the ten tribes is upbraided by Hosea (vii. 11, xii. 2). From this
we are not to infer "that here we have nothing to do with the
present, since the existing Israel, Judah, was surely no longer a
suitor for the assistance of Assyria, already grown powerless"
(Hitz.). The limitation of the reproach solely to the past is
irreconcilable with the terms of the verse and with the context
(ver. 19). 'il^.'i? ^?"n» cannot grammatically be translated :
What hadst thou to do with the way; just as little can we
make ^'}.^''y} hath chastised thee, since the following : know and
see, is then utterly unsuitable to it. '^'^^I^ and ^iT'aiPi are
not futures, but imperfects, i.e. expressing what is wont to
happen over again in each similar case ; and so to be expressed
in English by tlie present: thy wickedness, i.e. thy wicked
work, chastises thee. The wickedness was shown in forsakino-
Jahveh, in the nia'J'D, backslidings, the repeated defection from
the living God ; cf. iii. 22, v. 6, xiv. 7. As to the fact, we
have no historical evidence that under Josiah political alli-
ance with Egypt or Assyria was compassed; but even if no
formal negotiations took place, the country was certainly even
then not without a party to build its hopes on one or other of
CHAP. II. 20-25. 63
the great powers between which Judah lay, whenever a conflict
arose with either of them. — "'V'f}, with the Vav of consecution
(see Ew. § 347, a) : Know then, and at last comprehend, that
forsaking the Lord thy God is evil and bitter, i.e. bears evil and
bitter frnit, prepares bitter misery for thee. " To have no fear
of me " corresponds " to forsake," lit. thy forsaking, as second
subject ; lit. r and the no fear of me in thee, i.e. the fact that
thou hast no awe of me. 'n^HB, awe of me, like ^'ina in Deut.
ii. 25.
Vers. 20-25. All along Israel has been refractory ; it cannot
and will not cease from idolatry. Ver. 20. For of old time
thou hast broken thy yoke, torn off thy bands ; and hast said :
I will not serve ; but upon every high hill, and under every
green tree, thou stretchedst thyself as a harlot. Ver. 21. And
I have planted thee a noble vine, all of genuine stock : and how
hast thou changed thyself to me into the bastards of a strange
vine 1 Ver. 22. Even though thou washedst thee with natron
and tookest much soap, filthy remains thy guilt before me, saith
the Lord Jahveh. Ver. 23. How canst thou say, I have not
defiled me, after the Baals have I not gone I See thy way in
the valley, know what thou hast done — thou lightfooted camel
filly, entangling her ways. Ver. 24. A wild she-ass used to
the wilderness, that in her lust panteth for air ; her heat, who
shall restrain it ? all that seek her run themselves weary ; in her
month they will find her. Ver. 25. Keep thy foot from going
barefoot, and thy throat from thirst; but thou sayest. It is
useless ; no ; for I have loved strangers, and after them I
go." Ver. 20. D?WD, from eternltv, i.e. from immemorial anti-
quity, has Israel broken the yoke of the divine law laid on it,
and torn asunder the bands of decency and order which the
commands of God, the ordinances of the Torah, put on, to
nurture it to be a holy people of the Lord ; torn them as an
untamed bullock (xxxi. 18) or a stubborn cow, Hos. iv. 16.
niipiD, bands, are not the bands or cords of love with which
God drew Israel, Hos. xi. 4 (Graf), but the commands of
God whose part it was to keep life within the bounds of purity,
and to hold the people back from running riot in idolatry. On
this head see v. 5 ; and for the expression, Ps. ii. 3. The
Masoretes have taken in"i2B' and inpnj for the 1st person,
G4 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
pointing accordingly, and for 1i3J.;N, as unsuitable to this, they
have substituted liajJN. Ewald has decided in favour of these
readings; but he is" thus compelled to tear the verse to pieces
and to hold the text to be defective, since the words from 'yam
onwards are not in keeping with what precedes. Even if we
translate: I offend [transgress] not, the thought does not
adapt itself well to the preceding ; I have of old time broken
thy yoke, etc. ; nor can we easily reconcile with it the ground-
ing clause ; for on every high hill, . . . thou layest a whoring,
where Ew. is compelled to force on "'3 the adversative sig.
Most commentators, following the example of the LXX.
and Vulg., have taken the two verbs for 2d person ; and thus
is maintained the simple and natural thought that Israel has
broken the yoke laid on it by God, renounced allegiance to
Him, and practised idolatry on every hand. The spelling
'rin3B', ''npPiJ, i.e. the formation of the 2d pers. perf. with
', is frequently found in Jer. ; cf. v. 33, iii. 4, iv. 19, xiii. 21,
etc. It is really the fuller original spelhng "'H which has
been preserved in Aramaic, though seldom found in Hebrew;
in Jer. it must be accounted an Aramaism ; cf. Ew. § 190, c ;
Gesen. § 44, 2, Rem. 4. With the last clause, on every high
hill, etc., cf. Hos. iv. 13 and Ezek. vi. 13 with the comm. on
Deut. xii. 2. Stretchest thyself as a harlot or a whoring,
is a vivid description of idolatry, nyv^ bend oneself, lie down
ad coitum, like KoraKklveaBai, inclinari. — Ver. 21. In this
whoring with the false gods, Israel shows its utter corrup-
tion. I have planted thee a noble vine ; not, with noble vines,
as we translate in Tsa. v. 2, where Israel is compared to a
vineyard. Here Israel is compared to the vine itself, a vine
which Jahveh has planted ; cf. Ps. Ixxx. 9, Hos. x. 1. This
vine was all (n?3, in its entirety, referred to P'liB', as collect)
genuine seed ; a proper shoot which could bear good grapes
(cf. Ezek. xvii. 5) ; children of Abraham, as they are described
in Gen. xviii. 19. But how has this Israel changed itself to
me (v, dativ. incommodi) into bastards ! "''iiD is accus. depend-
ent on Jii^SHJ ; for this constr. cf. Lev. xiii. 25, Ps. cxiv. 8.
Q^I^D sig. not shoots or twigs, but degenerate sprouts or suckers.
The article in taan is generic : wild shoots of the species of the
wild vine; but this is not the first determining word; cf. for
CHAP. II. 20-25. G5
tliis exposition of tlie article xiii. 4, 2 Sam. xii. 30, etc., Ew,
§ 290, 0^) ; and for the omission of the article with nna:, c.f.
Ew. §293, a. Thus are removed the grammatical difficulties
that led Hitz. to take 'Ul '^ID quite unnaturally as vocative, and
Graf to alter the text. " A strange vine" is an interloping vine,
not of the true, genuine stock planted by Jahveh (ver. 10),
and which bears poisonous berries of gall, Deut. xxxii. 32. —
Ver. 22. Though thou adoptedst the most powerful means of
purification, yet couldst thou not purify thyself from the defile-
ment of thy sins. 103^ natron, is mineral, and nnii vegetable
alkali. DJjl^J introduces the apodosis ; and by the participle a
lasting condition is expressed. This word, occurring only here
in the O. T., sig. in Aram, to be stained, filthy, a sense here
very suitable. '33?, before me, i.e. before my eyes, the defile-
ment of thy sins cannot be wiped out. On this head see Isa.
i. 18, Ps. li. 4, 9. — Ver. 23. And yet Judah professes to be
pure and upright before God. This plea Jeremiah meets by
pointing to the open practising of idolatrous worship. The
people of Judah personified as a woman — njit in ver. 20 — is
addressed. '^'^ is a question expressing astonishment. ''riNp'lJ^
of defilement by idolatry, as is shown by the next explanatory
clause : the Baals I have not followed. i3vl»3 is used generi-
cally for strange gods, i. 16. The pubUc worship of Baal had
been practised in the kingdom of Judah under Jorara, Ahaziah,
and Athaliah only, and had been extirpated by Jehu, 2 Kings
X. 18 ff. Idolatry became again rampant under Aliaz (by his
instigation), Manasseh, and Amon, and in the first year of
Josiah's reign. Josiah began to restore the worship of Jahveh
in the twelfth year of his reign ; but it was not till the eighteenth
that he was able to complete the reformation of the public ser-
vices. There is then no difficulty in the way of our assuming
that there was yet public worship of idols in Judah during the
first five years of Jeremiah's labours. We must not, however,
refer the prophet's words to this alone. The following of Baal
by the people was not put an end to when the altars and images
were demolished ; for this was sufficient neither to banish from
the hearts of the people the proneness to idolatry, nor utterly
to suppress the secret practising of it. The answer to the pro-
testation of the people, blinded in self-righteousness, shows,
VOL. I. E
GO THE PEOtHECIES OF JEKEMUa
further, that the grosser publicly practised forms had not yet
disappeared. " See thy way in the valley." Way, i.e. doing and
practising. f<*3? with the article must be some valley known for
superstitions cultivated there; most commentators suggest
rio-htly the valley of Ben or Bne-Hinnom to the south of Jeru-
salem, where children were offered to Moloch ; see on vii. 31.
The next words, " and know what thou hast done," do not, taken
by themselves, imply that this form of idol-worship was yet to
be met with, but only that the people had not yet purified
themselves from it. If, however, we take them in connection
with what follows, they certainly do imply the continued exist-
ence of practices of that sort. The prophet remonstrates with
the people for its passionate devotion to idolatry by compai-ing
it to irrational animals, which in their season of heat yield them-
selves to their instinct. The comparison gains in pointedness
by his addressing the people as a camel-filly and a wild she-
ass, 'p n"i33 is vocative, co-ordiuate with the subject of address,
and means the young filly of the camel, npp, running lightly,
nimbly, swiftly. 'iT nanbp, intertwining, i.e. crossing her ways;
I'ushing right and left on the paths during the season of
heat. Thus Israel ran now after one god, now after another,
deviating to the right and to the left from the path pre-
scribed by the law, Deut. xxviii. 14. To delineate yet more
sharply the unruly passionateness with which the people rioted
in idolatry, there is added the figure of a wild ass running her-
self weary in her heat. Hitz. holds the comparison to be so
managed that the figure of the she-camel is adhered to, and
that this creature is compared to a wild ass only in respect of
its panting for air. But this view could be well founded only
if the Keri i=!K'33 were the original reading. Then we might
read the words thus : (like) a wild ass used to the wilderness
she (the she-camel) pants in the heat of her soul for air. But
this is incompatible with the Chelli. iK'??, since the suffix
points back to nns, and requires iK'33 n|iNi3 to be joined with
? nns, so that nSNt;^ must be spoken of the latter. Besides,
taken on its own account, it is a very unnatural hypothesis that
the behaviour of the she-camel should be itself compared to the
gasping of the wild ass for breath ; for the camel is only a
figure of the people, and ver. 24 is meant to exhibit the un-
CHAP. IL 20-25. CI
bridled ardour, rtot of the camel, but of the people. So that
with the rest of the comm. we take the wild ass to be a second
figure for the people, iris differs only orthographically from
K"1S, the usual form of the word, and which many codd. have
here. This is the wood ass, or rather wild ass, since the crea
ture lives on steppes, not in woods. It is of a yellowish colour,
with a white belly, and forms a kind of link between the deer
species and the ass ; by reason of its arrow-like speed not easily
caught, and untameable. Thus it is used as an emblem of
boundless love of freedom, Gen. svi. 12, and of unbridled
licentiousness, see on Job xxiv. 5 and xxxix. 5. '"insi as nom.
epicaen. has the adj. next it, T??, in the masc, and so too in the
apposition iti'Si ri5Sa; the fem. appears first in the statement
as to its behaviour, naSK' : she pants for air to cool the glow of
heat within, njxn sig. neither copulation, from n:Kj approach
(Dietr.), nor cestus libidinosus (Schroed., Ros.). The sig.
approach, meet, attributed to HiX, Dietr. grounds upon the Ags.
gelimpan, to be convenient, opportune; and the sig. glow is
derived from the fact that Jl is used of the boiling of water.
The root meaning of n:s, \\ is, according to Fleischer, tem-
pestivus fuit, and the root indicates generally any effort after
the attainment of the aim of a thing, or impulse ; from which
come all the meanings ascribed to the word, and for njxn in the
text before us the sig. heat, i.e. the animal instinct impelling to
the satisfaction of sexual cravings.
In ver. 246 HE'ina is variously interpreted. Thus much is
beyond all doubt, that the words are still a part of tlie figure,
i.e. of the comparison between the idolatrous people and the
wild ass. The use of the 3d person stands in tlie way of the
direct reference of the words to Israel, since in what precedes
and in what follows Israel is addressed (in 2d pers.). ti'lh can
thus mean neither the new moon as a feast (L. de Dieu, Clir.
B. Mich.), still less tempus menstruum (Jerome, etc.), but month ;
and the suffix in I^^'in is to be referred, not with Hitz. to i^nj^ri,
but to nnsi. The suffixes in rv^^ya and l^^iNVD'; absolutely de-
mand this. " Her month " is the month appointed for the
gratification of the wild ass's natural impulse, i.e., as Bochart
rightly explains it {Hieroz, ii. p. 230, ed. Ros.), mensis quo
68 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
solent syhestres asince mans appetitu fervere. The meaning of
the comparison is this : the false gods do not need anxiously to
court the favour of the people ; in its unbridled desires it gives
itself up to them; cf. iii. 2, Hos. ii. 7, 15. With this is suit-
ably coupled the warning of ver. 25 : hold back, i.e. keep thy
foot from getting bare (^nj is subst. not adjective, which would
have had to be fern., since 7y)_ is fem."), and thy throat from
thirst, viz. by reason of the fever of running after the idols.
This admonition God addresses by the prophet to the people.
It is not to wear the sandals off its feet by running after amours,
nor so to heat its throat as to become thirsty. Hitz. proposes un-
suitably, because in the face of the context, to connect the going
barefoot with the visiting of the sanctuary, and the thirsting of
the throat (1 Kings xviii. 26) with incessant calling on the gods.
The answer of the people to this admonition shows clearly that
it has been receiving an advice against running after the gods.
The Chet. n:nui is evidently a copyist's error for ^p.iiJ'. The
people replies : B'ijiJ, desperatum (est), i.e. hopeless ; thy advice is
all in vain ; cf. xviii. 12, and on Isa. Ivii. 10. The meaning is
made clearer by Ki^ : no; for I love the aliens, etc. D''")J are not
merely strange gods, but also strange peoples. Although
idolatry is the matter chiefly in hand, yet it was so bound up
with intriguing for the favour of the heathen nations that we
cannot exclude from the words some reference to this also.
Vers. 26-28. And yet idolatry brings to the people only dis-
grace, giving no help in the time of need. Ver. 26. " As a
thief is shamed when he is taken, so is the house of Israel put
to shame; they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and
their prophets. Ver. 27. Because they say to the wood, Thou
art my father; and to the stone. Thou hast borne me: for
they have turned to me the back and not the face ; but in the
time of their trouble they say, Arise, and help us. Ver. 28.
"Where then are thy gods that thou hast made thee ? let them
arise, if they can help thee in the time of thy trouble ; for as
many as are thy cities, so many are thy gods, Judah." The
thought in vers. 26 and 27a is this, Israel reaps from its
idolatry but shame, as the thief from stealing when he is caught
in the act. The comparison in ver. 26 contains a universal
truth of force at all times. The perf. ^ti-^ain is the timeless ex-
CHAP. II. 29-37. . C9
pression of certainty (Hitz.), and refers to the past as well as to
the future. Just as already in past time, so also in the future,
idolatry brings but shame and confusion by the frustration of
the hopes placed in the false gods. The " house of Israel " is
all Israel collectively, and not merely the kingdom of the ten
tribes. To give the greater emphasis to the reproaches, the
leading ranks are mentioned one by one. Ci''"i*DX, not : who say,
but because (since) they say to the wood, etc., i.e. because they
hold images of wood and stone for the gods to whom they owe
life and being; whereas Jahveh alone is their Creator or Fatlier
and Genitor, Deut. xxxii. 6, 18; Isa. Ixiv. 7; Mai. ii. 10. i?N
is fem., and thus is put for mother. The Kej'i ^3ri"ip^ is sug-
gested solely by the preceding Q''"]!?i<, while the C/iet. is correct,
and is to be read "'JJi'l?'!, inasmuch as each one severally speaks
thus. — With " for they have turned" follows the reason of the
statement that Israel will reap only shame from its idolatry.
To the living God who has power to help them they turn their
back; but when distress comes upon them they cry to Him for
help (WSyini r\mp as in Ps. iii. 8). But then God will send
the people to their gods (idols) ; then will it discover they will
not help, for all so great as their number is. The last clause
of ver. 28 runs literally : the number of thy cities are thy gods
become, i.e. so great is the number of thy gods; cf. xi. 13.
Judah is here directly addressed, so that the people of Judah
may not take for granted that what has been said is of force
for the ten tribes only. On the contrary, Judah will experience
the same as Israel of the ten tribes did when disaster broke
over it.
Vers. 29-37. Judah has refused to let itself be turned from
idolatry either by judgments or by the warnings of the prophets ;
nevertheless it holds itself guiltless, and believes itself able to
turn aside judgment by means of its intrigues with Egypt.
Ver. 29. "Wherefore contend ye against me? ye are all fallen
away from me, saith Jahveh. Ver. 30. In vain have I smitten
your sons ; correction have they not taken : your sword hath
devoured your prophets, like a devouring lion. Ver. 31. O
race that ye are, mark the word of Jahveh. Was I a wilder-
ness to Israel, or a land of dread darkness ? Why saith my
people, We wander about, come no more to thee ? Ver. 32,
70 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
Does a maiden forget her ornaments, a bride her girdle ? but
my people hath forgotten me days without number. Ver. 33,
How finely thou trimmest thy ways to seek love ! therefore to
misdeeds thou accustomest thy ways, Ver, 34. Even in thy
skirts is found the blood of the souls of the innocent poor ones ;
not at housebreaking hast thou caught them, but by reason
of all this, Ver. 35. And thou sayest, I am innocent, yea His
wrath hath turned from me : behold, I will plead at law with
thee for that thou hast said, I have not sinned. Ver. 36.
Why runnest thou so hard to change thy way ? for Egypt too
thou shalt come to shame, as thou wast put to shame for
Asshur, Ver. 37. From this also shalt thou come forth, beating
thy hands upon thy head ; for Jahveh rejecteth those in whom
thou trustest, and thou shalt not prosper with them." The
question in ver. 29, Wherefore contend ye against me? implies
that the people contended with God as to His visitations, mur-
mured at the divine chastisements they had met with ; not as
to the reproaches addressed to them on account of their idolatry
(Hitz., Graf), yi, with 7^, contend, dispute against, is used of
the murmuring of men against divine visitations, xii, 1, Job
xxxiii. 13. Judah has no ground for discontent with the Lord ;
for they have all fallen away from Him, and (ver. 31) let
themselves be turned to repentance neither by afflictions, nor
by warnings, nor by God's goodness to them. NlU'b, to vanity,
i.e. without effect, or in vain. Hitz. and Graf wish to refer
"your sons" to the able-bodied youth who had at different
times been slain by Jahveh in war. The LXX, seem to have
taken it thus, expressing ^n\>'? by iSe^aaOe ; for the third pers.
of the verb will not agree with this acceptation of "your sons,"
since the reproach of not having taken correction could not
apply to such as had fallen in war, but only to those who had
escaped. This view is unquestionably incorrect, because, as
Hitz. admits, the subject, those addressed in ^np^, must be the
people. Hence it follows of necessity that in ' D3\3a too the
people is meant. The expression is similar to lipy ''?3, Lev.
xix. 18, and is used for the members of the nation, those who
constitute the people ; or rather it is like n^iin^ <J3, Joel iv. 6,
where Judah is looked on by the prophet as a unity, where sons
are the members of the people, nan, too, is not to be limited
CHAP. 11. 29-37. 71
to those smitten or slain in war. It is used of all the iudn-
ments with which God visits His people, of sword, pestilence,
famine, failure of crops, drought, and of all kinds of diseases ;
cf. Lev. xxvi. 24 ff., Deut. xxviii. 22, 27 ff. "ID'''^ '^ instruction
by word and by warning, as well as correction by chastisement.
Most comm. take the not receiving of correction to refer to
divine punitive visitations, and to mean refusal to amend after
such warning ; Eos., on tlie other hand, holds the reference to
be to the warnings and reproofs of the prophets ("IDID hie instruc-
tionem valet, ut Prov. v. 12, 23 cei.). But both these references
are one-sided. If we refer " correction have they not taken "
to divine chastisement by means of judgments, there will be no
connection between this and the following clause : your sword
devoured your prophets ; and we are hindered from restraining
the reference wholly to the admonitions and rebukes of the
prophets by the close connection of the words with the first part
of the verse, a connection indicated by the omission of all
particles of transition. We must combine the two references,
and understand iDiti both of the rebukes or warnings of the
prophets and of the chastisements of God, holding at the same
time that it was the correction of the people by the prophets
that Jer, here chiefly kept in view. In administering this cor-
rection the prophets not only applied to the hearts of the people
as judgments from God all the ills that fell upon them, but
declared to the stiff-necked sinners the punishments of God, and
by their words showed those punishments to be impending:
e.g. Elijah, 1 Kings xvii. and xviii., 2 Kings i. 9 ff. ; Elisha,
2 Kings ii, 23 ; the prophet at Bethel, 1 Kings xiii. 4. Thus
this portion of the verse acquires a meaning for itself, which
simplifies the transition from the first to the third clause, and
we gain the following thought : I visited j^ou with punish-
ments, and made j'ou to be instructed and reproved by prophets,
but ye have slain the prophets who were sent to you, Nehe-
miah puts it so in ix. 26 ; but Jeremiah uses a much stronger
expression, Your sword devoured your prophets like a lion
which destroys, in order to set full before the sinners' eyes the
savage hatred of the idolatrous people against the prophets of
God. Historical examples of this are furnished by 1 Kings
xviii. 4, 13, xix. 10, 2 Ohron. xxiv. 21 ff., 2 Kings xxi. 16,
72 TUE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Jer. xxvi. 23. Tlie prophet's indignation grows hotter as he
brings into view God's treatment of the apostate race, and sets
before it, to its shame, the divine long-suffering and love. li^U
□ns, O generation ye ! English: O generation that ye are ! (cf.
Ew. § 327, a), is the cry of indignation; cf. Deut. xxxii. 5, where
Moses calls the people a perverse foolish generation. =ii<1 : see,
observe, give heed to the word of the Lord. This verb is often
used of perceptions by any sense, as expressive of that sense
by which men apprehend most of the things belonging to the
outward world. Have I been for Israel a wilderness, i.e. an
unfruitful soil, offering neither means of support nor shelter?
This question contains a litotes, and is as much as to say : have
not I richly blessed Israel with earthly goods? Or a land of
dread darkness ? H^^BXp, lit. a darkness sent by Jahveh ; cf.
the analogous form n^nin^B', Cant. viii. 6.^ The desert is so
called not merely because it is pathless (Job iii. 23), but as a
land in which the traveller is on all sides surrounded by deadly
dangers ; cf. ver. 6 and Ps. Iv. 5. Why then will His people
insist on being quit of Him? We roam about unfettered (as
to "m, see on Hos. xii. 1), i.e. we will no longer bear the yoke
of His law; cf. ver. 20. By a comparison breathing love and
longing sadness, the prophet seeks to bring home to the heart
of the people a feeling of the unnaturalness of their behaviour
towards the Lord their God. Does a bride, then, forget her
ornaments? etc. C'lp'i?, found besides in Isa. iii. 20, is the
ornamental girdle with which the bride adorns herself on the
wedding-day ; cf. Isa. iii. 20 with xlix. 18. God is His people's
best adornment ; to Him it owes all the precious possessions it
has. It should keep fast hold of Him as its most priceless
treasure, should prize Him more highly than the virgin her
jewels, than the bride her girdle. But instead of this it has
forgotten its God, and that not for a brief time, but throughout
1 Ewald, Gram. § 270, c, proposes to read with the LXX. nv3XD, be-
cause (he says) it is nowhere possible, at least not in the language of the pro-
jihets, for the name Jah (God) to express merely greatness. But this is not
to the point. Although a darkness sent by Jah be a great darkness, it by no
means follows that the name Jah is used merely to express greatness. But by
nin'' riD'il'in, l Sam. xxvi. 12, it is put beyond a doubt that darkness of
Jah means a darkness sent or spread out by Jah.
CHAP. II. 29-37. 73
countless days. DW is accus. of duration of time. Jeremiali
uses this figure besides, as Oalv. observed, to pave the way for
vv'liat comes next. Volebat enim Judceos coiiferre mulierihus
adulteris, quce dum feruntur effreni sua libidine, rapiuntur post
stws vagos amoves.
In ver. 33 the style of address is ironical. How good tlion
makest thy way ! i.e. how well thou knowest to choose out and
follow the right way to seek love. i)']'|] 3''D''n gig. usually:
strive after a good walk and conversation ; cf. vii. 3, 5, xviii. 11,
etc.; here, on the other hand, to take the right way for gaining
the end in view. " Love " here is seen from the context to be
love to the idols, intrigues with the heathen and their gods.
Seek love = strive to gain the love of the false gods. To at-
tain this end thou hast taught thy ways misdeeds, i.e. accus-
tomed thy ways to misdeeds, forsaken the commandments of
thy God which demand righteousness and the purifying of one's
life, and accommodated thyself to the immoral practices of
the heathen. W'ln, with the article as in iii. 5, the evil deeds
which are undisguisedly visible ; not : the evils, the misfortunes
which follow thee closely, as Hitz. interprets in the face of
the context. For in ver. 34 we have indisputable evidence that
the matter in hand is not evils and misfortunes, but evil deeds
or misdemeanours ; since there the cleaving of the blood of
innocent souls to the hems of the garments is mentioned as one
of the basest " evils," and as such is introduced by the D? of gra-
dation. The " blood of souls " is the blood of innocent mur-
dered men, which clings to the skirts of the murderers' clothes.
D)aj3 are the skirts of the flowing garment, Ezek. v. 3; ^ Sam.
xv.'27 ; Zech. viii. 23. The plural WVDJ before ni_ is explained
by the fact that niB'SJ is the principal idea. D''^i''3N are not
merely those who live in straitened circumstances, but pious
oppressed ones as contrasted with powerful transgressors and
oppressors ; cf. Ps. xl. 18, Ixxii. 13 f., Ixxxvi. 1, 2, etc. By
tlie next clause greater prominence is given to the fact tliat
they were slain being innocent. The words : not n"nnrii33j at
housebreaking, thou tookest them, contain an allusion to tlie law
in Ex. xxii. 1 and onwards ; according to which the killing of
a thief caught in the act of breaking in was not a cause of
blood-guiltiness. The thought runs thus : The poor ones thou
74 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
liast slain were no thieves or robbers whom thou hadst a right
to slay, but guiltless pious men ; and the killing of them is a
crime worthy of death. Ex. xxi. 12. The last words n^ix-b PJf ''3
are obscure, and have been very variously interpreted. Changes
upon the text are not to the purpose. For we get no help from
the reading of the LXX., of the Syr. and Arab., which seem
to have read n^iN as n^i?, and which have translated Spvi oak or
terebinth ; since "upon every oak " gives no rational meaning.
Nor from the connecting of the words with the next verse
(Venem., Schnur., Eos., and others) : yet with all this, or in
spite of all this, thou saidst ; since neither does '3 mean r/et,
nor can the 1 before ''"I'p'^'n, in this connection, introduce the
sequel thought. The words manifestly belong to what goes
before, and contain a contrast : not in breaking in by night thou
tookest them, but upon, or on account of all this. ?y in the sig.
upon gives a suitable sense only if, with Abarb., Ew., Nag.,
we refer 'i|S to ^1?3D3 and take D^riNVD as 1st pers. : I found
it (the blood of the slain souls) not on the place where the
murder took place, but upon all these, sc. lappets of the clothes,
i.e. borne openly for display. But even without dwelling on
the fact that ninno does not mean the scene of a murder or
breaking in, this explanation is wrecked on the unmistakeably
manifest allusion to the law, a|2n NVs; nnnnsa ds*, Ex. xxi. 1,
which is ignored, or at least obscured, by that view. The allu-
sion to this passage of the law shows that D^nsva is not 1st but
2d pers., and that the suffix refers to the innocent poor who
were slain. Therefore, with Hitz. and Graf, we take "^3 bv
n^S in the sig. " on account of all this," and refer the " all
this" to the idolatry before mentioned. Consequently the
words bear this meaning: Not for a crime thou killedst the
poor, but because of thine apostasy from God and thy forni-
cation with the idols, their blood cleaves to thy raiment. The
words seem, as Calv. surmised, to point to the persecution and
slaying of the prophets spoken of in ver. 30, namely, to the
innocent blood with which the godless king Manasseh filled
Jerusalem, 2 Kings xxi. 16, sxiv. 4; seeking as he did to
crush out all opposition to the abominations of idolatry, and
finding in his way the prophets and the godly of the land, who
by their words and their lives lifted up their common testimony
CHAP. [I. 29-37. 75
acjainst the idolaters and their abandoned practices. — Ver. 35.
Yet withal the people holds itself to be guiltless, and deludes
itself with the belief that God's wrath has turned away from
it, because it has for long enjoyed peace, and because the
judgment of devastation of the land by enemies, threatened by
the earlier prophets, had not immediately received its fulfil-
ment. For this self-righteous confidence in its innocence, God
will contend with His people (^niX for 'iinx as in i. 16). — Ver.
36 f. Yet in spite of its proud security Judah seeks to assure
itself against hostile attacks by the eager negotiation of alliances.
This thought is the link between ver. 35 and the reproach of
ver. 36. Wliy runnest thou to change thy way? vW for
yI^^j from ?tx, go, with *lN!p, go impetuously or with strength,
i.e. go in haste, run ; cf. 1 Sam. xx. 19. To change, shift
(niJE') one's way, is to take another way than that on which
one has hitherto gone. The prophet's meaning is clear from the
second half of the verse: " for Egypt, too, wilt thou come to
shame, as for Assyria thou hast come to shame." Changing
the way, is ceasing to seek help from Assyria in order to form,
close rela.tions with Egypt. The verbs "'B'^Jn and )jiE'3 show
that the intrigues for the favour of Assyria belong to the past,
for the favour of Egypt to the present. Judah was put to
shame in regard to Assyria under Ahaz, 2 Ohron. xxviii. 21 ;
and after the experience of Assyria it had had under Plezekiali
and Manasseh, there could be little more thought of lookinijf for
' OCT
help thence. But what could have made Judah under Josiah, in
the earlier days of Jeremiah, to seek an alliance with Egypt,
considering that Assyria was at that time already nearing its
dissolution? Graf is therefore of opinion that the prophet is
here keeping in view the political relations in the days of
Jehoiakim, in which and for which time he wrote his book,
rather than those of Josiah's times, when the alliance with
Asshur was still in force ; and that he has thus in passing cast a
stray glance into a time influenced by later events. But the
opinion that in Josiah's time the alliance with Asshur was still
existing cannot be historically proved. Josiah's invitation to
the passover of all those who remained in what had been the
kingdom of the ten tribes, does not prove that he exercised a
kind of sovereignty over the provinces that had formerly be-
76 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
longed to tlie kingdom of Israel, a thing he conld have done
only as vassal of Assyria ; see against this view the remarks on
2 Kings xxiii. 15 ff. As little does his setting himself against
the now mighty Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo show clearly that
he remained faithful to the alliance with Asshur in spite of the
disruption of the Assyrian empire ; see against this the remarks
on 2 Kings xxiii. 29 f. Historically only thus much is certain,
that Jehoiakim was raised to the throne by Pharaoh Necho,
and that he was a vassal of Egypt. During the period of this
subjection the formation of alliances with Egypt was for Judah
out of the question. Such a case could happen only when
Jehoiakim had become subject to the Chaldean king Nebu-
chadnezzar, and was cherishing the plan of throwing off the
Chaldean yoke. But the reference of the words to this design
is devoid of the faintest probability, vers. 35 and 36 ; and the
discourse throughout is far from giving the impression that
Judah had already lost its political independence ; they rather
imply that the kingdom was under the sway neither of Assyrians
nor Egyptians, but was still politically independent. We may
very plausibly refer to Josiah's time the resolution to give up
all trust in the assistance of Assyria and to court the favour of
Egypt. We need not seek for the outward inducement to
this in the recognition of the beginning decline of the Assyrian
power ; it might equally well lie in the growth of the Egyptian
state. That the power of Egypt had made considerable pro-
gress in the reign of Josiah, is made clear by Pharaoh Necho's
enterprise against Assyria in the last year of Josiah, from Necho's
march towards the Euphrates. Josiah's setting himself in op-
position to the advance of the Egyptians, which cost him his
life at Megiddo, neither proves that Judah was then allied with
Assyria nor excludes the possibility of intrigues for Egypt's
favour having already taken place. It is perfectly possibly that
the taking of Manasseh a captive to Babylon liy Assyrian
generals may have shaken the confidence in Assyria of the
idolatrous people of Judah, and that, their thoughts tnrnincr to
Egypt, steps may have been taken for paving the way towards
an alliance with this great power, even although the godly
king Josiah took no part in these proceedings. The prophet's
warning against confidence in Egypt and against courtincr its
CHAP. III. 1-5. 77
alliance, is givfen in terms so genera] that it is impossible to
draw any certain conclusions either with regard to the principles
of Josiah's government or with regard to the circumstances of
the time which Jeremiah was keeping in view. — Ver. 37. Also
from this, i.e. Egypt, shalt thou go away (come back), thy hands
upon thy head, i.e. beating them on thy head in grief and dis-
may (cf. for this gesture 2 Sam. xiii. 19). nt refers to Egypt,
thought of as a people as in xlvi. 8, Isa. xix. 16, 25 ; and thus
is removed Hitz.'s objection, that in that case we must have nNN
D''nD3p, objects of confidence. The expression refers equally
to Egypt and to Assyria. As God has broken the power of
Assyria, so will He also overthrow Egypt's might, thus making
all trust in it a shame. DH?, in reference to them.
Chap, iii. 1-5. As a divorced woman who has become another
man's wife cannot return to her first husband, so Jadah, after
it has turned away to other gods, will not be received again by
Jahveh ; especially since, in spite of all chastisements, it adheres
to its evil ways. Ver. 1. " He saith, If a man put away his
wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, can he
return to her again? would not snch a land be polluted? and
thou hast whored with many partners ; and wouldst thou return
tome? saith Jahveh. Ver. 2. Lift up thine eyes unto the
bare-topped hills and look, where hast thou not been lien with ;
on the ways thou sattest for them, like an Arab in the desert,
and pollutedst the land by thy whoredoms and by thy wicked-
ness. Ver. 3. And the showers were withheld, and the latter
rain came not ; but thou hadst the forehead of an harlot woman,
wonldst not be ashamed. Ver. 4. Ay, and from this time
forward thou criest to me. My father, the friend of. my youth
art thou. Ver. 5. Will he alway bear a grudge and keep it up
for ever? Behold, thou speakest thus and dost wickedness and
earnest it out." This section is a continuation of the preceding
discourse in chap, ii., and forms the conclusion of it. That this
is so may be seen from the fact that a new discourse, introduced
by a heading of its own, begins with ver. 6. The substance of
the fifth verse is further evidence in the same direction ; for the
rejection of Judah by God declared in that verse furnishes the
suitable conclusion to the discourse in chap, ii., and briefly shows
how the Lord will plead with the people that holds itself blame-
78 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
less (ii. 35).^ But it is soinewliat singular to find the connection
made by means of "ii3^"^, which is not translated by the LXX.
or Syr., and is expressed by Jerome by vu/go dicitur. Eos.
■would make it, after Eashi, possem dicere, Eashi's opinion being
that it stands for ID'^ 'h lff\ In this shape the assumption can
hardly be justified. It might be more readily supposed that the
infinitive stood in the sense : it is to be said, one may say, it
must be affirmed ; but there is against this the objection that
this use of the infinitive is never found at the beginning of a
new train of thonght. The only alternative is with Maur. and
Hitz. to join ibxi? with what precedes, and to make it dependent
on the verb DND in ii. 37 : Jahveh hath rejected those in whom
thou trustest, so that thou shalt not prosper with them ; for He
says : As a wife, after she has been put away from her husband
and has been joined to another, cannot be taken back again by
her first husband, so art thou thrust away for thy whoredom.
The rejection of Judali by God is not, indeed, declared expressis
verbis in vers. 1-5, but is clearly enough contained there in sub-
stance. Besides, " the rejection of the people's sureties (ii. 37)
involves that of the people too" (Hitz.). "ibxP, indeed, is not
universally used after verbis dicendi alone, but frequently stands
after very various antecedent verbs, in which case it must be
very variously expressed in English ; e.g. in Josh. xxii. 11 it
comes after ^V'q'W^ they heard : as follows, or these words ; in
2 Sam. iii. 12 we have it twice, once after the words, he sent
messengers to David to say, i.e. and cause them say to him, a
second time in the sense of namely; in 1 Sam. xxvii. 11 with
the force of: for he said or thought. It is used here in a
1 The contrary assertion of Ew. and Nagelsb. that these verses do not
belong to what precedes, but constitute the beginning of the next dis-
course (chap. iii.-vi.), rests upon an erroneous view of the train of thought
in this discourse. And such meagre support as it obtains involves a viola-
tion of usage in interpreting i^x y\m_ as : yet turn again to me, and needs
further the arbitrary critical assertion that the heading in iii. 6 : and Jahveh
said to me in the days of Josiah, has been put by a copyist in the wrong
place, and that it ought to stand before ver. 1.— Nor is there any reason
for the assumption of J. D. Mich, and Graf, that at ver. 1 the text has been
mutilated, and that by an oversight i^x nin> im \n»1 has dropped out ;
and this assumption also contradicts the fact that vers. 1-5 can neither
contaiu nor begin any new prophetic utterance.
CHAP, IIL 1-5. 79
manner analogous to this : he announces to thee, makes known
to thee. — The comparison with the divorced wife is suggested
by the law in Deut. xxiv. 1-4. Here it is forbidden that a man
shall take in marriage again his divorced wife after she has been
married to another, even although she has been separated from
her second husband, or even in the case of the death of the
latter ; and re-marriage of this kind is called an abomination
before the Lord, a thing that makes the land sinful. The
question. May he yet return to her ? corresponds to the words
of the law ; her husband may not again (^^t^?) take her to be
his wife. The making of the land sinful is put by Jer. in
stronger words : this land is polluted ; making in this an allusion
to Lev. xviii. 25, 27, where it is said of similar sins of the flesh
that they pollute the land.
With " and thou hast whored " comes the application of this
law to the people that had by its idolatry broken its marriage
vows to its God. Hit is construed with the accus. as in Ezek. xvi.
28. D")''?., comrades in the sense of paramours ; cf. Hos. iii. 1.
D''ii"ij inasmuch as Israel or Judah had intrigued with the gods
of many nations. vX aity'l is injin. abs., and the clause is to be
taken as a question : and is it to be supposed that thou mayest
return to me ? The question is marked only by the accent ; cf .
Ew. § 328, a, and Gesen. § 131, 4, b. Syr., Targ., Jerome, etc.
have taken nity'l as imperative : return again to me ; but wrongly,
since the continuity is destroyed. This argument is not answered
by taking ) copul. adversatively with the sig. yet; it is on the
contrary strengthened by this arbitrary interpretation. The
call to return to God is incompatible with the reference in
ver. 2 to the idolatry which is set before the eyes of the people
to show it that God has cause to be wroth. " Look but to the
bare-topped hills." ^\^^, bald hills and mountains (cf. Isa.
xli. 18), were favoured spots for idolatrous worship; cf. Hos.
iv. 13. When hast not thou let thyself be ravished? i.e. on
all sides. For ^%f the Masoretes have here and everywhere
substituted MSfVsee Deut. xxviii. 30, Zech. xiv. 2, etc. The
word is here used for spiritual ravishment by idolatry; here
represented as spiritual fornication. Upon the roads thou sattest,
like a prostitute, to entice the passers-by ; cf . Gen. xxxviii. 14,
Prov. vii. 12. This figure corresponds in actual fact to the
80 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
erection of idolatrous altars at the corners of the streets and at
the gates : 2 Kings xxiii. 8 ; Ezek. xvi. 25. Like an Arab in the
desert, i.e. a Bedouin, who lies in wait for travellers, to plunder
them. The Bedouins were known to the ancients, of. Died.
Sic. ii. 48, Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 28, precisely as they are repre-
sented to this day by travellers.— By this idolatrous course Israel
desecrated the land. The plural form of the sufSx with the
singular nw is to be explained by the resemblance borne both
in sound and meaning (an abstract) by the termination m
to the plural ni ; cf. ver. 8, Zeph. iii. 20, and Ew. § 259, b.
Tjrijn refers to the moral enormities bound up with idolatry,
e.g. the shedding of innocent blood, ii. 30, 35. The shedding
of blood is represented as defilement of the land in Num. xxxv.
33. — Ver. 3. But the idolatrous race was not to be brought to
reflection or turned from its evil ways, even when judgment
fell upon it. God chastised it by withholding the rain, by
drought ; cf. xiv. 1 ff., Amos iv. 7 ff. D''?''?'!, rain-showers (Deut.
xxxii. 2), does not stand for the early rain (^Tii''), but denotes
any fall of rain ; and the late rain (shortly before harvest) is
mentioned along with it, as in Hos. vi. 3, Zech. s. 1. But
affliction made no impression. The people persisted in its sinful
courses with unabashed effrontery ; cf. v. 3, Ezek. iii. 7 f. — Ver.
4. Henceforward, forsooth, it calls upon its God, and expects that
His wrath will abate ; but this calling on Him is but lip-service,
for it goes on in its sins, amends not its life. Xvn, nonne, has
usually the force of a confident assurance, introducing in the
form of a question that which is held not to be in the least
doubtful. rinr», henceforward, the antithesis to Qj'ii'o, ii. 20, 27,
is rightly referred by Chr. B. Mich, to the time of the reforma-
tion in public worship, begun by Josiah in the twelfth year of
his reign, and finally completed in the eighteenth year, 2 Chron.
xxxiv. 3-33. Clearly we cannot suppose a reference to distress
and anxiety excited by the drought; since, in ver. 3, it is expressly
said that this had made no impression on the people. On '3X,
cf. ii. 27. nw I^^S (cf. Prov. ii. 17), the familiar friend of my
youth, is the dear beloved God, i.e. Jahveh, who has espoused
Israel when it was a young nation (ii. 2). Of Him it expects
that He will not bear a grudge for ever. "IDJ, auard then like
rijpelv, cherish ill-will, keep up, used of anger ; see on Lev.
eSHAP. III. G-VI. 80. 81
xix. 18, Ps. ciii. 9, etc. A like meaning has ibB''', to which
^N, iram, is to supplied from the context ; cf. Amos i. 11. — Thus
the people speaks, but it does evil. '''Ji"]?'i, like ''nXTi^ in ver. 4,
is 2d pers. fem. ; see in ii. 20. Hitz. connects ''J^l^'i so closely
with ■'■^Vni as to make nijrin the object to the former verb also :
thou hast spoken and done the evil; but this is plainly contrary
to the context. "Thou speakest" refers to the people's saying
quoted in the first half of the verse : Will God be angry for
ever ? What they do is the contradiction of what they thus
say. If the people wishes that God be angry no more, it must
give over its evil life. ^''^'}\!, not calamity, but misdeeds, as in
ii. 33. ???!, thou hast managed it, properly mastered, i.e.
carried it through ; cf. 1 Sam. xxvi. 25, 1 Kings xxii. 22. The
form is 2d pers. fern., with the fem. ending dropped on account
of the Vav consec. at the end of the discourse ; cf. E\v. § 191, b.
So long as this is the behaviour of the people, God caunot
withdraw His anger.
CHAP. III. 6-VI. 30. — THE REJECTION OP IMPENITENT ISRAEL.
These four chapters form a lengthy prophetic discourse of
the time of Josiah, in which two great truths are developed :
that Israel can become a partaker of promised blessing only
through conversion to the Lord, and that by perseverance in
apostasy it is drawing on itself the judgment of expulsion
amongst the heathen. In the first section, chap. iii. 6-iv. 2,
we have the fate of the ten tribes displayed to the faithless
Judah, and the future reception again and conversion of Israel
announced. In the second section, chap. iv. 3-31, the call to
Judah to repent is brought home to the people by the portrayal
of the judgment about to fall upon the kingdom, the destruction
of Jerusalem and the devastation of the land. In the third
section, chap, v., a further description is given of the people's
persistence in unrighteousness and apostasy. And in the fourth
section, chap, vi., the impending judgment and its horrors are
yet more fully exhibited to a generation blinded by its self-
righteous confidence in the external performance of the sacrificial
worship.
Eichhorn and Hitz. have separated chap. iii. 6-iv. 2 from
VOL. I. i"
82 TnE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
what follows as being a separate oracle, on the ground that
at chap. iv. 3 a new series of oracles begins, extending to x. 2o.
These oracles, they say, " are composed under the impressions
created by an invasion of a northern nation, looked for with
dread and come at last in reality;" while they find no trace of
this invasion in chap. iii. 6-iv. 2. This latter section they hold
rather to be the completion to chap. ii. 1-iii. 5, seeing that the
severe retort (iii. 5) upon repentant Judah is justified here
(iii. 10) by the statement that this is no true repentance; that
the harsh saying : thou hast thyself wrought out thy misfortunes,
cannot be the prophet's last word ; and that the final answer to
-ib^"!] th'iv'? in ver. 5 is not found before D^iJ-'f "^^^^ ^^ in
ver. 12. By Dahler, Umbreit, Neumann, chap. iii. is taken as
an independent discourse ; but they hold it to extend to iv. 4,
because '3 in iv. 3 cannot introduce a new discourse. The
two views are equally untenable. It is impossible that a new
discourse should begin with "for thus saith Jahveh ; " and it
is as impossible that the threatening of judgment beginning
with iv. 5, " declare ye in Jahveh," should be torn apart,
separated from the call : " plow up a new soil ; circumcise the
foreskins of your hearts, that my wrath go not forth like fire
and burn," etc. (iv. 3, 4). Against the separation and for the
unity we have arguments in the absence of any heading and of
any trace of a new commencement in chap, iv., and in the
connection of the subject-matter of all the sections of these
chapters.^ We have no ground for the disjunction of one part
of the discourse from the other in the fact that in chap. iii. 6—
iv. 2 apostate Israel (of the ten tribes) is summoned to return
to the Lord, and invited to repentance by the promise of
acceptance and rich blessing for those who in penitence return
again to God ; while in iv. 3-vi. the devastation of the land
and dispersion amongst the heathen are held out as punishment
of a people (Judah) persisting in apostasy (see comment, on
iii. 6 ff.). The supposed connection between the discourse,
iii. 6-iv. 2 and ii. 1-iii. 5, is not so close as Hitz. would have
' By Eosenm. has been justly urged : " Cum inscriptio hie (3, 6) el c. 7, 1,
obvia, qua concionis habilx tempus notalur, turn manijesta omnium partium
inde a c. 3, 6, usque ad finem cap. 6 coJiasrentia, et orationis tenor sine uho
interstitio ac uovie concionis signo decurrcns."
CHAP. Ill, C-IV. 2. 83
it. The relation of chap. iil. 6 ff, to ii. 1 ff. is not that the
propliet desires in chap, iii, 6-iv. 2 to explain or mitigate the
harsh utterance in iii. 5, because his own heart could not
acquiesce in the thought of the utter rejection of his people, and
because the wrath of the seer was here calminc: down asain.
This opinion and the reference of the threatened judgment in
chap, iv.-vi. to the Scythians are based on unscriptural views
of the nature of prophecy. But even if, in accordance with
what has been said, these four chapters form one continuous
prophetic discourse, yet we are not justified by the character of
the whole discourse as a unity in assuming that Jeremiah
delivered it publicly in this form before the people at some
particular time. Against this tells the indefiniteness of the date
given : in the days of Josiah ; and of still greater weight is the
transition, which we mark repeated more than once, from the
call to repentance and the denunciation of sin, to threatening
and description of the judgment about to fall on people and
kingdom, city and country; cf. iv. 3 with v. 1 and vi. 1, 16.
From this we can see that the prophet continually begins again
afresh, in order to bring more forcibly home to the heart what
he has already said. The discourse as we have it is evidently the
condensation into one uniform whole of a series of oral addresses
which had been delivered by Jeremiah in Josiah's times.
Chap. iii. 6-iv. 2. The rejection and eestoeation op
Israel (op the Ten Teibes). — Hgstb. speaks of this passage
as the announcement of redemption in store for Israel. And he
so speaks not without good cause ; for although in iii. 6-9 the
subject is the rejection of Israel for its backsliding from the
Lord, yet this introduction to the discourse is but the historical
foundation for the declaration of good news (iii. 12-iv. 2), that
rejected Israel will yet return to its God, and have a share in
the glory of the Messiah. From the clearly drawn parallel
between Israel and Judah in iii. 8-11 it is certain that the
announcement of Israel's redemption can have no other aim
than " to wound Judah." The contents of the whole disconrse
maybe summed up in two thoughts: 1. Israel is not to remain
alway rejected, as pharisaic Judah imagined ; 2. Judah is not
to be alway spared. When Jeremiah entered upon his oiBce
84 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Israel had been in exile for 94 years, and all hope for the
restoration of the banished people seemed to have vanished.
But Judah, instead of taking warning by the judgment that
had fallen upon the ten tribes, and instead of seeing^ in the
downfall of the sister people the prognostication of its own,
was only confirmed by it in its delusion, and held its own con-
tinued existence to be a token that against it, as the people of
God, no judgment of wrath could come. This delusion must
be destroyedby the announcement of Israel's future reinstate-
ment.
Vers. 6-10. IsraeVs lacMidlng and rejection a warning for
JudaJi.—Vev. 6. "And Jahveh spake to me in the days of
King Josiah, Hast thou seen what the backsliding one, Israel,
hath done 1 she went up on every high mountain, and under
every green tree, and played the harlot there. Ver. 7. And I
thought : After she hath done all this, she will return to me ; but
she returned not. And the faithless one, her sister Judah, saw
it. Ver. 8. And I saw that, because the backsliding one,
Israel, had committed adultery, and I had put her away, and
had given her a bill of divorce, yet the faithless one, Judah, her
sister, feared not even on this account, and went and played the
harlot also. Ver. 9. And it befell that for the noise of her
whoredom the land was defiled, and she committed adultery
with stone and wood. Ver. 10. And yet with all this, the
faithless one, her sister Judah, turned not to me with her whole
heart, but with falsehood, saith Jahveh." The thought of
these verses is this : notwithstanding that Judah has before its
eyes the lot which Israel (of the ten tribes) has brought on
itself by its obdurate apostasy from the covenant God, it will
not be moved to true fear of God and real repentance. View-
ing idolatry as spiritual whoredom, the prophet developes that
train of thought by representing the two kingdoms as two
adulterous sisters, calling the inhabitants of the ten tribes H^a'D,
the baeksliding, those of Judah -TjiJ?, the faithless. On these
names Veneraa well remarks : " Sorores propter unam eandemque
stirpem, unde uterque populus fuit, et arctam ad se invicem rela-
tionem appellantur. Utraque fuit adultera propter idololatriam
et foedeiis violationem ; sed Israel vocatur uxor aversa ; Juda
vero perfda, quia Israel non tantum religionis sed et regni et
CHAP. III. 6-IV. 2. 85
civitatis respectu, adeofjue palam erat a Deo alienaia, Jiida vero
Deo et sedi regni ao religionis adfixa, sed nUiilominus a Deo et
cultu ejus defecerat, et sub externa specie popiili Dei foodus ejus
fregerat, quo ipso gravius peccaverat" This representation
Ezekiel has in chap, xxiii. expanded into an elaborate allegory.
The epithets nSB'O and nnija or rrjaa (ver. 11) are coined into
proper names. This is shown by their being set without
articles before the names ; as mere epithets they would stand
after the substantives and have the article, since Israel and
Judah as being nomm. propr. are definite ideas. nniE'D is else-
where an abstract substantive : apostasy, defection (viii. 5 ; IIos.
xi. 7, etc.), here concrete, the apostate, so-called for her many
nbro, ver. 22 and ii. 19. 'inija, the faithless, used of perfidious
forsaking of a husband ; cf. ver, 20, Mai. ii. 14. N''n napn,
going was she, expressing continuance. Cf. the same state-
ment in ii. 20. V!'?!!) 3d pers. fem., is an Aramaizing form for
natm or JWV, cf. Isa. liii. 10. — Ver. 7. And I said, sc. to myself,
i.e. I thought. A speaking by the prophets (Raslii) is not to
be thought of ; for it is no summons, turn again to me, but
only the thought, they will return. It is true that God caused
baclisliding Israel to be ever called again to repentance by the
prophets, yet without effect. Meantime, however, no reference
is made to what God did in this connection, only Israel's be-
haviour towards the Lord being here kept in view. The Chet.
^X^n1 is the later usage ; the Keri substitutes the resular con-
tracted form i*'!!^!!. The object, it (the whoredom of Israel),
may be gathered from what precedes. — Ver. 8. Many com-
mentators have taken objection to the N^NI, because the sen-
tence, "I saw that I had therefore given Israel a bill of
divorce," is as little intelligible as " and the faithless Judah saw
it, and I saw it, for," etc. Thus e.g. Graf, who proposes
with Ew. and Syr. to read K^ni, " and she saw," or with Jerome
to omit the word from the text. Against both conjectures it is
decisive that the LXX. translates Koi eiSov, and so must have
read NIKJ. To this we may add, that either the change or the
omission destroys the natural relation to one another of the
clauses. In either case we would have this connection : " and
the faithless one, her sister Judah, saw that, because the back-
slider Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away . . .
8 1) THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
yet tlie faithless one feaved not." But tlms the gist of the thing,
wliat Judali saw, namely, the repudiation of Israel, would be
related but cursorily in a subordinate clause, and the 7th verse
would be shortened into a half verse ; while, on the other hand,
the 8th verse would be burdened with an unnaturally long pro-
tasis. Eos. is right in declaring any change to be unnecessary,
provided the two halves of vers. 7 and 8 are connected in this
sense : vidi quod quum adulleram Israelitidem dimiseram, tamen
non timeret ejus perfida soror Juda. If we compare vers. 7
and 8 together, the correspondence between the two cornea
clearly out. In the first half of either verse Israel is spoken
of, in the second Judah ; while as to Israel, both verses state
how God regarded the conduct of Israel, and as to Judah, how
it observed and imitated Israel's conduct. t?^XJ corresponds to
-lOXJ in ver. 7. God thought the backsliding Israel will repent,
and it did not, and this Judah saw. Thus, then, God saw that
even the repudiation of the backsliding Israel for her adultery
incited no fear in Judali, but Judah went and did whoredom
like Israel. The true sense of ver. 8 is rendered obscure or
difficult by the external co-ordination to cue another of the two
thonghts, that God has rejected Israel just because it has com-
mitted adultery, and, that Judah nevertheless feared not ; the
second thought being introduced by Vav. In reality, however,
the first should be subordinated to the second thus : that al-
though I had to reject Israel, Judah yet feared not. What
God saw is not the adultery and rejection or divorce of Israel,
but that Judah nevertheless had no fear in committing and
persisting in the self-same sin. The "'3 belongs properly to
'^^11^'', but this relation is obscured by the leno-th of the
T .IT ' J Q
prefixed grounding clause, and so ns"}^'^ N? is introduced by \.
'U1 nni<"75"?jJ, literally : that for all the reasons, because the
backslider had committed adultery, I put her away and gave
her a bill of divorce ; yet the faithless Judah feared not. In
plain English : that, in spite of all my putting away the back-
sliding Israel, and my giving her . . . because she had com-
mitted adultery, yet the faithless Judah feared not. On
mnn3 isp, cf. Deut. xxiv. 1, 3.
In ver. 9 Judah's fornication with the false gods is further
described. Here nni:j ^JSJ? is rather stumbling, since ob vocem
CHAP. in. 6-IV. 2. 87
scortalionis cannot well be simply tantamount to ob famosam
scorlationem ; for ?ip, voice, tone, sound, din, noise, is distinct
from ca> or V^f, fame, rumour. All ancient translators have
taken % from PPp, as being formed analogously to Dh, Dh, TV;
and a Masoretic note finds in the defective spelling Jjp an in-
dication of the meaning levitas. Yet we occasionally find Jjip,
vox, written defectively, e.g. Ex. iv. 8, Gen. xxvii. 22, xlv. 16.
And the derivation from hh\> gives no very suitable sense ;
neither lightness nor despisedness is a proper predicate for
whoredom, by which the land is polluted; only shame or
shameful would suit, as it is put by Ew. and Graf. But there
is no evidence from the usage of the language that Pp has the
meaning of li?!^. Yet more inadmissible is the conjecture of
J. D. Mich., adopted by Hitz., that of reading Pipo, stock, for
7i?p, a stock being the object of her unchastity ; in support of
which, reference is unfairly made to Hos. iv. 12. For there
the matter in hand is rhabdoraancy, with which the present
passage has evidently nothing to do. The case standing thus,
we adhere to the usual meaning of isp : for the noise or din of
her whoredom, not, for her crying whoredom (de Wette). Jere-
miah makes use of this epithet to point out the open riotous
orgies of idolatry. ^3nn is neither used iu the active significa-
tion of desecrating, nor is it to be pointed n|inni (^Hiph.). On
the last clause cf. ii. 27. — Ver. 10. But even with all this, i.e.
in spite of this deep degradation in idolatry, Jndah returned
not to God sincerely, bnt in hypocritical wise. " And yet with
all this," Eos., following llashi, refers to the judgment that had
fallen on Israel (ver. 8) ; but this is too remote. The words can
bear reference only to that which immediately precedes : even
in view of all these sinful horrors the returning was not " from
the whole heart," i.e. did not proceed from a sincere heart, but
in falsehood and hypocrisy. For (the returning being that
which began with the abolition of idolatrous public worship in
Josiali's reformation) the people had returned outwardly to the
worship of Jaliveh in the temple, but at heart they still clave
to the idols. Although Josiali had put an end to the idol-
worship, and though the people too, in the enthusiasm for the
service of Jaliveh, awakened by the solemn celebration of the
passover, had broken in pieces the images and altars of the false
88 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
gods throughout the land, yet there was imminent danger that the
people, alienated in heart from the living God, should take the
snppression of open idolatry for a true return to God, and, vainly
admiring themselves, shonld look upon themselves as righteous
and pious. Against this delusion the prophet takes his stand.
Vers. 11-18. IsraeVs return, pardon, and blessedness. — Ver,
11. "And Jahveh said to me, The backsliding one, Israel, is
justified more than the faithless one, Judah. Ver. 12. Go
and proclaim these words towards the north, and say, Turn,
thou backsliding one, Israel, saith Jahveh ; I will not look
darkly on you, for I am gracious, saith Jahveh ; I will not
always be wrathful. Ver. 13. Only acknowledge thy guilt,
for from Jahveh thy God art thou fallen away, and hither and
thither hast thou wandered to strangers under every green tree,
but to my voice ye have not hearkened, saith Jahveh. Ver. 14.
Return, backsliding sons, saith Jahveh ; for I have wedded you
to me, and will take you, one out of a city and two out of a
race, and will bring you to Zion ; Ver. 15. And will give you
shepherds according to my heart, and they will feed you with
knowledge and wisdom. Ver. 16. And it comes to pass, when
ye increase and are fruitful in the land, in those days, saith
Jahveh, they will no more say, 'The ark of the covenant of
.Jahveh ; ' and it will no more come to mind, and ye will no
longer remember it nor miss it, and it shall not be made again.
Ver. 17. Ill tliat time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of
Jahveh ; and to it all peoples shall gather themselves, be-
cause the name of Jahveh is at Jerusalem: and no longer
shall they walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart. Ver.
18. In these days shall the house of Judah go along with the
house of Israel, and together out of the land of midnight shall
they come into the land which I have given for an inheritance
unto your fathers." In ver. 11, from the comparison of the
faithless Judah with the backsliding Israel, is drawn the con-
clusion : Israel stands forth more righteous than Judah. The
same is said in other words by Ezekiel, xvi. 51 f. ; cf. (Ezek.)
xxiii. 11. pn^ in Piel is to show to be righteous, to justify.
^fS^ lier soul, i.e. herself. Israel appears more righteous than
Judah, not because the apostasy and idolatry of the Israelites
was less than that of the people of Judah ; in this they are put
CHAP. III. 6-lV. 2., 89
on the same footing in vers. 6-10 ; in the like fasliion both have
])layed the harlot, i.e. stained themselves witli idolatry (while
by a rhetorical amplification the apostasy of Judali is in ver. 9
represented as not greater than that of Israel). But it is inas-
much as, in the first place, Judah had the warning example of
Israel before its eyes, but would not be persnaded to repent-
ance by Israel's punishment; then again, Judah had more
notable pledges than the ten tribes of divine grace, especially
in the temple with its divinely-ordained cultus, in the Levitical
priesthood, and in its race of kings chosen by God. Hence its
fall into idolatry called more loudly for punishment than did
that of the ten tribes ; for these, after their disruption from
Judah and the Davidic dynasty, had neither a lawful eultus,
lawful priests, nor a divinely-ordained kingship. If, then, in
spite of these privileges, Judah sank as far into idolatry as
Israel, its offence was greater and more grievous than that of
the ten tribes ; and it was surely yet more deserving of punish-
ment than Israel, if it was resolved neither to be brought to re-
flection nor moved to repentance from its evil ways by the
judgment that had fallen upon Isi'ael, and if, on tlie contrary,
it returned to God only outwardly and took the opus operatum
of the temple-service for genuine convei'sion. For " tiie mea-
sure of guilt is proportioned to the measure of grace." Yet will
not the Lord utterly cast off His people, ver. 12 ff. He snm-
mous to repentance the Israelites who had now long been
living in exile ; and to them, the backsliding sons, who confess
their sin and return to Him, He offers restoration to the full
favours of the covenant and to rich blessings, and this in order
to humble Judah and to pi'ovoke it to jealousy. The call to
repentance which the prophet is in ver. 12 to proclaim towards
the region of midnight, concerns the ten tribes living in Assyrian
exile. njaVj towards midnight, Le. into the northern provinces
of the Assyrian empire the tribes had been carried away
(2 Kings xvii. 6, xviii. 11). mw, return, sc. to tliy God. Not-
withstanding that the subject which follows, nriB'O, is fern., we
have the masculine form here used ad sensiim, because the faith-
less Israel is the people of the ten tribes. ''Jf ^'SX N?, I will
not lower my countenance, is explained by Gen. iv. 5, Job xxix.
24, and means to look darkly, frowningly, as outward expres-
90 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREIUAH.
oion of anger; and this without our needing to take '3| for
'i?j)3 as Kimclii does. For I am T'pn, gracious ; cf. Ex. xxxiv. 6.
As to ^it3X, see on ver. 5.— Ver. 13. An indispensable element
of the return is: Acknowledge thy guilt, thine offence, for
grievously hast thou offended ; thou art fallen away (J'B'S), and
Ti;5-)-n-nN i-i^sPi, lit. hast scattered thy ways for strangers; i.e.
hither and thither, on many a track, hast thou run after the
strange gods : cf. ii. 23.
The repeated call 531B', ver. 14, is, like that in ver. 12, ad-
dressed to Israel in the narrower sense, not to the whole cove-
nant people or to Judah. The "backsliding sons" are "the
backsliding Israel " of vers. 7, 8, 11 f., and of ver. 22. In ver.
18 also Judah is mentioned only as it is in connection with
Israel. D33 '''jir'J??, here and in sxxi. 32, is variously explained.
Tliere is no evidence for the meaning loathe, despise, which
Ges. and Diet, in the Le.v., following the example of Jos.
Kimchi, Pococke, A. Schultens, and others, attribute to the
word ?J?3; against this, cf. Hgstb. Chiistol. ii. p. 375; nor
is tlie sig. "rule" certified (LXX. hidri e^o) KaTaKvpievtrco
vfj-wv) ; it cannot be proved from Isa. xxvi. 13. -'J'3 means
only, own, possess; whence come the meanings, take to wife,
have oneself married, which are to be maintained here and in
xxxi. 32. In this view Jerome translates, quia ego vir vester ;
Lnther, denn icli will euch mir vertrauen ; Hgstb., denn icli traue
euch mir an ; — the reception anew of the people being given
under the fignre of a new marriage. This acceptation is, how-
ever, not suitable to the perf. 'wy?, for this, even if taken
prophetically, cannot refer to a renewal of marriage which
is to take place in the future. The perf. can be referred only
to the marriage of Israel at the conclusion of the covenant on
Sinai, and must be translated accordingly : I am your husband,
or: I have wedded you to me. This is demanded by the
grounding ''3 ; for the summons to repent cannot give as its
motive some future act of God, but must point to that covenant
relationship founded in the past, which, though suspended for
a time, was not wholly broken up.^ The promise of what
1 Calvin gives it rightly: " Dixerat enim, se dedisse libellum repudii h. e.
quasi puhUcis tabulis se testatum fuisse, nildl amplius sibi esse covjunctionis
cum popiilo illo. Nam exilium erat instar divortii. Jam dick : Ego sum
CHAP. III. 6-IV. 2. 91
God will do if Israel repents is given only from "'finj^l (with
\ consec.) onwards. The words, I take you, one out of a city,
two out of a race, are not with Kimchi to be so tnrned : if even
a single Israelite dwelt in a heathen city ; but thus : if from
amongst the inhabitants of a city there returns to me but one,
and if out of a whole race there return but two, I will gather
even these few and bring them to Zion. Quite aside from the
point is Hitz.'s remark, that in Mic. v. 1, too, a city is called n^^,
and is equivalent to nnSB'p. The numbers one and two them-
selves show us that nnsa'D is a larger community than the
inhabitants of one town, i.e. that it indicates the great subdivi-
sions into which the tribes of Israel were distributed. The
thought, then, is this : Though but so small a number obey the
call to repent, yet the Lord will save even these ; He will ex-
clude from salvation no one who is willing to return, but will
increase the small number of the saved to a great nation. This
promise is not only not contradictory of those which declare the
restoration of Israel as a whole ; but it is rather a pledge that
God will forget no one who is willing to be saved, and shows
the greatness of the divine compassion. — As to the historical
reference, it is manifest that the promise cannot be limited, as
it is by Theodrt. and Grot., to the return from the Assyrian
and Babylonian exile ; and although the majority of commen-
tators take it so, it can as little be solely referred to the Mes-
sianic times or to the time of the consummation of the kingdom
of God. The fulfilment is accomplished gradually. It begins
with the end of the Babylonian exile, in so far as at that time
individual members of the ten tribes may have returned into
the land of their fathers; it is continued in Messianic times
during the lives of the apostles, by the reception, on the part of
the Israelites, of the salvation that had appeared in Christ; it
is carried on throughout the whole history of the Church, and
attains its completion in the final conversion of Israel. This
Messianic reference of the words is here the ruling one. This
we may see from "bring you to Zion," which is intelligible
man'tus vester. Nam etiamsi ego iam graviter Isssus a vohis fuerim, quia
fefellistis fidem mild datam, tamen maneo in proposito, ut sim vohis maritus ;
. . . et perinde ac si mild semper fidem prsestitissetis, iierum assuman vos,
inquit."
92 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKKMIAH.
only when we look on Zion as the seat of the kingdom of God ;
and yet more clearly is it seen from the further promise, vers.
15-17, I will give you shepherds according to my heart, etc.
By shepherds we are not to understand prophets and priests,
but the civil authorities, rulers, princes, kings (cf. ii. 8, 26).
This may not only be gathered from the parallel passage, chap,
xxiii. 4, but is found in the '3^3, which is an unmistakeable
allusion to 1 Sam. xiii. 14, where David is spoken of as a man
whom Jahveh has sought out for Himself after His heart
(i33b), and has set to be prince over His people. They will
feed you ^'?V"'!'l "¥?•• ^°^^^ ^^^^^ words are used adverbially.
nn is a noun,' and ^'^V'H an injin. : deal wisely, possess, and
show wisdom ; the latter is as noun generally PS'^iT, Dan. i. 17,
Prov. i. 3, xxi. 16, but is found also as inJin. absol. ix. 23. A
direct contrast to these shepherds is found in the earlier kings,
whom Israel had itself appointed according to the desire of its
heart, of whom the Lord said by Hosea, They have set up kings
(to themselves), but not by me (viii, 4) ; kings who seduced
the people of God to apostasy, and encouraged them in it. "In
the whole of the long series of Israelitish rulers we find no
Jehoshaphat, no Hezekiah, no Josiah ; and quite as might have
been expected, for the foundation of the throne of Israel was
insurrection " (Hgstb.). But if Israel will return to the Lord,
He will give it rulers according to His heart, like David (cf . Ezek.
xxxiv. 23, Hos. iii. 5), who did wisely (P''3b'D) in all his ways,
and with whom Jahveh was (1 Sam, xviii. 14 f . ; cf. 1 Kings
ii. 3). The knowledge and wisdom consists in the keeping and
doing of the law of God, Deut. iv. 6, xxix. 8. As regards
form, the promise attaches itself to the circumstances of the
earlier times, and is not to be understood of particular historical
rulers in the period after the exile ; it means simply that the
Lord will give to Israel, when it is converted to Him, good and
faithful governors who will rule over it in the spirit of David.
But the Davidic dynasty culminates in the kingship of the
Messiah, who is indeed named David by the prophets ; cf.
xxii. 4,
In vers. 16 and 17 also the thought is clothed in a form cha-
racteristic of the Old Testament. When the returned Israelites
shall increase and be fruitful in the land, then shall they no
CHAP. III. 6-IV. 2. 93
more remember the ark of the covenant of the Lord or feel the
want of it, because Jerusalem will then be the throne of the
Lord. The fruitf ulness and increase of the saved remnant is a
constant feature in the picture of Israel's Messianic future ; cf.
xxiii. 3, Ezek. xxxvi. 11, Hos. ii. 1. This promise rests on the
blessing given at the creation. Gen. i. 28. God as creator and
preserver of the world increases mankind together with the
creatures ; even so, as covenant God, He increases His people
Israel. Thus He increased the sons of Israel in Egypt to be a
numerous nation, Ex. i. 12 ; thus, too, He will again make fruit-
ful and multiply the small number of those who have been
saved from the judgment that scattered Israel amongst the
heathen. In the passages which treat of this blessing, nT3
generally precedes nai; here, on the contrary, and in Ezek.
xxxvi. 11, the latter is put first. The words 'lJ1 =i"iOX' NP must
not be translated : they will speak no more of the ark of the
covenant ; ll?^ c. accus. never has this meaning. They must
be taken as the substance of what is said, the predicate being
omitted for rhetorical effect, so that the words are to be taken
as an exclamation. Hgstb. supplies : It is the aim of all our
wishes, the object of our longing. Mov. simply : It is our
most precious treasure, or the glory of Israel, 1 Sam. iv. 21 f. ;
Ps. Ixxviii. 61. And they will no more remember it. Ascend
into the heart, i.e. come to mind, joined with 13J here and in
Isa. Ixv. 17; cf. Jer. vii. 31, xxxii. 35, li. 50, 1 Oor. ii. 9.
^Ips; iO], and they will not miss it ; cf. Isa. xxxiv. 16, 1 Sam.
XX. 6, etc. This meaning is called for by the context, and
especially by the next clause : it will not be made again. Hitz.'s
objection against this, that the words cannot mean this, is an
arbitrary dictum. Nonjiet amplius (Chr. B. Mich.), or, it will
not happen any more, is an unsuitable translation, for this
would be but an unmeaning addition ; and the expansion, that
the ark will be taken into the battle as it formerly was, is sucli
a manifest rabbinical attempt to twist the words, that it needs
no further refutation. Luther's translation, nor offer more
there, is untenable, since nB-j? by itself never means offer.
The thought is this : then they will no longer have any
feeling of desire or want towards the ark. And wherefore ?
The answer is contained in ver. 17a : At that time will they
y4 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
call Jerusalem the tlirone of Jahveh. The ark was the throne
of Jaliveh, inasmuch as Jahveh, in fulfilment of His pro-
mise in Ex. XXV. 22, and as covenant God, was ever present
to His people in a cloud over the extended wings of the two
cherubim that were upon the covering of the ark of the law ;
from the mercy-seat too, between the two cherubs. He spake
with His people, and made known to them His gracious pre-
sence : Lev. xvi. 2; cf. 1 Chron. xiii. 6, Ps. Ixxx. 2, 1 Sam.
iv. 4. The ark was therefore called the footstool of God,
1 Chron. xxviii. 2 ; Ps. xcix. 5, cxsxii. 7 ; Lam. ii. 1. But in
future Jerusalem is to be, and to be called, the throne of Jahveh •,
and it is in such a manner to take the place of the ark, that the
people will neither miss it nor make any more mention of it.
The promise by no means presumes that when Jeremiah spoke
or wrote this prophecy the ark was no longer in existence ;
" was gone out of sight in some mysterious manner," as Movers,
Chron. S. 139, and Hitz. suppose, "• but only that it will be lost
or destroyed. This could happen only at and along with the
destruction of Jerusalem ; and history testifies that the temple
after the exile had no ark. Hence it is justly concluded that
the ark had perished in the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Chaldeans, and that upon the rebuilding of the temple after the
exile, the ark was not restored, because the nucleus of it, the
tables of the law written by the finger of God, could not be con-
structed by the hand of man. Without the ark the second
temple was also without the gracious presence of Jahveh, the
Shechinah or dwelling-place of God ; so that this temple was no
longer the throne of God, but only a seeming temple, without
substance or reality. And thus the Old Testament covenant
^ Against this Hgstb. well says, that this allegation springs from the in-
capacity of modem exegesis to accommodate itself to the prophetic antici-
pation of the future ; and that we might as well infer from iii. 18, that at
the time these words were spoken, the house of Judah must already in some
mysterious manner have come into the land of the north. 2 Chron. xxxv. 3
furnishes nuimpeachahle testimony to the existence of the ark in the 18th
year of Josiah. And even Graf says he cannot find anything to justify
Movers' conclusion, since from the special stress laid on the fact that at a
future time they will have the ark no longer, it might more naturally be
inferred that the ark was still in the people's possession, and was an object
of care to them.
CHAP. in. 6-IV. 2. 95
had come to an end. " We have here then before us," Htrstb.
truly observes, " the announcement of an entire overthrow of
the earlier form of the kingdom ; but it is such an overthrow
of the form that it is at the same time the highest perfection of
the substance — a process like that in seed-corn, which only dies
in order to bring forth much fruit ; like that in the body, which
is sown a corruptible that it may rise an incorruptible." For
the dwelling and enthronement of the Lord amidst His people
was again to come about, but in a higher form. Jerusalem is
to become the throne of Jahveh, i.e. Jerusalem is to be for the
renewed Israel that which the ark had been for the former
Israel, the holy dwelling-place of God. Under the old cove-
nant Jerusalem had been the city of Jahveh, of the great
King (Ps. xlviii. 3) ; because Jerusalem had possessed the
temple, in which the Lord sat enthroned in the holy of holies
over the ark. If in the future Jerusalem is to become the
throne of the Lord instead of the ark, Jerusalem must itself
become a sanctuary of God ; God the Lord must fill all Jeru-
salem with His glory (1i33), as Isaiah prophesied He would in
chap. Ix., of which prophecy we have the fulfilment portrayed
in Apoc. xxi. and xxii. Jeremiah does not more particularly
explain how this is to happen, or how the raising of Jerusalem
to be the throne of the Lord is to be accomplished ; fOr he is
not seeking in this discourse to proclaim the future reconstitu-
tion of the kingdom of God. His immediate aim is to clear
away the false props of their confidence from a people that set
its trust in the possession of the temple and the ark, and
further to show it that the presence of the temple and ark will
not protect it from judgment ; that, on the contrary, the Lord
■will reject faithless Judah, destroying Jerusalem and the temple;
that nevertheless He will keep His covenant promises, and that
by receiving again as His people the repentant members of the
ten tribes, regarded by Judah as wholly repudiated, with whom
indeed He will renew His covenant.
As a consequence of Jerusalem's being raised to the glory of
being the Lord's throne, all nations will gather themselves to
her, the city of God ; cf. Zech. ii. 15. Indeed in the Old Tes-
tament every revelation of the glory of God amongst His people
attracted the heathen ; cf. Jos. ix. 9 ff. nin^ DB'|', not, to the
9(3 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
name of Jaliveh towards Jerusalem (Hitz.), but, because of
tlie name of Jahveli at Jerusalem (as in Jos. ix. 9), i.e. because
Jahveh reveals His glory there ; for the name of Jahveh is
Jahveh Himself in the making of His glorious being known in
deeds of almighty power and grace. 0^-^=1-1^^, prop, belonging
to Jerusalem, because the name makes itself known there; cf.
xvi. 19, Mic. iv. 2, Zech. viii. 22.— The last clause, they will
walk no more, etc., refers not to the heathen peoples, but to
the Israelites as being the principal subject of the discourse (cf.
V. 16), since 3^ niTiB' is used of Israel in all the cases (vii. 24,
-ix. 13, xi. 8, xiii. 10, xvi. 12, xviii. 12, xxiii. 17, and Ps. Ixxxi.
13), thus corresponding to the original in Dent. xxix. 18,
whence it is taken, n^nif, prop, firmness, but in Hebr.
always sensu malo : obstinacy, obduracy of heart, see in
Dent. I.e. ; here strengthened by the adjective V^n belonging
to Dab. — Ver. 18. In those days when Jerusalem is glorified
bv being made the throne of the Lord, Judah along with Israel
will come out of the north into the land which the Lord gave
to their fathers. As the destruction of Jerusalem and of the
temple is foretold implicite in ver. 16, so here the expulsion of
Judah into exile is assumed as having already taken place, and
the return not of Israel only, but of Judah too is announced,
as in Hos. ii. 2, and more fully in Ezek. xxvii. 16 ff. We should
note the arrangement, the house of Judah with (7^, prop, on) the
house of Israel ; this is as much as to say that Israel is the
first to resolve on a return and to arise, and that Judah joins
itself to the house of Israel. Judah is thus subordinated to the
house of Israel, because the prophet is here seeking chiefly to
announce the return of Israel to the Lord. It can surely not
be necessary to say that, as regards the fulfilment, we are not
entitled hence to infer that the remnant of the ten tribes will
positively be converted to the Lord and redeemed out of exile
sooner than the remnant of Judah. For more on this point see
on xsxi. 8.
Vers. 19-25. The return of Israel to its God. — "Ver. 19. "I
thought, how I will put thee among the sons, and give thee
a delightful land, a heritage of the chiefest splendour of the
nations ! and thought, ' My Father,' ye will cry to me, and not
turn yourselves away from me. Ver. 20. Truly as a wife faith'
CHAP. III. 6-1 V. 2, 97
lessly forsakes her mate, so are ye become faithless towai'ds me,
house of Israel, saith Jahveh, Ver. 21. A voice upon the bare-
topped hills is heard, suppliant weeping of the sons of Israel ;
for that they have made their way crooked, forsaken Jahveh
their God. Ver. 22, 'Eeturn, ye backsliding sons, I will heal
your backshdings.' Behold, we come to thee ; for Thou Jahveh
art our God. Ver. 23. Truly the sound from the hills, from
the mountains, is become falsehood: truly in Jahveh our God
is the salvation of Israel. Ver. 24. And shame hath devoured
the gains of our fathers from our youth on ; their sheep and
their oxen, their sons and their daughters. Ver. 25. Let us lie
down in our shame, and let our disgrace cover us ; for against
Jahveh our God have we sinned, we and our fathers, from our
youth even unto this day, and have not listened to the voice of
our God." Hitz. takes vers. 18 and 19 together, without giving
an opinion on W^^? '^^^I. Ew, joins ver. 19 to the preceding,
and begins a new strophe with ver. 21. Neither assumption
can be justified. With ver, 18 closes the promise which formed
the burden of the preceding strophe, and in ver. 19 there begins
a new train of thought, the announcement as to how Israel comes
to a consciousness of sin and returns penitent to the Lord its
God (vers, 21-25). The transition to this announcement is
formed by vers. 19 and 20, in which the contrast between God's
fatherly designs and Israel's faithless bearing towards God is
brought prominently forward ; and by ''fp^O^ ''33X'! it is attached
to the last clause of the 18th verse. His having mentioned the
land into which the Israelites would again return, carries the
prophet's thoughts back again to the present and the past, to
the bliss which Jahveh had designed for them, forfeited by their
faithless apostasy, and to be regained only by repentant return
(Graf), " I thought," refers to the time when God gave the
land to their fathers for an inheritance. Then spake, i.e. thought,
I; cf, Ps. xxxi. 23. How I will set thee or place thee among
the sons! i.e. how I will make thee glorious among the sons (n-ii'
c. accus. and 3, as in 2 Sam. xix. 29). No valid objection
against this is founded by Hitz.'s plea that in that case we must
read '^n^E'S?., and that by Jeremiah, the teacher of morals, no
heathen nation, or any but Israel, can ever be regarded as a
son of God (xxxi. 9, 20). The fem. ^n'rK is explained by the
VOL. I. G
98 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
personification of Judah and Israel as two sisters, extending
throughout the whole prophecy. The other objection is erro-
neous as to the fact. In xxxi. 9 Jahveh calls Ephraim, = Israel,
his first-born son, as all Israel is called by God in Ex. iv. 22.
But the conception of first-born has, as necessary correlate, that
of other "sons." Inasmuch as Jahveh the God of Israel is
creator of the world and of all men, all the peoples of the earth
are His D'^l ; and from amongst all the peoples He has made
choice of Israel as n^Jp, or chosen him for His first-born son.
Hitz.'s translation : how will I endow thee with children, is
contrary to the usage of the language. — The place which God
willed to give Israel amongst His children is specified by the
next clause: and I willed to give thee a delightful land ('"'^^C H?
as in Zech. vii. 14, Ps. cvi. 24). nisav Oi') ornament of orna-
ments, i.e. the greatest, most splendid ornament. For there can
be no doubt that nixay does not come from ^'^t'j ^^^j ffiili
Kiraclii after the Targum, is to be derived from ''3V ; for the
plural D^;3V from "'3V may pass into D^^53i•, cf. Gesen. § 93. Qb,
as Ew., too, in § 186, e, admits, though he takes our nixay from
X3i:, and strains the meaning into : an heirloom-adornment
amidst the hosts of heathen. After such proofs of a father's
love, God expected that Israel would by a true cleaving to Him
show some return of filial affection. To cry, "My father," is a
token of a child's love and adherence. The Chet. ^^IpH and
i3lB'n are not to be impugned; the Keris are unnecessary altera-
tions. — Ver. 20. But Israel did not meet the expectation. Like
a faithless wife from her husband, Israel fell away from its God.
The particle of comparison IC'NS is omitted before the verb, as in
Isa. Iv. 9, cf. 10 and 11. V"}. does not precisely mean husband, nor
yet paramour, but friend and companion, and so here is equal
to wedded husband. nJ3 c. to, withdraw faithlessly from one,
faithlessly forsake, — c. 3, be faithless, deal faithlessly with one.
Yet Israel will come to a knowledge of its iniquity, and bitterly
repent it, ver. 21. From the heights where idolatry was prac-
tised, the prophet already hears in spirit the lamentations and
supplications of the Israelites entreating for forgiveness. ^'!i
U')W points back to ver. 2, when the naked heights were men-
tioned as the scenes of idolatry. From these places is heard the
fiipplicating cry for pardon. =i1J)n •■a, because (for that) they
CHAP. III. 6-lV. 2. 99
had made their way crooked, i.e. had entered on a crooked
path, had forgotten their God. — Ver. 22. Tlie propliet further
overhears in spirit, as answer to the entreaty of the Israelites,
the divine invitation and promise: Return, ye baclcsliding
children (of. ver. 14), I will heal your backslidings. na^K for
NQ"]*?. Backslidings, i.e. mischief which backsliding has brought,
the wounds inflicted by apostasy from God ; cf. Hos. xiv. 5, a
passage which was in the prophet's mind ; and for the figure of
healing, cf. Jer. xxx. 17, xxxiii. 6. To this promise they answer :
Behold, we come to Thee (=i3n« for wsnx from HT)^, Isa. sxi. 12,
for 'ins), for Thou art Jahveh, art our God. Of this confession
they further state the cause in vers. 23-25. — Ver. 23. From the
false gods they have gained but disgrace ; the salvation of Israel
is found only in Jahveh their God. The thought now given is
clearly expressed in the second clause of the verse ; less clear is
the meaning of the first clause, which tells what Israel had got
from idolatry. The difficulty lies in Q''"}n lion, which the early
commentators so joined together as to make jlDn stat. conslr.
(lion). LXX. : €69 '\^evBo<} rjnav ol ^ovvol koX fj BvvafM<} tuv
opicov. Jerome: mendaces erant colles et multitudo (s. fortitudo)
montium. Similarly Hitz. and Graf : from the hills the host
(or tumult) of the mountains is (for) a delusion ; Hitz. under-
standing by the host of the mountains the many gods, or the
numerous statues of them that were erected at the spots where
they were worshipped, while Graf takes the tumult of the
mountains to mean the turmoil of the pilgrims, the exulting
cries of the celebrants. But it is as impossible that "the
sound of the hills " should mean the multitude of the gods, as
that it should mean the tumult of the pilgrims upon the
mountains. Besides, the expression, " the host or tumult of the
mountains comes from the hills," would be singularly tautolo-
gical. These reasons are enough to show that n''"in cannot
be a genitive dependent on jlDii, but must be taken as co-
ordinate with niJ'9?'?} so that the preposition \'0 will have to be
repeated before Di"in. But lion must be the subject of the
clause, else there would be no subject at all. lion means bustle,
eager crowd, tumult, noise, and is also used of the surging mass
of earthly possessions or riches, Ps. xxxvii. 16, Isa. Ix. 5.
Schnur., Eos., Maur., de W., have preferred the last meaning,
100 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
and have put the sense thus : vana est ex collihus, vana ex montU
bus affluentia, or : dehisive is the abundance that comes from
the hills, from the mountains. This view is not to be over-
thrown by Graf's objection, that we cannot here entertain the
idea of abundance, however imaginary, acquired by the Israehtes
through idolatry, seeing that in the next verses it is declared
that the false gods have devoured the wealth which the Israelites
had inherited and received from God. For in the present con-
nection the abundance would be not a real but expected or
imagined abundance, the delusiveness of which would be shown
in the next verse by the statement that the false gods had
devoured the acquisitions of Israel. But to take lion in the
sense of affluentia seems questionable here, when the context
makes no reference to wealth or earthly riches, and where the
abundance of the hills and mountains cannot be understood to
mean their produce ; the abundance is that which the idolatry
practised upon the hills and mountains brought or was expected
to bring to the people. Hence, along with Ew., we take this
word in the sig. tumult or noise, and by it we understand the
wild uproarious orgies of idolatry, which, acccording to vers. 2
and 6, were practised on the hills and mountains (i^ni3T Pp, ver. 9).
Thus we obtain the sense already given by the Targ.: invanum
coluimus super collihus et non in utilitatem congregavimus nos
(S3t:"J"}nx, prop, tumultuati sumus) super montibns, i.e. delusive
and profitless were our idolatrous observances upon the heights.
In ver. 24 we are told in what particulars idolatry became
to them iptS'?. HB'an, the shame, opprobrious expression for
pyan, equal to shame-god, cf. xi. 13 and Hos. ix. 10 ; since the
worship of Baal,2'.e. of the false gods, resulted in disgrace to the
people. He devoured the wealth of our fathers, namely, their
sheep and oxen, mentioned as a specimen of their wealth, and
their sons and daughters. The idols devoured this wealth, not
in respect that sheep and oxen, and, on Moloch's altar, children
too, were sacrificed, for sheep aud oxen were offered to Jahveh ;
but because idolatry drew down judgments on the people and
brought about the devastation of the land by enemies who
devoured the substance of the people, and slew sons and
daughters, Deut. xxviii. 30, 33. From our youth on ; — the
youth of the people is the period of the judges. — Ver. 25. The
CHAP. III. 6-IV. 2. 101
people does not repudiate this shame and disgrace, but is willing
to endure it patiently, since by its sin it lias fully deserved it.
nnSE'J, not: we lie, but : we will lay us down in our shame, as
a man in pain and grief throws himself on the ground, or on
his couch (cf. 2 Sam. xii. 16, xiii. 31, 1 Kings xxi. 4), in order
wholly to give way to the feelings that crush him down. And
let our disgrace cover us, i.e. enwrap us as a mourning robe or
cloak; cf. Ps. xxxv. 26, cis, 29, Mic. vii. 10, Obad. ver. 10.
Chap, iv, 1, 2. The ansiver of the Lord.— Nan. 1. " If thou
retumest, Israel, saith Jahveh, returnest to me ; and if
thou puttest away thine abominations from before my face,
and strayest not, Ver. 2. And swearest, As Jahveh liveth,
in truth, with right, and uprightness ; then shall the na-
tions bless themselves in Him, and in Him make their boast."
Graf errs in taking these verses as a wish : if thou wouldst
but repent . . . and swear . . . and if they blessed them-
selves. His reason is, that the conversion and reconciliation
with Jahveh has not yet taken place, and are yet only hoped
for ; and he cites passages for QS with the force of a wish, as
Gen. xiii. 3, xxviii. 13, where, however, ^53 or 1^ is joined with
it. But if we take all the verbs in the same coustruction, we
get a very cumbrous result ; and the reason alleged proceeds
upon a prosaic misconception of the dramatic nature of tlie
prophet's mode of presentation from iii. 21 onwards. Just as
there the prophet hears in spirit the penitent supplication of the
people, so here he hears the Lord's answer to this supplication,
by inward vision seeing the future as already present. The
early commentators have followed the example of the LXX.
and Vulg. in construing the two verses differently, and take vX
nitJ'Pl and "iwn O as apodoses : if thou returnest, Israel, then
return to me; or, if thou, Israel, returnest to me, then shalt
thou return, sc. into thy fatherland ; and if thou puttest away
thine abominations from before mine eyes, then shalt thou no
longer wander ; and if thou swearest . . . theu will they bless
themselves. But by reason of its position after nilT' DW it is
impossible to connect vK with the protasis. It would be more
natural to take 3ltJ'n "hi^ as apodosis, the vN being put first for
the sake of emphasis. But if we take it as apodosis at all, the
apodosis of the second half of the verse does not rightly corre-
102 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
spoiid to that of the first half, l^jn iib wonld need to be
translated, "then shalt thou no longer wander without fixed
habitation," and so would refer to the condition of the people
as exiled. But for this IV is not a suitable expression.
Besides, it is difficult to justify the introduction of Df? before
riyaKOI, since an apodosis has already preceded. For these
reasons we are bound to prefer the view of Ew. and Hitz., that
vers. 1 and 2a contain nothing but protases. The removal of
the abominations from before God's face is the utter extirpation
of idolatry, the negative moment of the return to the Lord ;
and the swearing by the life of Jabveh is added as a positive
expression of their acknowledgment of the true God. *iun is
the wandering of the idolatrous people after this and the other
false god, ii. 23 and iii. 13. "And strayest not" serves to
strengthen " puttest away thine abominations." A sincere
return to God demanded not only the destruction of images
and the suppression of idol-worship, but also the giving up of
all wandering after idols, i.e. seeking or longing after other gods.
Similarly, swearing by Jahveh is strengthened by the additions:
'^??^?, in truth, not deceptively (ii?.t??, v. 2), and with right and
uprightness, i.e. in a just cause, and with honest intentions. —
The promise, " they shall bless themselves," etc., has in it an
allusion to the patriarchal promises in Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18,
xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14, but it is not, as most commentators,
following Jerome, suppose, a direct citation of these, and
certainly not "a learned quotation from a book" (Ew.), in
which case ia would be referable, as in those promises, to Israel,
the seed of Abraham, and would stand for ^3. This is put out
of the question by the parallel w!]ri] iai, which never occurs but
with the sense of glorying in God the Lord; cf. Isa. xli. 16, Ps.
xxxiv. 3, Isiv. 11, cv. 3, and Jer. ix. 22. Hence it follows that
13 must be referred, as Calv. refers it, to niiT, just as in Isa.
Ixv. 16: the nations will bless themselves in or with Jahveh,
i.e. will desire and appropriate the blessing of Jahveh and
glory in the true God. Even under this acceptation, the only
one that can be justified from an exegetical point of view, the
words stand in manifest relation to the patriarchal blessino-.
If the heathen peoples bless themselves in the name of
Jahveh, then are they become partakers of the salvation
CHAP. IV. 3-Sl. 103
that comes from Jaliveh ; and if tliis blessing comes to them
as a consequence of the true conversion of Israel to the Lord,
as a fruit of this, then it has come to them through Israel as
the channel, as the patriarchal blessings declare disertis verbis.
Jeremiah does not lay stress npon this intermediate agency of
Israel, but leaves it to be indirectly understood from the unmis-
takeable allusion to the older promise. Tlie reason for the ap-
plication thus given by Jeremiah to the divine promise made
to the patriarchs is found in the aim and scope of the present
discourse. The appointment of Israel to be the channel of
salvation for the nations is an outcome of the calling grace of
God, and the fulfilment of this gracious plan on the part of
God is an exercise of the same grace — a grace which Israel
by its apostasy does not reject, but helps onwards towards its
ordained issue. The return of apostate Israel to its God is indeed
necessary ere the destined end be attained ; it is not, however,
the ground of the blessing of the nations, but only one means
towards the consummation of the divine plan of redemption, a
plan which embraces all mankind. Israel's apostasy delayed
this consummation ; the conversion of Israel will have for its
issue the blessing of the nations.
Chap. iv. 3-31. Threatening of judgment upon Jeru-
salem AND JuDAH. — If Judah and Jerusalem do not reform,
the wrath of God will be inevitably kindled against them (vers.
3, 4). Already the prophet sees in spirit the judgment bursting
in upon Judah from the north, to the dismay of all who were
accounting themselves secure (vers. 5-10). Like a hot tem-
pest-blast it rushes on, because of the wickedness of Jerusalem
(vers. 11-18), bringing desolation and ruin on the besotted
people, devastating the whole land, and not to be turned aside
by any meretricious devices (vers. 19-31).
Ver. 3. "For thus hath Jahveh spoken to the men of Judah
and to Jerusalem : Break up for yourselves new ground, and sow
not among thorns. Ver. 4. Circumcise yourselves to Jahveh,
and take away the foreskins of your heart, men of Judah and
inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury break forth like fire and
burn unquenchably, because of the evil of your doings." The
exhortation to a reformation of life is attached by ''3, as being
104: THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
tlie ground of it, to the preceding exhortation to return. The
2^m D«, ver. 1, contained the indirect call to repent. In ver. 1
this was addressed to Israel. In ver. 3 the call comes to Judah,
which the prophet had already in his eye in chap. iii. ; cf. iii.
7, 8, 10, 11. The transition from Israel to Judah in the
phrase : for thus saith Jaliveh, is explained by the introduction
of a connecting thought, which can without difficulty be sup-
plied from the last clause of ver. 2 ; the promise that the nations
bless themselves in Jahveh will come to be fulfilled. The
thought to be supplied is : this conversion is indispensable for
Judah also, for Judah too must begin a new life. Without
conversion there is no salvation. The evil of their doings
brings nought but heavy judgments with it. K^K, as often, in
collective sense, since the plural of this word was little in use,
see in Josh. ix. 6. I''^ i? T'J, as in Hos. x. 12, plough up new
land, to bring new untilled soil under cultivation — a figure for
the reformation of life ; as much as to say, to prepare new
ground for living on, to begin a new life. Sow not among
thorns. The seed-corns are the good resolutions which, when
they have sunk into the soil of the mind, should spring up
into deeds (Hitz.). The thorns which choke the good seed
as it grows (Mat. xiii. 7) are not mala vestra studia (Ros.), but
the evil inclinations of the unrenewed heart, which thrive luxu-
riantly like thorns. " Circumcise you to the Lord " is explained
by the next clause : remove the foreskins of your heart. The
stress lies in nin''?; in this is implied that the circumcision
should not be in the flesh merely. In the flesh all Jews were
circumcised. If they then are called to circumcise themselves
to the Lord, this must be meant spiritually, of the putting away
of the spiritual impurity of the heart, i.e. of all that hinders the
sanctifying of the heart; see in Deut. x. 16. The plur. Tfhnv
is explained by the figurative use of the word, and the readinc
npny, presented by some codd., is a correction from Deut. x. 16.
Tiie foreskins are the evil lusts and longings of the heart.
Lest my fury break forth like fire ; cf. vii. 20, Amos v. 6, Ps.
Ixxxix. 47. 'o li'i 'PSJ? as in Deut. xxviii. 20. This judgment
of wrath the prophet already in spirit sees breaking on Judah.
Vers. 5-10. From the north destruction approaches. — Ver. 5.
" Proclaim in Judah, and in Jerusalem let it be heard, and say,
CHAP. IV. 3-31. 105
Blow the trumpet in the land ; cry with a loud voice, and say,
Assemble, and let us go into the defenced cities. Ver. 6. Raise
a standard toward Zion : save yourselves by flight, linger not :
for from the north I bring evil and great destruction. Ver. 7.
A lion comes up from his thicket, and a destroyer of the
nations is on his way, comes forth from his place, to make thy
land a waste, that thy cities he destroyed, without an inhabitant.
Ver. 8. For this gird you in sackcloth, lament and howl, for
the heat of .Tahveh's anger hath not turned itself from us.
Ver. 9. And it cometh to pass on that day, saith Jaliveh, the
heart of the king and the heart of the princes shall perish, and
the priests shall be confounded and the prophets amazed."
The invasion of a formidable foe is here represented with
poetic animation ; the inhabitants being called upon to publish
the enemy's approach throughout the land, so that every one
may hide himself in the fortified cities.^ The 1 before IJJpn
' By this dreaded foe the older commentators understand the Chaldeans ;
but some of the moderns will have it that the Scythians are meant. Among
the latter are Dahler, Hitz., Evv., Bertheau (z. Gesch. der Isr.), Movers, and
others; and they have been preceded by Eichhorn (Hebr. Proph. ii. 96/),
Cramer (in the Comm. on Zephaniah, nnder the title Scythische Denkmaler
in Palastina, 1777). On the basis of their hypothesis, M. Duncker (^Gesch.
des Alterth. S. 751 ff.) has sketched out a minute picture of the inimdation
of Palestine by hordes of Scythian horsemen in the year 626, according to
the prophecies of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. For this there is absolutely
no historical support, although Eoesch in his archaeological investigations
on Nabopolassar (Deutsch-morgld. Ztschr. xv. S. 602 ff.), who, according to
him, was a Scythian king, alleges that " pretty nearly all (?) exegetical
authorities " understand these prophecies of the Scythians (S. 636). For
this view can be neither justified exegetically nor made good historically, as
has been admitted and proved by A. Kueper (Jerem. lihr. ss. int. p. 13 sq.),
and Ad. Strauss ( Vaticin. Zeph. p. xviii. sq.), and then by Tholuck {die Fro-
pheten u. ihre Weiss, S. 94 ff.), Graf (Jer. S. 16 ff.). Nag., and others. Ou
exegetical grounds the theory is untenable ; for in the descriptions of the
northern foe, whose invasion of Judah Zephaniah and Jeremiah threaten,
there is not the faintest hint that can be taken to point to the Scythian
squadrons, and, on the contrary, there is much that cannot be suitable to
these wandering hordes. The enemies approaching like clouds, their
chariots like the whirlwind, with horses swifter than eagles (Jer. iv. 13),
every city fleeing from the noise of the horsemen and of the bowmen
(iv. 29), and the like, go to form a description obviously founded on Deut.
xxviii. 49 ff., and on the account of the Chaldeans (a'IB'3) in Hab. i. 7-11, —
a fact which leads Eoesch to suppose Habakkuk meant Scythian by D'T^a-
106 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEIIIAH.
in the Cliet. has evidently got into the text through an error in
transcription, and the Keri, according to which all the old
versions translate, is the only correct reading. "Blow the
trumpet in the land," is that which is to be proclaimed or
published, and the blast into the far-sounding iSiK' is the signal
of alarm by which the people was made aware of the danger
that threatened it ; cf. Joel ii. 1, Hos. v. 8. The second
clause expresses the same matter in an intensified form and
All the Asiatic •world-po'wers had horsemen, -war-chariots, and archers, and
■we do not know that the Scythians fought on chariots. Nor was it at all
according to the plan of Scythian hordes to besiege cities and carry the
vanquished people into exile, as Jeremiah prophesies of these enemies.
Again, in chap, xxv., where he expressly names Nebuchadnezzar the king
of Babel as the f ulfiller of judgment foretold, Jeremiah mentions the enemy
in the same words as in i. 15, |iss nin3!J'D~73 (xxv. 9), and represents the
accomplishment of judgment by Nebuchadnezzar as the fulfilment of all
the words he had been prophesying since the 13th year of Josiah. This
makes it as clear as possible that Jeremiah regarded the Chaldeans as the
families of the peoples of the north who were to lay Judah waste, conquer
Jerusalem, and scatter its inhabitants amongst the heathen. In a historical
reference, also, the Scythian theory is quite unfounded. The account in
Herod, i. 103-105 of the incursion of the Scythians into Media and of domi-
nion exercised over Asia for 28 years by them, does say that they came to
Syrian Palestine and advanced on Egypt, but by means of presents were
induced by King Psammetichus to withdraw, that they marched back again
without committing any violence, and that only i'hiyoi nui; ainZii/ plundered
the temple of Venus Urania at Ascalon on the way back. But these accounts,
taken at their strict historical value, tell us nothing more than that one
swarm of the Scythian hordes, which overspread Media and Asia Minor,
entered Palestine and penetrated to the borders of Egypt, passing by the
ancient track of armies across the Jordan at Bethshan, and through the
plain of Jezreel along the Philistine coast ; that here they were bought off
by Psammetichus and retired without even so much as touching on the
kingdom of Judah on their way. The historical books of the Old Testament
have no knowledge whatever of any incursion into Judah of Scythians or
other northern nations during the reign of Josiah. On the other hand we
give no weight to the argument that the march of the Scythians through
Syria against Egypt had taken place in the 7th or 8th year of Josiah a few
years before Jeremiah's public appearance, and so could be no subject
for his prophecies (Thol., Graf, Nag.). For the chronological data of the
ancients as to the Scythian invasion are not so definite that we can draw
confident conclusions from them ; cf. M. v. Niebuhr, Ges. Assurs u Babels
S. 67 ff. ' '
All historical evidence for a Scythian inroad into Judah beincr thus en-
CHAP. IV. 3-Sl. 107
with plainer words. Cry, make full (the crying), i.e. cry with
a full clear voice ; gather, and let us go into the fortified cities ;
cf. viii. 14. This was the meaning of the trumpet blast. Raise
a banner pointing towards Zion, i.e. showing the fugitives the
way to Zion as the safest stronghold in the kingdom. D3, a
lofty pole with a waving flag (Isa. xxxiii. 23 ; Ezek. xxvii. 7),
erected upon mountains, spread the alarm farther than even
the sound of the pealing trumpet ; see in Isa. v. 26. ^fVi^,
tirely ■wanting, the supporters of this hypothesis can make nothing of any
point save the Greek name Scythopolis for Bethshan, -which Dunck. calls " a
memorial for Judah of the Scythian raid." We find the name in Judges
i. 27 of the LXX., 'BxiSnia ri tun 'Sx.viZa ■ko'Ki;, and from this come the
2zu^t)ffoX(j of Judith iii. 10, 2 Mace. xii. 29, and in Joseph. Antt. v. 1. 22,
xii. 8. 5, etc. Even if we do not hold, as Eeland, Pal. ill. p. 992, does, that
the gloss, i) l<ni Ixviau ?ro'X;ff, Judges i. 27, has been interpolated late into
the LXX. ; even if we admit that it originated with the translator, the
fact that the author of the LXX., who lived 300 years after Josiah, inter-
preted 2xt;tfoVoX(j by 'SxvicJu ■jroT^i;, does by no means prove that the
city had received this Greek name from a Scythian invasion of Palestine,
or from a colony of those Scythians who had settled down there. The
Greek derivation of the name shows that it could not have originated be-
fore the extension of Greek supremacy in Palestine — not before Alexander
the Great. But there is no historical proof that Scythians dwelt in Beth-
shan. Duncker e.g. makes the inference simply from the name l.x.vSau
■jrlihii and l.KvSo'TroTihoii, 2 Macc. xii. 29 f. His statement: "Josephus
{Antt. xii. 5. 8) and Pliny (Hist. n. v. 16) aifirm that Scythians had
settled down there," is wholly unfounded. In Joseph. I.e. there is no
word of it ; nor will a critical historian accept as sufficient historical evi-
dence of an ancient Scythian settlement in Bethshan, Pliny's I.e. apho-
ristic notice : Seythopolin {antea Nysam a Libera Patre, sepulta nntriee ibi)
ScytMs deduetis. The late Byzantine author, George Syncellus, is the first
to derive the name Scythopolis from the incursion of the Scythians into
Palestine ; cf . Keland, p. 993. The origin of the name is obscure, but is
not likely to be found, as by Eeland, Gesen., etc., in the neighbouring
Succoth. More probably it comes froma Jewish interpretation of the pro-
phecy of Ezekiel, chap, xxxix. 11, regarding the overthrow of Gog in the
valley of the wanderers eastwards from the sea. This is Havernick's view,
suggested by Bochart.
Taking all into consideration, we see that the reference of our prophecy
to the Scythians is founded neither on exegetical results nor on historical
evidence, but wholly on the rationalistic prejudice that the prophecies of
the biblical prophets are nothing more than either disguised descriptions of
historical events or threatenings of results that lay immediately before the
prophet's eyes, which is the view of Hitz., Ew., and others.
108 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
secure your possessions by flight ; cf. Isa. x. 31. The evil
which Jahveh is bringing on the land is specified by ?n3 19?',
after Zeph. i. 10, but very frequently used by Jeremiah ; cf.
vi. 1, xlviii. 3, 1. 22, li. 54. l^f, breaking (of a limb), Lev.
xxi. 19, then the upbreaking of what exists, ruin, destruction.
In ver. 7 the evil is yet more fully described. A lion is come
up from his thicket (i33p with dag. forte dirim., from 'iJ^D [^?^j
2 Sam. xviii. 9], or from ^3?, Ps. Ixxiv. 5 ; cf. Ew. § 255, d, and
Olsh, § 155, b), going forth for prey. This lion is a destroyer
of the nations (not merely of individual persons as the ordi-
nary lion) ; he has started (Vpj, of striking tents for the march),
and is come out to waste the land and to destroy the cities.
The infin. is continued by the temp. fin. '■'3''Sn, and the Kal of
nyj is here used in a passive sense : to be destroyed by war. —
Yer. 8. For this calamity the people was to mourn deeply. For
the description of the mourning, cf. Joel i. 13, Mic. i. 8. For
the wrath of the Lord has not turned from us, as in blind self-
delusion ye imagine, ii. 35. The heat of Jahveh's anger is
the burning wrath on account of the sins of Manasseh, with
which the people has been threatened by the prophets. This
wrath has not turned itself away, because even under Josiah
the people has not sincerely returned to its God. — Ver. 9.
When this wrath bursts over them, the rulers and leaders of
the people will be perplexed and helpless. The lieart, i.e. the
mind, is lost. For this use of 37, cf. Job xii. 3, xxxiv. 10, Prov.
vii. 7, etc. ^fiiK'J, be paralyzed by terror, like the Kal in ii. 12.
The prophets are mentioned last, because ver. 10 cites a word of
propliecy whereby they seduced the people into a false security.
Ver. 10. " Then said I, Aii, Lord Jahveh, ti'uly Thou hast
deceived this people and Jerusalem in saying, Peace shall be
to you, and the sword is reaching unto the soul." This verse is
to be taken as a sigh addressed to God by Jeremiah when he
heard the announcement of the judgment about to fall on
Judah, contained in vers. 5-9. The Cliald. has well para-
phrased ipt<1 thus: etdixi: suscipe deprecationem nieam, Jahveh,
JDeus. But Hensler and Ew. wish to have 10NI chaiifred to
ipNI, " so tliat they say," quite unnecessarily, and indeed un-
suitably, since nNt^n, thou hast deceived, is out of place either
in the mouth of the people or of the lying prophets. That the
CHAP. IV. 3-31. 109
word quoted, "Peace shall be to you," is the saying of the false
prophets, may be gathered from the context, and this is directly
supported by xiv. 13, xxiii. 17. The deception of the people
by such discourse from the false prophets is referred back to
God : " Lord, Thou hast deceived," inasmuch as God not only
permits these lying spirits to appear and work, but has ordained
them and brought them forth for the hardening of the people's
heart ; as He once caused the spirit of prophecy to inspire as a
lying spirit the prophets of Ahab, so that by promises of victory
they prevailed upon him to march to that war in which, as a
punishment for his godiessness, he was to perish ; 1 Kings xxii.
20-23. Umbr. takes the words less correctly as spoken in the
name of the people, to whom the unexpected turn affairs had
now taken seemed a deception on the part of God ; and this,
although it was by itself it had been deceived, through its revolt
from God. For it is not the people's opinion that Jeremiah
expresses, but a truth concerning which his wish is that the
people may learn to recognise it, and so come to reflect
and repent before it be too late. On the use of the perf.
consec. nm, see Ew. § 342, b. As to the fact, cf. v. 18, Ps.
Ixix. 2.
Vers. 11-18. Description of the impending ruin, from which
nothing can save but speedy repentance. — Ver. 11. "At that
time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem, A hot
wind from the bleak hills in the wilderness cometh on the way
toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow and not to
cleanse. Ver. 12. A wind fuller than for this shall come to
me ; now will I also utter judgments upon them. Ver. 13.
Behold, like clouds it draws near, and like the storm are its
chariots, swifter than eagles its horses. Woe unto us ! for we
are spoiled. Ver. 14. Wash from wickedness thy heart, Jeru-
salem, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thine
iniquitous thoughts lodge within thee ? Ver. 15. For a voice
declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from the Mount
Ephraim. Ver. 16. Tell it to the peoples ; behold, publish it
to Jerusalem : Besiegers come from a far country, and let their
voice ring out against the cities of Judah. Ver. 17. As keepers
of a field, they are against her round about ; for against me hath
she rebelled, saith Jaliveh. Ver. 18. Thy way and thy doings
110 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
liave wrought thee this. This is thy wickedness; yea, it is
bitter, yea, it reacheth unto thine heart."
A more minute account of the impending Judgment is intro-
duced by the phrase : at that time. It shall be said to this
people ; in other words, it shall be said of this people ; substan-
tially, that shall fall upon it which is expressed by the figure
following, a hot wind blowing from the naked hills of the
wilderness, nil is stat. constr., and D^SK' its genitive, after which
latter the adjective ny should be placed ; but it is interpolated
between the nomen regens and the n. rectum by reason of its
smallness, and partly, too, that it may not be too far separated
from its nomen, while "i|1l33 belongs to ^\^f. The wind blowing
from the bleak hills in the wilderness, is the very severe east
wind of Palestine. It blows in incessant gusts, and cannot be
used for winnowing or cleansing the grain, since it would blow
away chaff and seed together ; cf. Wetzst. in Del., Joh, S. 320.
^■?.'?. is universally taken adverbially : is on the way, i.e. comes,
moves in the direction of the daughter of Zion. The daughter
of Zion is a personification of the inhabitants of Zion or Jeru-
salem. This hot blast is a figure for the destruction -which is
drawing near Jerusalem. It is not a chastisement to purify
the people, but a judgment which will sweep away the whole
people, carry away both wheat and chaff — a most effective
figure for the approaching catastrophe of the destruction of
Jerusalem, and the carrying away captive of its inhabitants.
Hitz. and Graf have, however, taken 'i]'}.'! as subject of the
clause : the path, i.e. the behaviour of my people, is a keen
wind of the bare hills in the wilderness. Thus the conduct of
the people would be compared with that wind as unprofitable,
inasmuch as it was altogether windy, empty, and further as
being a hurtful storm. But the comparison of the people's
behaviour with a parched violent wind is a wholly unnatural
one, for the justification of which it is not sufficient to point
to Hos. viii. 7 : sow wind and reap storm. Besides, upon this
construction of the illustration, the description : not to winnow
and not to cleanse, is not only unmeaning, but wholly unsuit-
able. Who is to be winnowed and cleansed by the windy ways
of the people ? Jahveh ? ! Ver. 14 is indeed so managed by
Hitz, and Graf that the tempestuous wind blows against God,
CHAP. IV. 3-3L ]11
" is directed against Jahveh like a blast of defiance and hos-
tility." But this argument is sufficient to overthrow that un-
natural view of the figure, which, besides, obtains no support
from ver. 12. n?XD cannot refer to ''SVTI3 : a full wind from
these, i.e. the sons of my people ; and v Xi3J, in spite of the
passages, xxii. 23, 1. 26, li. 48, Job iii. 25, does not mean : comes
towards me, or : blows from them on me ; for in all these pas-
sages Y is dativ. commodi or incomrnodi. Here, too, y is dative,
used of the originator and eflScient cause. The wind comes for
me, — in plainer English : from me. Properly : it comes to God,
i.e. at His signal, to carry out His will. n?Nn ^;7D is comparative :
fuller than these, namely, the winds useful for winnowing and
cleansing. Now will I too utter. The intensifying 22 does not
point to a contrast in the immediately preceding clause : because
the people blows against God like a strong wind, He too will
utter judgment against it. The Q3 refers back to the preceding
V : the storm comes from me ; for now will I on ray side hold
judgment with them. The contrast implied in D3 lies in the
wider context, in the formerly described behaviour of the
people, particularly in the sayings of the false prophets men-
tioned in ver. 10, that there will be peace. On D'DQB'D na"i, cf.
i. 16. " '"
These judgments are already on the way in ver. 13. " Like
clouds it draws near." The subject is not mentioned, but a
hostile army is meant, about to execute God's judgments.
" Like clouds," i.e. in such thick dark masses ; cf. Ezek. xxxviii.
16. The war-chariots drive with the speed of the tempest; cf.
Isa. V. 28, Ixvi. 15. The running of the horses resembles the
flight of the eagle ; cf. Hab. i. 8, where the same is said of
the horsemen of the hostile people. Both passages are founded
on Deut. xxviii. 49 ; but Jeremiah, while he had the ex-
pression VD^iD Cnosa -hp,, Hab. i. 8, in his mind, chose onB'J
instead of leopards (Di"iD3), in this following the original in
Deut. ; cf. 2 Sam. i. 23 and Lam. iv. 19. Already is heard
the cry of woe : we are spoiled ; cf. ver. 20, ix. 18, xlviii. 1. —
Ver. 14. If Jerusalem wishes to be saved, it must thoroughly
turn from its sin, wash its heart clean ; not merely abstain out-
wardly from wickedness, but renounce the evil desires of the
heart. In the question : How long shall . . . reuiain? we have
112 THE FEOPHECIES OF JEEEMUn.
implied the thought that Jerusalem has already only too long
cherished and indulged wicked thoughts. T^F) is 3d pers.
imperf. Kal, not 2d pers. Hiph. : wilt thou let remain (Schnur.
and others). For the Hiphil of 'ph is not in use, and besides,
would need to be 'V^J?. The !1N niaipno, as in Prov. vi. 18, Isa.
lix. 7, refer chiefly to sins against one's neighbour, such as are
reckoned up in vii. 5 f., 8 f. — Ver. 15. It is high time to cleanse
oneself from sin, periculum in mora est; for already calamity
is announced from Dan, even from the Mount Ephraim. ?ip
Ta^, the voice of him who gives the alarm, sc. J'DB'J, is heard ;
cf. iii. 21, xxxi. 15. That of which the herald gives warning
is not given till the next clause, i).^, mischief, i.e. calamity.
V'DTO is still dependent on ^ip. " From Dan," i.e. the northern
boundary of Palestine ; see on Judg. xx. 1. " From Mount
Ephraim," i.e. the northern boundary of the kingdom of Judah,
not far distant from Jerusalem. The alarm and the calamity
draw ever nearer. " The messenger comes from each succes-
sive place towards which the foe approaches" (Hitz.). In ver.
16 the substance of the warning message is given, but in so
animated a manner, that a charge is given to make the matter
known to the peoples and in Jerusalem. Tell to the peoples,
behold, cause to be heard. The ^p_\i in the first clause points
forward, calling attention to the message in the second clause.
A similar charge is given in ver. 5, only " to the peoples" seems
strange here. " The meaning would be simple if we could take
' the peoples' to be the Israelites," says Graf. But since d^^i
in this connection can mean only the other nations, the question
obtrudes itself : to what end the approach of the besiegers of
Jerusalem should be proclaimed to the heathen peoples. Jerome
remarks on this: Vult omnes in circuitu nationes Dei nosse sen-
tentiam, et flageUatd Jerusalem cunctos recipere disciplinam. In
like manner, Chr. B. Mich., following Schmid : Gentibus, ut his
quoque innotescat severitatis divincB in Judceos exemplum. Hitz.
and Gr. object, that in what follows there is no word of the
taking and destruction of Jerusalem, but only of the siege ;
that this could form no such exemplum, and that for this "the
issue must be awaited. But this objection counts for little.
After the description given of the enemies (cf. ver. 13), there
can be no doubt as to the issue of the siege, that is, as to the
CHAP. IV. 3-31. 113
taking of Jerusalem. But if this be so, tlien the warning of
the heathen as to the coming catastrophe, by holding the case
of Jerusalem before them, is not so far-fetched a thought as
that it should be set aside by Hitz.'s remark : " So friendly an
anxiety on behalf of the heathen is utterly unnatural to a Jew,
especially seeing that the prophet is doubly absorbed by anxiety
for his own people." Jeremiah was not the narrow-minded
Jew Hitz. takes him for. Besides, there is no absolute neces-
sity for holding " Tell to the peoples" to be a warning of a
similar fate addressed to the heathen. The charge is but a
rhetorical form, conveying the idea that there is no doubt about
the matter to be publislied, and that it concerned not Jerusalem
alone, but the nations too. This objection settled, there is no
call to seek other interpretations, especially as all such are less
easily justified. By changing the imper. =il''3?ili and ^Vl^^i] into
perfects, Ew. obtains the translation : " they say already to the
peoples, behold, they come, already tliey proclaim in Jeru-
salem," etc. ; but Hitz. and Graf have shown the change to
be indefensible. Yet more unsatisfactory is tlie translation,
"declare of the heathen," which Hitz. and Graf have adopted,
following the LXX., Kimchi, Vat., and others. This destroys
the parallelism, it is out of keeping with the nsrij and demands
the addition (with the LXX.) of ^^a thereto to complete the
sense. Graf and Hitz. have not been able to agree upon the
sense of the second member of the verse. If we make Ciliap de
gentibus, then 'lJ1 '^]l''Kip\! ought to be : proclaim upon {i.e. con-
cerning) Jerusalem. Hitz., however, translates, in accordance
with the use of V'OK'D in vers. 5 and 15 : Cry it aloud in Jeru-
salem (prop, over Jerusalem, Ps. xlix. 12, Hos. viii. 1) ; but
this, though clearly correct, does not correspond to the first
part of the verse, according to Hitz.'s translation of it. Graf,
on the other hand, gives : Call them (the peoples) out against
Jerusalem — a translation which, besides completely destroying
the parallelism of the two clauses, violently separates from the
proclamation the thing proclaimed : Besiegers come, etc. Nor
can WOB'ri be taken in the sense : call together, as in 1. 29, li.
27, 1 Kings xv. 22 ; for in that case the object could not be
omitted, those who are to be called together would need to be
mentioned ; and it is too much to assume 0'')i from the Dw for
VOL. I. H
1 14 THE rKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
an object. Tlie warning cry to Jerusalem runs : D'Tf^ besiegers,
(ace. to Isa. i. 8) come from the far country (cf. v. 15), and
give their voice (cf. ii. 15) ; i.e. let the tumult of a besieging
army echo throughout the cities of Judah. These besiegers
will be like field-keepers round about Jerusalem ("vV refers
back to Jerus.), like field-keepers they will pitch their tents
round the city (cf. i. 15) to blockade it. For against me
(Jahveh) was she refractory (iriD c. ace. pers., elsewhere with
3, Hos. xiv. 1, Ps. V. 11, or with 'S'^N', Num. xx. 24, and often).
This is expanded in ver. 18. Thy way, i.e. thy behaviour and
thy doings, have wrought thee this (calamity). This is thy
wickedness, i.e. the effect or fruit of thy wickedness, yea, it is
bitter, cf. ii. 19 ; yea, it reacheth unto thine heart, i.e. inflicts
deadly wounds on thee.
Vers. 19-26. Grief at the desolation of the land and the
infatuation of the people. — Ver. 19. " My bowels, my bowels !
I am pained! the chambers of my heart — my heart rages
within me ! I cannot hold my peace ! for thou hearest (the)
sound of the trumpet, my soul, (the) war-cry. Ver. 20. De-
struction upon destruction is called ; for spoiled is the whole
land ; suddenly are my tents spoiled, my curtains in a moment.
Ver. 21. How long shall I see (the) standard, hear (the) sound
of the trumpet ? Ver. 22. For my people is foolish, me they
know not ; senseless children are they, and without under-
standing ; wise are they to do evil, but to do good they know
not. Ver. 23. I look on the earth, and, lo, it is waste and
void ; and towards the heavens, and there is no light in them.
Ver. 24. I look on the mountains, and, lo, they tremble, and
all the hills totter. Ver. 25. I look, and, lo, no man is there,
and all the fowls of the heavens are fled. Ver. 26. I look, and,'
lo, Carmel is the wilderness, and all the cities thereof are de-
stroyed before Jahveh, before the heat of His anger."
To express the misery which the approaching siege of Jeru-
salem and the cities of Judah is about to brino-, the prophet
breaks forth into lamentation, vers. 19-21. It is a much de-
bated question, whether the prophet is the speaker, as the
Chald. has taken it, i.e. whether Jeremiah is uttering his own
(subjective) feelings, or whether the people is brought before
us speaking, as Grot., Schnur., Hitz., Ew. believe. Tlie
CHAP. IV. 3-31. 115
answer is this : the propliet certainly is expressing his personal
feelings regarding the nearing catastrophe, but in doing so lie
lends words to the grief which all the godly will feel. The
lament of ver. 20, suddenly are my tents spoiled, is unques-
tionably the lament not of the prophet as an individual, but of
the congregation, i.e. of the godly among the people, not of the
mass of the blinded people. The violence of the grief finds
vent in abrupt ejaculations of distress. " My bowels, my
bowels ! " is the cry of sore pain, for with the Hebrews the
bowels are the seat of the deepest feelings. The diet. nSiniS
is a monstrosity, certainly a copyist's error for i^Jinx, as it is in
many mss. and edd., from 7in : I am driven to writhe in agony.
The Keri ■^J'nis^, I will wait (cf. Mic. vii. 7), yields no good
sense, and is probably suggested merely by the cohortative form,
a cohortative being regarded as out of place in the case of b^n.
But that form may express also the effort to incite one's own
volition, and so would here be rendered in English by : I am
bound to suffer pain, or must suffer ; cf . Ew. § 228, a. — ''3? '^^"'''1?,
prop, the w'alls of my heart, which quiver as the heart throbs in
anguish. ^Tipin is not to be joined with the last two words as
if it were part of the same clause ; in that case we should ex-
pect riDin. But these words too are an ejaculation. The sub-
ject of noin is the following ''37 j cf. xlviii. 36. In defiance of
usage, Hitz. connects ''3? with E'^'inx N? : my heart can I not put
to silence. But this verb in Hiph. means always: be silent,
never : put to silence. Not even in Job xi. 3 can it have the
latter meaning ; where we have the same verb construed with
ace. rei, as in Job xli. 4, and where we must translate : at thy
harangues shall the people be silent. The heart cannot be
silent, because the soul hears the peal of the war-trumpet.
WDB' is 2d pers. fem., as in ii. 20, 33, and freq., the soul being
addressed, as in Ps. xvi. 2 (in Jyiio^), Ps. xlii. 6, 12. This
apostrophe is in keeping with the agitated tone of the whole
verse. — Ver. 20. One destruction after another is heralded
(on I3ti', see ver. 6). Ew. translates loosely : wound upon
wound meet one another. For the word does not mean wound,
but the fracture of a limb ; and it seems inadmissible to follow
the Chald. and Syr. in taking S";i?3 here in the sense of n-jpJ,
since the sig. " meet " does not suit "i3B'. The thought is this :
116 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
tidings are brought of one catastrophe after another, for the
devastation extends itself over the whole land and comes sud-
denly upon the tents, i.e. dwellings of those who are lament-
ing. Covers, curtains of the tent, is used as synonymous witii
tents ; cf. x. 20, Isa. liv. 2. How long shall I see the standard,
etc. ! is the cry of despair, seeing no prospect of the end to the
horrors of the war. The standard and the sound of the trum-
pet are, as in ver. 5, the alarm-signals on the approach of the
enemy.
There is no prospect of an end to the horrors, for (ver. 22)
the people is so foolish that it understands only how to do the
evil, but not the good ; cf. for this v. 21, Isa. i. 3, Mic. vii. 3.
Ver. 21 gives God's answer to the woful query, how long the
ravaging of the land by war is to last. The answer is : as long
as the people persists in the folly of its rebellion against God,
so long will chastising judgments continue. To bring this
answer of God home to the people's heart, the prophet, in vers.
23-26, tells what he has seen in the spirit. He has seen (WXn,
per/, proph.) bursting over Judah a visitation which convulses
the whole world. The earth seemed waste and void as at the
beginning of creation. Gen. i. 2, before the separation of the
elements and before the creation of organic and living beings.
In heaven no light was to be seen, earth and heaven seemed to
have been thrown back into a condition of chaos. The moun-
tains and hills, these firm foundations of the earth, quivered
and swayed (^i?.?!?'?'?, be put into a light motion, cf. Nah. i. 5) ;
men had fled and hidden themselves from the wrath of God
(cf. Isa. ii. 19, 21), and all the birds had flown out of sight in
terror at the dreadful tokens of the beginning catastrophe (ix.
9). The fruitful field was the wilderness, — not a wilderness,
but " changed into the wilderness with all its attributes" (Hitz.).
^?"!?'I' is not appell. as in ii. 7, but nom. prop, of the lower slopes
of Carmel, famed for their fruitfulness ; these being taken as
representatives of all the fruitful districts of the land. The
cities of the Carmel, or of the fruitful-field, are manifestly not
to be identified with the store cities of 1 Kings ix. 19, as Hitz.
supposes, but the cities in the most fertile districts of the
country, which, by reason of their situation, were in a prosperous
condition, but now are destroyed. "Before the heat of His
CHAP. IV. S-31. 117
anger," which is kindled against the foolish and godless race ;
cf. Nah. i. 6, Isa. xiii. 13.
Vers. 27-31. The devastation of Judali, though not its utter
annihilation, is irrevocably decreed, and cannot he turned away by
any meretricious expedients. — Ver. 27. " For thus saith Jahveh,
A waste shall the whole land be, yet will I not make an utter
end. Ver. 28. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heaven
above darken, because I have said it, purposed it, and repent it
not, neither will I turn back from it. Ver. 29. For the noise
of the horseman and bowman every city flees ; they come into
thickets, and into clefts of the rock they go up ; every city is
forsaken, and no man dwells therein. Ver. 30. And thou,
spoiled one, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself
in purple, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold,
though thou tearest open thine eyes with paint, in vain thou
makest thyself fair ; the lovers despise thee, they seek thy life.
Ver. 31. For I hear a voice as of a woman in travail, anguish
as of one who bringeth forth her first-born, the voice of the
(laughter of Zion ; she sigheth, she spreadeth out her hands :
Woe is rae ! for my soul sinketh powerless beneath murderers."
Vers. 27 and 28 confirm and explain what the prophet has
seen in spirit in vers. 23-26. A waste shall the land become ;
but the wasting shall not be a thorough annihilation, not such
a destruction as befell Sodom and Gomorrah. nj3 riK'J?, as in
Nah. i. 8 f., Isa. x. 23, and freq. This limitation is yet again
in V. 10, 18 made to apply to Jerusalem, as it has done
already to the people at large. It is founded on the promise
in Lev. xxvi. 44, that the Lord will punish Israel with the
greatest severity for its stubborn apostasy from Him, but will
not utterly destroy it, so as to break His covenant with it.
Accordingly, all prophets declare that after the judgments of
punishment, a remnant shall be left, from which a new holy
race shall spring ; cf. Amos ix. 8, Isa. vi. 13, xi. 11, 16, x. 20 ff.,
Mic. ii. 12, v. 6, Zeph. iii. 13, etc. "For this" refers to the
first half of ver. 27, and is again resumed in the '3 ?V following :
for this, because Jahveh hath purposed the desolation of the
whole land. The earth mourns, as in Hos. iv. 3, because her
productive power is impaired by the ravaging of the land.
The heaven blackens itself, i.e. shrouds itself in dark clouds
118 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
(1 Kings xviii. 45), so as to mourn over the desolated earth.
Tlie vividness of the style permits " have decreed it" to be
appended as asyndeton to " I have said it," for the sake of
greater emphasis. God has not only pronounced the desolation
of the land, but God's utterance in this is based upon a decree
which God does not repent, and from which He will not turn
back. The LXX. have placed the 'nbr after 'r\i2m, and have
thus obtained a neater arrangement of the clauses ; but by this
the force of expression in "I have said it, decreed it," is
weakened. In ver. 29 the desolation of the land is further
portrayed, set forth in ver. 30 as inevitable, and exhibited in
its sad consequences in ver. 31. On the approach of the hostile
army, all the inhabitants flee into inaccessible places from the
clatter or noise of the horsemen and archers. He that casts
the bow, the bowman ; cf. Ps. Ixxviii. 9. "'''VC"''? means, in
spite of the article, not the whole city, but every city, all cities,
as may be gathered from the ]\}^, which points back to this. So
frequently before the definite noun, especially when it is further
defined by a relative clause, as e.g. Ex. i. 22, Dent. iv. 3, 1
Sam. iii. 17 ; cf. Ew. § 290, c. For the first ^^Vn"^? the LXX.
have vracra jj X^P"'j ^°^ accordingly J. D. Mich., Hitz., and
Graf propose to amend to pNn"?3, so as to avoid " the clumsy
repetition." But we cannot be ruled here by aesthetic principles
of taste. Clearly the first " every city " means the populace of
the cities, and so 1X3 is : they (i.e. the men) come, pouring forth.
D'3J? is not here clouds, but, according to its etymology, to
be dark, means the dark thickets or woods ; cf. the Syr. ■«-^v ,
wood. D'B3, rocks, here clefts in the rocks, as is demanded by
the 3. For this state of things, cf. Isa. ii. 19 21 and the
accounts of Judg. vi. 2, 1 Sam. xiii. 6, where the Israelites
hide themselves from the invading Midianites in caves ravines
thorn-thickets, rocks, and natural fastnesses. — Ver. 30. In vain
will Jerusalem attempt to turn away calamity by the wiles of a
courtesan. In ver. 31 the daughter of Zion is addressed i.e.
tlie community dwelling around the citadel of Zion, or the in-
habitants of Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom, regarded as
a female personality (as to PT"?, see on Isa. i. 8). "Spoiled one"
is in apposition not to the ''JpN*, but to the person in the verb •
CHAP. IV. 3-31. 119
it is regarded as adverbitil, and so is witliout inflexion : if tliou
art spoiled, like Dinj;, Job xxiv. 7, 10 ; cf. Ew. § 316, b. The
following clauses introduced by ''3 are not so connected with the
question, what wilt thou do? as that ''2 should mean that : what
wilt thou do, devise to the end tliat thou mayest clothe thee ?
(Graf) ; the '3 means if or though, and introduces new clauses,
the apodosis of which is : " in vain," etc. If thou even clothest
thyself in purple. ''JB', the crimson dye, and stuffs or fabrics
dyed with it, see in Ex. xxv. 4. Tjis is a pigment for the eye,
prepared from silver-glance, sulphur-antimony — the Coliol, yet
much esteemed by Arab women, a black powder with a metallic
glitter. It is applied to the eyelids, either dry or reduced to a
paste by means of oil, by means of a blunt-pointed style or eye-
pencil, and increases the lustre of dark eyes so that they seem
lai'ger and more brilliant. See the more minute account in
Plille, on the eye-paint of the East, in ref. to 2 Kings ix. 30.
Vp^, tear asunder, not, prick, puncture, as Ew., following J.
D. Mich., makes it. This does not answer the mode of usine
the eye-paint, which was this : the style rubbed over with the
black powder is drawn horizontally through between the closed
eyelids, and these are thus smeared with the ointment. This
proceeding Jeremiah sarcastically terms rending open the eyes.
As a wife seeks by means of paint and finery to heighten the
ciiarms of her beauty in order to please men and gain the favour
of lovers, so the woman Jerusalem will attempt by like strata-
gems to secure the favour of the enemy; but in vain, like Jezebel
in 2 Kings ix. 30. The lovers will despise her. The enemies
are called lovers, paramours, just as Israel's quest for help
amongst the heathen nations is represented as intrigue with
them; see on ii. 33, 36. — Ver. 31, as giving a reason, is intro-
duced by ''S. Zion's attempts to secure the goodwill of the
enemy are in vain, for already the prophet hears in spirit the
agonized cry of the daughter of Zion, who beseechingly stretches
out her hands for help, and falls exhausted under tlie assassin's
strokes, i^^n, partio. Kal fwm. horn ^in; see Ew. § 151, S, and
Gesen. § 72, Eem. 1. nnv, in parallelism with ^ip and depen-
dent on " I hear," means cry of anguish, ns^nn, breathe heavily,
pant, sigh. Biiari is joined asynd. with the preceding word, but
is in sense subordinate to it : she sighs with hands spread out ;
120 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
a pleaJing (vesture expressing a prayer for protection. ll'.V, be
exhausted, here = sink down, faint, snccumb to the murderers.
Chap. V. The causes which called down the judg-
ment PEONOUXCED : THE TOTAL CORRUPTION OF THE
PEOPLE.— Chr. B. Mich, has excellently summed up thus the
contents of this cliapter : Deus judicia sua, quce cap. IV. prm-
dixerat, justificat ostendens, se quamvis invitum, tamen non
aliter posse quam punire Judceos propter prcefractam ipsorum
malitiam. The train of thought in this chapter is the follow-
ing : God would pardon if there were to be found in Jerusalem
but one wlio practised righteousness and strove to keep good
faith ; but high and low have forsaken God and His law, and
serve tlie false gods. This the Lord must punish (vers. 1-9).
Judali, like Israel, disowns the Lord, and despises the words of
Ilis prophets ; therefore the Lord must affirm His word by
deeds of judgment (vers. 10-18). Because they serve the
gods of sti'angers, He will throw them into bondage to strange
peoples, that they may learn to fear Him as the Almighty God
and Lord of the world, who withholds His benefits from them
because their sins keep them far from Him (vers. 19-25) ; for
wickedness and crime have acquired a frightful predominance
(vers. 26-31).
Vers. 1—9. By reason of the universal godlessness and moral
corruption the Lord cannot pardon. — Ver. 1. " Ranee thronch
the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek
npon her thoroughfares, if ye find any, if any doth judgment,
seeketh after faithfulness, and I will pardon her. Vei*. 2. And
if they say, ' As Jahveli liveth,' then in this they swear falsely.
Ver. 3. Jahveh, are not Thine eyes upon faithfulness? Thou
smitest them, and they are not pained ; thou consumest them,
they will take no correction ; they make their face harder than
rock, they will not turn. Ver. 4. And I thought. It is but the
baser sort, they are foolish ; for they know not the wav of
Jahveh, the judgment of their God. Ver. 5. I will get me
then to the great, and will speak with them, for they know
the way of Jahveh, the judgment of their God ; yet together
have they broken the yoke, burst the bonds. Ver. 6. Therefore
a lion out of the wood smiteth tliem, a wolf of the deserts
CHAP. V. 1-9. 121
spoileth them, a leopard lietli in wnit against their cities : every
one that goeth out thence is torn in pieces; because many are their
transgressions, many their backslidings. Ver. 7. Wherefore
should I pardon thee? thy sons have forsaken me, and sworn
by them that are no gods. I caused them to swear, but they
committed adultery, and crowd into the house of the harlot.
Ver. 8. Like well-fed horses, they are roaming about ; each
neigheth after the other's wife. Ver. 9. Shall I not punish
this ? saith Jahveh ; or shall not my soul be avenged on such
a people as this ? "
The thought of ver. 1, that in Jerusalem there is not
to be found one solitary soul who concerns himself about
iiprightness and sincerity, does not, though rhetorically ex-
pressed, contain any rhetorical hyperbole or exaggeration
such as may have arisen from the prophet's righteous in-
dignation, or have been inferred from the severity of the
expected judgment (Hitz.) ; it gives but the simple truth, as is
seen when we consider that it is not Jeremiah who speaks ac-
cording to the best of his Judgment, but God, the searcher of
hearts. Before the all-seeing eye of God no man is pure and
good. They are all gone astray, and there is none that doetli
good, Ps. xiv. 2, 3. And if anywhere the fear of God is the
ruling principle, yet when the look falls on the mighty hosts of
the wicked, even the human eye loses sight of the small com-
pany of the godly, since they are in no case to exert an influence
on the moral standing of the whole mass. " If ye find any "
is defined by, "if there is a worker of right ; " and the doing of
right or judgment is made more complete by "that seeketh
faithfulness," the doing being given as the outcome of the dis-
position. njiSDK is not truth (npx), but sincerity and good faith.
On this state of affairs, cf. Hos. iv. 1, Mic. vii. 2, Isa. Ixiv. 5f.
The pledge that God would pardon Jerusalem if He found but
one righteous man in it, recalls Abraham's dealing with God on
behalf of Sodom, Gen. xviii. 23. In support of what has been
said, it is added in ver. 2, that they even abuse God's name for
lying purposes ; cf. Lev. xix. 12. Making oath by the life of
Jahveh is not looked on here as a confession of faith in the
Lord, giving thus as the sense, that even their worship of God
was but the work of the lips, not of the heart (Eos.); but the
122 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
solemn appeal to the living God for the purpose of setting the
impress of truth on the face of a lie, is brought forward as
evidence that there is none that strives after sincerity. The
antithesis forced in here by Hitz. and Graf is foreign to text
and context both, viz. that between swearing by Jahveh and by
the false gods, or any other indifferent name. The emphasis
lies on swearing "ipf?, as opposed to swearing in the way de-
manded by God, iiiJ'JV?'! '2?B'i?ai not?3, iv. 2. ]J>, therein, i.e.
yet even in this, or nevertheless. — Yer. 3. The eye of the Lord
is directed towards faithfulness, which is not to be found in
Jerusalem (ver. 1), '? showing the direction toward person or
thing, as in Ps. xxxiii. 18, where 7 alternates with ^;. Hitz. is
^Yrono■ in translating: are not thine eyes faithful, z'.i?. directed
according to faithfulness ; a sense quite unsuitable here, since
the matter in hand is not the character or direction of the eye
of God, but that on which God looks. But because God de-
sired sincerity, and there was none in the people of Jerusalem,
He has smitten them, chastised them, but tliey felt no pain (pn
from nprij the tone being drawn back by reason of the _L) ; the
chastisement made no impression. Thou consunieJat them,
exterminatedst them, i.e. " Thou hast utterly exterminated
multitudes and swarms of them " (Hitz.), but they refused to
I'eceive correction ; cf . ii. 30. They made their face harder
than rock, i.e. hardened themselves by obstinately setting the
divine chastisements at naught ; cf. Ezek. iii. 7, 8. — Ver. 4 f.
This total want of good faith and uprightness is found not only
in the lower orders of the populace, amongst the mean and
ignorant rabble, but in the higher ranks of the educated. This
is rhetorically put in this shape, that Jeremiah, believing that
only the common people are so deeply sunk in immorality,
turns to tiie great to speak to them, and amongst tliem dis-
covers a thorough-going renunciation of the law of God. C^'i,
weak, are the mean and poor of the people, who live from hand
to mouth in rudeness and ignorance, their anxieties bent on
food and clothing (cf. x.Nxix. 10, si. 7). These do foolishly
(vXiJ as in Num. xii. 11), from want of religious ti-aining.
They know not the way of Jahveh, i.e. the way, the manner of
life, prescribed to men by God in His M'ord ; cf. 2 Kino-s
xxi. 22. Ps. xxv. 9, etc. The judgment of their God, i.e. that
CHAP. V. 1-9. 123
which God demanded as right and lawful, 2 Kings xvii. 26,
etc. The great, i.e. the wealthy, distinguished, and educated..
Yet even these have broken the yoke of the law, i.e. have
emancipated themselves from obedience to the law (Hitz.) ;
cf. ii. 20. Therefore they must be visited with punishment. —
Ver. 6. This verse is neither a threatening of future punish-
ments, nor is to be taken figuratively (lion, bear, leopard, as
figures for dreadful enemies). The change from the perf. DSn
to the iraperf. ^Tl^] and ^2^\ tells against the future con-
struction, showing as it does that the verbs are used aoristi-
cally of chastisements which have partly already taken place,
which may be partly yet to come. And the figurative explana-
tion of the beasts of prey by hostile peoples — found so early as
the Ohald. — is not in the least called for by the test ; nor is it
easy to reconcile it with the specification of various kinds of wild
beasts. The words are a case of the threatening of the law in
Lev. xxvi. 22, that God will chasten the transgressors of His
law by sending beasts of prey which shall rob them of theii'
children. Cf. with the promise, that if they keep His com-
mandments, He will destroy tke wild beasts out of the land.
Of. also the fact given in 2 Kings xvii. 25, that God sent lions
amongst the heathen colonists who had been transplanted into
the depopulated kingdom of the ten tribes, lions which slew
some of them, because they served not Jahveh. The true con-
ception of the words is confirmed by Ezek. xiv. 15, when in
like manner the sending of evil (ravening) beasts is mentioned
as an example of God's punishments, i^'^'}, smite, is a standing
expression for the lion's way of striking down his prey with his
paws ; cf. 1 Kings xx. 36. nu'ij; nxT is not wolf of the
evening, as Ohald., Syr., Hitz. explain it, following Hab. i. 8
and Zeph. iii. 3; for nianj? is not the plural of 3^V, but of
•^^ly., steppe : the wolf that lives in the steppe, and thence
makes its raids on inhabited spots. The reference of the words
to place is suggested plainly by the parallel, the lion out of the
wood. The leopard (panther) watches, i.e. lies lurking in wait
against their cities, to tear those that come out. The panther
is wont to lie in wait for his prey, and to spring suddenly out
on it; cf. Hos. xiii. 7. With "because many are thy trans-
gressions," cf. XXX. 14 f.
124 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Since these cliastisements have profited notliing God cannot
pardon the people. This is the meaning of the question in
ver. 7, DNt^ 'N*, wherefore should I then pardon ? not, should
I then pardon for this ? for ''Ki by itself does not stand for
n interrog., but is set before the pronom. demonstr. to give it
the force of an interrogative adjective; cf. Ew. § 326, a. The
Cheth. niPpX est obsoletam adeoque genuinnm (Ros.) ; the Keri
substitutes the usual form. To justify the question Trith a
negative answer implied, the people's fall into idolatry is again
set up before it in strong colours. Thy sons (the sons of the
daushter of Zion, i.e. of the national congregation , and so the
indi\idual members of the nation ; cf. Lev. xis. 18) have for-
saken me, and swear by them that are not gods, i.e. the idols ;
cf. ii. 11. For DHiX i^SC'X, I caused them to swear, the old
translators have V''??''?, I filled them to the full, and so it is read
in many codd. and edd. This reading is preferred by most of
the ancient commentators, and they appeal for a parallel to ver.
28, and Deut. xxxii. 15 (" when Jeshurun waxed fat, he
kicked"), Hos. xiii. 6, Neh. ix. 25, etc., where apostasy from
God is chidden as a consequence of superfluity of earthly
goods. So Luther: "and now that I have filled them full, they
committed adultery." Now possibly it is just the recollection
of the passages cited that has suggested the reading yatyx.
The apodosis, they committed adultery, forms no antithesis to
filling full. Adultery presupposes a marriage vow, or troth
plighted by an oath. God caused Israel to swear fidelity
when He made the covenant with it at Sinai, Ex. xxiv. This
oath Israel repeated at each renewal of the covenant, and last
under Josiah : 2 Kings xxiii. 3 ; 2 Cliron. xxxiv. 31 f. Hence
we must not wholly restrict the swearing to the conclusion of
the covenant at Sinai, nor wholly to the renewal of it under
Josiah. We must refer it to both acts, or rather to the solem-
nity at Sinai, together with all solemn renewals of it in after
times; while at the same time the reference to the renewal
under Josiah, this being still fresh in memory, may have been
the foremost. "We must not confine the reference of ^SS^'' to
spiritual adultery (= a fall away from Jahveh into idolatry);
the context, especially the next clause, and yet more unmistake-
ably ver. 8, refers to carnal uncleanness. This too was a breach
CHAP. V. 10-18. 125
of the covenant, since in taking it the people honnd itself not
only to be faithful to God, but to keep and follow all the laws
of His covenant. That the words, crowd into the house of the
harlot, i.e. go thither in crowds, are to be taken of carnal un-
cleanness, may be gathered from ver. 85 : each neighs after the
wife of his neighbour. Fornication is denounced as a desecra-
tion of the name of the Lord in Amos ii. 7. The first clause of
ver. 8 suggests a comparison : well-fed horses are tliey, i.e. they
resemble such. On the lechery of horses, see on Ezek. xxiii. 20.
The Cheth. D^JflD is partic. Hoph. of !ir, in Aram, feed, fatten,
here most suitable. The Keri D*J;VO would be the partic. Pn.
from ]V, the meaning of which is doubtful, given arbitrarily by
Kimchi and others as armati sc. memlro geniiali. Q'StJ''?, too,
is derived from W^, and given by Jerome sensu ohscoeno :
trahentes sc. genitalia; but CStJ'P cannot come from Tit^'b,
D'aB'D being the only possible form in that case. Nor does
trahentes, "draught-horses" (Hitz.), give a sense at all in
point for the comparison. A better view is that of those wlio
follow Simonis, in holding it to be partic. Hiph. of nae', in
Aethiop. oberravit, vagatus est. The participle is not to be
joined with " horses " as a second qualifying word, but to be
taken with ^''H, the periphrastic form being chosen to indicate
the enduring chronic character of the roaming. — Ver. 9. Such
abandoned behaviour the Lord must punish.
Vers. 10—18. In^pite of the feeling of security fostered hy the
false prophets, the Lord will make good His word, and cause the
land and kingdom to be laid waste by a barbarous people. —
Ver. 10. " Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy, but make not
a full end : tear away her tendrils ; for they are not Jahveh's.
Ver. 11. For faithless to nie is the house of Israel become and
the house of Judah, saith Jahveh. Ver. 12. Tliey deny Jahveli,
and say. He is not ; and evil shall not come u]ion us, and
sword and famine we shall not see. Ver. 13. And the prophets
shall become wind, and he that speaketh is not in them : so may
it happen unto them. Vers. 14. Therefore thus saith Jahveh
the God of hosts : Because ye speak this word, behold, I make
my words in thy month fire, and this people wood, and it shall
devour them. Ver. 15. Behold, I bring upon you a nation
from far, house of Israel, saith Jahveh, a people that is strong,
126 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
a people that is from of old, a people whose speech thou knowest
not, and understandest not what it saith. Ver. 16. Its quiver
is as an open grave, they are all mighty men. Ver. 17. It shall
eat up thy harvest and thy bread ; they shall eat up thy sons
and thy daughters; it shall eat up thy flocks and thy cattle, eat
up thy vine and thy fig-tree ; it shall break down thy fenced
cities, wherein thou trustest, with the sword. Ver. 18. But yet
in those days, saith Jahveh, I will not make a full end with
you."
To give emphasis to the threat, that the Lord will avenge
Himself on such a people, we have immediately following, in
ver. 10, the summons given to the enemy to subdue the land.
niniiK'a VV is variously explained. The old translators took
nilK' to mean walls ; but the second clause, tear away the
tendrils, seems not to suit this well. And then this word occurs
but once again, and with the meaning " caravan," while walls are
niiiB' in Job xxiv. 11. But this reason is not strong enough to
throw any doubt on the rendering : walls, supported as it is by
tlie old versions. The form niiB' from "iw' is contracted from
a form Q''')1B', constructed analogously to nhiB'. The second
clause would be unsuitable to the first only in the case that walls
were to mean exclusively town walls or fortifications. But this
is not the case. Even if the suffix here referred to Jerusalem,
mentioned in ver. 1, which is very doubtful, still then the city
would be looked on not in the light of a stronghold, but only
as representative of the kingdom or of the theocracy. Probably,
however, the suffix refers to the daughter of Zion as seat of the
kingdom of God, and the idea of a vineyard was in the
prophet's mind (cf ii. 21), under which figure Isaiah (v. 1-7)
set forth the kingdom of God founded on Mount Zion ; so that
under walls, the walls of the vineyard are to be thought of.
Elsewhere, indeed, these are called niinj (also in xlix. 3), but
only where the figure of a vineyard is further developed, or
at least is brought more plainly and prominently forward.
Here, again, where the enemy is summoned to go upon the
walls, this figure is mixed up with that of a city ; and so the
word ni-iE'j as indicating walls of any kind, seems most fitting.
Graf has overthrown, as being unfounded, Hitz.'s assertion,
that 3 n^y signified only, to go up against a thing ; and that
CHAP. V. 10-18. 127
accuracy and elegance required that the destruction should be
of the walls, not of the vineyard itself, npj? c. 3 means also :
to go up upon a thing, e.g. Ps. xxiv. 3, Deut. v. 5 ; and the
verb inriB' stands quite absolutely, so that it cannot be restricted
to the walls. " And destruction can only take place when, by
scaling the walls, entrance has been obtained into that which
is to be destroyed, be it city or vineyard." We therefore adhere
to the sig. walls, especially since the other translations attempted
by Evv. and Hitz. are wholly without foundation. Hitz. will
have us read ^''^lii^, and take this as plural of irjiB' ; next he
supposes a row of vines to be intended, but he obtains this sense
only by arbitrarily appending the idea of vines. Ew. endea-
vours, from the Aram, and Arab., to vindicate for the word the
meanincj : clusters of blossom, and so to obtain for the whole
the translation : push in amidst the blossom-spikes. A singular
figure truly, which in no way harmonizes with 3 1?^. " Destroy"
is restricted by the following " but make not," etc. ; see on iv.
27. On " tear away her tendrils," cf. Isa. xviii. 5. The
spoilers are not to root up the vine itself, but to remove the
tendrils, which do not belong to Jaliveh. Spurious members
of the nation are meant, those who have degenerated out of
their kind.
The reasons of this command are given in ver. 11 ff., by a
renewed exposure of the people's apostasy. The house of Israel
and the house of Judah are become faithless. On tiiis cf. iii.
6 ff. The mention of Israel along with Judah gives point to
the threatening, since judgment has already been executed
upon Israel. Judah has equalled Israel in faithlessness, and
so a like fate will be its lot. Judah shows its faithlessness by
denying the Lord, by saying Xin N^. This Ew. translates : not
so, after the ovk ecm ravra of the LXX. ; but he is certainly
wrong in this. Even though Nin may be used in place of the
neuter, yet it cannot be so used in this connection, after the
preceding ninn ^OTa. Better to take it : He is not, as the fools
speak in Ps. xlv. 1 : there is no God, i.e. go on in their lives
as if God were not. " Jahveh is not" is therefore in other
words: there exists not a God such as Jahveh is preached to us,
who is to visit His people with sore punishments. This view
is not open to the objection, quod p'O liiUtu siipplent, which
128 THE TROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
Eos. raises against the Interpretation : non est is, qualem pro-
phetw describunt. For we take XW not as is qualem, but as est
sc. Jahveh; and we explain tlie meaning of Jahveh only in that
reference in which He is disowned by these men, namely, as God
who visits His people with punishments. In this character He
was preached by the prophets. This appears from what is
further said by these disowners of God : evil or mischief will
not come on us. To a saying of this kind they could have been
provoked only by threatenings of punishments. The prophets
were not indeed the first to announce judgments ; Moses in
the law threatened transgressors with the sorest punishments.
But the context, the threatening against the false prophets in
ver. 13, suffcests that here we are to think of announcements
by the prophets. Doubtless the false prophets assured the
people: evil shall not come upon you, in opposition to the true
prophets, who threatened the sinful race with the judgments of
God. Such prophets are to become wind, sc. with their utter-
ances. 13'nn is not a noun: the word, but a verb, with the article
instead of the relative pronoun, as in Josh. x. 24, 1 Ghron. xxvi.
28, and often : He who speaks is not in them, i.e. in them there
is none other speaker than themselves ; the Spirit of God is not
in them, pt?, " there is none," is stronger than ^b, meaning :
they speak out of their own hearts. The threat, so be it unto
them, may be most simply referred to the first clause : they
become wind. Let the emptiness of their prophecies fall on
their own heads, so that they themselves may come to nought. —
Ver. 14. But the people is to have proof of the truth of the
word of the Lord. Because it, despising the threatening of
punishment, says : Misfortune shall not light upon us, the
Lord will make the word in the mouth of Jeremiah a fire, and
the people wood, that the fire may consume it. On this figure,
cf. Isa. i. 31, X. 17. Ver. 15 ff. explain this, and announce the
inroad of a dreadful enemy that is to lay waste the land and
consume the people. "A people from far," as in iv. 16. Judah
is called " house of Israel," not so much because it is what
remains of Israel, but because, after the captivity of the ten
tiibes, Judah regarded itself as the only true Israel or people
of God. Further description of the hostile people is intended
to show its formidable power, and to inspire dread. tn^N, en-
CHAP. V. 10-ai. 129
during, firm, strong ; cf. Gen. xllx. 24, MIc. vi. 2. I^^ivp,
dating from eternity, i.e. very ancient, not of recent origin,
but become mighty in immemorial antiquity. A people speaking
a language unfamiliar to the Jews, to comprehend whom is
impossible, i.e. barbarous ; cf. Deut. xxviii. 49. Further (ver.
16), it is a race of very heroes, fully furnished with deadly
weapons. J. D. Mich, took objection to the figure, " its quiver
is as an open grave ; " but his conjecture inSK' put nothing
better in place of it. The link of comparison is this : as an open
grave is filled with dead men, so the quiver of this enemy is
filled with deadly missiles. — Ver. 17. This people will devour
the harvest and the bread, the children, the cattle, and the best
fruits of the land. Devour, here as often, in the wider sense,
destroy ; cf. e.g. iii. 24 and x. 25, where the first half of the
present verse is compressed into the words : they ate up Jacob.
We need not wait to refute Hitz.'s absurd remark, that the
author imagined the enemy, the assumed Scythians, to be can-
nibals. In the second half of the verse the words, " the fenced
cities wherein thou trustest," are a reminiscence of Deut. xxviii.
52 ; and hence we may see, that while our prophet is describ-
ing the enemy in vers. 15-18, Moses' threatening, Deut. xxviii.
49-52, was in his mind. ^^1, break in pieces, as in Mai. i. 4.
With the sword, i.e. by force of arms ; the sword, as principal
weapon, being named, instead of the entire apparatus of war.
In ver. 18 the restriction of ver. 10 (cf. iv. 27) is repeated,
and with it the threatening of judgment is rounded off.
Vers. 19-31. This calamity Judah is preparing foo- itself by
its obduracy and excess of loickedness. — Ver. 19. " And if ye
then shall say. Wherefore hath Jahveh our God done all this
unto us ? then say to them. Like as ye have forsaken me and
served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in
a land that is not yours. Ver. 20. Declare this in the house
of Jacob, and publish it in Judah, saying, Ver. 21. Hear now
this, foolish people without understanding, that have eyes and
see not, have ears and hear not, Ver. 22. Me will ye not fear,
saith Jahveh, nor tremble before me? who have set the sand
for a bound to the sea, an everlasting boundary that it passes
not, and its waves toss themselves and cannot, and roar and
pass not over. Ver. 23. But this people hath a stubborn and
VOL. I. i
130 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
rebellious heart ; they turned away and went. Ver. 24. And
said not in their heart : Let us now fear Jahveh our God, who
giveth rain, the early rain and the late rain, in its season ; who
keepeth for us the appointed weeks of the harvest. Ver. 25.
Your iniquities have turned away these, and your sins have
withholden the good from you. Ver. 26. For among my people
are found wicked men ; they lie in wait as fowlers stoop ; they
set a trap, they catch men. Ver. 27. As a cage full of birds,
so are their houses full of deceit ; therefore are they become
great and rich. Ver. 28. They are grown fat and sleek, they
go beyond bound in wickedness ; the cause they try not, the
cause of the orphans, that they might have prosperity ; and the
right of the needy they judge not. Ver. 29. Shall I not
punish this? saith Jahveh; shall not my soul be avenged on
such a people as this ? Ver. 30. The appalling and horrible is
done in the land. Ver. 31. The prophets prophesy falsely, and
the priests bear rule under their lead, and my people loves it
so. But what will ye do in the end thereof ? "
The thought of ver. 19, that the people, by its apostasy,
draws down this judgment on itself, forms the transition from
the threat of punishment to the reproof of sins. The penalty
corresponds to the sin. Because Judah in its own land serves
the gods of foreigners, so it must serve strangers in a foreign
land. — Ver. 20 f. The reproof of sins is introduced by an
apostrophe to the hardened race. The exhortation, " Publish
this," is addressed to all the prophet's hearers who have the
welfare of the people at heart. " This," in vers. 20 and 21,
refers to the chiding statement from ver. 23 onwards, that the
people fears not God. The form of address, people foolish and
without understanding (cf. iv. 22, Hos. vii. 11), is made cuttint;,
in order, if possible, to bring the people yet to their senses.
The following clauses, "they have eyes," etc., depict spiritual
blindness and deafness, as in Ezek. xii. 22 ; ef. Dent. xxix. 3.
Blindness is shown in that they see not the government of
God's almighty power in nature ; deafness, in that they hear
not the voice of God in His word. They have no fear even of
the God whose power has in the sand set an impassable barrier
for the mighty waves of the sea. " Me " is put first for em-
phasis. The waves beat against their appointed barrier, but are
CHAP. V. 19-31. 131
not able, se. to pass it. — Ver. 23. But this people has a stubborn
and rebellious heart ; it bows not beneath the alraiglity hand
of God. " Stubborn and rebellious," joined as in Deut. xxi.
18, 20. Hence the following ^"ID is not to be taken from lip :
they defy (liitz.), but from nw : they turn away and go off,
and consider not that they owe their daily bread to the Lord.
Neither does God's power move the obdurate people to the fear
of Him, nor do the proofs of His love make any impression.
They do not consider that God gives them the rain which lends
the land its fruitfulness, so that at the fixed time they may
gather in the harvest. The 1 cop. before nni'' is rejected by
the Masoretes in the /sTm as out of place, since Ops is not any
special rain, co-ordinate to the early and late rain (Hitz.), or
because they had Deut. xi. 14, Joel ii. 23 before them. But in
this they failed to notice that the 1 before nni'' and that before
K'ip?!? are correlative, having the force of et — et. nV^B' is stat.
constr, from njjia', weeks, and to it nipn is co-ordinated in place
of an adjective, so that i''Vi5 is dependent on two co-ordinate
Stat, constr., as in xlvi. 9, 11, Zeph. ii. 6. But the sense is not,
the weeks, the statutes, of the harvest, i.e. the fixed and regu-
lated phenomena which regulate the harvest (Graf), but,
appointed weeks of harvest. The seven weeks between the
second day of the passover and the feast of harvest, or of weeks,
Ex. xsiii. 16, xxxiv. 22, Deut. xvi. 9 f., are what is here meant.
We must reject the rendering, " oath as to the harvest-time "
(L. de Dieu, J. D. Mich., and Ew.), since Scripture knows
nothing of oaths taken by God as to the time of harvest ,• in
Gen. viii. 22 there is no word of an oath. — Ver. 25. The people
has by its sins brought about the withdrawal of these blessings
(the withholding of rain, etc.). Itsn, turned away, as in Amos
V. 12, Mai. iii. 5. " These," i.e. the blessings mentioned in
ver. 24. The second clause repeats the same thing. The good,
i.e. which God in His goodness bestowed on them.
This is established in ver. 26 f. by bringing home to the
people their besetting sins. In (amidst) the people are found
notorious sinners. 112'^ in indeiinite generality : they spy about.
He in wait ; cf. Hos. xiii. 7. The singular is chosen because
the act described is not undertaken in company, but by indivi-
duals. ^2' from ^^f, bend down, stoop, as bird-catchers hide
132 THE PKOPHECIKS OF JEKEMIAH.
behind the extended nets till the birds have gone in, so as then
to draw them tight. " They set;" not the fowlers, hut the wicked
ones. n^HTO, destroyer (Ex. xii. 23, and often), or destruction
(Ezek. xxi'. 36) ; here, by virtue of the context, a trap which
brings destruction. The men they catch are the poor, the
needy, and the just ; cf. ver. 28 and Isa. xxix. 21. The figure
of bird-catching leads to a cognate one, by which are set forth
the gains of the wicked or the produce of their labours. As a
cage is filled with captured birds, so the houses of the wicked
are filled with deceit, i.e. possessions obtained by deceit, through
which they attain to credit, power, and wealth. Graf has
overthrown Hitz.'s note, that we must understand by nD^D, not
riches obtained by deceit, but the means and instruments of
deceit ; and this on account of the following ; therefore they en-
rich themselves. But, as Graf shows, it is not the possession of
these appliances, but of the goods acquired by deceit, that has
made these people great and rich, " as the birds that fill the
cage are not a means for capture, but property got by cunning."
3P3, cage, is not strictly a bird-cage, but a bird-trap woven of
willows (Amos viii. 1), with a lid to shut down, by means of
which birds were caught. — Ver. 28. Through the luxurious
living their wealth makes possible to them, they are grown fat
and sleek. in?'J?, in graphic description, is joined asynd. to the
preceding verb. It is explained by recent comm. of fat bodies,
become glossy, in keeping with the noun ntJ^V, which in Cant.
V. 14 expresses the glitter of ivory ; for the meaning cogitare,
think, meditate, which nw bears in Chald., yields no sense avail-
able here. The next clause is variously explained. D3 points to
another, yet worse kind of behaviour. It is not possible to
defend the translation : they overflow with evil speeches, or
swell out with evil things (Umbr., Ew.), since 1?y c. accus.
does not mean to overflow with a thing. Yet more arbitrary is
the assumption of a change of the subject : (their) evil speeches
overflow. The only possible subject to the verb is the wicked
ones, with whom the context deals before and after. VTiim
are not words of wickedness = what may be called wickedness,
but things of wickedness, wicked things. '•^^T serves to distri-
bute the idea of in into the particular cases into which it falls,
as in Ps. Ixv. 4, cv. 27, and elsewhere, where it is commonly
CHAP. Y. 19-31. 133
held to be pleonastic. Hitz. expounds truly : the individual
wickednesses in which the abstract idea of wicked manifests
itself. Sense : they go beyond all that can be conceived as evil,
i.e. the bounds of evil or wickedness. The cause they plead
not, namely, the cause of the orphans. 'HOV^I, imperf, c. i
consec. : that so they might have prosperity. Hitz. regards the
wicked men as the subject, and explains the words thus : such
justice would indeed be a necessary condition of their success.
But that the wicked could attain to prosperity by seizing every
opportunity of defending the rights of the fatherless is too weak
a thought, coming after what has preceded, and besides it does
not fit the case of those who go beyond all bounds in wicked-
ness. Ew. and Graf translate: that they (the wicked) might
make good the rightful cause (of the orphan), help the poor
man to his rights. But even if nvvn seems in 2 Ohron.
vii. 11, Dan. viii. 25, to have the signif. carry through, make
good, yet in these passages the sig. carry through with suc-
cess is fundamental; where, as here, this will not suit, n-PSn
being in any case applicable only to doubtful and difficult
causes — a thought foreign to the present context. Blame is
attached to the wicked, not because they do not defend the
orphan's doubtful pleas, but because they give no heed at all to
the orphan's rights. We therefore hold with Easchi that the
orphans are subject to this verb : that the orphans might have
had prosperity. The plural is explained when we note that
Cin^ is perfectly general, and may be taken as collective. The
accusation in this verse shows further that the prophet had the
godless rulers and judges of the people in his,eye. — Ver. 29 is
a refrain-like repetition of ver. 9. — The vers. 30 and 31 are, as
Hitz. rightly says, " a sort of epimetrum added after the con-
clusion in ver. 29," in which the already described moral de-
pravity is briefly characterized, and is asserted of all ranks of
the people. Appalling and horrible things happen in the land ;
cf. ii. 12, xxiii. 14, xviii. 13, Hos. vi. 10. The prophets pro-
phesy with falsehood, ^pf^, as in xx. 6, xxix. 9 ; more fully
lipB'^ ''DE'3, xxiii. 25, xxvii. 15. The priests rule Dn''T '?y, at their
(the prophets') hands, i.e. under their guidance or direction ; cf.
1 Ohron. XXV. 2 ff., 2 Ohron. xxiii. 18 ; not: go by their side
(Ges., Dietr.), for nin is not : go, march on, but : trample down.
134 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEIIIAH.
My [leople loves it so, yields willingly to such a lead ; cf. Amos
iv. 5. What will ye do Finnnj?^, as to the end of this conduct ?
The suff. fmm. with neuter force. The end thereof will be the
judgment ; will ye be able to turn it away?
Chap. vi. The judgment is irrevocably decreed. — A
hostile army approaches from the north, and lays siege to Jeru-
salem, in order to storm the city (vers. 1-8). None is spared,
since the people rejects all counsels to reform (vers. 9-15).
Since it will not repent, it will fall by the hands of the enemy,
in spite of the outward sacrificial service (vers. 16-21). The
enemy will smite Zion without mercy, seeing that the trial of
the people has brought about no change for the better in them
(vers. 22-30),
Vers. 1-8. The judgment breaking over Jerusalem. — ^Ver. 1.
" Flee, ye sons of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem, and
in Tekoa blow the trumpet, and over Beth-haccerem set up a
sign; for evil approachcth from the north, and great destruction.
Ver. 2. The comely and the delicate — I lay waste the daughter
of Zion. Ver. 3. To her come shepherds with their flocks, pitch
their tents about her round about, and devour each bis portion.
Ver. 4, Sanctify war against her ; arise, let us go up at noon.
Woe unto us ! for the day declineth ; for the shadows of even-
ing lengthen. Ver. 5. Arise, let us go up by night, and destroy
her palaces. Ver. 6. For thus hath Jabveh of hosts spoken.
Hew down wood, and pile up against Jerusalem a rampart ; she
is the city that is (to be) punished, she is all full of oppression in
her midst. Ver. 7. As a fountain pours forth its water, so pours
she forth her wickedness : violence and spoiling is heard in her ;
before my face continually, wounds and smiting. Ver. 8. Be
warned, Jerusalem, lest my soul tear herself from thee, lest I
make thee a waste, a land uninhabited."
In graphic delineation of the enemy's approach against Jeru-
salem, the prophet calls on the people to flee. As regarded its
situation, Jerusalem belonged to the tribe of Benjamin ; the
boundary between the tribal domain of Judah and Benjamin
passed through the valley of Ben-Hinnom on the south side of
Jerusalem, and then ran northwards to the west of the city
(Josh, XV. 8, xviii, 16 f.). The city was inhabited by Judeans
CH.AP. VI. 1-8. 135
and Benjamites, 1 Cliron. ix. 2 ff. The summons is addressed
to the Benjamites as the prophet's fellow-countrymen. Tekoa
lay about two hours' journey southwards from Bethlehem,
according to Jerome, on a liill twelve Eoman miles south of
Jerusalem ; see on Josh. xv. 59. This town is mentioned be-
cause its name admits of a play on the word Wi?l?. The alarm
is given in the country south of Jerusalem, because the enemy
is coming from the north, so that the flight will be directed
southwards. Beth-haccerera, ace. to Jerome, was a hamlet
(vicus) between Jerusalem and Tekoa, qui lingua St/ra et
Hebraica BethacJiarma nominatur, et ipse in monte positus,
apparently on wliat is now called the Frank's Hill, Jebel
Fureidis; see on Neh. iii. 14. nNKip, the lifting up, that which
raises itself up, or is raised ; here a lofty beacon or signal, the
nature of wliich is not further made known. The meaning,
fire-signal, or ascending column of smoke, cannot be made good
from Judg. xx. 38, 40, since there tW is appended ; nor from
the statements of classical authors (in Eos.), that in time of war
bodies of troops stationed in different places made their posi-
tions known to one another by masses of rising flame during
the night, and by columns of smoke in the day time. As to
the last clause, of. i. 14. " Great destruction," as in iv. 6. — In
ver. 2 the impending judgment is further described. It falls
on the daughter of Zion, the capital and its inhabitants, per-
sonified as a beautiful and delicately reared woman. ni3, defec-
tively written for nit^j, contracted from niX3, lovely, beautiful.
The words are not vocatives, fair and delicate, but accusa-
tives made to precede their governing verb absolutely, and are
explained by " the daughter of Zion," dependent on " I de-
stroy :" the fair and the delicate, namely, the daughter of Zion,
I destroy. riDT as in Hos. iv. 5. The other meaning of this
verb, to be like, to resemble, is wholly unsuitable here; and,
besides, in this signification it is construed with ?t5 or ?. Ew.'s
translation, I mean the daughter of Zion, is not justifiable by
the usage of the word, the Piel only, and not the Kal, being
capable of this interpretation. — Ver. 3. The destruction comes
about by means of shepherds with their flocks, who set up their
tents round the city, and depasture each his portion. We need
hardly observe that the shepherds and their flocks are a figure
1S6 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
for princes, who with their peoples besiege and sack Jerusalem
with this of. i. 15. The figure does not point to a nomad swarm,
or the Scytliian people, as Ew. supposes. "Each his liand," i.e.
what lies to his hand, or next him. — Ver. 4. The description
passes from figure to reality, and the enemies appear before us
as speaking, inciting one another to the combat, encouraging
one another to storm the city. To sanctify a war, i.e. prepare
themselves for the war by religious consecration, inasmuch as
the war was undertaken under commission from God, and be-
cause the departure of the army, like the combat itself, was
consecrated by sacrifice and other religious ceremonies ; see on
Joel iv. 9. !^?y, to go up against a place as an enemy, not, go
up upon, in which case the object, them (the city or walls), could
not be omitted. It is plainly the storming or capture of the
town that is meant by the going up ; hence we may understand
what follows : and we will destroy her palaces. We have a
rousing call to go up at noon or in clear daylight, joined with
" woe to us," a cry of disappointment that they will not be able
to gain their ends so soon, not indeed till night ; in these we
see the great eagerness with which they carry on the assault.
nja Di'', the day turns itself, declines towards its end ; cf. Ps.
xc. 9. The enemies act under a commission from God, who
has imposed on them the labour of the siege, in order to punish
Jerusalem for her sins. Jahveh is here most fittingly called
the God of hosts ; for as God of the world, obeyed by the
armies of heaven. He commands the kings of the earth to chas-
tise His people. Hew wood, i.e. fell trees for making the siege
works, cf. Deut. xx. 20, both for raising the attacking ram-
parts,^ and for the entire apparatus necessary for storming the
town, nxj) is not a collective form from f'V, like nJT from W ;
but the n— is a suffix in spite of the omission of the Mappik,
which is given by but a few of the codd., eastern and western,
for we know that Mappik is sometimes omitted, e.g. Num. xv.
28, 31 ; cf. Ew. § 217, d. We are encouraged to take it so by
Dent. XX. 19, where H)'?? are the trees in the vicinity of the
town, of which only the fruit trees were to be spared in case of
siege, while those which did not bear eatable fruit were to be
^ Affger ex terra Uijuisque attollitur contra murum, de quo tela jactantur.
Veget, de re milk. iv. 16.
CHAP. VI. 1-8. 137
made use of for the purposes of the siege. And thus we must
liere, too, read HSy, and refer the suffix to the next noun (Jeru-
salem). On " pile up a rampart," cf . 2 Sara. xx. 15, Ezek. iv.
2, etc. Ipan is used as passive of Kal, and impersonally. The
connection with "("'JTi is to be taken like ^n nsn in Isa. xxix. 1 :
• T - T T T
the city where it is punished, or perhaps like Ps. lix. 6, the
relative being supplied: that is punished. TO3 is not to be
joined, contrary to the accents, with li^on (Ven., J. D. Mich.),
a connection which, even if it were legitimate, would give but
a feeble thought. It belongs to what follows, "she is wholly
oppression in her midst," i.e. on all sides in her there is oppres-
sion. This is expanded in ver. 7. LXX. and Jerome have
taken "'"'i^n from Tip, and translate : like as a cistern keeps its
vvater cool {-^v-^ei, frigidam facit), so she keeps her wickedness
cool. Hitz. has pronounced in favour of this interpretation, but
changes " keep cool " into " keep fresh," and understands the
metaphor thus : they take good care that their wickedness does
not stagnate or become impaired by disuse. But it would be a
strange metaphor to put "keep wickedness cool," for " maintain
it in strength and vigour." We therefore, along with Luth. and
most commentators, prefer the rabbinical intei^pretation : as a
well makes its water to gush out, etc. ; for there is no sufficient
force in the objection that "lipo from "lip, dig, is not a spring
but a well, that 'V\>r\ has still less the force of making to gush
forth, and that "lia wholly excludes the idea of causing to spring
out. The first assertion is refuted by ii. 13, "lipp, fountain of
living water; whence it is clear that the word does mean a well
fed by a spi'ing. It is true, indeed, that the word lia, a later
way of writing "li^a (cf. 1 Chron. xi. 17 f. 22 with 2 Sam. xxiii.
15 f. 20), means usually, a pit, a cistern dug out; but this form
is not substantially different from 1X3, well, puteus, which is
used for "liil in Ps. Iv. 24 and Ixix. 16. Accordingly, this
latter form can undoubtedly stand with the force of li<3j as has
been admitted by the Masoretes when they substituted for it
T3 = 1X3; cf. the Arab. ju. The noun lipo puts beyond
doubt the legitimacy of giving to I'pn. from Tip, to dig a well,
the signification of making water to gush forth. The form
'"'"'1?.^} is indeed referable to "inp, but only shows, as is otherwise
138 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
well known, that no very strict line of demarcation can be
drawn between the forms of verbs 'j)V and 'lj); ">''i?v', again, is
formed regularly from "lip. Violence and spoiling; cf. xx. 8,
and Amos iii. 10, Hab. i. 3. "Before my face," before mine
eyes, corresponds to " is heard," as wounds and smitings are
the consequences of violence. On that head, cf. Ps. Iv. 10—12.
— Ver. 8. If Jerusalem cease not from these sins and crimes, the
Lord must devote it to spoliation. Let thyself be corrected,
warned ; cf . Ps. ii. 10, Lev. xxvi. 23. Vp.r} from ilp^, tear one-
self loose, estrange oneself, as in Ezek. xxiii. 17 ff. " A land
uninhabited" is an apposition giving greater expressiveness to
" a waste," xxii. 6.
Vers. 9-15. This judgment will fall unsparingly on Jerusalem,
lecause they listen to no warning, but suffer themselves to he
confirmed in their shameless courses hy false prophets and
wicked priests. — Ver. 9. " Thus hath Jahveh of hosts said : They
shall have a gleaning of the remnant of Israel as of a vine :
lay thine hand again as a vine-dresser on the shoots. Ver. 10.
To whom shall I speak, and testify, that they may hear?
Behold, uncircumcised is their ear, and they cannot give heed :
behold, the word of Jahveh is become to them a reproach ; they
have no pleasure in it. Ver. 11. But of the fury of Jahveh
am I full, am weary with holding it in. Pour it out upon the
child on the street, and upon the group of young men together ;
for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the old man
with him that is full of days. Ver. 12. And their houses shall
pass unto others, fields and wives together; for I stretch out
mine hand against the inhabitants of the land, saith Jahveh.
Ver. 13. For great and small are all of them greedy for gain ;
and from the prophet to the priest, all use deceit. Ver. 14.
And they heal the breach of the daughter of my people lightly,
saying. Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Ver. 15. They
are put to shame because they have done abomination, yet
they take not shame to themselves, neither know they disgrace ;
therefore they shall fall among them that fall : at the time that
I visit them they shall stumble, hath Jahveh said."
The threatening of ver. 9 is closely connected with the
foregoing. The Lord will make Jerusalem an uninhabited
waste, because it will not take warning. The enemy will make
CHAP. VI. 9-15. 139
a gleaning like vlne-dressers, i.e. they will yet search out even
that which is left of the people, and crush it or carry it captive.
This still sterner threat does come into contradiction with the
repeated pledge, that Israel is not to be wholly extirpated, not
to be made an ntter end of (iv. 27, v. 10, 18). For even at
the gleaning odd clusters are left, which are not noticed or set
store by. The words convey the idea that the enemy will not
have done with it after one devastating campaign, but will
repeat his inroads. -'^iJ' is construed with the accus, of the
vineyard in Lev. xix. 10. The " remnant of Israel " is not
the kingdom of Judah at large, but Judah already reduced by
judgments. In the second clause the idea of the first is
repeated in the form of a command to the gleaners. The
command is to be looked on as addressed to the enemy by God ;
and this turn of the expression serves to put the thought with
a positiveness that excludes the faintest doubt. To bring back
the hand means : yet again to turn it, stretch it out against a
person or thing ; cf. Amos i. 8, Isa. i. 25. nipppp is not baskets,
like Cpp, Gen. xl. 16, but like Cppij Isa. xviii, 5, vine-shoots,
prop, waving twigs, like DyWR, Cant. v. 11, from P?p = 77r
and PPJp, wave (Ew., Hitz.). — Ver. 10 f. Well might Jeremiah
warn the people once more (cf. ver. 8), in order to turn sore
judgment away from it ; but it cannot and will not hear, for it
is utterly hardened. Yet can he not be silent ; for he is so
filled with the fury of God, that he must pour it forth on the
depraved race. This is our view of the progress of the thought
in these verses ; whereas Hitz. and Graf make what is said in
ver. 11 refer to the utterance of the dreadful revelation received
in ver. 9. But this is not in keeping with " testify that they
may hear," nor with the nnralstakeable contrast between the
pouring out of the divine fury, ver. 11, and the testifying that
they may hear, ver. 10. Just because their ear is uncircumcised
so that they cannot hear, is it in vain to speak to them for the
purpose of warning them ; and the prophet has no alternative
left but to pour out on the deaf and seared people that fury of
the Lord with which he is inwardly filled. The question : to
whom should I speak ? etc. (?V for 7i<!, as xi. 2 and often), is not
to be taken as a question to God, but only as a rhetorical turn
of the thought, that all further speaking or warning is in vain.
140 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
" Testify," lay down testimony by exliibiting the sin and the
punisliment it brings with it. "That they may hear," ut
audiani, the Chald. has well paraphrased : ut accipiant doclrinam.
Uncircumcised is their ear, as it were covered with a foreskin,
so that the voice of God's word cannot find its way in ; cf.
V. 24, iv. 4. The second clause, introduced by n?", adduces the
reason of their not being able to hear. The word of God is
become a reproach to them ; they are determined not to hearken
to it, because it lashes their sins. Ver. 11 comes in adversatively :
But the fury of the Lord drives him to speak. nilT Don is not
a holy ardour for Jahveh (Graf and many ancient comm.),
but the wrath of God against the people, which the prophet
cannot contain, i.e. keep to himself, but must pour out. Be-
cause they will not take correction, he must inflict the judg-
ment upon them, not merely utter it. The imper. "^i^p is to
be taken like '^^'<^, ver. 9, not as an expression of the irresist-
ible necessity which, in spite of all his efforts against it,
compels the prophet to pour forth, in a certain sense, the wrath
of the Lord on all classes of the people by the very publishing
of God's word (Graf) ; but it is the command of God, to be
executed by him, as is shown by " for I stretch out mine hand,"
ver. 12. The prophet is to pour out the wrath of God by the
proclamation of God's word, which finds its fulfilment in judg-
ments of wrath ; see on i. 10. Upon all classes of the people :
the children that play in the street (cf. ix. 20), the young men
gathered together in a cheerful company, the men and women,
old men and them that are full of days, i.e. those who have
reached the furthest limit of old age. '3 tells why the prophet
is so to speak : for upon the whole population will God's wrath
be poured out. ^3?'., not, be taken captive, but, be taken, over-
taken by the wrath, as in viii. 9; cf. 1 Sam, xiv. 41. — Ver. 12a
gives the result of being thus taken : their houses, fields, and
wives will be handed over to others, descend to others. Wives
are mentioned along witli houses and fields, as in the command-
ment, Ex, XX. 17 ; cf. Deut. v. 18, The loss of all one's
possessions is mentioned in connection with reproof, following
in ver, 13, of greed and base avarice. The threatening is con-
firmed in ver. 12b by the clause : for I (Jahveh) stretch my
hand out, etc. Then in vers. 13 and 14 the cause of the judg-
CHAP. VI. 16-21. 141
ment is adduced. The judgment falls upon all, for all, great and
little, i.e. mean and powerful (cf. vers. 4, 5), go after base gain ;
and the teachers, who ought to lead the people on the true way
(Isa. XXX. 21), use deceit and dishonesty. They heal the breach
of the daughter of my people, i.e. the infirmities and injuries
of the state, after a light and frivolous fashion (>1?i?^ is partic.
Niph. fcem., and ?3? is of the thing that covers another) ; — in this,
namely, that they speak of peace and healing where there is no
peace ; that they do not uncover the real injuries so as to heal
them thoroughly, but treat them as if they were trifling and in
no way dangerous infirmities. — Ver. 15. For this behaviour
they are put to shame, i.e. deceived in their hope. The perf.
is prophetic, representing the matter as being equally certain
as if it had been already realized. It cannot bear to be trans-
lated either : they should be ashamed (Eos., Umbr. after the
Chald.), or : they would be ashamed (Ew.). The following
grounding clause adduces the cause of their being put to
shame : because they have done abomination ; and the next
clauses bring in a contrast: yet on the contrary, shame and dis-
grace they know not ; therefore on the day of visitation they
will fall with the rest. When these verses are repeated in
chap. viii. 12, the Niph. D?3n is used in place of the Hiph.
DV^'l'- It does not, however, follow from this that the Hiph.
has here the force of the NipL, but only thus much, that the
Hiph. is here used, not in a transitive, but in a simply active
meaning: to have shame or disgrace. For QW23 with the
relative omitted, time when I visit, we have in viii. 12 the
simpler form of the noun Q^'^Pf, as in x. 15, xlvi. 21, and often.
Such divergencies do not justify the accommodation of the
present passage to these others, since on occasions of repetitions
the expression in matters of subordinate importance is often
varied. The perf. of the verb has here the force of the fut.
exact.
Vers. 16-21. The judgment cannot be turned aside hy mere
sacrifice without a change of heart. — Ver. 16. " Thus hath Jahveh
said : Stand on the ways, and look, and ask after the everlasting
paths, which (one) is the way of good, and walk therein; so shall
ye find rest for your souls. But they say, We will not go. Ver.
17. And I have set over you watchmen, (saying) : Hearken to
142 THE PBOPHEOIES OF JEREMIAH.
the sound of the trumpet ; but they say, We will not hearken.
Ver. 18. Therefore liear, ye peoples, and know, thou congrega-
tion, what liappens to them. Ver. 19. Hear, O earth ! Behold,
T bring evil on this people, the fruit of their thoughts ; for to
my words they have not hearkened, and at my law they have
spurned. Ver. 20. To what end, then, is there incense coming
to me from Sheba, and the good spice-cane from a far land ?
Your burnt-offerings are not a pleasure, and your slain-offerings
are not grateful to me. Ver. 21. Therefore thus hath Jabveh
said : Behold, I lay stumbling-blocks for this people, that
thereon fathers and sons may stumble, at once the neighbour
and his friend shall perish."
Ver. 16 f. The Lord has not left any lack of instruction and
warning. He has marked out for them the way of salvation in
the history of the ancient times. It is to this reference is made
when they, in ignorance of the way to walk in, are called to
ask after the everlasting paths. This thought is clothed thus :
they are to step forth upon the ways, to place themselves where
several ways diverge from one another, and inquire as to the ever-
lasting paths, so as to discover wliich is the right way, and then on
this they are to walk. tibSV nia'n? are paths that have been trod
in the hoary time of old, but not all sorts of ways, good and bad,
which they are to walk on indiscriminately, so that it may be
discovered which of them is the right one (Hitz.). This meaning
is not to be inferred from the fact, that in xviii. 15 everlastino-
paths are opposed to untrodden ways ; indeed this very passage
teaches that the everlasting ways are the right ones, from
which through idolatry the people have wandered into unbeaten
paths. Thus the paths of the old time are here the ways in
which Israel's godly ancestors have trod ; meaning substantially,
the patriarchs' manner of thinking and acting. For the follow-
ing question, " which is the way," etc., does not mean, amongst
the paths of old time to seek out that which, as the right one,
leads to salvation, but says simply thus much : ask after the
paths of the old time, so as thus to recognise the right way, and
then, when ye have found it, to walk therein, aion Tj-i^^ not, the
good way ; for aitan cannot be an objective appended to 'H^'l,
since immediately after, the latter word is construed in ri3 as
fcem. " The good" is the genitive dependent on "way:" way
CHAP. VI. 16-21. 143
of the good, that leads to the good, to salvation. This way
Israel might learn to know from the history of antiquity
recorded in the Torah. Graf has brought the sense well out
in this shape : " Look inquiringly backwards to ancient history
(Deut. xxxii. 7), and see how success and enduring prosperity
forsook your fathers when they left the way prescribed to them
by God, to walk in the ways of the heathen (xviii. 15) ; learn
that there is but one way, the way of the fear of Jahveh, on
which blessing and salvation are to be found (xxxii. 39, 40)."
Find (with 1 consec), and find thus = so shall ye find ; cf. Ew.
§ 347, b; Ges. § 130, 2. To " we will not go," we may supply
from the context : ou the way of good. — Ver. 17. But God does
not let the matter end here. He caused prophets to rise up
amongst them, who called their attention to the threatening
evil. Watchers are prophets, Ezek. iii. 17, who stand upon
the watch-tower to keep a lookout, Hab. ii. 1, and to give the
people warning, by proclaiming what they have seen in spirit.
" Hearken to the sound," etc., are not the words of the watch-
men (prophets), for it is they who blow the trumpet, but the
words of God ; so that we have to supply, " and I said." The
comparison of the prophets to watchmen, who give the alarm
of the imminent danger by means of the sound of the trumpet,
involves the comparison of the prophets' utterances to the clang
of the signal-horn, — suggested besides by Amos iii. 6. — Ver.
18. Judah being thus hardened, the Lord makes known to the
nations what He has determined regarding it ; cf. Mic. i. 2.
The sense of " Know, thou congregation," etc., is far from
clear, and has been very variously given. Eos., DahL, Maur.,
Urabr., and others, understand 'TiJJ of the congregation or
assembly of the foreign nations ; but the word cannot have this
meaning without some further qualifying word. Besides, a
second mention of the nations is not suitable to the context.
The congregation must be that of Israel. The only question
can be, whether we are by this to think of the whole people
(of Judah), (Chald., Syr., Ew., and others), or whether it is
the company of the ungodly that is addressed, as in the phrase
n'lp mj? (Hitz.). But there is little probability in the view,
that the crew of the ungodly is addressed along with the
nations and the earth. Not less open to debate is the construe-
144 THE PEOPHEOIES OF JEEEMIAIL
tion of tJa-itJ-Vns*. In any case little weight can be attacliefl
to Hitz.'s assumption, that ON' is used only to mark out the if »^
as relative pronoun : observe it, O company that is amidst
them. The passages, xxxviii. 16 (Chet.), and Eccles. iv. B, wiiere
ns seems to have this force, are different in kind ; for a defi-
nite noun precedes, and to it the relation if f<''"l« is subjoined.
And then what, on this construction, is the reference of D3,
amidst them ? Hitz. has said nothing on this point. But ic
could only be referred to " peoples :" the company which is
amidst the peoples ; and this gives no reasonable sense. These
three words can only be object to " know :" know what is
amongst (in) them ; or : what is or happens to them (against
them). It has been taken in the first sense by Chald. (their
sins), Umbr., Maur. : what happens in or amongst them; in the
second by Eos., Dahl. : what I shall do against them. Ewald,
again, without more ado, changes 02 into t<3 : know, thou con-
gregation, what is coming. By this certainly a suitable sense
is secured ; but there are no sufficient reasons for a change of
the text, it is the mere expedient of embarrassment. All the
ancient translators have read the present text ; even the trans-
lation of the LXX. : kuI oi, 7roifiaivovT£<; ra iroiixvLa aiiTuv,
has been arrived at by a confounding of letters (my "ijjT with
■ny "'VI). We understand " congregation" of Israel, i.e. not of
the whole people of Judah, but of those to whom the title
" congregation" was applicable, i.e. of the godly, small as their
number might be. Accordingly, we are not to refer 03 if^^'^N
to " peoples :" what is occnrring amidst the peoples, viz. that
they are coming to besiege Jerusalem, etc. (ver. 3 ff.). Nor is
it to be referred to those in Judah who, according to vers. 16
and 17, do not walk in the right way, and will not give ear to
the sound of the trumpet. The latter reference, ace. to which
the disputed phrase would be translated : what will happen to
them (against them), seems more feasible, and corresponds
better to the parallelism of vers. 18 and 19, since this same phrase
is then explained in ver. 19 by : I bring evil upon this people.^
^ So that we cannot bold, with Graf, that the reading of the text is
" manifestly corrupted ;" still less do we hold as substantiated or probable
his conjectural reading: D3 ^Jliyn nK'N lyni, and know what I have
testified against them.
CHAP. VI. 22-30. 145
In ver. 19 the evil is characterized as a punishment drawn
down by them on themselves by means of the apposition ; fruit
of their thoughts. " Fruit of their thoughts," not of their
deeds (Isa. iii. 10), in order to mark the hostihty of the evil
heart towards God. God's law is put in a place of prominence
by the turn of the expression : My law, and they spurned at it ;
cf. Ew. § 344, h, with 309, b.—Yer. 20. The people had no
shortcoming in the matter of sacrifice in the temple ; but in
this service, as being mere outward service of works, the Lord
has no pleasure, if the heart is estranged from Him, rebels
against His commandments. Here we have the doctrine, to obey
is better than sacrifice, 1 Sam. xv. 22. The Lord desires that
men do justice, exercise love, and walk humbly with Him, Mic.
vi. 8. Sacrifice, as opus operatum, is denounced by all the
prophets: cf. Hos. vi. 6, Amos v. 21 ff., Isa. i. 11, Ps. 1. 8ff.
Incense from Sheba (see on Ezek. xxvii. 22) was required
partly for the preparation of the holy incense (Ex. xxx. 34),
partly as an addition to the meat-offerings. Lev. li. 1, 15, etc.
Good, precious cane, is the aromatic reed, calamus odoratus
(Ex. xxx. 23), calamus from a far country, — namely, brought
from India, — and used in the preparation of the anointing
oil ; see on Ex. xxx. 23. liV^p is from the language of the
Torah ; cf. Lev. i. 3 ff., xxii. 19 ff., Ex. xxviii. 38 ; and with
iib : not to well-pleasing, sc. before Jahveh, i.e. they cannot
procure for the offerers the pleasure or favour of God.
With 'b lany t6 cf. Hos. ix. 4.— Ver. 21. Therefore the Lord
:iT
will lay stumbling-blocks before the people, whereby they all
come to grief. The stumbling-blocks by which the people are
to fall and perish, are the inroads of the enemies, whose for-
midableness is depicted in ver. 22 ff. The idea of totality is
realized by individual cases in " fathers and sons, neighbour
and his friend." wn^ belongs to the following clause, and not
the Keri, but the Cheth. l"l?X', is the true reading. The Keri
is formed after the analogy of xlvi. 6 and 1. 32 ; but it is
unsuitable, since then we would require, as in the passages
cited, to have ?SJ in direct connection with ??'3.
Vers. 22-30. A distant, cruel people loill execute the judgment,
since Judah, under the trial, has proved, to he worthless metal. —
Ver. 22. " Thus hath Jahveh said : Behold, a people cometh
VOL. I. K
146 THE PROPHECIIiS OF JEREMIAH.
from the land of the north, and a great nation raises itself from
the furthermost sides of the earth. Ver. 23. Bows and javelins
they bear ; cruel it is, and they have no mercy ; their voice
roareth like the sea ; and on horses they ride, equipped as a man
for the war against thee, daughter of Zion. Ver. 24. We
heard the rumour thereof : weak are our hands : anguish hath
taken hold of us, and pain, as of a woman in travail. Ver. 25.
Go not forth into the field, and in the way walk not ; for a
sword hath the enemy, fear is all around. Ver. 26. O daughter
of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and besprinkle thee
with ashes ; make mourning for an only son, bitter lamentation :
for suddenly shall the spoiler come upon us. Ver. 27. For a
trier have I set thee among my people as a strong tower, that
thou mightest know and try their way. Ver. 28. They are all
revolters of revoltcrs ; go about as slanderers ; brass and iron ;
they are all dealing corruptingly. Ver. 29. Burned are the
bellows by the fire, at an end is the lead ; in vain they melt
and melt ; and wicked ones are not separated. Ver. 30. Re-
jected silver they call them, for Jahveh hath rejected them."
In ver. 22 the stumbling-blocks of ver. 21 are explained.
At the end of this discourse yet again the invasion of the
enemy from the far north is announced, cf. iv. 13 and v. 15,
and its terribleness is portrayed with new colours. The farther
the land is from which the enemy comes, the more strange and
terrible he appears to the imagination. The farthest (hind-
most) sides of the earth (cf. xxv. 32) is only a heightening of
the idea: land of the north, or of the far distance (v. 15); in
other words, the far uttermost north (cf. Isa. xiv. 13). In this
notice of their home, Hitz. finds a proof that the enemies were
the Scythians, not the Chaldeans ; since, ace. to Ezek. xxxviii.
6, 15, and xxxix. 2, Gog, i.e. the Scythians, come " from the
sides of the north." But " sides of the earth " is not a geogra-
phical term for any particular northern country, but only for
very remote lands ; and that the Chaldeans were reckoned as
falling within this term, is shown by the passage xxxi. 8,
according to which Israel is to be gathered again from the
land of the north and from the sides of the earth. Here any
connection with Scythia in "sides of the earth" is not to be
thought of, since prophecy knows nothing of a captivity of
CHAP. VI. 22-80. 147
Israel in Scythia, but regards Assur and Babylon alone as tlie
lands of the exile of Israelites and Jews. As weapons of the
enemy then are mentioned bows (cf. iv. 29, v. 16), and the
javelin or lance (tiT'3, not shield ; see on 1 Sam. xvii. 6). It
is cruel, knows no pity, and is so numerous and powerful, that
its voice, i.e. the tumult of its approach, is like the roaring of
the sea; cf. Isa. v. 30, xvii. 12. On horses they ride; cf. iv.
13, viii. 16, Hab. i. 8. ^IIJ? in the singular, answering to
" cruel it is," points back to ''12 or DJJ. ty'NS is not for nnx V^NS
(Eos.), but for r\mha ^>^-s, cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 33, Isa. xli'i. 13;
and the genitive is omitted only because of the HDnpsp coming
immediately after (Graf). " Against thee " is dependent on
^11J? : equipped as a warrior is equipped for the war, against
the daughter of Zion. In vers. 24-26 are set forth the terrors
and the suspense which the appearance of the foe will spread
abroad. In ver. 24 the prophet, as a member of the people,
gives utterance to its feelings. As to the sense, the clauses are
to be connected thus : As soon as we hear the rumour of tlio
people, i.e. of its approach, our hands become feeble through
dread, all power to resist vanishes : cf. Isa. xiii. 7 ; and for the
metaphor of travail, Isa. xiii. 8, Mic. iv. 9, etc. In ver. 28 the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, personified as the daughter of Zion,
are warned not to go forth of the city into the field or about
the country, lest they fall into the enemies' hands and be put
to death. 3'3DD 1130, often used by Jeremiah, cf. xx. 3, 10, xlvi.
5, xlix. 29, and, as xx. 10 shows, taken from Ps. xxxl. 14.
Fear or terrors around, i.e. on all sides danger and destruction
threaten. — ^Ver. 26. Sorest affliction will seize the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. As to ''daughter of my people," cf. iv. 11; on
" gird thee with sackcloth," cf. iv. 8. To bestrew the head witli
ashes is a mode of expressing the greatest affliction ; cf. Ezek.
xxvii. 30, Mic. i. 10. 1*n; ^3N as in Amos viii. 10, Zech. xii. 10.
The closing verses of this discourse (27-30) are regarded by
Hitz. as a meditation upon the results of his labours. " Ho
was to try the people, and he found it to be evil." But in this
he neglects the connection of these verses with the preceding.
From the conclusion of ver. 30, " Jahveh hath rejected them,"
we may see that they stand connected in matter with the
threatening of the spoiler ; and the fact is put beyond a doubt
148 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
when we compare together the greater subdivisions of the
present discourse. The vers. 27-30 correspond in substance
with the view given in v. 30, 31 of the moral character of
the people. As that statement shows the reasons for the
threatening that God must take vengeance on such a people
(v. 29), so what is said in the verses before us explain why it
is threatened that a people approaching from the north will
execute judgment without mercy on the daughter of Zion.
For these verses do not tell us only the results of the prophet's
past labours, but they at tlie same time indicate that his further
efforts will be without effect. Tlie people is like copper and
iron, unproductive of either gold or silver; and so the smelting
process is in vain. The illustration and the thing illustrated
are not strictly discriminated in the statement. |in3 is adject,
verb, with active force : he that tries metal, that by smelting
separates the slag from the gold and silver ore ; cf. Zech. xiii. 9,
Job xxiii. 10. l^'^O creates a difficulty, and is very variously
understood. The ancient comm. have interpreted it, according
to i. 18, as either in a fortress, or as a fortress. So the Chald.,
changing pro for Tin3 : electum dedi te in populo meo, in urbe
munita forti. Jerome : datur proplieta populo incredulo pro-
bator robustus, quod ebraice dicitur ni'3D, quod vel munitum juxta
AquiL, vel clausum atque circumdatum juxta St/mm. et LXX.
sonat. The extant text of the LXX. has ev \aol<i SeBoKifuia-
fievoi'i. Following the usage of the language, we are justified
only in taking ivao as apposition to |in3, or to tlie suffix in
T'nn: ; in which case Luther's connection of it with ''W, " amono-
my people, which is so hard," will appear to be impossible.
But again, it has been objected, not without reason, that the
reference of "fortress" to Jeremiah is here opposed to the
context, while in i. 18 it falls well in with it ; consequently
other interpretations have been attempted. Gaab, Maur., Hitz.
have taken note of the fact that 1^3 occurs in Job xxxvi. 19
like 1V3 in the signification of gold ; they take 1X20 as a con-
traction for nsD \a, and expound : without gold, i.e. although
then was there no gold, to try for which was thy task. To
this view Graf has objected : the testing would be wholly pur-
poseless, if it was already declared beforehand that there was
no noble metal in the people. But this objection is not con-
CHAP. VI. 22-30. 149
elusive ; for the testing could only have as its aim to exhibit the
real character of the people, so as to bring home to the people's
apprehension what was already well known to God. These
are weightier considerations : 1. We cannot make sure of the
meaning gold-ore for 1^3 by means of .lob xxxvi. 19, since the
interpretation there is open to dispute; and 1??, Job xxii. 24,
does not properly mean gold, but unworked ore, though in its
connection with the context we must understand virgin gold
and silver ore in its natural condition. Here, accordingly, we
would be entitled to translate only : without virgin ore, native
metal. 2. The choice of a word so unusual is singular, and
the connection of 1X30 with ''JSV is still very harsh. Yet less
satisfactory is the emendation defended by J. D. Mich., Dahl,
E\v., and Graf, 1S3D ; " for a trier have I made thee among my
people, for a separater ; " for IV^ has in Heb. only the meaning
cut off and fortify, and the Pi. occurs in Isa. xxii. 10 and Jer.
li. 53 in the latter meaning, whereas the signif. separate, dis-
criminate, can be maintained neither from Hebrew nor Arabic
usage. The case being so, it seems to us that the interpretation
ace. to i. 18 has most to be said for it : To be a trier have I
set thee amid my people "as a strong tower;" and to this Ges.,
Dietr. in Lex. s.v., adhere. — Ver. 28 gives a statement as to the
moral character of the people. " Kevolters of revolters " is a
kind of superlative, and ''^p is to be derived from l"]p, not from
"i^D, perverse of perverse ; or, as Hitz., imitating the Heb.
phrase, rebels of the rebellious. Going about as slanderers,
see on Lev. xix. 16, in order to bring others into difficulties ;
cf. Ezek. xxii. 9. To this is subjoined the figurative expression :
brass and iron, i.e. ignoble metal as contrasted with gold and
silver, cf. Ezek. xxii. 18 ; and to this, again, the unfigurative
statement : they are all dealing corruptingly. D''n''nK'D, cf. Isa.
i. 4, Deut. xxxi. 29. There is no sufiicient reason for joining
dp3 with the preceding : brass and iron, as Hitz. and Graf do
in defiance of the accents. — Ver. 29. The trial of the people
has brought about no purification, no separation of the wicked
ones. The trial is viewed under the figure of a long-continued
but resultless process of smelting, inj, Niph. from "i^n, to be
burnt, scorched, as in Ezek. xv. 4. D?!if ?<0 is to be broken up,
as in the Keri, into two words : E'S? and DH (from Don). For
150 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAII.
tliere does not occur any feminine form <^f^ from ^^, nor any
plural nm (even n;^K forms the plur. D^t^X), so as to admit of
our reading onmo or orpm. Nor would the plur., if there
were one, be suitable ; Ew.'s assertion that niE'X means flames
of fire is devoid of all proof. We connect CKD with what
precedes : Burnt are the bellows with fire, at an end is the lead.
Others attach " by the fire " to what follows : By the fire is the
lead consumed. The thought is in either case the same, only
Dn is not the proper word for: to be consumed. Sense: the
smelting has been carried on so perseveringly, that the bellows
have been scorched by the heat of the fire, and the lead added
in order to get the ore into fusion is used up ; but they have
gone on smelting quite in vain. ^I'^S with indefinite subject,
and the injin. ahsol. added to indicate the long duration of the
experiment. In the last clause of the verse the result is
mentioned in words without a figure : The wicked have not been
separated out (prop., torn asunder from the mass). — Ver. 30.
The final statement of the case : They call them (the whole
people) rejected silver, i.e. they are recognised as such ; for
Jahveh has rejected them, has given over trying to make
anything of them.
CHAP. VII.-X. — THE VANITY OP PUTTING TRUST IN THE
TEMPLE AND IN THE SACRIFICIAL SERVICE, AND THE
WAT TO SAFETY AND LIFE.
This discourse divides itself into three sections. Starting
with the people's confident reliance in the possession of the
temple and the legal sacrificial worship, Jeremiah in the first
section, by pointing to the destruction of Shiloh, where in the
old time the sanctuary of the ark of the covenant had been,
shows that Jerusalem and Judali will not escape the fate of
Shiloh and the kingdom of Ephraim, in case they persist in
their stiffneckedness against the Lord their God (ch. vii. 1-
viii. 3). For the confirmation of this threatening he goes on,
in the second section, further to tell of tlie people's determined
lesistance to all reformation, and to set forth the terrible visita-
tion which hardened continuance in sin draws down on itself
(ch. viii. 4-ix. 21). To the same end he finally, in the third
CHAP. VII, -X. 151
section, points out the mean? of escape from impending destruc-
tion, showing that the way to safety and life lies in acknowledg-
ing the Lord as the only, everlasting, and almighty God, and
in seeing the nothingness of the false gods; and, as the fruit
of such knowledge, he inculcates the fear of the Lord, and
self-humiliation under His mighty hand (ch. ix. 22-x. 25).
This discourse also was not uttered at any one particular
time before the people in the temple, and in the shape in which
it comes before us ; but it has been gathered into one uniform
whole, out of several oral addresses delivered in the temple by
Jeremiah upon various occasions in the days of Josiah. Accord-
ing to ch. xxvi., Jeremiah, at the beginning of the reign of
Jehoiakim, and in the court of the temple before the people,
uttered the threatening that if they would not hear the words
addressed to them by the prophets, nor reform their lives, the
Lord would make the temple like Shiloh, and make the city a
curse to all nations. For this speech he was found worthy of
death by the priests and false prophets, and was saved only
through the interference of the princes of the people. Now the
present discourse opposes to the people's vain confidence in the
temple the solemn warning that the temple will share the fate
of Shiloh ; and hence many commentators, especially Graf and
Nag., have inferred the identity of this with the discourse in
ch. xxvi., and have referred its composition to the beginning of
Jelioiakim's reign. But the agreement of the two chapters on
this one point is not sufficient to justify such an inference.
Jeremiah is wont often to repeat his leading thoughts in his
discourses ; and so it is not unlikely that more than once, during
the eighteen years of his ministry under Josiah, he may have
held up the fate of Shiloh and the sanctuary there, as a warn-
ing to the people which built its confidence on the possession
of the temple and the performance of the legal cultus. If the
foundation even of the first section of the present discourse
were to be found in that given in ch. xxvi., taken in connection
with the impression it made on the priests and prophets, with
the violent feeling it excited, and the storm against Jeremiah
which it called forth, then certainly the continuation of this
discourse from vii. 16 onwards would have been something
different from what we find it. In writing down the discourse,
152 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAB.
Jeremiah would certainly not have passed immediately from
threatening the people with the fate of Shiloh to the repudia-
tion of all intercessory prayers, and to the statement there made
as to the sacrificial service. This we mention without entering
on the discussion of the other portions of the discourse. In the
whole of the rest of the discourse, as continued ch. viii.-x., there
is not the least trace of hostility against Jeremiah on the part
of priests or people, or any hint of anything that would carry
us beyond the time of Josiah into the reign of Jehoiakim.
Chap. vii. 1-viii. 3. Warning against a false trust in
THE TEMPLE AND THE SACRinCIAL SERVICE. — The temple
does not afford protection from the threatened punishment. If
Judah does not change its manner of life, the temple will suffer
the fate of Shiloh, and Judah will, like Ephraim, be rejected by
the Lord (vers. 1-15). Neither intercession on behalf of the
corrupt race, nor the multitude of its burnt and slain offerings,
will turn aside from Jerusalem the visitation of wrath (vers.
16-28); for the Lord has cast away the hardened sinners on
account of their idolatry, and will make Jerusalem and Judah
a field of death (ver. 29-viii. 3).
Vers. 1-15. The vanity of trusting in the temple, — Ver. 1.
" The word that came to Jeremiah from Jahveh, saying, Ver. 2.
Stand in the gate of the house of Jahveh, and proclaim there
this word, and say, Hear the word of Jahveh, all ye of Judah,
that enter these gates to worship befoi-e Jahveh : Ver. 3. Thus
hath spoken Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel, Make your
ways and your doings good, and I will cause you to dwell in
this place. Ver. 4. Trust ye not in lying words, when they say,
The temple of Jahveh, the temple of Jahveh, the temple of
Jahveh, is this. Ver. 5. But if ye thoroughly make your ways
good, and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute right amongst
one another; Ver. 6. Oppress not stranger, fatherless, and
widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither follow
after other gods to your hurt; Ver. 7. Then I cause you to
dwell in this place, in the land which I have given unto your
fathers, from eternity unto eternity. Ver. 8. Behold, ye trust
in lying words, though they profit not. Ver. 9. How ? to steal,
to murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer
CHAP. VII. 1-15. 153
odours to Baal, and to walk after other gods whom ye know
not ? Ver. 10. And tlien ye come and stand before my face in
this house, upon which my name is named, and think, We are
saved to do all these abominations. Ver. 11. Is then this house
become a den of murderers, over which my name is named, in
your eyes ? I too, behold, have seen it, saith Jahveli. Ver.
12. For go ye now to my place which was at Sliiloh, where I
formerly caused my name to dwell, and see what I have done
unto it for the wickedness of my people Israel. Ver. 13. And
now, because ye do all these deeds, saith Jahveh, and I have
spoken to you, speaking from early morning on, and ye have
not heard ; and I have called you, and ye have not answered ;
Ver. 14. Therefore I do unto this house, over which my name
is named, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I have
given to you and to j^our fathers, as I have done unto Shiloh.
Ver. 15. And cast you away from my face, as I have cast away
all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim."
Ver. 2. The gate of the temple into which the prophet was
to go and stand, is doubtless one of the three gates of the inner
or upper court, in which he could stand and address the people
gathered before him in the outer court ; perhaps the same in
which Baruch read Jeremiah's prophecies to the people, xxxvi.
10 (Schniid, Hitz.). The gates through which the people
entered to worship are those of the outer court. The form of
address : All Judah, ye who enter, etc., warrant us in assuming
tliat Jeremiah delivered this discourse at one of the great
annual festivals, when the people were wont to gather to Jeru-
salem from the lenorth and breadth of the land. — Ver. 3 con-
tains the central idea of the discourse : it is only morally good
endeavours and deeds that give the people a sure title to a long
lease of the land. ?]']'!! a''t3^^ is not merely, amend one's con-
duct ; but, make one's way good, i.e. lead a good life. Tlie
" ways" mean the tendency of life at large, the "doings" are
the individual manifestations of that tendency; cf. xviii. 11,
xxvi. 13. " In this place," i.e. in the land that I have given to
your fathers; cf. ver. 7 and xiv. 13 with ver. 15, xxiv. 5, 6.
Positive exhortation to a pure life is followed by negative dehor-
tatlon from putting trust in the illusion : The temple, etc. The
threefold repetition of the same word is the most marked way
154 THE PEOPHECIE& OF JEREMIAH.
of laying very great emphasis upon it; c£. xxii. 29, Isa. vi. 3.
"These," these halls, the whole complex mass of buildings
(Hitz.), as in 2 Chron. viii. 11 ; and here nan has the force of
the neuter ; cf. Ew. § 318, h. The meaning of this emphatic
way of mentioning the temple of the Lord is, in this connec-
tion, the following : Jerusalem cannot be destroyed by enemies,
because the Lord has consecrated for the abode of His name
tliat temple which is in Jerusalem ; for the Lord will not give
His sanctuary, the seat of His throne, to be a prey to the
heathen, but will defend it, and under its protection we too may
dwell safely. In the temple of the Lord we have a sure pledge
for unbroken possession of the land and the maintenance of the
kingdom. Cf. the like discourse in Mic. iii. 11, " Jahveh is in
our midst, upon us none evil can come." This passage like-
wise shows that the " lying words" quoted are the sayings of
the false prophets, whereby they confirmed the people in their
secure sinfulness ; the mass of the people at the same time so
making these sayings their own as to lull themselves into the
sense of security. — Ver. 5. Over against such sayings Jeremiah
puts that which is the indispensable condition of continued so-
journ in the land. '3, ver. 5, after a preceding negative clause,
means : but on the contrary. This condition is a life morally
good, that shall show itself in doing justice, in putting away all
unrighteousness, and in giving up idolatry. With DSj! begins a
list of the things that belong to the making of one's ways and
doings good. The adjunct to l^QB'D, right, " between the man
and his neiglibour," shows that the justice meant is that they
should help one man to his rights against another. The law
attached penalties to the oppression of those who needed protec-
tion — strangers, orphans, widows; cf. Ex. xxii. 21 ff., Deut.
xxiv. 17 ff., xxvii. 19 ; and the prophets often denounce the
same ; cf. Isa. i. 17, 23, x. 2, Ezek. xxii. 7, Zech. vii. 10, Mai.
iii. 5, Ps. xciv. 6, etc. «aE''n-?« for 'tt^ is noteworthy, but
is not a simple equivalent for it. Like ov firi, i'S implies a
deeper interest on the part of the speaker, and the sense here
is: and ye be really determined not to shed innocent blood
(cf. Ew. § 320, b). Hitz.'s explanation, that i'S is equal to
friP IK'N or n6 DN, and that it here resumes again the now remote
DX, is overturned by the consideration that hi^ is not at the be-
CHAP. VII. H5. 155
ginning of the clause ; and there is not the sh'ghtest probability
in Graf s view, that the 7^ must have come into the text through
the copyist, who had in his mind the similar clause in xxii. 3.
Shedding innocent blood refers in part to judicial murders
(condemnation of innocent persons), iu part to violent attacks
made by the kings on prophets and godly men, such as we hear
of in Manasseh's case, 2 Kings xxi. 16. In this place (ver. 7),
i.e. first and foremost Jerusalem, the metropolis, where moral
corruption had its chief seat ; in a wider sense, however, it
means the whole kingdom of Judah (vers. 3 and 7). "To
your hurt " belongs to all the above-mentioned transgressions
of the law; of. xxv. 7. "In the land," etc., explains "this
place." " From eternity to eternity" is a rhetorically heightened
expression for the promise given to the patriarchs, that God
would give the land of Canaan to their posterity for an ever-
lasting possession, Gen. xvii. 8 ; although here it belongs not
to the relative clause, " that I gave," but to the principal clause,
" cause you to dwell," as in Ex. xxxii. 13.
In ver. 8 there is a recurrence to the warning of ver. 4, under
the form of a statement of fact; and in vers. 9-11 it is ex-
panded to this effect : The affirmation that the temple of the
Lord affords protection is a sheer delusion, so long as all God's
commandments are being audaciously broken. ?''I'^n '^P??, lit.
to no profiting : ye rely on lying words, without there being
any possibility that they should profit you. — Ver. 9. The query
before the injin. absoll. is the expression of wonder and indig-
nation ; and the infinitives are used with special emphasis for
the verb. fin. : How ? to steal, kill, etc., is your practice, and
then ye come. . . . — Ver. 10. Breaches of almost all the com-
mandments are specified ; first the eighth, sixth, and seventh
of the second table, and then two commandments of the first
table ; cf. Hos. iv. 2. Swearing falsely is an abuse of God's
name. In " offer odours to Baal," Baal is the representation
of the false gods. The phrase, other gods, points to the first
commandment, Ex. xx. 3 ; and the relative clause : whom ye
knew not, stands in opposition to : I am Jahveh your God, who
hath brought you out of Egypt. They knew not the other
gods, because they had not made themselves known to them
in benefits and blessings ; cf. xix. 4. While they so daringly
156 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Lreak all God's commands, they yet come before His face in
tlie temple which Jahveli lias chosen to reveal His name there.
'^i^ ayi "^m is not : which bears my name (Hitz.) ; or: on which
my name is bestowed, which is named after me (Graf). The
name of Jahveh is the revelation of Himself, and the meaning
is : on which I have set my glory, in which I have made my
glorious being known ; see on Deut. xxviii. 10 and Amos ix.
12. We are saved, sc. from all the evils that threaten lis, i.e.
we are concealed, have nothing to fear ; cf. Ezek. siv. 16, 18,
Amos iii. 12. The perfect denotat jirmam persuasionem inco-
litmi/atis. Ch. B. Mich. By changing "j'SJ into «?S3, as
Ewakl, following the Syr., reads, the sense is weakened. IVCp
131 nit:>j; is neither : as regards what we have done, nor : because
= while or whereas ye have done (Hitz.)) but : in order to do,
tiiat ye may do. ]Vu? with the injin., as with the perf., has
never the signif., because of or in reference to something past
and done, but always means, with the view of doing something ;
English: to the end that. The thought is simply this : Ye
appear in my temple to sacrifice and worship, thinking thus to
appease my wrath and turn aside all punishment, that so ye
may go on doing all these (in ver. 9 enumerated) abominations.
By frequenting the temple, they thought to procure an indul-
gence for their wicked ongoings, not merely for what they had
already done, but for what they do from day to day. — ^Ver. 11.
To expose the senselessness of such an idea, God asks if they
take the temple for a den of robbers ? " In your eyes" goes
with ^1^^ : is it become in your eyes, i.e. do ye take it for such ?
If thieves, murderers, adulterers, etc., gathered to the temple,
and supposed that by appearing there they procured the abso-
lution of their sins, they were in very act declaring the temple
to be a robbers' retreat. T"!?, the violent, here : the house-
breaker, robber. I, too, have seen, sc. that the temple is made
by you a den of thieves, and will deal accordingly. This com-
pletion of the thought appears from the context. — Ver. 12.
The temple is to undergo the fate of the former sanctuary
at Sliiloh. This threat is introduced by a groundino- '•3 for.
This for refers to the central idea of the last ve°sej that
they must not build their expectations on the temple, hold it
to be a pledge for their safety. For since the Lord has seen
CHAP. VII. 1-15. 157
how they have profaned and still profane it, He will destroy it,
as the sanctuary at Shiloh was destroyed. The rhetorical mode
of utterance, Go to the place, etc., contributes to strengthen the
threatening. They were to behold with their own eyes the fate
of the sanctuary at Shiloh, that so they might understand that
the sacredness of a place does not save it from overthrow, if
men have desecrated it by their wickedness. We have no his-
torical notice of the event to which Jeremiali refers. At Shiloh,
now Seilun (in ruins), the Mosaic tabernacle was erected after
the conquest of Canaan (Josh, xviii. 1), and there it was still
standing in the time of the high priest Eli, 1 Sam. i. 1-3; but
the ark, which had fallen into the hands of the Philistines at the
time of their victory (1 Sam. iv.), was not brought back to the
tabernacle when it was restored again to the Israelites. In the
reign of Saul we find the tabernacle at Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 2 ff.).
The words of ver. 12 intimate, that at that time " the place
of God at Shiloh" was lying in ruins. As Hitz. justly remarks,
the destruction of it is not to be understood of its gradual
decay after the removal of the ark (1 Sam. iv. 11, vii. 1 ff.) ;
the words imply a devastation or destruction, not of the place
of God at Shiloh only, but of the place Shiloh itself. This
is clearly seen from ver. 14 : I will do unto this house (the
temple), and the place which I gave to your fathers, as 1 have
done unto Shiloh. This destruction did not take place when
the Assyrians overthrew the kingdom of the ten tribes, but
much earlier. It may, indeed, be gathered from Judg. xviii. 20,
31 (see the comment, on this passage), that it was as early as
the time of Saul, during a Syrian invasion. By the destruc-
tion of the place of God at Shiloh, we need not understand
that the tabernacle itself, with its altar and other sacred furni-
ture (except the ark), was swept away. Such a view is contra-
dicted by the statement in 1 Ohron. xxi. 29, 2 Ohron. i. 3,
according to which the tabernacle built by Moses in the wilder-
ness was still standing at Gibeon in David's time, and in the
beginning of Solomon's reign ; cf. with 2 Chron. i. 5, when the
brazen altar of burnt-offering is expressly mentioned as that
which was made by Bezaleel. Hence it is clear that the Mosaic
tabernacle, with its altar of burnt-offering, had been preserved,
and consequently that it must have been moved first from
158 THE PEOFHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
Shiloh to Nob, and then, when Saul sacked this town (1 Sam.
xxii.), to Gibeon. The destruction of the place of God in Shiloh
must accordingly have consisted in this, tliat not only was tlie
tabernacle with the altar carried off from thence, but the build-
ings necessary in connection with the maintenance of the public
worship which surrounded it were swept away when the city
was plundered, so that of the place of the sanctuary nothing
was left remaining. It is clear that about the tabernacle thei'e
were various buildings which, along with the tabernacle and its
altars, constituted " the house of God at Shiloh ;" for in 1 Sam.
iii. we are told tliat Samuel slept in the temple of Jahveh
(ver. 3), and that in the morning he opened the doors of the
liouse of God (ver. 15). Hence we may gather, that round
about the court of the tabernacle there were buildings erected,
which -were used partly as a dwelling-place for tlie officiating
jiriests and Levites, and partly for storing up the heave-offerings,
and for preparing the thank-offerings at the sacrificial meals
(1 Sam. ii. 11-21). This whole system of buildings surround-
ing the tabernacle, with its court and altar of burnt-offering,
was called the " house of God ;" from which name Graf erro-
neously inferred that there was at Shiloh a temple like the one
in Jerusalem. The wickedness of my people, is the Israelites'
fall into idolatry in Eli's time, because of which the Lord gave
up Israel into the power of the Philistines and other enemies
(Judg. xiii. 1 ; cf. 1 Sam. vii. 3). " These deeds" (ver. 13)
are the sins named in ver. 9. I^IXJ is a continuation of the
infinitive sentence, and is still dependent on \Vl. Speaking from
early morn, i.e. speaking earnestly and unremittingly ; cf. Gesen.
§ 131, 3, b. I have called you, i.e. to repent, and ye liave not
answered, i.e. have not repented and turned to me. Ver. 15.
1 cast you out from my sight, i.e. drive you forth amongst the
heathen ; cf. Deut. xxix. 27 ; and with the second clause cf.
2 Kings xvii. 20. The whole seed of Ephraim is the ten
tribes.
Vers. 16-28. TJiis punishment will be turned aside, neither by
intercession, because the people refuses to give up its idolatry nor
by sacrifice, which God desires not, because for long they have
turned to Him the bade and not the face, and have not hearkened
to His iL-ords.—Vei: 16. « But thou, jirny not for this people
CHAP. VII. 16-28. 159
and lift not up for tliem cry and prayer ; and urge me not, for
I do not hear thee. Ver. 17. Seest thou not what tliey do in
the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem? Ver. 18.
The sons gather sticks, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the
women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of heaven,
and to pour out drink-offerings unto other gods, to provoke me.
Ver. 19. Provoke they me, saith Jahveh, not themselves, to tlie
shaming of their face? Ver. 20. Therefore thus saith the
Lord Jahveh, Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured
out on this place, upon man, upon beast, upon the trees of tlie
field, and upon the fruit of the ground ; and shall burn, and not
be quenched. Ver. 21. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God
of Israel : Your burnt-offerings add to your slain-offerings, and
eat flesh. Ver. 22. For I spake not with your fathers, nor
commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the
land of Egypt, concerning the matters of burnt-offering or
slain-offering. Ver. 23. But this word commanded I them,
saying, Hearken to my voice, and I will be your God, and ye
shall be my people ; and walk in the way whicli I command you,
that it may be well with you. Ver. 24. But they hearkened
not, nor inclined their ear, and walked in the counsels, in the
stubbornness of their evil heart, and turned to me the back,
and not the face. Ver. 25. Since the day that your fathers
went forth of the land of Egypt until this day, I sent to you
all my servants the prophets, daily from early morn sending
them ; Ver. 26. But they hearkened not to me, nor inclined
their ear, and were stiffnecked, and did worse than their fathers.
Ver. 27. And though thou speakest all these words unto them,
yet will they not hearken unto thee ; and though thou callest
unto them, yet will they not answer thee. Ver. 28. Thus speak
to them : This is the people that hearken not unto the voice
of Jahveh its God, and that receive not correction. Perished
is faithfulness, cut off from their mouth."
The purport of ver. 16, that God will not suffer Himself to
be moved by any entreaties to revoke the doom pronounced on
the wicked people, is expressed by way of a command from God
to the prophet not to pray for the people. That Jeremiah did
sometimes pray thus, however, we see from xiv. 19 ff. (cf. xviii.
20), when to his prayer the same answer is given as we have
160 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
here, and all intercession for the corrupt race is cliaracterized
as in vain. The second clause : lift not up for them crying,
i.e. supplicatory prayer, expresses the same, only more strongly ;
while the third clause : urge me not, cuts off all hope of success
from even the most importunate intercession. The reason for
this command to desist is shown in ver. 17, by a reference to
the idolatry which was openly practised throughout the land by
young and old, men and women. Each takes part according
to strength and capacity : the sons gather wood together, the
fathers set the fire in order, etc. The deity so zealously wor-
shipped by the people is called the Queen of heaven, and is
mentioned only by Jeremiah. Besides here, there is reference
to her in xliv. 17, where we see that her worship was veiy dili-
gently cultivated, and that she was adored as the bestower of
earthly possessions. (0370 is siai. constr., either from the Chald.
form tjPD, or from '"l^Vl?, after the analogy of n'lajj st. constr.
of HTaa ; but perhaps it has naPD in stat. abs.) This worship
was combined with that of the stars, the host of heaven, which
especially prevailed under Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 5). Thence
it may be presumed that the Queen of heaven was one of the
deities who came to Western Asia with the Assyrians, and that
she corresponds to the Assyrian-Persian Tanais and Artemis,
who in the course of time took the place once occupied by the
closely related Phoenician Astarte. She is originally a deifica-
tion of the moon, the Assyrian Selene and Vii'go ccelesiis, who,
as supreme female deity, was companion to Baal-Moloch as
sun-god ; cf. Movers, F/tonizier, i. S. 623 ff. With this accords
the statement of Steph. Byz., that creXrjvr] is also -nrfnavov rt
Tftj dcTTpa) irapaTrXrjaLov. The offerings which, ace. to this
verse and eh. xliv. 19, were brought to her, are called ^''^Jl, a
word which would appear to have come to the Hebrews along
with the foreign cultus. By the LXX. it was Grecized into
Xa-vSiva';, for which we find in glossators and codd. Kavwvat and
Xa^oiva^. They were, ace. to the Elymol. magn. and Suidas,
aproL ikalo) ava^vpa6evTe<i or Xdxava oTrra (? cooked vege-
tables) ; ace. to Jerome, xavayva';, quas nos placentas interpretati
sumus. In any case, they were some kind of sacrificial cakes, which
Vitr. put alongside of the -KOTrava of Aristophanes and Lucian ;
cf. the various interpretations in Schleussner, Lexic. in LXX.
CHAP. Vir. 16-28. 161
s.v. ^(avMV. These cakes were kindled on the altar (cf. Q''"}t3i?»,
xliv. 19) as a kind of Minchah (meat-offering), and with this
Minchah a libation or drink-offering (Q''?p?) was combined.
^jsn corresponds to nia>j??, so that b has to be repeated ; cf.
xliv. 19, 25, where we find libations poured out to the Queen
of heaven. In the 18th verse the expression is generalized into
" other gods," with reference to the fact that the service of the
Queen of heaven was but one kind of idolatry along with
others, since other strange gods were worshipped by sacrifices
and libations. To provoke me ; cf. Deut. xxxi. 29, xxxii. 16,
etc. — Ver. 19. But instead of vexing Him (Jahveh) they rather
vex themselves, inasmuch as God causes the consequences of
their idolatry to fall on their own head. QflX is used reflex-
ively : se ipsos ; cf. Ew. § 314, c; Gesen. § 124, 1, &. For the
cause of the shame of their face, i.e. to prepare for themselves
the shame of their face, to cover their face with shame ; cf. iii.
25. — For (ver. 20) because of this idolatrous work, the wrath
of the Lord will pour itself over the land in the consuming fire
of war (cf. iv. 4 with v. 17, Nah. i. 6, etc.), so as to cut off men
and beasts, trees and fruit. — Ver. 21. The multiplication of
burnt and slain offerings will not avert judgment. Your burnt-
offerings add to your slain-offerings. In the case of the ^''n??;
the greater part of the flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meals
by those who brought them. Along with these they might put
the burnt-offerings, which were wont to be burnt entire upon
the altar, and eat them also. The words express indignation at
the sacrifices of those who were so wholly alienated from God.
God had so little pleasure in their sacrifices, that they might
eat of the very burnt-offerings.
To show the reason of what is here said, Jeremiah adds, in
ver. 22, that God had not commanded their fathers, when He
led them out of Egypt, in the matter of burnt and slain
offerings, but this word : " Hearken to my voice, and I will
be your God," etc. The Keri ''X''Yin is a true exegesis, ace. to
xi. 4, xxxiv. 13, but is unnecessary; cf. Gen. xxiv. 30, xxv. 26,
etc. This utterance has been erroneously interpreted by the
majority of commentators, and has been misused by modern
criticism to make good positions as to the late origin of the
Pentateuch. To understand it aright, we must carefully take
VOL. I. L
162 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
into consideration not merely the particular terms of the present
passage, but the context as well. In the two verses as they
stand" there is the antithesis : Not nan n^V '^^i '^ ^^^ ^rod
speak and give command to the fathers, when He led them out
of Egypt, hut commanded the word: Hearken to my voice, etc.
The last word immediately suggests Ex. xix. 5 : If ye will
hearken to my voice, then shall ye be my peculiar treasure out
of all peoples ; and it points to the beginning of the law-giving,
the decalogue, and the fundamental principles of the law of
Israel, in Ex. xx.-xxiii., made known in order to the conclusion
of the covenant in xsiv., after the arrival at Sinai of the people
marching from Egypt. The promise : Then will I be your God,
etc., is not given in these precise terms in Ex. xix. 5 ff. ; but it is
found in the account of Moses' call to be the leader of the people
in their exodus, Ex. vi. 7 ; and then repeatedly in the promises
of covenant blessings, if Israel keep all the commandments of
God, Lev. xxvi. 12, Deut. xxvi. 18. Hence it is clear that
Jeremiah had before his mind the taking of the covenant, but
did not bind himself closely to the words of Ex. xix. 5, adopting
his expression from the passages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
which refer to and reaffirm that transaction. If there be still
any doubt on this head, it will be removed by the clause :
and walk in all the way which I command you this day (ona^ni
is a continuation of the imper. ^VO'^). The expression : to walk
in all the way God has commanded, is so unusual, that it occurs
only once besides in the whole Old Testament, viz. Deut. v. 30,
after the renewed inculcation of the ten commandments. And
they then occur with the addition D?^ 3iDi p'^nn [vd^^ in which
we cannot fail to recognise the D3^ 3D" )j;d^ of our verse
Hence we assume, without fear of contradiction, that Jeremiah
was keeping the giving of the law in view, and specially the
promulgation of the fundamental law of the book, namely of
the decalogue, which was spoken by God from out of the fire on
Sinai, as Moses in Deut. v. 23 repeats with marked emphasis.
In this fundamental law we find no prescriptions as to burnt
or slain offerings. On this fact many commentators, following
Jerome, have laid stress, and suppose the prophet to be speaking
of the first act of the law-giving, arguing that the Torah of offer"
ing in the Pentateuch was called for first by the worship of the
CHAP. VII. lC-28. 163
golden calf, after which time God held it to be necessary to
give express precepts as to the presenting of offerings, so as to
prevent idolatry. But this view does not at all agree with
the historical fact. For the worship of the calf was subsequent
to the law on the building of the altar on which Israel was to
offer burnt and slain offerings, Ex. xx. 24 ; to the institution of
the daily morning and evening sacrifice, Ex. xxix. 38 ff. ; and
to the regulation as to the place of worship and the consecra-
tion of the priests, Ex. xxv.-xxxi. But besides, any difficulty
in our verses is not solved by distinguishing between a first
and a second law-giving, since no hint of any such contrast is
found in our verse, but is even entirely foreign to the precise
terms of it. The antithesis is a different one. The stress in
ver. 23 lies on : hearken to the voice of the Lord, and on
walking in all the way which God commanded to the people at
Sinai. " To walk in all the way God commanded" is in sub-
stance the same as " not to depart from all the words which I
command you this day," as Moses expands his former exhorta-
tion in Deut. xxviii. 14, when he is showing the blessings of
keeping the covenant. Hearkening to God's voice, and walking
in all His commandments, are the conditions under which
Jahveh will be a God to the Israelites, and Israel a people to
Him, i.e. His peculiar people from out of all the peoples of
the earth. This word of God is not only the centre of the act
of taking the covenant, but of the whole Sinaitic law-giving ;
and it is so both with regard to the moral law and to the cere-
monial precepts, of which the law of sacrifice constituted the
chief part. If yet the words demanding the observance of the
whole law be set in opposition to the commandments as to
sacrifices, and if it be said that on this latter head God com-
manded nothing when He led Israel out of Egypt, then it may
be replied that the meaning of the words cannot be : God has
given no law of sacrifice, and desires no offerings. The sense
can only be : When the covenant was entered into, God did
not speak '''^.^'l ???, i.e. as to the matters of burnt and slain
offerintrs. ''"li'^ ^3? is not identical with inT^J?. rh\V na'n are
words or things that concern burnt and slain offerings ; that
is, practically, detailed prescriptions regarding sacrifice.
The purport of the two verses is accordingly as follows:
164 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
When the Lord entered into covenant with Israel at Sinai, lie
insisted on their hearkening to His voice and walking in all
His commandments, as the condition necessary for bringing
about the covenant relationship, in whicli He was to be God to
Israel, and Israel a people to Him; but He did not at that time
give all the various commandments as to the presenting of
sacrifices. Sucli an intimation neither denies the divine origin of
the Torah of sacrifice in Leviticus, nor discredits its character
as a part of the Sinaitic legislation.^ All it implies is, that the
giving of sacrifices is not the thing of primary importance in the
law, is not the central point of the covenant laws, and that so
long as the cardinal precepts of the decalogue are freely trans-
gressed, sacrifices neither are desired by God, nor secure covenant
blessings for those who present them. That this is what is meant
is shown by tlie connection in which our verse stands. The
words : that God did not give command as to sacrifice, refer to
the sacrifices brought by a people that recklessly broke all the
commandments of the decalogue (ver. 9 f.), in the thought
that by means of these sacrifices they were proving themselves
' After Vatke's example, Hitz. and Graf find in our verses a testimony
against the Mosaic origin of the legislation of the Pentateuch as a whole, and
they conclude ' ' that at the time of Jeremiah nothing was known of a legis-
lation on sacrifice given by God on Sinai." Here, besides interpreting our
verses erroneously, they cannot have taken into account the fact that Jere-
miah himself insists on the law of the Sabbath, xvii. 20 ff. ; that amongst
the blessings in which Israel will delight in Messiatric times yet to come, he
accounts the presenting of burnt, slain, and meat offerings, xvii. 26, xxxi. 14,
xxxiii. 11, 18. It is consequently impossible that, without contradicting
himself, Jeremiah could have disallowed the sacrificial worship. The asser-
tion that he did so is wholly incompatible with the fact recorded in 2 Kings
xsii., the discovery of the book df the law of Moses in the temple, in the
eighteenth year of Josiah's reign ; and that, too, whether, justly interpreting
the passage, we hold the book of the law to be the Pentateuch, or whether,
following the view maintained by the majority of modern critics, we take it
to be the book of Deuteronomy, which was then for the first time composed
and given to the king as Moses' work. For in Deuteronomy also the laws
on sacrifice are set forth as a divine institution. Is it credible or conceiv-
able, that in a discourse delivered, as most recent commentators believe, iu
the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign, Jeremiah should have spoken of the
laws on sacrifice as not commanded by God ? For in so doing he would
have undermined the authority of the book of the law, on which his entire
prophetic labours were based.
CHAP. VII. 16-28. 165
to be the covenant people, and that to them as such God was
bound to bestow the blessings of His covenant. It is therefore
with justice that Oehler, in Herzog's RealencyU. xii. S. 228,
says : " In the sense that the righteousness of the people and
the continuance of its covenant relationship were maintained by-
sacrifice as such — in this sense Jahveh did not ordain sacrifices
in the Torah." Such a soulless service of sacrifice is repudiated
by Samuel in 1 Sam. xv. 22, when he says to Saul : Hath
Jahveh delight in burnt and slain offerings, as in hearkening to
the voice of Jahveh ? Behold, to hearken is better than sacrifice,
etc. So in Ps. xl. 7, 1. 8 ff., li. 18, and Isa. i. 11 f., Jer. vi. 20,
Amos V. 22. What is here said differs from these passages
only in this : Jeremiah does not simply say that God has no
pleasure in such sacrifices, but adds the inference that the Lord
does not desire the sacrifices of a people that have fallen away
from Him. This Jeremiah gathers from the history of the
giving of the law, and from the fact that, when God adopted
Israel as His people. He demanded not sacrifices, but their
obedience to His word and their walking in His ways. The
design of Jeremiah's addition was the more thoroughly to crush
all such vain confidence in sacrifices.
Ver. 24 ff. But they have not regarded that which was
foremost and most cardinal in the law. They hearkened not,
sc. to my voice ; and instead of walking in the ways commanded,
they walked in the counsels of the stubbornness of their evil
heart. niSl(b3 is stat. absoL, and rilTiB'3 is co-ordinated with it
in apposition, instead of being subordinated ; cf. Ew. § 289, c.
The LXX. have not seen their way to admit such a co-ordina-
tion, and so have omitted the second term ; and in this. Movers,
Hitz., and Graf have followed them, deleting the word as a
mere gloss. As to "the stubbornness of their evil heart,"
see on iii. 17. "lins^ ViT, they were backwards, not forwards,
i.e. they so walked as to turn to me the back and not the face,
n%T with h expresses the direction or aim of a thing. The sub-
ject to these clauses is the Israelites from the time of Moses
down to that of Jeremiah. This is shown by the continuation
of the same idea in vers. 25 and 26. From the time the fathers
were led out of Egypt till the present time, God has with
anxious care been sending prophets to exhort and warn them ;
166 THE rnOPHECIES OF JEREMIAn.
but tliey have not hearkened, they have made their neck hard,
i.e. \Yere stiffnecked, and did worse than tlieir fatliers, i.e. each
succeeding generation did more wickedly than that which pre-
ceded it. On Di»n P^, (the period) from the day . . . until . . .
cf. the remarks on Hagg. ii. 18. Tlie ) gives to the mention
of the time the value of an independent clause, to which that
which is said regarding that time is joined by 1 consec. Di' is
adverbial accusative : by tlie day, i.e. daily, in early mom, i.e.
with watchful care sending (on this expression, see at ver. 13).
DV acquires this sense, not in virtue of its standing for Di' Di',
but by reason of its connection with the two infinitives ahsoll. —
Ver. 27. Just as little will they listen to Jeremiah's words, ri"!?"]!
with 1 consec. is properly : Speak to them, and they will not
hearken to thee, for : Even if thou speakest to them, they will
not hearken to thee. — Ver. 28. Hence the prophet will be bound
to say to them : This is the people that hath not hearkened to
the voice of God. On this Chr. B. Mich, makes this remark :
Elsi adhortalionibus tuis non obedient, tamen, nt sciant quales sint
el quce pcence ipsos maneant, dicas eis. Perished or gone is
faithfulness, and cut off out of their mouth. They have violated
the fidelity they owed to God, by not hearkening to His voice,
by breaking all His commandments (cf. vers. 23 and 9). " Out
of their mouth" is used instead of " ont of the heart," because
they continually make profession with their mouth of their de-
votion to God,e.(7. swear by Jahveli, but always lyingly, ver. 2.
Ver. 29-chap. viii. 3. Therefore the Lord has rejected the
backsliding people, so that it shall perish shamefully. — Ver. 29.
" Cat off thy diadem (daughter of Zion), and cast it away, and
lift up a lamentation on the bald peaked mountains ; for the Lord
hath rejected and cast out the generation of His wrath. Ver. 30.
For the sons of Judah have done the evil in mine eyes, saith
Jahveh, have put their abominations in the house on which
my name is named, to pollute it ; Ver. 31. And have built the
high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of Benhinnom, to
burn their sons and daughters in the fire ; which I have not com-
manded, neither came it into my heart. Ver. 32. Therefore,
behold, the days come, saith Jahveh, that they shall no longer say.
Tophet and Valley of Benhinnom, but. The valley of slaughter ,
and they shall bury in Tophet for want of room. Ver. 33. And
CHAP. VII. 29-VIII. 3. 167
the carcases of this people shall be moat for the fowls of heaven
and the beasts of the earth, with no one to fray them away.
Ver. 34. And I make to cease out of tlie cities of Judah and
from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth and the voice
of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the
bride; for a waste shall the land become. Chap. viii. 1. At
that time, saith Jahveh, they shall bring out the bones of the
kings of Judah and the bones of his princes, the bones of the
priests and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the in-
habitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves. Ver. 2. And they
shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the
host of heaven, which they have loved, and which they have
served, after which they have walked, and which they have
sought and worshipped : they shall not be gathered nor buried ;
for dung upon the face of the earth shall they be. Ver. 3. And
death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue which
is left of this evil race, in all the places whither I have driven
them that are left, saith Jahveh of hosts."
In these verses the judgment of ver. 20 is depicted in all its
horror, and the description is introduced by a call upon Zion
to mourn and lament for the evil awaitinjj Jerusalem and the
whole land. It is not any particular woman that is addressed
in ver. 29, but the daughter of Zion (cf. vi. 23), i.e. the capital
city personified as a woman, as the mother of the whole people.
Cut off 'n^», thy diadem. There can be no doubt that we are
by this to understand the hair of the woman ; but the current
opinion, that the word simply and directly means the hair, is
without foundation. It means crown, originally the diadem of
the high priest, Ex. xxix. 6 ; and the transference of the same
word to the hair of the head is explained by the practice of the
Nazarites, to wear the hair uncut as a mark of consecration to
the Lord, Num. vi. 5. The hair of the Nazarite is called in
Num. vi. 7 the consecration (itp) of his God upon his head,
as was the anointing oil on the head of the high priest. Lev.
xxi. 12. In this sense the long hair of the daughter of Zion
is called her diadem, to mark her out as a virgin consecrated to
the Lord. Cutting off this hair is not only in token of mourn-
ing, as in Job i. 20, IMic. i. 16, but in token of the loss of the
consecrated character. The Nazarite, defiled by the sudden
1 68 THE PKOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
occurrence of death near to his person, was bound to cut off
liis long hair, because by this defilement his consecrated hair
had been defiled ; and just so must the daughter of Zion cut
off her hair and cast it from her, because by her sins she had
defiled herself, and must be held as unconsecrate. Venema
and Eos. object to this reference of the idea to the consecrated
hair of the Nazarite : quod law non quadrat, nee in fcerninis
adeo suetum erat ; but this objection is grounded on defective
apprehension of the meaning of the Nazarite's vow, and on
misunderstanding of the figurative style here employed. The
allusion to the Nazarite order, for the purpose of representing
the daughter of Zion as a virgin consecrated to the Lord, does
not imply that the Nazarite vow was very common amongst
women. Deprived of her holy ornament, Zion is to set up a
lament upon bare hill-tops (cf. iii. 21), since the Lord has re-
jected or cast out (ver. 30) the generation that has drawn His
wrath down on it, because they have set idols in the temple
in which He has revealed His glory, to profane it. The
abominations are the image of Asherah which Manasseh set up
in the temple, and the altars he had built to the host of heaven
in both the courts (2 Kings xxi. 5, 7). Besides the desecra-
tion of the temple of the Lord by idolatry, Jeremiah mentions
in ver. 31, as an especially offensive abomination, the worship
of Moloch practised in the valley of Benhiunom. Here children
were burnt to this deity, to whom Manasseh had sacrificed his
son, 2 Kings xxi. 6. The expression "high altars of Tophet"
is singular. In the parallel passages, where Jeremiah repeats the
same subject, xix. 5 and xxxii. 35, we find mentioned instead
high altars of Baal; and on this ground, Hitz. and Graf hold
nsnn in our verse to be a contemptuous name for Baal Moloch.
nsn is not derived from the Persian ; nor is it true that, as Hitz.
asserts, it does not occur till after the beginning of the Assyrian
period, since we have it in Job svii. 6. It is formed from fiw,
to spit out, like nsi from fjiJ ; and means properly a spitting
out, then that before or on which one spits (as in Job xvii. 6),
object of deepest abhorrence. It is transferred to the worship
of Moloch here and xix. 6, 13 ff., and in 2 Kings xxiii. 10. In
the latter passage the word is unquestionably used for the place
in the valley of Benhinnom where children were offered to
CHAP. VII. 29- VIII. 3. 169
Moloch. So in Jer. xix. 6, 13 (the place of Topbet), and 14;
and so also, without a doubt, in ver. 32 of the present chapter.
There is no valid reason for departing from this well-ascertained
local signification ; " high altars of Tophet " may perfectly
■well be the high altars of the place of abominable sacrifices.
With the article the word means the ill-famed seat of the
Moloch-worship, situated in the valley of Ben or Bne Hinnom,
to the south of Jerusalem. Hinnom is nomen propr. of a man
of whom we know nothing else, and Di^n ''ia (|3) is not an
appellative : son of sobbing, as Hitz., Graf, Bottcher explain
(after Eashi), rendering the phrase by " Valley of the weepers,"
or " of groaning, sobbing," with reference to the cries of the
children slain there for sacrifices. For the name Ben-Hinnom
is much older than the Moloch-worship, introduced first by
Ahaz and Manasseh. We find it in Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16, in
the topographical account of the boundaries of the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin. As to Moloch-worship, see on Lev.
xviii. 21 and Ezek. xvi. 20 f. At the restoration of the public
worship of Jahveh, Josiah had extirpated Moloch-worship, and
had caused the place of the sacrifice of abominations in the
valley of Ben-Hinnom to be defiled (2 Kings xxiii. 20) ; so
that it is hardly probable that it had been again restored im-
mediately after Josiah's death, at the beginning of Jehoiakim's
reign. Nor does the present passage imply this ; for Jer. is
not speaking of the forms of idolatry at that time in favour
with the Jews, but of the abominations they had done. That
he had Manasseh's doings especially in view, we may gather
from chap. xv. 4, where the coming calamities are expressly
declared to be the punishment for Manasseh's sins. Neither is
it come into my heart, i.e. into my mind, goes to strengthen :
which I have not commanded. — Ver. 32. Therefore God will
make the place of their sins the scene of judgment on the
sinners. There shall come days when men will call the valley
of these abominations the valley of slaughter, i.e. shall make it
into such a valley. Where they have sacrificed their children
to Moloch, they shall themselves be slaughtered, massacred by
their enemies. And in this valley, as an unclean place (xix. 13),
shall they be buried " for want of room ;" since, because of the
vast numbers of the slain, there will be nowhere else to put
170 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
tliem. — Ver. 33. Even the number of the dead will be so great
that the corpses shall remain uuburied, shall become food for
beasts of prey, which no one will scare away. This is taken
almost literally from Deut. xxviii. 26. — Ver. 34. Thus the
Lord will put an end to all joyfulness in life throughout the
land : cf. Hos. ii. 13 ; Ezek. xxvi. 13. The voice of the bride-
groom and the bride is a circumlocution for the mirth of
marriage festivities ; cf. 1 Mace. ix. 39. All joy will be dumb,
for the land shall become a waste ; as the people had been
warned, in Lev. xxvi. 31, 33, would be the case if they forsook
the Lord.
Chap. viii. 1-3. But even then the judgment has not come
to a height. Even sinners long dead must yet bear the shame
of their sins. "At that time" points back to "days come" in
vii. 32. The Masoretes wished to have the ] before lN''i'i'' deleted,
apparently because they took it for ] consec. But it here stands
before the jussive, as it does frequently, e.g. xiii. 10, Ex. xii. 3.
They will take the bones of the kings, princes, priests, and
prophets, the rulers and leaders of the people (cf. ii. 26), and
the bones of the other inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their
graves, and spread them out before the sun, the moon, and the
stars, i.e. expose them under the open sky to the influence of
the heavenly bodies, so that they shall rot away, become " dung
on the face of the earth." The worst dishonour that could be
done to the dead, a just return in kind for their worship of
sun, moon, and stars: cf. vii. 18; 2 Kings xxi. 5, xxiii. 11.
This worship the prophet describes in its various stages: "In-
clination of the heart, the act of devoting and dedicating
themselves to the service, the frequenting of the gods' sanctuary
in order to worship and to obtain oracles ; while he strives to
bring out in strong relief the contrast between the zeal of their
service and the reward they get by it" (Hitz.). They shall
not be gathered, i.e. for burial : cf. 2 Sam. xxi. 13 f. ; 1 Sam.
xxxi. 13. The dead shall suffer this at the hands of enemies
despoiling the land. The reason for so doing was, as Jerome
observes, the practice of burying ornaments and articles of
value along with the dead. Seeking for such things, enemies
will turn up the graves (cf. acts of this kind in the case
cf Ibn Chaldun, in Sylv. de Sacy, Ahdollat. p. 561), and, in
CHAP. VIII. 4-23. 171
tlieir hatred and insolence, scatter the bones of the dead all
about. — Ver. 3. Not less dreadful will be the fate of those who
remain in hfe ; so appalling that they will prefer death to life,
since every kind of hardship in exile and imprisonment amongst
the heathen is awaiting them : cf. Lev. xxvi. 36-39, Deut.
xxviii. 65-67. D"'"lXB'an niiopsn strikes us as peculiar, seeing
that the latter word cannot be adjective to the former; for
" in all the remaining places of Judah " (Umbr.) gives no
suitable sense, and " in all remaining places outside of Judah "
is contrary to usage. But D''"iKB'jin may be taken as genitive, in
spite of the article prefixed to the stat. constr. niiopa ; and we
may then translate, with Maur. : in all the places of those who
remain whither I have driven them. The LXX. have omitted
the second word ; and it is possible it may have found its way
hither from the preceding line by an error of transcription.
And so Hitz., Ew., and Graf have deleted it as a gloss ; but the
arguments adduced have little weight. The LXX. have also
omitted " and say to them," ver. 4, have changed nb into
''3, and generally have treated Jeremiah in a quite uncritical
fashion : so that they may have omitted the word from the
present verse because it seemed awkward to them, and was not
found in the parallel passages, xxix. 14, xxiii. 3, which are not,
however, precisely similar to the present verse.
Chap. viii. 4-23. The people's obstinacy in wicked-
ness, AND THE DEEADFULNESS OF THE JUDGMENT. — Since
the people cleaves stedfastly to its sin (vers. 4-13), the Lord
must punish sorely (vers. 14-23). — Vers. 4-13. " And say to
them, Thus hath the Lord said : Doth one fall, and not rise
again ? or doth one turn away, and not turn back again ?
Ver. 5. Why doth this people of Jerusalem turn itself away
with a perpetual turning? They hold fast by deceit, they
refuse to return. Ver. 6. I listened and heard ; they speak
not aright; no one repenteth him of his wickedness, saying,
What have I done ? They all turn to their course again, like a
horse rushing into the battle. Ver. 7. Yea, the stork in the
heaven knoweth her appointed times ; and turtle-dove, and
swallow, and crane, keep the time of their coming ; but my
people know not the judgment of Jaliveh. Ver. 8. How caa
172 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
ye say, Wise are we, and the law of Jahveh we have ? Cer-
tainly the lying pen of the scribes hath made it a lie. Ver. 9.
Ashamed the wise men become, confounded and taken ; lo,
the word of Jahveh they spurn at ; and whose wisdom have
they ? Ver. 10. Therefore will I give their wives unto ethers,
their fields to new heirs : for from the small to the great, they
are all greedy for gain ; from the prophet even unto the priest,
they all use deceit. Ver. 11. And they heal the hurt of the
daughter of my people as it were a light matter, saying. Peace,
peace ; and yet there is no peace. Ver. 12. They have been
put to shame because they have done abomination ; yet they
take not shame to themselves, ashamedness they know not.
Therefore they shall fall amongst them that fall : in the time of
their visitation they shall stumble, hath Jahveh said. Ver. 13.
Away, away will I sweep them, saith Jahveh : no grapes on
the vine, and no figs on the fig-tree, and the leaf is withered ;
so I appoint unto them those that shall pass over them."
This strophe connects itself with what precedes. A judg-
ment, dreadful as has been described in vii. 32-viii. 3, "will
come on Judah, because the people cleaves stiffneckedly to
its sins. The i^y?^] of ver. 4 corresponds to that in vii. 28.
The questioning clauses in ver. 4 contain universal truths,
which are applied to the people of Judah in ver. 5. The
subjects to 'f?^\ and niti*'^ are indefinite, hence singular and
plural with like significance: cf. Gesen. § 137, 3; Ew. §294,6.
The verb niB*^, turn oneself, turn about, is here used in a double
sense : first, as turn away from one ; and then turn towards him,
return again. In the application in ver. 5, the Pilel is used
for to turn away from, and strengthened by : with perpetual
turning away or backsliding, nnsj is not pardc. Niph. fern.
from nyj, but an adjectival formation, continual, enduring,
from nV3, continuance, durableness. "Jerusalem" belongs to
" this people :" this people of Jerusalem ; the close grammatical
connection by means of the stat. constr. not being maintained,
if the first idea gives a sense intelligible by itself, so that the
second noun may then be looked on rather in the light of an
apposition conveying additional information ; cf. Ew. § 290,c.
JT'p'iri, equivalent to i^^nD, deceit against God. They refuse
to return. Sense : they will not receive the truth, repent and
CHAP. VIII. 1-23. 173
return to God. The same idea is developed in ver. 6. The
first person : I have listened and heard, Hitz. insists, refers to
the prophet, " who is justified as to all he said in ver. 5 by
what he has seen." But we cannot account that even an "apt"
view of the case, which makes the prophet cite his own obser-
vations to show that God had not spoken without cause. It is
Jahveh that speaks in ver. 5 ; and seeing that ver. 6 gives not
the slightest hint of any change in the speaker, we are bound
to take ver. 6 also as spoken by God. Thus, to prove that they
cleave unto deceit, Jahveh says that He has given heed to their
deeds and habits, and heard how they speak the p'^^i?, the not
riglit, i.e. lies and deceit. The next clause : not one repents
him of his wickedness, corresponds to : they refuse to return ;
cf. ver. 5 (d™ is partia.). Instead of this, the whole of it,
i.e. all of them, turn again to their course. aitJ' with 3, con-
strued as in Hos. xii. 7 : turn oneself to a thing, so as to enter
into it. For nimtp, the sig. course is certified to by 2 Sam.
xviii. 27. The diet. Dnii"ia is doubtless merely an error of
transcription for QOOTDj as is demanded by the Keri. Turn
again into their course. The thought is : instead of consider-
ing, of becoming repentant, they continue their evil courses.
This, too, is substantially what Hitz. gives. Eos., Graf, and
others, again, take this in the sense of turning themselves away
in their course ; but it is not fair to deduce this sense for 2W
without t? from ver. 4 ; nor is the addition of " from me "
justifiable. Besides, this explanation does not suit the following
comparison with the horse. It is against analogy to derive
cnii'lD from nST with the sig. desire, cupidity. Ew., follow-
ing the Chald., adopts this sense both here and in xxii. 17
and sxiii. 10, though it is not called for in any of these pas-
sages, and is unsuitable in xxii. 17. As a horse rusheth into
the battle, ^^f, pour forth, overflow, hence rush on impetu-
ously ; by Jerome rightly translated, cwn impelic vadens. Several
commentators compare the Latin se effimdere (Cass. Bell. Gall.
v. 19) and effundi (Liv. xxviii. 7) ; but the cases are not quite
in point, since in both the words are used of the cavalry, and
not of the steed by itself. This simile makes way for more in
ver. 7. Even the fowls under the heaven keep the time of their
coming and departure, but Israel takes no concern for the
174 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
jnclgment of its God ; cf. Isa. i. 3. "TPQ, (avis) pia, is the
stork, not the heron ; see on Lev. xi. 19. " In the heaven "
refers to the fliglit of the stork. All the birds mentioned here
are birds of passage, nin and D^iD are turtle-dove and pigeon.
For D^D the Masoretes read D''p, apparently to distinguish the
word from that for horse ; and so the oriental Codd. propose to
read in Isa. xxxviii. 14, although they wrote D^D. "TUJ? is the
crane (ace. to Saad. and Eashi), both here and in Isa. xxxviii.
14, where Gesen., Knob., and others, mistaking the asyndeton,
take it as an adjective in the sig. sighing.'^ ClJ^i^^ are the fixed
times for the arrival and departure of the birds of passage. —
Ver. 8. In spite of tliis heedlessness of the statutes, the judgment
of God, they vainly boast in their knowledge and possession of
God's law. Those who said, We are wise, are mainly the priests
and false prophets ; cf. ver. 10, ii. 8, v. 31. The wisdom these
people claimed for themselves is, as the following clause shows,
the knowledge of the law. They prided themselves on pos-
sessing the law, from which they conceived themselves to have
drawn their wisdom. The second clause, as Hitz. observed,
shows that it is the written law that is meant. The law is with
us. This is not to be understood merely of the outward pos-
session of it, but the inward, appropriated knowledge, the
mastery of the law. The law of Jahveh, recorded in the
Pentateuch, teaches not only the bearing towards God due by
man, but the bearing of God towards His people. The know-
ledge of this law begets the wisdom for ruling one's life, tells
1 Starting from this unproved interpretation of Isa. xxiviii. 14, and
supporting their case from the LXX. translation of the present passage,
rpvyuo xctl -jiiKihuu ci-/pov orpovSia, Hitz. and Graf argue that l^Jj) is not
the name of any particular bird, but only a qualifying -word to DID, in
order to distinguish the swallow from the horse, the sense more, commonly
attached to the same word. But that confused text of the LXX. by no
means justifies u3 in supposing that the i cop. was introduced subsequently
into the Heb. text. It is possible that dypoS is only a corrupt representa-
tion of "[^iy, and that arpovSi'x came into the LXX. text in consequence of
this corruption. But certainly the fact that the LXX., as also Aquil. and
Symm., both here and in Isa. xxxviii. 14, did not know what to make of the
Hebrew word, and so transcribed it in Greek letters, leads us to conclude
that these translators permitted themselves to be guided by Isa. xxxviii.,
and omitted here also the copula, which was there omitted before "i^jy.
CHAP. VIII. 4-23. 175
liow God is to be worshipped, how His favour is to be procured
and His anger appeased.
As against all this, Jeremiah declares : Assuredly the lying
pen (style) of the scribes hath made it a lie. Ew., Hitz., Graf,
translate D''"!S'D, authors, writers ; and the two latter of them
take nby = labour : " for a lie (or for deception) hath the
lying style (pen) of the writers laboured." This transl. is
feasible ; but it seems simpler to supply '" fT]!?) : hath made it
(the law) ; and there is no good reason for confining laiD to
the original composei's of works. The words are not to be
limited in their reference to the efforts of the false prophets,
who spread their delusive prophecies by means of writings :
they refer equally to the work of the priests, whose duty it was
to train the people in the law, and who, by false teaching as to
its demands, led the people astray, seduced them from the way
of truth, and deceived them as to the future. The labours
both of the false prophets and of the wicked priests consisted
not merely in authorship, in composing and circulating writings,
but to a very great extent in the oral teaching of the people,
partly by prophetic announcements, partly by instruction in the
law ; only in so far as it was necessary was it their duty to set
down in writing and circulate their prophecies and interpreta-
tions of the law. But this work by word and writing was
founded on the existing written law, the Torah of Moses ; just
as the true prophets sought to influence the people chiefly by
preaching the law to them, by examining their deeds and habits
by the rule of the divine will as revealed in the Torah, and by
applying to their times the law's promises and threatenings.
For this work with the law, and application of it to life, Jer.
uses the expression "style of the Shoferim," because the inter-
pretation of the law, if it was to have valid authority as the
rule of life, must be fixed by writing. Yet he did not in this
speak only of authors, composers, but meant sucli as busied
themselves about the book of the law, made it the object of
their study. But inasmuch as such persons, by false interpre-
tation and application, perverted the truth of the law into a
lie, he calls their work the work of the lying style (pen). — Ver. 9.
Those who held themselves wise will come to shame, will be
dismally disabused of their hopes. When the great calamity
176 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
comes on the sin-hardened people, they shall be confounded
and overwhelmed in ruin (cf. vi. 11). They spurn at the
word of Jahveh ; whose wisdom then have they ? None ; for
the word of the Lord alone is Israel's wisdom and understand-
ing, Deut. iv. 6.
The threatening in ver. 10 includes not only the wise ones,
but the whole people. "Therefore" attaches to the central
truth of vers. 5 and 6, which has been elucidated in vers. 7-9.
The first half of ver. 10 corresponds, in shorter compass, to
what has been said in vi. 12, and is here continued in vers.
106-12 in the same words as in vi. 13-15. D^Eni^ are those who
take possession, make themselves masters of a thing, as in xlix. 2
and Mic. i. 15. This repetition of the three verses is not given
in the LXX., and Hitz. therefore proposes to delete them as
a supplementary interpolation, holding that they are not only
superfluous, but that they interrupt the sense. For he thinks
ver. 13 connects remarkably well with ver. 10a, but, taken out
of its connection with what precedes as we have it, begins
baldly enough. To this Graf has made fitting answer : This
pnssage is in no respect more superfluous or awkward than vi.
13 ff.; nor is the connection of ver. 13 with ver. 10a at all closer
than with ver. 12. And Hitz., in order to defend the immediate
connection between ver. 13 and ver. 10, sees himself compelled,
for the restoration of equilibrium, to delete the middle part of
ver. 13 (from "no grapes" to "withered") as spurious; for
which proceeding there is not the smallest reason, since this
passage has neither the character of an explanatory gloss, nor
is it a repetition from any place whatever, nor is it awanting
in the LXX. Just as little ground is there to argue against
the genuineness of the two passages from the variations found
in them. Here in ver. 10 we have PiiriJ)') tDjSD instead of
the D^i'if "IVI DS^Pii"? 0^ vi. 13 ; but the suffix, which in the
latter case pointed to the preceding "inhabitants of the land,"
was unnecessary here, where there is no such reference. In
like manner, the forms o72n for Dv^n, and DH'^ipS HJJ for
DWpBTijJj are but the more usual forms used by Jeremiah else-
where. So the omission of the x in 131^ for W3T' as coming
either from the writer or the copyist, clearly does not make
against the genuineness of the verses. And there is the less
CHAP. VIII 4-23. 177
reason for making any difficulty about tlie passage, seeing tliat
such repetitions are amongst the peculiarities of Jeremiah's
style : cf. e.g.vii. 31-33 with xix. 5-7; x. 12-16 with li. 15-19;
XV. 13, 14, with xvii. 3, 4 ; xvi. 14, 15, with xxiii. 7, 8 ; xxiii. 5,
6, withxxxiii. 15, 16 ; xxiii. 19, 20, with xxx. 23, 24, and other
shorter repetitions. — Ver. 13. The warning of coming punish-
ment, reiterated from a former discourse, is strengthened by the
threatening that God will sweep them utterly away, because
Judah has become an unfruitful vine and fig-tree. In ^''0^ ^o^
we have a combination of ^p^ji, gather, glean, carry away, and
^'pn, Hiph. of fpo, make an end, sweep off, so as to heighten
the sense, as in Zeph. i. 2 f., — a passage which was doubtless
in the prophet's mind : wholly will I sweep them away. The
circumstantial clauses : no grapes — and the leaves are withered,
show the cause of the threatening : The people is become an
unfruitful vine and fig-tree, whose leaves are withered. Israel
was a vineyard the Lord had planted with noble vines, but
which brought forth sour grapes, ii. 21, Isa. v. 2. In keeping
with this figure, Israel is thought of as a vine on which are no
grapes. With this is joined the like figure of a fig-tree, to
which Micah in vii. 1 makes allusion, and which is applied by
Christ to the degenerate race of His own time in His symbolical
act of cursing the fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 19). To exhaust the
thought that Judah is ripe for judgment, it is further added
that the leaves are withered. The tree whose leaves are withered,
is near being parched throughout. Such a tree was the people
of Judah, fallen away from its God, spurning at the law of
the Lord ; in contrast with which, the man who trusts in
the Lord, and has delight in the law of the Lord, is like the
tree planted by the water, whose leaves are ever green, and
which bringeth forth fruit in his season, xvii. 8, Ps. i. 1-3.
Ros. and Mov. are quite wrong in following the Ohald.,
and in taking the circumstantial clauses as a description
of the future ; Mov. even proceeds to change i35''px flbx into
DQ^DN PipN. The interpretation of the last clause is a disputed
point. Ew., following the old translators (Chald., Syr., Aq.,
Symm., Vulg.; in the LXX. they are omitted), understands
the words of the transgression of the commands of God, which
they seem to have received only in order to break them, [nxi
VOL. I. M
178 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
seems to tell in favour of this, and it may be taken as prater.
with the translation : and I gave to them that which they trans-
gress. But unless we are to admit that the idea thus obtained
stands quite abruptly, we must follow the Chald., and take it
as the reason of what precedes : They are become an unfruitful
tree with faded leaves, because they have transgressed my law
which I gave them. But inNi with 1 consec. goes directly
against this construction. Of less weight is the other objection
against this view, that the plural suffix in D^i^V!! has no suitable
antecedent ; for there conld be no difficulty in supplying
" judgments " (cf. ver. 8). But the abrupt appearance of the
thought, wholly unlooked for here, is sufficient to exclude that
interpretation. We therefore prefer the other interpretation,
given with various modifications by Ven., Kos., and Maur., and
translate : so I appoint unto them those that shall pass over
them. The imperf. c. ] consec. attaches itself to the circum-
stantial clauses, and introduces the resulting consequence; it
is therefore to be expressed in English by the present, not by
the prater. : therefore I gave them (Nag.), jnj in the general
sig. appoint, and the second verb with the p7'on. rel. omitted :
illos qui eos invadent. l?y, to overrun a country or people,
of a hostile army swarming over it, as e.g. Isa. viii. 8, xxviii. 15.
For the construction c. accm. cf. Jer. xxiii. 9, v. 22. Hitz.'s
and Graf's mode of construction is forced : I deliver them up
to them (to those) who pass over them ; for then we must not
only supply an object to t???, but adopt the unusual arrange-
ment by which the pronoun DH? is made to stand before the
words that explain it.
Vers. 14-23. The horrors of the approaching visitation. — Yer.
14. "Why do we sit still ? Assemble yourselves, and let us go
into the defenced citie."!, and perish there ; for Jahveh our God
hath decreed our ruin, and given us water of gall to drink, be-
cause we have sinned against Jahveh. Ver. 15. We looked for
safety, and there is no good ; for a time of healing, and behold
terrors. Ver. 16. From Dan is heard the snorting of bis
horses; at the loud neighing of his steeds the whole earth
trembles : they come, and devour the land and its fulness, the
city and those that dwell therein. Ver. 17. For, behold, I send
among you serpents, vipers, of which there is no charniino-
CHAP. VIII. U-23. 179
which shall sting you, saith Jahveh. Ver. 18. Oh my com-
fort in sorrow, in me my heart grows too sick. Ver. 19. Be-
hold, loud sounds the cry of the daughter from out of a far
country : 'Is Jahveh not in Zion, nor her King in her?' Why
provoked they me with their images, with vanities of a foreign
land ? Ver. 20. Past is the harvest, ended is the fruit-
gathering, and we are not saved. Ver. 21. For the breaking
of the daughter of my people am I broken, am in mourning ;
horror hath taken hold on me. Ver. 22. Is there no balm in
Gilead, or no physician there ? why then is no plaister laid upon
the daughter of my people ? Ver. 23. Oh that my head were
waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears ! then would I weep
day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people."
In spirit the prophet sees the enemy forcing his way into the
country, and, the inhabitants fleeing into the fortified cities.
This he represents to his hearers with graphic and dramatic
effect. In ver. 14 the citizens of Judah are made to speak,
calling on one another to flee and give up hope of being saved.
" Why do we sit still ? " i.e. remain calmly where we are ? We
will withdraw into the strong cities (cf. iv. 5), and perish there
by famine and disease (HOTJ for ^fii^i, imperf. Niph., from
DOT: cf. Gesen. § 67, 5, Eem. 11; in Niph. be destroyed, perish).
The fortresses cannot save them from ruin, since they will be
besieged and taken by the enemy. For our sin against Him,
God has decreed our ruin. The Hiph. from DDl, prop, put to
silence, bring to ruin, here with the force of a decree. B'N'i ''!?,
bitter waters ; lyNl or B^ii, Deut. xxxii. 32, is a plant with a
very bitter taste, and so, since bitterness and poison were to
the Jews closely connected, a poisonous plant ; see on Deut.
xxix. 17. So they call the bitter suffering from the ruin at
hand which they must undergo. Of. the similar figure of the
cup of the anger of Jahveh, ch. xxv. 15 ff. — Ver. 15. Instead
of peace and safety hoped for, there is calamity and terror.
Tlie infin. abs. ri|ij? is used emphatically for the imperf. : We
looked for safety, and no good has come to us : for healing, sc.
of our injuries, and instead comes terror, by reason of the
appearance of the foe in the land. This hope has been
awakened and cherished in the people by false prophets (see on
iv. 10), and now, to their sore suffering, they must feel the
180 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
contrary of it. The same idea is repeated in xiv. 19. <^^'yP is a
mis-spelling of N31», xiv. 19, etc.— Ver. 16. From the northern
borders of Canaan (from Dan ; see on iv. 15) is already heard
the dreadful tumult of the advancing enemy, the snorting of
his horses. The suffix in VWD refers to the enemy, whose
invasion is threatened in vi. 22, and is here presumed as known.
in'SK, his strong ones, here, as in xlvii. 3, 1. 11, a poetical name
for strong horses, stallions ; elsewhere for strong animals, e.g.
Ps. xxii. 13, 1. 13. The whole earth, not the whole land. With
" devour the land," cf. v. 17. I'V and HN have an indefinite
comprehensive force ; town and country on which the enemy
is marching. — Ver. 17. The terribleness of these enemies is
Jieightened by a new figure. They are compared to snakes of
the most venomous description, which cannot be made innocuous
by any charming, whose sting is fatal. " Vipers " is in apposition
to " serpents;" serpents, namely basilisks. 'Jy^V is, ace. to Aqu.
and Vulg. on Isa. xi. 8, serpens regulus, the basilisk, a small and
very venomous species of viper, of which there is no charming.
Of.- for the figure. Cant. x. 11 ; and for the enemies' cruelty
thereby expressed, cf. vi. 23, Isa. xiii. 18.
The hopeless ruin of his people cuts the prophet to the very
heart. In vers. 18-23 his sore oppressed heart finds itself vent
in bitter lamentations. Oh my comfort in sorrow ! is the cry
of sore affliction. This may be seen from the second half of
the verse, the sense of which is clear : sick (faint) is my heart
upon me. vV shows that the sickness of heart is a sore burden
on him, crushes him down ; cf. Ew. § 217, i. "My comfort " is
accordingly vocative : Oh my comfort concernincr the sorrow!
Usually tn; "!? is supplied : Oh that I had, that there were
for me comfort! The sense suits, but the ellipse is without
parallel. It is simpler to take the words as an exclamation :
the special force of it, that he knows not when to seek comfort,
may be gathered from the context. For other far-fetched
explanations, see in Eos. ad h. l. The grief which cuts so
deeply into his heart that he sighs for relief, is caused by his
already hearing in spirit the mourning cry of his people as they
go away into captivity.— Ver. 19. From a far country he hears
the people complain : Is Jahveh not in Zion ? is He no longer
the King of His people there? The suffix in na^D refers to
CHAP. Vill. M--23. 181
" daughter of my people," and the King is Jaliveh ; cf. Isa.
xxxiii. 22. They ask whether Jahveh is no longer King in
Zion, that He may release His people from captivity and bring
them back to Zion. To this the voice of God replies with the
connter-question : Why have they provoked me with their
idolatry, sc. so that I had to give them over into the power of
the heathen for punishment? "Images" is expounded by the
apposition : vanities (no-gods ; for ?5C> see on ii. 5) of a foreign
land. Because they have chosen the empty idols from abroad
(xiv. 22) as their gods, Jahveh, the almighty God of Zion,
has cast them ont into a far country amidst strange people.
The people goes on to complain in ver. 20 : Past is the harvest
. . . and we are not saved. As Schnur. remarked, these words
have something of the proverb about them. As a country-
man, hoping for a good harvest, falls into despair as to his
chances, so the people have been in vain looking for its rescue
and deliverance. The events, or combinations of events, to
which it looked for its rescue are gone by without bringing any
such result. Many ancient commentators, following Rashi,
have given too special a significance to this verse in applying it
to the assistance expected from Egypt in the time of Jehoiakim
or Zedekiah. Hitz. is yet more mistaken when he takes the
saying to refer to an unproductive harvest. From ver. 19 we
see that the words are spoken by the people while it pines in
exile, which sets its hopes of being saved not in the produc-
tiveness of the harvest, but in a happy turn of the political
situation. — Ver. 21. The hopeless case of the people and
kingdom moves the seer so deeply, that he bursts forth with the
cry : For the breaking of my people I am broken (the Hoph.
''niliB'n, of the breaking of the heart, only here ; in this sig. usu.
the Niph., e.g. xxiii. 9, Ps. Ixix. 21). "ilij, to be black, used of
wearing mourning, in other words, to be in mourning; cf. Ps.
XXXV. 14, xxxviii. 7. Horror hath taken hold on me, is stronger
than : Anguish hath taken hold on me, vi. 24, Mic. iv. 9.
Help is nowhere to be found. This thought is in ver. 22
clothed in the question : Is there no balm in Gilead, or no
physician there? "There" points back to Gilead. Grafs
remark, that " it is not known that the physicians were got from
that quarter," shows nothing more than that its author has
182 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
mistaken the figurative force of the words. ''IJI, talsam, is
mentioned in Gen. xxxvii. 25 as an article of commerce carried
by Midianite merchants to Egypt (of. Ezek. xxvii. 17), but
is hardly the real balsam from Mecca (amyris opobalsamum),
which during the Roman sovereignty was grown under cul-
ture in the gardens of Jericho, and which only succeeds in a
climate little short of tropical. It was more likely the resina
of the ancients, a gum procured from the terebinth or mastic
tree (lentiscus, cT^'i:vo<;), wliich, ace. to Plin. 7i. nat. xxiv. 22, was
held in esteem as a medicament for wounds (resolvitur resina
ad vulnerum usus et malagmata oleo). Ace. to our passage
and xlvi. 11, cf. Gen. xxxvii. 25, it was procured chiefly from
Gilead ; cf. Movers, Flwnis. ii. 3, S. 220 ff., and the remarks
on Gen. xxxvii. 25. To these questions a negative answer is
given. From this we explain the introduction of a further
question with '2 : if there were balm in Gilead, and a physician
there, then a plaister would have been laid on the daughter
of my people, which is not the case. As to ^^nx nnpy, lit, a
plaister comes upon, see on xxx. 17. The calamity is so dread-
ful, that the prophet could weep about it day and night. To
express the extremity of his grief, he wishes that his head were
water, i.e. might be dissolved into water, and that his eye might
become an inexhaustible fountain of tears. I^^ ^O, who micrht
give, make my head water, i.e. would that it were water !
Chap. ix. 1-21. Lajient for the faithlessness and
FOLLY OF THE PEOPLE, INFATUATED REGARDING THEIR SIN.
— Upon the lament for the ruin of the kingdom, follows in vers.
1-8 the lament for the wickedness which rendered judgment
necessary, which is further gone into in vers. 9-21.
Vers. 1-8. " Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place
of wayfarers ! then would I leave my people, and go away from
them. For they be all adulterers, a crew of faithless ones.
Ver. 2. They bend their tongue like their bow with lying; and
not according to faithfulness do they manage in the land, but go
on from evil to evil, and me they know not, saith Jahveh. Ver.
3. Beware each of his neighbour, and trust not in any brother ;
for every brother supplanteth, and every friend goetli slandering'.
Ver. 4. And one overreacheth the other, and truth they spea'k
CHAP. IX. 1-8. 183
not ; they teach their tongue to speak lies, to deal perversely
they weary themselves. Ver. 5. Tliy dwelling is in the midst of
deceit ; in deceit they refuse to know me, saith Jahveh. Ver. 6.
Therefore thus hath spoken Jahveh of hosts : Behold, I will
melt them, and try them ; for liow should I deal in regard to
the daughter of my people ? Ver. 7. A deadly arrow is their
tongue ; they speak deceit ; with his mouth one speaketh peace
with his neighbour, and inwardly within him he layeth ambush.
Ver. 8. Shall I not visit this upon them ? saith Jahveh ; or
on such a people as this shall not my soul take vengeance ? "
Jeremiah would flee into the wilderness, far away from his
people ; because amidst such a corrupt, false, and cunning people,
life had become unbearable, ver. 1. ''??n^. ''*?, as in Isa. xxvii. 4,
equivalent to v I^^ ''!?, Ps. Iv. 7 : who would give me= Oh that
I had 1 The " lodging-place " is not a resting-place under the
open sky, but a harbour for travellers, — a building (khan)
erected on the route of the caravans, as a shelter for travellers.
Adultery and faithlessness are mentioned as cardinal sins. The
first sin has been rebuked in v. 7, the second is exposed in
vers. 2—4. 1313, faithless either towards God or one's fellow-
men : here in the latter sense. The account of the unfaithful
conduct is introduced in ver. 2 by the imperf. with 1 consec, and
is carried on in the perf. Manifestations of sin are the issue
of a sinful state of heart ; the perfects are used to suggest the
particular sins as accomplished facts. In the clause, " they
bend," etc, ip.K' is the second object; and "their bow" is in
apposition to " their tongue : " they bend their tongue, which is
their bow, with lying. For this construction the Hiph. is the
proper form, and this is not to be changed into the Kal (as by
Hitz., Gr., Nag.). In Job xxviii. 8 the Hiph. is used instead of
the Kal in the sense of tread upon, walk upon ; here it is used
of the treading of the bow to bend it, and lying is looked upon
as the arrow with which the bow is stretched or armed for shoot-
ing. If the verb be changed into the Kal, we must join IPS' with
Dn^ip : their lying-bow. For this connection ner '^?~'/l, Ezek.
xvi. 27, may be cited ; but it gives us the unnatural figure: their
tongue as a bow, which is lying. It is neither the tongue nor
the bow which is lying, but that which they shoot with their
tongue as with a bow. According to faithfulness; f of the rule,
184 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
norm, as in v. 3. Not faithfulness to their convictions (Hitz.),
bnt in their behaviour towards their fellow-men. "i??, he strong,
exercise strength, rule, and manage. The prophet has in view
the great and mighty who had power in their hands, and who mis-
used it to oppress their inferiors. From evil to evil they go on, i.e.
they proceed from one sin to another ; but God the Lord they
knownot, i.e. are determined to know nothing of Him; cf. 1 Sam.
ii. 12, Job xviii. 21. Hence each must keep himself on his
guard against the other. To express this in the most emphatic
manner, Jeremiah gives it the form of a command : Beware
each of his neighbour, trust not in a brother ; for each seeks to
overreach and trip up the other. In the words 2p.^' 3ipy there
seems to be an allusion to Jacob's underhand dealing with his
brother Esau, Gen. xxvii. 36. On " goes slandering," of.
vi. 28, and cf. also the similar description in Mic. vii. 5, 6. In
ver. 4 these sinful ways are exposed in yet stronger words, 'nn''^
uncontracted form of the imperf. Hiph. of 7?^^ trip up, deceive.
On the infin. m^n, cf. Ew. § 238, e, and Gesen. § 75, Rem. 17.
They weary themselves out, put themselves to great labour,
in order to deal corruptly ; !^ipi as in xx. 9, Isa. xvi. 12, else-
where to be weary of a thing; cf. vi. 11, xv. 6. — In ver. 5
the statement returns to the point at which it commenced :
thy sitting (dwelling) is in the midst of deceit. In deceit, i.e.
in the state of their mind, directed as it is by deceit and cheat-
ing, they refuse to know me, i.e. they are resolved to have
nothing to do with the knowledge of God, because in that case
they must give up their godless ways.^ By reason of this
depravity, the Lord must purge His people by sore judgments.
' The LXX. have not understood ^nnc'. They have split it up into
Tjn 2&, joined 2^ to ^ah:, and translated^ after adding t<^i : xal ov idT^iTzou
rov i^i(!rpi4.a.i. roxos i-a^l rix'f (i.e. usury upon usury) xii So'Xof tvi So'Xm.
oix. 'lih-Koa elUvai fit. Ew. has adopted this construction, and so trans-
lates : " have accustomed their tongue to speak lies, to do perversity, are
weary of turning again ; wrong upon wrong, deceit upon deceit, they are
not willing to know me." But this text is not better, but worse, than
the Masoretic : for, 1st, the perverse dealing or action is attributed to the
tongue ; 2rf, the thought, they are weary of turning again, does not suit the
context, since the persons described here have never sought to return or
repent, and so cannot have become wearyof it. For these reasons, neither
liitz. nor Graf has given countenance to the LXX. text
CHAP. IX. 9-15. 185
lie will melt it in the fire of affliction (Isa. xlviii. 10), to separate
the wicked : cf. Isa. i. 25, Zecli. xiii. 9 ; and on tn3j Jer. vi. 27.
For how should I do, deal? Not : what dreadful Judgments shall
I inflict (Hitz., Gr.), in which case the grounding *3 would not
have its proper force; but : I can do none otherwise than purge.
Before the face of, i.e. by reason of, the daughter, because the
daughter of my people behaves herself as has been described
in vers. 2-4, and as is yet to be briefly repeated in ver. 7. The
LXX. have paraphrased *JSp: otto TrpocrwTrov Trovrjpia';. This
is true to the sense, but it is unfair to argue from it, as Ew.,
Hitz., Gr. do, that nyn has been dropped out of the Hebrew
text and should be restored. — In ver. 7 what has been said is
recapitulated shortly, and then in ver. 8 the necessity of the
judgment is shown, tinia' J^n, a slaying, slaughtering, i.e. mur-
derous arrow. Instead of this Chet., which gives a good sense,
the Keri gives tJins', which, judging from the Chald. trans-
lation, is probably to be translated sharpened. But there is no
evidence for this sig., since tsina' occurs only in connection
with 3nt, 1 Kings x. 16, and means beaten, lit. spread gold. At
"'?"? i^?"]? the plural passes into the singular : he (one of them)
speaks ; cf. Ps. Iv. 22. 3nN for insidious scheming, as in Hos.
vii. 6. With ver. 8 cf. v.' 9, 29.
Vers. 9-15. T7ie land laid waste, and the people scattered
amongst the heathen. — Ver. 9. " For the mountains I take up a
weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a
lament; for they are burnt up so that no man passeth over
them, neither hear they the voice of the flock ; the fowls of the
heavens and the cattle are fled, are gone. Ver. 10. And I
make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling of jackals ; and the cities of
Judah I make a desolation, without an inhabitant. Ver. 11.
Who is the wise man, that he may understand this 1 and to
whom the mouth of Jahveh hath spoken, that he may declare
it? Wherefore doth the land come to ruin, is it burnt up
like the wilderness, that none passeth through? Ver. 12.
Jahveh said : Because they forsake my law which I set before
them, and have not hearkened unto my voice, neither walked
therein, Ver. 13. But went after the stubbornness of their
heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers have taught
them. Ver. 14. Therefore thus hath Jahveh of hosts spoken.
186 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the God of Israel : Behold, I feed this people with wormwood,
and give them water of gall to drink, Ver. 15. And scatter
them among the nations which they knew not, neither they nor
their father's, and send the sword after them, until I have con-
sumed them."
Already in spirit Jeremiah sees God's visitation come upon
the land, and in vers. 9 and 10 he raises a bitter lamentation
for the desolation of the country. The mountains and meadows
of the steppes or prairies are made so desolate, that neither
men nor beasts are to be found there. Mountains and meadows
or pastures of the steppes, as contrasted with the cities (ver. 10),
represent the remoter parts of the country. ?J? is here not
local : upon, but causal, concerning = because of, cf. iv. 24 ff.,
as is usual with (nyp) •'Hji NB'3 ; cf. 2 Sam. i. 17, Amos v. 1,
Ezek. xxvi. 17, etc. =inS3, kindled, burnt up, usually of cities
(cf. ii. 15), here of a tract of country with the sig. be parched
by the glowing heat of the sun, as a result of the interruption
of agriculture, lanip is steppe, prairie, not suitable for tillage,
but well fitted for pasturing cattle, as e.g. the wilderness of
Judah ; cf. 1 Sara. xvii. 28. With 135? '^3D, ver. 11, cf. Ezek.
xxxiii. 28. Not only have the herds disappeared that used to
feed there, but the very birds have flown away, because the
parched land no longer furnishes food for them ; cf. iv. 25.
To " are fled," which is used most properly of birds, is added :
are gone away, departed, in reference to the cattle. — Ver. 10.
Jerusalem is to become stone-heaps, where only jackals dwell.
D''3ri is jackals (canis aureus), in Isa. xiii. 22 called D''^^ from
their cry; see on Isa. I.e., and Gesen. ihes. s.v. ^tJ'i'' 73» as in
ii. 15, iv. 7. — That such a judgment will pass over Judah every
wise man must see well, and every one enlightened by God is to
declare it; for universal apostasy from God and His law cannot
but bring down punishment. But such wisdom and such
spiritual enlightenment is not found in the infatuated people.
This is the idea of vers. 11-13. The question : Who is the
wise man ? etc., reminds us of Hos. xiv. 10, and is used with a
negative force : unhappily there is none so wise as to see this.
" This" is explained by the clause, Wherefore doth the land,
etc. : this, i.e. the reason why the land is going to destruction.
The second clause, " and to whom," etc., is dependent on the
CHAP. IX. 16-21. 187
^O, which is to be repeated in thought : and who is he that, etc.
Jeremiah has the false prophets here in view, who, if they were
really illumined by God, if they really had the word of God,
could not but declare to the people their corruptness, and the
consequences which must flow from it. But since none is so
wise . . . Jeremiah proposes to them the question in ver. Hi,
and in ver. 12 tells the answer as given by God Himself.
Because they have forsaken my law, etc. '.^3? IHJ, to set before ;
as in Deut. iv. 8, so here, of the oral inculcation of the law by
the prophets. "Walketh therein" refers to the law. The stub-
bornness of their heart, as in iii. 17, vii. 24. After the Baals,
ii. 23. The relative clause, " which their fathers," etc., refers
to both clauses of the verse ; IK'S with a neuter sense : which
their fathers have taught them. — Ver. 14. The description of
the offence is again followed by the threatening of judgment.
To feed with wormwood and give gall to drink is a figure for
sore and bitter suffering at the overthrow of the kingdom and
in exile. The meaning of the snffix in DP^aND is shown by
the apposition : this people. On water of gall see viii. 14,
and for the use of n:y? and CNT together see Deut. xxix. 17. —
'1J1 D^nivan implies a verbal allusion to the words of Deut.
xxviii. 64 and 36, cf. Lev. xxvi. 33. With this latter passage
the second clause : I send the sword after them, has a close
affinity. The purport of it is : I send the sword after the
fugitives, to pursue them into foreign lands and slay them ; cf.
xlii. 16, xliv. 27. Thus it is indicated that those who fled into
Egypt would be reached by the sword there and slain. This does
not stand in contradiction to what is said in iv. 27, v. 18, etc.,
to the effect that God will not make an utter end of them
(Graf's opinion). This appears from xliv. 27, where those that
flee to Egypt are threatened with destruction by famine and
sword Dnif' ''ni?3 "ty, while ver. 28 continues : but they that
have escaped the sword shall return. Hence we see that the
terms of the threatening do not imply the extirpation of the
people to the last man, but only the extirpation of all the
godless, of this wicked people.
Vers. 16-21. Zion laid waste. — Ver. 16. " Thus hath Jahveli
of hosts said : Give heed and call for mourning women, that
they may come, and send to the wise women, that they may
188 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
come, Ver. 17. And may make haste and strike up a lamen-
tation for us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our
eyelids gush out with water. Ver. 18. For loud lamentation is
heard out of Zion : How are we spoiled, sore put to shame !
because we have left the land, because they have thrown down
our dwellings. Ver. 19. For hear, ye women, the word of
Jahveh, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth, and
teach your daughters lamentation, and let one teach the other
the song of mourning ! Ver. 20. For death cometh up by our
windows, he entereth into our palaces, to cut off the children
from the streets, the young men from the thoroughfares. Ver.
21. Speak : Thus runs the saying of Jahveh : And the carcases
of men shall fall as dung upon the field, and as a sheaf behind
the shearer, which none gathereth."
In this strophe we have a further account of the execution of
the judgment, and a poetical description of the vast harvest
death is to have in Zion. The citizens of Zion are called upon
to give heed to the state of affairs now in prospect, i.e. the
judgment preparing, and are to assemble mourning women
that they may strike up a dirge for the dead, ip.isnn, to be
attentive, give heed to a thing ; cf. ii. 10. Women cunning in
song are to come with speed (n3"inori takes the place of an
adverb). The form njvxian (Ps. xlv. 16, 1 Sam. x. 7) alternates
with nJXian, the usual form in this verb, e.g. Gen. xxs. 38,
1 Kings iii. 16, etc., in order to produce an alternating form of
expression. " For us" Nag. understands of those who call the
mourning women, and in it he finds " something unusual,"
because ordinarily mourners are summoned to lament for those
already dead, i.e. others than those who summon them. " But
here they are to raise their laments for the very persons who
summon them, and for the death of these same, which has
yet to happen." There is a misunderstanding at the bottom of
this remark. The "for us" is not said of the callers; for
these are addressed in the second person. If Naw.'s view were
right, it must be " for you," not « for us." Tru'e, the LXX.
has e<^' vfia<;; but Hitz. has rejected this reading as a simplifi-
cation and weakening expression, and as disturbing the plan.
" For us" is used by the people taken collectively, the nation
as such, which is to be so sorely afflicted and chastised by death
CHAP. IX. lC-21. 189
that it is time for the mourning women to raise their dirge, that
so the nation may give vent to its grief in tears. "We must
also take into account, that even although the lamentations
were for the dead, they yet cliiefly concerned the living, who
had been deeply afflicted by the loss of beloved relations ; it
would not be the dead merely that were mourned for, but the
living too, because of their loss. It is this reference that stands
here in the foreground, since the purpose of the chanting of
dirges is that our eyes may flow with tears, etc. Zion will
lament the slain of her people (viii. 23), and so the mourning
women are to strike up dirges. nj'OT for njX'OT, as in Euth i.
14; cf. Ew. § 198,6. On the'use of l"!; and '?n with the
accus. : flow down in tears, cf. Gesen. § 138, 1, Eem. 2, Ew.
§ 281, b. — Ver. 18 gives the reason why the mourning women
are to be called : Loud lamentation is heard out of Zion. Ew.
takes " out of Zion" of the Israelites carried away from their
country — a view arbitrary in itself, and incompatible with
ver. 20. " How are we spoiled ! " cf. iv. 13 ; brought utterly
to sham.e, because we have left the land, i.e. have been forced
to leave it, and because they (the enemies) have thrown down
our dwellings ! Y?f'}, cast down, overthrow, Job xviii. 7, cf.
Ezek. xix. 12, and of buildings, Dan. viii. 11. Kimchi and
Hitz., again, take " our dwellings " as subject : our dwellings
have cast us out, and appeal to Lev. xviii. 25 : The laud vomited
out its inhabitants. But the figurative style in this passage
does not justify us in adopting so unnatural a figure as this,
that the dwellings cast out their occupants. Nor could the
object be omitted in such a case. The passages, Isa. xxxiii. 9,
Mic. ii. 4, to which Hitz. appeals, are not analogous to the
present one. The subject, not expressed, ace. to our view
of the passage, is readily suggested by the context and the
nature of the case. The "for" in ver. 19 gives a second reason
for calling the moui'ning women together. They are to come
not only to chant laments for the spoiling of Zion, but that
they may train their daughters and other women in the art of
dirge-singing, because the number of deaths will be so great
that the existing number of mourning women will not be suffi-
cient for the task about to fall on them. This thought is intro-
duced by a command of God, in order to certify that this great
190 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
harvest of death will witliout fail be gathered. DJ^TN and
D3"'n33 have masc. suffixes instead of feminine, the masc. being
often thus used as the more general form ; cf. Ew. § 184, c.
In the last clause the verb " teach" is to be supplied from the
preceding context. — Ver. 20. Death comes in through (in at)
the -windows, not because the doors are to be thought of as
barricaded (Hitz.), but as a thief in the night, i.e. suddenly, in
an unexpected way. Perhaps Jeremiah was here thinking of
Joel ii. 9. And comes into the palaces, i.e. spares no house,
but carries off high and low. The second clause is not to be
very closely joined with the first, thus : Death comes into the
houses and palaces, to sweep the children from off the streets ;
this would be self-contradictory. We must rather repeat
" comes " from the first clause : He comes to sweep off the
streets the cliild at play. That is : In the houses and palaces,
as upon the streets and highways, he will seize his prey. — Ver.
21. The numbers of the dead will be so great, that the bodies
will be left lying unbaried. The concluding touch to this
awful picture is introduced by the formula, " Speak : Thus saith
the Lord," as a distinct word from God to banish all doubt of
the truth of the statement. This formula is interposed paren-
thetically, so that the main idea of the clause is joined bj' \ cop.
to ver. 20. This ] is not to be deleted as a gloss, as it is by Ew.
and others, because it is not found in the LXX. With " as
dung," cf. viii. 2, xvi. 4. "fpy, prop, a bundle of stalks, grasped
by the hand and cut, then = "iD'y, sheaf. As a sheaf behind
the reaper, which nobody gathers, i.e. which is left to lie un-
heeded, is not brought by the reaper into the barn. The point
of the simile is in the lying unheeded. Strange to say, Graf
and Nag. propose to refer the "none gathereth" not to the
sheaf of the shearer, but to the dead bodies : whereas the reaper
piles the sheaves upon the waggon and brings them to the
threshing-floor, the corpses are left unfathered.
Chap. Ix. 22-x. 25. The true wisdom.— It is not a reliance
on one's own wisdom and strength that brings well-being, but
the knowledge of the Lord and of His dealings in grace and
justice (ix, 22-25). Idolatry is folly, for the idols are the mere
work of men's hands ; whereas Jahveh, the Almighty God, is
CHAP. IX. 22-25. 191
ruler of the world (x. 1-16). Israel will be made to under-
stand this by the coming judgment (vers. 17-25).
Vers. 22-25. The way of safety'.— Ver. 22. « Thus hath
Jahveh said : Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and
let not the strong man glory in his strength ; let not the rich
man glory in his riches : Ver. 23. But let him that glorietli
glory in this, in having understanding, and in knowing me, that
I am Jahveh, dealing grace, right, and justice upon earth ; for
therein have I pleasure, saith Jahveh. Ver, 24, Behold, days
come, saith Jahveh, that I punish all the circumcised (who are)
with foreskin, Ver. 25. Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and tlie
sons of Ammon, Moab and them that have their hair-corners
polled, that dwell in the wilderness; for all the heathen are
uncircuracised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircunicised
in heart,"
After having overturned the foundations of the people's false
reliance on the temple, or the sacrifices, and in the wisdom of
its leaders, Jeremiah finally points out the way that leads to
safety. This consists solely in the true knowledge of the Lord
who doth grace, right, and justice, and therein hath pleasure.
In ver, 23 he mentions the delusive objects of confidence on
which the children of this world are wont to pride themselves :
their own wisdom, strength, and riches. These things do not
save from ruin. Safety is secured only by " having under-
standing and knowing me." These two ideas are so closely con-
nected, that the second may be looked on as giving the nearer
definition of the first. The having of understanding must
manifest itself in the knowing of the Lord, The two verbs are
in the infn. abs., because all that was necessary was to suggest
the idea expressed by the verb ; cf. Ew. § 328, b. The know-
ledge of God consists in knowing Him as Him who doth grace,
right, and justice upon earth, ion, grace, favour, is the
foundation on which right and justice are based ; cf. xxxii. 18,
Ps, xxxiii. 5, xcix, 4, ciii. 6. He who has attained to this
knowledge will seek to practise these virtues towards his fellow-
men, because only therein has God pleasure (n?s pointing back
to the objects before mentioned) ; cf, xxii. 3, Ps. xi. 7,
xxxvii, 28, But because the Lord has pleasure in right and
justice, He will punish all peoples that do not practise justice.
192 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEnElIIAH.
Thus vers. 24 and 25 are connected with what precedes. The
lack of righteousness is indicated by the idea HP'iya ?10 : cir-
cumcised with foreskin, i.e. not, circumcised in the foreskin
(LXX., Vulg.), but circumcised and yet possessed of the
foreskin. It is incorrect to translate: circumcised together
with the uncircnmcised (Kimchi, de W.). This is not only
contrary to the usage of the language, but inconsistent with the
context, since in ver. 25 ancircumcisedness is predicated of the
heathen and of Judah. The expression is an oxymoron^ thus :
uncircumcised-circumcised (Ew.), intended to gather Jews and
heathen into one category. This is shown by the order of the
enumeration in ver. 24 : Egypt, Judah, Edom, etc. ; whence
we may see that in this reference the prophet puts Judah on
the same footing with the heathen, with the Egyptians, Edom-
ites, etc., and so mentions Judah between Egypt and Edom.
From the enumeration Ew. and Nag., following the example
of Jerome,^ conclude that all the peoples named along with
Judah practised circumcision. But neither on exegetical nor
on historical grounds can this be confidently asserted. Con-
sidered from the exegetical point of view, it is contradictory of
the direct statement in ver. 25, that all the nations are uncir-
cumcised. We must certainly not take the words D^ian'PS as :
all these peoples, giving the article then the force of a retro-
spective demonstrative ; still less can they mean " all the other
nations" besides those named. "All the nations" are all
nations besides Israel. When these are called " uncircum-
cised," and Israel " nncircumcised in heart," it is as clear as
can be that all nations, and so Egyptians, Edomites, etc., are
called nncircumcised, i.e. in the flesh; while Israel — the whole
house of Israel, i.e. Judah and the other tribes — are set over
against the nations in contrast to them as being uncircnmcised
in heart, i.e. spiritually. From the historical view-point, too,
it is impossible to prove that cii'cunicision was in use amongst
all the nations mentioned along with Judah. Only of the
Egyptians does Herod, ii. 36 f., 104, record that they practised
' Jerome writes : multarum ex qnadam parte gentium, ei maxime qux
Jvdsesa Paliestinasque confines sunt, usque hodiepopuli circumciduntur, et prse-
cipue jEgyptii et Idumiei, Ammonilse ei Moalitce et omnis regio Saracenorum,
qux habitat in solitudine
CHAP. IX. 22-2S. 193
circumcision ; and if we accept the testimony of all other
ancient authors, Herod.'s statement concerns only the priests
and those initiated into the mysteries of Egypt, not the
Egyptian people as a whole ; cf. ray Bibl. Archdol. i. S. 307 f.
The only ground for attributing the custom of circumcision to
the Moabites and Arabs, is the fact that Esau and Ishmael, the
ancestors of these peoples, were circumcised. But the infer-
ence drawn therefrom is not supported by historical testimony.
Indeed, so far as the Edomites are concerned, Josephus testifies
directly the contrary, since in Antt. xiii. 9. 1, he tells us that
when John Hyrcanus had conquered this people, he offered
them the choice of forsaking their country or adopting circum-
cision, and that they chose the latter alternative. As to the
ancient Arabs, we find in the Ztsclir. filr die Kunde des Morgl.
iii. S. 230, a notice of the tribe 'Advdn, where we are told that
the warriors of this tribe consist of uncircumcised young men
along with those already circumcised. But this gives us no
certain testimony to the universal prevalence of circumcision ;
for the notice comes from a work in which pre- and post-
Mohammedan traditions are confounded. Finally, there is no
historical trace of the custom of circumcision amongst the
Ammonites and Moabites. nxa ''^iVp here, and xxv. 23, xlix.
32 : those polled, cropped at the edges of the beard and sides of
the head, are such as have the hair cut from off the temples and
the forehead, observing a custom which, according to Herod,
iii. 8,^ was usual amongst some of the tribes of the Arabian
Desert. The imitation of this practice was forbidden to the
Israelites by the law, Lev. xix. 27 ; from which passage we may
see that nsa refers to the head and the beard. Ace. to xlix. 32,
cf. with ver. 28, the tribes meant belonged to the Kedarenes,
descended according to Gen. xxv. 13 from Ishmael. In the
wilderness, i.e. the Arabian Desert to the east of Palestine.
By means of the predicate " uncircumcised in heart," the whole
house of Israel, i.e. the whole covenant people, is put in contrast
with the heathen. Circumcision involved the obligation to walk
blameless before God (Gen. xvii. 1), and, as sign of the cove-
nant, to keep God's commandments. If this condition was not
1 T5» rpix^v T'/iu xovp^u xsi'psaSal ipeeai, xctSxirsp etirou th Aiouvimv
xtxapSai, xslpouTcti It viroT po^ccT^ct, icipt^-/ipoiiiiris nils xp<na<p<iv;.
VOL. I. N
194 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
fulfilled, if the heart remained uncircumcised, Israel lost all
pre-eminence over the heathen, and was devoid of all room for
glorying in the sight of God, just as the heathen were, who
know not God the Lord, -who have turned the truth of God into
unrighteousness, and in their unrighteousness have become liable
to the judgment of God.
Chap. X. 1-16. Warning against idolatry by means of a
view of the nothingness of the false gods (vers. 1-5), and
a counter-view of the almighty and everlasting God (vers.
6-11) and of His governing care in the natural world. This
warning is but a further continuation of the idea of ix. 23,
that Israel's glory should consist in Jahveh who doth grace,
right, and justice upon earth. In order thoroughly to impress
this truth on the backsliding and idolatrous people, Jeremiah
sets forth the nullity of the gods feared by the heathen, and, by
showing how these gods are made of wood, plated with silver
and gold, proves that these dead idols, which have neither life
nor motion, cannot be objects of fear ; whereas Jahveh is God
in truth, a living and everlasting God, before whose anger the
earth trembles, who has created the earth, and rules it, who in
the day of visitation will also annihilate the false gods.^
1 Tbia whole passage is declared by Movers (de utr. rec. Jer. p. 43), de
W., Hitz., and Nag. to be spurious and a late interpolation ; because, as
they allege, it interrupts the continuity, because its matter brings us down
to the time of the Babylonian exile, and because the language of it diverges
in many respects from Jeremiah's. Against these arguments Kiiper, Haev.,
Welte, and others have made a stand. See my Manual of Introd. § 75, 1. —
By the exhibition of the coherence of the thought given in the text, we
have already disposed of the argument on which most stress is laid by the
critics referred to, the alleged interruption of the connection. How little
weight this argument is entitled to, may over and above be seen from the
fact that Graf holds ix. 22-25 to be an interpolation, by reason of the want
of connection ; in which view neither Movers preceded him, nor has Hitz.
or Nag. fallowed him. The second reason, that the subject-matter brings
us down to the time of the exile, rests upon a misconception of the purpose
in displaying the nothingness of the false gods. In this there is presup-
posed neither a people as yet unspotted by idolatry, nor a people puriiied
therefrom ; but, in order to fill the heart with a warii\er love for the living
God and Lord of the world, Israel's own God, the bias towards the idols,
deep-seated in the hearts of the people, is taken to task and attacked in
that which lies at its root, namely, the fear of the power of the heathen's
gods. Finally, as to the language of the passage, Movers tried to show
CHAP. X. 1-5. 195
Vers. 1-5. Tlie nothingness of tJie false gods. — Ver. 1. "Hear
the word which Jahveh speaketh unto you, house of Israel !
Ver. 2. Thus saith Jahveh : To the ways of the heathen use
yourselves not, and at the signs of the heaven be not dismayed,
because the heathen are dismayed at them. Ver. 3. For the
ordinances of the peoples are vain. For it is wood, which one
hath cut out of the forest, a work of the craftsman's hands
with the axe. Ver. 4. With silver and with gold he decks it,
with nails and hammers they fasten it, that it move not. Ver.
5. As a lathe-wrought pillar are they, and speak not ; they are
borne, because they cannot walk. Be not afraid of them ; for
they do not hurt, neither is it in them to do good."
This is addressed to the house of Israel, i.e. to the whole
covenant people ; and " house of Israel" points back to " all the
house of Israel" in ix. 25. Q?^;; for ^5 -?) ^^ frequently in
Jeremiah. The way of the heathen is their mode of life, espe-
that the whole not only belonged to the time of the pseudo-Isaiah, hut
that it was from his hand. Against this Graf has pronounced emphatically,
with the remark that the similarity is not greater than is inevitable in the
discussion of the same subject ; whereas, he says, the diversity in expres-
sion is so great, that it does not even give us any reason to suppose that the
author of this passage had the pseudo-Isaiah before him when he was
writing. This assertion is certainly an exaggeration ; but it contains thus
much of truth, that along with individual similarities in expression, the
diversities are so great as to put out of the question all idea of the passage's
having been written by the author of Isa. xl.-lxvi. In several verses Jere-
miah's characteristic mode of expression is unmistakeable. Such are the fre-
quent use of isan for the idols, vers. 3 and 15, cf. viii. 19, xiv. 22, and
Ompa ny, ver. is, cf. viii. 12, xlvi. 21, 1. 27, neither of which occurs in
the second part of Isaiah ; and t5'''2in, ver. 14, for which Isaiah uses
t5>i3, xlii. 17, xliv. 11. Further, in passages cognate in sense the expres-
sion is quite different ; cf. 4 and 9 with Isa. xl. 19, 20, xli. 7, where we
find tiitS' instead of D^S', which is not used by Isaiah in the sense of
" move ; " cf. ver. 5 with Isa. xlvi. 7 and xli. 23 ; ver. 12 with Isa. xlv. 18.
Finally, the two common expressions cannot prove anything, because they
are found in other books, as in^PIJ DaB>, ver. 16 andlsa. Ixiii. 17, derived
from Deut. xxxii. 9 ; or IDE' niKHV nin\ which is used frequently by
Amos ; cf. Amos iv. 13, v. 27J v. 8, ix'. 6, cf. with Jer. xxxiii. 2.— Even 1]D3
in the sense of molten image in ver. 14, as in Isa. xli. 29, xlviii. 5, is found
also in Dan. xi. 8; consequently this use of the word is no peculiarity of
the second part of Isaiah.
196 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
daily their way of worshipping their gods ; cf. rj oSo?, Acts ix.
2, xix. 9. 1P^ c. i'^, accustom oneself to a thing, used in xiii.
21 with the synonymous ?V, and in Ps. xviii. 35 (Piel) with ?.
The signs of heaven are unwonted phenomena in the heavens,
eclipses of the sun and moon, comets, and unusual conjunctions
of the stars, which were regarded as the precursors of extra-
ordinary and disastrous events. "We cannot admit Hitz.'s ob-
jection, that these signs in heaven were sent by Jahveh (Joel
iii. 3, 4), and that before these, as heralds of judgment, not only
the heathen, but the Jews themselves, had good cause to be
dismayed. For the signs that marked the dawning of the day
of the Lord are not merely such things as eclipses of sun and
moon, and the like. There is still less ground for Nag.'s idea,
that the signs of heaven are such as, being permanently there,
call forth religious adoration from year to year, the primitive
constellations (Job ix. 9), the twelve signs of the zodiac; for
nnj (innn), to be in fear, constemari, never means, even in Mai.
ii. 5, regular or permanent adoration. "For the heathen," etc.,
gives the cause of the fear : the heathen are dismayed before
tiiese, because in the stars they adored supernatural powers. —
Ver. 3. The reason of the warning counsel : The ordinances of
the peoples, i.e. the religious ideas and customs of the heathen,
are vanity, wn refers to and is in agreement with the pre-
dicate ; cf. Ew. § 319, c. The vanity of the religious ordinances
of the heathen is proved by the vanity of their gods. "For
wood, which one has hewn out of the forest," sc. it is, viz. the
god. The predicate is omitted, and must be supplied from P^n^
a word which is in the plural used directly for the false gods ;
cf. viii. 19, Deut. xxxii. 21, etc. With the axe, sc. wrought,
"■VK'? Rashi explains as axe, and suitably ; for here it means in
any case a carpenter's tool, whereas this is doubtful in Isa.
xliv. 12. The images were made of wood, which was covered
with silver plating and gold ; cf. Isa. xxx. 22, xl. 19. Tiiis
Jeremiah calls adorning them, making them fair with silver
and gold. When the images were finished, they were fastened
in their places with hammer and nails, that they might not
tumble over; cf. Isa. xli. 7, xl. 20. When thus complete, they
are like a lathe-wrought pillar. In Judg. iv. 5, where alone
this word elsewhere occurs, lon means palm-tree (= iDn) ,
CHAP. X. 6-11. 197
here, by a later, derivative usage, = pillar, in support of which
we can appeal to the Talnmdic "i»)i, columnam facere, and to
the O. T. n-i»''ri, pillar of smoke. HB'pp is the work of the
turning-lathe, Ex. xxv. 18, 31, etc. Lifeless and motionless
as a turned pillar.* Not to be able to speak is to be without
life ; not to walk, to take not a single step, i.e. to be without
all power of motion ; cf. Isa. xlvi. 7. The Chald. paraphrases
correctly : quia non est in lis spiritus vitalis ad ambulandum.
The incorrect form XIB'f. for 'mfi\ is doubtless only a copyist's
error, induced by the preceding NiM. They can do neither
good nor evil, neither hurt nor help ; cf. Isa. xli. 23. CiriiN for
DFIN, as frequently ; see on i. 16.
Vers. 6-11. Tlie almighty poioer of Jahveh, the living God. —
Ver. 6. "None at all is like Thee, Jahveh ; great art Thou,
and Thy name is great in might. Ver. 7. Who would not
fear Thee, Thou King of the peoples ? To Thee doth it apper-
tain ; for among all the wise men of the peoples, and in all
their kingdoms, there is none at all like unto Thee. Ver. 8.
But they are all together brutish and foolish ; the teachintr of
the vanities is wood. Ver. 9. Beaten silver, from Tarshish it
is brought, and gold from Uphaz, work of the craftsman and
of the hands of the goldsmith ; blue and red purple is their
clothing ; the work of cunning workmen are they all. Ver. 10.
But Jahveh is God in truth. He is living God and everlastinp-
King ; at His wrath the earth trembles, and the peoples abide
not His indignation. Ver. 11. Thus shall ye say unto them :
^ Ew., Hitz., Graf, Nag. follow in the track of Movers, Flioniz. i. S. 622,
who takes ns'pa ace. to Isa. i. 8 for a cucumber garden, and, ace. to Epist.
Jerem. v. 70, understands by TWpD IDh the figure of Priapus in a cucum-
ber field, serving as a scare-crow. But even if we admit that there is an
allusion to the verse before us in the mockery of the gods in the passage of
Epist. Jerem. quoted, running literally as follows : uaTi-tp yap h aixvnparu
"irpo^aaKaptop ovih (^vf^aaaoii, o'iru; 0( ^£0! avruii elal ^vTnuoi x,al TTipl^puaoi
y.ai ■TCipta.pyuptii ; and if we further admit that the author was led to make
his comparison hy his understanding ntypD in Isa. i. 8 of a cucumber
garden ; — yet his comparison has so little in common with our verse in point
of form, that it cannot at all be regarded as a translation of it, or serve as
a rule for the interpretation of the phrase in question. Aud besides it has
yet to be proved that the Israelites were in the habit of setting up images
of Priapus as scare-crows.
198 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEUIAH.
The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these
sliall perish from the earth and from under the heavens."
In this second strophe Jahveh is contrasted, as the only true
God and Lord of the world, with the lifeless gods. These there
is no need to fear, but it behoves all to fear the almighty God,
since in His wrath He can destroy nations. "When compared
with Ps. Ixxxvi. 8, the p in i*i<? seems redundant, — so much so,
that Ven. pronounces it a copyist's error, and Hitz. sets it aside
by changing the vowels. The word as it stands contains a
double negation, and is usually found only in dependent clauses
with a strong negative force : so that there is none. Here it has
the same force, but at the beginning of the sentence : none at
all is as Thou ; cf. Ew. § 323, a. Great is Thy name, i.e. the
manifestation of Thee in the world, in Thy govei'nment of the
earth. "In (or with) might" belongs to "great:" great with
might, displaying itself in acts of might ; cf. xvi. 21. Who
would not fear Thee ? a negative setting of the thought : every
one must fear Thee. King of the nations ; cf. Ps. xxii. 29,
xlvii. 8 f., xcvi. 10. nriN* from ^^l, air. \ey. equivalent to nx3
(whence niSJ)^ to be seemly, suitable. Among the wise men of
the peoples none is like Thee, so as that any should be able to
make head against Thee by any clever stroke ; cf. Isa. xix. 12,
xxix. 14. Nor is there in any kingdom of the peoples any one
like Jahveh, i.e. in might. It is not merely earthly kings that
are meant, but the gods of the heathen as well. In no heathen
kingdom is there any power to be compared with Jahveh.
We are led here to think also of the pagan gods by ver. 8,
where the wisdom and almighty power of the living God are
contrasted with foolishness and vanity of the false gods, rinN3
is not : in uno = in una re, sc. idololatria (Eabb.) ; nor is it, as
Hitz. in most strained fashion makes it : by means of one thine;,
i.e. by (or at) a single word, the word which comes immediately
after : it is wood. nriN is unquestionably neuter, and the force
of it here is collective, =r all together, like the Chald. t^^na. The
nominative to " are brutish " is " the peoples." The verb ijf3
is denom. from I^VS, to be brutish, occurring elsewhere in the
Kal only in Ps. xciv. 8, Ezek. xxi. 36 ; in the Niph. vers. 14,
21, li. 17, Isa. xix. 11. ?p3 as verb is found only here ; else-
where we have ^'03, foolish, and ba, folly (Cant. vii. 25), and,
CHAP. X. 6-11. 199
as a verb, the transposed form 5=20. The remaining words of
the verse make up one clause ; the construction is tlie same as
in ver. 3a, but the sense is not : " a mere vain doctrine is the
wood," i.e. the idol is itself but a doctrine of vanities. In this
way Ew. takes it, making " wood " the subject of the clause
and 1D10 the predicate. D''5'3n np^D is the antithesis to niiT" ip^o,
Dent. xi. 2, Prov. iii. 11, Job v. 17. As the latter is the
TraiSela of the Lord, so the former is the -iraiSeia of the false
gods (Dy?[!, cf. viii. 19.) The vaiBela of Jahveh displayed
itself, ace. to Dent. xi. 2, in deeds of might by means of which
Jahveh set His people Israel free from the power of Egypt. Con-
sequently it is the education of Israel by means of acts of love and
chastenings, or, taken more generally, the divine leading and
guidance of the people. Such a iraiheia the null and void gods
could not give to their worshippers. Their iraiZeia is wood, i.e.
not: wooden, but nothing else than that which the gods themselves
are — wood, which, however it be decked up (ver. 9), remains a
mere lifeless block. So that the thought of ver. 8 is this : The
heathen, with all their wise men, are brutish ; since their gods,
from which they should receive wisdom and instruction, are
wood. Starting from this, ver. 9 continues to this effect : How-
ever much this wood be decked out with silver, gold, and purple
raiment, it remains but the product of men's hands; by no such
process does the wood become a god. The description of the
polishing off of the wood into a god is loosely attached to the
predicate YV, by way of an enumeration of the various things
made use of therefor. The specification served to make the
picture the more graphic ; what idols were made of was familiar
to everybody. Vi?'!)!?, beat out into thin plates for coating over
the wooden image ; cf . Ex. xxxix. 3, Num. xvii. 3 f. As to
tyiE'irij Tartessus in Spain, the source of the silver, see on
Ezek. xxvii. 12. Gold from Ophir ; TBIN here and Dan. x. 5 is
only a dialectical variety of TBiK, see on 1 Kings ix. 27. As
to blue and red purple, see on Ex. xxv. 4. Q^P?", skilful
artisans, cf. Isa. xl. 20. They all, i.e. all the idols.— Ver. 10.
Whereas Jahveh is really and truly God. r\m D^•^'Sx (standing
in apposition), God in truth, "truth" being strongly contrasted
with "vanity," and "living God" (cf. Dent. v. 23) with the
dead gods (vers. 5, 8) ; and everlasting King of the whole world
200 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
(cf. Ps. X. 16, xxix. 10, Ex. XV. 18), before whose wrath the
earth trembles and the peoples qnake with terror; cf. Nah. i.
5, Joel ii. 11, Ps. xcvii. 5. "f^y N^' (written as in ii. 13), they
hold not, do not hold out, do not endure.
Ver. 11 is Chaldee. But it must not be regarded as a gloss
tliat has found its way into the text, on the grounds on whicli
I-Ioub., Ven., Eos., Ew., Hitz., Gr., etc., so regard it, namely,
because it is Chaldee, and because there is an immediate con-
nection between vers. 10 and 12. Both the language in which
the verse is written, and the subject-matter of it, are unfavour-
able to tl is view. The latter does not bear the character of a
gloss ; and no copyist would have interpolated a Chaldee verse
into the Hebrew text. Besides, the verse is found in the Alex-
andrian version ; and in point of sense it connects very suit-
ably with ver. 10 : Jahveh is everlasting King, whereas the
gods which have not made heaven and earth shall perish from
the earth and from under the heavens. This the Israelites are
io say to the idolaters. ^<51^? is the harder form for KV'it?. The
last word, <V>^j is Hebrew ; it does not belong to N'^B*, but
serves to emphasize the subject; the gods — these shall perish.
Jeremiah wrote the verse in Chaldee, ut Jiidceis suggerat, quo-
modo Clialdwis (ad qiios non nisi Chaldaice loqui poterant)
paucis verbis respondendum sit, as Seb. Schna. has remarked.
The thought of this verse is a fitting conclusion to the exhorta-
tion not to fear the gods of the heathen ; it corresponds to the
5th verse, with which the first strophe concludes the warning
against idolatry. The Israelites are not only not to fear the null
and void gods of the heathen, but they are to tell the heathen
that their gods will perish from the earth and from under the
heavens.
Vers. 12-16. Tlie tliird strophe. — In it the almighty power of
the living God is shown from His providential government of
nature, the overthrow of the false gods in the time of judgment is
declared, and, finally, the Creator of the universe is set forth as
the God of Israel. — Ver. 12. " That made the earth by His
power, that founded the world by His wisdom, and by His
understanding stretched out the heavens. Ver. 13. When He
thundering makes the roar of waters in the heavens. He causes
clouds to rise from the ends of the earth, makes lightnings
CHAP. X. 12-16. 201
for the rain, and brings the wind forth out of His treasuries.
Ver. 14. Brutish becomes every man without knowledge ;
ashamed is every goldsmith by reason of the image, for false-
hood is his molten image, and there is no spirit in them. Ver.
15. Vanity are they, a work of mockery ; in the time of their
visitation they perish. Ver. 16. Not like these is the portion
of Jacob : the framer of (the) all is He, and Israel is the
stock of His inheritance : Jahveh of hosts is His name."
In point of form, " that made the earth," etc., connects with
"Jahveh God," ver. 10; bnt in respect of its matter, the de-
scription of God as Creator of heaven and earth is led up to by
the contrast: The gods which have not made the heaven and
the earth shall perish. The subject to n^j; and the following
verbs is not expressed, bnt may be supplied from the contrasted
statement of ver. 11, or from the substance of the several state-
ments in ver. 12. The connection may be taken thus: The
true God is the one making the earth by His power = is He
that made, etc. As the creation of the earth is a work of God's
almighty power, so the establishing, the founding of it upon the
waters (Ps. xxiv. 2) is an act of divine wisdom, and the stretching
out of the heavens over the earth like a tent (Isa. xl. 22 ; Ps. civ.
2) is a work of intelligent design. On this cf . Isa. xlii. 5, xliv. 24,
xlv. 18, li. 13. Every thunder-storm bears witness to the wise
and almighty government of God, ver. 13. The words ?ip?
Inn are difficult. Ace. to Ew. § 307, b, they stand for i'ip \mV:
when He gives His voice, i.e. when He thunders. In support
of this it may be said, that the mention of lightnings, rain,
and wind suggests such an interpretation. But the trans-
position of the words cannot be justified. Hitz. has justly re-
marked : The putting of the accusative first, taken by itself,
might do; but not when it must at the same time be stat.
const]:, and when its genitive thus separated from it would
assume the appearance of being an accusative to iwn. Besides,
we would expect ^bip nn^ rather than i'ip ii^n^. wn b'lp cannot
grammatically be rendered : the voice which He gives, as Nag.
would have it, but: the voice of His giving; and "roar of
waters" must be the accusative of the object, governed by inn.
Hence we must protest against the explanation of L. de Dieu :
ad vocem dationis ejus midtitudo aquarum est in coelo, at least if
202 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEnElIUH.
ad vocem dationis is tantamount to simul ac dat. Just as little
can h'i^k taken by itself mean thunder, so that ad vocem should,
with Schnnr., be interpreted by ionitru est dare ejus multitu-
dinem aquce. The only grammatically feasible explanation is
the second of those proposed by L. de Dieu : ad vocem dandi
ipsum, i.e. qua dat vel ponit multitudinem aquarum. So Hitz. :
at the roar of His giving wealth of waters. Accordingly we
expound : at the noise, when He gives the roar of waters in
heaven, He raises up clouds from the ends of the earth ; taking,
as we do, the ni:j?5 to be a 1 consec. introducing the supple-
mentary clause. The voice or noise with which God gives the
roar or the fulness of waters in the heaven, is the sound of the
thunder. With this the gathering of the dark thunder-clouds
is put into causal connection, as it appears to be to the eye ;
for during the thunder we see the thunder-clouds gather thicker
and darker on the horizon. K''B'3, the ascended, poetic word
for cloud. Lightnings for the rain ; i.e. since the rain comes
as a consequence of the lightning, for the lightning seems to
rend the clouds and let them pour their water out on the earth.
Thunder-storms are always accompanied by a strong wind.
God causes the wind to go forth from His store-chambers,
where He has it also under custody, and blow over the earth.
See a like simile of the store-chambers of the snow and hail.
Job xxxviii. 22 f. From njjjy onwards, this verse is repeated
in Ps. cxxxv. 7. — Ver. 14 f. In presence of such marvels of
divine power and vvisdom, all men seem brutish and ignorant
(away from knowledge = without knowledge), and all makers
of idols are put to shame " because of the image " which they
make for a god, and which is but a deception, has no breath
of life, ^p:, prop, drink-offering, lihamen, cf. vii. 15 ; here
molten image = n3BD, as in Isa. xli. 29, xlviii. 5, Dan. xi. 8.
Vanity they are, these idols made by the goldsmith. A work
of mockings, i.e. that is exposed to ridicule when the nullity of
the things taken to be gods is clearly brought to light. Others :
A work which makes mockery of its worshippers, befools and
deludes them (Hitz., Nag.). In the time of their visitation,
cf. vi. 15. — Ver. 16. Quite other is the portion of Jacob, i.e.
the God who has fallen to the lot of Jacob (the people of
Israel) as inheritance. The expression is formed after Deut.
CHAP. X. 17-25, 203
iv. 19, 20, where it is said of sun, moon, and stars that Jahveh
lias apportioned (p^n) them to the heathen as gods, but has
taken Israel that it may be to Him n^n: Dj;^' ; accordingly Israel
is in Deut. xxxii. 9 called nw p^n, while in Ps. xvi. 5 David
praises Jahveh as ip^nTiJlp, For He is the framer ^bn, i.e. of
the universe. Israel is the stock of His inheritance, i.e. the
race which belongs to Him as a peculiar possession. in^O^ ti??*
is like iri?n? ^^f}, Dent, xxxii. 9 ; in Ps. Ixxiv. 2 it is said of
Mount Zion, and in Isa. Ixiii. 17 it is used in the plural,
'3 1D3B', of the godly servants of the Lord. The name of this
God, the framer of the universe, is Jahveh of hosts — the God
whom the hosts of heaven, angels and stars, serve, the Lord
and Euler of the whole world ; cf. Isa. liv. 5, Amos iv. 13.
Vers. 17-25. Tlie captivity of the people, their lamentation for
the devastation of the land, and entreaty that the punishment may
be mitigated. — Ver. 17. " Gather up thy bundle out of the
land, thou that sittest in the siege. Ver. 18. For thus hath
Jahveh spoken : Behold, I hurl forth the inhabitants of the
land this time, and press them hard, that they may find them.
Ver. 19. Woe is me for my hurt ! grievous is my stroke ! yet
I think : This is my suffering, and I will bear it ! Ver. 20. My
tent is despoiled, and all my cords are rent asunder. My sons
have forsaken me, and are gone : none stretches forth my tent
any more, or hangs up my curtains. Ver. 21. For the shep-
herds are become brutish, and have not sought Jahveh ; there-
fore they have not dealt wisely, and the whole flock is scattered.
— Ver. 22. Hark ! a rumour : behold, it comes, and great com-
motion from the land of midnight, to make the cities of Judah
a desolation, an abode of jackals. — Ver. 23. I know, Jahveh,
that the way of man is not in himself, nor in the man that
walketh to fix his step. Ver. 24. Chasten me, Jahveh, but
according to right ; not in Thine anger, lest Thou make me
little. Ver. 25. Pour out Thy fury upon the peoples that
know Thee not, and upon the races that call not upon Thy
name ! for they have devoured Jacob, have devoured him and
made an end of him, and laid his pastures waste."
In ver. 17 the congregation of the people is addressed, and
captivity in a foreign land is announced to them. This an-
nouncement stands in connection with ix. 25, in so far as
204 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
captivity is tlie accomplisliment of the visitation of Judah
tlireatened in ix. 24. Tliat connection is not, however, quite
direct; tlie announcement is led up to by the vrarning against
idolatry of vers. 1-16, inasmuch as it furnishes confirmation of
the threat uttered in ver. 15, that the idols shall perish in the
day of their visitation, and shows besides how, by its folly in
the matter of idolatry, Judah has drawn judgment down on
itself. The confession in ver. 21 : the shepherds are become
brutish, points manifestly back to the description in ver. 14
of the folly of the idolaters, and exhibits the connection of
vers. 17-25 with the preceding warning against idolatry.
Foregather up," etc., Hitz. translates: gather thy trumpery
from the ground ; so that the expression would have a con-
temptuous tone. But the meaning of rubbish cannot be
proved to belong to nyjs ; and the mockery that would lie in
the phrase is out of place. nyiS, from -_1^, contrahere, con-
stlpare, means that which is put together, packed up, one's
bundle. The connection of *1D!< and P.^P is pregnant : put up
thy bundle and carry it forth of the land. As N. G. Schroeder
suspected, there is about the expression something of the nature
of a current popular phrase, like the German Schnur dein Bundel,
pack up, i.e. make ready for the road. She who sits in the
siege. The daughter of Zion is meant, but we must not limit
the scope to the population of Jerusalem ; as is clear from
" inhabitants of the land," ver. 18, the population of the whole
land are comprised in the expression. As to the form ^nnsrv^
see at xxii. 23. ''BDN with dag. lene after the sibilant, as in
Isa. xlvii. 2. " I hurl forth " expresses the violent manner of
the captivity ; cf. Isa. xxii. 17 f. "This time;" hitherto hos-
tile invasions ended with plundering and the imposition of a
tribute : 2 Kings xiv. 14, xvi. 5, xviii. 13 f. — And I press them
hard, or close them in, =iNS»; ivo'p. These words are variously
explained, because there is no object expressed, and there may
be variety cf opinion as to what is the subject. Hitz., Umbr.,
Nag., take the verh find in the sense ot feel, and so the object nns
would easily be supplied from the verb ''nnvn : so that they
may feel it, i.e. I will press them sensibly. But we cannot
make sure of this meaning for NXa either from xvii. 9 or from
CHAP. X. 17-25. 205
Eccles. vlii. 17, where know (5)"]^) and ^VD are clearly identical
conceptions. Still less is Graf entitled to supply as object :
that which they seek and are to find, namely, God. His appeal
in support of this to passaf;es like Ps. xxxii. 6, Dent. iv. 27 and
29, proves nothing ; for in such the object is manifestly sug-
gested by the context, which is not the case here. A just con-
clusion is obtained when we consider that ''n'l^n contains a play
on liVEia in ver. 17, and cannot be understood otherwise than
as a hemming in by means of a siege. The aim of the siege is
to bring those hemmed in under the power of the besiegers, to
get at, reach them, or find them. Hence we must take the
enemy as subject to " find," while the object is given in QH? :
so that they (the enemy) may find them (the besieged). Thus
too Jerome, who translates the disputed verb passively : et
tribulaho eos ut invenianUir ; while he explains the meaning
thus: sic eos obsideri faciam, sicque tribulaho et coaiigustaho, ut
omnes in urbe reperiantur et effugere nequeant malum. Taken
tlius, the second clause serves to strengthen the first : I will
hurl forth the inhabitants of this land into a foreign land, and
none shall avoid this fate, for I will so hem them in that none
shall he able to escape.
This harassment will bring the people to their senses, so that
they shall humble themselves under the mighty hand of God.
Such feelings the prophet utters at ver. 19 ff., in the name of
the congregation, as he did in the like passage iv. 19 f. As
from the hearts of those who had been touched by their afilic-
tion, he exclaims : Woe is me for my breach ! i.e. my crushing
overthrow. The breach is that sustained by the state in its
destruction, see at iv. 6. npni, grown sick, i.e. grievous, incur-
able is the stroke that has fallen upon me. For this word we
have in xv. 18 HCTiK, which is explained by "refuseth to be
healed." '^f<5 introduces an antithesis : but I say, sc. in my
heart, i.e. I think. Hitz, gives '^x the force of a limitation =
notliing further than this, but wrongly ; and, taking the perf.
••rnDX as a preterite, makes out the import to be : " in their state
of careless security they had taken the matter lightly, saying
as it were. If no further calamity than this menace us, we may
be well' content ; " a thought quite foreign to the context. For
"this my suffering" can be nothing else than the "hurt" on
206 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAn.
account of which the spealier laments, or the stroke which he
calls dangerous, incurable, m has, besides, frequently the force
of positive asseveration: yea, certainly (cf. Ew. § 354, a), a force
readily derived from that of only, nothing else than. And so
here: only this, i.e. even this is my suffering, ''^n, sickness, here
suffering in general, as in Hos. v. 13, Isa. liii. 3 f., etc. The
old translators took the Yod as pronoun (my suffering), whence
it would be necessary to point ^^n, like ''ia, Zeph. ii. 9 ; cf.
Ew. § 293, b, Rem.— The suffering which the congregation must
bear consists in the spoliation of the land and the captivity of
the people, represented in ver. 20 under the figure of a
destruction of their tent and the disappearance of their sons.
The Ohald. has fairly paraphrased the verse thus : my land is
laid waste and all my cities are plundered, my people has gone
off (into exile) and is no longer here. *?^<S^. construed with the
accus. like egredi urbem ; cf. Gen. xliv. 4, etc. — From " my sons
have forsaken me " Nag. draws the inference that vers. 19 and
20 are the words of the country personified, since neither the
prophet could so speak, nor the people, the latter being indeed
identical with the sons, and so not forsaken, but forsaking.
This inference rests on a mistaken view of the figure of the
daughter of Zion, in which is involved the conception of the
inhabitants of a land as the children of the land when personi-
fied as mother. Nor is there any evidence that the land is
speaking in the words : I think. This is my suffering, etc. It is
besides alleged that the words give no expression to any sense
of guilt ; they are said, on the contrary, to give utterance to a
consolation which only an innocent land draws from the fact
that a calamity is laid upon it, a calamity which must straight-
way be borne. This is neither true in point cf fact, nor
does it prove the case. The words. This is my suffering,
etc., indicate resignation to the inevitable, not innocence or
undeserved suffering. Hereon Graf remarks : " The suffering
was unmerited, in so far as the prophet and the godly amongst
the people were concerned ; but it was inevitable that he and
they should take it upon their shoulders, along with the rest."
Asserted with so great width, this statement cannot be ad-
mitted. The present generation bears the punishment not
only for the sins of many past generations, but for its own
CHAP. X. 17-25. 207
sins ; nor were the godly themselves free from sin and guilt,
for they acknowledge the justice of God's chastisement, and
pray God to chasten them t3Eia'tt3j not in anger (ver. 24).
Besides, we cannot take the words as spoken by the prophet or
by the godly as opposed to the ungodly, since it is the sons
of the speaker (" my sons ") that are carried captive, who can
certainly not be the sons of the godly alone. — Ver. 21. The
cause of this calamity is that the shepherds, i.e. the princes and
leaders of the people (see on ii. 8, iii. 15), are become brutish,
have not sought Jahveh, i.e. have not sought wisdom and
guidance from the Lord. And so they could not deal wisely,
i.e. rule the people with wisdom. ^''3pT} is here not merely :
have prosperity, but : show wisdom, deal wisely, securing thus
the blessed results of wisdom. Tliis is shown both by the
contrasted " become brutish " and by the parallel passage,
iii. 15. Dn''J'1?, their pasturing, equivalent to " flock of their
pasturing," their flock, xxiii. 1.
The calamity over which the people mourns is drawing near,
ver, 22. Already is heard the tremendous din of a mighty
host which approaches from the north to make the cities of
Judah a wilderness. njftttB' pip is an exclamation : listen to the
T :
rumour, it is coming near. From a grammatical point of view
the subject to " comes " is " rumour," but in point of sense
it is that of which the rumour gives notice. Graf weakens
the sense by gathering the words into one assertory clause :
"They hear a rumour come." The " great commotion" is that
of an army on the march, the clattering of the weapons, the
stamping and neighing of the war-horses ; cf. vi. 23, viii. 16.
From the land of midnight, the north, cf. i. 14, iv. 6, etc.
" To make the cities," etc., cf. iv. 7, ix. 10. — The rumour o{
the enemy's approach drives the people to prayer, vers. 23-25.
The prayer of these verses is uttered in the name of the con-
gregation. It begins with the confession : Not with man is
his way, i.e. it is not within man's power to arrange the course
of his life, nor in the power of the man who walks to fix his
step (1 before T^n merely marking the connection of the
thought ; cf. Ew.' § 348, a). The antithesis to D'lN^ and
^'i6 is nini^, with God; cf. Ps. xxxvii. 23, Prov. xvi. 9 : Man's
heart deviseth his way, but Jahveh establisheth the steps. The
208 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEESIIAU.
thought is not : it is not in man's option to walk in straight or
crooked, good or evil ways, but : the directing of man, the way
by which he must go, lies not in his own but in God's power.
Hitz. justly finds here the wisdom that admits : " Mit unserer
Macht ist nichts getan" — man's destiny is ordained not by him-
self, but by God. Upon this acquiescence in God's dispensa-
tion of events follows the petition : Chasten me, for I have
deserved punishment, but chasten l2aK'D3j ace. to right, not in
Thine anger ; cf. Ps. vi. 2, xxxviii. 2. A chastening in anger
is the judgment of wrath that shall fall on obstinate sinner.5
and destroy them. A chastening ace, to right is one such as is
demanded by right (judgment), as the issue of God's justice,
in order to the reclamation and conversion of the repentant
sinner. " Lest Thou make me little," insignificant, puny ; not
merely, diminish me, make me smaller than I now am. For
such a decrease of the people would result even from a gentle
chastisement. There is no comparative force in the words. To
make small, in other words, reduce to a small, insignificant
people. This would be at variance with " right,'' with God's
ordained plan in regard of His people. The expression is not
equivalent to : not to make an utter end, xsx. 11, etc. The
people had no call to pray that they might escape being made
an utter end of ; thus much had been promised by God, iv. 27,
V. 10. — God is asked to pour forth His fury upon the heathen
who know not the Lord nor call upon His name, because they
seek to extirpate Jacob (the people of Israel) as the people of
God, at this time found in Judah alone. The several words in
ver. 256 suggest the fury with which the heathen proceed to the
destruction of Israel. The present verse is reproduced in Ps,
Ixxix. 6, 7, a psalm written during the exile, or at least after the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans ; but in the repro-
duction the energetic expansion of the " devoured " is omitted.
CHAP, xi.-xiii. — judah's faithlessness to covenakt
OBLIGATIONS, AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF.
In the first part of this compilation of discourses (ch. xi.
1-17) Judah is upbraided for disloyalty to the covenant, on
account of which people and kingdom are threatened with sore
CHAP. XI. 1-8. 209
disaster. In the second part (xi. 18-xii. 17), the murderous
attempt of the people of Anathoth against the prophet's life
(xi. 18-23) gives occasion for a description of Judah's irre-
claimable perverseness ; while Jeremiah's expostulation with
God as to the prosperity of godless men, and the reproof there-
for received by him from God (xii. 1-6), call forth an anounce-
ment that, in spite of God's long-suffering, judgment on Judah
and all nations will not be for ever deferred (xii. 7-17). Finally,
in the third part, ch. xiii., we have first a further account, by
means of a symbolical action to be performed by the prophet,
of the abasement of Judah's pride in banishment to the
Euphrates (vers. 1-11) ; and next, an account of the judg-
ment about to fall on Judah in the destruction of Jerusalem,
and this both in figurative and in direct language (vers.
12-27).
From the contents of the discourses it appears unquestion-
able that we have here, gathered into the unity of a written
record, various oral addresses of Jeremiah, together with some
of the experiences that befell him in the exercise of his calling.
There is no foundation for the assertion, that xii. 7-17 is a self-
complete prophetic discourse (Hitz.), or a supplement to the
rest, written in the last years of Jehoiakim (Graf) ; nor for
the assumption of several commentators, that the composition
of ch. xiii. falls into the time of Jehoiachin, — as will be shown
when' we come to expound the passages referred to. The dis-
course throughout contains nothing that might not have been
spoken or have happened in the time of Josiah ; nor have we
here any data for determining precisely the dates of the several
portions of the whole discourse.
Chap. xi. 1-17. Judah's DrsLOTALTT to the covenant,
WITH THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF. — In vers. 2-8 is a short
summary of the covenant made with the fathers ; in vers. 9-13
is an account of the breaking of this covenant by Judah, and
of the calamity which results therefrom ; and in vers. 14—17
further description of this calamity.
Vers. 1-8. " The word which came to Jeremiah from Jahveh,
saying : Ver. 2. Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak
to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
VOL. I. O
210 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Ver. 3. And say thou to them : Thus hath Jahveh, the God of
Israel said : Cursed is the man that heareth not the words of
this covenant, Ver. 4. Which I commanded your fathers in the
day that I hrought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of
the iron fm-nace, saying : Hearken to my voice, and do them
according to all which I command you; so shall ye be my
people, and I will be your God ; Ver. 5. That I may perform
the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a
land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. And I
answered and said : So be it, Jahveh. Ver. 6. Then said
Jahveh to me : Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah
and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying : Hear je the words of
this covenant and do them. Ver. 7. For I have testified to
your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land
of Egypt nnto this day, testifying from early morning on :
Hearken to my voice ! Ver. 8. But they hearkened not, nor
inclined their ear, but walked each in the stubbornness of their
evil heart ; and so I brought on them all the words of this
covenant which I have commanded them to do, and they have
not done them."
The form of address, ver. 2 : hear ye (lJ"p?'), and speak ye
(Dnna'n), is noteworthy, since we are not told who are to hear
and speak ; while at ver. 3, in ^lo^l Jeremiah receives the
commission to declare the words of the covenant to the people,
and to make known in the cities of Judah, etc. (ver. 6). The
difficulty is not removed by the plan adopted by Hitz. and
Graf from the LXX., of changing ^l^l^n] into ^n•^Sl^^ " and
speak them ;" for the WOB' remains to be dealt with. To whom,
then, is it addressed ? Schleussner proposed to change it into
njJDii' — a purely arbitrary change. In ver. 4 " hearing" is used
in the sense of giving ear to, obeying. And in no other sense
can it be taken in ver. 1. " The words of this covenant" are,
as is clear from the succeeding context, the words of the cove-
nant recorded in the Pentateuch, known from the reading of
the Torah. The call to hear the words thei^eof can only have
the meaning of : to give ear to them, take them to heart. Hence
Chr. B. Mich, and Schnur. have referred the words to the
Jews : Listen, ye Jews and ye citizens of Jerusalem, to the
words of the covenant, and make them known to one another,
CHAP. XI. 1-& 211
and exhort one another to observe them. But this paraphrase
is hardly consistent with the wording of the verse. Others
fancied that the priests and elders were addressed ; but if so,
these must necessarily have been named. Clearly it is to the
prophets in general that the words are spoken, as Kimchi
observed ; and we must not take " hear ye" as if the covenant
was unknown to the prophets, but as intended to remind the
prophets of them, that they might enforce them upon the
people. Taken thus, this introductory verse serves to exalt the
importance of the truths mentioned, to mark them out as truths
which God had commanded all the prophets to proclaim. If it
be the prophets in general who are addressed in ver. 2, the
transition to "and say thou" is easily explained. Jeremiah,
too, must himself do that which was the bounden duty of all
the prophets, must make the men of Judah and Jerusalem call
to mind the curse overhanging transgressors of the covenant.
The words : Cursed is the man, etc., are taken from Deut. xxvii.
26, from the directions for the engagement to keep the cove-
nant, which the people were to solemnise upon their entry into
Canaan, and which, ace. to Josh. viii. 30 ff., they did solemnise.
The quotation is made freely from memory. Instead of " that
heareth not the words of this covenant," we find in Deut. I.e. :
" that confirmeth not (D'i?') the words of this law to do them."
The choice there of the word D^ipj is suggested by its connec-
tion with the act of solemnisation enjoined. The recitation and
promulgation of the law upon Mount Gerizim and Ebal (Deut.
xxvii.) had no other aim than that of solemnly binding the
people to keep or follow the law ; and this is what Jeremiah
means by " hearing." The law to be established is the law of
the covenant, i.e. the covenant made by Jahveh with Israel,
and spoken of in Deut. xxviii. 69 and xxix. 8 as the " words
of this covenant." This covenant, which Moses had made with
the sons of Israel in the land of Moab (Deut. xxviii. 69), was
but a renewal of that solemnly concluded at Sinai (Ex. xxiv.).
And so Jeremiah speaks of this covenant as the one which
Jahveh commanded the fathers in the day, i.e. at the time, of
their leaving Egypt. " In the day that," etc., as in vii. 22.
"Out of the iron furnace;" this metaphor for the afHiction
endured by Israel in Egypt is taken from Deut. iv. 20. The
212 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
words : hearken unto my voice and do them (the words of the
covenant), suggest Deut. xxvii. 1, 2 ; and the words : so shall
ye be my people, suggest Deut. xxix. 12, a passage which itself
points back to Ex. vi. 7 (xix. 5 f.). Lev. xxvi. 12, Deut. vii. 6,
etc. That I may establish, i.e. perform, the oath which I have
sworn unto your fathers, i.e. the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob (Deut. vii. 8, etc.), promising to give them a land
flowing, etc. The frequently repeated description of the pro-
mised land; cf. Ex. iii. 8, 17, Deut. vi. 3, etc. njn Di»3, as in
Deut. ii. 30, iv. 20, etc., is not : at this time, now (Graf), but :
as this day, meaning : as is even now the case, sc. that ye still
possess this precious land. The assenting reply of the prophet :
run'' t»t<j yea, or so be it (jyevoiTo, LXX.), Lord, corresponds
to the 105J with which the people, ace. to Deut. xxvii. 15 ff.,
were to take on themselves the curses attached to the breaking
of the law, curses which they did take on themselves when the
law was promulgated in Canaan. As the whole congregation
did on that occasion, so here the prophet, by his " yea," ex-
presses his adherence to the covenant, and admits that the
engagement is yet in full force for the congregation of God ;
and at the same time indicates that he, on his part, is ready to
labour for the fulfilment of the covenant, so that the people
may not become liable to the curse of the law. — Vers. 6—8.
Having set forth the curse to which transgressors of the law
are exposed, God commands the prophet to proclaim the words
of the covenant to the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem,
and to call upon them to do these. " All these words " are
those subsequently specified, i.e. the commandments of the law
(cf. ver. 2). Jeremiah is to proclaim these, because, in spite of
unremitting exhortation to hear and give heed to the voice of
the Lord, the fathers had paid no regard thereto. H^il, not :
read aloud (Hitz., Graf), but : proclaim, make known, as in
ii. 2, iii. 12, etc. "l^V[l with 3, to testify against any one, equi-
valent to : solemnly to enforce on one with importunate counsel
and warning ; cf. Deut. xxx. 19, Ps. 1. 7, etc. On Iji/ni DSC'rij
see at vii. 13. — But they have not hearkened, ver. 8a, runnino-
almost literally in the words of vii. 24. " And I brought upon
them," etc., i.e. inflicted upon them the punishments with which
transgressors of the law were threatened, which curses had
CHAP. XI. 9-13. 215
been, in the case of the greater part of the people, the ten
tribes, carried to tlie extreme length, i.e. to the length of their
banishment from their own land into the midst of the heathen ;
of. 2 Kings xvii. 13 ff.
Vers. 9-13. Tlie people's breach of the covenant, and the con-
sequences of this. — Ver. 9. " And Jahveli said unto me : Con-
spiracy is found among the men of Judah and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. Ver. 10. They are turned back to the iniquities
of their forefathers, which refused to give ear to my words,
and they are gone after other gods to serve them ; the house
of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant
which I made with their fathers. Ver. 11. Behold, I bring
evil upon them, from which they cannot escape ; and though
they cry to me, I will not hear them. Ver. 12. And the cities
of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall go and cry
unto the gods unto whom they offer incense, but they shall not
help them in the time of their trouble. Ver. 13. For as many
as are thy cities, so many are thy gods become, O Judah ; and
as many as are the streets of Jerusalem, so many altars have
ye set up to Shame, altars to offer odours to Baal."
Jeremiah is once more to enforce the words of the covenant
upon the people, because they have broken the covenant, re-
turned to the idolatry of the fathers. Conspiracy is found, is
to be seen. The people's defection from Jahveh, their breach
of faith towards the covenant God, is called conspiracy, be-
cause it had become as universal as if it had been initiated by
a formal preconcertment. " The fonner fathers," forefathers
of the people, are the Israelites under Moses, who broke the
covenant by idolatry while still at Sinai, and those of the time
of the Judges. With nam the subject is changed; "they"
are not the forefathers, but the prophet's contemporaries. In
the last clause of ver. 10 is comprehended the apostasy of the
whole people : Like Israel, Judah too has broken the covenant.
Israel has been punished for this by being cast out among the
heathen, the like doom awaits Judah. — Ver. 11. Because of
the covenant broken, the Lord will bring on Judah and Jeru-
salem evil out of which they shall not come forth, i.e. not
merely, from which they shall not escape safely, but : in which
they shall find no way of rescue ; for if in this calamity they
214 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
cry to the Lord, He will not hear them. Nor will the gods
whom they serve, i.e. the false gods, help them then. As to
"as many as are," etc., see on ii. 28. "(The) Shame," i.e.
Baal, as at iii. 24.
Vers. 14-17. Neither entreaty mi their hehalf nor their hypo-
critical iDorship will avert judgment. — Ver. 14. "But thou, pray
not for this people, neither lift up for them cry or prayer ; for
I hear them not in the time that they cry unto me for their
trouble. Ver. 15. What would my beloved in my house ? they
who practise guile % Shall vows and holy flesh remove thy
calamity from thee ? then mayest thou exult. Ver. IG. A
green olive, fair for its goodly fruit, Jahveh called thy name ;
with the noise of great tumult He set fire to it, and its branches
brake. Ver. 17. And Jahveh of hosts, that planted thee, hath
decreed evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel
and of the house of Judah which they themselves have done,
to provoke me, in that they have offered odours to Baal."
We have already, in chap. vii. 16, met with the declaration
that the Lord will not accept any intercession for the covenant-
breaking people (ver. 14) ; the termination of this verse differs
slightly in the turn it takes. — Qnj?"i "IW the ancient commenta-
tors have almost unanimously rendered : tempore mali eorum,
as if they had read nv? (this is, in fact, the reading of some
codd.) ; but hardly on sufficient grounds. IJ^a gives a suitable
sense, with the force of the Greek ajx^i, which, like the German
t(m, passes into the sense of wegen, as the English about passes
into that of concerning. — In vers. 15-17 we have the reason
why the Lord will hear neither the prophet's supplication nor
the people's cry in their time of need. Ver. 15 is very obscure ;
and from the Masoretic text it is hardly possible to obtain a
suitable sense. " The beloved" of Jahveh is Judah, the cove-
nant people; cf. Dent, xxxiii. 12, where Benjamin is so called,
and Jer. xii. 7, where the Lord calls His people ''^'23 n^'T''7\
"What is to my beloved in my house?" i.e. what has my
people to do in my house — what does it want there 1 " My
house" is the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, as appears
from the mention of holy flesh in the second . clause. The
main difficulty lies in the words I3''3nn nnaton nnib'j;. Hitz.
takes riniB'5/ to be the subject of the clause, and makes the
CHAP. XI. U-17. 215
suffix point back to ^yy., which, as collective, is to be construed
generis f asm.: what should the accomplishment of his plans be to
my beloved in my house? But as adverse to this we must
note, a. the improbability of 'T'^ as used of the people being
feminine ; b. the fact that even if we adopt Hitz.'s change of
nnaTDH into nitSfOp; 7^^ *^^^ latter word does not mean plans or
designs to bring offerings. The phrase is clearly to be taken by
itself as a continuation of the question ; and the sufSx to be re-
garded, with Ew., Umbr., etc., as pointing, in the Aramaic
fashion, to the object following : they who practise guile. '"iDTa,
a thinking out, devising, usually of hurtful schemes, here guile,
as in Ps. cxxxix. 20, Job xxi. 27. What is meant is the hypocrisy
of cloaking their apostasy from God by offering sacrifices in the
temple, of concealing their idolatry and passing themselves
off as worshippers of Jahveh. On the form nriDto, see Ew.
§ 173, 5^, Gesen. § 80, Rem. 2,/. D"'3"]n makes no sense. It be-
longs manifestly to the words which follow ; for it can neither
be subject to HOiW, nor can it be joined to nnsrpn as its geni-
tive. The LiXX. render : fir) ev')(aX koI Kpia ayia d^eXovcrtv
airo aov TWi kukmi; aov ; and following this, Dathe, Dahl., Ew.,
Hitz. hold Cinjn to be the original reading. On the other
• t: - o o
hand, Maur., Graf, and Nag. think we should read Q'^'^n (after
Ps. xxxii. 7) or D''?'!l!, crying, loud supplication ; on the ground
of Buxtorf's hint, Anticrit. p. 661, that probably the Alex-
andrians had ^''^y) in their text, but, changing the 3 for J, read
D''Jin. We must make our choice between these two conjec-
tures ; for even if cann did not stand in the codex used by the
Alexandrians, it cannot have been the original word. The
form D''!i"J is, indeed, sufficiently attested by t3?S ''3.'], Ps. xxxii.
7 ; but the meaning of exultation which it has there is here
wholly out of place. And we find no case of a plural to ni"),
which means both exultation and piteous, beseeching cry (e.g.
vii. 16). So that, although n3"i is in the LXX. occasionally
rendered by Ber)ai<; (xi. 14, xiv. 12, etc.) or Trpoaevxv (1 Kings
viii. 28), we prefer tlie conjecture C'l'isn ; for " vow" is in better
keeping with "holy flesh," i.e. flesh of sacrifice, Hag. ii. 12, since
the vow was generally carried out by offering sacrifice. — Nor do
the following words, 'U1 =l!?J!5 ^133?!, convey any meaning, with-
out some alteration. As quoted above, they may be translated :
2 1 G THE PROPHECIES OF JEHEMIAH.
sliall pass away from thee. But this can mean neither : they
shall be torn from thee, nor : they shall disappoint thee. And
even if this force did lie in the words, no statement can begin
with the following ''Jnyn ''3. If this be a protasis, the verb is
wanting. We shall have to change it, after the manner of
the LXX., to '^nV"? "^-i'V? ''''?5':- = shall vows and holy flesh
(sacrifice) avert thine evil from thee 1 For the form liHJT as
Hiph. cf. W]T, ix- 2. "Thine evil" with the double force:
thy sin and shame, and the disaster impending, i.e. sin and
(judicial) suffering. There is no occasion for any further
changes. ti<, rendered rj by the LXX., and so read ii< by them,
may be completely vindicated : then, i.e. if this were the case,
if thou couldst avert calamity by sacrifice, then mightest thou
exult. Thus we obtain the following as the sense of the whole
verse : What mean my people in my temple with their hypo-
critical sacrifices ? Can vows and offerings, presented by you
there, avert calamity from you? If it could be so, well might
you shout for joy.
This idea is carried on in vers. 16, 17. Judah (Israel) was
truly a noble planting of God's, but by defection from the Lord,
its God and Creator, it has drawn down on itself this ruin.
Jahvch called Judah a green olive with splendid fruit. For a
comparison of Israel to an olive, cf. Hos. xiv. 7, Ps. lii. 10,
cxxviii. 3. The fruit of the tree is the nation in its individual
members. The naming of the name is the representation of
the state of the case, and so here : the growth and prosperity of
the people. Tlie contrasted state is introduced by 'n ?ipp with-
out adversative particle, and is thus made to seem the more
abrupt and violent (Hitz.). Noise of tumult (i^pP'!!, occurrinor
besides here only in Ezek. i. 24 as equivalent to li'^n), i.e. of
the tumult of war, cf. Isa. xiii. 4 ; not : roar of the thunder-
storm or crash of thunder (Nag., Graf). HvJ) for na^ cf. xvii.
27, xxi. 14, etc. The suffix is regulated by the thing repre-
sented by the olive, i.e. Judah as a kingdom. Its branches
brake ; VV"], elsewhere only transitive, here intransitive, analo-
gously to YTl in Isa. xlii. 4. Hitz. renders less suitably : its
branches look bad, as being charred, robbed of their gay adorn-
ment. On this head cf. Ezek. xxxi. 12. The setting of fire
to the olive tree Israel came about through its enemies, who
CHAP. XI. 18-23. 217
broke up one part of the kingdom after the other, who liad
already destroyed the kingdom of the ten tribes, and were now
about to destroy Judah next. That the words apply not to
Judah only, but to Israel as well, appears from ver. 17, where
the Lord, who has planted Israel, is said to have spoken, i.e.
decreed evil for the sin of the two houses, Israel and Judah.
laT is not directly = decree, but intimates also the utterance of
the decree by the prophet. DH? after IW is dat. incomm. : the
evil which they have done to their hurt; cf. xliv. 3, where the
dative is wanting. Hitz. finds in DHP an intimation of voluntary
action, as throwing back the deed upon the subject as an act of
free choice ; cf. Ew. § 315, a.
Chap. xi. 18-xii. 17. Evidence that Judah is unee-
CLAIMABLE, AND THAT THE SOKE JUDGMENTS THREATENED
CANNOT BE AVEKTED. — As a practical proof of the people's
determination not to reform, we have in
Vers. 18-23 an account of the designs of the inhabitants of
Anathoth against the prophets life, inasmuch as it was their ill-
■will towards his prophecies that led them to this crime. They
are determined not to hear the word of God, chiding and
punishing them for their sins, and so to put the preacher of
this word out of the way. — Ver. 18. " And Jahveli gave me
knowledge of it, and I knew it; then showedst Thou me their
doings. Ver. 19. And I was as a tame lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and knew not that they plotted designs against me :
Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and cut him off
out of the land of the living, that his name may be no more
remembered. Ver. 20. But Jahveh of hosts, that judgeth
justly, trieth reins and heart — I shall see Thy vengeance on
them, for to Thee have I confided my cause. Ver. 21. There-
fore thus hath Jahveh spoken against the men of Anathoth,
that seek after thy life, saying. Thou shalt not prophesy in the
name of Jahveh, that thou die not by our hand. Ver. 22.
Therefore thus hath Jahveh of hosts spoken : Behold, I will
punish them ; the young men shall die by the sword, their sons
and daughters shall die by famine. Ver. 23. And a remnant
shall not remain to them ; for I bring evil upon the men of
Anathoth, the year of their visitation."
218 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Jeremiah had not himself observed the designs of the people
of Anathoth against his life, because the thing was carried on
in secret ; but the Lord made it known to him. tx, then, sc.
when I knew nought of their murderous intent ; cf. ver. 19.
"Their doings," i.e. those done in secret. Ver. 19. ^^^ E'33,
agnus mansuetus, a tame pet-lamb, such as the Arabs used to
keep, such as the Hebrews too, 2 Sam. xii. 3, kept ; familiar
with the household, reared by them in the house, that does not
suspect when it is being taken to be killed. In hke manner
Jeremiah had no suspicion that his countrymen were har-
bouring evil designs against him. These designs are quoted
directly without "'OS?. The saying is a figurative or proverbial
one : we will destroy the tree i^npa. This word is variously
taken. The ordinary meaning, food for men and beasts,
usually bread, seems not to be suitable. And so Hitz. wishes
to read in73, in its sap (cf. Deut. xxxiv. 7, Ezek. xxi. 3), because
orb may mean grain, but it does not mean fruit. Nag. justly
remarks against this view : What is here essential is simply
the produce of the tree, furnished for the use of man. The
word of the prophet was a food which they abhorred (cf. ver.
21Zi). As Cin? originally meant food, we here understand by
it the edible product of the tree, that is, its fruit, in opposi-
tion to sap, wood, leaves. This interpretation is confirmed by
the Arabic ; the Arabs use both ^^^ and J^l of the fruit of a
tree, see ill. in Rosenm. Scliol. ad h. I. The proverbial saying
is given in plain words in the next clause. We will cut him
{i.e. the prophet) off, etc. — Ver. 20. Therefore Jeremiah calls
upon the Lord, as the righteous judge and omniscient searcher
of hearts, to punish his enemies. This verse is repeated almost
verbally in xx. 12, and in substance in xvii. 10. Who trieth
reins and heart, and therefore knows that Jeremiah has done
no evil. ns"ix is future as expressing certainty that God will
interfere to punish ; for to Him he has wholly committed his
cause. '^7?. Pi- of ^73, is taken by Hitz., Ew., etc. in the sense
of ??3 : on Thee have I rolled over my cause ; in support of
this they adduce Ps. xxii. 9, xxxvii. 5, Prov. xvi. 3, as parallel
passages. It is true that this interpretation can be vindicated
grammatically, for hh), might have assumed the form of rh),
CHAP. XII. 1-G. 219
(Evv. § 121, a). But the passages quoted are not at all decisive,
since Jeremiah very frequently gives a new sense to quotations
by making slight alterations on them ; and in the passage cited
we read y] n« -'?3. We therefore adhere, with Grot, and Eos.,
to the usual meaning of 'X3 ; understanding that in making
known there is included the idea of entrusting, a force sug-
gested by the construction with PX instead of p. 3'"!, controversy,
cause. — The prophet declares God's vengeance to the insti-
gators of the plots against his life, vers. 21-23. The intro-
ductory formula in ver. 21 is repeated in ver. 22, on account of
the long intervening parenthesis. " That thou diest not" is
introduced by the \ of consecution. The punishment is to fall
upon the entire population of Anathoth ; on the young men
of military age (D^'i^na), a violent death in war ; on the chil-
dren, death by famine consequent on the siege. Even though
all had not had a share in the complot, yet were they at heart
just as much alienated from God and ill-disposed towards His
word. " Year of their visitation " is still dependent on " bring."
This construction is simpler than taking DJB' for accus. adverb.,
both here and in xxiii. 12.
Chap. xii. 1-6. Tlie prophets displeasure at the prosperity of
the wicked. — The enmity experienced by Jeremiah at the hands
of his countrymen at Anathoth excites his displeasure at the
prosperity of the wicked, who thrive and live with immunity.
He therefore begins to expostulate with God, and demands
from God's righteousness that they be cut off out of the land
(vers. 1-4) ; wliereupon the Lord reproves him for this outburst
of ill-nature and impatience by telling him that he must patiently
endure still worse. — This section, the connection of which with
the preceding is unmistakeable, shows by a concrete instance
the utter corruptness of the people; and it has been included
in the prophecies because it sets before us the greatness of
God's long-suffering towards a people ripe for destruction.
Ver. 1. " Kighteous art Thou, Jahveh, if I contend with
Thee ; yet will I plead with Thee in words. Wherefore doth the
way of tlie wicked prosper, are all secure that deal faithlessly?
Ver. 2. Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root ;
grow, yea, bring forth fruit. Near art Thou in their mouth,
yet far from their reins. Ver. 3. But Thou, Jahveh, knowest
220 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
me, seest me, and triest mine heart toward Thee. Tear them
away like sheep to the slaughter, and devote them for a day of
slautrhter. Ver. 4. How long is the earth to mourn and the
herb of the field to wither? For the wickedness of them that
dwell therein, gone are cattle and fowl ; for they say : He sees
not our end. — Ver. 5. If with the footmen then didst run and
they wearied thee, how couldst thou contend with the horses ?
and if thou trustest in the land of peace, how wilt thou do in
the glorj' of Jordan ? Ver. 6. For even thy brethren and thy
father's house, even they are faithless towards thee, yea, they
call after thee with full voice. Believe them not, though they
speak friendly to thee."
The prophet's complaint begins by acknowledging : Thou art
righteous. Lord, if I would dispute with Thee, i.e. would accuse
Thee of injustice. I could convict Thee of no wrong ; Thou
wouldst appear righteous and prove Thyself in the right. Ps.
li. 6 ; Job ix. 2 ff. With ^X comes in a limitation : only he
will speak pleas of right, maintain a suit with Jahveh, will set
before Him something that seems incompatible with God's
justice, namely the question : Why the way of the wicked
prospers, why they that act faithlessly are in ease and comfort?
On this cf. Job xxi. 7 ff., where Job sets forth at length the
contradiction between the prosperity of the wicked and the
justice of God's providence. The way of the wicked is the
course of their life, their conduct. God has planted them,
i.e. has placed them in their circumstances of life; like a tree
they have struck root into the ground ; they go on, i.e. grow,
and bear fruit, i.e. their undertakings succeed, although they
have God in their mouth only, not in their heart. — Ver. 3. To
show that he has cause for his question, Jeremiah appeals to
the omniscience of the Searcher of hearts. God knows him,
tries his heart, and therefore knows how it is disposed towards
Himself (^RN belongs to ''sh, the nx indicating the relation —
here, viz., fidelity — in which the heart stands to God ; cf. 2 Sara,
xvi. 17). Thus God knows that in his heart there is no un-
faithfulness, and that he maintains to God an attitude alto-
gether other than that of those hypocrites who have God on
their lips only ; and knows too the enmity which, without hav-
ing provoked it, he experiences. How then comes it about
CHAP. XII. 1-6. 221
tliat with the prophet it goes ill, while with those faithless ones
it goes well? God, as the righteous God, must remove this
contradiction. And so his request concludes : Tear them out
(pn5 of the tearing out of roots, Ezek. xvii. 9) ; here Hiph. with
the same force (pointing back to the metaphor of their being
rooted, ver. 2), implying total destruction. Hence also the
illustration : as sheep, that are dragged away out of the flock to
be slaughtered. Devote them for the day of slaughter, like
animals devoted to sacrifice. — Ver. 4 gives the motive of his
prayer : How long shall the earth suffer from the wickedness
of these hypocrites? be visited with drought and dearth for
their sins ? This question is not be taken as a complaint that
God is punishing without end ; Hitz. so takes it, and then pro-
poses to delete it as being out of all connection in sense with
ver. 3 or ver. 5. It is a complaint because of the continuance
of God's chastisements, drawn down by the wickedness of the
apostates, which are bringing the land to utter ruin. The
mourning of the land and the withering of the herb is a conse-
quence of great drought ; and the drought is a divine chastise-
ment : cf. iii. 3, v. 24 ff., xiv. 2 ff., etc. But this falls not only
un the unfaithful, but upon the godly too, and even the beasts,
cattle, and birds suffer from it ; and so the innocent along with
the guilty. There seems to be injustice in this. To put an
end to this injustice, to rescue the innocent from the curse
brought by the wickedness of the ungodly, the prophet seeks
the destruction of the wicked, nap, to be swept away. The
3d pers. fem. sing, with the plural ni— , as in Joel i. 20 and
often ; cf. Ew. § 317, a, Gesen. § 146, 3. " They that dwell
therein " are inhabitants of the land at large, the ungodly
multitude of the people, of whom it is said in the last clause :
they say. He will not see our end. The sense of these words
is determined by the subject. Many follow the LXX. {ovk
o^jrerai, 6 0eo? 6Sov<; rjuSiv) and refer the seeing to God. God
will not see their end, i.e. will not trouble Himself about it
(Schnur., Eos., and others), or will not pay any heed to their
future fate, so that they may do all they choose unpunished
(Ew.). But to this Graf has justly objected, that nxn, in all
the passages that can be cited for this sense of the word, is used
only of that which God sees, regards as already present, never
222 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of tliat which is future. " He sees " is to be referred to the
prophet. Of him the ungodly say, he shall not see their end,
because they intend to put him out of the way (Hitz.) ; of
better, in a less special sense, they ridicule the idea that his
prophecies will be fulfilled, and say : He shall not see our end,
because his threatenings will not come to pass.
In vers. 5 and 6 the Lord so answers the prophet's complaint
as to reprove his impatience, by intimating that he will have
to endure still worse. Both parts of ver. 5 are of the nature
of proverbs. If even the race with footmen made him weary,
how will he be able to compete with horses ? irinri here and xxii.
15, a Tiph., Aramaic form for Hiph., arising by the hardening
of the n into n — cf . Hos. xi. 3, and Ew. § 122, a — rival, vie with.
The proverb exhibits the contrast between tasks of smaller and
greater difficulty, applied to the prophet's relation to his enemies.
What Jeremiah had to suffer from his countrymen at Ana-
thoth was but a trifle compared with the malign assaults that
yet awaited him in the discharge of his office. The second
comparison conveys the same thought, but with a clearer inti-
mation of the dangers the prophet will undergo. If thou
puttest thy trust in a peaceful land, there alone countest on
living in peace and safety, how wilt thou bear thyself in the
glory of Jordan % The latter phrase does not mean the swelling
of Jordan, its high flood, so as that we should, with Umbr. and
Ew., have here to think of the danger arising from a great and
sudden inundation. It is the strip of laud alone the bank of
the Jordan, thickly overgrown with shrubs, trees, and tall reeds,
the lower valley, flooded when the river was swollen, where
lions had their haunt, as in the reedy thickets of the Euphrates.
Cf. V. Schubert, Heise, iii. S. 82 ; Eobins. Bihl. Researches in
Palestine, i. 535, and Phys. Geogr. of the Holy Land, p. 147.
The " pride of the Jordan " is therefore mentioned in xlix.
19, 1. 44, Zech. xi. 3, as the haunt of lions, and comes before
us here as a region where men's lives were in danger. The
point of the comparison is accordingly this : Thy case up till
this time is, in spite of the onsets thou hast borne, to be com-
pared to a sojourn in a peaceful land ; but thou shalt come into
much sorer case, where thou shalt never for a moment be sure
of thy life. To illustrate this, he is told in ver. 6 that his
CHAP. XII. 7-17. 223
nearest of kin, and those dwelling under the same roof, -will
behave unfaithfully towards him. They will cry behind him
''•!'?) plena voce (Jerome ; cf. W^iD ^ii']\>, iv. 5). They will cry
after him, " as one cries when pursuing a thief or murderer "
(Gr.). Perfectly apposite is therefore Luther's translation :
They set up a hue and cry after thee. These words are not
meant to be literally taken, but convey the thought, that even
his nearest friends will persecute him as a malefactor. It is
therefore a perverse design that seeks to find the distinction
between the inhabitants of Anathoth and the brethren and
housemates, in a contrast between the priests and the blood-
relations. Although Anathoth was a city of the priests, the
men of Anathoth need not have been all priests, since these
cities were not exclusively occupied by priests. — In this reproof
of the prophet there lies not merely the truth that much sorer
suffering yet awaits him, but the truth besides, that the people's
faithlessness and wickedness towards God and men will j'et
grow greater, ere the judgment of destruction fall upon Judah ;
for the divine long-suffering is not yet exhausted, nor has un-
godliness yet fairly reached its highest point, so that the final
destruction must straightway be carried out. But judgment
will not tari'y long. This thought is carried on in what
follows.
Vers. 7—17. The execution of the judgment on Judah and its
enemies. — As to this passage, which falls into two strophes, vers.
7-13 and vers. 14-17, Hitz., Graf, and others pronounce that
it stands in no kind of connection with what immediately pre-
cedes. The connection of the two strophes with one another
is, however, allowed by these commentators ; while Eichh. and
Dahler hold vers. 14-17 to be a distinct oracle, belonging to the
time of Zedekiah, or to the seventh or eighth year of Jehoiakim.
These views are bound up with an incorrect conception of the
contents of the passage, — to which in the first place we must
accordingly direct our attention.
Ver. 7. " I have forsaken mine house, cast out mine heritage,
given the beloved of my soul into the hand of its enemies.
Ver. 8. Mine heritage is become unto me as a lion in the forest,
it hath lifted up its voice against me ; therefore have I hated
it. Ver. 9. Is mine heritage to me a speckled vulture, that
224 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAII.
vultures are round about it ? Come, gather all the beasts of
the field, bring them to devour! Ver. 10. Many shepherds
have destroyed my vineyard, have trodden down my ground,
have made the plot of my pleasure a desolate wilderness.
Ver. 11. They have made it a desolation ; it mourneth around
me desolate ; desolated is the whole land, because none laid it to
heart. Ver. 12. On all the bare-peaked heights in the v^ilder-
ness are spoilers come ; for a sword of Jahveh's devours from
one end of the land unto the other : no peace to all flesh.
Ver. 13. They have sown wheat and reaped thorns ; they have
■worn themselves weary and accomplished nothing. So then
ye shall be put to shame for your produce, because of the hot
anger of Jahveh."
Ver. 14. " Thus saith Jahveh against all mine evil neigh-
bours, that touch the heritage which I have given unto my
people Israel : Behold, I pluck them out of their land, and the
house of Judah will I pluck out of their midst. Ver. 15. But
after I have plucked them out, I will pity them again, and
bring them back, each to his heritage, and each into his
land. Ver. 16. And it shall be, if they will learn the ways of
my people, to swear by my name : As Jahveh liveth, as they
have taught my people to swear by Baal, then they shall be
built in the midst of my people. Ver. 17. But if they hearken
not, I will pluck up such a nation, utterly destroying it, saith
Jahveh."
Hitz. and Graf, in opposition to other commentators, will
have the strophe, vers. 7-13, to be taken not as prophecy, but
as a lament on the devastation which Judah, after Jehoiakim's
defection from Nebuchadnezzar in the eighth year of his reign,
had suffered through the war of spoliation undertaken against
insurgent Judah by those neighbouring nations that had main-
tained their allegiance to Chaldean supremacy, 2 Kings xxiv.
2 f. In support of this, Gr. appeals to the use throughout of
unconnected perfects, and to the prophecy, ver. 14 ff., joined
with this description ; which, he says, shows that it is something
complete, existing, which is described, a state of affairs on which
the prophecy is based. For although the prophet, viewing the
future with the eyes of a seer as a thing present, often describes
it as if it had already taken place, yet, he says, the context easily
CHAP. XII. 7-17. 225
enables us in such a case to recognise the description as pro-
phetic, whici], ace. to Graf, is not the case here. This argument
is void of all force. To show that the use of unconnected
perfects proves nothing, it is sufficient to note that sucli
perfects are used in ver. 6, where Hitz. and Gr. take ^1^3 and
li'li^^ as prophetic. So with the perfects in ver. 7. The context
demands this. For though no particle attaches ver. 7 to what
precedes, yet, as Graf himself alleges against Hitz., it is shown
by the lack of any heading that the fragment (vers. 7-13) is
" not a special, originally independent oracle ;" and just as
clearly, that it can by no means be (as Gr. supposes) an
appendix, stuck on to the preceding in a purely external and
accidental fashion. Tiiese assumptions are disproved by the
contents of the fragment, which are simply an expansion of tlie
threat of expulsion from their inheritance conveyed to the
people already in xi. 14-17 ; an expansion which not merely
points back to xi. 14-17, but which most aptly attaches itself
to the reproof given to the prophet for his complaint that
judgment on the ungodly was delayed (xii. 1-6) ; since it dis-
closes to the prophet God's designs in regard to His people, and
teaches that the judgment, though it may be delayed, will not
be withheld. — Vers. 7 £f. contain sayings of God, not of the
prophet, who had left his house in Anathoth, as Zwingli and
Bugenhagen thought. The perfects are prophetic, i.e. intimate
the divine decree already determined on, whose accomplishment
is irrevocably' fixed, and will certainly by and by take place.
"My house" is neither the temple nor the land inhabited by
Israel, in support whereof appeal is unjustly made to passages
like Hos. viii. 1, ix. 15, Ezek. viii. 12, ix. 9 ; but, as is clearly
shown by the parallel " mine heritage," taken in connection
with what is said of the heritage in ver. 8, and by " the beloved
of my soul," ver. 7, means the people of Israel, or Judah as the
eixisting representative of the people of God (house = family) ;
see on Hos, viii. 1. wnj = rhn: Dy, Deut. iv. 20, cf. Isa. xlvii.
6, xix. 25. nnn^, object of my sonl's love, cf. xi. 15. This
appellation, too, cannot apply to the land, but to the people of
Israel. — "Ver. 8 contains the reason why Jahveh gives up Plis
people for a prey. It has behaved to God like a lion, i.e. has
opposed Him fiercely like a furious beast. Therefore He must
VOL. I. P
226 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
withdraw His love. To give with the voice = to lift up the
voice, as in Ps. xlvi. 7, Ixviii. 34. " Hate" is a stronger ex-
pression for the withdrawal of love, shown by delivering Israel
into the hand of its enemies, as in Mai. i. 3. There is no
reason for taking 'HWa' as inchoative (Hitz., I learned to hate
it). The " hating" is explained fully in the following verses.
In ver. 9 the meaning of PiSS 0]^^} is disputed. In all other
jilaces where it occurs t3'V means a bird of prey, cf. Isa. xlvi.
11, or collective, birds of prey. Gen. xv. 11, Isa. xviii, 6. J?^3'^,
*r ^ ^
in the Rabbinical Heb. the hyaena, like the Arabic j_ji^ or
j_v-a. So the LXX. have rendered it ; and so, too, many recent
coram., e.g. Gesen. in thes. But with this the asyndeton by
way of connection with ti^JJ does not well consist : is a bird of
prey, a hyjena, mine heritage ? On this ground Boch. {Hieroz.
ii. p. 176, ed. Ros.) sought to make good the claim of t3;j) to
mean " beast of prey," but without proving his case. Nor is
there in biblical Heb. any sure case for V13V in the meaning of
hyaena ; and the Rabbinical usage would appear to be founded
on this interpretation of the word in the passage before us. Wy^
,_j^^, means dip, hence dye ; and so VSV^ Judg. v. 30, is dyed
materials, in plur. parti-coloured clothes. To this meaning
Jerome, Syr., and Targ. have adhered in the present case ;
Jerome gives avis discolor, whence Luther's der sprincJdigt
Vogel ; Chr. B. Mich., avis coloraia. So, and rightly, Hitz.,
Ew., Graf, Nag. The prophet alludes to the well-known fact
of natural history, that " whenever a strange-looking bird is
seen amongst the others, whether it be an owl of the niwht
amidst the birds of day, or a bird of gaj', variegated plumage
amidst those of duskier hue, the others pursue the unfamiliar
intruder with loud cries and unite in attacking it." Hitz.,
with reference to Tacit. Ann. vi. 28, Sueton. Cws. 81, and
Plin. Hist. N. x. 19. The question is the expression of amaze-
ment, and is assertory. Y is dat. ethic, intimating sympathetic
participation (Nag.), and not to be changed, with Gr., into '3.
The next clause is also a question : are birds of prey round
about it (mine heritage), sc. to plunder it ? This, too, is meant
CHAP. XII. 7-17. 227
to convey affirmation. With it is connected the summons to
the beasts of prey to gather round Judah to devour it. The
words here come from Isa. Ivi. 9. The beasts are emblem for
enemies. V'^i) is not first mode or perfect (Hitz.), but imperat.,
contracted from ^''^^Jl}, as in Isa. xxi. 14. The same thought
is, in ver. 10, carried on under a figure that is more directly
expressive of the matter in hand. The perfects in vers. 10-12
are once more prophetic. The shepherds who (along with
their flocks, of course) destroy the vineyard of the Lord are
the kings of the heathen, Nebuchadnezzar and the kings
subject to him, with their warriors. The " destroying" is
expanded in a manner consistent with the figure ; and here we
must not fail to note the cumulation of the words and the
climax thus produced. They tread down the plot of ground,
turn the precious plot into a howling wilderness. With " plot
of my pleasure" cf. 'lJ1 n^on pX, iii. 19.
In ver. 11 the emblematical shepherds are brought forward
in the more direct form of enemy. HOB', he (the enemy,
" they" impersonal) has changed it (the plot of ground) into
desolation. It mourneth vJJj round about me, desolated.
Spoilers are come on all the bare-topped hills of the desert.
"laiD is the name for such parts of the country as were suited
only for rearing and pasturing cattle, like the so-called wilder-
ness of Judah to the west of the Dead Sea. A sword of the
Lord's (i.e. the war sent by Jahveh, cf. xxv. 29, vi. 25) devours
the whole land from end to end ; cf. xxv. 33. "All flesh " is
limited by the context to all flesh in the land of Judah. IK'S
in the sense of Gen. vi. 12, sinful mankind; here: the whole
sinful population of Judah. For them there is no DvB', welfare
or peace. — Ver. 13. They reap the contrary of what they have
sowed. The words : wheat they have sown, thorns they reap,
are manifestly of the nature of a saw or proverb ; certainly not
merely with the force of meliora eaispectaverant et venerunt
pessima (Jerome) ; for sowing corresponds not to hoping or
expecting, but to doing and undertaking. Their labour brings
them the reverse of what they aimed at or sought to attain.
To understand the words directly of the failure of the crop, as
Ven., Eos., Hitz., Graf, Nag. prefer to do, is fair neither to
text nor context. To reap thorns is not = to have a bad har-
228 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
vest by reason of drought, blight, or the ravaging of enemies.
The seed: wheat, the noblest grain, produces thorns, the very
opposite of available fruit. And the context, too, excludes the
thought of agriculture and "literal harvesting." The thought
that the crop turned out a failure would be a very lame ter-
mination to a description of how the whole land was ravaged
from end to end by the sword of the Lord. The verse forms a
conclusion which sums up the threatening of vers. 7-12, to the
effect that the people's sinful ongoings will bring them sore
suffering, instead of tlie good fortune they hoped for. ^-'HJ,
they have worn themselves out, exhausted their strength, and
secured no profit. Thus shall ye be put to shame for your pro-
duce, ignominously disappointed in your hopes for the issue of
your labour.
Vers. 14-17. The spoilers of the Lord's heritage are also to
be carried off out of their land ; but after they, like Judah,
have been punished, the Lord will have pity on them, and will
bring them back one and all into their own land. And if the
heathen, who now seduce the people of God to idolatry, learn
the ways of God's people and he converted to the Lord, they
shall receive citizenship amongst God's people and be built up
amongst them ; but if they will not do so, they shall be extir-
pated. Thus will the Lord manifest Himself before the whole
earth as righteous judge, and through judgment secure the
weal not only of Israel, but of the heathen peoples too. By
this discovery of His world-plan the Lord makes so complete a
reply to the prophet's murmuring concerning the prosperity of
the ungodly (vers. 1-6), that from it may clearly be seen the
justice of God's government on earth. Viewed thus, both
strophes of the passage before us (vers. 7-17) connect them-
selves singularly well with vers. 1-6. — Ver. 14. The evil neiirh-
bours that lay hands on Jahveh's heritage are the neiahbour-
ing heathen nations, the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites,
Philistines, and Syrians. It does not, however, follow that
this threatening has special reference to the event related in
2 Kings xxiv. 2, and that it belongs to the time of Jehoiakim.
These nations were always endeavouring to assault Israel, and
made use of every opportunity that seemed favourable for
waging war against them and subjugating them ; and not for
CHAP. XIII. 229
the first time during tlie reign of Nebucliadnezzar, at wliicli
time it was indeed that they suffered the punishment here pro-
nounced, of being carried away into exile. The neighbours
are brought up here simply as representatives of the heathen
nations, and what is said of them is true for all the heathen.
The transition to the first person in ''WK' is like that in xiv. 15.
Jahveh is possessor of the land of Israel, and so the adjoining
peoples are His neighbours. 3 Vii, to touch as an enemy, to
attack, cf. Zech. ii. 12. I pluck the house of Judah out of
their midst, i.e. the midst of the evil neighbours. This is
understood by most commentators of the carrying of Judali
into captivity, since tyrij cannot be taken in two different senses
in the two corresponding clauses. For this word used of
deportation, cf. 1 Kings xiv. 15. "Them," ver. 15, refers to
the heathen peoples. After they have been carried forth of
their land and have received their punishment, the Lord will
again have compassion upon them, and will bring back each to
its inheritance, its land. Here the restoration of Judah, the
people of God, is assumed as a thing of course (cf. ver. 16 and
xxxii. 37, 44, xxxiii. 26). — Ver. 16. If then the heathen learn
the ways of the people of God. What we are to understand
by this is clear from the following infinitive clause : to swear
in the name of Jahveh, viz. if they adopt the worship of
Jahveh (for swearing is mentioned as one of the principal
utterances of a religious confession). If they do so, then shall
they be built in the midst of God's people, i.e. incorporated
with it, and along with it favoured and blessed. — Ver. 17. But
they who hearken not, namely, to the invitation to take Jahveh
as the true God, these shall be utterly destroyed. ^3N1 tjiinj,
so to pluck them out that they may perish. The promise is
Messianic, cf. xvi. 19, Isa. Ivi. 6 f ., Mic. iv. 1-4, etc., inasmuch
as it points to the end of God's way with all nations.
Chap. xiii. The humiliation of Judah's pride. — The
first section of this chapter contains a symbolical action which
sets forth the corruptness of Judah (vers. 1-11), and shows in
figurative language how the Lord will bring Judah's haughti-
ness to nothing (vers. 12-14). Upon the back of this comes
the warning to repent, and the threatening addressed to the
230 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
king and queen, that the crown shall fall from their head, that
Judah shall be carried captive, and Jerusalem dishonoured, be-
cause of their disgraceful idolatry (vers. 15-27).
Vers. 1-11. The spoilt girdle. — Ver. 1. "Thus spake Jahveh
unto me : Go and buy thee a Hnen girdle, and put it upon thy
loins, but into the water thou shalt not bring it. Ver. 2. So I
bought the girdle, according to the word of Jahveh, and put
it upon my loins. Ver. 3. Then came the word of Jahveh to
me the second time, saying : Ver. 4. Take the girdle which
thou hast bought, which is upon thy loins, and arise, and go to
the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock. Ver. 5.
So I went and hid it, as Jahveh had commanded me. Ver. 6.
And it came to pass after many days, that Jahveh said unto
me : Arise, go to the Euphrates, and bring thence the girdle
which I commanded thee to hide there. Ver. 7. And I went
to the Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the
place where I had hid it ; and, behold, the girdle was marred,
was good for nothing. Ver. 8. And the word of Jahveh came
to me, saying: Ver. 9. Thus hath Jahveh said, After this
manner will I mar the pride of Judah, the great pride of Jeru-
salem. Ver. 10. This evil people, which refuse to hear my
words, which walk in the stubbornness of their heart, and walk
after other gods, to serve them and to worship them, it shall he
as this girdle which is good for nothing. Ver. 11. For as the
girdle cleaves to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave
unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of
Judah, saith Jahveh ; that it might be to me for a people and
for a name, for a praise and for an ornament; but they
hearkened not."
With regard to the symbolical action imposed on the pro-
phet and performed by him, the question arises, whether the
thing took place in outward reality, or was only an occurrence
in the spirit, in the inward vision. The first view seems to be
supported by the wording of the passage, namely, the twice re-
peated account of the prophet's journey to the Phrat on the
strength of a twice repeated divine command. But on the
other hand, it has been found very improbable that " Jeremiah
should twice have made a journey to the Euphrates, merely to
prove that a linen girdle, if it lie long in the damp, becomes
CHAP. XIII. 1-11. 231
spoilt, a thing he could have done much nearer home, and which
besides everybody knew without experiment" (Graf). On this
ground Eos., Graf, etc., hold the matter for a parable or an
allegorical tale. But this view depends for support on the
erroneous assumption that the specification of the Euphrates is
of no kind of importance for the matter in hand ; whereas the
contrary may be gathered from the four times repeated men-
tion of the place. Nor is anything proved against the real
performance of God's command by the remark, that the journey
thither and back on both occasions is spoken of as if it were a
mere matter of crossing a field. The Bible writers are wont to
set forth such external matters in no very circumstantial way.
And the great distance of the Euphrates — about 250 miles — ■
gives us no sufficient reason for departing from the narrative as
we have it before us, pointing as it does to a literal and real
carrying out of God's command, and to relegate the matter to
the inward region of spiritual vision, or to take the narrative
for an allegorical tale. — Still less reason is to be found in
arbitrary interpretations of the name, such as, after Bochart's
example, have been attempted by Ven., Hitz., and Ew. The
assertion that the Euphrates is called nns inj everywhere else,
including Jer. xlvi. 2, 6, 10, loses its claim to conclusiveness
from the fact that the prefaced nnj is omitted in Gen. ii. 14,
Jer. li. 63. And even Ew. observes, that "fifty years later a
prophet understood the word of the Euphrates at li. 63." Now
even if li. 63 had been written by another prophet, and fifty
years later (which is not the case, see on chap. 1. ff.), the
authority of this prophet would suffice to prove every other
interpretation erroneous; even although the other attempts at
interpretation had been more than the merest fancies. Ew.
remarks, " It is most amazing that recent scholars (Hitz. with
Ven. and Dahl.) could seriously come to adopt the conceit that
nna is one and the same with nnSK (Gen. xlviii. 7), and so with
Bethlehem ;" and what he says is doubly relevant to his own
rendering. n"i3, he says, is either to be be understood like cOji,
of fresh water in general, or like i'j .'s, a place near the water,
a crevice opening from the water into the land, — interpreta-
tions so far fetched as to require no serious refutation.
232 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Move important than the question as to the formal nature
of the emblematical action is that regarding its meaning ; on
which the views of commentators are as muck divided. From
the interpretation in vers. 9-11 thus much is clear, that tlie
girdle is the emblem of Israel, and that the prophet, in putting
on and wearing this girdle, illustrates the relation of God to the
folk of His covenant (Israel and Judah). The further signi-
ficance of the emblem is suggested by the several moments of
tlie action. The girdle does not merely belong to a man's
adornment, but is that part of his clothing which he must put
on when about to undertake any laborious piece of work. The
prophet is to buy and put on a linen girdle. n'JjiB'S, linen, was
the material of the priests' raiment, Ezek. xliv. 17 f., which in
Ex. xxviii. 40, xxsix. 27 ff. is called C'B', white byssus, or 1?,
linen. The priest's girdle was not, however, white, but woven
parti-coloured, after the four colours of the curtains of the
sanctuary, Ex. xxviii. 40, xxxix. 29. Wool ("•?■>) is in Ezek.
xliv. 18 expressly excluded, because it causes the body to sweat.
The linen girdle points, therefore, to the priestly character of
Israel, called to be a holy people, a kingdom of priests (Ex.
xix. 6). "The purchased white girdle of linen, a man's pride
and adornment, is the people bought out of Egypt, yet in its
innocence as it was when the Lord bound it to Himself with
the bands of love" (Umbr.). The prohibition that follows,
" into water thou shalt not bring it," is variously interpreted.
Ohr. B. Mich, says : forte ne madefiat et facilius dein com-
pittrescat ; to the same effect Dahl., Ew., Umbr., Graf : to
keep it safe from the hurtful effects of damp. A view which
refutes itself; since washing does no kind of harm to the linen
girdle, but rather makes it again as good as new. Thus to the
point writes Nag., remarking justly at the same time, that the
command not to bring the girdle into the water plainly implies
ti)at the prophet would have waslied it when it had become
soiled. This was not to be. The girdle was to remain dirty,
and as such to be carried to the Euphrates, in order that, as
Ros. and Maur. observed, it might symbolize sordes quas con-
traxerit populus in dies majores, mores populi magis magisque
lapsi, and that the carrying of the soiled girdle to the Euphrates
might set forth before the eyes of the people what awaited it,
CHAP. XIIL 1-11. 233
after it had long been borne by God covered witli the filtli of
its sins. — The just appreciation of this prohibition leads us
easily to the true meaning of the command in ver. 4, to bring
the girdle that was on his loins to the Euphrates, and there to
conceal it in a cleft in the rock, wiiere it decays. By it is
signified, as Ohr. B. Mich., following Jerome, observes, populi
Judaici apud Chaldcsos citra JEuphratem captivitas et exilium.
Graf has objected : " The corruptness of Israel was not a con-
sequence of the Babylonish captivity ; the latter, indeed, came
about in consequence of the existing corruptness." But this
objection stands and falls with the amphibolia of the word
corruptness, decay. Israel was, indeed, morally decayed before
the exile ; but the mouldering of the girdle in the earth by the
Euphrates signifies not the moral but the physical decay of the
covenant people, which, again, was a result of the moral decay
of the period during which God had, in His long-suffering,
borne the people notwithstanding their sins. Wholly erroneous
is the view adopted by Gr. from Umbr. : the girdle decayed by
the water is the sin-stained people which, intriguing with the
foreign gods, had in its pride cast itself loose from its God, and
had for long imagined itself secure under the protection of the
gods of Chaldea. The hiding of the girdle in the crevice of
a rock by the banks of the Euphrates would have been the
most unsuitable emblem conceivable for representing the moral
corruption of the people. Had the girdle, which God makes to
decay by the Euphrates, loosed itself from him and imagined it
could conceal itself in a foreign land ? as Umbr. puts the case.
According to the declaration, ver. 9, God will mar the great
pride of Judah and Jerusalem, even as the girdle had been
marred, which had at His command been carried to the
Euphrates and hid there. The carrying of the girdle to the
Euplirates is an act proceeding from God, by which Israel is
marred; the intriguing of Israel with strange gods in the land of
Canaan was an act of Israel's own, against the will of God. —
Ver. 6. After the course of many days — these are the seventy
years of the captivity — the prophet is to fetch the girdle again.
He went, digged 0?", whence we see that the hiding in the
cleft of the rock was a buiying in the rocky soil of the
Euphrates bank), and found the girdle marred, fit for nothing.
234 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
These words correspond to the effect which the exile was de-
signed to have, which it has had, on the wicked, idolatrous race.
The ungodly should, as Moses' law, Lev. xxvi. 36, 39, declared,
perish in the land of their enemies ; the land of their enemies
will devour them, and they that remain shall pine or moulder
away in their iniquities and in the iniquities of their fathers
This mouldering (ip?;) is well reproduced in the marring
(nn'J'j) of the girdle. It is no contradiction to this, that a part
of the people will be rescued from the captivity and brought
back to the land of their fathers. For although the girdle
which the prophet had put on his loins symbolized the people
at large, yet the decay of the same at the Euphrates sets forth
only the physical decay of the ungodly part of the people, as
ver. 10 intimates in clear words : " This evil people that refuses
to hear the word of the Lord, etc., shall be as this girdle."
The Lord will mar the liXJ of Judah and Jerusalem. The
word means highness in both a good and in an evil sense, glory
and self-glory. Here it is used with the latter force. This is
shown both by the context, and by a comparison of the passage
Lev. xxvi. 19, that God will break the Tj) fiHi of the people by
sore judgments, which is the foundation of the present ver. 9. —
111 ver. 11 the meaning of the girdle is given, in order to explain
tlie threatening in vers. 9 and 10. As the girdle lies on the
loins of a man, so the Lord hath laid Israel on Himself, that it
may be to Him for a people and for a praise, for a glory and
an adornment, inasmuch as He designed to set it above all
other nations and to make it very glorious; of. Deut. xxvi. 19,
whither these words point back.
Vers. 12-17. How the Lord will destroy His degenerate people,
and how they may yet escape the impending ruin. — Ver. 12. " And
speak unto them this word : Thus hath Jahveh the God of
Israel said, Every jar is filled with wine. And when they say to
thee. Know we not that every jar is filled with wine? Ver. 13.
Then say to them : Thus hath Jahveh said : Behold, I fill all
inhabitants of this land — the kings that sit for David upon his
tlirone, and the priests, and the prophets, and all inhabitants of
Jerusalem— with drunkenness, Ver. 14. And dash them one
against another, the fathers and the sons together, saith Jahveh ;
I will not spare, nor pity, ror have mercy, not to destmy them.
CHAP. XIII. 12-17. 235
■ — Ver. 15. Hear ye and give ear ! Be not proud, for Jahveli
speaketh. Ver. 16. Give to Jahveh, your God, honour, ere He
bring darkness, and before your feet stumble upou the mountains
of dusk, and ye look for light, but He turn it into the shadow
of death and make it darkness. Ver. 17. But if ye hear it not,
then in concealment shall my soul weep for the pride, and weep
and run down shall mine eye with tears, because the flock of
Jahveh is carried away captive."
To give emphasis to the threatening conveyed in the sym-
bolical action, the kind and manner of the destruction awaiting
them is forcibly set before the various ranks in Judali and
Jerusalem by the interpretation, in vers. 12-14, of a proverbial
saying and the application of it to them. The circumstantial
way in which the figurative saying is brought in in ver. 12, is
designed to call attention to its import. ?5?j an earthenware
vessel, especially the wine Jar (cf. Isa. xxx. 24, Lam. iv. 2), is
here the emblem of man ; cf. xviii. 6, Isa. xxix. 16, We must
not, as Nag. does, suppose the simile to be used because such
jars are an excellent emblem of that carnal aristocratic pride
which lacked all substantial merit, by reason of their being of
bulging shape, hollow within and without solidity, and of fragile
material besides. No stress is laid on the bulging form and
hollowness of the jars, but only on their fulness with wine and
their brittleness. Nor can aristocratic haughtiness be predi-
cated of all the inhabitants of the land. The saying : Every
jar is filled with wine, seemed so plain and natural, that those
addressed answer : Of that we are well aware. " The answer is
that of the psychical man, who dreams of no deeper sense"
(Hitz.). Just this very answer gives the prophet occasion to
expound the deeper meaning of this word of God's. As one
fills all wine jars, so must all inhabitants of the land be filled
by God with wine of intoxication. Drunkenness is the effect
of the intoxicating wine of God's wrath, Ps. Ix. 5. This wine
Jahveh will give them (cf. xxv. 15, Isa. li. 17, etc.), so that,
filled with drunken frenzy, they shall helplessly destroy one
another. This spirit will seize upon all ranks : upon the kings
who sit upon the throne of David, not merely him who was
reigning at the time ; upon the priests and prophets as leaders of
the people; and upon all inhabitants of Jerusalem, the metropolis,
236 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
tlie spirit and temper of which exercises an unlimited influence
upon the temper and destiny of the kingdom at large. I dash
them one against the other, as jars are shivered when knocked
together. Here Plitz. finds a foreshadowing of civil war, by
which they should exterminate one another. Jeremiah was
indeed thinking of the staggering against one another of
drunken men, but in " dash them,'" etc., adhered simply to the
figure of jars or pots. But what can be meant by the shivering
of pots knocked together, other than mutual destruction ? The
kingdom of Judah did not indeed fall by civil war ; but who
can deny that the fury of the various factions in Judah and
Jerusalem did really contribute to the fall of the realm ? The
shattering of the pots does not mean directly civil war ; it is
given as the result of the drunkenness of the inhabitants, under
which they, no longer capable of self-control, dash against and
so destroy one another. But besides, the breaking of jars
reminds us of the stratagem of Gideon and his 300 warriors,
who, by the sound of trumpets and the smashing of jars, threw
the whole Midianite camp into such panic, that these foes
turned their swords against one another and fled in wild con-
fusion : Judg. vii. 19 ff., cf. too 1 Sam. xiv. 20. Thus shall
Judah be broken without mercy or pity. To increase the
emphasis, there is a cumulation of expressions, as in xxi. 7,
XV. 5, cf. Ezek. v. 11, vii. 4, 9, etc.— Ver. 15 ff. With this
threatening the prophet couples a solemn exhortation not to
leave the word of the Lord unheeded in their pride, but to give
God the glory, ere judgment fall on them. To give God the
glory is, in this connection, to acknowledge His glory by con-
fession of apostasy from Him and by returning to Him in
sincere repentance; cf. Josh. vii. 19, Mai. ii. 2. "Your God,"
who has attested Himself to you as God. The Hiph. 'HB'n^ is
not used intransitively, either here or in Ps. cxxxix. 12, but
transitively : before He brings or makes darkness ; cf . Amos
viii. 9. Mountains of dusk, i.e. mountains shrouded in dusk,
are the emblem of unseen stumbling-blocks, on which one
stumbles and falls. Light and darkness are well-known
emblems of prosperity and adversity, welfare and misery. The
suffix in HOB' goes with niN, which is construed feminine here
as in Job xxxvi. 32. Siiadow of death =.- deep darkness ; ^'JJ'.,
CHAP. XIII. 18-27. 237
cloudy night, i.e. dark night. The CJiet. rfK'' is imperf., and to
be read T'B'^; the Keri IT'B'I is uncalled for and incorrect. — Ver.
17. Knowing their obstinacy, the prophet adds : if ye hear it
(what I have declared to you) not, my soul shall weep. In
the concealment, quo secedere lugentes amant, ut impensius Jlere
possint (Chr. B. Mich.). For the pi'ide, sc. in which ye persist.
With tears mine eye shall run down because the flock of Jahveh,
i.e. the people of God (cf. Zech. x. 3), is carried away into
captivity (perfect, proph.).
Vers. 18-27. 27*6 fall of the kingdom, the caplivily of Judah,
with upbraidings against Jerusalem for her grievous guilt in the
matter of idolatry. — Ver. 18. " Say unto the king and to the
sovereign lady: Sit you low down, for from your heads falls
the crown of your glory. Ver. 19. The cities of the south are
shut and no man openeth ; Judah is carried away captive all of
it, wholly carried away captive. Ver. 20. Lift up your eyes
and behold them that come from midnight ! Where is the
flock that was given thee, thy glorious flock? Ver. 21. What
wilt thou say, if He set over thee those whom thou hast ac-
customed to thee as familiar friends, for a head ? Shall not
sorrows take thee, as a woman in travail ? 22. And if thou say
in thine heart, Wherefore cometh this upon me ? for the plenty
of thine iniquity are thy skirts uncovered, thy heels abused.
Ver. 23. Can an Ethiopian change his skin, and a leopard his
spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to
doing evil. Ver. 24. Therefore will I scatter them like chaff
that flies before the wind of the wilderness. Ver. 25. This is
thy lot, thine apportioned inheritance from me, because thou
hast forgotten me and trustedst in falsehood. Ver. 26. There-
fore will I turn thy skirts over thy face, that thy shame be seen.
Ver. 27. Thine adultery and thy neighing, the crime of thy
whoredom upon the hills, in the fields, I have seen thine abomi-
nations. Woe unto thee, Jerusalem ! thou sluilt not be made
clean after hov/ long a time yet ! "
From ver. 18 on the prophet's discourse is addressed to the
king and the queen-mother. The latter as such exercised great
influence on the government, and is in the Books of Kings men-
tioned alongside of almost all the reigning kings (cf. 1 Kings
XV. 13, 2 Kings x. 13, etc.) ; so that we are not necessarily led
288 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
to tliink of Jeclioniah and his mother in especial. To them he
proclaims the loss of the crown and the captivity of Judah.
Set yourselves low down (cf. Gesen. § 142, 3, b), i.e. descend from
the throne ; not in order to turn aside the threatening danger
by humiliation, but, as the reason that follows shows, because
the kingdom is passing from you. For fallen is D3'rib'NiD,
your head-gear, lit. what is about or on your head (elsewhere
pointed nw'xnp, 1 Sam. xix. 13, xxvi. 7), namely, your splendid
crown. The perf. here is prophetic. The crown falls when
the king loses country and kingship. This is put expressly in
ver. 19. The meaning of the first half of the verse, which is
variously taken, may be gathered from the second. In the
latter the complete deportation of Judali is spoken of as an
accomplished fact, because it is as sure to happen as if it had
taken place already. Accordingly the first clause cannot
bespeak expectation merely, or be understood, as it is by Grotius,
as meaning that Judah need hope for no help from Egypt.
This interpretation is irreconcilable with "the cities of the
south." "The south" is the south country of Judah, cf. Josh.
X. 40, Gen. xiii. 1, etc., and is not to be taken according to the
prophetic use of "king of the south," Dan. xi. 5, 9. The
shutting of the cities is not to be taken, with Jerome, of siege
by the enemy, as in Josh. vi. 1. There the closedness is other-
wise illustrated : No man was going out or in ; here, on the
other hand, it is : No man openeth. " Shut" is to be explained
according to Isa. xxiv. 10 : the cities are shut up by reason of
ruins which block up the entrances to them ; and in them is
none that can open, because all Judah is utterly carried away.
The cities of the south are mentioned, not because the enemy,
avoiding the capital, had first brought the southern part of the
land under his power, as Sennacherib had once advanced
against Jerusalem from the south, 2 Kings xviii. 13 f., xix. 8
(Graf, Nag., etc.), but because they were the part of the
kingdom most remote for an enemy approaching from the
north ; so that when they were taken, the land was reduced and
the captivity of all Judah accomplished. For the form rbin see
Ew. § 194, a, Ges. § 75, Kem. 1. D'-piSl^ is adverbial accusative :
in entirety, like DnB*'p, Ps. Iviii. 2, 'etc. For this cf. n^^3
n^}p, Amos i. 6, 9.
CHAP. XIII. 18-27. 239
The announcement of eaptivity is earned on in ver. 20,
wliere we have first an aeconnt of the impression ^Yhich tlie
carrying away captive will produce upon Jerusalem (vers. 20
and 21), and next a statement of the cause of that judgment
(vers. 22-27). In "'Kb and ''X'j a feminine is addressed, and,
as appears from the suffix in Q?'';!''^, one which is collective.
The same holds good of the following verses on to ver. 27,
where Jerusalem is named, doubtless the inhabitants of it, per-
sonified as the daughter of Zion — a frequent case. Nag. is
wrong in supposing that the feminines in ver. 20 are called for
by the previously mentioned queen-mother, that vers. 20-22
are still addressed to her, and that not till ver. 23 is there a
transition from her in the address to the nation taken col-
lectively and regarded as the mother of the country. The
contents of ver. 20 do not tally with Nag.'s view ; for the
queen-mother was not the reigning sovereign, so that the inha-
bitants of the land could have been called her flock, however
great was the influence she might exercise upon the king. The
mention of foes coming from the north, and the question
coupled therewith : Where is the flock ? convey the thought
that the flock is carried off by those enemies. Tlie flock is the
flock of Jahveb (ver. 17), and, in virtue of God's choice of it,
a herd of gloriousness. The relative clause : " that was given
thee," implies that the person addressed is to be regarded as
the shepherd or owner of the flock. This will not apply to the
capital and its citizens; for the influence exerted by the capital
in the country is not so great as to make it appear the shepherd
or lord of the people. But the relative clause is in good
keeping with the idea of the daughter of Zion, with which is
readily associated that of ruler of land and people. It inti-
mates the suffering that will he endured by the daughter of
Zion when those who have been hitherto her paramours are
set up as head over her. The verse is variously explained.
The old transU. and comra. take pV "li?3 in the sense of visit,
chastise ; so too Chr. B. Mich, and Eos. ; and Ew. besides,
who alters the text ace. to the LXX., changing IpS'. into the
plural I"!!??!. For this change there is no sufficient reason ; and
without such change, the signif. visit, punish, gives us no
suitable sense. The phrase means also : to appoint or set over
240 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
anybody; cf. f.jf. XV. 3. The subject can only be Jahvcli. The
words from nt?'! onwards form an adversative circumstantial
clause : and yet thou hast accustomed them ^'k^, foJ" ^■-"' '°
thee (cf. for HB^ c. ^X, x. 2). The connection of the words
VtA-h Q'^ihii depends upon the sig. assigned to Q"?^^. Gesen.
{thes.) and Eos. still adhere to the meaning taken by Luther,
Vat., and many others, viz. principes, princes, taking for the
sense of the whole : whom thou hast accustomed (trained) to be
princes over thee. Tiiis word is indeed the technical terra for
the old Edomitish chieftains of clans, Gen. xxxvi. 15 ff., and
is applied as an archaic term by Zech. ix. 7 to the tribal princes
of Judah ; but it does not, as a general rule, mean prince, but
familiar, friend, Ps. Iv. 14, Prov. xvi. 28, Mic. vii. 5 ; cf. Jer.
xi. 19. This being the well-attested signification, it is, in the
first place, not competent to render '^Ivy over or against thee
{adversus te, Jerome) ; and Hitz.'s exposition ; thou hast in-
structed them to thy hurt, hast taught them a disposition
hostile to thee, cannot be justified by usage. In the second
place, D-sIjn' cannot be attached to the principal clause, " set
over thee," and joined with " for a head :"' if He set over thee —
as princes for a head ; but it belongs to " hast accustomed,"
while only " for a head" goes with " if He set" (as de Wet.,
Umbr., Nag., etc., construe). The prophet means the heathen
kings, for wliose favour Judah had liitherto been intriguing,
the Babylonians and Egyptians. There is no cogent reason
for referring the words, as many comm. do, to the Babylonians
alone. For the statement is quite general throughout ; and, on
the one hand, Judah had, from the days of Ahaz on, courted
the alliance not of the Babylonians alone, but of the Egyptians
too (cf. ii. 18) ; and, on the other hand, after the death of Josiah,
Judah had become subject to Egypt, and had had to endure the
grievous domination of the Pharaohs, as Jeremiah had threat-
ened, ii. 16. If God deliver the daughter of Zion into the
power of these her paramours, i.e. if she be subjected to their
rule, then will grief and pain seize on her as on a woman in
childbirth ; cf. vi. 24, xxii. 23, etc. n"]? DK'X, woman of bearing ;
so here only, elsewhere ^J?}'' (cf. the passages cited) ; 'Ti? is
infill., as in Isa. xxxvii. 3, 2 Kings xix. 3, Hos. ix. 11. — Ver. 22,
This will befall the danghter of Zion for her sore transgressions.
CHAP. XIII. 18-27. 241
Therefore will she be covered with scorn and shame. The
manner of her dishonour, discovery of the skirts (here and
esp. in ver. 26), recalls Nah. iii. 5, cf. Isa. xlvii. 3, Hos. ii. 5.
Chr. B. Mich, and others understand the violent treatment of
the heels to be the loading of the feet with chains ; but the
mention of heels is not in keeping with this. Still less can the
exposure of the heels by the upturning of the skirts be called
maltreatment of the heels ; nor can it be that, as Hitz. holds,
the affront is simply specialized by the mention of the heels
instead of the person. The thing can only mean, that the
person will be driven forth into exile barefoot and with violence,
perhaps under the rod ; cf. Ps. Ixxxix. 52. — Ver. 23. Judah will
not escape this ignominious lot, since wickedness has so grown
to be its nature, that it can as little cease therefrom and do
good, as an Ethiopian can wash out the blackness of his skin,
or a panther change its spots. The consequential clause intro-
duced by Dns D3 connects with the possibility suggested in, but
denied by, the preceding question : if that could happen, then
might even ye do good. The one thing is as impossible as the
other. And so the Lord must scatter Judah among the heathen,
like stubble swept away by the desert wind, lit. passing by with
the desert wind. The desert wind is the strong east wind that
blows from the Arabian Desert; see on iv. 11.
In ver. 25 the discourse draws to a conclusion in such a way
that, after a repetition of the manner in which Jerusalem pre-
pares for herself the doom announced, we have again, in brief
and condensed shape, the disgrace that is to befall her. This
shall be thy lot. Hitz. renders ^^IP nJD : portion of thy gar-
ment, that is allotted for the swelling folds of thy garment (cf.
Euth iii. 15, 2 Kings iv. 39), on the ground that "ip never
means mensura, but garment only. This is, however, no con-
clusive argument ; since so many words admit of two plural
forms, so that D'"]!? might be formed from nnp ; and since so
many are found in the singular in the forms of both genders,
so that, alongside of ri'ip, la might also be used in the sense of
mensura ; especially as both the signiff. measure and garment
are derived from the same root meaning of T]p. We therefore
adhere to the usual rendering, portio mensurcB tuce, the share
portioned out to thee, "^f^ causal, because. Trusted in false-
TOL. I. Q
242 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
hood, i.e. both in delusive promises (vii. 4, 8) and in the help
of beingless gods (xvi. 19). — In the ''.JN-D11 lies the force of
reciprocation : because thou hast forgotten me, etc., I too
have taken means to make retribution on your unthankfulness
(Calv.). The tlireatening of this verse is word for word from
Nah. iii. 5. — For her lewd idolatry Jerusalem shall be carried
off like a harlot amid mockery and disgrace. In ver. 27 the
language is cumulative, to lay as great stress as possible on
Jerusalem's idolatrous ongoings. Thy lewd neighing, i.e. thy
ardent longing for and running after strange gods ; of. v. 8,
ii. 24 f. nsr, as in Ezek. xvi. 27, xxii. 9, etc., of the crime
of uncleanness, see on Lev. xviii. 17. The three words are
accusatives dependent on "'^''^l) though separated from it by
the specification of place, and therefore summed up again
in " thine abominations." The addition : in the field, after
" upon the hills," is meant to make more prominent the pub-
licity of the idolatrous work. The concluding sentence : thou
shalt not become clean for how long a time yet, is not to be
regarded as contradictory of ver. 23, which aflarms that the
people is beyond the reach of reformation ; ver. 23 is not a
hyperbolical statement, reduced within its true limits here.
What is said in ver. 23 is true of the present generation, which
cleaves immoveably to wickedness. It does not exclude the
possibility of a future reform on the part of the people, a puri-
fication of it from idolatry. Only this cannot be attained for
a long time, until after sore and long-lasting, purifyiuf judc^-
ments. Of. xii. 14 f., iii. 18 ff.
CHAP. XIV.-XVII. — THE WORD CONCEPJ^ING THE DROUGHTS.
The distress arising from a lengthened drought (xiv. 2-6)
gives the prophet occasion for urgent prayer on behalf of his
people (xiv. 7-9 and 19-22) ; but the Lord rejects all inter-
cession, and gives the people notice, for their apostasy from
Him, of their coming destruction by sword, famine, and pesti-
lence (xiv. 10-18 and xv. 1-9). Next, the prophet complains
of the persecution he has to endure, and is corrected by the
Lord and comforted (xv. 10-21). Then he has his course of
conduct for the future prescribed to him, since Judah is, for its
CHAP. XIV. 1-XV. 9. 243
sins, to be cast forth into banishment, but is again to be restored
(xvi. 1-xvii. 4). And the discourse concludes with general
considerations upon the roots of the mischief, together with
prayers for the prophet's safety, and statements as to the way
by which judgment may be turned aside.
This prophetic word, though it had its origin in a special
period of distress, does not contain any single discourse such as
may have been delivered by Jeremiah before the people upon
occasion of this calamity, but is, like the former sections, a sum-
mary of addresses and utterances concerning the corruption of
the people, and the bitter experiences to which his office exposes
the prophet. For these matters the special event above men-
tioned serves as a starting-point, inasmuch as the deep moral
degradation of Judah, which must draw after it yet sorer judg-
ments, is displayed in the relation assumed by the people to the
judgment sent on them at that time. — The various attempts of
recent commentators to dissect the passage into single portions,
and to assign these to special points of time and to refer them to
particular historical occurrences, have proved an entire failure,
as Graf himself admits. The whole discourse moves in the
same region of thought and adheres to the same aspect of
affairs as the preceding ones, without suggesting special his-
torical relations. And there is an advance made in the pro-
phetic declaration, only in so far as here the whole substance
of the discourse culminates in the thought that, because of
Judah's being hardened in sin, the judgment of rejection can
now in no way be turned aside, not even by the intercession of
those whose prayers would have the greatest weight.
Chap. xiv. 1-xv. 9. The ttselessness of prater on be-
half OF THE PEOPLE. — The title in ver. 1 specifies the occa-
sion for the following discourse : What came as word of Jahveh
to Jeremiah concerning the drought. — Besides here, n^rt l{?'t< is
made to precede the nin» nn^ in xlvi. 1, xlvii. 1, xlix. 34; and
so, by a kind of attraction, the prophecy which follows receives
an outward connection with that which precedes. Concerning
the matters of the droughts. nins3, plur. of nnsa, Ps. ix. 10,
X. 1, might mean harassments, troubles in general. But the
description of a great drought, with which the propliecy begins,
244 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
taken along with xvii. 8, where JTika occurs, meaning drought,
lit. cutting off, restraint of rain, sliows that the plural here is
to be referred to the sing, m'p (cf. n\-\mV from nghp), and
that it means the withholding of rain or drought (as freq. in
Chald.). We must note the plur., which is not to be taken as
intensive of a great drought, but points to repeated droughts.
Withdrawal of rain was threatened as a judgment against the
despisers of God's word (Lev. xxvi. 19 f. ; Deut. xi. 17, xxviii.
23) ; and this chastisement has at various times been inflicted
on the sinful people ; cf. iii. 3, xii. 4, xxiii. 10, Hag. i. 10 f.
As the occasion of the present prophecy, we have therefore to
regard not a single great drought, but a succession of droughts.
Hence we cannot fix the time at which the discourse was com-
posed, since we have no historical notices as to the particular
times at which God was then punishing His people by with-
drawing the rain.
Vers. 2-6. Description of the distress arising from the drought.
— Ver. 2. " Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish, lie
mourning on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem goeth up.
Ver. 3. Their nobles send their mean ones for water: they
come to the wells, find no water, return with empty pitchers,
are ashamed and confounded and cover their head. Ver. 4.
For the ground, which is confounded, because no rain is fallen
upon the earth, the husbandmen are ashamed, cover their head.
Ver. 5. Yea, the hind also in the field, she beareth and
forsaketh it, because there is no grass. Ver. 6. And the wild
asses stand on the bare-topped heights, gasp for air like the
jackals ; their eyes fail because there is no herb."
The country and the city, the distinguished and the mean,
the field and the husbandmen, are thrown into deep mournino-,
and the beasts of the field pine away because neither grass nor
herb grows. This description gives a touching picture of the
distress into which the land and its inhabitants have fallen for
lack of rain. Judah is the kingdom or the country with its
inhabitants; the gates as used poetically for the cities with the
citizens. Not mankind only, but the land itself mourns and
pines away, with all the creatures that live on it ; cf. ver. 4,
where the ground is said to he dismayed along with the tillers
of it. The gates of the cities are mentioned as being the places
CHAP. XIV. 2-6. 245
where the citizens congregate. '?*??<, fade away, pine, is
strengthened by : are blacis, i.e. mourn, down to the earth ;
pregnant for: set tliemselves mourning on the ground. As
frequently, Jerusalem is mentioned alongside of Judah as being
its capital. Their cry of anguish rises up to heaven. This
universal mourning is specialized from ver. 3 on. Their nobles,
i.e. the distinguished men of Jadah and Jerusalem, send their
mean ones, i.e. their retainers or servants and maids, for
water to the wells (^''33, pits, 2 Kings iii. 16, here cisterns).
The Chet. lij?^, here and in xlviii. 4, is an unusual form for
T'VV, Keri. Finding no water, they return, their vessels empty,
i.e. with empty pitchers, ashamed of their disappointed hope.
iCa is strengthened by the synonym 10»n. Covering the head
is a token of deep grief turned inwards upon itself; cf. 2 Sam.
XV. 30, xix. 5. ^?^^0 is the ground generally, nrin is a
relative clause : guce constemata est. " Because no rain," etc.,
literally as in 1 Kings xvii. 7. — Even the beasts droop and
perish. '3 is intensive: yea, even. The hind brings forth
and forsakes, so. the new-born offspring, because for want of
grass she cannot sustain herself and her young. 3ity, iii/in. ahs.
set with emphasis for the temp, fin., as Gen. xli. 43, Ex. viii. 11,
and often ; cf. Gesen. § 131, 4, a, Ew. § 351, c. Tiie hind was
regarded by the ancients as tenderly caring for her young, cf.
Boch. Hieroz. i. lib. 3, c. 17 (ii. p. 254, ed. Eos.). The wild
asses upon the bleak mountain-tops, where these animals choose
to dwell, gasp for air, because, by reason of the dreadful
drought, it is not possible to get a breath of air even on the
hills. Like the D''3I?, jackals, cf. ix. 10, x. 22, etc. Vulg. has
dracones, with the Aram, versions; and Hitz. and Graf are of
opinion that the mention of jackals is not here in point, and
that, since 0*30 does not mean dracones, the word stands here,
as in Ex. xxix, 3, xxxii. 2, for r?'?, the monster inhabiting the
water, a crocodile or some kind of whale that stretches its
head out of the water to draw breath witii gaping jaws. On
this Nag. has well remarked : he cannot see why the gaping,
panting jaws of the jackal should not serve as a figure in such
a case as the present. Their eyes fail away — from exhaustion
due to want of water. 3B'J}, bushes and under-shrnbs, as dis-
tinguished from af^., green grass.
246 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEKEMUn.
Vers. 7-9. The prayer. — Ver. 7. "If our iniquities testify
against us, O Jaliveh, deal Thou for Thy name's sake, for many
are our backslidings ; against Thee have we sinned. Ver. 8.
Thou hope of Israel, his Saviour in time of need, why wilt Thou
be as a stranger in the land, like a wayfarer that hath put up
to tarry for a night? Ver. 9. Why wilt Thou be as a man
astonied, as a mighty man that cannot help, and yet Thou art
in the midst of us, Jahveh, and Thy name is named upon us
— O leave us not ! "
The prophet utters this prayer in the name of his people
(cf. ver. 11). It begins with confession of sore transgression.
Thus the chastisement which has befallen them they have
deserved as a just punishment; but the Lord is besought to
help for His name's sake, i.e. not : " for the sake of Thy honour,
with which it is not consistent that contempt of Thy will should
go unpunished " (Hitz.). This interpretation suits neither the
idea of the name of God nor the context. The name of God
is the manifestation of God's being. From Moses' time on, God,
as Jahveli, has revealed Himself as the Redeemer aud Saviour
of the children of Israel, whom He had adopted to be His
people, and as God, who is merciful and gracious, long-suffer-
ing, and of great goodness and faithfulness (Ex. xxxiv. 6). As
such He is besought to reveal Himself now that they confess
their backsliding and sin, aud seek His grace. Not for the
sake of His honour in the eyes of the world, lest the heathen
believe He has no power to help, as Graf holds, for all reference
to the heathen nations is foreign to this connection ; but He is
entreated to help, not to belie the hope of His people, because
Israel sets its hope in Him as Saviour in time of need (ver. 9).
If by withholding rain He makes His land and people to pine,
then He does not reveal Himself as the lord and owner of
Judah, not as the God that dwells amidst His people; but He
seems a stranger passing through the laud, who sets up His
tent there only to spend the night, who " feels no share in the
weal and woe of the dwellers therein " (Hitz.). This is the
meaning of the question in ver. U. The ancient expositors
take HDJ elliptically, as in Gen. xii. 8 : that stretches out His
tent to pass the night. Hitz., again, objects that the wayfarer
does not drag a tent about with him, and, like Ew., takes this
CHAP. XIV. 10-18. 247
verb in the sense of swerve from the direct route, cf. 2 Sam.
ii. 19, 21, etc. But the reason alleged is not tenable; since
travellers did often carry their tents with them, and nnj, to turn
oneself, is not used absolutely in the sig. to turn aside from the
way, without the qualification : to the right or to the left.
TiD is in use for to turn aside to tarry, to turn in, Jer. xv. 5.
We therefore abide by the old interpretation, since "swerve
from the way" has here no suitable meaning. — Ver. 9. The
pleader makes further appeal to God's alnn'ghty power. It is
impossible that Jahveh can let Plimself look like a man at his
wit's end or a nerveless warrior, as He would seem to be if He
should not give help to His people in their present need. Since
the time of A. Schultens the air. Xey. Qn"jJ is rendered, after
/ / /
the Arab, ^^j, to make an unforeseen attack, by stupefactus,
attonitus, one who, by reason of a sudden mischance, has lost
his presence of mind and is helpless. This is in keeping with
the next comparison, that with a warrior who has no strength
to help. The passage closes with an appeal to the relation of
grace which Jahveh sustains towards His people, nrixi comes
in adversatively : yet art Thou in our midst, i.e. present to Thy
people. Thy name is named upon us, i.e. Thou hast revealed
Thyself to us in Thy being as God of salvation; see on vii. 10.
^jrijr\-?Sj lit. lay us not down, i.e. let us not sink.
Vers. 10-18. The Lord^s answer. — Ver. 10. "Thus saith
Jahveh unto this people : Thus they loved to wander, their feet
they kept not back ; and Jahveh hath no pleasure in them, now
'will He remember their iniquities and visit their sins. Ver. 11.
And Jahveh hath said unto me : Pray not for this people for
their good. Ver. 12. When they fast, I hear not their cry;
and when they bring burnt-offering and meat-offering, I have
no pleasure in them; but by sword, and famine, and pestilence
will I consume them. Ver. 13. Then said I : Ah Lord Jahveh,
behold, the prophets say to them. Ye shall see no sword, and
famine shall not befall you, but assured peace give I in this
place. Ver. 14. And Jahveh said unto me : Lies do the
prophets prophesy in my name : I have not sent them, nor
commanded them, nor spoken to them ; lying vision, and divina-
tion, and a thing of nought, and deceit of their heart they
2±ii THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
prophesy to you. Ver. 15. Therefore thiis saith Jahveh con-
cerning tlie prophets that prophesy in my name, when I have
not sent them, who yet say. Sword ,and famine shall not
be in this land: By sword and famine sliall these prophets
l)erish. Ver. 16. And the people to whom they prophesy shall
lie cast out upon the streets of Jerusalem, by reason of the
famine and of the sword, and none will bury them, them and
their wives, their sons and their dauf;hters; and I pour their
wickedness upon them. Ver. 17. And thou shalt say to them
this word : Let mine eyes run down with tears day and night
and let them not cease ; for with a great breach is broken the
virgin-daughter of my people, with a very grievous blow. Ver.
18. If I go forth into the field, behold the slain with the sword ;
and if I come into the city, behold them that pine with famine ;
for prophet and priest pass into a land and know it not."
To the prophet's prayer the Lord answers in the first place,
ver. 10, by pointing to the backsliding of the people, for which
lie is now punishing them. In the " tJius they love," etc., lies a
backward reference to what precedes. The reference is certainly
not to the vain going for water (ver. 3), as Ch. B. Mich, and R.
Salomo Haccohen thought it was ; nor is it to the description
of the animals afHicted by thirst, vers. 5 and 6, in which Nag.
finds a description of the passionate, unbridled lust after idolatry,
the real and final cause of the ruin that has befallen Israel.
Where could be the likeness between the wild ass's panting
for breath and the wandering of the Jews? That to which the
" thus " refers must be sought for in the body of the prayer to
which Jaliveh makes answer, as Eos. rightly saw. Not by any •
means in the fact that in ver. 9 the Jews prided themselves on
being the people of God and yet went after false gods, so that
God answered : ita amant vacillare, as good as to say : ita
inslahiles illos esse, vt nunc ah ipso, nunc ah aliis auxilium
quwrant (Eos.); for J)U cannot here mean the wavino- and
swaying of reeds, but only the wandering after other gods,
cf. ii. 23, 31. This is shown by the addition : they kept not
back their feet, cf. with ii. 25, where in the same reference the
withholding of the feet is enjoined. Graf is right in referring
thus to the preceding prayer : " Thus, in the same degree a'^
Jahveh has estranged Himself from His people (cf. vers. 8
CHAP. XIV. 10-ia 249
and 9), have they estranged themselves from their God."
They loved to wander after strange gods, and so have brouglit
on themselves God's displeasure. Therefore punishment comes
on them. The second clause of the verse is a reminiscence
of Hos. viii. 13. — After mentioning the reason why He punislies
Judah, the Lord in ver. 11 f. rejects the prayer of the prophet,
because He will not hear the people's cry to Him. Neither by
means of fasts nor sacrifice will they secure God's pleasure.
The prophet's prayer implies that the people will humble them.-
selves and turn to the Lord. Hence God explains His rejection
of the prayer by saying that He will give no heed to the
people's fasting and sacrifices. The reason of this appears
from the contest, — namely, because they turn to Plim only in
their need, while their heart still cleaves to the idols, so that
their prayers are but lip-service, and their sacrifices a soulless
formality. The suffix in DSl refers not to the sacrifices, but,
like that in Onn, to the Jews who, by bringing sacrifices, seek to
win God's love. ''3, but, introducing the antithesis to "have no
pleasure in them." The sword in battle, famine, and pestilence,
at the siege of the cities, are the three means by which God
designs to destroy the backsliding people ; cf. Lev. xxvi. 25 f.
In spite of the rejection of his prayer, the prophet endeavours
yet again to entreat God's favour for the people, laying stress,
ver. 13, on the fact that they had been deceived and confirmed
in their infatuation by the delusive forecastings of the false
prophets who promised peace. Peace of truth, i.e. peace that
rests on God's faithfulness, and so: assured peace will I give
you. Thus spoke these prophets in the name of Jahveh ; cf.
on this iv. 10, v. 12. Hitz. and Graf propose to change DiPB'
riDN into npx) CIVS', ace. to xxxiii. 6 and Isa. xxxix. 8, because
tiie LXX. have akriQuav koX elprjvrfv. But none of the pas-
sages cited furnishes sufficient ground for this. In xxxiii. 6
the LXX. have rendered elprjVTiv koL iriaTLv, in Isa. xxxix. 8,
elprjVT) Kcu BbKabO(Tvvr) ; giving thereby a clear proof tliat we
cannot draw from their rendering any certain inferences as to
the precise words of the original text. Nor do the parallels
prove anything, since in them the expression often varies in
detaih But there can be no doubt that in the mouth of the
pseudo-prophets "assured peace" is more natural than "peace
250 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
and truth." But the Lord does not allow this excuse. He
lias not sent the prophets that so prophesy : they prophesy
lying vision, divination, falsehood, and deceit, and shall them-
selves be destroyed by sword and famine. The cumulation of
the words, " lying vision," etc., shows God's wrath and indigna-
tion at the wicked practices of these men. Graf wants to
delete \ before ^'^X, and to couple Ws with t:D\>., so as to make
one idea : prophecy of nought. For this he can allege none
other than the erroneous reason that DDj?, taken by itself, does
not sufficiently correspond to "lying vision," inasmuch as, he
says, it has not always a bad sense attached to it ; whereas the
fact is that it is nowhere used for genuine prophecy. The
Cket. ?v« and ril»"in are unusual formations, for which the
usual forms are substituted in the Keri. Deceit of their heart
is not self-deceit, but deceit which their heart has devised ; cf .
xxiii. 26. But the people to whom these prophets prophesied
are to perish by sword and famine, and to lie unburied in the
streets of Jerusalem ; cf. viii. 2, xvi. 4. They are not there-
fore held excused because false prophets told them lies, for they
have given credit to these lies, lies that flattered their sinful
passions, and have not been willing to hear or take to heart the
word of the true prophets, who preached repentance and return
to God.^ To Hitz. it seems surprising that, in describing the
punishment which is to fall on seducers and seduced, there
should not be severer judgment, in words at least, levelled
against the seducers as being those involved in the deeper "uilt;
whereas the very contrary is the case in the Hebrew text.
Hitz. further proposes to get rid of this discrepancy by conjec-
tures founded on the LXX., yet without clearly inforniincf us
how we are to read. But the difficulty solves itself as soon as
1 Tlie Berleburg Bible says : "They wish to have such teachers, and even to
bring it about that there shall be so many deceiving workers, because they
can hardly even endure or listen to the upright ones. That is the reason
why it is to go no better with them than we see it is." Calvin too has sug-
gested the doubt: posset tamen videri parum humaniter agere Deus, quod
tarn duraspcenas ivfligit miseris hominibus, qui aliunde decepti sunt, and has
then given the true solution : certum est, nisi ultro mundus appeteret men-
daela, non tantam fore efficaciam diaboli ad fallendum. Quod igitur ita
rapiuntur homines ad impostaras, hoc Jit eorum culpa, quoviam magis pro-
peiisi sunt ad vanilalem, quam ut se Deo et verbo ejus suhjiciant.
CHAP. XIV. 10-18. 251
we pay attention to the connection. Tiie portion of the dis-
course before us deals with the judgment wliich is to burst on
the godless people, in the course of which those who had seduced
the people are only casually mentioned. For the purpose in
hand, it was sufBcient to say briefly of the seducers that they
too should perish by sword and famine who affirmed that these
punishments should not befall the people, whereas it was neces-
sary to set before the people the terrors of this judgment in all
their horror, in order not to fail of effect. AVith the reckon-
ing of the various classes of persons : they, their wives, etc., cf.
the account of their participation in idolatry, vii. 18. Hitz.
rightly paraphrases ''i???^'! : and in this wise will I pour out.
DnjJ"i, not : the calamity destined for them, but : their wicked-
ness which falls on them with its consequences, cf. ii. 19, Hos.
ix. 15, for propheta videtur causam reddere, cur Deus horribih
illud judicium exequi statuerit contra Judwos, nempe quoniam
digni erant tali mercede (Calv.). — Ver. 17. The words,"and speak
unto them this word," surprise us, because no word from God
follows, as in xiii. 12, but an exposition of the prophet's feel-
ings in regard to the dreadful judgment announced. Hence
Dahl. and Ew. propose to join the words in question with what
goes before, while at the same time Evv. hints a suspicion that
an entire sentence has been dropped after the words. But for
this suspicion there is no groiind, and the joining of the words
with the preceding context is contrary to the unfailing usage
of this by no means infrequent formula. The true explanation
is found in Kimchi and Calvin. The prophet is led to exhibit
to the hardened people the grief and pain he feels in contem-
plating the coming ruin of Judah, ut pavorem illis incuteret, si
forte, cum lime audirent, resipiscerent (Kimchi). If not his
words, then surely his tears ; for the terrible calamity he has to
announce must touch and stagger them, so that they may be
persuaded to examine themselves and consider what it is that
tends to their peace. To make impression on their hardened
consciences, he depicts the appalling ruin, because of which his
eyes run with tears day and night. On " run down," etc., cf.
ix. 17, xiii. 17, Lam. ii. 18, etc. "Let them not cease" gives
emphasis: not be silent, at peace, cf. Lara. iii. 49, i.e. weep
incessantly day and night. The appellation of the people :
252 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
virgin-daughter of my people, i.e. daughter that is my people,
cf. viii. 11, corresponds to the love revealing itself in tears.
The depth of sorrow is further shown in the clause : with a
blow that is very dangerous, cf. x. 19. In ver. 18 the prophet
portrays the condition of things after the fall of Jerusalem :
out upon the field are those pierced with the sword; in the city
aj)"i ''Ki^nn, lit. sufferino; of famine, Deut. xxix. 21, here abstr.
TT"-;-7 O ' '
pro concr. of those pining in famine ; and those that remain in
life depart into exile. Instead of the people Jeremiah men-
tions only the prophets and priests as being the flower of God's
people. TiD, to wander about, in Hebr. usually in the way of
commerce, here ace. to Aram, usage, possibly too with the idea
of begging subjoined. In the ^Vll K?'! Graf holds the 1. to be
entirely out of place, while Hitz. pronounces against him. The
words are variously taken ; e.g. and know nothing, wander
about aimless and helpless. But with this the omission of the
article with f]^ is incompatible. The omission sliows that
" and know not" furnishes an attribute to " into a land." We
therefore translate : and know it not = which they know not,
since the pronominal suffix is wont to be often omitted where it
can without difficulty be supplied from the preceding clause.
Vers. 19-22 and xv. 1-9. Renewed supplication and repeated
rejection of the same. — Ver. 19. " Hast thou then really rejected
Jndah? or doth thy soul loathe Zion ? Why hast Thou
smitten ns, so that there is no healing for us? We look for
peace, and there is no good ; for the time of liealing, and behold
terror ! Ver. 20. We know, Jahveh, our wickedness, the
iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against Thee.
Ver. 21. Abhor not, for Thy name's sake ; disgrace not the
throne of Thy glory ; remember, break not Thy covenant with
us ! Ver. 22. Are there among the vain gods of the Gentiles
givers of rain, or will the heavens give showers? Art not
Thou (He), Jahveh our God? and we hope in Thee, for Thou
hast made all these."
Chap. XV. 1. " And Jahveh said unto me : If Moses and
Samuel stood before me, yet would not my soul incline to
this people. Drive them from my face, that they go forth.
Ver. 2. And if they say to thee : Whither shall we go forth?
then say to them : Thus hath Jahveh said— Such as are for
CHAP. XIV. 19-22, XV. 1-9. 253
deatli, to death ; and such as are for the sword, to the sword ;
and such as are for the famine, to the famine ; and such as are
for the captivity, to the captivity. Ver. 3. And I appoint over
them four kinds, saith Jahveh : the sword to slay and the dogs
to tear, the fowls of the heaven and the cattle of the earth, to
devour and destroy. Ver. 4. And I give them up to be abused
to all kingdoms of the earth, for Manasseh's sake, the son of
Hezekiah king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.
Ver. 5. For who shall have pity upon thee, Jerusalem? and
who shall bemoan thee ? and who shall go aside to ask after thy
welfare ? Ver. 6. Thou hast rejected me, saith Jahveh ; thou
goest backwards, and so I stretch forth mine hand against thee
and destroy thee ; I am weary of repenting. Ver. 7. And I
fan them with a fan into the gates of the land ; bereave, ruin my
people ; from their ways they turned not. Ver. 8. More in
number are his widows become unto me than the sand of the sea ;
I bring to them, against the mother of the young man, a spoiler
at noon-day ; I cause to fall upon her suddenly anguish and
terrors. Ver. 9. She that hath borne seven languisheth, she
breatheth out her soul, her sun goeth down while yet it is day,
she is put to shame and confounded ; and their residue I give
to the sword before their enemies, saith Jahveh."
The Lord had indeed distinctly refused the favour sought
for Judah ; yet the command to disclose to the people the
sorrow of his own soul at their calamity (vers. 17 and 18) gave
the prophet courage to renew his supplication, and to ask of
the Lord if He had in very truth cast off Judah and Zion
(ver. 19), and to set forth the reasons which made this seem
impossible (vers. 20-22). In the question, ver. 19, the emphasis
lies on the l|ipt?0, strengthened as it is by the inf. abs. : hast Thou
utterly or really rejected ? The form of the question is the
same as that in ii. 14 ; first the double question, dealing with a
state of affairs which the questioner is unable to regard as being
actually the case, and then a further question, conveying
wonder at what has happened. ^Vi, loathe, cast from one, is
synonymous with DND. The second clause agrees verbally with
viii. 15. The reasons why the Lord cannot have wholly rejected
Judah are: 1. That they acknowledge their wickedness. Con-
fession of sin is the beginning of return to God ; and in case of
254 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEUEUIAH.
such return, tlie Lord, by His compassion, has vouchsafed to
PL's people forgiveness and tlie renewal of covenant blessings;
cf. Lev. xxvi. 41 ff., Deut. xxx. 2 ff. Along with their own evil
doinc, the transgression of their fathers is mentioned, cf. ii. 5 ff.,
vii. 25 ff., that full confession maybe made of the entire weight
of wickedness for which Israel has made itself answerable. So
that, on its own account, Judali has no claim upon tlie help of its
God. But the Lord may be moved thereto by regard for His
name and tiie covenant relation. On this is founded the prayer
of ver. 21 : Abhor not, sc. thy people, for Thy name's sake, lest
Tliou appear powerless to help in the eyes of the nations ; see
on ver. 7 and on Num. xiv. 16. ?3^, lit. to treat as fools, see on
Dcut. xxxii. 15, here: make contemptible. The throne of the
glory of God is the temple, where Jahveh sits enthroned over
the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies, Ex. xxv. 22,
etc. The destruction of Jerusalem would, by the sack of the
temple, dishonour the throne of the Lord. The object to " re-
member," viz. " Thy covenant," comes after " break not." The
remembering or rememberedness of the covenant is shown in
the not breaking maintenance of the same; cf. Lev. xxvi. 44 f.
Lastly, we have in ver. 22 the final motive for supplication :
that the Lord alone can put an end to trouble. Neither the
vain gods of the heathen (Dv?n, see viii. 19) can procure rain,
nor can the heaven, as one of the powers of nature, without
power from God. NW nriN, Thou art (N^n is the copula between
subject and predicate). Thou hast made all these. Not : the
heaven and the earth, as Hitz. and Gr. would make it, after
Isa. xxxvii. 16; still less is it, with Calv. : the punishment in-
flicted on us; but, as n^S* demands, the things mentioned imme-
diately before : cwlum, pluvias et quidquid est in omni rerum
natura, Eos. Only when thus taken, does the clause contain
any motive for : we wait upon Thee, i.e. expect from Thee
help out of our trouble. It further clearly appears from this
verse that the supplication was called forth by the calamity
depicted in vers. 2-5.
Cliap. XV. 1-9. Decisive refusal of the petition. — Ver. 1.
Even Moses and Samuel, who stood so far in God's favour that
by their supplications they repeatedly rescued their people from
overwhelming ruin (cf. Ex. xvii. 11, xxxii. 11 f.. Num. xiv. 13 ff.,
CHAP. XV. 1-9. 255
and 1 Sara. vii. 9 f., xii. 17 f., Ps. xclx. 6), if they were to
come now before the Lord, would not incline His loYe towards
this people. ?SJ indicates the direction of the soul towards any
one; in this connection: the inclination of it towards the people.
He has cast off this people and will no longer let them come
before His face. In vers. 2-9 this is set forth with terrible
earnestness. We must supply the object, "this people," to
" drive " from the preceding clause. " From my face " implies
the people's standing before the Lord in the temple, where they
had appeared bringing sacrifices, and by prayer invoking His
help (xiv. 12). To go forth from the temple = to go forth from
God's face. Ver. 2. But in case they ask where they are to go
to, Jeremiah is to give them the sarcastic direction : Each to
the destruction allotted to him. He that is appointed to death,
shall go forth to death, etc. The clauses : such as are for death,
etc., are to be filled up after the analogy of 2 Sam. xv. 20,
2 Kings viii. 1, so that before the second " death," "sword," etc.,
M-e supply the verb "shall go." There are mentioned four
kinds of punishments that are to befall the people. The
" death " mentioned over and above the sword is death by
disease, for which we have in xiv. 12 l^'n, pestilence, disease ;
cf. xliii. 11, where death, captivity, and sword are mentioned
together, with Ezek. xiv. 21, sword, famine, wild beasts, and
disease P?!), and xxxiii. 27, sword, wild beasts, and disease.
This doom is made more terrible in ver. 3. The Lord will
appoint over them (^pQ as in xiii. 21) four kinds, i.e. fonr
different destructive powers which shall prepare a miserable
end for them. One is the sword already mentioned in ver. 2,
which slays them ; the three others are to execute judgment on
the dead : the dogs which shall tear, mutilate, and partly devour
the dead bodies (cf. 2 Kings ix. 35, 37), and birds and beasts
of prey, vultures, jackals, and others, which shall make an end
of such portions as are left by the dogs. In ver. 4 the whole
is summed up in the threatening of Deut. xxviii. 25, that the
people shall be delivered over to be abused to all the kingdoms
of the earth, and the cause of this terrible judgment is men-
tioned. The Chet. n;iir is not to be read ^V)\, but nj;ir, and is the
contracted form from nw, see on Deut. xxviii. 25, from the
'ad. Vlt, lit. tossing hither and thither, hence for maltreatment.
256 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREUIAn.
For the sake of King Manasseh, who by his godless courses
had filled up the measure of the people's sins, so that the Lord
must cast Judah away from His face, and give it up to the
heathen to be chastised; cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 26, xxiv. 3, with the
exposition of these passages ; and as to what Manasseh did, see
2 Kings xxi. 1-16.
In vers. 5-9 we have a still further account of this appalling
judgment and its causes. The grounding ''3 in ver. 5 attaches to
the central thought of ver. 4. The sinful people will be given up
to all the kingdoms of the earth to be ill used, for no one will or
can have compassion on Jerusalem, since its rejection by God is
a just punishment for its rejection of the Lord (ver. 6). " Have
pity" and "bemoan" denote loving sympathy for the fall of
the unfortunate. ?on, to feel sympathy ; nu, to lament and
bemoan. "MD, to swerve from the straight way, and turn aside
or enter into any one's house; cf. Gen. xix. 2 f., Ex. iii. 3, etc.
7 Dipa'i' bii.\i>, to inquire of one as to his health, cf. Ex. xviii. 7 ;
:t:-t7 T. . . ^ '
then : to salute one, to desire 1? Di'?^, Gen. xliii. 27, Judg.
xviii. 15, and often. Not only will none show sympathy for
Jerusalem, none will even ask how it goes with her welfare. —
Ver. 6. The reason of this treatment : because Jerusalem has
dishonoured and rejected its God, therefore He now stretches
out His hand to destroy it. To go backwards, instead of
following the Lord, cf. vii. 24. This determination the Lord
will not change, for He is weary of repenting. Dnan frequently
of the withdrawal, in grace and pity, of a divine decree to punish,
cf. iv. 28, Gen. vi. 6 f., Joel ii. 14, etc.— Ver. 7. DnTNl is a
continuation of tJ^i, ver. 6, and, like the latter, is to be under-
stood prophetically of what God has irrevocably determined to
do. It is not a description of what is past, an allusion to the
battle lost at Megiddo, as Hitz., carrying out his a priori system
of slighting prophecy, supposes. To take the verbs of this verse
as proper preterites, as J. D. Mich, and Ew. also do, is not in
keeping with the contents of the clauses. In the first clause
Ew. and Gr. translate ^^^i^ '';iJ|^ gates, i.e. exits, boundaries of
the earth, and thereby understand the remotest lands of tlie
earth, the four corners or extremities of the earth, Isa. xi. 12
(Ew.). But " gates " cannot be looked on as corners or
extremities, nor are they ends or borders, but the inlets and
CHAP. XV. 1-9. 257
outlets of cities. For how can a man construe to himself the
ends of the earth as the outlets of it? where could one go to
from there? Hence it is impossible to take p,?'? of the earth
in this case ; it is the land of Judah. The gates of the land
are either mentioned by synecdoche for the cities, cf. Mic. v.
5, or are the approaches to the land (cf. Nah. iii, 13), its outlets
and inlets. Plere the context demands the latter sense, nit, to
fan, c. 3 loci, to scatter into a place, cf. Ezek. xii. 15, xxx. 26: fan
into the outlets of the land, i.e. cast out of the land. -'3K', make
the people childless, by the fall in battle of the sons, the young
men, cf. Ezek. v. 17. The threat is intensified by W3X, added
as asyndeton. The last clause : from their ways, etc., subjoins
the I'eason. — Vei\ 8. By the death of the sons, the women lose
their husbands, and become widows, v is the dative of sym-
pathetic interest. " Sand of the sea" is the figure for a count-
less number. CB^ is poetic plural ; cf. Ps. Ixxviii. 27, Job vi. 3.
On these defenceless women come suddenly spoilers, and these
mothers who had perhaps borne seven sons give up the ghost and
perish without succour, because their sons have fallen in war,
Thus proceeds the portrayal as Hitz. has well exhibited it.
Tina DN by is variously interpreted. We must reject the view
taken by Ch. B. Mich, from the Syr. and Arab, versions : upon
mother and young man; as also the view of Rashi, Cler., JEichh.,
Dahl., etc., that Dt< means the mother-city, i.e. Jerusalem.
The true rendering is that of Jerome and Kirachi, who have
been followed by J. D. Mich., Hitz., Ew., Graf, and Nag. :
upon the mother of the youth or young warrior. This view is
favoured by the correspondence of the woman mentioned in
ver. 9 who had borne seven sons. Both are individualized as
women of full bodily vigour, to lend vividness to the thought
that no age and no sex will escape destruction. 0!"]^^?, at clear
noontide, when one least looks for an attack. Thus the word
corresponds with the "suddenly" of the next clause. 1''^,
Aramaic form for 1''V, Isa. xiii. 8, pangs. The bearer of seven,
i.e. the mother of many sons. Seven as the perfect number of
children given in blessing by God, cf. 1 Sam. ii. 5, Ruth iv. 15.
" She breathes out her life," cf. Job xxxi. 39. Graf wrongly :
she sighs. The sun of her life sets (i^^3) while it is still day,
before the evening of her life has been reached, cf. Am. viii. 9.
VOL. I. R
258 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
"Is put to sliaine and confounded" is not to be referred to the
son, but the mother, who, bereaved of her children, goes covered
with shame to the grave. The Keri ^'^ for nX3 is an unneces-
sary change, since ^'Q^ is also construed as fem., Gen. xv. 17.
The description closes with a glance cast on those left in life
after the overthrow of Jerusalem. These are to be given to
the sword when in flight before their enemies, cf. Mic. vi. 14.
Vers. 10-21. Complaint op the prophet, and soothing
ANSWER OP THE LoED. — His sorrow at the rejection by God
of his petition so overcomes the prophet, that he gives utterance
to the wish : he had rather not have been born than live on in
the calling in which he must ever foretell misery and ruin to
his people, thereby provoking hatred and attacks, while his
heart is like to break for grief and fellow-feeling ; whereupon
the Lord reprovingly replies as in vers. 11-14.
Ver. 10. " Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast born me,
a man of strife and contention to all the earth ! I have not
lent out, nor have men lent to me; all curse me. Ver. 11.
Jahveh saith. Verily I strengthen thee to thy good ; verily I
cause the enemy to entreat thee in the time of evil and of
trouble. Ver. 12. Does iron break, iron from the north and
brass? Ver. 13. Thy substance and thy treasures give I for
a prey without a price, and that for all thy sins, and in all thy
borders, Ver. 14. And cause thine enemies bring it into a
land which thou knowest not ; for fire burneth in mine anger,
against you it is kindled."
Woe is me, exclaims Jeremiah in ver. 10, that my mother
brought me forth ! The apostrophe to his mother is significant
of the depth of his sorrow, and is not to be understood as if he
were casting any reproach on his mother ; it is an appeal to his
mother to share with him his sorrow at his lot. This lament is
consequently very different from Job's cursing of the day of his
birth, Job iii. 1. The apposition to the suffix " me," the man
of strife and contention, conveys the meaning of the lament in
this wise : me, who must yet be a man, with whom the whole
world strives and contends. Ew. wrongly renders it : " to be
a man of strife," etc. ; for it was not his mother's fault that he
became such an one. The second clause intimates that he has
CHAP. XV. 10-14. 259
not provoked tlie strife and contention, nw, lend, i.e. give on
loan, and with ^, to lend to a person, lend out ; hence ntJJjj
debtor, and 13 <^fi, creditor, Isa. xxiv. 2. These words are not
an individualizing of the thought : all interchange of friendly
services between me and human society is broken off (Hitz.).
For intercourse with one's fellow-men does not chiefly, or in
the foremost place, consist in lending and borrowing of gold
and other articles. Borrowing and lending is rather the fre-
quent occasion of strife and ill-will ;^ and it is in this reference
that it is Iiere brought up. Jeremiah says he has neither as
bad debtor or disobliging creditor given occasion to hatred and
quarrelling, and yet all curse him. This is the meaning of the
last words, in which the form '^WpO is hard to explain. The
rabbinical attempts to clear it up by means of a commingling
of the verbs ?Pp and npp are now, and reasonably, given up.
Ew. (Gram. § 350, c) wants to make it ''33?ppO ; but probably
the form has arisen merely out of the wrong dividing of a word,
and ought to be read ''?v?i? ^<y?^. So read most recent scholars,
after the example of J. D. Mich. ; of. also Bottcher, Grammat.
ii. S. 322, note. It is true that we nowhere else find Dl}?3 ; but
we find an analogy in the archaic nin?3. In its favour we
have, besides, the circumstance, that the heavy form Dl^ is by
preference appended to short words ; see Bottcher, as above,
S. 21. — To this complaint the Lord makes answer in vers.
11-14, first giving the prophet the prospect of complete vindi-
cation against those that oppose him (ver. 11), and then (vers.
12-14) pointing to the circumstances that shall compel the
people to this result. The introduction of God's answer by
nini -\m witliout na is found also in xlvi. 25, where Graf erro-
neously seeks to join the formula with what precedes. In the
present 11th verse the want of the nb is the less felt, since the
word from the Lord that follows bears in the first place upon
the prophet himself, and is not addressed to the people. ^^ DX
is a particle of asseveration, introducing the answer which
follows with a solemn assurance. The vowel-points of ^nilB'
require I'TI'I??', 1 pers. perf., from nnB* = the Aram. iOf, loose,
solve (Dan. v. 12) : I loose (free) thee to thy good. The diet.
^ Calvin aptly remarks : Vnde enim. inter homines et lites et j'urgia, nisi
quia male inter ipsos convenit, dum idtro et citro negotiantur ?
260 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH,
is variously read and rendered. By reason of the preceding
f^^J D!<, the view is improbable that we have here an infinitive ;
either ^nilB', inf. PL of "ntf' in the sig. inflict suffering : " thy
affliction becomes welfare" (Hitz.) ; or 'qniTf , inf. Kal of rr]f,
set free : thy release falls out to thy good (Ros., etc.)- The
context suggests the 1 pers. "perf. of l']B', against which the de-
fective written form is no argument, since this occurs frequently
elsewhere, e.g. 'H'^^V; Nah. i. 12. The question remains: whether
we are to take "ilB' according to the Hebrew usage : I afflict
thee to thy good, harass thee to thine advantage (Gesen. in the
thes. p. 1482, and Nag.), or according to the Aramaic (;_s) in
the sig. firmabo, stabiliam: I strengthen thee or support thee to
thy good (Ew., Maur.). We prefer the latter rendering, because
the saying : I afflict thee, is not true of God ; since the prophet's
troubles came not from God, nor is Jeremiah complaining of
affliction at the hand of God, but only that he was treated as
an enemy by all the world, ^^t^?, for good, as in Ps. cxis. 122,
so that it shall fall out well for thee, lead to a happy issue, for
which we have elsoAvhere fl^it^p, xiv. 11, Ps. Isxxvi. 17, Nch.
V. 19. — This happy issue is disclosed in the second clause : I
bring it about that the enemy shall in time of trouble turn
himself in supplication to thee, because he shall recognise in
the prophet's prayers the only way of safety; cf. the fulfilment
of this promise, xxi. 1 f., xxxvii. 3, xxxviii. 14 ff., xlii. 2. J?*33n,
here causative, elsewhere only with the sig. of the Kal, e.g.
xxxvi. 25, Isa. liii. 12. " The enemy," in unlimited gene-
rality : each of thine adversaries. That the case will turn out
so is intimated by vers. 12-14, the exposition of which is, how-
ever, difficult and rpuch debated. Ver. 12 is rendered either :
can iron (ordinary iron) break northern iron and brass (the
first "iron" being taken as subject, the Second as object)? or:
can one break iron, (namely) iron of the north, and brass
("iron" being taken both times as object, and " break" having
its subject indefinite) ? or : can iron . , . break (ViiJ intrans.
as in xi. 16)? Of these three translations the first has little
probability, inasmuch as the simile of one kind of iron breaking
another is unnatural. But Hitz.'s view is wholly unnatural :
that the first " iron" and " brass" are the object, and that " iron
CHAP. XV. 10-14. 261
from the nortli" is subject, standing as it does between the
two objects, as in Cant. v. 6, where, however, tlie construction
alleged is still very doubtful. Nor does the sense, which would
in tiiis way be expressed, go far to commend this rendering.
By iron and brass we would then have to understand, according
to vi. 28, the stiff-necked Jewish people ; and by iron from the
north, the calamity that was to come from the north. Thus
the sense would be : will this calamity break the sullen obsti-
nacy of the prophet's enemies? will it make them pliable?
The verse would thus contain an objection on the part of the
prophet against the concession vouchsafed by God in ver. 11.
With this idea, however, vers. 11—14 are emphatically not in
harmony. The other two translations take each a different
view of the sense. The one party understand by iron and brass
the prophet ; the other, either the Jewish people or the northern
might of the Chaldean empire. Holding that the prophet
is so symbolized, L. de Dieu and Umbr. give the sense thus :
"Let him but bethink him of his immoveable firmness ao;ainst
the onsets of the world ; in spite of all, he is iron, northern iron
and brass, that cannot be broken." Thus God would here be
speaking to tlie prophet. Dahl., again, holds the verse to be
spoken by the prophet, and gives the sense : Can I, a frail and
feeble man, break the determination of a numerous and stiff-
necked nation ? Against the latter view the objection already
alleged against Hitz. is decisive, showing as it did that the
verse cannot be the prophet's speech or complaint ; against the
former, the improbability that God would call the prophet iron,
northern iron and brass, when the very complaint he was
making showed how little of the firmness of iron he had about
him. If by the northern iron we understand the Jewish people,
then God would here say to the prophet, that he should always
contend in vain against the stiff-neckedness of the people
(Eichh.). This would have been but small comfort for him.
But the appellation of northern iron does not at all fit the
Jewish people. For the observation that the hardest iron, the
steel made by the Ohalybes in Pontus, was imported from the
north, does not serve the turn ; since a distinction between
ordinary iron and very hard iron nowhere else appears in the
Old Testament. The attribute " from the north " points
262 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
m
aiiifestly to the iron sway of the Chaldean empire (Ros.,
E\v., Maur., and many others) ; and the meaning of the verse
can only be this : As little as a man can break iron, will the
Jewish people be able to break the hostile power of the north
(xiii. 20). Taken thus, the pictorial style of the verse contains
a suggestion that the adversaries of the prophet will, by the
crushing power of the Chaldeans, be reduced to the condition
of turning themselves in supplication to the prophet. — AVith
this vers. 13 and 14 are thus connected : This time of evil and
tribulation (ver. 10) will not last long. Their enemies will
carry off the people's substance and treasures as their booty
into a strange land. These verses are to be taken, with Umbr.,
as a declaration from the mouth of the Lord to His guilt-bur-
dened people. This appears from the contents of the verses.
The immediate transition from the address to the prophet to
that to the people is to be explained by the fact, that both the
prophet's complaint, ver. 10, and God's answer, vers. 11-13,
have a full bearing on the people ; the prophet's complaint at
the attacks on the part of the people serving to force them to a
sense of their obstinacy against the Lord, and God's answer to
the complaint, that the prophet's announcement will come true,
and that he will then be justified, serving to crush their sullen
doggedness. The connection of thought in vers. 13 and 14 is
thus : The people that so assaults thee, by reason of thy threat-
ening judgment, will not break the iron might of the Chaldeans,
but will by them be overwhelmed. It will come about as thou
hast declared to them in my name ; their substance and their
treasures will I give as booty to the Chaldeans. TriDl N? ^
T'np N73j Isa. Iv. 1, not for purchase-money, i.e. freely. As
God sells His people for nought, i.e. gives them up to their
enemies (cf. Isa. lii. 3, Ps. xliv. 13), so here He threatens to
deliver up their treasures to the enemy as a booty, and for
nought. When Graf says that this last thought has no suffi-
cient meaning, his reasons therefor do not appear. Nor is
there anything " peculiar," or such as could throw suspicion
on the passage, in the juxtaposition of the two quaHfying
phrases : and that for all thy sins, and in all thy borders. The
latter phrase bears unmistakeably on the treasures, not on the
sins. " Cause ... to bring it," lit. I cause them (the treasures)
CHAP. XV. 15-18. 263
to pass with tliine enemies into aland which thou knowest not,
i.e. I cause the enemies to bring them, etc. Hitz. and Graf
erroneouslj : I carry thine enemies away into a land ; which
affords no suitable sense. The grounding clause : for hire, etc.,
is taken from Deut. xxxii. 22, to show that that threatening of
judgment contained in Moses' song is about to come upon
degenerate Judah. " Against you it is kindled " apply the
words to Jeremiah's contemporaries.^
Vers. 15-18. Jeremiah continues his complaint. — Ver. 15.
"Thou knowest it, Jahveh; remember me, and visit me, and
revenge me on my persecutors ! Do not, in Thy long-suffering,
take me away ; know that for Thy sake I bear reproach. Ver.
16. Thy words were found, and I did eat them ; and Thy words
were to nie a delight and the joy of my heart : for Thy name
was named upon me, Jahveh, God of hosts. Ver. 17. I sat
not in the assembly of the laughers, nor was merry ; because of
Tiiy hand I sat solitary; for with indignation Thou hast filled me.
Ver. 18. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound malignant ?
will not heal. Wilt Thou really be to me as a deceiving brook,
a water that doth not endure ? "
The Lord's answer, vers. 11-14, has not yet restored tran-
quillity to the prophet's mind;- since in it his vindication by
^ Vers. 11-14: are pronounced spurious by Hitz., Graf, and Nag., on the
ground that vers. 13 and 14 are a mere quotation, corrupted in the text,
from xyii. 3, 4, and that all the three verses destroy the connection, con-
taining an address to the people that does not at all fit into the context.
But the interruption of the continuity could at most prove that the verses
had got hito a wrong place, as is supposed by Ew., -who transposes them,
and puts them next to ver. 9. But for this change in place there are no
sufficient grounds, since, as our exposition of them shows, the verses in
question can be very well understood in the place which they at present
occupy. The other allegation, that vers. 13 and 14 are a quotation, cor-
rupted in text, from xvii. 3, 4, is totally without proof. In xvii. 3, 4 we
have simply the central thoughts of the present passage repeated, but modi-
fied to suit their new context, after the manner characteristic of Jeremiah.
The genuineness of the verses is supported by the testimony of the LXX.,
which has them here, while it omits them in xvii. 3, 4 ; and by the fact,
that it is inconceivable they should have been interpolated as a gloss in a
wholly unsuitable place. For those who impugn the genuineness have not
even made the attempt to show the possibility or probability of such a gloss
arising.
264 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
means of the abasement of his adversaries Iiad been kept at an
indefinite distance. And so he now, ver. 15, prays the Lord to
revenge him on his adversaries, and not to let him perish, since
for His sake he bears reproach. The object to "Thou knowest,
Lord," appears from the context, — namely : " the attacks which
I endure," or more generally: Thou knowest my case, my
distress. At the same time he clearly means the harassment
detailed in ver. 10, so that "Thou knowest" is, as to its sense,
directly connected with ver. 10. But it by no means follows
from this that vers. 11—14 are not original ; only that Jeremiah
did not feel his anxiety put at rest by the divine answer con-
veyed in these verses. In the climax : Remember me, visit me,
i.e. turn Thy care on me, and revenge me, we have the utter-
ance of the importunity of his prayer, and therein, too, the
extremity of his distress. According to Thy long-suffering,
i.e. the long-suffering Thou showest towards my persecutors,
take me not away, i.e. do not deliver me up to final ruin. This
prayer he supports by the reminder, that for the Lord's sake he
bears reproach ; of. Ps. Ixix. 8. Further, the imperative: know,
recognise, bethink thee of, is the utterance of urgent prayer.
In ver. 16 he exhibits how he suffers for the Lord's sake. The
words of the Lord which came to him he has received with
eagerness, as it had been the choicest dainties. "Thy words
were found" intimates that he had come into possession of them
as something actual, without particularizing how they were
revealed. With the figurative expression : I ate them, cf. the
symbolical embodiment of the figure, Ezek. ii. 9, iii. 3, Apoc. x.
9 f. The Keri T'^^'n is an uncalled for correction, suggested
by the preceding ^T,, and the Chet. is perfectly correct. Thy
words turned out to me a joy and delight, because Thy name
was named upon me, i.e. because Thou hast revealed Thyself to
me, hast chosen me to be the proclaimer of Thy word. Ver. 17.
To this calling he has devoted his whole life : has not sat in the
assembly of the laughers, nor made merry with them ; but sat
alone, i.e. avoided all cheerful company. Because of Thy hand,
i.e. because Thy hand had laid hold on me. The hand of Jahveh
is the divine power which took possession of the prophets,
transported their spirit to the ecstatic domain of inner vision,
and impelled to prophesy; cf . sx. 7, Isa. viii. 11, Ezek. i. 3, etc'.
CHAP. XV. 19-21. 265
Alone 1 sat, because Thou hast filled me with indignation. DJJt
is the wrath of God against the moral corruptness and infatua-
tion of Judah, with which the Spirit of God has filled Jeremiah
in order that he may publish it abroad, cf. vi. 11. The sadness
of what he had to publish filled his heart with the deepest grief,
and constrained him to keep far from all cheery good fellowship.
— Ver. 18. Why is my pain become perpetual ? " My pain " is
the pain or grief he feels at the judgment he has to announce
to the people ; not his pain at the hostility he has on that
account to endure. nS3 adverbial = nS3P, as in Am. i. 11, Ps.
xiii. 2, etc. "My wound," the blow that has fallen on him.
na^ys, malignant, is explained by " (that) will not heal," cf. xxx.
12, Mic. i. 9. The clause 'Dl riinn 'I'^n still depends on n^h,
and the infin. gives emphasis: Wilt Thou really be? ^B^?, lit.
lying, deception, means here, and in Mic. i. 16, a deceptive
torrent that dries up in the season of drought, and so disappoints
the hope of finding-water, cf. Job vi. 15 ff. "A water," etc.,
is epexegesis : water that doth not endure. To this the Lord
answers —
Vers. 19-21. By reprimanding his impatience, and hy again
assuring him of His protection and of rescue from the power of
his oppressors. — Ver. 19. " Therefore thus saith Jahveh : If
thou return, then will I bring thee again to serve me ; and if
thou separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my
mouth. They will return to thee, but thou shalt not return
unto them. Ver. 20. And I make thee unto this people a
strong wall of brass, so that they fight against thee, but prevail
not against thee ; for I am with thee, to help thee and to save
thee, saith Jahveh. Ver. 21. And I save thee out of the hand
of the wicked, and deliver thee out of the clutch of the violent."
In the words: if thou return, lies the reproach that in his
complaint, in which his indignation had hurried him on to doubt
God's faithfulness, Jeremiah had sinned and must repent.
la^K'tj! is by many commentators taken adverbially and joined
with the following words : then will I again cause thee to stand
before me. But this adverbial use has been proved only for
the Kal of 3ltJ', not for the Hiphil, which must here be taken by
itself : then will I bring thee again, sc. into proper relations with
me — namely, to stand before me, i.e. to be my servant. lOV
266 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
''3Bb, of the standing of the servant before his lord, to receive
his commands, and so also of prophets, cf. 1 Kings xvii. 1, xviii.
15, 2 Kino-s iii. 14, etc. In the words: if thou make to go
forth, i.e. separate the precious from the vile, we have the
figure of metal-refining, in course of which the pure metal is
hy fusion parted from the earthy and other ingredients mixed
with it. The meaning of the figure is, however, variously
understood. Some think here, unfittingly, of good and bad
men ; so Ohald. and Rashi : if thou cause the good to come
forth of the bad, turn the good into bad ; or, if out of the evil
mass thou cause to come forth at least a few as good, i.e. if thou
convert them (Ch. B. Mich., Eos., etc.). For we cannot here
have to do with the issue of his labours, as Graf well remarks,
since this did not lie in his owu power. Just as littlu is the case
one of contrast between God's word and man's word, the view
adopted by Ven., Eichh., Dahl., Hitz., Ew. The idea that Jere-
miah presented man's word for God's word, or God's word mixed
with spurious, human additions, is utterly foreign to the context ;
nay, rather it was just because he declared only what God
imposed on him that he was so hard bested. Further, that idea
is wholly inconsistent with the nature of true prophecy. Maurer
has hit upon the truth : si quce pretiosa in te sunt, admixtis
liheraveris sordibus, si virtutes qiias Jiahes maculis Uberaveris
impatientice et iracundice ; with whom Graf agrees. ''23 (with
tiie so-called 3 verit.), as my mouth shalt thou be, i.e. as the
instrument by which I speak, cf. Ex. iv. 16. Then shall his
labours be crowned with success. They (the adversaries) will
turn themselves to thee, in the manner shown in ver. 11, but
thou shalt not turn thyself to them, i.e. not yield to their wishes
or permit thyself to be moved by them from the rii^ht way.
Ver. 20 f. After this reprimand, the Lord renews to liiui the
promise of His most active support, such as He had promised
him at his call, i. 18 f . ; "to save thee" being amplified in
ver. 21.
Chap. xvi. 1-xvii. 4. The course to be pursued by
THE prophet in EEEERENCE TO THE APPROACHING OVER-
THROW OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH.— The ruin of Jerusalem
and of Judah will inevitably come. This the prophet must
CHAP. XVI. 1-9. 267
proclaim by word and deed. To this end he is shown in xvi.
1-9 what relation he is to maintain towards the people, now
grown ripe for judgment, and next in vers. 10-15 he is told
the cause of this terrible judgment ; then comes an account of
its fulfilment (vers. 16-21) ; then again, finally, we have the
cause of it explained once more (xvii. 1-4).
Vers. 1-9. Tlie course to he pursued by the prophet with
reference to the approaching judgment. — Ver. 1. " And the word
of Jaliveh came to me, saying : Ver. 2. Thou shalt not take
thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this
place. Ver. 3. For thus hath Jahveh said concerning the sons
and the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning
their mothers that bear them, and concerning their fathers that
beget them in this land: Ver. 4. By deadly suffering shall
they die, be neither lamented or buried ; dung upon the field
shall they become ; and by sword and by famine shall they be
consumed, and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of the
heavens and the beasts of the field. Ver. 5. For thus hath
Jahveh said : Come not into the house of mourning, and go not
to lament, and bemoan them not ; for I . have taken away my
peace from this people, saith Jahveh, grace and mercies. Ver. 6.
And great and small shall die in this land, not be buried ;
they shall not lament them, nor cut themselves, nor make
themselves bald for them. Ver. 7. And they shall not break
bread for them in their mourning, to comfort one for the dead ;
nor shall they give to any the cup of comfort for his father
and his mother. Ver. 8. And into the house of feasting go
not, to sit by them, to eat and to drink. Ver. 9. For thus
hath spoken Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I
cause to cease out of this place before your eyes, and in your
days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of
the bridegroom and the voice of the bride."
What the prophet is here bidden to do and to forbear is
closely bound up with the proclamation enjoined on him of
judgment to come on sinful Judah. This connection is brought
prominently forward in the reasons given for these commands.
He is neither to take a wife nor to beget children, because all
the inhabitants of the land, sons and daughters, mothers and
fathers, are to perish by sickness, the sword, and famine (vers.
268 THE FROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
3 and 4). He is both to abstain from the customary usages of
mourning for the dead, and to keep away from mirthful feasts,
in order to give the people to understand that, by reason of the
multitude of the dead, customary mourning will have to be
given up, and that all opportunity for merry-making will dis-
appear (vers. 5-9). Adapting thus his actions to help to con-
vey his message, he will approve himself to be the month of
the Lord, and then the promised divine protection will not fail.
Thus closely is this passage connected with the preceding
complaint and reproof of the prophet (xv. 10-21), while it at
the same time further continues the threatening of judgment
in XV. 1-9. — With the prohibition to take a wife, cf . the apostle's
counsel,! Cor. vii. 26. "This place" alternates with "this
land," and so must not be limited to Jerusalem, but bears on
Judah at large. Q^1?l, adject, verhale, as in Ex. i. 32. The
form ''ni'31? is found, besides here, only in Ezek. xxviii. 8, where
it takes the place of ^nio, ver. 10. D^x^nn ''nioD, lit. deaths of
sicknesses or sufferings, i.e. deaths by all kinds of sufferings,
since d-N^nn is not to be confined to disease, but in xiv. 18 is
used of pining away by famine. With "they shall not be
lamented," cf. xxv. 33, viii. 2, xiv. 16, vii. 33. — Ver. 5 ff. The
command not to go into a house of mourning (nnOj loud crying,
cry of lament for one dead, see on Am. vi. 7), not to show
sympathy with the survivors, is explained by the Lord in the
fearfully solemn saying : I withdraw from this people my peace,
grace, and mercy. DvB' is not " the inviolateness of the relation
between me and my people" (Graf), but the peace of God
which rested on Judah, the source of its well-being, of its
life and prosperity, and which showed itself to the sinful race
in the extension to them of grace and mercy. The consequence
of the withdrawal of this peace is the death of great and
small in such multitudes that they can neither be buried nor
mourned for (ver. 6). T^^nn, cut one's self, is used in Deut.
xiv. 1 for t:^^' inj, to make cuts in the body. Lev. xix. 28 ; and
n"]i5, NipL, to crop one's self bald, ace. to Deut. xiv. 1, to shave
a bare place on the front part of the head above the eyes.
These are two modes of expressing passionate mourning for
the dead which were forbidden to the Israelites in the law,
yet which remained in use among the people, see on Lev. xix.
CHAP. XVI. 10-15. 2G9
28 and Dent, xiv. 1. an?, for them, in honour of the dead.
— Ver. 7. Dns, as in Isa. Iviii. 7, for {^is, Lam. iv. 4, break, sc.
the bread (cf. Isa. I.e.) for mourning, and to give to drink the
cup of comfort, does not refer to the meals which were held in
the house of mourning upon occasion of a death after the
interment, for this custom cannot be proved of the Israelites
in Old Testament times, and is not strictly demanded by the
words of the verse. To break bread to any one does not mean
to hold a feast with him, but to bestow a gift of bread upon him ;
cf. Isa. Iviii. 7. Correspondingly, to give to drink, does not
here mean to drink to one's health at a feast, but only to
present with wine to drink. The words refer to the custom of
sending bread and wine for refreshment into the house of the
surviving relatives of one dead, to comfort them in their sorrow ;
cf. 2 Sam. iii. 35, xii. 16 ff., and the remarks on Ezek. xxiv. 17.
The singular suffixes on i'^rap, V3N, and iSi*, alongside of the
plurals on? and nni**, are to be taken distributively of every one
who is to be comforted upon occasion of a deatli in his house ;
and on? is not to be changed, as by J. D. Mich, and Hitz.,
into on?. — Ver. 8 f. The prophet is to withdraw from all
participation in mirthful meals and feasts, in token that God
will take away all joy from the people. '^5?'?"'^''?, house in
which a feast is given, a^^i*', for Dn^^, refers, taken ad sensum,
to the others who take part in the feast. On ver. 9, cf. vii. 34.
Vers. 10-15. "And when thou showest this people all these
things, and they say unto thee. Wherefore hath Jahveh pro-
nounced all this great evil against us, and what is our trans-
gression, and what our sin that we have committed against
Jahveh our God? Ver. 11. Then say thou to them. Because
your fathers have forsaken me, saith Jahveh, and have walked
after other gods, and served them, and worshipped them, and
have forsaken me, and not kept my law ; Ver. 12. And ye did
yet worse than your fathers ; and behold, ye walk each after
the stubbornness of his evil heart, hearkening not unto me.
Ver. 13. Therefore I cast you out of this land into the land
which ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers, and there may
ye serve other gods day and night, because I will show you
no favour. Ver. 14. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith
Jahveh, that it shall no more be said. By the life of Jahveh,
270 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
that brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,
Ver. 15. But, By the life of Jahveh, that brought the sons of
Israel out of the land of the north, and out of all the lands
whither I had driven them, and I bring them again into their
land that I gave to their fathers."
The turn of the discourse in vers. 10 and 11 is like that in v.
19. With ver. 11 cf. xi. 8, 10, vii. 24 ; with " ye did yet worse,"
etc., cf. 1 Kings xiv. 9 ; and on " after the stubbornness,"
cf. on iii. 17. The apodosis begins with " therefore I cast you
out." On this head cf. vii. 15, ix. 15, and xxii. 26. The article
in I'Tl^i^i'^V, Graf quite unnecessarily insists on having can-
celled, as out of place. It is explained sufficiently by the fact,
that the land, of which mention has so often been made, is
looked on as a specific one, and is characterized by the following
relative clause, as one unknown to the people. Besides, the "ye
know not" is not meant of geographical ignorance, but, as is
often the case with V]), the knowledge is that obtained by direct
experience. They know not the land, because they have never
been there. " There ye may serve them," Eos. justly charac-
terizes as concessio cum ironia : there ye may serve, as long as
ye will, the gods whom ye have so longed after. The irony is
especially marked in the " day and night." Here Jeremiah
has in mind Deut. iv. 28, xxviii. 36, 64, "it's' is causal, giving
the grounds of the threat, " I cast you out." The form nrjn
is air. \ey. — In vers. 14 and 15 the prophet opens to the people
a view of ultimate redemption from the affliction amidst the
heathen, into which, for their sin, they will be cast. By and
by men will swear no more by Jahveh who redeemed them out
of Egypt, but by Jahveh who has brought them again from the
land of the north and the other lands into which they have been
thrust forth. In this is implied that this second deliverance will
be a blessing wliich shall outshine the former blessing of redemp-
tion from Egypt. But just as this deliverance will excel the
earlier one, so much the greater will the affliction of Israel in
the northern land be than the Egyptian bondage had been. On
this point Res. throws especial weight, remarking that the aim
of these verses is not so much to give promise of comino- salva-
tion, as to announce instare illis atrocius malum, quam illud
^gyptiacum, eamque quam mox sint suhituri servitutem mulio
CHAP. XVI. 16-21. 271
fore duriorem, quam olirn ^gyptiaca fiierit. But though tliis
idea does lie implicite in the words, yet we must not fail to be
sure that the prospect held out of a future deliverance of Israel
from the lands into which it is soon to be scattered, and of its
restoration again to the land of its fathers, has, in the first and
foremost place, a comforting import, and that it is intended to
preserve the godly from despair under the catastrophe which is
now awaiting them.^ I?? is not nevertheless, but, as universally,
therefore; and the train of thought is as follows : Because the
Lord will, for their idolatry, cast forth His people into the
lands of the heathen, just for that very reason will their redemp-
tion from exile not fail to follow, and this deliverance surpass
in gloriousness the greatest of all former deeds of blessing, the
rescue of Israel from Egypt. The prospect of future redemp-
tion given amidst announcements of judgment cannot be sur-
prisiiig in Jeremiah, who elsewhere also interweaves the like
happy forecastings with his most solemn threatenings ; cf. iv.
27, V. 10, 18, with iii. 14 f., xsiii. 3 ff., etc. " This ray of light,
falling suddenly into the darkness, does not take us more by
surprise than ' I will not make a full end,' iv. 27. There is
therefore no reason for regarding these two verses as interpo-
lations from xxiii. 7, 8" (Graf).
Vers. 16-21. Further account of the punishment foretold, with
the reasons for the same. — Ver. 16. " Behold, I send for many
fishers, saith Jahveh, who shall fish them, and after will I send
for many hunters, who shall hunt them from every mountain
and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rock. Ver. 17.
For mine eyes are upon all their ways, they are not hidden
from me, neither is their iniquity concealed from mine eyes.
Ver. 18. And first, I requite double their iniquity and their sin,
because theydefiled my land with the carcases of their dctestables,
and with their abominations they have filled mine inheritance.
1 Calvin has excellently brought out hoth moments, and hss thus ex-
pounded the thought of the passage : " Scitis unde patres vestri exierint,
nempe e fornace senea, quemadmodum alibi loquitur (xi. 4) et quasi ex pro-
funda morte ; itaque redemptio ilia debuit esse memorabilis usque ad finera
mundi. Sed jam Deus conjiciet vos in abyssum, quae longe profundior erit
iUa -JIgypti tyrannide, e qua erepti sunt patres vestri ; nam si inde vos
redimat, erit miraculum longe excellentius ad posteros, ut fere exstinguat
vel saltern obscuret memoriam prioris iDius redemptionis."
272 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEJIIAH.
Ver. 19. Jahveh, my strength and my fortress, and my refuge
in the day of trouble ! Unto Thee shall the peoples come from
the ends of the earth and say : But lies have our fathers in-
herited, vanity, and amidst them none profiteth at all. Ver. 20.
Shall a man make gods to himself, which are yet no gods ?
Ver. 21. Therefore, behold, I make them to know this once,
I make them to know my hand and my might, and they shall
know that my name is Jahveh."
Vers. 16-18 are a continuation of the threatening in ver. 13,
that Judah is to be cast out, but are directly connected with
ver. 15b, and elucidate the expulsion into many lands there
foretold. The figures of the fishers and hunters do not bespeak
the gathering again and restoration of the scattered people, as
Ven. would make out, but the carrying of Judah captive out of
his land. This is clear from the second of the figures, for the
hunter does not gather the animals together, but kills them ;
and the reference of the verses is put beyond a doubt by vers.
17 and 18, and is consequently admitted by all other coram.
The two figures signify various kinds of treatment at the hands
of enemies. The fishers represent the enemies that gather the
inhabitants of the land as in a net, and carry them wholesale
into captivity (cf. Am. iv. 2, Hab. i. 15). The hunters, again,
are those who drive out from their hiding-places, and slay or
carry captive such as have escaped from the cities, and have
taken refuge in the mountains and ravines ; cf. iv. 29, Judg.
vi. 2, 1 Sam. siii. 6. In this the idea is visibly set forth that
none shall escape the enemy, npc' c. b pers., send for one,
cause him to come, as in siv. 3 (send for water), so that there
is no call to take ? according to the Aram, usage as sign of the
accusative, for which we can cite in Jeremiah only the case in
xl. 2. The form n^m {diet) agrees with Ezek. xlvii. 10,
while the Ken, D'JJ% is a formation similar to C"];^. In the
second clause CSl is, like the numerals, made to precede the
noun ; cf. Prov. xxxi. 29, Ps. Ixxsix. 51.— For the Lord knows
their doings and dealings, and their transgressions are not hid
from Him ; cf. xxiii. 24, xxxii. 19. % for ^K, indicating the
direction. Their ways are not the ways of 'flight, but their
course of action.— Ver. 18. The punishment foretold is but
retribution for their sins. Because they have defiled the land by
CHAP. XVI. 16-21. 273
idolatry, they shall be driven out of it. nJiK'S*"!, first, is by Jerome,
Hitz., Ew., Umbr. made to refer to tlie salvation promised in
ver. 15 : first, i.e. before the restoration of my favour spoken
of in ver. 15, I requite double. Against this Graf lias objected,
that on this view " first" would appear somewhat superfluous ;
and Niig., that the manifestly intended antithesis to nJB'l? is left
out of account. There is little force in either objection. Even
Nag.'s paraphrase does not do full justice to the presumed anti-
thesis ; for if we render : " For the first time the double shall
be requited, in the event of repetition a severer standard shall
be used," then the antithesis to " first" would not be " double,"
but the supplied repetition of the offence. There is not tlie
slightest hint in the context to lead us to supply this idea ; nor
is there any antithesis between " first" and " double." It is a
mere assumption of the comm., which Eashi, Kimchi, Eos.,
Maur., etc., have brought into the text by the interpolation of
a 1 cop. before njc'D : I requite the first of their transgressions
and the repetition of them, i.e. tlieir earlier and their repeated
sins, or the sins committed by their fathers and by themselves,
on a greater scale. We therefore hold the reference to ver. 15
to be the only true one, and regard it as corresponding both to
the words before us and the context. " The double of their
iniquity," i.e. ample measure for their sins (cf. Isa. xl. 2, Job
xi. 6) by way of the horrors of war and the sufferings of the
exile. The sins are more exactly defined by : because they
defiled my land by the carcases of their detestables, i.e. their
dead detestable idols. D''li'^pK' n?3J is formed according to '''}}B
DwJ, Lev. xxvi. 30, and it belongs to " they defiled," not to
" they filled," as the Masoretic accentuation puts it ; for N?o is
construed, not with 3 of the thing, but with double accus. ; cf.
Ezek. viii. 17, xxx. 11, etc. So it is construed in the last
clause : With their abominations they have filled the inheritance
of Jahveh, i.e. the land of the Lord (cf. ii. 7). The injin. DJ^n
is continued by 'iNpD in verba Jin., as usual.
In vers. 19-21 we have more as to the necessity of the
threatened punishment. The prophet turns to the Lord as his
defence and fortress in time of need, and utters the hope that
even the heathen may some time turn to the Lord and confess
the vanity of idolatry, since the gods which men make are no
VOL. I. S
21 i THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEMUn.
gods. To this tlie Lord answers in ver. 21, that just therefore
He must punish His idolatrous people, so that they shall feel
Ilis power and learn to know His name. — Ver. 19. In his cry
to the Lord : My strength ... in the day of trouble, which
agrees closely with Ps. xxviii. 8, lix. 17, xviii. 3, Jeremiah
utters not merely his own feelings, but those which should
animate every member of his people. In the time of need the
powerlessness of the idols to help, and so their vanity, becomes
apparent. Trouble therefore drives to God, the Almighty Lord
and Ruler of the world, and forces to bend under Plis power.
The coming tribulation is to have this fruit not only in the case
of the Israelites, but also in that of the heathen nations, so
that they shall see the vanity of the idolatry they have inherited
from their fathers, and be converted to the Lord, the only true
God. IIow this knowledge is to be awakened in the heathen,
Jeremiah does not disclose ; but it may be gathered from ver.
15, from tlie deliverance of Israel, there announced, out of the
heathen lands into which they had been east forth. By this
deliverance the heathen will be made aware both of the almighty
power of the God of Israel and of the nothingness of their own
gods. On «n cf. ii. 5 ; and with " none that profiteth," cf. ii. 8,
xiv. 22. In ver. 20 the prophet confirms what the heathen
have been saying. The question has a negative force, as is
clear from the second clause. In ver. 21 we have the Lord's
answer to the prophet's confession in ver. 19. Since the Jews
are so blinded that they prefer vain idols to the living God, He
will this time so show them His hand and His strength in that
foretold chastisement, that they shall know His name, i.e.
know that He alone is God in deed and in truth. Cf. Ezek.
xii. 15, Ex. iii. 14.
Chap. xvii. 1-4. Judah's sin is ineffaceably stamped upon
the hearts of the people and on their altars. These four verses
are closely connected with the preceding, and show why it is
necessary that Judah be cast forth amidst the heathen, by
reason of its being perfectly steeped in idolatry. Ver. 1. "The
sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with the point of a
diamond graven on the table of their hearts and on the horns
of your altars. Ver. 2. As they remember their cliildren, so
do they their altars and their Astartes by the green tree upon
CHAP. XVII. 1-4 275
the high hills. Ver. 3. My mountain in the field, thy substance,
all thy treasures give I for a prey, thy high places for sin in all
thy borders, Ver. 4. And thou shalt discontinue, and that of
thine own self, from thine inheritance that I gave thee, and I
cause thee to serve thine enemies in a land which thou knowest
not; for a fire have ye kindled in mine anger, for ever it
burneth."
The sin of Judah (ver. 1) is not their sinfulness, their prone-
ness to sin, but their sinful practices, idolatry. This is written
upon the tables of the hearts of them of Judah, i.e. stamped on
them (cf. for this figure Prov. iii. 3, vii. 3), and that deep and
firmly. This is intimated by the writing with an iron pen and
graving with a diamond. HSS, from IQV, scratch, used in
Deut. xxi. 12 for the nail of the finger, here of the point of the
style or graving-iron, the diamond pencil which gravers use for
carving in iron, steel, and stone.-" "^Vf, diamond, not emery as
Boch. and Ilos. supposed; cf. Ezek. iii. 9, Zech. vii. 12. The
thinrfs last mentioned are so to be distributed that " on the
o
table of their lieart" shall belong to "written with a pen of
iron," and "on the horns of their altars " to "with the point of
a diamond graven." The iron style was used only for writing
or carving letters in a hard material, Job xix. 24. If with it
one wrote on tables, it was for the purpose of impressing the
writing very deeply, so that it could not easily be effaced. The
having of sin engraved upon the tables of the heart does not
mean that a sense of unatoned sin could not be got rid of
(Graf) ; for with a sense of sin we have here nothing to do,
but with the deep and firm root sin has taken in the heart. To
the tables of the heart as the inward seat of sin are opposed
the horns of their altars (at "altars" the discourse is directly
addressed to the Jews). By altars are generally understood
idolatrous altars, partly because of the plural, "since the altar
of Jahveh was but oiie," partly because of ver. 2, where the
altars in question are certainly those of the idols. But the first
reason proves nothing, since the temple of the Lord itself con-
tained two altars, on whose horns the blood of the sacrifice was
sprinkled. The blood of the sin-offering was put not merely
1 Cf. PUnii lust. n. xxxvii. 15 : crustx adamantis expetuntur a sculjjtoribus
firroque includuntur, nullam noil duritiem ex facili excacaiites.
276 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
on the altar of burnt-offering, but also on tlie horns of the altar
of incense, Lev. iv. 7, 18, xvi. Ifi. Nor is the second r«;ason
conclusive, since tliere is no difficulty in taking it to oe the
altars of Jahveh as defiled by idolatry. This, indeed, we must
do, since Josiah had destroyed the altars of the false gods,
whereas here the altars are spoken of as existing monuments
of idolatry. The question, in how far the sin of Judah is
ineffaceably engraven upon the horns of her altars, is variously
answered by conim., and the answer depends on the view taken
of ver. 2, which is itself disputed. It is certainly wrong to join
ver. 2 as protasis with ver. 3 as apodosis, for it is incompatible
with the beginning of ver. 3, ''Tyi- Ew. therefore proposes to
attach "my mountain in the field" to ver. 2, and to change ''"i'^l!
into '''}y] : upon the high hills, the mountains in the field — a
manifest makeshift. Umbr. translates: As their children
remember their altars .... so will I my mountain in the field,
thy possession . . . give for a prey ; and makes out the sense to
be: "in proportion to the strength and ineffaceableness of the
impressions, such as are to be found in the children of idolatrous
fathers, must be the severity of the consequent punishment
from God." But if this were the force, then |3 could not pos-
sibly be omitted before the apodosis; apart altogether from the
suddenness of such a transition from the sins of the people
(ver. 1) to the sins of the children. — Ver. 2 is plainly meant to
be a fuller and clearer disclosure of the sins written on the
tables of Judah's heart, finding therein its point of connection
with ver. 1, The verse has no verhum finit., and besides it is
a question whether " their children " is subject or object to
"remember." The rule, that in calm discourse the subject
follows the verb, does not decide for us ; for the object very
frequently follows next, and in the case of the infinitive the
subject is often not mentioned, but must be supplied from the
context. Here we may either translate : as their sons remember
(Chald. and Jerome), or: as they remember their sons. As
already said, the first translation gives no sense in keeping with
the context. Eashi, Kimclii, J. D. Mich., Maur., Hitz. follow
the other rendering: as they remember their children, so do
they their altars. On this view, the verb. fin. llSP is supplied
from the hifin. ibt, and the two accusatives are placed alongside,
CHAP. XVII. 1-4. 277
as in Isa. Ixvi. 3 after the participle, without the particle of
comparison demanded by the sense; cf. also Ps. xcii. 8, Job
xxvii. 14. Niig. calls this construction very harsh; but it has
analogues in the passages cited, and gives the very suitable
sense: Their altars, Astartes, are as dear to them as their children.
Hitz. takes the force to be this : " Whenever they think of their
children, they remember, and cannot but remember, the altars
to whose horns tiie blood of their sacrificed children adheres.
And so in the case of a green tree upon the heights ; i.e. when
they light upon such an one, they cannot help calling to mind
the Asheralis, which were such trees." But this interpretation
is clearly wrong; for it takes the second clause YV. ''^ as object
to Ibr, which is grammatically quite indefensible, and which is
besides incompatible with the order of the words. Besides, the
idea that they remember the altars because the blood of their
children stuck to the horns of them, is put into the words; and
the putting of it in is made possible only by Hitz.'s arbitrarily
separating "their Astartes" from "their altars," and from the
specification of place in the next clause: "by the green tree."
The words mean : As they remember their children, so do they
their altars and Asheralis by every green tree. The co-ordina-
tion of Asherahs and altars makes it clear that it is not sacrifices
to Moloch that are meant by altars ; for the Asherahs have no
connection with the worship of Moloch. Nag.'s assertions, that
^'l?'^. is the name for male images of Baal, and that there can
be no doubt of their connection with child-slaughtering Moloch-
worship, are unfounded and erroneous. The word means
images of Asherah; see on 1 Kings xiv. 23 and Dent. xvi. 21.
Graf says that '"i f^"??? does not belong to " altars and Asherahs,"
because in that case it would need to be 'i fV nnn, as in ii. 20,
iii. 6, 13, Isa. Ivii. 5, Deut. xii. 2, 2 Kings xvi. 4, xvii. 10, but
that it depends on lit. This remark is not correctly expressed,
and Graf himself gives i'3^ a local force, thus : by every green
tree and on every high hill they think of the altars and
Asherahs. This local relation cannot be spoken of as a
"dependence" upon the verb ; nor does it necessarily exclude
the connection with " altars and Asherahs," since we can quite
well think of the altars and Asherahs as being by or beside
every green tree and on the hills. At the same time, we hold
278 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
It better to connect the local reference with the verb, because
it gives the stronger sense, — namely, that the Jews not merely
think of tiie altars and Asherahs which are by every green
tree and upon the high hills, but that by every green tree and
on the high hills they think of their altars and Asherahs, even
when there are no such things to be seen there. Thus we can
now answer the question before thrown out, in what respects
the sin was ineffaceably engraven on the horns of the altar : It
was because the altars and images of the false gods had entwined
themselves as closely about their hearts as their children, so that
they brought the sin of their idolatry along with their sacrifices
to the altars of Jahveh. The offerings which they bring, in
this state of mind, to the Lord are defiled by idolatry and carry
their sins to the altar, so that, in the blood which is sprinkled
on its horns, the sins of the offerers are poured out on the
altar. Hence it appears unmistakeably that ver. 1 does not
deal with the consciousness of sin as not yet cancelled or for-
given, but with the sin of idolatry, which, ineradicably implanted
in the hearts of the people and indelibly recorded before God
on the horns of the altar, calls down God's wrath in punishment
as announced in vers. 3 and 4.
" My mountain in the field " is taken by most comm. as a
name for Jerusalem or Zion. Bnt it is a question whether
the words are vocative, or whether they are accusative ; and so
with the rest of the objects, "thy substance," etc., dependent
on IRK. If we take them to be vocative, so that Jerusalem is
addressed, then we must hold "thy substance" and "thy
treasures" to be the goods and gear of Jerusalem, while the
city will be regarded as representative of the kingdom, or rather
of the population of Judah. But the second clause, "thy high
places in all thy borders," does not seem to be quite in keeping
with this, and still less ver. 4: thou shalt discontinue from
thine inheritance, which is clearly spoken of the people of
Judah. Furthermore, if Jerusalem were the party addressed,
we should expect feminine suffixes, since Jerusalem is everywhere
else personified as a woman, as the daughter of Zion. We there-
fore hold "my mountain" to be accusative, and, under "the
mountain of Jahveh in the field," understand, not the city of
Jerusalem, but Mount Zion as the site of the temple, the
CHAP. XVII. 1-4. 279
mountain of tlie house of Jaliveli, Isa. ii. 3, Zeeh. v!ii. 3, Ps.
Xxiv. 3. The addition H'lfe'a may not be translated : with the
field (Ges., de W., Nag.) ; for 3 denotes the means or instru-
ment, or an accessory accompanying the principal thing or
action and subservient to it (E\v. § 217, f. 3), but not the mere
external surroundings or belongings. Nag.'s assertion, that 3,
amidst = together with, is due to an extreme position in an
empirical mode of treating language, n'lfe'a means "in the
field," and "mountain in the field" is like the "rock of the
plain," xxi. 13. But whether it denotes "the clear outstanding
loftiness of the mountain, so that for it we might say : My
mountain commanding a wide prospect" (Umbr., Graf), is a
question. nn'B', field, denotes not the fruitful fields lying round
Mount Zion, but, like "field of the Amalekites," Gen. xiv. 7,
"field of Edom" (Gen. xxxii. 4), the land or country; see on
Ezek. xxi. 2 ; and so here : my mountain in the land (of Judah
or Israel). The land is spoken of as a field, as a level or plain
(xxi. 13), in reference to the spiritual height of the temple
mountain or mountain of God above the whole land ; not in
reference to the physical pre-eminence of Zion, which cannot be
meant, since Zion is considerably exceeded in height by the
Mount of Olives on the east, and by the southern heights of the
highlands of Judah. By its choice to be the site of the Lord's
throne amid His people. Mount Zion was exalted above the
whole land as is a mountain in the field ; and it is hereafter to
be exalted above all mountains (Isa. ii. 2 ; Mic. iv. 1), while the
whole land is to be lowered to the level of a plain (Zech. xiv.
10). The following objects are ranged alongside as asyndetons :
the Mount Zion as His peculiar possession and the substance
of the people, all their treasures will the Lord give for a prey
to the enemy. "Thy high places" is also introduced, with
rhetorical effect, without copula. "Thy high places," z.e. the
heights on which Judah had practised idolatry, will He give
up, for their sins' sake, throughout the whole land. The whole
clause, from " thy high places " to " thy borders," is an apposi-
tion to the first half of the verse, setting forth the reason why
the whole land, the mountain of the Lord, and all the substance
of the people, are to be delivered to the enemy; because, viz.,
the whole land has been defiled by idolatry. Hitz. wrongly
280 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
translates nxeriB for sin, i.e. for a sin-offering. — Ver. 4. And
tliou slialt discontinue from tliine inlieritance. Tliere is in
nri'ip'pE» an allnsion to tlie law in Ex. xxiii. 11, to let the ground
lie untilled in the seventh year, and in Deut. xv. 2, to let loans
tro, not to exact from one's neiglibonr what has been lent to him.
Because Jndah has transgressed this law, the Lord will compel
tlie people to let go tlieir hold of their inheritance, i.e. He will
cast them out of it. 'nil seems strange, interposed between the
verb and the "from thine inheritance" dependent on it. The
later Greek translators (for the entire passage vers. 1-4 is want-
ing in the LXX.) render it /j,6vt], and Jerome sola. Ew.
therefore conjectures "TJ^p, but without due reason, since the
translation is only a free rendering of: and that by thyself. J.
D. Mich., Gr., and Nag. propose to read 11', on the ground of
the connection wrongly made between £3ipC' and ilj, to let go his
hand, Dent. xv. 2, given in Ges. Le.T. s.v. For i1^ in this case is
not object to DDt;', but belongs to nt^D, hand-lending; and in
Deut. XV. 3 ^IJ is subject to £3prri, the hand shall quit hold.
^31 sig. and that by thee, i.e. by tliine own fault ; cf. Ezek. xxii.
16. Meaning: by thine own fault thou must needs leave
behind thee thine inheritance, thy land, and serve thine enemies
in a foreign land. On the last clause, "for a fire," etc., cf. xv.
14, where is also discussed the relation of the present vers. 3
and 4 to xv. 13, 14. For ever burns the fire, i.e. until the sin
is blotted out by the punishment, and for ever inasmuch as the
wicked are to be punished for ever.
"Vers. 5-27. Fuether confiemation of this announce-
ment IN GENEEAL REFLECTIONS CONCERNING THE SOURCES
OF RUIN AND OF WELL-BEING.— This portion falls into two
halves : a. On the sources of ruin and of well-being (vers. 5-18);
b. On the way to life (vers. 18-27). The reflections of the first
half show the curse of confidence in man and the blessings of
confidence in God the Lord, vers. 5-13; to which is joined,
vers. 14-18, a prayer of the prophet for deliverance from his
enemies.
Ver. 5. " Thus saith Jahveli : Cursed is the man that trusteth
in man and maketh flesh his arm, while his heart departeth from
Jahveh. Ver. 6. He shall be as a destitute man in the wilderness,
CHAP, XVII. 5-13. 281
and sliall not see tlitit good cometli ; he shall inhabit parched
places in the desert, a salt land and uninhabited. Ver. 7.
Blessed is the man that trusteth in Jahveh, and whose trust
Jahveh is. Ver. 8. He shall be as a tree planted by the water,
and sliall by the river spread out his roots, and shall not fear
when heat cometh ; his leaves shall be green, and in the year
of drought he shall not have care, neither cease from yielding
fruit. Ver. 9. Deceitful is the heart above all, and corrupt it
is, who can know it? Ver. 10. I Jahveh search the heart
and try the reins, even to give every one according to his way,
according to the fruit of his doings. Ver. 11. The partridge
hatcheth the egg which it laid not ; there is that getteth riches
and not by right. In the midst of his days they forsake him,
and at his end he shall be a fool. Ver. 12. Thou throne of
glory, loftiness frbm the beginning, thou place of our sanc-
tuary. Ver. 13. Thou hope of Israel, Jahveh, all that forsake
Thee come to shame. They that depart from me shall be
written in the earth, for they have forsaken the fountain of
living water, Jahveh."
Trust in man and departure from God brings only mischief
(vers. 5 and G) ; trust in the Lord brings blessing only (vers.
7, 8). These truths are substantiated in vers. 9-13, and eluci-
dated by illustrations. — Ver. 5. Trust in man is described
according to the nature of it in the second clause : he that
o
maketh flesh his arm, i.e. his strength. Flesh, the antithesis to
spirit (of. Isa. xxxi. 3), sets forth the vanity and perishableness
of man and of all other earthly beings ; cf. besides Isa. xsxi. 3,
also Job X. 4, Ps. Ivi. 5. In ver. G we are shown the curse of
this trusting in man. One who so does is as iJ?"jJ? in the steppe.
This word, which is found beside only in Ps. cii. 18, and in the
form iJJiiP Jer. xlviii. G, is rendered by the old translators by
means of words which mean desert plants or thorny growths
(LX'K. ar^pioiLvpLKT) ; Jerome, myrice ; similarly in Chald. and
Syr.) ; so Ew., arid shrub ; Umbr., a bare tree. All these
renderings are merely guesses from the context ; and the latter,
indeed, tells rather against than for a bush or tree, since the
following clause, " he shall not see," can be said only of a man.
So in Ps. cii. 18, where we hear of the prayer of the iP^.y. The
word is from "^"VJ, to be naked, made bare, and denotes the
282 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
destitute man, who lacks all the means of subsistence. It is not
the homeless or outcast (Graf, Hitz.). He shall not see, i.e.
experience that good comes, i.e. he shall have no prosperity,
but shall inhabit " burnt places," tracts in the desert parched
by the sun's heat. Sr\lt-land, i.e. quite unfruitful land ; cf.
Deut. xxix. 22. ^B'ri K? is a relative clause : and which is not
inhabited = uninhabitable. Dwelling in parched tracts and
salt regions is a figure for the total want of the means of life
(equivalent to the German : auf keinen griinen Zweig hommen).
— Vers. 7 and 8 show the companion picture, the blessings
of trusting in the Lord. " That trusteth in Jahveh " is
strengthened by the synonymous "whose trust Jahveh is;"
cf. Ps. xl. 5. The portrayal of the prosperity of him that
trusts in the Lord is an extension of the picture in Ps. i. 3, 4,
of the man that hath his delight in the law of the Lord. The
form ?5^'' is air. "Key., equivalent to 73J, water-brook, -which,
moreover, occurs only in the plural (vl^.), Isa. xxx. 25, xliv. 4.
He spreads forth his roots by the brook, to gain more and more
strength for growth. Tlie diet, t^i'' is iniperf. from i*']^, and
is to be read ^<'^^ The Keri gives HN"]^ from HN"!, correspond-
ing to the HK"!'; in ver. 6. The diet, is unqualifiedly right, and
N"i^ N? corresponds to JNT vh. As to n^'s^a, see on xiv. 1. He
has no fear for the heat in the year of drought, because the
brook by which he grows does not dry up.
To bring this truth home to the people, the prophet in
ver. 9 discloses the nature of the human heart, and then shows
in ver. 10 how God, as the Searcher of hearts, requites man
according to his conduct. Trust in man has its seat in the
heart, which seeks thereby to secure to itself success and
prosperity. But the heart of man is more deceitful, cunnino-
than all else (3pV, from the denom. ^'\>V, to deal treacherously).
t^'ON, lit. dangerously sick, iucurable, cf. xv. 18 ; here, sore
wounded by sin, corrupt or depraved. Who can know it? i.e.
fathom its nature and corruptness. Therefore a man must not
trust the suggestions and illusions of his own heart. — Ver. 10.
Only God searches the heart and tries the reins, the seat of
the most hidden emotions and feelings, cf. xi. 20, xii. 3, and
deals accordingly, requiting each according to his life and his
doings. Tlie] before nnp, which is wanting in many MSS. and
CHAP. XVII. 5-13. 283
is not expressed by the old translators, is not to be objected
to. It serves to separate the aim in view from the rest, and to
give it the prominence due to an independent thought; cf. E\v.
§ 340, h. As to the trutli itself, cf. xxxii. 19. With this is joined
the common saying as to the partridge, ver. 11. The aim is not
to specify greed as another root of the corruption of the heart,
or to give another case of false confidence in the earthly (Nag.,
Graf) ; but to corroborate by a common saying, whose truth
should be obvious to the people, the greater truth, that God,
as Searcher of hearts, requites each according to his works.
The proverb ran : He that gains riches, and that by wrong,
i.e. in an unjust, dishonourable manner, is like a partridge
which hatches eggs it has not laid. In the Proverbs we often
find comparisons, as here, without the 3 similit. : a gainer of
riches is a partridge ; cf. Prov. xxv. 14, xxvi. 28, xxviii. 15.
*<1P, the crier, denotes here and 1 Sam. xxvi. 20 the par-
tridge {Rephulm, properly Rophuhn from rOpen = rufen, to call
or cry) ; a bird yet found in plenty in the tribe of Judah ;
cf. Eobinson, Palestine. All other interpretations are arbi-
trary. It is true that natural history has not proved the fact
of this peculiarity of the partridge, on which the proverb was
founded ; testimonies as to this habit of the creature are found
only in certain Church fathers, and these were probably de-
duced from this passage (cf. Winer, hibl. B. W., art. Rebhuhn).
But the proverb assumes only the fact that such was the wide-
spread popular belief amongst the Israelites, without saying
anything as to the correctness of it. " Hatcheth and layetli
not " are to be taken relatively. 131, '■^^ Targum word in Job
xxxix. 14 for O'sn, fovere, sig. hatch, lit. to hold eggs close
together, cover eggs; see on Isa. xxsiv. 15. 1?J, to bring forth,
here of laying eggs. As to the Kametz in both words, see Evv.
§ 100, c. The point of the comparison, that the young hatched
out of another bird's eggs forsake the mother, is brought out in
the application of the proverb. Hence is to be explained " for-
sake him : " the riches forsake him, instead of : are lost to him,
vanish, in the half of his days, i.e. in the midst of life ; and at
the end of his life he shall be a fool, i.e. the folly of his con-
duct shall fully appear.
In vers. 12 and 13 Jeremiah concludes this meditation with
284 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
an address to the Lord, which the Lord corroborates by His own
word. — Ver. 12 is taken by many ancient coram, as a simple
stateraent: a throne of glory, loftiness from the beginning, is
the place of our sanctuary. This is grammatically defensible;
but the view preferred by almost all raoderns, that it is an
apostrophe, is more in keeping with the tension of feeling in
the discourse. The " place of our sanctuary" is the temple as
the spot where God sits throned amidst His people, not the
heaven as God's throne : Isa. Ixvi. 1. This the pronoun our
does not befit, since heaven is never spoken of as the sanctuary
of Israel. Hence we must refer both the preceding phrases to
the earthly throne of God in the temple on Zion. The temple
is in xiv. 21 called throne of the HID'' ni33, because in it Jahveb
is enthroned above the ark; Ex. xxv. 22 ; Ps. Isxs. 2, xcix. 1.
p&X-iD has here the sig. of E'Kio, Isa. xl. 21, xli. 4, 26, xlviii.
16 : from the beginning onwards, from all time. Heaven as the
proper throne of God is often called Di""9) loftiness ; cf. Isa.
Ivii. 15, Ps. vii. 8 ; but so also is Mount Zion as God's earthly
dwelling-place ; cf. Ezek. xvii. 23, xx. 40. Zion is called lofti-
ness from the beginning, i.e. from iraraemorial time, as having
been from eternity chosen to be the abode of God's glory upon
earth ; cf. Ex. xv. 17, where in the song of Moses by the Red
Sea, Mount Zion is pointed out prophetically as the place of the
abode of Jahveh, inasmuch as it had been set apart thereto by
the sacrifice of Isaac ; see the expos, of Ex. xv. 17. Nor
does E'N'iD always mean the beginning of the world, but in Isa.
xli. 26 and xlviii. 16 it is used of the bejiinninc of the thinrrs
then under discussion. From the place of Jahveh's throne
amongst His people, ver. 13, the discourse passes to Him who
is there enthroned : Thou hope of Israel, Jahveh (cf. xiv. 8),
through whom Zion and the temple had attained to that
eminence. The praise of God's throne prepares only the
transition to praise of the Lord, who there makes known His
glory. The address to Jahveh : Thou hope of Israel, is not a
prayer directed to Him, so as to Justify the objection against
the vocative acceptation of ver. 12, that it were unseemly to
address words of prayer to the temple. The juxtaposition of the
sanctuary as the throne of God and of Jahveh, the hope of
Israel, involves only that the forsaking of the sanctuary on
CHAP. XVII. U-18. 285
Zion is a forsaking of Jahveh, the hope of Israel. It needs
hardly be observed that this adverting to the temple as the
seat of Jahveh's throne, whence help may come, is not in
contradiction to the warning given in vii. 4, 9 f. against
false confidence in the temple as a power present to protect.
That warning is aimed against the idolaters, who believed that
God's presence was so bound up with the temple, that the latter
was beyond the risk of harm. The Lord is really present in
the temple on Zion only to those who draw near Him in the
confidence of true faith. All who forsake the Lord come to
shame. This word the Lord confirms through the mouth of
the prophet in the second part of the verse. ''IID'!, according
to the Cliet.^ is a substantive from "iiD, formed like 3''"iJ from a''T
(cf. E\v. § 162, a) ; the Keri "'^l. is partic. from l^D with
1 cop. — an uncalled-for conjecture. My departers = those that
depart from me, shall be written in the earth, in the loose earth,
where writing speedily disappears. p^, synonymous with
iBy, cf. Job siv. 8, suggesting death. The antithesis to this
is not the graving in rock, Job xix. 24, but being written in the
book of life ; cf. Dan. xii. 1 with Ex. xxxii. 32. In this direc-
tion the grounding clause points : they have forsaken the
fountain of living water (ii. 13) ; for without water one must
pine and perish. — On this follows directly,
Vers. 14-18. T7ie prophet's prayer for rescue from Ids enemies.
— Ver. 14. " Heal me, Jahveh, that I may be healed ; help me,
that I may be holpen, for Thou art my praise. Ver. 15. Behold,
they say to me, "Where is the word of Jahveh ? let it come, now.
Ver. 16. I have not withdrawn myself from being a shepherd
after Thee, neither wished for the day of trouble, Thou knowest;
that which went forth of my lips was open before Thy face.
Ver. 17. Be not to me a confusion, my refuge art Thou in the
day of evil. Ver. 18. Let my persecutors be put to shame,
but let not me be put to shame ; let them be confounded, but
let not me be confounded ; bring upon them the day of evil,
and break them with a double breach."
The experience Jeremiah had had in his calling seemed to
contradict the truth, that trust in the Lord brings blessing
(ver. 7 ff.) ; for his preaching of God's word had brought him
nothino' but persecution and suffering. Therefore he prays the
286 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
Lord to remove tliis contradiction and to verify that truth in
his case also. Tlie prayer of ver. 14, " heal me," reminds one
of Ps. vi. 3, XXX. 3. Thou art "'n^inn, the object of my praises ;
cf. Ps. Ixxi. 6, Deut. x. 21. — The occasion for this prayer is
furnished by the attacks of his enemies, who ask in scorn what
tlien has become of that which he proclaims as the word of the
Lord, why it does not come to pass. Hence we see that the
discourse, of which this complaint is the conclusion, was de-
livered before the first invasion of Judah by the Chaldeans.
So long as his announcements were not fulfilled, the unbelieving
were free to persecute him as a false prophet (cf. Deut. xviii.
22), and to give out that his prophecies were inspired by his
own spite against his people. He explains, on the contrary,
that in his calling he has neither acted of his own accord, nor
wished for misfortune to the people, but that he has spoken by
the inspiration of God alone. 'lJ1 ''flVX NP cannot mean : I have
not pressed myself forward to follow Thee as shepherd, i.e.
pressed myself forward into Thy service in vain and over-
weening self-conceit (Umbr.). For although this sense would,
fall very well in with the train of thought, yet it cannot be
grammatically justified, px, press, press oneself on to any-
tliing, is construed with ?, cf. Josh. x. 13 ; with to it can
only mean : press oneself away from a thing, n?^? may stand
for np ni^■^D, cf. xlviii. 2, 1 Sam. sv. 23, 1 Kings xv. 13 :
from being a shepherd after Thee, i.e. I have not withdrawn
myself from following after Thee as a shepherd. Against this
rendering the fact seems to weigh, that usually it is not the
prophets, but only the kings and princes, that are entitled the
shepherds of the people ; cf. xxiii. 1. For this reason, it would
appear, Hitz. and Graf have taken nj)"i in the sig. to seek after
a person or thing, and have translated : I have not pressed
myself away from keeping after Thee, or from being one that
followed Thee faithfully. For this appeal is made to places
like Prov. siii. 20, xxviii. 7, Ps. xxxvii. 3, where nj)"i does mean
to seek after a thing, to take pleasure in it. But in this sig.
fiJiT is always construed with the accus. of the thing or person,
not with ''y}^, as here. Nor does it by any means follow, from
tlie fact of shepherds meaning usually kings or rulers, that
the idea of "shepherd" is exhausted in ruling and governing
CHAP. XVII. li-18. 287
people. According to Ps. xxiii. 1, Jahveh is tlie shepherd of
the godly, who feeds them in green pastures and leads them to
the refreshing water, who revives their soul, etc. In this sense
prophets, too, feed the people, if they, following the Lord as
chief shepherd, declare God's word to the people. We cannot
in any case abide by Nag.'s rendering, who, taking njjn in its
literal sense, puts the meaning thus : I have not pressed myself
away from being a shepherd, in order to go after Thee. For
the assumption that Jeremiah had, before his call, been, like
AnioSj a herd of cattle, contradicts ch. i. 1 ; nor from the fact,
that the cities of the priests and of the Levites were provided
with grazing fields (n''B''iJp), does it at all follow that the priests
themselves tended their flocks. " The day of trouble," the ill,
disastrous day, is made out by Nag. to be the day of his entering
upon the office of prophet — a view that needs no refutation.
It is the day of destruction for Jerusalem and Judah, which
Jeremiah had foretold. When Nag. says : " He need not have
gone out of his way to affirm that he did not desire the day of
disaster for the whole people," he has neglected to notice that
Jeremiah is here defending himself against the charges of his
enemies, who inferred from his prophecies of evil that he found
a pleasure in his people's calamity, and wished for it to come.
For the truth of his defence, Jeremiah appeals to the omni-
science of God : " Thou knowest it." That which goes from
my lips, i.e. the word that came from my lips, was 1''3Q nai,
before or over against Thy face, i.e. manifest to Thee. — Ver. 17.
On this he founds his entreaty that the Lord will not bring
him to confusion and shame by leaving his prophecies as to
Judah unfulfilled, and gives his encouragement to pray in the
clause : Thou art ray refuge in the day of evil, in evil times ;
cf. XV. 11. May God rather put his persecutors to shame and
confusion by the accomplishment of the calamity foretold, ver.
18. T\]J\n pointed with Tsere instead of the abbreviation ^'^Iil,
cf. Ew. § 224, c. *^^?n is imperat. instead of f^^n^ as in 1 Sam.
XX. 40, where the Masoretes have thus pointed even the K''3n.
But in the Hiph. the i has in many cases maintained itself
atminst the e, so that we are neither justified in regarding the
form before us as scriptio plena, nor yet in reading nx^nn. — Break
them with a double breach, i.e. let the disaster fall on them
288 TOE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAa
doubly. " A double breach," pr. sometliiug doubled in the
way of breaking or demolition, jii^t^ is not subordinated to
n3L''D in Stat, eonstr., but is added as accus. of kind ; cf. Ew.
§287, /j.
Vers. 19-27. Of the hallowing of the Sahhath. — Ver. 19.
" Thus said Jahveh unto me : Go and stand in the gate of the
sons of the people, by which the kings of Judali come in and
by which they go out, and in all gates of Jerusalem, Ver. 20.
And say unto them : Hear the word of Jahveh, ye kings of
Judah, and all Judah, and all inhabitants of Jerusalem, that
go in by these gates : Ver. 21. Thus hath Jahveh said : Take
heed for your souls, and bear no burden on the Sabbath-day,
and bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. Ver. 22. And carry
forth no burden out of your houses on the Sabbath-day, and
do no work, and hallow the Sabbath-day, as I commanded your
fathers. Ver. 23. But they hearkened not, neither inclined
their ear, and made their neck stiff, that they might not hear
nor take instruction. Ver. 24. But if ye will really hearken
unto me, saith Jahveh, to bring in no burden by the gates of
the city on the Sabbath-day, and to hallow the Sabbath-day, to
do no work thereon, Ver. 25. Then shall there go through the
gates of the city kings and princes, who sit on the throne of
David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes,
the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this
city shall be inhabited for ever. Ver. 26. And they shall come
from the cities of Judah and the outskirts of Jerusalem, from
the land of Benjamin and froni the lowland, from the hill-
country and from the south, that bring burnt-offering and slain-
oifering, meat-offering and incense, and that bring praise into
the house of Jahveh. Ver. 27. But if ye hearken not to me,
to hallow the Sabbath-day, and not to bear a burden, and to
come into the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day, then will
I kindle fire in her gates, so that it shall devour the palaces of
Jerusalem, and not be quenched."
The introduction, ver. 19, shows that this passage has, in
point of form, but a loose connection with what precedes. It
is, however, not a distinct and independent prophecy ; for it
wants the heading, " The word of Jahveh which came," etc.,
proper to all the greater discourses. Besides, in point of
CHAP. XVII. 19-27. 289
subject-matter, it may very well be joined with the preceding
general reflections as to the springs of mischief and of well-
being ; inasmuch as it shows how the way of safety appointed
to the people lies in keeping the decalogue, as exemplified in
one of its fundamental precepts. — The whole passage contains
only God's command to the prophet ; but the execution of it,
i.e. the proclamation to the people of what was commanded, is
involved in the nature of the case. Jeremiah is to proclaim
this word of the Lord in all the gates of Jerusalem, that it
may be obeyed in them all. The locality of the gate of the
sons of the people is obscure and difficult to determine, that by
which the kings of Judah go and come. DJ? ''J3 seems to stand
for DJfn "i33j as the Keri would have it. In xxvi. 23 and 2 Kings
xxiii. G, " sons of the people " means the comimon people as
opposed to the rich and the notables ; in 2 Chron. xxxv. 5, 7 ff.,
the people as opposed to the priests and Levites, that is, the
laity. The first sig. of the phrase seems here to be excluded
by the fact, that the kings come and go by this gate ; for there
is not the smallest probability that a gate so used could have
borne the name of " gate of the common people." But we
might well pause to weigh the second sig. of the word, if we
could but assume that it was a gate of the temple that was
meant. Niig. concludes that it was so, on the ground that we
know of no city gate through which only the kings and the
dregs of the people were free to go, or the kings and the mass
of their subjects, to the exclusion of the priests. But this does
not prove his point ; for we are not informed as to the temple,
that the kings and the laity were permitted to go and come by
one gate only, while the others were reserved for priests and
Levites. Still it is much more likely that the principal entrance
to the outer court of the temple should have obtained the name
of " people's gate," or " laymen's gate," than that a city gate
should have been so called ; and that by that " people's gate"
the kings also entered into the court of the temple, while the
priests and Levites came and went by side gates which were
more at hand for the court of the priests. Certainly Nag. is
right when he further remarks, that the name was not one in
general use, but must have been used by the priests only. On
the other hand, there is nothing to support clearly the surmise
VOL. I. I
290 THE PEOrHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
that the gate liDI, 2 Chron. xxiii. 5, was so called ; tlie east
gate of the outer court is much more likely. We need not be
surprised at the mention of this chief gate of the temple along
with the city gates ; for certainly there would be always a great
multitude of people to be found at this gate, even if what Niig.
assumes were not the case, that by the sale and purchase of
things used in the temple, this gate was the scene of a Sabbath-
breaking trade. But if, with the majority of comm., we are
to hold that by " people's gate" a city gate was meant, then
we cannot determine which it was. Of the suppositions that it
was the Benjamin-gate, or the well-gate, Neh. ii. 14 (Maur.),
or the c;ate of the midst which led through the northern wall
of Zion from the upper city into the lower city (Hitz.), or the
water-gate, Neh. iii. 26 (Graf), each is as unfounded as another.
From the jilural : the kings of Judali (ver. 20), Ilitz. infers
that more kings than one were then existing alongside one
another, and that thus the name must denote the members of
the royal family. But his idea has been arbitrarily forced into
the text. The gates of the city, as well as of the temple, did
not last over the rei"n of but one kinji, ver. 21. nic'sja "lOtyn
to take heed for tlie souls, i.e. take care of the souls, so as not
to lose life (cf. Mai. ii. 15), is a more pregnant construction
than that with ?, Deut. iv. 15, althongh it yields the same
sense. Nag. seeks erroneously to explain the phrase according
to 2 Sam. XX. 10 (^'i]'!]? ""??'•?, take care against the sword) and
Deut, xxiv. 8, where i';?^n ought not to be joined at all with
V^JZi. The bearing of burdens on the Sabbath, both into the
city and out of one's house, seems to point most directly at
market trade and business, cf. Neh. xiii. 15 ff., but is used only
as one instance of the citizeus' occupations; hence are appended
the very words of the law : to do no work, Ex. xii. 16, xx. 10,
Deut. V. 14, and : to hallow the Sabbath, namely, by cessation
from all labour, cf. ver. 24. The remark in ver. 23, that the
fathers have already transgressed God's law, is neither contrary
to the aim in view, as Hitz. fancies, nor superfluous, but serves
to charactei'ize the transgression censured as an old and deeply-
rooted sin, which God must at length punish unless the people
cease therefrom. The description of the fathers' disobedience
is a verbal repetition of vii. 26. The diet. yiOIB' cannot be a
CHAP. XVII. lSF-27i 291
participle, but is a clerical error for V'iQp {infin. constr. with
scriptio plena), as ia xi. 10 and xix. 15. See a similar error in
ii. 25 and viii. 6, On " nor take instruction," cf. ii. 30. — In
the next verses the observance of this commandment is enforced
by a representation of the blessings which tlie Iiallowing of the
Sabbath will bring to the people (vers. 24-2G), and tlie curse
upon its profanation (ver. 27). If they keep the Sabbath holy,
the glory of the dynasty of David and tiie prosperity of the
people will acquire permanence, and Jerusalem remain con-
tinually inhabited, and the people at large will brin"- tliank-
offerings to tiie Lord in His temple. Hitz., Graf, and Nag.
take objection to the collocation : kings and princes (ver, 25),
because princes do not sit on the throne of David, nor can tliey
have other " princes" dependent on them, as we must assume
from the " they and their princes." But although the Q'''}K'l be
awanting in the parallel, xxii. 4, yet this passage cannot be re-
garded as the standard; for whereas the discourse in chap. xxii.
is addressed to the king, the present is to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, or rather the people of Judah. The Cl^^l is sub-
ordinate to the kings, so tiiat the sitting on the throne of David
is to be referred only to the kings, the following Dn*']'f'! helping
further to define them. " Elding" is to be joined botli witii
" in chariots" and " on horses," since 33"i means either driving
or riding. The driving and riding of the kings and their princes
through the gates of Jerusalem is a sign of the xmdiminisiied
splendour of the rule of David's race. — Ver. 26. Besides tlie
blessing of the continuance of the Davidic monarchy, Jeru-
salem will also have to rejoice in the continued spiritual privi-
lege of public worship in the house of the Lord. From the
ends of the kingdom the people will come with offerings to the
temple, to present thank-offerings for benefits received. The
rhetorical enumeration of the various parts of the country
appears again in xxxii. 44. Tiie cities of Judah and the out-
skirts of Jerusalem denote the part of the country which
bordered on Jerusalem ; then we have the land of Benjamin,
the northern province of the kingdom, and three districts into
which the tribal domain of Judah was divided : the Sliephelah
in the west on the Mediterranean Sea, the hill-country, and tiie
southland ; see on Josh. xv. 21, 33, and 48. Tlie desert of
292 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREIIIAH.
Judali (Josh. XV. 61) is not mentioned, as being comprehended
under the hill-country. The offerings are divided into two
classes : bloody, burnt and slain offerings, and unbloody, meat-
offerings and frankincense, which was strewed upon the meat-
offering (Lev. ii. 1). The latter is not the incense-offering
(Graf), which is not called npb, but nnbp, cf. Ex. xxx. 7 ff.,
although frankincense was one of the ingredients of the incense
prepared for burning (Ex. xxx. 34). These offerings they will
bring as "praise-offering" into the house of the Lord, ■"'^i'^
is not here used for n"iin nar, praise-offering, as one species of
slain-offering, but is, as we see from xxxiii. 11, a general desig-
nation for the praise and thanks which they desire to express
by means of the offerings specified. — Ver. 27. In the event of
the continuance of this desecration of the Sabbath, Jerusalem
is to be burnt up with fire, cf. xxi. 14, and, as regards the
expressions used, Amos i. 14, Hos. viii. 14.
CHAP. XVIII.-XX. THE FIGURES OF THE POTTEB'S CLAT AND
OF THE EAKTHEN PITCHER.
These three chapters have the title common to all Jeremiah's
discourses of the earlier period : The word which came to Jere-
miah from Jahveh (xviii. 1). In them, bodied forth in two
symbolical actions, are two discourses which are very closely
related to one another in form and substance, and which may
be regarded as one single prophecy set forth in words and
actions. In them we find discussed Judah's ripeness for the
judgment, the destruction of the kingdom, and the speediness
with which that judgment was to befall. The subject-matter
of this discourse-compilation falls into two parts : chap, xviii.
and chap. xix. and xx. ; that is, into the accounts of two sym-
bolical actions, together with the interpretation of them and
their application to the people (chap, xviii. 1—17 and chap. xix.
1-1.3), followed immediately by notices as to the reception
which these announcements met on the part of the people and
their rulei-s (chap, xviii. 18-23, and chap. xix. 14-xx. 18). In
the first discourse, that illustrated by the figure of a potter who
remodels a misshapen vessel, chap, xviii., the prophet inculcates
on the people the truth that the Lord has power to do according
SeRIBNER & WEIdFORD'S
Catalogue
ottbe
CJeoloiffual tubluattons
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
ESSES. SCRIBNEE & WELFOED, Sole
Agents in the United States for the above
well-known house, invite the attention of
the Trade and the Public to the subjoined List of
valuable Books, embracing the widest range of sound
and useful Theological Thought and Discussion,
SCRIBNER & WELFORD,
743-745 Broadway, New York City.
Adam (J., D.D.)— An Exposition of the Epistle op James. 8vo, $3.60.
Ahlfeld (Dr.), etc.— The Voice eeom the Cross : Sermons on our Lord's
Passion by Eminent Living Preachers of Germany. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Alexander (Prof. W. Lindsay)— SYSTEM OP Biblical Theology. Two vols.
8vo, S8.40.
Bannerman (Prof.) — The Chgroh op Ohkist. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
Bannerman (Eev. D.D.)— The Doctrine op tee Church. 8vo, $4.50.
Baiungarten (Professor) — Apostolic History. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Beck (Dr.) — Outlines op Biblical Psychology. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
Pastoral Theology in the New Testament. Crown 8vo, $2.50.
Bengel — Gnomon op the New Testament. With Original Notes, Explana-
tory and Illustrative. Five vols. 8vo, $12.00.
Bible-Class Handbooks. Crown 8vo.
BiNNiE (Prof.)— The Church, 60 cents.
Brown (Principal) — The Epistle to the Romans, 80 cents.
Candlish (Prof.)^The Christian Sacraments, 60 cents.
■ The "Wort of the Holy Spirit, 75 cents.
Christian Doctrine of God, 75 cents.
Davidson (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Hebrews, $1.00.
DoDS (Marous; D.D.) — Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, 80 cents.
Book of Genesis, 80 cents.
Douglas (Principal) — Book of Joshua, 60 cents.
Book of Judges, 50 cents.
Hamilton (T., D.D.)— Irish Presbyterian Church History, $1.00.
Hendbrson (Archibald, M.A.) — Palestine, with Maps. The Maps are
hy Captain Conder, R.E., of the Palestine Exploration Fund. $1.00.
KiLPATRiCK (T. B., B.D.)— Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature,
60 cents.
- Lindsay (Prof.)— St. Mark's Gospel, $1.00.
St. Luke's Gospel, Two vols., $1.50.
The Reformation, 80 cents.
The Acts of the Apostles, Two vols., $1.50.
Macgregor (Prof.) — The Epistle to the Galatians, 60 cents.
— Exodus, Two vols., $1.50.
Macpherson (John, M.A.) — Presbyterianism, 60 cents.
—. The Westminster Confession of Eaith, 80 cents.
The Sum of Saving Knowledge, 75 cents.
Murphy (Prof.) — The Books of Chronicles, 60 cents.
Reith (George, M.A.) — St. John's Gospel, Two vols,, 80 cents each.
Scrymgeour (Wm.)— Lessons on the Life of Christ, $1.00.
Stalker (James, M.A.) — Life of Christ, 60 cents.
Life of St. Paul, 60 cents.
Smith (George, LL.D.) — A Short History of Missions, $1.00.
Thomson (W. D., M.A.)— Christian Miracles and Conclusions of Science
80 cents.
Walker (Norman L., M.A.) — Scottish Church History, 60 cents.
Whytb (Alexander, D.D.)— The Shorter Catechism, $1.00.
Bible-Class Primers. Paper covers, 25 cents each.
Croskery (Prof.) — Joshua and the Conq[uest.
Given (Prof.)— The Kings of Judah.
Gloag (Paton J., D.D.)— Life of Paul.
IvERACH (James, M.A.)- Life of Moses.
Patbrson (Prof. J. A.)— Period of the Judges.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Bible-Class Primers — coniin%s&.
RoBSON (John, D.D.) — Outlines of Protestant Missions.
Salmond (Prof.)— Life of Peter.
The Shorter Catechism, Three Parts.
Life of Christ.
Skinneb (J., M.A.) — Historical Connection between the Old and
Smith (H. W., D.D.)— Outlines of Early Church History.
Thomson (P., M.A.)— Life of David.
Walker (W., M.A.) — The Kings of Israel.
WlNTEBBOTHAM (Raynbr, M.A.) — Life and Reign of Solomon.
WiTHBROW (Prof.) — The History of the Reformation.
Blaikie (Prof. W. G.) — The Pebachers of Scotland from the 6th to the
19th Cbhtuet. Poet 8to, $3.00.
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Bruce (A. B., D.D.) — The Training of the Twelve ; exhibiting the Twelve
Dieoiplee under Discipline for the Apostleship. Third Edition, 8vo, iJi.OO.
The Humiliation of Christ, in its Physical, Ethical, and Official
Aspects. Second Edition, 8to, $4.00.
The Kingdom of God ; or. The Teaching of Christ according to the
Synoptical Gospels. Ex. crown 8to.
Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion. (Translation.) Two vols.
8to, $6.60.
Calviui Instltutio Christianae Beligionis. A. TholuCK. Two vols. 8vo, |5.60.
Candlish (Prof. J. S., D.D.)— The Kingdom of God Biblically and His-
torically Considered. 8vo, $4.20.
Caspari (C. E.) — A Chronological and Geographical Inteoddction to
THE Life of Christ. 8vo, $3.00.
Caspars (A.) — The Footsteps of Christ. Crown 8vo, $3.00.
Cassel (Prof.) — Commentary on Esther. Svo, |3.00.
Cave (Prof.)— The Scriptural Doctrine op Sacrifice. 8vo, |4.80.
An Introduction to Theology : Its Principles, its Branches, its
Eesnlts, and its Literature. 8to, $4.80.
Cremer (Prof.)— Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New TBaTAMBNT Greek.
Third Edition, with Supplement, demy 4to, $13.60.
Crippen (Kev. T. G.)— A Popular Introduction to the History of
Christian Doctrine. 8to, $3.00.
Cunningham (Principal) — Historical Theology. Review of the Principal
Doctrinal Discussions since the Apostolic Age. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
Discussions on Church Principles. 8vo, $4.20.
Curtiss (Dr. S. I.)— The Levitical Priests. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Davidson (Prof.) — An Introductory Hebrew Grammar. "With Progressive
Exercises in Beading and "Writing. Ninth Edition, 8vo, $3.00.
DeUtzsch (Prof.)— A System of Biblical Psychology. 8vo, $3.00.
New Commentary on Genesis. Two vols. 8vo., 16.00.
Commentary on Job. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on Psalms. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
On the Proverbs of Solomon. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. 8vo, $3.00.
Old Testament History of Redemption. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Commentary on Isaiah. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On the Epistle to the Hebbews. Two vols. Svo, $6.00.
Doedes— Manual of New Testament Hermeneutics. Crown 8vo, $1.20.
DoUinger (Dr.)— Hippolytus and Callistus ; or. The Roman Church in the
First Half of the Third Century. 8vo, $3.00.
Domer (Prof.)— History of the Development of the Doctrine of the
Person OF Christ. Five vols. 8to, $15.00.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Domer (Prof.)— SYSTEM OF Christian Docteine. Four vols. 8vo, |12.00.
System of Chbistian Ethics. 8vo, |3.50. .
Eadie (Prof.)— Commentabies on St. Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians. New and Bevised Editions, Edited by Eev.
Wm, Young, M.A. Three vols. 8to, $4.20 each.
Ebrard (Dr. J. H. A.)— The Gospel History. 8vo, $3.00.
COMMENTABY ON THE EPISTLES OP Si. JoHN. 8V0, |3.00.
Apologetics. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Elliott — On the Inspiration op the Holy Scriptures. 8vo, $2.40.
Emesti — Biblical Interpretation op New Testament. Two vols., $3.20.
Ewaia (Heinrich) — Syntax op the Hebrew Language op the Old
Testameht. 8to, $3.00.
Revelation : Its Nature and Record. 8vo, $3.00.
Old and New Testament Theology. 8vo, $3.00.
Fairbaim (Principal) — The Revelation op Law in Scripture. 8vo, $3.75.
EzEKiEL AND THE BooK OP HIS PROPHECY. Fourth Edition, 8vo, $3.'75.-
Prophecy Viewed in its Distinctive Nature, its Special Func-
tions, AND Proper Interpretations. Second Edition, 8vo, $3.75.
New Testament Hermeneutical Manual. 8vo, $3.75.
Pastoral Theology : A Treatise oii the Office and Duties of the
Christian Pastor. With a Memoir of the Author. Crown 8to, $2.50.
Forbes (Prof.) — Symmetrical Structure op Scripture. 8vd, $3.00.
Analytical Commentary on the Romans. 8vo, $4.00.
— Studies in the Book op Psalms. 8vo, $3.00.
Prank (Prof. P. H.) — System of Christian Certainty. 8vo, $3.00.
Gebhart "(H.) — The Doctrine op the Apocalypse and its relation to
" THE Doctrine of the Gospel and Epistles of John. 8to, $3.00.
Gerlach — Commentary on the Pentateuch. 8vo, $3.75.
Gifford (Canon)— Voices op the Prophets. Crown 8vo, $1.40.
Given (Eev. Prof. J. J.) — The Truths op Scripture in connection with
Revelation, Inspiration, and the Canon. 8vo, $2.40.
Glasgow (Prof.) — Apocalypse Translated and Expounded. 8vo, $4.20.
Gloag (Paton J., D.D.) — A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
— The Messianic .Prophecies. Crown 8vo, $3.00.
Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. 8vo, $4.80.
Introduction to the Catholic Epistles. 8vo, $4.20.
— ^ Exegetical Studies. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Godet (Prof) — Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, $6:00.
Commentary on St. John's Gospel. Three vols, avo, $9.00.
— ^ Commentary on Epistle to the Romans. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on 1st Epistle to Corinthians. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Lectures in Defence op the Christian Faith. Cr. Svo, $2.40..
Goehel (Siegfried)— The Parables op Jesus. 8vo, $3.00.
Hagenbach (Dr. K. E.) — History op Doctrines. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
History op the Reformation. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
HaU (Eev. Newman, IL.B.)— The Lord's Prayer. 8vo, $3.75.
Hanulton (T., D.D.) — Beyond the Stars ; or. Heaven, its IrLhaiDitants,
Occupations, and Life. Second Edition, crown 8vo. [7ji the press.
Harless (Dr. C. A.) — System op Christian Ethics. 8vo, $3.00.
Hanpt (Erich) — The First' Epistle op St. John. 8vo, $3.00.
H&vemick (H. A. Ch.) — Introduction to Old Testament. $3.00.
Heard (Eev. J. B., M.A.)— The Tripartite Nature of Man— Spirit, Soul,
AND Body. Fifth Edition, crown 8to, $2.00.
Old and New Theology. A Constructive Critique. Cr. 8Vo, $2.25.
. T. and T. Claris Publicatians.
Hefele (Bishop) — A Histoey of. the Councils of the Church. Vol. I.,
to A.D. 325 ; Vol. II., A.D. 326 to 429. Vol. III., a.d. 431 to the cloee of the
Council of Chaloedoji:, 451.; 8vo, $4.80 each.
Hengstenberg (Prof.) — Commentaey on Psalms. Three vols. 8vo, |9.00.
CoMMENTABT ON THE BooE OF EcCLESlASTES. Treatises on the
Song of Solomon, Job, and on Isaiah, etc. 8vo, $3.00.
— The Peophecies of Ezbkiel Elucidated. 8vo, $3.00.
The Genuineness of Daniel, etc. 8vo, |4.80.
History of the ■ Kingdom of God. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Cheistology of the Old Testament. Pour vols. 8vo, $12.00.
-^ — - On the Gospel of St. John. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
HutcMson (John, D.D.) — Commentaey ON Thessalonians. 8vo, $3.60.
Commentaey on Philippians. 8vo, $3.00.
Johnstone (Prof. K., D.D.) — Commentary on First Peter. 8vo, $4.20.
Kant — The Mbtaphysic of Ethics. Crown 8vo, $2.40.
Philosophy of Law. Trans, by W. Hastie, B.D. Cr. 8vo, $2.00.
Keil (Prof.) — Commentary On the Pentateuch. Three vols. 8vb, $9.00.
Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on the Books of Samuel. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on the Books of Kings. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on Chronicles. 8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on Ezra, NbAemiah, Esther. .8vo, $3.00.
Commentary on JerSmiah. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary on EzeKibl. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Commentary ON "Daniel. 8vo, $3.00,
■ On the Books of the Minor Prophets. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical
SCHIPTHEES OF THE OlD TESTAMENT. TwO Vols. 8vO, $6.00.
■ — ; Handbook on Biblical Aech^siology. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Killen (Prof.) — The Old Catholic Church ; or, The History, Doctrine,
Worship, and Polity of the Christians, traced to A.D. 755. 8vo, $3.60.
'■ The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious. Crown 8vo, $1.00.
Konig (Dr. P. E.) — The Eeligious History of Israel. A Discussion of
the Chief Problems in Old Testament History as opposed to the DeTelopment
The.oriets. Crown 8vo, |il.50. -
Knmunacher (Dr. P. W.) — The Suffering .Sayioue ; or. Meditations on the
Last Days of the Silverings of Christ. Eighth Edition, crown 8v6, ,ffi2.40.
David, the King of Iseael : A Portrait drawn from Bible History
and the Book of Psalms. Second Edition, crown 8vo, f 2.40.
Knrtz (Prof.) — Handbook of Church History. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
■^— — History of the Old Covenant. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Laidlaw (Prof.)^THE Bible Doctrine of, Man. 8vo, $4.20,
Lechler (Prof. G. V., D.D.) — The Apostolic and Post- Apostolic Times.
Their Diversity and Unity in Life and Doctrine. Two vols: cr. 8vo, $6.40.
Lehmann (Pastor) — Scenes from the Life of Jesus. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
Liehtenberger's History of German Theology in the Nineteenth
Centdby. Eevised and brought up to date, with important additions
specially prepared for this English Edition by the Author. 8vo, $5.00.
Lisco (P. G.) — Parables, of Jesus Explained. Pcap. 8vo, $2.00.
Lotze (Hermann) — MiCROCOSMUS : An Essay concerning Man and his Relation
to the World. Second Edition, 8vo (1450 pages), one vol., $6.00.
luthar^t, Kahilis, and Bruckner — The Church. Crown Bvo, $2.00.
luHiaidt (Proif.)— St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel. $3.00.
"■^^-i^— History of Christian Ethics. \In the -press.
-r^-^- St. John's (Gospel Described and Explained according to its
' '" Peodliar Character. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00.
— Apologetic .Lectures on the Fundamental Truths of Cpeis-
■'■ ' ■ ^ TrAsiTT {SevenOi' Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Saying Truths of 'Christianity (Fifth Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.00.
MoEAL Truths, OF Cheistianity {Third Edition). Crown 8vo, $2.00.
T. and T. Claris Publications.
Mail (A., D.D.)— Studies in the Cheistian Evidences. -Second Edition,
crown 8to, $2.40.
Martensen (Bishop)— Cheistian Dogmatics : A Compendium of the Doctrines
of Christianity. 8to, $3.00.
Cheistian Ethics. (Genbeal Ethics.) 8vo, |3.00.
Cheistian Ethics. (Individual Ethics.) 8vo, $3.00.
Christian Ethics. (Social Ethics.) 8vo, f 3.00.
Matheson (Geo., D.D.)— Geowth OF THE Spieit OF Cheistianitt, from the
First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era. Two vols. 8to, $8 40.
Aids to the Study of Geeman Theoloot. Third Edition, $1.80.
Meyer (Dr.) — Ceitical and Exegetical Commentaei on St. Matthew's
Gospel. Two vols. 8to, $6.00.
On Mark and Luke. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On St. John's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00. '
On the Epistle to the Eomans. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
■ On Coeinthians. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
On Galatians. 8vo, $3.00.
On Ephbsians and Philemon. One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
On'Philippians and Colossians. One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
On Thessalonians. {Dr. Liinemann.) One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
The Pastoeal Epistles. {Dr. Huiher.) 8vo, $3.00.
• The Epistle to the Hebebws. {Dr. Liinemann.) 8vo, $3.00.
St. Jambs' and St. John's Epistles. {Huther.) 8vo, $3.00.
Petee and Jude. {Dr. Huther.) One vol. 8vo, $3.00.
*,* This translation is from the last edition revised by the late Dr. Meyer.
MioMe (Charles, M.A.) — Bible Words and Pheases. 18mo, 40 cents.
Monrad (Dr. D. G.)— The World of Peayee. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Morgan (J., D.D.)— Scripture Testimony to the Holt Spirit. $3.00.
Exposition of the Fiest Epistle of John. 8vo, $3.00.
Miiller (Dr. Julius)— The Christian Docieine of Sin. An entirely New
Translation from the Fifth German Edition. Two vols. 8to, $6.00.
Naville (Ernest) — The Peoblem of Evil. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
The Cheist. Translated by Rev. T. J. Despe^s. Cr. 8vo, $1.80.
MoDEEN Physics : Studies Historical and Philosophical. Translated
hy Eev. Hbnky Downton, M.A. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
Nicoll (W. E., M.A.) — The Incaenate Savioue : A Life of Jesus Christ.
Crown 8to, $2.40.
Oehler (Prof.)— Theology of the Old Testament. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Oosterzee (Dr. Van) — The Yeab of Salvation. Words of Life for Every
Day. A Book of Household Devotion. Two vols. 8vo, $2.40 each.
Moses : A Biblical Study. Crown 8vo, $2.40.
Orelli — Old Testament Peophecy eeoaeding the Consummation of the
Kingdom of God. 8vo, $3.00.
Peophecies of Isaiah. Demy 8vo, $3.00.
Peophecies of Jeeemiah. 8vo, $3.00.
PhiUppi (F. A.) — Commentaey on the Epistle to the Komans. Erom the
Third Improved Edition, by Bev. Professor Banks. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Pressense (Edward de) — The Eedeemeb : Discourses. Crown 8vo, $2.40.
Punjer (Bemhard) — Histoey of the Christian Philosophy of Religion
FROM THE Eeformation TO Kant. 8vo, $5.25.
Kabiger (Prof.)— ENCYCLOPEDIA- OF Theology. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
Eainy (Principal)— Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine.
{The Fifth Series of the Oimningham Lectures.) 8vo, $4.20. ^ '
KeuBch (Prof.) — Nature and the Bible : Lectures on the Mosaic History of
Creation in relation to Natural Science. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
Bothe (Prof.) — Sermons foe the Christian Yeae. Crown 8vo, $1.75.
Saisset — Manual of Modern Pantheism. Two vols. 8vo, $4.20.
SartoriuB (Dr. E.) — DocTElNE OF Divine Love. 8vo, $3.00.
Schmid'a Biblical Theology ov the New Testament. 8vo, $3.00.
Schiirer (Prof.)— History of the New Testament Times. Div. II. Three
vols. 8vo, $9.00.
Scott (Jas., M.A., p.p.)— .Pbinciplbs op New Testament Quotation
Established anb Applied to Biblical Obiticism. Crown 8to, 2nd
Edition, $1.50.
Simon (Eev. Prof. D. W.)— The Bible ; An Outgrowth of Theocratic Life.
Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Bedbmption oe Man. Discussions bearing oa the Atonement.
Demy 8vo, $4.00.
Smeaton (Prof.) — The Doctrine op the Atonement as Taught by Christ
Himself. Second Edition, 8to, $4.20.
On the Doctrine op the Holy Spirit. 2nd Edition. 8vo, 13.60.
Smith (Prof. Thos., D.D.)— Medusval Missions. Crown 8vo, $1.80.
Stalker (Kev. Jas., M.A.)— The LIpb op Jesus Christ. New Edition,, in
larger type. Grown 8vo, $1.50.
LiPE OP St. Paul._ Large Type Edition. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
Stanton (V. H., M.A.)— The Jewish and The Christian Messiah. A
Study in the Earliest History of Christianity. 8to, $4.20.
Steinmeyer (Dr. F. L.) — The Mjracles of Our Lord : Examined in their
relation to Modern Criticism. 8vo, $3.00.
— The History of the Passion and Resubrbction of Oub Lord,
considered in the light of Modern Criticism. 8vo, $3.00.
Stevenson (Mrs.) — The Symbolic Parables : The Predictions of the Apoca-
lypse in relation to the General Truths of Scripture. Crown 8vo, $1.40.
Stewart (Eev. G.) — Mediatorial Sovereignty : The Mystery of Christ and
the Eevelation of the Old and New Testaments. Two vols. 8vo, $8.40.
The Ajrgument op the Epistle to the Hebrews. 8vo, $4.20.
Stier (Dr. Kudolph) — On iHE Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight vols. 8vo,
$24.00. . -
The "Words op the Eisbn Saviour, and Commentary on the
Epistle op St. James. 8vo, $3.00.
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. 8vo, $3.00.
Tholuck (Prof.) — Light prom the Cross. Third Edition, crown 8vo, $2.00.
Xophel (Pastor G.) — The Wobk op the Holt Spirit. Crown 8vo,'$1.00.
TTUmann (Dr. Carl) — Reformers before the Reformation, principally in.
Germany and the Netherlands. Two vols. 8vo, $6.00.
The Sinlbssnbss op Jesus : An Evidence for Christianity. Fourth
Edition, crown 8vo, $2.26.
Urwick (W., M.A.) — The Servant of Jehovah : A Commentary upon
Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12 : with Dissertations upon Isaiah xl.-lxvi. 8vo, $2.00. ■
Walker. (J., D.D.) — Theology and Theologians of Scotland. New
Edition, crown 8vOi $1.40.
Watts (Prof.) — The Newer Criticism and the Analogy op the Faith.
Third Edition, crown 8v0, $2.00.
The Reign op Causality : A Vindication of the Scientific Principle
of Telle Causal Efficiency. Crown 8vo, $2.40.
Weiss (Prof.) — Biblical Theology op New Testament. 2 vols. 8vo, |6.00.
Life of Christ. Three vols. 8vo, $9.00. " ^ ■
White (Bev. M.) — Symbolical Numbers of Scripture. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
Winer (Dr. G. B.) — A Treatise .on the Grammar op New Testament,
Gbeek, regarded as the Basis of New Testament Exegesis. Third Edition,
edited by W. F. Moultoh, D.D. Ninth English Edition, 8to, $6.00.
The Doctrines and Confessions of Christendom. 8vo, $3.00.
■ Witherow (Prof. T., D.D.) — The Form of the Christian Temple. 8vo, $4.20.
Workman (Prof. G. 0.) — The Text op Jeremiah ; or, A Critical Investigation
of the Greek and Hebrew, with the Variations in the LXX Eetranslated into
the Original and Explained. Post 8vo, $3.60. - ■ ■
Wright (C. H., D.D.)— Biblical Essays. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
M
ESSRS. SCEIBNER & "WELFORD specially invite particular attention to
the following valuable "Works issued in the Series
"CLARK'S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY."
Baumgarten— The History of the Church In the Apostolic Age. Three vols.
Bleek— Introduction to the New Testament. Two vols.
Cassel's Commentary on Esther. One vol.
.Delltzsch — Commentary on Job. Two vols.
New Commentary on Genesis. Two vols.
Commentary on the Psalms. Three vols.
. Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon. Two vols.
Commentary on Song of Solomon and Eccleslastes. One vol.
Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah. Two vols.
Commentary on Epistle to the Hebrews. Two vols.
A System of Biblical Psychology. One vol.
Domer— A System of Christian Doctrine. Pour vols.
History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Five vols.
Ebrard— Commentary on the Epistles of St. John. One vol.
The Gospel History. One vol.
. Apologetics. Three vols.
Ewald— Revelation: Its Nature and Record. One vol.
■ ■ Old and New Testament Theology. One vol.
Frank's Syetom of Christian Certainty. One vol.
Gebhardt— Doctrine of the Apocalypse. One vol. ■
Godot— Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols.
Commentary on St. John's GospeL Three vols.
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Two vols.
■ Commentary on First Corinthians. Two vols.
Goebel— On the Parables. One vol.
Hagenhach— History of the Reformation. Two vols.
History of Christian Doctrines: Three vols.
Harless— A System of Christian Ethics. One vol.
Haupt— Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John, One vol.
HSvemlck— General Introduction to the Old Testament. One vol.
Hengstenberg— Christology of the Old Testament. Four vols.
.-^ Commentary on the Psalms. Three vols.
On the Book of Eccleslastes. Etc. ete. One vol.
Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Two vols.
Commentary on Ezekiel. One vol.
. ■ The Kingdom of God under the Old Covenant, Two vols.
Keil — Introduction to the Old Testament. Two vols.
. . Commentary on the Pentateuch. Three vols.
— '■ — Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. One vol.
— . — Commentary on the Books of Samuel. One vol.
Commentary on the Books of Kings. One vol.
— Commentary on the Books of Chronicles. One vol.
Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. One vol.
Commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations. Two vols.
. . Commentary on Ezekiel. Two vols.
Commentary on the Book of Daniel. One vol.
Commentary on the Minor Prophets. Two vols.
Biblical Archeeology. Two vols.
Kurtz— History of the Old Covenant ; or. Old Testament Dispensation. Three vols.
Luthardt— Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Three vols.
Martensen— Christian Dogmatics. One vol.
■ Christian Ethics. General— Social— Individual. Three vols.
Miiller— The Christian Doctrine of Sin. Two vols.
Oehler— Biblical Theology of the Old Testament. Two vols.
Orelli— Prophecy regarding Consummation of God's Kingdom. One voL
Commentary on Isaiah. One vol.
Commentary on Jeremiah. One vol.
Philippi— Commentary on Epistle to Romans. Two vols.
Kawger— Encyclopaedia of Theology. Two vols.
Sartorius— The Doctrine of Divine Love. One vol.
Schiirer— The Jewish People in the Time of Christ. Division II. Three vole.
Btelnmeyer— History of the Passion and KesurreotJon of our Lord. One vol.
Stier— The Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight vols.
The Words of the Risen Saviour, and Commentary on Epistle of St. James One vol
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. One vol.
Ullmann— Reformers before the Reformation. Two vole.
Weiss— Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Two vols.
The Life of Christ. Three vols.
Winer— Collection of the Confessions of Christendom. One vol.
\* For Prices of the above Works see preceding pages.
294 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREHIAH.
AND THE COMPLAINT OF THE PROPHET AGAINST HIS ADVER-
SARIES. — Tlie figure of tlie potter who remodels a misshapen
vessel (vers. 2-4). Tlie interpretation of this (vers. 5-10), and
its application to degenerate Israel (vers. 11-17). The recep-
tion of the discourse by the people, and Jeremiah's cry to the
Lord (vers. 18-23).
Vers. 2-10. The emblem and its interpretation. — Ver. 2.
"Arise and go down into the potter's house ; there will I cause
thee to hear my words. Ver. 3. And I went down into the
potter's house ; and, behold, he wrought on the wheels. Ver. 4.
And the vessel was marred, that he \Yronght in clay, in the
hand of the potter ; then he made again another vessel of it, as
seemed good to the potter to make. Ver. 5. Then came the
word of Jaiiveh to me, saying : Ver. 6. Cannot I do with you
as this potter, house of Israeli saith Jahveh. Behold, as the
clay in the hand of the potter, so are ye in mine hand, house of
Israel. Ver. 7. Now I speak concerning a people and king-
dom, to root it out and pluck up and destroy it. Ver. 8. But
if that people turns from its wickedness, against which I spake,
then it repents me of the evil which I thought to do it. Ver. 9.
And now I speak concerning a people and a kingdom, to build
and to plant it. Ver. 10. If it do that which is evil in mine
eyes, so that it hearkens not unto my voice, then it repents me
of the good wiiich I said I would do unto it."
By God's command Jeremiah is to go and see the potter's
treatment of the clay, and to receive thereafter God's interpre-
tation of the same. Here he has set before his eyes that which
suggests a comparison of man to the clay and of God to the
potter, a comparison tiiat frequently occurred to the Hebrews,
and which had been made to appear in tiie first formation of
man (cf. Job x. 9, xxxiii. 6, Isa. xsix. 16, xlv. 9, Ixiv. 7). This
is done that he may forcibly represent to the people, by means
of tlie emblem, the power of the Lord to do according to His
will with all nations, and so with Israel too. From the " go
down," we gather that the potteries of Jerusalem lay in a valley
near the city. D;:axn are the round frames by means of which
the potter moulded his vessels. This sig. of the word is well
approved here; but in Ex. i. 16, where too it is found, the
meaning is doubtful, and it is a question whether the derivation
CHAP. XVIII. 2-10. 295
is from pS or from t?^^', wlieel. Tlie perfecta consec. nriB'Jl
and 3K'l designate, taken in connection with the participle
niyj?, actions tliat were possibly repeated : " and if the vessel was
spoilt, he made it over again ; " cf. Ew. § 342, b. Il^na n^V,
working in clay, of the material in which men work in order to
make something of it ; cf. Ex. xxxi. 4,^
In vers. C-10 the Lord discloses to the prophet the truth
lying in the potter's treatment of the clay. Tiie power the
potter has over tlie clay to remould, according to liis plsasnre,
the vessel lie had formed from it if it went wrong ; the same
power God possesses over the people of Israel. This unlimited
power of God over mankind is exercised according to man's
conduct, not according to a decretum ahsolulum or unchangeable
determination. If he pronounces a people's overtlu'ow or ruin,
and if that people turn from its wickedness. He repeals His
decree (ver. 7 f.) ; and conversely, if He promises a people wel-
fare and pi'osperity, and if that people turn away from Him
to wickedness, then too He changes His resolve to do good to it
(ver. 9 f.). Inasmuch as He is even now making His decree
known by the mouth of the prophet, it follows that the accom-
1 Instead of ID'na several codd. and editt. have noha, as in ver. 6, to
■which Ew. and Hitz. both take objection, so that they delete njoriJ (Ew.)
or "iV^n T'3 iDha (Hitz.) as being glosses, since the words are not in the
LXX. The attempts of Uinbr. and Nag. to obtain a sense for iDh3 are
truly of such a kind as only to strengthen the suspicion of spuriousness.
Umbr., who i.s fo'.lowed by Graf, expounds : " as the clay in the hand of
tbe potter does ; " whereto Hitz. justly replies : " but is then the (failure)
solely its own doing? " Nag. will have 3 to be the 3 Berit. .- tiie vessel was
marred, as clay in the hand of the potter, in which case the -|Dn3 still
interrupts. But the failure of the attempts to make a good sense of "iDn3
does in no respect justify the uncritical procedure of Ew. and Plitz. in
deleting the word without considering that the reading is by no means
established, since not only do the most important and correct editions and
a great number of codd. read inha, but Aquila, Theodot., the Chald. and
Syr. give this reading ; Norzi and Honbig. call it lectio accuratiorum. codicum,
and the Masora on ver. 6 and Job x. 9 confirms it. Cf. de Rossi varix leclt.
ad h. I. aud the critical remarks in the B'Mia Hal. by J. H. Michaelis,
according to which -|Dn3 plainly made its way into the present verse from
ver. 6 by the error of a copyist ; and it can only be from his prejudice in
favour of the LXX. that Hitz. pronounces "yoro original, as being " the
reading traditionally in use."
29 G THE PROPHECIES OF JERESIIAH.
plisliment of Jeremiali's last utterances is conditioned by the
impression God's word makes on men. V?"!, adv., in the moment,
forthwith, and wlien repeated = now . . . now, now . . . again.
Nag. maintains that tlie arrangement here is paratactic, so tliat
tlie Vy), does not belong to the nearest verb, but to tlie main
idea, i.e. to the apodosis in tliis case. The remark is just; but
the word does not mean suddenly, but immediately, and the
sense is : wlien I have spoken against a people, and this people
repents, then immediately I let it repent me. bv Dm as in Joel
ii. 13, etc. Witli " to pluck up," etc., " to build," etc., cf. i. 10.
" Against which I spake," ver. 8, belongs to " that people,"
and seems as if it might be dispensed with ; but is not there-
fore spurious because the LXX. have omitted it. For njJin
1 T T T
the Keri has Vin, the most usual form, cf. vii. 30, Num. xxsii.
13, Judg. ii. 11, etc.; but the Chet. is called for by the follow-
ing naitan and inii-jD. naitan yo'rf?, to show kindness, cf. Num.
X. 32.'
The emblematical interpretation of the potter with the clay
lays a foundation for the prophecy that follows, vers. 11-17,
in which the people are told that it is only by reason of their
stiffnecked persistency in wickedness that they render threatened
judgment certain, whereas by return to their God they might
prevent the ruin of the kingdom.
Vers. 11-17. Application of the emblem to Judali. — Ver. 11.
"And now speak to the men of Judah and the iniiabitants of
Jerusalem, saying : Thus hath Jahveh said : Behold, I frame
against you evil and devise against you a device. Return ye,
now, each from his evil way, and better your ways and your
doings. Ver. 12. But they say: There is no use! For our
imaginations will we follow, and each do the stubbornness of
his evil heart. Ver. 13. Therefore thus hath Jahveh said :
Ask now among the heathen ! who liath heard the like ? A
very horrible thing hath the virgin of Israel done 1 Ver. 14.
Does the snow of Lebanon cease from the rock of the field ? or
do strange, cold trickling waters dry up ? Ver. 15. For my
people hath forgotten me ; to the vanity they offer odours ;
they have made them to stumble upon their ways, the ever-
lasting paths, to walk in by-paths, a way not cast up. Ver. 16.
To make their laud a dismay, a perpetual hissing, every one
CHAP. XVIII. 11-17. 297
tliat passetli thereby shall be astonished and shake liis liead.
Ver. 17. Like tlie east wind I will scatter tliem before the
enemy ; with the back and not with the face will I look upon
them in tlie day of their ruin."
In vers. 11 and 12 what was said at ver. 6 if. is applied to
Judah. 1V*j form in sense of prepare (cf. Isa. xxii. 11,
xxxvii. 26), is chosen with special reference to the potter 0-fi'').
nawp, the thought, design, here in virtue of the parallelism :
evil plot, as often both with and without nj?"! ; cf . Esth, viii. 3, 5,
ix. 25, Ezek. xxxviii. 10. The call to repentance runs much as
do XXXV. 15 and vii. 3. — But this call the people reject disdain-
fully, replying that they are resolved to abide by their evil
courses. IIOKI, not: they said, but : they say ; the per/, consec.
of the action repeating itself at the present time ; cf. Ew.
342, b. 1. t^NiJ as in ii. 25 ; on " stubbornness of their evil
heart," cf. iii. 17. By this answer the prophet makes them
condemn themselves out of their own mouth ; cf. Isa. xxviii. 15,
XXX. 10 f. — Ver. 13. Such obduracy is unheard of amongst the
peoples; cf. a like idea in ii. 10 f. ""jW = nn^W, v. 30.
INO belongs to the verb : liorrible things hath Israel veiymuch
done = very horrible things have they done. The idea is
strengthened by Israel's being designated a virgin (see on
xiv. 17). One could hardly believe that a virgin could be
guilty of such barefaced and determined wickedness. In ver.
14 f. the public conduct is further described ; and first, it is
illustrated by a picture drawn from natural history, designed
to fill the people with shame for their unnatural conduct. But
the significance of the picture is disputed. The questions have
a negative force: does it forsake ?= it does not forsake.
The force of the first question is conditioned by the view
taken of ''']»' 1l2fO ; and '''}f may be either genitive to "i«, or
it may be the accusative of the object, and be either a poetic
form for nib', or plural c. siiff. 1. pers. (my fields). Clir.
B. Mich., Schur., Ros., Maur., Neum. translate according to
the latter view : Does the snow of Lebanon descending fi-om
the rock forsake my fields'? i.e. does it ever cease, flowing
down from the rock, to water my fields, the fields of my people ?
To this view, however, it is to be opposed, a. that " from the
rock " thus appears superfluous, at leabt not in its proper placu.
298 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEUEMIAIL
since, according to the sense given, it would belong to " snow
of Lebanon;" b. that the figure contains no real illustrative
truth. The watering of the fields of God's people, i.e. of
Palestine or Judah, by the snow of Lebanon could be bi'ought
about only by the water from the melting snow of Lebanon soak-
ing into tiie ground, and so feeding the springs of the country.
But this view of the snpply for the springs that watered the
land cannot be supposed to be a fact of natural history so well
known that the prophet could found an argument on it. Most
recent commentators therefore join ''"l^ 1l2f», and translate: does
the snow of Lebanon cease from the rock of the field (does it
disappear) ? The use of 3W with t? is unexampled, but is
analogous to DV? *ipn niV, Gen. xxiv. 27, where, however,
3ty is used transitively. But even when ti-anslated as above,
" rock of the field " is variously understood. Hitz. will have
it to be Mount Zion, which in xvii. 3 is called my mountain in
the field, and xxi. 13, rock of the plain ; and says the ti'ickling
waters are the waters of Gihon, these being the only never-
drj'ing water of Jerusalem, the origin of wliicli has never been
known, and may have been commonly held to be from the snow
of Lebanon. Graf and Nag., again, have justly objected that
the connection between the snow of Lebanon and the water-
springs of Zion is of too doubtful a kind, and does not become
probable by appeal to Ps. cxxxiii. 3, where the dew of Hermon
is said to descend on the mountains of Zion. For it is perfectly
possible that a heavy dew after warm days might be carried
to Jerusalem by means of the cool current of air coming down
from the north over Hermon (cf. Del. on Ps. cxxxiii. 3) ; but
not that the water of the springs of Jerusalem should have
come from Lebanon. Like Ew., Umbr., Graf., and Nag., we
therefore understand the rock of the field to be Lebanon itself.
But it is not so called as being a detached, commanding rocky
mountain, for this is not involved in the sig. of "'"12' (see on
xvii. 3) ; nor as bulwark of the field (Nag.), for nii' does not
mean bulwark, and the change of TiSD into liSD, from lii'O,
a hemming in, siege, would give a most unsuitable figure.
"We hold the " field" to be the land of Israel, whence seen,
the summit of Lebanon, and especially the peak of Hermon
covered with eternal snows, might very well be called the rock
CHAP. XVUI. 11-17. 2S9
of the field.^ Observe the omission of the article before
Lebanon, whereby it comes about tiiat the name is joined
appeliatively to "snow :" the Lebanon-snow. And accordingly
we regard the waters as those which trickle down from Hermon.
The wealth of springs in Lebanon is well known, and the
trickling water of Lebanon is used as an illustration in Cant,
iv. 15. 'tynsi, are rooted up, strikes us as singular, since "root
up " seems suitable neither for the drying up of springs, nor
for: to be checked in their course. Dav. Kimchi thouglit,
therefore, it stood for 15^t3f , omiltimtur ; but this word has not
this signification,. Probably a transposition has taken place, so
that we have itJ'nJ'' for I'lB^a^, since for twi in Niph. the sig.
dry up is certified by Isa. xix. 5. The pi'edicate, too, Ci''"ir is
singular. Strange waters are in 2 Kings xi.v. 24 waters be-
longing to others; butthis will not do here. So Ew. derives it
from l^I, press, urge, and correspondingly, S''^^ from nip, spring,
well up: waters pouring fortli with fierce pressure. In this
case, however, the following C7ti: would be superfluous, or at
least feeble. Then, C'liJ D^O, Prov. xxv. 25, is cold water ; and
besides, T]' means constrinxit, compressit, of which root-meaning
the sig. to press forth is a contradiction. There is therefore
nothing for it but to keep to the sig. strange for C")!; strange
waters = waters coming fi'om afar, whose springs are not known,
so that they could be stopped up. The predicate cold is quite
in keeping, for cold waters do not readily dry up, the coldness
^ " Hermon is not a conical mountain like Tabor, with a single lofty peak
and a well-defined base, but a whole mountain mass of many days' journey
in circuit, with a broad crest of summits. The highest of these lie within
the Holy Land, and, according to the measurements of the English engineers,
Majors Scott and Robe (1840), rise to a height of 9376 English feet, — sum-
mits encompassed by far-stretching mountain ridges, from whose deep
gloomy valleys the cliief rivers of the country take their rise. . . . Behind
the dark green foremost range (that having valleys clothed with pine and
oak forests) high mountains raise their domes aloft ; there is a fir wood
sprinkled with snow as with silver, a marvellous mingling of bright and
dark ; and behind these rises the broad central riJge with its peaks covered
with deep and all but everlasting snows." — Van de Velde, Reise, i. S. 96 f.
Therewith cf. Robins. Phys. Geogr. p. 31.5 : " In the ravines round about
the highest of the two peaks, snow, or rather ice, lies the whole year round.
In summer this gives the mountain, when seen from a distance, the appear-
ance of being surrounded with radiant stripes descending from its crown."
300 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
being a protection against evaporation. Such, then, will be the
meaninc: of the verse : As the Lebanon-snow does not forsake
the I'ock, so the waters trickling thence do not dry up. From
the application of this general idea, that in inanimate nature
faithfulness and constancy are found, to Israel's bearing towards
God arises a deeper significance, which shows why this figure
was chosen. The rock in the field points to the Hock of Israel
as the everlasting rock, rock of ages (Isa. xxx. 29 and xxvi. 4),
and the cold, i.e. refreshing waters, which trickle from the rock
of the field, point to Jahveh, the fountain of living water, ii. 13
and xvii. 13. Although the snow does not forsake Lebanon,
Israel has forgotten the fountain of living water from which
water of life flows to it ; cf. ii. 13.
The application at ver. 15 is introduced by a causal ''3. Ew.
wrongly translates : that my people forgot me. ''3 means for ;
and the causal import is founded on the main idea of ver. 13 :
A very horrible thing hath Israel done; for it hath done that
which is unheard of in the natural world, it bath forsaken me,
the rock of safety ; cf. ii. 32. They burn odours, i.e. kindle
sacrifices, to the vanity, i.e. the null gods, cf. Ps. xxxi. 7, i.e.
to Baal, vii. 9, xi. 13, 17. The subject to Q^V?!! may be most
simply supplied from the idea of "the vanity:" the null gods
made them to stnmble ; cf. for this idea 2 Ohron. xxviii. 23.
This seems more natural than to leave the subject indefinite, in
which case the false prophets (cf. xxiii. 27) or the priests, or
other seducers, would be the moving spirits. "The ancient
paths" is apposition to "their ways:" upon their ways, the
paths of the old time, i.e. not, however, the good old believintr
times, from whose ways the Israelites have but recently divertrcd.
For D?iy never denotes the time not very long passed away, but
always old, immemorial time, here specially the time of the
patriarchs, who walked on the right paths of faithfulness to
God, as in vi. 16. Hitz. and Graf have taken "the ancient
paths" as subject: the old paths have made the Israelites to
stumble on their ways, which gives a most unnatural idea, while
the "paths of the earliest time" is weakened into " the example
of their ancestors;" and besides, the parallelism is destroyed.
As "by-paths" is defined by the apposition " a way not cast
up," so is " on their ways " by " the ancient paths." The C/iet.
CHAP. XVIII. 18-23. 301
•'P^B' is found only here ; the Keri is formed after Ps. Ixxvii, 20.
A way not cast up is one on which one cannot advance, reach
the goal, or on which one suffers hurt and perishes. — In ver.
16 tlie consequences of these doings are spoken of as having
been wrought out by themselves, in order thus to bting out the
God-ordained causal nexus between actions and tlieir con-
sequences. To make their land an object of horror to all that
set foot on it. nipnK' occurs only here, while the Keri nip''nB> is
found only in Judg. v. 16 for the piping of shepherds, from PIS',
to hiss, to pipe. In connection with naa' as expression of horror
or amazement, Jeremiah elsewhere uses only nij'iE', cf. xix. 8,
XXV. 9, 18, xxix. 18, li. 37, so that here the vowelling should
perhaps be rii?^nB'. The word does not here denote the hissing
= hissing down or against one, by way of contempt, but the
sound midway between hissing and whistling which escapes one
when one looks on something appalling. On " every one that
passeth by shall be dismayed," cf. 1 Kings ix. 8. ityNiii J)''3n only
here = B'N"i Tin, to move the head to and fro, shake the head;
a gesture of malicious amazement, cf. Ps. xxii. 8, cix. 25, like
tJ'N") lijp, Ps. xliv. 15. — In ver. 17 the Lord discloses the coming
punishment. Like an east wind, i.e. a violent storm-wind (cf.
Ps. xlviii. 8), will I scatter them, cf. xiii. 24. Because they
have turned to Him the back and not the face (cf. ii. 27), so
will He turn His back on them in the day of their ruin, cf.
Ezek. XXXV, 5.
Vers. 18-23. Enmity displayed against the prophet by the
people for this discourse, and prayer for protection from his
enemies. — Ver. 18. " Then said they : Come and let us plot
schemes against Jeremiah; for law shall not be lost to the
priest, and counsel to the wise, and speech to the prophet.
Come and let us smite him with the tongue and not give heed
to all his speeches. Ver. 19, Give heed to me, Jahveh, and
hearken to the voice of them that contend with me! Ver. 20.
Shall evil be repaid for good, that they dig a pit for my soul?
Remember how I stood before Thee to speak good for them, to
turn away Thy wrath from them ! Ver, 21. Therefore give
their sons to the famine and deliver them to the sword, that
their wives become childless and widows, and their men
slaughtered by death, their young men smitten by the sword in
302 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
battle. Ver. 22. Let a cry be heard from tbeir lionses, wlien
Tliou bringest troops upon tliem suddenly ; for tliey have digged
a pit to take me and laid snares for my feet. Ver. 23. But
Thou Jahveh knowest all their connsels against me for death :
forgive not their iniquity and blot not out their sin from before
Tliy face, that they be overthrown befoi"e Thee; in the time of
Thine anger deal with them."
Even the solemn words (vers. 15-17) of the prophet were
in vain. Instead of examining themselves and reforming their
lives, the blinded sinners resolve to put the troublesome preacher
of repentance out of the way by means of false charges. The
subject of " and they said " is those who had heard the above
discourse ; not all, of course, but the infatuated leaders of the
people who had. They call on the multitude to plot schemes
against him, cf. xi. 18 ff. For they have, as they think, priests,
wise men, and prophets to give them instruction out of the
law, counsel, and word, i.e. prophecy, — namely, according to
their idea, such as advise, teach, and preach otherwise than
Jeremiah, who speaks only of repentance and judgment. Ee-
cent scholars render nnin doctrine, which is right etymologically,
but not so when judged by the constant usage, which regards
the Torah, the law, as containing the substance of all the doctrine
needed by man to tell him how to bear himself towards God,
or to make hij life happy. The Mosaic law is the foundation
of all prophetic preaching; and that the speakers mean nnin in
this sense is clear from their claiming the knowledge of the
Torah as belonging to the priests; the law was committed to
the keeping and administration of the priests. The "counsel"
is that needed for the conduct of the state in difficult circum-
stances, and in Ezek. vii. 26 it is attributed to the elders; and
" speech" or word is the declarations of the prophets. On that
subject, cf. viii. 8-10. To smite with the tongue is to ruin by
slanders and malicious charges, cf. ix, 2, 4, 7, where the tongue
is compared to a lying bow and deadly arrow, Ps. Ixiv. 4 f.,
lix. 8, etc. That they had the prophet's death in view appears
from ver. 23; although their further speech: We will not give
heed to his words, shows that in the discourse against which
they were so enraged, he had said "nothing that, according to
their ideas, was directly and immediately punishable with death "
CHAP. XVIII, 18-23. 303
(Hitz.) ; cf. xxvi. 6, 11. Against these schemes Jeremiah cries
to God in ver. 19 for help and protection. While his adver-
saries are saying: People should give no heed to his speeclies,
he prays the Lord to give heed to him and to listen to the
sayings of his enemies. "My contenders," vi^ho contend against
me, cf. XXXV. 1, Isa. xlix. 25. — In support of his prayer he says
in ver. 20 : Shall evil he repaid for good I cf. Ps. xxxv. 12. In
his discourses he had in view nothing but the good of the people,
and he appeals to the prayers he had presented to the Lord to
turn away God's anger from the people, cf. xiv. 7 ff., vers. 19-22.
(On "my standing before Thee,'' cf. xv. 1.) This good they
seek to repay with ill, by lying charges to dig a pit for his soul,
i.e. for his life, into which pit he may fall ; cf. Ps. Ivii. 7, where,
however, instead of nmS' (ii. 6 ; Prov. xxii. 14, xxiii. 27), we
have '^n''?', as in ver. 22, diet. — He prays the Lord to requite
them for this wickedness by bringing on the people that which
Jeremiah had sought to avert, by destroying them with famine,
sword, and disease. The various kinds of death are, ver. 21,
distributed rhetorically amongst the different classes of the
people. The sons, i.e. children, are to be given np to the
famine, the men to the sword, the young men to the sword in
war. The sufSx on Dnjn refers to the people, of which the
children are mentioned before, the men and women after. On
^"30 '^l ^^ ■^•?^' '^f- ^zek. xxxv. 5, Ps. Ixiii. 11. " Death," men-
tioned alongside of sword and famine, is death by disease and
pestilence, as in xv. 2. — Ver. 22. To the terrors of the war and
the siege is to be added the cry rising from all the houses into
which hostile troops have burst, plundering and massacring.
To lay snares, as in Ps. cxl. 6, cxlii. 4. n3 is the springe
of the bird-catcher. — ^Ver. 23. Comprehensive summing up of
the whole prayer. As the Lord knows their design against
him for his death, he prays Him not to forgive their sin, but to
punish it. The form ''n»J^ instead of npn (Neh. xiii. 14) is the
Aramaic form for nnori, like 'm, iii, 6 ; cf . Ew. § 224, c. The
Chet. vni is the regular continuation of the imperative : and let
them he cast down before Thee. The Keri vn;i would be : that
they may be cast down before Thee. Hitz. wrongly expounds
the Chet: but let them be fallen before Thee (in Thine eyes), i.e
morally degraded sinners ; for the question is not here one of
304 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
moral degradation, bnt of the punishment of sinners. In the
time of Thine anger, i.e. when Thou lettest loose Thy wrath,
causest Thj judgments to come down, deal with tliem, i.e. with
their transgressions. On 3 nf)i, cf. Dan. xi. 7.
On tliis prayer of the prophet to God to exterminate his
enemies Hitz. remarks : " Tiie various curses which in his bitter
indignation he directs against his enemies are at bottom but the
expression of the thought : Now may all that befall them which
I sought to avert from them." The Hirschhei'g Bible takes a
deeper grasp of the matter: "It is no prayer of carnal ven-
geance against those that hated him, vers. 18, 23, Ps. ix. 18,
Iv. 16 ; but as God had commanded him to desist (xiv. 11, 12)
from the prayers he had frequently made for them, ver. 20, and
as they themselves could not endure these prayers, ver. 18, he
leaves them to God's judgments which lie had been already
compelleJ to predict to them, xi. 22, xiv. 12, 16, witliout any
longer resisting witli his entreaties, Lukexiii. 9, 2 Tim. iv. 14."
In this observation that clause only is wrong which says Jere-
miah merely leaves the wicked to God's judgments, since he,
on the other hand, gives them up thereto, prays God to carry out
judgment on them with the utmost severity. In this respect
the present passage resembles tlie so-called cursing psalms (Ps.
XXXV. 4-10, cix. 6-20, lix. 14-16, Ixix. 26-29, etc.) ; nor can we
say with Calvin : lianc veliementianij quonimn dictata fuit a spiritu
sanctOj non posse damnari^ sed non debere trald in exemplunij
quia hoc sing ulare fuit in proplieta. For the prophet's prayer is
no inspired nw "in'n, but the wish and utterance of his heart, for
the fulfilment of which he cries to God ; just as in the psalm.s
cited. On these imprecations, cf. Del. on Ps. xxxv. and cix.,
and vol. i. p. 417 f.; as also the solid investigation of this point by
Kurtz : Zur Tlieologie der Ps. IV. die FLucli- imd Bachepsalmen
in the Dorpat Ztschr. f. Tlieol. u. Kirche, vii. (1865), S. 359 ff.
All these curses are not the outcome and effusions of personal
vengeance against enemies, but flow from the pure sprincr of a
zeal, not self-regarding at all, for the glory of God. The
enemies are God's enemies, despisers of His salvation. Their
hostility against David and against Jeremiah was rooted in their
hostility against God and the kingdom of God. The advance-
ment of the kingdom of God, the fulfilment of tlie divine
CHAP. XIS. 1-13. 305
scheme of salvation, required the fall of the ungodly who seek
the lives of God's servants. In this way we would seek to
defend such words of cursing by appealing to the legal spirit of
the Old Testament, and would not oppose them to the words of
Christ, Luke ix. 55. For Christ tells us why He blamed the
Elias-hke zeal of Plis disciples in the words : " The Son of man is
not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." In keeping
with this, the peculiar end of Christ's coming on earth, we find
no curses from Him against His enemies and the enemies of the
kingdom of God. But just as the word, " I am not come," etc.
(Luke ix. 56), does not exclude the truth that the Father hath
given all judgment to Him, so, as Kurtz very justly remarks,
"from our hearing no word of cursing from the mouth of
Christ during His life on earth we cannot infer the absolute
inadmissibleness of all such ; still less can we infer that Christ's
apostles and disciples could not at all be justified in using any
words of cursing." And the apostles have indeed uttered curses
against obdurate enemies : so Peter against Simon the Magian,
Acts viii. 20; Paul against the high priest Ananias, Acts xxiii.
3, against the Jewish false teachers, Gal. i. 9 and v. 12, and
against Alexander the coppersmith, 2 Tim. iv. 14. But these
cases do not annihilate the distinction between the Old and the
New Testaments. Since grace and truth have been revealed
in Christ, the Old Testament standpoint of retribution accord-
ing to the rigour of the law cannot be for us the standard of
our bearing even towards the enemies of Christ and His
kingdom.
Chap. xix. 1-13. The broken pitcher. — Ver. 1. "Thus
said Jahveh : Go and buy a potter's vessel, and take of the
elders of the people and of the elders of the priests, Ver. 2.
And go forth into the valley of Benhinnom, which is before the
gate Harsuth, and proclaim there the words which I shall speak
unto thee, Ver. 3. And say: Hear the word of Jahveh, ye
kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem : Thus hath said
Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I bring evil upon
this place, the which whosoever heareth his ears shall tingle.
Ver. 4. Because they have forsaken me, and disowned this place,
and burnt incense in it to other gods whom they knew not,
VOL. I. U
303 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
they, and their fathers, and the kings of Judah, and have filled
this place with the blood of innocents, Ver. 5. And have built
high places for Baal, to burn their sons in the fire as burnt-
offerings to Baal, which I have neither commanded nor spoken,
nor came it into my heart. Ver. 6. Therefore, behold, days
come, saith Jahveh, that this place shall no longer be called
Tophet and Valley of Benhinnom, but Valley of Slaughter.
Ver. 7. And I make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem
in this place, and cause them to fall by the sword before their
enemies and by the hand of them that seek their lives, and
give their carcases to be food for the fowls of the heaven and
the beast of the earth, Ver. 8. And make this city a dismay
and a scoffing ; every one that passeth thereby shall be dismayed
and hiss because of all her strokes ; Ver. 9. And make them
eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and
each shall eat his neighbour's flesh in the siege and straitness
wherewith their enemies and they that seek after their lives
shall straiten them. — Ver. 10. And break the pitcher before
the eyes of the men that go w'ith thee, Ver. 11. And say to
them : Thus hath Jahveh of hosts said : Even so will I break
this people and this city as one breaketh this potter's vessel,
that it cannot be made whole again ; and in Tophet shall they
bury them, because there is no room to bury. Ver. 12, Thus
will I do unto this place, saith Jahveh, and its inhabitants, to
make this city as Tophet. Ver. 13. And the houses of Jeru-
salem and the houses of the kings of Judali shall become, as
the place Tophet, unclean, all the houses upon whose roofs
they have burnt incense to the whole host of heaven and poured
out drink-offerings to other gods."
The purpose for which Jeremiah was to buy the earthen jar
is told in ver. 10, and the meaning of breaking it in the valley
of Benhinnom is shown in vers, 11-13. p3i?3j from Pi?3, to pour
out, is a jar with a narrow neck, so called from the sound heard
when liquid is poured out of it, although the vessel was used
for storing honey, 1 Kings xiv. 3. The appellation tjnn i^n',
former of earthen vessels, i.e. potter, is given to denote the jar
as one which, on being broken, would shiver into many frag-
ments. Before " of the elders of the people" a verb seems to
be awanting, for which cause many supply nnp^l (according to
CHAP. XIX. 1-13. 307
xli. 12, xliil, 10, etc.), rightly so far as sense is concerned ; but
we are hardly entitled to assume a lacuna in the text. That
assumption is opposed by the \ before ''^ptO ; for we cannot
straightway presume that this ] was put in after the verb had
dropped out of the text. In that case the whole word would
have been restored. We have here rather, as Schnur. saw, a
bold constructio prwgnans, the verb " buy" being also joined in
zeugma with " of the elders :" buy a jar and (take) certain of
the elders ; cf. similar, only less bold, zeugmatic constr. in Job
iv. 10, X. 12, Isa. Iviii. 5. " Elders of the priests," as in 2 Kings
xix. 2, probably identical with tlie " princes Q"}^) of the priests,"
2 Chron. xxxvi. 14, are doubtless virtually the same as the
" heads QWI) of the priests," Neh. xii. 7, the priests highest
in esteem, not merely for their age, but also in virtue of their
rank ; just as the " elders of the people " were a permanent
representation of the people, consisting of the heads of tribes,
houses or septs, and families ; cf. 1 Kings viii. 1-3, and my
Bibl. Archdol. ii. S. 218. Jeremiah was to take elders of the
people and of the priesthood, because it was most readily to he
expected of them that the word of God to be proclaimed would
find a hearing amongst them. As to the valley of Benhinnom,
see on vii. 31. n>iD"irin IJJB'j not Sun-gate (after Din, Job ix. 7,
Judg. viii. 13), but Pottery or Sherd-gate, from Din = mtij
in rabbin. H^p^n, potter's clay. The Chet. nwiri is the ancient
form, not the modern (Hitz.), for the Keri is adapted to the
rabbinical form. The clause, " which is before the Harsiith-
gate," is not meant to describe more particularly the locality,
sufficiently well known in Jerusalem, but has reference to the
act to be performed there. The name, gate of niD"iri, which no-
where else occurs, points no doubt to the breaking to shivers of the
jar. Hence we are rather to translate Slierd-gate than Pottery-
gate, the name having probably arisen amongst the people
from the broken fragments which lay about this gate. Comm.
are not at one as to which of the known city gates is meant.
Hitz. and Kimchi are wrong in thinking of a gate of the court
of the temple — the southern one. The context demands one of
the city gates, two of which led into the Benhinnom valley : the
Spring- or Fountain-gate at the south-east corner, and the
Dung-gate on the south-west side of Zion ; see on Neh. iii.
308 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
13-15. One of these two must be meant, but which of them
it cannot be decided. There Jeremiah is to cry aloud the words
which follow, vers. 3-8, and which bear on the kings of Judah
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. " Kings" in the plural, as
in siii. 13, because the matter concerned not the reigning king
only, but his successors too, who had been guilty of the sins to be
punished. In vers. 3-5 the threatening is summarily set forth.
Horrible evil will the Lord bring on this place, i.e. Jerusalem.
The ears of every one that hears it will tingle, so utterly stun-
ning will the news of it turn out to be ; cf. 2 Kings xxi. 12 and
1 Sam. iii. 11, where we find nr^VH; cf. Ew. § 197, a. This they
have brought on themselves by their dreadful sins. They have
forsaken Jahveh, disowned this place ; 13?, prop, find strange,
Deut. xxxii. 27, then treat as strange, deny. Job sxi. 29. In
substance : they have not treated Jerusalem as the city of the
sanctuary of their God, but, as is mentioned after, they have
burnt incense in it to other (strange) gods. The words : they
and their fathers, and the kings of Judah, are not the subject
to " knew not," as is " they and their," etc., in ix. 15, svi. 13,
but to the preceding verb of the principal clause. " And have
filled the city with the blood of innocents." This Grot, and
others understand by the blood of the children slain for Moloch ;
and for this, appeal is made to Ps. cvi. 37 f., where the pour-
ing out of innocent blood is explained to be that of sons and
daughters offered to idols. But this passage cannot be the
standard for the present one, neither can the statement that
here we have to deal with idolatry alone. This latter is petitio
principii. If shedding the blood of innocents had been said of
offerings to Moloch, then ver. 5 must be taken as epexegesis.
But in opposition to this we have not only the parallelism of the
clauses, but also and especially the circumstance, that not till
ver. 5 is mention made of altars on which to offer children to
Moloch. We therefore understand the filling of Jerusalem
with the blood of innocents, according to vii. 6, cf. ii. 34 and
xxii. 3, 17, of judicial murder or of bloody persecution of the
godly ; and on two grounds : 1. because alongside of idolatry
we always find mentioned as the chief sin the perversion of
justice to the shedding of innocent blood (cf. the passages cited),
so that this sin would not likely be omitted here, as one cause
CHAP. XIX. 1-13. 309
of tlie dreadful judgment about to pass on Jerusalem; 2. because
our passage recalls the verywording of 2 Kings xxi. 16, where,
after mentioning his idolatry, it is said of Manasseh : Also inno-
cent blood hath he shed, until he made Jerusalem full (X??) to
the brink. The climax in tiie enumeration of sins in these
verses is accordingly this : 1. The disowning of the holiness of
Jerusalem as the abode of the Lord by the public practice of
idolatry ; 2. the shedding of innocent blood as extremity of
injustice and godless judicial practices ; 3. as worst of all
abominations, the building of altars for burning their own
children to Moloch. That the Moloch-sacrifices are mentioned
last, as being worst of all, is shown by the three relative
clauses : which I have not commanded, etc., which by an im-
passioned gradation of phrases mark God's abomination of
these horrors. On this subject cf. vii. 31 and xxxii. 35.
In vers. 6-13 the threatened punishment is given again at
large, and that in two strophes or series of ideas, which explain
tiie emblematical act with the pitcher. The first series, vers.
6-9, is introduced by '•nipl, which intimates the meaning of the
pitcher ; and the other, vers. 10-13, is bound up with the
breaking of the pitcher. But both series are, ver. 6, opened by
the mention of the locality of the act. As ver. 5 was but an
expansion of vii. 31, so ver. 6 is a literal repetition of vii. 32.
The valley of Benhinnom, with its places for abominable sacri-
fices (Osri, see on vii. 32), shall in the future be called Valley
of Slaughter ; i.e. at the judgment on Jerusalem it will be the
place where the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah will be
slain by the enemy. There God will make void (''ni|53, playing
on p3i??), i.e. bring to nothing ; for what is poured out comes
to nothing ; cf. Isa. xix. 3. There they shall fall by the sword
in such numbers that their corpses shall be food for the beasts
of prey (cf. vii. 33), and the city of Jerusalem shall be fright-
fully ravaged (ver. 8, cf. xviii. 16, xxv. 9, etc.). ijinaD (plural
form of suffix without Jod ; cf. Ew. § 258, a), the wounds she
has received. — In ver. 9 is added yet another item to complete
the awful picture, the terrible famine during the siege, partly
taken from the words of Deut. xxviii. 53 ff. and Lev. xxvi. 29.
That this appalling misery did actually come about during the
last siege by the Chaldeans, we learn from Lam. iv. 10. — The
310 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREJIIAH.
second series, vers. 10-13, is introduced by the act of breaking
the pitcher. This happens before the eyes of the elders who
have accompanied Jeremiah thither : to them the explanatory
word of the Lord is addressed. As the earthen pitcher, so shall
Jerusalem — people and city — be broken to pieces ; and that irre-
mediably. This is implied in : as one breaks a potter's vessel, etc.
(nsnri for N2";n), The next clause : and in Tophet they shall
bury, etc., is omitted by the LXX. as a repetition from vii. 32,
and is objected to by Ew., Hitz., and Graf, as not being in
keeping with its context. Ew. proposes to insert it before " as
one breaketh ;" but this transposition only obscures the meaning
of the clause. It connects very suitably with the idea of the
incurable breaking in sunder. Because the breaking up of
Jerusalem and its inhabitants shall be incurable, shall be like
the breaking of a pitcher dashed into countless fragments,
therefore there will be lack of room iu Jerusalem to bury the
dead, and the unclean places of Tophet will need to be used
for that purpose. With this the further thought of vers. 12
and 13 connects simply and suitably. Thus (as had been said
at ver. 11) will I do unto this place and its inhabitants, nnpi,
and that to make the city as Tophet, i.e. not " a mass of sherds
and rubbish, as Tophet now is" (Graf); for neither was Tophet
then a rubbish-heap, nor did it so become by the breaking of the
pitcher. But Josiah had turned all the place of Tophet in the
valley of Benhinnom into an unclean region (2 Kings xxiii. 10).
All Jerusalem shall become an unclean place like Tophet. This
is put in so many words in ver. 13 : The houses of Jerusalem
shall become unclean like the place Tophet, namely, all houses
on whose roofs idolatry has been practised. The construction of
D\soan causes some difficulty. The position of the word at the
end disfavours our connecting it with the subject ''J?3, and so
does the article, which does not countenance its being taken as
predicate. To get rid of the article, J. D. Mich, and Ew.
sought to change the reading into ^^i^^O nnarij after Isa. xxx.
33. Bat nnsn means a Tophet-like place, not Tophet itself,
and so gives no meaning to the purpose. No other course is
open than to join the word with " the place Tophet:" like the
place Tophet, which is unclean. The plural would then be
explained less from the collective force of Dip» than from regard
CHAP. XIX. 14-XX. 6. 311
to the plural subject. "All the houses" opens a supplementary
definition of the subject : as concerning all houses ; cf. Ew.
§ 310, a. On the worship of the stars by sacrifice on the house-
tops, transplanted by Manasseh to Jerusalem, see the expos, of
Zeph. i. 5 and 2 Kings xxi. 3. 'W1 ^Dni^ coinciding literally with
vii. 18 ; the inf. ahsol. being attached to the verb, finit. of the
former clause (Ew. § 351, c). — Thus far the word of the Lord
to Jeremiah, which he was to proclaim in the valley of Ben-
hinnom. — The execution of the divine commission is, as bein<r
a matter of course, not expressly recounted, but is implied in
ver. 14 as having taken place.
Chap. six. 14-xx. 6. The peophet Jeremiah and the
TEMPLE-TVAEDEN Pashue. — Ver. 14 f. Wheu Jeremiah, hav-
ing performed the divine command, returned from Tophet to
the city, he went into the court of the house of God and spoke
to the people assembled there, ver. 15 : "Thus hath said Jahveh
of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I bring upon this city,
and all its cities, all the evil that I have pronounced against it,
because they stiffened their necks not to hear my words."
" All the people " is the people present in the court of the
temple as distinguished from the men who had accompanied
Jeremiah into the valley of Benhinnom (ver. 10). ''??, the X
having dropped off, as in xxxix. 16, 1 Kings xxi. 21, 29, 2 Sam.
V. 2, and often. " All its cities" are the towns that belonged
to Jerusalem, were subject to it (xxxiv. 1) ; in other words, the
cities of Judah, i. 15, ix. 10, etc. All the evil that I have pro-
nounced against it, not merely in the valley of Benhinnom
(vers. 3-13), but generally up till this time, by the mouth of
Jeremiah. If we limit the reference of this view to the pro-
phecy in Tophet, we must assume, with Nag., that Jeremiah
repeated the substance of it here ; and besides, that prophecy
is not in keeping with " all its cities," inasmuch as it (vers.
3-13) deals with Jerusalem alone. Apparently Jeremiah must
have said more than is written in the verse, and described the
evil somewhat more closely ; so that the new matter spoken by
him here consists in the " Behold I bring," etc., i.e. in his fore-
warning them of the speedy fulfilment of the threatenings
against Jerusalem and Judah, as was the case with the pro-
312 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
phecy in tlie valley of Beliinnom, which also, ver. 3, begins with
N";?? 'm. On "'they stiffened their necks," etc., cf. xvii. 23,
vii. 26.
Chap. XX. 1 and 2. When the chief overseer of the temple,
Pashur, heard this prophecy, he had the prophet beaten, and
put him over-night in the stocks at the upper gate of Benjamin
in the temple. Pasliur is by the appellation : son of Immer,
distinguished from other priests of this name, e.g. Pashur, son
of Malchijah, 1 Chron. ix. 12. It cannot be determined whether
Immer is here the name of the 16th class of priests (1 Chron.
xxiv. 14) or of one of the greater priestly clans (Ezra ii. 37 ;
Neh. vii. 40). Pashnr held the office of TJJ T'i?S, chief over-
seer in the house of God. T'^3 is an official name attached to
^*p^ to explain it. In the latter word lies the idea of over-
seeing, while the former denotes the official standing or rank of
the overseer. The position of TJJ was a high one, as may be seen
from the fact that the priest Zephaniah, who, according to
xxix. 26, held this post, is quoted in Hi. 24 (2 Kings xxv. 18) as
next to the high priest. The compound expression without
article implies that there were several Q'T^^ of the temple. In
2 Chron. sxxv. 8 there are three mentioned under Josiah ;
which is not contradicted by 2 Chron. xxxi. 13, 1 Chron. ix. 11,
Keh. xi. 11, where particular persons are called 'n JT'H T'J3. As
chief overseer of the temple, Pashur conceived it to be his duty
to take summary magisterial steps against Jeremiah, for his
public appearance in the temple. To put this procedure of the
priest and temple-warden in its proper light, Jeremiah is de-
signated by the name of his office, '^''SJl'.' In virtue of the sum-
mary authority which belonged to him (cf. xxix. 26), Pashur
smote the prophet, i.e. caused him to be beaten with stripes, per-
haps according to the precept Deut. xxv. 3, cf. 2 Cor. xi. 24, and
1 As this official designation of Jeremiah is not found in chap, i.-xix., but
occurs frequently in the succeeding chapters, recent critics have taken it to
be an idle addition of the editor of the later prophecies, and have laid stress
on the fact as a proof of the later composition, or at least later editing, of
these pieces ; cf. Graf, S. xxxix. Nag., etc. This assumption is totally
erroneous. The designation of Jeremiah as N^asn occurs only where the
mention of the man's official character was of importance. It is used partly
in contradistinction to the false prophets, xxviii. 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, to
CHAP. XX. 1-6. 313
then threw him into prison till the following day, and put him
in the stocks. naQilDj twisting, was an instrument of torture by
which the body was forced into a distorted, unnatural posture ;
the culprit's hands and feet were presumably bound, so as to
keep the position so; see on 2 Ohron. xvi. 10, cf. with Acts
xvi. 24. The upper gate of Benjamin in the house of Jahveh
is the northern gate at the upper, i.e. inner court of the temple,
tiie same with the upper gate or the gate of the inner court,
looking northwards, Ezek. ix. 2 and viii. 3. By the designation
" which is in the house," etc., it is distinguished from the city
gate of like name, xxxvii. 13, xxxviii. 7. — When on the next
day Pashur released the prophet from imprisonment, the latter
made known to him the divine punishment for his misdeed: "Not
Pashur will Jahveh call thy name, but Magor-Missabib " (i.e.
Fear round about). The name is expressive of the thing. And
so : Jahveh will call the name, is, in other words. He will make
the person to be that which the name expresses ; in this case,
make Pashur to be an object of fear round about. Under the pre-
sumption that the name Magor-Missabib conveyed a meaning the
most directly opposed to that of Pashur, comm. have in various
ways attempted to interpret "iina's. It is supposed to be com-
posed of tJ'iiQ, Ohald. augeri, and "iin, nohilitas, with the force :
abundantia claritatis (Rashi) ; or after LiJ, gloriatus est de
nobiliiate (Simonis) ; or from ^mJ, amplus fuit locus, and the
Chald. "linp, circumcirca : de securitate circumcirca ; or finally,
by Ew., from tTB from K'la, spring, leap, rejoice (Mai. iii. 20),
and "lin = Sin, joy round about. All these interpretations are
arbitrary. E'^ib sig. leap and gallop about, Mai. iii. 20 and Hab.
i. 8, and in Niph. Nah. iii. 18, to be scattered (see on Hab. i. 8);
and n»'a sig. in Lam. iii. 11 to tear. But the syllable nin can
the elders, priests, and false prophets, xxix. 1, 29, xxxvii. 3, 6, 13, xlii. 2,
4, to the king, xxxii. 2, xxxiv. 6, xxxvii. 2, and partly to distinguish from
persons of other conditions in life, xliii. 6, xlv. 1, li. 59. We never find the
title in the headings of the prophecies save in xxv. 2, with reference to the
fact that here, ver. 4, he upbraids the people for not regarding the sayings
of all the prophets of the Lord ; and in the oracles against foreign peoples,
xlvi. 1, 13, xlvii. 1, xlix. 34, and 1. 1, where the name of his caUing gave
him credentials for these prophecies. — There is no further use of the name
in the entire book.
314 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMUn.
by no means have the sig. of ^UBD claimed for it. Nor are
there, indeed, sufScient grounds for assuming that Jeremiah
turned the original name upside down in an etymological or
philological reference. The new name given by Jeremiah to
Pashur is meant to intimate the man's destiny. On " Fear
round about," see on vi. 25. What the words of the new name
signify is explained in vers. 4-6. Ver. 4. " For thus hath Jahveh
said: Behold, I make thee a terror to thyself and to all thy
friends, and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies and
thine eyes behold it ; and all Judah will I give into the hand
of the king of Babylon, that he may carry them captive to
Babylon and smite them with the sword. Ver. 5. And I will
give all the stores of this city, and all its gains, and all its
splendour, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I
give into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them
and take and bring them to Babylon. Ver. 6. And thou,
Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity,
and to Babylon shalt thou come, and there die, and there be
buried, thou and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied
lyingly." — Pashur will become a fear or terror to himself and
all his friends, because of his own and his friends' fate ; for he
will see his friends fall by the sword of the enemy, and then he
himself, with those of his house and his friends not as yet slain,
will go forth into exile to Babylon and die there. So tiiat not
to himself merely, but to all about him, he will be an object of
fear. Nag. wrongly translates liJOj' l^ni, I deliver thee up to
fear, and brings into the text the contrast that Pashur is not to
become the victim of death itself, but of perpetual fear of death.
Along with Pashur's friends, all Judah is to be given into the
hand of the king of Babylon, and be partly exiled to Babylon,
partly put to death with the sword. All the goods and gear of
Jerusalem, together with the king's treasures, are to be plundered
and carried off by the enemy. We must not press " all thy
friends " in vers. 4 and 6 ; and so we escape the apparent contra-
diction, that while in ver. 4 it is said of all the friends that they
shall die by the sword, it is said of all in ver. 6 that they shall
go into exile. The friends are those who take Pasliur's side,
his partisans. From the last clause of ver. 6 we see that
Pashur was also of the number of the false prophets, who
CHAP. XX. 7-13, 315
propliesied the reverse of Jeremiah's prediction, namely, welfare
and peace (cf. xxiii. 17, xiv. 13). — This saying of Jeremiah
was most probably fulfilled at the taking of Jerusalem under
Jechoniah, Pashur and the better part of the people being
carried off to Babylon.
Vers. 7-18. The prophet's complaints as to the suf-
ferings MET WITH IN HIS CALLING. — This portion contains,
first, a complaint addressed to the Lord regarding the persecu-
tions which the preaching of God's word draws down on Jere-
miah, but the complaint passes into a jubilant cry of hope
(vers. 7-13) ; secondly, a cursing of the day of his birth (vers.
13-18). The first complaint runs thus :
Vers. 7-13. " Thou hast persuaded me, Jahveh, and I let my-
self be persuaded; Thou hast laid hold on me and hast prevailed.
I am become a laughter the whole day long, every one mocketh
at rae. Ver. 8. For as often as I speak, I must call out and cry
violence and spoil, for the word of Jahveh is made a reproach and
a derision to me all the day. Ver. 9. And I said, I will no more
remember nor speak more in His name ; then was it in my heart
as burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of
holding out, and cannot. Ver. 10. For I heard the talk of
many : Fear round about ! Eeport, and let us report him !
Every man of my friendship lies in wait for my downfall :
Peradventure he will let himself be enticed, that we may prevail
against him and take our revenge on him. Ver. 11. But
Jahveh stands by me as a mighty warrior ; therefore shall my
persecutors stumble and not prevail, shall be greatly put to
shame, because they have not dealt wisely, with everlasting
disgrace which will not be forgotten. Ver. 12. And, Jahveh
of hosts that trieth the righteous, that seeth reins and heart,
let me see Thy vengeance on them, for to Thee have I com-
mitted my cause. Ver. 13. Sing to Jahveh, praise Jahveh, for
He saves the soul of the poor from the hand of the evil-doers."
This lament as to the hatred and persecution brought upon
him by the preaching of the word of the Lord, is chiefly
called forth by the proceedings, recounted in vers. 1, 2, of the
temple-warden Pashur against him. This is clear from the liJo
a''3BO ; for, as Nag. truly remarks, the use of this expression
316 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAIL
against the prophet may certainly be most easily explained by the
use he had so pregnantly made of it against one so distinguished
as Pashur. Besides, the bitterness of the complaint, rising at
last to the extent of cursing the day of his birth (ver. 14 ff.), is
only intelligible as a consequence of such ill-usage as Pashur
had already inflicted on him. For although his enemies had
schemed against his life, they had never yet ventured positively
to lay hands on his person. Pashur first caused him to be
beaten, and then had him kept a \Yhole night long in the torture
of the stocks. From torture like this his enemies might proceed
even to taking his life, if the Lord did not miraculously shield
him from their vengeance. — The complaint, vers. 7—13, is an
outpouring of the heart to God, a prayer that begins with com-
plaint, passes into confidence in the Lord's protection, and ends
in a triumph of hope. In vers. 7 and 8 Jeremiah complains of
the evil consequences of his labours. God has persuaded him
to undertake the office of prophet, so that he has yielded to the
call of God. The words of ver. la are not an upbraiding,
nor are they given in an upbraiding tone (Hitz.) ; for nna does
not mean befool, but persuade, induce by words to do a thing.
P]n used transitively, but not as 1 Kings xvi. 22, overpower
(Ros., Graf, etc.) ; for then it would not be in keeping with the
following '3101, which after " overpower " would seem very
feeble. It means: lay hold of; as usually in the Hiph., so
here in Kal. It thus corresponds to 1^ J^iPin, Isa.viii. 11, de-
noting the state of being laid hold of by the power of the Spirit
of God in order to prophesy. ^3in, not : Thou hast been able,
but : Thou hast prevailed, conquered. A sharp contrast to this
is presented by the issue of his prophetic labours : I am become
a laughing-stock all the day, i.e. incessantly, n'^3, its (the people's)
entirety = all the people. — In ver. 8 " call " is explained by " cry
out violence and spoil:" complain of the violence and spoliation
that are practised. The word of Jahveh is become a reproach
and obloquy, i.e. the proclamation of it has brought him only
contempt and obloquy. The two cases of ''3 are co-ordinate ; the
two clauses give two reasons for everybody mocking at him. One
is objective : so often as he speaks he can do nothing but com-
plain of violence, so that he is ridiculed by the mass of the
people; and one is subjective: his preaching brings him only
CHAP. XX. 7-13. 317
disgrace. Most comm. refer " violence and spoiling " to the
ill-usage the prophet experiences ; but this does not exhaust the
reference of the words. — Ver. 9. After such bitter experiences,
the thought arose in his soul : I will remember Him (Jahveh)
no more, i.e. make no more mention of the Lord, nor speak in
His name, labour as a prophet ; but it was within him as burning
fire. The subject is not expressed, but is, as Eos. and Hitz.
rightly say, the word of Jahveh which is held back. " rthut
up in my bones" is apposition to "burning fire," for B'*? occurs
elsewhere also as masc, e.g. xlviii. 45, Job xx. 26, Ps. civ. 4.
The word of God dwells in the heart ; but from there outwards
it acts upon his whole organism, like a fire shut up in the
hollow of his bones, burning the marrow of them (Job xxi. 24),
so that he can no longer bear to keep silence. The perfects
" and I said," " and (then) it was," " and I became weary," are
to be taken as preterites, expressing events that have several
times been repeated, and so the final result is si)oken in the
imperf. I cannot. — Ver. 10 gives the reason for the resolution,
adopted but not carried out, of speaking no more in the name
of the Lord. This was found in the reports that reached his
ears of schemes against his life. The first clause is a verbal
quotation from Ps. xxxi. 14, a lament of David in the time of
Saul's persecutions, na'n, base, backbiting slander. The phrase :
Fear round about, indicates, in the form of a brief popular say-
ing, the dangerous case in which the prophet was,^ which his
adversaries prepare for him by their repeating : Report him, we
will report him. Report : here, report to the authorities as a
dangerous man. Even those who are on friendly terms with
him lie in wait for his fall. This phrase too is formed of phrases
from the Psalms. On "man of my peace," cf. Ps. xli. 10; on WV,
Ps. XXXV. 15, xxxviii. 18 ; and on "i^K', watch, lie in wait for,
Ps. Ivi. 7, Ixxi. 10. " Peradventure " — so they said — " he may
^ Hupfeld on Ps. xxxi. 14 holds y2B12 "liJD to be a proverbial expres-
sion for a harassed condition, full of terrors, since the phrase is frequently-
used by Jeremiah (besides the present vers. 3, 4, and 15, it is at vi. 25,
xlvi. 5, xlix. 29, Lam. ii. 22). The use made cf it in ver. 3 would in that
case be easily understood. For we cannot infer, as Nag. would do, that
Jeremiah must have formed the phrase himself, from the fact that, except
in Ps. xxxi. 14, it is nowhere found hut in Jeremiah.
318 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
let himself be enticed," sc. to say something on which a capital
charge may be founded (Graf). With " that we may prevail
against him," cf. i. 19, xv. 20. — At ver. 11 the lament rises into
confidence in the Lord, springing from the promise given to
him by God at his call. ''niJ< (for ''ns) mni recalls i. 19, xv. 20.
The designation of God as PIV "'i^? is formed after xv. 21.
Because the Lord has promised to deliver him out of the hand of
the cyii!) violent, he now calls him a hero using violence, and
on this founds his assurance that his persecutors will accom-
plish nothing, but will come to a downfall, to shame, and be
covered with never-dying, never-to-be-forgotten disgrace. Be-
cause they have dealt not wisely, i.e. foolishly, see on x. 21 ;
not: because they did not prosper, which would give a weak,
superfluous idea, since their not prospering lies already in t^'ia,
spe frustrari. This disgrace will befall the persecutors, because
the Lord of hosts will, as Searcher of hearts, take the part of
the righteous, and will take vengeance on their foes. This is
the force of ver. 12, which, with a few changes, is repeated
from xi. 20. — In this trustfulness his soul rises to a firm hope
of deliverance, so that in ver. 13 he can call on himself and all
the godly to praise God, the Saviour of the poor. Cf. Ps.
xxxi. 8, XXXV. 9, 10, 28, etc.
Vers. 14—18. The day of his birth cursed. — Ver. 14. " Cursed
be the day wherein I was born ! The day my mother bare me,
let it not be blessed ! Ver. 15. Cursed be the man that brought
the good tidings to my father, saying : A man-child is born to
thee, who made him very glad. Ver. 16. Let that man be as
the cities which Jahveh overthrew without repenting ; let him
hear crying in the morning and a war-cry at noon-tide, Ver. 17.
Because he slew me not from the womb, and so my mother
should have been my grave, and her womb should have been
always great. Ver. 18. Wherefore am I come forth out of the
womb to see hardship and sorrow, and that my days should
wear away in shame?"
Inasmuch as the foregoing lamentation had ended in assured
hope of deliverance, and in the praise rendered to God therefor,
it seems surprising that now there should follow curses on the
day of his birth, without any hint to show that at the end this
temptation, too, had been overcome. For this reason Ew. wishes
CHAP. XX. 14-18. 319
to rearrange the two parts of the complaint, setting vers. 14-18
before vers. 7-12. This transposition he holds to be so un-
questionably certain, that he speaks of the order and numbering
of the verses in the text as an example, clear as it is remarkable,
of displacement. But against this hypothesis we have to consider
the improbability that, if individual copyists had omitted the
second portion (vers. 14-18) or written it on the margin, others
should have introduced it into an unsuitable place. Copyists
did not go to work with the biblical text in such an arbitrary
and clumsy fashion. Nor is the position occupied by the piece
in question so incomprehensible as Ew. imagines. The cursing
of the day of his birth, or of his life, after the preceding
exaltation to hopeful assurance is not psycliologically incon-
ceivable. It may well be understood, if we but think of the
two parts of the lamentation as not following one another in
the prophet's soul in such immediate succession as they do in
the text ; if we regard them as spiritual struggles, separated
by an interval of time, through which the prophet must succes-
sively pass. In vanquishing the temptation that arose from tlie
plots of his enemies against his life, Jeremiah had a strong
support in the promise which the Lord gave him at his call,
that those who strove against him should not prevail against
him ; and the deliverance out of the hand of Pashnr which he
had just experienced, must have given him an actual proof that
the Lord was fulfilling His promise. The feeling of this might
fill the trembling heart with strength to conquer his temptation,
and to elevate himself again, in the joyful confidence of faith,
to the praising of the Lord, who delivers the soul of the poor
from the hand of the ungodly. But the power of the tempta-
tion was not finally vanquished by the renewal of his confidence
that the Lord will defend him against all his foes. The un-
success of his mission might stir up sore struggles in his soul,
and not only rob him of all heart to continue his labours, but
excite bitter discontent with a life full of hardship and sorrow,
— a discontent which found vent in his cursing the day of his
birth.
The curse uttered in vers. 14-18 against the day of his birth,
while it reminds us of the verses, ch. iii. 3 ff., in which Job
curses the day of his conception and of his birth, is markedly
320 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
distinsuished in form and substance from that dreadful utter-
ance of Job's. Job's words are much more violent and pas-
sionate, and are turned directly against God, who has given
life to him, to a man whose way is iiid, whom God hath hedged
round. Jeremiah, on the other hand, curses first the day of his
birth (ver. 14), then the man that brought his father the joyful
news of the birth of a son (vers. ]5-17), because his life is
passing away in hardship, trials, sorrow, and shame, without
expressly blaming God as the author of that life. — Ver. 14.
The day on which I was born, let it be cursed and not blessed,
sc. because life has never been a blessing to me. Job wishes
that the day of his birth and the night of his conception may
perish, be annihilated. — Ver. 15. In the curse on the man that
brought the father the news of the birth, the stress lies on the
clause, " who made him very glad," which goes to strengthen
"iE'3, evaiyyeXl^eadai, a clause which is subordinated to the
principal clause without any grammatical connection (cf. Ew.
§ 341, b). The joy that man gave the father by his news is
become to the son a source of bitter grief. — Ver. 16. He wishes
the fate of Sodom (Geu. xix. 25), namely ruin, to befall that
man. 2™ f<71, and may He (Jahveh) not let it repent Him, is
adverbially used : without feeling compunction for the destruc-
tion, i.e. without pity. In ver. 166 destruction is depicted
under the figure of the terrors of a town beleaguered by enemies
and suddenly taken. <^\>V'!, the wailing cry of the aflBicted towns-
people ; njlinn, the war-cry of the enemies breaking in ; cf,
XV. 8. — Ver. 17 tells why the curse should fall on that man :
because (^^% causal) he slew me not from the womb, i.e. accord-
ing to what follows : while yet in the womb, and so QiJPf]. with
1 consec.) ray mother would have become my grave. Logically
considered, the subject to 'JnniD can only be the man on whom
the curse of ver. 15 is pronounced. But how could the man
kill the child in the mother's womb ? This consideration has
given occasion to various untenable renderings. Some have
taken " from the womb," according to Job iii. 11, in the sense :
immediately after birth, simul ac ex uiero exiissem (Eos.). This
is grammatically fair enough, but it does not fall in with the con-
text ; for then the following Vav consec. must be taken as having
the negative force " or rather," the negation being repeated in
CHAP. XX. 14-18. 321
tlie next clause again (Ros., Graf). Both these cases are gram-
matically inadmissible. Others would supply " Jahveh" as
subject to ^JnniO, or take the verb as with indefinite subject, or
as passive. But to supply "Jahveh" is quite arbitrary ; and
against the passive construction it must be said that thus the
causal nexus, indicated by "itt'K, between the man on whom the
curse is to fall and the slaying of the child is done away with,
and all connection for the lf^, with what precedes would be
lost. The difficulty arising from simply accepting the literal
meaning is solved by the consideration, that the curse is not
levelled against any one particular person. The man that was
present at the birth, so as to be able to bring the father the
news of it, might have killed the child in the mother's womb.
Jeremiah is as little thinking how this could happen as, in the
next words, he is of the possibility of everlasting pregnancy.
His words must be taken rhetorically, not physiologically. That
pregnancy is everlasting that has no birth at the end of it. — In
ver. 18 a reason for the curse is given, in that birth had brought
him only a life of hardship and sorrow. To see hardship, i.e.
experience, endure it. His days pass away, vanish in shame,
i.e. shame at the discomfiture of hopes ; for his life-calling
produces no fruit, his prophetic work is in vain, since he cannot
save his people from destruction.
The curse on the day of birth closes with a sigh at the wretched-
ness of life, without any hint that he again rises to new joyful
faith, and without God's reprimanding him for his discontent
as in xi. 19 f. This difiiculty the comm. have not touched
upon ; they have considered only the questions : how at all such
a curse in the mouth of a prophet is to be defended; and whether
it is in its right place in this connection, immediately after
the words so full of hope as ver. 11 ff. (cf. Nag.). The latter
question we have already discussed at the beginning of the expo-
sition of these verses. As to the first, opinions differ. Some
take the curse to be a purely rhetorical form, having no object
whatsoever. For, it is said, the long past day of his birth is as
little an object on which the curse could really fall, as is the
man who told his father of the birth of a son, — a man who in
all probability never had a real existence (Nag.). To this
view, ventured so early as Origen, Oor. a Lap. lias justly
VOL. I. X
322 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEKEMIAII.
answered : ohsiat, quod dies ilia exstitent fueriique creatura Dei ;
non licet aiitem maledicere alicui creaturoe Dei, site ilia prcesens
sit sive prwterita. Otliei's, as Calv., espied in this cursing quasi
sacrilegum furorem, and try to excuse it on the ground that the
principium Jnijus zeli was justifiable, because Jeremiah cursed
the day of his birth not because of personal sufferings, sick-
nesses, poverty, and the like, but quoniam videret se perdere
operant^ quum tamen fideliter studeret earn impendere in salutem
populi, deinde quum videret doctrinam Dei ohnoxiam esse probris
et mtuperationihus, quum videret impios ita procaciter insurgere,
quum videret totam pietatem ita haberi ludihrio. But the sen-
tence passed, that the prophet gravissime peccaverit ut esset con-
tumeliosus in Deum, is a too severe one, as is also that of the
Berlehurg Bible, that " Jeremiah therein stands for an example
of warning to all faithful witnesses for the truth, showing that
they should not be impatient of the reproach, contempt, deri-
sion, and mockery that befall them on that account, if God's
long-suffering bears with the mockers so long, and ever delays
His judgments." For had Jeremiah sinned so grievously, God
would certainly have reproached him with his wrong-doing, as
in XV. 19. Since that is not here the case, we are not entitled
to make out his woi'ds to be a beacon of warning to all witnesses
for the truth. Certainly this imprecation was not written for
our imitation ; for it is doubtless an injirmitas, as Sob. Schm.
called it, — an outbreak of the striving of the flesh against the
spirit. But it should be to us a source of instruction and com-
fort. From it we should, on the one hand, learn the full weight
of the temptation, so that we may arm ourselves with prayer in
faith as a weapon against the power of the tempter ; on the
other hand, we should see the greatness of God's grace, which
raises again those that are stumbling to their fall, and does not
let God's true servants succumb under the temptation, as we
gather fi'om the fact, that the Lord does not cast off His servant,
but gives him the needed strength for can'ying on the heavy
labours of his ofBce. — The difficulty that there is no answer from
the Lord to this complaint, neither by way of reprimand nor of
consolation, as in xii. 5f., xv. 10, 19 f., is solved when we con-
sider that at his former complainings the Lord had said to him
all that was needed to comfort him and raise him up again. A
CHAP. XXI.-XXIX. 323
repetition of those promises would have soothed his bitterness
of spirit for a time, perhaps, but not permanently. For the
latter purpose the Lord was silent, and left him time to conquer
from within the temptation that was crushing him down, by-
recalling calmly the help from God he had so often hitherto
experienced in his labours, especially as the time was now not far
distant in which, by the bursting of the threatened judgment
on Jerusalem and Judah, he should not only be justified before
his adversaries, but also perceive that his labour had not been
in vain. And that Jeremiah did indeed victoriously struggle
against this temptation, we may gather from remembering that
hereafter, when, especially during the siege of Jerusalem under
Zedekiah, he had still sorer afflictions to endure, he no longer
trembles or bewails the sufferino-s connected with his calling.
IL— SPECIAL PREDICTIONS OP THE JUDGMENT TO BE AC-
COMPLISHED BY THE CHALDEANS, AND OF THE MES-
SIANIC SALVATION.— Chap. XXI.-XXXIII.
These predictions are distinguished from the discourses of
the first section, in regard to their form, by special head-
ings assigning precisely the occasion and the date of the
particular utterances ; and in regard to their substance, by the
minute detail with which judgment and salvation are foretold.
They fall into two groups. In chap, xxi.-xxix. is set forth in
detail the judgment to be executed npon Judah and the nations
by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon ; and in chap, xxx.-xxxiii.
the restoration of Judah and Israel on the expiry of the period
of punishment.
A. THE PREDICTIONS OP JUDGMENT ON JUDAH AND THE
NATIONS. — CHAP. XXI.-XXIX.
Although these prophecies deal first and chiefly with the
judgment which the king of Babylon is to execute on Judah,
yet they at the same time intimate that a like fate is in store
for the surrounding nations. And in them there is besides a
324 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
foreshadowing of the Judgment to come on Babylon after the
expiration of the period appointed for the domination of the
Chaldeans, and in brief hints, of the redemption of Israel from
captivity in Babylon and other lands into which it has been
scattered, Tliey consist of three prophetic pieces, of which
the middle one only, chap, xxv., forms one lengthy continuous
discourse, while the two others are composed of several shorter
or longer utterances; the latter two being arranged around the
former as a centre. In the first piece the necessity of judg-
ment is shown by means of an exposure of the profound cor-
ruption of the leaders of the people, the kings and the false
prophets, and of the people itself; this being done with a view
to check the reigning depravity and to bring back Israel to
the true God. In the discourse of chap. xxv. the judgment is
set forth with comprehensive generaluess. In the third piece,
chap, xxvi.-xxix., the truth of this declaration is confirmed, and
defended against the gainsaying of priests and prophets, by a
series of utterances which crush all hopes aud all attempts to
avert the ruin of Jerusalem and Judah. — This gathering
together of the individual utterances and addresses into longer
iliscourse-like compositions, and the grouping of them around
tlie central discourse chap, xxv., is evidently a part of the work
of editing the book, but was doubtless carried out under the
direction of the prophet by his assistant Baruch.
Chap, xxi.-xxiv. The Shepherds and Leaders of the People.
Under this heading may be comprehended the contents of
these four chapters; for the nucleus of this compilation is
formed by the prophecy concerning the shepherds of the
people, the godless last kings of Judah and the false prophets,
in chap. xxii. and xxiii., while chap. xxi. is to be regarded as
an introduction thereto, and chap. xxiv. a supplement. The
aim of this portion of prophetic teaching is to show how the
covenant people has been brought to ruin by its corrupt temporal
and spiritual rulers, that the Lord must purge it by sore judg-
ments, presently to fall on Judah through Nebuchadnezzar's
instrumentality. This is to be done in order to root out the
ungodly by sword, famine, and pestilence, and so to make the
survivors His true people again by means of right shepherds
CHAP. XXI. -XXIV. 325
whom He will raise up in the true branch of David. The
introduction, chap, xxi., contains deliverances regarding the
fate of King Zedekiah, the people, and the city, addressed by
Jeremiah, at the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by the
Chaldeans, to the men sent to him from the king, in reply to
the request for intercession with the Lord ; the answer being
to the effect that God \vill punish them according to the fruit
of their doings. Then follow in order the discourse against
the corrupt rulers, especially Kings Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and
Jechoniah, chap, xxii., with a promise that the remainder of
the Lord's flock will be gathered again and blessed with a
righteous shepherd (xxiii. 1-8), and next threatenings against
the false prophets (xxiii. 9-40) ; the conclusion of the whole
being formed by the vision of the two baskets of figs, chap,
xxiv., which foreshadows the fate of the people carried away to
Babylon with Jehoiachin and of those that remained in the
land with Zedekiah. — The several long constituent portions of
this "word of God," united into a whole by the heading xxi. 1,
belong to various times. The contents of chap. xxi. belong to the
first period of the Chaldean siege, i.e. the ninth year of Zedekiah;
the middle portion, chap. xxii. and xxiii., dates from the reigns
of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin ; the conclusion, chap, xxiv., is
from the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, not long after
Jehoiachin and the best part of the people had been carried off to
Babylon. — As to the joining of chap. xxii. and xxiii. with chap,
xxi., Ew. rightly says that Jeremiah made use of the opportunity
furnished by the message of the king to him of speaking plainly
out regarding the future destiny of the whole kingdom, as well
as in an especial way with regard to the royal house, and the
great men and leaders of the people ; and that he accordingly
gathered into this part of the book all he had hitherto publicly
nttered concerning the leaders of the people, both kings and
temporal princes, and also prophets and priests. This he did
in order to disclose, regardless of consequences, the causes for
the destruction of the kingdom of Judah and the city Jerusalem
by the Chaldeans ; while the brief promise of a future gathering
again of the remnant of the scattered flock, introduced at xxiii.
1-8, is to show that, spite of the judgment to fall on Judah
and Jerusalem, the Lord will yet not wholly cast off His people,
326 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
but will at a future time admit them to favour again. For
the confirmation of this truth there is added in chap. xxiv. the
vision of the two baskets of figs.
Chap. xxi. The taking of Jeetjsalem by the Chal-
deans. — Vers. 1 and 2. The heading specifying the occasion
for the following prediction. " The word of the Lord came to
Jeremiah when King Zedekiah sent unto him Pashur the son
of Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest,
saying: Inquire now of Jahveh for us, for Nebuchadrezzar
the king of Babylon maketh war against us ; if so be that the
Lord will deal with us according to all His wondrous works,
that he may go up from us." The fighting of Nebuchadrezzar
is in ver. 4 stated to be the besieging of the city. From this
it appears that the siege had begun ere the king sent the
two men to the prophet. Pashur the son of Malchiah is held
by Hitz., Graf, Nag., etc., to be a distinguished priest of the
class of Malchiah. But this is without sufficient reason ; for he
is not called a priest, as is the case with Zephaniah the son of
Maaseiah, and with Pashur the son of Immer (xxi. 1). Nor is
anything proved by the circumstance that Pashur and Malchiah
occur in several places as the names of priests, e.g. 1 Chron.
ix. 12 ; for both names are also used of persons not priests,
e.g. Malchiah, Ezra x. 25, 31, and Pashur, Jer. xxxviii. 1, where
this son of Gedaliah is certainly a laic. From this passage,
where Pashur ben Malchiah appears again, it is clear that the
four men there named, who accused Jeremiah for his speech,
were government authorities or court officials, since in xxxviii. 4
they are called D''"iK'. Eos. is therefore right in saying of the
Pashur under consideration : videtur unus ex principibus sive
aulicis fuisse, cf. xxxviii, 4. Only Zephaniah the son of
Maaseiah is called priest ; and he, ace. to xxix. 25, sxxvii. 3,
lii. 24, held a high position in the priesthood. Inquire for us
of Jahveh, i.e. ask for a revelation for us, as 2 Kings xxii. 13,
cf. Gen. XXV. 22. It is not : pray for His help on our behalf,
wliich is expressed by W^IJ!? ^^?'P'?, xxsvii. 3, cf. xlii. 2. In the
request for a revelation the element of intercession is certainly
not excluded, but it is not directly expressed. But it is on this
that the king founds his hope : Peradventuve Jahveh will do
CHAP. XXI. 3-7. 327
with us Ci^nis for «nx) according to all His wondrous works,
i.e. in the miraculous manner in which He has so often saved
us, e.g. under Hezekiah, who also, during the blockade of the
city by Sennacherib, had recourse to the prophet Isaiah and
besought his intercession with the Lord, 2 Kings xix. 2 ff., Isa.
xxxvii. 2 ff. That he (Nebuch.) may go up from us. npy^ to
march against a city in order to besiege it or take it, but with
?3?0, to withdraw from it, cf. xxxvii. 5, 1 Kings xv. 19. As to
the name Nebuchadrezzar, which corresponds more exactly
than the Aramaic-Jewish Nebuchadnezzar with the Nehuca-
durriusur of the inscriptions (iSN "ina 123, i.e. Neho coronam
servai), see on Dan. i. 1, p. 71.
Vers. 3-14. The Lord's reply through Jeremiah consists of
three parts: a. The answer to the king's hope that the Lord
will save Jerusalem from the Chaldeans (vers. 4-7) ; b. The
counsel given to the people and the royal family as to how
they may avert ruin (vers. 8-12) ; c. The prediction that Jeru-
salem will be punished for her sins (vers. 13 and 14).
Vers. 3-7. The answer. — Ver. 3. "And Jeremiah said to them :
Thus shall ye say to Zedekiah: Ver. 4. Thus hath Jahveh
the God of Israel said : Behold, I turn back the weapons of war
that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of
Babylon and the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the
walls, and gather them together into the midst of this city.
Ver. 5. And I fight against you with outstretched hand and
strong arm, and with anger and fury and great wrath, Ver. 6.
And smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast ; of
a great plague they shall die. Ver. 7. And afterward, saith
Jahveh, I will give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his
servants, and the people — namely, such as in this city are left
of the plague, of the sword, and of the famine — into the hand
of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of
their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek after their
life, that he may smite them according to the sharpness of the
sword, not spare them, neither have pity nor mercy." This
answer is intended to disabuse the king and his servants of all
hope of help from God. So far from saving them from the
Chaldeans, God will fight against them, will drive back into
the city its defenders that are still holding out without the
328 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
walls against the enemy; consume tlie inhabitants by sword,
pestilence, famine ; deliver the king, with his servants and all
that survive inside the lines of the besiegers, into the hand of
the latter, and unsparingly cause them be put to death. " I
make the weapons of war turn back" is carried on and explained
by " I gather them into the city." The sense is : I will bring
it about that ye, who still fight without the walls against the
beleaguerers, must turn back with your weapons and retreat
into the city. " Without the walls " is not to be joined to apo,
because this is too remote, and Y^na is by usage locative, not
ablative. It should go with " wherewith ye fight," etc. : where-
with ye fight without the walls against the beleaguering enemies.
The siege had but just begun, so that the Jews were still trying
to hinder the enemy from taking possession of stronger positions
and from a closer blockade of the city. In this they will not
succeed, but their weapons will be thrust back into the city. —
Ver. 7. The Lord will make known His almighty power not
for the rescue but for the chastisement of Judah. The words
" with outstretched hand and strong arm" are a standing figure
for the miraculous manifestation of God's power at the release
of Israel from Egypt, Deut. iv. 34, v. 15, xxvi. 8. This power
He will now exercise upon Israel, and execute the punishment
threatened against apostasy at the renewal of the covenant by
Moses in the land of Moab. The words 7^3 . . . *1N'3 are
from Deut. xxix. 27. The inhabitants of Jerusalem are to
perish during the siege by pestilence and disease, and the re-
mainder, including the king and his servants, to be mercilessly
massacred. "Great pestilence" alone is mentioned in ver. 6,
but in ver. 7 there are sword and famine along with it. The HNI
before D''"iNB'3n seems superfluous and unsuitable, since besides
the king, his servants and the people, there could be none others
left. The LXX. have therefore omitted it, and Hitz., Ew.,
Graf, and others propose to erase it. But the 1 may be taken
to be explicative : namely, such as are left, in which case n?<1.
serves to extend the participial clause to all the persons before
mentioned, while without the ntjil the '131 D''nx5J'3n could be re-
ferred only to DVn. " Into the hand of their enemies " is rhetori-
cally amplified by " into the hand of those that seek," etc., as in
xix. 7, 9, sxxiv. 20, etc. ; 3nn ''Q^, according to the sharpness
CHAP. XXI. 8-ia. 329
(or edge) of the sword, i.e. mercilessly (see on Gen. xxxiv. 26 ;
in Jer. only here), explained by " not spare them," etc., cf.
xiii. 14.
Vers. 8-12. The counsel given to the people and royal family
how to escape death. — Ver. 8. " And unto the people thou slialt
say : Thus hath Jahveh said : Behold, I set before you the way
of life and the way of death. Ver. 9. He that abideth in this
city shall die by sword, by famine, and by pestilence ; but he
that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you,
he shall live, and have his soul for a prey. Ver. 10. For I have
set my face on this city for evil and not for good, saith Jahveh ;
into the hand of the king of Babylon shall it be given, who shall
bnrn it with fire. Ver. 11. And to the house of the king of
Judah : Hear the word of Jahveh : Ver. 12. House of David !
thus hath Jahveh said : Hold judgment every morning, and
save the despoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury
break forth as fire, and burn unquenchably, because of the evil
of your doings." What the prophet is here to say to the people
and the royal house is not directly addressed to the king's envoy,
but is closely connected with the answer he was to give to the
latter, and serves to strengthen the same. We need not be
hampered by the assumption that Jeremiah, immediately after
that answer, communicated this advice, so that it might be
made known to the people and to the royal house. The counsel
given in vers. 8-12 to the people was during the siege repeatedly
given by Jeremiah both to the king and to the people, cf.
xxxviii. 1 ff., xxxviii. 17 ff., and xxvii. 11 ff., and many of the
people acted by his advice, cf. xxxviii. 19, xxxix. 9, lii. 15.
But the defenders of the city, the authorities, saw therein
treason, or at least a highly dangerous discouragement to
those who were fighting, and accused the prophet as a traitor,
xxxviii. 4 ff., cf. xxxvii. 13. Still Jeremiah, holding his duty
higher than his life, remained in the city, and gave as his
opinion, under conviction attained to only by divine revelation,
that all resistance is useless, since God has irrevocably decreed
the destruction of Jerusalem as a punishment for their sins.
The idea of ver. 7 is clothed in words taken from Dent. xxx.
15, cf. xi. 26. ^'^\, ver. 9, as opposed to NSJ, does not mean :
to dwell, but : to sit still, abide. To fall to the Chaldeans, i.e.
330 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
to go over to them, cf. xxxvii. 14, xxxix. 9, 2 Kings xxv. 11 ;
b}} is interchanged with %, xxxvii. 13, xxxviii. 19, lii. 15.
The diet. 'T.n^ is right, corresponding to ni»J ; the Keri Fi^n] is
wrong. His Hfe shall be to him for a prey, i.e. he shall carry
it thence as a prey, i.e. preserve it. Ver. 10 gives the reason for
the advice given. For I have set my face, cf. xliv. 11, recalls
Amos ix. 4, only there we have ■'J''^ for '35, as in xxiv. 6. To
set the face or eye on one means : to pay special heed to him,
in good (cf. xxxix. 12) or in evil sense; hence the addition, "for
evil," etc. — Ver. 11 f.'^ The kingly house, i.e. the king and his
family, under which are here comprehended not meiely women
and children, but also the king's companions, his servants and
councillors ; they are counselled to hold judgment every morn-
ing. UStt'D PT = n n, V. 28, xxii. 16, or UQB-b Da&=, Lam. iii.
59, 1 Kings iii. 28. ii?.3? distributlvely, every morning, as Amos
iv. 4. To save the despoiled out of the hand of the oppressor
1 According to Hitz., Gr., and Nag., the passage vers. 11-14 stands in
no inner connection with the foregoing, and may, from the contents of it,
be seen to belong to an earlier period than that of the siege which took
place under Zedekiah, namely, to the time of Jehoiakim, because, a. in the
period of chap. xxi. 1 ff. such an exhortation and conditional threatening
must have been out of place after their destruction had been quite uncon-
ditionally foretold to Zedekiah and the people in vers. 4-7 ; 6. the defiant
tone conveyed in ver. 13 is inconsistent with the cringing despondency
shown by Zedekiah in ver. 2 ; c. it is contrary to what we would expect
to find the house of the king addressed separately after the king had been
addressed in ver. 3, the king being himself comprehended in his " house.''
But these arguments, on which Hitz. builds ingenious hypotheses, are per-
fectly valueless. As to a, we have to remark : In vers. 4-7 unconditional
destruction is foretold against neither king nor people ; it is only said that
the Chaldeans will capture the city, — that the inhabitants will be smitten
with pestilence, famine, and sword, — and that the king, with his servants
and those that are left, will be given into the hand of tlie king of Babylon,
who will smite them uusparingly. But in ver. 12 the threatening is uttered
against the king, that if he does not practise righteousness, the wrath of
God will be kindled unqiienchably, and, ver. 14, that Jerusalem is to be
burnt with fire. In vers. 4-7 there is uo word of the burning of the city ;
it is first threatened, ver. 10, agamst the people, after the choice has been
given them of escaping utter destruction. How little the burning of Jeru-
salem is involved in vers. 4-7 may he seen from the history of the siege
and capture of Jerusalem uuder Jehoiachm, on which occasion, too, the king,
with his servants and the people, was given into the hand of the kina ol
Babylon, while the city was permitted to stand, aud the deported king
CHAP. XXI. 13, 14, 331
means : to defend his just cause against the oppressor, to defend
him from being despoiled ; cf. xxil. 3. The form of address :
House of David, which is by a displacement awkwardly separated
from iVaB*, is meant to remind the kingly house of its origin, its
ancestor David, who walked in the ways of the Lord. — The
second half of the verse, " lest my fury," etc., runs like iv. 4.
Vers. 13 and 14. The chastisement of Jerusalem. — Ver. 13.
" Behold, I am against thee, inhabitress of the valley, of the
rock of the plain, saith Jahveh, ye who say : "Who shall come
down against us, and who shall come into our dwellings ?
Ver. 14. And will visit you according to the fruit of your doings,
saith Jahveh, and kindle a fire in her forest, that it may devour
all her surroundings." This threatening is levelled against the
citizens of Jerusalem, who vaunted the impregnableness of their
city. The inhabitress of the valley is the daughter of Zion, the
population of Jerusalem personified. The situation of the city
is spoken of as poj^, ravine between mountains, in respect that
remained in life, and was subsequently set free from his captivity by Evil-
Merodacb. But that Zedekiah, by hearkening to the word of the Lord,
can alleviate his doom and save Jerusalem from destruction, this Jeremiah
tells him yet later in very plain terms, chap, xxxviii. 17-23, cf. xxxiv. 4 f.
Lastly, the release of Hebrew man-servants and maid-servants, recounted
in chap, xxxiv. 8 fE., shows that even during the siege there were cases of an
endeavour to turn and follow the law, and consequently that an exhortation
to hold by the right could not have been regarded as wholly superfluous. —
The other two arguments, 6 and c, are totally inconclusive. How the con-
fidence of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the strength of its fortifications
(ver. 13) is contradictory of the fact related in ver. 2, does not appear.
That Zedekiah should betake himself to the prophet, desiring him to en-
treat the help of God, is not a specimen of cringing despondency such as
excludes all confidence in any earthly means of help. Nor are defiance
and despondency mutually exclusive opposites in psychological experience,
but states of mind that rapidly alternate. Finally, Nag. seems to have
added the last argument (c) only because he had no great confidence in the
two others, which bad been dwelt on by Hitz. and Graf. "Why should not
Jeremiah have given the king another counsel for warding off the worst,
over and above that conveyed in the answer to his question (vers. 4-7) ? —
These arguments have therefore not pith enough to throw any doubt on
the connection between the two passages (vers. 8-10, and 11, 12) indicated
by the manner in which " and to the house (nu^l) of the king of Judah"
points back to " and unto this people thou shalt say" (ver. 8), or to induce
us to attribute the connection so indicated to the thoughtlessness of the
editor.
332 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Jerusalem was encircled by mountains of greater height (Ps.
cxxv. 2) ; and as rock of the plain, i.e. the region regarded as
a level from which Mount Zion, the seat of the kingdom, rose,
equivalent to rock of the field, xvii. 3. In the " rock" we think
specially of Mount Zion, and in the " valley," of the so-called
lower city. The two designations are chosen to indicate the
strong situation of Jerusalem. On this the inhabitants pride
themselves, who say : Who shall come down against us ? nn''
for nnr, from nm"; cf. Ew. § 139, c. Dwellings, of. xxv. 30,
not cities of refuge or coverts of wild animals ; liJ'O has not
this force, but can at most acquire it from the context ; see Del.
on Ps. xxvi. 8. The strength of the city will not shield the
inhabitants from the punishment with which God will visit
them. " According to the fruit," etc., cf. xvii. 10. I kindle
fire in her forest. The city is a forest of houses, and the figure
is to be explained by the simile in xxii. 6, but was not suggested
by liyD = lustra ferarum (Hitz.). All her surroundings, how
much more then the city itself !
Chap, xxii.-xxiii. 8. Rebuke of the xjngodlt kings
Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, and promise of a righteous
BRANCH OF David. — This discourse begins with an exhortation
to the king, his servants, and the people to do right and justice,
and to eschew all unrighteousness, and with the warning, that
in case of the contrary the royal palace will be reduced to ruins
and Jerusalem destroyed by fire. After touching briefly on the
fate of Jehoahaz, who has been deported to Egypt (vers. 10-12),
the discourse turns against Jehoiakim, rebukes his tyranny, in
that he builds his house with unrighteousness and schemes only
bloodshed and violence, and threatens him with ignominious ruin
(vers. 13-19). Then, after a threatening against Jerusalem
(vers. 20-23), it deals with Jechoniah, who is told he shall be
carried to Babylon never to return, and without any descendant
to sit on his throne (vers. 24-30). Next, after an outcry of
grief at the wicked sliepherds, follows the promise that the
Lord will gather the remnant of His flock out of all the lands
whither they have been driven, that He will restore them to their
fields and multiply them, and that He will raise up to them a
good shepherd in the righteous branch of David (xxiii. 1-8). —
CHAP. xxn. 1-9. 333
According to xxi. 1, Jeremiah spoke these words in the house
of the king of Judah ; whence we see that in tliis passage we
have not merely ideas and scraps of addresses gathered together,
such as had been on various occasions orally delivered by the
prophet. It further appears from ver. 10 and vers. 13-17, that
the portion of the discourse addressed to Jehoiakira was uttered
in the first year of his reign ; and from ver. 24, where Jechoniah
is addressed as king, that tlie utterance concerning him belongs
to the short period (only three months long) of his reign. But
the utterance concerning Jechoniah is joined with that concern-
ing Jehoiakim on account of the close relationship in matter
between them. The exhortation and warning against injustice,
forming the introduction, as regards its contents, fits very well
into the time of Jehoiakim (cf. ver. 17 with ver. 3). The
promise with which the discourse concludes was apparently not
spoken till the time of Jechoniah, shortly before his being taken
to Babylon. So that we have here the discourses of Jeremiah
belonging to the times of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin respec-
tively, joined into one continuous whole.
Chap. xxii. 1—9. The king is warned against injustice, and the
violent oppression of the poor and defenceless. — Yer. 1. " Thus
said Jahveh : Go down to the house of the king of Judah and
speak there this word, Ver. 2. And say : Hear the word of
Jahveh, thou king of Judah, that sittest upon the throne of
David, thou, and thy servants, and thy people, that go in by
these gates. Ver. 3. Thus hath Jahveh said : Do ye right and
justice, and save the despoiled out of the hand of the oppressor ;
to stranger, orphan, and widow do no wrong, no violence ; and
innocent blood shed not in this place. Ver. 4. For if ye will
do this word indeed, then by the gates of this place there shall
come in kings that sit upon the throne of David, riding in
chariots and on horses, he, and his servants, and his people.
Ver. 5. But if ye hearken not to these words, by myself have
I sworn, saith Jahveh, that this house shall become a desolation.
Ver, 6. For thus hath Jahveh said concerning the house of the
king of Judah : A Gilead art thou to me, a head of Lebanon ;
surely I will make thee a wilderness, cities uninhabited ; Ver. 7.
And will consecrate against thee destroyers, each with his tools,
who shall hew down the choice of thy cedars and cast them
331 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
into the fire. Ver. 8. And there shall pass many peoples by
this city, and one shall say to the other: Wherefore hath
Jahveh done thus unto this great city? Ver. 9. And they will
say : Because they have foi'saken the covenant of Jahveh their
God, and worshipped other gods and served them."
Go down into the house of the king. The prophet could go
down only from the temple ; cf. xxxvi. 12 and xsvi. 10. Not
only the king is to hear the word of the Lord, but his servants
ton, and the people, who go in by these gates, the gates of the
royal castle. The exhortation : to do right and justice, etc.,
is only an expansion of the brief counsel at xxi. 12, and that
brought home to the heart of the whole people in vii. 6, cf. Ezek.
xxii. 6 f. The form pWV for ?'^V, xxi. 12, occurs only here,
but is formed analogously to 7i^3, and cannot be objected to.
!i3Fi"7N is strengthened by " do no violence." On " kings riding,"
etc., cf. xvii. 25. — With ver. 5 cf. xvii. 27, where, however, the
threatening is otherwise worded. ''JjiJ'2B'p ''3, cf. Gen, xxii. 16.
^3 introduces the contents of the oath. " This house" is the
royal palace. n3"inp as in vii. 34, cf. xxvii. 17. The threaten-
ing is illustrated in ver. 6 by further description of the destruc-
tion of the palace. The royal castle is addressed, and, in respect
of its lofty situation and magnificence, is called a Gilead and a
head of Lebanon. It lay on the north-eastern eminence of
Mount Zion (see on 1 Kings vii. 12, note 1), and contained the
so-called forest-house of Lebanon (1 Kings vii. 2-5) and various
other buildings built of cedar, or, at least, faced ■vyith cedar
planks (cf. vers. 14, 23) ; so that the entire building might be
compared to a forest of cedars on the summit of Lebanon. In
the comparison to Gilead, Gilead can hardly be adduced in
respect of its great fertility as a pasturing land (Num. xxxii. 1 ;
Mic. vii. 14), but in virtue of the thickly wooded covering of
the hill-country of Gilead on both sides of the Jabbok. This
is still in great measure clothed with oak thickets and, according
to Buckingham, the most beautiful forest tracts that can be
imagined ; cf. C. v. Raumer, Pal. S. 82.^ f<? DX is a particle of
^ In 1834 Eli Smith travelled througli it, and thus ■writes : " Jebel 'Ajlun
presents the most charming rural scenery that I have seen in Syria. A con-
tinued forest of noble trees, chiefly the evergreen oak, covers a large part
of it, while the ground beneath is clothed -with luxuriant grass and decked
CHAP. XXII. 10-12. 335
asseveration. This glorious forest of cedar buildings is to
become a "'I']*?, a treeless steppe, cities uninhabited. " Cities "'
refers to the thing compared, not to the emblem ; and the plural,
as being the form for indefinite generality, presents no difficulty.
And the attachment thereto of a singular predicate has many
analogies in its support, cf. Ew. § 317, a. The Keri l^B'iJ is
an uncalled for emendation of the Cliet. ^5"f ^■'j ^^- vi- 5. — " I
consecrate," in respect that the destroyers are warriors whom
God sends as the executors of His will, see on vi. 4. With
" a man and his weapons," cf. Ezek. ix. 2. In keeping with
the figure of a forest, the destruction is represented as the
hewing down of the choicest cedars ; cf. Isa. x, 34. — Thus is
to be accomplished in Jerusalem what Moses threatened, Deut.
xxix. 33 ; the destroyed city will become a monument of God's
wrath against the transgressors of His covenant. Ver. 8 is
modelled upon Deut. xxix. 23 ff., cf. 1 Kings ix. 8 f., and made
to bear upon Jerusalem, since, along with the palace, the city
too is destroyed by the enemy.
From ver. 10 onwards the exhortation to the evil shepherds
becomes a prophecy concerning the kings of that time, who by
their godless courses hurried on the threatened destruction.
The prophecy begins with King Jehoahaz, who, after a reign
of three months, had been discrowned by Pharaoh Necho and
carried captive to Egypt ; 2 Kings xxiii. 30-35, 2 Cliron. xxxvi.
1-4.
Vers. 10-12. On JeJioahas.— Ver. 10. "Weep not for the
dead, neither bemoan him ; weep rather for him that is gone
away, for he shall no more return and see the land of his birth.
Ver. 11. For thus saith Jahveh concerning Shallum, the son
of Josiah king of Judah, who became king in his father Josiah's
stead, and who went forth from this place : He shall not return
thither more ; Ver. 12. But in the place whither they have
carried him captive, there shall he die and see this land no
more." The clause : weep not for the dead, with which the
prophecy on Shallum is begun, shows that the mourning for
with, a rich variety of wild flowers. As we went from el-Husn to 'Ajlun
our path lay along the summit of the mountain ; and we often overlooked
a large part of Palestine on one side and the whole of Haurin." — Rob. Phys.
Geog. p. 54.
336 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEJIIAH.
King Josiah was kept up and was still heartily felt amongst
the people (2 Chron. xxxv. 24 ff.), and that the circumstances
of his death were still fresh in their memory. riD? without the
article, although Josiah, slain in battle at Megiddo, is meant,
because there was no design particularly to define the person.
Ilim that goes or is gone away. He, again, is defined and
called Shallnm. This Shallum, who became king in his father
Josiah's place, can be none other than Josiah's successor, who
is called Joahaz in 2 Kings xxiii. 30 ff., 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1 ; as
was seen by Ohrysost. and Aben-Ezra, and, since Grotius,
by most commentators. The only question is, why he should
here be called Shallum. According to Frc. Junius, Hitz., and
Graf, Jeremiah compares Joahaz on account of his short reign
with Shallum in Israel, who reigned but one month (2 Kings
XV. 13), and ironically calls him Shallum, as Jezebel called
Jehu, Zimri murderer of his lord, 2 Kings is. 31. This
explanation is unquestionably erroneous, since irony of such a
sort is inconsistent with what Jeremiah says of Shallum. More
plausible seems Hgstb.'s opinion, Christ, ii. p. 401, that Jeremiah
gives Joahaz the name Shallum, i.e. the requited (cf. 2??', 1
Chron. vi. 13, = QX'D, 1 Chron. ix. 11), as nomen reale, to mark
him out as the man the Lord had punished for the evil of his
doings. Bat this conjecture too is overthrown by the fact, that
in the genealogy of the kings of Judah, 1 Chron. iii. 15, we
find among the four sons of Josiah the name Dw instead of
Joahaz. Now this name cannot have come there from the
present passage, for the genealogies of Chronicles are derived
from old family registers. That this is so in the case of Josiah's
sons, appears from the mention there of a fourth, Johanan, over
and above the three known to history, of whom we hear nothing
more. In the genealogical tables persons are universally men-
tioned by their own proper names, not according to "renamings"
or surnames, except in the case that these have received the
currency and value of historical names, as e.g. Israel for Jacob.
On the ground of the genealogical table 1 Chron. iii. we must
accordingly hold that Joahaz was properly called Shallum, and
that probably at his accession he assumed the name '^^i'',
" Jahveli sustains, holds." But Jeremiah might still have used
the name Shallum in preference to the assumed Joahaz, because
CHAP. XXII. 13-19. 337
the former had verified itself in that king's fate. With ver.
116 and 12, cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 33-35. — The brief saying in
regard to Joahaz forms the transition from the general censure
of the wicked rulers of Judah who brought on the ruin of the
kingdom, to the special predictions concerning the ungodly
kings Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, in whose time the judgment
burst forth. In counselling not to weep for the dead king
(Josiah), but for the departed one (Joahaz), Jeremiah does not
mean merely to bewail the lot of the king carried prisoner to
Egypt, but to foreshadow the misery that awaits the whole
people. From this point of view Calv. well says : si lugenda
est urbis hujus clades, potius lugendi sunt qui manehunt superstates
quam qui morientur. Mors eiiim erit quasi requies, erit partus
ad finienda omnia mala: Vita autem longiov nihil aliud erit
quam continua miseriarum series ; and further, that in the words :
he shall no more return and see the land of his birth, Jeremiah
shows: exilium fore quasi tabem, qucB paulatim consumat miseros
Judceos, Ita mors fuisset illis dulcior longe, quam sic diu cruciari
et nihil habere relaxationis. In the lot of the two kings the
people had to recognise what was in store for itself.
Vers. 13-19. The woe uttered upon Jehoiakim. — Ver. 13.
" Woe unto him that buildeth his house with unrighteousness
and his upper chambers with wrong, that maketh his fellow
labour for nought, and giveth him not his. hire; Ver. 14. That
saith: I will build me a wide house and spacious upper
chambers, and cutteth him out many windows, and covereth it
with cedars, and painteth it with vermilion. Ver. 15. Art thou
a king if thou viest in cedar! Did not tliy father eat and
drink, and do right and justice? Then it went well with him.
Ver. 16. He did justice to the poor and wretched, then it was
well. Is not this to know me? saith Jahveh. Ver. 17. For
on nothing are thine eyes and thy heart set but on gain and
on the blood of the innocent, to shed it, and on oppression and
violence, to do them. Ver. 18. Therefore thus saitli Jahveh
concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah : They
shall not mourn for him, saying : Alas, my brother ! and alas,
sister ! they shall not mourn for him : Alas, lord ! and alas for
his glory ! Ver. 19. An ass's burial shall his burial be, dragged
and cast far away from the gates of Jerusalem."
VOL. I. Y
338 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
The prediction as to Jehoiakim begins witli a woe upon the
unjust oppression of the people. The oppression consisted in
liis building a magnificent palace with the sweat and blood of
his subjects, whom he compelled to do forced labour without
giving the labourers wages. The people must have felt this
burden all the more severely that Jehoiakim, to obtain the throne,
liad hound himself to pay to Pharaoh a large tribute, the gold
and silver for which he raised from the population according to
Pharaoh's own valuation, 2 Kings xxiii. 33 S. AVith " Woe to
him that buildeth," etc., cf. Hab. ii. 12, Mic. iii. 10. " That
maketh his fellow labour," lit. through his neighbour he works,
i.e. he causes the work to be done by his neighbour (fellow-man)
for nought, without giving hiin wages, forces him to unpaid
statute-labour. 3 ^?J? as in Lev. xxv. 39, 46. ?J?S, labour,
work, gain, then wages, cf. Job vii. 2. Jehoiakim sought to
increase the splendour of his kingship by palace-building. To
this the speech points, put in his mouth at ver. 14 : I will build
me ni'np iT'a, a house of extensions, i.e. a palace in the grand
style, with spacious halls, vast chambers. nnD from ni"j, to find
vent, cheer up, 1 Sam. xvi. 23; not airv, but spacious, for
quite a modest house might have airy chambers. Ulijl is a con-
tinuation of the participle; literally: and he cuts himself out
windows, makes huge openings in the walls for windows. This
verb is used in iv. 30 of opening up the eyes with paint. ''3i?n
presents some difficulty, seeing that the suffix of the first
person makes no sense. It has therefore been held to be a
contracted plural form (Gesen. Lehrgeh. S. 523) or for a dual
(Ew. § 177, a), but without any proof of the existence of such
formations, since ''313, Amos vii. 1, Nah. iii. 17, is to be other-
wise explained (see on Amos vii. 1). Following on the back
of J. D. Mich., Hitz., Graf, and Bottcher {ausf. Gramm. § 414)
propose to connect the 1 before pSD with this word and to read
1''M?n : and tears open for himself his windows ; in support of
which it is alleged that one cod. so reads. But this one cod.
can decide nothing, and the suffix his is superfluous, even
unsuitable, seeing that there can be no thought of another
person's building ; whereas the copula cannot well be omitted
before ]\'SD. For the rule adduced for this, that the manner
of the principal action is frequently explained by appending
CHAP. XXII. 13-19. 339
infinitives ahioll. (Ew. § 280, a), does not meet the present case ;
the covering with cedar, etc., does not refer to the windows, and
so cannot be an explanation of the cutting out for himself.
We therefore hold, with Bottcher (Proben, S. 40), that 'Ji^n is
an adjective formation, with the force of: abundant in
windows, since this formation is completely accredited by ''^''3
and '"in (cf. Ew. § 164, c) ; and the objection alleged against
this by Graf, that then no object is specified for " cutteth out,"
is not of much weight, it being easy to supply the object from
the preceding " house : " and he cuts it out for himself abound-
ing in windows. There needs be no change of I13D1 into i^spl.
For although the injin. absol. would be quite in place as con-
tinuation of the verb. Jin. (cf. Ew. § 351, c), yet it is not neces-
sary. Tlie word is attached in zeugma to V^l>\ or '^ipn ; and he
covers with cedar, not : faces or overlays, for this verb does
not mean to plank or floor, for which nax is the usual word,
but hide, cover, and is used 1 Kings vi. 9, vii. 3, for roofing.
The last statement is given in inJin. absol. : rfty'Dl, and besmears
it, paints it (the building) with "iB'B', red ochre, a brilliant colour
(LXX. fii\ro<;, i.e. ace. to Kimchi, red lead ; see Gesen. thes.
S.V.). — In ver. 15 Jeremiah pursues the subject : kingship and
kingcraft do not consist in the erection of splendid palaces, but
in the administration of right and justice. The reproachful
question ppnn has not the meaning: wilt thou reign long?
or wilt thou consolidate thy dominion ? but : dost thou suppose
thyself to be a king, to show thyself a king, if thy aim and
endeavour is solely fixed on the building of a stately palace ?
"Viest," as in xii. 5. '']^?^, not: with the cedar, for mnn is
construed with the accus. of that with which one vies, but : in
cedar, i.e. in the building of cedar palaces. It was not necessary
to say with whom he vied, since the thought of Solorhon's
edifices would suggest itself. The LXX. have changed nN3
by a pointless quid pro quo into tnx3, iv "Axa.^, for which Cod.
Alex, and Arabs have eV'^^aayS. The fact that Ahab had
built a palace veneered with ivory (1 Kings xxii. 39) is not
sufficient to approve this reading, which Ew. prefers. Still
less cause is there to delete nxi as a gloss (Hitz.) in order to
obtain the rendering, justified neither by grammar nor in fact,
" if thou contendest with thy father." To confirm what he has
340 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
said, the prophet sets before the worthless king the example of
his godly father Josiali. "Thy father, did not he eat and
drink,'- i.e. enjoy life (of. Eccles. ii. 24, iii. 13)? yet at the same
time he administered right and justice, like his forefather
David; 2 Sam. viii. 15. Then went it well with him and the
kingdom. 3it3 TN, ver. 16, is wider than '"h 3iD TSJ : in respect
that he did justice to the poor and wretched, things went well,
were well managed in the kingdom at large. In so doing
consists " the knowing of me." The knowledge of Jahveh is
the practical recognition of God which is displayed in the fear
of God and a pious life. The infinitive nomin. W^_ has the
article because a special emphasis lies on the word (cf. Ew. §
277, c), the true knowledge of God required to have stress laid on
it. — But Jehoiakim is the reverse of his father. This thought,
lying in ver. 16, is illustrated in ver. 17. For thine eyes are
set upon nothing but gain. JJ^?, gain with the suggestion of
unrighteousness about it, cf. vi. 13, viii. 10. His whole
endeavour was after wealth and splendour. The means of
attaining this aim was injustice, since he not only withheld
their wages from his workers (ver. 13), but caused the innocent
to be condemned in the judgment that he might grasp their
goods to himself, as e.g. Ahab had done with Naboth. He also
put to death the prophets who rebuked his unrighteousness,
:Nxvi. 23, and used every kind of lawless violence. " Oppression"
is amplified by nsman (from J'ST, cf. Deut. xxviii. 33, 1 Sam.
xii. 3), crushing, "what we call flaying people" (Hitz.) ; cf. on
this subject, Mic. iii. 3. — Ver. 18 f. As punishment for this,
his end will be full of horrors ; when he dies he will not be
bemoaned and mourned for, and will lie unburied. To have an
ass's burial means : to be left unburied in the open field, or cast
into a flaying-ground, inasmuch as they drag out the dead body
and cast it far from the gates of Jerusalem. The words : Alas,
my bi'other! alas, etc.! are ipsissima verba of the regular mourners
who were procured to bewail the deaths of men and women.
The LXX. took objection to the " alas, sister," and left it out,
applying the words literally to Jehoiakim's death ; whereas the
words are but a rhetorical individualizing of the general idea :
they will make no death-laments for him, and the omission
destroys the parallelism. His glory, i.e. the king's. The idea
CHAP. XXII. 13-19. 341
is : neither his relatives nor his subjects will lament his death.
The injinn. absoll. WD) ^iHD, dragging forth and castirg (him),
serve to explain : the burial of an ass, etc. In xxxvi. 30, where
Jeremiah repeats this prediction concerning Jehoiakim, it is said :
His dead body shall be cast out (exposed) to the heat by day
and to the cold by night, i.e. rot unburied under the open sky.
As to the fulfilment of this prophecy, we are told, indeed, in
2 Kings xxiv. 6 that Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and
Jehoiachin, his son, was king in his stead. But the phrase " to
sleep with his fathers" denotes merely departure from this life,
without saying anything as to the manner of the death. It is
not used only of kings who died a peaceful death on a sickbed,
but of Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 40), who, mortally wounded in the
battle, died in the war-chariot. There is no record of Je-
hoiakim's funeral obsequies or burial in 2 Kings xxiv., and
in Chron. there is not even mention made of his death. Three
years after the first siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and
after he had become tributary to the king of Babylon, Jehoia-
kim rose in insurrection, and Nebuchadnezzar sent against him
the troops of the Chaldeans, Aramasans, Moabites, and Ammon-
ites. It was not till after the accession of Jehoiachin that
Nebuchadnezzar himself appeared before Jerusalem and be-
sieged it (2 Kings xxiv. 1, 2, and 10). So it is in the highest
degree probable that Jehoiakim fell in battle against the
Chaldean-Syrian armies before Jerusalem was besieged, and
while the enemies were advancing against the city ; also that he
was left to lie unburied outside of Jerusalem ; see on 2 Kings
xxiv. 6, where other untenable attempts to harmonize are dis-
cussed. The absence of direct testimony to the fulfilment of
the prophecy before us can be no ground for doubting that it
was fulfilled, when we consider the great brevity of the notices
of the last kings' reigns given by the authors of the books of
Kincps and Chronicles. Graf's remark hereon is excellent : " We
have a warrant for the fulfilment of this prediction precisely
in the fact that it is again expressly recounted in chap, xxxvi., a
historical passage written certainly at a later time (xxxvi. 30
seems to contain but a slight reference to the prediction in
xxii. 18, 19, .30) ; or, while xxii. 12, 25 ff. tallies so completely
with the history, is xxii. 18 f. to be held as contradicting it ? "
342 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Vers. 20-23. The ruin about to fall on Judah.—Ver. 20. " Go
tip on Lebanon and cry, and lift np thy voice in Baslian and
cry from Abarim ; for broken are all thy lovers. Ver. 21. I
spake to thee in thy prosperity ; thon saidst : I will not hear ;
that was thy way from thy youth up, that thou hearkenedst not
to my voice. Ver. 22. All thy shepherds the wind shall sweep
away, and thy lovers shall go into captivity ; yea, then shalt
thou be put to shame and ashamed for all thy wickedness.
Ver. 23. Thou that dvvellest on Lebanon and makest thy nest
on cedars, how shalt thou sigh when pangs come upon thee,
pain as of a woman in travail !" — It is the people personified as
the daughter of Zion, the collective population of Jerusalem
and Judahjthat is addressed, as in vii. 29. She is to lift up her
wailing cry upon the highest mountains, that it may be heard
far and near. The peaks of the mountain masses that bordered
Palestine are mentioned, from which one could have a view of
the land ; namely, Lebanon northwards, the mountains of
Bashan (Ps. Ixviii. 16) to the north-east, those of Abarim to the
south-east, amongst which was Mount Nebo, whence Moses
viewed the land of Canaan, Num. xxvii. 12, Deut. xxxii. 49.
She is to lament because all her lovers are destroyed. The
lovers are not the kings (Eos., Ew., Neum., Nag.), nor the
idols (Umbr.), but the allied nations (J. D. Mich., Maur., Hitz.),
for whose favour Judah had intrigued (iv. 30) — Egypt (ii. 36)
and the little neighbouring states (xxvii. 3). All these nations
were brought under the yoke by Nebuchadnezzar, and could no
longer give Judah help (xxviii. 14, xxx. 14), On the form
^?¥5'!, see Ew. 41, c. — Ver. 21. The cause of this calamity : be-
cause Judah in its prosperity had not hearkened to the voice of
its God. nw, from ni7B'j securit}', tranquillity, state of well-
being free from anxiety; the plur, denotes the peaceful, secure
relations. Thus Judah had behaved from }'outh up, i.e. from
the time it had become the people of God and been led out
of captivity ; see ii. 2, Hos. ii. 17. — In ver. 22 nj/nFi is chosen
for the sake of the word-play with 1\''V'~\, and denotes to depasture,
as in ii. 16. As the storm-wind, especially the parching east
wind, depastures, so to speak, the grass of the field, so will the
storm about to break on Judah sweep away the shepherds, carry
them off; cf. xiii. 24, Isa. xxvii. 8, Job xxvii. 21. The shep-
CHAP. XXII. 24-30. 343
herds of the people are not merely the kings, but all its leaders,
the authorities generally, as in x. 21; and " thy shepherds" is
not equivalent to " thy lovers," but the thought is this : Neither
its allies nor its leaders will be able to help ; the storm of
calamity will sweep away the former, the latter must go captive.
So that there is no need to alter ^]V'-\ into Ti^jr?. (Hitz.). With
the last clause cf. ii. 36. Then surely will the daughter of
Zion, feeling secure in her cedar palaces, sigh bitterly. The
inhabitants of Jerusalem are said to dwell in Lebanon and to
liave their nests in cedars in reference to the palaces of cedar
belonging to the great and famous, who at the coming de-
struction will suffer most. As to the forms ''W3B'* and ''fl^Spt?,
see on x. 17. The explanation of the form '''il^nj! is disputed.
Eos., Ges., and others take it for the Niph. of J3n, with the
force : to be compassionated, thus : how deserving of pity or
compassion wilt thou be ! But this rendering does not give a
very apt sense, even if it were not the case that the sig. to be
worthy of pity is not approved by usage, and that it is nowhere
taken from the Niph. We therefore prefer the derivation of
the word from niX, Niph. nJXJ, contr. ri33, a derivative founded
on the LXX. rendering : tI KaTaa-revd^ei's, and Vulg. quomodo
congemuisti. The only question that then remains is, whether
the form Poni lias arisen by transposition from JjiHiJ, so as to
avoid the coming together of the same letter at the beginning
(Ew., Hitz., Gr.) ; or whether, with Bottch. aiisf. Gramm.
§ 1124, B, it is to be held as a reading corrupted from ''wn;.?.
With " pangs," etc., cf. xiii. 21, vi. 24.
Vers. 24-30. Against Jehoiaehin or JecJioniah. — Ver. 24. " As
I live, saith Jahveh, though Conjahu, the son of Jehoiakira,
the king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, yet
would I pluck him thence, Ver. 25. And give thee into the
hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them of
whom tliou art afraid, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar
the king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans;
Ver. 2Q. And will cast thee and thy mother that hare thee into
another land where ye were not born ; and there shall ye die.
Ver 27. And into the land whither they lift up their soul to
return, thither shall they not return. Ver. 28. Is this man
Conjahu a vessel despised and to be broken, or an ntensil
344 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
wherein one has no pleasure ? Ver. 29. O land, land, land,
hear tlie word of Jahveh ! Ver. 30. Thus hath Jahveh said :
Write down this man as childless, as a man that hath no pro-
sperity in his life ; for no man of his seed shall prosper thnt
sitteth upon the throne of David and ruleth widely over
Judah."
The son and successor of Jehoiakirn is called in 2 Kings
xxiv. 6 ff., 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8 f., Jer. lii. 31, JehojacJiin, and in
Ezek. i. 2, Jojachin ; here, vers. 24, 28, and xxxvii. 1, Conjahu ;
in xxiv. 1, Jeconjalm ; and in xxvii. 20, xxviii. 4, xsix. 2, Esth.
ii. 6, 1 Chron. iii. 16, Jeconjah. The names Jeconjahu and
abbreviated Jeconjah are equivalent to Jojachin and Jehojachin,
i.e. Jahveh will establish. Jeconjah was doubtless his original
name, and so stands in the family register, 1 Chron. iii. 16,
but was at his accession to the throne changed into Jeho-
jachin or Jojachin, to make it liker his father's name. The
abbreviation of Jeconjahu into Conjahu is held by Hgstb.
Christol. ii. p. 402, to be a change made by Jeremiah in
order by cutting off the ' (will establish) to cut off the hope
expressed by the name, to make "a Jeconiah without the J,
a ' God will establish ' without the wiliy For two reasons we
cannot adopt this as the true view : 1. The general reason, that
if Jeremiah had wished to adumbrate the fate of the three kings
(Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin) by making chances in
their names, he would then have changed the name of Jehoiakim
in like manner as he did that of Jehoahaz into Shallum, and
that of Jehoiachin into Conjahu. The argument by which
Hgstb. seeks to justify the exception in the one case will not
hold its own. Had Jeremiah thought it unseemly to practise a
kind of conceit, for however solemn a purpose, on the name of
the then reigning monarch, then neither could he have ventured
on the like in the case of Jehoiachin ; for the present prediction
was not, as Hgstb. assumed, uttered before his accession, but, as
may be seen from the title the king of Judah, ver. 24, after
he had ascended the throne, was actually king. Besides, 2.
the name Conjahu occurs also at xxxvii. 1, in a historical head-
ing, as of equal dignity with Jeconjahu, xxix. 2, xxviii. 4, etc.,
where a name proper only to prophetic discourse would not have
been in place. The passages in which the prophets express the
CHAP. XXII. 24-30. 345
character and destiny of a person in a name specially formed
for the purpose, are of another kind. There we have always :
they shall call his name, or: his name shall be; cf. xxxiii. 16,
Isa. ix. 5, Ixii. 4, Ezek. xlviii. 35. That the name JeconjaJi has
not merely the prophet's authority, is vouched for by 1 Ohron.
iii. 15, Esth. ii. 6, and by the historical notices, Jer. xxiv. 1,
xxvii. 20, xxviii. 4, xxix. 2. And the occurrence of the name
Jojachin only in 2 Kings xxiv., 2 Chron. xxxvi., Jer. Iii. 31,
and Ezek. i. 2 is in consequence of the original documents used
by the authors of these books, where, so to speak, the official
names were made use of ; whereas Jeremiah preferred the
proper, original name which the man bore as the prince-royal
and son of Jehoiakim, and which was therefore the current and
best known one.
The utterance concerning Jechonlah is more distinct and de-
cided than that concerning Jehoiakim. With a solemn oath
the Lord not only causes to be made known to him that he is to
be cast off and taken into exile, but further, that his descendants
are debarred from the throne for ever. Nothing is said of his
own conduct towards the Lord. In 2 Kings xxiv. 9 and
2 Chron. xxxvi. 9 it is said of him that he did that which was
displeasing to the Lord, even as his father had done. Ezekiel
confirms this sentence when in xix. 5-9 he portrays him as a
young lion that devoured men, forced widows, and laid cities
waste. The words of Jahveh : Although Conjahu were a
signet ring on my right hand, convey no judgment as to his
character, but simply mean : Although he were as precious a
jewel in the Lord's eyes as a signet ring (cf. Hag. ii. 23), the
Lord would nevertheless cast him away. '3 before QX intro-
duces the body of the oath, as in ver. 5, and is for rhetorical
effect repeated before the apodosis, as in 2 Sam. iii. 9, ii. 27, etc.
Although he were, sc. what he is not ; not : although he is
(Graf) ; for there is no proof for the remark: that as being the
prince set by Jahveh over His people, he has really as close a
connection with Him. Hitz.'s explanation is also erroneous :
" even if, seeking help, he were to cling so closely to me as a
ring does to the finger." A most unnatural figure, not sup-
ported by reference to Cant. viii. 6. As to ^fpnNj from pnj
with I epenth.) cf. Ew. § 250, b. — From ver. 25 on, the discourse
346 THE PROPHECIES OF JEPvEMIAH.
is addressed directly to Jechoniah, to make liis rejection known
to him. God will deliver him into the hand of his enemies,
whom he fears, namely, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and
the Chaldeans, and cast him with his mother into a strange land,
where he shall die. The mother was called Nehushta, 2 Kings
xxiv. 8, and is brought forward in xxix. 2 as iTi'33. On the
fulfilment of this threatening, see 2 Kings xxiv. 12, 15, Jer.
xxiv. 1, xxix. 2. The construction n^ns fn?'7 is like that of
nnaj isan, ii. 21 ; and the absence of the article from nnnx is
no sufficient reason for holding it to be a gloss (Hitz.), or for
taking the article in H^n to be a slip caused by n^ri hv, ver. 27.
To lift up their souls, i.e. to direct their longings, wishes, to-
wards a thing, cf. Deut. xxiv. 15, Hos. iv. 8, etc. — The further
sentence on Jechoniah was not pronounced after he had been
carried captive, as Nag. infers from the pei'fects vDW and
in^B'n. The perfects are prophetic. The question : Is this
man a vessel despised and to be broken (^^V, vas fictile) ? is
an expression of sympathising regret on the part of the prophet
for the unhappy fate of the king; but we may not hence con-
clude that Jeremiah regarded him as better than his father.
The prophet's sympathy for his fate regarded less the person
of the unfortunate king than it did the fortunes of David's
royal seed, in that, of Jechoniah's sons, none was to sit on the
throne of David (ver. 30). Ew. has excellently paraphrased
the sense : " Although there is many a sympathising heart in
the land that bitterly laments the hard fate of the dear young
king, who along with his infant children has been (? will be)
dragged away, yet it is God's unchangeable decree that neither
he nor any of his sons shall ascend the throne of David."
nsj, not : broken, but : that shall be broken (cf. Ew. § 335, b).
Wherefore are they — he and his seed — cast out? At his acces-
sion Jehoiachin was eighteen years old, not eight, as by an error
stands in 2 Ohron. xxxvi. 9, see on 2 Kings xxiv. 8; so that when
taken captive, he might well enough have children, or at least one
son, since his wives are expressly mentioned in the account of
the captivity, 2 Kings xxiv. 15. That the sons mentioned in
1 Chron. iii. 16 and 17 were born to him in exile, cannot be
inferred from that passage, rightly understood, see on that
passage. The fact that no sons are mentioned in connection with
CHAP, xxiir. 1-8. 347
the carrying captive is simply explained by the fact that they
were still infants. — Ver. 29. The land is to take the king's fate
sore to heart. The triple repetition of the summons : Land,
gives it a special emphasis, and marks the following sentence as
of high importance ; cf . vii. 4, Ezek. xxi. 32, Isa. vi. 3. Write
him down, record him in the family registers, as childless, i.e.
as a man with whom his race becomes extinct. This is more
definitely intimated in the parallel member, namely, that he
will not have the fortune to have any of his posterity sit on the
throne of David. This does not exclude the possibility of his
having sons ; it merely implies that none of them should obtain
the throne. ''yiV. sig. lit. solitary, forsaken. Thus a man
might well be called who has lost his children by death. Ace.
to 1 Chron. iii. 16 f., Jechoniah had two sons, Zedekiah and
Assir, of whom the former died childless, the second had but
one daughter; and from her and her husband, of the line of
Nathan, was born Shealtiel, who also died childless; seethe
expos, of 1 Chron. iii. 16 f. Jechoniah was followed on the
throne by his uncle Mattaniah, whom Nebuchadnezzar installed
under the name of Zedekiah. He it was that rose in insur-
rection against the king of Babylon, and after the capture of
Jerusalem was taken prisoner while in flight ; and being carried
before Nebuchadnezzar at Eiblah, saw his sons put to death
before his eyes, was then made blind, thrown in chains, and
carried a prisoner to Babylon, 2 Kings xxv. 4 ff.
Chap, xxiii. 1-8. The gathering again of the flock., scattered
hy the evil shepherds, hy means of the righteous branch from the
stock of David. — Ver. 1. " Woe to shepherds that destroy and
scatter the flock of my pasturing ! saith Jahveh. Ver. 2. There-
fore thus saith Jahveh, the God of Israel, concerning the shep-
herds that feed my people : Ye have scattered my flock, and
driven them away, and not visited them ; behold, I will visit on
you the evil of your doings, saith Jahveh. Ver. 3. And I will
gather the remnant of my flock out of all lands whither I have
driven them, and bring them back to their pasture, that they
may be fruitful and increase ; Ver. 4. And will raise up over
them shepherds that shall feed them, and they shall fear no
more, nor be dismayed, nor be lacking, saith Jahveh. Ver. 5.
Behold, days come, saith Jahveh, that I raise up unto David a
348 THE PKOrHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
righteous branch, that shall reign as king, and deal wisely, and
do right and justice in the land. Ver. 6. In his days Judah
shall have welfare, and Israel dwell safely ; and this is his
name whereby he shall be called : Jahveh our Kighteousness.
Ver. 7. Therefore, behold, days come, saith Jahveh, that they
shall no more say : By the life of Jahveh who brought up the
sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt, Ver. 8. But : By the
life of Jahveh who brought up and led forth the seed of the
house of Israel out of the land towards midnight, and out of all
the lands whither I had driven them, and they shall dwell in
their own land."
This portion is the conclusion of the prophecy concerning the
shepherds of Israel, ch. xxii. In vers. 1 and 2 what has been
foretold concerning the last kings of Judah is condensed into
one general sentence, so as thus to form a point of connection
for the declaration of salvation which follows at ver. 3, consist-
ing in the gathering again of the people, neglected and scattered
by the evil shepherds, by means of the righteous branch of David.
The Lord cries woe upon the shepherds. C^JJ't without article,
because the matter concerns all evil shepherds, and is not applied
till ver. 2 to the evil rulers of Judah. Venema rightly says :
Generate vce pastoribus malis prcemittitur, quod mox ad pastores
Judcs applicatur. It is so clear from the context as to have been
generally admitted by recent comm., that by shepherds are meant
not merely the false prophets and priests, nor even these along
with the kings ; cf. on iii. 15, xxv. 34 ff., and Ezek. xsxiv. The
flock of my pasturing, in other words, the flock which I feed ;
for rr-ynp sig. both the feeding (cf. Hos. xiii. 6) and the place
where the flock feeds, cf. xxv. 36, Ps. Ixxiv. 1. Israel is called
the flock of Jahveh's pasturing inasmuch as He exerts a special
care over it. The flock bad shepherds, the ungodly monarchs on
the throne of David, have brought to ruin and scattered. The
scattering is in ver. 2, cf . with ver. 3, called a driving out into the
lands ; but the " destroying" must be discovered from the train
of thought, for the clause : ye have not visited them (ver. 2),
intimates merely their neglect of the sheep committed to their
charge. What the " destroying" more especiallv is, we may
gather from the conduct of King Jehoiakim, described in xxii.
13 ff. ; it consists in oppression, violence, and the shedding of
CHAP. XXIII. 1-8. 349
innocent blood ; cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 2, 3. With pb, ver. 2, is made
the application of the general sentence, ver. 1, to the shepherds of
Israel. Because they are such as have scattei'ed, driven away,
and not visited the flock of the Lord, therefore He will punish
in them the wickedness of their doings. In the DHX Crili^B x?
is summed up all that the rulers have omitted to do for the flock
committed to their care ; cf . the specification of what they have
not done, Ezek. xxxiv. 4. It was their duty, as Ven. truly says,
to see ut vera religio, pabulum populi spirituale, rede et rite
exerceretur. Instead of this, they have, by introducing idolatry,
directly encouraged ungodliness, and the immorality which flows
therefrom. Here in " ye have not visited them" we have the
negative moment made prominent, so that in ver. 3 may follow
what the Lord will do for His scattered flock. Of. the further
expansion of this promise in Ezek. xxxiv. 12 ff. We must note
" I have driven them," since in ver. 2 it was said that the bad
shepherds had driven the flock away. The one does not exclude
the other. By their corrupting the people, the wicked shepherds
had occasioned the driving out ; and this God has inflicted on the
people as punishment. But the people, too, had their share in
the guilt ; but to this attention is not here directed, since the
question deals only with the shepherds. — Ver. 4. When the
Lord shall gather His people out of the dispersion, then will
He raise up shepherds over them who will so feed them that
they shall no longer need to fear or to be dismayed before
enemies who might be sti'ong enough to subjugate, slay, and
carry them captive. The figurative expressions are founded on
the idea that the sheep, when they are neglected by the shep-
hei'ds, are torn and devoured by wild beasts ; cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 8.
They shall not be lacking ; cf. for ^p33 with this force, 1 Sam.
XXV. 7 ; in substance = not be lost. 'IpQ^. X? is chosen with a
view to onx C'[!i"!i5? ^ (ver. 2) : because the shephei'ds did not
take charge of the sheep, therefore the sheep are scattered and
lost. Hereafter this shall happen no more. The question as
to how this promise is to be accomplished is answered by vers. 5
and 6. The substance of these vei-ses is indeed introduced by
the phrase : behold, days come, as something new and important,
but not as something not to happen till after the things foretold
in ver. 4. According to Jeremiah's usage throughout, that
350 THE PBOPSECIES OF JEREMIAH.
phrase does not indicate any progress in time as compared with
what precedes, but draws attention to the weightiness of what
is to be announced. There is also a suggestion of " the contrast
between the hope and the existing condition of affairs, which
does not itself justify that hope. However gloomy the present
is, yet there is a time coming" (Hgstb.). The promise : I make
to arise (raise up) to David a righteous branch, rests upon the
promise, 2 Sam. vii. 12, 1 Ohron. xvii. 12 : I raise up thy seed
after thee, which shall be of thy sons — which the Lord will
hereafter fulfil to David. Graf tries to show by many, but not
tenable arguments, that ncs has here a collective force. That
he is wrong, we may see from the passages Zech. iii. 8 and vi.
12, where the same " branch" foretold by Jeremiah is called
the man whose name is nov ; and even without this we may
discover the same from the context of the present passage, both
from " He shall reign as king," and still more from : they shall
call his name Jahveh Tsidkenu. Neither of these sayings can
be spoken of a series of kings. Besides, we have the passages
XXX. 9 and Ezek. xxxiv. 23 f., xxxvii. 24, where the servant to
be raised up to David by Jahveh is called " my servant David.'"
Although then nip): has a collective force when it means a plant
of the field, it by no means follows that " it has always a col-
lective force" in its transferred spiritual signification. And the
passage, xxxiii. 17, where the promise is explained by: David
shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of Israel (cf .
xxxiii. 21), does not prove that the branch of David is a collec-
tive grouping together of all David's future posterity, but only
that this one branch of David shall possess the throne for evei-,
and not, like mortal men, for a series of years only; 2 Sam. vii.
16. nm denotes the Messiah, and this title is formed from
nin'' n»^j Isa. iv. 2 (see Del. on this passage). Nor does the
mention of shepherds in the plural, ver. 4, at all oppose this.
An untenable rendering of the sense is : first I will raise up
unto you shepherds, then the Messiah ; or : better shepherds,
inprimis unum, Messiam (Ch. B. Mich.). The two promises
are not so to be joined. Eirst we have the raising up of good
shepherds, in contrast to the evil shepherds that have destroyed
the people ; then the promise is further explained to the effect
that these good shepherds shall be raised up to David in the
CHAP. XXIII. 1-8. 351
" righteous braiicli," i.e. in the promised " seed" of his sons.
The good shepherds are contrasted with tlie evil shepherds, but
are then summed up in the person of the Messiah, as being
comprised therein. The relation of the good shepherds to the
righteous branch is not so, that the latter is the most pre-emi-
nent of the former, but that in that one branch of David the
people should have given to them all the good shepherds needed
for their deliverance. The Messiah does not correspond to the
series of David's earthly posterity that sit upon his throne, in
that He too, as second David, will also have a long series of
descendants upon His throne ; but in that His kingdom, His
dominion, lasts for ever. In the parallel passage, xxxiii. 15,
where the contrast to the evil shepherds is omitted, we therefore
hear only of the one branch of David ; so in Ezek. xxxiv., where
only the one good shepherd, the servant of the Lord, David,
stands in contrast to the evil shepherds (ver. 23). Hence
neither must we seek the fulfilment of our prophecy in the
elevation of the Maccabees, who were not even of the race of
David, nor understand, as Grot., Zerubbabel to be the righteous
branch, but the Messiah, as was rightly understood by the Chald.
He is p^'^'i in contrast to the then reigning members of the house
of David, and as He who will do right and justice in His realm ;
cf. xxii. 15, where the same is said of Josiah as contrasted with
his ungodly son Jehoiakim. ^?o is subjoined to ^?!3 to bespeak
His rule as kingship in the fullest sense of the word. Begnahit
res:, i.e. magnijice regnahit, ut non tantum appareant aliqum
reliquice pristince dignitatis, sed ut rex fioreat et vigeat et ohtineat
perfectionem, qualis fait sub Davide et Salomone ac multo prce-
stantior (Calv.). ''''3?'i?, deal prudently, rule wisely, as in iii. 15,
not : be fortunate, prosperous. Here the context demands the
former rendering, the only one justified by usage, since the
doing of right and justice is mentioned as the fruit and result
of the Vd&Ti. These words, too, point back to David, of whom
it is in 2 Sam. viii. 15 said, that he as king did right and justice
to all his people. — Ver. 6 exhibits the welfare which the
" branch" will, by His wise and just rule, secure for the people.
Judah shall be blessed with welfare (VKib), and Israel dwell
safely ; that blessing will come into fulfilment which Moses set
before the people's view in Dent, xxxiii. 28 f. JTiW^. as the
352 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREIIIAH.
totality of the inhabitants is construed as feminine, as in Hi. 7,
xiv. 2, etc. Israel denotes the ten tribes. Under the just sceptre
of the Messiah, all Israel will reach the destiny designed for it
by the Lord, will, as God's people, attain to full dignity and
glory.
This is the name by which they shall call Him, the branch
of David : Jahveh our Righteousness. The suffix in i5<1k"
refers to " righteous branch." Instead of the 3 pers. sing. «"JP^.
with the suffix i, some codd. have the plur. I5<"ip\ This some
polemical authors, such as Kaim., Martini, Galatin, hold to be
the true reading ; and they affirmed the other had proceeded
from the Jews, with the design of explaining away the deity of
the Messiah. The Jews translated, they said : This is the name
whereby Jahveh will call him : Our Righteousness ; which is
indeed the rendering of E. Saad. Gaou apud Aben Ezra, and
of Menasse ben Israel. But this rendering is rejected by most
Jewish coram, as being at variance with the accents, so that
the impugned reading could not well have been invented by the
Jews for polemical purposes, if^"]?'. is attested by most codd.,
and is rendered by the LXX., so that the sense can be none
other than : they will call the righteous branch of David
" Jahveh our Righteousness." Most comm., including even
Hitz., admit that the suffix refers to nov, the principal person
in both verses. Only Ew., Graf., and Nag. seek to refer it to
Israel, because in xxxiii. 16 the same name is given to Jeru-
salem. But the passage cited does not prove the case. To call
any one by a name universally denotes in the prophetic usage :
to set him forth as that which the name expresses ; so here : the
branch of David will manifest Himself to the people of Israel
as Jahve Tsidkenu. This name is variously expounded. The
older Christian comm. understand that the Messiah is here called
Jehovah, and must therefore be true God, and that He is called
our righteousness, inasmuch as He justifies us by His merit.'^
1 Thus the Vulg. renders : Dominus Justus noster ; and even Calv. says :
Quicunque sine conieniione et amarulentia judicant, facile vident, idem nomen
compeiere in Christum, quatenus est Deus, sicuti nomen filii Davidis respectu
humanx natural ei tribuitur. — Omnibus squis et moderatis hoc constabit,
Clirislum hie iusigniri duplici elogio, ut in eo nobis commendet propheta tarn
deilatis gloriam, quam veritatem humanai naturx; and by the righteousness
he understands justification by the merits of Christ.
CHAP. XXIII. 1-a 353
But the rabbinical interpreters, headed by the Chald., take the
name to be an abbreviation of a sentence; so e.g^ Kimchi :
Israel vocabit Messiam hoc nomine, quia ejus temporihus Domini
jnstitia nobis firma, jugis et non recedet. They appeal to xxxiii.
17 and to other passages, such as Ex. xvii. 15, where Moses
calls the altar " Jahveh my Banner," and Gen. xxxiii. 20,
where Jacob gives to the altar built by him the name El elolie
Jisrael. Hgstb. has rightly pronounced for this interpretation.
The passages cited show how in such names an entire sentence
is conveyed. " Jahveh my Banner" is as much as to say : This
altar is dedicated to Jahveh my banner, or to the Almighty,
the God of Israel. So all names compounded of Jahveh ; e.g.
Jehoshua = Jahveh salvation, brief for : he to whom Jahveh
vouchsafes salvation. So Tsidkijahu ~ Jahveh's righteousness,
for : he to whom Jahveh deals righteousness. To this corre-
sponds Jahveh Tsidhenu: he by whom Jahveh deals right-
eousness. We are bound to take the name thus by the parallel
passage, xxxiii. 16, where the same name is given to Jerusalem,
to convey the thought, that by the Messiah the Lord will make
Jerusalem the city of righteousness, will give His righteousness
to it, will adorn and glorify it therewith. — 1^1^"!^ is not to be
referred, as it is by the ancient Church comm., to justification
through the forgiveness of sins. With this we have not here
to do, but with personal righteousness, which consists in de-
liverance from all unrighteousness, and which is bound up with
blessedness. Actual righteousness has indeed the forgiveness
of sins for its foundation, and in this respect justification
is not to be wholly excluded; but this latter is here subor-
dinate to actual righteousness, which the Messiah secures for
Israel by the righteousness of His reign. The unrighteousness
of the former kings has brought Israel and Judah to corruption
and ruin ; the righteousness of the branch to be hereafter raised
up to David will remove all the ruin and mischief from Judah,
and procure for them the righteousness and blessedness which
is of God. — " What Jeremiah," as is well remarked by Hgstb.,
" sums up in the name Jehovah Tsidkenu, Ezekiel expands at
length in the parallel xxxiv. 25-31 : the Lord concludes with
them a covenant of peace ; rich blessings fall to their lot ; He
breaks their yoke, frees them from bondage ; they do not become
VOL. I. Z
354 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the heathen's prey." These divine blessings are also to be con-
ferred upou the people by means of the righteous branch. What
the ancient Church comm. found in the name was true as to
the substance. For as no man is perfectly righteous, so no mere
earthly king can impart to the people the righteousness of
Jahveh in the full sense of the term ; only He who is endowed
with the righteousness of God. In so far the Godhead of this
King is contained implicite in the name; only we must not
understand that he that bore the name is called Jahveh. But
that righteousness, as the sum of all blessing, is set before
the people's view, we may gather from the context, especially
from vers. 7 and 8, where it is said that the blessings to be
conferred will outshine all former manifestations of God's
grace. This is the sense of both verses, which, save in the
matter of a trifling change in ver. 8, are verbally repeated
from svi. 14 and 15, where they have already been expounded.^
Chap, xxiii. 9-40. Against the false prophets. — Next
to the kings, the pseudo-prophets, who flattered the people's
1 The LXX. have omitted both these verses here, and have placed them
at the end of the chapter, after ver. 40 ; but by their contents they do not
at all belong to that, whereas after ver. 6 they arc very much in place, as
even Hitz. admits. In the text of the LXX. handed down, ver. 6 ends
vnth the words: 'ImtiiK in roii irpotpirxic ; and 'laaiisx may he said to
correspond to VpTi nin\ and h to7? ■yrpo^-zirats to D''Nia3^, ver. 9. Hitz.
and Gr. therefore infer that vers. 7 and 8 were wanting also in the Hcb.
text used by the translator, and that they must have been added by way of
supplement, most probably from another MS. This inference is thought
to find support in the assumption that, because the Greek tiss. have no
point between 'ImiiU and In nls !r/jo(pi)T«(f, therefore the Alexandrian
translator must have joined these words together so as to make one mean-
ingless—sentence. A thoroughly uncritical conclusion, which could be
defended only if the Alex, translators had punctuated their Greek text as
we have it punctuated in our printed editions. And if a later reader of the
LXX. had added the verses from the Hebrew text, then he would certainly
have intercalated them at the spot where they stood in the original, i.e.
between ver. 6 and ver. 9. Their displacement to a position after ver. 40
is to be explained from the fact that in chap. xvi. 14 and 15 they imme-
diately follow a threatening ; and is manifestly the work of the translator
himself, who omitted them after ver. 6, understanding them as of threaten-
ing import, because a threatening seemed to bim to be out of place after
ver. 6.
CHAP, xxiii. 9-15. 355
carnal longings, have done most to contribute to the fall of the
realm. Therefore Jeremiah passes directly from his discourse
against the wicked kings to rebuking the false prophets ; and if
we may presume from the main substance, the latter discourse
belongs to the same time as the former. It begins
Vers. 9-15. With a description of the pernicious practices of
these persons. — Ver. 9. " Concerning the prophets. Broken is
mine heart within me ; all my bones totter. I am become like
a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome,
because of Jahveh and because of His holy words. Ver. 10.
For of adulterers the land is full, for because of the curse the
land withereth, the pastures of the wilderness dry up ; and their
course is become evil, and their strength not right. Ver. 11.
For both prophet and priest are profane ; yea, in mine house
found I their wickedness, saith Jahveh. Ver. 12. Therefore
their way shall be to them as slippery places in darkness, they
shall be thrown down and fall therein ; for I bring evil upon
them, the year of their visitation, saith Jahveh. Ver. 13. In
the prophets of Samaria saw I folly ; they prophesied in the
name of Baal, and led my people Israel astray. Ver. 14.
But in the prophets of Jerusalem saw I an horrible thing,
committing adultery and walking in falsehood, and they
strengthen the hands of the wicked, that none returneth from
his wickedness. They are all become to me as Sodom, and the
inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. Ver. 15. Therefore thus
saith Jahveh of hosts concerning the prophets : Behold, I feed
them with wormwood, and give them to drink water of bitter-
ness ; for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone
forth over all the land."
" Concerning the prophets " is the heading, as in xlvi. 2,
xlviii. 1, slix. 1, 7, 23, 28 ; and corresponds to the woe uttered
against the wicked shepherds, ver. 1. It refers to the entire
portion vers. 9-40, which is thus distinguished from the oracles
concerning the kings, chap. sxi. and xxii. It might indeed be
joined, according to the accents, with what follows : because of
the prophets is my heart broken ; but as the cause of Jeremiah's
deep agitation is given at the end of the second half-verse :
because of Jahveh, etc., it is not likely the seer would in one
sentence have given two different and quite separate reasons.
356 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
The brokenness of his heart denotes the profoundest inward
emotion ; yet not despondency by reason of sin and misery, liije
"a broken heart" in Ps. xxxiv. 19, li. 19, etc., but because of
God's wrath at the impious lives of the pseudo-prophets. This
has overcome him, and this he must publish. This wrath had
broken his heart and seized on all his bones, so that they
nervelessly tremble, and he resembles a drunken man who can no
longer stand firm on his feet. He feels himself inwardly quite
downcast ; he not only feels the horrors of the judgment that
is to befall the false prophets and corrupt priests who lead the
people astray, but knows well the dreadful sufferings the people
too will have to endure. The verb ^n") occurs only twice in the
Piel besides in the present passage ; in Gen. i. 2, of the Spirit
of God that in the beginning of creation brooded over the
waters of the earth, and Deut. xxxii. 11, of the eagle that flut-
ters over her young, — in Arabic i—ss^j, to be soft. The root
meaning of the word is doubtless : to be flaccid ; here accord-
ingly, to totter, to sway to and fro. "Because of Jahveh " is
more fully explained by " because of the words of His holiness,"
i.e. the words which God as holy has made known to him
regarding the unholy ongoings of the pseudo-prophets. — From
ver. 10 onwards come the sayings of God which have so terribly
agitated the prophet. The laud is full of adulterers. Adultery
in the literal sense is mentioned by way of example, as a reck-
less transgression of God's commands, then much in vogue
whereby the moral foundations of the kingdom were broken
up. In ver. 14 the prophets are said to commit adultery and
walk in lying, cf. sxix. 23 and v. 7. By reason of this vice
a curse lies on the land, under which it is withering away.
The clause " for because of the curse," etc., is not to be taken
as parenthesis (Nag.), but as co-ordinate with the previous
clause, giving the second, or rather the chief ground, why Jere-
miah is so deeply distressed. The reason of this is not so much
the prevailing moral corruption, as the curse lying on the land
because of the moral corruption of its inhabitants, n^x is not
perjury (Chald., Eashi, KImchi), but the curse wherewk'h God
punishes the transgression of His covenant laws, cf. xi. 3, 8
Deut. x.wiii. 15 ff., xxix. 19 ff. The words are modelled after
CHAP. XXIIL 9-15. 857
Isa. XXIV. 4ff.; and }*^tjri is not the populatiou, but the land itself,
which suffers under God's curse, and which is visited with
drought ; cf. xii. 4. The next words point to drought. "1310 niK3
as in ix. 9. By 'nni the further description of the people's
depravity is attached to the first clause of the verse. Their
course is become evil; their running or racing, i.e. the aim and
endeavour of the ungodly. The suflBx on this word QTOID
refers not to "adulterers," bat ad sensum to the inhabitants of
the land. Their strength is not-right, i.e. they are strong,
valiant in wrong; cf. ix. 2. For — so goes ver. 11 — both prophets
and priests, who should lead the people in the right way, are
profane, and desecrate by their wickedness even the house of
God, presumably by idolatry ; cf. xsxii. 34. There is no reason
for thinking here, as Hitz. does, of adultery practised in the
temple. — Yer. 12. For this the Lord will punish them. Their
way shall be to them as slippery places in darkness. This
threatening is after the manner of Ps. xxxv. 6, where 'ij^'n
'^ip/i??!]!! are joined, changed by Jeremiah to the words in the
text. The passage cited shows that we may not separate npBNa
from nippp?n, as Ew. does, to join it to the following W'n^.
Their way shall resemble slippery places in the dark, when one
may readily slip and fall. Besides, they are to be thrust, pushed,
so that they must fall on the slippery path (^T]V from nn'n =
nri'n, Ps. xxxv. 5; "therein" to be referred to "their way").
The clause : " for I bring evil," etc., is formed after xi. 23. —
Ver. 18 f. To display the vileness of the prophets, these are
parallelized with the prophets of Samaria. The latter did
foolishly ('"'{'SJii, prop, of that which is unsalted, insipid. Job vi. 6,
hence irrational, insulsiim), since they prophesied, being inspired
by Baal the no-god, and by such prophesying led the people
into error; cf. 1 Kings xviii. 19 ff. Much more horrible is the
conduct of the prophets of Jerusalem, who commit adultery,
walk in lying, and strengthen the wicked in their wickedness,
not merely by their delusive pretences (cf. ver. 17, vi. 14, xiv.
18), but also by their immoral lives, so that no one turns from
his wickedness, cf . Ezek. xiii. 22. w?? is here and in xxvii. 18,
as in Ex. xx. 20, construed, contrary to the usage everywhere
else, not with the in/in., but with the verb. fin. As the prophets,
instead of converting the wicked, only confirmed them in their
358 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEJIIAH.
sins, therefore all the inhabitants of Judah or Jerusalem are
become as corrupt as Sodom and Gomorrah. "They all" are
not the prophets, but the inhabitants of Judah or Jerusalem ; and
" the inhabitants thereof" are those of the capital, cf. Deut. xsxii.
32, Isa. i. 10. On the seducers the Lord will therefore inflict
punishment, because impiousness has gone forth from them over
the whole land. With the punishment threatened in ver. 15,
cf. ix. 14.
Vers. 16-22. Warning against the lying prophecies of the
2orophets. — Ver. 16. "Thus saith Jahveh of hosts : Hearken not
unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you ! They
deceive you ; a vision of their heart they speak, not out of the
mouth of Jahveh. Ver. 17. They say still unto my despisers :
'Jahveh hath spoken: Peace shall ye have;' and unto every
one that walketh in the stubbornness of In's heart they say :
'There shall no evil come upon you.' Ver. 18. For who hath
stood in Jahveh's counsel, that he might have seen and heard
His word? who hath marked my word and heard it? Ver. 19.
Beliold a tempest from Jahveh, fury goeth forth, and eddying
whirlwind shall hurl itself upon the head of the wicked. Ver.
20. The anger of God shall not turn till He have done and till
He have performed the thoughts of His heart. At the end of
the days shall ye be well aware of this. Ver. 21. I have not
sent the prophets, yet they ran ; I have not spoken to them, yet
they prophesied. Ver. 22. But if they had stood in my counsel,
they would publish my words to my people and bring them
back from their evil way and from the evil of their doings."
The warning against these prophets is founded in ver. 16 on
the fact that they give out the thoughts of their own hearts to
be divine revelation, and promise peace and prosperity to all
stiff-necked sinners, dy?!]"?, lit. they make you vain, i.e. make
you to yield yourselves to vain delusion, seduce you to false
confidence. This they do by their speaking visions, i.e. revela-
tions of their heart, not what God has spoken, revealed to them.
As an illustration of this, ver. 17 tells that they prophesy con-
tin aed peace or well-being to the despisers of God. The infin.
ahs. liCN after the verb. fin. intimates the duration or repetition
of the thing, mni la'n are words of the false prophets, with
which they give out that their prophesyings are God's word.
CHAP. XXIII. 16-22, 359
Since we nowhere else find sayincrs of Jaliveh introduced by
nin> 13^, but usually by '^ noN nb, the LXX. have taken
offence at that formula, and, reading "1?'^, join the words with
"'V^^'p? : Tol^ aTTwdovfj^ivot,^ toj' Xoyov Kvpiov. To this reading
Hitz. and Gr. give the preference over the Masoretic ; but they
have not noticed that they thus get an unsuitable sense. For
nin* n3T in prophetic language never denotes the Mosaic law
or the "moral law" (Hitz.), but the word of God published by
the prophets. By their view of " word of Jahveh " they would
here obtain the self-inconsistent thought : to the despisers of
divine revelation they proclaim as revelation. The Masoretic
reading is clearly right ; and Jeremiah chose the unusual
introductory formula to distinguish the language of the pseudo-
prophets from that of the true prophets of the Lord. '3 ^?'n"P3l
is prefixed absolutely : and as concerning every one that walks
. . . they say, for : and to every one . . . they say. On the
" stubbornness of their heart," see on iii. 17. With the speech
of the false prophets, cf. xiv. 13 and vi. 14. — In ver. 18 a more
comprehensive reason is given to show that these prophets are
not publishing God's decrees. The question : Who hath stood ?
has negative force = None hath stood. By this Jeremiah does
not deny the possibility of this universally, but only of the
false prophets (Hitz.). This limitation of the words is suggested
by the context. To the true prophets the Lord reveals His liD,
Amos iii. 7. VOK'll ^^.^.1 are not to be taken Jussively : let him
see and hear (Hitz.), for the foregoing interrogation is not a
conditional clause introducing a command. The imperfects
with \ are clauses of consequence or design, and after a pre-
ceding perfect should be rendered in English by the conditional
of the pluperfect. Seeing the word of God refers to prophetic
vision. The second question is appended without at all convey-
ing any inference from what precedes ; and in it the second verb
(with \ consec.) is simply a strengthening of the first: who hath
hearkened to my word and heard it? The Masoretes have quite
unnecessarily changed the Chef. ''I^'n into ^i^^. In the graphic
representation of the prophets, the transition to the direct speech
of God, and conversely, is no unusual thing. The change of V^^^}
into VOK'), unnecessary and even improper as it is, is preferred
by Graf and Nag., inasmuch as they take the interi'ogative ''»
3G0 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
in both clauses in the sense of quisquis and understand the
verse thus : He who has but stood in the counsel of the Lord,
let him see and hear His word (i.e. he must see and hear His
word) ; and he that hath marked my word, let him publish it
{i.e. he must publish it). This exposition becomes only then
necessary, if we leave the context out of view and regard the
question as being to the effect that no one has stood in God's
counsel — which Jeremiah could not mean. Not to speak of the
change of the text necessary for carrying it through, this view
does not even give a suitable sense. If the clause : He that
has stood in the counsel of the Lord, he must proclaim His
word, is to be regarded as having a demonstrative force, then
the principal idea must be supplied, thus namely : " and it is
impossible that it should be favourable to those who despise it."
In ver. 19 Jeremiah publishes a real word of the Lord, which
sounds very differently from the words of the false prophets.
A tempest from Jahveh will burst over the heads of the
evil-doers, and the wrath of God will not cease until it has
accomplished the divine decree. " A tempest from Jahveh "
is defined by " fury " in apposition as being a manifestation of
God's wrath ; and the whole first clause is further expanded in
the second part of the verse. The tempest from Jahveh goes
forth, i.e. breaks out, and as whirling tornado or eddying
whirlwind bursts over the head of the wicked, ^'n* is to be
taken in accordance with Wnnp: twist, whirl, cf. 2 Sam. iii. 29.
"The thoughts of His heart" must not be limited to what God
has decreed de interitu popiili (Calv.) ; it comprehends God's
whole redemptive plan in His people's regard — not merely the
overthrow of the kingdom of Judah, but also the purification
of the people by means of judgments and the final glorification
of His kingdom. To this future the next clause points : at the
end of the days ye shall have clear knowledge of this. " The
end of the days" is not merely the completion of the perioJ in
which we now are (Hitz., Gr., Nag., etc.), but, as universally,
the end of the times, i.e. the Messianic future, the last period
of the world's history which opens at the close of the present
ffion; see on Gen. xlix. 1, Num. xxiv. 14, etc. Ipunn is
strengthened by nra : attain to insight, come to clearer know-
ledge.— Ver. 21 f. From the word of the Lord proclaimed in
CHAP. XXIII. 23-32. 361
ver. 19 f. It appears that the prophets who prophesy peace or
well-being to the despisers of God are not sent and inspired by
God. If they had stood in the counsel of God, and so had
truly learnt God's word, they must have published it and turned
the people from its evil way. This completely proves the
statement of ver. 16, that the preachers of peace deceive the
people. Then follows —
Vers. 23-32, in continuation, an intimation that God knows
and toill punish the lying practices of these prophets. — Ver. 23.
" Am I then a God near at hand, saith Jahveh, and not a God
afar off ? Ver. 24. Or can any hide himself in secret, that I
cannot see him? saith Jahveh. Do not I fill the heaven and
the earth? saith Jahveh. Ver. 25. I have heard what the
prophets say, that prophesy falsehood in my name, saying : I
have dreamed, I have dreamed. Ver. 26. How long ? Have they
it in their mind, the prophets that prophesy falsehood in my
name, and the prophets of the deceit of their heart, Ver. 27.
Do they think to make my people forget my name by their
dreams which they tell one to the other, as their fathers forgot
my name by Baal ? Ver. 28. The prophet that hath a dream,
let him tell a dream ; and he that hath my word, let him speak
my word in truth. "What is the straw to the corn ? saith Jahveh.
Ver. 29. Is not thus my word— as fire, saith Jahveh, and as a
hammer that dasheth the rock in pieces ? Ver. 30. Therefore,
behold, I am against the prophets that steal my words one from
the other. Ver. 31. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith
Jahveh, that take their tongues and say : God's word. Ver. 32.
Behold, I am against the prophets that prophesy lying dreams,
saith Jahveh, and tell them, and lead my people astray with
their lies and their boasting, whom yet I have not sent nor
commanded them, and they bring no good to this people, saith
Jahveh."
The force of the question : Am I a God at hand, not afar off?
is seen from what follows. Far and near are here in their
local, not their temporal signification. A God near at hand is
one whose domain and whose knowledge do not extend far ; a
God afar off, one who sees and works into the far distance. The
question, which has an affirmative force, is explained by the
statement of ver. 24 : I fill heaven and earth. Hitz. insists on
362 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
understanding "near at hand" of temporal nearness, after
Deut. xxxii. 17 : a God who is not far hence, a newly appeared
God ; and he supposes that, since in the east, from of old,
knowledge is that which is known by experience, therefore the
greatness of one's knowledge depends on one's advancement in
years (Job sv. 7, 10, xii. 12, etc.) ; and God, he says, is the
Ancient of days, Dan. vii. 9. But this line of thought is
wholly foreign to the present passage. It is not wealth of
knowledge as the result of long life or old age that God
claims for Himself in ver. 24, but the power of seeing into that
which is hidden so that none can conceal himself from Him,
or omniscience. The design with which God here dwells on
His omniscience and omnipresence too (cf. 1 Kings vili. 27, Isa.
Ixvi. 1) is shown in ver. 25. The false prophets went so far
with their lying predictions, that it might appear as if God did
not hear or see their words and deeds. The Lord exposes this
delusion by calling His omniscience to mind in the words : I
have heard how they prophesy falsehood in my name and say,
I have dreamed, i.e. a dream sent by God, have had a revela-
tion in dreams, whereas according to ver. 26 the dream was
the deceit of their heart — " spun out of their own heart"
(Hitz.). Ver. 26 is variously interpreted. Hitz. supposes that
the interrogative l! (in C'''n) is made subordinate in the clause,
and that the question is expressed with a double interrogative.
He translates : How long still is there anything left in the heart
of the prophets ? as much as to say : how long have they
materials for this 1 But there is a total want of illustrations in
point for this subordination and doubling of the interrogative ;
and the force given to the C'.'; is quite arbitrary, since we should
have had some intimation of what it was that was present in
their hearts. Even then the repetition of the interrogative
particles is unexplained, and the connecting of d^, with a parti-
ciple, instead of with the infinitive with ?, cannot be defended
by means of passages where 7nn is joined with an adjective
and the idea " to be " has to be supplied. L. de Dieu, fol-
lowed by Seb. Schmidt, Ch. B. Mich., Eos., Maur., Umbr.,
Graf, was right in taking " How long " by itself as an aposio-
pesis : how long, sc. shall this go on f and in beginning a new
question with t:',;n, a question continued and completed by the
CHAP. XXIII. 23-32. 363
further question : "Do they think," etc., ver. 27. Is it in the
heart of the prophets, i.e. have the prophets a mind to prophesy
falsehood? do they mean to make men forget my name?
Against holding ver. 27 as a resumption of the question there is
no well-founded objection. Nag. aiErms that after D''3B'nn we
must in that case have here QH as recapitulation of the subject ;
but that is rendered unnecessary by the subject's being con-
tained in the immediately preceding words. The conjecture
propounded by Nag., to change tJ'\T into E'^n : how long still is
the fire in the heart of the prophets ? needs no refutation. To
make to forget the name of the Lord is : so to banish the Lord,
as seen in His government and works, from the people's heart,
that He is no longer feared and honoured. By their dreams
which they relate one to the otlier, i.e. not one prophet to the
other, but the prophet to his fellow-man amongst the people.
7^33, because of the Baal, whom their fathers made their god,
cf. Judg. iii. 7, 1 Sam. sii. 9 f. — These lies the prophets ought
to cease. Ver. 28. Each is to speak what he has, what is given
him. He that has a dream is to tell the dream, and he that
has God's word should tell it. Dream as opposed to word of
the Lord is an ordinary dream, the fiction of one's own heart ;
not a dream-revelation given by God, which the pseudo-propliets
represented their dreams to be. These dreams are as different
from God's word as straw is from corn. This clause is sup-
ported, ver. 29, by a statement of the nature of God's word.
It is thus (nb), namely, as fire and as a hammer that smashes the
rocks. The sense of these words is not this : the word of God
is strong enough by itself, needs no human addition, or : it will
burn as fire the straw of the man's word mixed with it. There
is here no question of the mixing of God's word with man's
word. The false prophets did not mingle the two, but gave out
their man's word for God's. Nor, by laying stress on the in-
dwelling power of the word of God, does Jeremiah merely give
his hearers a characteristic by which they may distinguish
genuine prophecy ; he seeks besides to make them know that
the word of the Lord which he proclaims will make an end of
the lying prophets' work. Thus understood, ver. 29 forms a
stepping-stone to the threatenings uttered in vers. 30-32 against
the lying prophets. The comparison to fire does not refer to
366 TEE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
LXX. translation : vixeh ea-re to Xrj/M/Ma, or Vulg. : vos estia
onus, as Oappell., J. D. Mich., Hitz., Gr., etc., do. The LXX.
rendering is based, not on another reading, but on another divi-
sion of the words, viz. ^?b'0^ DriK.— In ver. 34 the meaning of
this ansvs^er is more fully explained. On every one that uses
the word " burden " in this sneering way God will avenge the
sneer, and not only on his person, but on his house, his family
as well. In ver. 35 they are told how they are to speak of
prophecy. Ver. 36. They are no longer to make use of the
phrase " burden of Jahveh," " for the burden shall his word
be to each one," i.e. the word " burden" will be to each who
uses it a burden that crushes him down. "And ye wrest,"
etc., is part of the reason for what is said : and ye have = for
ye have wrested the words of the living God. The clause is
properly a corollary which tells what happens when they use
the forbidden word. — Vers. 38-40. In case they, in spite of the
prohibition, persist in the use of the forbidden word, i.e. do not
cease their mockery of God's word, then the punishment set
forth in ver. 33 is certainly to come on them. In the threat
^t'l DDnx ''ri''K'J there is a manifestly designed word-play on v!&'q.
LXX., Vulg., Syr. have therefore rendered as if from KB'J ''"''»':
(or ''ns^t^'J) instead : liyia Xa/x/Sava, ego tollam vos portans. One
cod. gives nm, and Ew., Hitz., Graf, Nag., etc., hold this read-
ing to be right; but hardly with justice. The Chald. has
expressed the reading of the text in its ty!?"}» |i2n* C'iD'iK, et
relinquam vos relinquendo. And the form ''H'B'J is explained
only by reading ^m (nm) ; not by XKO, for this verb keeps its
N everywhere, save with the one exception of ''ib'^, Ps. xxxii. 1,
formed after the parallel ''1D2. The assertion that the reading
in the text gives no good sense is unfounded. I will utterly
forget you is much more in keeping than : I will utterly lift
you up, carry you forth. — With ver. 40, cf. xx. 11.
Chap. xxiv. The two fig baskets— an emblem of the
future of Judah's people.— Ver. 1. "Jahveh caused me to see,
and behold two baskets of figs set before the temple of Jahveh,
after Nebuchadrezzar had carried captive Jechoniah, the son of
Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and tlie princes of Judah, and the
work-people and the smiths from Jerusalem, and had brouo-ht
CHAP. xxrv. 367
them to Babylon. Ver. 2. One basket had very good figs like the
early figs, the other basket very bad figs, which could not be eaten
for badness. Ver. 3. And Jahveh said to me: What seest thou,
Jeremiah? and I said: Figs; the good figs are very good, and the
bad figs very bad, which cannot be eaten for badness. Ver. 4.
Then came the word of Jahveh unto me, saying : Ver. 5. Thus
saith Jahveh, the God of Israel : Like these good figs, so will I
look on the captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this
place into the land of the Chaldeans, for good ; Ver. 6. And I
will set mine eye upon them for good, and will bring them back
again to this land, and build them and not pull down, and plant
them and not pluck up. Ver. 7. And I give them an heart to
know me, that I am Jahveh ; and they shall be my people, and
I will be their God ; for they will return unto me with their
whole heart. Ver. 8. And as the bad figs, which cannot be
eaten for badness, yea thus saith Jahveh, so will I make
Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes and the residue of
Jerusalem, them that are left remaining in this land and them
that dwell in Egypt. Ver. 9. I give them np for ill-usage, for
trouble to all kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and a by-
word, for a taunt and for a curse in all the places whither I
shall drive them. Ver. 10. And I send among them the swoid,
the famine, and the plague, till they be consumed from off the
land that I gave to them and to their fathers."
This vision resembles in form and substance that in Amos
viii. 1-3. The words : Jahveh caused me to see, point to an
inward event, a seeing with the eyes of the spirit, not of the
body. The time is, ver. 1, precisely given : after Nebuchad-
nezzar had carried to Babylon King Jechoniah, with the princes
and a part of the people ; apparently soon after this deporta-
tion, at the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, the king set up
by Nebuchadnezzar over Judah. Of. 2 Kings xxiv. 14-17. —
The Lord caused the prophet to see in spirit two baskets of
figs (n^Nin, from ^11% equivalent to nn, ver. 2), D''"!l|l!3 (from nj?;)
in the place appointed therefor (1J!i*2) before the temple. We
are not to regard these figs as an offering brought to Jahveh
(Graf) ; and so neither are we to think here of the place where
first-fruits or tithes were offered to the Lord, Ex. xxiii. 19 f.,
Deut. xxvi. 2. The two baskets of figs have nothing to do with
368 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEJIIAH.
first-fruits. They symbolize the people, those who appear before
the Lord their God, namely, before the altar of burnt-
offering ; where the Lord desired to appear to, to meet with
His people (HVU, Ex. xxix. 42 f.), so as to sanctify it by His
glory, Ex. xxix. 43. Q''"!WD therefore means : placed in the
spot appointed by the Lord for His meeting with Israel. —
Ver. 2. "The one basket very good figs" is short for: the
basket was quite full of very good figs ; cf. Friedr. W. M.
Philippi, on the Nature and Origin of the Status constr. in
Hebreio (1871), p. 93. The comparison to early figs serves
simply to heighten the idea of very good ; for the first figs,
those ripened at the end of June, before the fruit season in
August, were highly prized dainties. Cf. Isa. xxviii. 4, Hos.
ix. 10. — Ver. 3. The question : what seest thou ? serves merely
to give the object seen greater prominence, and does not imply
the possibility of seeing wrong (Nag.). — Ver. 4 ff. The inter-
pretation of the symbol. Ver. 5. Like the good figs, the Lord
will look on the captives in Chaldea for good (" for good "
belongs to the verb " look on them "). The point of resem-
blance is : as one looks with pleasure on good figs, takes them
and keeps them, so will I bestow my favour on Judah's cap-
tives. Looking on them for good is explained, ver. 6 : the
Lord will set His eye on them, bring them back into their land
and build them up again. With " build them," etc., cf. i. 10.
The building and planting of the captives is not to consist
solely in the restoration of their former civil well-being, but will
be a spiritual regeneration of the people. God will give them
a heart to know Him as their God, so that they may be in
truth His people, and He their God. "For they will return,"
not : when they return (Ew., Hitz.). The turning to the Lord
cannot be regarded as the condition of their receiving favour,
because God will give them a heart to know Him ; it is the
working of the knowledge of the Lord put in their hearts. And
this is adduced to certify the idea that they will then be really
the Lord's people.— Vers. 8-10. And as one deals with the bad
uneatable figs, i.e. throws them away, so will the Lord deliver
up to ignominious ruin Zedekiah with his princes and the
remainder of the people, both those still staying in the land and
those living in Egypt. This, the fate awaiting them, is more
CHAP. XXV. 1, 2. SG9
fully described in vers. 9 and 10. In ver. 8 the "j'ea, thus
saith," is inserted into the sentence by way of repetition of
the " thus saith," ver. 5. \F}^ t? is resumed and "expanded by
Wt^m in ver. 9. The "princes" are Zedekiah's courtiers.
Those in Egypt are they who during the war had fled thither
to hide themselves from judgment. From the beginning of
ver. 9 to n^i} is verbally the same as xv. 4, save that nv'j^ is
added to make more marked the contrast to naiDP, ver. 5 — the
evil, namely, that is done to them. Hitz., Ew., Umbr., Gr.,
following the LXX., delete this w^ord, but without due cause.
The further description of the ill-usage in "for a reproach,"
etc., is based on Dent, xxviii. 37 ; and is intensified by the
addition of " and for an object of cursing," to show tiiat in their
case the curse there recorded will be fulfilled. From the last
words, according to which disgrace will light on them in all the
lands they are driven into, it appears that captivity will fall to
the lot of such as are yet to be found in the land. But cap-
tivity involves new hostile invasions, and a repeated siege and
capture of Jerusalem ; during which many will perish by
sword, famine, and plague. Thus and by deportation they
shall be utterly I'ooted out of the land of their fathers. Cf.
xxix. 17 if., where Jeremiah repeats the main idea of this
threatening.
Chap. XXV. The Judgment on Judali and all Nations.
The prediction of this chapter is introduced by a full heading,
which details with sufficient precision the time of its composi-
tion. Ver. 1. " The word that came (befell) to (PV for ^N)
Jeremiah concerning the whole people of Judah, in the fourth
year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that is,
the first year of Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon ; Ver. 2.
Which Jeremiah the prophet spake to the whole people of
Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying." — All
the discourses of Jeremiah delivered before this time contain
either no dates at all, or only very general ones, such as iii. 6 :
In the days of Josiah, or : at the beginning of the reign of
Jehoiakim (xxvi. 1). And it is only some of those of tlie fol-
lowing period that are so completely dated, as xxviii. 1, xxxii. 1,
xxxvi. 1, xxxix. 1, etc. The present heading is in this further
VOL. I. 2 a
370 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
respect peculiar, that besides the year of the king of Judah's
reign, we are also told that of the king of Babylon. This is
suggested by the contents of this prediction, in which the people
are told of the near approach of the judgment which Nebuchad-
nezzar is to execute on Judah and on all the surrounding
nations far and near, until after seventy years judgment fall on
Babylon itself. The fourth year of Jehoiakim is accordingly
a notable turning-point for the kingdom of Judah. It is called
the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, because then,
at the command of his old and decrepit father Nabopolassar,
Nebuchadnezzar had undertaken the conduct of the war against
Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, who had penetrated as far as the
Euphrates. At Carchemish he defeated Necho (xlvi. 2), and
in the same year he came in pursuit of the fleeing Egyptians to
Judah, took Jerusalem, and made King Jehoiakim tributary.
With the first taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e. in 606 B.C., begins the seventy
years' Babylonian bondage or exile of Judah, foretold by Jere-
miah in ver. 11 of the present chapter. Nebuchadnezzar was
then only commander of his father's armies ; but he is here,
and in 2 Kings xsiv. 1, Dan. i. 1, called king of Babylon,
because, equipped with kingly authority, he dictated to the Jews,
and treated them as if he had been really king. Not till the
following year, when he was at the head of his army in Farther
Asia, did his father Nabopolassar die ; whereupon he hastened
to Babylon to mount the throne ; see on Dan. i. 1 and 1 Kin^s
xxiv. 1. — In ver. 2 it is again specified that Jeremiah spoke the
word of that Lord that came to him to the whole people and to
all the inhabitants of Jerusalem (7^ for hii again). There is
no cogent reason for doubting, as Graf does, the correctness of
these dates. Chap, xxxvi. 5 tells us that Jeremiah in the same
year caused Baruch to write down the prophecies he had
hitherto delivered, in order to read them to the people assembled
in the temple, and this because he himself was imprisoned; but
it does not follow from this, that at the time of receiving this
prophecy he was prevented from going into the temple. The
occurrence of chap, xxxvi. falls in any case into a later time of
Jehoiakim's fourth year than the present chapter. Ew., too,
finds it very probable that the discourse of this chapter was, in
CHAP. XXV. 1, 2. 371
sutstance at least, publicly delivered. The contents of it tell
strongly in favour of this view.
It falls into three parts. In the first, vers. 3-11, the people
of Judah are told that he (Jeremiah) has for twenty-three years
long unceasingly preached the word of the Lord to the people
with a view to their repentance, without Judah's having paid
any heed to his sayings, or to the exhortations of the other
prophets, so that now all the kings of the north, headed by
Nebuchadnezzar, will come against Judah and the surrounding
nations, will plunder everything, and make these lands tributary
to the king of Babylon ; and then, vers. 12-14, that after seventy
years judgment will come on the king of Babylon and his land.
In the second part, vers. 15-29, Jeremiah receives the cup of
the Lord's wrath, to give it to all the people to drink, beginning
with Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, proceeding to the
Egyptians and the nationalities in the west and east as far as
Elam and Media, and concluding with the king of Babylon.
Then in the third part, vers. 30-38, judgment to come upon all
peoples is set forth in plain statement. — The first part of this
discourse would have failed of its effect if Jeremiah had only
composed it in writing, and had not delivered it publicly before
the people, in its main substance at least. And the two other
parts are so closely bound up with the first, that they cannot be
separated from it. The judgment made to pass on Judah by
Nebuchadnezzar is only the beginning of the judgment which
is to pass on one nation after another, until it culminates in
judgment upon the whole world. As to the import of the judg-
ment of the Babylonian exile, cf. the remm. in the Comm. on
Daniel, Introd. § 2. The announcement of the judgment, whose
beginning was now at hand, was of the highest importance for
Judah. Even the proclamations concerning the other peoples
were designed to take effect in the first instance on the covenant
people, that so they might learn to fear the Lord their God
as the Lord of the whole world and as the Ruler of all the
peoples, who by judgment is preparing the way for and ad-
vancing the salvation of the whole world. The ungodly were,
by the warning of what was to come on all flesh, to be terrified
out of their security and led to turn to God ; while by a know-
ledge beforehand of the coming affliction and the time it was
372 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
appointed to endure, the God-fearing would be strengthened
with confidence in the power and grace of the Lord, so that
they might bear calamity with patience and self-devotion as a
chastisement necessary to their well-being, without taking false
views of God's covenant promises or being overwhelmed by
their distresses.
Vers. 3-11. The seventy yeari Chaldean bondage of Judali
and the peoples. — Ver. 3. " From the thirteenth year of Josiah,
son of Amon king of Judah, unto this day, these three and
twenty years, came the word of Jahveh to me, and I spake to
you, from early morn onwards speaking, but ye hearkened not.
Ver. 4. And Jahveh sent to you all His servants, the prophets,
from early morning on sending them, but ye hearkened not,
and inclined not your ear to heai". Ver. 5. They said : Turn
ye now each from his evil way and fi'om the evil of your doings,
so shall ye abide in the land which Jahveh hath given to your
fathers from everlasting to everlasting. Ver. 6. And go not
after other gods, to serve them and to worship them, that ye
provoke me not with the work of your hands, and that I do you
no evil. Ver. 7. But ye hearkened not to me, to provoke me
by the work of your hands, to your own hurt. Ver. 8. There-
fore thus hath said Jahveh of hosts : Because ye have not
heard my words, Ver. 9. Behold, I send and take all the families
of the north, saith Jahveh, and to Nebuchadrezzar my servant
(I send), and bring them upon this land, and upon its inhabi-
tants, and upon all these peoples round about, and ban them,
and make them an astonishment and a derision and everlastins
desolations, Ver. 10. And destroy from among them the voice
of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the
mill and the light of the lamp. Ver. 11. And this land shall
become a desert, a desolation, and these peoples shall serve the
king of Babylon seventy years."
The very beginning of this discourse points to the great crisis
in the fortunes of Judah. Jeremiah recalls into the memory
of the people not merely the whole time of his own labours
hitherto, but also the labours of many other prophets, who, like
himself, have unremittingly preached repentance to the people,
called on them to forsake idolatry and their evil ways, and
to return to the God of their fathers — but in vain (vers. 3-7).
CHAP. SXV. S-IL 373
The 23 years, from the 13th of Josiah till the 4th of Jehoiakim,
are thus made up : 19 years of Josiali and 4 years of Jehoiakim,
including the 3 months' reign of Jehoahaz. The form CaB'K
might be an Aramaism ; but it is more probably a clerical error,
since we have Dsa'n everywhere else ; cf. ver. 4, vii. 13, xxxv. 14,
etc., and Olsh. Gramm. § 191, g. For syntactical reasons it can-
not be 1st pers. imperf., as Hitz. thinks it is. On the significance
of this in/in. ahs. see on vii. 13. As to the thought of ver. 4
cf. vii. 25 f. and xi. 7 ff. "ibxP introduces the contents of the
discourses of Jeremiah and the other prophets, though formally
it is connected with nptt'l, ver. 4. As to the fact, cf. xxxv. 15.
iiaf'i, so shall ye dwell, cf. vii. 7.— With ver. 6 cf. vii. 6, i. 16,
etc. (VltJ, imperf. Hiph. from yvi). '^IWan cannot be the
reading of its Chet.^ for the 3d person will not do. The i seems
to have found its way in by an error in writing and the Keri
to be the proper reading, since IVP? is construed with the infini-
tive. — Ver. 8. For this obstinate resistance the Lord will cause
the nations of the north, under Nebuchadrezzar's leadership, to
come and lay Judah waste. "All the families of the north"
points back to all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north,
i. 14. 'snj ?S1 cannot be joined with " and take," but must
depend from Tpp in such a way that that verb is again re-
peated in thought. Ew. proposes to read nxi according to some
codd., especially as Syr., Chald., Vulg. have rendered by an
accusative. Against this Graf has justly objected, that then
Nebuchadnezzar would be merely mentioned by the way as in
addition to the various races, whereas it is he that brings these
races and is the instrument of destruction in God's hand.
Ew.'s reading is therefore to be unhesitatingly rejected. No
valid reason appears for pronouncing the words : and to Nebu-
chadrezzar . . . my servant, to be a later interpolation (Hitz.,
Gr.) because they are not in the LXX. There is prominence
given to Nebuchadnezzar by the very change of the construc-
tion, another " send" requiring to be repeated before " to Nebu-
chadrezzar." God calls Nebuchadnezzar His servant, as the
executor of His will on Judah, cf. xxvii. 6 and xliii. 10. The
" them" in " and bring them " refers to Nebuchadnezzar and
the races of the north. " This land" is Judah, the Jlt^jn being
SeiKTiKm ; so too the corresponding i^?^'^, " all these peoples
374 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMUH.
round about ;" so that we need have no doubt of the genuine-
ness of the demonstrative. The peoples meant are those round
about Judah, that are specified in vers. 19-25. a'noiqn, used
frequently in Deuteronomy and Joshua for the extirpation of
the Canaanites, is used by Jeremiah, besides here, only in the
prophecy against Babylon, 1. 21, 26, li. 3. With ni^n^'^l T\my
cf. xix. 8, xviii. 16 ; the words cannot be used of the peoples,
but of the countries, which have been comprehended in the
mention of the peoples. With " everlasting desolations," cf.
xlix. 13, Isa. Iviii. 12, Ixi. 4.— With ver. 10 cf. xvi. 9, vii. 34.
But here the thought is strengthened by the addition : the sound
of the mill and the light of the lamp. Not merely every sound of
joyfulness shall vanish, but even every sign of life, such as could
make known the presence of inhabitants. — Ver. 11. The land
of Judah shall be made waste and desolate, and these peoples
shall serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. The time indi-
cated appertains to both clauses. " This land" is not, with Nag.,
to be referred to the countries inhabited by all the peoples men-
tioned in ver. 9, but, as in ver. 9, to be understood of the land
of Judah ; and " all these peoples" are those who dwelt around
Judah. The meaning is unquestionably, that Judah and the
countries of the adjoining peoples shall lie waste, and that
Judah and these peoples shall serve the king of Babylon ; but
the thought is so distributed amongst the parallel members of
the verse, that the desolation is predicated of Judah only, the
serving only of the peoples — it being necessary to complete each
of the parallel members from the other.
The term of seventy years mentioned is not a so-called round
number, but a chronologically exact prediction of the duration
of Chaldean supremacy over Judah. So the number is under-
stood in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21, 22 ; so too by the prophet Daniel,
when, Dan. ix. 2, in the first year of the Median king Darius,
he took note of the seventy years which God, according to the
prophecy of Jeremiah, would accomplish for the desolation of
Jerusalem. The seventy years may be reckoned chronologically.
From the 4th year of Jehoiakira, i.e. 606 B.C., till the 1st year
of the sole supremacy of Cyrus over Babylon, i.e. 536 B.C., gives
a period of 70 years. This number is arrived at by means of
the dates given by profane authors as well as those of the his-
CHAP. XXV. 12-14. 375
torians of Scripture. Nebucliadnezzar reigned 43 years, his
son Evil-Merodach 2 years, Neriglissor 4 years, Labrosoarcliad
(according to Berosus) 9 months, and Naboned 17 years
(43-1-2+4 + 17 years and 9 months are 66 years and 9 months).
Add to this 1 year, — that namely wiiich elapsed between the time
when Jerusalem was first taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and the
death of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar's accession, — add
further the 2 years of the reign of Darius the Mede (see on
Dan. vi. 1), and we have 69| years. Witli this the biblical
accounts also agree. Of Jehoiakim's reign these give 7 years
(from his 4th till his 11th year), for Jehoiachin's 3 months, for
the captivity of Jehoiachin in Babylon until the accession of
Evil-Merodach 37 years (see 2 Kings xxv. 27, according to which
Evil-Merodach, when he became king, set Jehoiachin at liberty
on the 27tli day of the 12th month, in the 37th year after he
had been carried away). Thus, till the beginning of Evil-
Merodach's reign, we would have 44 years and 3 months ta
reckon, thence till the fall of the Babylonian empire 23 years
and 9 months, and 2 years of Darius the Mede, i.e. in all 70
years complete. — But although this number corresponds so
exactly with history, it is less its arithmetical value that is of
account in Jeremiah ; it is rather its symbolical significance as
the number of perfection for God's works. This significance
lies in the contrast of seven, as the characteristic number for
works of God, with ten, the number that marks earthly com-
pleteness ; and hereby prophecy makes good its distinguishing
character as contrasted with soothsaying, or the prediction of
contingent matters. The symbolical value of the number comes
clearly out in the following verses, where the fall of Babylon is
announced to come in seventy years, although it took place two
years earlier.
Vers. 12-14. The overtliroio of the hing of Babylon^ s sovereignty.
— Ver. 12. "But when seventy years are accomplished, I will
visit their iniquity upon the king of Babylon and upon that
people, saith Jahveh, and upon the land of the Chaldeans, and
will make it everlasting desolations. Ver. 13. And I bring
upon that land all my words which I have spoken concerning it,
all that is written in this book, that Jeremiah hath prophesied
concerning all peoples. Ver. 14. For of them also shall many
376 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
nations and great kings serve themselves, and I will requite
them according to their doing and according to the work of
their hands."
The punishment or visitation of its iniquity upon Babylon
was executed when the city was taken, after a long and difficult
siege, by the allied Medes and Persians under Cyrus' command.
This was in B.C. 538, just 68 yeai-s after Jerusalem was taken
by Nebuchadnezzar for the first time. From the time of the
fall of Babylon the sovereignty passed to the Medes and
Persians; so that the dominion of Babylon over Judah and the
surrounding nations, taken exactly, lasted 68 years, for which
the symbolically significant number 70 is used. The Masoretes
Jiave changed the Cliet. 'ni^^n into ''ns^ri {Keri), because the
latter is the usual form and is that which alone elsewhere occurs
in Jeremiah, cf. iii. 14, xxxvi. 31, xlix. 36 f. ; whereas in ver. 9
they have pointed O^riNan, because this form is found in Isa.
Ivi. 7, Ezek. xxxiv. 13, andNeh. i. 9. — The second half of the
13tii verse, from "all that is written" onwards, was not, of
course, spoken by Jeremiah to the people, but was first added
to explain " all my words," etc., when his prophecies were
written down and published. Ver. 14. The perfect ^^?3J is to
be regarded as a prophetic present. 3 133J, impose labour,
servitude on one, cf. xxii. 13, i.e. reduce one to servitude. D3
nan is an emphatic repetition of the pronoun 03, cf. Gesen.
§ 121, 3. Upon them, too (the Chaldeans), shall many peoples
and great kings impose service, i.e. they shall make the Chal-
deans bondsmen, reduce them to subjection. "With "I -will
requite tlieui," cf. 1. 29, li. 24, where this idea is I'epeatedly
expressed.^
' Vers, lli-14 are pronounced by Hitz., Ew., Graf to be spnrions and
interpolated ; but Hitz. excepts the second half of ver. 14, and proposes to
set it immediately after the first half of ver. 11. Their main argument is
the dogmatic prejudice, that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim Jeremiah
could not have foretold the fall of Babylon after seventy years' domination.
The years foretold, says Hitz., " would coincide by all but two years, or, il
Darius the Mede be a historical person, perhaps quite entirely. Such cor-
respondence between history and prophecy would be a surprising accident,
or else Jeremiah nmst have known beforehand the number of years during
which the subjection to Babylon would last." Kow the seventy years of
Babylon's sovereignty are mentioned again in xxix. 10, where Jcremiab
CHAP. XXV. 15-2D. 877
Vers. 15-29. The cup of God's fury.— Ver. 15. "For thus
hath Jahveh, the God of Israel, said to me: Take this cup of
the wine of fury at my hand, and give it to drink to all the
]3eoples to whom I send thee, Ver. 16. That they may drink,
and reel, and be mad, because of the sword that I send amongst
them. Ver. 17. And I took the cup at the hand of Jahveh,
and made all the peoples drink it to whom Jahveh had sent me :
Ver. 18. Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and her kings,
her princes, to make them a desolation and an astonishment,
an hissing and a curse, as it is this day ; Ver. 19. Pharaoh the
promises the exiles that after seventy years they shall return to their native
land, and no doubt is thrown by the above-mentioned critics on this state-
ment ; but there the seventy years are said to be a so-called round number,
because that prophecy was composed nine years later than the present one.
But on the other hand, almost all comm. have remarked that the utterance
of xxix. 10 : " when as for Babylon seventy years are accomplished, will I
visit you," points directly back to the prophecy before us (xxv.), and so gives
a testimony to the genuineness of our 11th verse. And thus at the same
time the assertion is disposed of, that in xxix. 10 the years given are a round
number ; for it is not there said that seventy years will he accomplished from
the time of that letter addressed by the prophet to those in Babylon, hut the
terminus a quo of the seventy years is assumed as known already from the
present twenty-fifth chap. — The other arguments brought forward hy
Hitz. against the genuineness of the verse have already been pronounced
inconclusive hy Nag. Nevertheless Nag. himself asserts the spurionsness,
not indeed of ver. 11& (the seventy years' duration of Judah's Babylonian
bondage), bnt of vers. 12-14, and on the following grounds: — 1. Although
in ver. 11, and below in ver. 26, it is indicated that Babylon itself will not
be left untouched by the judgment of the Lord, yet (he says) it is incredible
that in the fourth year of Jeboiakim the prophet could have spoken of the
fall of Babylon in such a full and emphatic manner as is the case in vers.
12-1-1. But no obvious reason can be discovered why this should be
incredible. For though in ver. 26 Jeremiah makes use of the name Sheshach
for Babylon, it does not hence follow that at that moment he desired to
speak of it only in a disguised manner. In the statement that the Jews
should serve the king of Babylon seventy years, it was surely clearly enough
implied that after the seventy years Babylon's sovereignty should come to
an end. Still less had Jeremiah occasion to fear that the announcement
of the fall of Babylon after seventy years would confirm the Jews in their
defiant determination not to be tributary to Babylon. The prophets of the
Lord did not suiler themselves to be regulated in their prophesyiugs by
such reasons of human expediency. — 2. Of more weight are his other two
arguments. Vers. 12 and 13 presume the existence of the prophecy against
Babylon, chap. 1. and li., which was not composed till the fourch year of
378 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all^ his
people; Ver. 20. And all the mixed races and all the kings
of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines,
Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod ; Ver. 21.
Edom, and Mcab, and the sons of Ammon ; Ver. 22. All the
kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the
islands beyond the sea; Ver. 23. Dedan, and Tema, and Buz,
and all with the corners of their hair polled; Ver. 24. And all
the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the mixed races that
dwell in the wilderness; Ver. 25. All the kings of Zimri, and
all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media; Ver. 26.
Zedekiala ; and the second half of ver. 13 presumes the existence of the
other prophecies against the nations, and that too as a -i3p. And although
the greater number of these prophecies are older than the time of the battle
at Carchemish, yet we may see (says Nag.) from the relation of apposition
in which the second half of yer. 13 stands to the first, that here that Sepher
against the peoples is meant in which the prophecy against Babylon was
already contained. But from all this nothing further follows than that the
words: "all that is written in this book and that Jeremiah prophesied
against the peoples," were not uttered by Jeremiah in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, but were first appended at the editing of the prophecies or the
writing of them down in the book which has come down to us. The
demonstratiye n-in does by no means show that he who wrote it regarded
the present passage, namely chap, xxv., as belonging to the Sepher
against the peoples, or that the prophecies against the peoples must have
stood in immediate connection with chap. xxv. It only shows that the
prophecies against the peoples too were found in the book which contained
chap. xxv. Again, it is true that the first half of ver. 14 occurs again
somewhat literally in xxvii. 7 ; but we do not at all see in this reliable
evidence that Jeremiah could not have written ver. 14. Nag. founds this
conclusion mainly on the allegation that the per/". ^H^J? is wrong, whereas
in xxvii. 7 it is joined regularly by i consec. to the indication of time which
precedes. But the perfect is here to be regarded as the prophetic present,
marking the future as already accomplished in the divine counsel ; just as in
xxvii. 6 the categorical innj represents as accomplished that which in
reality yet awaited its fulfilment. Accordingly we regard none of these
arguments as conclusive. On the other hand, the fact that the Alexandrian
translators have rendered vers. 12 and 13, and have made the last clause of
ver. 13 the heading to the oracles against the peoples, furnishes an unex-
ceptionable testimony to the genuineness of all three verses. Nor is this
testimony weakened by the omission in that translation of ver. 14 ; for this
verse could not but be omitted when the last clause of ver. 13 had been taken
as a heading, since the contents of ver. 14 were incompatible with that view.
CHAP. XXV. 15-29. 379
And all the kings of the north, near and far, one with another,
and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of
the earth ; and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.
Ver. 27. And say to them : Thus hath Jahveh, the God of
Israel, said : Drink and be drunken, and spue, and fall and
rise not up again, because of the sword which I send among
you. Ver. 28. And if it be that they refuse to take the cup
out of thine hand to drink, then say to them : Thus hath Jahveh
of hosts said : Drink ye shall. Ver. 29. For, behold, on the
city upon which my name is named I begin to bring evil, and
ye think to go unpunished? Ye shall not go unpunished; for
I call the sword against all inhabitants of the earth, saith
Jahveh of hosts."
To illustrate more fully the threatening against Judah and
all peoples, ver. 9 ff., the judgment the Lord is about to execute
on all the world is set forth under the similitude of a flagon
filled with wrath, which the prophet is to hand to all the kings
and peoples, one after another, and which he does give them
to drink. The symbolical action imposed upon the prophet
and, ace. to ver. 17, performed by him, serves to give emphasis
to the threatening, and is therefore introduced by ''3 ; of which
Graf erroneously affirms that it conveys a meaning only when
vers. 116-14 are omitted. Giving the peoples to drink of the
cup of wrath is a figure not uncommon with the prophets for
divine chastisements to be inflicted; cf. xlix. 12, li. 7, Isa. li. 17,
22, Ezek. xxiii. 31 ff., Hab. ii. 15, Ps. Ix. 5, Ixxv. 9, etc. The
cup of wine which is wrath (fury). nDnn is an explanatory
apposition to "wine." The wine with which the cup is filled
is the wrath of God. ONin belongs to Di3, which is fern., cf.
Ezek. xxiii. 32, 34, Lam. iv. 21, whereas iniK belongs to the
wine which is wrath. In ver. 16, where the purpose with
which the cup of wrath is to be presented is given, figure is
exchanged for fact: they shall reel and become mad because
of the sword which the Lord sends amidst them. To reel,
sway to and fro, like drunken men. -'pnnn, demean oneself
insanely, be mad. The sword as a weapon of war stands often
for war, and the thought is : war with its horrors will stupefy
the peoples, so that they perish helpless and powerless. — Ver. 17.
This duty inr posed by the Lord Jeremiah performs; he takes
380 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH,
tlie cup and makes all peoples drink it. Here the question has
been suggested, how Jeremiah performed this commission :
whether he made journeys to the various kings and peoples, or,
as J. D. Mich, thought, gave the cup to ambassadors, who
were perhaps then in Jerusalem. This question is the result
of an imperfect understanding of the case. The prophet does
not receive from God a flagon filled with wine which he is to
give, as a symbol of divine wrath, to the kings and peoples;
lie receives a cup filled with the wrath of God, which is to
intoxicate those that drink of it. As the wrath of God is no
essence that may be drunk by the bodily act, so manifestly the
cup is no material cup, and the drinking of it no act of the
outer, physical reality. The whole action is accordingly only
emblematical of a real work of God wrought on kings and
peoples, and is performed by Jeremiah when he announces
what he is commanded. And the announcement he accom-
plished not by travelling to each of the nations named, but by
declaring to the king and his princes in Jerusalem the divine
decree of judgment.
The enumeration begins with Judah, ver. 18, on which first
judgment is to come. Along with it are named Jerusalem, the
capital, and the other cities, and then the kings and princes;
whereas in what follows, for the most part only the kings, or,
alternating with them, the peoples, are mentioned, to show that
kings and peoples alike must fall before the coming judgment.
The plural "kings of Judah" is used as in xix. 3. The
consequence of the judgment: to make them a desolation, etc.,
runs as in vers. 9, 11, xix. 8, xxiv. 9. nin Di>3 has here the
force : as is now about to happen. — Ver. 19 ff. The enumera-
tion of the heathen nations begins with Egypt and goes north-
wards, the peoples dwelling to the east and west of Judah being
ranged alongside one another. First we have in ver. 20 the
races of Arabia and Philistia that bordered on Egypt to the
east and west; then in ver. 21 the Edomites, Moabites, and
Ammonites to the east, and, ver. 22, the Phoenicians with their
colonies to the west. Next we have the Arabian tribes of the
desert extending eastwards from Palestine to the Euphrates
(vers. 23, 24) ; then the Elamites and Medes in the distant east
(ver. 25), the near and distant kings of the north, and all
CHAP. XXV. 15-29. 381
kingdoms upon earth ; last of all the king of Babylon (ver 26).
^'?.?0" t7 LXX. : irdvra'i toO? av/jLfiiKrov^, and Jerome : cunctus-
que qui non est Aegyptius, sed in ejus regionibus commoratur. The
word means originally a mixed multitude of different races
that attach themselves to one people and dwell as strangers
amongst them ; cf. Ex. xii. 38 and Neh. xiii. 3. Here it is
races that in part dwelt on the borders of Egypt and were in
subjection to that people. It is rendered accordingly " vassals "
by Ew. ; an interpretation that suits the present verse very-
well, but will not do in ver. 24. It is certainly too narrow a
view, to confine the reference of the word to the mercenaries
or Ionian and Carian troops by whose help Necho's father
Psammetichus acquired sole supremacy (Graf), although this
be the reference of the same word in Ezek. xxx. 5. The land
of Uz is, ace. to the present passage and to Lam. iv. 21, where
the daughter of Edom dwells in the land of Uz, to be sought
for in the neighbourhood of Idumsea and the Egyptian border.
To delete the words "and all the kings of the land of Uz" as
a gloss, with Hitz. and Gr., because they are not in the LXX.,
is an exercise of critical violence. The LXX. omitted them
for the same reason as that on which Hitz. still lays stress —
namely, that they manifestly do not belong to this place, but to
ver. 23. And this argument is based on the idea that the land
of Uz {'AvatTi^) lies much farther to the north in Arabia
Deserta, in the Hauran or the region of Damascus, or that it
is a collective name for the whole northern region of Arabia
Deserta that stretches from Idumsea as far as Syria ; see Del.
on Job i. 1, and Wetzstein in Del.'s Job, S. 536 f. This is
an assumption for which valid proofs are not before us. The
late oriental legends as to Job's native country do not suffice
for this. The kings of the land of the Philistines are the
kings of the four towns next in order mentioned, with their
territories, cf. Josh. xiii. 3, 1 Sam. vi. 4. The fifth of the towns
of the lords of the Philistines, Gath, is omitted here as it was
before this, in Amos i. 7 f. and Zeph. ii. 4, and later in Zech.
ix. 5, not because Gath had already fallen into premature
decay ; for in Amos' time Gath was still a very important city.
It is rather, apparently, because Gath had ceased to be the
capital of a separate kingdom or principality. There is remain-
384 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
stitutes a commentary on the name ; cf. Hgstb. Christ, iii. p. 377.
The name does not sig. humiHation, in support of which Graf
has recourse partly to r\n^, partly to the Arabic usage. For
other arbitrary interpretations, see in Ges. thes. p. 1486.
From ver. 27 onwards the commission from God (ver. 15 f.)
is still more completely communicated to Jeremiah, so that the
record of its fulfilment (vers. 17-26), together with the enu-
meration of the various peoples, is to be regarded as an
explanatory parenthesis. These might the less unsuitably be
inserted after ver. 16, inasmuch as what there is further of the
divine command iu vers. 27-29 is, if we examine its substance,
little else than an enforcement of the command. The prophet
is not merely to declare to them what is the meaning of this
drinking of wrath (Hitz.), but is to tell them that they are to
drink tlie cup of wrath to the bottom, so that they shall fall for
drunkenness and not be able to stand again (ver. 27) ; and that
they must drink, because when once Jahveh has begun judg-
ment on His own people. He is determined not to spare any
other people. =i^p from n^i^ = \f<\i> serves to strengthen the
naB" ; in the second hemistich the figurative statement passes
into the real, as at ver. 16. In ver. 28 inB'n inc* is a peremptory
command: ye shall = must drink. Ver. 29 gives the reason:
since God spares not His ovk^n people, then the heathen people
need not count on immunity. " And ye think to go un-
punished " is a question of surprise. Judgment is to be ex-
tended over all the inhabitants of the earth.
As to the fulfilment of this prophecy, see details in the exposi-
tion of the oracles against the nations, chap, xlvi.-li. Hence it
' As has been done with the whole or with parts of vers. 12-14, so too the
last clause of ver. 26 is pronounced by Ew., Hitz., and Graf to be spurious,
a gloss that had ultimately found its way into the text. This is affirmed
because the clause is wanting in the LXX., and because the prophet could
not fitly threaten Babylon along with the other nations (Hitz.) ; or because
" the specification of a single kingdom seems very much out of place, after
the enumeration of the countries that are to drink the cup of wrath has
been concluded by the preceding comprehensive intimation, 'all the king-
doms cf the earth ' " (Gr.). Both reasons are valueless. By " shall drink
after them " Babylon is sufficiently distinguished from the other kings and
countries meutioned, and the reason is given why Babylon is not put on the
same footing with them, hut is to be made to drink after them.
CHAP. XSV. SO-38. 385
appenrs tliat most of the nations here mentioned were subject
to Nebucliadiiezzar. Only of Elam is no express mention
there made ; and as to Media, Jeremiah has given no special
prophecy. As to both these peoples, it is very questionable
whetlier Nebuchadnezzar ever subdued them. For more on
this, see on xlix. 34-o9. Altliough it is said in ver. 9 of the
present chapter and in chap, xxvii. 5ff. that God lias given all
peoples, all tlie lands of the earth, into the hand of Nebuchad-
nezzar, yet it does not follow thence that Nebuchadnezzar
really conquered all. The meaning of the prophetic announce-
ment is sinn])ly that the king of Babylon will obtain dominion
over the world for the coming period, and that when his
time is run, he too must fall beneath the judgment. The
judgment executed by Nebuchadnezzar on the nations is the
beginning of that upon the whole eartli, before which, in course
of time, all inhabitants of the earth fall, even those whom
Nebuchadnezzar's sword has not reached. In the beginning of
the Chaldean judgment the prophet sees the beginning of judg-
ment upon the whole earth.
Vers. 30-38. " But do thou prophesy to them all these words,
and say unto them: Jahveh will roar from on high, and from
His holy habitation let His voice resound ; He will roar against
His pasture, raise a shout like treaders of grapes against all the
inhabitants of the earth. Ver. 31. Noise reaclieth to the end
of the earth, for controversy hath Jahveh with the nations ;
contend will He with all flesh ; tlie wicked He gives to the
sword, is the saying of Jahveh. Ver. 32. Thus saith Jahveh
of hosts : Behold, evil goeth forth from nation to nation, and (a)
great storm sh.all raise iiself from the utmost coasts of the eartii.
Ver. 33. And the slain of Jahveh shall lie on that day from
one end of the earth unto the other, shall not be lamented,
neither gathered nor buried; for dung shall they be upon the
ground. Ver. 34. Howl, ye shepherds, and cry! and sprinkle you
(with ashes), ye loi'dliest of the flock ! For your days are filled
for the slaughter ; and I scatter yon so that ye shall fall like a
precious vessel. Ver. 35. Lost is flight to the shepherds, and
escape to the lordliest of the flock. Ver. 36. Hark! Crying of
the shepherds and howling of the lordliest of the flock ; for
JaliA'^eh layeth waste their pasture. Vei". 37. Desolated are
VOL. I. 2 3
386 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH,
the pastures of peace because of the heat of Jahveh's anger.
Ver. 38. He hath forsaken like a young lion his covert ; for
their land is become a desert, because of the oppressing sword,
and because of the heat of His anger."
In this passage the emblem of the cup of the Lord's anger
(vers. 25-29) is explained by a description of the dreadful
iudcment God is to inflict on all the inhabitants of the earth.
• ••11
This is not the judgment on the world at large as distinguished
from that proclaimed in vers. 15-29 against the kingdom of
God and the kingdoms of the world, as Nag. supposes. It is
the nature of this same judgment that is liere discussed, no
regard being here paid to the successive steps of its fulfilment.
Vers. 30 and 31 are only a further expansion of the second
half of ver. 29. " All these words " refers to what follows. The
clause " Jahveh will roar" to "let His voice resound" is a
reminiscence from Joel iv. 16 and Amos i. 2 ; but instead of
" out of Zion and out of Jerusalem " in those passages, we have
here " from on high," i.e. heaven, and out of His holy habita-
tion (in heaven), because the judgment is not to fall on the
heathen only, but on the theocracy in a special manner, and on
the earthly sanctuary, the temple itself, so that it can come only
from heaven or the upper sanctuary. Jahveh will roar like a
lion against His pasture (the pasture or meadow where His flock
feeds, cf. x. 25) ; a name for the holy land, including Jerusalem
and the temple ; not : the world subject to Him (Ew.). 'lil ly^',
He will answer Eedad like treaders of grapes ; i.e. raise a shout
as they do. Answer ; inasmuch as the shont or war-cry of
Jahveh is the answer to the words and deeds of the wicked.
Grammatically "l^n is accus. and object to the verb : Hedad he
gives as answer. The word is from Tli^, crash, and signifies
the loud cry with which those that tread grapes keep time to
the alternate raising and thrusting of the feet. Ew. is accord-
ingly correct, though far from happy, in rendering the word
" tramping-song ; " see on Isa. svi. 9 f. As to the figure of the
treader of grapes, cf. Isa. Ixiii. 3. — Ver. 31. px^ is the din of
war, the noise of great armies, cf. Isa. xvii. 12 f., etc. For the
Lord conducts a controversy, a cause at law, with the nations,
with all flesh, i.e. with all mankind ; cf. ii. 9, 35. — CJiEJ'in is for
' ■' f ■ T : |T
the sake of emphasis put first and resumed again in the suflSx
CHAP. XXV. 30-38. 387
to I33ri3. " Give to the sword " as in xv. 9. — Ver. 32 f. As a
fierce storm (cf. xxiii. 19) rises from the ends of the earth on
the horizon, so will evil burst forth and seize on one nation
after another. Those slain by Jahveh will then lie, unmourned
and unburied, from one end of the earth to the other ; cf. viii. 2,
xvi. 4. With "slain of Jahveh," cf. Isa. Ixvi. 16. Jahveh
slays them by the sword in war. — Ver. 34. No rank is spared.
This is intimated in the summons to howl and lament addressed
to the shepherds, i.e. the kings and rulers on earth (cf. x. 21,
xxli. 22, etc.), and to the lordly or glorious of the flock, i.e. to
the illustrious, powerful, and wealthy. With " sprinkle you,"
cf. vi. 26. Your days are full or filled for the slaughter, i.e. the
days of your life are full, so that ye shall be slain ; cf. Lam.
iv. 18. D^'nivisril is obscure and hard to explain. It is so read
by the Masora, while many codd. and editt. have lDD''riiViDri1. Ac-
cording to this latter form, Jerome, Rashi, Kimchi, lately Maur.
and Umbr., hold the word for a substantive : your dispersions.
But whether we connect this with what precedes or what follows,
we fail to obtain a fitting sense from it. Your days are full and
your dispersions, for : the time is come when ye shall be slain
and dispersed, cannot be maintained, because "dispersions" is
not in keeping with " are full." Again : as regards your dis-
persions, ye shall fall, would give a good meaning, only if " your
dispersions " meant : the flock dispersed by the fault of the
shepherds ; and with this the second pers. " ye shall fall " does
not agree. The sig. of fatness given by Ew. to the word is
wholly arbitrary. Hitz., Gr., and Nag. take the word to be a
Tiphil (like mnn, xii. 5, xxii. 15), and read nD'>niS''2n, I scatter
you. This gives a suitable sense ; and there is no valid reason
for attaching to the word, as Hitz. and Gr. do, the force of fV?
or r??) smite in pieces. The thought, that one part of the flock
shall be slain, the other scattered, seems quite apt ; so also is
that which follows, that they that are scattered shall fall and
break like precious, i.e. fine, ornamental vases. Hence there
was no occasion for Ew.'s conjectural emendation, ''■I33, like
precious lambs. Nor does the LXX. rendering: wanrep ol
Kpiol ol eKKeKTOi, give it any support ; for Qns does not mean
rams, but lambs. The similar comparison of Jechoniah to a
worthless vessel (xxii. 28) tells in favour of the reading in the
388 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
text (Graf). — In ver. 35 the threatening is made more woeful
by the tlioiight, tliat the shepherds shall find no refuge, and that
no escape will be open to the sheep. — Ver. 36 f. The prophet
is already hearing in spirit tlie lamentation to which in ver. 34
he has called them, because Jahveh has laid waste the pastures
of the shepherds and their flocks, and destroyed the peaceful
meadows by the heat of His anger. — In ver. 38, finally, the
discourse is rounded off by a repetition and expansion of the
thought with which the description of the judgment was begun
in ver. 30. As a young lion forsakes his covert to seek for
prey, so Jahveh has gone forth out of His heavenly habitation
to hold judgment on the people ; for their (the shepherds') land
becomes a desert. The perff. are prophetic. ''2 has grounding
force. The desolation of the land gives proof that the Lord
has arisen to do judgment. nji>n |i"in seems strange, since the
adjective n:i>n never occurs independently, but only in connec-
tion with a'ln (xlvi. 16, 1. 16, and with 1'V, Zeph. iii. 1),
Jhn, again, is regularly joined with '' ^N, and only three times
besides with a suffix referring to Jahveh (Ex. xv. 7; Ps. ii. 5 ;
Ezek. vii. 14). In this we fiud justification for the conjecture of
Hifz., Ew., Gr., etc., that we should read with the LXX. and
Chald. nji>n 3nn. The article with the adj. after the subst.
without one, here and in xlvi. 16, 1. 16, is to be explained by the
looseness of connection between the participle and its noun ; of.
Ew. § 335, «.
Chap. xxvi. Accusation and Acquittal of Jeremiah in the
matter of his prophesying Threatenings. The Prophet Urijah
put to death.
This chapter is separated from the discourses that precede
and follow by a heading of its own, and dates from the
beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim ; whereas the following
chap, xxvii.-xxix. fall into the earlier years of Zedekiah's
reign. In point of matter, however, the present chapter is
closely connected with these latter, though the connection be-
tween them is certainly not that held to exist by Ew. His
view is, that chap, xxvii.-xxix. furnish " three historical sup-
plements regarding true and false prophethood," in each of
which we are told in the first place how the prophet himself
CHAP. XXVI. 1-7. 389
acted, the account being concluded with notices of prophets
who either prophesied what was directly false, or who vindi-
cated the truth with but insufficient stedfastness. As against
this, Graf justly observes, "that this is in keeping neither
with the real contents of chap, xxvii-xxix. nor with chap,
xxvi. ; forMicah was far from being a false prophet, and Urijah
was as little wanting in courage as was Jeremiah, who hid him-
self from Jehoiakim, xxxvi. 19, 26." — Chap, xxvii.-xxix. are
related in the closest possible manner to chap. xxv. ; for all that
is said by Jeremiah in these chapters has manifestly for its aim to
vindicate the truth of his announcement, that Judah's captivity
in Chaldea would last seventy years, as against the false pro-
phets, who foretold a speedy return of the exiles into their
fatherland. To this the contents of chap. xxvi. form a sort of
prelude, inasmuch as here we are infornaed of the attitude as-
sumed by the leaders of the people, by the priests and prophets,
and by King Jehoiakim towards the prophet's announce-
ment of judgment about to fall on Judah. Thus we are put
in a position to judge of the opposition on the part of the
people and its leaders, with which his prophecy of the seventy
years' bondage of Judah was likely to meet. For this reason
chap, xxvi., with its historical notices, is inserted after xxv. and
before xxvii.-xxix.
Vers. 1-19. Accusation and acquittal of Jeremiah. —
Vers. 1-7. His prophecy that temple and city would be destroyed
gave occasion to the accusation of the prophet. — Ver. 1. " In the
beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of
Judah, came this word from Jahveh, saying : Ver. 2. Tlius said
Jahveh : Stand in the court of the house of Jahveh, and speak
to all the cities of Judah which come to worship in Jahveh's
house, all the words that I have commanded thee to speak to
them ; take not a word therefrom. Ver. 3. Perchance they
will hearken and turn each from his evil way, that I may repent
me of the evil which I purpose to do unto them for the evil of
their doings. Ver. 4. And say unto them : Thus saith Jahveh :
If ye hearken not to me, to walk in my law which I have set
before yon, Ver. 5. To hearken to the words of my servants
the prophets whom I sent unto you, from early
390 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
sending, but ye have not hearkened, Ver. 6. Then I make this
house like Shiloh, and this city a curse to all the peoples of the
earth. Ver. 7. And the priests and the prophets and all the
people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of
Jaliveh."
In the discourse of chap, vii., where he was combating the
people's false reliance upon the temple, Jeremiah had already
threatened that the temple should share the fate of Shiloh, unless
the people turned from its evil ways. Now, since that discourse
was also delivered in the temple, and since vers. 2-6 of the present
chapter manifestly communicate only the substance of what the
prophet said, several comm. have held these discourses to be
identical, and have taken it for granted that the discourse here
referred to, belonging to the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign,
was given in full in chap, vii., while the history of it has been,
given in the present chapter by way of supplement (cf. the
introductory remarks to chap. vii.). But considering that it is
a peculiarity of Jeremiah frequently to repeat certain of the
main thoughts of his message, the saying of God, that He will
do to the temple as He has done to Shiloh, is not sufficient to
warrant this assumption. Jeremiah frequently held discourses
in the temple, and more than once foretold the destruction of
Jerusalem ; so that it need not be surprising if on more than
one occasion he threatened the temple with the fate of Shiloh.
Between the two discourses there is further this distinction :
Whereas in chap. vii. the prophet speaks chiefly of the spolia-
tion or destruction of the temple and the expulsion of the
people into exile, here in brief incisive words he intimates the
destruction of the city of Jerusalem as well ; and the present
chapter throughout gives the impression that by this, so to
speak, peremptory declaration, the prophet sought to move the
people finally to decide for Jahveh its God, and that he thus so
exasperated the priests and prophets present, that they seized
him and pronounced him worthy of death. — According to the
heading, this took place in the beginning o£ the reign of
Jehoiakim. The like specification in the heading of chap,
xsvii. does not warrant us to refer the date to the fourth year
of this king. "The beginning" intimates simply that the dis-
course belongs to the earlier period of Jehoiakim's reign, with-
CHAP. XXVI. 8-19. 391
out minuter information as to year and day. "To Jeremiah "
seems to have been dropped out after " came this word," ver. 1.
The court of the house of God is not necessarily the inner or
priests' court of the temple ; it may have been the outer one
where the people assembled ; cf. xix. 14, All the " cities of
Judah" for their inhabitants, as in xi. 12. The addition:
" take not a word therefrom," cf. Deut. iv. 2, xiii. 1, indicates
the peremptory character of the discourse. In full, without
softening the threat by the omission of anything the Lord com-
manded him, i.e. he is to proclaim the word of the Lord in its
full unconditional severity, to move the people, if possible, to
repentance, ace. to ver. 3. With ver. 3b, cf . xviii. 8, etc. — In
vers. 4-6 we have the contents of the discourse. If they
hearken not to the words of the prophet, as has hitherto been
the case, the Lord will make the temple as Shiloh, and this city,
i.e. Jerusalem, a curse, i.e. an object of curses (cf. xxiv. 9), for
all peoples. On this cf. vii. 12 ff. But ye have not hearkened.
The C/iet. nriNtn Hitz. liolds to be an error of transcription ;
Ew. § 173, g, and Olsh. Gramm. § 101, c, and 133, a paragogi-
cally lengtliened form ; Bottcher, LeJirb. § 665. iii. and 897, 3,
a toneless appended suffix, strengthening the demonstrative
force ; this (city) here.
Vers. 8-19. The behaviour of the priests, prophets, and i^rinces
of the people towards Jer6miah on account of this discourse. —
Ver. 7 ff. When the priests and prophets and all the people
present in the temple had heard this discourse, they laid hold
of Jeremiah, saying, Ver. 8 f. " Thou must die. Wherefore
prophesiest thou in the name of Jahveh, saying. Like Shiloh
shall this house become, and this city shall be desolate, without
inhabitant? And all the people gathered to Jeremiah in the
house of Jahveh." This last remark is not so to be understood,
when compared with vers. 7 and 8, as that all the people who,
according to ver. 7, had been hearing tiie discourse, and,
according to ver. 8, had with the priests and pro])hets laid hold
on Jeremiah, gathered themselves to him now. It means, that
after one part of the people present had, along with the priests
and prophets, laid hold on him, the whole people gathered
around him. " All the people," ver. 9, is accordingly to be
distinguished from " all the people," ver. 8 ; and the word t)3,
302 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMUn.
all, must not be pressed, in both cases meaning simply a great
many. When it is thus taken, there is no reason for following
Hitz., and deleting "all the people" in ver. 8 as a gloss.
Jeremiah's special opponents were the priests and prophets
after their own hearts. But to them there adhered many from
among the people ; and these it is that are meant by " all the
people," ver. 8. But since these partisans of the priests and
pseudo-prophets had no independent power of their own to pass
judgment, and since, after Jeremiah was laid hold of, all the
rest of the people then in the temple gathered around him, it
happens that in ver. 11 the priests and prophets are opposed
to " all the people," and are mentioned as being alone the
accusers of Jeremiah. — When the princes of Judah heard
what had occurred, they repaired from the king's house (the
palace) to the temple, and seated themselves in the entry of the
new gate of Jahveh, sc. to investigate and decide the case.
The new gate was, according to xxxvi. 10, by the upper, i.e.
inner court, and is doubtless the same that Jotham caused to
be built (2 Kings xv. 35) ; but whether it was identical with
the upper gate of Benjamin, xx. 2, cannot be decided. The
princes of Judah, since they came up into the temple from the
palace, are the judicial officers who were at that time about the
palace. The judges were chosen from among the heads of the
people ; cf. my BILL Archdol. ii. § 149. — Yer. 10. Before these
princes, about whom all the people gathered, Jeremiah is accused
by the priests and prophets: "This man is worthy of death;"
literally : a sentence of death (cf. Deut. xix. 6), condemnation
to death, is due to this man ; " for he hath prophesied against
this city, as ye have heard with yonr ears.'' With these last
words they appeal to the people standing round who had heard
the prophecy, for the princes had not reached the temple till
after Jeremiah had been apprehended. Ver 12. To this Jere-
miah answered in his own defence before the princes and all
the people: "Jahveh hath sent me to prophesy against (?X for
?y) this house and against this city all the words which ye
have heard. Ver. 13. And now make your ways good and
your doings, and hearken to the voice of Jahveh your God, and
Jahveh will repent Him of the evil that He hath spoken against
you, Ver. 14. But I, behold, I am in your hand; do with me
CHAP. XXVI. 8-19. 393
as seemeth to you good and right. Ver. 15. Only ye must
know, that if ye put me to death, ye bring innocent blood upon
you, and upon this city, and upon her inhabitants; for of a
truth Jahveh hath sent me to you to speak in your ears all
these words." — As to " make your ways good," cf. vii. 3.
Tiiis defence made an impression on the princes and on all
the people. From the intimation that by reform it was possible
to avert the threatened calamity, and from the appeal to the
fact that in truth Jahveh had sent him and commanded him
so to speak, they see that he is a true prophet, whose violent
death would bring blood-guiltiness upon the city and its in-
habitants. They therefore declare to the accusers, ver. 16 :
" This man is not worthy of death, for in the name of Jahveh
our God hath he spoken unto us." — Vers. 17-19. To justify
and confirm this sentence, certain of the elders of the land rise
and point to the like sentence passed on the prophet Micah of
Moresheth-Gath, who had foretold the destruction of the city
and temple under King Hezekiah, but had not been put to
death by the king ; Hezekiah, on the contrary, turning to prayer
to the Lord, and thus succeeding in averting the catastrophe.
The " men of the elders of the land" are different from " all
the princes," and are not to be taken, as by Graf, for repre-
sentatives of the people in the capacity of assessors at judicial
decisions, who had to give their voice as to guilt or innocence ;
nor are they necessarily to be regarded as local authorities of
the land. They come before us here solely in their character
as elders of the people, who possessed a high authority in the
eyes of the people. The saying of the Morasthite Micah which
they cite in ver. 18 is found in Mic. iii. 12, verbally agreeing
with ver. 18 ; see the exposition of that passage. The stress
of what they say lies in the conclusion drawn by them from
Micah's prophecy, taken in connection with Hezekiah's attitude
towards the Lord, ver. 19 : " Did Hezekiah king of Judah
and all Jndah put him to death? Did he not fear Jaliveh
and entreat Jahveh, and did not Jahveh repent Him of the evil
which He had spoken concerning them ? and we would commit
a great evil against our souls V Neither in the book of Micah,
nor in the accounts of the books of Kings, nor in the chronicle
of Hezekiah's reign are we told that, in consequence of that
394 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
prophecy of Micah, Hezekiah entreated the Lord and so averted
judgment from Jerusalem. Tliere we find only that during
the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, Hezekiah besought
the help of the Lord and protection from that mighty enemy.
The elders have combined this fact with Micah's propliecy,
and thence drawn the conclusion that the godly king succeeded
by his prayer in averting the miscliief. Cf. tiie remarks on this
passage at Mic. iv. 10. '' "^Q-nN n^n, lit. stroke the face of
Jahveh, i.e. entreat Him, cf. Ex. xxxii. 11. " And we would
commit," are thinking of doing, are on the point of doing a
great evil against our souls ; inasmuch as by putting the pro-
phet to death they would bring blood-guiltiness upon them-
selves and hasten the judgment of God. — The acquittal
of Jeremiah is not directly related ; but it may he gathered
from the decision of the princes : This man is not worthy of
death.
Vers. 20-24. TJte prophet Urijah put to death. — While the
history we have just been considering gives testimony to tlie
hostility of the priests and false prophets towards the true
prophets of the Lord, the story of the prophet Urijah shows
the hostility of King Jelioiakim against the proclaimers of
divine truth. For this purpose, and not merely to show in how
great peril Jeremiah tlien stood (Gr., Nag.), this history is in-
troduced into our book. It is not stated that the occurrence
took place at the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign, nor can we
infer so much from its being placed directly after the events
of that time. Tlie time is not specified, because it was irrele-
vant for tlie case in hand. Ver. 20. A man, Urijah the son of
Shemaiah — both unknown — from Kirjath-Jearim, now called
Kuriyet el 'Enab, about three hours to the north-west of Jeru-
salem, on the frontiers of the tribe of Benjamin (see on Josh,
ix. 17), prophesied in tlie name of Jahveh against Jerusalem
and JudaJi very much in the same terms as JeremiaJi had
done. When King Jehoiakim and his great men heard this
discourse, he sought after tlie propliet to kill him. Urijah,
when he heard of it, fled to Egypt; but the king sent men
after him, Elnathan the son of Achbor with some followers,
and had him brought back thence, caused him to be put to
death, and his body to be thrown into the graves of the common
CHAP. XXVII.-XXIX, 395
people. I-Iitz. takes objection to " all his mighty men," ver. 21,
because it is not found in the LXX., and is nowhere else used
by Jeremiah. But these facts do not prove that the words are
not genuine ; the latter of the two, indeed, tells rather in favour
of their genuineness, since a glossator would not readily have
interpolated an expression foreign to the rest of the book. The
" mighty men" are the distinguished soldiers who were about
the king, the military commanders, as the " princes" are the
supreme civil authorities. Elnatlimi the son of Aclibor, accord-
ing to xxxvi. 12, 25, one of Jehoiakim's princes, was a son of
the Achbor who is mentioned in 2 Kings xxii. 12-14 as
amongst the princes of Josiah. Whether this Elnathan was
the same as the Elnathan whose daughter Nehushta was
Jehoiacliin's mother (2 Kings xxiv. 8), and who was therefore
the king's father-in-law, must remain an undecided point,
since the name Elnathan is of not unfrequent occurrence ; of
Levites, Ezra viii. 16. D5?n ''Ja (see on xvii. 19) means the
common people here, as in 2 Kings xxii. 6. The place of burial
for the common people was in the valley of the Kidron ; see on
2 Kings xxii. 6. — Ver. 24. The narrative closes with a remark
as to how, amid such hostility against the prophets of God on
the part of king and people, Jeremiah escaped death. This was
because the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with him.
This person is named in 2 Kings xxii. 12, 14, as one of the
great men sent by King Josiah to the prophetess Hulda to
inquire of her concerning the book of the law I'ecently dis-
covered. According to Jer. xxxix. 14, xl. 5, etc., be was the
father of the future Chaldean governor Gedaliah.
Chap, xxvii.— xxix. The yoke of Babylon upon Judah and
the neighbouring Peoples.
These three chapters are closely connected with one another.
They all belong to the earlier period of Zedekiah's reign, and
contain words of Jeremiah by means of which he confirms
and vindicates against the opposition of false prophets his
announcement of the seventy years' duration of the Chaldean
supremacy over Judah and the nations, and warns king and
people patiently to bear the yoke laid on them by Nebuchad-
nezzar. The three chapters have besides an external connec-
396 THE PKOPnEClES OF JEREMIAH.
tioii. For cliap. xxviii. is attached to the event of xsvii. by its
introductory formula : And it came to pass in that year, at the
beo'innincj, etc., as xxi.x. is to xxviii. by njiNI.. To this, it is true,
the lieadin" handed down in the Masoretic text is in contradic-
tion. Tiie date : In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim,
tlie son of Josiah king of Judah, came this word to Jeremiah
(xxvii. 1), is irreconcilable with the date : And it came to pass
in that year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedehiah king of
Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month. The name
"Jehoiakim the son of Josiah" in xxvii. 1 is erroneous. It is
without doubt the blunder of a copyist who had in his mind
the heading of the 26th chapter, and should have been " Zede-
kiah ;" for the contents of chap, xxvii. carry us into Zedekiah's
time, as plainly appears from vers. 3, 12, and 20. Hence the
Syr. translation and one of Kennicott's codd. have substituted
the latter name.^
^ Following the example of ancient comm., Haevernick in his Introd.
(ii. 2) has endeavoured to defend the date : " In the beg inni ng of the
reign of Jelioialiim the son of Josiah." To this end he ventures the hypo-
thesis, that in chap, xxvii. there are placed beside one another three dis-
courses agreeing in their subject-matter : " one addressed to Jehoiakim
(vers. 2-11), a second to Zedekiah (vers. 12-15), a third to the priests and
people ;" and that the words : " by the hand of the ambassador that came
to Zedekiah the king of Judah,'' are appended to show how Zedekiah ought
to have obeyed the older prophecy of Jehoiakim's time, and how he should
have borne himself towards the nations with which he was in alliance.
But this does not solve the diflBculty. The prophecy, vers. 4-11, is ad-
dressed to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon ; but since
the envoys of these kings did not come to Jerusalem till Zedekiah's time,
we are bound, if the prophecy dates from the beginning of Jehoiakim's
reign, to assume that this prophecy was commtmicated to Jeremiah and
pubhshed by him eleven years before the event, upon occasion of which it
was to be conveyed to the kings concerned. An assumption that would
require unusually cogent reasons to render it credible. Vers. 4ft-21 con-
tain nothing whatever that points to Jehoiakim's time, or give countenance
to the hypothesis that the three sections of this chapter contain three
discourses of different dates, which have been put together on account
merely of the similarity of their contents.
Beyond this one error of transcription, these three chapters contain
nothing that could throw any doubt on the integrity of the text. There
are no traces of a later supplementary revision by another baud, such as
Mov., Hitz., and de W. profess to have discovered. The occurrence of
Jeremiah's name in the contracted form fT'DT', as also of other names com-
CHAP. X2V1I. 397
Chap, xxvii. The yoke of Babylon. — In three sections,
connected as to their date and their matter, Jeremiah prophe-
sies to the nations adjoining Judah (vers. 2-11), to King Zede-
kiah (vers. 12-15), and to the priests and all the people (vers.
16-22), that God has laid on them the yoke of the king of
Babylon, and that they ought to humble thenaselves under His
almighty hand. — Ver. 1. According to the (corrected) heading,
the prophecy was given in the beginning of the reign of Zede-
kiah. If we compare chap, xxviii. we find the same date: " in
that yeai", at the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah," more
fully defined as the fourth year of his reign. Graf has made
objection, that in the case of a reign of eleven years, one could
not well speak of the fourth year as the beginning of the reign.
But the idea of beginning is relative (cf. Gen. x. 10), and does
not necessarily coincide with that of the first year. The reign
of Zedekiah is divided into two halves : the first period, or begin-
poutided with Jahu in the form Jdh, doe3 not prove later retouching ; for,
as Graf has shown, we find alongside of it the fuller form also (xxviii. 12,
xxix. 27-30), and have frequently both longer and shorter forms in the
same verse (so in xxvii. 1, xxviii. 12, xxix. 29-31). And so long as other
means for distinguishing are wanting, it will not do to discriminate the
manner of expression in the original text from that of the reviser by means
of these forms alone. Again, as we have shown at p, 312, note, there is a
good practical reason for Jeremiah's being called "tlie prophet" (^''3311);
so that this too is not the reviser's work. Finally, we cannot argue later
addition from the fact that the name of the king of Babylon is written
Nebuchadnezzar in xxvii. 6, 8, 20, xxviii. 3, 11, 14, xxix. 1, 3 ; for the
same form appears again in xxxiv. 1 and xxxix. 5, and with it we have also
Nebuchadrezzar in xxix. 21 and xxxix. 1. Elsewhere, it is true, we find
only the one form Nebuchadnezzar, and this is the unvarying spelling in
the books of Kings, Chron., Ezra, Dan., and in Esth. ii. 6 ; whereas
Ezekiel uniformly writes Nebuchadrezzar (xxvi. 7, xxix. 18, 19, and xxx.
10), and this form Jeremiah uses twenty-seven times (xxi. 2, 7, xxii. 25,
xxiv. 1, XXV. 1, 9, xxix. 21, xxxii. 1, 28, xxxy. 11, xxxvii. 1, xxxix. 1, 11,
xliii. 10, xliv. 30, xlvi. 2, 13, 26, xlix. 28, 30, 1. 17, li. 34, lii. 4, 12, 28,
29, 30 — not merely in the discourses, but in the headings and historical
parts as well). But though the case is so, we are not entitled to conclude
that Nebuchadnezzar was a way of pronouncing the name that came into
use at a later time ; the conclusion rather is, as we have remarked at p. 327,
and on Dan. i. 1, that the writing with n represents the Jewish-Aramfean
pronunciation, whereas the form Nebuchadrezzar, according to the testimony
of such inscriptions as have been preserved, expresses more fairly the
398 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREUIAE.
ring, when he was elevated by Nebuchadnezzar, and remained
subject to him, and the after or last period, when he had re-
belled against his liege lord.
Vers.'s-ll. The yoke of the Icing of Babylon upon the Icings
of Edam, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon.—Ver. 2. " Thus
said Jahveh to me : Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them
upon thy neck, Ver. 3. And send them to the king of Edom,
the king of Moab, the king of the sons of Ammon, the king of
Tyre, and the king of Sidon, by the hand of the messengers
that are come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. Ver. 4.
And command them to say unto their masters. Thus hath Jahveh
of hosts, the God of Israel, said : Thus shall ye say unto your
masters : Ver. 5. I have made the earth, the man and the beast
that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my out-
stretched hand, and give it to whom it seemeth meet unto me.
Ver. 6. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant ; and the beasts
of the field also have I given him to serve him. Ver. 7. And
all nations shall serve him, and bis son, and his son's son, until
the time of his land come, and many nations and great kings
serve themselves of him. Ver. 8. And the people and the king-
dom that will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,
Assyrian pronunciation. The Jewish way of pronouncing tvouH naturally
not arise till after the king of Babylon had appeared in Palestine, from
which time the Jews would have this name often on their lips. Hence it is
in the book of Jeremiah alone that we find both forms of the name (that
with r 27 times, that with n 10 times). How it has come about that the
latter form is used just three times in each of chap, xxvii. and xxviii. can-
not with certainty be made out. But note, (1) that tlie form with n occurs
twice in xxviii. (vers. 3 and 11) in the speech of the false prophet Hananiah,
and then, ver. 14, in Jeremiah's answer to that speech ; (2) that the pro-
phecy of chap, xxvii. was addressed partly to the envoys of the kings of
Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Phoenicia, while it is partly a warning to the
people against the lying speeches of the false prophets, and that it is just
in these portions, vers. 6, 8, and 20, that the name so written occurs. If
we consider this, we cannot avoid the conjecture, that by changing the r foa
7), the Jewish people had accommodated to their own mode of utterance the
strange-sounding name Nahuczidunisw, and that Jeremiah made use of the
popular pronunciation in these two discourses, whereas elsewhere in all his
discourses he uses Nebuchadrezzar alone ; for the remaining cases in which
we find Nebuchadnezzar in this book are contained in historical notices.
CHAP. XXVII. 2-11. 399
and that will not put its neck into the yoke of the king of Baby-
lon, with sword, with famine, and with pestilence I will visit
that people, until I have made an end of them by his hand.
Ver. 9. And ye, hearken not to yonr prophets, and your sooth-
sayers, and to your dreams, to your enchanters and your sor-
cerers, which speak unto you, saying : Ye shall not serve the
king of Babylon. Ver. 10. For they prophesy a lie unto you,
that I shonld remove you far from your land, and that I should
drive you out and ye should perish. Ver. 11. But the people
that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon
and will serve him, that will I let remain in its land, saith
Jahveh, to till it and to dwell therein."
The yoke Jeremiah is to make and lay on his neck is a plain
emblem of the Babylonian yoke the nations are to bear. The
words " bonds and yokes" denote together one yoke. niDb are
the two wooden beams or poles of the yoke, which were fastened
together by means of the niipiD, bonds, ropes, so that the yoke
might be laid on the beast's neck ; cf. Lev. xxvi. 13. That
Jeremiah really put such a yoke on his neck and wore it, we
see from xxviii. 10, 12, where a false prophet breaks it for him.
He is to send the yoke to the kings of Edom, Moab, etc., by
means of envovs of those kings, who were come to Jerusalem
to Zedekiah. And since Jeremiah laid a yoke on his own neck,
and so carried out the commanded symbolical action in objective
reality, there is no reason to doubt that he made yokes for the
five kings named and gave them to their respective envoys.
Chr. B. Mich., Hitz., Graf, hold this to be improbable, and
suppose that Jeremiah only made a yoke for himself and put
it on his neck ; but by appearing abroad with it, he set before
the eyes of the ambassadors the yoke that was to be laid on
their kings, and, in a certain sense, emblematically gave it to
them. But even though this might have sufficed to accomplish
the aim of the prophecy, it is difficult to reconcile it with the
wording of the text ; hence Hitz. seeks arbitrarily to change
DPtrh^ into nfinptJ'. And it is a worthless argument that Jere-
miah cannot possibly have believed that the envoys would carry
the yokes with them and deliver them to their masters. Why
should not he have believed they would do so? And if they did
not, it was their concern. The plur. " bands and yokes" may
400 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEIIIAH.
indeed mean a single yoke, but it may also mean many ; and
the verbs omn and ombp, both -with plural suffixes, indicate
clearly that he was to make not merely one yoke for himself,
but yokes for himself and the kings. In chap, xxviii. 10 and
12, where one yoke is spoken of, the singular n^ian is used ;
while, ver. 13, " yokes of wood hast thou broken," does not
prove that this plural has the same force as the singular.
We are not told for what purpose ambassadors from the
kings named had come to Jerusalem ; but we can discover what
it was from the message Jeremiah gives them for their lords.
From this it appears, without a doubt, that they were come to
take counsel as to a coalition with the view of throwing off the
Chaldean supremacy. By God's command Jeremiah opposes
this design with the announcement, that the God of Israel, the
Creator of the world and of all creatures, has given all these
lands (those of the kings named in ver. 3) into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar; that men, and even beasts, should serve him,
i.e. that he might exercise unbounded dominion over these lands
and all that belonged to them, cf. xxviii. 14. " My servant,"
as in XXV. 9. Ail nations are to serve him, his son and his
grandson. These words simply express the long duration of the
king of Babylon's power over them, without warranting us in con-
cluding that he was succeeded on the throne by his son and his
grandson, cf. Deut. vi. 2, iv. 25. For, as we know, Nebuchad-
nezzar was succeeded by his son Evil-Merodach ; then came his
brother-in-law Neriglissar, who murdered Evil-Merodach, who
was followed by his son Laborosoarchod, a child, murdered after
a nine months' reign by conspirators. Of these latter, Naboned
ascended the throne of Babylon ; and it was under his reifn
that the time for his land came that it should be made subject
by many nations and great kings, cf. xxv. 14. Nin Da serves to
strengthen the suffix on iS^N ; and the suffix, like 13, refers to
Nebuchadnezzar.^ What is said in vers. 6 and 7 is made sterner
by the threatening of ver. 8, that the Lord will punish with
1 Ver. 7 is wanting in the LXX., and therefore Mov. and Hitz. pro-
nounce it spurious. But, as Graf remarked, they have no sufficient reason
for this, since, reference being had to ver. 16 and to xxviii. 3, 11, this
verse is very much in place here. It is not a valicimum ex eventu, as' Hitz.
asserts, but was rather omitted by the LXX., simply because its contents,
CHAP. XXVII. 2-11. 401
sword, famine, and pestilence the people and Idngdom that will
not serve Nebuchadnezzar. "IB'X nw introduces a second rela-
tive clause, the nx being here quite in place, since " the people
and the kingdom" are accusatives made to precede absolntelj',
and resumed again by the 'n lijn ^j;, which belongs directly to
the verb " visit," With ''isn-lj? cf. xxiv, 10 and OHK ini^3-nj?,
corresponding in meaning, in ix. 15. — Ver. 9 f. Therefore they
must not hearken to their prophets, soothsayers, and sorcerers,
that prophesy the contrary. The mention of dreams between
the prophets and soothsayers on the one hand, and the en-
chanters and sorcerers on the other, strikes us as singular.
It is, however, to be explained from the fact, that prophets
and soothsayers often feigned dreams and dream-revelations
(cf. xxiii. 25) ; and other persons, too, might have dreams,
and could give them out as significant. Of. xxix. 8, where
dreams are expressly distinguished from the discourse of
the prophets and soothsayers. Whether the reckoning of
five kinds of heathen prophecy has anything to do with the
naming of five kings (Hitz.), appears to us to be questionable ;
but it is certain that Jeremiah does not design to specify five
different, i.e. distinct and separate, kinds of heathen divination.
For there was in reality no such distinction. Heathen prophecy
was closely allied with sorcery and soothsaying; cf. Deut. xviii.
9 f,, and Oehler on the Relation of Old Testament Prophecy to
Heathen Divination (Tiib. 1861). The enumeration of the
multifarious means and methods for forecasting the future is
designed to show the multitude of delusive schemes for supply-
ing the lack of true and real divine inspiration. Q'S^'l, equi-
valent to CSKfaOj the same which in Deut. xviii. 10 is used along
with I^ij??. The explanation of the Jast-mentioned word is dis-
puted. Some take it from IJV, cloud = cloud-maker or storm-
raiser ; others from I^V, eye = fascinator, the idea being that of
bewitching with the evil eye ; see on Lev. xix. 26. The use of
the word along with flK'aifH IJ'roD, Deut. xviii. 10, favours the
latter rendering, whereas no passage in which the word is used
taken literally, were not in keeping with the historical facts. The LXX.
omit also the clause from "that will not serve" to "king of Babylon
and," which is accordingly, and for other subjective reasons of taste, pro-
nounced spurious by Hitz. ; but Graf justly opposes this.
VOL. I. 2
402 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEKEMIAH.
in the Old Testament supports the sig. storm-raiser. " That 1
should remove you," as is shown by the continuation of the
infinitive by '''jiDl'?!- The false prophets delude the people,
inducing them to rise in rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar,
contrary to God's will, and thus simply bringing about their
expulsion from their land, i.e. removal into banishment. IJ???
shows, as frequently, that the inevitable consequence of these
persons' proceedings is designed by them. — Ver. 11. The people,
on the other hand, that bends under the yoke of the king of
Babylon shall remain in its own land. Tor the great Asiatic
conquerors contented themselves, in the first place, with tho-
roughly subjecting the vanquished nations and imposing a
tribute ; only in the case of stubborn resistance or of insur-
rection on the part of the conquered did they proceed to
destroy the kingdoms and deport their populations. This
Zedekiah and the ambassadors that had come to him might
have learnt from Nebuchadnezzar's course of action after the
capture of Jerusalem under Jehoiachin, as compared with that
in Jehoiakim's time, had they not been utterly infatuated by
the lying spirit of the false prophets, whose prophecies accom-
modated themselves to the wishes of the natural heart.
Vers. 12-15. To King Zedekiah Jeremiah addressed words
of like import, saying : " Bring your necks into the yoke of
the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and ye shall
live. Ver. 13. Why will ye die, thou and thy people, by sword,
famine, and pestilence, as Jahveh hath spoken concerning the
people that will not serve the king of Babylon ? Ver. 14. And
hearken not unto the words of the prophets that speak unto
you : Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon ; for they pro-
phesy a lie unto you. Ver. 15. For I have not sent them,
saith Jahveh, and they prophesy in my name falsely, that I
might drive you out and ye might perish, ye and the pro-
phets that prophesy unto you." — The discourse addressed to
the king in the plural, " bring your necks," etc., is explained
by the fact that, as ver. 13 shows, in and along with the king
his people are addressed. The imperative Vm intimates the
consequence of the preceding command. Ver. 13 gives the
application of the threat in ver. 8 to King Zedekiah and his
ptople ; and ver. 14 f . gives the warning corresponding to
CHAP. XXVII. 16-22. 403
vers. 9 and 10 against the sayings of the lying prophets ; cf.
chap. xiv. 14 and xxiii. 16, 21.
Vers. 16-22. The priests and all the people are warned to
give no belief to tile false prophesyings of a speedy restoration
of the vessels carried off to Babylon. — Ver. 16. "Tims hath
Jahveh said : Hearken not to the sayings of your prophets that
prophesy unto you : Behold, the vessels of Jahveh's house shall
now shortly be brought again from Babylon ; for they prophesy
a lie unto you. Ver. 17. Hearken not unto them ; serve the
king of Babylon and live ; wherefore should this city become
a desert ? Ver. 18. But if they be prophets, and if the word
of Jahveh be with them, let them now make intercession to
Jahveh of hosts, that the vessels which are left in the house
of Jahveh, and in the king's house, and in Jerusalem, go
not to Babylon. Ver. 19. For thus saith Jahveh of hosts con-
cerning the pillars and the [brazen] sea and the frames, and
concerning the other vessels that are left in this city, Ver. 20.
Which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took not away when
he carried away captive Jechoniah the son of Jehoiakim king
of Judah from Jerusalem to Babylon, with all the nobles of
Judah and Jerusalem. Ver. 21. For thus saith Jahveh of
hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that are left in
the house of Jahveh, and in the house of the king of Judah,
and in Jerusalem : Ver. 22. To Babylon shall they be brought,
and there shall they remain until the day that I visit them,
saith Jahveh, and carry them up, and bring them back to this
place."
Here Jeremiah gives King Zedekiah warning that the pro-
phecies of a speedy end to Chaldean bondage are lies, and
that confidence in such lies will hurry on the ruin of the state.
He at the same time disabuses the priests of the hope raised by
the false prophets, that the vessels of the temple and of the
palace that had been carried off at the time Jechoniah was
taken to Babylon will very soon be restored ; and assures them
that such statements can only procure the destruction of the
city, since their tendency is to seduce king and people to
rebellion, and rebellion against the king oi Babylon means the
destruction of Jerusalem, — a propTiecy that was but too soon
fulfilled. The vessels of the temple, ver, 16, are the golden
404 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
vessels Solomon caused to be made (1 Kings vii. 48 f.), which
Nebuchadnezzar had carried to Babylon, 2 Kings xxiv. 13.
n^33p, from towards Babylon, i.e. from Babylon, whither they
had been taken ; cf. Ew. § 216, b. " Now shortly," lit. hastily or
speedily, i.e. ere long, cf. xxviii. 3, where the prophet Hananiah
foretells the restoration of them within two years, in opposition
to Jeremiah's affirmation that the exile will last seventy years.^
To show more clearly the irreconcilableness of his own position
with that of the false prophets, Jeremiah further tells what true
prophets, who have the word of Jahveh, would do. They would
betake themselves in intercession to the Lord, seeking to avert
yet further calamity or punishment, as all the prophets sent by
God, including Jeremiah himself, did, cf. vii. 16. They should
endeavour by intercession to prevent the vessels that are still
left in Jerusalem from being taken away. The extraordinary
expression 1N3 ''IV27 has probably come from the omission of
Jod from the verb, which should be read 1N3J. As it stands, it
can only be imperative, which is certainly not suitable, w?? is
usually construed with the infinitive, but occasionally also with
the temp. Jin. ; with the imperf., which is what the sense here
demands, in Ex. xx. 20 ; with the perf., Jer. xxiii. 14. — Of the
temple furniture still remaining, he mentions in ver. 19 as most
valuable the two golden pillars, Jacliin and Boaz, 1 Kings vii.
15 ff., the brazen sea, 1 Kings vii. 23 ff., and nuiaisn, the artistic
waggon frames for the basins in which to wash the sacrificial
flesh, 1 Kings vii. 27 ff. ; and he declares they too shall be
carried to Babylon, as happened at the destruction of Jeru-
salem, 2 Kings XXV. 13 ff. (inii'n for inii'jna.)^
' These words are not given in LXX., and so Mov. and Hitz. pronounce
them spurious. Haev., on the other hand, and with greater justice, says
(Introd. ii. 2), that the LXX. omitted the words, because, according to an
Alexandrian legend, the temple furniture was really very soon restored,
even in Zedekiah's time, cf. Baruch i. 8 ff. ; so that the false prophets
were in the right. The passage cited frnm Baruch does not indeed give a
very rigorous proof of this. It alleges that the silver vessels which Zede-
kiah had caused to be made after Jechoniah's exile had been brought back
by Baruch. But considering the innumerable arbitrary interferences of the
LXX. with the text of Jeremiah, the omission of the words in question
cannot justify the slightest critical suspicion of their genuineness.
" The statement in vers. 19-22 ia wide and diffuse ; it is therefore con-
CHAP. xxvm. 1-4. 405
Chap, xxviii. Against the false peophet Hananiah. —
Vers. 1-4. This man's prophecy. At the same time, namely
in the fourth year of Zedekiah (cf. rem. on xxvii. 1. The
diet. nJE'a is supported by xlvi. 2 and li. 59 ; the Keri nj^a ig
an unnecessary alteration), in tlie fifth month, spake Hananiah
the son of Asur, — a prophet not otherwise known, belonging to
Gibeon, a city of the priests (Josh. xxi. 17 ; now Jib, a large
village two hours north-west of Jerusalem ; see on Josh. Ix. 3),
possibly therefore himself a priest, — in the house of the Lord,
in the presence of the priests and people assembled there, saying :
Ver. 2. " Thus hath Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel, said :
I break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Ver. 3. Within two
years I bring again into this place the vessels of the house
of Jahveh, which Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon took
away from this place and carried them to Babylon. Ver. 4.
And Jechoniah, the son of Jehoiakim the king of Judah, and
all the captives of Judah that went into Babylon, bring I again
to this place, saith Jahveh ; for I will break the yoke of the
king of Babylon." — The false prophet endeavours to stamp on
densed in the LXX., but at tlie same time mutilated. From the factMov.,
with Hitz. agreeing thereto, concludes that the Hebr. text has been expanded
by means of glosses. Graf has already shown in reply to this, that the hand
of a later glossator interpolating materials from lii. 17, 2 Kings xxv. 18 and
xxiv. 1 is not betrayed in the extended account of the furniture remaining, and
of the occasion on -which it was left behind. He goes on to show that it is
rather the editorial hand of Baruch than the hand of the glossator that is to
be presumed from the fact that, in consequence of the narrative part of ver.
20, ver. 19 is repeated in ver. 21 ; and from the further fact that it is impos-
sible here to discriminate the interpolated from the original matter. Graf
has also so conclusively proved the worthlessness of the distinguishing
marks of the glossator adduced by Mov. and Hitz., that we adopt in fuU
his argument. Such marks are (we are told), (1) the scriptio plena of
maUD here, as contrasted with lii. 17, 2 Kings xxv. 13, 2 Ghron. iv. 14,
and of ^''J1^^ as against xxiv. 1, xxviii. 4, xxix. 2 ; and yet the interpola-
tions in vers. 19 and 20 are said to have been taken directly from lii. 17 and
xxiv. 1. (2) The expression D''"in, which is alleged not to have come into
use tiU the exile. But the fact of its standing here and in xxxix. 6 is enough
to show it to have been earlier in use ; cf. also 1 Kings xxi. 8, 11 ; and
since it is not used in xxiv. 1 and xxix. 2, it is certain that it has not been
got from there. (3) The "slip-shod" D''^B'"n'"l, ver. 21, for d''^tJ'n''31,
ver. 18, which is, however, occasioned simply by the preceding accusative
of place, 'ui mn' JTia (ver. 18 also mn'' nna).
406 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
his prediction the impress of a true, God-inspired prophecy, by
copying the title of God, so often used by Jeremiah, " Jahveh
of hosts, the God of Israel," and by giving the utmost definite-
ness to his promise : " within two years" (in contrast to Jere-
miah's seventy years). " Two years" is made as definite as
possible by the addition of D''DJ ; two years in days, i.e. in two
full years. See on Gen. xli. 1, 2 Sam. xiii. 23.
Vers. 5-11. JeremiaJis reply. — First Jeremiah admits that
the fulfilment of this prediction would be desirable (ver. 6),
but then reminds his opponent that all the prophets of the Lord
up till this time have prophesied of war and calamity (vers. 7
and 8). So that if a prophet, in opposition to these witnesses of
God, predicts nothing but peace and safety, then nothing short
of the fulfilment of his prediction can make good his claim to
be a true prophet (ver. 9). — Jeremiah's answer is to this effect :
Ver. 6. "Amen (i.e. yea), may Jahveh so do ! may Jahveh per-
form thy words which thou hast prophesied, to bring again the
vessels of Jahveh's house and all the captives from Babylon into
this place. Ver. 7. Only hear now this word that I speak in
thine ears, and in the ears of all the people. Ver. 8. The prophets
that were before me and before thee from of old, they pro-
phesied concerning many lands and great kingdoms, of war,
and of trouble, and of pestilence. Ver. 9. The prophet that
prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet cometh to
pass, shall be known as the prophet that Jahveh hath truly
sent." — As to 15^, yea, see on si. 5. The scope of this assent
is straightway defined in " may Jahveh so do." But in order
that the hearers may not misunderstand his assent, Jeremiah
proceeds to show that hitherto only threatening predictions
have carried with them the presumption of their being true
prophecies, inasmuch as it is these alone that have been in
harmony with the predictions of all previous prophets. ^^^S'l
(ver. 8) is explained by the fact that " the prophets" with the
accompanying relative clause is made to precede absolute-wise.
In the same absolute manner the clause " the prophet . . .
peace" is disposed so that after the verb V})] the word XOsn is re-
peated. For nv-h many MSS. have :iV^h ; manifestly an adapta-
tion to passages like xiv. 12, xxi. 9, xxiv. 10, xxvii. 8, 13, xxix.
17 f., where sword, famine, and pestilence are mentioned to-
CHAP. XXVIII. 12-17. 407
getlier as three modes of visitation by God ; whereas only the
general word nj;-; seems in place here, when mentioned along-
side of " war." For this very reason Hitz. rejects aj?") as being
the least diiBcult reading, while Ew. takes it under his protec-
tion on account of the parallel passages, not considering that
the train of thought is different here. — The truth expressed in
ver. 9 is based on the Mosaic law concerning prophecy, Deut.
xviii. 21 f., where the fulfilment of the prediction is given as
the test of true, God-inspired prophecy. — Ver. 10 f . Had
Hananiah been sent by the Lord, he might have been satisfied
with Jeremiah's opinion, and have contentedly awaited the
issue. But instead of this, he seeks by means of violence to
secure credence for his prophesying. He takes the yoke from
off the neck of the prophet, and breaks it in pieces, as he re-
peats before the people his former prediction : " Thus hath
Jahveh said : Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within two years."
— Thereupon Jeremiah went his way without answering a word,
calmly entrusting to the Loi'd the vindication of the truth of
His own word.
Vers. 12-17. The Lord!s testimony against Hananiah. —
Apparently not long after Jeremiah had departed, he received
from the Lord the commission to go to Hananiah and to say to
him: Ver. 13. "Thus saith Jahveh: Yokes of wood hast thou
broken, but hast made in place of them yokes of iron. Ver. 14.
For thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : A yoke of
iron I lay upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him ;
and the beasts of the field also have I given him." — When the
prophet says : Yokes of wood hast thou broken, etc., we are
not to understand him as speaking of the breaking of the
wooden yoke Jeremiah had been wearing ; he gives the deeper
meaning of that occurrence. By breaking Jeremiah's wooden
yoke, Hananiah has only signified that the yoke Nebuchad-
nezzar lays on the nations will not be so easily broken as a
wooden one, but is of iron, i.e. not to be broken. The plural
" yokes" is to be explained by the emblematical import of the
words, and is not here to be identified, as it sometimes may
be, with the singular, ver. 10. Ver. 14 shows in what sense
408 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAIL
Hananiali put an iron yoke in the place of the wooden one :
Jahveh will lay iron yokes on all nations, that they may serve
the king of Babel. Hananiah's breaking the wooden yoke
does not alter the divine decree, but is made to contribute to
its fuller revelation. With the last clause of ver. 14, cf. xxvii.
6. — Hereupon Jeremiah forewarns the false prophets what is
to be God's punishment on them for their false and audacious
declarations. Ver. 15. " Hear now, Hananiah : Jahveh hath
not sent thee, and thou hast made this people to believe a lie.
Ver. 16. Therefore thus saith Jahveh : Behold, I cast thee from
off the face of the earth ; this year shalt thou die, for thou hast
spoken rebellion against Jahveh." " The year " = this year,
as in Isa. xxxvii. 30. The words "for thou hast spoken," etc.,
recall Deut. xiii. 6. They involve an application to Hananiah's
case of the command there given to put such a prophet to
death, and show how it can with justice be said that the Lord
will cast him from off the face of the earth. The verb ^HS^'P
is chosen for the sake of the play on ^n??' N?. God has not
sent him as prophet to His people, but will send him away from
off the earth, i.e. cause him to die. — In ver. 17 it is recorded
that this saying was soon fulfilled. Hananiah died in the
seventh month of that year, i.e. two months after his contro-
versy with Jeremiah (cf. ver. 1).
Chap. sxix. A LETTER FROM JeEEMIAH TO THE CAPTIVES
IN Babylon, together with theeatenings against theie
FALSE PROPHETS. — As in Jerusalem, so too in Babylon the
predictions of the false prophets fostered a lively hope that
the domination of Nebuchadnezzar would not last lone, and
that the return of the exiles to their fatherland would soon
come about. The spirit of discontent thus excited must have
exercised an injurious influence on the fortunes of the captives,
and could not fail to frustrate the aim which the chastisement
inflicted by God was designed to work out, namely, the moral
advancement of the people. Therefore Jeremiah makes use of
an opportunity furnished by an embassy sent by King Zedekiah
to Babel, to address a letter to the exiles, exhorting them to
yield with submission to the lot God had assigned to them. He
counsels them to prepare, by establishing their households there,
CHAP. XXIX. 1-3. 409
for a long sojourn in Babel, and to seek the welfare of tiiat
country as the necessary condition of their own. They must
not let themselves be deceived by the false prophets' idle pro-
mises of a speedy return, since God will not bring them back
and fulfil His glorious promises till after seventy years have
passed (vers. 4-14). Then he tells them that sore judgments
are yet in store for King Zedekiah and such as have been left
in the land (vers. 15-20) ; and declares that some of their false
prophets shall perish miserably (vers. 21-32).
Vers. 1-3. Heading and Introduction. — The following circular
is connected, in point of outward form, with the preceding dis-
courses against the false prophets in Jerusalem by means of
the words : " And these are the words of the letter," etc. The
words of the letter, i.e. the main contents of the letter, since it
was not transcribed, but given in substance. " Which the
prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the
elders of the captives, and to the priests and prophets, and to
the whole people, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away
from Jerusalem to Babylon." " The residue of the elders,"
Hitz. and Graf understand of those elders who were not at the
same time priests or prophets. On this Nag, pronounces : " It
is impossible that they can be right, for then ' the residue of
the elders of the captivity' must have stood after the priests
and prophets." And though we hear of elders of the priests,
there is no trace in the O. T. of elders of the prophets. Be-
sides, the elders, whenever they are mentioned along with the
priests, are universally the elders of the people. Thus must we
understand the expression here also. "Tlie residue of the
elders" can only be the remaining, i.e. still surviving, elders of
the exiles, as in; is used also in xxxix. 9 for those still in life.
But there is no foundation for the assumption by means of
which Gr. seeks to support his interpretation, namely, that the
place of elders that died was immediately filled by new appoint-
ments, so that the council of the elders must always have been
regarded as a whole, and could not come to be a residue or
remnant. Jeremiah could not possibly have assumed the exist-
ence of such an organized governing authority, since in this
very letter he exhorts them to set about the establishment of
regular system in their affairs. The date given iu ver. 2 :
410 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
" after that Jechoniah the king, and the sovereign lady, and
the courtiers, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the work-
men and smiths, were gone away from Jerusalem," points to
the beginning of Zedekiah's reign, to the first or second year of
it. With this the advice given to the captives in the letter
harmonizes well, namely, the counsel to build houses, plant
gardens, etc.; since this makes it clear that they had not been
long there. The despatch of this letter is usually referred to
the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign, because in xxviii. 1 this
year is specified. But the connection in point of matter be-
tween the present chapter and chap, xxviii. does not necessarily
imply their contemporaneousness, although that is perfectly
possible ; and the fact that, according to li. 59, Zedekiah him-
self undertook a journey to Babylon in the fourth year of his
reign, does not exclude the possibility of an embassy thither in
the same year. The going away from Jerusalem is the emi-
gration to Babylon ; cf. xxiv. 1, 2 Kings xxiv. 15. fTJ''?|i'^, the
queen-mother, see on xiii. 18. O''?'"!? are the officials of the
court ; not necessarily eunuchs. Both words are joined to the
king, because these stood in closest relations to him. Then
follows without copula the second class of emigrants, the princes
of Judah and Jerusalem, i.e. the heads of the tribes, septs, and
families of the nation. The artisans form the third class. This
disposes of the objections raised by Mov. and Hitz. against the
genuineness of the words " princes of Judah and Jerusalem,"
their objections being based on the false assumption that these
words v/ere an exposition of "courtiers." Cf. against this, 2 Kings
xxiv. 15, where along with the D''DnD the heads of tribes and
families are comprehended under the head of psn ''71X. Ver.
3. "By the hand " oi JElasah is dependent on "sent," ver. 1.
The men by whom Jeremiah sent the letter to Babylon are not
further known. Shaphan is perhaps the same who is mentioned
in xxvi. 24. We have no information as to the aim of the
embassy.
Vers. 4-14. At ver. 4 the contents of the letter begin.
Jeremiah warns the people to prepare for a lengthened sojourn
in Babylonia, and exhorts them to settle down there. Ver. 5.
" Build houses and dwell (therein), and plant gardens and eat
the fruit of them. Ver. 6. Take wives and beset sons and
CHAP. XXIX. 4-14. 411
daughters, and take for your sons wives and give your daugh-
ters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters ; and
increase there and not diminish. Ver. 7. And seek the safety
of the city whither I have carried you captive, and pray for it
to Jahveh, and in its safety shall be safety to you." The im-
peratives "increase and not diminish" give the consequence of
what has been said just before. " The city whither I have carried
you captive " is not precisely Babylon, but every place whither
separate companies of the exiles have been transported. And
pray for the city whither you are come, because in this you
further your own welfare, instead of looking for advantage to
yourselves from the fall of the Chaldean empire, from the
calamity of your heathen fellow-citizens. — With this is suitably
joined immediately the warning against putting trust in the
delusive hopes held out by the false prophets. " For thus saith
Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Let not your prophets, that
are in the midst of you, and your soothsayers, deceive you, and
hearken not to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed ; for
falsely they prophesy to you in my name ; I have not sent them,
saith Jahveh." Cl??™ is somewhat singular, since we have no
other example of the Hiph. of u?n in its sig. dream (in Isa.
xxxviii. 16 the Hiph. of the same root means to preserve in
good health) ; hut the Hiph. may here express the people's
spontaneity in the matter of dreams : which ye cause to be
dreamed for you (Hitz.). Thus there would be no need to alter
the reading into D'dSH ; a precedent for the defective spelling
being found in D''"irVD, 2 Chron. xxviii. 23. What the false pro-
phets gave out is not expressly intimated, but may be gathered
from the context ver. 10, namely, that the yoke of Babylon would
soon be broken and captivity come to an end. — This warning is
justified in vers. 10-14, where God's decree is set forth. The
deliverance will not come about till after seventy years ; but
then the Lord will fulfil to His people His promise of grace.
Ver. 10. " For thus saith Jahveh : When as seventy years are
fulfilled for Babylon, I will visit you, and perform to you my
good word, to bring you back to this place. Ver. 11. For I
know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jahveh,
thoughts of peace and not for evil, to give you (a) destiny and
hope. Ver. 12. And ye will call upon me, and go and pray
412 THE PROPHECIES OF JEKEMUH.
unto me, and I will hear you. Ver. 13. And ye will seek me,
and find me, if ye search for me with all your heart. Ver. 14.
And I will let myself be found of you, saith Jahveh, and will
turn your captivity, and gather you out of all the peoples and
from all the places whither I have driven you, saith Jahveh,
and will bring you again to the place whence I have carried
you away." — n^ljp 'sS, according to the measure of the fulfil-
ment of seventy years for Babel. These words point back to
chap. xsv. 11 f., and we must reckon from the date of that
prediction. 1i?S c. accus. sig. to visit in a good sense, to look
favourably on one and take his part. "My good word" is ex-
pounded by the following infinitive clause. Ver. 11. "I know
my thoughts" is not to be taken, as by Jerome, J. D.Mich., etc.,
as in contrast with the false prophets : I know, but they do
not. This antithesis is not in keeping with what follows. The
meaning is rather : Although I appoint so long a term for the
fulfilment of the plan of redemption, yet fear not that I have
utterly rejected you ; I know well what my design is in your
regard. My thoughts toward you are thoughts of good, not of
evil. Although now I inflict lengthened sufferings on you, yet
this chastisement but serves to bring about your welfare in the
future (Chr. B. Mich., Graf, etc.).— To give you nnns, lit,
last, i.e. issue or future, and hope. For this sig. cf. Job viii. 7,
Prov. V. 4, etc. Tliis future destiny and hope can, however,
only be realized if by the sorrows of exile you permit your-
selves to be brought to a knowledge of your sins, and return
penitent to me. Then ye will call on me and pray, and I will
hear you. "And ye will go," ver. 12, is not the apodosis to
" ye will call," since there is no further explanation of it, and
since the simple "^^^ can neither mean to go away satisfied nor
to have success. " Go" must be taken with what follows : go
to the place of prayer (Ew., Umbr., Gr., Nag.). In ver. 13
'nx is to be repeated after " find." Vers. 12 and 13 are a re-
newal of the promise, Deut. iv. 29, 30 ; and ver. 14 is a brief
summary of the promise, Deut. sxx. 3-5, whence is taken the
graphic expression nUB'-ns DW; see on that passage. — There-
after in
Vers. 15-20. Jeremiah informs the captives of the judgment
that is to fall on such as are still left in the land. Ver. 15. " If
CHAP. XXIX. 15-20. 413
ye say : Jahveh hath raised m up prophets in Babylon— Ver.
16. Yea, thus saith Jahveh of the luDg that sitteth upon the
throne of David, and of all the people that dwelleth in this city,
your brethren that are not gone forth with you into captivity,
Ver. 17. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts : Behold, I send amongst
them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and make them like
horrible figs, that cannot be eaten for badness, Ver. 18. And
hunt after them with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence,
and give them to be abused to all the kingdoms of the earth, to
be a curse, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach
among all the peoples whither I have driven them ; Ver. 19.
Inasmuch as they have not hearkened to my words, saith
Jahveh, wherewith I sent to them my servants the prophets,
from early morning on sending them, and ye have not hearkened,
saith Jahveh. Ver. 20. But ye, hear the word of Jahveh, all
ye captives whom I have sent from Jerusalem to Babylon." —
The design with which Jeremiah tells the captives of this
judgment may be gathered from the terms of ver. 15, with
which this prophecy is introduced : God hath raised up to us
prophets in Babel ("^33, lit. as far as Babel, i.e. extending His
agency so far beyond the bounds of Judah). Hence it is clear
that the announcement of judgment to come on those left in
the land is in direct opposition to the predictions of the prophets
that had appeared in Babylon. These prophesied a swift end
to Chaldean domination and an immediate return of the exiles
to their fatherland. So long as one of David's posterity sat on
his throne in Jerusalem, and so long as the kingdom of Judah
was maintained, the partial captivity of the people and removal
of the plundered treasures of the temple would appear as a
calamity which might soon be repaired. The false prophets in
Babylon laid, therefore, great stress on the continued existence
of the kingdom, with its capital and the temple, in their efforts
to obtain belief amongst the exiles. As Nag. justly remarks,
it was to take this ground from beneath their feet that Jeremiah
predicted expulsion and destruction against the people of Jeru-
salem. The prophecy does indeed bear upon the inhabitants
of Jei'usalem, " but not in the first reference ; its immediate
purpose was to overthrow the foundations on which the false
prophets of the exile stood " (Nag.). Taken thus, these verses
414 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMUH.
form an integral part of the message sent by Jeremiah to the
exiles, which was of no small weight for quieting the excitement,
nourished by the false prophets, which reigned amongst them.
One is struck by the want of connection between vers. 15 and
16. The beginning of ver. 16, " Yea, thus saith," comes directly
after the end of ver. 15 without any joining link. Nag. holds
the ''3 to be the pleonastic ''^ which often introduces a saying.
But its position before the " thus saith " makes this impossible.
Here it serves to strengthen the asseveration : yea, thus fitly
introducing what Jahveh says to the contrary; and vers. 15
and 16 are, tersely and immediately, set over against one another.
"If ye say" means: as regards your saying that Jahveh hath
raised you up prophets in Babylon, the answer is : Thus hath
Jahveh said. This is the connection of ver. 16 with ver. 15.^
" Your brethren that," etc., is co-ordinate with " all the people."
The words: "I make them like horrible figs," make allusion to
the vision in chap. xxiv. 2 ff., but do not imply that this vision
^ By the above exposition of the connection and progress of the thought,
are disposed of all the objections that have been brought by Houb., Lud.
Capp., Yen., etc., against the genuineness of these verses, or, at least,
against the true position for them. The fact of their being wanting in the
LXX., on -which Hitz. mainly grounds his charge of spuriousness, proves
nothing more than that these translators -were unable to understand the
train of thought in the verses, especially seeing that the substance of them
has several times been expressed by Jeremiah, particularly vers. 17 and 18 ;
xxiv. 9, 10, cf. XV. 4, xix. 8 ; -with ver. 19 cf. vii. 18, 25 f . Against the
attempts to alter the text, Graf's remarks are admirable : " It is much
easier to explain how the passage was omitted as out of place by the LXX.
than to show how it could have been introduced as an interpolation. It is too
long for a mere marginal gloss that had at a later time found its way into
the text ; and why it should have been placed here, would remain all the
more incomprehensible if it were so wholly unconnected with the body of
the text. TVe cannot admit that it is merely an erroneous displacement of
ver. 15, which originally stood before ver. 21 ; since it is less likely that
ver. 16 could have come directly after ver. 14. In respect of form, vers.
16-20 is connected with and forms a continuatiou of what precedes. Ver.
20 implies the presence of ver. 16 as an antithesis, and at the same time
completes again the connection that had been interrupted with ver. 15,
and leads on to ver. 21 ff. Connection in thought seems to be wanting
only because ver. 16 does not express the connecting idea, and because the
contrast is so abrupt." — The other arguments adduced by Hitz. to throw
suspicion on the passage, we can afford to pass over as wholly without force.
CHAP. XXIX. 21-23. 415
was known to the exiles, for they are quite intelligible to him
who knows nothing of chap. xxiv. (Nag.). The adject. iVb' is
found only here, from IJJB', shudder ; horrible, that on tasting
which one shudders. With ver. 18, cf. xxiv. 9. " Wherewith I
sent my servants," i.e. commissioned them. This verb construed
with double accus. as in 2 Sam. xi. 22, Isa. Iv. 11. "Ye have
not hearkened," the 2d pers. instead of the 3d, is hardly to be
explained by the fact that the prophet here cites in full an often
quoted saying (Hitz., Nag., etc.). The reason is that the pro-
phet is thinking of the exiles also as having been equal to their
brethren remaining in Judah in the matter of not hearkening.
Thus the way is prepared for the summons: But ye, hear,
ver. 20.
Vers. 21-23. After having set forth the divine determination,
the prophet's letter addresses itself specially against the false
prophets and tells them their punishment from God. Ver. 21.
" Thus saith Jahveh, the God of hosts, of Ahab the son of
Kolaiah, and of Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who prophesy
to you in my name falsely : Behold, I give them into the hand
of Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, that he may smite
them before your eyes. Ver. 22. And of them shall be taken
up a curse by all the exiles of Judah that are in Babylon,
saying : Jahveh make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom
the king of Babylon roasted in the fire, Ver. 23. Because they
have done folly in Israel, and have committed adultery with
their neighbours' wives, and have spoken in my name lying
words which I have not commanded them. But I know it and
am witness, saith Jahveh."— Beyond what is here told, we know
nothing of these two pseudo-prophets. The name 3Nns is
written in ver. 20 without X ; thus the Kametz comes to be
under the n, and in consequence of this the Pathach is changed
into a Seghol. " Smite," i.e. slay. The manner of their death
is called, probably with allusion to the name Kolaiah, nPi?, roast,
burn in a heated furnace ; a mode of execution usual in Babylon,
ace. to Dan. iii. 6. This punishment is to fall on them because
of two kinds of sin : 1. Because they have done folly in Israel,
namely, committed adultery with their neighbours' wives ; 2.
Because they have prophesied falsely in the name of Jahveh.
Except in Josh. vii. 15, the phrase: commit folly in Israel, is
416 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
always used of the grosser sins of uncleanness; see on Gen.
xxxiv. 7. So here also.— The Cliet. Jfn^in is expounded in the Keri
by Tn^Ti^ according to which there has been a transposition of the
letters I'and \ as in ii. 25, viii. 6, etc. Still the article here is
extraordinary, since ^J? has none. Therefore J. D. Mich., Ew.,
Hitz., Graf suppose we should read T^} V^, the N having been
dropped from Nin in scriptio continua, as it often is, especially-
after 1, in t^'^n and other words, cf. xix. 15, xxxix. 16, 1 Kings
xxi. 29, etc. wn is then the copula between subject and pre-
dicate, as in Isa. xliii. 25 ; cf. Ew. § 297, b.
Vers. 24-32. TJireatening against the false prophet Shemaiah.
— Jeremiah's letter to the exiles (vers. 1-23) had excited
^reat indignation among the false prophets iu Babylon, who
predicted speedy restoration. One of them, named Shemaiah,
wrote accordingly letters to Jerusalem addressed to the people,
and especially to the priest Zephaniah, who held the highest
place in the management of the temple, insisting that he should
immediately take steps to punish Jeremiah and check his
labours (vers. 24-28). When Zephaniah read this letter to
Jeremiah, the latter received from God the commission to tell
the pseudo-prophet of the punishment awaiting him, that he
and his race should perish and not survive Israel's liberation,
(vers. 29-32). — This threatening accordingly dates from a
somewhat later time than the letter, vers. 1-23, since it was its
arrival and influence upon the exiles that led Shemaiah to WTite
to Jerusalem that letter, to which the threatening of the present
verse is the reply. But on account of their historical connec-
tion, the letter of Jeremiah and that of Shemaiah were, at the
publication of Jeremiah's prophecies, placed the one after the
other. — From the introductory clause of ver. 24: "And to
Shemaiah the Nehelamite thou shalt speak thus," we miflit
conclude, with Graf, that what Jeremiah had to say was not
addressed by letter to Shemaiah himself; and hold it to have
sufficed that he should read it, like all the exiles, in the letter
which doubtless found its way to Babylon. But this is incom-
patible with the command of God, ver. 31 : Send to all the
captives, saying, etc. For it was only by writing that Jeremiah
could send to the exiles the sentence from God on Shemaiah
that follows in ver. 31. The introductory clause is therefore
CHAP. XXIS. 24-32. 417
interposed by the author of the book to form a link of connec-
tion between the two utterances regarding the pseudo-prophets
at Babylon, We cannot make sure whether "the Nehela-
mite" refers the man to a family or to a place of which we
know nothing else, Ver, 25. Next the introduction to the
divine sentence comes (from "Because thou" on) a statement
of the occasion that called for it, which extends to ver. 28. Then
in vers. 29-31 we are told that Zephaniah read to Jeremiah
the letter he had received from Shemaiah in Babylon, and that
Jeremiah was then commissioned by God to intimate to
Shemaiah the punishment to be sent on him by God for his
false and seducing prophecies. Then, again, attached to the
preliminary statement by "therefore," the introductory phrase
"Thus saith Jahveh" is repeated, and what the Lord said
follows, — Ver, 25. " Because thou hast sent in thy name (with-
out divine commission) letters to all the people in Jerusalem,
and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and to all
the priests, saying." Q"'"!S'? may be a single letter, cf. 2 Kings
X, 1, 2 ; but since these were sent to the people, the priest
Zephaniah, and all the people, the word doubtless means here
letters in the plural. As to Zephaniah ben Maaseiah, see at
xxi, 1. — In vers. 26-28 follows the main substance of the letter :
"Jahveh hath set thee to be priest in the stead of the priest
Jehoiada, that there should be officers in the house of Jahveh
for every man that is mad and prophesieth, that thou shouldest
put him in the stocks and in neck-irons. Ver. 27. And, now,
why hast thou not restrained Jeremiah of Anathoth, that pro-
phesieth to you ? Ver. 28. For therefore hath he sent to us to
Babylon (a letter) to the effect : It will last long ; build houses
and dwell (therein), and plant gardens and eat the fruit of
them " Zephaniah occupied, ace, to ver. 26, the post of a chief
officer of the temple, was a chief warden, as Pashur had been
before him, xxi. 1, who had charge of the police regulations of
the temple. In the stead of the priest Jehoiada. These words
Grot., Hitz., and Gr. refer to the high priest Jehoiada under
King Joash, 2 Kings xi, 18, who set up officers (nnj^f) over
the temple. But this view cannot be reconciled with the words of
the text : " Jahveh hath set thee to be priest in Jehoiada's stead,
that there should be officers;" since from these unambiguous
VOL. I. 2 t)
418 THE PKOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
words, Zeptaniah filled the same post as Jehoiada had done,
and was his successor in office. The other well-known Jehoiada
was high priest, who appointed officers ; Zephaniah, on the other
hand was only "the second priest," and as such had charge of
the temple arrangements and of public order there. Nor is
there any hint here or elsewhere that Zephaniah was the im-
mediate successor of Pashur in this office, nor any indication to
make it unlikely that Jehoiada held the post after Pashur and
that Zedekiah succeeded him. The plural " officers " is general :
that at all times there should be officers. " For every man that
is mad and prophesieth." WfO, the deranged or mad person,
is here closely associated with t<?^n!3, him that bears himself as
prophet. The former word is used in the evil sense of the
apparently deranged behaviour of the man on whom the Spirit
of God has laid hold, 2 Kings ix. 11, Hos. ix. 7. The idea is
not : for (or against) every prophet, but : for every madman
that plays the prophet. The temple, i.e. the outer court of the
temple, was the usual place for prophets to take their stand.
Shemaiah accordingly means that it was the duty of the chief
warden of the temple to repress attempts to speak in the temple
on the part of pretended prophets, by putting such persons in
stocks and irons. As to ri33np, see on xx. 2. pJ'V is ci,Tr. \ey.
It certainly does not mean prison after p3V, in Samaritan =
clausit; but apparently neck-irons after (jljj, necklace, ring.
Since both words are used together here, and since the meaning
is apparently that Jeremiah should be put into both instruments
at once, Hitz. conjectures that both together were needed to
make the stocks complete, but that each had its own proper
name, because it was possible to fix in the neck, leaving hands
and feet free, or conversely, as in xx. 2. — "iM, rebuke, check by
threats, restrain, cf. Euth ii. 16, jNIal. iii. 11, etc. "For there-
fore," sc. just because thou hast not restrained him from pro-
phesying he has sent to Babylon. n^B* with "ibs^ following,
send to say, means : to send a message or letter as follows.
'^''3 ^^''.^, "''»'<.? Hitz. renders : for he thought : it (Babylon) is
faraway; Jeremiah's meaning being, that in Jerusalem they
would know nothing about his letter he was sending to Babylon.
But such a hidden purpose is utterly foreign to the character of
CHAP. XXIX. 24-32. 419
the prophet. He had publicly predicted in Jernsalem the long
seventy years' duration of the exile ; and it was not likely to
occur to him to wish to make a secret of the letter of like
import which he sent to Babylon. Besides, Hitz.'s interpreta-
tion is forced. Since there is no ibNij before n'ria «3, the ibN^J
before na-ix can only be introductory to the contents of the
letter. For ^'ix used of duration in time, cf. 2 Sam. iii. 1,
Job xi. 9. "Long-lasting it is," sc. your sojourn in Babylon.
These words give the burden of his prophecy, that on which he
founded his counsel : build houses, etc. — Ver. 29. Zephaniah
read aloud to Jeremiah the letter he had received from Babylon.
With what design, we are not told; probably simply to inform
him of the proceedings of the pseudo-prophets in Babylon. If
we may judge by xxi. 1 and xxxvii. 3, Zephaniah seems to have
been friendly to Jeremiah. — Ver. 30 ff. In consequence of this,
Jeremiah received from the Lord the commission to predict to
Shemaiah his punishment at the hand of God, and to send the
prediction to all that are in Babylon in banishment. With ver.
316, cf. xxviii. 15. The punishment is this: Shemaiah shall
have no posterity among his people, i.e. of his children none
shall be left amongst the people, nor shall he see, i.e. experience,
have any share in the blessings which the Lord will yet bestow
upon His people. The extinction of his race and his own
exclusion from the privilege of seeing the day of Israel's re-
demption are the punishment that is to fall on him for his
rebellion against the commandment of the Lord. With ''3
't mo cf. xxviii. 16.
END OF VOL. I.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In demy 8do, price 10s. &d.,
THE JEWISH
AND
THE CHRISTIAN MESSIAH.
A STUDY IN THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.
By VINCENT HENEY STANTON, M.A.,
FELLOW, TUTOE, AMD DUrujITY LECTDRER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBKIDGE ;
LATE HULSEAN LECTURER.
'Mr. Stanton's book answers a real want, and will be indispensable to students of ths
origin of Christianity. We bops that Mr, Stanton will be abis to continue his labours
in that most obscure and most important period, of bis competency to deal with which
he has given such good proof in this book.' — Ouardian.
' We welcome this book as a valuable addition to the literature of a most important
subject. . . . The book is remarkable for the clearness of its style. Mr. Stanton is never
obscure from beginning to end, and we think that no reader of average attainments -n-ill
be able to put the book down without having learnt much from his lucid and scholarly
exposition.' — Ecclesiastical Gazette.
Now ready, Second Division, in Three Vols., 8vo, price 10s. 6d. each,
HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE
TIME OF OUR LORD.
By Dr. EMIL SCHUEEE,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GIESSE^.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND EDITION (Revised throughout, and
GKEATLY ENLARGED) OF 'HISTORY OP THE NEW TESTAMENT TIME.'
The First Division, which will probably be in a single volume, ia undergoing revision
by the Author. (The Second Division is complete in itself.)
' Under Professor Scbiirer's guidance, ws are enabled to a large extent to construct a
social and political framework for the Gospel History, and to set it iu such a light as to
see new evidences of the truthfulness of that history and of its contemporaneousness. . .
The length of our notice shows our estimate of the value of his work.' — English
Churchman.
'We gladly welcome the publication of this most valuable work.' — Dublin Review.
'Most heartily do we commend this work as an invaluable aid in the intelligent study
of ths New Testament.' — Nonconformist.
'As a handbook for tbs study of the New Testament, the work ia invaluable and
unique.' — British Quarterly Review.
In demy 8vo, price 10s. Gd.,
AN EXPLANATORY COMMENTARY ON
ESTHER.
CONSISTING OF
TH£J SECOND TARGUM TRANSLATED FROM THE ARAMAIC
WITS NOTES, MITHRA, THE WINGED BULLS
OF PERSEPOLIS, AND ZOROASTER.
By Professor PAULUS CASSEL, D.D., Berlin.
' A specially remarkable exposition, which will sscure for itself a commanding
position in Biblical literature. It has great charms from a literary and historical point
of view.' — Sword and Trowel.
' A perfect mine of infoi-mation.' — Record.
' It is manifestly the ready expression of a full and richly stored mind, dispensing ths
treasures accumulated by years of labour and research. . . . No one whose fortune it ia
to secure this commentary will rise from its study without a nsw and lively realization
of ths life, trials, and triumphs of Esther and Mordecai.' — Ecclesiastical Gazette.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
LOTZE'S MICBOCOSMUS.
Just published, in Two Vols., 8t)0 (\ibO pages). Second EDinoN, price 36«.,
MICROCOSMUS:
Concerning Man and Ms relation to the World.
By HERMANN LOTZE.
STransIatrti from tfje ffirrman
By ELIZABETH HAMILTON aot> E. E. CONSTANCE JONES.
' The Englieh public have now before them the greatest philosophic work produced
in Germany by ths generation just past. The translation comes at an opportune time,
for the circumetancee of English thought, just at the present moment, are peculiarly
those with which Lotze attempted to deal when hs wrote his " Microcosmus," a quarter
of a century ago. . . . Few philosophic books of the century are so attractive both in
stylo and matter.' — Atherueum.
' These are indeed two masterly volumes, vigorous in intellectual power, and trans-
lated with rare ability. . . . This work will doubtless find a place on the shelves of all
ths foremost thinkers and students of modern times.' — Evangelical Magazine.
' Lotze is the ablest, the most brilliant, and most renowned of the Gennan philosophers
of to-day. ... He has rendered invaluable and splendid service to Christian thinkers,
and has given them a work which cannot fail to equip them for the sturdiest intellectual
conflicts and to ensure their victory,' — Baptist Magazine.
' The reputation of Lotze both as a scientist and a philosopher, no less than the merits
of the work itself, will not fail to secure the attention of thoughtful readers.' — Scotsman.
' The translation of Lotze'e Microcosmus is the most important of recent events in our
philosophical literature. , , . The diecuseion is carried on on the basis of an almost
encyclopsedio knowledge, and with the profoimdest and subtlest critical insight. We
know of no other work containing so much of speculative euggestion, of keen criticism,
and of sober judgment on these topics.' — Andover Review.
In Two Vols., 8tio, price 21s.,
NATURE AND THE BIBLE:
LECTURES ON THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION IN ITS
RELATION TO NATURAL SCIENCE.
By Dr. FR. H. REUSCH.
EEVISED AND COEEECTED BY THE AUTHOE.
TRANSLATED from the Fourth Edition by KATHLEEN LTTTELTON.
' Other champions mnch more competent and learned than myself might have been
placed iu the field ; I will only name one of the most recent. Dr. Eeusch, author of
" Nature and the Bible."'— The Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
' The work, we need hardly say, ie of profound and perennial interest, and it can
scarcely be too highly commended as,in many respects, a very successful attempt to settle
one of the most perplexing questions of the day. It is impossible to read it without
obtaining larger views of theology, and more accurate opinions respecting its relations
to science, and no one will rise from its perusal without feeling a deep sense of gratitude
to its author.'— ScotttsA Review.
' This graceful and accurate translation of Dr. Eeusch's well-known treatise on the
identity of the doctrines of the Bible and the revelations of Nature is a valuable addition
to English litsrature.'— IFAtie/uii? Review.
' Wo owe to Dr. Eeusch, a Catholic theologian, one of the most valuable treatises ou
the relation of Eeligion and Natural Science that has appeared for many years. Its fine
impartial tone, its absolute freedom from passion, its glow of sympathy with all sound
science, and its liberality of religious views, are likely to surprise all readers who are
unacquainted with the fact that, whatever may he the errors of the Eomish Church its
more enlightened members are, as a rule, free from that idolatry of the letter of Scrip-
ture which IB one of the most dangerous faults of ultra-Protestantism.'- Z^femr^ World
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Just published, in post 8vo, price Is. &d.,
THE PREACHERS OF SCOTLAND FROM THE
SIXTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
TWELFTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.
By W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.,
PKOFESSOE OP APOLOGETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY, THE KEW COLLEOE,
EDINBUROH.
' Exceedingly intsresting and well worth rsading boii for information and pleasure.
... A batter review of Scottish preaching from an evangelical standpoint could not be
desired. ' — Scotsman.
Just published, in crown Svo, price 3s. 6d.,
SECOND EDITION, REVISED.
THE THEOLOGY
AND
THEOLOGIANS OF SCOTLANID,
CHIEFLY OF THE
Se&cntEEntI) ana ^igljicentfj Centuries,
Being one of the 'Cunningham Lectures.'
By JAMES WALKEE, D.D., Carnwath.
'These pages glow with fervent and eloquent rejoinder to the cheap scorn and
scunilous satire poured out upon evangelical theology as it has been developed north
of the Tweed.' — British Quarterly Review.
* We do not wonder that in their delivery Dr. Walker*s lectures excited great interest ;
we should have wondered far more if they had not done so.'— Mr. Spuegeon in Sword
and Trowel.
In Two Vols., 8to, price 21s.,
A SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY.
BY THE LATE
W. LINDSAY ALEXANDEE, D.D., LL.D.,
PKINCIPAL OF THE THEOLOGICAL HALL OF THE CONGKEGATIOKAL CHURCHES
IN SCOTLAND.
' A work like this is of priceless advantage. It is the testimony of a powerful and
accomplished mind to the supreme authority of the Scriptures, a lucid and orderly
exhibition of their contents, and a vindication, at once logical, scholarly, and conclusive,
of their absolute sufBciency and abiding truthfulness. It is a pleasure to read lectures
so vigorous and comprehensive in their grasp, so subtle in their dialect, so reverent in
spirit, and so severely chaste in their style. There are scores of men who would suffer
no loss if for the next couple of years thsy read no other hook than this. To master it
thorouo-hly would he an incalculable gain.'— Baptist Magazine.
' This is probably the most interesting and scholarly system of theology on the lines
of orthodoxy which has seen the light.'— Literary World.
' This has been characterised as probably the most valuable contribution which our
country has made to theology during the present century, and we do not think this an
exaggerated estimate.'— ScoiiisA Gongregationalist. , , ,
' Oh that Scotland and Congregationalism had many worthies like Dr. Lindsay
Alexander! . . . The ripe man, full of rich experience aud heavenly knowledge, will
prize each ieaf, and give himself a glorious drilling as he masters chapter by chapter.' —
Mr. Spuegeon in The Sword and Trowel.
Just published, in demy Svo, price 10s. 6d.,
THE REDEMPTION OF MAN.
DISCUSSIONS BEARING ON THE ATONEMENT.
By D. W. SIMOK, Ph.D. (Tub.),
PEOFESSOE 01' THEOLOGY, OONGEEGATIONAL THEOLOGICAL HALL, BDINECBGH ;
AUTHOE OF 'the BIBLE, AN OUTGEOWTH OF THEOOBATIO LIFE.
CONTENTS :— Introduction. Chap. I. The Atonement and the Kingdom of God.
II The Constitution of Humanity. III. Relations of Man to God. IV.
Hehrew Sin-01ferin?s, with Ethnic Parallels. V. The Anger of God. VI. For-
giveness of Sin. VI r. Passio Christi. VIII. The Passion of Christ and the
Passion of Man. IX. The Atonement and Prayer: an 'Argumentum ad
Hominem.' X. The Historical Influence of the Death of Christ.
' A thoughtful, able, and learned discussion. . . . The author ie full of his subject,
and handles the literature of it with the facility which comee of sound and laborious
application of his mind to it. There ie no student of theology who would not be
benefited hy a careful and respectful study of this volume.' — lAterary Churchman.
' A book of interest and importance. . . . Dr. Simon throws his heart into his work,
and his hook is warmed throughout hy deep feeling. ... It is elaborated hy Dr. Simon
with singular power. Oxford undergraduates, reading for the theological school, will
find themselves unable to neglect this work.' — Saturday Review.
' Dr. Simon has produced a series of discussions of great value, vigorous, com-
prehensive in their grasp, pliilosophical in tone, and rich in theological scholarship. It
is lucidly written, and is full of suggestive force.' — Baptist Magazine.
* Possesses merits which are likely to give it high rank among modem discussions on
the atonement. . . . "\Ve most heartily commend to our readers this vigorous, thought-
ful, and devout volume.' — Literary World.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In crown Svo, price is. &d.,
THE BIBLE
AN OUTGROWTH OF THEOCRATIC LIFE.
'A more valuable and suggestive book haa not recently come into our hands.'
British Quarterly Review.
' This book will well repay perusal. It contains a great deal of learning as well as
ingenuity, and the etyle is clear.' — Guardian.
' A book of ahsorbing interest, and well worthy of study.' — Methodist New Connexion
Magazine.
'Dr. Simon's little book is worthy of the most careful attention.' — Baptist.
'We have read the hook with much appreciation, and heartily commend it to all
interested in the subject with which it deals.' — Scottish Congregationalist.
Just published, in demy Svo, price 14s.,
SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
By Dr. I. A. DORNER,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, BERLIN.
Edited by Dr. A. DORNER.
TRANSLATED BY
Professor C. M. MEAD, D.D., and Rev. R. T. CUNNINGHAM M.A.
'This nohle book is the crown of the Systematic Theology of the author ' ' It iq
a masterpiece. It is the fruit of a hfetime of profound investigation in 'tVin ^hil,.
sopbioal, biblical, and histcrioal eources of theology. The s?stem of Dnrnnt ia
comprehensive, profound, evangelical, and catholic. It rises inio tho ..io„- t;"'"'"^ "t
Christian thought above the strifes of Scholasticism.'LVfonalTsm.tndtystb^^m" U
' There rested on his whole being a consecration such as is lent onW 1,.^ ti,= vi-i
of a thorough sanctification of the inmost natm-e, and hYibeiS^ll^^t "^''''l
wisdom.'— Professor Wkiss. ' ^ dignity of a matured
' This is the last work we ehall obtain from the able pen of the lato D,. -n^™
it may be said that it fitly crowns the edifice of hie manifold labou^sl'-S^ecfator '
T. & T. CLARK,
38 GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH.
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
GRIMM'S LEXICON.
Just published, in demy iio, price 36s.,
GREEK-ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT,
BEIHQ
ffirtmm'3 TOt'Ifee'g ffila&ig -Raiji Ee&tamenti.
TRANSLATED, REVISED, AND ENLARGED
EY
JOSEPH HENRY THAYER, D.D.,
BUSSEY PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION IN THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
EXTRACT FROM PREFACE.
TOWARDS the close of the year 1862, the " Arnoldiache Buchhandlung "
in Leipzig published the First Part of a Greek-Latin Lexicon of the
New Testament, prepared, upon the basis of the " Olavis Novi Testamenti
Philologica" of C. G. Wilke (second edition, 2 vols. 1851), by Professor O.L.
WiUBALD Geimm of Jena. In his Prospectus Professor Grimm announced it
as his purpose not only (in accordance with the improvements in classical lexico-
graphy embodied in the Paris edition of Stephen's Thesaurus and in the fifth
edition of Passow's Dictionary edited by Rost and his coadjutors) to exhibit the
historical growth of a word's significations, and accordingly in selecting his
vouchers for New Testament usage to show at what time and in what class of
writers a given word became current, but also duly to notice the usage of the
Septuagint and of the Old Testament Apocrypha, and especially to produce a
Lexicon which should correspond to the present condition of textual criticism,
of exegesis, and of biblical theology. He devoted more than seven years to his
task. The successive Parts of his work received, as they appeared, the out-
spoken commendation of scholars diverging as widely in their views as Hupfeld
and Hengstenberg ; and since its completion in 1868 it has been generally
acknowledged to be by far the best Lexicon of the New Testament extant.'
'I regard it as a work of the greatest importance. ... It seems to me a work show-
ing the most patient diligence, and the most carefully arranged collection of useful slnd
helpful references.' — ^The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
' The use of Professor Grimm's book for years has convinced me that it is not oBly
unquestionably the best among existing New Testament Lexicons, but that, apart from
all comparisons, it is a work of the highest intrinsic merit, and one which is admirably
adapted to initiate a learner into an acquaintance with the language of the New Testa-
ment. It ought to be regarded as one of the first and most necessary requisites for the
study of the New Testament, and consequently for the study of theology in general.'—
Professor Emil SchOrer.
' This is indeed a noble volume, and satisfies in these days of advancing scholarship
a very great want. It is certainly unequalled in its lexicography, and invaluable in its
literary perfectuess. ... It should, wU, must make for itself a place in the library of
all those students who want to be thoroughly furnished for the work of understanding,
expounding, auil applying the Word of Goi.'— Evangelical Magazine.
'"" Undoubtedly the best of its kind. Beautifully printed and well translated, with
some corrections and improvements of the original, it will be prized by students of the
Christian. Scriptures.' — Athenceum. ' ' '
T. and T. Clark's Piiblications.
Just published, in demy Zvo, price 16s.,
HISTORY OF THE
CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
FROM THE REFORMATION TO KANT.
By BEENHAED PUNJEE.
Translated from the German by W HASTIE B.D.
With a Preface by Professor FLINT, D.D., LL,.U.
•The merits of Punjer's history are not difficult to discover ; on the contrary they
are of the kind ^vhich, as the French b2.j, sautent auxyeux. The language is almost
everywhere as plain and easy to apprehend as, considering the nature of the matter
conveyed, it could be made. The style is simple, natural, and direct ; the only sort of
style appropriate to the subject. The amount of information imparted is most exten-
sive and strictly relevant. Nowhere else will a student get nearly so much knowledge
as to what has been thought and written, within the area of Christendom, on the philo-
sophy of religion. He must he an excessively learned man in that department who has
nothing to learn from this book.'— jBxirocS from iSc Pre/ace.
'Piinier's "History of the Philosophy of Keligion" is fuller of information on its
subject than any other book of the kind that I have either seen or heard of. The writing
in it is, on the whole, clear, simple, and uninvolved. The Translation appears to me
true to' the German, and, at the same time, a piece of very satisfactory English. I should
think the work would prove useful, or even indispensable, as well for clergymen as for
professors and students.' — Db. Hdtchison STrBLiNO.
'A book of wide and most detailed research, showing true philosophic grasp.' —
Professor H. Cai.derwood. ^
'We consider Dr. Piinjer's work the most valuable contribution to this subject which
has yet appeared.' — Church Bells.
'Hemarkahle for the extent of ground covered, for systematic arrangement, lucidity
of expression, and judicial impa rtiality.' — London Quarterly Bmew.
Jtist published, in Two Vols., in demy &vo, price 21s.,
HANDBOOK OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
By GAEL FEIEDEICH KEIL,
DOCTOK AND PBOFIESSOB OP THEOLOGT.
Third Improued and Corrected Edition.
Note. This third edition is virtually a new book, for the learned Author has made
large additions and corrections, bringing it up to the present state of knowledge.
' This work is the standard scientific treatise on Biblical Archseology. It is a very
mine of learning.' — John Bull.
' No mere dreary mass of details, but a very luminous, philosophical, and suggestive
treatise. Many chapters are not simply invaluable to the student, hut have also very
direct homiletic usefulness.' — Literary World.
' A mine of biblical information, out of which the diligent student may dig precious
treasures.' — ITie Bock.
' Keil's Biblical Arch£Bology will be a standard work from the day of its appearance.'
— Preshptcrian Eein&w.
Jxist published, in demy 8vo, priee 10s. 6d.,
THE FORM OF THE CHRISTIAN TEMPLE.
Being a Treatise on the Constitution of the
New Testament Church.
By THOMAS WITHEEOW, D.D., LL.D.,
rROFESSOB OF CHDECH HISTORY IN MAGEE COLLEGE, LOJJD OKDEBRT.
' We welcome the appearance of another work from the scholarly pen of Dr Witherow
... No such able discussion of tho constitution of the New Testament Church h»i
appeared for a long time.' — The Witness.
T. and T. Clark's Publicatio
lis.
In Two Vols.; demy. Svo.~V.al. I. now ready, price XOs. &d.,
A NEW COMMENTARY
ON
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
By Peofessoe FEAISTZ DELITZSOH, D.D.
MESSES CLARE have pleasure in intimating, that by special arrangement
mth the author they are publishing a translation of the Fifth Edition,
thoroughly rensed, and in large part re-written, of this standard Commentary.
The learned author, who has for a generation been one of the foremost ' biblical
scholars of Germaiiy, and who is revered aliice for his learning and his piety, has
here stated with evident care his latest and most matured opinions.
' Thirty-fijs years have elapsed sines Prof. DeKtzsch's Commentary on Genesis first
^PPearsd ; iifteen years since the fourth edition was published in 1872. Ever in the van
of historical and philological research, the venerable author now oomea forward with
another fresh edition in which he incorporates what fifteen years have achieved for
illustration and criticism of the text of Genesis. ... We congratulate Prof. Delitzsch
on this new edition, and trust that it may appear before long iu an English dress. By
r'^-?i- *^™ ^y ^^ ''*''®r commentaries, he has earned the gratitude of every lover
of biblical science, and we shall' be siirprised if, in the future, many do not acknowledge
that they have found m it a welcome help and guide.'— Professor S. E. Dkivek, in The
Aeademy.
Just published, in post Svo, price 9s.,
THE TEXT OF JEREMIAH:
OE,
A Criiical Invesiigation of the Greek and Hebrew, with the
Variations in the LXX. Retranslated into the
Original and Explained.
By Peofessor G. C. WOEKMAN", M.A.,
VICTOKIA UNIVERSITY, COBUKG, CANADA.
With an Introduction by Professor F. DELITZSCH, D.D.
Besides discussing the relation between the texts, this book solves the difficult
problem of the variations, and reveals important matter for, the history, the inter-
pretations, the correction, and the reconstruction of the present Massoretic text.
* A work of valuable and lasting service.' — Professor Delitzsch.
Just published, in demy Svo, price 7s. M.,
THE BOOK OF PSALMS.
The Structural Connection of the Book of Psalms both in single Psalms and
in the Psalter as an organic whole.
By JOHN POEBES, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES, ABERDEEN,
'One cannot hut admire the keenness of insight and deftness of handling with which
thought is balanced ap:ainst thought, line against line, stanza against stanza, poem, against
poem. Only long familiarity and loving research could have given such skill and ease
of movement. ... A more suggestive, able, and origiual biblical monograph has not
appeared recently, the contents and purport of which commend themselve3 more power-
fully to believer's in the Ohribtian revelation and the inspiration of the Scriptures.' —
British and Foreign Evangelical Review.
T. and T. Clark s Publications.
Just published, in demy Svo, price 10*. 6rf.,
THE JEWISH
Airo
THE CHRISTIAN MESSIAH.
A STUDY IN THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.
By VINCENT HENEY STANTON, M.A.,
FELLOW, TUTOR, AND DIVINITY LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLKGE, CAilBRIDGE ;
LATE HULSEAN LECTURER.
'Mr. Stanton 'a book anewers a real want, and will be indiapensable to students of the
origin of Christianity. We hope that Mr. Stanton will be able to continue his labours
in that most obscure and most important period, of his competency to deal with which
he has given sucb good proof in this book.' — Guardian.
' Ws welcome this book as a valuable addition to the literature of a most important
subjsct. . . . The book is remarkable for the clearness of its style. Mr. Stanton is never
obscurs from beginning to end, and we think that no reader of average attainments -will
be able to put the book down without having learnt much from his lucid and scholarly
exposition.' — Ecclesiastical Gazette.
Now ready. Second Division, in Three Vols., 8vo, price 10«. &d. each,
HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE
TIME OF OUR LORD.
By Dr. EMIL SCHUEEE,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOOT IN THE UNIVEESITY OF GIESSEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND EDITION (Revised throughout, and
GREATLY ENLARGED) OF ' HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TIME.'
The First Division, which will probably hs in a single volume, is undsrgoing rsvision
by the Author. (The Sscond Division is complete in itself.)
' Under Professor SchUrer's guidance, we are enablsd to a large extent to construct a
social and political framework for the Gospel History, and to set it io such a light as to
see new evidences of the truthfulness of that history and of its contemporaneousness. . .
The length of our notice shows our estimats of the value of his work.' — English
Churchman.
'We gladly welcome the publication of this most valuable work.' — Dublin BevieiB.
'Most heartily do we commend this work as an invaluable aid in the intelligent study
of the New Testament.' — Nonconformist.
'As a handbook for the study of tbs New Testament, the work is invaluable and
unique.' — British Quart erly Review.
Just published, in demy 8vo, price 10s. 6rf.,
AN EXPLANATORY COMMENTARY. ON
ESTHER.
WKitlj iFour appenbujg,
CONSISTING OF
THE SECOND TARGUM TRANSLATED FROM THE ARAM AW
WITH NOTES, MITHRA, THE WINGED BULLS
OF PERSEPOLIS, AND ZOROASTER.
By Professor PAULUS CASSEL, D.D., Berlin
nosWn^Pf"^"^,-™,"!^*'"''''^'^ exposition, which will secure for itself a commanding
' A perfect mine of information.' — Record
to secure this commentarv will ri«B fvnrn itl, -f j ■;, ' \- ^° °°^ '^*'°^« fortune it is
_^nhe_life^s, and^-t^S^^^^^^
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
LOTZB'S MICROCOSMUS.
Just published, in Two Vols., S,vo (UbO pages), Second Edition, jsncs 36*.,
MICROCOSMUS:
Concerning Man and his relation to the World.
By HERMANN LOTZE.
STransIateB front t^e ffietman
Bt ELIZABETH HAMILTON and E. E. CONSTANCE JONES.
' The Englieh public have now before them the greatest philosopbio work produced
in Germany by the generation just past. The translation comes at an opportune time,
for the circumstances of English thought, just at the present moment, are peculiarly
those with which Lotze attempted to deal when he wi'ote his " Microcosmus, a quarter
of a century ago. . . . Few philosophic books of the century are so attractive both in
style and matter.' — Athenaeum.
' These are indeed two masterly volumes, vigorous in intellectual power, and trans-
lated with rare ability. . . . This work will doubtless find a place on the shelves of all
the foremost thinkers and students of modern times.' — •Evangelical Magazine.
' Lotze is the ablest, the most brilliant, and most renowned of the German philosophers
of to-day. . . . He has rendered invaluable and splendid service to Christian thinkers,
and has given them a work which cannot fail to equip them for the sturdiest intellectual
conflicts and to ensure their victory.' — Baptist Magazine.
* The reputation of Lotze both as a scientist and a philosopher, no less than the merits
of the work itself, will not fail to secure the attention of thoughtful readers.' — Scotsman.
* The translation of Lotze'e Microcosmus is the most important of recent events in our
philosophical literature. . . . The discussion is carried on on the basis of an almost
encyclopEedic knowledge, and with the profoandest and subtlest critical insight. We
know of no other work containing so much of speculative suggestion, of keen criticism,
and of sober judgment on these topics.' — Andover Review.
In Two Vols., 8fo, price 21s.,
NATURE AND THE BIBLE:
LECTUEES ON THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION IN ITS
RELATION TO NATURAL SCIENCE.
Bt Dk.. FR. H. RBTJSCH.
eevised and ooeeected bt the authoe.
TRANSLATED fbom the Fourth Edition bt KATHLEEN LYTTBLTON.
' Other champions much more competent and learned than myself might have been
placed in the field ; I will only name one of the most recent, Dr. Eeusch, author of
" Nature and the Bible."'— The Eight Hon. "W. E. Gladstone.
' The work we need hardly say, is of profound and perennial interest, and it can
scarcely be too highly commended as.in many i-espects, a very successful attempt to settle
one of the most perplemng questions of the day. It is impossible to read it without
obtaining larger viewB of theology, and more accurate opinions respecting ite relations
to science, and no one will rise from its perusal without feeling a deep sense of gratitude
to its author.' — Scottish Review.
' This graceful and accurate translation of Dr. Eeusch's well-known treatise on the
identity of the doctrines of the Bible and the revelations of Nature is a valuable addition
to English literature.' — Whitehall Review.
' "We owe to Dr. Eeusch, a Catholic theologian, one of the most valuable treatises on
the relation of Eeligion and Natural Science that has appeared for many years. Its fine
impartial tone, its absolute freedom from passion, its glow of sympathy with all sound
science, and its liberality of religious views, are likely to surprise all readers who axe
unacquainted with the fact that, whatever may be the errors of the Eomish Church, its
more enlightened members are, as a rule, free from that idolatry of the letter of bcrip-
ture which is one of the most dangerous faults of ultra-Protestantism. -Jjiterary World.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Just published, in post &vo, price 7s. Gd. ,
THE PREACHERS OF SCOTLAND FROM THE
SIXTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
TWELFTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES
By W. G. BLAIKTE/ D.D.,
PEOFESSOK OF APOLOGETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY, THE KEW COLLEGE,
EDINBURGH.
' Exceedingly interesting and well wortli reading both for information and pleasure.
... A better review of Scottish preaching from an evangelical etandpomt could not be
desir ed. ' — Scotsman. _^_^_
Just published, In crown Svo, price 3s. Sd.,
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
THE THEOLOGY
AND
THEOLOGIANS OF SCOTLAND,
CHIEFLY OF THE
Scbentecntlj auU ^tgf)tcmttj Centuries.
Being one of the 'Cunningham Lectures.'
By JAMES WALKEE, D.D., Carnwath.
' These pages glow with fervent and eloquent rejoinder to the cheap scorn and
ecun-iloue satire poured out upon evangelical theology ae it has heen developed noi-th
of the Tweed.' — British Quarterly Review.
' We do not wonder that in their delivery Dr. Walker's lectures excited gi'eat interest ;
we should have wondered far more if they had not done so.' — ilr. Spurgeon in Swoi'd
and Trowel.
In Two Vols., Svo, price 21s. ^
A SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY.
BY THE LATE
W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., LL.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE THEOLOGICAL HALL OF THE CONGREGATIOSAL CHURCHES
IS SCOTLAND.
' A work like this is of priceless ad\'antage. It is the testimony of a powerful and
accomplished mind to the supreme authority of the Scriptures, a lucid and orderly
exhibition of their contents, and a viudication, at once logical, scholarly, and conclusive,
of their absolute euiSciency and abiding truthfulness. It is a pleasure to read lectures
so vigorous and comprehensive in their grasp, so subtle in their dialect, so reverent in
spirit, and so severely chaste in their style. There are scores of men who would suffer
no loss if for the next couple of years they read no other book than this. To master it
thoroughly would be an incalculable gum.'— Baptist Magazine.
' This IS probably the most interesting and scholarly system of theology on the lines
°mr? ?^y '"'^''^^ ^^^ ^"^"^ *" light.'— iiferai-i/ World.
ihis has been characterised as probably the most valuable contribution which our
™„ "^ has made to theology during the present century, and we do not think this an
exaggerated estimate.'— 5cb««isft Congregationalut.
Alexande^* Scotland aud Congregationalism had many worthies like Dr. Lindsay
Drizre>^h e^f' ; J^ ? • '"''u' ^"^l " "■=*; '=^P«ri«i>ce and heavenly knowledge, will
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Works by Professor I. A. DORNER.
Just ■published, in demy 8vo, price 14s.,
SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
By De. I. A. DOENEE,
PKOFESSOK OF THEOLOGY, EEKLIN.
Edited bt Dr. A. DORNEE.
TKANSLATED BT
Peofessoe C. M. mead, D.D., and Rev. R. T. CUNNINGHAM, M.A.
'This noble book ie the crown of the Systematic Theology of the author. . . . It ie
a masterpiece. Il is the fruit of a lifetime of profound investigation in the philo-
Bophioal, biblical, and historical sourcee of theology. The system of Dorner is
jBomprehensive, profound, evangelical, and catholic. It rises into the clear heaven of
Christian thought above the strifes of Scholasticism, nationalism, and Mysticiem. It
ie, indeed, comprehensive of all that is valuable in these three types of human thought.'
— Professor C. A. Bkiggs, D.D.
' There rested on his whole being a consecration such as is lent only by the nobility
of a thorough sanctiflcation of the inmost nature, and by the dignity of a matured
■wisdom.' — Professor Weiss.
' This is the last work we shall obtain from tbe able pen of the late Dr. Dorner, and
it may be said that it fitly crowue the edifice of his manifold labours.' — Spectator.
In Four Volumes, 8vo, price £2, 2s.,
A SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
' In all investigations the author is fair, clear, and moderate ; ... he has shown that
hie work is one to be valued, for its real ability, as an important contribution to the litera-
ture of theology.' — Scotsman.
*Had it been the work of an entire lifetime, it would have been a monument of
marvellous industry and rare scholarship. It ie a tribute alike to the genius, the learn-
ing, and the untiring pereeverance of its author,' — Baptist Magazine.
* The work hae many and great excellencee, and ie really indispensable to all who
would obtain a thorough acquaintance with the great problems of theology. It ie a
great benefit to English students that it should be made acceeeible to them in their own
language, and in a form eo elegant and convenient.' — Literary Churchman.
In Five Volumes, Si'o, price, £2, 12s. 6rf.,
HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
' So great a mase of learning and thought eo ably eet forth hae never before been
preeented to English readere, at least on this eubjeot.' — Journal of Sacred Literature.
In crown 8uo, price 4s. &d.,
THE BIBLE
AN OUTGROWTH OF THEOCRATIC LIFE.
By D. W. SIMON,
PRINCIPAL OF THE CONGREGATIONAL COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.
'A more valuable and euggestive book has not recently come into our hande.'—
British Quarterly Review. * j , , ,
' This book will well repay perusal. It contains a great deal of learning as well ae
ingenuity, and the style is clear.'— Gucwdiara.
'A book of absorbing interest, and well worthy of study.'— Methodist New Connexion
^r 'siinon'e little book is worthy of the most careful attention.'— JSapJe'sj.
'We have read the book with mnch appreciation, and heartily commend it to all
interested in the subject with which it deals.' — Scottish Congregationalist.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.
New Edition, Re-written and Enlarged.
APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 1-100. Two Vola. Ex. demy 8vo, price 21e.
ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 100-325. Two Vols. Ex. demy 8vo, price 2Xs.
NICENE and POST-NICENE CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 325-600. Two Vole. Ex. demy
8vo, price 2Ia.
MEDIiEVAL CHRISTIANITY, A.D. 690-1073. Two Vola. Ex. demy 8vo, price 21s.
(Complstion of thie Period, 1073-1517, in preparation.)
MODERN CHRISTIANITY. The German Reformation, A.D. 1617-1630, Two Vols.
Ex. demy 8vo, price 21s.
' Dr. Schaff's " History of the Christian Church " is the mast ualuable contribution to Eccieaias-
tical History that has euer been published in this country. When completed it will haue no rival
In point of comprehensiiieness, and in presenting the results of the most advanced scholarship
and the latest discoveries. Each division cotters a separate and distinct epoch, and is complete in
itself.'
' No etudent, and indeed no critic, can with faimeas overlook a work like the preeent,
written with such evident candour, and, at the same time, with so thorough a knowledge
of the sourcea o( early Christian hiatory.' — Scotsman.
'In no other work of its kind with which I am acquainted will students and general
rsaders find ao much to inatruct and interest them.' — Key. Prof. Hitchcock, D.D.
' A work of the fresheet and most conscientious research.* — Dr. Joseph Cook, in
Boston Monday Lectures.
' Dr. Schaff presents a connected hiatory of all the great movementa of thought aud
action in a pleasant and memorable style. Hia discrimination is keen, his courage
undaunted, his candour transparent, and for general readers he haa produced what we
have no hesitation in pronouncing the History of the Church.' — Freeman.
Just published in ex. 8vo, Second Edition, price 9s.,
THE OLDEST CHURCH MANUAL
CALLED THE
UeacUnQ of tbe XTwelve Hpostles.
The Didachi and Kindred Documents in the Original, with Translations and Discussions of
Post-Apostolic Teaching, Baptism, Worship, and Discipline, and with
Illustrations and Fac-Similes of the Jerusalem Manuscript.
Bt PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PB0FE8S0R IN ONION IHEOLOOICAL SEMINAKY, NEW VORK.
'The best work en the DidacliS which has yet appeared.'— CAwrcAmore.
'Dr. Schaff's "Oldest Church Manual "is by alone wav the nWpqt Tnn,=« ,.«.y,„iot«
and in every way valuable edition of the recentl/-discolerId^' 'Teo.oh\^^oTthl T^^^}!"
which has been or is likely to be pubhahed Dr <?,;i oW= i? , ^ ® Apostles
forth he regarded as indisoensablfi w„' v ^'^''^ffs Proleg,.mena will bence-
scbolarly ani valuable edItSn of tL" bidac^ T. oltl7o add' t^h^t" f >' '^'^ T''
a striking portrait of Bryennios and many othir ul^f u?X\\^Vonin;y«.?Xt-„'/
This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at |http : //books . google . com/
i by Google
^
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by
Google
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
M
ESSRS. CLARK have much pleasure in forwarding to
their Subscribers the First Issue for 1874 —
Keil on Jeremiah, Vol. II.
Christlieb on Modern Doubt and Christian Belief.
They are especially glad to introduce the latter work to the
British public, as being, by general consent in fcermany, the most
remarkable work on Apologetics of recent times ; and they have
no doubt it will take the sime position in this country, and be
of great service in the defence of truth.
In addition to the volumes of the Keil and Delitzsch Series,
of which only the Salomonic Writings and Ezekiel remain
to be published, Messrs. Clark have in preparation a Transla-
tion of Professor Oehler's Biblical Theology of the Old
Testament; and they have also pleasure in intimating that
Dr. Luthardt is preparing a New Edition of his Commentary
ON St. John's Gospel, which, with the sanction of the Author,
will appear in the Foreign Theological Library.
They beg anew to thank the Subscribers for their continued
support, and to respectfully request a continuance of it
May they ask a remittance of the Subscription for 1874 —
21s.
Edinburgh, Marck 1874.
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by VjOOQIC
CLARK'S
FOREIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
FOUETH SERIES.
VOL. XL I.
Bnl on t|)t ^xof^uiti of 3it»mta( mti Eatntntationtf.
VOL. IL
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET.
MDCCCLXXIV.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
FBIKTES BY U17BRAY AND OIBB,
T. & T. CLAKK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, .
DUBLIN,
FEW YOP.K,
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
JOHN R0BBBT80N AND CO.
eCRIBNBB, WELFOBD, AND ARMSTRONG.
A
Digitized by
Google
BIBLICAL COMMENTARY
ON
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
BY
C. F. KEIL, D.D., AND F. DELITZSCH, D.D.,
PBOFESSOBS OF THEOLOGY.
THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH,
BY
C. R KEIL, D.D.
VOL. II.
TBANSLATED FROU THE GERMAN BY
JAMES KENNEDY, B.D.
EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGIT STREET.
MDCCCLXXIV.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
^ TBgOLO'JICAl j
4[^WTO^
y
OCT
1 6 \950
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Vim
^^i^
159i24
CONTENTS.
THE PEOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
II. Special Pbedictions (continued) — Chap, xxi.-xxxui. "««
B. The Annonncement of Deliverance for all Israel. — Chap, xxx.-
xzziii., ....... 1
Chap, ixx., rxxi.— Israel's Deliverance and Glorious Condition
in the Future, ....... 2
Chap. xmi. — The Purchase of a Field as a Symbol of the
Bestoration of Judah after the Exile, . . . .47
Chap, zzxiii. — Benewed Promise of the Restoration and
Glorious Condition of the People of God, . . .60
III. The Laboue and Suffering of the Peophet before and after
THE Conquest and Destruction of Jerusalem. — Chap.
XSXIV.-XLV., ....... 78
A. Prophecies delirered under Zedekiah, and Events of Je-
htnakim's Time — Chap, xtriv.-xxxvi.
Chap. xxxIt. — Concemiiig Zedekiah and the Emancipation of
the Men- and Maid-servants, ..... 79
Chap. XXXV. — ^The Example of the Rechabites, . . .88
Chap, xxxvi. — Jeremiah's Discourses are -written down, and
read in the Temple, ...... 93
B. Experiences and Utterances of Jeremiah during the Siege and
Capture of Jerusalem. — Chap, xxxvii.-xxxix.
Chap, xxxvii — Declaration regarding the Issue of the Siege ;
Imprisonment of Jeremiah and Conversation with the King, . 104
Chap, xxxviii. — Jeremiah in the Miry Pit. Last Interview
with the King, ...... 108
Chap, xxxix. — Capture of Jerusalem ; Fate of Zedekiah and
Jeremiah. Consolatory Message to Ebedmelech, . . 116
C. Jeremiah's Predictions and Experiences after the Destruction
of Jerusalem. — Chap, xl.— xlv.
Chap, xl., xli. — Liberation of Jeremiah. Murder of Gedaliah by
Ishmael, and its Results, ..... 125
Digitized by
Google
VllI
CONTENTS.
PAG*
Chap, xlii.— The Word of God concerning the Flight to Egypt, 189
Chap, xliii — The Flight to Egypt : the Conquest of Egypt
predicted, ....... 146
Chap. zliv. — Waruiag against Idolatry, and Intimation of its
Punishment, ....... 155
Chap. xlv. — ^A Promise addressed to Baruch, . . . 170
IV. PfiOPHEClES DIRECTED AGAINST FOREIGN NATIONS. -:-CHAP.
XLVI.-LI., ....... 173
Chap, xlvi.— On Egj-pt, . . . . . .177
Chap, xlvii — Concerning the Philistines, . . . . 197
Chap, zlviii. — Concerning Moab, ..... 204
Chap. xliz. — Concerning Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar,
Hazor, Elam, ....... 235
Chap. 1., li. — Against Babylon, ..... 262
Appendix —
Chap. lii. — ^Historical Account of the Capture and Destruction of
Jerusalem, the Fate of Zedekiah and the People, and the
Liberation of Jehoiachin from Imprisonment, . . 322
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAR
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. The Name, Contents, and Arrangement of the Book, . . . ' 835
§ 2. The Author, Time of Composition, and Position in the Canon, . 339
EXPOSITION.
Chap. i. —Sorrow and Wailing over the Fall of Jerusalem and Judah, 355
Chap. ii. — Lamentation over the Judgment of Destruction that has
come on Zion and the Desolation of Judah, . . . 379
Chap. iii. — The Suffering and the Consolation of the Gospel, . 400
Chap. iv. — Submission under the Judgment of God, and Hope, . 429
Chap. v. — A Prayer to the Lord by the Chvirch, languishing in
Miseryj for the Kestoration of her former State of Grace, . 445
Digitized by
Google
THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
B. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OP DELIVERANCE FOE ALL ISRAEL. —
CHAP. XXX.-XXXIII.
N view of the impending fall of the kingdom of
Judah, Jeremiah seeks to present the godlj with a
strong anchor of hope in the reahzation of God's
gracious promises, which were to be fulfilled after
the appointed season of punishment had passed. For this
purpose, after predicting the ills of exile times, the prophet
gives a comprehensive statement concerning the deliverance
which the Lord will vouchsafe to His people in the future, and
gathers together the repeated briefer promises regarding the
restoration and glorious condition of Israel and Judah, so as to
give a full description of the deliverance intended for all the
covenant people under the sceptre of the future David. This
detailed announcement of the deliverance consists of a pretty
long prophetic address (which Hengstenberg very properly
designates "the triumphal hymn of Israel's salvation," chap.
XXX. and xxxi.), and two pieces confirmatory of this address, viz. :
(1) one recording a symbolical act performed by the prophet
at God's command, — the sa,le of a piece of hereditary property
in land during the last siege of Jerusalem, shortly before the
breaking up of the kingdom, which commenced with the taking
of the city, — together with a message from God explaining this
act, chap, xxxii. ; and (2) another passage giving, in prophetic
language, a renewed promise that Jerusalem and Judah would
be restored with the blissful arrangements connected with the
Davidic monarchy and the Levitical priesthood, chap, xxxiii.
According to the headings given in xxxii. 1 and xxxiii. 1, these
two latter pieces belong to the tenth year of Zedekiah's reign ;
VOL. II. A
r
Digitized by
Google
2 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
the address contained in chap. xxx. and xxxi., on the other hand,
belongs to a somewhat earlier period, and was not uttered
publicly before the people, but simply composed in writing,
and meant to be preserved for future use. As regards the
exact time of its composition, the views of modern expositors
are very dissimilar. While Hengstenberg, with many others,
places it in the same period with the allied chapters xxxii. and
xxxiii., viz. in the time when Jerusalem was being besieged,
immediately before the capture and destruction of the city,
Nagelsbach reckons this address among the oldest portions of
the whole book, and assigns its composition to the times of King
Josiah, to which iii. 11-25 belongs. But the arguments adduced
in support of this view are quite' insufficient to establish it. It
does not by any means follow from the substantial agreement of
the address with that in chap, iii., so far as it exists, that they
were both composed at the same time ; and if (as Nagelsbach
thinks) the fact that there is no mention made of the Chaldeans
were taken as a criterion of composition before the fourth year
of Jehoiakim, then, too, would the address in chap, xxxiii. be
put down as having been composed before that year, but in
glaring contradiction to the inscription given xxxiii. 1. And .
as little reason is there for inferring, with Hengstenberg, from
XXX. 5-7, that the final catastrophe of Jeremiah's time is repre-
sented as still imminent; for these verses do not refer at ail to
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. That learned
writer is, however, quite correct in his remark, that the prophet
takes his stand-point within the period of the catastrophe, as if
it had already begun, but that this time is an ideal present, so
that we must not allow ourselves to be deceived as to the time
of composition by the circumstance that, generally, Judah no
less than Israel appears to be already in a state of exile, far
from the land of the Lord. The time of composition cannot
be made out with perfect certainty. Yet there is nothing against
the assumption that it is the tenth year of Zedekiah.
Chap. XXX. and xxxi. IsraeVs Deliverance and Glorious
Condition in the Future.
A great day of judgment, before which all the world trembles,
will bring to Israel deliverance from the yoke imposed on them.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXX.-XXXI. 3
The Lord will bring them ont of the land of their captivity
(xxx. 4-11). He will bind up and heal the wounds which He
inflicted on them because of their sins ; will render to those
who oppressed and chastised them according to their deeds
(vers. 12-17) ; will again build up His kingdom, and render
His people glorious, both in temporal and spiritual respects
(vers. 18-22). The wrath of the Lord will be poured forth
upon all evil-doers like a tempest, till He has performed the
thoughts of His heart at the end of the days (vers. 23, 24).
At that time the Lord will become the-God of all the families
of Israel, and show them favour as His own people (xxxi. 1-6) ;
He will also gather the remnant of Israel out of the land of the
north, lead them back into their inheritance, and make them
glad and prosperous through His blessing (vers. 7-14) ; the
sorrow of Ephraim will He change to joy, and He will perform
a new thing in the land (vers. 15-22). In like manner will
He restore Judah, and make want to cease (vers. 23-26). Israel
and Judah shall be raised to new life (vers. 27-30), and a new
covenant will be made with them, for the Lord will write His
law in their heart and forgive their sins (vers. 31-34). Israel
shall for ever remain the people of God, and Jerusalem be
built anew to the honour of the Lord, and, as a holy city, shall
no more be laid waste for ever (vers, 35-40).
This address forms a united whole which divides into two
halves. In chap. xxx. 4-22 it is the deliver^mce of Israel in
general that is set forth ; while in the passage from chap. xxx.
23 on to the end of chap. xxxi. it is deliverance, more especially
in reference to Israel and Judah, that is portrayed. As there
is no doubt about its unity, so neither is there any well-founded
doubt regarding its genuineness and integrity. Hence the
assertion of Hiteig, that, as a whole, it exhibits such a want of
connection, such constant alternation of view-point, so many
repetitions, and such irregularity in the structure of the verses,
that there seems good ground for suspecting interpolation, —
such an assertion only shows the inability of the expositor to
put himself into the course of thought in the prophetic word, to
grasp its contents properly, and to give a fair and unprejudiced
estimate of the whole. Hitzig would reject xxxi. 38-40, and
Nagelsbach xxx. 20-24, as later additions, but in neither case
Digitized by
Google
4 TEE FBOFHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
is this admissible; and Kueper (Jeremias, p. 170 sqq.) and
Graf, in his Commentary, have already so well shown with
what little reason Movers and Hitzig have supposed they had
discovered so many "interpolations," that, in our exposition,
we merely intend to take up in detail some of the chief
passages.
Chap. XXX. 1-3. Introduction, and statement op the
SUBJECT. — Ver. 1. " The word which came to Jeremiah from
Jahveh, saying : Ver. 2. Thus hath Jahveh the God of Israel
said : Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in
a book ; Ver. 3. For, behold, days come, saith Jahveh, when I
shall turn the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith
Jahveh, and I shall bring them back to the land which I gave
to their fathers, and they shall possess it."
Ver. 1 contains the Jieading not merely of vers. 2 and 3, as
Hitzig erroneously maintains, but of the whole prophecy, in
chap. XXX. and xxxi. Vers. 2 and 3 form the introduction.
Jeremiah is to write the following word of God in a book,
because it refers to times still future, — regards the deliverance
of Israel and Judah from exile, which will not take place till
afterwards. In assigning the reason for the command to write
down the word of God that had been received, there is at the
same time given the subject of the prophecy which follows.
From this it is further evident that the expression " all the
words which I have spoken to thee " cannot, like xxxvi. 2, be
referred, with J. D. Michaelis, to the whole of the prophecies
which Jeremiah had up till that time received; it merely
refers to the following prophecy of deliverance. The perfect
wan is thus not a preterite, but only expresses that the ad-
dress of God to the prophet precedes the writing down of
the words he received. As to the expression tvaf aits', see
on xxix. 14.
Vers. 4-11. TTie judgment on th& nations for the deliverance
of Israel. — ^Ver. 4. " And these are the words which Jahveh
spake concerning Israel and Judah : Ver. 5. For thus saith
Jahveh : We have heard a cry of terror, fear, and no peace.
Ver. 6. Ask now, and see whether a male bears a child I Why
do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXy, 4-11. 5
in cbildbirtL, and every face tarned to paleness? Ver. 7.
Alas ! for that day is great, with none like it, and it is a time
of distress for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it. Ver. 8.
And it shall come to pass on that day, saith Jahveh of hosts,
that I will break his yoke from upon thy neck, and I will burst
thy bonds, and strangers shall no more put servitude on him ;
Ver. 9. Bat they shall serve Jahveh their God, and David
their king, whom I shall raise up to them. Ver. 10. But fear
thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith Jahveh, neither be con-
founded, O Israel ; for, behold, I will save thee from afar, and
thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall
return, and be at rest, and be secure, and there shall be none
making him afraid. Ver. 11. For I am with thee, saith
Jahveh, to save thee ; for I will make an end of all the nations
whither I have scattered thee, yet of thee will I not make an
end, but I will chastise thee properly and will not let thee go
quite unpunished."
With ver. 4 is introduced the description of Israel's restora-
tion announced in ver. 3. This introduction is not absolutely
necessary, but neither is it for that reason spurious and to be
expunged, as Hitzig seeks to do ; it rather corresponds to the
breadth of Jeremiah's representation. The '3 in ver. 5 is ex-
plicative : " Thus, namely, hath Jahveh spoken." With the
lively dramatic power of a poet, the prophet at once transports
the hearers or readers of his prophecy, in thought, into the
great day to come, which is to bring deliverance to all Israel.
As a day of judgment, it brings terror and anguish on all those
who live to see it. nTin pip^ « A voice (sound) of trembling
. (or terror) we hear," viz. the people, of whom the prophet is
one. ins does not depend on «yoK>, but forms with Di^B' )'W
an independent clause : " There is fear and not peace" (or
safety). Ver. 6. What is the cause of this great horror, which
makes all men, from convulsive pains, hold their hands on their
loins, so as to support their bowels, in which they feel the pangs,
and which makes every countenance pale I In ver. 7 the cause
of-this horror is declared. It is the great day of judgment
that is coming. "That (not this) day" points to the future,
and thus, even apart from other reasons, excludes the supposi-
tion that it is the day of the destruction of Jerusalem that is
Digitized by
Google
6 TBE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
meant. The words " that day is great'*^ refer to Joel ii. 1 1,
and '' there is none like it" is an imitation of Joel ii. 2 ; in the
latter passage the prophet makes use of a judgment which he
had seen passed on Judah, — its devastation by locusts, — and
for the first time presents, as the main element in his prophecy,
the idea of the great day of judgment to come on tdl nations,
and by which the Lord will perfect His kingdom on this earth.
This day is for Jacob also, i.e. for all Israel, a time of distress ;
for the judgment falls not merely on the heathen nations, but
also on the godless members of the covenant people, that they
may be destroyed from among the congregation of the Lord.
The judgment is therefore for Israel as well as for other nations
a critical juncture, from which the Israel of God, the com-
munity of the faithful, will be delivered. This deliverance is
described more in detail in ver. 8 S. The Lord will break the
yoke imposed on Israel, free His people from all bondage to
strangers, i.e. the heathen, so that they may serve only Him,
the Lord, and David, His king, whom He will raise up. The
su£5x in W^ is referred by several expositors (Hitzig, Nagels-
bach) to the) king of Babylon, " as having been most clearly
before the minds of Jeremiah and his contemporaries;" in
support of this view we are pointed to Isa. x. 27, as a passage
which may have been before the eyes of Jeremiah. But
neither this parallel passage nor ^'^K^V (with the sufiSx of the
second person), which immediately follows, sufficiently justifies
this view. For, in the second half also of the verse, the second
person is interchanged with the third, and l^nhDlo, which is
parallel with w^, requires us to refer the suffi[x in the latter
word to Jacob, so that " his yoke" means " the yoke laid on
him," as in 1 Kings xii. 4, Isa. ix. 3. It is also to be bnrne in
mind that, throughout the whole prophecy, neither Babylon
nor the king of Babylon is once mentioned; and that the
judgment described in these verses cannot possibly be restricted
to the downfall of the Babylonian monarchy, but is the judg-
ment that is to fall upon all nations (ver. 11). And although
this judgment begins with the fall of the Babylonian supre-
macy, it will bring deUverance to the people of God, not
merely from the yoke of Babylon, but from every yoke which
strangers have laid or vrill lay on them. — Ver. 9. Then Israel
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXX. 12-17. 7
will no longer serve strangers, i.e. foreign rulers who are
heathens, but their God Jahveh, and David the king who will
be raised up to them, i.e. the Messiah, the righteous sprout that
Jahveh will raise up to David ; cf . xxiii. 5. The designation
of this sprout as " David their king," i.e. the king of the
Israelites, points us back to Hos. iii. 5. — ^Ver. 10 f. Israel the
servant of Jahveh, i.e. the true Israel, faithful and devoted to
God, need thus fear nothing, since their God will deliver them
from the land of their captivity, and stand bj them as their
deliverer, so that they shall be able to dwell in peace and un-
disturbed security in their own land. For Jahveh will make a
complete end of all the nations among whom Israel has been
scattered ; Israel, on the other hand, He shall certainly chastise,
but OBfu? (according to what is right, in due measure), that
they may be made better by their punishment. As to the ex-
pression t3S?*B? IB J see on x. 24; for '"i« nfe'J l6, see on iv. 27
and v." 18 '(ink for inN, v. 18); and lastly, on 1^3« ^ m,
cf. Ex. xxxiv. ^7, Num. xiv. 18, Nah. i. 3. — ^Vers. 10 and 11
are repeated in xlvi. 27, 28, though with some slight changes.^
Vers. 12-17. Because Israel has been severely chastised for
his sins, the Tjord will now punish his enemies, and heal Israel.
— Ver. 12. " For thus saith Jahveh : It is ill with thy bruise,
thy wound is painful. Ver. 13. There is none to judge thy
cause ; for a sore, healing-plaster there is none for thee. Ver.
14. All thy lovers have forgotten thee, thee they seek not;
for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, the
chastisement of a cruel one, because of the multitude of thine
iniquity, [because] thy sins were numerous. Ver. 15. Why
* The general strain of these verses is the same as that of the second
portion of Isaiah ; hence Hitzig, following Morers, views them as an inter-
polation made by the reviser. Bat this view is most incorrect, as Graf has
already pointed out. The only expression which, besides the repetition
made in xlvi 27, occurs nowhere else in Jeremiah, but frequently in the
second Isaiah, is, " my- servant Jacob ;" cf. Isa. xEv. 1, 2, xlv. 4, xlviii.
20 and xli. 8, zliv. 21, xlix. 3. All the rest is not characteristic of Isaiah.
" Thus, * Fear not, I am with thee,' is certainly found in Isa. xliii. 5, but
also in Gen. zxvi. 24 ; ' Fear not, neither be afraid,' is found in a like con-
nection in Isa. U. 7, but also in Jer. jjsm. 24, Deut. i. 21, xzxi. 8, Josh.
viii. 1 ; cf. Isa. xliv. 2, Jer. i. 8, 17, JosL L 9. 3ipV' occurs also in vers. 7,
10, 25, Lam. ii 3. For ^T^'O, cf. xiv, 8 ; for jsrna, cf . xxiii. 23, tttj 3,
Digitized by
Google
8 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
criest thou over thy bruise, — [because] thy wotind is bad ?
Because of the multitude of thine iniquity, [because] thy sins
were numerous, have I done these things to thee. Ver. 16.
Therefore all those who devour thee shall be devoured ; and all
thine oppressors, they shall all go into captivity ; and they who
spoiled thee shall become a spoil, and those that plundered thee
I will give up for plunder. Ver. 17. For I will put a plaster
on thee, and will heal thee of thy wounds, saith Jahveh ; for
they call thee an outcast, [and say], Zion is she [whom] none
seeketh after."
This strophe is only a fuller expression of the idea set forth
in ver. 11, that the Lord certainly chastises Israel, but will
not make an end of him. The chastisement has commenced.
From the wounds and blows which Israel has received, he lies
motionless and helpless, getting neither sympathy nor aid from
his lovers. The feminine sufHx and the mention of lovers show
that the address turns to the daughter of Zion. On the ex-
pression "iQ^V? ^5?, " it is ill with thy bruise," cf . xv. 18.
nso njrtJ, « bad, incurable is the stroke which thou hast re-
ceived," as in X. 19, xiv. 17. ^ P% "to execute justice;" cf.
V. 28, xxii. 16. Hitzig well explains the meaning : " thy
claims against thy heathen oppressors." 1i'?p, although con-
nected by the accents with what precedes, does not agree well
with ^?.'"1 H! ; for "lifO has not the meaning which has been
attributed to it, of a " bandage," but, as derived from the verb
lit, "to press a wound," signifies the wound that has been
pressed together ; see on Hos. v. IS. Neither does the figure
of the wound agree with the expression, " there is none to judge
li. 50. In the second part of Isaiah, {3Nt5' occurs as Beldom as TIHO J^NI ;
on the other hand, cf. Jer. xlviii. 11, vii. S3. The expressions found in
ver. 11 are as rare in the second part of Isaiah as they are frequent in
Jeremiah. Thus, ' For I am with thee to save thee' is found in xv. 20, xlii.
11 ; 'to make a full end ' occurs also in iv. 27, v. 10, 18 ; ' I shall certainly
not let thee go unpunished,' which, like Nah. i. 8, seems to have been taken
from Ex. xxxiv. 7 or Num. xiv. 18, is not found at all in the second part of
Isaiah ; )«Bn, which is found in ix. 15, xiii. 24, xviii. 17, xxiii. 1 f., appears
only in Isa. xli. 16 ; and while OSKTS^ "IB^ is nsed in the same meaning in
I. 24, nD* occurs nowhere in the second part of Isaiah, and DBKis^ is
found in Isa. xli. 1, liv. 17, lix. 11, in quite a different connection and
meaning." (Graf.)
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXX. 12-17. 9
thy cause," so that we might, with Umbreit, render the passage,
" No one gives thee thy due, in pressing thy wounds ;" while,
as Graf says, "HIkbt dissociated from liW? forms a useless
synonym with >^^^" and in xlvi. 11, where the thought is re-
peated, it is separated from the latter word. Accordingly, with
Hitzig and Graf, we connect rilKQ"i nijo? into one clause : " for
the wound, there is no healing (or medicine) — no plaster."
npyn is what is laid upon the wound, a plaster. "All thy
lovers," i.e. the nations which were once sdlied with thee (cf.
xxii. 20 and 22), do not trouble themselves about thee, because
I have smitten thee so heavily on account of the multitude of
thy transgressions ; cf. v. 6, xiii. 22. ^^'^ still depends on the
preposition 7^, which continues its force, but. as a conjunction.
The idea that the Israelites have richly deserved their sufferings
is still more plainly presented in ver. 15 : " Why criest thou,
because thou hast brought this suffering on thee through thy
sins?" B*UK also depends on ?P, which continues to exert its
power in the sentence as a conjunction.-^Ver. 16 f. Therefore
(i.e. because Israel, although punished for his sins, is destitute
of help) will the Lord take pity on him. He will recompense
to his oppressors and spoilers according to their deeds, and will
heal his wounds. The enemies of Zion will now meet the fate
which they have prepared for Zion. Those who, like rapacious
animals, would devour Israel (see on ii. 3), shall be devoured,
and all his oppressors shall go into captivity ; cf. xxii. 22. The
Kethib TJB^^ is the Aramaic form of the participle from DKB'
for DDB' ; the Qeri substitutes the Hebrew form TO)^, after
1. 11, Isa. xvii. 14. na^N ri?v, to put on a bandage, lay on a
plaster. nS'iK signifies, primarily, not a bandage, but, like the
Arabic i^Ji (according to Fleischer in Delitzsch on Isa. Iviii.
8), the new skin which forms over a wound as it heals, and
(as is shown by the expression of Isaiafi, rioxri"?|n3"iN) proves
the healing of the wound. Against the direct transference of
the meaning of the word in Arabic to the Hebrew fi?^^, with-
out taking into consideration the passage in Isaiah just referred
to, there is the objection that the word is always used in con-
nection with njy, " to be put on " (cf . vlii. 22, 2 Chron, xxiv.
13, Neh. iv. 1), or njvrij « to put on" (here and in xxxiii. 6),
Digitized by
Google
10 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
which is not the proper verb to be used in speaking of the
formation of a new skin over a wound after suppuration has
ceased. Hence the word in Hebrew seems to have received
the derived sense of " a healing-plaster ;" this is confirmed by
the employment of the word J^JV^, " plaster," in ver. 13 and
xlvi. 11. — ^The second *3, ver. 17, is subordinate to the clause
which precedes. " Because they called thee one rejected," Le.
because the enemies of Zion spoke of her contemptuously, as a
city that has been forsaken of God, the Lord will heal her
wounds.
Vers. 18-22. Further explanation of the deliverance promised
to Zion. — Ver. 18. " Thus saith Jahveh : Behold, I will turn
the captivity of the tents of Jacob, and will take pity on his
dwellings ; and the city shall be .built again upon its own hill,
and the palace shall be inhabited after its own fashion. Ver.
19. And there shall come forth from them praise and the
voice of those who laugh ; and I will multiply them, so that
they shall not be few, andl will honour them, so that they shall
not be mean. Ver. 20. And his sons shall be as in former
times, and his congregation shall be established before me, and
I will punish all that oppress him. Ver. 21. And his leader
shall spring from himself, and his ruler shall proceed from his
midst ; and I will bring him near, so that he shall approach to
me ; for who is he that became surety for his life in drawing
near to me I saith Jahveh. Ver. 22. And ye shall become my
people, and I will be your Gqd."
The dweUings of Israel that have been laid waste, and the
cities that have been destroyed, shall be restored and inhabited
as formerly, so that songs of praise and tones of joy shall re-
sound from them (ver. 18 f .). " The captivity of the tents of
Jacob" means the miserable condition of the dwellings of
Jacob, i.e. of all Israel; for "to turn the captivity" has every-
where a figurative sense, and signifies the turning of adversity
and misery into prosperity and comfort; see on zxix. 14.
Hitzig is quite wrong in his rendering : " I bring back the
captives of the tents of Jacob, i,e. those who have been carried
away out of the tents." That " tents " does not stand for those
who dwell in tents, but is a poetic expression for " habitations,"
is perfectly clear from the parallel " his dwellings." To " take
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXX. 18-22. 11
pity on the dwellings" means to "restore the dwellings that
have been destroyed" (cf. ix. 18). The anarthrous T? must
not be restricted to the capital, bat means every city that has
been destroyed ; here, the capital naturally claims the first con-
sideration. ''tJpon its hills" is equivalent to saying on its
former site, cf. Josh. zi. 13 ; it does not mean " on the mound
made by its ruins," in support of which Nagelsbach erroneously
adduces Deut. xiii. 17. 1101^ in like manner stands, in the
most general way, for every palace. iCBB'D"?? does not mean
" on the proper place," i.e. on an open, elevated spot on the
hill (Hitzig), neither does it mean ''on its right position"
(Ewald) ; both of these renderings are against the usage of the
words : but it signifies " according to its right" (cf . Deut. rvii.
11), z.e. in accordance with what a palace requires, after its
own fashion. 3?^, to be inhabited, as in xvii. 6, etc. " Out
of them " refers to the cities and palaces. Thence proceeds,
resounds praise or thanksgiving for the divine grace shown
them (cf. xxxiii. 11), and the voice, i.e. the tones or sounds, of
those who laugh (cf. xv. 17), i^. of the people living in the
cities and palaces, rejoicing over their good fortune. " I will
increase them, so that they shall not become fewer," cf . xxix. 6 ;
" I will briiig them to honour (cf. Isa. viii. 23), so that they
shall not be lightly esteemed." — In ver. 20 f. the singular suf-
fixes refer to Jacob as a nation (ver. 18). ** His sons" are the
members of the nation ; they become as they were previously,
in former times, — aieiU olim sub Davide et Salomone^ florentissimo
rerum statu, " The congregation will be established before me,"
Le, under my survey (1^30 as in Ps. cii. 29), i.e. they shall no
more be shaken or moved from their position. — Ver. 21. The
expression "his prince will be out of him" is explained by the
parallel clause, " his ruler will proceed from him." The mean-
ing is, that the people will no longer be ruled or subdued by
foreign masters, but be ruled by glorious princes, t.e. leaders
endowed with princely glory, and these out of the midst of
themselves. Herein is contained the truth, that the sovereignty
of Israel, as restored, culminates in the kingdom of the Messiah.
Yet the words employed are so general that we cannot restrict
1n*iK and i?B'b to the person of the Messiah. The idea is to be
taken in a more general way: As ifcrael was ruled by princes
Library of the
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMARK
New York ogt zed by Google
12 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of the house of David, whom God had chosen, so will it again
in the future have its own rulers, whom God will raise out of
their midst and exalt gloriously. This is clear from the
further statement, " I will cause him to approach, and he shall
come near unto me." To affirm that these words do not refer
to the ruler, but to the people, is a mistake that could be made
only by those expositors who view the " ruler" as being none
else than the Messiah. Yet the LXX. and the Chaldee para-
phrase understood the words as referring to the people ; and in
support of this view, it may be asserted . that, in the Messianic
period, Israel is to become a holy people (iii. 17), and attain its
destiny of being a nation of priests (Ex. xix. 6), in reference to
which it is called ia*!? D?, Ps. cxlviii. 14. But the context
evidently requires us to refer the words to the king, with re-
gard to whom one here looks for a further statement. The verb
a^ipn is the regular expression employed in reference to the
approach on the part of the priests to Jahveh, cf. Num. xvi. 5 ;
and {^M in Ex. xxiv. 2 denotes the approach of Moses to Jahveh
on Mount Sinai. The two verbs thus signify a bringing near
and a coming near, which, under the old covenant, was the
prerogative of those persons who were consecrated by the Lord
to be servants in His sanctuary, but was denied the common
people. As to the kings of Israel, in regard to this matter, the
ordinance proclaimed concerning Joshua held good in reference
to them also : " he shall stand before Eleazar, who shall inquire
for him in a matter of Urim before Jahveh" (Num. xxvii. 21).
Even a David could not approach into the immediate presence
of the Lord to ask His will. This prerogative of the priests
the Lord will, in the future, vouchsafe also to the princes of
Israel, i.e. He will then put them in such a relation to Himself
as no one may now presume to occupy, except at the risk of his
life. This is shown by the succeeding sentence, which assigns
the reason i " For who is there that stands surety for his heart,
i.e. with his heart answers for the consequences of approaching
me 1" 37 and not E'M is named, as the seat of physical life,
in so far as the heart is the place where the soul is alone with
itself, and becomes conscious of all it does and suffers as its own'
(Oehler in Delitzsch's Psychology, p. 296 <4 Clark's Transla-
tion). The meaning is, that nobody will stake his spiritual-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXX. 23, 24. 13
moral life on any attempt to draw near to God, because a sinful
nian is destroyed before the holiness of the Divine Being.
Whoever approaches into the presence of Jahveh must die ;
Num. viii. 19 ; Ex, xix. 21, xxxiv. 3, etc. — ^Ver. 22. Then Israel
shall really become the people of the Lord, and the Lord shall
be their God; thus the end of their divine calling shall be
attained, and the salvation of Israel shall be complete ; see on
vii, 23.
Vers. 23, 24. The wicked shall be destroyed hy the fire of
God^s anger. — ^Ver. 23. " Behold, a whirlwind of Jahveh, — wrath
goeth forth,— a sweeping whirlwind ; it shall hurl down on the
head of the wicked. Ver. 24. The heat of Jahveh's anger
shall not return till He hath done and till He hath established
the purpose of His heart ; in the end of the days ye shall con-
sider it."
These two verses have been already met with in chap, xxiii.
19 and 20, with a few variations. Instead of Wnno we have^
here "l^l^S^iDj and njn^"tlS is hei'e strengthened by prefixing l^in ;
on the other hand, nj''3, which is added in the preceding passage
to intensify Mjiiann, is here omitted. The first of these changes
is more of a formal than a real kind ; for by the substitution
of "''lisOD for ''?rinD, the play in the latter word on -''nj is
merely disturbed, not " destroyed," since "i and ^ are kindred
sounds, l^^iinn has been variously rendered. The meaning of
" abiding," which is founded on 1 Kings xvii. 20, is here un-
suitable. Equally inappropriate is the meaning of " crowding
together," or assembling in troops, which we find in Hos. vii.
14. It is more correct t9 derive it from "'^J, either in the sense
of sweeping away or that of blustering, which are meanings
derived from the fundamental one of producing harsh sounds
in the throat, and transferred to the rushing sound made by the
storm as it carries everything along with it. The second and
third changes affect the sense. For, by the addition of l^in
to ^K, the idea of a judgment in wrath is intensified ; and
by dropping nra, less is made of the acuteness of perception.
Both of these variations correspond to differences in the context
of both passages. In chap, xxiii., where the words are applied
to the false prophets, it was important to place emphasis on
the statement that these men would, by experience, come to a
Digitized by
Google
14 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
full knowledge of the reality of that judgment they denied ; in
this chapter, on the other hand, the idea of judgment in wrath
must be expressly set aside. There is thus no good ground for
considering tliese verses a later interpolation into the text, as
Movers, Hitzig, and Nagelsbach think. Hitzig rejects these
vierses as spurious on the false ground that the judgment
threatened in this chapter refers merely to the fall of the king-
dom of Babylon, which Jeremiah could not have been able to
know beforehand ; Nagelsbach rejects them on the ground of
other erroneous assumptions.^ — ^The only doubtful point regard-
ing these verses is, whether they are to be connected, as Hengsten-
berg thinks, with what precedes, or with what follows, as Ewald
supposes. In the former case, to the promise for the true Israel
would be added a threat against those who only seemed to be
Israel, — ^like the declaration in Isaiah, " There is no peace to
the wicked:" "this addition would thus be made, lest those for
whom the promise was not intended should unwarrantably apply
it to themselves. But, however well-founded the thought is, that
every increasing manifestation of grace is invariably accom-
panied by an increased manifestation of righteousness, and
though all the prophets clearly testify that the godless members
of the covenant people have no share in the promised salvation,
but instead are liable to judgment ; yet there has not been such
preparation made for the introduction of this thonght as that
we might be able at once to join these two verses to what pre-
cedes. The exclamation " Behold !" with which the words are
introduced, rather form a sign that a new addition is to be made
to the prophecy. We therefore view the threat in this verse as
a resumption of the threat of judgment made in ver. 5 S., to
1 First, he holds the groundless opinion that this prophecy originated in
the time of Josiah, and therefore could not have borrowed verses from the
address given in chap, xxiii., which belongs to the time of Jehoiakim ;
sepondly, with as little ground he afRrms that these verses do not corre-
spond with the character of the chapter, and seem like a jarring discord
in the midst of the announcement of deliverance it contains ; finally, he
asks whence could come " the wicked" mentioned, in the times described
by the prophet, — as if he thought that when the captivity of the people was
turned, all godless ones would suddenly disappear. — ^The doubts as to the
genuineness of ver. 22 are based by Nagelsbach merely on the fact that
the same idea is repeated in xxxi. 1.
>:
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 1-e. 15
which is attached, in xxxi. 1, the farther development of the
annotincement of deliverance ; bat we refer the threat made in
the verse not merely to the heathen as such, hut to all " wicked
ones," in snch a way that it at the same time applies to the
godless members of the covenant people, and signifies their
exclasi(m from salvation.
Chap. zxsi. The salvation Fofi all the families of
ISBAEL. — Ewald has well stated the connection of this chapter
with the conclusion of the preceding, as follows: <' In order
that the old form of blessing, foand in the books of Moses, and
here given in ver. 22, may be fulfilled, the whirlwind of Jahveh,
which mast carry away all the unrighteous, will at last dis-
charge itself, as has been already threatened, xxiii. 19 ; this
must take place in order that there may be a fulfilment of that
hope to all the tribes of Israel (both kingdoms)." Ver. 1
announces deliverance for all the families of Israel, but after-
wards it is promised to both divisions of the people sepa-
rately, — ^first, in vers. 2-22, to the teit tribes, who have been
exiles the longest ; and then, in a more brief statement, vers.
23-26, to the kingdom of Jadah: to this, again, there is ap-
pended, vers. 27-40, a further description of the nature of the
deliverance in store for the two houses of Israel.
Vers. 1—6. 7%e deliverance for all Israel^ and the readmission
of the ten tribes. — Ver. 1. " At that time, saith Jahveh, will I
be a God to all the families of Israel, and they shall be my
people. Ver. 2. Thus saith Jahveh : A people escaped from
the sword found grace in the wilderness. Let me go to give
him rest, even IsraeL Ver. 3. From afar hath Jahveh ap-
peared unto me, and with everlasting love have I loved thee ;
therefore have I continued my favour towards thee. Ver. 4.
Once more will I build thee up, and thou shalt be built, O
virgin of Israel ; once more shalt thou adorn [thyself] with thy
tabrets, and go forth in the dance of those that make merry.
Ver. 5. Once more shalt thou plant vineyards on the hills of
Samaria ; planters will plant them, and apply them to common
use. Ver. 6. For there is a day [when] watchmen will cry on
Mount Ephraim : Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion, to Jahveh
our God ! "
Digitized by
Google
16 THE PBOPBECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
The expression " At that time " refers to xxx. 24, " in the
end of the days," which means the Messianic future. The
announcement of deliverance itself is continued by resumption
of the promise made in xxx. 22 ; the transposition of the two
portions of the promise is to be remarked. Here, " I will be a
God to them " stands first, because the restoration and perfec-
tion of Israel have their only foundation in the love of God
and in the faithfulness with which He keeps His covenant, and
it is only through this gracious act that Israel again becomes
the people of God. " All the families of Israel" are the
families of the whole twelve tribes, — of the two kingdoms of
Israel and Judah, separated since the death of Solomon. After
this announcement of deliverance for the whole of Israel, the
address turns first to Israel of the ten tribes, and continues to
treat longest of them, " because, judging from appearances,
they seem irrecoverably lost — for ever rejected by the Lord"
(Hengstenberg). Ver. 2o is variously explained. Ewald, fol-
lowing Baschi and others, refers the words 'U1 in KSO to the
leading of Israel out of 'Egypt : once on a time, in the Arabian
desert, the people that had just barely escaped the sword of the
Egyptians nevertheless found grace, when Jahveh, as it were,
went to make a quiet dwelling-place for them. The love which
He displayed towards them at that time He has since continued,
and thus He will now once more bring back His people out of
the midst of strangers. This view of the passage is supported
by the use of the perfects in vers. 2 and 3,, in contrast with the
imperfect, " again will I build thee," ver. 4, and_ the employ-
ment of the expression "in the desert;" cf. ii. 2, Hos. xiii.
4, 5. But " the people of those who have escaped the sword "
is an expression that cannot be reconciled with it. Easchi,
indeed, understands this as referring to the sword of the Egyp-
tians and Amalekites ; but the thought that Israel, led out of
Egypt through the Arabian desert, was a people that had sur-
vived or escaped the sword, is one met with nowhere else in the
Old Testament, and is quite inapplicable to the condition of the
people of Israel when they were led out of Egypt. Although
Pharaoh wished to exterminate the people of Israel through
hard servile labour, and through such measures as the order to
kill all male children when they were born, yet he did not make
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXL 1-6. 17
an exhibition of his wrath against Israel by the sword, neither
did he show his anger thus at the. Red Sea, where he sought
to bring Israel back to Egypt by force. There God shielded
His people from the attack of Pharaoh, as He did in the battle
against the Amalekites, so that Israel was led through the desert
as a whole people, not as a remnant. The designation, '< a people
escaped from the sword," unconditionally requires us to refer
the words to the deliverance of the Israelites from exile ; these
were only a remnant of what they had formerly been, since
the greater portion of them perished, partly at the downfall of
the kingdom, and partly in exile, by the sword of the enemy.
Hence the perfects in vers. 2 and 3 are prophetic, and used of
the divine counsel, which precedes its execution in time. By
using the expression " in the desert," Jeremiah makes an allu-
sion to Israel's being led through the Arabian desert. The
restoration of Israel to Canaan, from their exile among the
nations, is viewed under the figure of their exodus from Egypt
into the land promised to their fathers, as in Hos. ii. 16 f. ; and
the exodus from the place of banishment is, at the same time,
represented as having already occurred, so that Israel is again
on the march to his native land, and is being safely conducted
through the desert by his God. There is as little ground for
thinking that there is reference here made to the desert lying
between Assyria or Babylon and Palestine, as there is for
Hitzig's referring a'ln 'I'hb' to the sword of the Medes and
Persians. — The inf. abs. W"? is used instead of the first person
of the imperative (cf. 1 Kings xxii. 30), to express a summons
addressed by God to Himself : " I will go." [See Gesenius,
§ 131, 4, b, 7.] The suffix in IP'S")? points out the object (Israel)
by anticipation : " to bring him to rest." VJ") in the Hiphil
usually means to be at rest, to rest (Deut. xxviii. 65) ; here, to
give rest, bring to rest. — Ver. 3. The people already see in
spirit how the Lord is accomplishing His purpose, ver. 2b.
" From afar (the prophet speaks in the name of the people, of
which he views himself as one) hath Jahveh appeared unto
me." So long as Israel languished in exile, the Lord had with-
drawn from him, kept Himself far off. Now the prophet sees
Him appearing again. " From afar," t.«. from Zion, where the
Lord is viewed as enthroned, the God of His people (Ps. xiv. 7),
VOL. II. B
Digitized by
Google
18 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
sitting there to lead them back into their land. But the Lord
at once assures the people, who have been waiting for Him, of
His everlasting love. Because He loves His people with ever-
lasting love, therefore has He kept them by His grace, so that
they were not destroyed. ^E'o, to draw, keep, restrain ; hence
"'P!? "^V^, prolongare graiiam, Ps. xxxvi. 11, cix. 12, but con-
strued with p of a person ; here, with a double accusative, to
restrain any one, to preserve him constantly by grace. — ^Ver. 4.
Israel is now to be built up again, i.e. to be raised to a permanent
condition of ever-increasing prosperity ; cf. xii. 16. The addi-
tional clause, " and thou shalt be built," confirms this promise.
The ".virgin of Israel" is the congregation of Israel; cf. xiv.
17. A new and joyful phase in the life of the people is to
begin : such is the meaning of the words, " with tabrets shalt
thou adorn thyself, and thou shalt go forth in the dance of
those who make merry." In this manner were the popular
feasts celebrated in Israel ; cf. Judg. xi. 34, Ps. Ixviii. 26. —
Ver, 5. " The mountains of Samaria," i.e. of the kingdom of
Ephraim (1 Kings xiii. 22 ; 2 Kings xvii. 24), shall again be
planted with vineyards, and the planters, too, shall enjoy the
fruits in peace, — not plant for strangers, so that enemies shall
destroy the fruits ; cf. Isa. Ixii. 8 f., Ixv. 21 f. The words
" planters plant and profane " (i.e. those who plant the vine-
yards are also to enjoy the fruit of them) are to be explained
by the law in Lev. xix. 23 f., according to which the fruits of
newly planted fruit trees, and according to Judg. ix. 27, vines
also, were not to be eaten during the first three years ; those of
the fourth year were to be presented as a thank-offering to the
Lord ; and only those of the fifth year were to be applied to
common use. This application to one's own use is expressed
in Dent. xx. 6 by -'?n, properly, to make common. — ^Ver. 6 is
attached to the foregoing by *3, which introduces the reason of
what has been stated. The connection is as follows : This pros-
perous condition of Ephraim is to be a permanent one ; for the
sin of Jeroboam, the seduction of the ten tribes from the sanc-
tuary of the Lord, shall not continue, but Ephraim shall once
more, in the future, betake himself to Zion, to the Lord his
God. " There is a day," i.e. there comes a day, a time, when
watchmen call. D*iSi here denotes the watchmen who were posted
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXZh 7-14. 19
on the moantalns, that they might ohserve and give notice of
the first appearance of the crescent of the moon after new-
moon, so that the festival of the new-moon and the feasts con-
nected with it might be-fixed ; cf. Keil's Bibl. Archaol. ii. § 74,
Anm. 9 [see also the articles Mond and Neumond in Herzog's
Real-Eneykl. vols. ix. and x. ; New-moon in Smith's Bible Dic-
tionary, vol. ii.]. ri?y, to go up to Jerusalem, which was pre-
eminent among the cities of the land as to spiritual matters.
Vers. 7-14. The restoration of Israel. — Ver. 7. " For thus
saith Jahveh : Shout for joy over Jacob, and cry out over the
head of the nations ! Make known, praise, and say, O Jahveh,
save Thy people, the remnant of Israel ! Ver. 8. Behold, I will
bring them out of the land of the north, and wiU gather them
from the sides of the earth. Among them are the blind and
lame, the woman with child and she that hath born, together ;
a great company shall they return hither. Ver. 9. With weep-
ing shall they come, and with supplications will I lead them :
I will bring them to streams of water, by a straight way in
which they shall not stumble ; for I have become a father to
Israel, and Ephraim is my first-bom, Ver. 10. Hear the word
of Jahveh, ye nations, and declare among the islands far off,
and say : He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep
him, as a shepherd his flock. Ver. 11. For Jahveh hath re-
deemed Israel and ransomed him out of the hand of one stronger
than he. Ver. 12. And they shall come and sing with Joy on
the height of Zion, and come like a flood to the goodness of
Jahveh, because of corn, and new wine, and fresh oil, and the
young of the flock and the herd ; and their soul shall be like a
well-watered garden, neither shall they pine away any more.
Ver. 13. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and young
men and old men together ; and I will turn their mourning to
joy, and will comfort them, and will cause them to rejoice after
their sorrow. Ver. 14. And I will satiate the soul of the priests
with fat, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness,
saith Jahveh."
In order to set forth the greatness of the salvation which the
Lord will prepare for Israel, so long outcast, Israel is commanded
to make loud jubilation, and exhorted to approach the Lord
with entreaties for the fulfilment of His purpose of grace. The
Digitized by
Google
^0 TBE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
statement regarding this salvation is introduced by '3, " for,"
since the description, given in this strophe, of Israel's being led
back and re-established, furnishes the actual proof that the
nation shall be built up again. The summons to rejoice comes
from Jahveh (since, by His gracious dealings, He gives the
people material for praise), and is addressed to the members
of the nation. These are to rejoice over Jacob, i^. over the
glorious destiny before the people. O'fun B'N^^ wnx is translated
by Hitzig : " shout at the head of the nations," i.e. making a
beginning among them all; but this is incorrect and against
the context. The thought that many other enslaved nations
besides Israel will rejoice over the fall of their oppressors, has
not the least foundation in this passage. The summons to the
nations, which follows in ver. 10, is simply a command to make
known God's purpose regarding the deliverance of Israel. Of
course, B'iiia, taken literally and by itself, may be rendered
" at the head " (1 Kings xxi. 12 ; Amos vi. 7, etc.) ; but in this
place, the expression of which it forms the first word is the
object of vHX, which is construed with 3, " to rejoice over some-
thing," Isa. xxiv. 4. " The head of the nations " signifies " the
first of the nations" (DlHri JT'B'8"!, Amos vi. 1), i.e. the most
exalted among the nations. Such is the designation given to
Israel, because God has chosen them before all the nations of
the earth to be His peculiar people (Deut. vii. 6 ; 2 Sam. vii.
23 f.), made them the highest over (^ I^f?, Deut. xxvi. 19) all
nations. This high honour of Israel, which seemed to have
been taken from him by his being delivered over to the power
of heathen nations, is now to appear again. v?ri ^JTp^n, " make
to be heard, sing praise," are to be combined into one thought,
" sing praise loudly" (so that people may hear it). The words
•of praise, " Save Thy people, O Jahveh," form rather the
expression of a wish than of a request, just as in many psalms,
^.g. Ps. XX. 10, xxviii. 9, especially cxviii. 25 in W n^'Enn,
with which Jesus was greeted on His entry into Jerusalem,
Matt. xxi. 9 (Graf). — To the rejoicing and praise the Lord
replies with the promise that He will lead back His people out
of the most distant countries of the north, — every one, even the
feeble and frail, who ordinarily would not have strength for so
long a journey. " Hither," i.e. to Palestine, where Jeremiah
X
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 7-14. 21
wrote the promise ; cf. iii. 18, xvi. 15. — " With weeping," i.e.
with tears of joy, and with contrition of heart over favour so
undeserved, they come, and God leads them with weeping,
" amidst earnest prayers to the God they have found again, as
a lost son returns to the arms of his father" (Umbreit). Hitzig
and Graf would connect D^JUnna with what precedes, and com-
bine " I will lead them, I will bring them ;" by this arrange-
ment, it is said, the careful guidance of God, in leaving nothing
behind, is properly set forth. But the symmetry of the verse
is thereby destroyed ; and the reason assigned for this construc-
tion (which is opposed by the accents), viz. that D^Junri does
not mean miteratio, clemetttia, will not stand the test. As in
Isa. Iv. 12 it is the being brought nnnfe'a that is the chief point,
so here, it is the bringing D'jynna, amidst weeping, i^. fervent
prayer. At the same time, the Lord will care like a father for
their refreshment and nurture ; He will lead them to brooks of
water, so that they shall not suffer thirst in the desert (Isa.
xlviii. 21), and guide them by a straight (i.e. level) road, so that
they shall not fall. For He shows Himself again to Israel as
a father, one who cares for them like a father (cf. iii. 19, Deut.
xxxii. 6, Isa. Ixiii. 16), and treats Ephraim as His first-born.
" The first-born of Jahveh," in Ex. iv. 22, means the people
of Israel as compared with the other nations of the earth.
This designation is here transferred to Ephraim as the head
and representative of the ten tribes ; but it is not likely that
there is in this any allusion to the preference which Jacob dis-
played for the sons of Joseph, Gen. xlix. 22 ff. compared with
ver. 4 (Venema, J. D. Michaelis, Nagelsbach), — the advantage
they obtained consisting in this, that Ephraim and Mauasseh were
placed on an ec[ual footing with Jacob's sons as regards inheri-
tance in the land of Canaan ; in other words, they were elevated
to the dignity of being founders of tribes. There is no trace
in this prophecy of any preference given to Ephraim before
Judah, or of the ten tribes before the two tribes of the king-
dom of Judah. That the deliverance of Ephraim (Israel) from
exile is mentioned before that of Judah, and is further more
minutely described, is simply due to the fact, already mentioned,
that the ten tribes, who had long languished in exile, had the
least hope, according to man's estimation, of deliverance. The
Digitized by
Google
z'
22 THE PROPHECIES OP JEREMIAH.
designation of Ephraim as the first-born of Jahveli simply
shows that, in the deliverance of the people, Ephraim Is in no
respect to be behind Jadah, — that they are to receive their full
share in the Messianic salvation of the whole people ; in other
words, that the love which the Lord once displayed towards
Israel, when He delivered them out of the power of Pharaoh,
is also to be, in the future, displayed towards the ten tribes, who
were looked on as lost. The nature of fatherhood and sonship,
as set forth in the Old Testament, does not contain the element
of the Spirit's testimony to our spirit, but only the idea of
paternal care and love, founded on the choosing of Israel out
of all the nations to be the peculiar people of God ; see on Ex.
iv. 22 and Isa. Ixiii. 16, Ixiv. 7. '"iba is substantially the same
as Tip;; }3 and O'^i^V.^ 1^^ in ver. 20.— Ver. 10 f. The most remote
of the heathen, ,too, are to be told that Jahveh will free His
people from their hands, gather them again, and highly favour
them, lest they should imagine that the God of Israel has not
the power to save His people, and that they may learn to fear
Him as the Almighty God, who has given His people into, their
power, not from any inability to defend them, but merely for
the purpose of chastising them for their sins. D'*N are the
islands in, and countries lying along the coast of, the Mediter-
ranean Sea ; in the language of prophecy, the word is used
as a designation of the distant countries of the west ; cf. Ps.
Ixxii. 10, Isa. xli. 1, 5, xlii. 12, etc. On ver. lOJ, cf. xxiii. 3,
Ex. xxxiv. 12 ff., Isa. xl. 11, " Stronger than he," as in Ps.
XXXV. 10 ; the expression is here used of the heathen master of
the world. — Vers. 12-14. Thus led by the Lord through the
wilderness (ver. 9), the redeemed shall come rejoicing to the
sacred height of Zion (see on xvii. 12), and thence go in streams,
i.e. scatter themselves over the country like a stream, for the
goodness of the Lord, i.e. for the good things which He deals
out to them in their native land. " To the goodness of Jahveh"
is explained by " because of corn," etc. (?y for ?N), cf. Hos.
lit. 5. As to the good things of the country, cf. Deut. viii. 8.
Their soul will be like a well-watered garden, an emblem of
the fulness and freshness of living power ; cf. Isa. Iviii. 11. —
Ver, 13. Then shall young men and old live in unclouded joy,
and forget all their former sorrow. " In the dance" refers
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXL 16-22. 23
merely to the virgins : to " young men and old together," only
the notion of joy is to be repeated from the context. — Ver. 14.
The priests and the people will refresh themselves with the fat,
i.e. the fat pieces of the thank-offerings, because numerous
offerings will be presented to the Lord in consequence of the
blessing received from Him.
Vers. 15—22. Changing of sorrow into joy, because JEphraim
will turn to the Lord, and tlie Lord will lead him back. — Ver. 15.
" Thus saith Jahveh : A voice is heard in Bamah, lamentation,
bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children ; she refuses
to be comforted for her children, because they are not. Ver. 16.
Thus saith Jahveh : Restrain thy voice from weeping, and thine
eyes from tears; for there is a reward for thy work, saith
Jahveh, and they shall return from the land of the enemy.
Ver. 17. And there is hope for thy latter end, saith Jahveh,
that children shall return to thy border. Ver. 18. I have cer-
tainly heard Ephraim complaining. Thou hast chastised me and
I was chastised, like a calf not tamed. Turn me that I may
turn, for Thou, O Jahveh, art my God. Ver. 19. For, after I
return I repent, and after I have been taught I smite upon
[my] thigh ; I am ashamed, yea, and confounded, because I
bear the reproach of my youth. Ver. 20. Is Ephraim a son
dear to me, or a child of delight, that, as often as I speak against
him, I'do yet certainly remember him? Therefore my bowels
move for him; I shall surely pity him, saith Jahveh. Ver. 21.
Set thee up way-marks, put up posts for thyself ; set thine heart
to the highway, the road [by which] thou camest : return, O
virgin of Israel, return to these cities of thine. Ver. 22. How
long wilt thou wander about, O backsliding daughter? For
Jahveh hath created a new [thing] in the earth : a woman shall
encompass a man."
In this strophe the promise is further confirmed by carrying
out the thought, that Israel's release from his captivity shall
certainly take place, however little prospect there is of it at
present. For Israel will come to an acknowledgment of his
sins, and the Lord will then once more show him His love.
The hopeless condition of Israel is dramatically set forth in
ver. 15 f. : Rachel, the mother of Joseph, and thus the ances-
tress of Ephraim, the chief tribe of the Israelites who had
Digitized by
Google
24 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMtAH.
revolted from the royal house of David, weeps bitterly over the
loss of her children, the ten tribes who have been carried away
into exile ; and the Lord addresses consolation to her, with the
promise that they shall return out of the land of the enemy.
" A voice is heard " (V^f?, participle, to show duration). The
" voice" is more fully treated of in the second part of the verse :
loud lamentation and bitter weeping. There is a difficulty con-
nected with '"'D'ja. The LXX. took it to be the name of the
city Ramdh, now called er-Rdm, in the tribe of Benjamin, five
English miles north from Jerusalem, on the borders of the king-
doms of Judah and Israel (1 Kings xv. 17), although this city
is elsewhere written with the article (f^^'J'J), not only in the his-
torical notices found in xl. 1, Josh, xviii. 25, Judg. iv. 5, etc.,
but also in prophetical addresses, as in Hos. vi. 8, Isa. x. 29.
In this passage it cannot be a mere appellative (" on a height"),
as in 1 Sam. xxii. 6, Ezek. xvi. 24 ; nor can we think of Ramah
in Naphtali (Josh. xix. 36, also fi?")!?), for this latter city never
figures in history like the Ramah of Samuel, not far from
Gibeah ; see on Josh, xviii. 25 and 1 Sam. i. 1. But why is
the lamentation of Rachel heard at Ramah ? Most expositors
reply, because the tomb of Rachel was in the vicinity of Ramah ;
in support of this they cite 1 Sam. x. 2. Nagelsbach, who is
one of these, still maintains this view with the utmost confi-
dence. But this assumption is opposed to Gen. xxxv. 16 and
19, where it is stated that Rachel died and was buried on the
way to Bethlehem, and not far from the town (see on Genesis,
I.C.), which is about five miles south from Jerusalem, and thus
far from Ramah. Nor is any support for this view to be got
from 1 Sam. x. 2, except by making the groundless assumption,
that Saul, while seeking for the asses of his father, came to
Samuel in his native town ; whereas, in the account given in
that chapter, he is merely said to have sought for Samuel in a
certain town, of which nothing more is stated, and to have
inquired at him; see on 1 Sam. x. 2. We. must therefore
reject, as arbitrary and groundless, all attempts to fix the locality
of Rachel's sepulchre in the neighbourhood of Ramah (Nagels-
bach) ; in the same way we must treat the assertion of Thenius,
Knobel, Graf, etc., that the Ephratah of Gen. xxxv. 16, 19, is
the same as the Ephron of 2 Chron. xiii. 19, which was situated
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXL 16-J2, 25
near Bethel ; so, too, mast we deal with the statements, that
Gphratah, i.e. Bethlehem, is to be expunged from the text of
Gen. XXXV. 9 and 48 as a false gloss, and that the tradition,
attested in Matt. ii. 18, as to the situation of Bachel's sepulchre
in the vicinity of Bethlehem, is incorrect. Nor does the passage
of Jeremiah now before us imply that Rachel's sepulchre was
near Bamah. Rachel does not weep at Ramah over her lost
children, either because she had been buried there, or because
it was in Ramah of Benjamin that the exiles were assembled,
according to Jer. xl. 1 (Hitzig, and also Delitzsch on Gen. xxxv.
20). For it was the Jews who were to be carried away captive
that were gathered together at Ramah, whereas it was over
Israelites or Ephraimites that had been carried into exile that
Rachel weeps. The lamentation of Rachel is heard at Ramah,
as the most loftily situated border-town of the two kingdoms,
whence the wailing that had arisen sounded far and near, and
conld be heard in Judah. Nor does she weep because she has
learned something in her tomb of the carrying away of the
people, but as their common mother, as the beloved spouse of
Jacob, who in her married life so earnestly desired children.
Just as the people are often included under the notion of the
" daughter of Zion," as their ideal representative, so the great
ancestress of Ephraim^ Benjamin, and Manasseh is here named
as the representative of the maternal love shown by Israel in the
pain felt when the people are lost. The sing. ^J't? '3 signifies,
" for not one of them is left." — This verse is quoted by Matthew
(ii. 18), after relating the story of the murder of the children
at Bethlehem, with the introductory formula. Tore iirXrjpmdj)
TO pTjdev BiA 'lepe/ilov: from this the older theologians (cf.
Calovii Bibl. illustr. ad Jer. I.e.) conclude that Jeremiah
directly prophesied that massacre of the children committed by
Herod. But this inference cannot be allowed ; it will not fit
in with the context of the prophecy. The expression iirXrjpaidrj,
used by Matthew, only shows that the prophecy of Jeremiah
received a new f alfilment through that act of Herod. Of course,
we must not reduce the typical reference of the prophecy to that
event at Bethlehem simply to this, that the wailing of the
mothers of Bethlehem over their murdered children was as great
as the lamentation made when the people were carried into exile.
/"
Digitized by
Google
26 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Typology rather assumes a causal connection between the two
events. The destruction of the people of Israel by the Assyrians
and Chaldeans is a type of the massacre of the infants at Beth-
lehem, in so far as the sin which brought the children of Israel
into exile laid a foundation for the fact that Herod the Idumean
became king over the Jews, and wished to destroy the true King
and Saviour of Israel that he might strengthen his own do-
minion. Cf. Fr. Kleinsehmidt, die typohg. Citate der vier
Evangelien, 1861, S. 10 ff. ; [Fairbairn's Typology, fifth edition,
vol. i. pp. 452-3.]
The Lord will put an end to this wailing. " Cease thy
w^eeping," He cries to the sorrowing ones, " for there is a reward
for thy labour" (almost identical with 2 Chron. xv. 7). npva is
the maternal labour of birth and rearing of children. The
reward consists in this, that the children shall return out of the
land of the enemy into their own laud. Ver. 17 states the
same thing in parallel clauses, to confirm th& promise. On the
expression " hope for thy latter end," cf. xxix. 11. D'33 with-
out the article, as in Hos. xi. 10, etc. ; cf. Ewald, § 277, b.
This hope is grounded on the circumstance that Israel will
become aware, through suffering, that he is punished for his
sins, and, repenting of these sins, will beseech his God for favour.
The Lord already perceives this repentant spirit and acknow-
ledgment of sin. "ipJ^J does- not mean " I had myself chas-
tised," or " I learned chastisement " (Hitzig), but " I was
chastised," like an untamed calf, i.e. one not trained to bear the
yoke and to endure labour. On this figure, cf. Hos. x. 11. The
recognition of suffering as chastisement by God excites a desire
after amelioration and amendment. Biit since man cannot
accomplish these through his own powers, Israel prays, " Lead
me back," so. from my evil way, i.e. turn me. He finds him-
self constrained to this request, because he feels regret for his
apostasy from God. *31E' '^nx in this connection can only
mean, " after I turned," sc. from Thee, O Lord my God ; on
this meaning of ait5', cf. viii. 4. Jljii, to be brought to under-
standing through punishment, i.e. to become wise. To smite
the thighs is a token of terror and horror; cf. Ezek. xxi. 17.
On -riD^M W) ^nf 3 cf. Isa. xlv. 16. " The shame of my youth"
is that which I brought on myself in my youth through the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 15-22. 27
sins I then committed. On this confession generally, cf. the
similar one in iii. 21 £f. — Thereafter the Lord replies, ver. 20,
with the question, whether Ephraim is so dear a son to Him
that, as often as He has spoken against him, ue. uttered hard
words of condemnation, He still, or again, thinks of him. "t^I
D^yB'jre', " a child of delight," whom one fondles ; cf. Isa. v. 7.
The clause explanatory of the question, " for as often as," etc.,
is taken in different ways. 3 la^ may signify, " to speak about
one," or " to speak against one," or " to pay addresses to one,"
t.e. to court him : 1 Sam. xxv. 39 ; Cant. viii. 8. Hitzig applies
the last meaning to the expression, and translates, " as often as
I have paid my suit to him ;" according to this view, the basis
of the representation of Jahveh's relation to the people is that
of a husband to his wife. But this meaning of the verb does
not by any means suit the present context, well established
though it is by the passages that have been adduced. Ephraim
is here represented as a son, not a virgin to whom Jahveh
could pay suit. Hence we must take the expression in the
sense of " speaking against" some one. But what Jahveh says
against Ephraim is no mere threatening by words, but a repri-
mand by deeds of judgment. The answer to the question is to
be inferred from the context : If the Lord, whenever He is
constrained to punish Ephraim, still thinks of him, then Ephraim
must be a son dear to Him. But this is not because of his con-
duct, as if he caused Him joy by obedience and faithful attach-
ment, but in consequence of the unchangeable love of God, who
cannot leave His son, however much grief he causes his Father.
" Therefore," i.e. because he is a son to whom Jahveh shows
the fulness of His paternal love, all His kindly feelings towards
him are now excited, and He desires to show compassion on him.
On 'po vsn cf. Isa. xvi. 11 and Ixiii. 15. Under " bowels" are
included especially the heart, liver, reins, the noblest organs of
the soul. The expression is strongly anthropopathic, and de-
notes the most heartfelt sympathy. This fellow-feeling mani-
fests itself in tlie form of pity, and actually as deliverance
from misery.
The Lord desires to execute this purpose of His everlasting
love. Ver. 21. Israel is required to prepare himself for return,
and to go home again into his own cities. " Set thee up way-
Digitized by
Google
28 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
marks." p'V, in 2 Kings xxiii. 17 and Ezek. xxxix. 15, " a tomb-
stone," probably a stone pillar, which could also serve as a
way-mark. D^inori is not from T]D as in ver. 15, but from
T?n, and has the same meaning as nio'n, Joel iii. 3, Talm.
Ttsrij a pillar, Arab, jjyo U, pi., eippi, signa in desertia, " Set
thy heart," i.e. turn thy mind to the road, the way you have
gone (on Wpn see ii. 20), not, that you may not miss it, but
because it leads thee home. " Beturn to these .cities of thine."
" These " implies that the summons issues from Palestine.
Moreover, the separate clauses of this verse are merely a poetic
individualization of the thought that Israel is to think seriously
of returning ; and, inasmuch as this return to Palestine pre-
supposes return to the Lord, Israel must first turn with the
heart to his God. Then, in ver. 22, follows the exhortation
not to delay. The meaning of ponnii is educed from Cant,
v. 6, where pDH signifies to turn one's self round ; hence the
Hithpael means to wander about here and there, uncertain what
to do. This exhortation is finally enforced by the statement,
" Jahveh creates a new thing on the earth" (cf . Isa. xliii. 19).
This novelty is, " a woman will encompass a man." With
regard to the meaning of these words, about which there is
great dispute, this much is evident from the context, that they
indicate a transformation of things, a new arrangement of the
relations of life. This new arrangement of things which
Jahveh brings about is mentioned as a motive which should
rouse Ephraim ( = Israel) to return without delay to the Lord
and to his cities. If we keep this in mind, we shall at once
set aside as untenable such interpretations as that of Luther
in his first translation of 1532-38,, " those who formerly be-
haved like women shall be men," which Ewald has revived in
his rendering, " a woman changing into a man," or that of
Schnurrer, Eosenmiiller, Gesenius, Maurer, " the woman shall
protect the man," or that of Nagelsbach, " the woman shall
turn the man to herself." The above-mentioned general con-
sideration, we repeat, is sufiicient to set aside these explana-
tions, quite apart from the fact that none of them can be
lexically substantiated ; for 33iD neither means to " turn one's
self, vertere" nor to " protect," nor to " cause to return" (as if
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 16-22. 29
33^0 were nsed for 3?^E'). Deut. xxxii. 10 is adduced to prove
the meaniDg of protection ; but the word there means to go
about fondling and cherishing. Neither the transmutation of
the female into a male, or of a weak woman into a strong man,
nor the protection of the man by a woman, nor the notion that
the strong succumbs to the weak, forms an effectual motive for
the summons to Israel to return ; nor can we call any of them a
new creative act effected by Jahveh, or a new arrangement of
things. But we must utterly reject the meaning of the words
given by Castle, le Clerc, and Hitzig, who apply them to the
unnatural circumstance, that a woman makes her suit to a man,
even where by the woman is understood the virgin of Israel,
and by the man, Jahveh. Luther gave the correct rendering
in his editions of 1543 and 1545, " the woman shall encompass
the manj'^-only, " embrace" (Ger. umfangm) might express the
sense better than " encompass" (Ger. umgeben). na^j is nomen
sextts, " femella, a female;" 13J, a "man," also ^' proles tnas-
cula," not according to the sexual relation ( = "Ut), but with
the idea of strength. Both in the choice of these words and
by the omission of the article, the relation is set forth in its
widest generality ; the attention is thereby steadily directed to
its fundamental nature. The woman, the weak and tender
being, shall lovingly embrace the man, the strong one. Heng-
stenberg reverses the meaning of the words when he renders
them, '* the strong one shall again take the weak into his
closest intercourse, under his protection, loving care." Many
expositors, including Hengstenberg and Hitzig of moderns,
have rightly perceived that the general idea has been set forth
with special reference to the relation between the woman, Isratel,
and the man, Jahveh. Starting with this view, which is sug-
gested by the context, the older expositors explained the words
of the conception and birth of Christ by a virgin ; cf. Corn, a
Lapide, Calovii Bibl. ill., Cocceius, and Pfeiffer, dttbia vex.
p. 758 sqq. Thus, for example, the Berleburger Bibel gives
the following explanation : "A woman or virgin — not a married
woman — will encompass, i.e. carry and contain in her body, the
man who is to be a vanquisher of all and to surpass all in
strength." This explanation cannot be set aside by the simple
remark, " that here there would be set forth the very feature
Digitized by
Google
30 THE PBOPHECIES OT JEREMIAH.
in the birth of Christ by a virgin which is not peculiar to it as
compared with others ;" for this *' superficial remark" does not
in the least touch the real point to be explained. Bat it may
very properly be objected, that 33^0 has not the special meaning
of conceiving in a mother's womb. On this ground we can
also set down as incorrect the other explanation of the words in
the Berleburger Bibel, that the text rather speaks of " the
woman who is the Jewish Church, and who, in the spirit of
faith, is to bear Christ as the mighty God, Isa. ix. 6, in the like-
ness of a man, Rev. xii. 1, 2." However, these explanations
are nearer the truth than any that have been offered since.
The general statement, " a woman shall encompass (the) man,"
i.e. lovingly embrace him, — ^this new relation which Jahveh will
bring about in place of the old, that the man encompasses the
wife, loving, providing for, protecting her, — can only be re-
ferred, agreeably to the context, to change of relation between
Israel and the Lord. MiD, " to encompass," is used tropically,
not merely of the mode of dealing on the part of the Lord to
His people, the faithful, — of the protection, the grace, and the
aid which He grants to the pious ones, as in Ps. xxxii. 7, 10,
Deut. xxxii. 10, — but also of the dealings of men with divine
things. in3n? ''??^D^, Ps. xxvi. 6, does not mean, " I will go
round Thine altar," in a circle or semicircle as it T*ere, but, " I
will keep to Thine altar," instead of keeping company with the
wicked ; or more correctly, " I will surround Thine altar,"
making it the object of my care, of all my dealings, — I will
make mine own the favours shown to the faithful at Thine altar.
In the verse now before us, 33^0 signifies to encompass with
love and care, to surround lovingly and carefully, — the natural
and fitting dealing on the part of the stronger to the weak and
those who need assistance. And the new thing that God
creates consists in this, that the woman, the weaker nature that
needs help, will lovingly and solicitously surround the man,
the stronger. Herein is expressed a new relation of Israel to
the Lord, a reference to a new covenant which the Lord, ver.
31 ff., will conclude with His people, and in which He deals so
condescendingly towards them that they can lovingly embrace
Him. This is the substance of the Messianic meaning in the
words. The conception of the Son of God in the womb of the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 28-26. 31
Virgin Mary is not expressed in them either directly or indi-
rectly, even though we were allowed to take 33^0 in the meaning
of " embrace." This new creation of the Lord is intended to
be, and can be, for Israel, a powerful motive to their imme-
diate return to their God.
Vers. 23-26. The re-establishment and blessing of Judah. —
Ver. 23. " Thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel :
Once more shall they say this word in the land of Judah and
in its cities, when I turn their captivity : * Jahveh bless thee,
O habitation of righteousness, O mountain of holiness ! ' Ver.
24. And there shall dwell in it, [in] Judah and all its cities
together, husbandmen and [those who] move about with the
flock. Ver. 25. For I have satiated the weary soul, and I
have filled every languishing soul. Ver. 26. Because of this I
awoke and looked, and my sleep was sweet unto me."
The prophecy which treats of Judah alone is condensed,
but states much in few words, — not merely the restitutio in
statum integritatis, but also rich blessing thereafter. "May
Jahveh bless thee" is a benediction, equivalent to " may you
be blessed ; " cf. Ps. cxxviii. 5, cxxxiv. 3. pTV nu does not
mean " habitation of salvation," but " habitation of righteous-
ness ; " cf. Isa. i. 21, where it is said of Jerusalem that right-
eousness formerly dwelt in it. This state of matters is again to
exist ; Jerusalem is again to become a city in which righteous-
ness dwells. " The holy mountain " is Zion, including Moriah,
where the Lord had set up His throne. That the designation
" the holy mountain" was applied to the whole of Jerusalem
cannot be made out from Ps. ii. 6, xlviii. 2 ff., Isa. xi. 9, xxvii.
13, which have been adduced to prove the assertion. The
prayer for the blessing implies that Zion will again be the seat
of the Divine King of His people. Ver. 24. " There dwell in
it (in the land of Judah) Judah and all his towns," i.e. the
population of Judah and of all its towns, as "husbandmen
and' (those who) pasture flocks," Le. each one pursuing un-
disturbed bis own peaceful employment, agriculture and cattle-
rearing, and (ver. 25) so blessed in these callings that they
are kept from every need and want, i^?^ may either be
viewed as the perfect, before which the relative is to be sup-
plied, or an adjectival form imitated from the Aramaic parti-
Digitized by
Google
32 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
ciple, masc. 3>M. — Ver. 26. Thereupon the prophet awoke from
his ecstatic sleep, and said, "My sleep was pleasant" (cf.
Prov. iii. 24). Very many expositors, including Bosenmiiller,
Umhreit, and Neumann among the moderns, understand the
words, " therefore (or, because of this) I awoke," etc., as refer-
ring to God, because in what precedes and follows Jahveh
speaks, and because God is sometimes, in the Psalms, called on
to awake, e.g. Ps. vii. 7, xxxv. 23, xliv. 24, etc. But it has
been very properly objected to this, that the words, " my sleep
was sweet " (pleasant), are inappropriate as utterances of God,
inasmuch as He does not sleep ; nowhere in Scripture is sleep
attributed to God, and the summons to awake merely implies
the non-interference on the part of God in the affairs of His
people. Moreover, we would need to refer the sleeping of God,
mentioned in this verse, to His dealing towards Israel during
the exile, in such a way that His conduct as a powerful judge
would be compared to a sweet sleep, — which is inconceivable.
As little can the verse be supposed to contain words of the
people languishing in exile, as Jerome has taken them. For
the people could not possibly compare the time of oppression
during the exile to a pleasant sleep. There is thus nothing left
for as but to take this verse, as the Targum, Kaschi, Kimchi,
Venema, Dahler, Hitzig, Hengstenberg, and others have done,
as a remark by the prophet regarding his feelings when he re-
ceived this revelation ; and we must accept something like the
paraphrase of Tholuck (die Propheten, S. 68) : " Because of
such glorious promises I awoke to reflect on them, and my
ecstatic sleep delighted me." This view is not rendered less
tenable by the objection that Jeremiah nowhere says "God
had revealed Himself to him in a dream, and that, in what
precedes, there is not to be found any intimation that what he
sets forth appeared to him as a vision. For neither is there any
intimation, throughout the whole prophecy, that he received it
while in a waking state. The command of God, given xxx. 2
at the first, to write in a book the words which Jahveh spoke to
him, implies that the prophecy was not intended, in the first
instance, to be publicly read before the people ; moreover, it
agrees with the assumption that he received the prophecy in a
dream. But against the objection that Jeremiah never states,
>
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 27-30. 33
in any other place, in \rhat bodily condition he was when he
received his revelations from God, and that we cannot see why
he should make such an intimation here, — we may reply, with
Nagelsbach, that this prophecy is the only one in the whole
book which contains unmixed comfort, and that it is thus easy
to explain why he could never forget that moment when, awak-
ing after he had received it, he found he had experienced a
sweet sleep. Still less weight is there in the objection of Graf,
that one cannot comprehend why this remark stands here, be-
cause the description is evidently continued in what follows,
while the dream must have ended here, when the prophet
awoke. For this is against the assumption that the hand of the
Lord immediately touched him again, and put him back into
the ecstatic state. One might rather urge the consideration
that the use of the word rijE', " sleep," does not certainly prove
that the prophet was in the ecstatic state, from the fact that
the LXX. render i^OT!'!', in Gen. ii. 21 and xv. 2, by eKorcurK.
But wherever divine revelations were made in dreams, these of
course presuppose sleep ; so that the ecstatic state might also
be properly called " sleep." Jeremiah adds, " And I looked,"
to signify that he had been thoroughly .awakened, and, in com-
plete self-consciousness, perceived that his sleep had been
pleas&nt.
Vers. 27-30. The renovation of Israel and Judah. — Ver. 27.
" Behold, days are coming, saith Jahveh, when I will sow the
house of Israel and the house of Judah with seed of men and
seed of beasts. Ver. 28. And it shall be that, just as I have
watched over them to pluck up and to break down, to pull
down and to destroy and to hurt, so' shall I watch over them
to build and to plant, saith Jahveh. Ver. 29. In those days
. they shall no more say, ' Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and
the teeth of the children become blunt ; ' Ver. 30. But each man
shall die for his own iniquity : every man who eats the sour
grapes, his own teeth shall become blunted."
After announcement has been made, in what preceded, that
both portions of the covenant people will be led back into their
own land and re-established there, both are now combined, since
they are again, at the restoration, to be united under one king,
the sprout of David (cf. iii. 15, 18), and to both there is pro-
VOL. II. C
Digitized by
Google
3i THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
raised great blessing, both temporal and spiritual. The house
of Israel and the house of Judah, as separate nations, are re-
presented as a fruitful field, which God will sow with men and
cattle. >^^\}^, " cattle," the tame domestic animals, contribute
to the prosperity of a nation. Th^t this seed will mightily
increase, is evident from the fact that God sows it, and (as
is further stated in ver. 28) will watch over it as it grows.
Whereas, hitherto. He has watched for the purpose of destroy-
ing and annihilating the people, because of their apostasy, He
will in time to come watch for the purpose of planting and
building them up. The prophet has hitherto been engaged in
fulfilling, against the faithless people, the first part of the com-
mission given him by the Lord when he was called to his oflSce
(i. 10); hereafter, he will be engaged in building up. As
certainly as the first has taken place, — and of this the people
have had practical experience, — so certainly shall the other now
take place. — Ver. 29. The proverb, which Ezekiel also (xviii.
2 f .) mentions and contends against, cannot mean, " The fathers
have begun to eat sour grapes, but not till the teeth of their
sons have become blunted by them" (Nagelsbach) ; the change
of tense is against this, for, by the perfect v3K and the imper-
fect nj^nprij the blunting of the children's teeth is set down as a
result of the fathers' eating. The proverb means, " Children
atone for the misdeeds of their fathers," or " The sins of the
fathers are visited on their innocent children." On this point,
cf. the explanations given on Ezek. xviii. 2 ff. " Then shall
they no more say" is rightly explained by HItzig to mean,
" They shall have no more occasion to say." But the meaning
of the words is not yet made plain by this ; in particular, the
question how we must understand ver. 30 is not settled. Graf,
referring to xxiii. 7, 8, supplies 'nON* after Q^"*?, and thus
obtains the meaning. Then will they no more accuse God of
unrighteousness, as in that wicked proverb, but they will per-
ceive that every one has to suffer for his own guilt. Hitzig
and Nagelsbach have declared against this insertion, — the
former with the remark that, in xxiii. 7, 8, because both mem-
bers of the sentence begin with protestations, the whole is
clear, while here it is not so, — the latter resting on the fact
. that the dropping of the proverb from current use certainly
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 31-4a 35
implies a correct knowledge of the righteousness of God, bat
one which is very elementary and merely negative ; while, on
the other hand, the whole connection of the passage now before
US shows that it is intended to describe a period when the theo-
cratic life is in a most flourishing condition. Then expositors
take ver. 30 as the utterance of the prophet, and as embodying
the notion that the average level of morality shall be so high at
this future period, that only some sins will continue to be com-
mitted, and these as isolated exceptions to the rule. Taken all
in all, Israel will be a holy people, in which the general spirit
pervading them will repress the evil in some individuals, that
would otherwise manifest itself. But we cannot imagine how
these ideas can be supposed to be contained in the words,
"Every man shall die for his own sins," etc. Ver. 30 un-
questionably contains the opposite of ver. 29. The proverb
mentioned in ver. 29 involves the complaint against God, that
in punishing sin He deals unjustly. According to this view,
ver. 30 must contain the declaration that, in the future, the
righteousness of God is to be revealed in the punishment of
sins. As we have already remarked on Ezek. xviii. 3 f., the
verse in question rather means, that after the re-establishment
of Israel, the Lord will make known to His people His grace
in so glorious a manner that the favoured ones will fully per-
ceive the righteousness of His judgments. The experience of
the unmerited love and compassion of the Lord softens the
heart so much, that the favoured one no longer doubts the
righteousness of the divine punishment. Such knowledge of
true blessedness cannot be called elementary ; rather, it implies
a deep experience of divine grace and a great advance in the
life of faith. Nor does the verse contain a judgment expressed
by the prophet in opposition to that of his contemporaries, but
it simply declares that the opinion contained in that current
proverb shall no longer be accepted then, but the favoured
people will recognise in the death of the sinner the punish-
ment due to them for their own sin. Viewed in this manner,
these verses prepare the way for the following announcement
concerning the nature of the new covenant.
Vers. 31-40. The new covenant. — ^Ver. 31. " Behold, days are
coming, saith Jahveh, when I will make with the house of
Digitized by
Google
V
36 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant ; Ver. 32.
Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day
when I laid hold of their hand to bring them out of the land
of Egypt, which covenant of mine they broke, though I had
married them to myself, saith Jahveh; Ver. 33. But this is
the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, saith Jahveh : I will put my law within them, and
on their heart will I write it ; and I will become to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people. Ver. 34. And they shall no
more teach every man his neighbour and every man his brother,
saying. Know ye Jahveh, for all of them shall know me, from
the least of them to the greatest of theft), saith Jahveh ; for I
will pardon their iniquity, and their sins will I remember no
more. Ver. 35. Thus saith Jahveh, [who] gives the sun for
light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and stars for
light by night, who rouses the sea so that its waves roar, Jahveh
of hosts is His name : Ver. 36. If these ordinances move away
from before me, saith Jahveh,' then also will the seed of Israel
cease to be a people before me for ever. Ver. 37. Thus saith
Jahveh : If the heavens above can be measured, and the foun-
dations of the earth below can be searched out, then will I also
reject all the seed of Israel because of all that they have done,
saith Jahveh. Ver. 38. Behold, days come, saith Jahveh, when
the city shall be built for Jahveh, from the tower of Hananeel
unto the gate of the corner, Ver. 39. And the measuring-line
shall once more go out straight over the hill of Gareb, and tarn
round towards Goah. Ver. 40. And all the valley of the corpses
and of the ashes, and all the fields unto the valley of Kidron,
unto the corner of the gate of the horses towards the east, [shall
be] holiness to Jahveh ; it shall not be plucked up nor pulled
down again for ever."
The re-establishment of Israel reaches its completion in the
making of a new covenant, according to which the law of God
is written in the hearts of the people; thereby Israel becomes
in truth the people of the Lord, and the knowledge of God
founded on the experience of the forgiveness of sins is such
that there is no further need of any external means like mutual
teaching about God (vers. 31-34). This covenant is to endure
for ever, like the unchangeable ordinances of nature (vers.
"N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXL 81-40. 37
35-37) ; and in consequence of this, Jerusalem shall be built
as the holy city of God, which shall never be destroyed again
(vers. 38-40). — V er. 31. n*i3 rro does not mean " to make an
appointment," but " to conclude a covenant," to establish a rela-
tion of mutual duties and obligations. Every covenant which
God concludes with men consists, on the side of God, in assur-
ance of His favours and actual bestowal of them ; these bind
men to the keeping of the commands laid on them. The cove-
nant which the Lord will make with all Israel in the future is
called " a new covenant," as compared with that made with the
fathers at Sinai, when the people were led out of Egypt ; this
latter is thus implicitly called the " old covenant." The words,
" on the day when I took them by the hand," etc., must not
be restricted, on the one side, to the day of the exodus from
Egypt, nor, on the other, to the day when the covenant was
solemnly made at Sinai ; they rather refer to the whole time of
the exodus, which did not reach its termination till the entrance
into Canaan, though it culminated in the solemn admission of
Israel, at Sinai, as the people of Jahveh ; see on vii. 22. (On
the punctuation of 'i?'?f]iJ» ^^' Ewald, § 238, d, Olshaus. Gramm.
§ 191,/.) iK'tJ is not a conjunction, " qudd, because," but a
relative pronoun, and must be combined with W'laTiK, " which
my covenant," i.e. which covenant of mine. " They" stands
emphatically in contrast with " though I" in the following cir-
cumstantial clause, which literally means, " but I have married
them to myself," or, " I was their husband." As to wy?, see
on iii. 14. Hengstenberg wrongly takes the words as a promise,
" but I will marry them to myself ;" this view, however, is
incompatible with the perfect, and the position of the words as
a contrast with " they broke." ^ The two closely connected
expressions indicate why a new covenant was necessary ; there
is no formal statement, however, of the reason, which is merely
given in a subordinate and appended clause. For the proper
reason why a new covenant is made is not that the people have
^ In the citation of this passage in Heb. viii. 8 S., the words are quoted
according to the LXX. version, xiiya iifti>,ri(r» ainav, although this trans-
lation is incorrect, because the apostle does not use these words in proving
any point. These same words, moreover, have been rendered hj the
LXX., in iii. 14, iyH ntcrciitvfttiaa iftan.
Digitized by
Google
• W \ h Lit' \ ,
38 THE PBOPHECIES 9f JEBEMUH.
broken the old one, but that, though Jahveh had united Israel
to Himself, they have broken the covenant and thereby ren-
dered it necessary to make a nevr one. God the Lord, in virtue
of His unchangeable faithfulness, would not alter the relation
He had Himself established in His love, but simply found it
anew in a way which obviated the breaking of the covenant by
Israel. For it was a defect connected with the covenant made
with Israel at Sinai, that it could be broken on their part. This
defect is not to exist in the new covenant which God will make
in after times. The expression " after those (not these) days"
is remarkable ; Qnri is not the same as >>^9[}, and yet the days
meant can only be the " coming days ;" accordingly, it is
" those days" (as in ver. 29) that are to be expected. The
expression " after these days " is inexact, and probably owes
its origin to the idea contained in the phrase " in the end of
the days" (D'Djn nnnsa, cf. xxiii. 20).— Ver. 33. The character
of the new covenant : " I (Jahveh) give (will put) my law
within them, and write it upon their heart." Q?")i?2i is the
opposite of CfiV.?r 10J> which is constantly used of the Sinaitic
law, cf. ix. 12, Deut. iv. 8, xi. 32, 1 Kings ix. 6 ; and the
" writing on the heart" is opposed to writing on the tables of
stone, Ex. xxxi. 18, cf. xxxii. 15 f., xxxiv. 8, Deut. iv. 13, ix. 11,
X. 4, etc. The difference, therefore, between the old and the
new covenants consists in this, that in the old the law was laid
before the people that they might accept it and follow it, receiv-
ing it into their hearts, as the copy of what God not merely
required of men, but offered and vouchsafed to them for their
happiness ; while in the new it is put Ivithin, implanted into
the heart and soul by the Spirit of God, and becomes the ani-
mating life-principle, 2 Cor. iii. 3. The law of the Lord thus
forms, in the old as well as in the new covenant, the kernel and
essence of the relation instituted between the Lord and His
people ; and the difference between the two consists merely in
this, that the will of God as expressed in the law under the
old covenant was presented externally to the people, while under
the new covenant it is to become an internal principle of life.
Now, even in the old covenant, we not only find that Israel is
urged to receive the law of the Lord his God into his heart, — to
make the law presented to him from without the property of
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 81-40. 39
bis heart, as it were, — but even Moses, vre also find, promises
that God will circumcise the heart of the people, that they may
love God the Lord with all their heart and all their soul (Deut.
XXX. 6). But this circumcision of heart and this love of God
with the whole soul, which are repeatedly required in the law
(Deut. vL 5, X. 12, 16), are impossibilities, unless the law be
received into the heart. It thus appears that the difference
between the old and the new covenants must be reduced to this,
that what was commanded and applied to the heart in the old
is given in the new, and the new is but the completion of the
old covenant. This is, indeed, the true relation between them,
as is clearly shown by the fact, that the essential element of the
new covenant, " I will be their God, and they shall be my
people," was set forth as the object of the old ; cf. Lev. xxvi.
12 with Ex. xxix. 45. Nevertheless the difference is not merely
one of degree, but one of kind. The demands of the law,
" Keep the commandments of your God," " Be ye holy as the
Lord your God is holy," cannot be fulfilled by sinful man.
Even when he strives most earnestly to keep the commands of
the law, he cannot satisfy its requirements. The law, with its
rigid demands, can only humble the sinner, and make him
beseech God to blot out his sin and create in him a clean heart
(Ps. li. 11 ff.) ; it can only awaken him to the perception of sin,
but cannot blot it out. It is God who must forgive this, and
by forgiving it, write His will on the heart. The forgiveness i
of sin, accordingly, is mentioned, ver. 34, at the latter part of 1
the promise, as the basis of the new covenant. But the forgive-/
ness of sins is a work of grace which annuls the demand of the
law against men. In the old covenant, the law with its require-
ments is the impelling force ; in the new covenant, the grace
shown in the forgiveness of sins is the aiding power by which
man attains that common life with God which the law sets
before him as the great problem of life. It is in this that the
qualitative difference between the old and the new covenants
consists. The object which both set before men for attainment 7
is the same, but the means of attaining it are different in each, j
In the old covenant are found commandment and requirement ;
in the new, grace and givjng. Certainly, even. under the old
covenant, God bestowed on the people of Israel grace and the
Digitized by
Google
40 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
forgiveness of sins, and, by the institution of sacrifice, had
opened up a way of access by which men might approach Him
and rejoice in His gracious gifts ; His Spirit, moreover, pro-
duced in the heart of the godly ones the feeling that their sins
were forgiven, and that they were favoured of God. But even
this institution and this working of the Holy Spirit on and in
the heart, was no more than a shadow and prefiguration of
what is actually offered and vouchsafed under the new covenant,
Heb. X. 1. The sacrifices of the old covenant are but prefigu-
rations of the true atoning-offering of Christ, by which the
sins of the whole world are atoned for and blotted out.
In ver..Ma- are unfolded the results of God's putting His
law in the heart. The knowledge of the Lord will then no
longer be communicated by the outward teaching of every man
to his fellow, but all, small and great, will be enlightened and
taught by the Spirit of God (Isa. liv. 13) to know the Lord ;
cf. Joel iii. 1 f.j Isa. xi. 9. These words do not imply that,
under the new covenant, " the oiBce of the teacher of religion
must cease " (Hitzig) ; and as little is " disparity in the im-
parting of the knowledge of God silently excluded" in ver. 33.
The meaning simply is this, that the knowledge of God will
then no longer be dependent on the communication and instruc-
tion of man. The knowledge of Jahveh, of which the prophet
speaks, is not the theoretic knowledge which is imparted and
acquired by means of religious instruction ; it is rather know-
ledge of divine grace based upon the inward experience of the
heart, which knowledge the Holy Spirit works in the heart by
assuring the sinner that he has indeed been adopted as a son of
God through the forgiveness of his sins. This knowledge, as
being an inward experience of grace, does not exclude religious
instruction, but rather tacitly implies that there is intimation
given of God's desire to save and of His purpose of grace.
The correct understanding of the words results from a right
perception of the contrast involved ih them, viz. that under the
old covenant the knowledge of the Lord was connected with the
mediation of priests and prophets. Just as, at Sinai, the sinful
people could not endure that the Lord should address them
directly, but retreated, terrified by the awful manifestation of
the Lord on the mountain, and said entreatingly to Moses,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXI. 31-40L 41
" Speak thoa with us and we will hear, but let not God speak
with us, lest we die" (Ex. xx. 15) ; so, under the old covenant
economy generally, access to the Lord was denied to indivi-
duals, and His grace was only obtained by the intervention of
human mediators. This state of matters has been abolished
under the new covenant, inasmuch as the favoured sinner is
placed in immediate relation to God by the Holy Spirit. Heb.
iv. 16 ; Eph. iii. 12.
In order to give good security that the promise of a new
covenant would be fulfilled, the Lord, in ver. 35 f., points to
the everlasting duration of the arrangements of nature, and
declares that, if this order of nature were to cease, then Israel
also would cease to be a people before Him ; i.e. the continu-
ance of Israel as the people of God s^all be like the laws of
nature. Thus the eternal duration of the new covenant is
imphcitly declared. Hengstenberg contests the common view
of vers. 35 and 36, according to which the reference is to the
firm, unchangeable continuance of God's laws in nature, which
everything must obey ; and he is of opinion that, in ver. 35,
it is merely the omnipotence of God that is spoken of, that this
proves He is God and not man, and that there is thus formed a
basis for the statement set forth in ver. 35, so full of comfort
for the doubting covenant people, that God does not lie, that
He can never repent of His- covenant and His promises. But
the arguments adduced for this, and against the common view,
are not decisive. The expression " stirring the sea, so that its
waves roar," certainly serves in the original passage, Isa. li. 15,
from which Jeremiah has taken it, to bring the divine omnipo-
tence into prominence ; but it does not follow from this that
here also it is merely the omnipotence of God that is pointed
out. Although, in rousing the sea, " no definite rule that we
can perceive is observed, no uninterrupted return," yet it is
repeated according to the unchangeable ordinance of God,
though not every day, like the rising and setting of the heavenly
bodies. And in vei*. 36, under the expression "these ordi-
nances " are comprehended the rousing of the sea as well as the
movements of the moon and stars ; f urtherj the departure, i.e.
the cessation, of these natural phenomena is mentioned [as
impossible], to signify that Israel cannot cease to exist as a
Digitized by
Google
42 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
people ; hence the emphasis laid on the immatabilitj of these
ordinances of nature. Considered in itself, the putting of the
sun for a light by day, and the appointment of the moon and
stars for a light by night, are works of the almighty power of
God, just as the sea is roused so that its waves roar ; but, that
these phenomena never cease, but always recur as long as the
present world lasts, is a proof of the immutability of these
works of the omnipotence of God, and it is this point alone
which here receives consideration. "The ordinances of the
moon and of the stars " mean the established arrangements as
regards the phases of the moon, and the rising and setting of
the different stars. " From being a nation before me " declares
not merely the continuance of Tsrael as a nation, so that they
shall not disappear from the earth, just as so many others perish
in the course of ages, but also their continuance before Jahveh,
i.e. as His chosen people ; cf. xxx. 20. — This positive promise
regarding the continuance of Israel is confirmed by a second
simile, in ver. 37, which declares the impossibility of rejection.
The measurement of the heavens and the searching of the
foundations, i.e. of the inmost depths, of the earth, is regarded
as an impossibiHty. God will not reject the wliole seed of
Israel : here 73 is to be attentively considered. As Hengsten-
berg correctly remarks, the hypocrites are deprived, of the
comfort which they could draw from these promises. Since
the posterity of Israel are not all rejected, the rejection of the
dead members of the people, i.e. unbelievers, is not thereby
excluded, but included. That the whole cannot perish " is no
bolster for the sin of any single person." The prophet adds :
" because of all that they have done," i.e. because of their sins,
their apostasy from God, in order to keep believing ones from
despair on account of the greatness of their sins. On this,
Calvin makes the appropriate remark : Consulto propheta hie
proponit scelera populi, ut sciamus superiorem fore Dei clementiam^
nee congeriem tot malorum fore obstaculo, quominus Deus ignoscat.
If we keep before our mind these points in the promise con-
tained in this verse, we shall not, like Graf, find in ver. 37
merely a tame repetition of what has already been said, and be
inclined to take the verse as a superfluous marginal gloss.^
^ Hitzig even tbinka that, " because the style and the use of language
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXL S»-40. 43
Vers. 38-40. Then shall Jerusalem be built up as a holy
city of God, and be no more destroyed. After COJ, the
Masoretic text wants B'K3, which is supplied in the Qeri.
Hengstenberg is of opinion that the expression was abbreviated
here, inasmuch as it has already occurred before, several times,
in its full form (vers. 27 and 31) ; but Jeremiah does not
usually abbreviate when he repeats an expression, and D*K3 has
perhaps been dropped merely through an error in transcription.
" The city shall be built for Jahveh," so that it thenceforth
belongs to Him, is consecrated to Him. The extent of the new
city is described as being " from the tower of Hananeel to the
gate of the comer." The tower of Hananeel, according to
Neh. iii. 1 and Zech iv. 10, was situated on the north-east
comer of the city wall; the gate of the comer was at the
north-west comer of the city, to the north or north-west of
the present " Jaffa Gate ; " see on 2 Kings xiv. 13, 2 Chron. .
xxvi. 9 ; cf. Zech. xiv. 10. This account thus briefly describes
the whole north side. Ver. 39. The measuring-line (nijJ as.
found here, 1 Kings vii. 23 and Zech. i. 16, is the original
form, afterwards shortened into ijj, the Qeri) further goes out
llMj " before itself," i.e. straight out over the hill Gareb.
7j? does not mean " away towards, or on " (Hitzig) ; nor is the
true reading *!?, " as far as, even to," which is met with in
several codices : the correct rendering is " away over," so that
a part, at least, of the hill was included within the city bounds.
*' And turns towards Goah." These two places last named
betoken the second Isaiah, and the order of both strophes is reversed in the
LXX. (i.e. ver. 37 stands before ver. 35 f.), vers. 35, 36 may Lave stood in
the margin at the beginning of the genuine portion in vers. 27-34, and
ver. 37, on the other hand, in the margin at ver. 34." But, that the
verses, although they present reminiscences of the second Isaiah, do not
quite prove that the language is his, has- already been made sufficiently
evident by Graf, who points out that, in the second Isaiah, non is nowhere
used of the roaring of the sea, nor do we meet with n^pn and D^pirii
ni'ilD ViaB**., D'pjn-i)3, nor again -([jn in the Niphal, or pN^piO (but
Y'\i<n JlWbiD in Isa. xl. 21); other expressions are not peculiar to the
second Isaiah, since they also occur in other writings. — But the transposi-
tion of the verses in the LXX., in view of the arbitrary treatment of the
text of Jeremiah in that version, cannot be made to prove anything what-
ever.
Digitized by
Google
44 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
are nnknown. From the context of the passage only this much
is clear, that both of them were situated on the west of the
city; for the starting-point of the line spoken of is in the
north-west, and the valley of Ben-hinnom joins in at the end
of it, in the south, ver. 40. 3^3 means " itching," for 3^3 in
Lev. xxi. 20, xxii. 22 means " the itch ; " in Arabic also " the
leprosy." From this, many expositors infer that the hill
Gareb was the hill where lepers were obliged to dwell by them-
selves, outside the city. This supposition is probable ; there is
no truth, however, in the assumption of Schleussner, Krafft
(Topogr. von Jems. S. 158), Hitzig, and Hengstenberg, that the
hill Bezetha, included within the city bounds by the third wall
of Agrjppa, is the one meant; for the line described in ver. 39
is not to be sought for on the north side of the city. With
Graf, we look for the hill Gareb on the mount which lies
westward from the valley of Ben-hinnom and at the end of the
valley of Bephaim, towards the north (Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16),
so that it is likely we must consider it to be identical with " the
top of the mountain" mentioned in these passages. This
mountain is the rocky ridge which bounds the valley of Ben-
hinnom on the west, and stretches northwards, on the west side
of the valley of Gihon and the Lower Pool (Birket es Sultan),
to near the high road to Jaffa, where it turns off towards the
west on the under {i.e. south) side of the Upper Pool {Birket el
Mamilla); see on Josh, xv. 8. It is not, as Thenius supposes
{Jerusalem hefwe the Exile, an appendix to his commentary on
the Books of Kings), the bare rocky hill situated on the north,
and overhanging the Upper Pool ; on this view, Goah could
only be the steep descent from the plateau into the valley of
Kidron, opposite this hill, towards the east. Regarding Goah,
only this much can be said with certainty, that the supposition,
made by Vitringa and Hengstenberg, of a connection between
the name and Golgotha, is untenable ; lexical considerations
and facts are all against it. Golgotha was situated in the
north-west : Goah must be sought for south-west from Jeru-
salem. The translation of the Chaldee, " cattle-pond," is a
mere inference from riya, "to bellow." But, in spite of the
uncertainty experienced in determining the positions of the hill
Gareb and Goah, this much is evident from the verse before
Digitized by
Google
•CHAP. XXXI. 38-40. 45
US, that the city, which is thus to be built anew, will extend
to the west beyond the space occupied by old Jerusalem, and
include within it districts or spots which lay outside old (i.e.
pre- and postrcxile) Jerusalem, and which had been divided off
from the city, as unclean places. — In ver. 40, without any
change of construction, the southern border is described. " The
whole valley of the corpses and of the ashes . . . shall be
holy to Jahveh," i.e. be included within the space occupied
by the new city. By " the valley of the corpses and of the
ashes " expositors generally and rightly understand the valley
of Ben-hinnom (0*^33 are the carcases of animals that have been
killed, and of men who have been slain through some judg-
ment of God and been left unburied). Jeremiah applies this
name to the valley, because, in consequence of the pollution
by Josiah of the place where the abominations bad been
offered to Moloch (2 Kings xxiii. 10), it had become a sort
of slaughtering-place or tan-yard for the city. According
to Lev. vi. 3, ]f^. means the ashes of the burnt-offerings
consumed on the altar*. According to Lev. iv. 12 and vi. 4,
these were to be carried from the ash-heap near the altar,
out of the city, to a clean place ; but they might also be
considered as the gross deposit of the sacrifices, and thus as
unclean. Hence also it came to pass that all the sweepings
of the temple were probably brought to this place where the
ashes were, which thus became still more unclean. Instead
of niD'iB^n, the Qeri requires DiDlB'n, and, in fact, the former
word may not be very different from Jill.? T)So'W^ 2 Kings
xxiii. 4, whither Josiah caused all the instruments used in
idolatrous worship to be brought and burned. But it is
improbable that nte^B' is a mere error in transcription for
nioiB'. The former word is found nowhere else; not even
does the verb D1K' occur. The latter noun, which is quite
well known, could not readily be written by mistake for the
former ; and even if such an error had been committed, it would
not have gained admission into all the MSS., so that even the
LXX. should have that reading, and give the word as ^Avap-
t)fici)0, in Greek characters. We must, then, consider ntone'
as the correct reading, and derive the word from *^-, or
Digitized by
Google
46 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
*-Si, or Mj^, " to cut off, cut to pieces," iu the sense of
"ravines, hollows" (/V")> ^^ ^'^'^ abscissa, places cut off or
shut out from the holy city. " Unto the brook of Kidron,"
into which the valley of Ben-hinnom opens towards the east,
"unto the comer of the horse-gate towards the east." The
horse-gate stood on the site of the modern "Dung-gate"
(Bab el Moghdriebh), in the wall which ran along from the
south-east end of Zlon to the western border of Ophel (see on
Neh. iii. 28), so that, in this verse before us, it is the south and
south-eastern boundaries of the city that are given ; and only
the length of the eastern side, which enclosed the temple area,
on to the north-eastern corner, has been left without men-
tion, because the valley of the Kidron here formed a strong
boundary.
The extent of the new city, as here given, does not much
surpass that of old Jerusalem. Only in the west and south
are tracts to be included within the city, and such tracts, too,
as had formerly been excluded from the old city, as unclean
places. Jeremiah accordingly announces, not merely that
there will be a considerable increase in the size of Jerusalem,
but that the whole city shall be holy to the Lord, the unclean
places in its vicinity shall disappear, and be transformed into
hallowed places of the new city. As being sacred to the Lord,
the city shall no more be destroyed.
From this description of Jerusalem which is to be built
anew, so that the whole city, including the unclean places now
outside of it, shall be holy, or a sanctuary of the Lord, it is
very evident that this prophecy does not refer to the rebuilding
of Jerusalem after the exile, but, under the figure of Jeru-
salem, as the centre of the kingdom of God under the Old
Testament, announces the erection of a more spiritual kingdom
of God in the Messianic age. The earthly Jerusalem was a
holy city only in so far as the sanctuary of the Lord, the
temple, had been built in it. Jeremiah makes no mention of
the rebuilding of the temple, although he had prophesied the
destruction, not only of the city, but also of the temple. But
he represents the new city as being, in its whole extent, the
sanctuary of the Lord, which the temple only had been, in
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIT. 47
ancient Jerasalem. Cf., as a sabstantial parallel, Zech. xiv.
10, 11. — ^The erection of Jerusalem into a city, within whose
walls there shall be nothing unholy, implies the yanquishment
of sin, from which all impurity proceeds ; it is also the ripe fruit
of the forgiveness of sins, in which the new covenant, which
the Lord will make with His people in the days to come, con-
sists and culminates. This prophecy, then, reaches on to the
time when the kingdom of God shall have been perfected : it
contains, under an old Testament dress, the outlines of the
image of the heavenly Jerusalem, which the seer perceives at
Patmos in its full glory. This image of the new Jerusalem
thus forms a very suitable conclusion to this prophecy regarding
the restoration of Israel, which, although it begins with the
deliverance of the covenant people from their exile, is yet
thoroughly Messianic. Though clothed in an Old Testament
dress, it does not implicitly declare that Israel shall be brought
back to their native land during the period extending from the
time of Gyrus to that of Christ ; but, taking this interval as its
stand-point, it combines in one view both the deliverance from
the exile and the redemption by the Messiah, and not merely
announces the formation of the new covenant in its begin-
nings, when the Christian Church was founded, but at the
same time points to the completion of the kingdom of God
under the new covenant, in order to show the whole extent of
the salvation which the Lord will prepare for His people who
return to Him. If these last verses have not made the im-
pression on Grafs mind, that they could well have formed the
original conclusion to the prophecy which precedes, the reason
lies simply in the theological inability of their expositor to get
to the bottom of the sacred writings.
Chap, xxxii. The Purchase of a Field as a Symlol of the
Restoration of Judah after the Exile.
This chapter, after an introduction (vers. 1—5) which accu-
rately sets forth the time and circumstances of the following
event, contains, first of all (vers. 6-15), the account of the
purchase of a hereditary field at Anathotb, which Jeremiah,
at the divine command, executes in full legal form, together
with a statement of the meaning of this purchase ; then (vers.
Digitized by
Google
48 THE PEOPHECIES OP JEREMIAH,
16-25) a prayer of the prophet for an explanation as to how
the purchase of the field could be reconciled with the delivering
up of the people and the city of Jerusalem to the Chaldeans ;
together with (vers. 26-35) the Lord's reply, that He shall
certainly give up Jerusalem to the Chaldeans, because Israel
and Judah, by their sins and their idolatries, have roused
His wrath ; but (vers. 36-44) that He shall also gather again
His people out of all the lands whither they have been scat-
tered, and make an everlasting covenant with them, so that
they shall dwell safely and happily in the land in true fear of
God.
Vers. 1-5. The time and the circUmstances of the following
message from God. — The message came to Jeremiah in the
tenth year of Zedekiah, i.e. in the eighteenth year of Nebu-
chadrezzar (cf. XXV. 1 and Hi. 12), when the army of the king
of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was kept
in confinement in the fore-court of the royal palace. These
historical data are inserted (vers. 2-5) in the form of circum-
stantial clauses : 'u^ ?*n ^], " for at that time the army of the
king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem." The siege had
begun in the ninth year of Zedekiah (xxxix. 1, Hi. 4), and was
afterwards raised for a short time, in consequence of the ap-
proach of an auxiliary corps of Egyptians ; but, as soon as these
had been defeated, it was resumed (xxxvu. 5, 11). Jeremiah
was then kept confined in the court of the prison of the royal
palace (cf. Neh. iii. 25), " where Zedekiah, king of Judah, had
imprisoned him, saying : Why dost thou prophesy, ' Thus saith
the Lord, Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king
of Babylon, so that he shall take it ; Ver. 4. And Zedekiah,
the king of Judah, shall not escape out of the hand of the
Chaldeans, but shall assuredly be delivered into the hand of the
king of Babylon, and his mouth shall speak with his mouth,
and his eyes shall behold his eyes ; Ver. 5. And he shall lead
Zedekiah to Babylon, and there shall he be until I visit him,
saith the Loi*d. Though ye fight with the Chaldeans, ye shall
not succeed 1 ' " — ^We have already found an utterance of like
import in chap, xxi., but that is not here referred to ; for it was
fulfilled at the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, and did not
bring on Jeremiah the consequences mentioned here. From
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIL 6-13. 49
chap, xxxvii. we learn that Jeremiah, daring the siege of
Jerusalem, on till the time when it was raised through the
approach of the Egyptian army, had not been imprisoned, but
went freely in and out among the people (xxxvii. 4 ff.). Not
till during the temporary raising of the siege, when he wanted
to go out of the city into the land of Benjamin, was he seized and
thrown intQ a dungeon, on the pretence that he intended to
go over to the Chaldeans. There he remained many days, till
King Zedekiah ordered him to be brought, and questioned him
privately as to the. issue of the conflict; when Jeremiah replied,
" Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon."
On this occasion Jeremiah complained to the king of his im-
prisonment, and requested that he might not be sent back into
the dungeon, where he must soon perish ; the king then ordered
him (xxxvii. 11-24) to be taken into the court of the prison-
house ('"TJ^en "ivn, xxxvii. 21), where he remained in confine-
ment till the city was taken (xxxviii. 13, 28, xxxix. 14). The
statement in our verses as to the cause of this imprisonment
does not contradict, but agrees with the notice in chap, xxxvii.,
as soon as we perceive that this account contains merely a
brief passing notice of the matter. The same holds true of the
utterance of the prophet in vers. 3-5. Jeremiah, even at the
beginning of the siege (xxi. 3 ff.), had sent a message of similar
import to the king, and repeated the same afterwards : xxxiv.
3-5, xxxvii. 17, xxxviii. 17-23. The words of our verses are
taken from these repeated utterances; ver. 4 agrees almost
verbatim with xxxiv. 3 ; and the words, " there shall he remain
ink npsijf, till I regard him with favour," are based upon the
clearer utterance as to the end of Zedekiah, xxxiv. 4, 5. — The
circumstances under which Jeremiah received the following
commission from the Lord are thus exactly stated, in order
to show how little prospect the present of the kingdom of Judah
offered for the future, which was portrayed by the purchase
of the field. Not only must the kingdom of Judah inevitably
succumb to the power of the Chaldeans, and its population go
into exile, but even Jeremiah is imprisoned, in so hopeless a
condition, that he is no longer sure of his life for a single day.
Vers. 6-15. Tlie purchase of the field. — ^In ver. 6, the intro-
duction, which has been interrupted by long parentheses, is
VOL. II. D
~]
Digitized by
Google
50 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
resumed with the words, " And Jeremiah said," etc. The word
of the Lord follows, ver. 7. The Lord said to him : " Behold,
Hanameel, the son of Shallum, thine uncle, cometh to thee,
saying, * Buy thee my field at Anathoth, for thou hast the
redemption-right to purchase it.' " According to a mode of
construction common elsewhere, I^M might be taken as in ap-
position to ?KO?n : « Hanameel, son of Shallum, thine uncle."
But vers. 8, 9, in which Jeremiah calls Hanameel ^^H^, son
of my uncle, show that Tf^ is in apposition to Pp* : " son of
Shallum, [who is] thine uncle." The right of redemption
consisted, in this, that if any one was forced through circum-
stances to sell his landed property, the nearest blood-relation
had the right, or rather was obliged, to preserve the possession
for the family, either through pre-emption, or redemption from
the stranger who had bought it (Lev. xxv. 25). For the land
which God had given to the tribes and families of Israel for a
hereditary possession could not be sold, so as to pass into the
hands of strangers ; and for this reason, in the year of jubilee,
what had been sold since the previous jubilee reverted, without
payment of any kind, to the original possessor or his heirs.
(Of. Lev. xxv. 23-28, and Keil's Bibl. Archdol. ii. § 141,
p. 208 ff.) — ^Ver. 8. What had been announced to the prophet
by God took place. Hanameel came to him, and offered him
his field for sale. From this Jeremiah perceived that the pro-
posed sale was the word of the Lord, i,e. that the matter was
appointed by the Lord. Ver. 9. Jeremiah accordingly bought
the field, and weighed out to Hanameel '' seven shekels and
ten the silver" (^D|0 is definite, as being the amount of money
asked as price of purchase). But the form of expression is
remai'kable : " seven shekels and ten" instead of " seventeen "
(clDsn ^'?j>v nvm nw?'). The Chaldee consequently has « seven
manehs and ten shekels of silver ;" and J. D. Michaelis sup-
poses that the seven shekels which are first named, and are
separated from -the ten, were shekels of gold : " seven shekels
of gold, and seven shekels of silver." But both assumptions
are gratuitous, and perhaps only inferences, not merely from
the unusual separation of the numerals, but likewise from
the fact th^t seventeen silver shekels (less than two pounds
sterling) was too small a price for an arable field. The sup-
">.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXU. 6-U. 51
position of Hitzig has more in its favoar, that the mode of
expression '' seven shekels and ten (shekels) of silver" was a
law form. Some have songht to explain the smallness of the
price on the ground that the seller was compelled to part with
his property through poverty, and that the land had become
depreciated in consequence of thfe war. Both may be true ;
but, as Nagelsbach has already remarked, neither explains the
smallness of the price. For instances have very properly been
adduced from Eoman history (Livy, xxvi. 11, and Floras, ii, 6)
which show that occupation of a country by an enemy did not
lessen the value of ground-property. It is rather to be taken
into consideration, that in the first place we do not know the
real value of arable land among the Hebrews ; and secondly,
the sale of portions of land was, correctly speaking, only the sale
of the harvests up till the year of jubilee, for then the property
returned to the former possessor or his heirs. In the case of a
sale, then, the hearer the jubilee-year, the smaller must be the
price of purchase in the alienation of the land. — Ver. 10 ff.
The purchase was concluded in full legal form. " I wrote it
(the necessary terms) in the letter (the usual letter of purchase),
and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed out the money
on the balance" (it was then and still is the custom in the East
to weigh money), onn means here, not to append a seal
instead of subscribing the name, or for attestation (cf. 1 Kings
xxi. 8, Neh. x. 2), but to seal up, make sure by sealing (Isa.
xxix. 11, etc.). For, from vers. 11, 12, we perceive that two
copies of the bill of purchase were prepared, one sealed up,
and the other open ; so that, in case the open one were lost, or
were accidentally or designedly injured or defaced, a perfect
original might still exist in the sealed-up copy. Then " Jere-
miah took the bill of purchase, the sealed one," — the specifica^
tion and the conditions, — " and the open one." The words fiJVQn
^'^^ii!!! are in apposition with 'W ^Bp"ns. The Vulgate renders
stipulationes et rata ; Jerome, 'stipulatione rata, which he explains
by atipulationibus et sponsionibus corroborata. f^JV?, usually
" a command, order," is probably employed here in the general
sense of " specification," namely, the object and the price of
purchase ; Q^^n, '' statutes," the conditions and stipulations of
sale. The apposition has the meaning, " containing the agree-
bigitized by
Google
52 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHUB.
ment and the conditions." Both copies of this hill, the prophet,
— before the eyes of Hanameel, his cousin (''"i\ either in the
general sense of a near relation, since the relationship has been
stated exactly enough already, or "!3 has been inadvertently
omitted), and before the eyes of, i.e. in the presence of " the
witnesses, who wrote in the letter of purchase," i.e. had sub-
scribed it as witnesses in attestation of the matter, and in the
eyes of all the Jews who were sitting in the court of the prison,
and in whose presence the transaction had been concluded, —
delivered up to his attendant Baruch, son of Nerijah, the son
of Mahsejah, with the words, ver. 14 : " Thus saith Jahveh of
hosts, the God of Israel : Take these letters, this sealed-up letter
of purchase and this open letter, and put them into an earthen
vessel, that they may remain a long time [there], Ver. 15.
For thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Houses, and
fields, and vineyards shall still be bought in this land." — The
second utterance of the Lord (ver. 15) declares the reason why
the letters were to be preserved in an earthen vessel, in order
to protect them from damp, decay, and destruction, namely,
because one could make use of them afterwards, when sale of
property would still be taking place. There is also implied the
intimation, that the present desolation of the land and the
transportation of its inhabitants will only last during their
time ; and then the population of Judah will return, and enter
again on the possession of their land. The purchase of the field
on the part of Jeremiah had this meaning ; and for the sake of
this meaning it was announced to him by God, and completed
before witnesses, in the presence of the Jews who happened to
be in the court of the prist^n.
Vers. 16-25. The prayer of Jeremiah. —Although Jeremiah
has declared, in the words of the Lord, ver. 14 f ., the meaning
of the purchase of the field to the witnesses who were present
at the transaction, yet the intimation that houses, fields, and
vineyards would once more be bought, seemed so improbable,
in view of the impending capture and destruction of Jerusalem
by the Chaldeans, that he betakes himself to the Lord in prayer,
asking for further disclosures regarding the future of the people
and the land, less for his own sake than for that of the people,
who could with difficulty rise to such confidence of faith. The
Digitized by
Google
C5AP. XXXIL 16-26. 53
prayer runs thus, ver. 17 : " Ah, Lord Jahreh I behold, Thou
hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and
Thine outstretched arm ; to Thee nothing is impossible. Ver. 18.
Thou showest mercy unto thousands, and repayest the iniquity
of fathers into the bosom of their children after them, Thou
great and mighty God, whose name is Jahveh of hosts. Ver. 19.
Great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to
all the ways of the children of men, to give unto every one
according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his works :
Ver. 20. Thou who didst signs and wonders in the land of Egypt
until this day, both in Israel and among [other] men, and *
madest for Thyself a name, as it is this day ; Ver. 21. And didst
lead Thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and
wonders, and with strong hand and outstretched arm, and with
great terror, Ver. 22. And didst give them this land, which
Thou hast sworn to their fathers to give them, a land flowing
with milk and honey ; Ver. 23. And they came and took pos-
session of it, but they hearkened not to Thy voice and walked
not in Thy law : all that Thou commandedst them to do they
did not, therefore didst Thou cause all this evil to come against
them. Ver. 24. Behold, the besiegers' mounds are come to
the city, to take it, and the city will be given into the hands of
the Chaldeans, who fight against it, because of the sword,
hunger, and pestilence ; and what Thou didst speak is come to
pass, and, behold, Thou seest it. Ver. 25. Yet Thou hast said
to me, O Lord Jahveh, ' Buy thee the field for money, and
> take witnesses,' while the city is being delivered into the hands
of the Chaldeans."
This prayer contains a laudation of the omnipotence of the
Lord and the justice of His dealing among all men (vers.
17—19), and especially in the guidance of the people Israel
(vers. 20-23), with the view of connecting with it the question,
how the divine command to buy the field is to be reconciled
with the decreed deliverance of the city into the power of the
Chaldeans (vers. 24, 25). Ver. 17. God proclaims His omni-
potence in the creation of the heaven and the earth, cf. xxvii. 5.
From this it is plain that nothing is too wonderful for God, i.e.
is impossible for Him, Gen. xviii. 14. As Creator and Buler
of the world, God exei'cises grace and justice. The words of
Digitized by
Google
54 THE PBOPBECIES OF JEBEMUH.
ver. 18 are a reminiscence and free imitation of the passages
Ex. XX. 5 ff. and xxxiv. 7, where the Lord so depicts His deal-
ings in the guidance of men. To " recompense iniquity into
the bosom" (see Isa. Ixv. 6, of. Ps. Ixxix. 12), i.e, to pour into
the bosom of the garment the reward for iniquity, so that it
may be carried away and borne ; cf. Ruth iii. 15, Prov. xvii.
23. " The great and mighty God," as in Deut. x. 17. On
" Jahveh of hosts is His name," cf. x. 16, xxxi. 35. lOE' is
to be explained thus : " O Thou great God, whose name is
Jahveh of hosts." — Ver. 19. God shows His greatness and
might in the wisdom with which He regards the doings of men,
and in the power with which He executes His decrees, so as to
recompense to every one according to his deeds. On 19a cf.
Isa. xxviii. 29, Ps. Ixvi. 5. " To give to every one," etc., is
repeated, word for word, from xvii. 10. — Vers. 20-22. The
Lord has further shown this omnipotence and righteousness in
His guidance of Israel, in His leading them out of Egypt with
wonders and signs; cf. Deut. vi. 22, xxxiv. 11. " Until this
day" cannot mean that the wonders continue in Egypt until
this day, — still less, that their glorious remembrance continues
till this day (Calvin, Eosenmtiller, etc.). Just as little can we
connect the words with what follows, '* until this day, in Egypt
and among men," as Jerome supposed ; although the idea et in
Israel et in cunctis mortalibus quotidie tua signa complentur is
in itself quite right. Logically considered, " until this day"
belongs to the verb. 'l31 '?'??'), and the construction is pregnant,
as in xi. 7 : " Thou hast done wonders in Egypt, and hast still
been doirig them until this day in Israel and among other men."
" Men," in contrast to " Israel," are mankind outside of Israel, —
other men, the heathen ; on the expression, cf. Judg. xviii. 7,
Isa. xliii. 4, Ps. Ixxiii. 5. " As at this day :" cf. xi. 5, xxv. 18.
Through signs and wonders the Lord wrought, leading Israel
out of Egypt, and into the land of Canaan, which had been
promised to their fathers. Ver. 21 is almost exactly the same
as Deut. xxvi. 8, cf. iv. 34. PilJ N^to refers to the terror
spread among the neighbouring nations, Ex. xv. 14 ff., by the
wonders, especially the slaying of the first-bom among the
Egyptians, Ex. xii. 30 f., and the miracle at the Red Sea. On
" a land flowing with milk and honey," cf. Ex. iii. 8. — Ver. 23.
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXSIL 26-44. 55
These wonders of grace which the Lord wrought for His
people, Israel reqaited with base anthankfulness. When they
had got into possession of the land, they did not listen to the
voice of their God, and did the reverse of what He had com-
manded. (The Kethih ^mnna might be read as a plural. But
since >Tita in the plural is always written elsewhere TlT^ (cf.
Gen. xxvi. 5, Ex. xvi. 28, xviii. 20, Lev. xxvi. 46, etc), and
the omission of the * in plural suffixes is unusual (cf. xxxviii.
22), the word rather seems to have been incorrectly written
for "O^^Of (cf. xxvi. 4, xliv. 10, 23), i.e. the \ seems to have
been misplaced. Therefore the Lord brought on them this
great calamity, the Chaldean invasion (^^pJ? for fTip?) ; cf.
xiii. 22, Dent. xxxi. 29. With this thought, the prophet makes
transition to the questions addressed to the Lord, into which
the prayer glides. In ver. 24, the' great calamity is more fully
described. The ramparts of the besieging enemy have come
to the city (Nia with ace), to take it, and the city is given
(njnj, proplietic perfect) into the hands of the Chaldeans.
" Because of the sword ;" i.e. the sword, famine, and pestilence
(cf. xiv. 16, XXV. 16, etc.) bring them into the power of the
enemy. " What Thon spakest," i.e. didst threaten through the
prophets, " is come to pass ; and, behold, Thou seest it (viz.
what has happened), and yet (p^^. adversative) Thou sayest
to me, ' Buy the field,' " etc. The last clause, '2 Tyrn, is a
" circumstantial" one, and is not a part of God's address, but is
added by Jeremiah in order to give greater prominence to the
contrast between the actual state of matters and the divine
command regarding the purchase. The prayer concludes with
this, which is for men an inexplicable riddle, not (as Nagels-
bach thinks) for the purpose of leaving to the reader the solu-
tion of the problem, after all aids have been offered him, — for
Jeremiah would not need to direct his question to God for that
purpose, — but in order to ask from God an explanation regarding
the future. This explanation immediately follows in the word
of the Lord, which, from ver. 26 onwards, is addressed to the
prophet.
Vers. 26—44. The answer of the Lord. — ^Behold, I am Jahveh,
the God of all flesh ; is there anything impossible to me ? Ver.
28. Therefore, thus saith Jahveh : Behold, I give this city into
Digitized by
Google
56 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMUH.
the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchad-
rezzar, the king of Babylon, that he may take it. Ver. 29.
The Chaldeans that fight against this city shall come, and shall
set fire to this city, and burn it and the houses on whose roofs
you have burned incense to Baal and poured out libations to
other gods, to provoke me. Ver. 30. For the children of Israel
and the children of Judah have done only what is evil in mine
eyes from their youth ; for the children of Israel have only
provoked me with the work of their hands, saith Jahveh.
Ver. 31. For this city has been to me [a burden] upon mine
anger and upon my wrath from the day that it was built till
this day, that I might remove it from before my face ; Ver. 32.
Because of all the wickedness of the children of Israel and the
children of Judah, which they have done, to provoke me, —
they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets,
the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Ver. 33.
They turned to me the back and not the face; and though
they were constantly being taught, they would not hear so as
to receive instruction. Ver. 34. And they placed their abomi-
nations in the house which is called by my name, in order to
defile it ; Ver. 35. And built high places to Baal in the valley
of Ben-hinnom, to devote their sons and their daughters to
Moloch, — which I did not command them, nor did it come into
my mind that they would do such abomination, — that they might
lead Judah to sin. Ver. 36. And now, therefore, thus saith
Jahveh, the God of Israel, concerning this city, of which ye say,
' It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon,
through the sword, famine, and pestilence :* Ver. 37. Behold, I
shall gather them out of all lands whither I have driven them
in my wrath, and in mine anger, and in great rage, and shall
bring them back to this place, and make them dwell safely.
Ver. 38. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Ver. 39. And I will give them one heart and one way, to fear
me always, for good to them and to their children after them.
Ver. 40. And I will make with them an everlasting covenant,
that I shall not turn aside from doing them good ; and I will
put my fear in their heart, that they may not depart from me-
Ver. 41. And I shall rejoice over them, to do them good, and
shall plant them in this land, in truth, with my whole heart and
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXII. 26-44, 57
my whole soul. Ver. 42. For thus saith Jahveh : * Just as I
have brought all this great evil on this people, so shall I bring
on them all the good of wbich I speak regarding them.' Ver. 43.
And fields shall be bought in this land, of which je say, It is a
desolation, without man or beast, and it is given into the hand
of the Chaldeans. Ver. 44. They shall buy fields for money,
and write it in the letter, and seal it up, and take witnesses, in
the land of Benjamin, and in the places round Jerusalem, and
in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the hill-country, and
in the cities of the plain, and in the cities of the south ; for I
shall turn again their captivity, saith Jahveh."
The Lord replies to the three points touched on in the prayer
of the prophet. First, in ver. 27, He emphatically confirms
the acknowledgment that to Him, as Creatpr of heaven and
earth, nothing is impossible (ver. 17), and at the same time
points out Himself as the God of all flesh, i.e. the God on whom
depend the life and death of all men. This description of God
is copied from Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16, where Jahveh is called
'* the God of the spirits of all flesh." " All flesh " is the name
given to humanity, as being frail and perishing. — Then God
reaffirms that Jerusalem will be given into the hand of Nebu-
chadrezzar, and be burned by the Chaldeans (ver. 28 ff.), because
Israel and Judah have always roused His wrath by their idolatry
and rebellion against His commands (vers. 30-35). The sub-
stance of these verses has been often given before. On Vf^rei
cf. xxi. 10, xxxvii. 8 ; on 'U1 ntsi? nc-K cf. xix. 13 with vii. 9, 18.
The mention of the children of Israel in connection with the
children of Judah is not to be understood as if the destruction
of Jerusalem was partly owing to the former ; but it is here
made, to signify that Judah can expect no better fate than the
Israelites, whose kingdom has been destroyed long before, and
who have for a long time now been driven into exile. '=1?* vn
D^'^V, "they were only doing," i.e. doing nothing else than
what is displeasing to the Lord. In ver. 306 " the children of
Israel" is a designation of the whole covenant people. The
whole sentence has reference to Deut. xxxi. 29. " The work of
their hands " is not the idols, but signifies the whole conduct
and actions of the people. Ver. 31. The difficult construction
'p"nri|n . . . 'BK*?? is most easily explained from the employment
r
Digitized by
Google
58 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH. .
of ?y njn with reference to the superincumbency of a duty or
burden lying on one. " This city became to me a burden on
my wrath," an object which lay upon my wrath, called it forth.
No other explanation can be vindicated. The passages Hi. 3
and 2 Kings xxiv. 3, 20, are of a different character, and the
meaning juxta, secundum .for -"V, after vi. 14 (Hitzig), is quite
unsuitable. The words, " from the day when it was built," are
not to be referred to the earliest founding of Jerusalem, but to
that time when the Israelites first built it ;. and even in refer-
ence to this, they are not to be pressed, but to be viewed as
a rhetorically strong expression for, " from its earliest times."
Even so early as David's time, opposition against Jahveh showed
itself in the conspiracy of Absalom ; and towards the end of
Solomon's reign, idolatry -had been introduced into Jerusalem,
1 Kings xi. 5 ff. After the words " to remove it from before
mj face," there follows once more, in ver. 32, the reason of the
rejection ; cf. vii. 12, xi. 17, and for enumeration of the several
classes of the population, ii. 26, xvii, 25. The sins are once
more specified, vers. 33-35 ; in ver. 33, as a stiff-necked depar-
ture from God, and in ver. 34 f. the mention of the greatest
abomination of idolatry, the setting up of idols in the temple,
and of the worship of Moloch. With 33a cf. ii. 27. The
inf. abs. ^B7l stands with special emphasis instead of the finite
tense : though they were taught from early mom, yet they were
inattentive still. On this point cf.* ii. 13, 25, xxv. 3, 4. On
nWD T\T\\h cf. xvii. 23, vii. 28. Vers. 34, 35 are almost identical
with vii. 30, 31. W rtbg? does not belong to the relative
clause 'W1 ^ "ifK (Niigelsbach), but is parallel to 'W1 ">''?Si?^, con-
tinuing the main clause: ''that they should commit these
abominations, and thereby cause Judah to sin," i.e. bring them
into sin and guilt, '^nn with K dropped ; see xix. 15. — ^After
setting forth the sin for which Judah had drawn on herself the
judgment through the Chaldeans, the Lord proclaims, ver. 36 ff.,
the deliverance of the people from exile, and their restoration;
thus He answers the question which had been put to Him, ver.
25. fwyi, "but now," marks what follows as the. antithesis to
what precedes. " Therefore, thus saith Jahveh," in ver. 36,
corresponds to the same words in ver. 28. Because nothing is
impossible to the Lord, He shall, as God of Israel, gather again
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXU. 26-44. 59
those who hare been scattered through every land, and bring
them back into their own country. " To this city," — namely,
of which ye speak. The suffix of Qy?P? refers to ^^Vl?, whose
inhabitants are meant. Jerusalem, as the capital, represents
the whole kingdom. "The dispersed" are thus, in general, the
inhabitants of Judah. Hence, too, from the nature of the
case, "this place" is the kingdom of Judah. On this point
cf. Ezek. xxxvi. 11, 33, Hos. xi. 11. — Vers. 38, 39 are to be
understood Uke xxxi. 33. They must in very deed become the
people of the Lord, for God gives them one heart and one way
[of life], to fear Him always, i.e, through His Spirit He renews
and sanctifies them (xxxi. 33, xxiv. 7 ; Ezek. xi. 19). " One
heart and one way," that they may all with one mind and in one
way fear me, no longer wander through many wicked ways
(xxvi. 3 ; Isa. liii. 6). >iKn'_ is an infinitive, as often in Dent., e.g.
iv. 10, from which the whole sentence has been derived, and
vi. 24, to which the expression Dn? ^w points. The everlasting
covenant which the Lord wishes to conclude with them, i.e. the
covenant-relationship which He desires to grant them, is, in fact,
the new covenant, xxxi. 33 ff. Here, however, only the eternal
duration of it is made prominent, in order to comfort the pious
in the midst of their present sufferings. Consequently, only
the idea of the DjiV is mainly set forth : " that I shall not turn
away from them, to do them good, — ^no more withdraw from them
my gracious benefits ; " but the uninterrupted bestowal of these
implies also faithfulness to the Lord on the part of the people.
The Lord desires to establish His redeemed people in this
condition by putting His fear in their heart, namely, through
His Spirit ; see xxxi. 33, 34. '^B^, " And I shall rejoice over
them, by doing them good," as was formerly the case (Deut.
xxviii. 63), and is again to be, in time to come. ^^^3, in truth,
properly, "in faithfulness." This expression is strengthened
by the addition, " with my whole heart and my whole soul." —
So much for the promise of restoration and renewal of the
covenant people. This promise is confirmed, vers. 42-44, by
the assurance that the accomplishment of deliverance shall
follow as certainly as the decree of the calamity has done ; the
change is similar to that in xxxi. 38. Finally, vers. 43, 44,
there is the application made of this to the purchase of the
Digitized by
Google
60 THE PSOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
field which the prophet had been commanded to falfil ; and the
signification of this purchase is thus far determined, that after
the restoration of Judah to their own land, fields shall once
more be bought in . full legal form : with this, the discourse
returns to its starting-point, and finishes. The article is used
generically in nifen ; hence, on the repetition of the thought,
ver. 44, the plural n^B' is employed instead. The enumeration
of the several regions of the kingdom, as in xvii. 26, is a
rhetorical individualization for strengthening the thought. Tlie
land of Benjamin is here made prominent in relation to the
field purchased by Jeremiah at Anathoth in the land of Ben-
jamin. The final sentence 'U1 3'B'S '3 also serves for further
proof. The Hiphil in this expression does not mean the same as
the usual iV^: " I turn the captivity," i,e. I change the adversity
into prosperity. TE'ii expresses restitutio in statum incolumi-
tatis sen integritatis more plainly than 3^B', — not merely the
change of misfortune or misery ; but it properly means, to lead
back or restore the captivity, i.e. to remove the condition of
adversity by restoration of previous prosperity. The expression
is analogous to DO^P or nl3'in nja, to build or raise ruins, Isa.
xliv. 26, Iviii. 12, Ixi. 4, and ntoOB' DDip, to raise up desolate
places, Isa. Ixi. 4, which does not mean to restore ruins or
desolate places, but to build them up into inhabitable places
(cf. Isa. Ixi. 4), to remove ruins or desolations by the building
and restoration of cities.
Chap, xxxiii. Renewed Promise of the Restoration and Glorious
Condition of the People of God.
Ver. 1. While Jeremiah was still in confinement in the coart
of the prison belonging to the palace (see xxxii. 2), thp word of
the Lord came to him the second time. This word of God is
attached by tV^^ to the promise of chap, xxxii. It followed, too,
not long, perhaps, after the other, which it further serves to
confirm. — After the command to call on Him, that He might
make known to him great and hidden things (vers. 2, 3), the
Lord announces that, although Jerusalem shall be destroyed by
the Chaldeans, He shall yet restore it, bring back the captives
of Judah and Israel, purify the city from its iniquities, and
make it the glory and praise of all the people of the earth (vers.
Digitized by
Google
CBAF. XXJOIL 2, 3. 61
4-9), SO that in it and in the whole land joy will again prevail
(vers. 10-13). Then the Lord promises the restoration of the
kingdom through the righteous sprout of David, — of the priest-
hood, too, and sacrificial worship (vers. 14-18) ; He promises
also the everlasting duration of these two ordinances of grace
(vers. 19-22), because His covenant with the seed of Jacob and
David shall be as enduring as the natural ordinance of day and
night, and the laws of heaven and earth (vers. 23-26). — The
promises thus fall into two parts. First, there is proclaimed
the restoration of the people and kingdom to a new and glorious
state of prosperity (vers. 4-13) ; then the re-establishment of
the monarchy and the priesthood to a new and permanent con-
dition (vers. 14-26). In the first part, the promise given in
chap, xxxii. 36-44 is further carried out ; in the second, the
future form of the kingdom is more plainly depicted.
Vers. 2, 3. Introduction. — Ver. 2. " Thus saith Jahveh who
makes it, Jahveh who forms it in order to establish it, Jahveh
is His name : Ver. 3. Call on me and I will answer thee, and
tell thee great and hidden things which thou knowest not."
The reference of the suffixes in nb^, FlrtN, and TO''?n, is evident
from the contents of the propositions : the Lord does what He
says, and forms what He wants to make, in order to accomplish
it, i.e. He completes what He has spoken and determined on.
">y, to frame, namely, in the mind, as if to think out, just as in
xviii. 11 : the expression is parallel with fi^E'no 3E'n ; in this sense
also we find Isa. xlvi. 11. f??, to establish, realize what has been
determined on, prepare, is also found in Isa. ix. 6, xl. 20, but
more frequently in Jeremiah (x. 12, li. 12, 15), and pretty often
in the Old Testament generally. On the phrase " Jahveh is
His name," cf. xxxi. 35. The idea contained in ver. 2 reminds
us of similar expressions of Isaiah, as in xxii. 11, xxxvii. 26,
xlvi. 11, etc. ; but this similarity offers no foundation for the
doubts of Movers and Hitzig regarding the genuineness of this
verse. The same holds as regards ver. 3. The first proposi-
tion occurs frequently in the Psalms, e.g. iv. 4, xxviii. 1, xxx.
9, also in Jer. vii. 27, xi. 14 ; but vr\p^ with i'K is unusual in
Isaiah. The words onyv k? nlixa are certainly an imitation
of twjn^ Ky\ riilSJ, Isa. xlviii. 6 ; but they are modified, in the
manner peculiar to Jeremiah, by the change of n)*)V3 into n'nss.
Digitized by
Google
62 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
The combination l1"iV3i rfchi is elsewhere used only of the
strong cities of the Canaanites, Deut. i. 28, ix. 1, Josh. xiv. 12,
cf. Num. xiii. 28; here niivais transferred to things which lie
beyond the limits of human power to discover, and become
known to men only through divine revelation. There is no
good reason for Ewald's change of nnx3 in accordance with
Isa. xlviii. 6. — Gn the contents of these verses Hengstenberg
remarks : " It may seem strange that, though in the opening
part the prophet is promised a revelation of greater, unknown
things, for which he Is to call on God, yet the succeeding an-
nouncement contains scarcely anything remarkable or peculiar."
Graf also adds the remark of Hitzig, that the command to pray,
addressed to Jeremiah, cannot have the effect of keeping us
from the conclusion that the verses are an addition by a later
hand. Nagelsbach replies that the mode of expression presents
nothing specially unlike Jeremiah, and that what is most cal-
culated to give the impression of being unlike Jeremiah's,
namely, this introduction in itself, and especially the peculiar
turn of ver. 3, " Call unto me," etc., is occasioned by the prayer
of the prophet, xxxii. 16-25. To this prayer the prophet had
received an answer, xxxii. 36-44 ; but he is here admonished to
approach the Lord more frequently with such a request. The
God who has the power to execute as well as make decrees is
quite prepared to give him an insight into His great thoughts
regarding the future; and of this a proof is at once given.
Thus, vers. 1-3 must be viewed as the connecting link between
chap, xxxii. xxxiii. Yet these remarks are not sufficient to
silence the objections set forth against the genuineness of vers.
2, 3 ; for the specializing title of our chapter, in ver. 1, is
opposed to the close connection which Nagelsbach maintains
between chap, xxxii. xxxiii. The fact that, in chap, xxxii.,
Jeremiah addresses the Lord in prayer for further revelation
regarding the purchase of the field, as commanded, and that he
receives the information he desired regarding it, gives no
occasion for warning to the prophet, to betake himself more
frequently to God for disclosures regarding His purposes of
salvation. And Nagelsbach has quite evaded the objection that
Jeremiah does not obey the injunction. Moreover, the succeed-
ing revelation made in vers. 4-26 is not of the nature of a
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIU. 2, 3. 63
« proof," for it does not contain a single great leading feature
in God's purposes as regards the future. — Hengstenberg also
points out the difficulty, " that the Scripture everywhere refuses
to recognise a dead knowledge as true knowledge, and that the
hope of restoration has an obstacle in the natural man, who
strives to obscure and to extinguish it ; that, consequently, the
promise of riestoration is always new, and the word of God
always great and grand ; " but what he adduces for the solution
of the difficulty contained in the command, '' Call on me, and I
will show thee great and unknown things," is insufficient for his
purpose. The objection which expositors have taken to these
verses has asisen from an improper application of them ; the
words vK K'lp have been understood as referring to the request
that God should give some revelation regarding the future, or
His purposes of deliverance, and nj^ as referring to the com-
munication of His purposes for increasing our knowledge of
them. But " to call on God " rather signifies to pray to God,
i.e. to beseech Him for protection, or help, or deliverance in
time of need, cf. Ps. iii. 5, xxviii. 1, xxx. 9, Iv. 17, etc. ; and
to "answer" is the reply of God made when He actually
vouchsafes the aid sought for ; cf. e-jf. Ps. Iv. 17, " I call on
God, and Jahveh answers me (saves me) ; " Ps. iv. 2, 4, xviii.
7, xxvii. 7, etc. Consequently, also, " to make known " (I'ln)
is no mere communication of knowledge regarding great and
unknown things, no mere letting them be known, but a making
known by deeds. The words R'^ and nnis "lirt', ascribed to the
Lord, suggest and require that the words should be thus under-
stood. With the incorrect reference of these words to knowing
and making known there is connected the further error, that
the command, " Call unto me," is directed to the person of the
prophet, and gives an admonition for his behaviour towards
God, for which the text affords no foundation whatever ; for it
does not run : " Thus saith Jahveh to me " (v^), and the inser-
tion of this v^ is unwarranted, and inconsistent with the use
of '3 which introduces the announcement. Hitzig, Graf, and
others have passed by this >3 without remark; and what
Nagelsbach says about it is connected with his view, already
refuted, as to the essential unity of chap, xxxii. xxxiii. Lastly,
Ewald has enclosed ver. 3 within parentheses, and considers that
r
Digitized by
Google
6'4 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
the introductory formula of ver. 2 is resumed in ver. 4 : "Yea,
thus salth Jahveh." This is a conclusion hastily formed by one
who is in difficulty, for ver. 3 has not the nature of a parenthesis.
If we allow the arbitrary addition "to me" after the words, "Thus
saitli the Lord," ver. 2, and if we take the words in their
simplest sense, — the invocation of the Lord as a call to God for
help in need, — then vers. 2, 3 do not contain a mere prelude to
the revelation which follows, but an exhortation to the people
to betake themselves to the Lord their God in their calamity,
when He will make known to them things unattainable by
human discernment ; for C?, ver. 4) He announces, in reference
to the ruined houses of the city, that He will repair their
injuries.
Vers. 4-13. Repair of the injuries and renewal of the pros-
perity of Jerusalem and Judah. — -Ver. 4. " For thus saith
Jahveh, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city,
and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which are
broken down because of the besiegers' mounds and because of
the sword, Ver. 5. While they come to fight with the Chal-
deans, and to fill them with the corpses of men, whom I have
slain in my wrath and in my fury, and for all whose wicked-
ness I have hidden my face from this city : Ver. 6. Behold, I
will apply a bandage to it and a remedy, and will heal them,
and will reveal to them abundance of peace and truth. Ver. 7.
And I will turn again the captivity of Judah and the captivity
of Israel, and will build them up as at the first. Ver. 8. And
I will purify them from all their iniquity by which they have
sinned against me, and will pardon all their iniquities, by which
they have sinned and have transgressed against me. Ver. 9.
And it (the city) shall become to me a name of joy, a praise,
and an honour among all the people of the earth that shall
hear all the good which I do them, and shall tremble and quake
because of all the good and because of all the prosperity that I
show to it. Ver. 10. Thus saith Jahveh : Again shall there be
heard in this place, — of which ye say, *It is desolate, without
man and without beast,' — in the cities of Judah, and in the
streets of Jerusalem, which are laid waste, without men, and
without inhabitants, and without beasts, Ver. 11. The voice
of gladness and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXUL 4-18. 65
and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, ' Praise
Jahveh of hosts, for Jahveh is good, for His mercy is for ever,'
•who bring thank-offerings into the house of Jahveh. For I
will turn again the captivity of the land, as in the beginning,
saith Jahveh. Yer. 12. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts : In this
place, which is laid waste, without man and beast, and in all
its cities, there will yet be pasture-ground for shepherds making
their flocks lie down in. Ver. 13. In the cities of the hill-
country, in the cities of the plain, and in the cities of the south,
in the land of Benjamin, and in the environs of Jerusalem, and
in the cities of Judah, the flock shall yet pass under the hand
of one who counts them, saith Jahveh."
With ver. 4 begins the statement concerning the great and
incomprehensible things which the Lord will make known to His
people ; it is introduced by '3, which marks the ground or rea-
son,- — so far as the mere statement of these things gives reason
for the promise of them. The word of the Lord does not follow
till ver. 6 and onwards. In vers. 4 and 5 are mentioned those
whom the word concerns, — the houses of Jerusalem (ver. 4),
and the people that defend the city (ver. 5). Corresponding to
this order, there comes first the promise to the city (ver. 6), and
then to the people. Along with the houses of the city are
specially named also the houses of the kings of Judah; not,
perhaps, as Hitzig thinks, because these, being built of stone,
afforded a more suitable material for the declared object, — for
that these alone were built of stone is an unfounded supposi-
tion, — but in order to show that no house or palace is spared
to defend the city. " Which are broken down " refers to the
houses, not only of the kings, but also of the city. They are
broken, pulled down, according to Isa. xxii. 10, in order to
fortify the walls of the city against the attacks of the enemy,
partly to strengthen them, partly to repair the damage caused
by the battering-rams directed against them. This gives the
following meaning to the expression 3^^^"?K1 rtpiJisn'pRj in
order to work against the mounds, i.e. the earthworks erected
by the enemy, and against the sword. The sword is named
as being the chief weapon, instead of all the instruments of
war which the enemy employs for reducing the city ; cf. Ezek.
xxvi. 9. It is against the laws of grammar to understand O'^ni ■
VOL. II. E
Digitized by
Google
66 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
as referring to " the destruction of the enemy by the siege
material ; for, on such a supposition, "Tti would require to de-
signate the efficient cause, i.e. to stand for '?BD (cf. iv. 26), but
neither "i'K nor ?? can mean this.— The first half of ver. 5 is
difficult, especially D''K3, which the LXX. have omitted, and
which Movers and Hitzig would expunge, with the absurd re-
mark, that it has come here from xxxi. 38 ; this is an easy and
frivolous method of setting aside difficulties. All other ancient
translations have read CKB, and have attempted to point out
how its genuineness is ascertained on critical grounds.* To
connect csa closely with what precedes is impossible ; and to
understand it as referring to the houses, qucB dirutce adhibentur
ad dimicandum cum Chaldceis (C. B. Michaelis), is incompatible
with the idea contained in td3. Still more inadmissible is the
view of L. de Dieu, Venema, Schnurrer, Dahler, and Bosen-
miiller : venientibus ad oppugnandum cum Chaldceis; according
to this view, DntoTiK must be the nominative or subject to CNa.
D*nB'3n"nK Dn?n? can only signify, " to contend with the Chal-
deans " (against them) ; cf . xxsii. 5. According to this view,
only the Jews can be the subject of D*K3. " They come to make
war with the Chaldeans, and to fill them (the houses) with the
dead bodies of men, whom I (the Lord) slay in my wrath." The
subject is not named, since it is evident from the whole scope
of tfie sentence what is meant. We take the verse as a predica-
tion regarding the issue of the conflict, — but without a copula ;
or, as a statement added parenthetically, so that the participle
may be rendered, " while they come," or, " get ready, to fight."
Kia, used of the approach of an enemy (cf. Dan. i. 1), is here
employed with regard to the advance of the Jews to battle
^ The different attempts to solve the difficulty by conjectures are of such
a nature as scarcely to deserve mention. Ewald would change D'NB : 3inn
into D'<ainn, " that are broken down opposite the earthworks and the
cannons." But the, plural of 3"in is Dilin, Ezek. rsvL 29, and cannot
possibly mean cannons. E.. Meier would read D^iSS 3''inn, " and for the
destruction of those who are pressing in." Then qiks must be the enemy
who are pressing in ; but how does this agree with what follows, " in order
to fight with the Chaldeans"? Lastly, Nagelsbach would change "JiS
D'IB'an into D^^B'1T"i>{f, to obtain the idea that the earthworks and the
sword come for the purpose of contending against Jerusalem (!).
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXllL 4-13. 67
against the besiegers of the city. The second infinitival clause,
" to fill them," represents the issue of the struggle as contem-
plated by the Jews, in order to express most strongly its utter
frnitlessness ; while the relative clauses, " whom I have slain,"
etc., bring out the reasons for the evil consequences. Sub-
stantially, the statement in ver. 5 is parallel to that in ver. 4,
so that we might supply the preposition ?y pp) : " and con-
cerning those who come to fight," etc. Through the attach-
ment of this second predication to the first by means of the
participle, the expression has become obscured. In the last
clause, IK'S is to be connected with onyrT^.
In view of the destruction of Jerusalem now beginning, the
Lord promises, Ter. 6, " I will apply to it (the city) a bandage
(see XXX. 17) and a remedy," i.e. a bandage which brings heal-
ing, " and heal them " (the inhabitants) ; for, although the
suffix in D'riNB"! might be referred to the houses, yet the follow-
ing clause shows that it points to the inhabitants. Hitzig
takes W?! in the meaning of ??3, " I roll to them like a stream,"
and appeals to Am. v. 24, Isa. xlviii. 18, Ixvi. 12, where the
fulness of prosperity is compared to a stream, and the waves of
the sea ; but this use of fi?3 is as uncertain here as in xi. 20.
We keep, then, to the well-established sense of revealing,
making known (cf. Ps. xcviii. 2, where it is parallel with S*"!^^),
without any reference to the figure of sealed treasure-chambers
(Deut. xxviii. 12), but with the accessory notion of the unfold-
ing of the prosperity before all nations (ver.. 9), as'in Ps. xcviii.
2. Ting is here to be taken as a noun, "fulness, wealth," from
in^, an Aramaizing form for "iK'y, to be rich (Ezek. xxxv. 13).
riDKl DiPB' does not mean " prosperity and stability," but " peace
and truth ; " but this is not to be toned down to " true peace,"
».e. real, enduring happiness (Nagelsbach). noK is the truth
of God, i.e. His faithfulness in His promises and covenants, as
in Ps. Ixxxv. 11, 12, where mercy and truth, righteousness and
peace, are specified as the gracious benefits with which the
Lord blesses His people. — Ver. 7. The attainment of this
prosperity consists in the change of the wretchedness and misery
of Judah and Israel (the whole covenant people) into perma-
nent happiness, and their being built up, — i.e. the firm establish-
ment of their civil prosperity through the secure possession
/^
Digitized b'y
Google
68 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEUIAH.
and eDJoyment of the good things of the land, — as in the
beginning, t.e. the time previous to the rending of the state
through the falling away of the people into idolatry ; cf. Isa.
i. 26, 1 Kings xiii. 6. For n«B> ns a^ri see xxxii. 44.— Ver. 8.
This prosperity gains stability and permanence through the
people's being cleansed from their sins by their being forgiven,
which, according to xxxi. 34, will form the basis of the new
covenant. Regarding the anomalous form /"^a? for "73?, .Hitzig
supposes that in the tcriptio coniinua a transcriber wished to
keep the two datives Dn''ni3ij|? T)? separate by inserting the 1.
But the form a?0^ xxxi. 34, is equally irregular, except that
there the insertion of the 1 may be explained in this, or in
some similar way. — Ver. 9. In consequence of the renovation*
of Israel externally and internally, Jerusalem will become to
the Lord a name of delight, i.e. a name which affords joy,
delight. DB^ here signifies, not fame, but a name. But the
name, as always in Scripture, is the expression of the essential
nature ; the meaning therefore is, " she will develope into a
city over which men will rejoice, whenever her name is men-
tioned." On the following words, " for praise and for glory,"
i.e. for a subject of praise, etc., cf. xiii. 11. \''.^3"75?, " to all,"
or "among all nations." How far Jerusalem becomes such is
shown by the succeeding clauses: <'who shall hear . . . and
tremble and quake because of the good," i.e. not from fear
" because they, are seized with terror through these proofs of
the wonderful power of God in contrast with the helplessness of
their idols, and through the feeling of their miserable and desti-
tute condition as contrasted with the happiness and prosperity of
the people of Israel " (Graf). Against this usual view of the
words, it has already been remarked in the Berlebnrger Bible,
that it does not agree with what precedes, viz. with the state-
ment that Jerusalem shall become a name of joy to all nations.
Moreover, ins and K"], in the sense of fear and teiTor, are con-
strued with 'JBD or It? ; here, they signify to shake and tremble
for joy, like IHB in Isa. Ix. 5, cf. Hos. iii. 5, i.e., as it is
expressed in the Berlebnrger Bible, " not with a slavish fear,
but with the filial fear of penitents, which will also draw and
drive them to the reconciled God* in Christ, with holy fear and
trembling." Calvin had previously recognised this Messianic
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIU. 14-26. 69
idea, and fitly elucidated the words thns : hcBC duo inter se con-
juncta, nempe pavor et tremor, qui nos humiliet coram Deo, et
fidiuna qua nos erigat, ut audeamus familiariter ad ipsum accedere.
DTilN may be for BlJK, cf. i. 16 ; but probably "B'^ b construed
with a double accusative, as in Isa. xlii. 16.
The prosperity which the Lord designs to procure for His
people is, vers. 10-13, further described in two strophes (vers.
10-11 and 12-13) ; in vers. 10, 11, the joyous life of men.
In the land now laid waste, gladness and joy shall once more
prevail, and God will be praised for this. The description,
" it is desolate," etc., does not imply the burning of Jerusalem,
lii. 12 ff., but only the desolation which began about the end
of the siege. " In this place " means " in this land ; " this is
apparent from the more detailed statement, '' in the cities of
Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem." " The voice of glad-
ness," etc., forms the subject of the verb VOf''.. On the ex-
pression see vii. 34, xvi. 9, xxv. 10. There is here added:
" the voice of those who say, ' Praise the Lord,' " etc. — the usual
liturgic formula in thanksgiving to God ; cf. 2 Chron. v. 13,
vii. 3, Ezra iii. 11, Ps. cvi. 1. rrjln, praise and thanks in word
and deed ; see xvii. 26. On naB^ns ym see xxxii. 44. The
rendering, " I ^all bring back the captives of the land " (here
as in ver. 7), is both grammatically indefensible, and further,
unsuitable: (a) inappropriate, on account of njb'K'iMj for no
previous restoration of captives had taken place; the leading
of the people out of Egypt is never represented as a bringing
back from captivity. And (b) it is grammatically untenable,
because restoration to Canaan is expressed either by '/K K''an
pKn, after Deut xxx. 5 ; or by 3''E'n, with the mention of the
place (n?? ''?) ; cf' Jer. xvi. 15, xxiv. 6, xxxii. 37, etc. — ^Vers.
12, 13. In the land which is now laid waste, and emptied of
men and beasts, shepherds, with their flocks, shall again move
about and lie down. " This place " is specified by the mention
of the several parts of the land, as in xxxii. 44, xvii. 26.
nJiD ''yf?^, at the hands, i.e. under the guidance, of him who
counts them, viz. the shepherd, who counted the sheep when
he took them out to the pasture as well as when he brought
them back into the fold ; cf. Virgil, Eel. iii. 34.
Vers. 14-26. The re-establishment of the Davidie monarchy
Digitized by
Google
70 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
and of the Levitical priesthood. — ^Ver. 14. " Behold, days are
coming, saith Jahveh, when I will perform the good word
which I have spokeu to the house of Israel, and concerning the
house of Judah. Yer. 15. In those days and at that time will
I cause to sprout unto David a sprout of righteousness, and he
shall do judgment and righteousness in the land. Ver. 16.
In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell
safely ; and this is how she shall be called, * Jahveh our right-
eousness.' Ver. 17. For thus saith Jahveh : David shall never
want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel.
Ver. 18. Nor shall the Levitical priests want a man before me
to offer a bumt'offering, to burn a meat-offering, or to perform
sacrifice everyday. ,
Ver. 19. '-' And the word of Jahveh came unto Jeremiah,
saying : Ver. 20. Thus saith Jahveh, If ye shall be able to
break my covenant (with) the day and my covenant (with) the
night, so that there shall not be day and night in their proper
time, Ver. 21. Then also shall my covenant with David my
servant be oroken, so that he shall not have a son to reign upon
his throne, ahd with the Levites, the priests, my ministers.
Ver. 22. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the
sand of the sea measured, .so will I multiply the seed of David
my servant, and the Levites who serve me.
Ver. 23. " And the word of Jahveh came to Jeremiah,
saying : Ver. 24. Hast thou not seen what this people have
spoken, saying, ' The two families which the Lord hath chosen,
these He hath rejected?* and my people they have despised, so
that they are no longer a nation before them. Ver. 25. Thus
saith Jahveh : If my covenant with day and night doth not
exist, if I have not appointed the laws of heaven and earth,
Ver. 26. Then also will I reject the seed of Jacob and David
my servant, so as not to take any of his seed as rulers over the
seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will turn their
captivity, and take pity on them."
Vers. 14-18 contain the promise of the restoration of the
monarchy and the priesthood. Vers. 19-26 further present
two special messages from God, in the form of supplements,
which guarantee the eternal continuance of these institutions.^
* The portion contained within vers. 14-26 is wanting in the LXX. ; for
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. ZXXIIL 14-26. 71
The promise in vers. 14-16 has already been given in substance
in chap, xxiii. 5, 6, and in our yerses it is oiily formally extended,
and thereby made more prominent. In ver. 14 it is designated
as the establishment, i.e. the realization, of the good word which
the Lord has spoken concerning Israel and Judah. " The good
word" is, according to Dent, xxviii. 1-14, the blessing which
the Lord has promised to His people if they obey His com-
mands; cf. 1 Kings viii. 56. Here also must " the good word"
be taken in the same general meaning ; for our verse forms the
transition from the promise of the restoration and blessing of
Israel in the future (vers. 6-13) to the special promise of the
renewal and completion of the Davidic monarchy (ver. 15 ff.).
In xxix. 10, on the contrary, " the good word" is specially
referred, by the following infinitival clause, to the deliverance
of the people from Babylon. But it is unhkely that " the good
word " refers to the " sprout " of David, which is expressly
promised in xxiii. 5 ff., and repeated here, ver. 15 f. ; for here
a like proniise to the Levites follows, while there is none in chap,
xxiii., and it is here so closely linked with the promise regard-
ing David, that it must be viewed as a portion of the " good
word." In the change from ?s to 7? in ver. 14, we must not,
with Hengstenberg, seek a real difference ; for in Jeremiah
these prepositions often interchange without any difference of
meaning, as in xi. 2, xviii. 11, xxiii. 35, etc. The blessing
promised to the people in the " good word" culminates in the
promise, ver. 15 f., that the Lord will cause a righteous sprout
to spring up for David. On the meaning of this promise, see
the remarks on xxiii. 5, 6. The difference made in the repeti-
this reason, and chiefly because of the pTomise of the eternal duration, not
merely of the royal house of David, but also of the Levitical priests, and
their innumerable increase, J. D. Michaelis and Jahn hare considered it
spurious. To these must be added Movers, who takes vers. 18, 21&-25 as
later interpolations, and Hitzig, who treats the whole passage as a series
of separate additions made in a later age. On the other side, Eueper,
Wiohelhaus, and Hengstenberg (Christology, vol. ii. pp. 459-461 of Clark's
Translation) have shown the utter worthlessness of these reasons, and
Graf also has defended the genuineness of the passage. So too has Ewald,
who says (Propheten, ii. 269), " Nothing can be so preposterous and un-
reasonable as to find in this passage, xxxiii. 19-26, or in chap, xxx.-xzxiii.
generally, additions by a later prophet"
Digitized by
Google
72 THE PROPHECIES OP JEREMIAH. ,
tion of that pi'omise is really unimportant. n'OVS instead of
^nbpn does not change the sense, n'oyi?, to cause to sprout or
grow, correi^onds to the figure of the nov, under which the
Messiah is represented in both passages. njTiv nov is only a
more sonorous expression for P*^V nov. The words " He shall
rule as king and deal wisely," which in xxiii. 5 bring into
prominence the contrast between th^ kingdom of the Messiah
and that of the godless shepherd of the people, were unnecessary
for the connection of our passage. Besides, in xxiii. 6 Israel is
named together with Judah, instead of which, we have here, in
ver. 16, Jerusalem ; accordingly, the name " Jahveh Tsidkenu"
is referred to Jerusalem, while in xxiii. 6 it is predicated of the
sprout of David.. The mention of Jerusalem instead of Israel
is connected with the general scope of our prophecy, viz. to
comfort the covenant people over the destruction of Jerusalem
(ver. 4 f.). But that, through the mention simply of Judah
and its capital, the ten tribes are not to be excluded from par-
ticipation in the coming prosperity, may be seen even froiri
ver. 14, where " the good word " is referred to Israel and
Judah, and still more plainly from vers. 24, 26, where this
promise is made sure to the whole seed of Israel. The trans-
ference of the name Jahveh Tsidkenu from the sprout of David
to the city of Jerusalem' is connected with the fact, that the
name only expresses what the Messiah will bring to the people
(see xxiii. 6) ; the righteousness which He works in and on
Jerusalem may, without changing the substance of the thought,
be attributed to Jerusalem itself, inasmuch as Jerusalem reflects
the righteousness which is bestowed on her by the Messiah. —
This promise is, ver. 17, further confirmed by the renewal of
that which the Lord had given King David, through Nathan
the prophet, 2 Sam. vii. 12-16, and that, too, in the form in
which David himself had expressed it in his address to Solo-
mon, shortly before his death, 1 Kings ii. 4, and in which Solo-
mon had repeated it, 1 Kings viii. 25 and ix. 5. The formula
. 'wi TTQI OT, « there never will be cut off from David one
sitting," etc., has the meaning, David will never want a de-
scendant to occupy his throne ; or, the posterity of David will
possess the kingdom for ever. A temporary loss of the throne
is not thereby excluded, but only such a permanent loss as
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIII. 14-26. 73
would be caused bj the family of David becoming extiuct, or
by the kingdom in Israel either passing over to some other
family, or in some way or other coming to an end ; see on
1 Kings ii. 4. — The very same promise is given to the Levitical
priests, i.e. the priests of the tribe or family of Levi (0")?p C??!^
as in Deut. xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1, etc.). They shall never want
one to bring and prepare an offering before the Lord. Burnt-
offering, meat-offering, and sin-offering are the three species
of sacrifice which were to be brought, according to the law, as
in xvii. 26. By means of the apposition " the Levites," the
priests are designated as the legitimate priesthood, established
as such in virtue of God's choice of the tribe of Levi, in con-
trast with priests such as Jeroboam appointed, out of the com-
mon people, for the worship set up by him. Not only shall
Israel have priests, but priests out of the tiibe of Levi, which
was chosen by God for the sacerdotal of&ce, as the medium of
communicating His gracious gifts. The designation of the
priests as " the Levites " corresponds; accordingly, to the kings
of the family of David. Such a view explains this addition to
our passage, to which critics such as Hitzig have taken objec-
tion. The Davidic kingdom and the Levitical priesthood were
the two pillars and bases of the Old Testament theocracy, on
which its existence and continuance depended. The priesthood
formed the medium of approach for the people into divine
favour. The kingdom assured them of the divine guidance.^
Both of these pillars were broken with the desti-uction of Jeru-
salem and of the temple ; the theocracy then appeared to have
ceased to exist. At this time, when the kingdom, with its ordi-
nances of justice and of grace, bestowed by God, was being
dissolved, the Lord, in order to keep His people from despair,
declares that these two institutions, in accordance with His
promise, shall not fall to the ground, but shall stand for ever.
By this, God's own people received a pledge for the re-estab-
Ushment and renovation of the kingdom of God. Such is the
object 01 this promise. — As to the kind and mode of reinsti-
^ Continehatur auiem salm populi dudbus istis partibus. Nam, sine rege,
erant.veluti corpus truncum aut mtUilum; sine sacerdote mera erat dissipatio.
Nam sacerdos erat quasi medius inter Deum et populum, rex atUem represen-
tabat Dei personam. — Calvin.
Digitized by
Google
74 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEMUH. '
tutioQ of both of these ordinances, which were abolished when
the state came to rain, the prophecy now before as gives no
explanation ; but in the emphatic confirmation of the prophecy
which follows, we find brief indications which clearly show that
the restoration spoken of will not be a reinstitution of the old
form which is now perishing, but a renovation of it, in its
essential features, to a permanent existence.
The confirmations of these promises, which follow them in
vers. 19-26, are each introduced by separate headings, perhaps
not merely to render them more prominent, but because the
Lord revealed them separately to the prophet ; but it by no
means follows from this that they are later additions, without
any connection. Ver. 20 f . " If ye shall break my covenant
with the day, . . . then also will my covenant with David ... be
broken." This if betokens the impossible ; man cannot alter
the arrangement in nature for the regular alternation of day
and night. tJ^'f} and nTpn are in apposition to ^O'na, « my
covenant the day — the night," for " my covenant with regard
to the day and the night, which is this, that day and night shall'
return at their appointed times." The \ before w37 is ex-
planatory. ny?j-DDi* are adverbs, " day and night," for " the
regular alternation of day and night." These divine arrange-
ments in nature are called a covenant ; because God, after the
flood, gave a pledge that they should uninterruptedly continue,
in A covenant made with the human race ; cf. Gen. ix. 9 with
viii. 22. As this covenant of nature cannot be broken by men,
so also the covenant of grace of the Lord with David and the
Levites cannot be broken, i.e. annulled. The covenant with
David consisted in the promise that his kingdom should endure
for ever (see ver. 17) ; that with the Levites, in the eternal
possession of the right to the priesthood. The institution of
the priesthood is certainly not represented in the law as a cove-
nant ; it consisted merely in the choice of Aaron and his sons
as priests by God, Ex. xxviii. 1. But, inasmuch as they were
thereby brought into a peculiar relation to the Lord, and thus
had vouchsafed to them not merely privileges and promises, but
also had laid on them duties, the fulfilment of which was a
condition of receiving the privileges, this relation might be
called a covenant; and indeed, in Num. xxv. 11 ff., the promise
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. xxxm. u-56. 75
given to Fhinebas, that he should have the priesthood as an
eternal possession, is called a covenant of peace and an eternal
covenant of priesthood. This promise concerned the whole
priesthood in the person of Phinehas, and the Levites also,
inasmnch as the Levites were given to the priests ; hence there
is mention made in Mai. ii. 4, 8, of a covenant with Levi. In
this prophecy, too, mention is made of the priests alone. The
general idea contained in the words " the Levites," placed first,
is more clearly defined, hy the appositidb " the priests," and
restricted to the priests of the* tribe of Levi. — ^Ver. 22. In ,
order to make still more impressive the pledge given, that the
covenant with David and the Levitical priesthood can never be
broken, the Lord adds the promise of a numerons increase of
the seed of David and the Levites. "iK'K as correlative to ?3
stands for ib'ks ; for in the accusative lies the general reference
to place, time, kind, and manner ; cf. Ew. § 360a, 333a. The
comparison with the innumerable host of stars and the im-
measurable quantity of the sand reminds ns of the patriarchal
promises. Gen. xv. 5, xxii. 17. In this way, the promises that
apply to all Israel are specially referred to the family of David
and the Levites (" the Levites," vef. 22, is abbreviated from
" the Levites, the priests," ver. 21), This transference, how-
ever, is not a mere hyperbole which misses the mark ; for, as
Jahn observes, an immense increase of the royal and priestly
families would only have been a burdeil on the people (Graf).
The import of the words of the verse is simply that the Lord
purposes to fulfil the promise of His blessing, made to the
patriarchs in favour of their whole posterity, in the shape of a
numerous increase; but this promise will now be specially
applied to the posterity of David and to the priests, so that there
shall never be wanting descendants of David to occupy the
throne, nor Levites to perform the service of the Lord. , The
question is not about a ** change of the whole of Israel into
the family of David and the tribe of Levi" (Hengstenberg) ;
and if the increase of the family of David and the Levites
correspond in multitude with the number of all the people of
Israel, this increase cannot be a burden on the people. But the
question, whether this promise is to be understood literally, of
the increase of the ordinary descendants of David and the
Digitized by
Google
76 THE PBOPHECIES OFJEBEMIAH.
Levites, or spiritually, of their spiritual posterity, cannot be
decided, as Hengstenberg and Nagelsbach think, by referring
to the words of the Lord in Ex. xix. 6, that all Israel shall be
a kingdom of priests, and to the prophetic passages, Isa. Ixi. 6,
Ixvi. 23 ff., according to which the whole people shall be priests
to God, while Levites also shall be taken from among the
heathen. For this prophecy does not treat of the final glory
of the people of God, but only of the innumerable increase of
those who shall attain membership in the family of David and
the Levitical priests. The question that has been raised is
rather to be decided in accordance with the general promises
regarding the increase of Israel ; and in conformity with these,
we answer that it will not result from the countless increase of
the descendants of Jacob according to the flesh, but from the
incorporation, among the people of God, of the heathen who
return to the God of Israel. As the God-fearing among the
heathen will be raised, for their piety, to be the children of
Abraham, and according to the promise, Isa. Ixvi. 20 ff., even
Levitical priests taken from among them, so shall the increase
placed in prospect before the descendants of David and Levi
be realized by the reception of the heathen into the royal and
sacerdotal privileges of the people of God under the new
covenant.
This view of our verse is confirmed by the additional proof
given of the promised restoration of Israel, vers. 23-26 ; for
here there is assurance given to the seed of Jacob and David,
and therefore to all Israel, that they shall be kept as the people
of God. The occasion of this renewed confirmation was the
allegation by the people, that the Lord had rejected the two
families, i.e. Israel and Judah (cf. xxxi. 27, 31, xxxii. 20),
called, Isa. viii. 14, the two houses of Israel. With such words
they despised the people of the Lord, as being no longer a'
people before them, i.e. in their eyes, in their opinion. That
those who spoke thus were Jews, who, on the fall of the king-
dom of Judah, despaired of the continuance of God's election
of Israel, is so very evident, that Hengstenberg may well find
it djfiicult to understand how several modern commentators
could think of heathens, — Egyptians (Schnurrer), Chaldeans
(Jahn), Samaritans (Movers), or neighbours of the Jews and
^
Digitized .by
Google
CHAP. XXXIU. 14-2& 77
of Ezekiel on the Chebar (Hitzig). The verdict pronoonced
on what these people said, " they despise, or contemn, my
people," at once relieves us from any need for making such
assumptions, as soon as we assign the full and proper force to the
expression " my people "= the people of Jahveh. Just as in
this passage, so too in zxix. 32, " this people" is interchanged
with " my people " as a designation of the Jews. Moreover,
as Graf correctly says, the expression " this people" nowhere
occurs in the prophets of the exile as applied to the heathen ;
on the contrary, it is very frequently employed by Jeremiah to
designate the people of Judah in their estrangement from the
Lord : iv. 10, v. 14, 23, vi. 19, vii. 33, viii. 5, ix. 14, xiii. 10,
xiv. 10, XV. 1, 20, and often elsewhere. " My people," on the
other hand, marks Judah and Israel as the people of God. In
contrast with such contempt of the people of God, the Lord
announces, " If my covenant with day and night does not
stand, if I have not appointed the laws of heaven and earth,
then neither shall I cast away the seed of Jacob." The ^ is
repeated a second time before the verb. Others take the two
antecedent clauses as one : '' If I have not made my covenant
with day and night, the laws of heaven and earth." This con-
struction also is possible ; the sense remains unchanged, ^nna
%^yh\ DDi' is imitated from ver. 20. " The laws of heaven and
earth" are the whole order of nature; cf. xxxi. 35. The
establishment, institution of the order of nature, is a work of
divine omnipotence. This omnipotence has founded the cove-
nant of grace with Israel, and pledged its continuance, despite
the present destruction of the kingdom of Judah and the tem-
porary rejection of the guilty people. But this covenant of
grace includes not merely the choosing of David, but also the
choosing of the seed of Jacob, the people of Israel, on the
ground of which David was chosen to be the ruler over Israel.
Israel will therefore continue to exist, and that, too, as a nation
which will have rulers out of the seed of David^ the servant of
the Lord. <' The mention of the three patriarchs recalls to
mind the whole series of the promises made to them " (Heng-
stenberg). The plural tlhmi does not, certainly, refer directly
to the promise made regarding the sprout of David, the Mes-
siah, but at the same time does not stand in contradiction with
Digitized by
Google
78 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEHIAB.
it ; for the revival and continued existence of the Davidic rule
in Israel culminates in the Messiah. On 'W a^B^K »3 cf. xxxi. 23,
XXX. 3, 18, and the explanations on xxxii. 44. The Qeri yp^
rests on ver. 11, but is unnecessary ; for a^B'S makes good
enough sense, and corresponds better to D'Horni, in so far as it
exactly follows the fundamental passage, Deut. xxx. 3, where
Dm is joined with nuB^ns x^.
III.— THE LABOUR AOT) SUFFERING OF THE PROPHET BEFORE
AND AFTER THE CONQUEST A1{D DESTRUCTION OF JE-
RUSALEM.— Chap. XXXIV.-XLV. •
Under this title may be placed the whole of the contents of
these twelve chapters, which fall into three divisions. For
ch. xxxiv.-xxxvi. contain partly utterances of Jeremiah in the
early part of the siege of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, partly
matters of fact in Jehoiakim's time. Next, mention is made,
in ch. xxxvii.-xxxix., of the toils and sufferings of the prophet
during that siege, until the fall of the city ; then, in ch. xl.-
xliv., is depicted his active labour among the people who had
been left behind in the land by the Chaldeans, and who after-
wards fled to Egypt ; finally, as an appendix to the account of
his labours among the people, we find, in ch. xlv., the words of
comfort addressed to Baruch by Jeremiah. The second of
these divisions is marked by a historical introduction, ch. xxxvii.
1, 2, and the third by a somewhat lengthened prophetic head-
ing. Only ch. xxxiv.-xxxvi., which we regard as the first
division, seems to be without an external bond of unity. Graf,
£wald, Nagelsbach, and others have consequently marked
them as appendices ; but in this way neither their position nor
their connection is at all accounted for. The relation of ch.
xxxiv. to the following is analogous to that of ch. xxi. Just as
the collection of special announcements regarding judgment
and deliverance, ch. xxi., was introduced by the utterances of
the prophet in the beginning of the last siege of Jerusalem
by the Chaldeans ; so too, in our third division, the collected
evidences of the labours of Jeremiah before and after the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIV. 1-7. 79
destruction of Jernsalem, are introdaced, ch. zzzir., by the
utterances which predict qnite definitely what shall be the issue
of the siege of the city and the fate of the king and people.
The first of these utterances is set in a frame of historical
statements regarding the siege (vers. 1, 7) ; this setting marks
it out as an introduction to the notices following. But the
second utterance, vers. 8-22, refers to the fact of the manu-
mission of the Hebrew men- and maid-servants during the
siege, and the cancelling of that measure afterwards. The fol-
lowing chaps., XXXV. xxxvi., furnish two proofs of the activity
of the prophet under Jehoiakim, which, on account of their
historical nature, could not be introduced till now, since they
would not admit of being inserted in the collection of the par-
ticular prophecies of coming judgment, ch. xxi.-xxix.
A. PEOPHECIES DELIVEEED XTNDEE ZEDEKIAH, AND EVENTS
OP JEHOIAKDtt'S TIME. — CHAP. XXXIV.-XXXVI.
Chap, xxxiv. Concerning ZedeMah and the Emancipation of the ■
Men- and Maidservants.
This chapter contains two prophecies of the time of the
siege of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, of which the first, vers.
1-7, announces to the king the fruitlessness of resistance to the
power of the Chaldeans ; the second, vers. 8-22, threatens the
princes and people of Judah with severe judgments for an-
nulling the manumission of the Hebrew men- and maid-ser-
Vants. Both of these utterances belong to the first period of
the siege, probably the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah.
Vers. 1-7. The message to Zedekiah is regarded by Hitzig,
Ewald, Graf, Nagelsbach, etc. as a supplement to ch. xxxii.
1 ff., and as giving, in its complete form, the prophecy to which
ch. xxxii. 3 S. was referred, as the reason of the confinement
of Jeremiah in the court of the prison. Certainly it is so far
true that Jeremiah, in vers. 2-5, expresses himself more fully
regarding the fate of King Zedekiah at the fall of Jerusalem
into the hands of the Chaldeans than in ch. xxxii. 3-5, xxi.
3 ff., and xxxvii. 17 ; but we are not warranted in drawing the
inference that this message forms a historical appendix or sup-
Digitized by
Google
80 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
plement to ch. xxxii. 3 ff., and was the occasion or reason of
Jeremiah's imprisonment. See, on the contrary, the remarks
on xxxii. 3 ff. It is not given here as an appendix to explain
the reason of the prophet's imprisonment, but as a prophecy
from which we may see how King Zedekiah was forewarned,
from the very beginning of the siege, of what its issue would
be, that he might frame his conduct accordingly. Nor does it
belong to the period when Nebuchadnezzar, after beating off
the Egyptians who had come to the relief of the beleaguered
city, had returned to the siege of Jerusalem, but to the earliest
period of the siege, when Zedekiah might still cherish the hope
of defeating and driving off the Chaldeans through the help of
the Egyptians. — According to ver. 1, the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah when " Nebuchadnezzar and," i.e. with, " all
his host, and all the kingdoms of the land of the dominion of
his hand, and all the nations, were fighting against Jerusalem
and all her towns." The words are multiplied to represent the
strength of the Chaldean army, so as to deepen the impression
of overpowering might, against which resistance is vain. The
army consists of men drawn from all the kingdoms of the terri-
tory he rules, and of all nations. IT npB'bD jnx means the
same as '^pf^WQ JHNj li. 28, the territory over which his do-
minion, which includes many kingdoms, extends. The LXX.
have omitted " all the nations " as superfluous. See a like
conglomeration of words in a similar description, Ezek. xxvi. 7.
" All her towns" are the towns of Judah which belong to Jeru-
salem ; see xix. 15. According to ver. 7, the strong towns not
yet taken are meant, especially those strongly fortified, LacMsh
and Azekah in the plain (Josh. xv. 39, 35), the former of
which is shown still nnder the name Um Lakhis, while the
latter is to be sought for in the vicinity of Soeho ; see on Josh.
X. '3, 10, and 2 Chron. xi. 9. — Jeremiah is to say to the king :
Ver. 26. " Thus saith Jahveh : Behold, 1 will deliver this
city into the hand of the king of Babylon, that he may burn it
with fire. Yer. 3. And thou shalt not escape from his hand,
but shalt certainly be seized and delivered into his hand ; and
thine eyes shall see the eyes of the king of Babylon, and his
month shall speak with thy mouth, and thou shalt go to Baby-
lon. Yer. 4. But hear the word of Jahveh, O Zedekiah, king
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIV.' 1-7. 81
of Judah. Thns saith Jahveh concerning thee : Thoa shalt not
die by the sword. Ver. 5. In peace shalt thon die ; and as with
the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings who were before
thee, so shall they make a burning for thee, and they shall wail
for thee, [crying,] • Alas, lord ! ' for I have spoken the word,
saith Jahveh." — On vers. 2, 3, cf. xxxii. 3-5. " But hear,"
ver. 4, introduces an exception to what has been said before ; but
the meaning of vers. 4, 5 is disputed. They are usually under-
stood in this way : Zedekiah shall be carried into exile to Baby-
lon, but shall not be killed with the sword, or executed, but
shall die a peaceful death, and be buried with royal honours.
But C. B. Michaelis, Venema, Hitzig, and Graf take the words
as an exception that will occur, should Zedekiah follow the
advice given him to deliver himself up to the king of Babylon,
instead of continuing the struggle. Then what is denounced
in ver. 3 will not happen ; Zedekiah shall not be carried away
to Babylon, but shall die as king in Jerusalem. This view
rests on the hypothesis that the divine message has for its object
to induce the king to submit and give up himself (cf. xxxviii.
17 f.). But this supposition has no foundation ; and what
must be inserted, as the condition laid before Zedekiah, " if
thou dost willingly submit to the king of Babylon," is quite
arbitrary, and incompatible with the spirit of the words, " But
hear the word of Jahveh," for in this case ver. 4 at least
would require to run, " Obey the word of Jahveh " ("i?"!? J'??'
njiT), as xxxviii. 20. To take the words J* i3'n VO^ in the sense,
" Give ear to the word, obey the word of Jahveh," is not
merely inadmissible grammatically, but also against the context ;
for the word of Jahveh which Zedekiah is to hear, gives no
directions as to how he is to act, but is simply an intimation
as to what the end of his life shall be : to change or avert
this does not stand in his power, so that we cannot here think
of obedience or disobedience. The message in vers. 4, 5 states
more in detail what that was which lay before Zedekiah : he
shall fall into the hands of the king of Babylon, be carried into
exile in Babylon, yet shall not die a violent death through the
sword, but die peacefully, and be buried with honour, — not,
like Jehoiakim, fall in battle, and be left onmonrued and un-
buried (xxii. 18 f.). This intimation accords with the notices
VOL. II. F
Digitized by
Google
82 ^ THE PBOPBECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
given elsewhere as to the end of Zedekiah (xxxii. 5, xxxiz. 5-7).
Although Zedekiah died a prisoner in Babylon (Hi. 11), yet his
imprisonment woald not necessarily be an obstacle in the way
of an honourable burial after the fashion of his fathers. When
Jehoiachin, after an imprisonment of thirty-seven years, was
raised again to royal honours, then also might there be accorded
not merely a tolerably comfortable imprisonment to Zedekiah
himself, but to the Jews also, at his death, the permission to
bury their king according to their national custom. Nor is any-
thing to be found elsewhere contrary to this view of the words.
The supposition that Zedekiah caused the prophet to be im-
prisoned on account of this message to him, which Nagelsbach
has laboured hard to reconcile with the common acceptation of
the passage, is wholly devoid of foundation in fact, and does
not suit the time into which this message falls ; for Jeremiah
was not imprisoned till after the time when the Chaldeans were
obliged for a season to raise the siege, on the approach of the
Egyptians, and that, too, not at the command of the king, but
by the watchman at the gate, on pretence that he was a deserter.
" Thou shalt die in peace," in contrast with " thou shalt die by
the sword," marks a peaceful death on a bed of sickness in
contrast ^ith execution, but not (what Graf introduces into the
words) in addition, his being deposited in the sepulchre of his
fathers. "With the burnings of thy fathers," etc., is to be
understood, according to 2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxi. 19, of the
burning of aromatic spices in honour of the dead ; for the burn-
ing of corpses was not customary among the Hebrews : see on
2 Chron. xvi. 14. On " alas, lord !" see xxii. 18. This promise
is strengthened by the addition, " for I have spoken the word,"
where the emphasis lies on the ^N : / the Lord have spoken
the word, which therefore shall certainly be fulfilled. — In vers.
6, 7 it is further remarked in conclusion, that Jeremiah ad-
dressed these words to the king during the siege of Jerusalem,
when all the cities of Judah except Lachish and Azekah
were already in the power of the Chaldeans. "1V30 "n^ is
not in apposition to HT^rr ny, but belongs to ^tKE>: : " they
were left among the towns of Judah as strong cities;" ue.
of the strong cities of Judah, they alone had not yet been
conquered.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIV. 8-lL 83
Vers. 8-22. Threatening becaxtse op the re-enslave-
ment OF THE LIBERATED HeBREW HEN- AND MAID-SERVANTS.
— Vers. 8-11 describe the occasion of the word of the Lord,
which follows in vers. 12-22. It came to Jeremiah " after King
Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the pet^le in Jerusalem,
to proclaim liberty to them, that every one should send away his
man-servant, or his maid-servant, being a Hebrew or Hebrewess,
so that none should impose servitude on any one of them who
was a Jew, his brother. Yer. 10. And all the princes and all
the people who entered into the covenant obeyed, each one
setting free his man-servant and his maid-servant, and not
imposing servitude on them any more : they obeyed and each
one set them free. Ver. 11. But they turned round after-
wards, and brought back the servants and the handmaids whom
they had set free, and brought them under subjection, for
servants and for handmaids." The covenant which Zedekiah
concluded with all the people at Jerusalem, according to what
follows, consisted in a solemn vow made before the Lord in the
temple, probably confirmed by sacrifices, to set free the male
and female slaves of Hebrew descent, in conformity with the
law, Ex. xxi. 1-4, Dent. xv. 12. The law required the
gratuitous manumission of these after seven years of service.
This time, indeed, is not mentioned in our verses, but it is
assumed as well known through the law. But, in the general
departure of the people from the Lord and His commandments,
the observance of this law had probably long been intermitted,
so that, in consequence of the solemn engagement to obey it once
more, a great number of Hebrew male and female slaves received
their freedom, inasmuch as very many had served longer than
seven years ; however, we need not suppose that all bond men
and women were liberated at once. The resolution, ver. 9, that
every one should liberate his Hebrew man- or maid-servant,
and that no one should continue to impose servitude on a Jew,
his brother, i.e. compel him any longer to serve as a slave, is
conditioned by the law, which is assumed as well known : this
also accords with the expression 03"^?J( ''i'l ?: > which is used in a
general way of the treatment of Hebrew men- and maid-servants.
Lev. XXV. 39. However, it is also possible that a liberation
of all bond men and women took place without regard to the
Digitized by
Google
84 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
duration of their servitude, partly for the purpose of averting,
by such obediencie to the law, the calamity now threatening the
city, and partly also to employ the liberated slaves in the defence
of theoity; for, according to ver. 21 f., the emancipation took
place during the siege of Jerusalem, and after the departure of
the Chaldeans the solemn promise was revoked. The expres-
sion "liTJ S'JiJ, " to proclaim liberty," is taken from Lev. xxv.
10, but it does not prove that the manumission took place on a
sabbath- or a jubilee-year, nn? refers ad sensum to those who
were bondmen and had a right to be set free. The general
expression is explained by D^K'Sn n?e>, and this again is more
closely defined by Da-12j| ^rS^? (cf. Lev. xxv. 39). ^n'ns niiTS
E'^K, (that no one should labour) " through a Jew, who is his
brother," i.e. a fellow-countryman ; i.e. that no one should impose
servitude on a Jew, as being a compatriot. " To enter into a
covenant " is to assume its obligation ; cf . 2 Chron. xv. 12, Ezek.
xvi. 8. The Kethib tN&'yy receives, in the Qeri^ the vowels of
the Kal, since the Hiphil of this verb does not occur elsewhere,
only the Kal, cf, 2 Chron. xxviiL 10 ; but the alteration is un-
necessary, — the Hiphil may intensify the active meaning.
Vers. 12-22. The threat of punishment. — Ver. 12. "Then
came the word of Jahveh to Jeremiah from Jahveh, saying :
Ver. 13. Thus saith Jahveh, the God of Israel, *I made a
covenant with your fathers in the day when I brought them
out of the land of Egypt, from a house of- bondmen, saying,
Ver. 14. At the end of seven years shall ye set free each man
his brother, who is a Hebrew that sold himself to thee ; and he
shall serve thee six years, then shalt thou send him away from
thee free : but your fathers hearkened not unto me, nor inclined
their ear. Ver. 15. But you had turned just now, and had done
what is right in mine eyes, because each man proclaimed
liberty to his neighbour, and ye had made a covenant before
me in the house on which my name is called. Ver. 16. But
ye turned again and profaned my name, and each one made
his man-servant and his handmaid, whom he had sent away
free, at their pleasure, to return, and ye brought them into
subjections to be men- and maid-servants to you. Ver. 17.
Therefore, thus saith Jahveh, Ye have not hearkened unto me
in proclaiming liberty each man to his brother, and each man
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIV. 12-22; 85
to his neighbour : behold, I proclaim a liberty for yoa, saith
Jahveh, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to famine, and I
will deliver you up for maltreatment to all the kingdoms of the
earth. Yer. 18. And I shall make the men who have trans-
gressed my covenant, that have not kept the words of the
covenant which they concluded before me, like the calf which
they cut in two, and between whose pieces they passed. Ver.
19. The princes of Jndah and the princes of Jerusalem, the
courtiers, and the priests, and all the people of the land, who
passed through between the pieces of the calf, Ver. 20. Them
will I give into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand
of those who seek their life, so that their corpses shall be for
food to the birds of heaven and to the beasts of the earth.
Ver. 21. And Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes will I
give into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those
who seek their life, and into the hand of the army of the king
of Babylon, that has departed from against you. Ver. 22.
Behold, I will command, saith Jahveh, and will make them
return to this city, and they shall fight against it, and shall take
it, and shall burn it with fire ; and the cities of Judah will I
make a desolation, without an inhabitant."
In vers, 13-16 the Lord seta before the people and their
rulers their new offence; in vers. 17-22 He announces to them
the punishment for this new deed by which the covenant is
broken. In order to place the transgression in its proper light.
He mentions, first of all, that, when He led Israel out of Egypt,
, He concluded with them a covenant to the effect that every one
of them should set free his Hebrew servant at the end of seven
years ; He also mentions that their fathers had transgressed this
covenant (vers. 13, 14). The designation of Egypt as a house
of bondmen, as in Ex. xiii. 3, 14, xx. 2, Deut. vi. 12, etc.,
possesses a special emphasis, and points to what is mentioned
in Deut. xv. 15 as the motive for obeying the law referred to
in the address. Because Israel was a servant in Egypt, and
the Lord has redeemed him out of this house of bondmen,
therefore must they not treat as slaves their brethren who had
fallen into poverty, but set them free after six years of service.
The expression " at the end (after the lapse) of seven years " is
to be understood in the same way as the expression "after
Digitized by
Google
86 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
eight days." As this just means " when seven days are com-
pleted," so also, according to the law, Ex. xxi. 2, Deut. xv. 12,
the emancipation was to follow in the seventh year, after six
full years of service. " Who sold himself to thee " is an ex-
pression copied from Deut. xv. 12. — ^From this sin of their
fathers they had now for a little turned away, and, in a solemn
covenant, resolved to free the bondmen, as the law decreed
(ver. 15); but they have immediately profaned the name of
the Lord again by revoking this decree, viz. by breaking the
covenant made before God. D^?^?, " according to their pleasure,"
like W'B37, Deut. xxi. 14. — ^Ver. 17 ff. The announcement of
punishment. Because ye have not hearkened, by proclaiming,
every one, liberty to his bondman (this certainly had been done,
but was again undone by annulling the decree), therefore I
proclaim liberty for you ; i.e. you, who have hitherto been my
servants (Lev. xxv. 55), I discharge from this relation, — deliver
you up to your fate as regards the sword, etc., that the sword,
famine, and pestilence may have power over you. For njni^ see
XV. 4. — In ver. 18 the construction is disputed. Many, in-
cluding Luther, take >3J|n as the second object to *Finj : " I will
make the men .... the calf," i^. like the calf. But, though
jnj is frequently construed with a double accusative with the
meaning of making some thing another thing (cf. 'e.g. ver. 22,
Gen. xvii. 5, Ex. vii. 1), yet in such a case the predicative-
object does not readily take the article. Moreover, [nj, in the
sense required here, to make like = treat as, is joined with 3,
as in Isa. xli. 2, Ezek. xxviii. 2, 6, Gen. xlii. 30, 1 Kings x.
27, etc. Finally, Rosenmiiller objects: continuata versu 19
personarum deseriptio et repetitio verbi ^Jjinjl ver. 20 via per-
mittunt, propositionem hoc versu absolvi. For these reasons,
L. de Dieu, Rosenmiiller, Ewald, and Graf have taken -"Jyri as
being in apposition to n^iaflj and the enumeration " princes of
Judah," etc., ver. 19, as a continuation or exposition of D'^'^srij
ver. 18, and Drfs ^Wljl, ver. 20, as a resumption of the same
words in ver. 18. According to this view, vers. 18-20 would
form a series of appositions : " I will give the men . . . that have
not kept the words of the covenant which they concluded before
me ... . the princes of Judah who passed between the parts
of the calf, — these will I give into the hands of their enemies."
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIV. U-82. 87
Bat, apart from the consideration that the enumeration of the
covenant-breakers (viz. the princes of Judah, etc.), which is
added hj way of apposition in ver. 19, ought not to come in
till after the apposition to n^3n, which woald be a harsh and
complicated arrangement of the members of the sentence, this
construction seems untenable for the following reasons: (a)
" The calf that they cut," etc., which forms the explanatory
apposition to " the covenant," is separated from it by the inter-
vening clause, " which they made before me." And (6), even
though we might modify this harshness by repeating 'D^lfiK
before ^JJiJ, yet the mode of expression, *' they have not per-
formed the words of the calf which they cut in two, and between
whose parts they passed," would be a very stiff and unnatural
one for " they have not performed what they vowed or sware in
presence of the parts of the calf which they had halved, and when
they passed through between these pieces." With Maurer and
Hitzig, therefore, we abide by the older view, which takes «J?n
as the second object to 'ROJl: "I will make the men . . . the
calf," or, better, " like the calf which they cut in two," etc.
The article is used with ?35? because this predicate is more exactly
determined by relative clauses, and -"JJJn stands for ?3y3, since,
as often happens, the 3 of likeness is dropped to give more
point to the idea. We make ver. 19 begin a new sentence, and
take the names of this verse as objects absolute, which, by cniK
following 'W01, are subordinated to the verb : " As for the
princes of Judah .... them shall I give . . . ." — From ver.
18 we see that, when alliances were entered into, the contract-
ing parties slaughtered an 7X0, « calf," i.e. a young bullock, cut
it in two halves, and went through between the pieces that were
placed opposite one another. See on Gen. xv. 10 for details
regarding this most ancient custom and its meaning : according
to the account of Ephraem Syrus, it is of Chaldean origin.
Thus are explained the phrases used to signify the making of
a covenant. n*^3 ni3, to cut a eovenatit, opxia rifiveiv, foedus
feiire, i.e. ferienda hostia foedus facere. We cannot with cer-
tainty infer, from the threatening pronounced in this passage,
that this rite originally signified nothing more than that he who
broke his promise would be treated like the animal that had
been slaughtered. For the threatening is merely a conclusion
Digitized by
Google
88 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
drawn from the sacred act ; but this does not exclude a deeper
meaning of the rite. — Vers. 19-22 give the real explanation of
the threatening attached to the ritual of the covenant. Princes,
officers of the court, priests and people, who have transgressed
the covenant, shall die by the hand of the enemy, and perish
ignominiously. On ver. 206, cf . vii. 33, xvi. 4, etc. On 0<unD
see on Gen. xxxvii. 36. King Zedekiah also, with his princes,
his retinue, shall fall into the hand of his enemies, ay, into the
hands of the Chaldeans, who have now withdrawn from Jeru-
salem (on ?J/o rnv see on xxi. 2). See also xxxvii. 5-8.
Chap. XXXV. The Example of the RecJiabites.
By the command of God, Jeremiah brings the family of the
Rechabites (who had fled for refnge to Jerusalem before the
approach of the Chaldeans) into one of the chambers of the
temple, and sets before them some wine to drink (vers. 1-5).
They decline to drink, because the head of their ifamily had
forbidden them the use of wine, as well as the possession of
houses and the cultivation of the soil, and had commanded
them to live in tents (vers. 6-11). Jeremiah is to put this
before the people of Jndah. The Kechabites faithfully observe
the command of their ancestor, while the people of Judah
transgress the commands of their God, which are continually
presented to them (vers. 12-16). Therefore the threatened
calamity shall fall upon Judah ; but the house of Rechab, as a
reward for their faithfulness to the injunctions of their ancestor,
shall continue for ever (vers. 17-19).
According to ver. 1, this word of the Lord came to Jeremiah
in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, and, according to
ver. 11, previous to the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar and his host
before Jerusalem ; therefore perhaps in the summer of the year
606 B.C., for Jerusalem was taken for the first time by Nebu-
chadnezzar in the ninth month (December) of that year.
Vers. 1-11. JeremiaKs dealings with the Rechabites — ^Ver.
2. Jeremiah is to go to the house, j.e. the family, of the
Rechabites, speak with them, and bring them into one of the
chambers of the temple, and set before them wine to drink.
D^M^n n^3, vers. 2, 3, 18, is exchanged for D'-nann-rr'a »33, ver. 5,
from which it is apparent that " the house of the Rechabites "
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXV. 1-11. 89
does not mean their dwelling-place, bat the family, palled
in 1 Chron. ii. 55 33vn'3. According to this passage, the
Sechabites were a branch of the Kenites, i.e, descendants of
the Kenite, the father-in-law of Moses (Judg. i. 16), who had
gone to Canaan with the Israelites, and dwelt among them,
partly in the wilderness on the southern frontier of the tribe of
Judah (1 Sam. xv. 6, xxvii. 10, xxx. 29), partly at Kadesh in
Naphtali (Judg. iv. 11, 17, v. 24). Their ancestor, or father
of the tribe, was Rechab, the father of Jonadab, with whom
Jehu made a friendly alliance (2 Kings x. 15, 23). Jonadab
had laid on them the obligation to live in the special manner
mentioned below, in order to keep them in the simplicity of
nomad life observed by their fathers, and to preserve them from
the corrupting influences connected with a settled life. fl^3?Y,
" cells of the temple," were additional buildings in the temple
fore-courts, used partly for keeping the stores of the temple
(1 Chron. xxviii. 12), partly as dwellings for those who served
in it, and as places of meeting for those who came to visit it ;
see Ezek. xl. 17. — Ver. 3. In executing the command of the
Lord, Jeremiah took (went for) Jaazaniah, son of Jeremiah,
son of Habaziniah, and all his brethren, and sons, and the
whole house of the Bechabites, and brought them into the
temple-chamber of the sons of Hanan. Jaazaniah was pro-
bably the then chief of the Bechabites. The chamber of the
sons of Hanan was situated next the princes' chamber, which
stood over that of Maaseiah the door-keeper. Nothing further
is known about Hanan the son of Jigdaliah ; here he is called
" the man of God," an honourable title of the prophets, — see e.g.
1 Kings xii. 22, — for, according to the usual mode of construc-
tion, Q'npKri B'^K does not belong to Jigdaliah, but to Hanan, cf.
xxviii. 1, Zech. i. 1. "The chamber of the princes" is the
chamber where the princes, the chiefs of the people, used to
assemble in the temple. Its position is more exactly described
by y? 5JIBD, " over the chamber of Maaseiah," but not very
clearly for us, since the buildings of the temple fore-courts are
nowhere else more exactly described ; however, see on xxxvi.
10. Maaseiah was IBH ^dW, "keeper of the threshold," i.e.
overseer of the watchmen of the temple gates, of which, accord-
ing to Hi. 24 and 2 Kings xxv. 18, there were three, who are
Digitized by
Google
90 THE PBOPEECIES OF JEREMIAH.
there mentioned along with the high priest and his substitute
Maaseiah is probably the same whose son Zephaniah was Vya
HiE'sn, cf. lii. 24 T-ith zxxvii. 3, xxix. 25, and xxi. 1. — Ver. 5 f.
There, Jeremiah caused bowls filled with wine to be set before
the Bechabites, and commanded them to drink. (QT?| are
large goblets, bowls, out of which drinking-cups [nlDb] were
filled.) But they explained that they did dot drink wine,
because their father, i.e. their ancestor, Jouadab had forbidden
them and their posterity to drink wine for ever, as also to build
houses, to sow seed, and to plant vineyards, z.e. to settle them-
selves down in permanent dwellings and to pursue agriculture.
^9f '^^^. ^\ "And there shall not be to you," se. what has just
been named, Le. ye must not possess houses, growing-crops, or
vineyards (cf. ver. 9),^ but ye are to dwell in tents all your
life, that ye may live long, etc. This promise is an imitation
of that found in Ex. xx. 12. — Vers. 8-10. This command of
their forefather they observe in all points, and therefore dwell
in tents ; and only because of Nebuchadnezzar's arrival in the
country have they come to Jerusalem, in order to find refuge
for a time from the army of the Chaldeans and that of Aram
(the Arameans). The special mention of the army of Aram in
connection with that of the Chaldeans is perhaps due to the
frequent predatory incursions made, at an earlier period, on
Israel and Judah by the Syrians. According to 2 Kings xxiv.
2, after Jehoiakim had rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, hostile
bands of Arameans invaded Judah for the purpose of laying
waste the country.
Vers. 12-19. Tlie example of the Bechabites is one for Judah.
— Jeremiah is to proclaim the word of the Lord to the people
of Judah, as follows : Ver. 13. " Thus saith Jahveh of hosts,
' These injunctions, given by Jonadab to his posterity, that he might
make them always lead a nomad life, are quoted by Diodorus Siculus, xix.
94, as a law among the Nabateans: 'Sofic; itrrln ainolf, fitut ahoi> cvii»u»,
ftiri 0vrivfip fcriiip (pvrot x»pTO(popo», i*vri atxf fipiitiBiii, fivre tlxlett xetret-
vKtvi^im ; while the object of the law is stated to have been the main-
tenance of their freedom against the more powerful who sought to bring
them into subjection. And even at the present day the Bedouins imagine
that they are prevented, by the nobility of their descent from Ishmael,
from engaging in agriculture, handicraft, or the arts ; cf. Arvieuz, Sitten
der Beduinen-Araber, 6 f .
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXV. 12-18. 91
the God of Israel : Qo and aaj to the men of Jadah and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, Will ye not receive instmction hy
listening to my words? saith Jahveh. Ver. 14. The words of
Jonadab the son of Rechab, who commanded his sons not to
drink wine, are performed, and they have drunk no wine to
this day, but have obeyed the command of their father. But
/ have spoken unto you, rising up early and speaking, yet ye
have not listened unto me. Ver. 15. And I sent unto you all my
servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying.
Turn ye, now, every one from his evil way, and do good deeds,
and do not go after other gods, to serve them ; then shall ye
dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers.
But ye did not incline your ear, nor hearken unto me. Ver.
16. Yea, the children of Jonadab the son of Kechab have ob-
served the commandment of their father which he commanded
them, while this people have not hearkened unto me. Ver. 17.
Theriefore, thus saith Jahveh, the God of hosts, the God of
Israel : Behold, I will bring upon Judah and on the inhabitants
of Jerusalem all the evil which I have uttered regarding them,
because I spake unto them and they did not hear, and I called
unto them, but they did not answer. Ver. 18. And to the
house of the Rechabites Jeremiah said : Thus saith Jahveh of
hosts, the God of Israel, Because ye have listened to the com-
mand of Jonadab your father, and have kept all his com-
mandments, and have done according to all that he commanded
you, Ver. 19. Therefore, thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God
of Israel, Jonadab the son of Bechab shall not want a man to
stand before me for ever."
The command, " Go and speak to the men of Judah," etc.,
shows that it was not in the chamber of the temple, in presence
of the Bechabites, but probably in one of the temple fore-courts,
that Jeremiah addressed the following word of the Lord to the
people assembled there. In order to shame the Jews thoroughly,
he shows them the faithfulness with which the Bechabites ob-
serve the ordinances of their ancestor Jonadab. The character
of the address, as one intended to rouse feelings of shame, is
indicated even at the beginning of ver. 13 : " Will ye not re-
ceive instruction by hearkening to the words of the Lord?"
The Hoph. Di5^n is construed as a passive with the accus. ; in the
Digitized by
Google
92 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEUUB.
older \rriters we frequently find this construction, in which the
passive is used impersonally, hence the sing, is here employed :
cf . Ges. § 143, 1, Ew. § 295, b. " To this day "—now for nearly
300 years without interruption ; for Jonadab was already held
in high esteem when Jehu ascended the throne, 883 B.C. (2
Kings X. 15). Judah, on the contrary, does not listen to the
commandments which his God unceasingly inculcates on him,
but rather wanders after other gods, to serve them. On ver. 15
cf . XXV. 4, 5. "0'JKn-i>K stands for 'TO'iK'7"^?, xxv. 5.— In ver.
16, where the introductory *3, imo, indicates a culmination, the
idea is once more briefly expressed. Nagelsbach incorrectly
renders '3 " because" and makes ver. 16 the protasis to ver. 17.
" Such a protasis with because (quia), without any connection
with what precedes, is contrary to the use of language " (Hitzig).
On the threat of punishment in ver. 17, see xi. 11. — Ver. 18.
The declaration concerning the Bechabites is introduced by the
formula, " And to the house of the Rechabites Jeremiah said ; "
thereby, too, it is shown that the statement does not form an
integral portion of the preceding address, but was uttered by
Jeremiah perhaps at the close of his transactions with them
(ver. 11). But it is not given till now, in order to signify to
the people of Judah that even fidelity to paternal commands
has its own rewards, to make the threat uttered against Judah
all the more impressive. On the promise ver. 19, cf. xxxiii. 18.
Since 'JB? "^y denotes the standing of a servant before his
master, and in vii. 10 is used of the appearance of the people
before the Lord in the temple, 'JB? ip'y seems here also to
express not merely the permanence of the family, but in addition,
their continuance in the service of the Lord, without, of course,
involving sacerdotal service ; cf . on the other hand, xxxiii. 18,
where this service is more exactly described. The acknowledg-
ment of the Lord on the part of the Bechabites is a necessary
result of their connection with Israel.*
^ According to the account of the Jewish missionary Wol£F, there are
still some Rechabites in Asia, in Mesopotamia and Yemen, who afiBnn that
they are descended from Hobab the brother-in-law [A.V. " father-in-law ; "
but see Smith's Bible Dictionary, vol, L Robab'] of Moses. Wolff points out
that part of the desert of Yemen near Senaa as the special locality where
these Rechabites lire. Cf. Dr. Joseph Wolff, m Wanderleben, von Dr.
Sengelmaun, Hamburg 1863, S. 65 n. 196.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVI. 93
Chap, xxxvi. JeremiaKa Discourses are written down, and
read in the Temple.
In the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim the word of
the Lord came to Jeremiah, bidding him commit to writing all
the addresses he had previously delivered, that Judah might, if
it were possible, still regard the threatenings and return (vers.
1-3). In accordance with this command, he got all the words
of the Lord written down in a book by his attendant Baruch,
with the further instruction that this should be read on the
fast-day in the temple to the people who came out of the country
into Jerusalem (vers. 4-8). When, after this, in the ninth
month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim, a fast was appointed,
Baruch read the prophecies to the assembled people in the
chamber of Gemariah in the temple. Michaiah the son of
Gemariah mentioned the matter to the princes who were assem-
bled in the royal palace ; these then sent for Baruch with the
roll, and made him read it to them. But they were so frightened
by what was read to them that they deemed it necessary to
inform the king regarding it (vers. 9-19). At their advice,
the king had the roll brought and some of it read before him ;
but scarcely had some few columns been read, when he cut the
roll into pieces and threw them into the pan of coals burning
in the room, at the same time commanding that Baruch and
Jeremiah should be brought to him ; but God hid them (vers.
20-26). After this roll had been burnt, the Lord commanded the
prophet to get all his words written on a new roll, and to predict
an ignominious fate for King Jehoiakim ; whereupon Jeremiah
once more dictated his addresses to Baruch (vers. 27-32).
Since Jeremiah, according to vers. 3, 6, 7, is to get his ad-
dresses written down that Baruch may be able to read them
publicly on the fast-day, now at hand, because he himself was
prevented from getting to the temple, the intention of the divine
command was not to make the prophet put down in writing and
gather together all the addresses he had hitherto given, but the
writing down is merely to serve as a means of once more pre-
senting to the people the whole contents of his prophecies, in
order to induce them, wherever it was possible, to return to the
Lord. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar, after
Digitized by
Google
94 ' THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
vanquishing the Egyptians at the Euphrates, advanced against
Judah, took Jerusalem, and made Jehoiakim tributary. In the
same year, too, Jeremiah had delivered the prophecy regarding
the giving up of Judah and all nations for seventy years into
the power of the king of Babylon (chap, xxv.) ; this was before
he had been bidden write down all his addresses. For, that he
did not receive this command till towards the end of the fourth
year, may be gathered with certainty from the fact that the
public reading of the addresses, after they were written down,
was to take place on the fast-day, which, according to ver. 9,
was not held till the ninth month of the fifth year. The only
doubtful point is, whether they were written down and read
before or after the first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchad-
nezzar. Most modern commentators take the former view ;
e.g. Hitzig says, briefly and decidedly, " According to ver. 29,
the Chaldeans had not as yet appeared in the country." Bat
this is not mentioned in ver. 29. The threatening in this verse,
" The king of Babylon shall come and destroy this land, and
exterminate men and beasts from it," does not prove that the
king of Babylon had not yet come to Judah, but merely that
the country had not yet been destroyed, and men and cattle
e:cterminated from it. When Jerusalem was first taken, Nebu-
chadnezzar contented himself with subjecting Jehoiakim under
his supreme authority and requiring the payment of tribute, as
well as carrying away some of the vessels of the temple and
some hostages. The devastation of Judah and the extirpation
of men and beasts did not commence till the second subjuga-
tion of Jerusalem under Jehoiakim, and was completed when
the city was utterly destroyed, in Zedekiah's time, on its third
subjugation. The settlement of the question that has been
raised depends on the determination of the object for which
the special fast-day in the fifth year was appointed, whether
for averting the threatened invasion by the Chaldeans, or as a
memorial of the first capture of Jerusalem. This question we
have already so far decided in the Commentary on Daniel,
p. 66, where it is stated that the fast was held in remembrance
of that day in the year when Jerusalem was taken for the first
time by Nebuchadnezzar ; we have also remarked in the same
place, that Jehoiakim either appointed or permitted this special
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XSTVL 95
fast " for the purpose of ronsing the popular feeling against
the Chaldeans, to whom they were in subjection, — ^to evoke in
the people a religious enthusiasm in favour of resistance ; for
Jehoiakim keenly felt the subjugation by the Chaldeans, and
from the first thought of revolt." However, every form of
resistance to the king of Babylon could only issue in the ruin
of Judah. Accordingly, Jeremiah made Baruch read his
prophecies publicly to the people assembled in the temple on
that day, " by way of counterpoise to the king's desire ;" the
prophet also bade him announce to the king that the king of
Babylon would come, i.e. return, to destroy the land, and to root
out of it both men and beasts. These circumstances give the
first complete explanation of the terror of the princes when they
listened to the reading of the book (ver. 16), as well as of the
wrath of the king, exhibited by his cutting the book in pieces
and throwing it into the fire : he saw that the addresses of the
prophet were more calculated to damp those religions aspira-
tions of the people on which he based his hopes, than to rouse
the nation against continued submission to the Chaldeans. Not
till now, too, when the object of the appointment of the fast-
day was perceived, did the command given by God to the
prophet to write down his prophecies appear in its proper light.
Shortly before, and in the most earnest manner, Jeremiah had
reminded the people of their opposition to the word of God
preached by him for twenty-three years, and had announced
to them, as a punishment, the seventy years' subjugation to the
Chaldeans and the desolation of the country ; yet this an-
nouncement of the fearful chastisement had made no deeper or
more lasting impression on the people. Hence, so long as the
threatened judgment was still in the distance, not much could
be expected to result from the reading of his addresses in the
temple on the fast-day, so that the command of God to do so
should appear quite justified. But the matter took a con-
siderably different form when Nebuchadnezzar had actually
taken Jerusalem and Jehoiakim had submitted. The com-
mencement of the judgments which had been threatened by
God was the proper moment for laying before the hearts of the
people, once more, the intense earnestness of the divine message,
and for urging them to deeper penitence. Just at this point
Digitized by
Google
90 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the reading of the whole contents of the prophecies delivered
by Jeremiah appears like a final attempt to preserve the people,
on whom judgment has fallen, from complete destruction.
Vers. 2-8. The word of the Lord to Jeremiah was to this
effect : " Take thee a book-roll, and write on it (HvN for <f^y)
all the words that I have spoken unto thee concerning Israel
and Judah, and concerning all the nations, from the day I spake
unto thee, from the days of Josiah till this day. Ver. 3. Per-
haps the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I meditate
doing to them, that they may return every one from his evil
way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin." V)^,
here means, to hear correctly and lay to heart ; cf. xxvi. 3.
Hitzig views the command as meaning, not that Jeremiah is
now for the first time to write down his addresses (which would
be an impossibility for the most faithful memory), but that he
is merely to write them down together in one book, out of the
several scattered leaves and scraps. Graf has already refuted
this view, though more fully than was necessary. It is not a
copying, word for word, of every sepai'ate address that is meant,
but merely a writing down of the essential contents of all his
oral discourses. This is quite clear, not merely from what is
stated in ver. 3 as the object of this command, but also from
the character of these collected addresses, as they are preserved
to us. That the expression " all the words" is not to be under-
stood in the most rigid sense, follows from the very fact that,
when Jeremiah anew wrote down his prophecies, ver. 32, he
further added " many similar words" to what had been con-
tained in the first book-roll, which was burned by Jehoiakim.
But Jeremiah might perhaps be able to retain in his memory
the substance of all the addresses he had delivered during the
twenty-three years, since all of them treated of the same sub-
jects — reproof of prevailing sins, threat of punishment, and
promises.— Ver. 4. Jeremiah carries out the divine command
by making Baruch write down on a book-roll all the words of
the Lord, out of his mouth ('OT 'BD, i.e. at the dictation of Jere-
miah) ; and since he himself is prevented from getting to the
house of the Lord, he bids him read the words he had written
down in the ears of the people in the temple on the fast-day,
at the same time expressing the hope, ver. 7 : '* Perhaps their
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXIVI. 9-19. 97
sapplication will fall down before the Lord, and they will
retam each one from his wicked way ; for great is the wrath
and the anger which the Lord hath expressed concerning this
people." Barach, who is mentioned so early as xxxii. 12 S. as
the attendant of the prophet, was, according to the passage
now before us, his amanuensis, and executed his commissions.
"vctS ^Jtt, according to xxxiii. 1 and xxxix. 15, might mean, '' I
am in prison ;" but this does not accord with the request of the
princes, ver. 19, that Jeremiah should hide himself. Moreover,
n^sp does not mean ^' seized, eaptus" but *' stopped, restrained,
hindered ;" see on Neh. vi. 10. The cause of hindrance is not
mentioned, as being away from the purpose of the narrative.
" To read in the roll in the ears of the people," i.e. to read to
the people out of the book. OS'S Qi*a does not mean " on any
fast-day whatever," but, " on the fast-day." The article is
omitted because there was no need for defining the fast-day
more exactly. The special fast-day mentioned in ver.. 9 is
intended. 'U1 Dfljnri pan, " their supplication will fall down
before the Lord," i.e. reach unto God, as if it were laid before
His feet. ^ is transferred from the posture of the suppliant
— his falling down before God — to his supplication. Hence, in
Hiphil^ to make the supplication fall down before the Lord is
equivalent to laying the request at His feet ; xxxviii. 26, xlii. 9,
Dan. ix. 18, 20. If the supplication actually comes before God,
it is also heard and finds success. This success is pointed out
in 'W OE'Jl, « that they may repent." If man, in a repentant
spirit, supplicates God for grace, God grants him power for
conversion. But the return of the people from their wicked way
is indispensable, because the wrath which God has expressed
concerning it is great, t.e. because God has threatened a heavy
judgment of wrath. — ^Ver. 8. Baruch executes his commission.
Vers. 9-19. 2he reading of the book in the temple. — Ver. 9.
In the fifth year of Jehoiakim, in the ninth month, " they
proclaimed a fast before the Lord, — all the people in Jeru-
salem, and all the people who had come out of the cities of
Jndah to Jerusalem." Q^V K"ii5, to call, declare, appoint a fast ;
cf. 1 Kings xxi. 9, 12, 2 Chron. xx. 3. From the tenor of the
words, the people who lived in Jerusalem and those who had
come thither out of the country might seem to have called the
VOL. II. a
Digitized by
Google
98 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
fast. But this is impossible ; for the people from the cities of
Judah evidently came to Jerusalem only in consequence of the
fast being appointed. Hence Graf is of opinion that Q^v S"ii?
seems here used in a general way of the keeping of such a fast.
This view is not confirmed by any parallel instances. The
expression is inexact, and the inexactness has arisen from the
effort to attain greater conciseness of expression. The meaning
is this : a fast was proclaimed, and all the people in Jerusalem
and out of the cities of Judah came to worship the Lord in
the temple. It remains doubtful with whom the appointment
originated, — whether with the king, or with the high priest and
the priesthood. The ninth month corresponds to our December,
and consequently came round with the cold season ; cf. ver. 22 f.
The fast-day was a special one ; for in the law only the day of
atonement, in the seventh month, was prescribed as a fast-day.
On the object of this measure, see supra, p. 94 f. — Ver. 10.
On this day Baruch read the addresses of Jeremiah out of the
book to the people who had come to the temple, in the " chamber
of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, the scribe, in the upper fore-
court, at the- entrance' of the new gate of the house of the
Lord." Gemariah the son of Shaphan was one of the king's
private scribes, a secretary of state. For, according to ver. 12,
he belonged to the princes, and was probably a brother of
Ahikam the son of Shaphan, who had already shown himself,
before this, a protector of the prophet (xxvi. 24). The chamber
which he had- in the temple was situated in the upper fore-
court, at the entrance of the new gate, whose position we
cannot exactly determine (see on xxvi. 10), but which led from
the outer to the inner court of the priests, which rose higher
than the ethers. — Ver. 11. Micaiah, a son of Gemariah, was also
listening to the reading ; and he it was who brought the news
into the palace. He made for the room, i.e.' the office, of Eli-
shama, the secretary of state, where the princes, viz. Elishama,
Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, Elnathan the son of Achbor (cf.
xxvi. 22), Gemariah the son of Shaphan, and Zedekiah the son
of Hananiah, had just met for a consultation ; and he men-
tioned to them what he had heard. — Ver 14. On this informa-
tion the princes sent Jehudi (perhaps one of the under-officers
of the secretary of state) to Baruch, to bring him, with the book
"v..
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVI. 9-19. 99
from which he had read. From the designation, " Jehudi son
of Nethaniah, son of Shelemiah, son of Cashi," Hitzig and Graf
conclude that the first and last are not proper names, but ap-
pellatives, "the Jew" and "the Cushite," and account for the
use of them on the ground that, through the application of the
law given in Deut. xxiii. 7, 8 to Cushites as well as Egyptians,
the ancestor was a Cushite, and only his great-grandson became
a Jew, or Jewish citizen, and was called " Jehudi." But this
view is opposed (1) by the fact that the names of the father
and the grandfather are true proper names, and these, moreover,
contain the name Jah {Jahvek), — hence are genuine proper
names of Israelites ; moreover, (2) even in olden times Jehudith
occurs as a woman's name. Gen. xxvi. 34. According to this,
Jehudi is a true proper name, and at the most, Cushi is but a
surname of the great-grandfather, given him because of his
descent from the Cushites. Further, the law, Deut. xxiii. 7,
applies only to the posterity of the Edomites and Egyptians,
that these should not be received into the congregation of the
Lord till the third generation ; this ordinance was based on
grounds which did not permit of its application to other
nations. These might be naturalized even in the first genera-
tion on undergoing circumcision, with the exception of Ca-
naanites, Ammonites, and Moabites, who were not to be admitted
into the Israelitish community even in the tenth generation,
Deut. xxiii. 3. — ^Ver. 15. When Baruch came, the princes,- in
token of friendly and respectful treatment, bade him sit down
and read to them out of the book he had brought with him.
Ver. 16. But when they heard all the words read, " they were
afraid one at another ; " i.e. by looks, gestures, and words, they
gave mutual expression of their fear, partly because of the
contents of what had been read. Although they were gene-
rally acquainted with the sense and the spirit of Jeremiah's
addresses, yet what had now been read made a powerful im-
pression on them ; for Baruch plainly had read, both to the
people in the temple and to the princes, not the whole book,
but only the main portions, containing the sternest denuncia-
tions of sin and the strongest threats of punishment. The
statement, " he read in (out of) the book the words of Jere-
miah" (ver. 10), does not mean that he read the whole book ;
Digitized by
Google
100 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
this wonld only have wearied the people apd weakened the
impression made. But they were partly also terrified, perhaps,
by the boldness of a declaration which so decidedly opposed the
desires and hopes of the king ; for the thought of the event
mentioned zxvi. 20 S. would at once suggest to them the
danger that might arise to the lives of Jeremiah and Baruch
from the despotic character of the king. They said therefore
to Baruch, " We must tell the king all these things." For it
was clear that the matter could not long remain concealed from
the king, after the public reading in the temple. Hence they
dared not, agreeably to their official relation to the king, hide
from him what had taken place. — Ver. 17. Meanwhile, in order
to inform themselves more exactly regarding what had hap-
pened, they ask Baruch, " Tell us, how hast thou written all
these words at his mouth?" Thereupon Baruch replied, " He
used to call aloud these words to me," i.e. he used to dictate
them to me by word of mouth, " and I wrote them in the book
with ink." The imperfect expresses the repeated or continued
doing of anything; hence N'lp'. here means to dictate, which
requires considerable time. In the following circumstantial
clause is found the participle anb 'JW, while I was writing ;
and so I myself was doing nothing else all the time than writing
down what was dictated. Some commentatoi*s have found a
stumbling-block in VSD in the question of the princes (ver. 17);
the LXX.' and Ewald omit this word, inasmuch as Baruch
does not explain till afterwards that he had written down the
words from the mouth of Jeremiah. Others, like Venema, take
VSD as a question =V&pn. Both explanations are arbitrary and
unnecessary. The princes knew quite well that the substance
of the book was from the mouth of Jeremiah, i.e. contained
his addresses ; but Baruch, too, might have composed the book
from the oral discourses of the prophet without being com-
missioned by him, without his knowledge also, and against his
will. Accordingly, to attain certainty as to the dbare of the
prophet in this matter, they ask him, and Baruch answers that
Jeremiah had dictated it to him. — Ver. 19. Thereupon the
princes advised Baruch to hide himself and Jeremiah ; ioc they
know beforehand that Jehoiakim would put to death the wit-
nesses of the truth.
V
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVL 20-2S, 101
Vers. 20-26. The reading of the hook before the king. — ^Ver.
20. The princes betook tfaemsjelves to the king Ti-fn, into the
inner fore-court (leaving the book-roll in the chamber of the
secretary of state), and gave him an account of the matter,
isn is the inner court of the palace, in wh^ch the royal dwelling-
apartments are situated. *i^i?Bn, to entrust a thing or person to
any one (xl. 7), hence to deposit, preserve, Isa. x. 28. — ^Ver. 21.
Thereupon the king makes Jehudi fetch the book, and causes
it to be read before himself and the assembled princes. *TQP
^, to stand over, since the one who is standing before his
master, while the latter is sitting, overtops him ; cf. Gen. xviii.
8. The king was sitting, as is stated in ver. 22 by way of
preparation for what follows, in the winter-house, t.e. in that
portion of the palace which was erected for a winter residence,
in the ninth month, i.e. during the winter, and the pot of coals
was burning before him. The rooms of eastern houses have
no stoves, but in the middle of the floor there is a depression,
in which is placed a sort of basin with burning coals, for the
purpose of heating the apartment : cf. Keil's Bibl. Areh&ol. ii.
§ 95, S. 7. For the expression nxnTiKl, " and as for the fire-pot,
it was burning before him," cf. Ewald, § 277, d. — ^Ver. 23. Now,
*' when Jehudi had read three or four columns, he [the king]
cut it [the book-roll] with the pen-knife and threw [the pieces]
into the fire, in the pot of coals, till the whole roll was consumed
on the fire in the pot of coals." rtlTn, properly " doors," are
not leaves, but divisions of a book. The opinion of Hitzig,
that leaves are to be understood, and that the Megillak, there-
fore, was not a roll, properly speaking, but a book with leaves,
cannot be substantiated. In the synagogues, the Jews even
at the present day, according to the ancient custom, use real
rolls, which are rolled up on a stick. On these the Scripture
text is written, though not in lines which occupy the whole
breadth of the roll; the whole space is divided into parts.
"Scribebatur" says Buxtorf in Institutione epistolari Hebr. p.
4, " volumen lineis, non per hngitudinem totius chartcB aut per-
gamenti deductis, sed in plures areas divisis, quomodo sunt latera
paginarum in libris complicatis. Istae propterea voce metaphoricd
voeantur Tl^TJ januw valvce, quod figuram januw rejerant."
The subject of >}fl\>\ is not Jehudi, as Hitzig thinks, but the
Digitized by
Google
102 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
king, and the word does not signify " he cut it out," but " he
cut it in pieces " (the suffix refers to n?JBn). We are not, with
many expositors, to view the conduct of the king in such a way
as to think that, whenever Jehudi had read some portions, he
cut these off and threw them into the fire, so that the book was,
with these interruptions, read through to the end, and at the
same time gradually destroyed. Such conduct Graf justly
characterizes as trifling and silly, and not in harmony with the
anger of a king having a violent disposition. But we cannot see
how the imperfect jnp» (in Nagelsbach's opinion) proves that
Jehudi read the whole, when the text states that only three or
four columns were read. The meaning, peculiar to the im-
perfect, of the continuation or repetition of an act, is fully
made out by supposing that the king cut down the roll bit by
bit, and threw the pieces into the fire one after the other.
Neither does the expression n?it3n"?3 Dhny imply that the whole
book was read ', for QOijI does not denote the completion of the
reading, but the completion of the burning : hence the words
are to be translated, " till the whole roll had completely got
upon the fire," i.e. was completely burnt ; cf. "7K Dn, Gen. xlvii.
18. The inf. absol. V!f^] is a continuation of the finite verb,
as frequently occurs, e.g. in xiv. 5, xxxii. 44. — Ver. 24 f. In
order to characterize the conduct of the king, the writer remarks,
"Yet the king and his servants who heard all these words
(which Jehudi had read) were not afraid, nor did they rend
their garments (in token of deep sorrow) ; and even when
Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah addressed the king, request-
ing him not to burn the roll, he did not listen to them." So
hardened was the king, that he and his servants neither were
terrified by the threatenings of the prophet, nor felt deep sorrow,
as Josiah did in a similar case (2 Kings xxii. 1 1, cf . 1 Kings
xxi. 27), nor did they listen to the earnest representations of
the princes. Viag are the court-attendants of the king in
contrast with the prinx:es, who, according to ver. 16, had been •
alarmed by what they heard read, and wished, by entreaties, to
keep the king from the commission of such a wicked act as the
destruction of the book. Ewald, on the contrary, has identified
V"12J? with the princes, and thereby marred the whole account,
while he reproaches the princes with " acting as the wretched
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVI. 27-82. 103
instraments of what they knew to be the sentiments prevailing
at court." — Ver. 26. Not content with destroying the book,
Jehoiakim also wished to get Baruch and Jeremiah oat of the
way ; for he ordered the king's son Jerahmeel and two other
men to go for Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet ;
" but the Lord hid them," i.e. graciously kept them out of the
sight of the spies. T|7Qn-i3 is not the son of Jehoiakim, — if so,
we would find simply ^33"nN ; but a royal prince is meant, cf.
xxxviii. 6, 1 Kings xxii. 26, 2 Kings xi. 1, 2, Zeph. i. 8.
Vers. 27-32. The punishment which is to come on Jehoiakim
for his toicked act. — Ver. 27 ff. After the burning of the roll
by the king, Jeremiah received from the Lord the command to
get all that had been on the former roll written on another,
and to announce the following to Jehoiakim the king : Ver. 29.
"Thus saith Jahveh: Thou hast burned this roll, whilst thou
sayest, Why hast thou written thereon. The king of Babylon
shall surely come and destroy this land, and root out man and
beast from it ? Ver. 30. Therefore thus saith Jahveh regard-
ing Jehoiakim the king of Judah : He shall not have one who
sits upon the throne of David, and his corpse shall be cast
forth to the heat by day and to the frost by night. Ver. 31.
And I shall punish him, his servants, and bis seed for their
iniquity, and bring on them and on all the inhabitants of Judali
and all the men of Judah all the evil which I have spoken to
them ; but they did not hear." On the meaning of ver. 29 J
see p. 94, supra. The threatening expressed in ver. 30 f. is
really only a repetition of what is given in xxii. 18, 19, and
has already been explained there. " There shall not be to him
one who sits upon the throne of David," i.e. he is not to have a
son that shall occupy the throne of David after him. This
does not contradict the fact that, after his death, his son
Jehoiachin ascended the throne. For this ascension could not
be called a sitting on the throne, & reign, inasmuch as he was
immediately besieged in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and
compelled to surrender after three months, then go into exile to
Babylon. On ver. 31 cf. xxxv. 17, xix. 15. — Ver. 22. There-
upon Jeremiah made his attendant Baruch write all the words
of the former roll on a new one, " out of his mouth," i.e. at his
dictation ; and to these he added many other words like them.
Digitized by
Google
104 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEUUH.
iTOra, t>. of like import with those on the previous roll. Hence
we perceive that on the first roll there were written down not
all the several addresses fully, but only the most important
parts of his oral announcements.
B. BXFEBIENOES AND UTTERANCES OP JEREMIAH DURING
THE SIEOB AND CAPTURE OP JERUSALEM. — CHAP.
XXXVII.-XXXIX.
Chap, xxxvii. Declaration regarding the Issue of the Siege ;
Imprisonment of Jeremiah and Conversation with the King.
Vers. 1-10. The account of what befell Jeremiah and what
he did during the last siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans,
until the taking of the city, is introduced, vers. 1 and 2, with
the general remark that Zedekiah, — whom Nebuchadnezzar the
king of Babylon had made king in the land of Judah in place
of Coniah (on which name see on xxii. 24),— when he became
king, did not listen to the words of the Lord through Jeremiah,
neither himself, nor his servants (officers), nor the people of the
land (the population of Judah). Then follows, vers. 3-10, a
declaration of the prophet regarding the issue of the siege, which
he sent to the king by the messengers who were to beseech him
for his intercession with the Lord. Vers. 3-5. The occasion of
this declaration was the following : Zedekiah sent to Jeremiah
two of his chief officers, Jehucal the son of Shelemiah (see on
xxxviii. 1), and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest (see
xxi. 1 and xxix. 25), with this charge: "Pray now for us to
Jahveh our God." This message was sent to Jeremiah while
he still went in and out among the people, and had not yet
been put in prison (KyS, ver. 4 and lii. 31, an unusual form for
K?3, vers. 15 and 18, for which the Qeri would have us in both
instances read Kv3) ; the army of Pharaoh (Hophra, xliv. 30),
too, had marched out of Egypt to oppose the Chaldeans ; and
the latter, when they heard the report of them {^^^, the news
of their approach), had withdrawn from Jerusalem (?yo npy,
see on xxi. 2), viz*, in order to repulse the Egyptians. Both of
these circumstances are mentioned for the purpose of giving a
clear view of the state of things : (a) Jeremiah's freedom to go in
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVIL U-16. 105
and ont, not to prepare us for his imprisonment afterwards, bat
to explain the reason why the king sent two chief officers of
the re^lm to him, whereas, after his imprisonment, he caused
him to be brought (cf. ver. 17 with xxxviii. 14); and (b) the
approach of the Egyptians joined with the raising of the siege,
because this event seemed to afford some hope that the city
would be saved. — This occurrence, consequently, falls within
a later period than that mentioned in chap. xxi. — Ver. 6. Then
came the word of the Lord to this effect : Ver. 7. " Thus saith
Jahveh, the God of Israel : Thus shall ye say to the king of
Judah who hath sent yon to me to ask at me. Behold, the
army of Pharaoh, which marched out to your help, will return
to Egypt, their own land. Ver. 8. And the Chaldeans shall
return and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with
fire. Ver. 9. Thus saith Jahveh : Do not deceive yourselves
by thinking. The Chaldeans will quite withdraw from us ; for
they will not withdraw. Ver. 10. For, even though ye had
beaten the whole army of the Chaldeans who are fighting with
you, and there remained of them only some who had been
pierced through and through, yet they would rise up, every man
in his tent, and bum.this city with fire." In' order to cut off
every hope, the prophet announces that the Egyptians will
bring no help, but withdraw to their own land before the
Chaldeans who went out to meet them, without having accom-
plished their object ; but then the Chaldeans will return, con-
tinue the siege, take the city an4 bum it. To assure them of
this, he adds : " Ye must not deceive yourselves with the vain
hope that 'the Chaldeans may possibly be defeated and driven
back by the Egyptians. The destruction of Jerusalem is so
certain that, even supposing you were actually to defeat and
repulse the Chaldeans, and only some few grievously wounded
ones remained in the tents, these would rise up and bum the
city." In tt7|. "^pn the inf. abs. is to be observed, as strengthen-
ing the idea contained in the verb : " to depart wholly or com-
pletely ; " "n?!} is here to " depart, withdraw." D'B'JK in contrast
with yn are separate individuals. l?^P, pierced through by
sword or lance, i.e. grievously, mortally wounded.
Vers. 11-15. The imprisonment of Jeremiah. — During the
time when the Chaldeans, on account of the advancing army
Digitized by
Google
106 . THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of Pharaoh, had withdrawn from Jerusalem and raised the
siege, " Jeremiah went out of the city to go to the land of
Benjamin, in order to bring thence his portion among the
people." n^fii, in accordance with later usage, for 'n]l, as in
iii. 9 ; cf . Ewald, § 345, b. DBto jspn? is explained in various
ways. p?n? for VwV'fl^ can scarcely have any other meaning
than to share, receive a share ; and in connection with Q^^ip,
" to receive a portion thence," not, to receive an inheritance
{Syr., Chald., Vulg.), for DBto does not suit this meaning. The •
LXX. render tov dyopdaat iKeWev, which Theodoret explains
by nrploffOai dprow. AH other explanations have still less in
their favour. We must connect Dyn Tjina with 'W J^???, since
it is unsuitable for DBto p?n?, — Ver. 13. When he. was entering
the gate of Benjamin, where Jeriah the son of Shelemiah kept
watch, the latter seized him, saying, " Thou desirest to go over
to the Chaldeans" ("-"K 7W, see on xxi. 9). The gate of Benja-
min (xxxviii. 7 ; Zech. xiv. 10) was the north gate of the city,
through which ran the road to Benjamin and Ephraim ; hence
it was also called the gate of Ephraim, 2 Kings xiv. 13, Neh.
viii. 16. n7i?3 jya, « holder of the oversight," he who kept the
watch, or commander of the wStch at the gate. " The accu-
sation was founded on the well-known views and opinions of
Jeremiah (xxi. 9) ; but it was mere sophistry, for the simple
reason that the Chaldeans were no longer lying before the city"
(Hitzig). — ^Ver. 14. Jeremiah replied: " A lie [= not true;
cf. 2 Kings ix. 12] ; I am not going over to the Chaldeans.
But he gave no heed to him ; so Jeriah seized Jeremiah, and
brought him to the princes. Ver. 15. And the princes were
angry against Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison,
in the house of Jonathan the scribe ; for they had'made it the
prison," — probably because it contained apartments suitable for
the purpose. From ver. 16 we perceive that they were sub-
terranean prisons and vaults into which the prisoners were
thrust ; and from ver. 28 and xxxviii. 26, it is clear that Jere-
miah was in a confinement much more severe and dangerous to
his life. There he sat many days, i.e. a pretty long time.
Vers. 16-21. Examination of the prophet by the king, and
alleviation of his confinement. — Ver. 16 ff. " When Jeremiah
had got into the dungeon and into the vaults, and had sat there
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVII 16-21. 107
many days, then Zedekiah the king sent and fetched him, and
questioned him in his own house (palace) secretly," etc. Ver.
16 is by most interpreters joined with the foregoing, but the
words K3 '3 do not properly permit of this. For if we take
the verse as a further confirmation of D''')?'? '^Vi?5) " the princes
vented their wrath on Jeremiah, beat him," etc., " for Jeremiah
came . . .," then it must be acknowledged that the account
would be very long and lumbering. N3 '3 is too widely sepa-
rated from 'SyiPV Hence the LXX. have koX ^Xdov, — some
codices, indeed, ort rjXdov; and Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf
would change K3 ^3 into t^3>1. But the passages, 1 Sam. ii. 21,
where "ipB '? is supposed to stand for '*i^% and Isa. xxxix. 1,
where J'OK'5 is thought to have arisen out of VDB' '3, 2 Kings
XX. 12, are not very strong proofs, since there, as here, no error
in writing is marked. The Vulgate has itaque ingressus ; many
therefore would change '3 into t? ; but this also is quite arbi-
trary. Accordingly, with Rosenmiiller, we connect ver. 16 with
the following, and take ^ as a temporal particle ; in this, the
most we miss is ) copulative, or 'H^. In the preceding sentence
the prison of the prophet is somewhat minutely described, in
order to prepare us for the request that follows in ver. 20.
Jeremiah was in a "»l3"n'3, " house of a pit," cf. Ex. xii. 29,
i.e. a subterranean prison, and in ni^nn. This word only
occurs here ; but in the kindred dialects it means vaults, stalls,
shops ; hence it possibly signifies here subterranean prison-
cells, so that n1>3riri"7K more exactly determines what *ii3n"n''3
is. This meaning of the word is, at any rate, more certain
than that given by Eb. Scheid in Hosenmiiller, who renders
nwn by Jlexa, curvata ; then, supplying ligna, he thinks of the
stocks to which the prisoners were fastened. — ^The king ques-
tioned him inB?, " in secret," namely, through fear of his
ministers and court-officers, who were prejudiced against the
prophet, perhaps also in the hope of receiving in a private
interview a message from God of more favourable import. To
the question of the king, " Is there any word from Jahveh ? "
Jeremiah replies in the affirmative; but. the word of God is
this, " Thou shalt be given into the hand of the king of Baby-
lon," just as Jeremiah had previously announced to him ; cf.
xxxii. 4, xxxiv. 3. — Jeremiah took this opportunity of complain-
Digitized by
Google
108 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
ing about his imprisonment, saying, ver. 18, " In what have I
sinned against thee, or against thy servants, or against this
people, that ye have put me in prison ? Ver. 19. And where
are your prophets, who prophesied to you, The king of Babylon
shall not come against you, nor against this land I" Jeremiah
appeals to his perfect innocence (ver. 18), and to the confirma-
tion of his prediction by its event. The interview with the
king took place when the Chaldeans, after driving the Egyptians
out of the country, had recommenced the siege of Jerusalem,
and, as is evident from ver. 21, were pressing the city very
hard. The Kethib VK is to be read i'K, formed from ri'K with
the suffix i ; the idea of the suffix has gradually become ob-
scured, so that it stands here before a noun in the plural. The
Qeri requires fi'st. The question. Where are your prophets 1
means, Let these prophets come forward and vindicate their
lying prophecies. Not what these men had prophesied, but
what Jeremiah had declared had come to pass ; his imprison-
ment, accordingly, was unjust. — Besides thus appealing to his
innocence, Jeremiah, ver. 20, entreats the king, " Let my
supplication come before thee, and do not send me back into
the house of Jonathan the scribe, that I may not die there."
For 'n tU"?sn see on xxxvi. 7. The king granted this request.
" He commanded, and they put Jeremiah into the court of the
watch [of the royal palace, see on xxxii. 2], and gave him a
loaf of bread daily out of the bakers' street, till all the bread
in the city was consumed ;" cf. Hi. 6. The king did not give
him his liberty, because Jeremiah held to his views, that were
so distasteful to the king (see on xxxii. 3). " So Jeremiah
remained in the court of the guard."
Chap, xxxviii. Jeremiah in the Miry Pit. Last Interview vaith
tJie King.
In this chapter two events are mentioned which took place
in the last period of the siege of Jerusalem, shortly before the
capture of the city by the Chaldeans. According to ver. 4, the
number of fighting men had now very much decreased ; and
according to ver. 19, the number of> deserters to the Chaldeans
had become large. Moreover, according to ver." 9, famine had
already begun to prevail ; this hastened the fall of the city.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. ZXXTIIL 1-18. 109
Vers. 1-13. Jeremiah is cast into a miry pit, but drawn out
again by Ebedmelech the Cushite. Vers. 1-6. Being confined
in the court of the guard attached to the royal palace, Jeremiah
had opportunities of conversing with the soldiers stationed there
and the people of Judah who came thither (cf. ver. 1 with
xxxii. 8, 12), and of declaring, in opposition to them, his con-
viction (which he had indeed expressed from the beginning of
the siege) that all resistance to the Chaldeans would be fruit-
less, and only bring destruction (cf . xxi. 9 f.). On this account,
the princes who were of a hostile disposition towards him were
so embittered, that they resolved on his death, and obtain from
the king permission to cast him into a deep pit with mire at
the bottom. In ver. 1 four of these princes are named, two of
whom, Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of Mal-
chiah, are known, from xxxvii. 3 and zxi. 1, as confidants of
the king ; the other two, Shephatiah the son of Mattaii, and
Gedaliah the son of Pashur, are not mentioned elsewhere.
Gedaliah was probably a son of the Pashur who had once put
Jeremiah in the stocks (xx. 1, 2). The words of the prophet,
vers. 2, 3, are substantially the same as he had already uttered
at the beginning of the siege, xxi. 9 (n'>rc as in xxi. 9). Ver. 4.
The princes said to the king, " Let this man, we beseech thee,
be put to death [for the construction, see on xxxv. 14] ; for
therefpre [i.e. because no one puts him out of existence, — )? vV
as in xxix. 28] he weakens the hands of the men of war who
remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking
words like these to them ; for this man does not seek the wel-
fare of this people, but their ill." KBIO for <^f]^f to cause the
hands of any one to be relaxed, i.e. to make him dispirited ;
cf. Ezra iv.4, Isa. xxxv. 3. K^'J with f, as Job x. 6, Deut. xii.
30, 1 Chron. xxii. 19, etc., elsewhere with the accusatival OK ;
cf. xxix. 7 et passim. On this point cf. xxix. 7. The allega-
tion which the princes made against Jeremiah was possibly
correct. The constancy with which Jeremiah declared that
resistance was useless, since, in accordance with the divine
decree, Jerusalem was to be taken and burnt by the Chaldeans,
could not but make the soldiers and the people unwilling any
longer to sacrifice their lives in defending the city. Neverthe-
less the complaint was unjust, because Jeremiah was not ex-
Digitized by
Google
110 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
pressing his own personal opinion, but was declaring the word
of the Lord, and that, too, not from any want of patriotism or
through personal cowardice, but in the conviction, derived from
the divine revelation, that it was only by voluntary submission
that the fate of the besieged could be mitigated; hence he
acted from a deep feeling of love to the peo|)le, and in order
to avert complete destruction from them. The courage of the
people which he sought to weaken was not a heroic courage
founded on genuine trust in God, but carnal obstinacy, which
could not but lead to ruin. — Ver. 5. The king said, " Behold,
he is in your hand, for the king can do nothing alongside of
you." This reply indicates not merely the weakness and power-
lessness of the king against his princes, but also his inward
aversion to the testimony of the man of God. " That he would
like to save him, just as he afterwards does (ver. 10)," is not
implied in what he says, with which he delivers up the prophet
to the spite of his enemies. Though the princes had at once
put Jeremiah to death, the king wonld not even have been able
to reproach them. The want of courage vigorously to oppose
the demand of the princes did not spring from any. kindly
feeling towards the prophet, but partly from moral weakness of
character, partly from inward repugnance to the word of God
proclaimed by Jeremiah. On the construction ?3V pK instead
of the participle from M3J, which does not occur, cf. Ewald,
§ 321, a. OariK is certainly in form an accusative ; but it can-
not be such, since 13^ follows as the accusative : it is therefore
either to be pointed MRS or to be considered as standing for
it, just as ^n^K often occurs for iriK, " with," i.e. " along with
you." — Ver. 6. The princes (D'"}^) now cast Jeremiah into the
pit of the king's son (jhaii^, see on xxxvi. 26) Malchiah, which
was in the court of the prison, letting him down with ropes into
the pit, in which there was no water, but mud ; into this Jere-
miah sank. The act is first mentioned in a general way in the
words, " they cast him into the pit ;" then the mode of pro-
ceeding is particularized in the words, " and they let him
down," etc. On the expression ''"ij??? nian, « the pit of Mal-
chiah," cf. Ewald, § 290, d : the article stands here before the
nomen regens, because the nomen rectum, from being a proper
name, cannot take it ; and yeit the pit must be pointed out as
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVin. 1-13. Ill
one well known and definite. That it was very deep, and that
Jeremiah must have penshed in it if he were not soon taken
out again, is evident from the very fact that they were obliged
to use ropes in letting him down, and still more so from the
trouble caused in palling him out (vers. 10-12). That the
princes did not at once put the prophet to death with the sword
was not owing to any feeling of respect for the king, because the
latter had not pronounced sentence of death on him, but because
they sought to put the prophet to a painful death, and yet at the
same time wished to silence the voice of conscience with the
excuse that they had not shed his blood. — ^Vers. 7-13. The
deliverance of Jeremiah. Ebedmelech the Cushite, a eunuch,
heard of what had happened to Jeremiah. Cno V^Vi signifies a
eunuch : the ^^ shows that D'"iD is here to be taken in its
proper meaning, not in the metaphorical sense of an officer of
the court. Since the king had many wives (ver. 22 f.), the
presence of a eunuch at the court, as overseer of the harem,
cannot seem strange. The law ^f Moses, indeed, prohibited
castration (Deut. xxiii. 2) ; but the man was a foreigner, and
had been taken by the king into his service as one castrated. 13^
^tO is a proper name (otherwise it must have been written ^^\}) ;
the name is a genuine Hebrew one, and probably may have
been assumed when the man entered the service of Zedekiah. —
On hearing of what had occurred, the Ethiopian went to the
king, who was sitting in the gate of Benjamin, on the north
wall of the city, which was probably the point most threatened
by the besiegers, and said to him, Ver. 9, " My lord, O king,
these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to
Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the pit ; and
he is dying of hunger on the spot, for there is no more bread
. in the city." 1t5^ ifK'IK ^VyH, lit. : " they have done wickedly
what they have done." riDjl cannot be translated, " and he died
on the spot," for Ebedmelech wishes to save him before he dies
of hunger. But neither does it stand for nbM, " so that he
must die." The imperfect with Vav consecutive expresses the
consequence of a preceding act, and usually stands in the nar-
rative as a historic tense ; but it may also declare what neces-
sarily follows or will follow from what precedes ; cf. Ewald,
§ 342, a. Thus T\m stands here in the sense, " and so he is
Library of thfe
mm THEOLOGICAL S£hUKAK\
New York ogtzed by Google
112 THE PBOPBECIES OF JEBEMIAfi.
dying," i.e. " he must die of hunger." wnn, « on his spot,"
i.e. on the place where he is ; cf. 2 Sam. ii. 23. The reason,
" for there is no longer any bread (p^\<} with the article, the
necessary bread) in the city," is not to be taken in the exact
sense of the words, but merely expresses the greatest deficiency
in provisions. As long as Jeremiah was in the court of the
prison, he received, like the oiBcers of the court, at the king's
order, his ration of bread every day (xxxvii. 21). But after
he had been cast into the pit, that royal ordinance no longer
applied to him, so that he was given over to the tender mercies
of others, from whom, in the prevailing scarcity of bread, he
had not much to hope for. — Ver. 10.. Then the king com-
manded the Ethiopian, ^' Take hence thirty men in thine hand,
and bring up Jeremiah out of the pit before he dies." 1'!,'',?,
" in thine hand," i.e. tinder your direction ; cf. Num. xxxi. 49.
The number thirty has been found too great; and Ewald,
Hitzig, and Graf would read T\f7f, because the syntax requir^es
the singular E''X after D^K9»', and because at that time, when
the fighting men had already decreased in number (ver. 4),
thirty men could not be sent away from a post in danger with-
out difficulty. These two arguments are quite invalid. The
syntax does not demand ^^; for with the tens (20-90) the
noun frequently follows in the plural as well as in the singular,
if the number precede ; cf. 2 Sam. iii. 20, 2 Kings ii. 16, etc.;
see also Gesenius' Grammar, § 120, 2. The other argument is
based on arbitrary hypotheses ; for the passage neither speaks of
fighting men, nor states that they would be taken from a post
in danger. Ebedmelech was to take thirty men, not because
they would all be required for drawing out the prophet, but for
making surer work in effecting the deliverance of the prophet,
against all possible attempts on the part of the princes or of the
populace to prevent them. — Ver. 11. Ebedmelech took the men
at his hand, went into the king's house under the treasury, and
took thence rags of torn and of worn-out garments, and let
them down on ropes to Jeremiah into the pit, and said to him,
" Put, I pray thee, the rags of the torn and cast-off clothes
under thine arm-pits under the ropes." Jeremiah did so, and
then they drew him out of the pit by the ropes. ''■f^Xi|i ni"? is
a room under the treasury. '.p3, in ver. 12 CKipa, from WSj
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVIIL 14-28. 113
to be worn away (of clothes), are rags. Wano (from ano, to drag,
drag about, tear to pieces) are torn pieces of clothing. D'HtO,
worn-out garments, from npo, in Niphal, Isa. li. 6, to vanish,
dissolve away. The article at nlariEin is expunged from the
Qeri for sake of uniformity, because it is not found with D'n^ ;
but it may as well be allowed to stand as be removed. nv'lWt
0^^, properly the roots of the hands, are not the knuckles of
the hand, but the shoulders of the arms. Dyan? nPiPiD, under
the ropes ; i.e. the rags were to serve as pads to the ropes which
were to be placed under the arm-pits, to prevent the ropes from
cutting the flesh. When Jeremiah had been drawn out in this
way from the deep pit of mire, he remained in the court of the
prison.
Vers. 14-28. Conversation between the king and the prophet. —
Ver. 14. King Zedekiah was desirous of once more hearing
a message of God from the prophet, and for this object had
him brought into the third entrance in the house of the Lord.
Nothing further is known about the situation and the nature of
this entrance ; possibly it led from the palace to the temple, and
seems to have been an enclosed space, for the king could carry
on a private conversation there with the prophet. The king
said to him, '' I ask you about a matter, do not conceal anything
from me." He meant a message from God regarding the final
issue of the siege, cf. xxxvii. 7. Jeremiah, knowing the aver-
sion of the king to the truth, replies, ver. 15 : " If I tell thee
\sc. the word of the Lord], wilt thou not assuredly kill me ?
And. if I were to give thee advice, thou wouldst not listen to
me." Ver. 16. Then the king sware to him secretly, "As
Jahveh liveth, who hath made us this soul, I shall certainly not
kill thee, nor deliver thee into the hand of these men who seek
thy life." "i?^ ns, as in xxvii, 8, properly means, " with regard
to Him who has created us." The Qeri expunges JIK. "These
men " are the princes mentioned in ver. 1. — ^Ver, 17 f . After
this solemn asseveration of the king, Jeremiah said to him,
" Thus saith Jahveh, the God of hosts, the God of Israel : If
thou wilt assuredly go out to the princes of the king of Babylon
\i.e. wilt surrender thyself to them, cf . 2 Kings xviii. 31, xxiv.
12], then thy soul shall live, and this city shall' not be burned
with fire, and thou and thy house shall live. But if thou dost
VOL. II. H
Digitized by
Google
114 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEKEHIAH.
not go out to the princes of the king of Babylon, then this city
will be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall
bum it with fire, and thou shalt not escape oat of their hand."
The word of God is the same that Jeremiah had already re-
peatedly announced to the king, cf . xxxiv. 2-5, xzxii. 4, xsi.
4-10. The princes (chiefs, generals) of the king of Babylon
are named, because they commanded the besieging army (xxxix.
3, 13) ; Nebuchadnezzar himself had his headquarters at Hiblah,
xxxix. 5. — ^Ver. 19 ff. Against the advice that he should save
his life by surrendering to the Chaldeans, Zedekiah suggests the
consideration, " I am afraid of the Jews, who have deserted
[ijN 7M as in xxxvii. 13] to the Chaldeans, lest they give me
into their hands and maltreat me." 3 <'?5fn'?, illudere alicui, to
abuse any one by mockery or ill-treatment ; cf . Num. xxii. 29,
1 Chron. x. 4, etc. Jeremiah r'eplies, ver. 20 f., " They will
not give thee up. Yet, pray, listen to the voice of Jahveh, in
that which I say to thee, that it may be well with thee, and
that thy soul may live. Ver. 21. But if thou dost refuse to
go out [i.«. to surrender thyself to the Chaldeans], this is the
word which the Lord bath shown me [has revealed to me] :
Ver. 22. Behold, all the women that are left in the house of the
king of Jndah shall be brought out to the princes of the king of
Babylon, and those [women] shall say, Thy friends have misled
thee and have overcome thee ; thy feet are sunk in the mud,
they have turned away back. Ver. 23. And all thy wives and
thy children shall they bring out to the Chaldeans, and thou
shalt not escape out of their hand ; for thou shalt be seized by
the hand of the king of Babylon, and thou shalt bum this city
with fire." — After Jeremiah had once more assured the king
that he would save his life by voluntary surrender, he announces
to him that, on the other alternative, instead of his becoming
the sport of the deserters, the women of his harem would be
insulted. The women who remain in the king's house, as
distinguished from " thy wives " (ver. 23), are the women of
the royal harem, the wives of former kings, who remain in the
harem as the concubines of the reigning king. These are to
be brought out to the generals of the Chaldean king, and to
sing a satire on him, to this effect : <' Thy friends have misled
thee, and overpowered thee," etc. The first sentence of this
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXVm. 14-28. 115
song is from Obad. ver. 7, where 'pN^B'ri stands instead of Wi'Bri.
The friends (jHf^f 'K'JK, cf . xx. 10) are his great men and his
false prophets. Through their counsels, these have led him
astray, and brought him into a bog, in which his feet stick f^st,
and then they have gone back ; i.e. instead of helping him out,
they have deserted him, leaving him sticking in the bog. . The
expression is figurative, and the meaning of the figure is plain
(y?P- *^ ploral). Tfti, air. "Kef., is equivalent to nif3, a bog, Job viii.
11. Moreover, the wives and children of Zedekiah are to fall into
the hands of the Chaldeans. Q^^V^^s, the participle, is used instead
of the finite tense to express the notion of indefinite personality :
" they bring them out." T3 fe'BFin, properly, " to be seized in
the hand," is a pregnant construction for, '' to fall into the
hand and be held fast by it." " Thou shalt burn this city,"
t.«. bring the blame of burning it upon thyself, Ewald, Hitzig,
and Graf, following the LXX., Syr., and Chald., would change
tpfe'Ji into ^I'lfe'J?, but needlessly. — Vers. 24-27. From the king's
weakness of character, and his dependence on his evil counsellors,
neither could this interview have any result. Partly from want
of firmness, but chiefly from fear of the reproaches of his
princes, he did not venture to surrender himself and the city to
the Chaldeans. Hence he did not wish that his interview with
the prophet should be known, partly for the purpose of sparing
himself reproaches from the princes, partly also, perhaps, not
to expose the prophet to further persecutions on the part of the
great men. Accordingly, he dismissed Jeremiah with this instruc-
tion : " Let no man know of these words, lest thou die." But
if the princes should learn that the king had been speaking with
him, and asked him, " Tell us, now, what thou hast said to the
king, do not hide it from us, and we will not kill thee ; and
what did the king say to thee ? " then he was to say to them,
" I presented my supplication before the king, that he would
not send me back to the house of Jonathaix, to die there." As
to the house of Jonathan, see on xxxvii. 15. On '^nn 7^BD
cf. xxxvi. 7, xxxvii. 20. — ^Vers. 27, 28. What the king had
supposed actually occurred, and Jeremiah gave the princes, who
asked about the conversation, the reply that the king had pre-
pared for him. vaso ^enn^, they went away in silence from him,
and left him ia peace ; ci. 1 Sam. vii. 8. ''3^'"] I'DB'J \ib '3, for
Digitized by
Google
116 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
the matter, the real subject of the conversation did not become
known. So Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison till
the day of the capture of Jerusalem. — The last sentence of
ver. 28 belongs to the following chapter, and forms the intro-
ductory sentence of the passage whose conclusion follows in
xsxix. 3.
Chap, xxxix. Capture of Jerusalem ; Fate of Zedekiah and
Jeremiah. Consolatory Message to Ebedmelech.
In vers. 1-14 the events which took place at the taking of
Jerusalem are summarily related, for the purpose of showing
how the announcements of Jeremiah the prophet have been
fulfilled.!
Vers. 1-3. " And it came to pass, when Jerusalem had been
taken (in the ninth year of Zedekiah the king of Jndah, in
* The greater portion of the section vera. 1-14 is set down by Movers,
Hitzig, Ewald, and Graf as the interpolation of a later glosser, compiled
either out of chap. lii. 4-16, or from 2 Kings xxv. Vers. 3, 11, 12, and 14
are supposed by Hitzig to be all that are genuine, on the ground that these
are the only portions containing independent statements, not derived from
any other source. They treat sirnp^ of the person of the prophet, and
state how, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, Nehuzaradan, the captain
of the body-guard, brought Jeremiah out of the court of the prison and
deUvered him over to the care of Gedaliah. If we gather together the
verses that are left as genuine, we find, of course, that ^^e subject treated
of in them is what occurred when Jeremiah was liberated from bis con-
finement in the court of the prison. But neither is the difference between
ver. 14 and chap. xl. 1 ff. thereby settled, nor the difficulty removed, that
Nebuzaradan, the captain of the body-guard, was not present with the
army when Jerusalem was taken ; according to lii. 12, it was not till a
month after that event that he was sent to Jerusalem from Eiblah by the
king, who was staying there. Vers. 11 and 12, too, retain the appearance
of being interpolations. Ewald and Graf, accordingly, conader these two
verses also as later insertions. But even this view does not settle the
differences and difficulties that have been raised, but only increases them ;
for it would represent Jeremiah as being set at liberty, not by Nebuzaradan,
as is related zl. 1 ff., but by the Chaldean generals named in ver. S. —
When, however, we inquire into the grounds taken as the foundation of
this hypothesis, the fact that the LXX. have omitted vers. 4, 10, and 13
can prove nothing, since vers. 1 and 2 are found in the LXX., although
these also are supposed to be spurious. The only argument adduced for
the attempted excision, viz. that vers. 1, 2, 4-10 break the connection,
proves absolutely nothing in iteelf, but merely receives importance on the
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXTX. 1-3. 117
the tenth month, Nebuchadrezzar and all his army had come
against Jerusalem and besieged it; in the eleventh year of
Zedekiah, in the fourth month, on the ninth of the month, was
the city broken into), then came all the princes of the king of
Babylon and sat down • at the middle gate, — Nergal-sharezer,
Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim, chief chamberlain, Nergal-sharezer,
chief magician, and all the rest of the princes of the king of
Babylon." These three verses, to which the last clause of
chap, xxxviii. 28 belongs, form one period, broken up by a
pretty long piece inserted in it, on the beginning and duration
of the siege of Jerusalem ; so that, after the introductory clause
nB'KS njrn ( = '"1^ as in xxxvii. 11), chap, xxxviii. 28, the conclu-
sion does not come till the word ^^J3J1, ver. 3. In the parenthesis,
the length of the siege, as stated, substantially agrees with
lii. 4- 7a and 2 Kings xxv. l-4a, only that in these passages
snpposition that tbe present section conld only treat of the liberation of
Jeremiab, and most contain nothing that is mentioned elsewhere regarding
the taking of Jerusalem. But this supposition is quite unwarranted.
That vers. 1 and 2 are inserted parenthetically cannot afford any ground of
suspicion as regards their genuineness ; and that, in vers. 4-10, mention is
briefly made of Zedekiah's being seized and condemned, of the destruction
of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of the people, except the very meanest,
— this also cannot throw suspicion on the genuineness of these verses ; for
these statements obviously aim at showing how the word of tbe Lord, which
Jeremiah had proclaimed repeatedly, and once more a short time before
the storming of the city, had been fulfilled. Finally, it follows from this
that these statements agree with those given in chap. lii. and in 2 Kings
xzv. regarding the capture and destruction of Jerusalem ; but it does not
follow that they have been derived from the latter as their source. The
language in the disputed verses is peculiarly that of Jeremiah. The ex-
pression ntW 'nrrTS is found in Jer. zxvii. 20 ; while in lii 10, instead
T : •• T
of it, we find mTV nfe*^, and in 2 Kings xxv. the whole sentence is
T : •• T T
wanting. So, also, D'tDBBte 13^t ver. 5 and lii. 9, is* an expression peculiar
to Jeremiah (see on i. 16) ; in 2 Kings xxv. 6 it is changed to tSBtsfe "531.
Thus we must set down as groundless and erroneous the allegation made
by Hitzig and Graf, that these verses of ovur chapter have been derived from
2 Kings xxv. ; for the form of the name Nebuchadnezzar (with n) in ver. 5
instead of Nebuchadrezzar, which agrees with 2 Kings xxv., and which has
been brought to bear on this question, can prove nothing, just because
not only in ver. 11 but also in ver. 1 (which also is said to be taken from
2 Kings xxv.) we find Nebuchadrezzar.
Digitized by
Google
118 THE PBOPHEOIES OF JEREMIAH.
the time when the siege began is further determined by the
mention of the day of the month, E'lh? "liifya, which words are
omitted here. The siege, then, lasted eighteen months, all but
one day. After the besiegers had penetrated into the city
through the breaches made in the wall, the princes, t.e. the
chief generals, took up their position at " the gate of the midst."
a^., " they sat down," i.e. took up a position, fixed their quarters.
*' The gate of the midst," which is mentioned only in this passage,
is supposed, and perhaps rightly, to have been a gate in the
wall which divided the city of Zion from the lower city ; from
this point, the two portions of the city, the upper and the lower
city, could most easily be commanded. — With regard to the
names of the Babylonian princes, it is remarkable (1) that the
name Nergal-sharezer occurs twice^ the first time without any
designation, the second time with the ofiicial title of chief magi-
cian; (2) that the name Samgar-nebo has the name of God (Nebo
or Nebu) in the second half, whereas in all other compounds of
this kind that are known to us, Nebu forms the first portion of
the name, as in Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, Nebushasban
(ver.' 13), Naboned, Nabonassar, Nabopolassar, etc. ; (3) from
this name, too, is omitted the title of office, while we find one
with the following name. Moreover (4) in ver. 13, where the
Babylonian grandees are again spoken of, instead of the four
names, only three are given, but every one of them with a title
of office; and only the third of these, Nergal-sharezer, the
chief magician, is identical with the one who is named last in
ver. 3 ; while Nebushasban is mentioned instead of the Sarsechim
of ver. 3 as D'nD"3'i, chief of the eunuchs (high chamberlain) ;
and in place of Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, we find Nebuzar-
adan as the commander of the body-guards (D^n3? 31). On
these four grounds, Hitzig infers that ver. 3, in the passage
before us, has been corrupted, and that it contained originally
only the names of three persons, with their official titles. More-
over, he supposes that i|OD is formed from the Persian Apt-
and the derivation-syllable^^, Pers.jj, and means **he who
has or holds the cup," the cup-bearer ; thus corresponding to
np^ aij Rab-shakeh, "chief cup-bearer," 2 Kings xviii. 17,
Isa. xxxvi. 2. He also considers D^sone' a Hebraizing form of
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIX 1-8, 119
ono 3"> ; nsD or na'B', " to cut," by transposition from >Kn^ Arab.
r rr-^j from which comes (<«**-, " a eanuch," = '3p, plur. D'ap ;
hence D'?P'^^= D*^p 3"i, of which the former has been a marginal
gloss, afterwards received into the text. This complicated
combination, however, by which Hitzig certainly makes out
two official titles, though he retains' no more than the divine
name Nehu as that of Babsaris, is fpnnded upon two very
hazardous conjectures. Nor do these conjectures gain much
support from the renewal of the attempt, made about fifty years
since by the late P. von Bohlen, to explain from the Neo-Persian
the names of persons and titles occurring in the Assyrian and
Old-Babylonian languages, an attempt which has long since been
looked upon as scientifically unwarranted. Strange as it may
seem that the two persons first named are not further specified
by the addition of an official title, yet the supposition that the
persons named in ver. 3 are identical with those mentioned in
ver. 13 is erroneous, since it stands in contradiction with lii. 12,
which even Hitzig recognises as historically reliable. Accord-
ing to lii. 12, Nebuzaradan, who is the first mentioned in ver
13, was not present at the taking of Jerusalem, and did not
reach the city till four weeks afterwards ; he was ordered by
Nebuchadnezzar to superintend arrangements for the destruction
of Jerusalem, and also to make arrangements for the transpor-
tation of the captives to Babylon, and for the administration of
the country now being laid waste. But in ver. 3 are named
the generals who, when the city had been taken by storm, took
np their position within it. — ^Nor do the other difficulties,
mentioned above, compel us to make such harsh conjectures.
If Nergal-sharezer be the name of a person, compounded of
two words, the divine name, Nergal (2 Kings xvii. 30), and
Sharezer, probably dominator tuebitur (see Delitzsch on Isa.
xxxvii. 38), then Samgar-Nebu-Sarsechim may possibly be a
proper name compounded of three words. So long as we are
unable with certainty to explain the words i?i?p and D''3p"iB' out
of the Assyrian, we can form no decisive judgment regarding
them. But not even does the hypothesis of Hitzig account for
the occurrence twice over of the name Nergal-sharezer. The
Nergal-sharezer mentioned in the first passage was, no doubt,
Digitized by
Google
120 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the commander-in-chief of the besieging army; but it could
hardly be maintained, with anything like convincing power,
that this ofBcer could not bear the same name as that of the
chief magician. And if it be conceded that there are really
errors in the strange words «r")3Dp and D'Pp'ife', we are as yet
without the necessary means of correcting them, and obtaining
the proper text.
In vers. 4-7 are narrated the flight of Zedekiah, his capture,
and his condemnation, like what we find in lii. 7-11 and 2
Kings XXV. 4-7. " When Zedekiah the king of Judah and all
the men of war saw them (the Chaldean generals who had taken
up their position at the mid-gate), they fled by night out of the
city, by the way of the king's garden, by a gate between the
walls, and he went out by the way to the Arabah. Ver. 5.
But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after them, and over-
took Zedekiah in the steppes of Jericho, and captured him, and
brought him to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, to Eiblah,
in the land of Hamath ; and he pronounced judgment on him."
Hitzig and Graf consider that the connection of these events,
made by DSl"j "I2't{3, is awkward, and say that the king would
not have waited till the Chaldean generals took up their position
at the mid-gate, nor could he see these in the night-time ; that,
moreover, he would hardly have waited till the city was taken
before he fled. These objections are utterly worthless. If the
city of Zion, in which the royal palace stood, was separated
from the lower city by a wall, then the king might still be
quite at ease, with his men of war, in the upper city or city of
Zion, so long as the enemy, who were pushing into the lower
city from the north, remained at the separating wall, near the
middle gate in it ; and only when he saw that the city of Zion,
too, could no longer be held, did he need to betake himself to flight
with the men of war around him. In actual fact, then, he
might have been able to see the Chaldean generals with his own
eyes, although we need not press DN"! so much as to extract thi?
meaning from it. Even at this juncture, flight was still possible
through the south gate, at the king's garden, between the two
walls. Thenius, on 2 Kings xxv. 4, takes D^nbh to mean a
double wall, which at the southern end of Ophel closed up the
ravine between Ophel and Zion. But a double wall must also
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIX. i-7. 121
have had two gates, and Thenias, indeed, has exhibited them in
his plan of Jerusalem ; bat the text speaks of but one gate
O?^). " The two walk" are rather the walls which ran along
the eastern border of Zion and the western border of Ophel.
The gate between these was situated in the wall which ran
across the Tyropoean valley, and united the wall of Zion and
that of Ophel ; it was called the horse-gate (Neh. iii. 28), and
occupied the position of the modem "dung-gate" (Bab-el
Moghdribeh) ; see on Neh. iii. 27, 28. It was not the "gate of
the fountain," as Thenius (Buclier derKdn. S. 456), Nagelsbach,
and others imagine, founding on the supposed existence of the
double waU at the south end of Ophel. Outside this gate, where
the valley of the Tyropoeon joined with the valley of the Kidron,
lay the king's garden, in the vicinity of the pool of Siloam; see on
Neh. iii. 15. The words 'U1 SJW introduce further details as to
the king's flight. In spite of the preceding plurals WX^ 'nn^ii^
the sing. ^ is quite suitable here, since the narrator wishes to
give further details with regard to the flight of the king alone,
without bringing into consideration the warriors who fled along
with him. Nor does the following Dn'^HK militate against this
view; for the Chaldean warriors pursued the king and his fol-
lowers, not to capture these followers, but the king. Escaped
from the city, the king took the direction of the nanjJ, the plain
of the Jordan, in order to escape over Jordan to Gilead. But the
pursuing enemy overtook him in the steppes of Jericho (see on
Josh. iv. 13, pp. 50, 51 of Clark's Translation), and thus before
he had crossed the Jordan ; they led him, bound, to Biblah,
before the king of Babylon. " Eiblah in the land of Hamath "
is still called Ribleh, a wretched village about 20 miles S.S.W.
from Hums (Emesa) on the river el Ahsy (Orontes), in a large
fertile plain in the northern portion of the Behda, on the great
caravan-track which passes from Palestine through Damascus,
Emesa, and Hamath to Thapsacns and Carchemish on the
Euphrates ; see Robinson's Bibl. Res, iii. 545, and on 2 Kings
xxiii. 33 (vol. ii. p. 160 of Clark's Translation).— On nai
D'OSB'p, to speak judgment, pronounce sentence of punishment,
see on i. 16. Nebuchadnezzar caused the sons of Zedekiah
and all the princes of Judah (D'^n, nobles, lords, as in xxvii. 30)
to be slain before the eyes of the Jewish king; then he put out
Digitized by
Google
122 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAB.
his eyes and bound him with brazen fetters, to carry him away
to Babylon (K'3? for Kjan?), where, according to lii. 11, he re-
mained in confinement till his death.
Vers. 8-10 contain a brief notice regarding the fate of the cily
of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, joined on to the passage pre-
ceding, in order to prepare the way for a short account of the
treatment which Jeremiah experienced at the same time. From
the more detailed notice regarding the fate of the city, given in
lii. 12 ff., 2 Kings zxv. 8 £F., we see that the destruction of the
city and the carrying away of the people took place one month
after their fall, and that the king of Babylon had appointed
Nebuzaradan, the commander of his body-guards, to go to Jeru-
salem for the purpose of carrying out these matters. In these
verses of ours, also, Nebuzaradan is mentioned as the one who
carried out the judgment that had been pronounced (ver, 10 ff.) ;
but the fact of his being sent from Eiblah and the date of the
execution of his commission are here omitted, so that it appears
as if it had all occurred immediately after the capture of the city,
and as if Nebuzaradan had been always on the spot. For the
writer of this chapter did not need to give a historically exact
account of the separate events ; it was merely necessary briefly
to mention the chief points, in order to place in proper light
the treatment experienced by the prophet. The Chaldeans
burned the king's house (the palace) and DJinTl'a, This latter
expression, taken in connection with " the king's house," signifies
the rest of the city apart from the king's palace ; hence n''3 is
used in a collective sense. The temple is not mentioned, as
being of no consequence for the immediate purpose of this
short notice. — ^Ver. 9. ''And the rest of the people that had
remained in the city, and the deserters who had deserted to him,
and the rest of the people that remained, Nebuzaradan, the
chief of the body-guards, led captive to Babylon. Ver, 10. But
of the poorest of the people, who had nothing, Nebuzaradan
left some in the country, and he gave them vineyards and
arable fields at the same time." Iv^ after ^-'BJ refers, ad senaum,
to the king of Babylon ; his name, certainly, is not given in the
immediate context, but it is readily suggested by it. In lii. 15
we find «3 ^^D"7N instead of 1v^ ; yet we might also refer this
last-named word to the following subject, Nebuzaradan, as the
"\
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XXXIZ. U-14. 123
representative of the king. D'n3D-3"i, properly, chief of the
slayers, m. of the executioners, is the chief of the king's body-
guard, who occupied the first place among the royal attendants ;
see on Gen. xxxrii. 36. By the addition of the words &^'3
VXnn^ on that day, i.e. then, the more general account regarding
Jerusalem and its inhabitants is concluded, for the purpose of
attaching to it the notice regarding the fate of the prophet
Jeremiah, vers. 11-14.
Vers. 11-14. Nebuchadnezzar gave orders regarding Jere-
miah, through Nebuzaradan, the chief of the body-guards ;
" Take him, and set thine eyes upon him, and do him no harm ;
but, just as he telleth thee, so do with him." In obedience to
this command, "Nebuzaradan, the chief of the body-guards,
sent, — and Nebushasban the head chamberlain, and Nergal-
sharezer the chief magician, and all (the other) chief men of the
king of Babylon, — they sent and took Jeremiah out. of the
court of the prison, and delivered him over to Gedaliah the son
of Ahikam, the son of Sbaphan, to take him out to the house.
Thus he dwelt among the people." — On the names of the
Chaldean grandees, see on ver. 3. Instead of the chief cham-
berlain (CiD'^"!) Sarsechim, there is here named, as occupying
this ofBce, Nebushasban, who, it seems, along with Nebuzaradan,
was not sent from Biblah till after the taking of Jerusalem,
when Sarsechim was relieved. We cannot come to any certain
conclusion regarding the relation in which the two persons ot
names stand to one another, since Nebushasban is only mentioned
in ver. 13, just as Sarsechim is mentioned only in ver. 3.
Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the man who had already on a
former occasion given protection to Jeremiah (xxvi. 24), was,
according to xl. 5, placed by the king of Babylon over the cities
of Judah, i^. was nominated the Chaldean governor over Judah
and the Jews who were left in the land. To him, as such,
Jeremiah, is here (ver. 14) delivered, that he may take him
into the house. ri^3 is neither the temple (Hitzig) nor the
palace, the king's house (Graf), but the house in which Gedalitdi
resided as the governor ; and we find here n*3n, not ^n'?3, since
the house was neither the property nor the permanent dwelling-
place of Gedaliah. — According to this account, Jeremiah seems
to have remained in the court of the prison till Nebuchadnezzar
Digitized by
Google
124 THE FBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
came, to have been liberated by Nebuzaradan only at the com-
mand of the king, and to hare been sent to Gedaliah the
governor. Bat this is contradicted by the account in x\. 1 ff.,
according to which, Nebuzaradan liberated the prophet in
Eamah, where he had been kept, confined by manacles, among
the captives of Judah that were to be carried to Babylon:
Nebuzaradan sent for him, and gave him his liberty. This
contradiction has arisen simply from the intense brevity with
which, in this verse, the fate of Jeremiah at the capture and
destruction of Jerusalem is recorded; it is easy to settle the
difference in this way : — When the city was taken, those inhabi-
tants, especially males, who had not carried arms, were seized
by the Chaldeans and carried out of the city to Ramah, where
they were held prisoners till the decision of the king regarding
their fate should be made known. Jeremiah shared this lot
with his fellow-countrymen. When, after this, Nebuzaradan
came to Jerusalem to execute the king's commands regarding
the city and its inhabitants, at the special order of his monarch,
he sent for Jeremiah the prophet, taking him out from among
the crowd of prisoners who had been already carried away to
Bamah, loosed him from his fetters, and gave him permission
to choose his place of residence. This liberation of Jeremiah
from his confinement might, in a summary account, be called
a sending for him out of the court of the prison, even though
the prophet, at the exact moment of his liberation, was no
longer in the court of the prison of the palace at Jerusalem, -
but had been already carried away to Eamah as a captive.
Vers. 15-18. Jeremiah's message of comfort to Ebedmeleeh, —
Ver. 15. " Now to Jeremiah there had come the word of the Lord,
while he remained shut up in the court of the prison, as follows :
Ver. 16. Go and speak to Ebedmeleeh the Cushite, saying, Thus
saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I will bring
my words against this city for evil and not for good, and they
shall take place before thee on that day. Ver. 17. But I will
deliver thee on that day, saith Jahveh ; neither shalt thou be
given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid.
Ver. 18. For I will surely save thee, neither shalt thou fall by
the sword, and thine own life shall be thy spoil, because thou
hast trusted me, saith Jahveh." — This word of God for Ebed-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XL. l-6w 125
melech came to the prophet, no doabt, very soon after his
deliverance from the miry pit by this pious Ethiopian ; but it
is not given till now, and this by way of supplement, lest its
introduction previously should break the chain of events which
occurred at the time of that deliverance, chap, xxxviii. 14-
xxxix. 13. Hence n^n, ver. 15, is to be translated as a plu-
perfect. " Go and say," etc., is not inconsistent with the fact that
Jeremiah, from being in confinement, could not leave the court
of the prison. For Ebedmelech could come into the prison,
and then Jeremiah could go to him and declare the word of
God. *' Behold, I will bring my words against this city," i.e.
I shall cause the evil with which I have threatened Jerusalem
and its inhabitants to come, or, to be accomplished (*30 with K
dropped, as in xix. 15, and "?S for by). T.^?? I'lTl, " and these
words are to take place before thy face," i.e, thou shalt with
thine own eyes behold their fulfilment, wnn Di>3, i.e. at the
time of their occurrence. But thou shalt be saved, not fall
into the hands of the enemy and be killed, but carry away thy
body out of it all as booty ; cf . xxi. 9, xzxviii. 2. '' Because
thou hast trusted me ;" i.e. through the aid afforded to my
prophet thou hast continued thy faith in me.
c. jeeemiah's predictions and expebiences after the
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. — CHAP. XL.-XLV.
Chap. xl. and" xli. Liberation of Jeremiali. Murder of Gedaliah
by Ishmael, and its results.
Chap. xl. 1-6. The liberation of Jeremiah by Nebuzaradan,
the chief of the body-guards. — The superscription, " The word
which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after that Nebuzaradan,
the captain of the body-guard, had let him go from Bamah,"
does not seem to be appropriate ; for in what follows there is'
no word of God declared by Jeremiah, but first, 2-6, we are told
that Jeremiah was liberated and given in charge to Gedaliah ;
then is told, xl. 7-xli. 18, the story of the murder of Gedaliah
the governor by Ishmael, together with its consequences ; and
not till xlii. 7 ff. is there communicated a word of God, which
Jeremiah uttered regarding the Jews who wished to flee to
Digitized by
Google
126 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
Egypt, and had besought him for some revelation from God
(xlii. 1-6). The heading of our verse cannot refer to this
prophecy, not merely for the reason that it is too far removed,
bnt still more because it has a historical notice introducing it,
xlii. 1-6. Our superscription rather refers to i. 1-3 ; and "i^n
here, as well as there, means, not a single prophecy, but a
number of prophecies. Just as njn^ ^^l in i. % forms the
heading for all the prophecies uttered by Jeremiah from the
thirteenth year of Josiab till the destruction of Jerusalem and
the carrying away of the people in the eleventh year of Zede-
kiah, so the words 'U1 IB^K wn of this verse form the super-
scription for the prophecies which Jeremiah uttered after the
destruction of Jerusalem, i.e. to the section formed by chap,
xl.-xlv^, although chap. xliv. xlv. have headings of their own ;
these, however, are subordinate to the heading of this chapter,
in the same way as the titles in vii. 1, xi. 1, xiv. 1, etc. fall
under the general title given in i. 2, 3. — Regarding Nbbuzar-
adan and the discharge of Jeremiah at Bamah (t.e. er Ram,
see on xxxi. 15), cf. the explanations given on xxxix. 13 (p. 124
of this volume). In what follows, from irinpa onwards, further
details are given regarding Jeremiah's liberation. '' When he
(Nebuzaradan) sent for him, he (Jeremiah), bound with fetters,
was among all the captives of Jerusalem and Judah who were
being carried away to Babylon." Those who were to be carried
away had been gathered together to Bamah, which lies about
five miles north from Jerusalem ; thence they were to set out
for Babylon. D-iJm (= D^jST, Job xxxvi. 8, Isa. xlv. 14), « fetters,"
— ^here, according to ver. 4, " manacles," by which, perhaps, two
or more prisoners were fastened to one another. — ^Vers. 2-4.
When Jeremiah had been brought, the commander of the
guards said to him, " The Lord thy God hath declared this
evil against this place, and the Lord hath brought it on
(brought it to pass), and hath done as He spake ; for ye have
sinned against the Lord, and have not hearkened to His voice :
thus hath this thing happened to you." The mode of expression
is that of Jeremiah ; but Nebuzaradan may have expressed the
thought, that now there had been fulfilled what Jeremiah had
predicted In the name of God, because the people, by their re-
bellion, had broken the oath they had sworn before their God
X
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XL. 1-6. 127
(cf. Ezek. xvii. 13 ff.), and had thereby sinned against Him.
The article before W, required by the Qeri, is unnecessary ;
cf. Ewald, § 293, a ; Gesenius, § 112, 2, a. — ^Ver. 4. Nebnzar-
adan then declared him free : " And now, behold, I free thee
this day from the shackles on thine hands. If it please thee
to come with me to Babylon, then come, and I will set mine
eye npon thee (t.e. take thee under my protection, cf.jxxxix.
12). But if it please thee not to come with me to Babylon,
then let it be so. See, the whole country Is before thee (cf .
Gen. xiii. 9, xx. 5, etc.) ; whithersoever it pleases thee, and seems
right to thee to go, go." Ver. 5. And because Jeremiah had
not yet returned, he said, " Go back to Gedaliah, .>. . whom
the king of Babylon hath set over the cities of Judah, and
remain with him among the people ; or go wherever it seemeth
right to thee to go." And the commander of the guard gave
him what provisions he required and a present, and sent him
away ; thereafter Jeremiah went to Gedaliah to Mizpah, and
remained there among the people who had been left behind in
the land (ver. 6). The words 3^B^ j6 anjn were certainly mis-
understood by the old translators, who made various conjectures
as to their meaning; even yet, Dahler, Movers, Graf, and
Nagelsbach are of opinion that '' it is impossible to understand"
this sentence, and that the text is plainly corrupt. Luther
renders : f' for no one will any longer return thither." Hitzig
considers this translation substantially correct, and only requir-
ing to be a little more exactly rendered : " but there, no one
returns home again." Apart, however, from the consideration
that on this view uYy, which stands at the head of the sentence,
does not get full justice paid to it, the thought does not accord
with what precedes, and the reference of the suffix to the
indefinite " person" or " one" is extremely forced. According
to what goes before, in which Nebuzaradan gives the prophet
full liberty of choosing whether he would go with him to Baby-
lon or remain in the country, in whatever part he likes, and
from the following advice which he gives him, " Go, or return,
to Gedaliah," the words 31B^ «? «•!$>, on account of the third
person (S'lK^), cannot certainly be an address of the chief
captain to Jeremiah, and .as little can they contain a remark
about going to Babylon. The words are evidently, both as to
Digitized by
Google
128 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
their form and their contents, a circumstantial clause, contain-
ing a statement regarding the relation of Jeremiah to the pro-
posal of the chief captain (and this is the view taken long ago
by Kimchi), i,e. a parenthetical remark of the narrator, accord-
ing to which Nebuzaradan demands that he shall remain with
Gedaliah, in the sense, '' and yet he was not going back,"
or, still better, on account of the imperfect a'E'J, " because he
was still unwilling to go back," namely, to this or that place
indefinitely ; then Nebuzaradan further said, " Betum, then,
to Gedaliah." If we supply "iot<>5 before 'U^ "^^Bi, with which
Nebuzaradan brings the matter to a close, the meaning is quite
clear. It is evident from ver. 4 that Nebuzaradan stopped a
little in order to let Jeremiah decide ; but since the prophet did
not return, i.e. neither decided in the one way nor the other,
he adds 'U1 >^^^^ and thereby puts an end to the indecision.
^I?l|^. means a portion of food, or victuals ; cf. Hi. 34 and Prov.
XV. 17. Mizpah, where Gedaliah had taken up his position, is
the Mizpah of the tribe of Benjamin, where Samuel judged
the people and chose Saul to be king (1 Sam. vii. 15 ff., x. 17) ;
doubtless the modern Neby Samwil, five miles north-west from
Jerusalem, a short distance south-west from Bamab ; see on
Josh, xviii. 26. .
Vers. 7-12. Return of those who had h6m dispersed: they
gather round Gedaliah. — Whilst the country and its capital
were being conquered, many of the men of war had dispersed
here and there through the land, and fled for refuge to regions
difficult of access, where they could not be reached by the
Chaldeans ; others had even escaped into the territory of the
Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites. When these heard that
now, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away
of the captives, the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah
as governor over the few people who had been left behind in
the country, they returned from their several places of refuge,
and came to Mizpah to Gedaliah, who promised them protec-
tion and safety, on condition that they would recognise the
authority of the king of Babylon and peaceably cultivate the
soil. D'?jn nfe>j « leaders of the forces, captains." >^^, " in
the country," as opposed to the city ; n'nfe>, « fields," as in
xvii. 3. Oji'B'JK, " their men," the troops under the captains.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
CHAP. XL 7-12. 129
Intjt TpBn »3j « that he had committed to his oversight and
care." ** Men," viz. old, weak, infirm men ; " women and
children," whose husbands and fathers had perished ; '' and
some of the poor of the country, of those who had not been
carried captive to Babylon" (IP partitive), i,e. the poor and
mean people whom the Chaldeans had left behind in the
country (xxxix. 10). — Ver. 8 ff. These captains came to Mizpah,
namely (] explicative), Ishmael the son of Nethaniah (accord-
ing to xli. 1, the grandson of Elishama, and of royal blood),
Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah (cf. ver. 13 and xli.
11, 16, xlii. 1 ff. ; the name Jonathan is omitted in 2 Kings
XXV. 23 ; see on this passage), Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth,
and the sons of Ephai the Netophathite (from Netophah in the
vicinity of Bethlehem, 1 Chron. ii. 54, Ezra ii. 22), Jezaniah
(^nw ; but in 2 Kings xxv. 23 W'^tt?!:) the Maachathite, from
Maachah, a district in Syria near Hermon, Deut. iii. 14, Josh,
xii. 5. These men, who had borne arms against the Chaldeans,
were concerned for their safety when they returned into the
country. Gedaliah sware to them, i.e. promised them on oath,
" Be not afraid to serve the Chaldeans ; remain in the country
and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.
And as for me, behold, I shall remain at Mizpah to stand before
the Chaldeans who will come to us," i.e. as lieutenant of the
king of Babylon, to represent you before the Chaldean officers
and armies, to maintain your rights and interests, so that you
may be able to settle down where you choose, without anxiety,
and cultivate the land. '* And as for yourselves, gather ye
wine and fruit (r.P., see on 2 Sam. xvi. 1) and oil, and put them
in your vessels." *ips is used of the ingathering of the fruits
of the ground. It was during the fifth or sixth month (2 Kings
xxv. 8), the end of July or beginning of August, that grapes,
figs, and olives became ripe ; and these had grown so plenti-
fully in comparison with the small number of those who had
returned, that they could gather sufficient for their wants.
"And dwell in your cities, cities which ye seize," i.e. which
yon shall take possession of. Ver. 11 ff. Those Jews also who
had fied, during the war, into the neighbouring countries of
Moab, Ammon, Edom, etc., returned to Judah when they
learned that the king of Babylon had left a remnant, and
VOL. ir. I
Digitized by
Google
130 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
placed Gedaliah over them ; they came to Mizpah to Gedaliah,
who appointed them places to dwell in, and they gathered much
wine and fruit, i.e. made a rich vintage and fruit harvest.
nnKB^.jnj, « to give a remainder," as it were to leave a re-
mainder (V Trfn, xliv. 7, or 'V Di{?, Gen. xlv. 7).
Vers. 13-16. Gedaliah is forewarned of Ishma^Va intention to
murder him. — After the return of those who had taken refuge
in Moab, etc., Johanan the son of Kareah, together with the
rest of ]the captains who were scattered here and there through
the country, came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, to say to him : " Dost
thou know indeed that Baalis the king of the Ammonites hath
sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take thy life ? " The
words " that were in the country " are neither a gloss, nor a
thoughtless repetition by some scribe from ver. 7 (as Hitzig
and Graf suppose), but they are repeated for the purpose of
distinguishing plainly between the captains with their men
from the Jews who had returned out of Moab, Ammon, and
Edom. BfeJ rtsn, « to strike the soul, life" = to kill ; cf. Gen.
xxxvii. 21, Deut. xix. 6. What induced the king of Ammon
to think of assassination, — whether it was personal hostility
towards Gedaliah, or the hope of destroying the only remaining
support of the Jews, and thereby perhaps putting himself in
possession of the country,— cannot be determined. That he
employed Ishmael for the accomplishment of his purpose, may
have been owing to the fact that this man had a personal envy
of Gedaliah ; for Ishmael, being sprung from the royal family
(xl. 1), probably could not endure being subordinate to Geda-
liah. — ^The plot had become known, and Gedaliah was secretly
informed of it by Johanan ; but the former did not believe the
rumour. Johanan then secretly offered to slay Ishmael, taking
care that no one should know who did it, and urged compliance
in the following terms : " Why should he slay thee, and all the
Jews who have gathered themselves round thee be scattered,
and the remnant of Judah perish?" Johanan thus called his
attention to the evil consequences which would result to the
remnant left in the land were he killed ; but Gedaliah replied,
'< Do not this thing, for thou speakest a lie against Ishmael."
The Qeri needlessly changes v^'h^ into nfeTJri-i»N ; of. xxxix.
12.
N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLL 1-10. 131
Chap. xli. vers. 1-10. Murder of GedaUah and his follotoers,
as weU as other Jetos, hy Ishmael. — Vers. 1-3. The warning of
Johanan had been only too well fonnded. In the seventh
month, — only two months, therefore, after the destruction of
Jerusalem and the appointment of Gedaliah as governor, —
Ishmael came with ten men to Mizpah, and was hospitably-
received by Gedaliah and invited to his table. Ishmael is here
more exactly described as to his family descent, for the purpose of
throwing a stronger light upon the exceeding cruelty of the mur-
ders afterwards ascribed to him. He was the son of Nethaniah,
the son of Elishama, — perhaps the secretary of state mentioned
xxxvi. 12, or more likely the son of David who bore this name,
2 Sam. V. 6, 1 Cbron. iii. 8, xiv. 7 ; so that Ishmael would
belong to a lateral branch of the house of David, be of royal
extraction, and one of the royal lords. ^?fn '3"i1 cannot be
joined with Ishmael as the subject, because in what follows
there is no further mention made of the royal lords, but only
of Ishmael and his ten men ; it belongs to what precedes, snjp
na^TQii, so that we must repeat 1? before '3"!. The objections of
Nagelsbach to this view will not stand examination. It is not
self-evident that Ishmael, because he was of royal blood, was
therefore also one of the royal nobles ; for the B'?! certainly
did not form a hereditary caste, but were perhaps a class of
nobles in the service of the king, to which class the princes did
not belong simply in virtue of their being princes. But the
improbability that Ishmael should have been able with ten men
to overpower the whole of the Jewish followers of Gedaliah,
together with the Chaldean warriors, and (according to ver. 7)
out of eighty men to kill some, making prisoners of the rest, is
not so great as to compel us to take "^^ *3n in such a meaning
as to make it stand in contradiction with the statement, repeated
twice over, that Ishmael, with his ten men, did all this. Eleven
men who are determined to commit murder can kill a large
number of persons who are not prepared against such an attempt,
and may also keep a whole district in terror.^ ** And they did
eat bread there together," i.e. they were invited by Gedaliah to
^ There is still less ground, with Hitzig, Graf, and Nagelsbach, for
assuming that ^Xin ^311 is a gloss that has crept into the text. The fact
that D>a*i, which is used here, is elsewhere applied only to Chaldean nobles,
Digitized by
; Google
132 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAB.
his table. While at meat, Ishmael and his ten men rose and slew
Gedaliah with the sword. On account of ^HN nojl, which comes
after, Hitzig and Graf would change QJl into ^35, he slew him,
Gedaliah ; this alteration is possibly warranted, but by no means
absolutely necessary. The words '1J1 Svk nojl, " and he killed
him," contain a reflection of the narrator as to the greatness of
the crime; in conformity with the facts of the case, the murder is
ascribed only to the originator of the deed, since the ten men of
Ishmael's retinue were simply his executioners. Besides Gedaliah,
Ishmael killed " all the Jews that were with him, with Gedaliah
in Mizpah, and the Chaldeans that were found there, the men
of war." The very expression shows that, of the Jews, only
those are meant who were present in the house with Gedaliah,
and, of the Chaldean soldiers, only those warriors who had been
allowed him as a guard, who for the time being were his
servants, and who, though they were not, as Schmidt thinks,
hausto liberalius vino inebriati, yet, as Chr. B. Michaelis remarks,
were tune temporis inermes et imparati. The Jews of post-exile
times used to keep the third day of the seventh month as a
fast-day, in commemoration of the murder of Gedaliah ; see on
Zech. vii. 3. — Ver. 4 ff. On the next day after the murder of
Gedaliah, " when "no man knew it," i.e. before the deed had
become known beyond Mizpah, " there came eighty men from
Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria," having all the tokens of
mourning, "with their beards shaven, their clothes rent, and
with cuts and scratches on their bodies (onniino, see on xvi. 6),
and a meat-offering and frankincense in their hand, to bring
them into the house of Jahveh." The order in which the towns
are named is not geographical; for Shiloh lay south from
Shechem, and a Kttle to the side from the straight road leading
from Shechem to Jerusalem. Instead of iV> the LXX. {Cod.
Vat.) have SaXijfi ; they use the same word as the name of a
place in Gen. xxxiii. 18, although the Hebrew D?B> is there an
adjective, meaning safef in good condition. According to
Bobinson (Bill. Res. iii. 102), there is a village named Sdlim
is insufBcient to show this ; and even Ewald has remarked that " ihe last
king (Zedekiah) may well be supposed to have appointed a nnmber of
grandees, after the example of the Chaldeans, and given them, too, Chaldean
names."
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. 2CL1. 1-10. 133
three miles east from Nahlua (Shechem) ; Hitzig and Graf, on
the strength of this, prefer the reading of the LXX., to preserve
the order of the names in the text. But Hitzig has renounced
this conjecture in the second edition of his Commentary, << because
S&lim in Hebrew would be o^^, not o>^." There is absolutely
no foundation for the view in the LXX. and in Gen. xxxiii,
18 ; the supposition, moreover, that the three towns are given
in their topographical order, and must have stood near each
other, is also unfounded. Shechem may have been named first
because the greater number of these men came from that city,
and other men from Shiloh and Samaria accompanied them.
These men were pious descendants of the Israelites who belonged
to the kingdom of Israel; they dwelt among the heathen
colonists who had been settled in the country under Esarhaddon
(2 Kings xvii. 24 ff.), but, from the days of Hezekiah or Josiah,
had continued to serve Jahveh in Jerusalem, where they used
to attend the feasts (2 Chron. xxxiv. 9, cf. xxx. 11). Nay,
even after the destruction of Jerusalem, at the seasons of the
sacred feasts, they were still content to bring at least unbloody
offerings — meat-offerings and incense — on the still sacred spot
where these things used to be offered to Jahveh ; but just be-
cause this could now be done only on the ruins of what had
once been the sanctuary, they appeared there with all the signs
of deep sorrow for the destruction of this holy place and the
cessation of sacrificial worship. In illustration of this, Grotius
has adduced a passage from Papinian's instit. de rerum divis. §
sacrce : " Locus in quo aedes sacrce sunt wdijicatce, ettam diruto
(sdificio, sacer adhuc manet." — Ver. 6. Ishmael went out from
Mizpah to meet these men, always weeping as he went (sljfi
nain ^^n, of. Ges. § 131, a*; Ew. § 280, b). If they came
from Ephraim by way of Gibeon (el Jib), the road on to
Jerusalem passed close by Mizpah. When Ishmael met them,
he asked them to come to Gedaliah (to Mizpah). But when
they had entered the city, " Ishmael slew them into the midst
of the pit " (which was there), i.e. killed them and cast their
corpses into the pit. Ver. 8. Only ten men out of the eighty
saved their lives, and this by saying to Ishmael, " Do not kill
us, for we have hidden stores in the field — wheat, and barley,
and oil, and honey." D^ibOD are excavations in the form of
Digitized by
Google
134 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
cisterns, or subterranean storehouses in the open country, for
keeping grain ; the openings or entrances to these are so con-
cealed that the eye of a stranger could not perceive them. Such
places are still universally employed in Palestine at the present
day (Eobinson's Palestine, i. pp. 324-5), and are also to be found
in other southern countries, both in ancient and modern times ;
see proofs of this in Bosenmiiller's Scholia ad huno locum. It
is remarked, in ver. 9, of the pit into which Ishmael threw the
corpses, that it was the same that King Asa had made, i.e. had
caused to be made, against, i.e. for protection against, Baasha
the king of Israel. In the historical books there is no mention
made of this pit in the account of the war between Asa and
Baasha, 1 Kings xv. 16-22 and 2 Chron. xvi. 1-6 ; it is only
stated in 1 Kings xv. 22 and 2 Chron. xvi. 6 that, after Baasha,
who had fortified Eamah, had been compelled to return to his
own land because of the invasion of Benhadad the Syrian king,
whom Asa had called to his aid, the king of Judah ordered all
his people to carry away from Ramah the stones and timber
which Baasha had employed in building, and therewith fortify
Geba and Mizpah. The expression K^J?? '3B0 certainly implies
that the pit had been formed as a protection against Baasha, and
belonged to the fortifications raised at that time. However, i^an
cannot mean the burial-place belonging to the city (Grotius),
but only a cistern (cf. 2 Kings x. 14); and one such as could
contain a considerable store of water was as necessary as a wall
and a moat for the fortification of a city, so that it might be
able to endure a long siege (Graf). Hitzig, on the other hand,
takes i1a to mean a long and broad ditch which cut off the
approach to the city from Ephraim, or which, forming a part
of the fortifications, made a break in the road to Jerusalem,
though it was bridged over in times of peace, thus forming a
kind of tunnel. This idea is certainly incorrect ; for, according
to ver. 7, the "ditch" was inside the city ("I'Vn ^03). The
expression 'fi'713 T3 is obscure, and cannot be explained with
any degree of certainty. T3 cannot mean " through the fault
of" Gedaliah (Raschi), or "because of" Gedaliah — for his
sake (Kimchi, Umbreit), or " coram " Gedaliah (Venema), but
must rather be rendered " by means of, through the medium
of," or " at the side of, together with." Nagelsbach has decided
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XU. 1-10. 125
for the rendering " by means of," giving as his reason the fact
that Ishmael had made use of the name of Gedaliah in order to
' decoy these men into destruction. He had called to them,
" Come to Gedaliah " (ver. 6) ; arid simply on the authority of
this name, they had followed hipi. But the employment of
the name as a means of decoy can hardly be expressed by T3.
We therefore prefer the meaning ''at the hand = at the side
of" (following the Syriac, L. de Dieu, Eosenmiiller, Ewald),
although this signification cannot be established from the
passages cited by Bosenm. (1 Sam. xiv. 34, xvi, 2, Ezra vii. 23),
nor can the meaning " together with " (Ewald) be shown to
belong to it. On the other hand, a passage which is quite
decisive for the rendering " by the hand of, beside," is Job xv.
23 : '' there stands ready at his hand Ql^^y i.e. close to him) a
day of darkness." If we take this meaning for the passage now
before us, then vvhtl T3 cannot be connected with nsn nK'K,
in accordance with the Masoretic accents, but with DE' TIW'!',
'' where Ishmael cast the bodies of the men whom he had slain,
by the side of Gedaliah;" so that it is not stated till here
and now, and only in a casual manner, what had become of
Gedaliah's corpse. Nothing that admits of being proved can be
brought against this view.^ The wn which follows is a pre-
dicate: "the ditch wherein .... was that which Asa the
king had formed."
The motive for this second series of assassinations by Ishmael
is difficult to discover. The supposition that he was afraid of
1 Because the LXX. have, for vHi\ wbl3 T3, (fpimp liiyei. tovto Iot/v,
J. I>. Micliaelis, Dahler, Movers, Hitzig, and Graf would change the text,
and either take Kin Wm T3- (Dahler, Movers) or Kin ^nail TS (=1^3)
as the original reading, inasmnch as one codex of De Rossi's also has Tia.
But apart from the improbability of TilJ 113 or jnjn being incorrectly
changed into VCT^i T3, we find that K^n stands provokingly in the way ;
for it would be superfluous, or introduce an improper emphasis into the
sentence. The LXX. have but been attempting to guess at a translation of
a text they did not understand. What Hitzig further supposes has no
foundation, viz. that this "ditch" is identical with that mentioned 1 Sam.
ziz. 22, in \3\i>, and with to ^pia/) ro /*ey» of 1 Mace. vii. 19 ; for the ditch
at Sechu was near Bamah, which was about four miles from Mizpah, and
the large fountain 1 Mace. vii. 19 was h Bri^ifi, an unknown place in the
vicinity of Jerusalem.
1^
Digitized by
Google
136 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
being betrayed, and for this reason killed these strangers,
not wishing to be troubled with them, is improbable, for the
simple reason that these strangers did not want to go to Mizpab,
but to Jerusalem. For the supposition of Thenius (on 2 Kings
XXV. 23) and of Schmieder, that the people had intended going
to Mizpah to a house of God that was there, is very properly
rejected by Hitzig, because no mention is made in history of a
place of worship at Mizpah ; and, according to the express state-
ment of ver. 6 ff., Ishmael had enticed them into tliis city only
by inviting them to come and see Gedaliah. Had Ishmael
wished merely to conceal, the murder of Gedaliah from these
strangers, he ought to have done anything but let them into
Mizpab. As little can we regard this deed (with Graf) as an
act of revenge on these Israelites by Ishmael for the murder
of his relations and equals in rank by Nebuchadnezzar (Hi. 10),
because these men, who had now for a long time been living
together with heathens, were Assyrian and Chaldean subjects.
For we cannot comprehend how he could look on these Israelites
as friends of the Chaldeans, and vent his anger against the
Chaldean rule by murdering them; the mournful procession
which they formed, and the offerings they were carrying to
present, proclaimed them faithful adherents of Jndah. Nagels-
bach, accordingly, is of opinion that Ishmael had simply
intended robbery. As it is evident that he, a rough and wild
man, had assassinated the noble Gedaliah from personal jealousy,
and in order to further the political interest of his Ammonite
patron, he must have been seeking to put himself in the position
of his victim, or to flee. " When we find, moreover, that he
soon murdered a peaceable caravan of pilgrims, and preserved
the lives only of a few who offered to show him hidden treasures ;
when, finally, we perceive that the whole turba imbellis of
Mizpah were seized and carried off into slavery, Ishmael proves
himself a mere robber." But, though the fact that Ishmael
spared the lives of the ten men who offered to show him hidden
treasures seems to support this view, yet the supposition that
nothing more than robbery was intended does not suffice to
explain the double murder. The two series of assassinations
plainly stand in the closest connection, and must have been
executed from one and the same motive. It was at the instiga-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XU. 1-10. 137
tion of the Ammonite king that Ishmael murdered Gedaliah ;
moreover, as we learn from the report brought to Gedaliah by
Johanan (xl. 15), the crime was committed in the expectation
that the whole of Judah would then be dispersed, and the
remnant of them perish. This murder was thus the work of
the Ammonite king, who selected the royally-descended Ishmael
as his instrument simply because he could conveniently, for the
execution of his plans, employ the personal envy of one man
against another who had been preferred by the king of Babylon.
There can be no doubt that the same motive which urged him
to destroy the remnant of Judah, i.e. to frustrate the attempt
to gather and restore Judah, was also at work in the massacre
of the pilgrims who were coming to the temple. If Ishmael,
the leader of a robber-gang, had entered into the design of the
Ammonite king, then everything that might serve for the
preservation and consolidation of Judah must have been a
source of pain to him ; and this hatred of his towards Judah,
which derived its strength and support from his religious views,
incited him to murder the Jewish pilgrims to the temple, .
although the prospect of obtaining treasures might well co-
operate with this in such a way as to make him spare the ten
men who pretended they had hidden stores. With this, too,
we can easily connect the hypocritical dealing on the part of
Ishmael, in going forth, with tears, to meet these pious pilgrims,
so that he might deceive them by making such a show of grief
over the calamity that had befallen Judah; for the wicked
often assume an appearance of sanctity for the more effectual
accomplishment of their evil deeds. The LXX. evidently did
not know what to make of this passage as it stands ; hence, in
ver. 6, they have quite dropped the words " from Mizpah," and
have rendered nail ^pn ^iVn by airol iiropevovro Kal eKXaiov.
Hitzig and Graf accept this as indicating the original text,
' since Ishmael had no ostensible ground for weeping. But the
reasons which are supposed to justify this conjecture are, as
Nagelsbach well remarks, of such a nature that one can scarcely
believe they are seriously held. — Ver. 10. After executing these
murderous deeds, Ishmael led away into captivity all the people
that still remained in Mizpah, the king's daughters and all the
people whom Nebuchadnezzar had committed to the care of
r'
Digitized by
Google
138 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMUH.
Gedaliah, intending to go over with them to the Ammonites.
As the object of 32*5 is very far removed through the interven-
tion of a relative clause, the connection is resumed by ME^I.
" The king's daughters" are not only the daughters of Zedekiah,
but female members generally of the royal house, princesses,
analogous to ^^D"I3, king's son = prince, xxxvi. 26, xxxviii. 6.
Vers. 11.-18. The struggle against Ishmael; intended flight to
Egypt. — ^Ver. 11 ff. When Johanan and the rest of the cap-
tains heard of what had taken place in Mizpah, they marched
out with all their men to fight Ishmael, and came on him at
the great water at Gibeon, i.e. by the pool at Gibeon which is
mentioned 2 Sam. ii. 13, one of the large receptacles for water
which are still found there; see on 2 Sam. ii. 13. Gibeon,
now called el Jib (see on Josh. ix. 3), was situated only about
two miles north from Mizpah ; from which we may conclade
that it was soon known what had happened, and the captains
quickly assembled their men and marched after Ishmael. —
Ver. 13 £f. When those who had been carried off by Ishmael
saw these captains, they were glad, since they had followed
their captor merely because they were forced to do so. They
all turned, and went over to Johanan ; but Ishmael escaped
from Johanan, with eight men, — having thus lost two in the
fight with Johanan, — and went to the Ammonites. — Ver. 16 ff.
After the escape of Ishmael, it was to be feared that the
Chaldeans would avenge the murder of the governor, and make
the Jews who remained atone for the escape of the murderer
by executing them or carrying them away to Babylon. Ac-
cordingly, Johanan and the other captains determined to with-
draw to Egypt with the men, women, and children that had
been carried off by Ishmael; these they conducted first to
Bethlehem, where they encamped for the purpose of deliberating
as to the rest of the journey, and taking due precautions. The
account given in ver. 16 is clumsily expressed, especially the
middle portion, between "whom he had brought back" and
"the son of Ahikam;" and in this part the words "from
Mizpah " are particularly troublesome in breaking the connec-
tion : " whom he ( Johiinan) had brought back from Ishmael
the son of Nethaniah, from Mizpah, after he (Ishmael) had
slain Gedaliah," while it is more correctly stated in the second
Digitized hy
Google
CHAP. XUL 139
relative clause, "whom he had brought back from Gibeon."
Hitzig and Graf accordingly suppose that, origintilly, instead
of r\vm yfn i^m, there stood in the text nzv "lE'K, « whom he
(Ishmael) had led captive from Mizpah, after he had slain
Gedaliah." . Thus the whole becomes clear. Against this con-
jecture there only stands the fact that the LXX. translate otx;
direarpey^ev airo ^la/taijX ; they must thus have read 3*B'n IB'N
^KO, and omitted merely nsxen as unsaited to the passage.
However, the error may be even older than the LXX., and 3'?'n
nKD may easily have arisen through a scribe having glanced at
the words 3'B'n "ib'K of the last clause. The words from "men "
to "chamberlains" form the more exact specification of the
general expression " all the remnant of the people : " " men, viz.
men of war, women (including the king's daughters, ver. 10),
and children and chamberlains " (D^pno, guardians and servants
of the female members of the royal family). — ^Ver. 17. " They
marched and stopped (made a halt) at the inn of Chimham,
which is near Bethlehem." rnnj, air. \ey., considered etymo-
logically, must mean diversorium, Tiosfpitium, an inn, khan, or
caravanserai. Instead of the Keihib DHIDD, many codices read
DnD3 (like the Qeri) ; nor have any of the old translators read
^ or i in the word. The. Qeri is evidently correct, and we are
to read Q?^3, the name of a son of Barzillai the rich Gileadite,
2 Sam. xix. 38, 41, who is supposed to have built or founded
this caravanserai for the convenience of travellers. The words
" because of the Chaldeans" in the beginning of ver. 18 depend
on " to go to Egypt " at the end of the preceding verse : " to
go to Egypt for fear of the Chaldeans," on account of the
murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael.
Chap. xlii. The Word of God concerning the Flight to Egypt.
At the halting-place near Bethlehem the captains and the
people whom they led deem it necessary to inquire through
Jeremiah as to the will of God regarding their intention ; they,
betake themselves to the prophet with the request that he would
address God in prayer for them regarding this matter, and they
promise that they will, in any case, comply with the message
that he may receive from God (vers. 1-6). Whereupon, after
ten days, the word of the Lord came to the prophet, vers. 7-22,
r-
Digitized by
Google
140 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
to the effect that, if they remained in the country, the Lord
would take pity on them and protect them from the Chaldeans,
and establish them ; but, should they go to Egypt, against the
will of the Lord, then the evil which they feared would follow
them thither, so that they would perish by the sword, hunger,
and pestilence.
Vers. 1-6. " And there drew near all the captains, namely,
Johanan the son of Kareah, and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah,
and all the people, from little to great, Yer. 2. And said to
Jeremiah the prophet, Let our supplication come before thee,
and pray for us to Jahveh thy God, for all this remnant (for
we are left a few out of many, as thine eyes see us) ; Ver. 3.
That Jahveh thy God may tell us the way in which we should
go, and the thing that we should do." Of the captains, two,
viz. Johanan and Jezaniah, are mentioned as the leaders of the
people and the directors of the whole undertaking, who also,
xliii. 1 ff., insolently accuse the prophet of falsehood, and carry
out the proposed march to Egypt. Jezaniah is in xl. 8 called
the Maachathite ; here he is named in connection with his
father, " the son of Hoshaiah ; " while in xliii. 2, in conjunc-
tion with Johanan the son of Kareah, Azariah the son of
Hoshaiah is mentioned, which name the LXX. also have in
ver. 1 of this chapter. Hitzig, Ewald, etc., are consequently
of the opinion that Tnv in our verse has been written by mis-
take for n»"nj|. But more probable is the supposition that the
error is in the nniy of xliii. 2, inasmuch as there is no reason
to doubt the identity of Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah with the
Jezaniah descended from Maacha (xl. 8) ; and the assumption
that mv is incorrect in two passages (xlii. 1 and xl. 8) is
highly improbable. They go to the prophet Jeremiah, whom
they had taken with them from Mizpah, where he was living
among the people, with the rest of the inhabitants of the place
(xli. 16). 'nn W"?Bri as in xxxvii. 20 ; see on xxxvi. 7. The
request made to the prophet that he would intercede for them
with the Lord, which they further urge on the ground that
the number left out of the whole people is small, while there is
implied in this the wish that God may not let this small rem-
nant also perish ; — this request Nagelsbach considers a piece of
hypocrisy, and the form of asking the prophet " a mere farce,"
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUI. l-C 141
since it Is quite plain from xliii. 1-6 that the desire to go to
Egypt was already deeply rooted in their minds, and from this
they would not allow themselves to be moved, even by the
earnest warning of the prophet. But to hypocrites, who were
playing a mere farce with the prophet, the Lord would have
probably replied in a different way from what we find in
vers. 8-22. As the Searcher of hearts, He certainly would
have laid bare their hypocrisy. And however unequivocally
the whole address implies the existence of disobedience to the
voice of God, it yet contains nothing which can justify the
assumption that it was only in hypocrisy that they wished to
learn the will of God. We must therefore assume that their
request addressed to the prophet was made in earnest, although
they expected that the Lord's reply would be given in terms
favourable to their intention. They wished to obtain from
God information as to which way they should go, and what
they should do, — not as to whether they should remain in the
country or go to Egypt. " The way that we should go " is, of
course, not to be understood literally, as if they merely wished
to be told the road by which they would most safely reach
Egypt ; neither, on the other hand, are the words to be under-
stood in a merely figurative sense, of the mode of procedure
they ought to pursue ; but they are to be understood of the
road they ought to take in order to avoid the vengeance of the
Chaldeans which they dreaded, — in thb sense, whither they
ought to go, in order to preserve their lives from the danger
which threatened them. — ^Ver. 4. Jeremiah replies : " I have
heard (i.e. acceded to your request) ; behold, I will pray to
Jahveh your God, according to your words ; and it shall come
to pass that whatever Jahveh answers you I will tell you, I
will not keep anything from you." Ver. 5. They said further :
" Let Jahveh be a true and faithful witness against us, if we
do not just according to all the word which Jahveh thy God
shall send thee (to declare) unto us. Ver. 6. Whether it be
good or bad, we shall obey the voice of Jahveh our God, to
whom we send thee, that it may be well with us when we obey
the voice of Jahveh our God." noK IP, Prov. xiv. 25, and !ON3,
Isa. viii. 2, Ps. Ixxxix. 38. Both predicates occupy emphatic
positions. God is to be a faithful witness, not in regard to the
Digitized by
Google
142 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
truth of what they say, but as regards the fulfilment of their
promise, so that, if they would not obey His word. He might
come forward to punish them. . ^^^. is construed with a double
accusative : to send away a person with something, i.e. to give
him a commission. After " whether it be good or evil," there
is no need for supplying " in our eyes " (y*J''}/3), as Hitzig and
Graf allege: "whether it please us or not;" the subject is
I2nn : « we will obey the word, whether it be good or evil," i.e.
whether it announce good or evil to come (cf. Eccles. xii. 14).
The Kethib UN occurs only in this passage in the Old Testa-
ment ; the Qeri accordingly substitutes MHiS : the former, how-
ever, is taken from the vulgar tongue, and should not be
altered here. VOf? '? does not mean *' because we obey," but
" when we obey." The hearing is the condition, not the cause
of the prosperity.
Vers. 7-22. The word of the Lord. — At the end of ten
days, the reply that had been asked for came from the Lord.
Hitzig and Graf think that Jeremiah had lingered ten days
with the answer, in order to obtain strong and clear convic-
tion, '' matured through his own meditation, probably also in
part confirmed by the arrival of further news." This opinion
is characterized by Nagelsbach as "in harmony with modem
science, but unhistorical ; " it should rather be called unscrip-
tural, as resting on a denial of divine inspiration. The reason
why the Lord did not make known His will to the prophet for
ten days was a disciplinary <pe. By waiting, those who asked
would get time for • bethinking themselves, and for quietly
considering the situation of affairs, so that they might be able,
calmly and collectedly, to receive and obey the answer of God,
which was far from satisfying the fears and wishes of their
heart. Ver. 8. Jeremiah called the captains and all the people
together, and announced to them as follows : Ver. 9. " Thus
saith Jahveh, the God of Israel, to whom ye have sent me, that
I might bring your supplication before Him : Ver. 10. If ye
will indeed abide in this land, then will I build you up and not
pull down ; and I will plant you, bat not root out; for I repent
of the evil that I have done to you. Ver. 11. Be not afraid of
the king of Babylon, whom ye fear, be not afraid of him, saith
Jahveh ; for I am with you to save you and to deliver you out
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUL 7-22. 143
of his hand. Ver. 12. And I will get pity for yon, so that he
shall take pity on you, and bring you back to your land. Ver.
13. But if ye say, We will not remain in this land, so that ye
will not obey the voice of Jahveh your God, Ver. 14. Saying,
Nay, but we will go to the land of Egypt, that we may not see war
nor hear the sound of a trumpet, and we shall not hunger after
bread, and we will dwell there. — Ver. 15. Now therefore hear
the word of Jahveh, ye remnant of Judah : Thus saith Jahveh
of hosts, the God of Israel, If ye do indeed set your face to go
to Egypt, and go to sojourn there, Ver. 16. Then shall the sword,
of which ye are afraid, overtake yon there, in the land of
Egypt, and hunger, which ye dread, shall there follow hard
after yon, in Egypt, and there shall ye die. Ver. 17. And all the
men who have set their face to go to Egypt, to sojourn there,
shall die by the sword, and through hunger, and from the plague;
nor shall they have any one left or escaped from the evil which
I will bring on them. Ver. 18. For thus saith Jahveh of hosts,
the God of Israel : As mine anger and my wrath were poured
out upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so shall my wrath be
poured out upon you when ye go to Egypt, and ye shall become
an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach,
and ye shall not see this place again. — Ver. 19. Jahveh hath
spoken to you, O remnant of Judah. Go not to Egypt : ye
shall know for certain that I have warned you to-day. Ver.
20. For ye err at the risk of your souls when ye sent me to
Jahveh your God, saying. Pray for us to Jahveh our God,
and according to all that Jahveh our God shall say to us, so
tell us, and we will do it. Ver. 21. Now I have told you
to-day, and ye have not obeyed the voice of Jahveh your God,
nor in anything for which He hath sent me unto you. Ver. 22.
Now, therefore, ye must surely know that ye shall die by the
sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place whither ye
have been pleased to go to sojourn."
The Lord's reply extends as far as ver. 18 ; the last four
verses (19-22) form ?in epilogue, a further address by the
prophet, in which he once more specially impresses Go^'s
resolution on the minds of the people. The answer of God
consists (1) in the promise that, if they will remain in the land,
the Lord is willing to build them up, and protect them from
Digitized by
Google
144 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
the wrath of the king of Babylon (vers. 9-12); and (2) the
threat that, if they will go to Egypt against the advice aiid
will of the Lord, they shall certainly perish there by the sword,
famine, and pestilence (vers. 13-18). On the expression
nann yen, see on xxxvi. 7. 318? (ver. 10) can only be inf.
abs. of 3B'|, for 3^B^; if we view it as coming from 3lt^,
we get no suitable meaning, for the thought si revertendo
illuc Tnanseritis in hoc terra (C. B. Michaelis) could not be
expressed by UB'n a^E'. Certainly there is no other instance
of such a form as a^t? being used for 3^B^ ; in a verb like 22^,
however, which drops the * in the inf. constr., a like omission
in the inf. abs. is quite conceivable, while the supposition of
some injury having been done to the text (Olshansen, Gram.
§ 89) is less probable. On the expression, " I will build you,"
etc., cf . xxiv. 6, xxxi. 4, xxxiii. 7. " I repent of the evil " is
an anthropopathic expression for the cancelling of a penal sen-
tence : cf . Joel ii. 14, etc. — ^In ver. 11, the repetition of the
words "do not fear him" produces special emphasis. — ^Ver.
12. " I shall give you compassion," i,e. obtain it for you, so
that the king of Babylon will show pity on you ; cf . Gen.
xliii. 14, 1 Kings viii. 50. J. D. Michaelis, Hitzig, Ewald,
and Graf, following the LXX., Vulgate, and Syriac, would
change y^\}\ into a^B'in (make you dwell) ; but there is no
necessity for this, since y^\} makes good enough sense, pro-
vided we refer it, not to the return of those who had been
exiled to Babylon, but, as thei connection requires, to the de-
parture from Mizpah, after the halt near Bethlehein, in the
intended flight to Egypt ; we must, besides, view this departure
as a complete forsaking of their country, and the leaders in this
emigration as being fugitives who had fled before the Chal-
deans, and had returned only a short time before, for the
purpose of settling down again in the country. — Vers. 13-18.
The threatening if, in spite of warning and against God's will,
they should still persist in going to Egypt. The protasis of
the conditional sentence begun in ver. 13, " If ye say," etc.,
extends onwards through ver. 14; the apodosis is introduced
co-ordinately with the commencement of ver. 15, " Now there-
fore," etc. "IB^B^ Tip, " the sound of war-trumpet," as in iv. 19.
On " hungering after bread," cf. Amos viii. 11. on^f? (with
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLII. 7-22. 145
the article) is the bread necessary for life. " The remnant of
Judah" is to be understood of those who still remained in the
land, as is shown by ver. 2 ; see also ver. 19, xliii. 5, xliv. 12,
14. The warning given in ver. 16 contains the idea that the
very evil which they feared would come on them in Judah
will befall them in Egypt. There they shall perish by sword,
famine, and plague, since Nebuchadnezzar will conquer Egypt ;
cf. xliii. 8-13. — Ver. 17. vn^., used instead of the impersonal
JVjm, is referred to the following subject by a rather unusual
kind of attraction ; cf. Ewald, § 345, b. All the men who set
their faces, i.e. intend, to go to Egypt shall perish ; not a single
one shall escape the evil ; for the same judgment of wrath
which has befallen Jerusalem shall also come on those who flee
to Egypt ; cf . vii. 20. On the expression " ye shall become a
curse," etc., cf. xxiv. 9, xxv. 18, xxix. 18.
Taking for granted that the leadei^ of the people will not
obey, Jeremiah appends to the word of the Lord an earnest
address, in which several points are specially insisted on, viz.
that the Lord had spoken to them, that He had forbidden them,
to go to Egypt, and that he (the prophet), by proclaiming the
word of the Lord, had warned them (3 "^^Vn, to testify, bear
witness against a person, i.e. warn him of something, cf. xi. 7).
Thus he discloses to them the dangerous mistake they are in,
when they first desire some expression of the mind of the Lord
regarding their intentions, and, in the hope that He will accede
to their request, promise unconditional obedience to whatever
He may direct, but afterwards, when they have received a mes-
sage from the Lord, will not obey it, because it is contrary to
what they wish. The Kethib D'nynn has been incorrectly
written for DO^ynri, the Hiphil from nvn, to err; here, as in Prov.
X. 17, it means to make a mistake. on^n^E'S^a, not, ^ you mislead
your oxon selves" decepistis animas vestras (Vulg.), nor " in your
souls," — meaning, in your thoughts and intentions (Nagels-
bach), — but " at the risk of your souls," your life; cf. xvii. 21.
tf» i>b^ (ver. 21), « and that in regard to all that for which
Jahveh has abnt me to you," points back to their promise, ver.
5, that they would do " according to all the word." By employ-
ing the perfect in vers. 20, 21, the thing is represented as quite
certain, as if it had already taken place. Yer. 22 concludes
VOL. II. K
Digitized by
Google
146 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the warning with a renewed threat of the destruction which
shall befall them for their disobedience.
Chap, xliii. The Flight to Egypt : the Conquest of Egypt
predicted.
Vers. 1-7. Tlie march of the people to Egypt. — ^When Jere-
miah had thus ended all the words which the Lord had
announced to him for the people, then came forward Azariah
(probably an error for Jezaniah, see on xlii. 1) the son of
Hoshaiah, Johanan the son of Kareah, and the rest of the
insolent men, and said to Jeremiah, "Thou dost utter false-
hood ; Jahveh our God hath not sent thee unto us, saying. Ye
must not go to Egypt to sojourn there ; Ver. 3. But Baruch
the son of Neriah inciteth thee against us, in order to give us
into the hand of the Chaldeans, to kill us, and to take us
captive to Babylon." D^'iDN is not the predicate to D'B'JNn"73,
but forms a I'esumption of '^0J(>1, with which it thus serves, to
connect its object, Jeremiah, arid from which it would other-
wise be pretty far removed. Azariah (or, more correctly,
Jezaniah) occupies the last place in the enumeration of the
captains, xl. 8, and in xlii. 1 is also named after Johanan, who
is the only one specially mentioned, in what follows, as the
leader on the march. From this we may safely conclude that
Jezaniah was the chief speaker and the leader of the opposition
against the prophet. To avoid any reference' to the promise
they had made to obey the will of God, they declare that
Jeremiah's prophecy is an untruth, which had been suggested
to him, not by God, but by his attendant Baruch, with the view
of delivering up the people to the Chaldeans. — Vers. 4-7.
Thereupon Johanan and the other captains took "all the
remnant of Judah, that had returned from all the nations
whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah, —
the men and women and children, the king's daughters, and
all the souls whom Nebuzaradan, chief of the body-guard, had
committed to Gedaliah . . . and Jeremiah the prophet, and
Baruch the son of Neriah, — and went to the land of Egypt —
for they did not hearken to the voice of Jahveh — and came to
Tahpanhes." In this enumeration of those who were conducted
to Egypt, Hitzig, Graf, and others distinguish two classes :
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. ILin. 8-13. 147
(1) the men, women, children, etc., who had been in Mizpah
with Gedaliah, and had been led to Gibeon, after the murder
of the latter, by Ishmael, but had afterwards been brought to
Bethlehem by Johanan and the other captains (ver. 6, cf. xl.
7, xli. 10, 16) ; (2) those who had returned from the foreign
countries whither they had fled, but who had hitherto lived in
the country, scattered here and there, and who must have joined
the company led by Johanan to Bethlehem during the ten days
of halt at that resting-place (ver. 5, cf. xl. 11, 12). There is
no foundation, however, for this distinction. Neither in the
present chapter is th^re anything mentioned of those who had
been dispersed through the land joining those who had marched
to Bethlehem ; nor are the Jews who had returned from Moab,
Ammon, Edom, and other countries to their owa home distin-
guished, in chap. xl. and xli., as a different class from those
who had been with Gedaliah in Mizpah ; but on the other
hand, according to xl. 12, these returned Jews also came to
Gedaliah at Mizpah, and gathered grapes and fruit. Besides^
in these .verses the distinction can only be made after the
insertion into the text of the conjunction ) before C^asnTiK.
To " all the remnant of Judah who had returned from the
nations" belong the men, women, children, etc., whom Nebuzar-
adan had committed to the care of Gedaliah. The enumeration
in ver. 6 gives only one specification of the " whole remnant
of Judah," as in xli. 16. "And all the souls;" as if it were
said, " and whoever else was still left alive;" cf. Josh. x. 28.
Tahpanhes was a frontier town of Egypt on the Pelusian
branch of the Nile, and named Ad^vai by the Greeks ; see on
ii. 16. Here, on the borders of Egypt, a halt was made, for
the pmpose of coming to further resolutions regatding their
residence in that country. Here, too, Jeremiah received a
revelation from God regarding the fate now impending on
Egypt.
Vers. 8-13. Prediction regarding EgypU — Ver. 8. "And
the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying,
Ver. 9. Take in thine hand large stones, and hide them in the
clay in the brick-kiln, which is at the entrance to the house of
Pharaoh in Taphanhes, in the eyes of the Jews ; Ver. 10. And
say to them : Thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel,
Digitized by
Google
148 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
Behold, I will send ' and take Nebuchadrezzar, the king of
Babylon, my servant, and will place his throne over these stones
which I havd hidden, and he shall stretch his tapestry over
them. Yer. 11. And he shall come and smite the land of
Egypt, (he who is) for death, to death, — (he who is) for cap-
tivity, to captivity, — (he who is) for the sword, to the sword.
Ver. 12. And I will kindle fire in the houses of the gods of
Egypt, and he shall bum them and carry them away ; and he
shall wrap the land of Egypt round him as the shepherd wraps
his cloak round him, and thence depart in peace. Yer. 13.
And he shall destroy the pillars of Beth-;hemesh, which is in
the land of Egypt, and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians
shall he burn with fire."
This prophecy is introduced by a symbolical action, on which
it is based. But in spite of the fact that the object of the
action is stated in the address which follows, the action itself is
not quite plain from the occurrence of I3?&3, whose usual mean-
ing, "brick-kiln" (cf. Nah. iii. 14), does not seem suitable here.
Eichhom and Hitzig think it absurd that there should be found
before the door of a royal habitation a brick-kiln on which
a king was to place his throne. From the Arabic ^JiLe, which
also signifies a rectangular figure like a tile or brick, and is
used of the projecting entablature of doors, — from the employ-
ment, also, in the Talmud of the word |a7D to signify a quad-
rangular tablet in the form of a tile, — Hitzig would claim for
the word the meaning of a stone floor, and accordingly renders,
" and insert them with mortar into the stone fiooring." But
the entablatures over doors, or quadrangular figures like bricks,
are nothing like a stone flooring or pavement before a palace.
Besides, in the way of attaching to the word the signification of
a "brick-kiln," — a meaning which is well established,^-or even
of a brickwork, the difficulties are not so great as to compel us
to accept interpretations that have no foundation. We do not
need to think of a brick-kiln or brickwork as being always before
the palace ; as Neumann has observed, it may have indeed been
there, although <Hily for a short time, during the erecting of
some part of the palace; nor need it have been just at the
palace gateway, but a considerable distance away from it, and
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUIL 9-13. 149
on the opposite side. Alongside of it there was lying mortar,
an indispensable- building material. )00, '' to bide," perhaps
means here not merely to embed, bat to embed in such a way
that the stones could not very readily be perceived. Jeremiah
was to press down the big stones, not into the brick-kiln, but
into the mortar which was lying at (near) the brick-kiln, — to
put them, too, before the eyes of the Jews, inasmuch as the
meaning of this act had a primary reference to the fate of the
Jews in Egypt. The object of the action is thus stated in
what follows : Jahveh shall bring the king of Babylon and set
his throne on these stones, so that he shall spread out his
beautiful tapestry over them. "inCE' (Qeri l^B?'), an intensive
form of IBB', rriB?', " splendour, beauty," signifies a glittering
ornament, — here, the decoration of the throne, the gorgeous
tapestry with which the seat of the throne was covered. The
stones must thus form the basis for the throne, which the king
of Babylon will set up in front of the palace of the king of
Egypt at Tahpanhes. But the symbolical meaning of this
action is not thereby exhausted. Not merely is the laying of
the stones significant, but also the place where they are laid, —
at the entrance, or opposite Pharaoh's palace. This palace was
built of tiles or bricks : this is indicated by the brick-kiln and
the mortar. The throne of the king of Babylon, on the contrary,
is set up on large stones. The materials of which the palace
and the throne are formed, shadow forth the strength and
stability of the kingdom. Pharaoh's dominion is like crumbling
clay, the material of bricks ; the throne which Nebuchadnezzar
shall set up opposite the clay-building of the Pharaohs rests on
large stones, — his rule will be powerful and permanent. Ac-
cording to Jeremiah's further development of the symbol in
ver. 11 ff., Nebuchadnezzar will come to Egypt (the Kethib nxa
is to be read PiKS, <« he came down," to Egypt, Kla being con-
strued with the accus.), and will smite the land together with
its inhabitants, so that every man will receive his appointed lot,
viz', death by pestilence, imprisonment, and the sword, i.e. death
in battle. On the mode of representation here, cf. xv. 2. —
Ver. 12. He shall burn the temples of the gods of Egypt, and
carry away the idols. The first person WlfTi, for which LXX.,
Syriac, and Vulgate have the third, must not be meddled with ;
Digitized by
Google
150 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
it corresponds to ^wofe' in ver. 10. What Nebuchadnezzar does
as Jahveh's servant C'!^?, ver. 10) is done by God. The suffixes
in DB'^K' and D3e' are assigned in such a way that the one Is to
be referred to the temples, the other to the idols ; See on xlviii.
7. — iDjn has been variously interpreted, nov with the accus.
7"^ or nopfe' means to envelope one's self with a garment, put
on a garment, wrap the cloak round; cf. 1 Sam. xxviii. 14,
Ps. cix. 19, Isa. lis. 17, etc. This is the meaning of the verb
here, as is shown by the clause expressing the comparison. The
point of likeness is the easiness of the action. Ewald has very
well explained the meaning of the whole : " As easily as any
shepherd in the open field wraps himself in his cloak, so will
he take the whole of Egypt in his hand, and be able to throw
it round him like a light garment, that he may then, thus
dressed as it were with booty, leave the land in peace, without a
foe, — a complete victor." Other explanations of the word are
far-fetched, and lexically untenable. — ^Ver. 13. In conclusion,
mention is further made of the destruction of the famous temple
of the Sun at Heliopolis, to show the fulfilment of the prophecy
that all Egypt would fall under the power of Nebuchadnezzar.
E'DB' n^a, " House of- the Sun," Is the Hebrew rendering of the
Egyptain Pe-rd, i.e. House of the Sun, the sacred name of the
city vulgarly called On ; see on Gen. xli. 45. It lay north-east
from Cairo, near the modern village of Matarieh, and thus
pretty far Inland ; it was renowned for its magnificent temple,
dedicated to JRd, the Sun-god. At the entrance to this building
stood several larger and smaller obelisks, of which the two
larger, added to the two older ones by Pheron the son of
Sesostris, were about 150 feet high. One of these the Emperor
Augustus caused to be brought to Rome ; th'e other was thrown
down in the year 1160; while one of the more ancient but
smaller obelisks still stands In Its original position, raising its bead
in the midst of a beautiful garden over a mass of dense foliage.
These ^obelisks are signified by niaJfO. The additional clause,
" which is in the land of Egypt," does not belong to Beth-
shemesh, as if it were appended for the purpose of distinguish-
ing the city so named from Beth-shemesh in the land of Judah ;
the words are rather connected with ntajfo, and correspond with
Djnvo 'iipK In the parallel member of the verse. The obelisks
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIIL 8-13. 151
of the most famous temple of the Egyptian San-god are well
known as the most splendid representatives of the glory of the
Egyptian idolatry : the destruction of these monuments indi-
cates the ruin of all the sanctuaries of the ancient kingdom of
the Pharaohs. The last clause is a kind of re-echo from ver.
12a ; lip" is strengthened by the addition of B'K3 for the pur-
pose of giving a sonorous ending to the whole. — ^The king of
Egypt is not named in the prophecy, but according to xliv. 30
. it is Pharaoh-HophrOf who is to be given into the power of
Nebuchadnezzar.
When we inquire as to the fulfilment of this prediction, we
find M. Duncker, in his Geseh. des Altertkums, i. 841, giving
a reply in these words : " Nebuchadnezzar did not fulfil these
expectations (of Jeremiah, chap, xliii. 8-13, xliv. 30, and of
Ezekiel, chap. xxix. 32). He contented himself with having
repelled the renewed attack of Egypt. The establishment of
his dominion in Syria did not depend on his conquering Egypt ;
but Syria must obey him, throughout its whole extent. The
capture'of Jerusalem followed the siege of the island-town of
Tyre (B.C. 586), the last city that had maintained its independ-
ence. The army of the Chaldeans lay thirteen years before
Tyre without being able to bring the king Ethbaal (Ithobal)
under subjection. At last, in the year 573, a treaty was con-
cluded, in, which the Tyrians recognised the supremacy of the
king of Babylon." That Tjrre was brought into subjection is
inferred by Duncker (in a note, p_. 682), first, from the generally
accepted statement of Berosus, that the whole of Phoenicia was
subdued by Nebuchadnezzar (Josephus' Ant. x. 11. 1, and
contra Ap. i. 19); secondly, from Josephus' statement (contra
Ap. i. 21), that the kings Merbal and Hiram had been brought
by the Tyrians from Babylon ; and lastly, from the fact that,
with the close of the siege, the reign of Ithobal ends and that
of Baal begins. "It would thus appear that Ithobal was
removed, and his family carried to Babylon." These facts,
which are also acknowledged by Duncker, sufficiently show
(what we have already pointed out in Ezekiel) that the siege
of Tyre ended with the taking of this island-city. For, unless
the besieged city had been taken by storm, or at least compelled
to surrender, the king would not have let himself be dethroned
Digitized by
Google
152 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
and carried to Babylon. — But whence has Duncker derived the
information that Nebuchadnezzar had no concern with the
subjugation of Egypt, but merely with the establishment of his
authority in Syria? Although Nebuchadnezzar began the
siege of the island-city of Tyre soon after the destruction of
Jerusalem, and required thirteen years to reduce it, yet it does
not by any means follow from this that he had only to do with
the strengthening of his authority in Syria, and no connection
with the subjugation of Egypt ; all that we can safely infer is,
that he thought he could not attempt the conquest of Egypt
with any certain prospect of success until he had subdued the
whole of Syria. Besides, so long as such an one as Pharaoh-
Hophra occupied the throne of Egypt, — who had not only
sent an army to Zedekiah king of Judah to raise the siege of
Jerusalem, but also (according to Herodotus, ii. 161, who draws
from Egyptian sources) led an army to Sidon and fought a
naval battle with the Tyrians ; who (as Diod. Sic. i. 68 relates,
also following Egyptian tradition) set out for Cyprus with
abundant war-material and a strong army and fleet, and took
Sidon by storm, while the rest of the towns submitted through
fear ; who, moreover, had defeated the Phoenicians and Cyprians
in a naval engagement, and had returned to Egypt with
immense spoil ; — how could Nebuchadnezzar possibly think that
his rule in Syria was iirmly established? Such statements as
those now referred to even Duncker does not venture to reject.
We must, however, view them with a regard to the usual
exaggerations by which the Egyptians were accustomed to
extol the deeds of their Pharaohs ; but after making all due
allowance, we are led to this, that, after the fall of Tyre,
Hophra sought to prevent the island of Cyprus as well as
Tyre from becoming a dependency of Nebuchadnezzar. Could
Nebuchadnezzar leave unmolested such an enemy as this, who,
on the first suitable opportunity, would attempt to wrest the
whole of Syria from him ? So short-sighted a policy we could
not attribute to such a conqueror as Nebuchadnezzar. Much
more considerate is the judgment previously expressed regarding
this by Vitringa, on Isa. xix, :. " Etiamsi omnis historia hie
sileret, non est probabile, Nebueadnezarem magnum dominatorem
gentium, post Palcestinam et Phwniciam subactatrif non tentasse
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUII. 8-18. 153
jEgyptum, et ai tentaverit, tenfasse frustra ; et qua parte jEgyp-
tum oceupavity earn Jion vastasse et desolasse."
It is also to be borne in mind that the conquest of Egypt by
Nebuchadnezzar, which is denied by Hitzig and Graf as well
as Duncker, as it formerly was by Volney, is vouched for by
the trustworthy testimony of Berosus (in Josephns, contra A p.
i. 19), who says that Nebuchadnezzar took Egypt {fcpaTrjaai.
Alyvirrov, 'Apafiiai, x.t.X.) ; the denial, too, rests on a mere
inference from the account given by Herodotus from the
traditions of the priests regarding the reign of Apries (Hophra).
If the witness of Berosus regarding the conquest of Syria and
Phoenicia be trustworthy, why should his testimony concerning
Egypt be unreliable 1 The account of Josephus (Ant. x. 9. 7),
that Nebuchadnezzar, in the iifth year after the capture of
Jerusalem, and the twenty-third year of his reign, invaded
Egypt, killed the king (Hophra), put another in his place, and
led captive to Babylon the Jews that had fled to Egypt, — this
account will not admit of being brought forward (as has often
been attempted, and anew, of late, by Mrc. von Niebuhr,
Assur und Babel, S. 215) as sufficient testimony for a successful
campaign carried on by Nebuchadnezzar against Egypt during
the siege of Tyre. The difficulty in the way of proving that
such a campaign actually took place is not so much that the
death of Hophra in battle with Nebuchadnezzar, or his execu-
tion afterwards, contradicts all authenticated history, as that the
particular statements of Josephns regarding this campaign,
both as to the date and the carrying away to Babylon of the Jews
that had fled to Egypt, are simply conclusions drawn from a
combination of Jer. xliii. 8-13 and xliv. 30 with Jer. lii. 20 ;
besides, the execution of King Hophra by Nebuchadnezzar is
foretold neither by Jeremiah nor by Ezekiel. Ezekiel, in chap,
xxix.-xxxii., merely predicts the decline of the Egyptian influ-
ence, the breaking of the arm of Pharaoh, i.e. of his military
power, and his fall into Sheol ; but he does it in so ideal a
manner, that even the words of xxx. 13, " there shall be no more
a prince out of the land of Egypt," — i.e. Egypt shall lose all her
princes, just as her idols have been destroyed, — even these words
cannot well be applied to the execution of Pharaoh-Hophra
But Jeremiah, in chap, xliii. and in xlvi. 13 ff., predicts merely
Digitized by
Google
154 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the downfall of the pride and power of Pharaoh, and the con-
quest, devastation, and spoiling of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar.
And even ' in the words of xliv. 30, " I (Jahveh) will deliver
Pharaob-Hophra into the hand of his enemies, and of those
who seek his life, just as I delivered Zedekiah the king of
Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar his enemy, and of
those who sought after his life," there is nothing definitely
stated regarding Hophra's being executed by Nebuchadnezzar,
or killed in battle with him. Such a reference cannot be made
out from the words, even though we \»y no emphasis on the
plural "his enemies," in contrast with the expression "Nebu-
chadnezzar his enemy," and, according to xlvi. 26, understand
Nebuchadnezzar and his servants as being included under the
" enemies ; " for certainly Zedekiah was not killed by Nebu-
chadnezzar, but merely taken prisoner and carried to Babylon.
Besides, there was no need of special proof that the prophecies
of Jeremiah regarding Egypt declare much more important
matters than merely an expedition of Chaldean soldiers to
Egypt, as well as the plunder of some cities and the carrying
away of the Jews who resided there ; and that, in chap, xliv.,
what the Jews who went to Egypt against the will of God are
threatened with, is not transportation to Babylon, but destruction
in Egypt by sword, hunger, and pestilence, until only a few
individuals shall escape, and these shall return to Judah (xliv.
14, 27, 28).
But if we compare with the prophecy of Jeremiah in chap,
xliii. 8-13, and in xlvi. 13-26, that of Ezekiel in chap. xxix.
17-21, which was uttered or composed in the twenty-seventh
year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, i.e. in the year 573,
it becomes abundantly evident that Nebuchadnezzar cannot
have invaded and conquered Egypt before that year, and not
till after the fall of Tyre, which immediately ensued. And
that this was actually the case, is put beyond doubt by the
statement of Herodotus, ii. 161 £F., regarding Apries, that he
lost his throne and his life in consequence of being defeated in
battle with the Cyrenians. What Herodotus assigns as the
cause of the fall of Apries, is insufficient to account for the
unhappy end of this king. Herodotus himself states, ii. 169,
that the Egyptians were filled with the most intense hatred
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIV. 155
against Apries ; the monuments also bear witness to this fact.
This bitter feeling most have ha4 a jleeper source than merely
the unsnccessful issue of a war with Cyrene; it receives its
explanation only when we find that Apries, by his attempts
against Nebuchadnezzar, had deserved and brought on the
subjugation of Egypt by the king of Babylon ; cf. Havernick
on Ezekiel, p. 500. By sending an auxiliary army to Judah,
for the purpose of driving back the Chaldeans, and by forming
an expedition to Cyprus and the cities of Phoenicia, which was
evidently directed against the establishment of the Chaldean
power in Phoenicia, Apries had so provoked the king of Babylon,
that the latter, immediately after the subjugation of Tyre, entered
on the campaign against Egypt, which he invaded, subdued, and
spoiled, without, however, killing the king ; him he preferred
allowing to rule on, but as his vassal, and under the promise
that he would recognise his authority and pay tribute, just as
had been done with King Jehoiakim when Jerusalem was first
taken. If all this actually took place (which we may well
assume), Apries might probably have begun another war against
Cyrene, after the Chaldeans had departed, in the hope of pro-
curing some small compensation to the Egyptians for the defeat
they had suffered from the Chaldeans, by subduing that pro*
vince in the west ; in this war the king might have lost his life,
as Herodotus relates, through want of success m his attempt.
In this way, the account of Herodotus regarding the death of
Apries quite agrees with the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchad-
nezzar. But that Herodotus makes no mention of the conquest
of Egypt, is suflSciently accounted for when we remember that
he derived his information from the stories of the priests, who
carefully omitted all mention of a struggle between Egypt and
the power of Chaldea, since this had ended in the humiliation of
Egypt ; hence also mention was made only of the victories and
mighty deeds of Necho li., while his defeat at Carchemish was
passed over in silence.
Chap. xliv. Warning against Idolatry/, and Intimation of its
Punishment.
When the Jews had settled down in Egypt in different
places, they betook themselves zealously to the worship of the
Digitized by
Google
156 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
queen of heaven ; to this they were probably indaced by the
example of the heathen round about them, and by the vain
expectation of thereby promoting their interests as members of
the community (cf. ver. 17 ff.). Accordingly, when all the
people who were living here and there through the country
had assembled in Upper Egypt (ver. 15) for the celebration
of a festival, the prophet seized the opportunity of setting
before them, in an earnest manner, the ruinous consequences
of their doings. First of all, he reminds them of the judg-
ments which they and their fathers, by their continued apostasy
from the Lord, and by their idolatry, had brought on Jeru-
salem and Judah (vers. 2-7) ; and he warns them not to bring
destruction on the remnant of Judah still left, by continuing-
iu their idolatry (vers, 8-10). The threatening also is ex-
pressed, that the Lord will destroy all those who marched to
Egypt with the sword, famine, and pestilence (vers. 11-14).
But the whole assembly declare to him that they will not obey
his word, but persist in worshipping the queen of heaven ;
alleging that their fathers prospered so long as they honoured
her, and war and famine had come on them only after they
ceased to do so (vers. 15-19). Jeremiah refutes this false
notion (vers. 20-23), and once more solemnly announces to
them the sentence of destruction by sword and famine in
Egypt. As a sign that the Lord will keep His word, he finally
predicts that King Hophra shall be delivered into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar.
Ver. 1. " The word that came to Jeremiah regarding all the
Jews who were living in the land of Egypt, who dwelt in
Migdol, in Tahpanhes, in Noph, and in the land of Pathros."
From this heading we perceive that those who (according to
chap, xliii,) had gone to Egypt, had settled there in various parts
of the country, and that the following denunciations, which
at the same time form his last prophecy, were uttered a long
time after that which is given in xliii. 8-13 as having been
delivered at Tahpanhes. . The date of it cannot, indeed, be
determined exactly. From the threatening that King Hophra
shall be delivered over to the power of Nebuchadnezzar (vers.
24-30), only this much is clear, that Egypt was not yet
occupied by the Chaldeans, which, as we have shown above
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUV. 2-U. 157
(p. 154), did not take place before the year 572. Bat it by no
means follows from this that Jeremiah did not utter these words
of threatening till shortly before this event. He may have
done so even five or ten years before, in the period between
585 and 580, as we have already observed on p. 17, vol. i. The
Jews had settled down, not merely in the two northern frontier
towns, Migdol (i.e. Magdolo, Marfhd)\o<i, according to the Itiner.
Anton., twelve Roman miles from Pelusium, Copt. Meschtdl,
Egypt. Ma^ktr, the most northerly place in Egypt ; see on
Ezek. xxix. 10) and TaJtpanhes (i.e. Daphne, see on xliii. 7),
but also in more inland places, in Noph (i.e. Memphis, see on
ii. 16) and the land of Pathros (LXX. IIa6ovfyt)<i, Egypt.
Petores, i.e. Southland, viz. Upper Egypt, the Thebais of the
Greeks and Romans ; see on Ezek. xxix. 14). The word of
the Lord runs as follows : —
Vers. 2-14. T/ie teaming and threatening. — " Thus saith
Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Ye yourselves have seen
all the evil which I have brought on Jerusalem, and on all the
cities of Judah ; and, behold, they are a desolation this day,
and there is no inhabitant in them ; Yer. 3. Because of their
wickedness which they have done, by provoking me through
going to bum incense, (and) to serve other gods whom they
knew not, (neither) they (nor) ye, nor your fathers. Ver. 4.
And I sent unto yon all my servants the prophets, rising early
and sending (them), to say. Do not this abominable thing which
I hate. Yer. 5. But they did not hear, nor inclined their ear
to turn from their wickedness, by not burning incense to other
gods. Yer. 6. Therefore my wrath and mine anger poured
itself out, and burned up the cities of Judah and the streets
of Jerusalem ; so that they have become a desolation and a
waste, as at this day. Yer. 7. Now therefore thus saith
Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do ye great evil
agdnst your souls, by cutting of from yourselves man and
woman, child and suckling, out of the midst of Judah, so
leaving no remnant for yourselves ; Yer. 8. Through provoking
me by the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods
in the land of Egypt, whither ye have gone to sojourn, that ye
might bring destruction on yourselves, and that ye might
become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the
/^
Digitized by
Google
158 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
earth? Ver. 9. Have ye forgotten the evil deeds of your
fathers, and the evil deeds of the kings of Jadah, and the evil
deeds of their wives, and your own evil deeds, and the evil deeds
of- your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and
on the streets of Jerusalem ? Ver. 10. They have not been
contrite to this day, and are not afraid, nor do they walk in my
law, and in my statutes, which I have set before you and before
your fathers. Ver. 11. Therefore thus saith Jahveh of hosts,
the God of Israel : Behold, I will set my face against yon for
evil, and to cut off all Judah. Ver. 12. And I will take the
remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go to the land of
Egypt in order to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed;
in the land of Egypt shall they fall, by sword and famine shall
they be consumed ; small and great, by sword and famine shall
they die, and they shall become an execration and an astonish-
ment, and a curse and a reproach. Ver. 13. And I will punish
those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I punished Jerusalem,
by sword, and famine, and pestilence. Ver. 14. There shall not
be one escaped or left to the remnant of Judah that came
to sojourn there in the land of Egypt, so as to return to the
land of Judah, whither they long to return and dwell ; for
they shall not return except [as] escaped ones."
In order to make an impression on the people by his warn-
ing against idolatry, Jeremiah begins his address with ^ refer-
ence to the great calamity which the fathers have brought on
the kingdom of Judah through their continued idolatry (vers.
2-6). " Ye have seen all the evil," etc. ; all the cities are laid
waste and depopulated, because their inhabitants have roused
the anger of the Lord, and have not let themselves be dis-
suaded by the admonitions of the prophet^ whom God has
sent. " This day," i.e. now, at present. On ver. 3, cf. xi. 17,
xix. 4, xxxii. 32, etc. ; and as to the meaning of lt9^, see on
i. 16. In ver. 3b the address becomes more direct, through
the change into the second person, " ye ; " the audience then
present only continue these sins of their fathers. On ver. 4,
cf. vii. 25, xxy. 4, etc. n^<^^ nayhn i?^, «< the thing of this
abomination," which is equivalent to " this abominable idol-
atry." 13^ serves to render the subject more prominent, as
in Judg. xix. 24. On ver. 6, cf. xlii. 18, vii. 20. The wrath
Digitized by
Google
CHAP XLIV. 2-14. 159
of God barned in the cities, for the fire of destmction was a
manifestation of the divine wrath. As to iW} D^>3, see on
xi. 5. In vers. 7-10 follows the application of what has been
said to those present, who are asked how they come to continue
in the old sins, to their own destruction, " doing evil in regard
to your souls," i.e. for the injury, destruction of your souls,
yourself; cf. xxvi. 19, where '^79 stands for '3'?N. This is
immediately afterwards more exactly specified by 'U1 inan?, to
exterminate the whole of you, without an exception. As to
the enumeration '' man and woman," etc., cf. 1 Sam. xv. 3,
xxii. 19. The infs. 'Jp^yan? and "itspp are used as gerundives :
" inasmuch as (through this that) ye provoke me." 'For the
expression " the works of your hands," see on i. 16. In ver. 8,
an object must be supplied from ver. 7 for the expression
DW nnsn 1?D7 ; for, to take Q3? (with Hitzig) in a reflexive
sense is a very harsh construction. On 'W npjijip, cf. xlii.
18, xxvi. 6. The answer to the question now asked follows
in vers. 9 and 10, in the form of the further question, whether
they have forgotten those former sins, and that these sins
have been the cause of the evil which has befallen the land.
The interrogation expresses the reproach that they have been
able to forget both, as is evidenced by their continuance in sin.
In ver. 9, the expression " the evil deeds of Ms wives " (I'B'J) is
remarkable. Hitzig and Nagelsbach, following Kimchi, refer
the suffix to the kings, since there was always but one king at
a time. But this is an unnatural explanation ; the suffix refers
to Judah as a nation, and is used in order to comprehend the
wives of the fathers and of the kings together. It is quite
arbitrary in Ewald and Graf to change Vfi to VJ^, following
the LiXX. Tmv ap'^ovrav vfiwu ; for these translators have
mutilated the text by the omission of the following D2^n5n nw.
VB'J rfjn is not merely conserved, but even required, by Tm
IM*K'3 njn. But the prophet gives special prominence to the
evil deeds of the wives, since it was they who were most
zealous in worshipping the queen of heaven ; cf. vers. 15 and
19. ^NBT {6, " they have not been crushed," viz. by repentance
and sorrow for these sins. The transition to the third person
is not merely accounted for by the. fact that the subject treated
of is the sins of the fathers and of the present generation, — for,
Digitized by
Google
160 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
as is shown by the expression '' till this day," the prophet has
chiefly his own contemporaries in view ; but he speaks of these
in the third person, to signify the indignation with which he
turns away from men so difficult to reform. On the expres-
sion, " they had not walked in my law," cf. xxvi. 4, ix. 12.
For this the Lord will punish them severely, vers. 11-14. All
those who have fled to Egypt, with the intention of remaining
there, will be quite exterminated. On " Behold, I will set my
face,'.' etc., cf. xxi. 10. " For evil " is more exactly defined by
" to cut off all Judah," i.e. those of Judah who are in Egypt,
not those who are in Babylon. This limitation of the words
" all Judah " is necessarily required by the context, and is
plainly expressed in ver. 12, where " Judah " is specified as
" the remnant of Judah that were determined to go to Egypt."
••rini?? has the meaning of taking away, as in xv. 15. pO 1001
are to be taken by themselves ; and D^iVO K5K3, as b shown by
the accents, is to be attached to what follows, on which, too,
the emphasis is placed; in like manner, 'W a^na are to be
attached to the succeeding verb. The arrangement of the
words, like the accumulation of sentences all expressing the
same meaning, reveals the spirit of the address in which God
vents His wrath. On " they shall become an execration," etc.,
see xlii. 18. In vers. 13, 14, the threatened extermination is
further set forth. Those who dwell in Egypt shall be punished
with sword, famine, and plague, like Jerusalem. The inhabit-
ants of Egypt generally are meant ; and by the judgment
which is to fall on that country, the remnant of Judah there
shall be so completely destroyed, that none shall escape. The
leading member of the sentence is continued by y^^, " and
that they should return to the land of Judah, after which their
soul longs, that they may live there." A reason is further
assigned, and with this the address, reduced within becoming
limits, concludes: "for there shall return none except (ON *3)
fugitives," i.e. except a few individual fugitives who shall come
back. This last clause shows that we are not to understand
the declaration '' none shall escape " in the strictest meaning of
the words. Those who escape and return to Judah shall be
so few, in comparison with those who shall perish in Egypt,
as to be quite inconsiderable. Cf. the like instance of a
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUV. 15-19. 161
seeming contradiction in vers. 27, 28. On DB^WflK Nfe*:, of.
xxii. 27.
Vers. 15-19. The answer of tlie people to this threatening
address. — Ver. 15. " Then all the men who knew that their
wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women stand-
ing [there], a great maltitude, and all the people who dwelt in
the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, sajing,
Ver. 1 6. [As for] the word which thou hast spoken unto us in
the name of Jahveh, we will not hearken unto thee : Ver. 17.
But we will certainly perform every word that has proceeded
out of our own mouth, by burning incense to the queen of
heaven, and pouring out libations to her, just as we have done,
we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of
Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem ; and we were filled
with bread, and became prosperous, and saw no evil. Ver. 18.
But since we ceased to offer incense to the queen of heaven,
and to pour out libations to her, we have been in want of
everything, and are consumed by sword and famine. Ver. 19.
And when we [women] have been burning incense to the
queen of heaven, and poured out libations to her, have we
made cakes to her without our husbands, making an image
of her, and offering libations to her I " To the word of the
prophet the men and women oppose their pretended experi-
ence, that the adoration of the queen of heaven has brought
them comfort and prosperity, while the neglect of this worship,
on the other hand, has brought want and misfortune. No
doubt they inferred this, by the argument post hoc, ergo propter
hoe, from the fact that, after idolatry had been rooted out by
Josiah, adversity had befallen the land of Judah ; while, up
till that time, the kingdom of Judah had been independent,
and, for more than a century before, had been spared the suf-
fering of misfortune. Thus, through their blindness, peculiar
to the natural man, they had overlooked the minor transient
evils with which the Lord visits His people when they sin. Not
till near the end of Josiah's reign did misfortune fall on Judah:
this was when the Egyptian army, under Pharaoh-Necho,
marched through Palestine ; Josiah was slain in the battle he
had lost, the land was laid waste by the enemy, and its in-
habitants perished by sword and famine. In ver. 15, those
VOL. II. I.
/
Digitized by
Google
162 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEHUH.
who are represented speaking are all the men who knew of
their wives' idolatry, i.e. who permitted it, and all the women,
" a great company," i.e. gathered together in great numbers,
and all the rest of the people who lived in Dgypt. The speci-
fication " in Pathros " is not in apposition to the words " in the
land of Egypt," bat belongs to the verb I3jp ; it tells where
the gathering took place, viz. in a district of Upper Egypt.
From the presence of a large number of women, we may con-
clude that the assembly was a festival in honour of the queen
of heaven. The former portion of ver. 16 forms an absolute
clause, from I3'nfi to J* DK'a, " as regards the word which • . .
we will not listen to thee," i.e. with regard to this word we obey
thee not. The expression, "the word which has gone forth
out of our mouth," points to the uttering of vows : cf. Num.
XXX. 3, 13 ; Deut. xxiii. 24. 'U1 ifN "^^f}"^ means " all that
we have uttered as a vow," every vow to offer incense, etc., i.e.
to present meat and drink offerings to the queen of heaven, —
that shall we keep, fulfil, as we and our fathers have done in
the land of Judab. On this mode of worship, cf. vii. 17 f., and
the remarks there made. " And we were satisfied with bread,"
i.e. in consequence of this worship we had amply sufficient food.
D'aiO, " good," well, comfortable ; cf. xxii. 16. TK |p, "from
that time " = since. «0J? is for I3bn, from DDPi^ as in Num.
xvii. 28 ; cf. Ewald, § 197, a. To this statement on the part
of the men, the women further add, ver. 19, that they do not
engage in this sacrificial worship or prepare the sacrificial
cakes without their husbands, i.e. without their knowledge and
approval. This is put forward by the women in the way of
self-vindication ; for, according to the law, Num. xxx. 9 ff.,
the husband could annul, i.e. declare not binding, any vow
which had been made by his wife without his knowledge.
Although ,it is women who are speaking, the mase. O^^P? is
used as being the gender which most commonly occurs ; it also
pretty often stands for the feminine. The inf. constr. ^Bf??*
(with f) is here employed, in conformity with later usage,
instead of the inf. ab»., for the finite verb, by way of continua-
tion ; cf. Ewald, § 351, c, where, however, many passages
have been set down as falling under this rule that demand a
different explanation. The meaning of 'l^VJ!??? is disputed ; the
N.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUV. 20-28. 163
final n is a suffix^ written with Raphe, thongh Mappik also
occnrs in some MSS. The Hiphil of this verb is found else-
where only in Ps. Ixxviii. 40, and there iii the signification of
vexing, grieving, like the Piel in Isa. Ixiii. 10, Ps. Ivi. 6.
Ewald translates " in order to move her," i.e. make her well-
disposed, — but quite arbitrarily, for to provoke is the very
opposite of rendering propitioas. The verb 3SJ> also signifies
" to form, shape," Job x. 8 ; and in this sense the Hiphil is
used here, " in order to put them into shape," i.e. to form the
moon-goddess (queen of heaven) in or on the sacrificial cakes
(Kimchi, Raschi, Dahler, Maurer, Graf, etc.). The sacrificial
cakes (C^J-* s^® *>" "^^ ^8) probably had the form of a crescent,
or even of the full moon, like the aeXrjvai of the Greeks, which
used to be offered in Athens at the time of the full moon in the
month of Munychion, to Artemis, as goddess of the moon ; cf.
Hermann, gottesdienstUche AlterthUmer der Grieehen, 2 Ausg.
S. 146, Anm. 13, u. S. 414.
Vers. 20-23. Refutation of these statements of the people. —
Ver. 20. " And Jeremiah spake to all the people, to the men
and women, and to all the people that had given him answer,
saying, Ver. 21. Did not the incense-burning which ye per-
formed in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem,
ye and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the
people of the land, — did not Jahveh remember them, and did it
not arise in His mind ? Ver. 22. And Jahveh coidd no longer
endure it, because of the wickedness of your deeds, because of
the abominations which ye committed ; thus your land became
a desolation, and a waste, and a curse, without an inhabitant,
as at this day. Ver. 23. Because ye burned incense and sinned
against Jahveh, and did not hearken to the voice of Jahveh,
and in His law, in His statutes, and in His testimonies ye walked
not; therefore this evil hath befallen you, as at this day."
Jeremiah answers them that their idol-worship, by which they
have provoked the Lord their God, is the very cause of the
misfortune that has befallen them, because God could no
longer endure this abomination which they would not forsake.
ni3|3n is a noun, "the burning of incense," which includes,
besides, all the other elements of idolatrous worship; hence
the word is resumed, at the close, under the plur. oniK, « these
Digitized
.by Google
164 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
things." n^JWl is 3d pers.'sing. nent., lit. " it has come into His
mind," i.e. He has carefully considered it, and that in the way
of punishment, for He could no longer endure such abomina-
tion. The imperf. ??'' is used for the historic tense (imperf.
with 1 consec), because the 1 would necessarily be separated
from the verb by the (6 ; and it is employed instead of the
perfect, which we would be inclined to expect after the pre-
ceding ^3r, since that which is treated of is something that
endures for a considerable time ; cf . Ewald, § 346, b. On the
expression " because of the evil," etc., cf. xxi. 12, iv. 4, etc. ;
on the last clause in ver. 22, cf. vers. 6 and 12. — Ver. 23 is an
emphatic and brief repetition of what has already been said.
nsnj? is for >^^i>, as in Deut. xxxi. 29 : cf. Gesenius, § 74,
note 1 ; Ewald, § 194, b.
Vers. 24-30. Announcement of the punishment for this
idolatry. — ^Ver. 24. " And Jeremiah said unto all the people,
and unto all the women, Hear the word of Jahveh, all of
Judah that are in the land of Egypt ; Ver. 25. Thus saith
Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Ye and your wives have
both spoken with your month, and fulfilled it with your hands,
saying, We will assuredly perform our vows which we have
vowed, by burning incense to the queen of heaven, and by
pouring out libations to her : ye will by all means perform
your vows, and carry out your vows. Ver. 26. Therefore
hear the word of Jahveh, all Judah that dwell in the land of
Egypt : Behold, I have sworn by my great name, saith Jahveh,
truly my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any
man of Judah, saying, ' As the Lord Jahveh liveth,' in all the
land of Egypt. Ver. 27. Behold, I will watch over them for
evil, and not for good ; and all the men of Judah that are in
the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by
famine, till they are annihilated. Ver. 28. And those who
escape the sword shall return out of the land of 'Egypt to
the land of Judah, a small number ; and all the remnant of
Judah, that went to the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall
know whose word shall stand, mine or theirs. Ver. 29. And
this shall be the sign to you, saith Jahveh, that I will punish
you in this place, that ye may know that my words shall surely
rise up against you for evil: Ver. 30. Thus hath Jahveh
"N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUV. 24-30. 165
spoken, Behold, I will give Pharaoh-Hophra into the hand of
his enemies, and into the hand of those who seek his life, just
as I have given Zedekiah the king of Jadah into the hand of
Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, who was his enemy, and
sought his life."
After refuting the false assertion of the people, Jeremiah
once more announces to them, on behalf of God, in the most
solemn manner, the punishment of extermination by sword and
famine in Egypt ; this he does for the purpose of giving the
greatest possible emphasis to his warning against persevering
in idolatry. For substance, this announcement is similar to
that of vers. 11—14, but the expression is stronger. Even in
the summary account of their offences, ver. 25, the words are
so chosen and arranged as to bring out clearly the determina-
tion of the people to persevere in worshipping the queen of
heaven. " As for you and your wives, ye have spoken with
your mouth and fulfilled it with your hand" (on the Vav consic.
attached to nnannj cf. Ewald, § 344, 6), i.e. ye have uttered vows
and then carried them out ; for ye say. We must keep the vows
that we have vowed. It is to be observed that the verbs iij"!?"!?!,
and in the concluding portion njO'pn and 'l3'E'J|ri, are feminine,
since the address chiefly applies to the wives, who cluug most
tenaciously to idolatry. In the clause 'U1 n3D''pri Cgn, " ye will
make your vows and perform them," there is unmistakeable irony,
in which the reference is to the wilfulness of the people in this
idolatry. This iffeXodprja-Keia is shown by the inf. abs. Cipn,
which strengthens nja'pn. "To establish vows," i.e. to make
them, was not a thing commanded, but left to one's free deter-
mination. Hence, also, no appeal to the maxim that vows
which have been made or uttered must be fulfilled, can justify
the making of the vows. The form 'l30''i5J|i for fijopn is an
unusual one ; and the ^ which the Hirik takes after it is occa-
sioned by the form D*pn; cf. Ewald, § 196, e. — The announcement
of the punishment is introduced by a solemn oath on the part of
God. Jahveh swears by His great name, {.e. as the one who
has shown Himself God by His mighty deeds — who has the
power of keeping His word. The name is, of course, only a
manifestation of His existence. OS as a particle used in swear-
ing = certainly not. His name shall no more be named in the
Digitized by
Google
y
166 THE PBOPHEGIES OF JEBEHIAH.
moath of any Jew in the land of Egypt, i.e. be used in assevera-
tions, because all the Jews in Egypt shall be exterminated. On
the expression, " Behold, I will watch over them," etc., cf . xxxL
28 and xxi. 10. In ver. 28, it is more exactly stated that only
a few individuals shall escape the sword and return to Judah ;
thus, no one shall remain behind in Egypt. By this judgment,
all the remnant of Judah that went to Egypt shall find out
whose word — Jahveh's or theirs — will endure, i.e. prove true.
Dnw 'aQD properly depends on "i2'n, « the word from me or from
them " (the people). — Ver. 29. In confirmation of this threaten-
ing, the Lord gives them another sign which, when it is fulfilled,
will let them know that the destruction announced to them shall
certainly befall them. The token consists in the giving up of
Eing Hophra into the hand of his enemies. As certainly as
this shall take place, so certainly shall the extermination of the
Jews in Egypt ensue. The name jnBPi is rendered Ovd^pi^ in
Manetho, in the classical writers ^Airplrj^, Aprils, who, accord-
ing to Herodotus (ii. 161), reigned twenty-five years, but
nineteen according to Manetho (cf. Boeckh, Manetho, etc., p.
341 ff.). His death took place in the year 570 B.C. This date
is reached by a comparison of the following facts : — Cambyses
conquered Egypt in the year 525 ; and in the preceding year
Amasis had died, after a reign of forty-four years (Herod, iii.
10). Hence Amasis — who took Apries prisoner, and gave
him up to the common people, who killed him (Herod, ii.
161-163, 169) — must have commenced his reign in the year
570. On the death of Apries, or Hophra, cf. the explanation
given on p. 154 f., where we have shown that the words, " I will
give him into the hand of his enemies, and of those who seek his
life," when compared with what is said of Zedekiah, " into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar his enemy," do not require us to
assume that Hophra was killed by Nebuchadnezzar, and can
very well be harmonized with the notice of Herodotus regarding
the death of this king.
Hitzig and Graf have taken objection to this sign given by
Jeremiah, and regard vers. 29, 30 as a spurious vaticinium ex
eoen<w, the work of another hand. The reasons they urge are,
that it is scarcely possible Jeremiah could have lived till 570 ;
that ver. 29 f. would be the only place where Jeremiah offered
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIV. 24-30. 167
snch a criterion ; and that, even as it is, these verses contain
nothing original, but, by their stiff and lifeless parallelism, are
easily seen to be an artificial conclusion. Of these three argu-
ments, the last can prove nothing, since it is merely a subjective
opinion on an aesthetic point. The second, again, rather declares
for than against the genuineness. For " if it were not Jere-
miah's usual, elsewhere, to offer some criterion, then such an
interpolation would have been all the more carefully avoided "
(Nagelsbach). Of course we do not find any other signs of this
kind in Jeremiah ; but it does not follow from this that he
could not offer such a thing in a special case. Yet the ground
taken up by Nagelsbach, as sufficient to establish this position,
seems quite untenable, viz. that the announcement of the fate
in store for the king must have been the answer of the true God
to the presumptuous boast of Apries, mentioned by Herodotus,
" that even God could not dethrone him, so firmly did he think
he was established : " this view of the matter seems too remote
from the object of Jeremiah's address. And finally, the first-
named objection receives importance only on the supposition
that " an event which was intended to serve as niN, a sigh or
criterion, must be something that was to happen immediately,
or within a brief appointed period of time, so that a person
might be able, from the occurrence of the one, to conclude that
what had been foretold about a later period would as certainly
take place " (Graf). But there are no sufficient grounds for
this hypothesis. If no definite time be fixed for the occurrence
of this sign, then it may not appear till a considerable time
afterwards, and yet be a pledge for the occurrence of what was
predicted for a still later period. That Jeremiah lived till the
year 570 is certainly not inconceivable, but it is not likely that
he uttered the prophecy now before us at the advanced age of
nearly eighty years. Now, if his address is allowed to be a real
prophecy, and not a mere vaticinium ex eventu, as Hitzig, look-
ing from his dogmatic standpoint, considers it, then it must
have been uttered before the year 570 ; but whether this was
two, or five, or ten years before, makes no material difference.
The address itself contains nothing to justify the assumption of
Graf, that it is closely connected with the prophecy in xliii.
8-13, and with the warning against the migration into Egypt,
Digitized by
Google
168 THE PBOPHECISS OF JEREMIAH.
chap. xlii. That the Jews spoken of had not been long in
Egypt, cannot be inferred from vers. 8, 12, and 18 ; on the
contrary, the fact that they had settled down in different parts
of Egj'pt, and had assembled at Pathros for a festival, shows
that they had been living there for a considerable time before.
Nor does it follow, from the statement in ver. 14 that they
longed to return to Judah, that they had gone to Egypt some
months before. The. desire to return into the land of their
fathers remains, in a measure, in the heart of the Jew even at
the present day. After all, then, no valid reason can be assigned
for doubting the genuineness of these verses.
On the fulfilment of 'these threatenings Nagelsbach remarks :
" Every one must be struck on finding that, in chap, xliv., the
extermination of the Jews who dwelt in Egypt is predicted ;
while some centuries later, the Jews in Egypt were very
numerous, and that country formed a central point for the
Jewish exiles (cf . Herzog, ReaUEncycL xvii. S. 285). Alexander
the Great found so many Jews in Egypt, that he peopled with
Jews, in great measure, the city he had founded and called
after himself (cf. Herzog, i. S. 235). How did these Jews get to
Egypt? Whence the great number of Jews whom Alexander
found already in Egypt ? I am inclined to think that we must
consider them, for the most part, as the descendants of those
who had come into the country with Jeremiah. But, according
to this view of the matter, Jeremiah's prophecy has not been
fulfilled." Nagelsbach therefore thinks we must assume that
idolatrous worship, through time, almost entirely ceased among
the exiled Jews in Egypt as it did among those in Babylon, and
that the Lord then, in return, as regards the penitents, repented
of the evil which He had spoken against them (xxvi. 13, 19).
But this whole explanation is fundamentally wrong, since the
assertion, that Alexander the Great found so many Jews in
Egypt, that with them mainly he peopled the city of Alexandria
which he had founded, is contrary to historic testimony. In
Herzog {Real-Eucycl. i. S. 235), to which Nagelsbach refers for
proof on the point, nothing of the kind is to be found, but
rather the opposite, viz. the following : " Soon after the founda-
tion of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, this city became not
merely the centre of Jewish Hellenism in Egypt, but generally
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUV. 24-30. 169
speaking the place of union between Oriental and Occidental
Jews. The external condition of the Jews of Alexandria must,
on the whole, be characterized as highly prosperous. The first
Jewish settlers had, indeed, been compelled by Alexander the
Great to taike up their residence in the city (Josephus, Antt.
XV. 3. 1) ; so, too, were other Jews, by Ptolemy i. or Lagi (ibid.
xii. 2. 4). But both of these monarchs granted them the same
rights and privileges as the Macedonians, including Greek
citizenship ; and in consequence of the extremely advantageous
position of the city, it speedily increased in importance. A still
larger number, therefore, soon went thither of their own accord,
and adopted the Greek language." In this account, the quota-
tion from Josephus, Antt. xv. 3. 1, is certainly incorrect ; for
neither is there in that passage any testimony borne to the
measures attributed to Alexander, nor are there any other
historical testimonies given from antiquity. But as little can
we find any proofs that Alexander the Great found so many
Jews in Egypt that he could, to a large extent, people with
them the city he had founded. It is merely testified by
Josephus {Antt. xi. 8. 5), and by Hecatseus.in Josephus
(eotitra Ap. i. 22 ; p. 457, ed. Haverc), that Alexander had
Jewish soldiers in his army ; it is further evident, from a notice
iu Josephus, de bell. Jud. ii. 18. 7, contra Ap. ii. 4 (cf. Curtius
Rufus, iv. 8), that the newly founded city, even under Alexan-
der, immediately after it was commenced, and still more under
Ptolemy Lagi (cf. Josephus, Antt. xii. 1, and Hecatsens in Jos.
contra Ap. i. 22, p. 455), attracted a constantly increasing
multitude of Jewbh immigrants. This same Ptolemy, after
having subdued Phoenicia and Coele-Syria in the year 320, and
taken Jerusalem also, it would seem, by a stratagem on a
Sabbath day, transported many captives and hostages out of
the whole country into Egypt ; many, too, must have been sold
at that time as slaves to the inhabitants of such a wealthy
country as Egypt : see a statement in the book of Aristeas, at
the end of Havercamp's edition of Josephus, ii. p. 104. In the
same place, and in Josephus' Antt. xii. 1, Ptolemy is said to
have armed 30,000 Jewish soldiers, placed them as garrisons in
the fortresses, and granted them all the rights of Macedonian
citizens (laoiroXa^eia). Ewald well says, History of the People
Digitized by
Google
170 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of Israel, vol. iv. of second edition, p. 254 : " When we farther
take into consideration, that, in addition to all other similar
disasters which had previously befallen them, many Jews were
removed to Egypt (especially by Ochus, after Egypt had been
reconquered), we can easily explain how Ptolemy Philadelphus
can be said to have liberated 100,000 Egyptian Jews. Ariateas'
Book, p. 105." This much, at least, is proved by these various
notices, — that, in order to understand how such a vast increase
took place in the number of the Jews in Egypt, we do not need
to regard them as the descendants of those who removed thither
with Jeremiah, and so to question the fulfilment of the prophecy
now before us. Jeremiah does not, of course, threaten with
destruction all those Jews who live in Egypt, but only those who
at that time went thither against the divine will, and there
persevered in their idolatry. We do not know how great
may have been the number of these immigrants, but they could
hardly exceed twb thousand, — perhaps, indeed, there were not
so many. All these, as had been foretold them, may have
perished in the conquest of Egypt by the Chaldeans, and after-
wards, through the sword, famine, and pestilence ; for the
myriads of Jews in Egypt at the time of Ptolemy Lagi could
easily have removed thither during the period of 250 years
intermediate between the immigration in Jeremiah's time and
the foundation of Alexandria, partly as prisoners and slaves,
partly through voluntary settlement.
Chap. xlv. A Promise addressed to Baruch.
Ver. 1. "Th6 word which Jeremiah the prophet spake to
Baruch the son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a
book at the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoia-
kim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying, Ver. 2. Thus
saith Jahveh, the God of Israel, to thee, O Baruch : Ver. 3.
Thou saidst. Woe to me now ! for Jahveh hath added sorrow to
my pain: I am weary with sighing, and no rest do I find.
Ver. 4. Thus shalt thou say unto him, Thus saith Jahveh:
Behold, what I have built I will destroy, and what I have
planted I will pluck up, and, that is the whole earth. Ver. 5.
And thou seekest great things for thyself; seek them not: for,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. ZLV. 171
behold, I will bring evil on all flesh, saith Jahveh; but I will give
thy life unto thee for booty in all places whither thou shalt go.".
From the superscription in ver. 1, it appears that this word
of God came to Baruch through Jeremiah the prophet, in the
fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, when Baruch was
writing out, or had written out, in a book-roll the prophecies
that had been uttered by Jeremiah up till that time. It is
not necessarily implied in the infin. ^^33 that the word of
God came during the transcription, while he was still engaged
in writing : it may also mean, " when he was ready with the
writing," had got done with it ; and Hitzig is wrong when he
rejects as " misleading " the view which Movers takes — " when
he had written." The writing down of the addresses of Jere-
miah in the year mentioned is related in chap, xsxvi. ; thus the
substance of this chapter and that of chap, xxxvi. agree.
" These words " can only be the addresses (words) of Jeremiah
which Baruch was then writing down. From this, Hitzig,
Graf, Nagelsbach, and others, infer that this small piece was
the last in the copy of Jeremiah's prophecies originally prepared
under Jehoiakim, — if not of the first one which was intended to
be read in the temple, at least of the second copy which was
made after the former one had been destroyed ; and that it was
only after the collection had been enlarged to the extent of the
collection handed down to as, that this portion was affixed as
an appendix to the end of the prophecies of Jeremiah which
relate to his own country. But this inference is not a valid
one. " These words " are the addresses of the prophet in
general, which Baruch wrote down ; and that only those which
were uttered up to the fourth year of Jehoiakim are intended,
is implied, not in the demonstrative " these," but in the date
given afterwards, by which " these " is further specified. In
ver. 1 it is merely stated that at that time the word of God,
given below, came to Jeremiah, and throtfgh him to Baruch,
but not that Baruch wrote down this also on that occasion,
and appended it to the roll of Jeremiah's prophecies which
had been prepared at his dictation. It may have been written
down much later, possibly not till the whole of Jeremiah's
prophecies were collected and arranged in Egypt. Moreover,
the position occupied by this chapter in the collection shows
Digitized by
Google
172 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
that this message of comfort to Barach was added as an ap-
pendix to those predictions of Jeremiah which concern Jadah
and Israel.
The occasion for this message of comfort addressed to the
prophet's attendant is pointed out in ver. 3, in the words which
Barach had uttered : " Woe to me ! for Jahveh adds sorrow to
my pain." Bamch felt *' pain," i.e. pain of soul, at the moral
corruption of the people, their impenitence and obduracy in
sin and vice, just like the prophet himself, xv. 18. To this
pain God adds sorrow, by threatening the judgment which
shall fall on Jadah for sin, and which was even then begin-
ning to break over the land ; cf . viii. 18 ff. Baruch sighs over
this till he is wearied, and finds no rest ; cf . Lam. v. 5. " I
am weary with my sighing," is a reminiscence from Ps. vi. 7.
This sorrow in addition to his pain was not caused in him for
the first time by writing down the discourses of the prophet,
bat was rather thus freshened and increased. The answer of
the Lord to this sighing is of a stern character, yet soothing
for Baruch. The sentence of destruction has been determined
on. What the Lord has built He will now destroy : it is not
said why, since the reason was sufficiently known from the
prophet's utterances. As to the expression in ver. 4, cf. i. 10,
xxxi. 28. The destruction regards the whole earth, "IW
"'"'!' n^T ?> ^i*' "and as regards the whole earth, it is it,"
namely that I destroy. On the employment of ns in intro-
ducing the subject, cf. Dan. ix. 13, Hag. ii. 5, and Ewald,
§ 277 d. n??'*'?' <Jo«s not mean "the whole land," but "the
whole earth:" this is indubitably evident from the parallel
" upon all flesh," ver. 5, i.e. the whole of humanity, as in xxv.
'31. The sentence is passed on all the earth, in accordance
with the announcement made in chap. xxv. 15 ff. — Ver. 5.
But when the judgment extends over the whole of humanity,
an individual man cannot ask for anything great. " To seek
for great things," i.e. to ask for things which in general or
under certain circumstances are unattainable (cf. Ps. cxxxi. 1),
is here used with reference to worldly prosperity. When the
whole world is visited with judgment, an individual man must
not make great demands, but be content with saving his life.
This is promised to Baruch in ver. 5b, to alleviate his pain
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVL-LL 173
and sorrow. " To give life to any one for booty," means to
let him escape vith his life ; cf . xxi. 9, xxxviii. 2, xxxix. 18.
In the words, "in all places whither thou shalt go," it is in-
timated that he will be obliged to avoid destruction by flight,
but will thereby save his life.
rv. FB0PHECIE3 DIBECTED AGAINST FOREIGN NATIONS. —
CHAP. XLVI.-LI.
Like Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, Jeremiah has uttered pre-
dictions concerning a number of heathen nations, and incor-
porated them with the collection of his prophecies regarding
Judah and Israel. But while in Amos the utterances regarding
six nations round about the kingdom of God, as representatives
of the whole heathen world, merely pave the way for announcing
judgment on Judah and Israel, and are given for the purpose
of teaching the necessity for judgment on the whole world that
is opposed to God, in order that the kingdom of God may be
advanced ; Isaiah, on the other hand, when the power of
Assyria appeared against the kingdom of God, brought for-
ward the thought, in a pretty long series of oracles against the
nations, chap, xiii.-xxiii., that all kingdoms ^nd peoples, cities
and men of the world that had apostatized from God, and still
continued in apostasy, shall be humbled, and compelled by
judgments inflicted on them to seek refuge with the God of
Israel, — to submit to Him, and to offer their gifts for the
establishment of His kingdom ; and he concludes this announce-
ment with an apocalyptic description of the judgment on the
whole earth, and the consummation of the kingdom of God in
glory, chap, xxiv.-xxvii. The object aimed at by Ezekiel and
Jeremiah in their oracles against the heathen nations is more
specific. .Ezekiel, in view of the destruction of Jerusalem and
the kingdom of Judah, directs a series of oracles against seven
nations ; and in these addresses he predicts the destruction of
the heathen world, and the fall of all heathen powers into
Sheol, in order that these may not exult over the fall of the
people of God, but rather, in the judgment on Israel, recognise
the omnipotence and justice of the Lord, the Judge of all the
earth. And Jeremiah, in his addresses to the nations, chap.
Digitized by
Google
/
/
174 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREI^AH.
xlvi.'-li., merely brings out more fully the execution of that
sentence which he had already proclaimed (chap, xzt.) to all the
peoples and kingdoms of the earth, shortly before the appear-
ance of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon in the fourth
year of Jehoiakim's reign. The multitude of nations and
tribes, far and near, to which, in xxv. 17-26, he gives the cup
of the divine wrath out of Jahveh's hand, is in chap, xlvi.-li.
reduced to nine nations ; and these are named in such order,
that here, as there (chap, xxv.), Egypt heads the list (chap,
xlvi.), while Babylon closes it (chap. I., li.). Of the rest of
these nations, those related to Israel, viz. Moabites, Ammon-
ites, and Edomites, have special prophecies addressed to them,
chap, xlviii. and xlix. 1—22 ; but the others are more sum-
marily addressed. Thus, in the oracle pronounced against the
Philistines, the Phoenicians also (Tyre and Sidon) are threat-
ened with extermination (chap, xlvii.) ; the many Arabian
tribes severally named in chap. xxv. are comprehended under
the general designations "Kedar" and "the kingdoms of
Hazor" (xlix. 28—33); while the kingdoms of the north are
represented by Damascus (xlix. 23-27), and the distant nations
of the east (Media and Elam) by Elam, xlix. 34-39.
Ewald, Hitzig, Graf, and Nagelsbach would account for
several smaller nations being taken together in one prophecy,
on the ground that the prophet wished to make out the signifi-
cant number seven, — ^just as Amos (i. 1-ii. 5) brings forward
seven kingdoms before his address is directed to Israel, and as
Ezekiel also has arranged his prophecies against the nations in
accordance with the number seven. But though the number
seven plainly appears in Amos and Ezekiel, such an assumption
cannot be established in the case of Jeremiah. To make out
this number, the oracles against Elam and Babylon are viewed
as later additions, on the ground that both of them are connected
with the first years of the reign of Zedekiah. But the assertion
that the first seven belong to the fourth year of Jehoiakim
cannot be proved. The second prophecy regarding Egypt (xlvi.
14-28), and that against the Philistines (chap, xlvii^), contain,
in their heading^, indications of the time of composition, which
do not point to the fourth year of Jehoiakim. With this also
accords the remark further brought to bear on the alleged
Digitized by
Google
CHAP, XLVl-Ll 175
composition of those seven prophecies in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, — ^that this follows, not merely from the general
agreement of their contents with chap. xlvi. as well as with chap.
XXV., hut also from the fact that *' the same expressions which
the prophet uses in chap. xxv. with reference to the judgment
of all nations, are re-echoed in chap. xlvi.-xlix. 33: e.g. cf.
xxv. 31, 34, with xlvi. 10 ; xxv. 35 with xlvi. 5, 6 ; xxv. 29,
31, with xlvii. 6, 7 ; and particularly xxv. 28, 29, with xlix. 12
(Caspari on Obadiah, p. 16) : cf. also xxv. 27 with xlviii. 26 ;
xxv. 30 with xlviii. 33 ; xxv. 34 with xlix. 20 ; xxv. 38 with
xlix. 19 and xlvi. 16." For, of all these piassages, none belongs
to the second prophecy against Egypt (xlvi. 14-28), and to that
against the Philistines (chap, xlvii.), except the last-quoted
passage, xlvi. 16, in which the expression na^'n ann agrees with
xxv. 38, if in the latter passage we read 2"in for liin. But this
expression is also repeated in the oracle against Babylon, 1. 16 ;
so that no proof can be drawn, from a consideration of the
language employed, to show that the prophecies against Egypt
(xlvi. 14-28) and against the Philistines (chap, xlvii.) belong
to the same time, as has been supposed. And the assertion that
the prophecy against Elam forms an appendix to those which
precede, could have been made only by a mind in a state of
perplexity. Its position, after that against the Arabian tribes,
and before that against Babylon, exactly agrees with the place
occupied by Elam in xxv. 5.^
* From the above statement, the propriety and correctness of arrange-
ment among these oracles in Jhe Hebrew text will both be apparent. On the
other hand, the transposition made in the Greek text of the LXX. (abeady
referred to in the note on p. 33 of voL i.) is characterized, even by Ewald and
Hitzig, as "arbitrary" and "incorrect." Ewaldremarks: "We cannot find that
any other principle was acted upon in their arrangement than that the large
portion about Babylon, chap, l.ff., should be made as prominent as possible;
the small piece about the Elamites which precedes it, xlix. 34-39, was put
the very first, probably because it was thought desirable that, seeing liey
were then under Persian irule, what plainly referred to Persia should be
made conspicuous ; the portion directed against the Babylonians was then
placed immediately after that referring to Egypt; that referring to the
Philistines was then put in its place, but that referring to Edom, as being
longer, was inserted after it ; then the three small pieces on Ammon, Eedar,
and Damascus were put together, while the large one about Moab con-
cluded this much-distorted series." But the assertion of Movers and Hitzig
Digitized by
Google
176 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEMIAR.
When we examine the contents of these nine oracles, we find
that the one against Babylon differs from all the preceding in
this, that it announces not merely the ruin of Babylon, but also
the salvation of Israel ; but this peculiarity is the very point in
which it agrees with the prophecies against Egypt, of which the
second ends with a promise in Israel's favour (xlvi. 27, 28).
This correspondence shows us that we cannot separate the pro-
phecy regarding Babylon from the others, or even place it in
contrast with them. Egypt and Babylon were, at that time,
the two great powers of this world which sought to oppress and
destroy the kingdom of God. The fall of one or the other of
these powers was thus for Israel a pledge that they would be
preserved and saved. In the remaining oracles, the reference
to the theocracy is quite placed in the background. Only in
that against Ammon do we meet with the complaint that it had
taken possession of the cities of Israel, as if Israel had no heir
(xlix. 1). In the others there is no mention made of offence
against the theocracy, but only of pride, arrogance, and carnal
reliance on their earthly power, for which they shall be humbled
and punished. Further, it is to be observed that the oracles
against Egypt, Moab, Ammon, and Elam conclude with the pro-
mise of restoration at the end of the days, Le. in the Messianic
future (cf. xlvi. 26, xlviii. 47, xlix. 6 and 39). All these things
plainly show that these oracles against the people merely repeat,
in greater detail, the sentence already pronounced, chap, xxv.,
against all nations : God the Lord has appointed the king of
Babylon to execute this sentence, and for this end will give
him, in the immediate future, and till his appointed time shall
end, supremacy over the nations ; after that, Babylon also shall
—that this arrangement in the Greek text did not originate with the trans-
lator, but was found in the original, and that, too (according to Movers), at
the time of Alexander's campaign against Persia — rests on critical conjec-
tures regarding chap. xlyi. 27, 28, -which are decidedly erroneous. More-
over, the insertion of these oracles into the middle of chap, xxv., between
vers. 13 and 15, in the LXX. text, is due to the arbitrary conduct of the
Alexandrine translator, as even Hitzig allows that whoever arranged the
chapter did not find it in a fragmentary condition, but had himself dismem-
bered it. Yet Hitzig is of opinion that these oracles originally belonged to
somewhere about chap, xxv., — a view that rests on grounds which, in the
note on p. 376 &. of vol. i., we have already shown to be untenable.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 1, 2. 177
succumb to the sentence of ruin passed on it ; and for Israel,
with the deliverance from Babylon, there will arise a state of
prosperity in which all nations will afterwards participate. In
giving details with regard to these announcements of judgment,
Jeremiah throughout falls back on the expressions of the older
paophets, just as he does in his prophecies regarding Israel and
Jndah ; these expressions he reproduces in a manner suited to
the circumstances of his time, and still further developes. Cf.
the collection of these references in Kueper on Jeremiah, p. 79 £f . ;
see further the proofs given in the following commentary on each
particular case.
Chap. xlvi. On Egypt.
Vers. 1 and 2. Superscriptions. — Ver. 1 contains the title
for the whole collection of prophecies regarding the nations
(D^sn, as contrasted with Israel, mean the heathen nations),
chap. xlvi.-li. As to the formula, " What came as the word of
Jahveh to Jeremiah," etc., cf. the remarks on xiv. 1. — In ver. 2,
the special heading of this chapter begins with the word D^V'?!'-
^T^ is subordinated by ? to the general title, — properly, " with
regard to Egypt : " cf. 2t«to^, etc., xlviii. 1, xlix. 1, 7, 23, 28,
also xxiii. 9. This chapter contains two prophecies regarding
Egypt, vers. 2-12, and vers. 13-28. Bnx»i» refers to both.
After this there follows an account of the occasion for the first
of these two prophecies, in the words, " Concerning the army of
Pharaoh-Necho, the king of Egypt, which was at the river
Euphrates, near Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar the king
of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah king of Judah." toJ, as in 2 Ohron. xxxv. 20, or nb>,
as in 2 Kings xxiii. 29, in LXX. Ney(aa> ; Egyptian, according
to Brugsch (Hist. d!Egypte, i. p. 252), Nehdou; in Herodotus
Neicm, — is said by Manetho to have been tbe sixth king of the
twenty-sixth (Saite) dynasty, the second Pharaoh of this name,
the son of Psammetichus l., and grandson of Necho l. Brugsch
says he reigned from 611 to 595 B.C. See on 2 Chron. xxiii.
29. The two relative clauses are co-ordinate, i.e. "'B'K in each
case depends on ?^n. The first clause merely states where
Pharaoh's army was, the second tells what befell it at the
Euphrates. It is to this that the following prophecy refers.
VOL. II. M
Digitized by
Google
178 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
Fharaoh-Necho, soon after ascending the throne, in the last
year of Josiah's reign (610 B.C.), had landed in Palestine, at
the bay of Acre, with the view of subjugating Hither Asia as
far as the Euphrates, and had defeated and slain King Josiah,
who marched oat against him. He next deposed Jehoahaz, whom
the people had raised to the throne as Josiah's successor, and
carried him to Egypt, after having substituted Eliakim, the
elder brother of Jehoahaz, and made him his vassal-king, under
the name of Jehoiakim. When he had thus laid Judah under
tribute, he advanced farther into Syria, towards the Euphrates,
and had reached Carchemish on that river, as is stated in this
verse : there his army was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, in the
fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim (606 B.C.) ; see on 2
Kings xxiii. 29 f. Carchemish is Kt,pici^<nop, Circesium, or Cer-
cusium of the classical writers,^ Arabic XxujJ^^, a fortified
city at the junction of the Chebar with the Euphrates, built on
the peninsula formed by the two rivers (Ammian. Marc, xxiii.
5, Procop. bell. Pera. ii. 5, and Maras9. under Karkesija). All
that now remains of it are ruins, called by the modem Arabs
Abu Pnera, and situated on the Mesopotamian side of the
Euphrates, where that river is joined by the Chebar (Ausland,
1864, S. 1058). This fortress was either taken, or at least
besieged, by Necho. The statement, " in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim," can be referred exegetically only to the time of
the defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish, or the year of the
battle, and is actually so understood by most interpreters. No
one but Niebuhr {Gesch. Ass. u. Bab. S. 59, 86, 370 ff.) alters
the date of the battle, which he places in the third year of
Jehoiakim, partly from consideration of Dan. i. 1, partly from
other chronological calculations ; he would refer the date given
in our verse to the time when the following song was composed
or published. But Dan. i. 1 does not necessarily require us to
make any such assumption (see on that passage), and the other
chronological computations are quite uncertain. Exegetically,
it is as impossible to insert a period after " which Nebuchad-
nezzar the king of Babylon smote " (Nieb. p. 86, note 3), as to
' See the opinion of Bawlinson in Smith's Bible Dictionary, vol. i. p. 278.
— Tb.
X.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 8-12. 179
connect the date <'in the fourth year of Jehoiakim" vith
" which word came to Jeremiah " (ver. 1). The title in ver. 1
certainly does not refer specially to the prophecy about Egypt,
but to D)iiin"7y. But if we wished to make the whole of ver. 2
dependent on 'w -\Tt iTn ne'K, which would, at all events, be a
forced, unnatural construction, then, from the combination of
the title in ver. 1 with the specification of time at the end of
ver. 2, it would follow that all the prophecies regarding the
nations had come to Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim,
— which would contradict what is said in the heading to the
oracle against Elam (xllx. 34), not to mention the oracle against
Babylon. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent us from
assuming that the first prophecy against Egypt was revealed to
Jeremiah, and uttered by him, in the same fourth year of
Jehoiakim in which Necho was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar.
In this way, the argument brought forward by Niebuhr in
support of his forced interpretation, viz. that all specifications of
time in the addresses of Jeremiah refer to the period of com-
position, loses all its force. In zlv. 1 also, and in li. 9, the
time when the event occurred coincides with the time when the
utterance regarding it was pronounced. Although we assume
this to hold in the case before us, yet it by no means follows
that what succeeds, in vers. 3-12, is not a prophecy, but a song
or lyric celebrating so important a battle, " the picture of an
event that had already occurred," as Niebuhr, Ewald, and
Hitzig assume. This neither follows from the statement in the
title, " which Nebuchadnezzar in the fourth year of Jehoiakim
smote," nor from the contents of the succeeding address. The
superscription does not naturally belong to what Jeremiah has
said or uttered, but must have been prefixed, for the first time,
only when the address was committed to writing and inserted in
the collection, and this not till after the battle had been fought ;
but it is evident that the address is to be viewed as substantially
a prophecy (see vers. 6b and 10(), although Jeremiah depicts,
in the most lively and dramatic way, not merely the preparation
of the mighty host, ver. 3, and its formidable advance, vers. 7-9,
but also its flight and annihilation, in ver. 5 and vers. 10-12.
Ver. 3. " Prepare shield and target, and advance to the
battle. Ver. 4. Yoke the horses [to the chariots] ; mount the
Digitized by
Google
180 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
steeds, and stand with helmets on; polish the spears, pnt on
the armour. Ver. 5. Why do I see? they are terrified and
turned back, and their heroes are beaten, and flee in flight, and
do not turn : terror is round about, saith Jahveh. Yer. 6. Let
no^ the swift one flee, nor let the hero escape; towards the
north, by the side of the river Euphrates, they stumble and
fall. Ver. 7. Who is this that cometh up like the Nile I his
waters wave like the rivers. Ver. 8. Egypt cometh up like the
Nile, [his] waters are moved like the rivers ; and he saith, I
will go up, I will cover the earth ; I will destroy the city, and
those who dwell in it. Ver. 9. Go up, ye horses ; and drive
furiously, ye chariots ; and let the heroes go forth ; Cushites
and Fhutites, be^urlng the shield ; and Lydians, handling [and]
bending the bow. Ver. 10. But that day [belongs] to the Lord
Jahveh of hosts, a day of vengeance for avenging Himself on
His enemies : and the sword shall devour and be satisfied, and
shall drink its fill of their blood ; for the Lord Jahveh of
hosts holdeth a slaying of sacrifices in the land of the north at
the river Euphrates. Ver. 11. Go up to Gilead, and take
balsam, O virgin, daughter of Egypt : in vain hast thou multi-
plied medicines; cure there is none for thee. Ver. 12. The
nations have heard of thine ignominy, and thy cry hath filled
the earth : for heroes stumble against heroes, both of them fall
together."
This address falls into two strophes, vers. 3-6 and 7-12. In
both are depicted in a lively manner, first the advance of the
Egyptian host to the battle, then their flight and destruction.
The whole has been arranged so as to form a climax : in the
first strophe, the admirable equipment of the armies, and their
sudden flight and defeat, are set forth in brief sentences ; in the
second, there is fully described not merely the powerful advance
of the host that covers the earth, but also the judgment of
inevitable destruction passed on them by God : the reason for
the whole is also assigned. Ver. 3 f . In order to represent the
matter in a lively way, the description begins with the call ad-
dressed to the army, to make ready for the battle. "Make ready
shield and target," the two main pieces of defensive armour.
\yo was the small [round] shield ; nay, acuturn, the large shield,
covering the whole body. " Advance to the fight," i.e. go for-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 3-12, 181
ward into the battle. Then the address turns to the several
portions of the army : first to those who fight from chariots,
who are to yoke the horses ; then to the horsemen, to mount
the steeds. 0''^B are not horsemen, bat riding-horses, as in
1 Kings V. 6, X. 26, Ezek. xxvii. 14. mV is construed with the
accus., as in Gen. xlix. 4. The rendering given by Dahler
and Umbreit, "Mount, ye horsemen," and that of Hitzig,
" Advance, ye horsemen," are against the parallelism ; and
the remark of the last-named writer, that " Mount the steeds "
would be ^331, does not accord with 1 Sam. xxx. 17. Next,
the address is directed to the foot - soldiers, who formed the
main portion of the army. These are to take up their posi-
tion with helmets on, to polish the spears, t.e. to sharpen
them, and to put on the pieces of armour, in order to be
arrayed for battle, p^o, to nib, polish, remove rust from
the spear, and thereby sharpen it. l^*ip, here and in li. 3
for f^y, a coat of mail, pieces of armour. — Vers. 5, 6. Thus
well arrayed, the host advances to the fight ; but suddenly the
seer perceives the magnificent army terror-stricken, retreating,
and breaking out into a disorderly flight. The question, " Why
(wherefore) do I see I " points to the unexpected and incompre-
hensible turn in the progress of events. D^nn nan is not an
accns. dependent on WK'i, but an independent clause : " What
do I see? They are terror-stricken" (D^wn, terrified, broken-
spirited through terror), via), Hoph. from nna, to be broken,
here and in Job iv. 20 applied to persons. 0^30 is added to the
verb instead of the inf. abs., to give emphasis to the idea con-
tained in the word ; cf. Ewald, § 281, a. 3''?BD "liJO, " horror,
terror around " (cf. vi. 25), is taken by Ewald as the reply of
Jahveh to the question, ".Wherefore is this I On every side
there is danger;" and this is appropriately followed by the
imperatives in ver. 6, " Let no one, then, attempt to flee ; not
one shall escape to Egypt, but they must fall at the Euphrates."
The perfects ^?^y\ WB'S are prophetic; the stumbling and falling
are as certain as if they had already happened. The second
strophe commences at ver. 7. The description begins anew,
and that with a question of astonishment at the mighty host
advancing like the Nile when it bursts its banks and inundates
the whole country. "iK] is the name of the Nile, taken from
Digitized by
Google
182 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the Egyptian into the Hebrew language ; cf . Gen. xli. ff., Ex.
i. 22, etc. twsni?, dash about (v. 22), wave backwards and for-
wards : the Hithpa. is here interchanged with the Hithpo. with-
out any difference of meaning. — Ver. 8 brings the answer to
the question of astonishment : " Egypt approaches, its hosts
cover the land like the waves of the Nile, to destroy cities and
men." On the forna <VV^ (with k contracted from NS), cf.
Ewald, § 192, d; Gesenius, § 68, Eem. 1. l"'y is used in an in-
definite general sense, " cities," as in viii. 16. — ^In ver. 9, the
imperat. stands as in ver. Si.: " Let the formidable army
approach, — cavalry, chariots, and infantry, with all their
splendidly equipped aualiaries, — nevertheless it shall perish."
D'piDn PJ> does not here mean " Mount the steeds," which is
against the parallelism, but " Get up (i.e. prance), ye horses ; ",
this meaning is guaranteed by the Hiphil WJID, as used in Nab.
iii. 3. 35v? ''''?"'?'^ is ^" imitation of Nah. ii. 5. As auxiliaries,
and very braves one too (D^'i^aa), are mentioned " Gush," i.e.
the Ethiopians ; " Phut," the Libyans ; and " Ludim," i.e.
Hamitic, African Lydians, as in Ezek. xxx. 5. On the double
construct in riB'^ ''^'p 'B'Bin, « holding, bending bows," cf. Ew.
§ 280, c. — Ver. 10. This formidable army shall perish ; for the
day of the battle is the day of the Lord of hosts, on which He
will take vengeance upon His enemies. Among these enemies
are the Egyptians, who have grievously sinned against Israel,
the people of the Lord, not merely of late, by making war
upon and killing King Josiah, by carrying away Jehoahaz, and
making Jehoiakim his vassal, but also from the earliest times.
For this, Egypt is now to be brought low. The sword shall
devour and be refreshed by drinking the blood of the Egyptians.
For the Lord is preparing for a slaying of sacrifices (nat) in the
north, at the Euphrates. Isa. xxxiv. 6 forms the basis of these
words. — ^Ver. 11. The blow which shall there come on the
Egyptians is one from which they shall never recover, and the
wound shall be one not to be healed by any balm. As to the
balm of Gilead, see on viii. 22 ; on rtt<a"i and >^i)P>, see xxx. 13.
" Virgin daughter of Egypt " is equivalent to virgin-like people
of Egypt, i.e. not hitherto forced, but now ravished, violated,
so that all nations shall hear of the dishonour done them, and
their cry shall fill the whole earth, for (as at the conclusion,
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVt 13-28. 183
the threat is added by way of confirmation) all the heroes of
Egypt stumble and fall. 1^333 1^33, <* hero against hero," Let
one against another, or over the others, as usaally happens in
a flight where confusion reigns ; cf. Jer. xxvi. $7.
Vers. 13-28. The second prophecy regarding Egypt^ with a
message for Israel attached to it, was uttered after the pre-
ceding. This is evident even from the superscription, ver. 13 :
" The word which Jahveh spake to Jeremiah the prophet of
the coming of Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon to smite
the land of Egypt." The formula, " The word which," etc.,
agrees with that in I. 1 ; and "131, in contrast with n^'^, the
word usually met with in headings, perhaps means that this
prophecy, like that concerning Babylon, was not uttered in
public by Jeremiah, but only written down. Vf^y? is used in
reference to the coming of Nebuchadrezzar to smite the land.
Graf puts down this heading as an addition, not made till a late
edition of the prophecies was brought out, and even then added
through a mistake on the part of the compiler. In support of
this, he urges that the announcement in vers. 14-26 does not
form an independent prophecy, but merely constitutes the
second portion of the description given in vers. 3-12 of the
defeat of the Egyptians. But the ground assigned for this
view, viz. that if this prophecy formed a separate and distinct
piece, written at another time, then Jeremiah would have pre-
dicted the conquest of the other countries, Philistia, Moab,
Ammon, etc., in consequence of the battle of Carchemish ;
and as regards Egypt, would have contented himself with a
triumphal song over its fall — ^which is in itself unlikely : this
argument is utterly null. It has no meaning whatever ; for
vers. 3-12 contain, not a triumphal song over a defeat that
had already taken place, but a prophecy regarding the defeat
about to take place. To this the prophet added a second pro-
phecy, in which he once more announces beforehand to Egypt
that it shall be conquered. In this way, more is foretold
regarding Egypt than the neighbouring countries, because
Egypt was of much greater consequence, in relation to the
theocracy, than Philistia, Moab, etc. According to the super-
, scription, this second prophecy refers to the conquest of Egypt
by Nebuchadnezzar. According to xxxvii. 5, this did not
Digitized by
Google
184 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
take place so long as Zedekiah was king ; and according to
xliii. 8 ff., it was foretold by Jeremiah, after the destruction of
Jerusalem, when the Jews were fleeing to Egypt after the
murder of Gedaliah. From this, one might conclude, with
Nagelsbach, that the piece now before us is contemporaneous
with xliii. 8 S. But this inference is not a valid one. The
threat uttered in xliii. 8 ff. of a conquest to befall Egypt had
a special occasion of its own, and we cannot well regard it ii\
any other light than as a repetition of the prophecy now before
us, for the Jews ; for its contents seem to show that it was
composed not long after that in vers. 3-12, or soon after the
defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish. This address also falls
into two strophes, vers. 14-19 and vers. 20-26, while vers, 27,
28 form an additional message for Israel. The line of thought
is this : Egypt, may arm herself as she chooses, but her power
shall fall, and her auxiliaries shall flee (vers. 14-16). Pharaoh's
fall is certain ; the enemy shall come in force, and turn all
Egypt into a desert (vers. 17-19). The destroyer comes from
the north, the mercenaries flee, and the enemy hews down
countless hosts of men like trees in a forest (vers. 20-23).
Egypt will be given into the hand of the people out of the
north ; for Jahveh will punish gods, princes, and people, and
deliver up Egypt to the king of Babylon. But afterwards,
Egypt will again be inhabited as it was before (vers. 24-26).
On the other hand, Israel need fear nothing, for their God will
lead them back out of their captivity (vers. 27, 28).
Ver. 1 4. " Tell ye it in Egypt, and make it to be heard in
Migdol, and make it be heard in Noph and Tahpanhes : say,
Stand firm, and prepare thee; for the sword hath devoured
around thee. Ver. 15. Why hath thy strong one been swept
away? he stood not, for Jahveh pushed him down. Ver. 16.
He made many stumljle, yea, one fell on another; and they
said, Arise, and let us return to our own people, and to the
land of our birth, from before the oppressing sword. Ver. 17.
They cried there, Pharaoh the king of Egypt is undone ; he
hath let the appointed time pass. Ver. 18. As I live, saith the
King, whose name is Jahveh of hosts, Surely as Tabor among
the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, shall he come. Ver.
19. Prepare thee things for exile, O daughter dweUing in
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 14-19. 185
Egypt : for Noph will become a desolation, and be destroyed by
fire, without an inhabitant."
Like the last prophecy, this one also begins with the suin-
mons to arms (ver. 14), in order to prepare the way for the
description giyen immediately afterwards of the defeat (ver.
15 ff.). The summons to make the proclamation is addressed
to some persons not named, who are to announce through the
country, particularly in the frontier towns and in the northern
capital of Egypt, that the foe, in his devastating career, has
advanced to the borders of the land. This is evident from the
clause which states the. reason: "The sword hath devoured
what lay round thee." Kegarding Migdol, i.e. Magdolos, and
Tahpanhes, i.e. Daphne, the two frontier towns in the north,
and Noph, i.e. Memphis, the northern capital of the kingdom,
see on ii. 16 and xliv. 1. ^J}'}, to take up one's position for
the fight ; cf. ver. 4. T^'^?' " *^y surroundings," are the fron-
tier countries, but especially those on the north, — Judah,
Philistia, Edom, — since the enemy comes from the north.
However, we cannot with certainty infer from this, that by
that time the kingdom of Judah had already fallen, and
Jerusalem been laid waste. Immediately after Necho had
been vanquished at the Euphrates, Nebuchadnezzar marched
after the fugitive foe, pursuing him as far as the borders of
Egypt; hence we read, in 2 Kings xxiv. 7, "The king of
Egypt went no more out of his land ; for the king of Babylon
had taken all that had belonged to the king of Egypt, from the
river of Egypt to the river Euphrates." Even at that time,
in the fourth and fifth years of Jehoiakim, it could be said,
" His sword hath devoured the countries contiguous to Egypt."
And Nebuchadnezzar was prevented on that occasion from ad-
vancing farther, and penetrating into Egypt itself, only by hear-
ing of his father's death at Babylon, in consequence of which he
was compelled to return to Babylon as speedily as possible, for
the purpose of assuming the reins of government, and to let
his army with the prisoners follow him at their leisure (Bero-
sus in Josephus, contra Ap. i. 19). — ^Ver. 15. The prophet in
spirit looks on the power of Egypt as already broken. This
is shown by the question of astonishment, ^'''J'a^ finw {ftie,
which has been variously rendered. 0*^'?^, " strong ones," is
Digitized by
Google
186 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
used in Jer. viii. 16, xlvii. 3, and 1. 11, of stallions, but else-
where as an epithet of bulls, especially the strong bulls of
Bashan; see on viii. 16. In the present passage the reference
may be to the mighty men of war, who do not maintain their
position (Chald. and most of the old interpreters); the verb
in the singular forms no sufficient objection to this view, the
irregularity being due to the fact that the verb precedes its
subject [see Ewald, § 316, i; Gesenius, § 147]. It is more
difficult to combine with this the singulars of the verbs ^OJJ and
^Din which follow ; these, and especially the suffix in the sin-
gular, appear to indicate that 1*^'3N really refers to a noun in
the singular. But the form of this noun seems against such a
view ; for the words adduced in support of the position that
singular nouns sometimes assume plural suffixes, are insufficient
for the purpose : thus, ^wnnj Ps, jx. 15, and 1'nS3B>, Ezek.
XXXV. 11, are plainly nouns in the singular. And in support
of the averment that, in pausal forms with Segol, the « is a
mere mater lectionis, only ^'B?, Prov. vi. 1, can be adduced :
the other instances brought forward by Hitzig fail to establish
his position. For T^\^, Dent, xxviii. 48, may be plural ;
^ra, Gen. xvi. 5, is far from being a case in point, for the pre-
position often takes plural suffixes; and even in the case of
"'VDPt, Ps. xvi. 10, the ' is marked in the Qeri as superfluous ;
most codices, too, rather give the form 'Tl'pn, But even in
the verse now before us, many codices, according to Kennicott
and de Bossi, read 1"j''3N, so that the word should perhaps be
taken as a singular. The singulars, however, which occur in
the following clauses do not form conclusive proofs of this,
since they may be taken in a distributive sense; and more
generally the address often suddenly changes from the plural
to the singular. In connection with the possibility of taking
I'TSK as a singular, the paraphrase of the LXX. deserves men-
tion and consideration, o /ioo^os o eAcXe/rro? aov, to which a gloss
adds *A'jn<}. But we cannot agree with Kennicott, J. D.
Michaelis, Ewald, Hitzig, Graf, and Nagelsbach, in holding
this as certainly the correct rendering ; nor can we give to T3K
the sense of " bull," for this meaning is not made out for the
singular simply because the plural is used of strong bulls : this
holds especially in Jeremiah, who constantly applies the plural
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 14-19. 187
to strong steeds. Still less ground is there for appealing to
the fact that Jahveh is repeatedly called ^^. "I'lS or T3k
2^PS!, Gen. xlix. 24, Isa. i. 24, xlix. 26, etc. ; for this epithet of
Jahreh (who shows Himself in or towards Israel as the Mighty
One) cannot be applied to the helpless images of Apis. In
Ps. Ixviii. 31, D*1'3K means "strong ones" — ^bulls as emblems
of kings. If the word be used here with such a reference, it
may be singular or plural. In the former case it would mean
the king ; in the latter, the king with his princes and magnates.
Against the application of the word to the images of Apis,
there is the fact that Apis, a symbol of Osiris, was neither the
only nor the chief god of Egypt, but was worshipped nowhere
except in Memphis (Herodotus, ii. 153); hence it was not
suited to be the representative of the gods or the power of
Egypt, as the context of the present passage requires. — Ver.
16. As the mighty one of Egypt does not stand, but is thrust
down by God, so Jahveh makes many stumble and fall over
one another, so that the strangers return to their own home
in order to escape the violence of the sword. The subject of
iiDt^'j is indefinite ; the speakers, however, are not merely the
hired soldiers or mercenaries (ver. 11), or the allied nations
(Ezek. XXX. 5), but strangers generally, who had been living
in Egypt partly for the sake of commerce, partly for other
reasons (Hitzig, Graf). As to nji'n ann^ see on xxv. 38. — In
ver. 17, " they cry there " is not to be referred to those who
fled to their native land ; the subject is undefined, and " there "
refers to the place where one falls over the other, viz. Egypt.
" There they cry, ' Pharaoh the king of Egypt is ^V.f, desola-
tion, destruction, ruin : ' " for this meaning, cf. xxv. 31, Ps.
xl. 3; the signification "noise, bustle," is unsuitable here.*
^ The word DB' has been read by the LXX. and the Y algate as if it had
been Q^, Sno/tct, nomen; accordingly the LXX. render, xaXitciTt ro onofia
9»paa 'Sc)ieuk, ficui'h.tits Alyvirtov, 'Scuta 'EoPtl ''Efitiii (or ^'Ea^uf Ma^i) ;
Yvlgftte, vocate nomen Pharaonis regis .^!gypti: Tumultum adduxit tempus.
This reading is preferred by J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf,
-with this difference, that Hitzig and Graf take only f^^^ as a name.
Hence Ewald translates, " They call Pharaoh's name ' Noise-which-a-wink-
can-hush.' " This rendering is decidedly false, for *iViD nowhere has the sense
of "wink, nod," not even in Judg. xz. 38, where it means an agreement
Digitized by
Google
188 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
The meaning of IJften "^''^J'.JJ also is disputed ; it is quite in-
admissible, however, to join the words with I^KK*, as Ewald
does, for the purpose of making out a name. No suitable
meaning can be extracted from them. Neither !^'<B' nor "ijrtBi?
can be the subject of T'^SiJ ; the translation given by Schnur-
rer, " devastation that goes beyond all bounds," is still more
arbitrary than that of Ewald given in the note. Since the
Hiphil "''3J(ii is never used except with a transitive meaning,
the subject can be none else than Pharaoh; and the words
Ijrttsn "l'3J'.j3 must be intended to give the reason for his be-
coming a desolation : they are thus to be rendered, " he has
allowed ^y^ts^l to pass by," not "the precise place," as Rosen-
miiller explains it (" he did not stop in his flight at the place
where the army could be gathered again, on the return "), but
"the precise time." The reference, however, is not to the
suitable time for action, for self-defence and for driving off
the enemy (Grotius, C. B. Michaelis, Manrer, Umbreit), be-
cause the word does not mean suitable, convenient time, but
appointed time. As Hitzig rightly perceived, the time meant
is that within which the desolation might still be averted, and
after which the judgment of God fell on him (Isa. x. 25, xxx.
18), — the time of grace which God had vouchsafed to him,
so that Nebuchadnezzar did not at once, after the victory at
Carchemish, invade and conquer Egypt. Pharaoh let this time
pass by ; because, instead of seeing in that defeat a judgment
from God, he provoked the anger of Nebuchadnezzar by his
repeated attacks on the Chaldean power, and brought on the
invasion of Egypt by the king of Babylon (see above, p. 155).
made. For the reading Qe* instead of Dt?' there are no sufficient grounds,
although such passages as xz. 3 and Isa. xxx. 7 may be adduced in support
of the idea obtained by such a change in the word. The translation of the
LXX. is merely a reproduction of the Hebrew words by Greek letters, and
shows that the translator did not know how to interpret them. The Vuf-
gate rendering, tumultum adduxit tempus, is also devoid of meaning. More-
orer, these translators have read Jisip as the imperative iKip ; if we reject
this reading, as all moderns do, then we may also lay no weight on DC^
instead of DE'. Besides, the meaning is not materially affected by this
reading, for the giving of a name to a person merely expresses what he is
or will be.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVL 20-26. 189
— In ver. 18 f. there is laid down a more positive founda,tion
for the threat uttered in ver. 17. With an oath, the Lord an-
nounces the coming of the destroyer into Egypt. Like Tabor,
which overtops all the mountains round about, and like Carmel,
which looks out over the sea as if it were a watch-tower, so
will he come, viz. he from whom proceeds the devastation of
Egypt, the king of Babylon. The power of Nebuchadnezzar,
in respect of its overshadowing all other kings, forms the point
of comparison. Tabor has the form of a truncated cone. Its
height is given at 1805 feet above the level of the sea, or 1350
from the surface of the plain below; it far surpasses in -height
all the hills in the vicinity, and affords a wide prospect on every
side; cf. Kobinson's Phys. Geogr. of Falestine, p. 26 f. Carmel
stretches out in the form of a long ridge more than three miles
wide, till it terminates on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea,,
as a bold, lofty promontory, which rises in an imposing manner
at least 500 feet above the sea ; cf. Robinson, p. 26 f. Then
the inhabitants of Egypt will be driven into exile. n?i3 '93,
, *' vessels of wandering ; " outfit for an exile, as in Ezek. xii. 3.
" Daughter of Egypt " is not a personification of the country,
whose inhabitants are the people, but of the population, which
is viewed as the daughter of the country ; it stands in apposition
to rqfi\ hke onyp na n^a, ver. 11. For Noph, i.e. Memphis,
the capital, is laid waste and burned, so as to lose its inhabit-
ants. With ver. 20 begins the second strophe, in which the
fate impending on Egypt is still more plainly predicted.
Ver. 20. " Egypt is a very beautiful young heifer ; a gadfly
from the north comes — comes. Ver. 21. Her mercenaries, too,
in her midst, are like fatted calves; for they also turn their backs,
they flee together: they do not stand, for the day of her destruc-
tion is come on her, the time of her visitation. Ver. 22. Its
sound is like [that of] the sei-pent [as it] goes ; for they go with
an army, and come against her with axes, like hewers of trees.
Ver. 23. They cut down her forest, saith Jahveh, for it is not
to be searched ; for they are more numerous than locusts, and
they cannot be numbered. Ver. 24. The daughter of Egypt is
disgraced ; she is given into the hand of the people of the north.
Ver. 25. Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel, saith, Behold, I
will visit Amon of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, her gods, and
Digitized by
Google
190 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
ber kings ; Pharaoh, and all those who trust in him. Yer. 26.
And I will give them into the hand of those who seek their life,
even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon,
and into the hand of his servants ; bat afterwards it shall be
inhabited, as in the days of old, saith Jahveb."
In ver. 20 the address begins afresh, in order to carry out
further, under new images, the description of the desolation
already threatened. Egypt is a very beautiful n?JV ; this
feminine is chosen with a regard to " the daughter of Egypt."
njansi is an adjective formed from the Peal of nsj, "very
beautiful," not "coquetting" (Hitzig, who follows the /ve/vaV
XcoTriaiiiini of the LXX.). A very beautiful heifer is the
people when carefully and abundantly fed in their beautiful
and fertile land (Hitzig). Upon this heifer there comes from
the north Y^J). This air. \ey. is variously rendered. Hi? means,
in the Hebrew, to pinch, nip (Job xxxiii. 6), to compress
together, as in winking (Ps. xxxv. 19), to bring the lips closely
together (Prov. xvi. 30), and to nip off ; cf . ^jo^ to pinch, nip,
cut off. Hence A. Schultens (^Orig. Heb. ii. 34 sqq.), after
Cocceius, and with a reference to Virgil, Georg. iii. 147, has
rendered H^ by morsus velUcans oestri. Hitzig (with whom
Roediger, in his additions to Gesenius* Thesaurus, agrees) takes
^^}i insectutn eitnici simile as his warrant for rendering it by
oestrus, " the gadfly," which gives a more suitable meaning.
Ewald, on the contrary, compares Y^p with (ji/> *°d translates
it " whale," a huge sea-monster ; but this is quite arbitrary, for
piJ does not correspond to the Arabic j^_^, and the whale or
shark does not afford any figure that would be suitable for the
context : e.g. ver. 21, " her mercenaries also flee," shows that
the subject treated of is not the devouring or destruction, but
the expulsion of the Egyptians out of their land ; this is put as
an addition to what is said about exile in ver. 19. Still less
suitable is the general rendering excidium, destruction (Rabbins,
Gesenius, Umbreit) ; and there is no lexical foundation for the
Vulgate translation stimulator, nor for " taskmaster," the render-
ing of J. D. Michaelis and Rosenmiiller. The old translators
"x
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 20-26. 191
hare only made guesses from the context. The figure of the
gadfly corresponds to the hee in the land of Assyria, Isa. vii. 18.
The repetition of K3 gives emphasis, and points either to the
certainty of the coming, or its continuance. — Ver. 21. The
mercenaries, also, of the daughter of Egypt, well fed, like
fatted calves, betake themselves to flight. 0'^?^' are "mer-
cenaries," as distinguished from the allies mentioned in ver. 9.
It was Carians and lonians through whomPsammetichus at-
tained the supriBmacy over all Egypt : these had settled down
in orpaTOTreSa of their own, between Bubastis and Pelnsium, on
both banks of the eastern arm of the Nile (Herodotus, ii. 152,
154), and were very well cared for, since the king relied on
them (Herod, ii. 152, 163). Hence the comparison with fatted
calves, which, moreover, are co-ordinated with the subject, as is
shown by the resumption of the subject in nan D|. '3 stands
in the middle of the sentence, with an asseverative meaning :
"Yea, these also turn their back, they flee together, do not
stand ; for the day of their destruction is come." " The day
of their destruction" is used as in xviii. 17. On " the time of
their visitation " (which stands in apposition to the preceding
expression), cf. xi. 23, xxiii. 12 : it is not an accusative of time °
(Graf), for this always expresses the idea of continuance daring
a space of time. In vers. 22, 23, the annihilation of the power
of Egypt is portrayed under another figure. A difficult expres-
sion is n?!. E'n|3 riTip, " her (viz. that of the daughter of Egypt)
voice is like (the voice of) the serpent (which) goes." ife must
be taken as part of a relative sentence, since this verb is nowhere
used of a voice or sound ; hence it cannot be so joined here.
Ewald, following the avpi^ovro^ of the LXX., would read Py^,
" hissing," instead of ^ZI, and translates, " it makes a noise like
the hissing serpent." He more fully defines the meaning thus :
" Even though Egypt were hidden like a serpent in a thicket,
yet it would be heard in its flight, like a nasty serpent hissing
fiercely, while it hurries away from the axe of the wood-
cutter." But, apart from the arbitrary change of ^?1 into
fP.B' (the former word is used in Gen. iii. 14 of the going, i.e.
crawling, of a serpent), Ewald puts into the words an idea alto-
gether foreign to them. The nasty, fierce hissing of the serpent
that is forced to flee, is quite unsuitable ; for there is no further
Digitized by
Google
192 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
mention made of the flight of the Egyptians, but Egypt is hewn
down like a forest by woodcutters. Moreover, as Graf has
already well remarked, Egypt is not compared to a serpent, but
only its voice to the voice or hiss of a serpent. For 9tJ> signifies,
not merely the voice, but any sound, even the rustling and
rattling of leaves (cf . Gen. iii. 8, Lev. xxvi. 36, 2 Sam. v.- 24) ;
hence it may denote the noise caused by a serpent crawling on
its belly in the thicket. The comparison, as Graf has correctly
observed, is like that in Isa. xxix. 4. There it is the daughter
of Zion, but here it is the daughter of Egypt that lies on the
ground, deeply humbled ; weeping softly and moaning, making
a sound like that of a serpent in a moss among fallen leaves,
fleeing before the woodcutters.^ Thus she lies on the ground,
for the enemy comes in force, with axes like woodcutters, to
hew down the forest of men in Egypt. The mention of the
axes is occasioned by the comparison of the foe to woodcutters ;
we are not to -think of battle-axes as weapons of the Massagetas,
Scythians, Persians, and other nations (Herodotus, i. 215, iv. 70,
vii. 64; Xenophon, Cyroped. i. 2, 9). Axes here form the
type of murderous weapons generally. On the comparison of
a multitude of people to a forest, cf. xxi. 14, Isa. x. 18 f., 33 f.
The clause ipn^. W 'S is referred by L. de.Dieu, J. D. Michaelis,
Hitzig, Niigelsbach, etc., to the wood, " for it cannot be explored
' The old translators have quite misunderstood these words, and attempted
to apply them, each one according to his own fancy, to the enemy. Thus
the LXX. translate : ^am ainm (QTip) ^S S<pias avpl^ouros, Sti h elftft^
(?in3 for yni) vopfivouTeii, «.t.A. Chald. : vox collisionis armorum eorum
est sicut vox serpentum repentium; and similarly the Syriac. The Vulgate is:
vox ejus quasi aeris (DBTU for tJ'rU) sonabit, quoniam cum exercitu pro-
perdbunt et cum securibus venient. The translator of the Vulgate has thus
read ri^ip, and referred the suffix to pp, which he renders stimulator.
Luther follows the Vulgate: "Siefaren daher, das der Hamisch brasselt,
und kommen mit Heeres Krafft." Hitzig also seeks to change the text, after
the LXX., turning n^ip into D^ip, and [j^na into i>in3. But this alteration
disturbs the order of the sentence. Not only in vers. 20 and 21, but also
in vers. 23, 24, the first clause always treats of Egypt, and what befalls her
is only stated in the clauses which follow : so is it in ver. 22. Thus the
alteration made affords a very trivial result, viz. that the enemy advancing
on Egypt march through the very sandy desert between Gaza and Egypt,
and make slow progress, like serpents, because they wade through the sand ;
so that they make their appearance suddenly and unexpectedly.
CHAP. XLVI. 20-26. 193
or penetrated ;" thus a road mast be made in order to get through
it. However, the question is not about the enemy going or
inarching through Egypt, but about the destruction of Egypt
and her powers. Rosenmiiller and Graf, with Baschi, are
more correct in referring the clause to the hostile army, " for
it cannot be investigated," i.e. it is impossible to learn the num-
ber of them. It is no great objection to this interpretation that
the verb occurs in the singular : this must be retained as it is,
since it is not the individual enemies that cannot be searched
out, but it is the number of the whole army that cannot be
reckoned. On the employment of ipn in the Niphal in connec-
tion with the impossibility of counting a multitude, cf. 1 Kings
vii. 47, and the expression "'ijn ^6 in Job v. 9, ix. 10, xxxvi. 36.
The clauses which follow, and conclude ver. 23, explain the
thought further : *' more numerous than grasshoppers," i.e.
innumerable.
In ver. 24 f . the result of the overthrow of Egypt, which has
hitherto been set forth in figurative language, is stated in words
which describe the exact realities : Egypt will be given up to
ignominy, delivered into the power of a people from the north,
i.e. the Chaldeans. The Lord of hosts, the Almighty God of
Israel, punishes it for its sins. He visits, i.e. punishes, Amon
of No, the chief idol of Egypt ; Pharaoh, and the land, with all
its gods and its kings, and with Pharaoh, all those who place
theii" trust in his power. Words are accumulated for the pur-
pose of showing that the judgment will be one which shall
befall the whole land, together with its gods, its rulers, and its
inhabitants. First of all is mentioned Amon of No, as in Ezek.
XXX. 14 f. Kb is an abbreviation of posj Kb, t.e. dwelling of
Amon, the sacred name of the royal city in Upper Egypt,
famous in antiquity, which the Greeks called Jtos iroXts, or
GriP'n, or &i]ficu, it is supposed, after the vulgar Egyptian
name Tapet or Tape (Throne or Seat) ; see on Nah. iii. 8.
Amon — in Greek 'A/ifwvv (Herodotus, ii. 42), 'A/iovv (Plutarch,
de Is. chap. 9), 'A/i&v ( Jamblichus, de myst. 5, 8) — was a sun-
god (Amon-Ki), probably a symbol of the sun as it appears in
the spring, in the sign of the Bam ; hence he was represented
with rams' horns. By the Greeks he was compared to Jupiter,
or Zeus, and named Jupiter Ammon. The chief seat of his
VOL. II. N
Digitized by
Google
194 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
worship was Thebes, where he had a temple, with a nntnerous
learned priesthood and a fatnoas oracle (cf. Strabo, xvii. 1. 43 ;
Justin, xi. 11), which Cambyses destroyed (Diodorus Siculus,
Fragm. Lib. x.). Under the expression " kings of Egypt " we
are not to include governors or vassal-kings, but all the kings
who ever ruled Egypt ; for in the judgment now falling on
Egypt, all the kings it ever had, together with all its gods, are
punished. In the last part of the verse the name of Pharaoh
is once more given, for the purpose of attaching to it the words
" and all who trust in him ; " these are intended for the Jews
who expected help from Egypt. The punishment consists in
their being all given into the hand of their enemies, namely
{\ explic.) into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and his servants.
This defeat, however, is not to be the end of the Egyptian
kingdom. The threat of judgment concludes, in ver. 266,
with a promise for the future. "Afterwards, it shall be
inhabited, as in the days of yore." )3e^ is used in a neuter
sense, as in xvii. 6, xxxiii. 16, etc. Since this verb also signi-
fies to settle down, . be encamped (Num. xxiv. 2), and to lie
quiet, to rest, or keep oneself quiet, inactive (Judg. v. 17 ; Prov.
vii. 11), Hitzig and Graf, with Eamchi, give the explanation :
"because the power of Egypt shall be broken, it will keep
quiet, and remain at home in its own country, instead of march-
ing forth and fighting other nations, as it has lately begun
again to. do (ver. 7) after centuries of peace." But although,
in support of this' view, we are pointed to Ezek. xxix. 13, where
the restoration of Egypt is predicted, with the further remark,
" it will be an abject kingdom," yet this idea is not contained in
the words of oiur verse. To render pE' by " to keep quiet, be
inactive," does not suit the words " as in the days of old." In
former days, Egypt was neither inactive nor remained at home in
peace in its own land. From the remotest antiquity, the Pharaohs
made wars, and sought to enlarge their dominions by conquest.
Add to this, that we must view the concluding portion of this
prophecy in a manner analogous to the closing thought of the
prophecies regarding Moab (xlviii. 47), Ammon (xlix. 6), and
' Elam (xlix. 39), where the turning of the captivity in the last
times is given in prospect to these nations, and " afterwards," in
xlix. 6, alternates with " in the latter days " found in xlviii. 47
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVI. 27, 28. 195
and xlix. 39. From this it follows that, in the verse now before
us also, it is not the future in general, but the last time, i,e.
the Messianic future, that is pointed out ; hence \?^ does not
express the peaceful condition of the land, but its being in-
habited, in contrast with its depopulation in the immediate
future, in consequence of its inhabitants being killed or carried
away. On the fulfilment of this threatening, see p. 151 fF.
Vers. 27, 28. A promise for Israel. — Ver. 27. "But fear not
thou, O my servant Jacob, nor be dismayed : for, behold, I will
save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their cap-
tivity ; and Jacob shall return, and be at rest and secure, and
no one shall make him afraid. Ver. 28. Fear thou not, my
servant Jacob, saith Jahveh, for I am with thee ; for I will
make complete destruction of all the nations whither I have
driven thee, but of thee will I not make complete destruction :
yet I will correct thee in a proper manner, and I will not leave
thee wholly unpunished." These verses certainly form no
integral portion of the prophecy, but an epilogue ; yet they are
closely connected with the preceding, and are occasioned by the
declaration in ver. 26, that the Lord, when He visits Pharaoh,
shall also visit all those who trust in Him. This word, which is
directed to Judah, might be understood to declare that it is
Judah chiefly which will share the fate of Egypt. In order
to prevent such a misconception, Jeremiah adds a word for
Israel, which shows how the true Israel has another destiny to
hope for. Their deliverer is Jahveh, their God, who certainly
punishes them for their sins, gives them up to the power of the
heathen, but will also gather them again after their dispersion,
and then grant them uninterrupted prQsperity. This promise
of salvation at the close of the aqnouncement of judgment on
Egypt is similar to the promise of salvation for Israel inserted
in the threat of judgment against Babylon, 1. 4-7 and 19, 20,
li. 5, 6, 10, 35, 36, 45, 46, 50 ; and this similarity furnishes a
proof in behalf of the genuineness of the verse, which is denied
by modern critics. For, althoagh what Nagelsbach remarks is
quite correct, viz. that the fall of the kingdom of Babylon,
through its conquest by Cyrus, directly brought about th'e
deliverance of Israel, while the same cannot be said regarding
the conquest of Egypt, yet even Egypt had a much greater
Digitized by
Google
196 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
importance, in relation to Jadah, than the smaller neighbonring
nations, against which the oracles in chap, xlvii.-xlix. are
directed; hence there is no ground for the inference that,
because there is nothing said in these three chapters of such
a connection between Egypt and Israel, it did not really exist.
But when Nagelsbach further asks, " How does this agree with
the fact that Jeremiah, on other occasions, while in Egypt,
utters only the strongest threats against the Israelites — chap,
xlii.-xliv. ? " — there is the ready answer, that the expressions
in chap, xlli.-xliv. do not apply to the whole covenant people,
but only to the rabble of Judah that was ripe for the sentence
of destruction, that had fled to Egypt against the will of God.
What Hitzig and Graf have further urged in another place
against the genuineness of the verses now before us, is scarcely
worth mention. The assertion that the verses do not accord
with the time of the foregoing prophecy, and rather presup-
pose the exile, can have weight only with those who h priori
deny that the prophet could make any prediction. But if
Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, distinctly announces
not merely the carrying away of Judah to Babylon, but also
fixes the duration of the exile at seventy years, then he might
well speak at the same time, or later, of the restoration of Israel
from their captivity.
But there are two other considerations which support the
genuineness of these verses : (1) The fact that Hitzig and Graf
are obliged to confess it remains a problem how they came to
form a part of the oracle against Egjrpt. The attempt made
by the former writer to solve this problem partly rests on the
assumption, already refuted by Graf, that the verses were
written by the second Isaiah (on this point, see our remarks at
p. 7, note), and partly on a combination of results obtained by
criticism, in which even their author has little confidence. But
(2) we must also bear in mind the nature of the verses in ques-
tion. They form a repetition of what we find in xxx. 10, 11,
and a repetition, too, quite in the style of Jeremiah, who makes
variations in expression. Thus here, in ver. 27, n\n» DW is
omitted after 3lpjJ^, perhaps simply because ver. 26 concludes
with njn) DW ; again, in ver. 20, 3^p3J! *13J? Nyn-^K not? is re-
peated with njnj DW, which is wanting in xxx. 11. On the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVII. 1. 197
other hand, Ig'B'if? in xxx. 11a, and ^S in xxx: 11 J, have
been dropped ; of ^''Jyt^&n (xxx. 11) has been exchanged for
TUBf fPiivti}. Hence Hitzig has taken the text here to be the
better and the original one ; and on this he founds the supposi-
tion that the verses were first placed here in the text, and were
only afterwards, and from this passage, inserted in chap. xxx.
10, 11, where, however, they stand in the best connection, and
even for that reason could not be a gloss inserted there. Such
are some of the contradictions in which critical scepticism
involves itself. We have already given an explanation of these
verses under chap. xxx.
Chap, xlvii. Concerning the Philistines.
Ver. 1. Title. — The word of the Lord against the Philistines
came to Jeremiah " before Pharaoh smote Gaza." If we un-
derstand this time-definition in such a way that " the prophecy
would refer to the conquest of Gaza by Pharaoh," as Graf
thinks, and as Hitzig also is inclined to suppose, then this
portion of the title does not accord with the contents of the
following prophecy ; for, according to ver. 2, the devastator of
Philistia approaches from the north, and the desolation comes
not merely on Gaza, but on all Philistia, and even Tyre and Sidon
(vers. 4, 5). Hence Graf thinks that, if any one is inclined to
consider the title as utterly incorrect, only two hypotheses are
possible : either the author of the title overlooked the statement
in ver. 2, that the hostile army was to come from the north ; in
which case this conquest might have taken place at any time
during the wearisome struggles, fraught with Such changes
of fortune, between the Chaldeans and the Egyptians for the
possession of the border fortresses, during the reign of Jehoiakim
(which is Ewald's opinion) : or he may possibly have noticed
the statement, but found no difficulty in it ; in which case, in
spite of all opposing considerations (see M. von Niebuhr, Gesch.
Assyr. und Bah. p. 369), it must be assumed that the conquest
was effected by the defeated army as it was returning from the
Eaphrates, when Necho, on his march home, reduced .Gaza
(Hitzig), and by taking this fortress from the enemy, barred
the way to Egypt. Of these two alternatives, we can accept
neither as probable. The neglect, on the part of the author of
Digitized by
Google
198 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
the title, to observe the statement that the enemy is to come
from the north, would show too great carelessness for us to
trust him. But if he did notice the remark, then it merely
follows that Pharaoh must have reduced Gaza on his return,
after being defeated at Carchemish. Nor is it legitimate to
conclude, as Ewald does, from the statement in 2 Kings xxiv. 7
(" The king of Egypt went no more out of his land ; for the king
of Babylon had taken all that had belonged to the king of
Egypt, from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates "),
that the wars Jjetween the Chaldeans and the Egyptians for the
possession of the border fortresses, such as Gaza, were tedious,
and attended with frequent changes of fortune. In the connec-
tion in which it stands, this statement merely shows that, after
Nebuchadnezzar had made Jehoiakim his vassal, the latter could
not receive any help from Egypt in his rebellion, after he had
ruled three years, because Pharaoh did not venture to march
out of his own territory any more. But it plainly follows from
this, that Pharaoh cannot have taken the fortress of Gaza while
retreating before Nebuchadnezzar. For, in this case, Nebu-
chadnezzar would have been obliged to drive him thence before
ever he could have reduced King Jehoiakim again to subjection.
The assumption is difficult to reconcile with what Berosus says
regarding the campaign of Nebuchadnezzar, viz. that he con-
tinued in the field till he heard of the death of his father. Add
to this, that, as M. von Niebuhr very rightly says, " there is
every military probability against it " (i.e. against the assump-
tion that Gaza was reduced by Necho on his retreat). "If this
fortress had stood out till the battle of Carchemish, then it is
inconceivable that a routed eastern army should have taken the
city during its retreat, even though there were, on the line of
march, the strongest positions on the Orontes, in Lebanon, etc.,
where it might have taken its stand." Hence Niebuhr thinks
it " infinitely more improbable either that Gaza was conquered
before the battle of Carchemish, about the same time as Ashdod,
and that Jeremiah, in chap, xlvii., predicts the approach of the
army which was still engaged in the neighbourhood of Nineveh ;
or that the capture of the fortress did not take place till later,
when Nebuchadnezzar was again engaged in Babylon, and that
the prophet announces his return, not his first approach."
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVII. 1. 199
Bosenmiiller and Nagelsbach have declared in favour of the
first of these suppositions. Both of them place the capture of
Gaza in fhe time of Necho's march against the Assyrians under
Josiah ; Kosenmiiller before the battle of Megiddo ; Nagels-
bach after that engagement, because he assumes, with all
modem expositors, that Necho had landed with his army at the
Bay of Acre. He endeavours to support this view by the
observation that Necho, before marching farl^er north, sought
to keep the way clear for a retreat to Egypt, since he would
otherwise have been lost after the battle of Carchemish, if he
did not previously reduce Gaza, the key of the high road to
Egypt. In this, Nagelsbach rightly assumes that the heading,
" before Pharaoh smote Gaza," was not intended to show the
fulfilment of the prophecy in the conquest of Gaza by Necho
soon afterwards, but merely states that Jeremiah predicts to the
Philistines that they will be destroyed by a foe from the north,
at a time when conquest by a foe from the north was impend-
ing over them. Eightly, too, does Niebuhr remark that, in
support of the view that Gaza was taken after the battle at
Carchemish, there is nothing more than the announcement of
the attack from the north, and the arrangement of the prophecies
in Jeremiah, in which that against the Philistines is placed after
that about the battle at Carchemish. Hitzig and Graf lay
great weight upon this order and arrangement, and thence con-
clude that all the prophecies against the nations in chap, xlvi.-
xlix., with the exception of that regarding Elam, were uttered in
the fourth year of Jehoiakim. There are no sufficient grounds
for this conclusion. The agreement between this prophecy now
before us and that in chap, xlvi., as regards particular figures
and expressions (Graf), is too insignificant to afford a proof that
the two belong to the same time ; nor is much to be made out
of the point so strongly insisted on by Hitzig, that after the
Egyptians, as the chief nation, had been treated of, the author
properly brings forward those who, from the situation of their
country, must be visited by war immediately before it is sent on
the Egyptians. The main foundation for this view is taken
from the notice by Herodotus (ii. 159), that Necho, after the
battle at Magdolos, took the large Syrian city KaStnti. Mag-
dolos is here taken as a variation of Megiddo, and Kadytis of
Digitized by
Google
200 THE FBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
Gaza. But neither Hitzig nor Stark have proved the identity
of Kadjtis with Gaza, as we have already remarked on 2 Kings
xxiii. 33 ; so that we cannot safely draw any conclusion, re-
garding the time when Gaza was taken, from that statement
of Herodotus. In consequence of the want of evidence from
other sources, the date of this event cannot be more exactly
determined.
From the contents of this prophecy and its position among
the oracles against the nations, we can draw no more than a
very probable inference that it was not published before the
fourth year of Jehoiakim, inasmuch as it is evidently but a
further amplification of the sentence pronounced in that year
against all the nations, and recorded in chap. xxv. Thus all
conjectures as to the capture of Gaza by Necho on his march
to the Euphrates, before the battle at Carchemish, become very
precarious. But the assumption is utterly improbable also, that
Necho at a later period, whether in his flight before the Chal-
deans, or afterwards, while Nebuchadnezzar was occupied in
Babylon, undertook an expedition against Philistia: such a
hypothesis is irreconcilable with the statement given in 2 Kings
xxiv. 7. There is thus no course left open for us, but to under-
stand, by the Pharaoh of the title here, not Necho, but his
successor Hophra: this has been suggested by Raschi, who
refers to Jer. xxxvii. 5, 11, and by Perizonius, in his Origg.
JEgy-pt. p. 459, who founds on the notices of Herodotus (ii. 261)
and of Diodorus Siculus, i. 68, regarding the naval battle
between Apries on the one hand and the Cyprians and Phoeni-
cians on the other. From these notices, it appears pretty certain
that Pharaoh-Hophra sought to avenge the defeat of Necho
on the Chaldeans, and to extend the power of Egypt in Asia.
Hence it is also very probable that he took Gaza, with the view
of getting into his hands this key of the highway to Egypt.
This assumption we regard as the most probable, since nothing
has been made out against it ; there are no sufficient grounds
for the opinion that this prophecy belongs to the same time as
that in chap. xlvi.
Contents of the Prophecy. — From the north there pours
forth a river, inundating fields and cities, whereupon lamenta-
tion begins. Every one flees in haste before the sound of the
V
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVII. 2-7. 201
hostile army, for the day of desolation is come on all Philistia
and Phoenicia (vers. 2-4). The cities of Philistia mourn, for
the sword of the Lord is incessantly active among them (vers.
5-7). This brief prophecy thus falls into two strophes : in the
first (vers. 2-4), the ruin that is breaking over Philistia is de-
scribed ; in the second (vers. 5-7), its operation on the country
and on the people.
Yer. 2. " Thus saith Jahveh : Behold, waters shall rise up
out of the north, and shall become an inundating stream, and
they shall inundate the land and its fulness, cities and those
who dwell in them ; and men shall cry, and all the inhabitants
of the land shall howl. Ver. 3. Because of the sound of the
trampling of the hoofs of his strong horses, because of the din
of his chariots, the noise of his wheels, fathers do not look back
to their children from weakness of hands ; Ver. 4. Because of
the day that cometh to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from
Tyre and Zidon every one remaining as a helper ; for Jahveh
destroyeth the Philistines, the remnant of the coast of Caphtor.
Ver. 5. Baldness is come upon Gaza ; Ashkelon is destroyed,
the rest of their plain. How long wilt thou cut thyself ? Ver.
6. O sword of Jahveh, how long wilt thou not rest? Draw thy-
self back into thy sheath ; rest, and be still. Ver. 7. How canst
thou be quiet, when Jahveh hath commanded thee ? Against
Ashkelon and against the sea-coast, there hath He appointed it."
The address opens with a figure. The hostile army that
is to devastate Philistia is represented as a stream of water,
breaking forth from the north, and swelling to an overflowing
winter-torrent, that inundates the country and cities with their
inhabitants. The figure is often used : cf. xlvi. 7, 8, where the
Egyptian host is compared to the waves of the Nile ; and Isa.
viii. 7, where the Assyrian army is likened to the floods of the
Euphrates. The simile is applied here in another way. The
figure is taken from a strong spring of water, coming forth
in streams out of the ground, in the north, and swelling to
an overflowing winter-torrent, that pours out its floods over
Philistia, laying it waste. " From the north " is used here as
in xlvi. 20, and points back to i. 13, 14. "An inundating
stream " is here employed as in Isa. xxx. 20 ; " earth and its
fulness, a city and those who dwell in it," as in viii. 16. In
Digitized by
Google
202 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
ver. 3 follows the application of the figure. It is a martial
host that overflows the land, and with its mighty noise pats the
inhabitants in such terror that they think only of a hasty flight ;
even fathers do not turn back to save their children. 'i?J|?',
Stt. \67., Syriac -4^» ineedere, gradi, hence probably the
stamping of hoofs. D'T?^? strong horses, as in viii. 16.
^M"}?, instead of the construct state, has perhaps been chosen
only for the sake of introducing a variation ; cf . Ewald, § 290, a.
njen, to turn the back, as in xlvL 5. " Slackness of hands,"
i.e. utter loss of courage through terror; cf.vi. 24 (the form
l^'B") only occurs here). In ver. 4 the deeper source of fear is
mentioned ; " because of the day," i.e. because the day has
come to destroy all the Philistines, namely, the day of the
judgment determined by the Lord ; cf. xlvi. 10. " In order to
destroy every remnant helping Tyre and Zidon." itS> T'lfe' are
the Philistines, who could afford help to the Phoenicians in the
struggle against the Chaldean power. This implies that the
Phoenicians also shall perish without any one to help them.
This indirect mention of .the Phoenicians appears striking, but
it is to be explained partly on the ground that Jeremiah has
uttered special prophecies only against the chief enemies of
Judah, and partly also perhaps from the historical relatiofas, i.e.
from the fact that the Philistines might have afforded help to
the Phoenicians in the struggles against the great powers of the
world. Hitzig unnecessarily seeks to take l^'i^vS "'^ as the
object, and to expunge yfj) ''''1?'"''? as a gloss. The objections
which he raises against the construction are groundless, as is
shown by such passages as xliv. 7, Isa. xiv. 22, 1 Kings xiv.
10, etc. " The remaining helper " is the expression used,
because the other nations that could help the Egyptians, viz.
the Syrians and Phoenicians, had already succumbed to the
Chaldean power. The destruction will be so great as this,
because it is Jahveh who destroys the Philistines, the remnant
of the coast of Caphtor. According to Amos ix. 7, Deut.
ii. 23, the Philistines came from Caphtor ; hence llnsa *S 0*1^8'
can only mean " what still remains of the people of Philistia
who come from the coast of Caphtor," like " the remnant of
the Philistines " in Amos i. 8. Opinions are divided as to
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVII. 2-7. 203
Caphtor. The prevailing view is that of Lakemacher, that
Caphtor is the name of the island of Crete ; bat for this there
are no tenable grounds : see on Zeph. ii. 5 ; and Delitzsch on
Genesis, S. 248, Aufl. 4. Dietrich (in Merx' Archiv. i. S. 313 ff.)
and Ebers {j^gypten u. die BUcher Moses, i. S. 130 ff.) agree
in thinking that Caphtor is the shore of the Delta, but they
explain the name differently. Dietrich derives it from the
Egyptian Kah-pet-E6r (district of Hor), which he takes to be
the environs of the city of Buto, and the lake called after it
(the modern Burlos), not far from the Sebennytic mouth of
the Nile ; Ebers, following the tablet of Canopus, in which the
Egyptian name Kfa (Kaf) is given as that of Phoenicia,
derives the name from Kaf-t-ur, ue. the great Kef a, as the
ancient seat of the Phoenicians on the shore of the Delta must
have been called. But both explanations are still very doubt-
ful, though there is no question about the migration of the
Philistines from Egypt into Canaan. — Vers. 5-7. The prophet
sees, in the spirit, the threatened desolation as already come
upon Philistia, and portrays it in its effects upon the people
and the country. " Baldness (a sign of the deepest and most
painful sorrow) has come upon Gaza ; " cf. Mic. i. 16. nnpnj
is rendered by the Vulgate contictiit After this Graf and
Nagelsbach take the meaning of being "speechless through
pain and sorrow ; " cf. Lam. ii. 10. Others translate " to be
destroyed." Both renderings are lexically permissible, for HD^
and DD*j have both meanings. In support of the first, the
parallelism of the members has been adduced ; but this is not
decisive, for figurative and literal representations are often
interchanged. On the whole, it is impossible to reach any
definite conclusion ; for both renderings give suitable ideas,
and these not fundamentally different in reality the one from
the other. DiJDJ' TV^»f, "the rest of their valley" (the suffix
referring to Gaza and Ashkelon), is the low country round
about Gaza and Ashkelon, which are specially mentioned from
their being the two chief fortresses of Philistia. pDJJ is suit-
ably applied to the low -lying belt of country, elsewhere
called njB^, " the low country," as distinguished from the
hill-country ; for POJ? does not always denote a deep valley,
but is also sometimes used, as in Josh. xvii. 16, etc., of the
Digitized by
Google
204 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
plain of Jezreel, and of other plains which are far from being
deeply-sunk valleys. Thus there is no valid reason for follow-
ing the arbitrary translation of the LXX., icdi, rh KaraXonra
'Evaxeifi, and changing Oi^p^ into B^i?JJ^, as Hitzig and Graf
do; more especially is it utterly improbable that in the Chaldean
period Anakim were still to be found in Philistia. The men-
tion of them, moreover, is out of place here ; and still less can
we follow Graf in his belief that the inhabitants of Gath
are the " rest of the Anakim." In the last clause of ver. 5,
Philistia is set forth as a woman, who tears her body (with her
nails) in despair, makes incisions on her body; cf. xvi. 6,
xli. 5. The question, " How long dost thou tear thyself?"
forms a transition to the plaintive request, " Gather thyself,"
i.e. draw thyself back into thy scabbard. But the seer replies,
" How can it rest 1 for Jahveh hath given it a commission
against Ashkelon and the Philistine sea-coast." For ^oi'lf'?, in
ver. 7, we must read the 3d pers. fem. t^i'B'n, as the following
FI7 shows. The form probably got into the text from an
oversight, through looking at ''Opt^Pi in ver. 6. om f|^n, " the
sea-coast," a designation of Philistia, as in Ezek. xxv. 16.
The prophecy concludes without a glance at the Messianic
future. The threatened destruction of the Philistines has
. actually begun with the conquest of Philistia by Nebuchad-
nezzar, but has not yet culminated, in the extermination of the
people. The extermination and complete extirpation are thus
not merely repeated by Ezekiel, xxv. 15 ff., but after the exile
the threats are once more repeated against the Philistines by
Zechariah (ix. 5) : they only reached their complete fulfilment
when, as Zechariah announces, in the addition made to Isa.
xiv. 30 ff., their idolatry also was removed from them, and their
incorporation into the Church of God was accomplished through
judgment. Cf. the remarks on Zeph. ii. 10.
Chap, xlviii. Concerning Moab.
The Moabites had spread themselves on the eastern side of
the Dead Sea, where the Emims dwelt in former times (Deut.
ii. 10). But previous to the immigration of the Israelites into
Canaan, the Amorites, under King Sihon, had already taken
forcible possession of the northern portion of this territory as
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIIL 205
far as the Arnon (Num. xxi. 13). The Israelites, on their
inarch through the desert, were not to treat the Moabites as
enemies, nor touch their territory (Deut. ii. 9 ; cf . Judg. xi.
15, 18). But when Sihon, king of the Amorites, had been
slain by the Israelites, and his kingdom subdued, the Israelites
took possession of the territory north of the Arnon, that had
formerly belonged to the Moabites, but had been conquered
by Sihon : this was given to the tribe of Beuben for an
inheritance (Num. xxi. 24 ff. ; Deut. ii. 32-36 ; Josh. xiii.
15 ff.). The Moabites could not get over this loss of the
northern half of their country. The victory of the Israelites
over the powerful kings of the Amorites, viz. Sihon in Hesh-
bon and Og of Bashan, inspired them with terror for the power
of this people; so that their king Balak, while the Israelites were
encamped in the steppes of Moab opposite Jericho, fetched
Balaam the sorcerer from Mesopotamia, with the design of
destroying Israel through the power of his anathema. And
when this plan did not succeed, since Balaam was obliged,
against his will, to bless Israel instead of cursing them, the
Moabites sought to weaken them, and to render them powerless
to do any injury, by seducing them to idolatry (cf. Num. xxii.-
XXV.). Such malicious conduct was shown repeatedly afterwards.
Not long after the death of Joshua, Eglon the king of Moab, .
aided by the Ammonites and Amalekites, crossed the Jordan
and took Jericho, which he made the centre of operations for
keeping the Israelites under subjection : these were thus op-
pressed for eighteen years, until they succeeded in defeating
the Moabites and driving them back into their own land, after
Ehud had assassinated King Eglon (Judg. iii. 12 ff.). At a
later period, Saul made war on them (1 Sam. xiv. 47) ; and
David completely subdued them, severely chastised them, and
made them tributary (2 Sam. viii. 2). But after the death of
Ahab, to whom King Mesha had paid a very considerable
yearly tribute (2 Kings iii. 4), they revolted from Israel
(2 Kings i. 1, iii. 5). In the time of Jehoshaphat, in conjunc-
tion with the Ammonites and a portion of the Edomites, they
even invaded Judah, with the design of taking Jerusalem ; but
they mined themselves through mutual discords, so that Jeho-
shaphat obtained a glorious victory over them (2 Chron. xx.).
Digitized by
Google
206 THK PSOFHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
It was possibly ako with the view of taking revenge for this
exhibition of malicioas spirit that the king of Judah afterwards,
in conjunction with Joram king of Israel, carried war into their
country, and defeated them (2 Kings iii. 6-27). Still later,
mention is made of an invasion of Israel by Moabite hosts
during the reign of Joash (2 Kings xiii. 20) ; and in the time
of Hezekiah, we find them once more in possession of their
ancient territory to the north of the Amon, at a time when the
trans- Jordanic tribes of Israel had been carried away by the
Assyrians into exile.
Judging from these aphoristic notices, the Moabites, on the
division of the kingdom after Solomon's death, seem to have re-
mained tributary to the kingdom of the ten tribes until the death
of Ahab; then they revolted, but soon afterwards were once more
reduced to subjection by Joram and Jehoshaphat. Still later,
they certainly made several invasions into Israel, but without
permanent result ; nor was it till the carrying away of the
trans-Jordanic tribes by the Assyrians that they succeeded in
regaining permanent possession of the depopulated land of
Keuben, their former territory. This account, however, has
been modified in several important respects by the recent dis-
covery of an inscription on a monument raised by King Mesha
after a victory he had gained ; this <' Moabite stone " was found
in the neighbourhood of the ancient Dibon. The deciphering
of the long inscription of thirty-four lines on this memorial
stone, so far as success has followed the attempts hitherto made,
has issued in its giving important disclosures concerning the
relation of Moab to Israel.^ From these we gather that Omri,
^ On the discovery of this memorial stone, of which Count de Vogue gave
the first account in a paper entitled " La stile de Mesa : Lettre h Mr. le
Comtede Vogiid par Ch. Clermont- Ganneau," Paris 1870, cf. the detailed
notice by Petermann in the Zeitschr. der Dentschen Morg. Gesell. xxiv. (for
1870), S. 640 S. The stone was broken to pieces by the Arabs ; thus, un-
fortunately, the whole of the inscription has not been preserved. So much,
however, of the fragments has been saved, that from these the contents of
the inscription may be substantially obtained with tolerable cerfaunty. The
work of deciphering has been undertaken by Konst. Sohlottmann ( Ueber die
Siegess&nle Mesa's, Konigs der Moabiter, HalL Osterpiogr. 1870, with these
additions : " Die Inschrift Mesa's ; Transcription u. Uebersetzung revidirt,"
in the Zeitschr. der Morg. Gesell. xxiv. S. 253 ff. ; " Additamenta " in
the same periodical, S. 415 ff., 438 ff., 645 ff.; and "Der MoaUterkonig
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLViU. 207
king of Israel, had taken possession of the district of Medeba,
and that the Moabites were heavily oppresse4 by him and his
successor for forty years, until King Mesha succeeded, through
the help of his god Chemosh, in regaining the temtory that
had been seized by the Israelites. We. may further with cer-
tainty conclude, from various statements in this inscription,
that the Moabites were by no means exterminated by the
Israelites, when they took possession of the country to the north
of the Amon, which had been seized by the Amorites ; they
continued to live beside and among the Israelites. Moreover,
since the tribe of Heubeu was chiefly engaged in the rearing
of cattle, and thus appropriated the pastoral districts of the
country, the Moabites were not utterly, at least not permanently
subdued, but rather took every opportunity of weakening the
Israelites, in order not merely to reclaim their old possessions,
but also to make themselves independent of Israel. This object
they seem to have actually attained, even so soon as immediately
after the death of Solomon. They continued independent until
the powerful Omri restored the supremacy of Israel in the
territory of Keuben ; and Moab continued subject for forty
years, at the end of which King Mesha again succeeded in
breaking the yoke of Israel after the death of Ahab. Thence-
forward, Israel never again got the upper hand, though Jero-
boam II. (as we are entitled to conclude from 2 Kings xiv. 25)
may have disputed the supremacy with the Moabites for a
time.
Amos (ii. 1-3) and Isaiah (chap. xv. and xvi.) have alreadv,
Mesa naeh seiner Inschrijt und nach den M>1. Berkhten," in the TheoL Stud.
u. Kritiken, 1871, S. 687 ff.), also by Theod. Noldeke ("Die Inschrift des R.
Mesa," Kid 1870), Ferd. Hitzig {"Die Inschrift des Mesha," Heidelb. 1870),
Himpd (in the Tab. Theol. Quartalschr. 1870, H. 4, and in Merx'' Archiv,
ii. S. 96 ff.), Diestel (" Die moahit. Gedenktafel," in the Jahrh. f. deutsche
Theol. 1871 (H. 4), S. 215ff.), Rabbi Dr. Geiger (" Die Sauk des Mesa," in
the Zeitschr. der Morg. Ges. xxiv. S. 212 fF.), Dr. Ginsburg (" The Moabite
Stone," Lond. 1870), Ganneau (in the Revue arched.) ; by Derenborg and
othera'(in Grerman, English, and French periodicals). [In addition to the
work of Dr. Ginsburg, mentioned above, the English reader may consult an
able article by Professor Wright in the Ndrth British Review for October
1870 ; one by W. H. Ward in the Bibliotheca Sacra of the same date ; and
another by Prof. A. B. Davidson in the British and Foreign Evangelical
Bevieie for January 1871. — ^Te.]
Digitized by
Google
208 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
before Jeremiah, threatened Moab with destructioB, because of
the acts of hostiUty against Israel of which they have been
guilty. We have no historical notice concerning the fulfilment
of these threatenings. Inasmuch as the power of the Assyrians
in Eastern Asia was broken through the defeat of Sennacherib
before Jerusalem, the Moabites may possibly have asserted their
independence against the Assyrians. Certainly it seems to
follow, from the remark in 1 Chron. v. 17 (that the families of
Gad were reckoned by genealogies in the days of Jotham king
of Judah), that some of the Israelites on the east of Jordan
came for a time under the sway of Judah. But even though
this were allowed to hold true of the tribe of Reuben also, such
a mastery could not have lasted long, since even towards the
end of Jotham's reign, Pekah the king of Israel joined with
Hazael king of Syria in war against Judah (2 Kings xv. 37) ;
and during the reign of Ahaz, Rezin invaded Gilead, and pene-
trating as far as the seaport of Elath, took it from Judah
(2 Kings xvi. 6). At all events, up till the time of Nebuchad-
nezzar, the threats of Amos and Isaiah had attained only the
feeblest beginnings of fulfilment ; and (as is abundantly evident
from the prophecy in this chapter) the Moabite? were then
more powerful than ever they had been before, and in undis-
turbed possession also of that portion of their ancient territory
lying north of the Amon, which had been taken from them by
Sihon the Amorite ; and after his defeat, the victorious Israel-
ites had again apportioned it to the tribe of Eeuben.
This prophecy of Jeremiah concerning Moab is to be ex-
plained on the ground of these historical relations. The day
of ruin was to begin with the appearance of the Chaldeans in
Palestine ; this day had been predicted not merely by Amos
and Isaiah, but even by Balaam, on the occasion of the first
conflict of the Moabites with Israel. Jeremiah accordingly
takes up anew the utterances of the old prophets regarding
Moab which had not yet been fulfilled, but were now about to
receive their accomplishment : these he reproduces in his own
peculiar manner, taking as his foundation the oracular sen-
tences of Isaiah concerning Moab, and combining these by
means of the utterances of Amos and Balaam, not only regard-
ing Moab, but also regarding the whole heathen world now ripe
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIIL 209
for judgment ; and out of all this he frames a comprehensive
announcement of the ruin to fall on this people, so haughty, and
so filled with hatred against Israel.^
The contents of this announcement are as follow : — The
chief cities of Moab are perished, and with them their fame.
Plans are being concocted for their destruction. On all sides
there is a crying over the devastation, and wailing, and flight ;
Chemosh, with his priests and princes, wanders into exile, and
country and city are laid waste (vers. 1-8). Let Moab escape
with wings, in order to avoid the destruction; for although they
have, in all time past, lived securely in their own land, they
shall now be driven out of their dwellings, and come to dishonour
with their god Chemosh, in spite of the bravery of their heroes
(vers. 9-15). The destruction of Moab draws near, their glory
perishes, the whole country and all its towns are laid waste, and
the power of Moab is broken (vers. 16-25). All this befalls
them for their pride and loftiness of spirit ; because of this they
are punished, with the destruction of .their glorious vines and
their harvest ; and the whole land becomes filled with sorrow
and lamentation over the desolation, and the extermination of
all those who make offerings to idols (vers. 26-35). Meanwhile
the prophet mourns with the hapless people, who are broken like
a despised vessel (vers. 36-38). Moab becomes the laughing-
stock and the horror of all around: the enemy captures all their
fortresses, and none shall escape the ruin (vers. 39-44). Fire
goes out from Heshbon and destroys the whole land, and the
* This reproduction Gresenius (on Isaiah, p. 511) characterizes as " a
feeble imitation, by vliich the text of the older author is made quite diffuse
and watery, frequently mixed through in a wonderful manner, made into a
kind of patchwork, and enlivened now and again by a stiff turn." Movers
and Hitzig have spoken still more depreciatingly of this chapter, and excised
a great number of verses, on the ground of tiieir having been introduced
later by way of touching up ; in this manner, Hitzig rejects as spurious
verses which Movers recognises as exhibiting marks of Jei-emiah's peculiar
style, — a method of procedure which Graf has already denounced as arbi-
trary criticism. We hope to show in the commentary the total want of
foundation for this pseudo-critical mode of dealing ; we only make the
further remark here by anticipation, that Eueper (on Jeremiah, p. 83 sqq.)
has very clearly accounted for and vindicated the conduct of Jeremiah in
making use of the expressions of previous prophets, while Movers and Hitaig
have paid no regard to this thorough kind of work.
VOL. II. O
Digitized by
Google
210 THE PBOFHECIKS OF JEREMIAH.
people must go into captivity ; but at the end of the days, the
Lord will turn the captivity of Moab (vers. 45-47). According
to this view of the whole, this prophecy falls into seven strophes
of unequal length, of which every one concludes either with li?N
rriiT or nin^ dm. The middle one, which is also the longest
(vers. 26-35), forms an apparent exception, inasmuch as DW
<^<^\ does not stand at the end, but in the middle of ver. 35 ;
while in the second last strophe (vers. 39-44), the last two
verses (43 and 44) end with this formula.
Vers. 1-8. Calamities to come on Moab. — Ver. 1. *' Thus
saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel, Woe to Nebo, for it
is laid waste! Kiriathaim is come to dishonour, it is taken :
the fortress is come to dishonour and broken down. Ver. 2.
Moab's glory is no more. In Heshbon they have devised evil
against her, [saying], Come, and let us cut her off from [being]
a nation : thou also, O Madmen, art brought to silence ; the
sword shall go after thee. Ver. 3. A sound of crying from
Horonaim, desolation and great destruction. Ver. 4. Moab is
destroyed ; her little ones have caused a cry to be heard. Ver.
5. For they ascend the ascent of Luhith with weeping, — weep-
ing : for on the descent of Horonaim the enemies have heard
a cry of destruction. Ver. 6. Flee, save your life ! and be like
one destitute in the wilderness. Ver. 7. For, because thy
trust [was] in thy works,, and in thy treasures, thou also shalt
be taken ; and Chemosh shall go into captivity, his priests and
his princes together. Ver. 8. The destroyer shall come to
every city, and no city shall escape ; and the valley shall perish,
and the plain shall be laid waste, as Jahveh hath said."
With the exclamation " Woe !" Jeremiah transports the
hearers of the word of God at once into the midst of the
catastrophe which is to come on Moab ; this is with the view
of humbling the pride of this people, and chastening them for
their sins. The woe is uttered over Nebo, but holds also of the
towns named afterwards. Nebo is not the mountain of that name
(Dent, xxxii. 49, xxxiv. 1), but the city, which probably did not
lie far from the peak in the mountain-range of Abarim, which
bore the same name (Num. xxxii. 3, 38 ; Isa. xv. 2), although
in the Oncmasticon, s.v. Na^av, the situation of the mountain
is given as being six Soman miles from Heshbon, towards the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-& ' 211
west, and s.v. Na^mp, that of the city, eight Boinan miles south
from Heshbou, for both accounts point to a situation in the
south-west. The name bJ is still applied to some ruins; cf.
Robinson's Palestine, iii. p. 170. " Kiriathaim is taken." The
site of this town, mentioned as early as Gen. xiv. 5, has been
fixed, since the time of Burckhardt, as that of a mass of ruins
called et Teim, about five miles south of Heshbon ; but Dietrich,
in Merx' Archiv. i. S. 337 ff., has shown that this is incorrect.
According to Eusebius, in his Onomasticon, Kiriathaim lay ten
Roman miles to the west of Medeba : this suits not merely the
position of et Teim, but also the ruins of Kereyat south-west
from Medeba, on the ridge of Mount Attarus, a little to the
south of M'kaur (Maehaerus), and of Baara in the Wady Zerka
Maein, where also is the plain mentioned in Gen. xiv. 5, either
in the plain stretching direct east from Kereyat between Wady
Zerka Maein and Wady Wal, or south-east in the beautiful
plain el Kara, described by Burckhardt, p. 371 ff., between
the Wal and the Mojeb. Nebo and Kiriathaim lay on the
eastern border of the high range of mountains, and seem to be
comprehended under 3JfQ?, " the height, the high fortress," in
the third clause of ver. 1, as the representatives of the moun-
tain country of Moab. Various expositors, certainly, take the ,
word as a proper name designating an elevated region ; Graf
and Nagelsbach take it to be a name of Kir-Moab (Kir-heres,
Kir-haresheth, vers. 31, 36), the chief fortress in the country,
the modern Kerek in the southern part of Moab ; but no valid
proof has been adduced. By " the height " Hitzig understands
the highlands, which learn of the fall of these towns in the
lowlands, and feel this disgrace that has come on Moab, but
have not yet themselves been taken. But this view is unten-
able, because the towns of Nebo and Kiriathaim are not situated
in the level country. Again, since HB^i^n is common to the two
clauses, the distinction between 'T)|?? and nFin could hardly be
pressed so far as to make the latter the opposite of the former,
in the sense of being still unconquered. The meaning rather is,
that through Nebo's being laid waste, and the capture of Kiiia-
thaim, the fortress on which the Moabites trusted is no more.
And to this ver. 3 appropriately adds, " the boasting of Moab
Digitized by
Google
212 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
is gone," i.e. Moab has no more ground for boasting. "In
Heshbon they (the enemy, or the conquerors) plot evil against
Moab." Heshbon was formerly the capital of the Amorite
kingdom of Sihon (Num. xxi. 26 ; Deut. ii. 24, etc.), and was
assigned to the tribe of Beuben (Josh. xiii. 17) ; but because
it lay on the boundary of the territory belonging to the tribe,
it was given up to the Gadites, and set apart as a Levitical city
(Josh. xxi. 37). It lay ten Koman miles east from the Jordan,
opposite Jericho, almost intermediate between th^ Amon and the
Jabbok, and is still pointed out, though in ruins, under the old
name Heshbdn (see on Num. xxxii. 37). At the time of Jere-
miah it was taken possession of by the Ammonites (Jer. xlix. 3),
consequently it was the frontier town of the Moabite territory
at that time ; and being such, it is here named as the town
where the enemy, coming from the north, deliberate regarding
the conquest of Moab — "meditate evil," i.e. decide upon conquest
and devastation. The suffix of nvV refers to Moab as a country,
and hence is feminine ; cf. ver. 4. " We will destroy it
(Moab) ^^30, so that it shall no longer be a nation." Just as in
«E'n liSE'ria there is a play on the words, so is there also in the
expression ts'^n lO"]? which follows. This very circumstance
forms an argument for taking Madmen as a proper name, in-
stead of an appellative, as Yenema and Hitzig have done, after
the example of the LXX. : " Yea, thou shalt be destroyed (and
made into) a dunghill." In support of this rendering they
point to 2 Kings x. 27, Ezra vi. 11. But the verb OOT, in its
meaning, ill accords with f?"]? in the sense of a dung-heap, and
in this case there would be no foundation for a play upon the
words (Graf). It is no proof of the non-existence of a place
called Madmen in Moab, that it is not mentioned elsewhere ;
Madmena in the tribe of Benjamin (Isa. x. 31), and Madmanna
in Judah (Josh. xv. 31), are also mentioned but once. These
passages rather show that the name Madmen was not uncommon ;
and it was perhaps with reference to this name that Isaiah
(xxv. 10) chose the figure of the dunghill. DO'n, to be silent,
means, in the Niphal, to be brought to silence, be exterminated,
perish ; cf. xlix. 26, xxv. 37, viii. 14, etc. As to the form ''B'^J?
instead of 'Bin, cf . Ewald, § 140, b ; Gesenius, § 67, Rem. 5. The
following clause refers to Madmen: " after thee shall the sword
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-8; 213
go;" cf. ix. 15. — Vef. 3. A cry is heard from Horonaim against
violence aud destruction. The words Tifi 13E^ "i^ are to be taken
as the cry itself; cf. iv. 20, xx. 8. The city of Horonaim, men-
tioned both here and in Isa. xv. 5 in connection with Luhith,
lay on a slope, it would seem, not far from Luhith. Regarding
this latter place we find it remarked in the Onomasticon: est usque
hodie vicus inter Areopolim et Zoaram nomine LuitUa (Aoveidd).
As to 'Slpovael/i, the Onomasticon says no more than itoXk
MfohP h> 'lepefiia (ed. Lars. p. 376). The destruction over
which the outcry is made comes on Moab. By " Moab " Graf
refuses to understand the country or its inhabitants, but rather
the ancient capital of the country, Ar-Moab (Num. xxi. 28; Isa.
XV. 1), in the valley of the Arnon, which is also simply palled
Ar in Num. xxi. 15, Deut. ii. 9. But, as Dietrich has already
shown (S. 329 ff.), the arguments adduced in support of this
view are insufficient to prove the point.^ laB*, to break, — of
a nation or a city (xix. 11; Isa. xiv. 25, etc.), as it were, to
ruin, — ^is here used of the country or kingdom. v'^'^^J'^ is for
nn^ys, as in xiv. 3. The little ones of Moab, that raise a cry,
are neither the children (Vulgate, Dahler, Maurer), nor the small
towns (Hitzig), nor the people of humble condition, but cives
Moabi ad statum miserum dejecti (Kueper). The LXX. have
rendered et? Zoyopa (i.e. •^^I'V), which reading is preferred by
J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Umbreit, Graf, Nagelsbach, but with-
out sufficient reason; for neither the occurrence of Zoar in
combination with Horonaim in ver. 34, nor the parallel passage
Isa. XV. 5, will prove the point. Isa. xv. 5 is not a parallel to
this verse, but to ver. 34 ; however, the train of thought is diffe-
^ The mention of Moab among names of cities in ver. 4, and in connection
with Eir-heres in vers. 31 and 36, proves nothing ; for in ver. 4 Moab is
not named among towns, and the expression in vers. 31 and 36 is analogous
to the phraee " Judah and Jerusalem." Nor can any proof be derived from
the fact that Eabbath-Moab is merely called " Moab " in the Onemasticon
of Eusebius, and Mob in Abulfeda, and Eabbath-Ammon, now merely
" Amman ; " because this mode of speaking will not admit of being applied
for purposes of proof to matters pertaining to Old Testament times, since it
originated only in the Christian ages, — at a time, too, when Rabbath had
become the capital of the country, and when Rabbath-Moab could easily be
shortened by the common people into " Moab." Rabbath (of Moab), how-
ever, is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament.
Digitized by
Google
/
214 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
rent from that before us here. Besides, Jeremiah writes the
name of the town ijV (not ly^'t), cf. ver. 34, as in Isa. xv. 5,
Deut. xxxiv. 3, Gen. xiii. 10 (i?^S occurs only in Gen. xix. 22,
30) ; hence it is unlikely that "ViJDt has been written by mistake
for ijnv.
In ver. 5 this idea is further elucidated. The inhabitants
flee, weeping as they go, towards the south, before the con-
quering enemy advancing from the north, up the ascent of
Luhith, and down the descent of Horonaim. The idea is
taken from Isa. Xv. 5, but applied by Jeremiah in his own
peculiar manner; 12 TP^ is changed into 'M n?g^, and the
notion of weeping is thereby intensified. We take '33 as an
adverbial accusative, but in fact it is to be rendered like the
preceding '333; and n7j|; stands with an indefinite nominative:
"one ascends = they ascend," not "weeping rises over weep-
ing," as Hitzig, Graf, and others take it. For, in the latter
case, '333 could not be separated from '33, nor stand first ; cf .
the instances adduced by Graf, rue's n:f and m T.}>. The
form ninpn for Ji'njn is either an error of transcription or an
optional form, and there is no ground for taking the word as
appellative, as Hitzig does, " the ascent of boards, i.e, as boards
tower one above another, so does weeping rise," — an unnatural
figure, and one devoid of all taste. The last words of the second
member of the verse present some difficulty, chiefly on account
of '^s, which the LXX. have omitted, and which Ewald and
Umbreit set down as spurious, although (as Graf rightly re-
marks) they do not thereby explain how it came into the text.
To suppose, with the Rabbinical writers, that the construct
state '^X stands for the absolute, is not only inadmissible, as
being against the principles of grammar, but also contrary to
the whole scope of the passage. The context shows that the
clamour cannot proceed from the enemy, but only ^rom the
fugitive Moabites. Only two explanations are possible : either
'^v must be taken in the sense of angustice^ and in connec-
tion with liJJW, « straits, distress of crying," a cry of distress,
as De Wette does ; or, " oppressors of the cry of distress," as
Nagelsbach takes it. We prefer the former, in spite of the
objection of Graf, that the expression " distress of crying," for
"a cry of distress," would be a strange one : for this objection
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVni. 1-8. 215
may be made against his own explanation, that ^^ means the
bursting open of the month in making a loud cry ; and n^j^ nv
is a loud outcry for help. — Ver, 6. Only by a precipitate
flight into the desert can the Moabites save even their lives.
The summons to flee is merely a rhetorical expression for the
thought that there is no safety to be had in the country. To
'^}1'^) in ver- 6 we must supply nie'DJ as the subject : " your
souls shall be." Ewald would change Q3e^ into DS^K'B? ; but
this proposal has against it the fact that the plural form Q^Q^
is found in but a single case, Ezek. xiii. 20, and r\WSi every-
where else : besides, IS^. is often used in the singular of several
persons, as in 2 Sam. xix. 6, and may further be easily taken
here in a distributive sense ; of. ^K^w vhVi lOpD, H. 6. The
assumption of C. B. Michaelis, Rosenmiiller, Maurer, [and of
the translators of our "Authorized" English Version], that
™J.'i^ is the second person, and refers to the cities, i.e. their
inhabitants, is against the context. "^Itt^V. cannot here be the
name of a town, because neither Aroer in the tribe of Keuben,
which was situated on the Amon, nor Aroer of the tribe of
Gad, which was before Babbath-Ammon, lay in the wilder-
ness ; the comparison, too, of the fugitives to a city is unsuit-
able. The clause reminds us of xvii. 6, and iJJ^iSI = the "ly^J?
of that passage; the form found here is either an error of
transcription caused by thinking of Aroer, or a play upon the
name of the city, for the purpose of pointing out the fate
impending over it. — Ver. 7. Moab will not be saved from
destruction by any trust on their works or on their treasures.
The LXX., Vulgate, and Syriac render T'^^ by fortresses,
hence Ewald would read I^JiVD instead ; but there is no ground
for the change, since the peculiar rendering alluded to has
evidently originated from >wm having been confounded with
rtVD. Others, as Dahler, refer the word to idols; but these
are always designated as T 'E>5|0. Graf translates " property,"
and points to 1 Sam. xxv. 2, Ex. xxiii. 16; but this meaning
also has really nothing to support it, for ne'j|D in these pas-
sages denotes only agriculture and its produce, and the com-
bination of the word with nii^t^tt in this passage does not
require such a rendering. We abide by the common meaning
of " doings " or " works," not evil deeds specially (Hitzig), but
Digitized by
Google
216 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
" all that Moab undertakes." Neither their efforts to maintain
and increase their power, nor their wealth, will avail them in
any way. They shall be overcome. Moab is addressed as a
country or kingdom. 1??, to seize, capture ; of a land, to
take, conquer. Ohemosh, with his priests and princes, shall go
into exile. B"D3 is perhaps a mere error of the copyist for
B'^ca, Chemosh, the chief deity of the Moabites and Ammon-
ites, worshipped as a king and the war-god of his people : see
on Num. xxi. 29. As in the last-named passage the Moabites
are called the people of Chemosh, so here, not merely the
priests, but also the princes of Moab, are called his priests and
his princes. The Kethib in» is not to be changed, although
Jeremiah elsewhere always uses nn», which is substituted in
the Qeri ; cf. xlix. 3. In confirmation of this, it is added, in
ver. 8, that all the cities of Moab, without exception, shall be
laid waste, and the whole country, valley and plain, shall be
brought to ruin. llB^'sn, « the level," is the table-land stretch-
ing from the Amon to Heshbon, and north-eastwards as far as
Rabbath-Ammon, and which originally belonged to the Moabites,
hence called " the fields of Moab " in Num. xxi. 40 ; but it
was taken from them by the Amorites, and after the conquest
of the latter was taken possession of by the Israelites (Deut.
iii. 10, iv. 43 ; Josh. xiii. 9), but at that time had been taken
back once more by the Moabites. p^vn is the valley of the
Jordan, commonly called fi^^^fj, as in Josh. xiii. 27 and 19 ;
here it is that portion of the valley towards the west ;ivhich
bounds the table-land. IK'S can only be taken in a causal
signification," because," as in xvi. 13, or in a relative meaning,
quod, or " as."
Vers. 9-15. Moab is laid waste, and its inhabitants carried
captive. — Ver. 9. " Give pinions to Moab, for he will flee and
get away, and his cities shall become a waste, with no one
dwelling in them. Ver. 10. Cursed is he that doeth the work
of Jahveh negligently, and cursed is he that restraineth his sword
from blood. Ver. 11. Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and lay still upon his lees ; he was not poured out from vessel
to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity, therefore his taste
hath remained in him, and his smell hath not changed. Ver. 12.
Therefore, behold, days come, saith Jahveh, when I will send
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 9-15. 217
to him those who pour out, and they shall poor him out ; and
they shall empty his vessels, and break their bottles. Ver. 13.
And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of
Israel was ashamed of Bethel their confidence. Ver. 14. How
can ye say, We are mighty, and men of valour for the war?
Ver. 15. Moab is laid waste, and people ascend into his cities,
and the choice of his young men go down to the slaughter,
saith the King, whose name is Jahveh of hosts."
The devastation will come so suddenly, that Moab, in order
to escape it, uses wings for enabling him to flee from it. The
request " give " is not ironical, but a mere rhetorical employ-
ment of the idea that wings would be necessary in order to
escape. TV, which elsewhere means a flower, here signifies
wings or waving plumes, as in the Targum on Ps. cxxxix. 9,
and in the Kabbinical writings. t<to, written with K for the
sakd of obtaining similarity of sound, stands for n^J z= )^J, to
flee. — Ver. 10. The devastation is a work of the Lord, and
those who execute it must carry out the divine decree, so that
they may not bring the curse upon themselves. The first
clause is taken quite generally : the more exact specification of
the work of the Lord follows in the second clause ; it is the
employment of the sword against Moab. "His sword" does
not mean Jahveh's, but the sword carried by the devastator,
nw is used adverbially, but not in the sense of " deceitfully,"
rather " carelessly, negligently ; " cf . njO"! I?, Prov. x. 4,
xii. 24. In ver. 11 follows the reason why the judgment has
necessarily come on Moab. Moab is compared to old wine
that has lain long on its lees, and thereby preserved its flavour
and smell unchanged. The taste and odour of Moab signify
his disposition towards other nations, particularly towards
Israel, the people of God. Good wine becomes stronger and
more juicy by lying pretty long on its lees (see on Isa. xxv. 6) ;
inferior wine, however, becomes thereby more harsh and thick.
The figure is used here in the latter sense, after Zeph. i. 12.
Moab's disposition towards Israel was harsh and bitter; the
people were arrogant and proud (ver. 29 f . ; Isa. xvi. 6), and
so hostile towards Israel, that they sought every opportunity
of injuring them (see above, p. 205 f ., and the comments on
2 Sam. viii. 2). From his youth, i.e. from the time when
Digitized by
Google
218 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Moab, after subduing the Eminos (Dent. ii. 10), bad established
himself in his own land, or had become enrolled among the
nations of history, — from that time forward had he remained
undisturbed in his own land, i.e. without being driven out of
it, had not gone into captivity (as is shown by the figure of
the wine poured from one vessel into another). In this way
there is a qualification made of the general statement that he
remains at rest on his lees, and undisturbed. For Moab has
often carried on wars, and even suffered many defeats, but
has never yet been driven from his own land; nor had the
temporary dependence on Israel exercised any transforming
influence on the ordinary life of the people, for they were
simply made tributary. This quiet continuance in the country
is to cease. The God of Israel " will send to them cellarmen
(Germ. Schroter), who shall bring them out of the cellar"
(Germ, ausschroten), as Luther translates ver. 12. " Schroter "
are men who bring the wihe-casks out of the cellar; for
" schroten " means to bring out heavy burdens, especially full
casks on a strong kind of hand-barrow (GteTia. Hebewerkzeug),
like a ladder in appearance. D*yx (from nySj to bend, incline)
are those who incline a barrel or vessel for the purpose of
pouring out its contents. These will not merely empty the
vessels, but also break the pitchers ; i.e. not merely carry away
the Moabites, but also break down their political organization,
and destroy their social arrangements.
Ver. 13. In this way Moab will come to dishonour through
his god Chemosh, i.e. experience his powerlessness and nothing-
ness, and perish with him, just as Israel (the ten tribes) came
to dishonour through Bethel, 2.e. through their golden calf at
Bethel. As to the form on^^D, with Segol in the pretone, cf.
Ewald, § 70, a; Olshausen, Gram. S. 377. Moab will then be
no longer able to boast of his valour ; this is the meaning of the
question in ver. 14 : on this term in the address, cf. ii. 23, viii.
8. In ver. 15 it is further stated that the result will show this :
" Moab is laid waste." n?v nnv] is variously interpreted. An
explanation which has met with much acceptance, but which
nevertheless is really untenable, is founded on Judg. xx. 40
(" The whole city went up towards heaven," i.e. in smoke and
fire) : " As for his cities, fire or smoke ascends ;" but there is no
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 16-25. 219
mention here either of smoke or fire. Kimchi long ago came
near the truth when he sought to find the subject Tils' in fjf :
" and the devastator comes against his cities." However, the
contrast between '"ijy and nv is not fully brought out in this
way : it is better to leave the subject indeterminate : " and his
cities they climb" (Kueper), or: " they go up to his cities"
(Bottcher, Neue ^hrmlese, ii. 163). The enemy who mounts
the cities is evidently intended. To change ^^B' into TiB' is
both unnecessary and unsuitable ; but J. D. Michaelis, Ewald,
Dahler, Graf, after making the alteration, translate, " The
destroyer of Moab and of his cities draws near." Hitzig justly
remarks, in opposition to this conjecture : " There is nothing to
justify the mere placing of the subject at the head of the sen-
tence (contrast vers. 8, 18^) ; besides, one does not see why the
cities of Moab are distinguished from Moab itself ; and cf . 20b"
neap T1», " to sink down to the slaughter," cf. 1. 27 ; and on this
use of TiJ, Isa. xxxiv. 7. The enemy ascends into the cities, the
young soldiers of Moab descend to the shambles. This threaten-
ing is enforced by the addition, '' saith the King," etc. Jahveh
is called the King, in contrast with the belief of the Moabites,
that their god Chemosh was the king of his people (see on ver. 7).
The true King of the Moabites also is Jahveh, the God of hosts,
i.e. the Ruler of the whole world.
Vers. 16^25. MoaVs glory is departed. — Ver. 16. ** The
destruction of Moab is near to come, and his trouble hastens
rapidly. Ver. 17. Bewail him, all [ye who are] round aboqt
him, and all who know his name ! Say, How the rod of strength
is broken," the staff of majesty I Ver.' 18. Come down from
[thy] glory, and sit in the drought, [thou] inhabitant, daughter
of Dibon ; for the destroyer of Mo^b hath come up against thee,
he hath destroyed thy strongholds. Ver. 19. Stand by the way,
and watch, O inhabitant of Aroer ! ask him who flees, and her
that has escaped ; say. What has happened I Ver. 20. Moab
is ashamed, for it is broken down : howl and cry out ; tell it in
Amon, that Moab is laid waste. Ver. 21. And judgment hath
come upon the country of the plain, upon Holon, and upon
Jahzah, and upon Mephaath, Ver. 22. And upon Dibon, and
upon Nebo, and upon Betji-Diblathaim, Ver. 23. And upon
Kirjathaim, and upon Beth-Gamul, and upon Beth-Meon,
Digitized by
Google
220 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
Yer. 24. And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all
the cities of the land of Moab, those that are far off and those
that are near. Yer. 25. The horn of Moab is cut off, and his
arm is broken, saith Jahveh."
The downfall of Moab will soon begin. Yer. 16a is an
imitation of Deut. xxxii. 35 ; cf. Isa. xiii. 22, Ivi. 1. The fall
of the Moabite power and glory will be so terrible, that all the
nations, near and distant, will have pity on him. The sum-
mons to lament, ver. 17, is not a mockery, but is seriously
meant, for the purpose of expressing the idea that the downfall
of so mighty and glorious a power will rouse compassion. The
environs of Moab are the neighbouring nations, and " those
who know his name " are those who live far off, and have only
heard about him. The staff, the sceptre, is the emblem of
authority ; cf. Ezek. xix. 11, 12, 14, and Ps. ex. 2. In vers.
18-25 is further described the downfall of this strong and
glorious power. The inhabitants of Dibon are to come down
from their glory and sit in misery ; those of Aroer are to ask
the fugitives what has happened, that they may learn that the
whole table-land on to the Amon has been taken by the enemy ;
and they are to howl over the calamity. The idea presented in
ver. 18a is an imitation of that in Isa. xlvii. 1, " Come down,
O daughter of Babylon, sit in the dust ;" but ''f'] is intensified
by the addition of 1^30, and "IBV ^i^ '2m is changed into ''3^
NOM (the Kethib ''2^ has evidently been written by mistake for
'Jip, the Qeri). Koy elsewhere means " thirst ;" but " sit down
in the thirst" would be too strange an expression ; hence NOS
must here have the meaning of NOS, Isa. xliv. 3, " the thirsty
arid land :" thus it remains a question whether we should point
the word spSj or take NDS as another form of "P^, as ^J^ is of
3?n, Ezek. xxiii. 19. There is no sufficient reason why Hitzig
and Ewald should give the word a meaning foreign to it, from
the Arabic or Syriac. Dibon lay about four miles north from
the Amon, at the foot of a mountain, in a very beautiful plain,
where, under the name of Dibdn, many traces of walls, and a
well by the wayside, hewn out of the rock, are still to be found
(Seetzen, i. S. 409 f .). Hence it must have been well provided
with water, even though we should be obliged to understand by
" the water of Dimon" (Dibon), which Isaiah mentions (xv. 9),
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 16-25. 221
the river Arnon, which is about three miles off. The command
to " sit down in an arid land" thus forms a suitable figure,
representing the humiliation and devastation of Dibon. That
the city was fortified, is evident from the mention of the for-
tifications in the last clause, n? '^i?"j as in xlvi. 19. Aroer
was situated on the north bank of the Arnon (Mojeb), where
its ruins still remain, under the old name Ara'ir (Burckhardt,
p. 372). It was a frontier town, between the kingdom of
Sihon (afterwards the territory of the Israelites) and the pos-
session of the Moabites (Deut. ii. 36, iii. 12, iv. 48 ; Josh. xii. 2,
xiii. 9, 16). But after the Moabites had regained the northern
portion of their original territory, it lay in- the midst of the
land. The fugitives here represented as passing by are endea-
vouring, by crossing the Arnon, to escape from the enemy
advancing from the north, and subduing the country before
them. ■'????) D3 means fugitives of every kind. The co-ordi-
nation of the same word or synonymous terms in the masc.
and fem. serves to generalize the idea ; see on Isa. iii. 1, and
Ewald, § 172, c. In HOTDJ the tone is retracted through the
influence of the distinctive accent; the form is participial.
The question, " What has happened f " is answered in ver.
20. firin ^3, « for ( = certainly) it is broken down." The
Kethib *i?Vrt vyn must not be changed. Moab is addressed :
with ^1*3(? is introduced the summons, addressed to individuals,
to proclaim at the Arnon the calamity that has befallen the
country to the north of that river. In vers. 21-24 the general
idea of Moab's being laid waste is specialized by the enumera-
tion of a long list of towns on which judgment has come. They
are towns of ■>^K''Qrt JHK, the table-land to the north of the Arnon,
the names of which nearly all occur in the Pentateuch and
Joshua as towns in the tribe of Reuben. But Holon is men-
tioned only here. According to Eusebius, in the Onomastieon,
s.v. ^leaad, Jahzah was situated between Mf]ha^S>v (Medeba)
and A'q^ov'i (^Dibon) ; according to Jerome, between Medeba and
Debus, or Deblathai ; but from Num. xxi. 23, we conclude that
it lay in an easterly direction, on the border of the desert, near
the commencement of the Wady Wale. Mophaath or Mephaath,
where, according to the Onomastieon, a Koman garrison was
placed, on account of the near proximity of the desert, is to be
Digitized by
Google
222 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
sought for in the neighbonrhood of Jahzah ; see on Josh. xiii.
18. As to Dibon, see on ver. 18 ; for Nebo, see on ver. 1.
Beth-Diblathaini is mentioned only in this passage. It is pro-
bably identical with Almon-Diblathaim, Num. xxxiii. 46, and
to be sought for somewhere north from Dibon. For Kirjathaim
see ver. 1. Beth-Gamul is nowhere «lse mentioned ; its site,
too, is unknown. Eli Smith, in Eobinson's Palestine, iii. App.
p. 153, is inclined to recognise it in the ruins of Um-eUJemel,
lying on the southern boundary of the Hauran, about twenty
miles south-west from Bozrah ; but a consideration of the posi-
tion shows that they cannot be the same. Beth-Meon, or Baal-
Meon (Num. xxxii. 38), or more fully, Beth-Baal-Meon (Josh,
xiii. 17), lay about three miles south from Heshbon, where
Burckhardt (p. 365) found some ruins called Mi-m, ^^y^J>«
(Robinson, iii. App. p. 170, ^^\^, Ma-in); see on Num. xxxii.
38. Kerioth, vers. 24 and 41, and Amos ii. 2, is not to be identi-
fied with the ruins called Kereyath or Kureiyath, mentioned by
Burckhardt (p. 367) and Seetzen {Reisen, ii. 342, iv. 384), as
Ritter has assumed ; for this Kereyath is more probably Kir-
jathaim (see on ver. 1). Rather, as is pretty fully proved by
Dietrich (in Mer£ Archiv. i. 320 ff.), it is a synonym of Ar,
the old capital of Moab, Num. xxii. 36 ; and the plural form is
to be accounted for by supposing that Ar was made up of two
or several large portions. We find two great arguments sup-
porting this position : (1.) When Ar, the capital, occurs among
the names of the towns of Moab, as in the list of those in
Reuben, Josh. xiii. 16-21, and in the prophecy against Moab in
Isaiah, chap. xv. and xvi., where so many Moabitic towns are
named, we find no mention of Kerioth ; and on the other hand,
where Kerioth is named as an important town in Moab, Amos
ii. 2, Jer. xlviii., there is no mention of Ar. (2.) Kerioth is
mentioned as an important place in the country in Amos ii. 2,
where, from the whole arrangement of the prophecy, it can only
be the capital of Moab ; in this present chapter also, ver. 24,
Kerioth and Bozrah are introduced as two very important
towns which maintained the strength of Moab ; and imme-
diately afterward^ it is added, " The horn of Moab is cut off,"
etc. Further, in ver. 41 the capture of Kerioth is put on a level
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 26-35. 223
with the taking of the fortresses ; while it is added, that the
courage of the mighty men has failed, just as in xlix. 22 the
capture of Bozrah is coupled with the loss of courage on the
part of Edom's heroes. Bozrah is not to be confounded with
Bozrah in Edom (xlix. 13), nor with the later flourishing city
of Bostra in Hauran': it is the same with Bezer p-ff), which,
according to Deut. iv. 43 and Josh. xx. 8, was situated in the
Mishor of the tribe of Reuben, but has not yet been dis-
covered ; see on Deut. iv. 43. For the purpose of completing
the enumeration, it is further added, " all the towns of the land
of Moab, those which are far off (i.e. those which are situated
towards the frontier) and those which are near" (i,e. the towns
of the interior, as Kimchi has already explained). Thereby
the horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm broken. Horn and
arm are figures of pov^er : the horn an emblem of power that
boldly asserts itself, and pushes down all that opposes (cf. Ps.
Ixxv. 5, 11) ; the arm being rather an emblem of dominion.
Vers. 26-35. Moab'a haughtiness and deplorable fall, — Ver.
26. " Make him drunk, — for he hath boasted against Jahveh, — so
that Moab shall splash down into his vomit, and himself become
a laughing-stock. Ver. 27. Was not Israel a laughing-stock
to thee, or was he found among thieves ? for whenever thou
spakest of him, thou didst shake thine head. Ver. 28. Leave
the cities and dwell in the rock, ye inhabitants of Moab ; and
be ye like a dove [that] builds its nest in the sides of the mouth
of a pit. Ver. -29. We have heard the very arrogant pride of
Moah, his haughtiness, and his arrogance, and his high-minded-
ness, and his elation of mind. Ver. 30. I know, saith Jahveh,
his wrath, and the untruthfulness of his words ; they have
done what is untrue. Ver. 31. Therefore will I howl over
Moab, and for all Moab will I cry ; they mourn for the people
of Kir-heres. Ver. 32. I will weep for thee [with more]
than the weeping of Jazer, O vine of Sibmah, thou whose
tendrils have gone over the sea, have reached even to the sea
of Jazer ; on thy fruit-harvest and thy vintage a spoiler has
fallen. Ver. 33. And joy and gladness are taken from the
garden, and from the land of Moab ; and I have caused wine to
fail from the wine-vats : they shall not tread [with] a shout ;
the shout shall be no shout. Ver. 34. From the cry of Hesh-
Digitized by
Google
224 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
bon as far as Elealeh, as far as Jahaz, they utter their voice ;
from Zoar as far as Horonaim and the third Eglath ; for even
the waters of Nimrim shall become desolations. Yer. 35. And
I will destroy from Moab, saith Jahveh, him that offers on a
high place and burns incense to his gods."
Through his pride, Moab has incurred the sentence of de-
struction to his power. In arrogance and rage he has exalted
himself over Jahveh and His people Israel ; therefore must he
now be humbled, vers. 26-30. The summons to make Moab
drunk is addressed to those whom God has charged with the
execution of the sentence ; cf. vers. 10 and 21. These are to
present to the people of Moab the cup of the divine wrath, and
so to intoxicate them, that they shall fall like a drunk man into
his vomit, and become a laughing-stock to others (cf. xiii. 13,
XXV. 15), because they have boasted against Jahveh by driving
the Israelites from their' inheritance, and by deriding the
people of God ; cf. Zeph. ii. 8. P?p, to strike, frequently of
striking the hands together ; here it signifies to fall into his
vomit, i.e. to tumble into it with a splash. No other explanation
of the word can find support from the language used. Cf.
Isa. xix. 14 and xxv. 10 f. In the last clause of ver. 26, the
emphasis lies on Kin D|: "he also (Moab, like Israel before)
shall become a laughing-stock." This statement is enforced by
the question put in ver. 27, " Was not Israel a laughing-stock
to thee 1 " DN — DW shows a double question, like DK — Q ;
and OKI in the first, clause may be further strengthened by
the interrogative n before pr^, as in Gen. xvii. 17. For other
forms of the double question, see Ps. xciv. 9, Job xxi. 4, Jer.
xxiii. 26. On Dagesh dirimens in pnfe'n, cf. Ewald, § 104, b.
There is no sufiicient reason for questioning the feminine form
'"•^y?? in t^'® Q^"^ ! Israel is personified as a woman, just as
Moab in ver. 20, where npiPi is found. On \3 l^^a*! '^lO, cf.
xxxi. 20, where, however, 3 I3'i is used in another meaning.
''li^'!''?, to shake oneself, is a stronger expression than B'K'is T'i<^,
to shake the head (xviii. 16), a gesture denoting mockery and
rejoicing over another's injury ; cf. Ps. Ixiv. 9. — Ver. 28. A
transition is now made from figurative to literal language, and
Moab is summoned to leave the cities and take refuge in inac-
cessible rocks, because he will not be able to offer resistance to
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 26-36. 225
the enemy ; cf. vers. 6 and 9. " Like a dove that builds its
nest over deep crevices." The reference is to wild pigeons,
which occur in large numbers in Palestine, and make their
nests in the clefts of high rocks (Song of Sol. ii. 14) even at
the present day, e.g. in the wilderness of Engedi ; cf . Robin-
son's Palestine., ii. 203. nn?"'? '^????> ^»'' " o" ^^^ ot^er side of
the month of the deep pit," or of the abyss, i.e. over the yawn-
ing hollows. '^l^Va is a poetic form for ""^M, as in Isa. vii. 20.
The humiliation of Moab finds its justification in what is
brought out in ver. 29 f., his boundless pride and hatred against
Israel. — Vers. 29 and 30 only more fully develope the idea
contained in Isa. xvi. 6. Those who " heard" are the prophet
and the people of God. There is an accumulation of words to
describe the pride of Moab. Isaiah's expression also, ^^"13^
vna n?"'^?, is here expanded into two clauses, and Jahveh is
named as the subject. Not only have the people of God per-
ceived the pride of Moab, but God also knows his wrath. 1*^2
belongs to p'SO as a genitive, as in Isaiah I3"l<? means " not
right," contrary to actual facts, i.e. untrue.^ — Vers. 31-33 are
also an imitation of Isa. xvi. 7-10. Ver. 31 is a reproduction
of Isa. xvi. 7. In ver. 7, Isaiah sets forth the lamentation of
Moab over the devastation of his country and its precious
fruits ; and not until ver. 9 does the prophet, in deep sympathy,
mingle his tears with those of the Moabites. Jeremiah, on the
other hand, with his natural softness, at once begins, in the
first person, his lament over Moab. |3"??, " therefore," is not
immediately connected with ver. 29 f ., but with the leading idea
presented in vers. 26 and 28, that Moab will fall like one intoxi-
cated, and that he must flee out of his cities. If we refer it to
ver. 30, there we must attach it to the thought implicitly con-
* The Masoretic accentuation, according to which Athnach is placed under
]3, exhibite another view of the words in the text : this is shown by the
Chaldee paraphrase, " their nobles endure not, they have not done what is
right." The Masoretes took D*n3 in the sense of " staves," and took staves
as a symbol of princes, as in Hob. xi. 6. Luther, in his translation, " I
know his anger well, that he cannot do so very much, and attempts to do
more than he can," follows the Vulgate, Ego scio jactantiam ejus, et quod
non sit juxta earn virtus ejus, necjuxta quod poterat conata sit facere, which
again seems to have followed the LXX. in taking )n3 for fna.
VOL. II. f
Digitized by
Google
r
226 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
talned in the emphatic statement, " I (Jahveh) know his wrath,"
viz. '' and I will punish him for it." The /who makes lament
is the prophet, as in Isa. xvi. 9 and xv. 5. Schnnrrer, Hitzig,
and Graf, on the contrary, think that it is an indefinite third
person who is introduced as representing the Moabites; bat
there is no analogous case to support this assumption, since the in-
stances in which third persons are introduced are of a different
kind. But when Graf further asserts, against referring the /to
the prophet, that, according to what precedes, especially what
we find in ver. 26'ff., such an outburst of sympathy for Moab
would involve a contradiction, he makes out the prophet to be
a Jew thirsting for revenge, which he was not. Easchi has
already well remarked, on the other hand, under Isa. xv. 5,
that " the prophets of Israel differ from heathen prophets like
Balaam in this, that they lay to heart the distress which they
announce to the nations ; " cf . Isa. xxi. 3 f. The prophet weeps
for all Moab, because the judgment is coming not merely on
the northern portion (vers. 18-25), but on the whole of the
country. In ver. 316, Jeremiah has properly changed 't?*?'S?
(cakes of dried grapes) into 'B'38ji"7S, the people of Kir-heres,
because his sympathy was directed, not to dainties, but to the
men in Moab ; he has also omitted " surely they are smitten,"
as being too strong for his sympathy, 'i^^.^to groan, taken
from the cooing of doves, perhaps after Isa. xxxviii. 14, lix. 11.
The third person indicates a universal indefinite. Kir-heres, as
in Isa. xvi. 11, or Kir-haresheth in Isa. xvi. 7, 2 Kings iii. 25,
was the chief stronghold of Moab, probably the same sis Kir-
Moab, the modern Kerek, as we may certainly infer from a
comparison of Isa. xvi. 7 with xv. 1 ; see on 2 Kings iii. 25, and
Dietrich, S. 324.— Ver, 32. "iryj '330, « more than the weeping
of Jazer," may signify, " More than Jazer weeps do I weep
over thee ; " or, " More than over Jazer do I weep over thee."
However, the former interpretation is the more obvious, and
is confirmed by the reading in Isa. xvi. 9. According to the
Onomasticon, Jazer was fifteen Eoman miles north from Hesh-
bon. Seetzen recognises it in the rains called es Szir at the
source of the Ndhr Szir ; see on Num. xxi. 32. According to
Jerome, on Isa. xvi. 8, Sibmah was only five hundred paces from
Heshbon; see on Nam. xxxii. 38. Judging from the verse now
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIIL 2(5-36. 227
before ns, and from Isa. Lc, the vines of Sibmah mast have been
famed for the strength and excellence of their clusters. Even
now, that region produces excellent grapes in abundance. From
Szalt, which lies only ten miles north from Szir, raisins and grapes
are carried to Jerusalem, and these of excellent quality (Seetzen,
i. S. 399 ; Burckhardt, p. 350). In what follows, " his tendrils
crossed the sea," etc., the extensive cultivation of the grape is set
forth under the figure of a vine whose tendrils stretch out on all
sides. " They have crossed over the sea " has reference in Isaiah
(xvi. 8) to the Dead Sea (DJ, as in Ps. Ixviii. 23, 2 Chron.
XX. 2) ; not merely, however, in the sense of the shoots reaching
close to the Dead Sea, but also over it, for Engedi was famed
for its vines (Cant. i. 14). Jeremiah also has reproduced the
words taken from Isaiah in this sense. From the following
clause, " they reached to the sea of Jazer," it does not follow
that he has specified " the sea " by " Jazer." What tells rather
the other way is the fact that 13V, which means to cross over,
cannot possibly be used as equivalent to *>? Vii, " to reach to."
" They crossed over the sea " shows extension towards the west,
while " they reached to the sea of Jazer " indicates extension to-
wards the north. This latter statement also is an imitation of
what we find in Isa. xvi. 8 ; and " Jazer " is merely further
specified as ** the sea of Jazer." In spite of the most diligent
inquiries, Seetzen (i. S. 406) could learn nothing from the people
of that region regarding an inland lake ; but in the beautiful
green vale in the vicinity of Sz4r (i.e. Jazer) there were several
ponds, which he supposes may possibly be the mare Jazer, since
this valley lying among the mountains is somewhat depressed,
and in ancient times was probably filled with water. , The
" sea" (DJ) of Solomon's temple further shows that D* does not
necessarily denote only a large lake, but might also be applied
to a large artificial basin of water. So also, at the present day,
the artificial water-basins on the streets of Damascus are called
laharat, " seas ; " cf . Wetzstein in Delitzsch on Isa. xvi. 8.
This cultivation of the vine is at an end ; for the destroyer has
fallen upon the fruit-harvest and the vintage. Jeremiah, by
*' the destroyer has fallen," explains the words of Isaiah (xvi. 9),
" shouting has fallen." — In ver. 33, Isa. xvi. 10 is reproduced.
** Joy and gladness are taken away from the gardens, and from
Digitized by
Google
228 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
the whole land of Moab." boys is not here a proper name, for
Moarit Carmel does not at all suit the present context ; it is an
appellative, fruit-land, i.e. the fruitful wine-country near Jazer.
Jeremiah adds, " and from the land {i.e. the whole land) of
Moab." The pressing of the grapes comes to an end ; there is
no wine in the vat ; no longer is the wine pressed with " Hedad."
*JTn is an adverbial accusative. This is further specified by
the oxymoron : a " Hedad, and yet not a Hedad" This word
generally signifies any loud shout, — not merely the shout of the
wine-pressers as they tread the grapes (see on xxv. 30), but also
a battle-cry ; cf . li. 14. Hence the meaning is, " Hedad is heard,
but not a merry shout of the wine-pressers." — Ver. 34 is based
on Isa. XV. 4-6. " From the cry of Heshbon is heard the echo
as far as Elealeh and Jahaz," or " from Heshbon to Elealeh and
Jahaz is heard a cry, and from Zoar to Horonaim." Heshbon
and Elealeh are only about two miles distant froni each other ;
their ruins are still visible under the names of Hesbdn (Husban,
see on ver. 2) and El Al (see on Num. xxxii. 37). They were
both built on hills ; Elealeh in particular was situated on the
summit of a hill whence the whole of the southern Belka may
be seen (Burckhardt, p. 365), so that a shout thence emitted
could be heard at a great distance, even as far as Jahaz, which
is pretty far off to the south-west from Heshbon (see on ver. 21).
The words " from Zoar to Horonaim " also depend on " they
uttered their voice." Both places lay in the south of the land ;
see on vers. 3 and 4. The wailing resounds not merely on the
north, but also on the south of the Arnon. "There is much
dispute as to the meaning of nje'^pB' npjjf, which is here men-
tioned after Horonaim, but in Isa. xv. 5 in connection with, or
after Zoar. To take the expression as an appellative, juvenca
tertii anni (LXX., Vulgate, Targum, Gesenius, etc.), would
perhaps be suitable, if it were an apposition to Moab, in which
case we might compare with it passages like xlvi. 20, 1. 11 ; but
this does not accord with its position after Horonaim and Zoar,
for we have no analogy for the comparison of cities or fortresses
with a juvenca tertii anni, h. e. indomita jngoqm non assueta ;
and it cannot even be proved that Zoar and Horonaim were
fortresses of Moab. Hence we take V ripjy as the proper name
of a place, *' the third Eglath;" this is the view of Bosenmiiller,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIIL 86-88. 229
Drechsler, and Dietrich (in Mer£ Archiv. i. S. 342 ff.). The
main reason for this view is, that there woald be no use for an
addition being made, bjr way of apposition, to a place which is
mentioned as the limit of the Moabites' flight, or that reached
by their wailing. The parallelism of the clauses argues in
favour of its being a proper name ; for, on this view of it, three
towns are named in both members, the first once, as the start-
ing-point of the cry of wailing, the other two as points up to
which it is heard. The preposition iJf, which is omitted, may
be supplied from the parallel member, as in Isa. xv. 8. Regard-
ing the position of Eglath Shelishijah, it is evident from the
context of both passages that we must look for it on the southern
frontier of Moab. It is implied in the epithet "the third"
that there were three places (villages), not far from one
another, all bearing the same name. Dietrich (S. 344 f .) has
adduced several analogous cases of towns in the country to the
east of the Jordan, — two, and sometimes even three, towns of
the same name, which are distinguished from each other by
numerals. " The waters of Nimrim also shall become desola-
tions," because the enemy fill up the springs with earth. Nim-
rim is not the place called nn03 or ftiOJ n*3 mentioned in Num.
zxxii. 3, 36, Josh. xiii. 27, whose ruins lie on the way from
Szalt to Jericho, in the Wady Shaib, on the east side of the
Jordan (see on Num. xxxii. 36), for this lies much too far to
the north to be the place mentioned here. The context points
to a place in the south, in Moab proper, where Burckhardt
(p. 355), Seetzen {ReUen, ii. S. 354), and de Saulcy {Voyage, i.
283, ii. 52) have indicated a stream fed by a spring, called
Moiet Numtre (i.e. brook Nimrah), in the country at the south
end of the Dead Sea, and in that wady a mass of ruins called
Numire (the Nimmery of Seetzen, iii. 18). — Ver. 35 ends the
strophe of which it is a part ; here the Lord declares that He
will make to cease ^^"> (for, or from Moab, lit; to Moab),
every one who offers on a high place and burns incense to his
gods, njyo cannot be a substantive, else the parallelism would
be destroyed. Nor may we, with Hitzig, render " he who raises
a high place," i.e. builds it, for n^yn is not used in this sense.
Vers. 36-38. Further lamentation over the fall of Moab. —
Ver. 36. " Therefore my heart sounds like pipes for Moab, and
Digitized by
Google
230 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
my heart sounds like pipes for the men of Kir-hpres ; therefore
the savings which he has made are perished. Ver. 37. For every
head is baldness, and every beard is shorn ; on all hands there are
cuts, and on loins sackcloth. Ver. 38. On all the roofs of Moab,
and in its streets, it is all mourning ; for I have broken Moab
like a vessel, in which there is no pleasure, saith Jahveh."
The prophet once more lifts up his lamentation over Moab
(ver. 36 corresponds to ver. 31), and gives reason for it in the
picture he draws of the deep affliction of the Moabites. Ver.
36a is an imitation of Isa. xvi. 11 ; the thought presented in
ver. 36& accords with that found in Isa. xv. 7. Isaiah says,
" My bowels sound (groan) like the harp," whose strings give
a tremulous sound when struck with the plectrum. Instead of
this, Jeremiah puts the sounding of pipes, the instruments
used in dirges (Matt. ix. 23). Moab and Kir-heres are men-
tioned together, as in ver. 31. \3'pV, in the second clause, does
not stand for t?"'^ % " on this account that " (Kimchi, Hitzig,
Graf, etc.), but is co-ordinated with the first \3'bv. The idea
is not, " Therefore my heart mourns over Moab, because
the savings are perished ; " but because the sentence of deso-
lation has been passed on the whole of Moab, therefore the
heart of the prophet makes lament, and therefore, too, all
the property which Moab has acquired is lost. fTjn*, as a
collective noun, is joined with the plural verb ^"I3N. On the
construction nby nnn^, cf. Gesenius, § 123, 3, Rem. 1 ; Ewald,
§ 332, c. The proof of this is given by the deep sorrow and
wailing of the whole Moabite nation, ver. 37 f . On all sides are
tokens of the deepest sadness, — heads shorn bald, beards cut off,
incisions on the hands, sackcloth roqnd the loins. — Ver. 37 is
, formed out of pieces taken from Isa. xv. 2, 3. nrnj? is a sub-
stantive, " baldness," i.e. quite bald, nvtis, deeurtata, instead of
njms (in Isaiah), is weaker, but more suitable for the present con-
nection. 0*113, i.e. cuts or scratches inflicted on the body, as signs
of mourning ; cf . xvi. 6, xli. 5. ISDD n'V|i, " It is all wailing ; "
nothing is heard but wailing, for God has broken Moab in pieces
like a useless vessel. On the simile employed, cf. xxii. 28.
Vers. 39-44. No escape from destruction. — ^Ver. 39. " How
it is broken ! they howl. How hath Moab turned the back,
for shame I And Moab becomes a laughing-stock and a terror
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVnL 89-44. 231
to all his neighbours. Ver. 40. For thus saith Jahveh: Be-
hold, he shall % like the eagle, and spread his wings over
Moab. Ver. 41. Kerioth is taken, and the strongholds are
seized, and the heart of the heroes of Moab on that day become
like the heart of a travailing woman. Ver. 42. And Moab is
destroyed from being a people, because he hath boasted against
Jahveh. Ver. 43. Fear, and a pit, and a snare, are against thee,
O inhabitant of Moab, saith Jahveh. Yer. 44. He who flees
from the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who goes up out of
the pit shall be taken in the snare ; for I will bring against it,
against Moab, the year of their recompense, saith Jahveh."
The subject of nnn in ver. 39 is Moab viewed as a nation.
^V^n might be imperative, but in this case we would be obliged
to take rl3 also as an imperative (as Hitzig and Graf do). It
is simpler to take both forms as perfects : " they howl . . . Moab
turns the back, is ashamed " ( = for shame). On pnE? n*ri, cf.
ver. 26. "i^no, object of terror, as in xvii. 17. " All who are
round about him," as in ver. 17. " For (ver. 40) the enemy
rushes down upon Moab like an eagle, and seizes Kerioth and
all his strongholds." The subject is left unnamed, as in xlvi.
18, but it is Nebuchadnezzar. The figure of the eagle, dart-
ing down in flight on its prey, is founded on Deut. xxviii. 49
(on "7N for ??, cf. xlix. 22). Kerioth, the capital, is taken
(see on ver. 24) ; so are the other strongholds or fastnesses of
the country. The mere fact that n^^^i? has the article does not
justify any one in taking it as an appellative, "the cities;"
this appears from a comparison of Amos ii. 2 with this verse.
No plural of n^j? occurs anywhere. Then the fear of death
falls on the heroes of Moab like a woman in labour. ^■^,
partic. Hiphil from "i^V, uterum eomprimens, is found only here
and in xlix. 22, where the figure is repeated. Moab is anni-
hilated, so that it is no longer a nation (cf. ver. 2), because it
has risen up in pride against the God of Israel ; cf . ver. 26.
He who flees from one danger falls into the other. The play
on the words *in?, fear, horror, nns, pit, and-na, spring-trap,
as well as the mode in which it is carried out, is taken from
Isa. xxiv. 17 f ., — a prophecy of the judgment on the world; see a
similar idea presented in Amos v. 19, but somewhat differently
expressed. The Kethib D'jn, perfect Hiphil, "he flees," is less suit-
Digitized by
Google
232 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
able than the Qeri Dan (after Isaiah). The last clause, " for I
will bring," etc., is quite in Jeremiah's peculiar style; cf. iv.23,
xxiii. 12. nVK belongs to 3siD-7N : the noun is anticipated by
the pronoun, as frequently occurs ; cf. ix. 14, xli. 3, xliii. 11.
Vers. 45-47. Conclusion. — Ver. 45. " Under the shadow of
Heshbon stand fugitives, powerless ; for a fire goes out from
Heshbon, and a flame from Sihon, and devours the region of
Moab, and the crown of the head of the sons of tumult. Ver.
46. Woe unto thee, Moab I the people of Chemosh are perished !
for thy sons are taken away into captivity, and thy daughters
into captivity. Ver. 47. Yet will I turn the captivity of Moab
at the end of the days, saith Jahveh. Thus far is the judgment
of Moab."
From Heshbon issued the resolution to annihilate Moab
(ver. 2) ; to Heshbon the prophecy finally returns. " In the
shadow of Heshbon stand fugitives, powerless" (0^?, with
IP privative), where, no doubt, they were seeking refuge ; cf .
Isa. XXX. 2, 3. The fugitives can only be Moabites. Here
it is astonishing that they seek refuge in Heshbon, since the
enemy comes from the north, and according to ver. 2, it is in
Heshbon that the resolution to destroy Moab was formed ; and
judging from xlix. 3, that city was then in the hands of the
Ammonites. Hence Hitzig and Graf miss the connection.
Hitzig thinks that the whole clause was inserted by a glosser,
who imagined the town belonged to Moab, perhaps allow-
ing himself to be misled in this by Num. xxi. 27, " Come to
Heshbon." Graf, on the other hand, is of opinion that the
fugitives are seeking the protection of the Ammonites in
Heshbon, but do not find it : hence he would take the *3 which
follows in the adversative sense of "however" or "rather;"
but this is against the use of the word, and cannot be allowed.
The tenor of the words, " Fugitives stand under the shadow of
Heshbon," does not require us to assume that people had fled
to Heshbon out of the whole of Moab. Let us rather think
of fugitives from the environs of Heshbon, who seek refuge
in this fortified town, from the enemy advancing from the
north, but who find themselves disappointed in their expecta-
tion, because from this city there bursts forth the fire of war
which destroys Moab. The thought merely serves the purpose
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLVIII. 46-47. 233
of attaching to it the utterances which follow regarding Moab ;
but from vers. 43 and 44 alone, it is evident that escape will be
impossible. In proof of this he mentions the flight to Heshbon,
that he may have an opportunity of introducing a portion of
the old triumphal songs of the Mosaic age, with which he
wished to conclude his prophecy, vers. i5b and 46. The
fugitives stand powerless, i.e. exhausted and unable to flee any
further, while Heshbon affords them no refuge. For there
bursts forth from it the fire that is to destroy the whole of
Moab. The words from " for a fire," etc., on to the end of
ver. 46, are a free imitation of some strophes out of an ancient
song, in which poets of the Mosaic period celebrated the victory
of Israel over Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had con-
quered the greater portion of Moab ; but with this there is in-
terwoven a passage from the utterances of Balaam the seer,
regarding the fall of Moab, found in Num. xxiv. 17, viz. from
73iOni to liSB' *J3. These insertions are made for the purpose of
showing that, through this judgment which is now coming upon
Moab, not only those ancient sayings, but also the prophecy
of Balaam, will find their full accomplishment. Just as in the
time of Moses, so now also there again proceeds from Heshbon
the fire of war which will consume Moab. The words, " for a
fire has gone out from Heshbon," are a verbatim repetition of
what we find in Num. xsi. 28, with the single exception that K'K is
here, as in Ps. civ. 4, construed as masculine, and thus takes NSJ
instead of hkv^ ; but this change, of course, does not affect the
meaning of the words. The next clause runs, in Numbers,
I.C., l^mp nni3D nan^, but here l^n'p pat? nan^ ; this change into
pas is difficult to account for, so that J. D. Michaelis and Ewald
would alter it into n^ao. There is no need for refuting the
assumption of Baschi and Nagelsbach, that Sihon stands for the
city of Sihon ; or the fancy of Moras and HItzig, that an old
glosser imagined Sihon was a town instead of a king. When
we consider that the burning of Heshbon by the Israelites,
celebrated in that ancient song, was brought on by Sihon the
Amorite king, since the Israelites were not to make war on
Moab, and only fought against Sihon, who had made Heshbon
his residence, there can be no doubt that Jeremiah purposely
changed nr)i?9 into j^n^D pao, in order to show that Sihon was
Digitized by
Google
234 THE FBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
the originator of the fire which consumed Heshbon. By, this
latter expression Jeremiah seeks to intimate that, in Nebu-
chadnezzar and the Chaldean army, there will arise against
the Moabites another Sihon, from whose legions will burst
forth the flame that is to consume Moab. psD, ''from be-
tween," is to be explained on the ground that Sihon is not
viewed as a single individual, but as the leader of martial
hosts. This fire will "devour the region of Moab, and the
crown of the head of the sons of tumult." These words have .
been taken by Jeremiah from Balaam's utterance regarding
Moab, Num. zxiv. 17, and embodied in his address after some
transformation. What Balaam announces regarding the ruler
(Star and Sceptre) that is to arise out of Israel, viz, " he shall
smite the region of Moab, and dash in pieces the sons of
tumult," Jeremiah has transferred to the fire: accordingly,
he has changed ynoi into '?^^'l, and ri?^33"^3 I5"ji?i into
ji8E> *32 "P]^^. Several commentators understand nsB as sig-
nifying the margin of the beard (Lev. xix. 27, xxi. 5); but
the mention of the crown of the head in the parallel member
does not require this meaning, for riKS does not signify the
comer of the beard, except when found in combination with
K't^ or }i?T. The singeing of the miargin of the beard seems,
in connection with the burning ^of the crown, too paltry and
insignificant. As in the fundamental passage ^KB signify the
sides of Moab, so here riKB is the side of the body, and l^ij
the head, fitif 03, homines tumuUttoai, are the Moabites with
their imperious disposition; cf. ver. 29. — Ver. 46 is again
derived from the ancient poem in Num. xxi., but the second
half of the verse is altered. The bold figure which represents
Chemosh the god of the Moabites as delivering his people up
to captivity, is continued in the literal statement of the case ;
Moab's sons and daughters, z.e. its population, are carried away
by the enemy into captivity. — Ver. 47. This infliction of judg-
ment^ however, on the Moabites, is not to prove a complete
annihilation of them. At the end of the days, i.e. in the
Messianic times (see on xxiii. 20), there is in store for them a
turn in their fortunes, or a restoration. For TVS,^ 3^B', see on
xxix. 14. Cf. the similar promise for Egypt, xlvi. 26 ; Ammon
and Elam, xlix. 6 and 39. The last clause, " Thus far," etc..
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX 1-6. 235
is an addition made by the editor, when this oracle was re-
ceived into the collection of Jeremiah's prophecies ; cf . li. 64.
tsac'p means the prophecy regarding Moab with respect to its
contents.
As to the fulfilment of the threatened ruin, Josephus (Antt.
X. 9. 7) states that Nebuchadnezzar, in the fifth year after the
destruction of Jerusalem, made war on the Moabites and sub-
dued them. This statement is not to be questioned, though the
.date given should be incorrect. We have no other sources of
information regarding this people. After the return of the
Israelites from Babylon, the Moabites are no longer mentioned
as a people, except in Ezra ix. 1, Neh. xiii. 1, 23, where it is
stated that some Israelites had married Moabitish wives ; nor
is any mention made of this people in the books of the Macca- .
bees, which, however, relate the wars of Judas Maccabeus with
the Ammonites and Edomites (1 Mace. v. 3 and 6, cf. iv. 61);
neither is there any further notice taken of them in Josephus,
who only now and then speaks of Moab, i.e. the country and
its towns (Antt. xiii. 14. 2, 15. 4 ; Bell. Jud. iii. 3. 3, iv. 8. 2).
This name seems to have been merged, after the exile, in that
of the Arabians. But the disappearance of the name of this
people does not exclude the probability that descendants con-
tinued to exist, who, when Christianity spread in the country
to the east of the Jordan, were received into the communion
of the Christian church. -
Chap. xlix. Concerning A mmon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar and
Hazor, Elatn.
Vers. 1-6. Conceening the childben of Ammon. — ^The
Ammonites were, not onerely as regards descent, but also as to
their character and their relation to Israel, the twin-people with
the Moabites. From them, too, as well as from the Moabites,
Sihon the king of the Ammonites had wrenched a portion of
their territory, which the Israelites received for a possession
after Sihon had been subdued. This territory they sought
every opportunity of retaking from the Israelites, whom they as
constantly endeavoured to humiliate when they could. Besides
their connection with Eglon the Moabite king (Judg. iii. 13),
they oppressed Israel during the period of the judges for
Digitized by
Google
236 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
eighteen years, not only in Gilead, but also on this side of
Jordan, since they foaght against Ephraim, Benjamin, and
Judah (Judg. x. 7 ff., xi. 12-32). During Samuel's time, their
king Nahash besieged Jabesh-Gilead, and demanded the sur-
render of the city under shameful conditions, in consequence
of which they were defeated by Saul (1 Sam. ii.). During the
time of David they disgracefully treated his ambassadors, who
had come to comfort King Hanun over the death of his father ;
they then united with the Syrians against Israel, but were
defeated by Joab, and, after the taking of their capital, Eabbah,
severely chastised (2 Sam. x. 1 to xi. 1, and xii. 26-31). Under
the reign of Jehoshaphat, also, in company with the Moabites,
they invaded Judah (2 Chron. xx.) ; and when, later, the
Israelites were heavily oppressed by the Syrians under Hazael,
the Ammonites practised cruelties on them in Gilead, for which
the prophet Amos (i. 13-15) threatens them with devastation
of their country and foreign captivity. After the death of
Jeroboam ii., who had restored the borders of Israel as far as
the Dead Sea (2 Kings xiv. 25), the Ammonites must have
made fresh attempts to enlarge their territory during the inter-
regnum that had begun in the kingdom of the ten tribes ; for
it is mentioned in 2 Chron. xxvi. 8 that they brought presents
to King Uzziah, i.e. paid tribute, and had thus been rendered
tributary to him : it is also stated in 2 Chron. xxvii. 5 that his
son Jotham marched against them in order to enforce the pay-
ment of the tribute. But when, soon afterwards, Tiglath-pileser
the Assyrian carried away the tribes of Israel on the east of the
Jordan (2 Kings xv. 29 ; 1 Chron. v. 26), the Ammonites seized
possession of the depopulated country of the tribes of Gad and
Beuben, while they also seized Heshbon on the border of these
two tribal territories. This unjust appropriation of Israelitish
territory forms the starting-point of the prophecy now before us.
Ammon has taken possession of the inheritance of Gad,
therefore must his cities be destroyed by war, that Israel may
again obtain his own property (vers. 1, 2). Ammon will sorrow
deeply, for his god will go with his princes into captivity (vers.
2-4). His trust in the wealth of his land will not help him,
but his people will be frightened away through terror on every
side, yet they will be restored in the future (vers. 5, 6).
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUX 1-6. 237
Ver. 1. "Concerning the children of Ammon, thus saith
Jahveh : Hath Israel no sons, or hath he no heir t Why doth
their king inherit Gad, and his people dwell in his cities ? Ver.
2. Therefore, behold, days are coming, saith Jahveh, when I
will cause to be heard against Kabbah of the children of
Ammon a war-cry ; and it shall become a heap of ruins, and
her daughters shall be burned with fire : and Israel shall heir
those who heired him, saith Jahveh. Ver. 3. Howl, O Hesh-
bon ! for Ai is laid waste. Cry 1 ye daughters of Kabbah,
gird yourselves with sackcloth ; lament, and run up and down
among the enclosures : for their king shall go into captivity,
his priests and his princes together. Ver. 4. Why dost thou
glory in the valleys ? Thy valley flows away, O thou rebellious
daughter, that trusted in her treasuces, [saying], Who shall
come to me I Ver. 5. Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee,
saith the Lord Jahveh of hosts, from all that is round thee ;
and ye shall be driven each one before him, and there shall be
none to gather together the fugitives. Ver. 6. But afterwards I
will turn the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith Jahveh."
The address begins with a question full of reproach : " Has
Israel, then, no sons who could take possession of his land as
their inheritance, that the king of the Ammonites has taken
possession of Gad (i.e. of the hereditary portion of the tribe of
Gad), and dwells in the cities of Gadf" The question pre-
supposes that the Israelites had been carried away by Tiglath-
pileser, but at the same time, also, that the country still belongs
to the Gadites, for they certainly have sons who shall again
receive the inheritance of their fathers. Since Jeremiah, as is
clear from ver. 3, had Amos i. 13-15 in his mind, he evidently
uses D3?0 in a double sense, not merely in ver. 3, but even in
ver. 1 also, with a reference to Amos i. 15, meaning the king
and god of the Ammonites. As in Apios, Aquila, Symmachus,
Jerome, and the Syriac, so in this passage also, the LXX.,
Vulgate, and Syriac have 'understood D3?o of the god D3?o ;
with them agree Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf. But the reasons
alleged for the change of D3pD into Di3?p are quite as insuflfi-
cient here as in Amos i. 15. Just as, in the last-named
passage, 03?? first of all refers to the king of the Ammonites,
so is it here. It is not the god, but the king, of the Ammonites
Digitized by
Google
238 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
that has taken possession of the territory of Gad. It is not till
ver. 3 that the reference to the god Milcom plainly comes out.
Yen 2. Therefore shall Kabbah, the capital of the Ammonites,
hear the cry of war, and be changed into a heap of ruins. ri2T
Jisy \33, « The great (city) of the sons of Ammon," is the full
name of the Ammonite capital (cf. Dent. iii. 11), which is
usually called, briefly, nan (Amos i. 14 ; 2 Sam. xi. 1, etc.) ; it
was afterwards called Philadelphia, probably after Ptolemy
Philadelphus, in Polybius 'Pafi^ard/iava, in Abulfeda Amdn,
which is the name still given to its ruins on the Nahr Amm^n,
i.e. the Upper Jabbok ; see on Dent, iii.- 11. "A cry of war,"
as in iv. 19 ; cf . Amos i. 14. " A hill of desolation," i.e. a heap
of ruins ; cf. Josh. viii. 28, Deut. xiii. 17. " Her daughters "
are the smaller cities dependent on the capital, — here, all the
remaining cities of the Ammonites ; cf . Num. xxi. 25, Jo^.
XV. 45, etc. " Israel shall heir those who heired him," i.e. re-
ceive back the property of those who have appropriated his
land. — Ver. 3. The cities of the Ammonites, i.e. their inhabit-
ants, shall howl and lament over this calamity. The summons
given to Heshbon to howl implies that this city, formerly the
residence of Sihon, was then in possession of the Ammonites.
There is obscurity in the clause announcing the reason, " for
*V (LXX. Fat) is laid waste :" the word seems to be a proper
noun, but there is no city of this name known in the Ammonite
country, or the land east of the Jordan ; while we must not
think of Ai (^?n, Josh. vli. 2 f .), which was situated on the west
side of the Jordan. Venema and Ewald are inclined to take the
word as an appellative, synonymous with ?n, " ruins " (which is
the meaning of *?), and regard it as the subject of Rabbah, the
capital, " because it has been laid in ruins." But a comparison
of xlviil. 20, iv. 20, Zech. xi. 3, rather favours our taking ^^ as
the subject. Graf and others would therefore change ^V into
1^, as (they say) the capital of the Ammonites was called by
the Israelites. But there are no historical traces of this desig-
nation of Eabbah. There remains hardly any other course open
than to consider ''V as the name of an important Ammonite city.
The mere fact that it is mentioned nowhere else cannot form a
strong foundation for the objection against this assumption, for
we do not find anywhere a list of the Ammonite cities. The
Digitized by
Google
CHAP, xux 1-e. 239
inhabitants of the other towns are to put on signs of sorrow, and
go about mourning " in the enclosures," i,e. in the open country,
since the cities, being reduced to ashes, no longer afford shelter.
Most expositors understand niTiS as meaning sheep-folds (Num.
xxxii. 16, 24, 36) ; but there is no reason for taking this special
view of the meaning of the word, according to which ni^^J
would stand for JNX niTjJ. TTpii and 1^3 also mean the wall of
a vineyard, or the hedges of the vineyards, and in Num. xxii. 24
specially the enclosure of the vineyards at the cross-roads in the
country east of the Jordan. This is the meaning here. We
must not, with Nagelsbach, think of city walls on which one
could run up and down, for the purpose of taking measures
for defence: the words do not signify the walls of a city. The
carrying away into exile of Maleatn with his priests and princes
gives the reason for the sorrow. D3pp is here not the earthly
king, but the god Milcom viewed as the king of the Ammonites,
as is clear from the addition l^jlijS, and from the parallel passage
in xlviii. 7. The clause is copied from Amos i. 15, but wn
has been substituted for f-iip, in order that Q3P0 may be under-
stood of Milcom, the chief deity (see on 1 Kings xi. 5). — ^Ver. 4.
Thus shall the empty boasting of the Ammonites and their
trust in their riches come to nothing. " Why dost thou boast
of the valleys?" i.e. of the splendid fruitful valleys and plains
which, being well watered, produced large crops of corn and
wheat.^ ^5?? ^\ is viewed by some as an antithesis [to what
immediately precedes] : " thy valley flows, se. with the blood of
the slain" (Rosenmiiller and Gesenius still view it thus) ; or,
" it flows away," i.e. thy valley (viz, its inhabitants) is scattered,
dispersed. But it is quite arbitrary to supply "with blood;"
and even the other explanation — which Hitzig justifies on the
ground that valley or river-bottom stands for what it contains,
* The LXX. have in this passage, as in xlviL 5, changed pay for pjj;, and
translated rl AyaKKiStit in reii xs5/«/f 'Epvaxufi, ;, here it remains doubtful
whether they have expressed D^pQPa or '^pDy by ^EmiaKu'ft. On the
ground of this arbitrary paraphrase, Hitag would at once change WVO^
into DV3P> without considering that the giant races of that region, to
which Og the king of Bashan had also belonged (Deut. iii. 11), :Hrere not
called D^piv at all, but D^QTOt by the Ammonites, and 0''Q^t< by the
Moabites (Deut. ii. 10, 20).
Digitized by
Google
/•
240 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
i.e, the inhabitants of the valley, and that the pojpulation is
represented under the figure of a mass of water running, flow-
ing away — is very far-fetched. The words cannot form an
antithesis to what precedes (because the description of the con-
fidence shown is still continued, and the antithesis does not
follow till ver. 5), but merely a further extension of the pre-
ceding clause. We may, then, either translate, "thy valley
flows, overflows," so that the words shall be subordinated to
what precedes ; or we may take 3}, with Ewald and Graf, as a
noun, in which case we must repeat the preposition 3, " the
abundance of thy valley." The singular, " thy valley," means,
together with the other valleys of the country, perhaps the
valley of Eabbah ; for Amm&n lies in a broad valley along the
banks of the Moiet Amm§,n, which has its source in a pool two
hundred paces from the south-west end of the city (Burckhardt's
Syria, p. 355). Regarding the vicinity, Abidfeda writes ( Tabulce
Syr, ed. Mich. p. 92), circumjecta regio arva sativa sunt ac terra
bona et abundans. The direct address, " O rebellious daughter,"
used of Israel in xxxi. 22, is here transferred to the inhabitants
of Eabbah, with reference to the fact that the Ammonites,
denying their descent from Lot, behaved like enemies towards
Jahveh and His people. In trusting their riches, they are like
the Moabites, xlviii. 7. In this confidence they said, " Who
will come unto us?" i.e. attack us as enemies. Thereupon
the Lord replies, " I will bring on thee fear, terror from all
that is round thee," all the nations that dwell about thee (cf .
xlviii. 17, 39), whose distress or overthrow will put thee in
terror. ^1M t5'*»= V3Bj> E^N, « every one before him " (cf. Josh. '
vi. 5, Amos iv. 3), without looking about him, or turning round
(cf . xlvi. 5), i.e. in the most precipitate flight, with no one to
rally the fugitives, ili? is collective. — ^Ver. 6. Yet afterwards,
the fortunes of Ammon also shall be changed, as it was with
Moab, xlviii. 47.
Regarding the fulfilment of this prophecy (just as in the
case of Moab), we have no further information than that of
Josephus (Ant. x. 9. 7), that Nebuchadnezzar defeated and
subdued the Ammonites in the fifth year after the destruction
of Jerusalem. Shortly before, their king Baalis had got
Gedaliah the governor put out of the way (Jer. xl. 14). Even
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 7-22. 241
after the exile they kept up their hostile spirit against the
Israelites ajid the Jews, inasmuch as they tried to hinder the
building of the city walls at Jerusalem (Neh. iv. 1 ff.), and in
the Maccabean age were still making war against the Jews ;
1 Mace. V. 6, 30-43. Their name was preserved till the
time of Justin Martyr {'Afifutvir&p i<m vw iroKv irXSjOoi,
Dial. Tryph. p. 272). But Origen already comprehends their
country under the general name Arabia (lib. 1 in Jobutn).
Vers. 7-22. Concerning Edom. — To the Edomites, whom
Israel were to leave andistorbed in their possession, since they
were a kindred nation (Deut. ii. 4), Balaam announces that
"Edoln shall become a possession," i.e. shall be taken pos-
session of by the ruler rising out of Israel. We have shown,
in the explanation given of Num. xxiv. 18, that up to the
time of the exile this utterance had been fulfilled merely by
feeble attacks being made, since the Edomites were only tem-
porarily subdued by the Israelites, then soon made themselves
independent again, and made war on Israel. On account of
their implacable hostility towards the people of God, Ezekiel
(xxv. 12 ff.), as well as Jeremiah in this prophecy, announces
ruin to them. The contents of the prophecy before us are as
follow: The far-famed wisdom of Teman will not preserve
Edom from the destruction with which Jahveh will visit it.
The judgment of desolation that has been decreed shall in-
evitably come on it (vers. 7-13). The nations shall wage war
against it, and make it small ; because of its proud trust in the
strength of its dwellipg-place, it shall become the laughing-
stock of every passer-by (vers. 14-18). As a lion from the
reedy places of Jordan suddenly attacks a herd, the Lord will
drag the Edomites from their rocky dwelling, so that the earth
shall quake with the crash of their fall, and the anguish of
death shall seize their heroes (vers. 19-22). In this prophecy
Jeremiah has relied much on Obadiah, vers. 1-9, and repro-
duced much of his expressions regarding the fall of Edom.^
According to what has been said, his address falls into three
strophes. In the first (vers. 7-13), the judgment breaking
^ The use made of Obadiah by Jeremiah has been bo convincingly
proved, especially by Caspari in Us commentary on Obadiah, that even
Ewald and Graf, who place the prophecy of Obadiah in the time of the
VOL. II. Q.
Digitized by
Google
242 THE PROPHEaES OF JEBEMIAH.
over Edom is depicted as one that cannot be averted, and as
having been irrevocably decreed by the Lord ; in the second
(vers. 14-18), it is set forth as to its nature and the occasion
of its occurrence; and in the third (vers. 19-22), as to its
completion and consequences.
Vers. 7-13. The judgment as inevitable. — ^Ver. 7. "Thus saith
Jahveh of hosts : Is there no more wisdom in Teman? has wis-
dom perished from those of understanding? is their wisdom [all]
poured out t Ver. 8. Flee, turn ye ! hide yourselves, ye inhabit-
ants of Dedan; for I bring the destruction of Esau upon him, the
time [when] I visit him. Ver. 9. If grape-gatherers come to thee,
they will not leave gleanings ; if thieves by nighty they destroy
what suffices them. Ver. 10. For I have stripped Esau, I have
uncovered his secret places, and he cannot cover himself; his
seed is destroyed, and his brethren, and his neighbours, and he
is not. Ver. 11. Leave thine orphans, I will keep them alive ; ,
and let thy widows trust me. Ver. 12. For thus saith Jahveh :
Behold, [they] whose judgment was not to drink the cup shall
certainly drink it : and art thou he [who] shall be quite un-
punished? thou shalt not be unpunished, but sbalt certainly
drink. Ver. 13. For by myself have I sworn, saith Jahveh,
that Bozrah shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste,
and a curse; and all its cities shall become everlasting wastes."
In order to frighten Edom out of his carnal security, the
prophet begins by depicting the horror of the judgment coming
down on this people, before which his wise men shall stand not
knowing what to advise, and unable to find out any means for
averting the evil. Teman^ the home of the wise Eliphaz (Job
ii. 11), is here, as in Amos i. 12, Obad. ver. 9, the region of
that name in Gebalene, the northern district of Idumea ; see
on Amos i. 12. The question, "Is there no longer wisdom in
Teman?" is ironical, and has a negative meaning. The follow-
ing clauses also ^re to be taken as questions, not as assent to
the question, as Hitzig and Graf infer from the omission of DK.
D'Jais not the plural of 1?, "son," but the participle of )«l or
exile, acknowledge this use that has been made of it, and therefore hold
that the first part of the book of Obadiah is a fragment of am older oracle.
This is a hypothesis which we have already shown, in the introduction to
Obadiah, to be untenable.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 7-ia 243
r?, and equivalent to B'?33; cf. Isa. xxix. 14.— Ver. 8. The
Dedanites, whose caravans march in peace throngh Edom (see
on XXV. 23), must flee, and hide themselves in deeply concealed
hiding-places, in order to escape the evil befalling Edom. The
form UBn, which only occurs besides in Ezek. ix. .2, in the
sense of being "turned, directed," is here preferred to the
Hiphil (cf. ver. 24, xlvi. 21, etc.), in order to indicate the con-
straint under which they must change their route. ^P^?^^. is
also an imperative, in spite of the Segol in the first syllable,
which is found there, in some forms, instead of a ; cf . Ewald,
§ 226, a. Ta^ ''P''9.?;3, " make deep to stay," i.e. withdraw
yourselves into deep or hidden places, where the enemy does
not see and discover you. " For the destruction of Esau," ix.
the destruction determined on Esau, or Edom, "I bring on
him ; " on this matter, cf. xlvi. 21. — ^Ver. 9 is a reproduction
of Obad. ver. 5, but in such a way that what Obadiah brings
forward as a comparison is directly applied by Jeremiah to the
enemy : our prophet represents the enemy as grape-gatherers
who leave nothing to glean, and as nocturnal thieves who
destroy what is sufficient for them, i,e. destroy till they have
enough, drag away and destroy as much as they can. The
after-clauses, " they will not leave," etc., " they destroy," etc.,
are thus not to be taken as questions. The reference to
Obadiah does not entitle us to supply K^^n from that passage.
The connection here is somewhat different. The following
verse is joined by means of '3, " for ; " and the thought, " for
I have stripped Esau, I have discovered his secret places,"
shows that the enemy is to be understood by the grape-
gatherers and nocturnal thieves: he will leave nothing to
glean — will plunder all the goods and treasures of Edom, even
those that have been hidden. On this subject, cf. Obad. ver. 6.
tiB'n, "to strip off leaves, make bare" (xiii> 26), has been
chosen with a regard to it^enj in Obadiah. ?3l' ^6 nariJlj Ut.
" and he hides himself, he will not be able to do it ; " i.e. Esau
(Edom) tries to hide himself ; he will not be able to do it — he
will not remain concealed from the enemy. There are not
sufficient grounds for changing the perf . nam = nara into the
inf. abs. riiinj, as Ewald and Graf do. "His seed is de-
stroyed," i.e. his family, the posterity of Esau, the Edomites,
Digitized by
Google
244 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
"his brethren," the descendants of nations related to the
family, and of others similar who had intermingled with them,
as the Amalekltes, Gen. xxxvi. 12, Horites, Gen. xxxvL 20 ff.,
Simeonites, 1 Ghron. iv. 42, " and his neighbours," the neigh-
bouring tribes, as Dedan, ver. 8, Thema and Buz, xxv. 23.
" And he is not " is aidded to give intensity, as in Isa. xix. 7 ;
cf. Jer. xxxi. 15. The last idea is made more intensive by ver.
11, "Leave your orphans and widows." Edom is addressed,
and the imperative expresses what must happen. The men of
Edom will be obliged to leave their wives and children, and
these will be left behind as widows and orphans, because the
men fall in battle. Yet the Lord will care for them, so that
they shall not perish. In this comfort there is contained a
very bitter truth for the Edomites who hated Jahveh. naty is
the Imperative (Ewald, § 228, a), not infinitive (Hitzig) ; and
?no3n is a rare form of the jussive for njrtonri, as in Ezek.
xxxvii. 7 ; cf. Ewald, § 191, b. Reasons are given for these
threats in vers. 12 and 13, first in the thought that Edom
cannot continue to be the only one unpunished, then in the
bringing forward of the solemnly uttered purpose of God.
" Those who should not be compelled to drink." Those meant
are the Israelites, who, as the people of God, ought to have
been free from the penal judgment with which the Lord visits
the nations. If, now, these are not left (spared such an
infliction)) still less can Edom, as a heathen nation, lay claim
to exemption. By this Jeremiah does not mean to say that
any injustice befalls the Jews if they are obliged to drink the
cup of the wrath of God, but merely that their having been
chosen to be the people of God does not give them any right
to exemption from the judgments of God on the world, i.e. if
they make themselves like the heathen through their sins and
vices. The inf. abs. ^riE' for nhK' intensifies: "ye shall (t&ust)
drink." The idea is founded on that pervading chap, xxv.,
and there, is use made of the words in xxv. 29. The *3 in ver.
13 is mainly dependent on the clause immediately preceding :
" thou shalt certainly drink." On " by myself have I sworn "
cf. xxii. 5. In the threat that Edom shall be laid waste there
is an accumulation of words corresponding to the excitement
of feeling accompanying an utterance under solemn oath. 3"jn
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 14-18. 245
is used instead of the more common nann ; cf. xxv. 18, xliv. 22,
etc. D?iy nia"in, as in xxv. 9. Bozrah was at that time the
capital of the Edomites (cf. yer. 22); it lay south from the
Dead Sea, on the site of the village Buseireh (Little Bozrah),
in Jebal, which is still surrounded by a castle and with ruins
of considerable extent, and is situated on an eminence ; see on
Amos i. 12 and Gen. xxxvi. 33. " And all its cities," t.e. the
rest of the cities of Idumea ; cf. ^'''O^^^S ver. 2.
Vers. 14-18. The nature and occasion of the judgment decreed.
— Ver. 14. " I have heard tidings from Jahveh, and a mes-
senger has been sent among the nations : Gather yourselves
together, and go against her, and arise to the battle I Ver. 15.
For, behold, I have made thee small among the nations,
despised among men. Ver. 16. Thy terribleness hath de-
ceived thee, the pride of thy heart, O thou that dwellest in the
hiding-places of the rock, that boldest the height of the hill.
Though thou makest thy nest high like the eagle, thence will
I bring thee down, saith Jahveh. Ver. 17. And Edom shall
become an astonishment ; every passer-by shall be astonished at
her, and shall hiss at all her plagues. Ver. 18. As [it was in]
the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, saith Jahveh, no
man shall dwell there, nor shall a son of man sojourn there."
This judgment will immediately take place. The nations
who are to make Edom small and despised have been already
summoned by the Lord to the war. Jeremiah has taken this
idea from Obad. vers. 1, 2. The subject in " I have heard " is
the prophet, who has heard the information from Jahveh. In
Obadiah is found the plural, "we have heard," because the
prophet includes himself among the people; this is to show
that the news serves as a consolation to Israel, because Edom
shall be punished for his crimes committed against Judah.
This view was not before the mind of Jeremiah ; with him the
prevailing representation is, that judgment, from which Edom
cannot be excepted, is passed upon all nations. Therefore he
has chosen the singular, " I have heard." In the succeeding
clause the'perf. Pual nW has been changed into rni'K', as the
more usual form. The messenger is to be considered as having
been sent by the Lord for the purpose of summoning the
nations to war, as he actually does in the second hemistich.
Digitized by
Google
2i6 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
The message agrees, in the nature of its contents, with Obad.
ver. 1 ; but Jeremiah has dealt somewhat freely with its form.
The statement with regard to the object of the war, ver. 15,
agrees pretty exactly with Obad. ver. 2. The accoant, too,
which is given of the cause of the judgment, i.e. the guilt of
Edom arising from his trusting in the impregnable character
of his habitation, is derived from Obad. vers. 3, 4. Jeremiah
has intensified the idea by the additional use of ^nvpsn, but
has also made certain limitations of the expression by omitting
some clauses found in Obadiah. The word just named is air.
\ey., and has been variously explained. The verb l?B occurs
only in Job ix. 6, with the meaning of quaking, trembling;
and the noun nwB pretty frequently in the seftse of fear,
shuddering, horror ; further, nS7B0 is used in 1 Kings xv. 13,
2 Chron. xv. 16, of an idol, monster, object of horror. Hence
Babbinical writers have been inclined to understand nV7BFi as
meaning idolatry ; in this they are followed by J. D. Michaelis,
Meier, and Nagelsbach. The last-named writer translates,
"Thy monster (idol) led thee astray." But even though
this meaning were better established from the use of language'
than it is, yet the mention of idolatry, or even of an idol, is
quite unsuitable in this passage. The LXX. render ^ irairfvUt
<rbv, i.e. riaus or joeus tuus, Chald. iiniK'BD, "thy folly," —
evidently a mere guess from the context. The best ascer-
tained translation is, " Thy terror," i.e. the terror which thou
dost inspire, or the fear of thee, " hath misled thee, the pride
of thine heart," so that " the pride," etc., forms an apposition
to "thy terror." The combination of the fem. IPipBR with
the verb K'B^ii in the masc. is not decisive against this. Follow-
ing the example of Schleussner (0 arrogantiam tuarri), Hitzig
and Graf would take the word as an exclamation, " Terror to
thee 1 horror on thee ! " and they point for support to fi33fl|',
Isa. xxix. 16. But an exclamation is out of place here, and
incompatible with the derivation of the following words from
Obadiah. Since Jeremiah appropriates from Obadiah the
thought, " thy pride hath misled thee," "JiiypBl? may possibly
be meant as a mere intensification of 13? ilf. The pride of
Edom increased because the other nations were afraid to make
war on him in his rocky dwelling, so difficult of access. On
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 19-22. 247
I'Pf i? '.yO? '??K', see on Obad. ver. 3. The (succeeding apposition-
clause in3B' Dho, found in Obadiah, is modified by Jeremiah
into ."lyaa nho *fc«h, "thou that seizest, or boldest (as in xl. 10),
the height of the hill." In the expression Jl?Bn \un there is
perhaps implied an allusion to the rock-city J^D, or Petra, in the
Wady Musa (see on 2 Kings xiv. 7), and in nyaa DhD another
allusion to Bozrah, trhich lay on a hill ; see on ver. 13. On ver.
16, cf. Obad. ver. 4. Jeremiah has omitted the hyperbolic addi-
tion, " among the stars." In vers. 17 and 18 the devastation
of Edom is further portrayed. On ver. 17a, cf. xxv. 11, 38 ;
with 176 agrees xix. 8, almost word for word. The comparison
with Sodom, etc., is a reminiscence from Deut. xxix. 22, and
is repeated in the prophecy concerning Babylon, 1. 40 ; cf . Isa.
xiii. 19, Amos iv. 11. "Her neighbours" are Admah and
Zeboim, Deut. xxix. 22, Hos. xi. 8. The comparison with
Sodom is not so to be understood as if it indicated that Edom
shall be destroyed in the same manner as Sodom ; it is merely
stated that the land of Edom shall become a desert waste, like
' the region of the Dead Sea, uninhabited, and with no human
beings in it ; cf. ver. 33 and 1. 40.
Vers. 19-22. The execution of the judgment, and fall of
Edom. — Ver. 19. " Behold, he shall come up like a lion from
the glory of Jordan, to the dwelling of rock : but in a moment
will I drive him away from her, and will appoint over her him
who is chosen; for who is like me? and who will summon
me [before the judge] ? and what shepherd shall stand before
mel Ver. 20. Therefore hear the counsel of Jahveh which
He hath counselled against Edom, and His purposes which He
has purposed against the inhabitants of Teman : Surely they
shall drag them about, the little ones of the flock ; surely he
shall lay waste their dwelling over them. Ver. 21. At the
noise of their fall the earth trembles ; a cry — its noise is heard
in the Eed Sea. Ver. 22. Behold, he shall come like the
eagle and dart after [his prey], and spread his wings over
Bozrah ; and the heart of the mighty men of Edom in that
day shall become like the heart of a woman travailing."
As a lion coming up out of the thicket of reeds at the
Jordan {JTil'} l^**?, see on xii. 5) suddenly attacks a flock, so
shall he who executes the judgment attack the Edomites in
Digitized by
Google
248 THE PEOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
their strong habitations, and at once put them to flight. The
foe or general who executes the judgment is here no further
pointed out, as in xlvi. 18, xlviii. 20; but he is merely set forth
as a lion, and in ver. 22 as an eagle that in its flight darts
down on its prey. ?ri*S nu, pasture or dwelling of permanence;
as tO^K is used in Num. xxiv. 21 of the rocky range of Sinai,
so is it used here of the rocky range of Seir {y?Bn ^jpij ver. 16).
The translation "evergreen pasture" (Graf, Nagelsbach) can-
not be defended ; for neither iri'S, " continual, enduring," nor
ni3, "pasture-ground, dwelling," includes the notion of green
grass. Quite baseless is the assumption of Hitzig, that the
former word means the "shepherd" as remaining with the
flock. '"i^aiK, " I shall wink," stands for the adverb, " imme-
diately, at once." n'^yp ^y-iK, «I will make him (Edom)
run," i.e. drive him, "from it," his habitation (which is con-
strued as fem. ad sensum). Jahveh sends the lion ; Jahveh
is not compared with the lion (Hitzig). In iwa *D the former
word is not the interrogative pronoun, but the indefinite
quicunque, as in Ex. xxiv. 14 ; cf. Ewald, 332, b. And the
latter word is not "the valiant shepherd" (Hitzig), but sig-
nifies " chosen." HvN is used instead of rivy ; and ?5? I^S
means to " set over " something, as the chief, superior. The
idea is, that God will frighten away the Edomites out of their
land by a lion, and appoint him as the shepherd whom He
chooses for that purpose. None can prevent this, for there is
none like Jahveh in strength or power, and none can call Him
to account for His doing. mW (from "i?J), in Hiphil, to " sum-
mon before the court of justice," i.e. to call on one to make a
defence ; cf . Job ix. 19. Nor can any shepherd stand before
Jahveh, i.e. defend his flock. These words are directed
against the rulers of Edom, who foolishly imagined they were
secure, and could not be touched in their rock-fortresses. The
words, moreover, contain general truths, so that we cannot
apply "nna to historical persons, such as Nebuchadnezzar or Alex-
ander the Great. — ^Ver. 20. This truth the Edomites are to
lay to heart, and to hear, i.e. consider the purpose which the
Lord has formed regarding Edom. Teman is not synonymous
with Edom, but the inhabitants of Teman are specially named
together with Edom in the parallel member, because they
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 19-22. 249
were particularly famous for their wisdom (ver. 7), and in
their pride over this wisdom, held the counsels of God in very
small esteem. The counsel of God, the thoughts which He
has conceived regarding Edom, follow in the clauses which are
introduced with solemn assurance. \^tn n'jnt oariD^ is ren-
dered by the Vulgate, si non dejecerint eos parvuli gregis, which
Luther follows in his translation, '<if the shepherd-boys will
not drag them away." And C. B. Michaelis and Havernick
(on Ezekiel, p. 415) still view the words as meaning that "the
least of the flock " will drag away Edom; i.e. the covenant people,
weak and miserable though they are, will be. victorious over
Edom : in support of this rendering they point to Ezek. xxv. 14.
But though Ezekiel clearly declares that the Lord will satisfy
His revenge on Edom by means of His people Israel, yet it does
not follow from this that Ezekiel had this passage of Jeremiah
in his mind, and sought so to apply it. In spite of the clear-
ness with which the thought is expressed by Obadiah and
Ezekiel, that Edom will at last become the prey of the people
of God, we would expect to find it in Jeremiah only as a
simple inference from his words ; for Jeremiah does not, like
Obadiah and Ezekiel, mention the enmity of Edom to Israel as
the cause of his guilt, but only the pride of his heart. Against
taking " the little ones of the flock " as the subject of the clause,
we find these considerations: (1) 3nD, "to pull, drag away,"
does not well apply to sheep, but rather points to dogs (xv. 3)
or lions, which drag away their prey. (2) The context is far
from leading us to understand, by the little ones of the sheep,
Israel or the people of God, either here or where the words are
repeated, 1. 45 ; while Zech. ii. 7 and xiii. 7 are passages which
cannot be held as regulating this verse. In ver. 19 the rulers
of Edom are viewed as shepherds : in accordance with this
figure, the Edomites are in ver. 20 called sheep, and weak,
helpless ones too. The subject of D'^np^ is indefinite : " the
enemy will advance like a lion out of the jungle of the Jordan ; "
the suffix precedes the noun, as in xlviii. 44, etc. The fate of
Edom will be so terrible, that their pasture-ground, their habi-
tation, will be astonished at it. The Hiphil D^e*^ is formed, like
D'E'J in Num. xxi. 20, from DOB' ; not, however, with the sense
of " laying waste," which the construction with ?? of a person
Digitized by
Google
250 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
does not suit, but with the meaning of " making astonished,"
as in Ezek. xxxii. 10, and only here with the directly causative
sense of manifeisting, showing astonishment or amazement.—
Ver. 21. The fall of Edom will be so fearful, that the earth
will tremble, and the cry of anguish from the perishing people
will be heard on the Red Sea. a?Qi is the inf. Kal with suffix.
The threatening concludes, in ver. 22, with the same thought
through which destruction is threatened to the Moabites, xlviii.
40 fif. The comparison of the euemy to an eagle is continued
in the expression, " he shall come up ; " the coming up, how-
ever, does not mean the rising of the eagle into the air, but
refers to the enemy : to march as an enemy against Edom.
With reference to the fulfilment of this prophecy, we have
already pointed out, on Num. xxiv. 18, and at the close of the
exposition in Obadiah, that the threatened devastation of the
land of Edom was brought about by the Chaldeans, as is clear
from Mai. i. 3 ; but the annihilation of the people was com-
menced by the Maccabeans, and completed by the Romans,
about the time of the Jewish war.
Vers. 23-27. Conoeening Damascus. — Aram, on this side
of the Euphrates, or Syria, was divided, in the times of Saul and
David, into the kingdoms of Damascus, Zobah, and Hamath,
of which the second, extending between Damascus and Hamath
(see on 2 Sam. viii. 3), or situated north-eastward from Damas-
cus, between the Orontes and the Euphrates, was the niost
powerful ; its kings were defeated by Saul (1 Sam. xiv. 47),
and afterwards conquered and made tributary to the kingdom
of Israel by David, who did the same to the Syrians of Da-
mascus that had come to the assistance of Hadadezer king
of Zobah (2 Sam. viii. and x.). After the death of David
and during the. time of Solomon, a freebooter named Rezon,
who had broken away from Hadadezer during the war, estab-
lished himself in Daniascus (see on 1 Kings xi. 23-25), and
became the founder of a dynasty which afterwards made
vassals of all the smaller kings of Syria, whose numbeir is given
1 Kings XX. 1. This dynasty also, under the powerful rulers
Benhadad i. and ii. and Hazael, long pressed hard on the king-
dom of Israel, and conquered a great part of the Israelite terri-
tory (1 Kings XV. 18 £f., xx. 1 ff., xxii. 3 ff. ; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 23-27. 251
vi. 8 £f., yiii. 28 f., x. 32 f., xii. 18 ff., xiii. 3 ff.)- ^^ last, King
Joash, after the death of Hazael, sacceeded in retaking the con-
quered cities from his son, Benhadad iii. (2 Kings xiii. 19 ff.) ;
and Jeroboam ii. was able to restore the ancient frontiers of
Israel as far as Hamath (2 Kings xiv. 25). Some decades
later, Bezin king of Damascus, in alliance with Pekah of Israel,
undertook a war of conquest against Judah during the time
of Ahaz, who therefore called to his aid the Assyrian king
Tiglath-pileser. This monarch conquered Damascus, and put
an end to the Syrian kingdom, by carrying away the people to
Kir (2 Kings xv. 37, xvi. 5-9). This kingdom of Syria is
called " Damascus" in the prophets, after its capital. We find
threats of destruction and ruin pronounced against it even by
such early prophets as Amos (i. 3-5), for its cruelty committed
against Israel, and Isaiah (xvii. 1 ff.), because of its having
combined with Israel to destroy Judah. According to the use
of language just referred to, *' Damascus," mentioned in the
heading of this prophecy, is not the city, but the kingdom of
Syria, which has been named after its capital, and to which,
besides Damascus, belonged the powerful cities of Hamath and
Arpad, which formerly had kings of their own (Isa. xxxvii. 13).
Jeremiah does not mention any special offence. In the judg-
ment to come on all nations, Aram-Damascus cannot remain
exempt.
* Ver. 23. " Hamath is ashamed, and Arpad, for they have
heard evil tidings : they despair ; there is trouble on the sea ; no
one can rest. Ver. 24. Damascus has become discouraged, she
has turned to flee : terror has seized her ; distress and pains have
laid hold on her, like a woman in childbirth. Ver. 25. How is the
city of praise not left, the city of my delight? Ver. 26. There-
fore shall her young men fall in her streets, and all the men of
war shall be silent in that day, saith Jahveh of hosts. Ver. 27.
And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall
devour the palaces of Benhadad."
The largest cities of Aram are seized with consternation and
discouragement. Damascus would flee, but its men of war fall
by the sword of the enemy, and the city is in flames. The
description of the terror which overpowers the inhabitants of
Aram begins with Hamath {Epiphaneia of the Greeks, now
Digitized by
Google
252 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
called Hamah), which lies north from Hums (Emesa), on the
Orontes (el 'Asi) ; see on Gen. x. 17 and Num. xxxiv. 8. Arpad
is always mentioned in connection with Hamath (Isa. x. 9,
xxxvi. 19, xxxvii. 13 ; 2 Kings xviii. 34 and xix. 13) : in the
list of Assyrian synonyms published by Oppert and Schrader, it
is sounded Arpadda ; and judging by the name, it still remains
in the large village of ArfSd, mentioned by Maras^., about
fifteen miles north from Haleb (Aleppo) ; see on 2 Kings xviii.
34. The bad news which Hamath. and Arpad have heard is
about the approach of a hostile army. " She is ashamed," i.e.
disappointed in her hope and trust (cf. xvii. 13), with the acces-
sory idea of being confounded. iSOi, to be fainthearted from
fear and anxiety ; cf . Josh. ii. 9, 24, Ex. xv. 15, etc. There is
a difficulty with the expression njOT DJ3, from the mention of
the sea. Ewald has therefore invented a new word, '3, which
is stated to signify mind, heart ; and he translates, " their heart
is in trouble." Gr,af very rightly remarks, against this, that
there was no occasion whatever for the employment of a word
which occurs nowhere else. The simplest explanation is that
of J. D. Michaelis, Rosenmiiller, and Maurer : '•' on the sea,"
i.e, onwards to the sea, " anxiety prevails." The objection of
Graf, that on this view there is no nominative to «V, cannot
make this explanation doubtful, because the subject (Ger. marif
Fr. o»i, Eng. people, they) is easily obtained from the context.
The words ?3V ti? l5i?.B'n form a reminiscence from Isa. Ivii. 20,
where they are used of the sea when stirred up, to which the
wicked are compared. But it does not follow from this that the
words are to be understood in this passage also of the sea, and
to be translated accordingly : " in the sea there is no rest," i.e.
the sea itself is in ceaseless .motion (Hitzig) ; or with a change
of Dja into DJ3, " there is a tumult like the sea, which cannot
keep quiet" (Graf). As little wairrant is there for concluding,
from passages like Jer. xvii. 12 ff., where the surging of the
Assyrian power is compared to the roaring of the waves of the
sea, that the unrest of the inhabitants of Syria, who are in a
state of anxious solicitude, is here compared to the restless
surging and roaring of the sea (Umbreit). For such a pur-
pose, "1^^., " concern, solicitude," is miich too weak, or rather
inappropriate. — Ver. 24. pB^l '"'??'?» " Damascus has become
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUX. 28-27. 253
slack," i.e. discouraged ; she tarns to flee, and cannot escape,
being seized with trembling and anxiety. •'^^JJlJ is not the
third pers. fem., prehendit terrorem, but stands for '^ij''jni3> ^'^^
Mappik omitted, because the tone is retracted in consequence
of the Athnach ; cf. vi. 24, y'm. 21, etc. " Terror has seized
Damascus." In the last clause Qv^rn is subsumed along with
nnV; hence the verb is put in the singular. — Ver. 25. The
question, " How is not," etc., has been differently explained.
Eichhorn, Gesenius, Ewald, and Umbreit take the words
according to the German usage, in the sense, " How is the city
forsaken 1 " or laid waste. But this Germanism is foreign to
the Hebrew ; and it is not obviated by C. B. Michaelis taking
" how " in the sense of quam inopinato et quam horribilUer non
deserta est, so that the words would mean nullua est modus deser-
tionis aut gradus quern Damascus non sit experta, because W ^t?
does not express the kind .and manner, or the degree of an
action. In the only other passage where ^ T^ occurs (2 Sam.
i. 14) the negative has its full meaning. Others (Calvin,
Schnurrer, J. D. Michaelis, Eosenmiiller, Maurer) take 3]^ in
the sense of leaving free, untouched : " How has she not been
left untouched f " i.e. been spared. But this meaning of the
verb is nowhere found. There is no other course left than, with
Nagelsbach, to take the verb as referring to the desertion of the
city through the flight of the inhabitants, as in iv. 29, etc., and
to take the words thus : " How is (i.e. how has it happened that)
the famous city (is) not forsaken?" According to this view, it
is not the desolation of the city that is bewailed, but the fact
that the inhabitants have not saved their lives by flight. The
way is prepared for this thought by ver. 24, where it is said that
the inhabitants of Damascus wish to flee, but are seized with
convulsive terror ; in ver. 25 also there is a more specific reason
given for it, where it is stated that the youths (the young
warriors) and all the men of war shall fall in the streets of the
city, and be slain by foes. The suflSx in " my delight" refers
to the prophet, and expresses his sympathy for the fall of the
glorious city (see on xlviii. 31) ; because not only does its popu-
lation perish, but the city itself also (ver. 27) is to be burned
to ashes. — ^Ver. 27 has been imita,ted from Amos i. 4 and ver.
14 conjointly, noha, not "on/' but "in," i.e. " within the
Digitized by
Google
/"
254 THE FBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
walK" " The palaces of Benhadad " are the palaces of the
Syrian kings generally, because three kings of Damascus bore
this name.
The fulfilment of this threat cannot be proved historically,
from want of information. Since Pharaoh-Necho had con-
quered Syria as far as the Euphrates, it is very possible that,
after the defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish, in the con-
quest of Syria by Nebuchadnezzar, Damascus was harshly
treated. The prophecy is, however, so general in its statement,
that we need not confine its fulfilment to the conquest by Nebu-
chadnezzar.
Vers. 28-33. "Conceening Kedab and the kikgdoms of
Hazob, which Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon smote."
(The Kethib ^llfK'i'ia^aJ is perhaps merely an error in transcrip-
tion occasioned by the occurrence of the preceding i^vn.) Kedar,
the Kedarenes, a Bedouin nation descended from Ishmael,
dwelling in tents throughout the region between Arabia Petraea
and Babylonia (see on Gen. xxv. 13 and Ezek. xxvii. 21), is
Here, no doubt, a general name for all the nomadic tribes and
shepherd nations of Arabia. Hazor elsewhere occurs only as
the name of various' cities in Palestine (Josh. xi. 1, xv. 23,
25, xix. 23 ; Nah. xi. 33), of which we need not think here,
since it is Arabians who are spoken of. No locality or region
of this name in Arabia is known. Jeremiah appears to have
formed the name for the purpose of designating those Arabians
who dwelt in Q*7-?n, "courts" or "villages," and who thus differed
from the Bedouins proper, or nomads and dwellers in tents ; cf.
Isa. xlii. 11 with Gen. xxv. 16. The settled Arabians are to
this day called Hadarijeh, in contrast with Wabarijeh, who
dwell in tents. " Hadar, ixn, is the settled dwelling-place, in
contrast with ledu, the steppe, where the tents are pitched,
sometimes here, sometimes there, and only for a time " (Delitzsch
on Isa. xlii. 11, vol. ii. p. 182 of Clark's translation). " The
kingdoms of Hazor" are the regions of the settled tribes, ruled
by theii; own princes or sheiks ; cf . xxv. 24.^ In the prophecy,
the general designation, " children of the east," i.e. Orientals,
• According to Mrc. v. Niebuhr, Gesck. Ass. u. Bah. p. 210, " Hazor is
the modem Hajar, a region which occupies the whole'north-eastern corner
of the Nejed, and to which, in the wider sense, Lascha, the region on thd
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 28-38. 255
alternates with Eedar : the fonner is the most commoa name
given to the tribes living to the east of Palestine, in the wilder-
ness : cf . Judg. vi. 3, Job i. 3, Ezek. zxv. 4. Instead of this
name, Josephns uses the designation "w^rabians" (Ant. v. 6. 1);
later, " Nabateans " or " Eedarenes " became common. Here
also (ver. 32) is used the special designation nsD 'JfiVi? [cut (at)
the corner (of the hair)], which points to the custom, usual
among several of these Bedouin tribes, of cropping the hair of
the head and beard ; see on ix. 25 and xxv. 23.
Ver. 286. " Thus saith Jahveh, Arise, go up to Kedar, and
destroy the children of the east. Yer. 29. Their tents and
their flocks shall they take : their curtains, and all their vessels,
and their camels shall they carry away for themselves ; and they
shall cry over them. Fear is on every side. Ver. 30. Flee I
wander far, dwell deep, ye inhabitants of Hazdr, saith Jahveh ;
for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath taken counsel against
you, and hath devised a plan against them. Ver. 31. Arise !
go up against a nation at ease, dwelling carelessly, saith Jahveh ;
it has no gates nor bars — they dwell alone. Ver. 32. And their
camels shall be a prey, and the multitude of their herds a spoil ;
and I will scatter them to every wind who have cut the comer
[of their beards], and from all sides will I bring their destruc-
tion, saith Jahveh. Ver. 33. And Hazor shall be an habitation
of jackals, a desolation for ever. No man shall dwell there,
nor shall a son of man sojourn in it."
This prophecy consists of two brief strophes, which begin
with a summons to the army of the enemy to wage war on the
Arabians (ver. 285 and ver. 31), and then announce the execu-
tion of this order; the arrangement, moreover, b such that
there is attached to the first strophe a summons to the Arabians
to save themselves by flight (ver. 30), while the other concludes
with the threat that their territory shall be destroyed (ver. 33).
— Ver. 28. njp is used with '?^ instead of i>J?, to signify hostile
advance against a nation or city, vn^ with Qametz-Hatuph
(without Metheg) is imperative ; cf. Ewald, § 227, i, with
251, e. The verbs ^n^'. and ^tt^ff] in ver. 29 are not jussives
coast, also belongs." But livn, from nsPI, which corresponds to j.^*. or
.-^■^ , is fundamentally different from^^vb or jsn.»..
Digitized by
Google
256 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
(Ewald, Umbreit, etc.), but imperfects, describing what takes
place in consequence of the order given. Tents and flocks of
sheep and goats, curtains and vessels, together with camels,
form the property and wealth of the nomads. KC'], to take
away, carry off ; On?^ sibi. They call out over them, as if it
were a watch-cry, " Horror around : " on this expression, see
vi. 25. This justifies the call addressed to them, " Flee," etc.
To «3 is added flJ for the purpose of intensifying, and this
again is farther strengthened by appending IND : " Use every
effort to flee." MBO 'P'DJ?.|i as in ver. 8. A reason is given
for the summons, in the statement that Nebuchadnezzar, as the
instrument of Jahveh, has formed a plan against them ; cf. ver.
20 and xviii. 11. Instead of on'hy_, many MSB. and the ancient
versions have M -Si in conformity with the first member. In
all probability, the original reading is " against them," inasmuch
as " the discourse, as in other instances, makes a transition, in
the last portion, from direct address to a calmer style of speak-
ing " (Ewald). — ^Ver. 31 does not declare the plan of the king
of Babylon ; but the words, " Arise, go ye up," etc., are once
more the summons of the Lord, as is shown by the expression
" saith Jahveh." The enemy is to march against a peaceful
nation, dwelling securely, that has neither doors nor bars, i.e.
does not live in cities surrounded by walls with gates and bars
(cf. 1 Sam. xxiii. 7, Dent. iii. 5), whose territory, therefore, is
easily conquered. They dwell alone, apart from others, without
connection and intercourse with other nations, from which they
could obtain help and support. ivB', like "^'|?f, Job xxxvi. 2,
Dan. vii. 8, is a Chaldaizing form ; elsewhere it is written vbft
Job xxi. 23, or vB', Job xvi. 12. As to living securely, cf.
Judg. xviii. 7, Ezek. xxxviii. 11 ; on living alone, xv. 17. This
last is elsewhere said only of Israel, Num. xxiii. 9, Deut. xxxiii.
28. Their possessions will become the spoil of the enemy ; God
will scatter them to every wind (cf. Ezek. v. 12, xii. 14), and
bring destruction on them from every side (on f^^^, cf. 1 Kings
v. 4). — Ver. 33. The dwelling-places of the settled tribes
(Hazor) shall become the habitation of jackals (cf. ix. 10), an
uninhabited desolation for ever. Ver. 336 is in part a repeti-
tion of ver. 18.
With regard to the fulfilment of this prophecy, it follows
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX. 34-89. 257
from the latter part of the title that Nebachadnezzar had
smitten the Arabian tribes, i.e. defeated them, and subjected
them to his sway. Bat we hare no historical information as
to the time when this took place. M. von Niebuhr {Gesdi.
Astyr. v.. Bab. S. 209) and Duncker {Gesch. d. Alterth. i. S.
427) suppose that Nebuchadnezzar, after he had returned home
to Babylon from Hither Asia, having heard of the death of
his father, after his victory at Carchemish, and after he had
ascended the throne, " as it seems," first thought of extending
his authority over the Arabians on the lower portion of the
Euphrates, in North Arabia, and in the Syrian desert. This
supposition may possibly be true, but cannot be raised to historic
probability ; moreover, it is connected, by the above-mentioned
historians, with theories regarding the campaigns against Hither
Asia which rest upon statements of Josephus that are very
uncertain, and some of which can be proved to be incorrect.
Such is the statement in Antt x. 6. 1, that Nebachadnezzar,
after his victory at Carchemish, in pursuing the Egyptians
to the borders of their country, did not touch Judea. The
only notice we have, apart from Scripture, of the conquest of
Arabia by Nebuchadnezzar, is that furnished by Josephus
(contra Ap. i. 19) from Berosus: Kparrjaai Be ifytjat rov
Ba^vXcovtop (i.e. Nebuchadnezzar) Atr/vtrrov, Svpia<;, '^oiviKiyi,
}ApaPia<i. But this notice is stated in such indefinite and
general terms, that nothing more specific can be inferred from
it regarding the time and circumstances of the conquest of the
Arabians.
Vers. 34-39. Concerning Elam. — By the title (on the form
of which, cf . xlvi. 1, xlvii. 1, and xiv. 1), the utterance regarding
Elam Is placed "in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king
of Judah ; " hence it was published later than the prophecies in
chap, xlviii. and in xlix. 1-33, and not long before the prophecy
regarding Babylon in chap. 1. Elam, a Shemitic people in
Elymais, the Persian province of Susiana (the modern Husls-
t&n), which, except in Gen. xiv. 1, only appears in history
when It had no longer a Shemitic but an Aryan language (see
on Gen. x. 22 and Dan. viil. 2), is mentioned in Isa. xxli. 6 as
serving in the Assyrian army, and in Isa. xxi. 6 as being,
together with Madai (the Medes), the executors of judgment
VOL. II. B
Digitized by
Google
258 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
against Babylon. That Elam still belonged, in the time of
Esarhaddon, to the kingdom of Assyria, follows from Ezra iv. 9,
where Elamites are mentioned among the colonists whom this
Assyrian king transplanted into the depopulated kingdom of the
ten tribes. But whether Elam, after the revolt of Media, also
made itself independent of Assyria, or remained subject to this
kingdom till it fell, we have no historical data to determine.
The same must be said regarding the question whether, after
the fall of Nineveh and the destruction of the Assyrian king-
dom by the united armies of Nabopolassar from Babylon and
Cyaxares from Media, Elam was incorporated with the Median
or the Babylonian kingdom; for nothing more specific has been
transmitted to us regarding the division of the conquered king-
dom among the two victors. Judging from its geographical
situation, we must probably come to the conclusion that Elam
fell to the lot of the Medes. Seeing that there is an utter want,
in other respects, of facts regarding the earlier history of Elam,
neither can a historical occasion be made out for this prophecy.
The supposition of Ewald, " that the wild and warlike Elaniites
(Isa. xxii. 6) had shortly before taken part with the Chaldeans
as their allies in the deposition of Jehoiachin and the first great
exile of the people, and had therein shown themselves particu-
larly cruel," has no support of any kind, either in the contents
of the prophecy or in the time when it was composed. The
prophecy itself contains not the slightest indication of any
hostility on the part of the Elamites towards Judah ; nor is
anything proved regarding this by the fact that the chastise-
ment is not said to proceed from Nebuchadnezzar, but directly
from Jahveh, since, in the oracles concerning Philistia, Edom,
and Damascus also, Nebuchadnezzar is not mentioned, but
Jahveh is named as the one who destroys these peoples and
burns up their cities; cf. xlvii. 4, xlix. 10, 13 ff., 27. Add to
this, that the assumption of Elamites being in Nebuchadnezzar's
army is devoid of historic probability, since Elam, as has already
been stated, hardly belonged to the Chaldean kingdom.*
^ No valid reason has been adduced for calling in question the statement
in the title regarding the time when this prophecy was composed ; yet this
has been done by Movers, Hitzig, and Niigelsbach. " That the LXX. have
given the headiiig twice, the first time briefly, and then fully at the end
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XLIX 34-39. 259
Ver. 35. " Thus saith Jahveh of hosts : Behold, I will break
the bow of Elam, the chief part of their strength. Ver. 36.
And I will bring upon Elam four winds from the four ends of
the heaven, and I will scatter them towards all these winds ; and
there shall be no nation where the scattered ones of Elam shall
not come. Ver. 37. And I will make Elam terrified before
their enemies, and before those who seek their life ; and I will
bring on them evil, the heat of my wrath, saith Jahveh ; and I
will send after them the sword, until I consume them. Ver. 38.
And I will place my throne in Elam, and will destroy thence
king and princes, saith Jahveh. Ver. 39. But it shall be in the
end of the days, that I will turn the captivity of Elam, saith
Jahveh."
Elam's martial power is to be destroyed, and its population
scattered to the four winds among all nations (ver. 25 f.). The
Lord will make them terrified before their enemies, and let them
be pursued by the sword till they are swept away (ver. 37). In
the country itself He will hold a tribunal, and destroy king and
priests out of it (ver. 38). In ver. 35, the bow, as the chief
weapon of the Elamites (cf. Isa. xxii. 6), is mentioned, by
synecdoche, instead of all offensive and defensive weapons,
for all the means of resistance and attack employed by this
warlike nation. This, indeed, is shown by the apposition, " the
first-fruits (i.e. the chief part) of their strength " or valour.
To break the bow in pieces is thus equivalent to rendering
defenceless. The plural suflSx in Dn"i^33 points to Elam as a
nation — the Elamites. Hitzig, Graf, and older expositors
make an assumption which is both unnecessary and incapable
of the piece, merely shows that two different readings have now been com-
bined in it" (Ewald). And Niigelsbach has yet to bring proof of the assur-
ance given us when he says, " I consider it quite impossible that Jeremiah,
in the beginning of Zedekiah's reign, should have thought of any other
than Nebuchadnezzar as the instrument to be employed.in executing judg-
ment, or that he should even have left this matter in suspenso." If Jere-
■ miah, as a prophet of the Lord, does not announce, as the word of Jahveh,
mere human conjectures regarding the future, but only what the Spirit of
the Lord suggested to him, neither could he set forth his own conjectures
regarding the question by whom God the Lord was to scatter the Elamites
to the four winds, but must leave it in suspenso, if the Spirit of the Lord
had revealed nothing to him regarding it.
/"
Digitized by
Google
260 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
of proof, that ne'g stands for 0*^^31, and means " the valiant,
brave people of war," as in Isa. zxi. 17 and 1 Sam. li. 4 ; bat
neither in these passages can the alleged meaning be f allj made
out. — Ver. 36. Through the working of God's power, the Elam-
ites shall be dispersed to all the four winds, t.«. to all parts of
the earth. This exercise of power is represented under the
figure of the four winds. The wind is the most appropriate
among all earthly things for symbolizing the Spirit of Ood, or
the energy of the divine operation ; cf. Zech. vi. 5, Dan. vii. 2.
The Kethib D^J> in ver. 36 has evidently been written by mis-
take for.oW. The meaning of the figure is this: Elam is to
be attacked on all sides by enemies, and be scattered in every
direction. This is evident from ver. 37, where the figurative
is changed for the literal, and the thought further extended.
<nnnri, Hiphil from nrin, be broken to pieces, in Hiphil to
dispirit through fear and terror ; cf. i. 17. On the form in
the text, which is shortened from *n^Finn through the shifting of
the lone to the last syllable, cf. Ewald, § 234, e. nv^, " evil,
misfortune," is marked by the apposition, " the heat of mine
anger," as the emanation of God's Judgment of wrath. On
37^, cf. ix. 15. The Lord will sit in judgment on king and
princes, and punish them with death. The throne is set for
the Judge to sit in judgment ; see xHii. 10. Yet (ver. 39), in
the Messianic future, blessing shall come on Elam ; cf . xlix. 6,
xlviii. 7.
If we compare this prophecy with the remaining prophecies
of Jeremiah regarding the heathen nations, we shall find that
it contains no reference whatever to any execution by Nebu-
chadnezzar king of Babylon of the judgment with which the
Elamites are threatened ; but it announces the fall of Elam
and the dispersion of its inhabitants by enemies in a way go
general, that, as Havernick (on Daniel, p. 549) has remarked,
it is an arbitrary addition for any one to make, if he thinks
definitely of the Chaldeans [as the enemies of Elam], because,
correctly viewed, the contents rather declare against a conquest
by Nebuchadnezzar. " Jeremiah," says Havernick, " an-
nounces the utter extinction of the state as such, a general dis-
persion and annihilation of the people, a tribunal of punishment
which the Lord Himself will hold over them, — features which
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. XUX. 84-89. 261
are far too strongly marked, and far too grand, to let ns think
that Elam is merely to be rendered tributary and incorporated
into a new state. If we connect with this the deliverance of
Elam mentioned at the close of ver. 39, viz. his conversion, then
we will not hesitate to take the meaning of the oracle, in a more
general way, as referring to the gradual fall of this heathen
nation, for which, however, a future deliverance is in store, as
is f c^Ily shown by the issue." This view is at least much more
correct than the current one, still maintained by Ewald, Hitzig,
Graf, etc., according to which the prophecy refers to a conquest
of EHam by Nebuchadnezzar. M. von Niebuhr (Gesch, Assyr.
tmd Bab. S. 210) attempts to show its probability from a notice
in Strabo (xi. 524), and (on S. 212) from the intimation given
in the book of Judith, chap, i., of a war between Nebuchad-
nezzar and Media, which was successfully concluded in the
twelfth year of his reign. But the statement in Strabo, that
the Kossaites, a nation of robbers, once sent 13,0Q0 archers to
help the Elamites against the Susites and Babylonians, is far
too indefinite for us to be able to apply it to a war which Nebu-
chadnezzar in company with Media carried on against Elam ;
. for the Susites are at least not Medes. And the notice in the
.book of Judith is self-evidently unhistorical ; for it says that
Nebuchadnezzar was king of the Assyrians and resided in the
great city of Nineveh, and that he defeated Arphaxad the king
of Media in the seventeenth year of his reign (Judith i. 1, 13).
' But Nebuchadnezzar neither resided in Nineveh, which had
been destroyed shortly before ; nor could he have made war on
Arpha:xad king of Media in the seventeenth year.of his reign,
because he had in that year begun to besiege Jerusalem with
all his forces. But the additional considerations which Niebuhr
brings forward in support of his hypothesis can as little stand
the test. Neither Jer. xxv. 25, where the kings of Media and
Elam are mentioned among those who are to drink the cup
of wrath, nor Ezek. xxxii. 24 f., where Elam and the whole
multitude of its people are brought forward as among those
who were slain, and who sank into the nether parts of the
earth, furnish proofs of the conquest and destruction of Elam
by Nebuchadnezzar, or of a war between that king and Media.
For the funeral-song in Ezekiel bears a thoroughly ideal
Digitized by
Google
262 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUa
character, and announces the fall of all the heathen powers,
without any regard to Nebuchadnezzar. This holds, too, in a
sense, of Jer. xxv., where Nebuchadnezzar is certainly men-
tioned as the ruler into whose power all the nations are to be
delivered for the space of seventy years, inasmuch as this
announcement also launches out into the idea of a judgment of
all nations ; so that we are not entitled to assume that all the
kingdoms of the earth, to whom the cup of wrath is presented,
were to be conquered and brought under subjection by Nebu-
chadnezzar. Still less reason is there for inferring from Jer.
xxvii. 3, that Nebuchadnezzar was involved in a war with
Media at a time when, as is there stated, at the beginning
of Zedekiah's reign, the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and
Phoenicia sent ambassadors to Jerusalem to recommend a coali-
tion against the power of Babylon. Even if Nebuchadnezzar
were then occupied in the eastern portion of his kingdom, yet
there is nothing at all to prove that he was involved in war
with Media or Elam. History says nothing of a war waged
by Nebuchadnezzar on Elam, nor does this prophecy furnish
any support for such an assumption. Although it does not set
before us a " gradual ruin " of Elam (Havernick), but rather
a catastrophe brought on by God, yet the description is" given
in terms so general, that nothing more specific can be inferred
from it regarding the time and the circumstances of this
catastrophe. In this prophecy, Elam is not considered in its
historical relation to the people of Israel, but as the representa-
tive of the heathen world lying beyond, which has not hitherto
come into any relation towards the people of Israel, but which
nevertheless, along with it, falls under the judgment coming on
all nations, in order that, through the judgment, it may be led
to the knowledge of the true God, and share in His salvation.
Chaps. 1. and li. — Against Babylon.
The genuineness of this prophecy has been impugned by
the newer criticism in different ways ; for some quite refuse to
allow it as Jeremiah's, while others consider it a mere inter-
polation.^ Hitzig (Exeg. Handh. 2 Aufl.) considers that this
* With regard to the special attacks and their refutation, see details in
Keil's Manual of Introduction to the Old Testament [translated by Prof.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U, LI. 263
oracle, with its epilogue, H. 59-64, is not to be wholly rejected
as spurious, as has been done by Von Colin and Gramberg ;
he is so much the less inclined to reject it, because, although
there is many an interpolated piece here and .there (?), yet no
independent oracle has hitherto been found in Jeremiah that
is wholly interpolated. " In fact," he continues, " this oracle
shows numerous traces of its genuineness, and reasons for
maintaining it. The use of particular words (1. 6, li. 1, 5, 7,
14, 45, 55), and the circle of figures employed (li. 7, 8, 34, 37), "
as well as the style (1. 2, 3, 7, 8, 10), especially in turns like
li. 2 ; the concluding formula, li. 57 ; the dialogue introduced
without any forewarning, li. 51, — all unmistakeably reveal
Jeremiah ; and this result is confirmed by chronological data."
These chronological data, which Hitzig then extracts from
particular verses, we cannot certainly esteem convincing, since
they have been obtained through a method of exegesis which
denies the spirit and the essential nature of prophecy; but
his remarks concerning Jeremiah's use of words and his circle
of images are perfectly well-founded, and may be consider-
ably corroborated if the matter were more minutely investi-
gated. Notwithstanding all this, Ewald has again repeated,
in the second edition of his work on the Prophets, the assertion
first made by Eichhorn, that this prophecy is spurious. He
Douglas, in Clark's F. T. L. vol. i. p. 842 ff.]. To the list there given of the
defenders of this prophecy (of whom Kueper, Havemick, and Nagelsbaoh
in the monograph entitled der Prophet Jeremias und Babylon, 1850, have
thoroughly discussed the question), we must add the name of Graf, who,
in the remarks prefixed to his commentary on chap. 1. f., has thoroughly
examined the arguments of his opponents, and reached this result : " The
prophecy contains nothing which Jeremiah could not have written in the
fourth year of Zedekiah ; and the style of writing itself exhibits all the
peculiarities which present themselves in his book. This prophecy is there-
fore as much his work as the prophecies against the other foreign nations."
Only the passage li. 15-19, a repetition of x. 12-16, is said to proceed
from another hand, because it stands out of all connection with what pre-
cedes and what follows it (but see the exposition) ; while he has so fully
vindicated, as geniune portions of the prophecy, other passages which had
been assumed as interpolations, even by Nagelsbaoh in his monograph, that
the latter, in treating of Jeremiah in Lange's BibeUcerk [see Clark's Trans-
lation, p. 419], has renounced his former doubts, and now declares that it
is only the passage in li 15-19 that he cannot regard as original
Digitized by
Google
264 THE FBOPHECIES OF JEBEMMH.
does not, indeed, deny that " this long piece against Babylon
has many words, turns of expression, and thoughts, nay,
even the whole plan, in common with Jeremiah; and since .
Jeremiah is often accustomed in other places also to repeat
himself, this might, at the first look, even create a preposse^
sion favouring the opinion that it was composed by Jeremiah
himself. But Jeremiah repeats himself in a more wholesale
style, and is not unfaithful to himself in his repetitions : here,
however, the Jeremianic element peers through only in single
though very numerous passages, and the repeated portions are
often completely transformed. What, therefore, appears here as
Jeremianic is rather a studied repetition and imitation, which
would require here to be all the stronger, when the piece was
intended to pass as one of Jeremiah's writings." Ewald goes
on to say that Babylon appears already as directly threatened
by Cyrus ; and the whole view taken of Babylon as a kingdom
utterly degenerated, and unable any longer to escape the final
. destruction, — the prophetic impetuosity shown in rising up
against the Chaldean oppression, — the public summons ad-
dressed to all the brethren living in Babylon, that they should
flee from the city, now irrecoverably lost, and return to the
holy land, — the distinct mention of the Medes and otiier
northern nations as the mortal enemies of Babylon, and of the
speedy and certain fall of this city ; — all this, says Ewald, is
foreign to Jeremiah, nay, even conflicting and impossible.
For particular proof of this sweeping verdict, Ewald refers to
the name ^'^ (li. 41, as in xxv. 26) for Babylon, ""O^ ^2 for
D'nB'3, li. 1, and similar circumlocutions for Chaldean names,
li. 21. He refers also to certain words which are quite new,
and peculiar only to Ezekiel and later writera: \iO, nne, H. 23,
25, 27 ; D wji, 1. 2 ; D^^? as a designation of false prophets,
I. 36 ; also to a^nn, to devote with a curse, 1. 21, 26, li. 3,
which in the rest of Jeremiah occurs only xxv. 9. Further,
he refers to the headings found in 1. 1 and li. 59, which are
quite different from what Jeremiah himself would have written;
and lastly, to the intimate connection subsisting between 1. 27,
II. 40, and Isa. xxxiv. 6 ff., between 1. 39 and Isa. xxxiv. 14,
and between li. 60 ff. and Jer. xxxiv. 16. But all these con-
siderations are much too weak to prove the spurionsness of the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L., LL 265
passage before as. The connection with Isa. xsxlr. quite
agrees with Jeremiah's characteristic tendency to lean on older
prophecies, and reprodace the thoughts contained in them (we
merely recall the case of the prophecy concerning Moab in
chap, xlviii., against whose genuineness even Ewald has nothing
to say); and it can be brought to tell against the genuine-
ness of this oracle only on the groundless supposition that Isa.
xxxiv. originated in exile times. The headings given in 1. 1
and li. 59 contain nothing whatever that would be strange in
Jeremiah : li. 59 is not a title at all, but the commencement
of the account regarding the charge which Jeremiah gave to
Seraiah when he was going to Babylon, with reference to his
carrying with him the prophecy concerning Babylon ; and the
heading in 1. 1 almost exactly agrees with that in xlvi. 13 (see
the exposition). Of the alleged later words, O^l^n and Dvi?3
are derived from the Pentateuch, D'^3 from Isa. xliv. 25.
tJD and nriB certmnly were not known to the Hebrews till the
invasions of Judah by the Assyrians and Chaldeans ; but the
latter of the two words we find as early as in the address of the
Assyrians in Isa. xxxvi. 9, and the former in Isa. xli. 25 : thus,
not a single one of the words alleged to have been first used by
Ezekiel is peculiar to him. Finally, of the circumlocutions
used for the names " Babylon " and " Chaldeans," Ewald him-
self confesses that W^ in xxv. 26 may be Jeremiah's ; and he
has yet to give proof for the assertion that the names cited are
merely circumlocutions in which a play is made on words that
did not come into vogue till after Jeremiah's time. And as
little has been even attempted in the way of establishing the
opinion he has expressed regarding what is Jeremianic in the
prophecy, — that it is a studied repetition and imitation, — or the
assertion that Babylon is represented as being directly threat-
ened by Cyrus. In the Old Testament Scriptures, Cyrus is
represented as the king of Persia, which he was; but this
prophecy says nothing of the Persians. Thus, the learned
supplementary matter with which Ewald seeks to support his
general assertions is by no means fitted to strengthen his
position, but rather shows that the proper argument for reject-
ing this oracle as spurious is not to be found in the nature of
this particular prophecy, but in the axiom openly expressed by
Digitized by
Google
266 THE PEOPHEOIES OF JEREMIAH.
Elcbhorn, von Colin, Gramberg, and other followers of the
" vulgar rationalism," that Jeremiah could not have announced
the destruction of Babylon by the Medes, because at his time
the Medes had not yet appeared on the scene of history as a
conquering nation; for, according to the principles of ratior-
alism, the prophets could merely prophesy of things which lay
within 'the political horizon. It has not escaped the acute
observation of Hitzig, that the genuineness of this prophecy
could not be shaken by such general assertions ; hence he has
adopted Movers' hypothesis of numerous interpolations, in order
thereby to account for the use made of portions of Isaiah,
which, on dogmatic grounds, are referred to the exile. But for
this assumption also there are wanting proofs that can stand the
test. Besides the general assertion that Jeremiah could not
have repeated earlier pieces word for word, the arguments
which Movers and Hitzig bring forward from the context, or
from a consideration of the contents, in the case of isolated
verses, depend upon false renderings of words, conjectures of a
merely subjective character, and misunderstandings of various
kinds, which at once fall to the ground when the correct
explanation is given.
The germ of this prophecy lies in the word of the Lord,
chap. XXV. 12, "When seventy years are completed, I will
punish the king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity,
and the land of the Chaldeans, and make it everlasting deso-
lations ; " and its position with regard to the other prophecies
of Jeremiah against the nations has already been given in out-
line in the statement of xxv. 26, " And the king of Sheshach
(Babylon) shall drink after them." Just as these utterances
(xxv. 12, 26) stand in full accord with the announcement that,
in the immediate future, all nations shall be given into the
power of the king of Babylon, and serve him seventy years ;
so, too, the prophecy against Babylon now lying before us not
only does not stand in contradiction with the call addressed
to Jeremiah, that he should proclaim to his contemporaries
the judgment which Babylon is to execute on Judah and all
nations, but it rather belongs to the complete solution of the
problems connected with this call. The announcement of the
fall of Babylon, and the release of Israel from Babylon, form
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L., LI. 267
the subject of the prophecy, which is more than a hundred
verses in length. This double subject, the two parts of which
are so closely connected, is portrayed in a series of images
which, nearly throughout, are arranged pretty loosely to-
gether, so that it is impossible to summarize the rich and
varied contents of these figures, and to sketch a correct plan
of the course of thought and of the divisions of the oracle.
Hence, too, the views of expositors with regard to the division
of the whole into parts or strophes widely differ;^ we follow
the view of Ewald, that the whole falls into three main parts
(1. 2-28, 1. 29 on to li. 26, and li. 27-58), every one of which
begins with a spirited exhortation to engage in battle. These
three main portions again fall into ten periods, of which the
first three (1. 2-10, 11-20, and 21-28) form the first main
division ; the four middle ones form the second main portion
(1. 29-40, ver. 41 to li. 4, vers. 5-14, and vers. 15-26) ; while
the following three form the last (vers. 27-37, 38-49, and
■ 50-58). We further agree with what Ewald says regarding
the contents of the first two parts in general, viz. that in the
first the prevailing view is the necessity for the deliverance of
Israel, and that in the second, the antithesis between Babylon
on the one hand, and Jahveh together with Israel, His spiritual
instrument, on the other, is fully brought out ; but we do not
agree with his remark concerning the third part, that there
the prevailing feature is the detailed description of the con-
dition of Israel at that time, for this does not at all agree with
the contents of li. 27-58. Bather, the address rises into a
triumphant description of the fall of Babylon, in which the
Lord will show Himself as the avenger of His people. On the
whole, then, the prophecy is neither wanting in arrangement
* Thus, according to Eichhom, Dahler, and Bosenmiiller, the whole con-
sists of several pieces (three or six) which originally belonged to different
periods ; according to Schmieder, it consists of " seven different poems or
songs, all having the same subject, which, however, they set forth from
different sides, and under countless images." K^elsbach at first assumed
that there were three main divisions, with thirteen subdivisions ; afterwards,
in Lange's Bibelwerk [see Clark's Foreign Theol. Library], he thinks he
is able also to distinguish three stages of time, which, however, do not
permit of being sharply defined, so that he continues to divide the whole
prophecy into nineteen separate views or figures.
Digitized by
Google
/
268 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
nor in that necessary progress in the devebpment of thought
which proves nnity of conception and execution.
Chap. 1. 1. The title, " The word which Jahveh spake con-
cerning Babyloi;, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by Jere-
miah the prophet," follows xlvi. 13 in choosing mn* na^ ne'K
instead of the usual n^n iB'tjt, and deviates from that passage
only in substituting " by the hand of Jeremiah" for " to Jere-
miah," as in xxxvii. 2. The preference of the expression
" spake by the hand of" for " spake to," is connected with the
fact that the following prophecy does not contain a message of
the Lord which came to Jeremiah, that he might utter it before
the people, but a message which he was to write down and send
to Babylon, li. 60 ff. The apposition to " Babylon," viz. " the
land of the Chaldeans," serves the purpose of more exactly
declaring that " Babylon " is to be understood not merely of
the capital, but also of the kingdom ; cf . vers. 8, 45, and
51, 54.
Vers, 2-10. The fall of Babylon, and deliverance of larael. —
Ver. 2. " Tell it among the nations, and cause it to be heard,
and lift up a standard ; cause it to be heard, conceal it not : say,
Babylon is taken, Bel is ashamed, Merodach is confounded ;
her images are ashamed, her idols are confounded. Yer. 3.
For there hath come up against her a nation out of the north ;
it will make her land a desolation, and there shall be not an
inhabitant in it : from man to beast, [all] have fled, are gone.
Yer. 4. In those days, and at that time, saith Jahveh, the
children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah
together; they shall go, weeping as they go, and shall seek
Jahveh their God. Yer. 5. They shall ask for Zion, with their
faces [turned to] the road hitherwards, [saying], Come, and
let us join ourselves to Jahveh by an eternal covenant [which]
shall not be forgotten. Yer. 6. My people have been a flock
of lost ones ; their shepherds have misled them [on] mountains
which lead astray: from mountain to hill they went; they
forgot their resting-place. Yer. 7. All who found them have
devoured them ; and their enemies said. We are not guilty, for
they have sinned against Jahveh, the dwelling-place of justice,
and the hope of their fathers, Jahveh. Yer. 8. Flee out of the
midst of Babylon, and from the land of the Chaldeans; let
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 2-ia 269
them go forth, and let them be like he-goats before a flock.
Ver, 9. For, behold, 1 will stir up, and bring up against Baby-
Ion, an assembly of great nations out of the land of the north :
and they shall array themselves against her ; on that side shall
she be taken : his arrows [are] like [those of] a skilful hero
[who] does not return empty. Ver. 10. And [the land of the]
Chaldeans shall become a spoil ; all those who spoil her shall
be satisfied, saith Jahveh."
In the spirit Jeremiah sees the fall of Babylon, together with
its idols, as if it had actually taken place, and gives the com-
mand to proclaim among the nations this event, which brings
deliverance for Israel and Judah. The joy over this is ex-
pressed in the accumulation of the words for the summons to
tell the nations what has happened. On the expression, cf. iv.
5, €, xlvi. 14. The lifting up of a standard, i.e. of a signal-
rod, served for the more rapid spreading of news ; cf. iv. 6,
vi. 1, Isa. xiii. 2, etc. " Cause it to be heard " is intensified
by the addition of " do not conceal it." The thing is to be
proclaimed without reserve ; cf . xxxviii. 14. " Babylon is
taken,-" i.e. conquered, and her idols have become ashamed,
inasmuch as, from their inability to save their city, their power-
lessness and nullity have come to light. Bel and Merodach are
not different divinities, but merely different names for the chief
deity of the Babylonians. Bel = Baal, the Jupiter of the Baby-
lonians, was, as Bel-Merodach, the tutelary god of Babylon.
•' The whole of the Babylonian dynasty," says Oppert, Exp6d.
en Mdsopot. ii. p. 272, " places him [Merodach] at the head of
the gods ; and the inscription of Borsippa calls him the king of
heaven and earth." D'?^, " images of idols," and 0W3, pro-
perly " logs," an expression of contempt for idols (see on Lev.
xxvi. 30), are synonymous ideas for designating the nature and
character of the Babylonian gods. — Ver. 3. Babylon is fallen
by a people from the north, that has gone out against her, and
makes her land a desolation. This nation is described in ver. 9
as a collection, union of great nations, that are enumerated
especially in li. 27, 28. On '' it [the nation] shall make her
land," etc., cf. ii. 15, xlvui. 9 ; on the expression "from man to
beast," cf. xxxiii. 12, ix. 9. ^IJ is from lu, ver. 8 and xlix.
30 = ^Ti3, from nij, ix. 9.— Ver. 4f. Then, when Babylon shall
Digitized by
Google
270 THE FBOFHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
have fallen, the children of Israel and Judah retam out of their
captivity, seeking Jahveh their God with tears of repentance,
and marching to Zion, for the purpose of joining themselves to
Him in an eternal covenant. The fall of Babylon has the
deliverance of Israel as its direct result. The prophet views
this in such a way, that all the steps in the fulfilment (the
return from Babylon, the reunion of the tribes previously sepa-
rated, their sincere return to the Lord, and the making of. a
new covenant that shall endure for ever), which will actually
follow successively in long periods, are taken together into one
view. By the statement made regarding the time, " In those
days, and at that time," the fall of Babylon and the deliver-
ance of Israel (which Jeremiah sees in the spirit as already
begun) are marked out as belonging to the future. Israel and
Judah come together, divided no more ; cf. iii. 18. " Going
and weeping they go," i.e. they always go further on, weeping :
cf. xli. 6 ; 2 Sam. iii. 16 ; Ewald, § 280, b. Cf. also iii. 21, xxxi.
9. Seeking the Lord their God, they ask for Zion, ue. they
ask after the way thither ; for in Zion Jahveh has His throne.
"The way hither'' (i.e. to Jerusalem) "is their face," «c. directed.
" Hither" points to the place of the speaker, Jerusalem, lyil 'i<3
are imperatives, and words with which those who are returning
encourage one another to a close following of the Loi'd their
God. W3 is imperative for ^1?^, like ^sapJ in Isa. xliii. 9, Joel
iv. 11 ; cf. Ewald, § 226, c. It cannot be the imperfect, because
the third person gives no sense ; hence Graf would change the
vowels, and read riv3. But suspicion is raised against this by
the very fact that, excepting Eccles. viii. 15, nff, in the sense
of joining oneself to, depending on, occurs only in the Niphal.
DTiV irna is a modal accusative : " in an eternal covenant [which]
shall not be forgotten," ue. which we will not forget, will not
break again. In fact, this is the new covenant which the
Lord, according to xxxi. 31 ff., will make in time to come with
His people. But here this side of the matter is withdrawn
from consideration ; for the point treated of is merely what
Israel, in his repentant frame and returning to God, vows he
shall do.
Israel comes to this determination in consequence of the
misery into which he has fallen because of bis sins, vers. 5-7.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. h. 2-10. 271
Israel was like a flock of lost sheep which their shepherds had
led astray. Tvnzk Jt<S, a flock of sheep that are going to ruin.
The participle in the plural is joined with the collective noun
ad bensum, to show what is imminent or is beginning to happen.
The verb fijii points to the subject Jt<V ; hence the Qeri vn is
unnecessary. The plural suffixes of the following clause refer
to *B? as a collective. The shepherds led the people of God
astray on Q^??^B' Dnn (a local accusative ; on the Keihib D'33iB',
cf . xxxi. 32, xlix. 4 ; it is not to be read D'MiB'), mountains
that render people faithless. These mountains were so desig-
nated because they were the seats of that idolatry which had
great power of attraction for a sinful people, so that the seduc-
tion or alienation of the people from their God is ascribed to
them. 331^^ is used in the sense which the verb has in Isa.
xlvii. 10. The Qeri DiaalB' gives the less appropriate idea, " the
shepherds made the sheep stray." Hitzig's translation, " they
drove them along the mountain," does not suit the verb M^B>,
Moreover, the mountains id themselves do not form unsuitable
pasture-ground for sheep, and D'^n does not mean " a bare,
desolate mountain-range.". The objection to our view of tJ^"}!!
D'MiB', that there is no very evident proof that worship on high
places is referred to (Graf), is pure fancy, and the reverse only
is true. For the words which follow, " they (the sheep) went
from mountain to hill, and forgot their resting-place," have no
meaning whatever, unless they are understood of the idolatrous
dealings of Israel. The resting-place of the sheep (DV^n, the
place where the flocks lie down to rest), according to Ver. 7, is
Jahveh, the hope of their fathers. Their having forgotten this
resting-place is the result of their going from mountain to hill :
these words undeniably point to the idolatry of the people on
every high hill (ii. 20, iii. 2, xvii. 2, etc.). — Ver. 7. The conse-
quence of this going astray on the part of Israel was, that
every one who found them devoured them, and while doing
so, cherished the thought that they were not incurring guilt,
because Israel had been given up to their enemies on account'
of their apostasy from God; while the fact was, that every
offence against Israel, as the holy people of the Lord, brought
on guUt ; cf . ii. 3. This befell Israel because they have sinned
against Jahveh. Pls njj, « the habitation (or pasture-ground)
Digitized by
Google
272 t&E PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
of righteousness." So, in xxxi. 23, Zion is called the mountain
on which Jahvefa sits enthroned in His sanctuary. As in other
places Jahveh Himself is called a fortress, Ps. xvlii. 3 ; a sun,
shield, Ps. Ixxxiv. 12 ; a shade, Ps. cxxi. 5 ; so here He is called
the One in whom is contained that righteousness which is the
source of Israel's salvation. As such, He was the hope of the
fathers, the God upon whom the fathers put their trust ; cf.
xiv. 8, xvii. 13, Ps. xxii. 5 f. The repetition of nw at the end
is intended to give an emphatic conclusion to the sentence. —
Vers. 8-10. To escape from this misery, Israel is to flee from
Babylon ; for the judgment of conquest and plunder by enemies
is breaking over Babylon. The summons to flee out of Babylon
is a reminiscence of Isa. xlviii. 20. The Kethib 'NS* may be
vindicated, because the direct address pretty often makes a
sudden transition into the language of the third person. They
are to depart from the land of the Chaldeans. No more will
then be necessary than to change Vrn into vrn. The simile,
" like he-goats before the flock," does not mean that Israel is
to press forward that he may save himself before any one else
(Graf), but that Israel is to go before all, as an example and
leader in the flight (Nagelsbach). — Ver. 9. For the Lord
arouses and leads against Babylon a crowd of nations, i.e. an
army consisting of a multitude of nations. As T"}??? reminds
us of Isa. xiii. 17, so D'^ha D'ia ^p remind us of D'ls Jlia^DtJ
^'IpDSJ in Isa. xiii. 4. 7 iHVj to make preparations against.
he'd is not used of time (RosenmuUer, Nagelsbach, etc.), for
this application of the word has not been established from the
actual occurrence of instances, but it has a local meaning, and
refers to the " crowd of nations :" from that place where the
nations that come out of the north have assembled before Baby-
lon. In the last clause, the multitude of great nations is taken
together, as if they formed one enemy : " his arrows are like
[the arrows] of a wisely dealing {Le. skilful) warrior." ^ The
^ Instead of piaB^o, J. H. Michaelis, in his Biblia Hakns., has accepted
the reading p^sK'lO on the authority of three Erfurt codices and three old
editions (a Yeneta of 1618 ; Buxtorfs Rabbinic Bible, printed at Basle,
1620 ; and the London Polyglott). J. D. Michaelis, Eosenmjiller, Maurer,
and Umbreit have decided for this reading, and point to the rendering
of the Yulgate, inier/ectoris, and of the Targum, VsnD, orhara. On the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP L. 11-29. 273
words Di3''T a^B'J K> do not permit of. being referred, on the
strength of 2 Sam. i. 22, to one particular arrow which does not
come back empty ; for the verb 31{J>, though perhaps suitable
enough for the sword, which is drawn back when it has executed
the blow, is inappropriate for the arrow, which does not return.
The subject to 3«^^ is ^133, the hero, who does not turn or return
without having accomplished his object; cf. Isa. Iv. 11. In ver.
10, Q^K's is the name of the country, " Chaldeans ;" hence it
is construed as a feminine. The plunderers of Chaldea will be
able to satisfy themselves with the rich booty of that country.
Vers. 11-20. The devastation of Babylon and glory of IsraeL
— ^Ver. 11. " Though ye rejoice, though ye exult, O ye plun-
derers of mine inheritance, though ye leap proudly like a heifer
threshing, and neigh hke strong horses, Yer. 12. Your mother
will be very much ashamed ; she who bare you will blush :
behold, the last of the nations [will be] a wilderness, a desert,
and a steppe. Ver. 13. Because of the indignation of Jahveh
it shall not be inhabited, and it shall become a complete deso-
lation. Every one passing by Babylon will be astonished, and
hiss because of all her plagues. Yer. 14. Make preparations
against Babylon round about, all ye that bend the bow ; shoot at
her, do not spare an arrow, for she hath sinned against Jahveh.
Yer. 15. Shout against her round about ; she hath given herself
up : her battlements are fallen, her walls are pulled down ; for
it is Jahveh's vengeance : revenge yourselves on her ; as she
hath done, do ye to her. Yer. 16. Cut off the sower from
Babylon, and him that handles the sickle in the time of
harvest. From before the oppressing sword each one will
turn to his own nation, and each one will flee to his own
land. Yer. 17. Israel is a scattered sheep [which] lions
have driven away : the first [who] devoured him [was] the
other hand, the LXX. and Syriac have read and rendered i)*2E'D ; and
this reading is not merely presented by nmnulli libri, as Maurer states,
but by twelve codices of de Rossi, and aJl the more ancient editions of the
Bible, of which de Rossi in his varim lectiones mentions forty-one. The
critical ■witnesses are thus overwhelming for ^atw ; and against VsB'p
there lies the further consideration, that ?3B' has the meaning orbare, to
render childless, only in the Piel, but in the Hiphil means dbortare, to
cause or have miscarriages, as is shown by ^'at^D Dm, Hos. ix. 14.
VOL. II. S
Digitized by
Google
274 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAB.
king of Babylon ; and this, the last, Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon, bath broken his bones. Yer. 18. Therefore thus
saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel : Behold, I will punish
the king of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king
of Assyria. Yer. 19. And I will bring back Israel to his
pasture-ground, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and
on the mountains of Ephraim his soul shall be satisfied. Yer.
20. In those days, and at that time, saith Jahveh, thie iniquity
of Israel shall be sought for, but it shall not be ; and the sins
of Judab, but they shall not be found : for I will pardon those
whom I will leave remaining."
Yer. 11 does not permit of being so closely connected with
what precedes as to separate it from ver. 12 (De Wette, Nagels-
bach). Not only is the translation, " for thou didst rejoice,"
etc., difficult to connect with the imperfects of all the verbs in
the verse, but the direct address also does not suit ver. 10, and
rather demands connection with ver. 12, where it is continued.
'3, of course, introduces the reason, yet not in such a way that
ver. 11 states the cause why Ohaldea shall become a spoil, but
rather so that vers. 11 and 12 together give the reason for the
threatening uttered. The different clauses of ver. 11 are the
protases, to which ver. 12 brings the apodosis. " You may go on
making merry over the defeat of Israel, but shame will follow
for this." The change of the singular forms of the verbs into
plurals (Qeri) has been caused by the plural 'i 'Dfe*, but is un-
necessary, because Babylon is regarded as a collective, and its
people are gathered into the unity of a person ; see on xiii. 20.
*' Spoilers of mine inheritance," i,e. of the people and land of
the Lord ; cf . xii. 7, Isa. xvii. 14. On tWB, to gallop (of a
horse, Hab. i. 8), hop, spring (of a calf, Mai. iii. 20), see
on Hab. i. 8. KE«j is rendered by the LXX. ev ^ordinj, by
the Ynlgate super herbam ; after these, Ewald also takes the
meaning of springing like a calf through the gi-ass, since he
explains KBH as exhibiting the correct punctuation, and re-
marks that b'^B, like ^?n, can stand with an object directly after
it ; see § 282, o. Most modem expositors, on the other hand,
take XBH as the fem. participle from 8*1^, written with K instead
of n : " like a threshing heifer." On this, A. Schnltens, in his
Animadv. philoLy on this passage, remarks : Coniparatio petita
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 11-20. 275
eatavitula, quw in area media inter frumenta, ore ex lege non
ligato (Dent. xxv. 10), proe pabuK abundantia gestit ex exsultat.
This explanation also gives a suitable meaning, without com-
pelling us to do violence to the language and to alter the
text. As to D''T?^) stallions, strong horses (Luther), see on
viii. 16 and xlvii. 3. " Your mother" is the whole body of the
people, the nation considered as a unity (cf. Isa. 1. 1, Hos. ii. 4,
iv. 5), the individual members of which. are called her sons;
cf. v. 7, etc. In ver. 126, the disgrace that is to fall on Baby-
lon is more distinctly specified. The thought is gathered up
into a sententious saying, in imitation of the sayings of Balaam.
" The last of the nations" is the antithesis of "the first of the
nations," as Balaam calls Amalek, Num. xxiv. 20, because they
were the first heathen nation that began to fight against the
people of Israel. In like manner, Jeremiah calls Babylon the
last of the heathen nations. As the end of Amalek is ruin
(Num. xxiv. 20), so the end of the last heathen nation that
comes forward against Israel will be a wilderness, desert, steppe.
The predicates (cf. ii. 6) refer to the country and kingdom of
Babylon. But if the end of the kingdom is a desert, then the
people must have perished. The devastation of Babylon is
further portrayed in ver. 13, together with a statement of the
cause : " Because of the anger of Jahveh it shall not be in-
habited ;" cf. Isa. xiii. 20. The words from Wni onwards are
imitated from xlix. 17 and xix. 8. — Ver. 14. In order to exe-
cute this judgment on Babylon, the nations are commanded to
conquer and destroy the city. The archers are to place them-
selves round about Babylon, and shoot at the city unsparingly.
T!? does not mean to prepare oneself, but to prepare fl90?'?> ^^
battle, combat. The archers are mentioned by synecdoche,
because the point in question is the siege and bombardment of
Babylon; cf. Isa. xiii. 18, where the Medes are mentioned as
archers. HT is used only here, in Kal, of the throwing, i.e.
the shooting of arrows, instead of HT^ which is elsewhere the
usual word for this ; and, indeed, some codices have the latter
word in this passage. " Spate not the arrow," i,e. do not spare
an arrow ; cf. Ii. 3. Jr")f?, to cry aloud; here, to raise a battle-
cry ; cf . Josh. vi. 16. The effect and result of the cry b, " she
hath given her hand," i.e. given herself up. "^^ lOJ usually
Digitized by
Google
276 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
signifies the giving of the hand as a pledge of faithfulness (2
Kings X. 15; Ezek. xvii. 18; Ezra x. 19), from which is derived
the meaning of giving up, delivering up oneself ; cf. 2 Chron.
XXX. 8. Cf. Cornelius Nepos, Hamilc. c. 1, donee victi manum
dedissenU The air. \ey. nWIB'K (the Kethib is either to be
read n'n*l?'i<, as if from a noun WfK, or to be viewed as an
error in transcription for rfni'^K, which is the Qeri) signifies
" suf^orts," and comes from WN, LI, to support, help ; then
the supports of a building, its foundations ; cf. KJ?'K, Ezra
iv. 12. Here the word signifies the supports of the city, i.e.
the fortifications of Babylon, errdX^eit, propugnacula, pinnce,
the battlements of the city wall, not the foundations of the
walls, for which 7BJ is unsuitable. " It {ae. the destruction of
Babylon) is the vengeance of Jahveh." **The vengeance of
Jahveh " is an expression derived from Num. xxxi. 3. " Avenge
yourselves on her," i.e. take retribution for what Babylon has
done to other nations, especially to the people of God ; cf. 28 f.
and li. 11. The words, " cut off out of Babylon the sower and
the reaper," are not to be restricted to the fields, which, accord-
ing to the testimonies of Diod. Sic ii. 7, Pliny xviii. 17, and
Curtius V. 1, lay within the wall round Babylon, but " Baby-
lon " is the province together with its capital ; and the objection
of Nagelsbach, that the prophet, in the whole context, is de-
scribing the siege of the city of Babylon, is invalid, because
ver. 126 plainly shows that not merely the city, but the pro-
vince of Babylon, is to become a wilderness, desert, and steppe.
The further threat, also, " every ones flees to his own people
from before the oppressing sword" (cf. xxv. 38, xlvi. 16),
applies not merely to the strangers residing in Babylon, but
generally to those in Babylonia. Hitzig would arbitrarily refer
these words merely to the husbandmen and field-workers. The
fundamental passage, Isa. xiii. 14, which Jeremiah had before
his mind and repeats verbatim, tells decidedly against this view ;
cf. also Jer, li. 9, 44. — Vers. 17-19. This judgment comes on
Babylon because of her oppression and scattering of the people
of Israel, whom the Lord will now feed in peace again on their
native soil. Israel is like nn^tB nfe>, a sheep which, having been
scared away out of its stall or fold, is hunted into the wide
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 11-20. 277
world ; cf. Oi^i^ Viffl, Joel iv. 2. Although tm, « to scatter,"
implies the conception of a flock, yet we cannot take ^'^ as a
collective (Graf), since it is nomen unitatis. The point in the
comparison lies on the fact that Israel has heen hunted, like a
solitary sheep, up and down among the beasts of the earth ;
and "ij? is more exactly specified by the following clause, " lions
have chased after it." The object of ^nnn is easily derived
from the context, so that we do not need to follow Hitzig in
changing }lE't<"}n ^nnri into ftvvn rnn^in. These kings are, the
king of Assyria first, and the king of Babylon last. The former
has dispersed the ten tribes among the heathen ; the latter,
by destroying the kingdom of Judah, and carrying away its
inhabitant^ has shattered the theocracy. The verbs apply to
the figure of the lion, and the suffixes refer to Israel. 7^K is
used of the devouring of the flesh ; QSV is a denominative from
QVP, and means the same as Bf}}, Num. xxiv. 8, to break bones
in pieces, not merely gnaw them. So long as the flesh only is
eaten, the skeleton of bones remains ; if these also be broken,
the animal is quite destroyed. — Ver. 18. The Assyrian has
already received his punishment for that — the Assyrian kingdom
has been destroyed ; Babylon will meet with the same punish-
ment, and then (ver. 19) Israel will be led back to his pasture-
ground, nil, pasture-ground, grass-plot, where sheep feed, is
the land of Israel. Israel, led back thither, will feed on Oarmel
and Bashan, the most fertile tracts of the country, and the
mountains of Ephraim and Gilead, which also furnish fodder
in abundance for sheep. As to Gilead, see Num. xxxii. 1,
Mic. vii, 14 ; and in regard to the mountains of Ephraim, Ex.
xxxiv. 13 f ., where the feeding on the mountains of Israel and
in the valleys is depicted as fat pasture. The mountains of
Israel here signify the northern portion of the land generally,
including the large and fertile plain of Jezreel, and the different
valleys between the several ranges of mountains, which here
and there show traces of luxuriant vegetation even yet ; cf.
Kobinson's Physical Geography, p. 120. Then also the guilt of
the sins of Israel and Judah shall be blotted out, because the
Lord grants pardon to the remnant of His people. This pro-
mise points to the time of the New Covenant ; cf. xxxi. 34 and
xxxiii. 8. The deliverance of Israel from Babylon coincides
Digitized by
Google
278 THE PROPHECIES OF JEEEMIAH.
with the view given of the regeneration of the people by the
Messiah, just as we find throughout the second portion of
Isaiah. On the construction 'if^. I'lgTlK I5^i?3», cf. xxxv. 14, and
Gesenius, § 143, 1. On the form nrKVon, with * after the
manner of verbs n*^, cf. Ewald, § 198, b.
Vers. 21-28. The pride and power of Babylon are broken, as
a punishment for the sacrilege he committed at the temple of
the Lord. Ver. 21. "Against the land, — Double-rebellion, —
go up against it, and against the inhabitants of visitation ; lay
waste and devote to destruction after them, saith Jahveh, and
do according to all that I have commanded thee. Ver. 22. A
sound of war [is] in the land, and great destruction. Ver. 23.
How the hammer of the whole earth is cut and broken ! how
Babylon has become a desolation among the nations ! Ver. 24.
I laid snares for thee, yea, and thou hast been taken, O
Babylon ; but thou didst not know : thou wast found, and also
seized, because thou didst strive against Jahveh. Ver. 25.
Jahveh hath opened His treasure-house, and brought out the
instruments- of His wrath ; for the Lord, Jahveh of hosts, hath
a work in the land of the Chaldeans. Ver. 26. Come against
her, [all of you], from the last [to the first] ; open her store-
houses: cast her up in heaps, like ruins, and devote her to
destruction ; let there be no remnant left to her. Ver. 27.
Destroy all her oxen ; let them go down to the slaughter : woe
to them ! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.
Ver. 28. [There is] a sound of those who flee and escape out
of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of
Jahveh our God, the vengeance of His temple."
The punishment of Babylon will be fearful, corresponding
to its crimes. The crimes of Babylon and its punishment
Jeremiah has comprised, in ver. 21, in two names specially
formed for the occasion. The enemy to whom God has en-
trusted the execution of the punishment is' to march against
the land DWD. This word, which is formed by the prophet
in a manner analogous to Mizraim, and perhaps also Aram
Naharainif means "double rebellion," or "double obstinacy."
It comes from the root fi"io, " to be rebellious " against Jahveh
and His commandments, whence also *")!?, " rebellion ; " Num.
xvii. 25, Ezek. ii. 5, 7, etc. Other interpretations of the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 21-28w 279
word are untenable: such is that of Fiirst, who follows the
Vulgate " terram dominantium" and, comparing the Aramaic
K^D, " Lord," renders it by " dominion " (Herschaft). Utterly
indefensible, . too, is the translation of Hitzig, "the world of
men" (MenschentDeU), which he derives from the Sanskrit
martjam, "world," on the basis of the false assumption that
the language of the Chaldeans was Indo-Germanic. The
only doubtful points are in what respect Babylon showed
double obstinacy, and what Jeremiah had in his mind at the
time. The view of Hitzig, Maurer, Graf, etc., is certainly
incorrect, — that the prophet was thinking of the double punish-
ment of Israel by the Assyrians and by the Babylonians (vers.
17 and 33); for the name is evidently given to the country
which is now about to be punished, and hence to the power of
Babylon. Nagelsbach takes a twofold view : (1) he thinks of
the defiance shown by Babylon towards both man and God ;
(2) he thinks of the double obstinacy it exhibited in early
times by building the tower, and founding the first worldly
kingdom (Gen. x. 8f.), and in later times by its conduct
towards the theocracy : and he is inclined rather to the latter
than to the former view, because the offences committed by
Babylon in early and in later times were, in their points of
origin and aim, too much one and the same for any one to be
able to represent them as falling under two divisions. This is
certainly correct ; but against the first view there is also the
important consideration that fTiD is pretty constantly used only
of opposition to God and the word of God. If any one, not-
withstanding this, is inclined to refer the name also to offences
against men, he could yet hardly agree with Nagelsbach in
thinking of the insurrections of Babylon against the kings of
Assyria, their masters ; for these revolts had no meaning in
reference to the position of Babylon towards God, but rather
showed the haughty spirit in which Babylon trod on all the
nations. The opinion of Dahler has most in its favour:
" Doubly rebellious, i.e. more rebellious than others, through its
idolatry and its pride, which has exalted it against God, vers.
24, 29." Rosenmiiller, De Wette, etc., have decided in favour
of this view. Although the dual originally expresses the idea
of pairing, yet the Hebrew associates with double, two/old^ the
Digitized by
Google
2S0 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
idea of increase, gradation ; cf. Isa. xl. 2, Ixi. 7. The object
is prefixed for the sake of emphasis ; and in order to render
it still more prominent, it is resumed after the verb in the
expression " against it." l^pB, an infinitive in form, " to visit
with punishment, avenge, punish," is also used as a significant
name of Babylon : the land that visits with punishment is to
be punished. Many expositors take 3hn as a denominative
from 3'in, « sword," in the sense of strangling, murdering ; so
also in ver. 27. But this assumption is far from correct; nor is
there any need for making it, because the meaning of destroying
is easily obtained from that of being laid waste, or destroying
oneself by transferring the word from things to men. ^'■]^.^.,
" to proscribe, put under the ban," and in effect " to exter-
minate ; " see on xxv. 9. On " after them," cf. xlix. 37, xlviii.
2, 9, 15, etc.— Ver. 22. After the command there immediately
follows its execution. A sound of war is heard in the land.
The words are given as an exclamation, without a verb. As to
THi ■i3B'j which is an expression much used by Jeremiah, see
on iv. 6. — Ver. 23. Babylon, "the hammer of the whole
earth," i.e. with which Jahveh has beaten to pieces the nations
and kingdoms of the earth (li. 20), is itself now .being beaten
to pieces ".nd destroyed. On the subject, cf. Isa. xiv. 5, 6.
Babylon will become the astonishment of the nations, li. 41.
" How ! " is an exclamation of surprise, as in Zeph. ii. 15,
— a passage which probably hovered before the mind of
the prophet. — Ver. 24. This annihilation will come unex-
pectedly. As the bird by the snare of the fowler, so shall
Babylon be laid hold of by Jahveh, because it has striven
against Him. The Lord lays the snare for it, that it may be
caught. cJipJ, "to lay snares;" cf. Ps. cxli. 9, where na is
also found. nJHJ »?\, " and thou didst not perceive," i,e. didst
not mark it : this is a paraphrase of the idea *' unexpectedly,"
suddenly ; cf. li. 8, Isa. xlvii. 11. This has been literally
fulfilled on Babylon. According to Herodotus (i. 191), Cyrus
took Babylon by diverting the Euphrates into a trench he had
dug. By this stratagem the Persians threw themselves so
unexpectedly on the Babylonians (ef airpoaZoK^ov <T<fn irape-
orrjvav oi nipffai), that when the outmost portions Gf the city
had been already seized, those who lived in the middle had not
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 21-28. 281
observed at all that they were captured (tow? to fieaov olKiovrat
ov fjMvBdvetv €aX(0K6Ta<}). Similarly, when the city was taken
under Darius Hystaspes, they were surprised that Zopyrus
traitorously opened the gates to the besiegera (Herodotus, iii.
158). Babylon has contended against Jahveh, because, in its
pride, it refused to let the people of God depart ; cf. vers. 29
and 33. In ver. 25 the sudden devastation of Babylon is
accounted for. Jahveh opens His armoury, and brings out the
instruments of His wrath, in order to execute His work on the
land of the Chaldeans. isiK, « magazine, treasure-chamber,"
is here applied to an armoury. The "instruments of His wrath "
are, in Isa. xiii. 5, the nations which execute the judgment of
God, — here, the instruments of war and weapons with which
Jahveh Himself marches into battle against Babylon. On
'Ul nDKTD, cf. xlviii. 10. The business which the Lord has
there regards the chastisement of Babylon for its insolence.
For the transaction of this business He summons His servants,
ver. 26 f. nritia, as in xlvi. 22, xlix. 9, is substantially the
same as nvy itiia, xlix. 14, xlviii. 8. TB?, " from the end," or
from the last bitherwards, the same as ^^i^?, li. 31, i.e. all
together on to the last ; cf . Gen. xix. 4, xlvii. 2, etc. *' Open
her (Babylon's) bams " or granaries ; " heap it up (viz. what
was in the granaries) like heaps " of grain or sheaves, '< and
devote it to destruction," i.e. consume it with fire, because
things on which the curse was imposed must be burnt ; cf . Josh.
xi. 12 and 13. All the property found in Babylon is to be
collected in heaps, and then burnt with the city. The use
of the image is occasioned by the granaries. C''??^'? '^ air.
Xey., from DSK, to give fodder to cattle, — properly a stall for
fodder, then a barn, granary, no;?? is a heap of grain (Cant,
vii. 3), sheaves (Ruth iii. 7), also of rubbish (Neh. iii. 34). As
ver. 26 declares what is to be done with goods and chattels, so
does ver. 27 state what is to be done with the population. The
figure employed in ver, 26 is followed by the representation of
the people as oxen destined for slaughter; in this Jeremiah
had in his mind the prophecy found in Isa. xxxiv., in which
the judgment to come on Edom is depicted as a slaughter of
lambs, rams, and he-goats : the people of Edom are thus com-
pared to cattle that may be offered in sacrifice. This figure
Digitized by
Google
282 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
also forms the basis of the expression naa? TV in xlviii. 15,
where this style of speaking is used with regard to the youths
or the young troops ; cf . also li. 40. The D*ib, accordingly,
designate not merely the chief among the people, or the men
of rank, but represent the whole human population. In the
last clause ("for their day is come," etc.), there is a transi-
tion in the discourse from the figure to the real subject itself.
The sufBx in Dn y» does not refer to the oxen, but to the men over
whose murder there is an exclamation of woe. In like manner,
" their day " means the day of judgment for men, viz. the time
of their visitation with punishment ; see on xlvi. 21. Fugitives
and escaped ones will bring to Zion, and proclaim the news of
the execution of this fearful judgment, that the Lord has ful-
filled the vengeance of His temple, i.e. avenged on Babylon
the burning of His temple by the Chaldeans. The fugitives
and escaped ones are the Israelites, who were summoned to
flee from Babylon, ver. 3. On " the vengeance of Jahveh,"
cf. ver; 15 and H. 11.
Vers. 29-40. The pride of Babylon is humbled through the
utter destruction of the people and the land. — Ver. 29. " Sum-
mon archers against Jerusalem, all those who bend the bow ;
encamp against her round about. Let there be no escape for
her ; recompense to her according to her work ; according to
that which she hath done, do ye to her : for she hath presumed
against Jahveh, against the Holy One of Israel. Ver. 30.
Therefore shall her young men fall in her streets, and all her
men of war shall fail in that day, saith Jahveh. Ver. 31.
Behold, I am against thee, O Pride ! saith the Lord, Jahveh
of hosts ; for thy day hath come, the time [when] I visit thee.
Ver. 32. And Pride shall stumble and fall, and he shall have
none to lift him up ; and I will kindle fire in his cities, and it
shall devour all that is round about him. Ver. 33. Thus saith
Jahveh of hosts. The children of Israel and the children of
Judah are oppressed together, and all who led them captive
kept hold of them ; they refused to let them go. Ver. 34.
Their Redeemer is strong ; Jahveh of hosts is His name : He
shall surely plead their cause, that He may give rest to the
earth, and make the inhabitants of Babylon tremble. Ver. 35.
A sword [is] against the Chaldeans, saith Jahveh, and against
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 29-40. 283
the inhabitants of Babylon, and against her princes, and against
her wise men. Ver. 36. A sword [is] against the liars, and
they shall become fools ; a sword [is] against her heroes, and
they shall be confounded. Ver. 37. A sword is agaidst his
horses, and against his chariots, and against all the aoxiliaries
which [are] in the midst of her, and they shall become women ;
a sword is against her treasures, and they shall be plundered.
Ver. 38. A drought is against her waters, and they shall become
dty ; for it is a land of graven images, and they are mad upon
idols. Ver. 39. Therefore shall wild beasts dwell [there] with
jackals, and ostriches shall dwell in it ; and it shall no more be
inhabited for ever, neither shall it be dwelt in from genera-
tion to generation. Ver. 40. As God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah and their inhabitants, saith Jahveh, no man shall
dwell there, nor shall a son of man sojourn in it."
Further description of the execution of God's wrath. Archers
shall come and besiege Babylon round about, so that no one
shall escape. The summons, " Call archers hither," is a dra-
matic turn in the thought that the siege is quickly to ensue.
ff^fn is used here as in li. 27, to summon, call by making
proclamation, as in 1 Kings xv. 22. D''3'^ does not signify
" many," as the ancient versions give it ; this agrees neither
with the apposition which follpws, " all that bend the bow,"
nor with ver. 26, where all, to the last, are summoned against
Babylon. Raschi, followed by all the moderns, more correctly
renders it " archers," and derives it from nan = Mi, Gen. xlix.
23, cf. with xxi. 10, like 3"i, Job xvi. 13. The apposition, " all
those who bend the bow," gives additional force, njn with
accns. means to besiege ; cf. Ps. liii. 6. " Let there be no,
escape " is equivalent to saying, " that none may escape from
Babylon." The Qeri n? after *ri* is unnecessary, and merely
taken from ver. 26. On the expression " render to her," etc.,
cf . XXV. 14 ; and on " according to all," etc., cf . ver. 15. ** For
she hath acted presumptuously against Jahveh," by burning
His temple, and keeping His people captive : in this way has
Babylon offended " against the Holy One of Israel." This
epithet of God is taken from Isaiah, cf. li. 5. This presumption
must be punished. — Ver. 30 is a repetition of xlix. 26. — Ver. 31.
The Lord will now visit the presumption of Babylon. The day
Digitized by
Googk
/-
284 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of punishment has arrived. On ** behold, I am against thee,"
cf. xxi. 13. " O arrogance, pride I " is directly addressed to
Babylon : in ver. 32 also there is a like designation of Babylon
as the personification of pride. On the words " for thy day is
come," cf. ver. 27. " And I will kindle a fire," etc., stands as
in xxi. 14, where, however, " in its forest" is found instead of
" in his cities." The former, indeed, is the reading rendered
by the LXX. in this passage ; but they have acted quite arbi-
trarily in this, since Jeremiah, for the most part, varies indivi-
dual words when he repeats a thought. " In his cities " does
not suit very well, inasmuch as the other cities of the country
belonged to Babylon, the /xijt/jottoXis, as hers, and in li. 43
they are spoken of as hers ; cf. xix. 15, xxxiv. 1, xlix. 13, etc. —
Vers. 33-40. Further description of the guilt and punishment
of Babylon. The presumptuous pride manifests itself in the
fact that Israel and Judah still languish in exile. All those who
have been seized and carried away they have kept hold of.
^\p-i^ is used as in Isa. xiv. 2. , They refuse to let them go, as
Pharaoh once did, Ex. vii. 14, 27, ix. 2 ; cf . Isa. xiv. 17. Jahveh,
the deliverer of Israel, cannot endure this. As the strong One,
the God of hosts. He will lead them in the fight; as their
advocate. He will obtain their dues for them ; cf . xxv. 31, Isa.
xlix. 25., Dahler, Ewald, and Umbreit follow the Vulgate and
the Chaldee in taking 'W1 Ti"]^ IVO? as synonymous with W^,
in the sense of shaking, rousing, a meaning which vy] has in
the Kal, but which cannot be made out for the Hiphil. In the
. Hiphil it means to give rest, to come to rest, Deut. xxviii. 65,
Isa. xxxiv. 14, Ixi. 4, Jer. xxxi. 2 ; and in the Niphal, to rest,
keep quiet, xlvii. 6. This is the meaning given by the Syriac,
Raschi, Kimchi, Eosenmiiller, Maurer, Hitzig, etc., and sup-
ported by a comparison with Isa. xiv. 7, 3, 16. Babylon has
hitherto kept the earth in unrest and anxiety (Isa. xiv. 16) ;
now it is to get rest (Isa. xiv. 3, 7), and trembling or quaking
for fear is to come on Babylon. The two verbs, which have
similar sounds, express a contrast. On the form of the infini-
tive ni'"?, cf. Ewald, § 238, d. In order to conduct the case
of Israel as against Babylon, the Lord (vers. 35-38) calls for
the sword against the Chaldeans, the inhabitants of Babylon,
on their princes, wise men, heroes, and the whole army, the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L. 29-40. 285
treasures and the waters. There is no verb following at!!?> b«t
only the object with ??, the words being put in the form of an
exclamation, on account of the passion pervading them. The
sword is to come and show its power on the Chaldeans, i.e. the
population of the rural districts, on the inhabitants of the
capital, and further, on the princes and wise men (magicians).
A special class of the last named are the D^3, properly
" babblers," those who talk at random, here " soothsayers" and
lying prophets, the astrologers of Babylon ; see Delitzsch on Isa.
xliv. 25 [Clark's translation, For. Theol. Lib.]. ^i>Si1, " And
they shall be as fools ;" see on v. 4. Further, on the warriors,
the horses, and war-chariots, the main strength of the Asiatic
conquerors, cf. xlvi. 9, Isa. xliii. 17, Ps. xx. 8. 3^^"7^, « all
the mixed multitude" in the midst of Babylon : these are here
the mercenaries and allies (as to this word, see on xxv. 20).
These shall become women, i.e. weak and incapable of resist-
ance ; see Nah. iii. 13. The last objects of vengeance are the
treasures and the waters of Babylon. In ver. 38 the Masoretes
have pointed a^in, because a'ln, " sword," seemed to be inappli-
cable to the waters. But indeed neither does the sword, in the
proper sense of the word, well apply to treasures; it rather
stands, by synecdoche, for war. In this improper meaning it
might also be used with reference to the waters, in so far as the
canals and watercourses, on which the fertility of Babylonia
depended, were destroyed by war. Hence many expositors
would read snn here also, and attribute the employment of
this word to the rhetorical power connected with enumeration.
Others are of opinion that y]n may also mean aridity, drought,
in Deut. xxviii. 22 ; but the assumption is erroneous, and can-
not be confirmed by that passage. Neither can it be denied,
that to confine the reference of the expression " her waters "
to the canals and artificial watercourses of Babylonia seems
unnatural. All these received their water from the rivers
Euphrates and Tigris, the volume of water in which remained
uninfluenced by war. We therefore follow Hitzig in holding
that 3Yn is the correct punctuation ; in the transition from a^n
into a^flj with its similar sound^ we neither perceive any injury
done to rhetorical force, derived from an enumeration of
objects, nor any need for referring the following clause, which
Digitized by
Google
286 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
assigns the reason merely to such rhetorical considerations as
Graf does. In the drying up of the water there is no allusion
to the diversion of the Euphrates, by which Cyrus opened np
for himself an entrance into the city (Herodotus, i. 190) ; the
drying up is merely appointed by God, as a consequence of
continued drought, for the purpose of destroying the land.
Hitzi^s opinion neither suits the context, nor can be justified
otherwise ; he holds that water is the emblem of the sea of
nations, the surging multitude of people in the streets of the
city, and he refers for proof to li. 36 and Isa. xxi. 1 (I). The
clauses in ver. 386, which assign the reason, refer to the whole
threatening, vers. 35-38a. Babylon is to be destroyed, with its
inhabitants and all its means of help, because it is a land of
idols (cf. li. 52 and Isa. xxi. 9), and its inhabitants suffer them-
selves to be befooled by false gods. pTinrin means to act or
behave like a madman, rave, xxv. 16 ; here, to let oneself be
deprived of reason, not (as Graf thinks) to fall into a sacred
frenzy. C?^??, terrors, Ps. Ixxxviii. 16 ; here, objects of fear
and horrpr, i.e. idols. — Ver. 39. Therefore shall Babylon become
an eternal waste, where none but beasts of the desert find
shelter, where no human being dwells. This threat is formed
out of reminiscences from Isa. xiii. 20-22 and xxxiv. 14. For 01*^
and D'^K, see on Isa. xxxiv. 14 ; for njjr ni33, see on Isa. xiii.
21. The second half of the verse agrees word for word with
Isa. xiii. 20a. — ^Ver. 40 is a repetition of xlix. 18, and in its
first half is founded on Isa. xiii. 19.
Ver. 41-li. 4. The agents wlio execute the judgment. — Ver.
41. "Behold, a people shall come from the north, and a great
nation, and many kings shall be raised up from the most dis-
tant sides of the earth. Ver. 42. Bow and javelin shall they
seize : they are cruel, and will not pity ; their voice shall sound
like the sea, and they shall ride upon horses, [each one] ar-
rayed like a man for the battle, against thee, O daughter of
Babylon. Ver. 43. The king of Babylon hath heard the
report concerning them, and his hands have fallen down .- dis-
tress hath seized him, writhing pain, like [that of] the woman
in childbirth. Ver. 44. Behold, he shall come up like a lion
from the glory of Jordan to a habitation of rock; but in a
moment will I make them run away from her, and will set
digitized by
Gbogle
CHAP. L. 41-LI. 4. 287
over her him who is chosen : for who is like me, and who will
appoint me a time [to plead my defence]? and what shepherd
[is there] that will stand before met Ver. 45. Therefore
hear ye the counsel of Jahveh which He hath taken against
Babylon, and His purposes which He hath purposed against the
land of the Chaldeans : Assuredly they shall drag them away,
the smallest of the flock ; assuredly [their] habitation shall be
astonished at them. Ver. 46. At the cry, * Babylon is taken,' the
earth is shaken, and a cry [for help] is heard among the nations.
Chap. li. ver. 1. "Thus saith Jahveh: Behold, I will stir
up against Babylon, and against the inhabitants of [as it were]
the heart of mine opponents, the spirit of a destroyer. Ver. 2.
And I will send against Babylon strangers, and they shall
winnow her, and empty her land, because they are against her
round about in a day of evil. Ver. 3. Against [him who]
bends let the bender bend his bow, and against [him who] lifts
up himself in his coat of mail: and do not spare her young
men ; devote to destruction all her host, Ver. 4. That slain
ones may fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and those that are
pierced through in her streets."
The greater portion of this strophe consists of quotations
from former utterances. Vers. 41-43 are taken from vi. 22-24,
and vers. 44-46 from xlix. 19-21 ; here they are applied to
Babylon. What is said in vi. ,22-24 concerning the enemy
out of the north Vho will devastate Judah, is here transferred
to the enemy that is to destroy Babylon. For this purpose,
after the words " and a great nation," are added " and many
kings," in order to set forth the hostile army advancing
against Babylon as one composed of many nations; and in
consequence of this extension of the subject, the verb ^ijr is
used in the plural, and -Kin nWK is changed into nen nnx.
Moreover, the mention of the " daughter of Babylon " instead
of the " daughter of Zion " is attended by a change from the
directly communicative form of address in the first person
(" We have heard," etc., ver. 43) into the third person (" The
king of Babylon hath heard," etc.). In applying . the ex-
pressions used in xlix. 19-21 regarding the instrument chosen
for the destruction of Edom, to the instrument selected against
Babylon (vers. 44-46), the names "Babylon" and "the land
Digitized by
Google
288 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
of the Chaldeans" are substituted for "Edom" dud "the
inhabitants of Teman " (xh'x. 20) ; but beyond this, only the
last verse is changed, in accordance with the change of circum-
stances. The thought that, in consequence of the fall of
Edom, the earth trembles, and Edom's cry of anguish is heard
on the Bed Sea, is intensified thus: by the sound or cry,
"Babylon is taken," the earth is shaken, and a cry is heard
among the nations. The conquest of Babylon, the mistress of
the world, puts the whole world in anxiety and fear, while the
effects of Edom's fall extend only to the Eed Sea. The
Kethib DVns, ver. 44, seems to come from the verb YP,, in the
sense of pushing, so that it is not a mere error in transcription
for Dlf "IN. Moreover, such changes made on former utterances,
when they are repeated and applied to Babylon, show that
these verses are not glosses which a reader has written on the
margin, and a later copyist inserted into the text, but that
Jeremiah himself has applied these earlier words in his address
against Babylon. The two passages are not merely quite
appropriately arranged beside one another, but even present
in their connection a thought which has not hitherto been met
with in the address against Babylon, and which does not recur
afterwards. The enemy that is to conquer Babylon is certainly
pointed out, so early as ver. 9, as an assemblage of great nations
out of the north, but not more particularly characterized there ;
but the nations that are to constitute the hostile army are not
further designated till li. 11 and 27 ff. The second quotation,
vers. 44-46, adds the new thought that the appearance of this
enemy against Babylon is owing to a decree of the Lord, the
execution of which no man can prevent, because there is none
like Jahveh. The figurative description of the enemy as a lion
coming up out of the thicket of reeds at the Jordan, frighten-
ing the herd feeding on their pasture-ground, and carrying off
the weakly sheep, is appropriate both to Nebuchadnezzar's
expedition against Edom, and to the invasion of Babylonia by
the Medes and their allies, for the purpose of laying waste the
country of the Chaldeans, smiting the inhabitants of Babylon,
and conquering it. Even the expression in'R nu permits of
being applied to Babylonia, which was protected by its canal
system and the strong walls of its capital.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 1-i. 289
In li. 1-4, the terrible character of the hostile nation is
further described. Against Babylon and the inhabitants of
Chaldea, God stirs up the " spirit of a destroyer," viz. a savage
nation that will massacre the Chaldeans without pity. ^^i> 37,
lit. " the heart of mine adversaries," is the word Bulb's, changed,
according to the canon Atbash (see on xxv. 26), for the purpose
of obtaining the important meaning that Chaldea is the centre
of God's enemies. This explanation of the name involves the
thought that all enmity against God the Lord culminates in
Babylon ; on the basis of this representation Babylon is called,
Bev. xvii. 5, " the mother of harlots and abominations of the
earth." rCJ}^ nf\ does not mean Kuvatova Sia^Oelpovra (LXX.),
ventum pestilmtem (Vulgate), " a sharp wind " (Luther), nor,
as it is usually translated, " a destroying wind ; " for TOI T'^n is
nowhere used of the rousing of a wind, but everywhere means
" to rouse the spirit of any one," to stir him up to an under-
taking ; cf. Hag. i. 14, 1 Chron. t. 56, 2 Ghron. xxi. 16, and
xxxvi. 22. Jeremiah also employs it thus in ver. 11, and this
meaning is quite suitable here also, rcnw is a substantive, as
in iv. 7 : " the spirit of a destroyer." The figure of winnowing,
which follows in ver. 2, does not by any means necessarily
require the meaning " wind," because the figure contained in
the word W? was first called forth by the employment of
0*1J, " strangers " =.barbarians. The sending of the C^J to
Babylon has no connection with the figure of the wind, and it
even remains a question whether fJ^lT really means here to
winnow, because the word is often used of the scattering of a
nation, without any reference to the figure of winnowing ; cf.
Lev. xxvi. 33, Ezek. v. 10, xii. 15, etc., also Jer. xlix. 32, 36.
However, this thought is suggested by what follows, "they
empty her hand," although the clause which assigns the
reason, " because they are against her round about " (cf . iv.
17), does not correspond with this figure, but merely declares
that the enemies which attack Babylon on every side disperse
its inhabitants and empty the land. — Ver. 3. These strangers
shall kill, without sparing, every warrior of Babylon, and anni-
hilate its whole military forces. In the first half of the verse
the reading is doubtful, since the Masoretes would have the
second itV (Qen) «xpunged, probably because (as Bottcher,
VOL. II. t x
Digitized by
Google
290 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
N. Aehrenl. ii. S. 166, supposes) they considered it merely a
repetition. The meaning is not thereby changed. According
to the Qeri, we would require to translate, " against [him who]
bends [the bow, may there be, or come], one who bends his bow;"
according to the Kethib, " against [him who] bends [the bow],
may he who bends his bow bend it." As to ^'i*)'"''? with lE't?.
omitted, cf. 1 Chron. xv. 12, 2 Chron. i. 4, and Ewald, § 333, b.
'pa ?yn» stands in apposition to ^""I'lr''^ ; ^^^^ is the Hithpael
from n?J?, and means to raise oneself : it is to be taken as the
shortened form of the imperfect passive ; cf. Gesenius, § 128,
Bern. 2. Certainly, the Hithpael of n?y occurs nowhere else,
but it is quite appropriate here ; so that it is unnecessary, with
Hitzig, to adduce, for explanation, the Arabic ^Jj, to stretch
the head out of anything, or, with Ewald, to derive the form
from the Aramaic ??J|, Arabic Ji, to thrnst in. Neither is
there any foundation for the remark, that the abbreviated form
of the imperfect would be admissible only if ?X were found
instead of W. Indeed, the Syriac, Targum, and Vulgate have
actually read and rendered from ?K, which several codices also
present, " Let him not bend his bow, nor stretch himself in his
coat of mail." But by this reading the first half of the verse
is put in contradiction to the second ; and this contradiction is
not removed by the supposition of J. D. Michaelis and Hitzig,
who refer these clauses to the Chaldeans, and find the thought
expressed in them, that the Chaldeans, through loss of courage,
cannot set themselves for defence. For, in that case, we would ,
be obliged, with Hitzig, to explain as spurious the words that
follow, " and spare ye not her young men ; " but for this there
is no valid reason. As to 'O'ltlD, cf. 1. 21, 26. On ver. 4, cf. 1. 30
and xlix. 26. The suffix in " her streets " refers to Babylon.
Vers. 5-14. Because of the righteousness of Israel, Babylon is
to be irretrievably destroyed. Ver. 5. " For Israel is not for-
saken, nor Judah of his God, of Jahveh of hosts ; but their
land is full of guilt because of the Holy One of Israel.
Ver. 6. Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save ye every
one his life : do not perish for her iniquity ; because it is a
time of vengeance for Jahveh; He renders to her what she has
committed. Ver. 7. Babylon [was] a golden cup in the hand
N.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U. 6-14. 291
of Jahveh, tbat Intoxicated all the earth. Nations have drunk
of her wine, therefore nations are mad. Yer. 8. Babylon has
fallen suddenly and been broken : howl over her : take balsam
for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. Ver. 9. 'We have
tried to heal Babylon, but she is not healed. Leave her, and
let us go each one to his own land ; for her judgment reaches
unto heaven, and is lifted up to the clouds.' Ver. 10. Jahveh
hath brought forth our righteousnesses ; come, and let us declare
in Zion the doing of Jahveh our God. Ver. 11. Sharpen the
arrow, fill the shields : Jahveh hath roused the spirit of the
kings of Media ; for His counsel is against Babylon, to destroy
it ; because it is the vengeance of Jahveh, the vengeance of
His temple. Ver. 12. Against the walls of Babylon raise a
standard; strengthen the watch, set watchmen, prepare the
ambushes : for Jahveh hath both devised and done what He
spake against the inhabitants of Babylon. Ver. 13. O thou
that dwellest upon many waters, rich in treasures, thine end hath
come, the measure of thy gain. Ver. 14. Jahveh of hosts hath
sworn by Himself, * Surely I have filled thee with men, as [with]
the locust ; and they shall raise a shout of joy against thee.' "
The offence of Babylon against the Holy One of Israel
demands its destruction. In ver. 5, two reasons are given for
God's determination to destroy Babylon. The Lord is induced
to this (1) by His relation to Israel and Judah, whom Babylon
will not let go ; (2) by the grave offence of Babylon. Israel
is |D?N K?, " not widowed," forsaken by his God ; i.e., Jahveh,
the God of hosts, has not rejected His people for ever, so as
not to trouble Himself any more about them; cf. Isa. 1. 1,
liv. 4 ff. « Their land "—the land of the Chaldeans—" is full
of guilt before the Holy One of Israel," partly through their
relation to Israel (1. 21), partly through their idolatry (1. 2, 38).
10 does not mean here " on the side 9f," but " on account of,"
because they do not acknowledge Jahveh as the Holy One
of Israel. — ^Ver. 6. In order to escape the punishment that is
to fall on the guilt-laden city, the Israelites living in Babylon
must flee to save their lives ; cf. 1. 8, and on the mode of
expression, xlviii. 6. " Be not destroyed l^jto, for her iniquity,"
(3 • of price), not " in her guilt " = punishment for sin (Graf),
or " through her guilt " (Nagelsbach). Both of these last two
Digitized by
Google
292 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
views are against the context ; for the idea is, that Israel mast
flee to save his life, and that he too may not atone for
the guilt of Babylon. On the expression, "it is a time of
vengeance," etc., cf. 1. 15, Isa. xxxiv. 8. B?B'D >^D3, as in
Isa. lix. 18, Ixvi. 6. ^^DB, prop, accomplishment, actual. proof,
is used both of human and divine doing and working, of
human misdeeds and divine recompense, wn is used emphati-
cally. — Ver. 7 f . Babylon, certainly, in its former power and
greatness, was a golden goblet, by means of which Jahveh
presented to the nations the wine of His wrath, and intoxicated
them ; but now it is fallen, and broken without remedy. Isa.
xxi. 9 finds an echo in the expression, " Babylon is fallen." The
figure of the cup refers us back to xxv. 15 fF., where, however,
it is applied in a different way. The cup is said to be of gold,
in order to pomt out the splendour and glory of Nebuchad-
nezzar's dominion. "In the hand of Jahveh," i.e. used by
Him as His instrument for pouring out His wrath to the
nations. Bat Babylon has suddenly fallen and been broken in
pieces. At this point Jeremiah drops the figare of the cup,
for a golden cup does not break when it falls. The fall is so
terrible, that the nations in Babylon are summoned to partici-
pate in the lamentation, and to lend their aid in repairing her
injuries. But they answer that their attempts to heal her are
fruitless. (On '^V, cf. xlvi. 11 and viii. 22.) The terrible and
irreparable character of the fall is thus expressed in a dramatic
manner. We must neither think of the allies and mercenaries
as those who are addressed (Schnurrer, Hosenmiiller, Maurer,
Hitzig), nor merely the Israelites who had been delivered from
Babylon (Umbreit). The latter view is opposed by the words
which follow, " Let every one go to his own country ;" this points
to men out of different lands. And the former assumption is
opposed by the consideration that not nierely the mercenaries,
but also the allies are to be viewed as fallen and ruined together
with Babylon, and that Babylon, which had subdued all the
nations, has no allies, according to the general way in which
the prophet views these things. Those addressed are rather the
nations that had been vanquished by Babylon and detained in
the city, of which Israel was one. Inasmuch as these were the
servants of Babylon, and as such bound to pay her service.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LL 6-14. 293
they are to heal Babylon ; and because the attempts to heal
her prove fruitless, they are to leave the ruined city. They
answer this summons by the resolve, "We will go every one to
his own land;" cf . 1. 8, 16. The motive for this resolution,
" for her guilt reaches up to heaven," certainly shows that it
is Israelites who are speaking, because it is only they who form
their opinions in . such a way ; but they speak in the name of
all the strangers who are in Babylon. BSBto is the matter
upon which judgment is passed, i.e. the transgression, the guilt,
analogous to D^OT BS^fe, Ezek. vii. 23, and niD OBW^ Deut.
x\x. 6, xxi. 22 ; it does not mean the punishment adjudged, of
which we cannot say that it reaches up to heaven. On this
expression, cf . Ps. Ivii. 11, cviii. 5. Through the fall of Babylon,
the Lord has made manifest the righteousness of Israel ; the
redeemed ones are to proclaim this in Zion. OipTV does not
mean "righteous acts" (Judg. v. 11), but proofs of the right-
eousness of Israel as opposed to Babylon, which righteousness
Babylon, through tyrannical oppression of the people that had
been delivered up to it merely for chastisement, has failed to
perceive, and which, so long as the Lord did not take His
people to Himself again in a visible manner, was hidden from
the world ; cf. Ps. xxxviL 6. — Ver. 11. The instruments which
the Lord employs in bringing about the fall of Babylon are the
kings of the Modes, i.e. the provincial governors, or h^ads of
the separate provinces into which the Medes in ancient times
were divided, until, after revolting from the Assyrians in the
year 714 B.O., they put themselves under a common head, in
order to assert their independence, and chose Dejokes as their
monarch. See Spiegel's Erdn (1863, S. 308 ff.), and Delitzsch
on Isa. siii. 17, who rightly remains that in Isa. xiii. 17, as
well as here, ^o is a general designation for the Aryan tribes
of Iran, taken from the most important and influential nation.
In xxi. 2, Isaiah mentions Elam in the first series, along with
Media, as a conqueror of Babylon ; and the Babylonian king-
dom was destroyed by Darius the Mode and Cyrus the Persian.
But the Persians are first named in the Old Testament by
Ezekiel and Daniel, while the name " Elam" as a province of
the Persian kingdom is gradually lost, from the times of Cyrus
onwards, in that of the "Persians." The princes of Media
Digitized by
Google
r
294 THE PBOPBECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
are to prepare themselves for besieging and conqaering Baby-
lon. I3!|i (from 1^3), prop, to polish, cleanse from dirt and
rust. The arrows are thereby sharpened; cf. Isa. xlix. 2.
D''B7B'ri ispa is variously explained. The meaning of ** shields "
is that best established for O'vhf (see ou 2 Sam. viii. 7) ; while
the meaning of " armour equipmedt," which is defended by
Thenius, is .neither very suitable for 2 Sam. viii. 7 nor for 2
Kings xi. 10 and Cant. iv. 4. There is not the least foundation
for the meaning " quiver," which is assumed merely for this
passage. fi^B^fi!! '^'^o is to be explained in accordance with
the analogous expression in 2 Kings ix. 24, riK'isa Sv t«?D,
" he filled his hand with the bow," i,e. seized the bow. " Fill
the shields" with your bodies, or with your arms, since we put
these among the straps of the shields. Those addressed are
the kings of the Medes, whose spirit God has stirred up to
make war against Babylon ; for it is against her that His
mind or plan is directed. As to the expression, '' for it is the
vengeance of Jahveh," etc., c)[. 1. 15, 28. The attack is to be
directed against the walls of Babylon. D3, « standard," is the
military sign carried before the army, in order to show them
the direction they are to take, and the point of attack. "^^fP,
"watch," is the force besieging the city; cf. 2 Sam. xi. 16.
" Make the watch strong," ue. enclose the city firmly. This
is more exactly specified in the following clauses. "Set
watches," not as a guard for their own camp (Hitzig), but
against the city, in order to maintain a close siege. " Place
the ambushes," that they may peep into the city whenever
a sally is made by the besieged; cf. Josh. viii. 14 ff., Judg.
XX. 33 ff. " For what Jahveh hath determined, He will also
perform." D| — D3, " as well as : " He has resolved as well as
done, i.e. as He has resolved, He also executes. — Ver. 13. All
the supports of the Babylonian power, its strong position on
the Euphrates, and its treasures, which furnished the means
for erecting strong fortifications, cannot avert the ruia de-
creed by God. As to the form ''J?Ml^, isee on xxii. 23. It is
the city with its inhabitants that is addressed, personified as
a virgin or daughter. The many waters on which Babylon
dwells are the Euphrates, with the canals, trenches, dykes,
and marshes which surrounded Babylon, and afforded her a
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 5-14 295
strong protection against hostile attacks, but at tlie same time
contributed to increase the wealth of the country and the
capital.^ The great riches, however, by which Babylon became
TAy0» nan, «< great in treasures," so that -SJschylus (Pera. 52)
calls it Ba^vKuv 17 'iro\v)(pv<To<!, were derived from the enor-
mous spoils which Nebuchadnezzar brought to it, partly from
Nineveh, partly from Jerusalem, and from the tribute paid by
Syria and the wealthy commercial cities of Phoenicia. " Thine
end is come;" cf. Gen. vi. 13. ?I?V3 riQX, «the ell {i.e. the
measure) of thy gain," i.e. the limit put to thine unjust gain.
The words are connected with " thine end is come " by zeugma.
This explanation is simpler than the interpretation adopted
by Venema, Eichhom, and Maurer, from the Vulgate pedalia
prwcisionis tuoB, viz. " the ell of cutting thee off." Bottcher
(Proben, S. 289, note m) seeks to vindicate the rendering in
the following paraphrase : " The ell at which thou shalt be cut
o£F, like something woven or spun, when it has reached the
destined number of ells." According to this view, "ell " would
stand for the complete number of the ells determined on ; but
there is no consideration of the question whether V^, " to cut
off the thread of life," Isa. xxxviii. 12, can be applied to a city.
— Ver. 14. The Lord announces destruction to Babylon with
a solemn oath. Many take &K ^3 in the sense of ^ OK in
oaths : " truly, certainly." But this use of the expression is
neither fully established, nor suitable in this connection. In
2 Sam. XV. 21 (the only passage that can be cited in its be-
half), the meaning "only" gives good enough sense. Ewald
(§ 356, b) wrongly adduces 2 Kings v. 20 in support of the
above meaning, and three lines below he attributes the signi-
' Dnncker, Gesch. d. Alterth. i. S. 846, remarks : " The fertility of the
soil of Babylon — the produce of the fields — depended on the inundations
of the Euphrates. By means of an extensive system of dykes, canals, and
river-walls, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded not only in conducting the water of
the Euphrates to every point in the plain of Babylon, but also in averting
the formation of marshes and the occurrence of floods (which were not
rare), as well as regulating the inundation." The purpose for which these
water- works were constructed, was "first of aU, irrigation and navigation ;
but they at the same time afforded strong lines of defence against the foe "
(Niebuhr, Gesch. Assyr. u. Bab. S. 219). See details regarding these
magnificent works in Duncker, S. 845 S. ; Niebuhr, S. 218 S.
r
Digitized by
Google
296 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAR
fication " although " to the passage now before us. Moreover,
the asseveration, " Verily I have filled thee with men as with
locusts, and they shall sing the Hedad over thee," can have a
suitable meaning only if we take "I have filled thee" pro-
phetically, and understand the filling with men as referring to
the enemy, when the city has been reduced (Hitzig). But to
fill a city with meQ hardly means quite the same as to put a host
of enemies in it. '3 serves merely to introduce the oath, and
OK means " although," — as, for instance, in Job ix. 15. The
meaning is not, " When I filled thee with men, as with locusts,
the only result was, that a more abundant wine-pressing could
be obtained " (Nagelsbach), for this thought is foreign to the
context ; the meaning rather is, '' Even the countless multitudes
of men in Babylon will not avail it " (Ewald), will not keep it
from ruin. iTn, the song sung at the pressing of wine, is, from
the nature of the case, the battle-song ; see on xrv. 30.
Vers. 15-26. The omnipotence of the Lord and Creator of
the whole world will destroy the idols of Babylon, and break
the mighty kingdom that rules the world. Ver. 15. " He who
made the earth by His strength, establishing the world by His
'wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by His understanding ;
Ver. 16. When, thundering. He makes a roaring sound of
water in the heavens, He causes clouds to ascend from the end
of the earth, makes lightnings for the rain, and brings forth
the wind out of His treasures. Ver. 17. Every man without
knowledge is brutish ; every goldsmith Is ashamed because of
the image : for his molten work is a lie, and there is no spirit in
them. Ver. 18. They are vanity, a work of mockery ; in their
time of visitation they perish. Ver. 19. The Portion of Jacob
is not like these ; for He is the framer of all, and of the tribe
of his inheritance: Jahveh of hosts is His name. Ver. 20.
Thou art a hammer to me, weapons of war ; and with thee I
will break nations in pieces, and with thee destroy kingdoms.
Ver. 21. And with thee I will break in pieces the horse and his
rider, and with thee I will break in pieces the chariot and its
rider. Ver. 22. And with thee I will break in pieces man and
woman, and with thee I will break in pieces old and youngs
and with thee I will break in pieces young man and maiden.
Ver. 23. And with thee I will break in pieces the shepherd and
■Digitized by
Google
CHAP. li 15-26. 297
his flock, and with thee I will break ia pieces the husbandman
and his yoke [of oxen], and with thee I will break in pieces gover-
nors and deputy-governors. Ver. 24. And I will recompense
to Babylon, and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea, all their evil
which they have done in Zion before your eyes, saith Jahveh.
Ver. 25. Behold, I am against thee, O mountain of destruc-
tion, saith Jahveh, that destroyed all the earth; and I will
stretch out my hand against thee, and roll thee down from the
rocks, and make thee a burnt mountain, Ver. 26. So that they
shall not take from thee a stone for a corner, or a stone for
foundations; but thou sbalt be desolations for ever, saith
Jahveh."
In order to establish, against all doubt, the fall of Babylon
that has been announced under solemn oath, Jeremiah, in vers.
15-19, repeats a passage from the address in x. 12-16, in which
he holds up before the people, by way of warning, the almighty
power of the living God, and the destruction of the idols at the
time of the judgment. In chap. x. he wished, by means of this
announcement, to combat the fears of the idolatrous people for
the power of the heathen gods; here he seeks by the same
means to destroy the confidence of the Chaldeans in their gods,
and to state that all idols will be destroyed before the ialmighty
power of the Creator and Euler of the whole world on the day
of judgment, and Israel shall then learn that He who formed
the universe will show Himself, by the fall of Babylon, as the
Creator of Israel. The whole passage is repeated verbatim^ on
till a change made in ver. 19, where b^^. is omitted before
'trhra tiae', and these words are connected with what precedes :
" He is the former of all, and of the tribe which belongs to
Him as His own property," i.e. Israel. This alteration is not
% to be put to the account of a copyist, who omitted the word
" Israel " through an oversight, but is due to Jeremiah : there
was no need here, as in chap, x., for bringing into special pro-
minence the relation of Israel to his 6od.^ As to the rest, see
' In chap. z. 16 the LXX. have taken no account either of ^Klb*^ or ti21ff-
Hence Movers, Eitzig, and Ewald infer that these words have found their
way into the text as a gloss suggested by Deut. zzxii. 9, and should be
deleted. But in this they are wrong. The omission of the two words by the
LXX. is a result of the erroneous translation there given of the first clause
Digitized by
Google
298 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
the exposition of x. 12-16. In vers. 20-26 the destruction of
Babylon and its power is farther carried out in two figures. In
vers. 20-24 Babylon is compared to a hammer, which God
uses for the purpose of beating to pieces nations and kingdoms,
with their forces and their inhabitants, but on which He will
afterwards requite the evil done to Zion. J*?!? is equivalent
to r???> Prov. XXV. 18, one who breaks in pieces ; hence a
battle-hammer. Hitzig takes y3 to be a singular, " formed
thus in order to avoid an accumulation of i sounds (cf. B'^'ba
with 'tJvB)." This is possible, but neither necessary nor pro-
bable. The plural, " weapons of war," is added, because the
battle-hammer is considered as including all weapons of war.
By the hammer, Ewald understands " the true Israel ;" Hitzig,
Cyrus, the destroyer of Babylon ; Nagelsbach, an ideal person.
These three views are based on the fact that the operation
performed by means of the hammer (breaking to pieces) is
marked by perfects with 1 relative Q^'^^^^, which is also true
of the retribution to be made on Babylon : from this it is in-
ferred that the breaking with the hammer, as well as the
retribution, is still future, and that the meaning is, " When I
hammer in this way with thee, I will requite Babylon" (Hitzig) ;
while EWald concludes from nothing but the context that the
words refer to Israel. But none of these reasons is decisive,
nor any of the three views tenable. The context gives decided
support to the opinion that in ver. 20 ff. it is Babylon that is
addressed, just as in ver. 13 f. and ver. 25 ; a farther proof is,
that as early as chap. 1. 23, Babylon is called " the hammer of
the whole earth." Only very weighty reasons, then, could in-
duce us to refer the same figure, as used here, to another nation.
The word E^B3 (1. 23), " hammer, smith's hammer" (Isa. xli.
7), is not essentially different from }*BD, which is used here.
of the reise. This the LXX. have rendered ov roietvni ftspU t$ 'leucofi,
instead of oi raiatnit h f*ep}{ rov 'leex&ijS. Having done so, it was im-
possible for them to continue, Sti i ir>.affx( t«J 5ra»T« avri;, because
they could not predicate this of fiipi{, which they evidently did not take
to mean Glod. And if they were to connect wn with what followed, they
were bound to omit the two words, for it would never have done to take
together \rhro D3B' ^tpC'^l t5?n. They therefore simply omitted the
troublesome words, and went on to translate : Sri o ■s'Keuiai rx vitro,
cmrii xXvpotofcici xiiTov. Cf. N^ebbach, Jeremia u, Babylon, S. 94. .
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 15-26. 299
The figure is qaite inapplicable to Israel, because " Israel is
certainly to be delivered through the destruction of Babylon,
but is not to be hiinself the instrument of the destruction"
(Graf). Finally, the employment of the perfect with i relative,
both in connection with the shattering to pieces which God
accomplishes with (by means of) Babylon, and also the retri-
bution He will execute on Babylon, is explained by the fact,
that just as, in prophetic vision, what Babylon does to the
nations, and what happens to it, was not separated into two
acts, distinct from one another, but appeared as one continuous
whole, so also the work of Babylon as the instrument of de-
struction was not yet finished, but had only begun, and still
continuing, was partly future, Hke the retribution which it was
to receive for its offence against Zion ; just as in ver. 13 Baby-
lon is viewed as then still in the active exercise of its power ;
and the purpose for which God employs it, as well as the fate
that is to befall it, is presented together in something like this
manner: " O Babylon, who art my hammer with which I break
peoples and kingdoms in pieces, thee will I requite ! " There
is separate mention made of the instances of breaking, in a long
enumeration, which becomes tedious through the constant repe-
tition of the verb — something like the enumeration in chap. 1.
35-38, where, however, the constant repetition of 3"in gives
great emphasis to the address. First comes the general desig-
nation, nations and kingdoms; then military forces ; then (ver.
25) the inhabitants of the kingdoms, arranged, as in Ezek. xxiii.
6, 23, according to sex, age, and class, labouring classes (shep-
herds, and husbandmen with their cattle); and lastly digni-
taries, satraps and lieutenant-governors, C^JM nine, as in Ezek.
xxiji. 6, 23. nriB probably comes from the Zendic pavan (root
pa), of which a dialectic form is pagvan, " upholder of govern-
ment ;" see on Hag. i. 1. IJD corresponds to the t^(o^dvr}<; of
the Athenians, " lieutenant-governor ;" but it is not much that
has hitherto been ascertained with regard to this office ; see
Delitzsch on Isa. xli. 25 [Clark's translation]. On 'W ^riD^Bn,
cf. ver. 6 and 1. 15, 29 ; " before your eyes," towards the end
of this verse, belongs to this verb in the main clause. This
retribution is set forth in ver. 25 f. under a new figure. Babylon
is called the " mountain of destruction ;" this name is imme-
Digitized by
Google
300 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
diately explained by the predicate, " that destroys the whole
earth," brings destruction on it. The name ir'ne'en in is ap-
plied in 2 "Kings zxiii. 13 to the Mount of Olives, or its southern
summit, the so-called mons offensiortis vel scandali of eccle-
siastical tradition, on which Solomon had erected idolatrous
altars for his foreign wives ; the name refers to the pernicious
influence thereby exercised on the i^eligious life of Israel. In
this verse, " destruction " is used in a comprehensive sense of
the physical and moral ruin which Babylon brought on the
nations. Babylon is a " mountain," as being a powerful king-
dom, supereminent above others ; whether there is also a refer-
ence in the title to its lofty buildings (C. B. Micbaelis) seems
doubtful. " I will roll thee down from the rocks," de petris,
in quarum fastigiis hucusque eminuisti. Non efferea te amplius
super alia regno (C. B. Mjch.). To this Hitzig adds, by way
of explanation : " The summit of the mountain is sometimes
changed into the very, position occupied by the crater." From
what follows, '' I will make thee a mountain of burning," i.e.
either a burning, or burnt, burnt-out mountain, modern ex-
positors infer, with J. D. Michaelis, that the prophet has before
his mind a volcano in active eruption, *' for no other kind of
mountains could devastate countries ; it is just volcanoes which
have been hollowed out by fire that fall in, or, it may be, tumble
down into the valley below, scattering their constituent elements
here and there ; the stones of such mountains, too, are com-
monly so much broken and burnt, that they are of no use for
building" (Hitzig). Of the above remarks this much is correct,
that the words, " I will make thee a burning mountain," are
founded on the conception of a volcano ; any more extended
application, however, of the figure to the whole verse is un-
warranted. The clause, " I will roll thee down from the
rocks," cannot possibly be applied to the action of a volcano in
eruption (though Nagelsbach does so apply it), unless we are
ready to impute to the prophet a false notion regarding the
eruptions of volcanoes. By the eruption, a mountain is not
loosened from the rock on which it rests, and hurled down into
the valleys round about ; it is only the heart of the mountain,
or the rocks on which its summit rests, that seem to be vomited
out of it. Besides, the notion that there is a representation of
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. lJr-26. 301
an active volcano in the first clauses of the verse, is disproved
by the very fact that the mountain, Babylon, does not bring
rain on the earth, as one that is burning ; it is not to become
such until after it has been rolled down from the rocks on which
it rests. The laying waste of the countries is not ascribed to
the fire that issues from the mountain, but the mountain begins
to burn only after it has been rolled down from its rocks.
Babylon, as a kingdom and city, is called a mountain, because
it mightily surpassed and held sway over them ; cf. Isa. ii. 14.
It brings ruin on the whole earth by subjugation of the nations
and devastation of the countries. The mountain rests on rocks,
i.e. its power has a foundation as firm as a fock, until the Lord
rolls it down from its height, and burns the strong mountain,
making it like an extinct volcano, the stones of which, having
been rendered vitreous by the fire, no longer furnish material
that can be employed for the foundation of new buildings. " A
comer-stone," etc., is explained by C. B. Michaelis, after the
Chaldee, Kimchi, and others, to mean, " no one will appoint a
king or a prince any more out of the stock of the Chaldeans."
This is against the context, according to which the point treated
of is, not the fall of the kingdom in or of Babylon, but the
destruction of Babylon as a city and kingdom. Hitzig and
Graf, accordingly, take the meaning to be this : Not a stone of
the city will be used for a new building, — no one will any more
build for himself among their ruins, and out of the material
there. The comer-stone and the foundation (it is further
asserted) are mentioned by way of example, not because parti-
cularly large and good stones are needed for these parts, but >
because every house begins with them. But though the follow-
ing clause, " thou shalt be an everlasting desolation," contains
this idea, yet this interpretation neither exhausts nor gives a
generally correct view of the meaning of the words, " no one
will take from thee a corner-stone or a foundation-stone." The
burning of the mountain signifies not merely that Babylon was
to be burned to ashes, but that her sway over the world was to
be quite at an end ; this was only to come about when the city ■
was burnt. When no stone of any value for a new building is
to be left after this conflagration, this is equivalent to saying
that nothing will be left of the empire that has been destroyed,
r^
Digitized by
Google
302 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMUB.
which would be of any use in the foundation of another. state.
The last clause also (" for thou slialt be," etc.) refers to more
than the destruction of the city of Babylon. This is seen even
in the fundamental passage, xxv. 12/ where the same threat is
uttered against the land of the Chaldeans.
Vers. 27-37. A summons addressed to the nations to fight
against Babylon, in order that, by reducing the city, vengeance
may be taken for the offence committed against Israel by
Babylon. Ver. 27. " Lift up a standard on the earth, sound
a trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her,
call the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz against
her ; appoint troops against her ; bring up horses like horrid
loctists. Ver. 28. Prepare nations- against her, the kings of
the Medes and her governors, and all her lieutenant-governors,
and all the land of his dominion. Ver. 29. Then the earth
quakes and trembles : for the purposes of Jahveh against
Babylon are being performed, to make the land lof Babylon a
desolation, without an inhabitant. Ver. 30. The heroes of
Babylon have ceased tb fight, they sit in the strongholds : their
strength is dried up ; they have become women ; they have set
her habitations on fire ; her bars are broken. Ver. 31. One
runner runs against another, and one messenger against
another, to tell the king of Babylon that his city is wholly
taken. Ver. 32. And the crossing-places have been seized,
and the marshes have they burned up with fire, and the men
of war are confounded. Ver. 33. For thus saith Jahveh of
ho^ts, the God of Israel : The daughter of Babylon is like a
thresh ing-fioor at the time when it is trodden ; yet a little, and
the time of harvest will come to her. Ver. 34. Nebuchad-
nezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured us, and ground us
down; he hath set us down [like] an empty vessel, he hath
swallowed us like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my
dainties ; he hath thrust me out. Ver. 35. Let the inhabitress
of Zion say, ' My wrong and my flesh [be] upon Babylon ; ' and
let Jerusalem say, 'My blood be upon the inhabitants of
. Chaldea.' Ver. 36. Therefore thus saith Jahveh: Behold, I
will plead thy cause, and execute vengeance for thee ; and I
will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. Ver. 37.
And Babylon shall become heaps [of ruins], a dwelling-place
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 27-87. 303
of dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an in-
habitant."
The lifting up of the standard (ver. 27) serves as a signal
for the nations to assemble for the struggle against Babylon.
}ns3 does not mean " in the land," but, as the parallel " among
the nations " shows, " on the earth." V^\>, " consecrate [pre-
pare] against her (Babylon) nations" for the war; of. vi. 4,
xxii. 7. ^y^f>2, as in 1. 29. The kingdoms summoned are :
Ararat, i.e. the middle (or eastern) province of Armenia, in the
plain of Araxes, which Moses of Chorene calls Arairad, Araratia
(see on Gen. viii. 4) ; Minni, which, according to the Syriac
and Chaldee, is also a name of Armenia, probably its western
province (see Gesenius' Thesaurus, p. 807); and Ashkenaz,
which the Jews take to be Germany, although only this much
is certain, that it is a province in the neighbourhood of Armenia.
For Askin is an Armenian proper name, and az an Armenian
termination ; cf. Lagarde's Gesammelte Abhandll, S. 254, and
Delitzsch on Gen. x. 3, 4th ed. ^"ip3, " appoint, order against
her." ipsci does not mean " captains " or leaders, for this
meaning of the foreign word (supposed to be Assyrian) rests
on a very uncertain etymology; it means some peculiar kind
of troops, but nothing more definite can be affirmed regarding
it. This meaning is required by the context both here and
in Nah. iii. 17, the only other place where the word occurs :
see on that passage. The sing. iDSp corresponds with the
sing. DID, and is therefore to be taken collectively, "troops
and horses." Whether the simile "iDD p?J3 belongs merely to
" horses," or to the combination " troops and horses," depends
on the meaning attached to the expression. Modem expositors
render it " bristly locusts ; " and by that they understand, like
Credner (Joel, S. 298), the young grasshopper after it has laid
aside its third skin, when the wings are still enveloped in rough
horny sheaths, and stick straight up from the back of the
animal. But this explanation rests on an erroneous interpre-
tation of Nah. iii. 17. "IDD means to shudder, and is used of
the shivering or quivering of the body (Ps. cxix. 120), and of
the hair (Job iv. 15) ; and p?) does not mean a particular kind
of locusts, though Jerome, on Nah. iii. 17, renders it attelabus
{parva locusta est inter locustam et britchum, et modicis pennis
r
Digitized by
Google
304 THE FROPBEOIES OF JEBEHIAB.
reptans potitis quam volans^ eemperque subsiliens), but is a poetic
epithet of the locust, " the devourer." If any one prefers to
view 1DD as referring to the nature of the locusts, he may, with
Bochart and Rosenmiiller, think of the locustarum species, quae
habet caput hirsutum. But the epithet " horrid " is probably
intended merely to point out the locusts as a fearful scourge
of the country. On this view, the comparison refers to both
clauses, and is meant to set forth not merely the enormous
multitude of the soldiery, but also the devastation they make of
the country. In ver. 28 mention is further made of the kings
of the Medes (see on ver. 11), together with their governors
and lieutenant-governors (see on ver. 23), and, in order to give
prominence to the immense strength of the army, of " all the
land of his dominion ; " on these expressions, cf . xsxiv. 1 and
1 Kings ix. 19. The suffix refers to the king of Media, as the
leader of the whole army ; while those in " her governors, and
all her lieutenant-governors," refer to the country of Media. —
Ver. 29 f . On the advance of this mighty host against Babylon,
to execute the judgment determined by the Lord, the earth
quakes. The mighty men of Babylon cease to offer resistance,
and withdraw dispirited, like women, into inaccessible places,
while the enemy sets fire to the houses, breaks the bars, and
captures the city. The prophet views all this in spirit as already
present, and depicts in lively colours the attack on the city and
its capture. Hence the historic tenses, B'jnnij ?nFi1, ^7in, etc.
noi? is used of the permanence, i.e. of the realization of the
divine counsels, as in xliv. 23 f . On the singular, see Ewald,
§ 317, a. " To make the land," etc., as in iv. 7, xviii. 16, etc.
" They sit (have taken lip their position) in the strongholds "
(mountain fastnesses), i.e. in inaccessible places; cf. 1 Sam.
xiii. 16, 2 Sam. xxiii. 14. nne^J is but to be regarded as a
Kal form from T\m ; on its derivation from JiTiE', see on Isa.
xli. 17. " They have become women ; " cf. 1. 37. The subject
of the verb WJrn is the enemy, who set fire to the dwellings in
Babylon. "Runner runs against runner," i.e. from opposite
sides of the city there come messengers, who meet each other
running to tell the king in his castle that the city is taken.
The king is therefore (as Graf correctly remarks against
Hitzig) not to be thought of as living outside of the city, for
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 27-87. 305
" in this case nt<??? would have no meaning," but as living in
the royal castle, which was situated in the middle of the city,
on the Euphrates. Inasmuch as the city is taken " from the
end" (^i^i^), i.e. on all sides, the messengers who bring the
news to the king's fortress must meet each other. — ^Ver. 32
permits of being taken as a continuation of the message brought
to the king. nliaj^D, "crossing -places," do not here mean
"fords" (Judg. iii. 28); for such shallow places, where one
could go through the river, are not to be found in the Euphrates
at Babylon : they mean bridges and ferries, because, in addition
to the stone bridge built by Nebuchadnezzar (Herodotus, i. 186 ;
see Duncker's Gesekickte, i. S. 859), there must also have been
at Babylon, throughout its large extent, other means of cross-
ing, either by bridges of boats or ferries. ^B'SHJ, " they have
been taken," seized by the enemy; cf. xlviii. 41. CBJK are
ponds and artificial lakes which had been formed for the pro-
tection of the city, of the waters of the Euphrates (Herodotus,
i. 185 ; Arrian, vii. 17) ; these " they have burned with fire."
Inasmuch as a burning of ponds is an impossibility, many, with
Kimchi, would understand wam of the reeds of the marshes.
Bnt the word has no such meaning ; moreover, even if it had,
the burning of the reeds would have no significance for the
taking of the city. Others think of the sluices and the en-
closures of the artificial waters, which enclosures were con-
structed of wood-work; but apart from the basin of water at
Sepharvaim, which could be opened by sluices, the enclosure
of the ponds with wood-work is a matter of much doubt, and a
burning of the wood-work is not a burning of the ponds. The
expression, as Calvin long ago remarked, is hyperbolic, and
not to be pressed: Propheta hyperbolice ostenditf siccata fuisse
vada Euphratis ac si quis lignum exureret igni supposito ; Jioc
quidem aquis non convenit, sed hyperbolice meliu» exprimit mira-
culum. On the whole, the picture is not to be taken as a
description of the historical circumstances connected with the
taking of Babylon by Cyrus ; neither, therefore, is the burning
of the ponds to be referred to the fact that the bed of the
Euphrates was made dry through diversion of the stream
(Herodotus, i. 191) ; bnt we have here a poetic colouring given
to the thought that all Babylon's means of offence and defence
VOL. II. U
Digitized by
Google
306 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
will fall into the power of the enemy and be destroyed by them.
For (according to the reason assigned in yer. 33 for what has
been described) the Almighty God of Israel has decreed the
destruction of Babylon. *' The daughter of Babylon {i.e. not
merely the city, but the kingdom of Babylon) is like a threshing-
floor at the time when they tread it," i,e. stamp on it, make
the ground into a threshing-floor by treading it hard.^ "^^Tl'"?
might be the infinitive (Ewald, § 238, d) : it is simpler, however,
to take it as a perfect, and supply the relative IB'K. The mean-
ing is, that Babylon is ripe for judgment. WO liy, « yet a
little while " (i.e. soon), comes the time of harvest, so that the
grain will be threshed, i.e. the judgment will be executed.
The figure reminds us of Isa. xxi. 10, cf. Joel iv. 13, Mic.
iv. 15, etc. — Ver. 34 f. This judgment comes on Babylon for
its offences against Israel. The king of Babylon has devoured
Israel, etc. Those who complain, in ver. 34, are the inhabit-
ants of Judah and Jerusalem, in whose name the prophet
enumerates the crimes of Babylon. "Nebuchadnezzar has
devoured us," i.e. oppressed us. The plural suffixes to the verbs
have been needlessly changed in the Qeri into singulars, for
the simple reason, perhaps, that with 'J^S? and in ver. 35 the
address makes a transition into the singular, ^'on signifies to
throw enemies into confusion by causing a panic, for the pur-
pose of destroying them; hence to destroy, see on Dent. iL 15 ;
here to destroy, crush. " He set us down like an empty vessel "
refers to the country and the people ; he has swept the country
of human beings, and robbed the people of everything. . V}^,
usually a sea-monster, crocodile (Isa. xxvii. 1, li. 9, etc.) ; here
a beast of prey which devours everything. 0''?"?^?, " delights,"
then " dainty meats," Gen. xlix. 20.* nnn, from nw, signifies
to wash away, push away (see Delitzsch on Isa. iv. 4) ; in other
1 " The threshing-floor is an open spot in the field, carefully levelled and
cleared from stones, etc., that the grain may be spread out on it for thresh-
ing." — Paulsen, Ackerhau der Morgenl. S. 123. " A level spot is selected
for the threshing-floors, which are then constructed near each other, of a
circular form, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, merely by beating the earth
hard."— Robinson's Pal. ii. 227.
* The form actually found in the Masoretic text is ''iim " from (out of,
with) my dainties." — Te.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 38-49. 307
places Jeremiah uses tynn^ vUi. 3, xvi. 15, etc. "Let my"
wrong (i.e. the wrong done me) come upon Babylon." This
wrong is more fully specified, with reference to the figure of
swallowing, by " my flesh and blood ; '* cf. Mic. iii. 3. The
Lord will avenge this wrong, ver. 36, cf. 1. 34, li. 6, 11 ; He
will also dry up the sea of Babylon, and make her spring dry
up. Many expositors understand these latter words meta-
phorically, as referring to the sea of nations surging in Babylon
(vers. 42, 55), and view the treasures and riches as the fountain
from which the sea of nations sprang up (Hitzig) ; but the
context demands a literal interpretation, inasmuch as in ver.
37 the subject treated of is the laying waste of the country.
The sea of Babylon is the Euphrates, with its canals, lakes,
and marshes, i.e. the abundance of water to which Babylonia
owed its fertility, and the city its influence as the centre of the
then known world. Isaiah (xxi. 1) accordingly calls Babylon,
emblematically, the desert of the sea, inasmuch as the region
in which Babylon stands is a plain, broken in such a manner
by the Euphrates, as well as by marshes and lakes, as that the
city, so to speak, swims in the sea (Delitzsch). The source or
spring of the sea is the Euphrates, and the drying up of this
spring is not to be understood literally of the drying up of the
Euphrates, but signifies a drying up of the springs of water
that fertilize the country. On the figures employed in ver. 37,
cf. ix. 10, xviii. 16, xlix. 33.
Vers. 38-49. The inhabitants of Babylon fall; the city
perishes with its idols, to the joy of the whole world. — ^Ver. 38.
" Together they roar Uke young lions, they growl like the whelps
of lionesses. Ver. 39. When they are heated, I will prepare
their banquets, and will make them drunk, that they may exult
and sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith Jahveh. Ver.
40. I will bring them down like lambs to be slaughtered, like
rams with he-goats. Ver. 41. How is Sheshach taken, and the
praise of the whole earth seized ! How Babylon is become an
astonishment among the nations ! Ver. 42. The sea has gone
up over Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its
waves. Ver. 43. Her cities have become a desolation, a land
of drought, and a steppe, a land wherein no man dwells, and
through which no son of man passes. Ver. 44. And I will
Digitized by
Google
308 TBEPBOPHECIESOFJEBEHIAH.
punish Bel in Babylon, and will bring out of his month what
he has swallowed, and no longer shall nations go in streams
to him : the wall of Babylon also shall fall. Ver. 45. Go ye
out from the midst of her, my people I and save ye each one
his life from the burning of the wrath of Jahveh. Ver. 46.
And lest your heart be weak, and ye be afraid because of
the report which is heard in the land, and there comes the
[=this] report in the [=this] year, and afterwards in the
[=that] year the [ = that] report, and violence in the land,
ruler against ruler. Ver. 47. Therefore, behold, days are
coming when I will punish the graven images of Babylon ; and
her whole land shall dry up,^ and all her slain ones shall fall in
her midst. Ver. 48. And heaven and earth, and all that is in
them, shall sing for joy over Babylon : for the destroyers shall
come to her from the north, saith Jahveh. Ver. 49. As
Babylon sought that slain ones of Israel should fall, so there
fall, in behalf of Babylon, slain ones of the whole earth."
This avenging judgment shall come on the inhabitants of
Babylon in the midst of their revelry. Ver. 38. They roar
and growl like young lions over their prey ; cf. ii. 15, Amos
ii). 4. When, in their revelries, they will be heated over their
prey, the Lord will prepare for them a banquet by which they
shall become intoxicated, so that they sink down, exulting (i.e.
staggering while they shout), into an eternal sleep of death.
DBn, " their heat," or heating, is the glow felt in gluttony and
revelry, cf. Hos. vii. 4 f ., not specially the result or effect of a
drinking-bout; and the idea is not that, when they become
heated through a banquet, then the Lord will prepare another
one for them, but merely this, that in the midst of their revelry
the Lord will prepare for them the meal they deserve, viz.
give them the cup of wrath to drink, so that they may fall
down intoxicated into eternal sleep, from which they no more
awake. These words are certainly not a special prediction
of the fact mentioned by Herodotus (i. 191) and Xenophon
{Cyrop. vii. 23), that Cyrus took Babylon while the Babylonians
were celebrating a feast and holding a banquet; they are
merely a figurative dress given to the thought that the inhabit-
ants of Babylon will be surprised by the judgment of death
^ Bather, " shall be ashamed ; " see note at foot of p. 311. — Tb.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U. 38-49. 309
in the midst of their riotous enjoyment of the riches and
treasures taken as spoil from the nations. In that fact, how-
ever, this utterance has received a fulfilment which manifestly
confirms the infallibility of the word of God. In ver. 40, what
has been said is confirmed by another figure ; cf. xlviii. 5 and
I. 27. Lambs, rams, goats, are emblems of all the classes of
the people of Israel ; cf. Isa. xxxiv. 6, Ezek. xxxix. 18. — Ver.
41 ff. The fearful destruction of Babylon will astonish the
world. — Ver. 41 is an exclamation of astonishment regarding
the conquest of the city which was praised throughout the
world. As to ^B'?', see on ver. 1 and xxv. 26. <^\<^^, "praise,"
is here used for " a subject of praise and fame ; " cf. xlix. 25.
— ^Ver. 42 f. Description of the fall. The sea. that has come
over Babylon and covered it with its waves, was taken figura-
tively, even by the Chaldee paraphrasts, and understood as
meaning the hostile army that overwhelms the land with its
hosts. Only J. D. Michaelis was inclined to take the words
in their proper meaning, and understood them as referring to
the inundation of Babylon by the Euphrates in August and in
winter. But however true it may be, that, in consequence of
the destruction or decay of the great river-walls built by Nebu-
chadnezzar, the Euphrates may inundate the city of Babylon
when it swells into a flood, yet the literal acceptation of the
words is unwarranted, for the simple reason that they do not
speak of any momentary or temporary inundation, and that,
because Babylon is to be covered with water, the cities of
Babylonia are to become an arid steppe. The sea is therefore
the sea of nations, cf . xlvi. 7 ; the description reminds us of the
destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Bed Sea. On ver.
43, cf. xlviii. 9, xlix. 18, 33 f., 1. 12. The suffix in jna refers to
" her cities ; " but the repetition of K^S is not for that reason
wrong, as Graf thinks, but is to be explained on the ground that
the cities of Babylonia are compared to a barren land ; and the
idea is properly this: The cities become an arid country of
steppes, a land in whose cities nobody can dwell. — Ver. 44.
With the conquest of Babylon, Bel, the chief deity of the
Babylonians (see on 1. 2), is punished ; and not only is his prey
torn from him, but his fame also, which attracted the nations,
is destroyed. Under the prey which Bel has swallowed, and
Digitized by
Google
310 - THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
which is to be torn oat of his mouth, we must include not
merely the sacred vessels which had been deposited ,in the
temple of Belus (Dan. i. 3), and the voluntary offerings pre-
sented him (Hitzig), but all the property which Babylon had
taken as spoil from the nations; and the nations themselves,
with life and property, Babylon has swallowed (see 34 and
1. 17). All this is now to be torp out of his jaws. Bel falls
with the fall of Babylon (cf. Isa. xlvi. 1), so that nations no
longer come in streams to him, to dedicate their goods and
treasures to him. The description ends with the sentence,
" the wall of Babylon also is fallen," which Hitzig and Graf
wrongly suspect, on the ground that it is insipid. Ewald, on
the contrary, perceives in the very same expression a brief and
emphatic conclusion; because the famous wall of Babylon,
strong in every part, was the main defence of this great city of
the world. For explaining this sentence, therefore, it is un-
necessary to assume that the walls of Babylon seem to have
been regarded as sacred to Bel, as Nagelsbach is inclined to
infer from the names which are said to be given to these walls
in an inscription translated by Oppert.^ — Ver. 45 f . Since
Babylon will be punished by the Lord with destruction, the
people of God are to flee out of it, and to preserve their lives
from the fierce anger of Jahveh, which will discharge itself on
Babylon. «!« iiin, as in iv. 8, 26, etc. — ^Ver. 46. Yet they are
not to despair when the catastrophe draws near, and all kinds
of rumours of war and oppression are abroad. The repetition
of njpiDB>n expresses the correlative relation, — this and that
report; cf. Ewald, § 360, c. The sufBx in l^nN has a neuter
sense ; the word means " afterwards " (= Ti^t ^[jN, Job xlii.
16). )^K3 Dorn is also to be taken as dependent, grammati-
cally, on K31 : " and when a deed of violence is committed in
the land, one ruler (rises up) against the other." These words
* Cf. J. Oppert, Expedition en Mesopot. i. p. 227, where, on the strength
of an inscription of Assarhaddon, which is read, " Imgur-Bel is its (Baby-
lon's) chief wall, Ninivitti-Bel its rampart,'" the expressions found in the
inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar before the mention of the walls — viz.
" Imgur-Bel " (may Bel - Dagon protect him) and " Ninivitti-Bel " (the
abode of Bel) — have been explained by Rawlinson and Oppert as names of
the first and second lines of fortification round Babylon.
Digitized .by
Google
CHAP. LL 88-19. 311
presuppose Bot merely a pretty long duration of the war, but
also rebellion and revolution, through which Babylon is to go
to ruin. In this sense they are employed by Christ for de-
scribing the wars and risings that are to precede His advent ;
Matt. xxiv. 6, Mark xiii. 7, Luke xxi. 9. — ^Ver. 47. Therefore,
viz. because what has been stated above will happen, or because
the events mentioned in ver. 46 are harbingers of the judg-
ment on Babylon, — therefore days are coming when God shall
execute judgment on the idols of Babylon, and dry up the
land^ (cf. ver. 43), and all her slain ones, i.e. all her inhabit-
ants shall fall down, slain in the midst of her. D'N3 Q^DJ nsn jr?,
"Therefore, behold, days are coming," is a formula very fre-
quently found in Jeremiah ; cf. vii. 32, xvi. 14, xix. 6, xxiii.
7, etc. — Ver. 48. Heaven and earth, with all that is in them
(i.e. the whole world, with its animate and inanimate creatures),
break out into rejoicing over the fall of Babylon (cf. Isa. xHv.
23), for Babylon has enslaved and laid waste all the world.
The second part of ver. 48, "for the destroyers shall come
from the north," is logically connected with ver. 47, to which
ver. 48a is to be taken as subordinate, in the sense, "over
which heaven and earth rejoice." On ver. 48 J, cf. 1. 3, 9, 41.
Both parts of ver. 49 are placed in mutual relation by Da — D|.
These two particles, thus used, signify " as well as," " not only
. . . but also," or " as . . . so." Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf
have quite missed the meaning of both clauses, since they take
'??1^ Y?^ as a vocative, and render the whole thus : " Not only
must Babylon fall, O ye slain ones of Israel, but slain ones of
the whole earth have fallen on the side of Babylon (or through
Babylon)." This view of the expression " slain ones of Israel "
cannot be established, either from grammatical considerations
or from a regard to the meaning of the whole. Not only is
there no occasion for a direct address to the slain ones of Israel ;
but by such a view of the expression, the antithesis indicated
by Da — Da, between " the slain ones of Israel " and " the slain
ones of the earth," is thereby destroyed. Viewed grammati-
* Keil has here misread the Hebrew text, whiph runs \^2F\ Piyi{<"^3.
The verb does not come from {j^a^ to become dry, but from B>^3, to be
ashamed; hence the correct rendering is, " all her land shall be ashamed,"
not ' ' shall be dried up."— Tr.
Digitized by
Google
312 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
cally, " the slain ones of Israel " can only be the subject de-
pendent on the inf. 7ky? : " the fall of the slain ones of Israel."
Kirochi has long ago hit the meaning in the explanation,
7S37 nap nn^n 733 DS, " as Babylon was the cause of the slain
ones of Israel falling." Similarly Jerome : et quomodo fedl
Babylon ut eaderefit oecisi ex Israel. This paraphrase may be
vindicated on grammatical grounds, for the inf. constr. mth 7,
with or without n^n, is used to express that on which one is
engaged, or what one is on the point of doing ; cf. Gesenius,
§ 132, 3, Eem. 1. In this meaning, ?S3? stands here without
iTn : « as Babylon was concerned in making the slain ones of
Israel fall ; " or better : " Just as Babylon was intent on the fall
of slain ones in Israel, so also there fall because of Babylon
(prop, dative, for Babylon) slain ones of all the earth ;" because
there are to be found, in the capital of the empire, people from
all quarters of the world, who are slain when Babylon is con-
quered. The perf. vW is prophetic, like Wp? in ver. 47.
Vers. 50-58. Final summing up of the offence and the
punishment of Babylon. Ver. 50. "Ye who have escaped
the sword, depart, do not stay ! remember Jahveh from afar,
and let Jerusalem come into your mind. Ver. 51. We were
ashamed, because we heard reproach ; shame hath covered our
face, for strangers have come into the holy places of the house
of Jahveh. Ver. 52. Therefore, behold, days are coming, saith
Jahveh, when I will take vengeance on her graven images;
and through all her land shall the wounded groan. Ver. 53.
Though Babylon ascended to heaven, and fortified the height
of her strength, yet from me there shall come destroyers to
her, saith Jahveh. Ver. 54. The noise of a cry [comes] from
Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans.
Ver. 55. For Jahveh lays waste Babylon, and destroys out of
her the great noise ; and her waves sound like many waters :
a noise of their voice is uttered. Ver. 56. For there comes
against her, against Babylon, a destroyer, and her heroes are
taken ; each one of their bows is broken : for Jahveh is a God
of retributions, He shall certainly recompense. Ver. 57. And
I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her governors
and her lieutenant-governors, and her heroes, so that they shall
sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith the King, whose
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 60-68. 313
name is Jahveh of hosts. Ver. 58. Tlias saith Jahveh of
hosts : The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly destroyed,
and her high gates shall be burned with fire, so that nations
toil for nothing, and peoples for the fire, and thus are
weary. .
Once more there is addressed to Israel the call to return
immediately; cf. ver. 45 and 1. 8. The designation, "those
who have escaped from the sword," is occasioned by the men-
tion in ver. 49 of those who are slain : it is not to be explained
(with Nagelsbach) from the circumstance that the prophet sees
before him the massacre of the Babylonians as something that
has already taken place. This view of the matter agrees
neither with what precedes nor what follows, where the punish-
ment of Babylon is set forth as yet to come. It is those who
have escaped from the sword of Babylon during the exercise
of its sway that are meant, not those who remain, spared in
the conquest of Babylon. They are to go, not to stand or
linger on the road, lest they be overtaken, with others, by the
judgment falling upon Babylon; they are also to remember,
from afar, Jahveh the faithful covenant God, and Jerasalem,
that they may hasten their return. 0?n is a form of the im-
perative from ^?n ; it occurs only here, and has probably been
chosen instead of U?, because this form, in the actual use of
language, had gradually lost its full meaning, and become
softened down to a mere interjection, while emphasis is here
placed on the going. After the call there follows, in ver. 51,
the complaint, " We have lived to see the dishonour caused by
the desecration of our sanctuary." This complaint does not
permit of being taken as an answer or objection on the part of
those who are summoned to return, somewhat in this spirit :
" What is the good of our remembering Jahveh and Jerusalem ?
Truly we have thence a remembrance only of the deepest shame
and dishonour " (Nagelsbach). Such an objection the prophet
certainly would have answered with a reproof for the want or
weakness of faith. Ewald accordingly takes ver. 51 as con-
taining " a confession which the exiles make in tears, and filled
with shame, regarding the previous state of dishonour in which
they themselves, as well as the holy place, have been." On this
view, those who are exhorted to return encourage themselves
Digitized by
Google
314 THE FROPBECIES OF JEBEMUH.
by tbis confession and prayer to zeal in retaming; and it
would be necessary to supply dicite before ver. 51, and to take
UK'S as meaningj "We are ashamed because we have heard
scoffing, and because enemies have come into the holy places
of Jahveh's house." But they might have felt no shame on
account of this dishonour that befell them. V^z signifies merely
to be ashamed in consequence of the frustration of some hope,
not the shame of repentance felt on doing wrong. Hence, with
Calvin and others, we must take the words of ver. 51 as a
scruple which the prophet expresses in the name of the people
against the summons to remember Jahveh and Jerusalem, that
he may remove the objection.. The meaning is thus something
like the following : *' We may say, indeed, that disgrace has
been imposed on us, for we have experienced insult and dis-
honour ; but in return for this, Babylon will now be laid waste
and destroyed." The plural p'EnipQn denotes the different holy
places of the temple, as in Ps. Ixviii. 36. The answer which
settles this objection is introduced, ver. 52, by the formula,
" Therefore, behold, days are coming," which connects itself
with the contents of ver. 51 : " Therefore, because we were
obliged to listen to scoffing, and barbarians have forced their
way into the holy places of the house of our God, — therefore
will Jahveh punish Babylon for these crimes." The suffixes in
nv"?? and PijnK refer to Babylon. 7?n is used in undefined
generality, " slain, pierced through." — ^Ver. 53. Babylon shall
by no means escape punishment. Even though it mounted
up to heaven (cf. Job xx. 6 ; there may, at the same time, be
an allusion to Isa. xiv. 12, and possibly also to the tower
at Babylon), and i???J|i, " cut off (t.e. made inaccessible) the
height of its strength," i.e. the height in which its strength
consists, its lofty wall of defence (probably an allusion to the
lofty walls of Babylon ; see on ver. 58), yet destroyers are to
come against it from Jahveh. — ^Ver. 54. The prophet in the
spirit sees these destroyers as already come. A cry of anguish
proceeds from Babylon, and great destruction; cf. 1. 22, 46,
and xlviii. 3. For (ver. 55) Jahveh lays waste Babylon, and
destroys out of her 7\,li 7\p, properly " the loud voice," i.e. the
loud noise and bustle of the city. "Their waves," i.e. the
surging masses of the conquering army, roar like many or great
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LL 60-58. 315
•waters ; cf . Isa. xvii. 12. D?^P ft^f \F}}, lit. " there is given "
(t.e. there sounds) " the noise of their voice," i.e. of the roaring
of their waves. " For there comes on Babylon a destroyer, so
that hei heroes are made prisoners, and her bows (by synec-
doche for weapons) broken in pieces." The Piel nnrin has
here an intransitive sense, " to break or shiver into pieces," like
rWB, Isa. xlviii. 8, Ix. 11. This must take place, for Jahveh is
a God of retribution; cf. ver. 24. This retribution He will
execute in such a way as to make the princes, wise men, rulers,
and heroes of Babylon sink down into an eternal sleep, by
presenting to them the cup of wrath. On Wlf'T and 'Ml «B^.,
cf. ver. 39. On the enumeration of the different classes of
leaders and supporters of the state, cf. ver. 23 and 1. 35 ; and
on the designation of Jahveh as King, xlviii. 15, with the
remark there made.^ — ^Ver. 58. And not only are the defenders
of the city to fall, but the strong ramparts also, the broad walls
and the lofty towers, are to be destroyed. The adjective '^^'J)\l
is joined in the singular with the plural rfoh, because the com-
plex notion of the walls of Babylon, denoted by the latter
word, is viewed as a unity ; cf. Ewald, § 318. "^IV, in Hith-
pael, means " to be made bare," i.e. to be destroyed down to
the ground; the inf. abs. Pilel is added to intensify the ex-
pression. Regarding the height and breadth and the extent
of the walls of Babylon, cf. the collection of notices by the old
writers in Duncker's (7««ci. des Alt. i. S. 856 ff. According to
Herodotus (i. 178 f.), they were fifty ells [" royal cubits," or
nearly 85 feet] thick, and 200 ells [337^ feet] high ; Ctesias
assigns them a height of 300 feet, Strabo that of 50 ells [cubits,
or 75 feet], and a breadth of 32 feet. On this Duncker remarks :
" The height and breadth which Herodotus gives to the walls
are no doubt exaggerated. Since the wall of Media, the first
line of defence for the country, had a height of 100 feet and
a breadth of 20 feet, and since Xenophon saw in Nineveh
walls 150 feet in height, we shall be able with some degree of
certainty to assume, in accordance with the statement of Pliny
(vi. 26), that the wall of Babylon must have had a height of
200 feet above the ditch, and a proportionate breadth of from
30 to 40 feet. This breadth would be sufficient to permit of
teams of four being driven along the rampart, between the
Digitized by
Google
316 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
battlements, as Herodotus and Strabo inform us, withoat
toaching, jast as the rampart on the walls of Nineveh is said
to have afforded room for three chariots."* The gates leading
into the city were, according to Herodotus, Z.c., provided with
beautifully ornamented gateways; the posts, the two leaves
of the gates, and the thresholds, were of bronze. The pro-
phecy concludes, ver. 586, with some words from Hab. ii.
13, which are to be verified by the destruction of Babylon,
viz. that the nations which have built Babylon, and made it
great, have laboured in vain, and only wearied themselves.
Habakkuk probably does not give this truth as a quotation
from an older prophet, but rather declares it as an ordinance of
God, that those who build cities with blood, and strongholds
with unrighteousness, make nations toil to supply food for fire.
Jeremiah has made use of the passage as a suitable conclusion
to his prophecy, but made some unimportant alterations ; for
he has transposed the words ^ '13 and P'^ 'H?) and changed
^Sy*. into 'Syjl, that he may conclude his address with greater
emphasis. For, according to the arrangement here, O'BO
e'K"'13 still depends on ^yJ'l, and iSJf^l indicates the result of
this toil for the enslaved nations, — they only weary themselves
thereby. The genuineness of this reading is put beyond a
doubt by the repetition of ^BJ^l at the close of the epilogue in
ver. 64. What Habakkuk said generally of the undertakings
' For details as to the number of the walls, and statistics regarding them,
see Duncker, S. 858, Anm. 3, who is inclined to understand the notice of
Berosus regarding a triple wall as meaning that the walls of the river are
counted as the second, and those round the royal fortress as the third line
of circumvallation. J. Oppert, Ezped. en Mesop. i. p. 220 fi., has given a
thorough discussion of this question. By carefully comparing the accounts
of the ancient writers regarding the walls of Babylon, and those given in
the inscriptions, latdy discovered and deciphered, found on the buildings
of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar, with the vast extent of the long
mounds of rubbish on the places where the ruins are met with, he has
obtained this result, — that the city was surrounded by a strong double wall
with deep ditches, an outer and an inner enceinte, and that the outer or
large wall enclosed a space of 513 square kilometres, i.e. a piece of ground
as large as the department of the Seine, fifteen times the extent of the city
of Paris in the year 1859, seven times that of the same city in 1860, while
the second or inner wall enclosed an area of 290 square Ulometres, much
larger than the space occupied by London.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LI. 6^-64. 317
of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah applied specially to the fall of the
city of Babylon, because it was to exhibit its fulfilment most
plainly in that event.
Vers. 59-64. Epilogue. — Ver. 59. "The word which Jeremiah
the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Nerijah, the son of
Maaseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to
Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was
'quartermaster-general'" (Ger. ReisemarseluiU)} Seraiah the
son of Nerijah was, no doubt, a brother of Baruch the son of
Nerijah ; cf . xxxii. 12. nrwp "v^ does not mean " a peaceful
prince" (Luther), ["a quiet prince," English Version], but
" prince of the resting-place " (cf . Num. x. 33), i.e. the king's
" quartermaster-general." What Jeremiah commanded Seraiah,
or charged him with, does not follow till ver. 61 ; for the words
of ver. 60, " And Jeremiah wrote in a book all the' evil that
was to come on Babylon, [namely] all these words which are
written against Babylon" (in the preceding address, chap. 1.
and li.), form a parenthetic remark, inserted for the purpose of
explaining the charge that follows. This remark is attached
to the circumstantial clause at the end of ver. 59, after which
" the word which he commanded " is not resumed till ver. 61,
with the words, "and Jeremiah spake to Seraiah;" and the
charge itself is given in vers. 616-64 : " When thou comest to
Babylon, then see to it, and read all these words, and say, O
Jahveh, Thou hast spoken against this place, to destroy it, so
that there shall be no inhabitant in it, neither man nor beast,
but it shall be eternal desolations. And it shall be, when thou
hast finished reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to
it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates (ver. 64), and say,
Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again, because of
the evil that I bring upon her ; and they shall be weary."
* The Peshito renders riTOD "lfe> by " chief of the camp," evidently reading
ruriD- Gesenius, following in this line, thought that Seraiah held an
office in the Babylonian army similar to that of quartermaster-general.
It is evident, however, that he was rather an officer of the Jewish court in
attendance on the king. Maurer, who is followed by Hitzig, and here
by Keil, in his rendering " Reisemarschall," suggested the idea that he was a
functionary who took charge of the royal caravan when on the march, and
fixed the halting-place. — Te.
^
Digitized by
Google
318 THE PBOFHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
h^ IKia does not mean, " when thou shalt have got near
Babylon, so that thoa beholdest the city lying in its full extent
before thee" (Hitzig), but, according to the simple tenor of
the words, " when thou shalt have come into the city," The
former interpretation is based on the erroneous supposition that
Seraiah had not been able to read the prophecy in the city,
from fear of being called to account for this by the Babylonians.
But it is nowhere stated that he was to read it publicly to the
Babylonians themselves in an assembly of the people expressly
convened for this purpose, but merely that he is to read it, and
afterwards throw the book into the Euphrates. The reading
was not intended to warn the Babylonians of the destruction
threatened them, but was merely to be a proclamation of the
word of the Lord against Babylon, on the very spot, for the
purpose of connecting with it the symbolic action mentioned in
ver. 63 f. ffN^i does not belong to ^N33 (" when thou comest
to Babylon, and seest"), but introduces the apodosis, <Hhen see
to it, and read," i.e. keep it in your eye, in your mind, that you
read (cf. Gen. xx. 10) ; not, " seek a good opportunity for
reading" (Ewald). At the same time, Seraiah is to cry to
God that He has said He will bring this evil on Babylon, i.e.
as it were to remind God that the words of the prophecy are
His own words, which He has to fulfil. On the contents of
ver. 62, cf. I. 3, li. 26. After the reading is finished, he is to
bind the book to a stone, by means of which to sink it in
the Euphrates, uttering the words explanatory of this action,
"Thus shall Babylon sink," etc. This was to be done, not
for the purpose of destroying the book (which certainly took
place, but was not the object for which it was sunk), but in
order to symbolize the fulfilment of the prophecy against
Babylon. The attachment of the stone was not a precautionary
measure to prevent the writing from being picked up some-
where, and thus bringing the writer or the people of the
caravan into trouble (Hitzig), but was merely intended to
make sure that the book would sink down into the depths of
the Euphrates, and render it impossible that it should rise
again to the surface, thus indicating by symbol that Babylon
would not rise again. The words which Seraiah is to speak on
throwing the book into the Euphrates, contain, in nuce, the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U. 89-64., 319
substance of the prophecy. The prophet makes this still more
plain, by conclading the words he is likewise to utter with
)&^. as the last word of the prophecy. Luther has here well
rendered *1?J, "to weary," by "succumb" (erliegen). The
Babylonians form the subject of ^B)?J.^ The symbolic meaning
of this act is clear; and from it, also, the meaning of the whole
charge to the prophet is not difficult to perceive. The sending
of the prophecy through Seraiah, with the command to read it
there, at the same time looking up to God, and then to sink
it in the Euphrates, was not intended as a testimony to the
inhabitants of Babylon of the certainty of their destruction,
but was meant to be a substantial proof for Israel that God the
Lord would, without fail, fulfil His word regarding the seventy
years' duration of Babylon's supremacy, and the fall of this
great kingdom which was to ensue. This testimony received
still greater significance from the circumstances under which it
was given. The journey of King Zedekiah to Babylon was, at
least in regard to its official purpose, an act of homage shown
by Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar, as the vassal of the king of
Babylon. This fact, which was deeply humiliating for Judab,
was made use of by Jeremiah, in the name of the Lord, for
the purpose of announcing and transmitting to Babylon, the
city that ruled the world, the decree which Jahveh, the God of
Israel, as King of heaven and earth, had formed concerning
the proud city, and which He would execute in His own time,
^ Mistaking the meaning of the repetition of the word IBJf^, Movers,
Hitzig, and Graf have thereon based various untenable conjectures. Movers
infers from the circumstance that the whole epilogue is spurious ; Hitzig
and Graf conclude from it that the closing words, " Thus far are the words
of Jeremiah," originally came after ver. 58, and that the epilogue, because
it does not at all admit of being separated from the great oracle against
Babylon, originally preceded the oracle beginning 1. 1, but was afterwards
placed at the end; moreover, that the transposer cut off from ver. 58 the
concluding remark, " Thus far," etc., and put it at the end of the epilogue
(ver. 64), but, at the same time, also transferred ^BJJM, in order to show that
the words, i.e. the prophecies of Jeremiah, strictly speaking, extend only
thus far. This intimation is, indeed, quite superfluous, for it never could
occur to the mind of any intelligent reader that the epilogue, vers. 59-64,
was an integral portion of the prophecy itself. And there would be no
meaning in placing the epilogue before L 1.
Digitized by
Google
320 THE FBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
that He might confirm the hope of the godly ones among H!s<
people in the deliverance of Israel from Babylon.
The statement, " Thus far are the words of Jeremiah," is an
addition made by the editor of the prophecies. From these
words, it follows that chap. lii. does not belong to these
prophecies, but forms a historical appendix to them.
Finally, if any question be asked regarding the fulfilment of
the prophecy against Babylon, we must keep in mind these two
points : 1. The prophecy, as is shown both by its title and its
contents, is not merely directed against the city of Babylon,
but also against the land of the Chaldeans. It therefore pro-
claims generally the devastation and destruction of the Chaldean
kingdom, or the fall of the Babylonian empire ; and the cap-
tnre and destruction of Babylon, the capital, receive special
prominence only in so far as the world-wide rule of Babylon
fell with the capital, and the supremacy of the Chaldeans over
the nations came to an end. 2. In addition to this historical
side, the prophecy has an ideal background, which certainly is
never very prominent, but nevertheless is always more or less
to be discovered. Here Babylon, as the then mistress of the
world, is the representative of the God-opposing influences on
the earth, which always attempt to suppress and destroy the
kingdom of God. The fulfilment of the historical side of this
prophecy began with the capture of Babylon by the united
forces of the Medes and Persians under the leadership of
Cyrus, and with the dissolution of the Chaldean empire,
brought about through that event. By this means, too, the
people of Israel were delivered from the Babylonish captivity,
while Cyrus gave them permission to return to their native
land and rebuild the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem; 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 22 f., Ezra i. 1 S. But Babylon was not destroyed when
thus taken, and according to Herodotus, iii. 159, even the walls
of the city remained uninjured, while, according to a notice of
Berosus in Josephus, contra Ap. i. 19, Cyrus is said to have
given orders for the pulling down of the outer wall. Cyrus
appointed Babylon, after Susa and Ecbatana, the third city in
the kingdom, and the winter residence of the Persian kings
(according to Xenophon, Cyrop. viii. 6. 22). Darius Hystaspes,
who was obliged to take the city a second time, in consequence
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U. 89-64. 321
of its revolt in the year 518 B.C., was the first who caused the
walls to be lowered in height ; these were diminished to 50 ells
[royal cubits— about 85 feet], and the gates were torn away
(Herodotus, iii. 158 f.). Xerxes spoiled the city of the golden
image of Belns (Herodot. i. 183), and caused the temple of Belus
to be destroyed (Arrian, vii. 17. 2). Alexander the Great had
intended not merely to rebuild the sanctuary of Belus, but also
to make the city the capital of his empire ; but he was prevented
by his early death from carrying out this plan. The decay of
Babylon properly began when Seleucus Nicator built Seleucia,
on the Tigris, only 300 stadia distant. " Babylon" says Pliny,
vi. 30, "ad aolUudinem rediit, exhausta vieinitate Seleucia." And
Strabo (bom 60 B.C.) says that, even in his time, the city was
a complete wilderness, to which he applies the utterance of a
poet : eprjfiia- /leyaXr) iarlv ^ /ieyaXt) ttcXk (xvi. 1. 5). This
decay was accelerated under the rule of the Parthians, so that,
within a short time, only a small space within the walls was
inhabited, while the rest was used as fields (Diodorus Siculus,
ii. 9 ; Curtius, v. 4. 27). According to the statements of Jerome
and Theodoret, there were still living at Babylon, centuries
afterwards, a pretty considerable number of Jews ; but Jerome
(ad Jerem. 51) was informed by a Persian monk that these
ruins stood in the midst of a hunting district of the Persian
kings. The notices of later writers, especially of modem
travellers, have been collected by Eitter, Erdkunde, xi. S. 865 f.;
and the latest investigations among the ruins are described in
his Expidition scient. en M^sopotamie, i. pp. 135-254 (Paris,
1863).^ John the evangelist has taken the ideal elements of
this prophecy into' his apocalyptic description of the great city
of Babylon (Rev. xvi. ff.), whose fall is not to begin till the
kingdom of God is completed in glory through the return of
our Lord.
^ Fresh interest in Babylonian archseology haa of late been awakened,
especially in this country, by Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum,
who has collected and deciphered about eighty fragments of some tablets
that had been brought from Assyria, and that give an account of the '
deluge different in some respects from the Mosaic one. The proprietors of
the Daily Telegraph have also shown much public spirit in sending out, at
their own cost, an expedition to Assyria, for furth^ investigation of the
mins there. — Te.
VOL. II. X
Digitized by
Google
822 THE FBOPHBCIES OF JEBEMIAH.
APPENDIX.
CHAP. LII. — HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OP THE CAPTURE AND
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, THE FATE OF ZEDEKIAH
AND THE PEOPLE, AND THE LIBERATION OF JEHOIACHIN
FROM IMPRISONMENT.
By the closing formula, li. 64, the contents of chap. lii. are
separated from, and marked as an appendix to, the prophecies
of Jeremiah ; yet nothing is said regarding the author of this
chapter. However, if we keep in mind the nature of its con-
tents, then, from the very fact that it gives an account of the
liberation of King Jehoiachiu from prison, and of his elevation
to royal honours, it necessarily follows that it cannot have been
composed by Jeremiah, because the prophet can scarcely have
lived till this occurred, which was less than 561 B.C. It must
further be considered that the contents of this chapter also
agree, almost word for word, with 2 Kings xziv. 18-25, 30 ;
moreover, the introductory notice regarding Zedekiah's ascen-
sion of the throne, his age, and the character of his rule, given
vers. 1-3, was unnecessary for the object of this appendix. The
same holds true of the notice regarding the liberation of
Jehoiachin from prison, at the close, vers. 31-34, which does
not seem to stand in any close and intimate connection with the
history of the destruction of Jerusalem and the fate of Zede^
kiah, while both of these events are closely connected with the
plan and aim of the Books of Kings, and are written quite in
their spirit. On these grounds, most expositors, both ancient
and modern, assume that this historical appendix to the> pro-
phecies of Jeremiah has been derived from the Second Book of
Kings. But weighty reasons oppose this assumption. (1.) The
very fact that the name of the king of Babylon is throughout
written Nebmliadrezzar makes it unlikely that the narrative was
derived from 2 Kings xxiv. 18 S., because the name is there
constantly written Nebuchadnezzar, — a form which also occurs
in Jeremiah, though not often (see vol. i. p. 397, note). (2.)
This chapter contains notices which are not found in 2 Kings
xxiv. and xxv. Thus, it is stated, in ver. 10, that Nebuchad-
rezzar also caused all the princes of Judah to be executed at
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LIL 823
Riblafa, and Kiog Zedekiab, who had been carried to Babylon,
to be pat In prison till his death ; in vers. 19-23 we find a whole
series of special remarks as to the vessels of the temple and the
ornaments of the brazen pillars, — observations which are not
met with either In 2 Kings xxv,, or in the description of the
building of the temple, 1 Kings vii. We further find, in vers.
28-30, a notice regarding three deportations of the people,
giving the numbers, not roundly, but precisely, as they are
nowhere else given in the historical books of the Old Testament.
Were this statement the only additional detail given by this
chapter, as compared with 2 Kings zxv., one might perhaps
suppose that it was an Interpolation from another source, added
to the rest of the account that has been derived from 2 Kiaga
xxlv. and xxv.; but this opinion, which even In itself is not very
probable, is excluded by the other additions found In ver. 10
and in 19-23. If the author of this chapter had been able to
derive, and had actually derived, these additional particulars
from a historical source, treating of the later times of the king-
dom of Judah, which has not come down to us, and which con-
tained more than our canonical books of Kings and Chronicles,
he would no doubt have also found there the account of the
three deportations, and taken it from that source. We must
therefore assume that this chapter, and 2 Kings xxiv. 18 on to
xxv. 30, have both a common origin. In which the fall of the
kingdom of Judah was more fully described than in the histori-
cal books of the canon ; in this way, the remarkable coincidence,
almost word for word, betwene the narrative portions which are
common to the two extracts, is accounted for quite as easily as
theidifferences that have just been mentioned. From a (!ritical
examination of the state of both texts now before us, no certain
conclusions can be drawn regarding their mutual relation. The
differences of this kind arise partly from errors and omissions
by later copyists, partly also from the circumstance that the
epitomizers have not throughout kept rigorously to the words
of their source. Regarding the author of the original written
document, we cannot even make any supposition that could
pretend to anything like probability. Barnch, as the editor of
the collection of Jeremiah's prophecies, may have made the
extract from it which we find In this chapter. We have already,
Digitized by
Google
324 THE PROPHECIES OF JEREMIAH.
In substance, given the exposition while treating of 2 Kings
xxiv. 18 ff., so that we may here content ourselves with briefly
putting together the deviations of this text from the other, and
explaining its peculiarities.
Vers. 1-11. Fate of King Zedekiah at the taking of Jeru-
salem ; cf . 2 Kings xxiv. 18, xxv. 7, and Jer. xxxix. 1-7. The
statements regarding Zedekiah's ascension and his government,
vers. 1-3, agree word for word with 2 Elings xxiv. 18-20, even
to the variation i3'5>B>n, ver. 3, for Ssbfn (Kings). The length
of the siege of Jerusalem, vers. 4- 7a, and the flight, capture,
and condemnation of King Zedekiah and the princes of Judafa,
vers. 7&-11, not only agrees with 2 Kings xxv. 1-7, but also with
Jer. xxxix. 1-7, where it is merely the forcible entrance into
the city by the Chaldeans that receives special detail ; see on
xxxix. 3. The variation 13n5, vet 4, instead of 105 (2 Kings
xxv. 1), does not affect the sense. As to the account given of
the flight, capture, and condemnation of the king, both chap,
xxxix. and 2 Kings xxv. omit the notices given in ver. 10, *' and
also all the princes of Judah he caused to be slain (i.e. executed)
at Biblah," and in ver. 11, ''and he put him in the prison-house
till the day of his death." rti^Bri'D'a has been rendered olxla
/ivXlmK by the LXX. ; on this fact Hitzig bases the opinion
that the Hebrew words signify " the house of punishment," or
" the house of correction," in which Zedekiah was obliged to
tarn the mill like other culprits, and as Samson was once obliged
to do (Jndg. xvi. 21). But this meaning of the words cannot
be substantiated. rni?B means " oversight, mustering, or visita-
tion (Heimsuchung), or vengeance," e.g. Isa. x. 3, but not pun-
ishment (Strafe), and* the plural, "watches" (Ezek. ix. 1) and
"custody," Ezek. xliv. 11; hence the egression used here
signifies " the house of custody," or " the house of the watches."
The translation of the LXX. can decide nothing against this,
because their interpretation is based npon traditions which are
themselves unfounded. Begarding this, Ewald well remarks
{History of the People of Israel, iii. p. 748 of 2d ed.): "That
Zedekiah must have laboured at the mill, as is mentioned in
later chronicles (see Aug. Mai, Scriptorum veterum nova colleelio,
t. i. P. 2, p. 6 ; cf. Chron. Sam. chap, xlv.), is probably a mere
inference from Lam. v. 13."
V
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. UL 12-28. * 325
Vers. 12-23. The destruction of Jerusalem and of the
temple, and the carrying away of the people, which are only
very summarily stated in chap, xxxix. 8-10, are here related in
complete accordance with the account given in 2 Kings xxv.
8-17. The deviations for the most part originated through the
freedom exercised by the epitomizer in his work, or only when
mistakes were made by later copyists. The text before us has
some amplifications (especially the notices regarding the orna-
ments of the brazen pillars, ver. 23) which are found nowhere
else in the Old Testament. The difference in date between
ver. 12 (" on the tenth of the month") and the passage in Kings
(" on the seventh of the month") has arisen through one number ■
having been mistaken for another in copying ; it cannot now
be decided which b correct ; see on 2 Kings xxv. 18. As to
Nebuzaradan, see on zxxix. 13. Instead of ''ia> 123P, is found
135? in 2 Kings xxv. 8, which certainly is a simpler reading, but
one having less appearance of being the original. The only
strange point is the want of the relative i^K in plain prose
before loy, which is probably to be pointed IDV. D^i'B'lTa, in-
stead of Q)?B'l"i'. (Kings), is a pregnant expression for " he came
into Jerusalem." — Ver. 14. From the expression riiD^n"73"nN, as
given in ver. 14, "all" is omitted in Kings, as beipg not indis-
pensable for the meaning. — Ver. 15. The first words, " And of
the poor of the people," are wanting in Kings, and have been
brought here, through an error on the part of the copyist, from
the beginning of the next verse ; for " the poor of the people "
are first treated of in ver. 16, where it is stated that Nebuzar-
adan left them in the land, while ver. 15 treats of those who
were carried away to Babylon. The word fi^^<^, instead of
fionn (Kings), seems to have originated simply through the
exchange of K for n^ and to mean, like the other, the multitude
of people. Hitzig and Graf are of opinion that I^QM here, as in
Prov. viii. 30, means workmaster or artificer, and that )^>3Kn
denotes the same persons (collectively) who are designated Ehnn
■^i'??']! in xxiv. 1, xxix. 2, and 2 Kings xxiv. 14. But this view
is opposed by the parallel passage, xxxix. 9, where the whole of
this verse occurs, and B^^Kf?? OVn W stands instead of W
liDKn. « The rest of the people of Jerusalem " are divided, by
HKi — DM, into those who went over to the Chaldeans, and the
Digitized by
Google
326 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEHIAH.
rest of the people who wei^ taken prisoners by the Chaldeans
at the capture of the city. The statement that both of these
two classes of the population of Jerusalem were carried away
to Babylon is so far limited by the further declaration, in ver.
16, that Nebuzaradan did not carry away every one, without
exception, but let a portion of the humbler inhabitants of the
country, who had no property, remain in the land, as vine-
dressers and husbandmen, that they might till the land. In-
stead of psn ni?np there occurs in Kings HRn n^o, and in
Jer. xxxix. 10, more distinctly, B''nD ^V? Py " some of the
people, the humbler ones," who had no property of their own.
'"■Hj P^' '^^''^» is an abstract noun, "poverty;" the singular is
used collectively, hence the plural is here used to supply the
deficiency. For D*3J<, from aJ', to plough, there is found instead,
in 2 Kings xxv. 12, Kethib Q''3|, from 3^3, with the same mean-
ing. — ^Vers. 17-23. The carrying away of the vessels of the
temple is more fully stated than in 2 Kings xxv. 13-17. The
large brazen articles, the two pillars at the porch (cf. 1 Kings
vii. 15 ff.), the bases (1 Kings vii. 27 S,), and the brazen sea
(1 Kings vii. 23 ff.), which were too vast in their proportions to
be easily carried away to Babylon, were broken to pieces by the
Chaldeans, who carried off the brass of which they were made.
JVJ? "le^K is more correct than n^3 IB'K. (Kings), and " all their
brass" is more precise than simply " their brass" (Kings). In
the enumeration of the smaller brazen vessels used for the
temple service, ver. 18, there is omitted, in 2 Kings, nlpnTeriTiKI,
" and the bowls" (used in sacrifice) ; this omission is perhaps
due merely to an error in transcription. The enumeration of
the gold and silver vessels in ver. 19 has been much more
abbreviated in 2 Kings xxv. 15, where only "the fire-pans and
the bowls " are mentioned, while in the text here, besides these
there are named " the basons," then " the pots (Eng. vers, cal-
drons), and the candlesticks, and the pans (Eng. vers, spoons),
and the cups." For particulars regarding these different
vessels, see on 1 Kings vii. 40, 45, 50. In ver. 20, reference
is made to the fact that the mass of metal in the vessels that
were carried away was without weight. The same is stated in
2 Kings xxv. 16, where, however, there is no mention of the
twelve brazen bulls ; while in the text of Jeremiah, nnn ib^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LII. 24-30. 327
rriJbsn is faulty, and we must read Instead, rtibtsni \<nnn "lE'N.
The assertion of Graf, in his commentary on this verse, and of
Thenius on 2 Kings xxv. 16, — that the notice regarding the
twelve brazen bulls is incorrect, because these were then no
longer in Jerusalem (xxvii. 19), but had previously been re-
moved by Ahaz from under the brazen sea for Tiglath-pileser,
— we have already, under 2 Kings xvi. 17, shown to be erro-
neous. The apposition of n?KPi a'pin-TS to DFiK'n?? explains the
reference of the suffix. In vers. 21-23, the narrator, in order
to call attention to the amount of art exhibited on the vessels
destroyed by the Chaldeans, gives a brief description of the
brazen- pillars with their capitals. This description is much
shortened in 2 Kings xxv. 17, and contains notices completing
that which is given of these works of art in 1 Kings vii. For
details, see the passage referred to.
Vers. 24-27. Tha account given regarding the arrest of the
chief officers of the temple and of the city, and concerning their
transportation to Biblah, where Nebuchadnezzar caused them
to be executed, agrees with 2 Kings xxv. 18-21, except in
some unimportant variations, which, however, do not alter the
sense; the explanation has been already given in the commentary
on that passage. In 2 Kings xxv., the account of the appoint-
ment of Gedaliah as the governor of Jadah, together with that
of his assassination by Ishmael, which follows the narrative
just referred to, is here omitted, because the matter has been
already more fully stated in the passage chap. xl. 7 on to xliii.
7, and had no close connection with the object of the present
chapter. Instead of this, there follows here, in vers. 28-30 (as
a continuation of the remark made, ver. 27, " Thus was Judah
carried away captive out of his own land "), a calculation of the
number of the Jews taken to Babylon at the three deportations:
in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, 3023 Jews; iii the
eighteenth year, 832 souls from Jerusalem ; and in the twenty-
third year, 745 souls, — in all, 4600 persons. The correctness
of th^se data is vouched for by the exactness of the separate
numbers, and the agreement of the sum with the individual
items. In other respects, however, they present various diffi-
culties. There is, first^ the dironological discrepancy that the
second deportation is here placed in the eighteenth year of
Digitized by
Google
328 THE PROPHECIES OF JEBEMIAH.
Nebuchadnezzar, in contradiction with ver. 12, according to
which, the deportation after the taking of Jerusalem occurred
in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar; and 832 souls
could not well be carried out of Jerusalem during the siege.
This difference can be settled only by assuming that this list
of deporfations was derived from another source than the pre-
ceding notice regarding the destruction of Jerusalem, in which
the years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign were reckoned in some
other way than elsewhere in Jeremiah and in the books of
Kings, probably from the date of the actual commencement
of his reign, which followed a year after he first appeared in
Judah, from which his reign is dated elsewhere ; see on Dan.
i. 1 (p. 59 ff.). According to this mode of computation, the
seventh year would correspond to the eighth of the common
reckoning, and be the year in which Jehoiachin was carried
away to Babylon, tojgether with a large number of the people.
But this does not agree with 3023, which is given as the num-
ber of those who were carried away ; for, at that time, accord-
ing to 2 Kings xxiv. 14, 16, as many as 10,000 Jews, or,
according to another view of these verses, even 18,000, were
carried away to Babylon. This difference does not permit of
being explained in any way. Ewald (History of the People of
Israel, iii. p. 738) accordingly assumes that in ver. 28, after
i)4f, the word nibv has been omitted, as in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9,
where the age of Jehoiachin is given ; hence he thinks that,
instead of " in the seventh," we must read " in the seventeenth
year of Nebuchadnezzar." On such a view, the reference
would be to a deportation which took place under Zedekiah,
a year before the capture, or during the time of the siege of
Jerusalem, and that, too, out of the country districts of Judah
in contrast with Jerusalem, ver. 29. This supposition is
favoured not merely by the small number of those who are
said to have been carried away, but also by the context of the
narrative, inasmuch as, in what precedes, it is only the capture
of Jerusalein and the deportation of the people in Zedekiah's
time that is treated of. Nagelsbach has objected to this sup-
position, that it was not likely the great mass of the people
would be carried away during the war, at a time when the
approach of the Egyptian army (cf. xxxvii. 5) was an object of
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LII. 24-80. 329
dread. Bat the objection does not weaken the supposition, since
the former rests on two presuppositions that are quite erroneous:
viz., first, that the deportation took place before the defeat of
the auxiliary army from Egypt, whereas it may have followed
that event ; and secondly, that the Chaldeans, by keeping the
hostile Jews in the country, might have been able to get some
assistance against the Egyptian army, whereas, by removing
the hostile population of Judah,-they would but diminish the
number of the enemies with which they had to contend. We
therefore regard this conjecture as highly probable, because it
is the means of settling all difficulties, and because we can
thereby account for the small number of those who were car-
ried away in the deportations daring and after the destruction
of Jerusalem. Regarding the third deportation, which was
effected by Nebuzaradan (ver. 30) in the twenty-third, or,
according to another reckoning, in the twenty-fourth year of
Nebuchadnezzar, m. in the fifth year after the destruction of
Jerusalem, we have no other information ; for the statement
of Josephas, .^ntt. x. 9. 7, that Nebuchadnezzar made war
upon the Ammonites and Moabites in that year, has not been
placed beyond a doabt, and is probably a mere inference from
this verse, taken in connection with the prophecies in chap,
xlviii. and xlix. Yet there is nothing improbable in the state-
ment, viewed by itself. For it must be borne in mind that,
after the appointment of Gedaliah as governor, and the de-
parture of the Chaldean hosts, many Jews, who bad fled during
the war, returned into the country. Hence, in spite of the fact
that, after the murder of Gedaliah, a multitude of Jews, fear-
ing the vengeance of the Chaldeans, fled to Egypt, many'may
have still remained in the country ; and many other fugitives
may not have returned till afterwards, and given occasion to the
Chaldeans for removing other 745 disturbers of the peace to
Babylon, four or five years after Jerosalem had been laid in
ashes. This deportation may have taken place on the occasion
of the subjugation of the Moabites, Ammonites, and Idumeans,
or daring the war with the Phoenicians, possibly because they
had rendered assistance to these nations against the Chaldeans.
These verses thus contain nothing to justify the assumption of
M. von Niebuhr {Gesch. Asayr. und Babels^ S. 58, note) and
Digitized by
Google
330 THE PBOPHECIES OF JEBEMUH.
Nagelsbach, that they are a gloss. The paucity of those
who were carried away is not to be attributed to a desire on
the part of the writer of this inserted portion to represent the
calamity as not so very terrible after all ; nor is it due to the
substitution of the number of the Levites for that of the entire
people, — two wholly arbitrary assumptions : it is completely ex-
plained by a consideration of the historical circumstances. The
best of the population of Judah had already been carried away,
and Zedekiah and his counsellors must have said to themselves,
when they rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, that the latter
would not spare this time; thus they must have defended
themselves to the utmost, as is shown by the very fact that the
siege of Jerusalem lasted eighteen months. In this manner,
war, pestilence, and famine carried off a great number of the
population of Jerusalem ; so that, of men who were able-bodied
and fit for war, and who could be carried into exile, not more
than 4600 fell into the hands of the Chaldeans. During the
war, also, many had concealed themselves in inaccessible places,
while the lowest of the people were left behind in the country
to cultivate the fields. Still more strange might appear the
circumstance that the sum-total of those who were carried away
to Babylon, viz. 10,000 with Jehoiachin, and 4600 under
Zedekiah, — 14,600 in all, — is evidently disproportionate to the
number of those who returned to Jerusalem and Judah
under Zerubbabel, which number is given in Ezra ii. 64 at
42,360, exclusive of men and maid servants. For this reason,
Graf is of opinion that still later deportations may have taken
place, of which no mention is made anywhere. This assump-
tion, however, has little probability. On the other hand, we
must" consider these points : (1.) In the accounts given of those
who were carried away, only full-grown and independent per-
sons of the male sex are reckoned, while, along with fathers,
both their wives and their children went into exile. (2.) Even
so early as the first capture of Jerusalem in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, a number of prisoners of war, perhaps not incon-
siderable, came to Babylon ; these might unite with the thou-
sands of their brethren who were carried thither at a later
period. (3.) When the exiles had settled down in Babylon,
and there found not only a means of livelihood, but 6ven in
%
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. LIL 81-34. 331
many instances, as is clear from several intimations, attained to
opulence as citizens, many, even of those who had been left in
the country, may have gone to Babylon, in the hope of finding
there greater prosperity than in Judah, now laid waste and
depopulated by war. (4.) From the time when the 10,000
were carried away with Jehoiachin, in the year 599 B.C., till
the return under Zerubbabel, 536 B.C., 63 years, i.e. nearly two
generations, had passed, during which the exiles might largely
increase in numbers. If we take all these elements into con-
sideration, then,- in the simple fact that the number of those
who returned amounts to nearly three times the numbers of
those given as having been carried away under Jehoiachin and
Zedekiah, we cannot find such a difficulty as entitles us to
doubt the correctness of the numbers handed down to us.
Vers. 31-34. The closing portion of this chapter, viz. the
notice regarding the liberation of Jehoiachin from imprison-
ment, and his elevation to royal honours by Evil-merodach
after Nebuchadnezzar's death, substantially agrees with the
account given of that event in 2 Kings xxv. 27-30. The dif-
ference of date, " on the twenty-fifth of the month " (ver. 31),
and " on the twenty-seventh of the month " in 2 Kings, has
arisen through the entrance of a clerical error into one text or
the other. The few remaining variations of the two texts have
DO influence on the meaning. As to the fact itself, and its
importance for the people languishing in exile, we may refer
to the explanation given at 2 Kings xxv. 27 ff.
.<
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by VjOOQIC
THE
LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
S8S
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by
Google
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH.
INTEODUCTION.
§ 1. THE NAME, CONTENTS, AND AEEANGEMENT OP
THE BOOK.
The Name. — The five Lamentations composed on the fall
of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, which have received
their position in the canon of the Old Testament among the
Hagiographa, have for their heading, in Hebrew hss. and in
printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, the word na'K ("alas!
how . . ."), which forms the characteristic initial word of three
of these pieces (i. 1, ii. 1, and iv. 1). The Rabbis name the
collection ni^i? (Lamentations), from the nature of its contents :
80 in the Talmud (Tract. Baha Bathra, f. 145); cf. Jerome
in the Frol. galeat, and in the prologue to his translation:
*'incipiunt Threni, ue. lamentationeSf quae Cynoth hebraice tn-
acribuntur." With this agree the designations Ofrtjvoi (LXX.),
and Threni or LamentationeSf also Lamenta in the Vulgate and
among the Latin writers.
Contents. — The ancient custom of composing and singing
lamentations over deceased friends (of which we find proof in
the elegies of David on Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sam. i. 1 7 fF.,
and on Abner, 2 Sam. iii. 33 ff., and in the notice given in
2 Cbron. xxxv. 25) was even in early times extended so as to
apply to the general calamities that befell countries and cities ;
hence the prophets often speak of taking up lamentations over
the fall of nations, countries, and cities ; cf. Amos v. 1, Jer.
vii. 29, ix. 9, 17 f., Ezek. xix. 1, xxvi. 17, xxvii. 2, etc. The
five lamentations of the book now before us all refer to the
835
r
Digitized by
Google
336 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
destruction of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of Jadah by the
Chaldeans ; in them are deplored the unutterable misery that
has befallen the covenant people in this catastrophe, and the
disgrace which the fallen daughter of Zion has thereby suffered.
This subject is treated of in the five poems from different points
of view. In the first, the lamentation is chiefly made over the
carrying away of the people into captivity, the desolation of
Zion, the acts of oppression, the plundering and the starvation
connected with the taking of Jerusalem, the scoffing and con-
tempt shown by the enemy, and the helpless and comfortless
condition of the city, now fallen so low. In the second, the
destruction of Jerusalem and Judah is set forth as an act of
God's wrath against the sins of the people, the impotency of
human comfort in the midst of the terrible calamity is shown,
and the people are exhorted to seek help from the Lord. In
the third, the deep spiritual sufferings of God's people in the
midst of the general distress form the subject of grievous com-
plaint, out of which the soul endeavours to rise, and to see the
compassion of the Lord, and the justice of His dealings on
earth generally, as well as in this visitation of judgment ; and
on this is founded the confident expectation of help. In the
fourth, the dreadful misery that has befallen Zion's citizens of
every class is represented as a punishment for the grievous
sins of the people and their leaders. And lastly, in the fifth,
the Lord is entreated to remove the disgrace from His people
and restore them to their former state of grace. According
to this view, one may readily perceive in these poems a well-
cogitated plan in the treatment of the material common to the
whole, and a distinct progress in the execution of this plan.
There is no foundation, on the other hand, for the opinion of
De Wette, that a gradation may be traced in the description
given of the condition of the city ; and the attempt of earlier
expositors (Horrer, Pareau, Jahn, etc.) to explain and apply
the contents of the different poems to different leading features
in the Chaldean catastrophe — such as the siege, the capture,
the destruction of the city and the temple — has entirely failed.
Ewald, again, assumes that the five poems were composed for
a time to be solemnly spent in sorrow and penitence, and that
in the five lamentations the prophet-\rriter presents a kind of
Digitized by
Google
lOTBODDCTION. 337
changing act (drama), making five different acts follow each
other progressively; and further, that it is only with the
changing series of these that the entire great act of real lamenta-
tion and divine sorrow concludes. But neither in the design
nor in the execution of these poems are any points to be found
which form a safe foundation for this assumption. Ewald is so
far correct, however, in his general remark, that the prophetic
composer sought to present to the community, in their deep
sorrow, words which were meant to direct the grieving heart to
the only source of true comfort ; and that he understood how
" to lead the deeply sorrowing ones imperceptibly to a proper
knowledge of themselves and of their own great guilt, and
thereby, in the first place, to true sorrow and sighing; that
he also knew how to resolve the wildest grief at last into true
prayer for divine retribution, and to change new strength into
rejoicing over the everlasting Messianic hope, and into the
most touching request for the divine compassion " (Die Diehter
det Alt. Bundet, 3 Ausg. i. 2, S. 322).
FoBH. — In order to give an air of continuity as well as of
exhaustive completeness to the lamentation, which constantly
assumes new figures and turns of thought, the poems, with the
exception of the last (chap, v.), are alphabetically arranged, and
in such a form that the first three consist of long stanzas,
each of three lines, which are for the most part further divided
about the middle by a csesura into two portions of unequal
length. These poems are so arranged in accordance with the,
letters of the alphabet, that in the first two, every verse of
three lines, and in the third, every line in the verse, begins with
the letters of the alphabet in their order. In this. last [third]
poem, moreover, all the letters of the alphabet occur thrice in
succession, for which reason the Masoretes have divided these
lines of the verses aa, if each formed a complete verse. In the
fourth poem, the verses, which are also arranged and marked
alphabetically, consist only of lines which are likewise divided
into two by a casura; in the fifth, the alphabetic arrange-
ment of the verses is departed from, and it is only in their
number that the verses of the poem are made like the letters of
the alphabet. This alphabetic arrangement of the verses is
exactly carried out in the four poems, but with the remarkable
VOL. II. Y
Digitized by
Google
338 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEUUH.
difference, that in the first only does the order of the letters
entirely agree with the traditional arrangement of the alphabet,
while, in the other three, the verse beginning with B stands
before that beginning with y- This deviation from the rule
does not admit of being explained by the assumption that the
verses in question were afterwards transposed in consequence
of an oversight on the part of the copyist, nor by the supposi-
tion that the order of the letters had not yet been absolutely
fixed. The former assumption, adopted by Kennicott, Jahn,
etc., is shown to be utterly incorrect, by the circumstance that
the supposed transmutation cannot be reconciled with the course
of thought in the ^oems; while the latter, which has been
maintained by C. B. Michaelis, Ewald, etc., is disproved by
the fact that no change has taken place in the order of the
letters in the Shemitic alphabets (cf. Sommer, Bibl. Abhandll.
i. S. 145 ; Gesenius, § 5, Rem. 2 ; Ewald, § 12, a) ; and other
alphabetic poems, such as Fs. cxi., cxii., cxix., and Prov. xxxi.
10-31, exactly preserve the common arrangement of the letters.
Still less does the irregularity in question permit of being
attributed to an oversight on the part of the composer (which is
Bertholdt's view), for the irregularity is repeated in three poems.
It is rather connected with another circumstance. For we find
in other alphabetic poems also, especially the older ones, many
deviations from the rule, which undeniably prove that the
composers bound themselves rigorously by the order of the
alphabet only so long as it fitted in to the course of thought
without any artificiality. Thus, for instance, in Ps. cxlv. the
Nun verse is wanting ; in Ps. xxxiv. the Vav verse ; while, at the
close, after n, there follows another verse with B. Just such
another closing verse is found in Ps. xxv., in which, besides,
the first two verses begin with tt, while 3 is wanting; two
verses, moreover, begin with T instead of p and T: in Ps.
xxxvii. y is replaced by V, which is again found after B in its
proper order. It is also to be considered that, in many of these
poems, the division of the verses into strophes is not continu-
ously and regularly carried out; e.g. in these same Lamentations,
i. 7 and ii. 19, verses of four lines occur among those with
three. Attempts have, indeed, been made to attribute these
irregularities to later revisers, who mistook the arrangement
Digitized by
Google
nJTBODOcnoN. 339
into strophes; bat the arguments adduced will not stand the
test ; see details in Havemick's Einl. iii. S. 51 ff.
If we gather all these elements together, we shall be obliged
to seek for the reason of most, if not all of these deviations
from the norm, in the free use made of such forms by the
Hebrew poets. Gerlach here objects thatj " in view of the loose
connection of thought in alphabetic poems generally, and iu
these Lamentations particularly, and considering the evident
dexterity with which the poet elsewhere uses the form, another
arrangement of the series would not have caused him any
difficulty." We reply that there is no want in these poems of
a careful arrangement of thought ; but that the skill of the poet,
in making use of this arrangement, was not always sufficient
to let him put his thoughts, corresponding to things, into the
alphabetic form, without using artificial means or forced con-
structions ; and that, in such cases, the form was rather sacri-
ficed to the thought, than rigorously maintained through the
adoption of forced and unnatural forms of expression.
Finally, the reason for the absence of the alphabetic arrange-
ment from the fifth poem is simply, that the lamentatioit there
resolves itself into a prayer, in which the careful consideration
indispensable for the carrying out of the alphabetic arrange-
ment must give place to the free and natural outcome of the,
feelings.
§ 2. THE AUTHOR, TIME OF COMPOSITION, AND POSITION IK
THE CANON.
AuTHOB. — In the Hebrew text no one is named as the
author of the Lamentations ; but an old tradition affirms that
the prophet Jeremiah composed them. Even so early as in the
Alexandrine version, we find prefixed to i. 1, the words, Kal e'^e-
vero fierh alj(jidK<0Tia6rivai rov 'lapa^X, xal 'lepovaaX^fi iprifuo-
Ofjvat, eKudicrev 'l€pefiia<} icKaUov, ical i6p^vT}<re rov dpfjvov tovtov
eVt 'Iepov<ra\ij/ji,, xal evjre. These words are also found in the
Vulgate ; only, instead of et dixit, there is the amplification, et
amaro animo suspirans et ejulans dixit. The Syriac is without
this notice ; but the Arabic exactly reproduces the words of the
LXX., and the Targum begins with the words, Dixit Jeremia»
Digitized by
Google
840 THE LAUBNTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
propheta et aacerdos magnus. After this, both in the Talmud
{Baba bathr, f. 15. 1) and by the Church Fathers (Origen in
Euseb. hist. eecl. iv. 25, Jerome in prolog, gal, etc.), as well as
the later theologians, the Jeremianic authorship was assumed
as certain. The learned but eccentric Hermann von der Hardt
was the first to call in question the Jeremianic composition of
the book, in a " Programm" published in 1712 at Helmstadt ;
he attributed the five poems to Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach,
Abednego, and King Jeboiachin (!). This doubt was resumed
at a later period by an unknown writer in the Tubingen 77ieoL
Quartalschr. 1819, part i. ; it was mentioned by Augusti
{Einl.), and further carried out by Oonz in BengeTs Arehiv, iv.
p. 161 f. and 422 ff. Kalkar was the next to question the
traditional belief, and urged against it the position of the book
among the C^uis, and the difference existing between the
Greek translation of the Lamentations and that of the prophe-
cies of Jeremiah ; these objections he held to be not incon-
siderable, yet not decisive. Then Ewald (Foet. Bueher des
A. B.\. S. 145, and in the third edition of the same book, i. 2,
S. 326 ; cf. BibL Jdhrbb. vii. S. 151 f ., and History of the People
of Israel, iv. p. 22) decidedly refused to ascribe the book to the
prophet, and rather attributed it to one of his pupils, Barnch
or some other ; in this opinion he is followed by Bunsen, as is
usual in questions regarding the criticism of the Old Testa-
ment. Finally, Nagelsbach (in Lange's series, see Clark's
For. Theol. Lib.), with the help of the Concordance, has pre-
pared a table of those words and forms of words found in the
Lamentations, but not occurring in the prophecies of Jeremiah ;
by this means he bas endeavoured to set forth the difference of
language in the two books, which he accepts as a decisive reason
for rejecting the Jeremianic authorship of the Lamentations.
And Thenius assures us that, " in consequence of pretty long
and conscientious examination, he has become convinced " that
chap. ii. and iv., judging from their contents and form, unde-
niably proceeded from Jeremiah ; while chap. i. and iii. were
composed by one who was left behind in the country, some time
after the destruction of Jerusalem, and shortly before the la^
deportation ; but chap. v. is from a man " who was probably
wandering about everywhere, as the leader of a band of nobleljs
^
Digitized by
Google
\
INTBODUCTION. 341
seeking a safe asylum, bat unwilling to attach themselves to
the caravan going to Egypt."
Schrader, in his late revision of De Wette's Introduction,
§ 339, has thus condensed the results of these critical investiga-
tions : In support of the old tradition, which mentions Jeremiah
as the author, " one might appeal to the afBnity in contents,
spirit, tone, and language (De W.). Nevertheless, this same
style of language, and the mode of representation, exhibit,
again, so much that is peculiar ; the artificiality of form, espe- '
cially in chap, i., iL, and iv., is so unlike Jeremiah's style ; the
absence of certain specific Jeremianic peculiarities, and the
contradiction between some expressions of the prophet and those
of the author of the Lamentations, is again so striking, that
one must characterize the authorship of Jeremiah as very im-
probable, if not quite impossible, especially since the points of
likeness to the language used by Jeremiah, on the one hand,
are sufiSciently accounted for in general by the fact that both
works were composed at the same time ; and on the other hand,
are nullified by other points of likeness to Ezekiel's style, which
show that use has already been made of his prophecies." Again ;
" The hypothesis of Thenius, that the poems are by different
authors, is refuted by the similarity in the fundamental cha-
racter of the poems, and in the character of the language."
We may therefore dispense with a special refutation of this
hypothesis, especially since it will be shown in the exposition
that the points which Thenius has brought forward in support
of his view are all founded on a wretchedly prosaic style of
interpretation, which fails to recognise the true nature of poetry,
and regards mere poetic figures as actual history. Of the con-
siderations, however, which Schrader has adduced against the '
Jeremianic authorship, the last two that are mentioned would,
of course, have decided influence, if there were any real foun-
dation for them, viz. the contradiction between some expressions
of Jeremiah and those of the author of the Lamentations.
But they have no foundation in fact.
The only instance of a contradiction is said to exist between
V. 7 and Jer. xxxi. 29, 30. It is quoted by Schrader, who
• refers to Noldeke, die aUtest. Lilerat. S. 146. But the expression,
" Our fathers have sinned, they are no more, we bear their
/^
Digitized by
Google
342 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
iniqaities" (v. 7), does not stand in contradiction to what is said
in Jer. xxxix. 29 f. against the current proverb, " The fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth have become
blunt," viz. that in the future, after the restoration of Israel,
" every one shall die for his own iniquity, and the teeth of
every one who eats sour grapes shall become blunt." One
statement would contradict the other only if the latter meant
that those who bear the punishment were guiltless, or thought
themselves such. But how far this thought was from the mind
of the suppliant in v. 7, is shown by what he says in ver. 16 :
" Woe unto us, for we have sinned." According to these
words, those in ver. 7 can only mean, " We atone not merely
for our own sins, but also the sins of our fathers," or, '< The sins
of our fathers as well as our own are visited on as." This
confession accords with Scripture (cf. Ex. xx. 5, Jer. xvi.
11, etc.), and is radically different from the proverb, " The
fathers have eaten sour grapes," etc., which was constantly in
the mouth of those who considered themselves innocent, and
who thereby perverted the great truth, that God visits the sins
of the fathers upon the children who hate Him, into the false
statement, that innocent children must atone for the sins of
their fathers. On this, cf. also the exposition of v. 7. But
when Schrader, following Noldeke, further remarks, " that
Jeremiah would hardly have said nothing whatever about God's
having foretold all this suffering through him" there lies at
the foundation of this remark the preposterous notion, that
Jeremiah ought to have brought himself prominently forward
in the Lamentations (supposing him to have written them), as
one who ought not to suffer the evil under which the people were
groaning. Such gross Felagianism was foreign to the prophet
Jeremiah. No one need speak, therefore, of a contradiction
between the Lamentations and the prophecies of Jeremiah.
As little proof is there for the assertion that the author of the
Lamentations made use of the prophecies of Ezekiel. Nagels-
bach and Schrader, in support of this allegation, have adduced
only ii. 14, compared with Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 5 f. ; and ii. 15,
compared with Ezek. xxvii. 3, xxviii. 12. Nagelsbach says:
« The words, ^ri) K)B' ?i^ m tij^PM, in ii. 14, are no doubt a
quotation from Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15,
Digitized by
Google
MTEODUCTION. 313
23, xa. 28, 34, xxli. 28. For it is only in tbese passages,
and nowhere else in the Old Testament, that the expression ^rn
«1B> occurs, and in combination with /Sn. Moreover, *B' ^T?r}
in ii. 15, is an expression decidedly peculiar to Ezekiel, for it
occurs only in Ezek. zxvii. 3 (cf. xxvjii. 12), and nowhere else."
But the three expressions of these two passages form really too
weak a proof that the author of the Lamentations made use of
the prophecies of Ezekiel. Of course, as regards the mere form
of the words, it is true that the expression 'B' I???, " she who i^
perfect in beauty," is found, besides Lam. ii. 15, only in Ezek.
xxvii. 3, where the prophet says of Tyre, " Thou sayest, I am
perfect in beauty," and in Ezek. xxviii. 12, where it is said of
the king of Tyre, "Thou art . . . ■•?' Ws;" but the thing occurs
also in Ps. 1. 2, with the unimportant change in the form of the
words 'B' ??3D, " perfection of beauty," where Zion is so desig-
nated. Now, if we not merely gather out of the Concordance
the expressions of like import, but also keep in view the idea pre-
sented in ii. 15, " Is this the city n??"^?^ ^^ '?' "H? ito*^*?'?"
and at die same time consider that the poet says this of Jeru-
salem, there cannot be the least doubt that he did not take these
epithets, which are applied to Jerusalem, from Ezekiel, who
used them to designate Tyre, but that he had Ps. I. 2 in view,
just as the other epithet^ " a joy of the whole earth," points to Ps.
xlviii. 3. Only on the basis of these passages in the Psalms could
he employ the expression 'ID'*'?'? " ''^hich they call." Or are we
to believe that the word -"yS, nWa was originally unknown to the
author of the Lamentations, and that he first became acquainted
with it through Ezekiel ? Nor, again, can we say that the words
taken by Nagelsbach out of ii. 14 are " undoubtedly a quotation
from Ezekiel," because they do not occur in this way in any of
the passages cited from Ezekiel. All that we can found on this
assertion is, that in the prophecies of Jeremiah neither K1^ ntri
nor the word-form ?sn occurs; while Ezekiel not only uses
KlB' |itn, xii. 14, WB? ntn, and V)f ntno, as synonymous with
sic' 13^, K)» DD^, and 3n ntn (xiii. 6-9J 23), but also says of the
false prophets, xiii. 9-11, " They build a wall, and plaster it over
with lime" (^sn Sm D'no, xiii. 10, cf. vers. 14, 15, 18). These
same false prophets are also called, in ver. 11, ^sn ^n^, " those
who plaster with lime." But Ezekiel uses the word ?Bn only in
Digitized by
Google
344 THE' UMEMTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
the meaning of " lime," while the writer of these Lamentations
employs it in the metaphorical sense, " absurdity, nonsense," in
the same way as Jeremiah, xxiii. 13, uses fij^ri, " absurdity," of
the prophets of Samaria. Now, jast as Jeremiah has hot taken
n7&n from Ezekiel, where it does not occur at all (but only in
Job i. 22, xxiv. 12), so there is as little likelihood in the opinion
that the word '>B>J, in Lam. ii. 14, has been derived from Ezekiel,
because Job vi. 6 shows that it was far from rarely used by the
Hebrews. Nor does the non-occurrence of KlB* ntn in Jeremiah
afford any tenable ground for the opinion that the expression,
as found in Lam. ii. 14, was taken from Ezekiel. The idea
contained in ntn was not unknown to Jeremiah ; for he speaks,
xiv, 14, of "i^B' jitn, and in xxiii. 16 of Da?® titn, referring to the
false prophets, whose doings he characterizes as ^5^; cf. vi.
13, viii. 10, xiv. 14, xxiii. 25 f., 32, xxvii. 10, 15, xxviii. 16,
xxix. 9, 23, 31. Further, if we consult only the text of the
Bible instead of the Concordance, and ponder the connection of
thought in the separate passages, we can easily perceive why,
instead of l^B' (I^tn) ntn, which is so freqdent in Jeremiah, there
is found in 'Lami ii.' 14, W?' mn and WE' niK&o njn. In the
addresses in which Jeremiah warns the people of the lying
conduct of the false prophets, who spoke merely out of their
own heart, i^E' was the most suitable expression ; in Lam. ii.
14, on the contrary, where complaint is made that the pro-
phecies of their prophets afford no comfort to the people in
their present distress, Kl^ was certainly the most appropriate
word which the composer could select, even without a knowledge
of Ezekiel. There can be no question, then, regarding a quota-
tion from that prophet. But even though it were allowed that
ii. 14 implied an actual acquaintance with chap. xii. and xiii. of
Ezekiel, still, nothing would follow from that against the Jere-
mianic authorship of the Lamentations. For Jeremiah uttered
these prophecies in the sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin,
i.e. in the thurd year before the last siege, and the fifth before
the destruction of Jerusalem ; .and considering the frequent
intercourse carried on between the captives in Babylon and
those who still remained in Judah and Jerusalem, in virtue of
which the former even sent letters to Jerusalem (cf. Jer. xxix.
25), some of Ezekiel's prophecies might have become known in
Digitized by
Google
WTBODUCTIOil. 345
the latter city a considerable time before the final catastrophe,
and even reached the ears of Jeremiah.
With the demolition of these two arguments, the main strength
of oar opponents, in the bringing forward of proof, has been
broken. Schrader has not adduced a single instance showing
" the absence of certain specific Jeremianic peculiarities." For
" the comparatively less emphasis given to the sins of the
people," which is alleged in Noldeke's note, cannot be applied
in support of that position, even if it were correct, in view of
the prominence so frequently assigned to grievous sin, i. 5,
8, 14, 18, 22, ii. 14, iii. 39, 42, iv. 6, 13, v. 7 ; because the
Lamentations were not composed with the design of punishing
the people for their sin, but were intended to comfort in their
misery, and to raise up again, the people who had been severely
chastised for the guilt of their sin, which was greater than the
sin of Sodom (iv. 6). Add to this, that Schrader, by using this
argument, contradicts himself ; for he has shortly before ad-
duced the affinity in contents, spirit, tone, and language as an
argument to which one might appeal in support of the Jere-
mianic authorship, and this affinity he has established by a long
series of quotations.^
Further, the remark that " the artificiality of form, especially
in chap, i., ii., and iv., is unlike Jeremiah," is correct only in so
far as no alphabetic poems are to be found in the prophetic
book of Jeremiah. But are we then to look for poetic com-
positions in prophetic addresses and historical narratives? The
remark now quoted is based on the assertion made by other
critics, that the alphabetic arrangement of poetic compositions
generally is a mere rhetorical work of art, and the production of
a later but degenerate taste (Ed. Renss and others), or a piece of
* The passages are the following : i. 8 £., cf. with Jer. iv. 30, xiii. 21 f .,
26 ; i. 20, iv. 13 ff., with Jer. xiv. 7, 18 ; ii. 14 with Jer. xiv. 13 ; i. 16, ii.
11, iii. 48, 49, with Jer. viii. 21 ff., ix. 16 ff., xiii. 17, xiv. 17 ; iii. 62 with
Jer. XV. 26 f. ; chap. iii. with Jer. xv. 10 ff., xvii. 6ff., 14 ff., xx. 7ff., 14 ff.
(De Wette). Further, nsjf n? Tl^a, i. 15, ii. 13, cf. Jer. xiv. 17, xlvi. 11 ;
liJD, ii. 22, cf. Jer. iv. 25, x. 3, 10 ;" ^^r, »• H, cf. Jer. xv. 19 ; DniDTO
instead of D^'IOno, i. 11 ; my instead of niJ, i. 8 ; vfh instead of t^ ;
^ i>3K, iv. 6 ; '"p^i, iv. 14 ; ^IBFI, ii- 14. Finally, Chaldaiziag forms: }^DD'lB',
i. 4 ; KJB'^ instead of 7UB>*, iv. 1 ; KltSD, iii. 12 ; y^n, ii. 1 ; jni^, i. 14.
Digitized by
Google
346 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAB.
trifling unworthy of the prophet. This view has long ago been
shown groundless ; cf. Havemick's Einl. iii. S. 46 ff. Even
Hupfeld, who calls the alphabetical arrangement " artificiality
or trifling," considers that it is of a kindred nature with collec-
tions of proverbs, and with small poems of a didactic character
but deficient in close connection of thought; he thinks, too, that
it may be comparatively ancient as a style of composition, and
that it was not applied till later to other species of writing (as
Lamentations). To this, Ed. Riehm, in the second edition of
Hupfeld on the Psalms, i. p. 31, has added a very true remark :
" In lyric poetry proper, the employment of this artificial form
is naturally and intrinsically justified only when a single funda-
mental strain, that fills the whole soul of the poet, — deep, strong,
and sustained, — seeks to die away in many different forms of
chords ; hence its employment in the elegy." The application
of this artificial form to such a purpose is perfectly justified in
these Lamentations ; and the attempt to deny that these poems
are the work of Jeremiah, on the ground of their artificial con-
struction, would be as great an exhibition of arbitrary conduct,
as if any one refused to ascribe the hymn " Befiehl du deine
Wege" to Paul Gerhardt, or " Wie schon leucht' uns der Mor-
genstern" to Philip Nicolai, on the ground of the " artificiality"
that manifests itself in the beginning of the verses.
Finally, the language and the mode of representation in
these poems certainly exhibit much that is peculiar; and we
find in them many words, word-forms, and modes of expression,
which do not occur in the prophecies of Jeremiah. But it
must also be borne in mind that the Lamentations are not
prophetic addresses intended to warn, rebuke, and comfort, but
lyric poetry, which has its own proper style of language, and
this different from prophetic address. Both the subject-
matter and the poetic, form of these poems, smooth though
this is in general, necessarily resulted in this, — ^that through
the prevalence of peculiar thoughts, modes of representation,
and feelings, the language also received an impress, in words
and modes of expression, that was peculiar to itself, and
different from the prophetic diction of Jeremiah. The mere col-
lection of the words, word-forms, and expressions peculiar to the
Lamentations, and not occurring in the prophecies of Jeremiah,
■\
Digitized by
Google
INTBODUCTION. 347
cannot furnish irrefragable proof that the authors of the two
writings were different, unless it be shown, at the same time, that
the character of the language in both writings is essentially
different, and that for the ideas, modes of representation, and
thoughts common to both, other words and expressions are used in
the Lamentations than those found in the prophecies of Jeremiah.
But neither the one nor the other has been made out by Nagels-
bach. After giving the long list he has prepared, which occupies
five and a half columns, and which gives the words occurring
in the different verses of the five chapters, he explains that he
does not seek to lay any weight on the oTraf Xeyofieva, pro-
bably because Jeremiah also has many such words ; but then
he raises the question, " How is the fact to be accounted for,
that Jeremiah never uses liyV ^''^ ^P^. except as divine names,
while the latter, nevertheless, occurs fourteen times in the
Lamentations; that Jeremiah never uses t5*an, nr, njK, njj,
KCjn.ntDno, )h>2, i>on t6, nsj;, fpy, nrn, ^^n, ru'33, '?n\ a<ia ke^j, nor
^Dp, the relative v, or ^'i^a without a suffix, while all these
expressions occur more or less frequently in the Lamentations ?
And it has been well remarked that these expressions are not of
so specific a kind, that the fact of their not being used in the
prophetic book, but employed in the Lamentations, might be
explained from the nature of the contents ; but they belong,
in great measure, to what I may call the house-dress of the
author, which he constantly wears, — which he more or less
unconsciously and unintentionally uses." We answer that the
simile of the house-dress has been most unhappily chosen.
Although the style of a writer may possibly be compared to his
coat, yet nobody is in the habit of wearing his house-coat
always, on Sundays and week-days, in the house and out of
it ; so, too, no writer is in the habit of using always the same
words in prose and poetry. When we investigate the matter
itself, we find we must, first of all, deduct fully one-third of the
words enumerated, although these have evidently been collected
and arranged as the most convincing proof ; the words thus re-
jected are also found in the prophetic book of Jeremiah, though
not quite in the same grammatical form, as the note shows.^ Then
' For ai^a, without a sufSz, iii. 45, exactly corresponds to S'lgD, Jer.
/^
Digitized by
Google
348 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
we ask the counter question, whether words which one who
composed five poems employs only in one of these pieces, or
only once or twice throughout the whole, ought to be reckoned
as his house-dress t Of the words adduced, we do not find a
single one in all the five poems, but ^C'D only in iii. 2, B*3B K^3
only in iv. 16, fiyjJ only in iii. 14 and v. 14, fB nvB only in ii.
16 and iii. 46, 1^'j? only in iii. 35 and 38, n:K (Niphal) only in
chap. i. (four times). Moreover, we ask whether Jeremiah
might not also, in lyric poems, use poetic words which could
not be employed in homely address ? But of the words enu-
merated, iD^, tCf^, and 'J'lK alone as a name of God, together
with n3*13, belong to the poetic style.^ They are therefore not
found in Jeremiah, simply because his prophetic addresses
are neither lyric poems, nor rise to the lyric height of pro-
phetic address. The rest of the words mentioned are also
found in the Psalms especially, and in Job, as will be shown
in the detailed exposition. And when we go deeper into the
matter, we find that, in the Lamentations, there is the same
tendency to reproduce the thoughts and language of the Psalms
vi 1 : cf. besides, 'snpa, iv. 15, .20, with Jer. xxiii. 9 ; riaiipa, iv. 13, and
J^. vi. 6, zlvi. 21. ^n ih, ii. 2, 17, 21, iii. 43, is found five times ia
Jeremiah (xiii 14, xv. 5, xxi. 7, 1. 14, Ii. 3), not only in the 3d pers. per-
fect, but also in the imperfect. Of j;^3 there occurs the Kal, Jer. Ii. 34,
and the noun j^a, 11. 44 ; from '-['ffn, the noun ^tjin certainly is not found,
but perhaps the verb is used in the Hiphil, Jer. xiii. 16, as the Eal in Lam.
iv. 8, V. 16. With KOn, i. 8 and iii. 39, alternates flKtsn, iv. 6, 22, which
Jeremiah frequently uses. Of QOC*, the participle D&iti' certainly is not
found in Jeremiah, but the adj. Dp:;' is found in Jer. xii. 11, as in Lam.
V. 8 ; and the Niphal of the verb in Jer. iv. 9 and xxxiii. 10, as in Lam.
iv. 5. Lastly, neither is Ttijt wholly wanting in Jeremiah ; for in xxii. .
16 we are to read >3y, miser, although the noun ''iy and the verb are not
met with in his book.
^ ft"/?]} as a name of God (iiL 35 and 38), besides Isa. ziv. 14, is found
only in poetic pieces, Num. xxvL 16, Deut. xxxii. 8, and about twenty
times in the Psalms ; ^]hK used by itself, except in direct addresses to Grod
and interviews with Him, occurs in the Psalms about forty times, and also
in the addresses of particular prophets, composed in the loftier Style, par-
ticularly Isaiah and Amos ; lastly, nyii, in iii. 14, occurs as a reminiscence
of Job XXX. 9, and in the Psalms and hymns, Isa. xxxviiL 20, and Hab.
iii. 10.
Digitized by
Google
INTBODUCTION. 349
(especially those describing the psalmist's sufferings) and of the
book of Job, that characterizes the prophecies of Jeremiah, in
the use he makes of Deuteronomy and the writings of earlier
prophets. Another peculiarity of Jeremiah's style is seen in
the fact that the composer of the Lamentations, like Jeremiah
in his addresses, repeats himself much, not merely in his ideas,
but also in his words : e.g., ten w occurs four times, of which
three instances are in chap. ii. (vers. 2, 17, 21) and one in
iii. 43 ; lono (and l^Dfjo) also occurs four times (i. 7, 10, 1 1,
ii. 4), and njKJ as frequently (i. 4, 8, 11, 21) ; njj is found five
times (i. 4, 5J i2, iii. 32, 33), but in all the other Old Testa-
ment writings only thrice; and Jeremiah also u9es t^^^ four
times, while, of all the other prophets, Isaiah is the only one
who employs it, and this he does twice.
These marks may be sufficient of themselves to show unmis-
takeably that the peculiarity of the prophet as an author is
also found in the Lamentations, and that nothing can be dis-
covered showing a difference of language in the expression of
thoughts common to both writings. But this will be still more
evident if we consider, finally, the similarity, both as regards
the subjects of thought and the style of expression, exhibited in
a considerable number of instances in which certain expressions
characteristic of Jeremiah are also found in Lamentations:
e.g., the frequent employment of "OB' and 'BV 13 laB', ii. 11, 13,
iii. 47, 48, iv. 10, cf. with Jer. iv. 6, 20, vi. 1, 14, viii. 11,
21, X. 19, xiv. 17, etc.; 3^3DOn«p, ii. 22, with yaop l^JD,
Jer. vi. 25, xx. 3, 10, xlvi. 5, xlix. 29 ; (DJO, or) njOT nT);i:»,
i. 16, ii. 18, iii. 48, ii. 11, cf. with Jer. viii. 23, ix. 17,
xiii. 17, xiv. 17 ; phf »ri«ri, iii. 14, with ph^? 'n^yj, Jer. xx. 7 ;
'IC?} "'Dl, iii. 47, as in Jer. xlviii. 43. Cf. also the note on
p. 345, after the passages quoted by De Wette. Pareau, then,
. had good reason when, long ago, he pointed out the peculiari-
ties of Jeremiah in the style of the Lamentations ; and only a
superficial criticism can assert against this, that the existing
coincidences find a sufficient explanation in the assumption that,
speaking generally, the two books were composed at the same
period.^ We therefore close this investigation, after having
^ Pai«aa has discussed this question veiy well in the Observatt. general,
prefixed to his Commentary, § 6-8, and concludes with this reaidt : Non
Digitized by
Google
350 THE LAMENTATIOKS OF JEBEMUB.
proved that the tradition which ascribes the Lamentations to
the prophet Jeremiah as their author is as well-founded as any
ancient historical tradition whatever.
Time op Composition. — From the organic connection of
the five poems, as shown above, it follows of itself that they
cannot have proceeded from different authors, nor originated at
different periods, but were composed at brief intervals, one after
the other,- not long after the destruction of Jerusalem and the
fall of the kingdom of Judafa, and in the order in which they
have been transmitted to us. What gives special support to
this conclusion is the circumstance that, throughout these
Lamentatidhs, there is no possibility of mistaking the expression
of grief, still fresh in the writer's mind, over the horrors of
that fearful catastrophe. The assumption, however, that the
prophet, in the picture he draws, had before his eyes the ruins
of the city, and the misery of those who had been left behind,
cannot be certainly made out from a consideration' of the con-
tents of the poems. But there seems to be no doubt that
Jeremiah composed them in the interval between the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem and his involuntary departure to Egypt.
There is no tenable groimd for the confident assertion of Ewald,
that they were composed in Egypt ; for the passages, i. 3, iv.
18 f ., V. 5, 9, do not mean that the writer was then living among
the fugitives who had fled in such vast multitudes to Egypt,
partly before and partly after the destruction of the city.
Position of the Lamentations in the Canon. — The
separation of the Lamentations from the book of the prophecies
of Jeremiah, and their reception into the third division of the
Old Testament canon (the Kethubim), — which Kalkschmidt and
Thenius, in complete misunderstanding of the principle on which
the tripartition of the canon is founded, would bring to bear as an
argument against their having been composed by Jeremiah, — are
tantum regnant in Threnis varii illi characteres, quo$ stilo Jeremix proprios
esse vidimus, verum etiam manifesto cernitur in eorum scriptore animus tener,
lenis, ad qusevis triitia facile commotus ae dolorem tegreferens. Quod autem
in iis frequentius observetur, quam in sermonibus Jeremix propheticis, dictionis
sublimitas et brevitas majorque iinaginum eopia et pulchritudo, atque concep-
tuum vis et inte7itio : illudvix aUter fieri potuisse agnoscemus, si ad argumenti
naturam attendamus, quo vehementur affici debuerit Jeremias; etc., p. 40.
Digitized by
Google
DJTBODUCTION. 351
fully accounted for by their subjective, lyric contents ; in conse-
quence of this they differ essentially from the prophecies, and
take their place alongside of the Psalms and other productions
of sacred poesy. This position of theirs among the 'Kethubim
must be considered (against Bleek) as the original one ; their
arrangement by the side of the prophetic writings of Jeremiah
in the LXX. and Vulgate, which Lather [as well as the trans-
lators of the " authorized" English version] has retained, must
have originated with the Alexandrine translators, who could
not understand the arrangement of the Hebrew canon, and
who afterwards, in order to make the number of the books of
the Bible the same as that of the letters of the alphabet (twenty-
two), counted the Lamentations as forming one book with the
prophecies of Jeremiah. That this arrangement and enume-
ration of the Lamentations, observed by the Hellenists, deviated
from the tradition of the Jews of Palestine, may be perceived
from the remark of Jerome, in his Prol. galeat., regarding this
mode of reckoning : quamquam nonnuUi Buth et Cynoth inter
hagiographa seriptitent, et hos libros in suo putent nuipero aupptt-
tandos. Their arrangement in the series of the five Megilhth
(rolls appointed to be read on certain annual feast-days and
memorial-days) in our editions of the Hebrew Bible was not
fixed till a later period, when, according to the ordinance in the
synagogal liturgy, the Lamentations were appointed to be read
on the ninth of the month Ab, as the anniversary of the de-
struction of the temples of Solomon and of Herod. [Cf . Herzog's
Real-Encr/kl. xv. 310.]
The importance of the Lamentations, as a part of the canon,
does not so much consist in the mere fact that they were com-
posed by Jeremiah, and contain outpourings of sorrow on
different occasions over the misery of his people, as rather in
their being an evidence of the interest with which Jeremiah,
in the discharge of his functions as a prophet, continued to
watch over the ruins of Jerusalem. In these Lamentations he
seeks not merely to give expression to the sorrow of the people
that he may weep with them, but by his outpour of complaint
to rouse his fellow-countrymen to an acknowledgment of God's
justice in this visitation, to keep them from despair under the
burden of unutterable woe, and by teaching them how to give
r
Digitized by
Google
352 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEUUH.
due submission to the judgment that has befallen them, to lead
once more to God those who would not let themselves be
brought to Him through his previous testimony regarding that
judgment while it was yet impending. The Jewish synagogue
has recognised and duly estimated the importance of the
Lamentations in these respects, by appointing that the book
should be read on the anniversary of the destruction of the
temple. A lilte appreciation has been made by the Christian
Church, which, rightly perceiving that the Israelitish com-
munity is the subject in these poems, attributed to them a
reference to the church militant ; and, viewing the judgment
on the people of God as a prophecy of the judgment that came
on Him who took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, it
has received a portion of the Lamentations into the ritual for
the Passion Week, and concludes each of these lessons with the
words, " Jerusalem, Jerusalem, eonvertere ad Dominum, Deum
tuum." Cf. The] Passion Week in its Ceremonies and Prayers,
Spires 1856, and the Offidum hehdomadce sanetae, a reprinted
extract from Dr. Beischl's Passionale, Munich 1857. The
motives for this choice are so far set forth by Allioli (in Neu-
mann, ii. S. 486) in the following terms: "The church wished
believers to see, in the great punishments which God had
ordained against Jerusalem by the instrumentality of Nebu-
chadnezzar, the still more severe chastisement that God has
brought on Israel after the dreadful murder of the Messias.
She seeks to bewail the unhappy condition of the blinded nation,
once favoured with the divine revelation. In the fall of Jeru-
salem, she seeks to deplore the evil that has come on herself
from external and internal foes, the persecution of brother by
brother, the havoc made by false teachers, the looseness of
opinions, the sad advances made by indifference in matters of
faith and by the corruption of morals. In the devastation and
the penalties inflicted on Jerusalem^ she wishes to present for
consideration the destruction which comes on every soul that
dies the death in sins. In the condition of the ruined city and
the homeless nation, she seeks to make men bewail the homeless
condition of the whole race, who have fallen into decay and
disorder through Adam's sin. And lastly, in the nation visited
with punishment, she seeks to set forth Jesus Christ Himself,
Digitized by
Google
mTEODUcnoN. 353
in so far as He has become the sahstitnte of all men, and
suffered for their sins." This display of all these references is
sadly deficient in logical arrangement ; but it contains a precious
kernel of biblical truth, which the Evangelical Church^ has
endeavoured in many ways to turn to advantage. Regarding
the adaptations of the Lamentations made for liturgical use in
the Evangelical Church, see particulars in Schoberlein, Schatz
des liturgischen Char- und Gemeindegesanges, ii. S. 444 ff.
As to the commentaries on the Lamentations, see Keil's
Manual of Introduction to tJie Old Testament, vol. i. p. 508
[Clark's Foreign Theol. Library]. To the list of works therein
given are to be appended, as later productions, Ewald's recent
treatment of the book in the third edition of the Dichter des
A. Bundes (1866), i. 2, where the Lamentations have been
inserted among the Psalms, S. 321 ff. ; Wilh. Engelhardt, die .
Klagel. Jerem. Uhersetzt. 1867 ; Ernst Gerlach, die Klagel. erhl.
1868 ; and Nagelsbach, in Lange's series of commentaries
(Clark's English edition), 1868.
* t.e. the " United Evangelical Church" of Germany, the National Pro-
testant Church, which was formed by the coaUtion of the Lutheran and
Eeformed (or Calvinistic) communions. This union began in Prussia in
1817, and was gradually effected in other German states. But many
staunch adherents of the old distinctive (Augsburg and Helvetic) Con-
fessions endured persecution rather than consent to enter the " United "
Church. The liturgy was framed under the special direction of the Prussian
king in 1821, and after some alterations were made on it, appointed by a
royal decree, in 1830, to be used in all the churches. — Tb.
VOL. II.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by
Google
EXPOSITION.
CHAP. r. — SORROW AND WAILING OVER THE FALL OF
JERUSALEM AND JUDAH.
1 *Alas ! how she sits alone, the city [that was] full of people !
She has become like a widow, [that was] great among the nations ;
The princess among provinces has become a vassal.
2 She weeps bitterly through the night, and her tears are upon her cheek ;
She has no comforter out of all her lovers :
All her friends have deceived her ; they have become enemies to her.
8 Judah is taken captive out of affliction, and out of much servitude ;
She sitteth among the nations, she hath found no rest ;
AU those who pursued her overtook her in the midst of her distresses.
4 The ways of Zion mourn, for want of those who went up to the appointed
feast;
AU her gates are waste ; her priests sigh ;
Her viigins are sad, and she herself is in bitterness.
6 Her enemies have become supreme ; those who hate her are at ease ;
For Jahveh hath afflicted her because of the multitude of her trans-
gressions :
Her young children have gone into captivity before the oppressor.
6 And from the daughter of Zion all her honour has departed ;
Her princes, have become like harts [that] have f oimd no pasture,
And have gone without strength before the pursuer.
' Eeil has attempted, in his German translation of this and the next
three chapters, to reproduce something of the alphabetic acrosticism of the
original (see above, p. 337) ; but he has frequently been compelled, in
consequence, to give something else than a faithful reproduction of the
Hebrew. It will be observed that his example has not been followed here ;
but his peculiar renderings have generally been given, except where these
peculiarities were evidently caused by the self-imposed restraint now men-
tioned. He himself confesses, in two passages omitted from the present
translation (pp. 591 and 600 of the German original), that for the sake of
reproducing the alphabeticism, he has been forced to deviate from a strict
translation of the ideas presented in the Hebrew. — Tr.
866
Digitized by
Google
356 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
*
7 In the days of her affliction and her persecutions,
Jerusalem remembers aU her pleasant things which have been from the
days of old :
When her people fell by the hand of the oppressor, and there was none
to help her,
Her oppressors saw her, — they laughed at her times of rest.
8 Jerusalem hath sinned grieTously, therefore she hath become an abomi-
nation :
AU those who honoured her despise her, because they have seen her
nakedness ;
And she herseU sighs, and turns backward.
9 Her filth is on her flowing skirts ; she remembered not her latter end ;
And so she sank wonderfully : she has no comforter.
" O Jahveh, behold my misery !" for the enemy hath boasted.
10 The oppressor hath spread out his hand upon all her precious things ;
For she hath seen [how] the heathen have come into her sanctuary,
[Concerning] whom Thou didst command that they should not enter
into Thy community.
11 AU her people [have been] sighing, seeking bread ;
They have given their precious things for bread, to revive their souL
See, O Jahveh, and consider that I am become despised.
12 [Is it] nothing to you, aU ye that pass along the way?
Consider, and see if there be sorrow like my sorrow which is done to me,
"WTiom Jahveh hath afflicted in the day of the burning of His anger.
13 From above He sent fire in my bones, so that it mastered them ;
He hath spread a net for my feet. He hath turned me back ;
He hath made me desolate and ever languishing.
14 The yoke of my transgressions hath been fastened to by His hand ;
They have interwoven themselves, they have come up on my neck ; it
hath made my strength faU :
The Lord hath put me into the hands of [those against whom] I cannot
rise up.
16 The Lord hath removed all my strong ones in my midst ;
He hath proclaimed a festival against me, to break my young men in
pieces :
The Lord hath trodden the wine-press for the virgin daughter of Judah.
16 Because of these things I weep ; my eye, my eye runneth down, [with]
water.
Because a comforter is far from me, one to refresh my soul ;
My children are destroyed, because the enemy hath prevailed.
17 Zion stretcheth forth her hands, [yet] there is none to comfort her ;
Jahveh hath commanded concerning Jacob ; his oppressors are round
about him :
Jerusalem hath become an abomination among them.
18 Jahveh is righteous, for I have rebelled against His mouth.
Hear now, aU ye peoples, and behold my sorrow ;
My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 357
19 I called for my lovers, [but] they have deceived me ;
My priests and my elders expired in the city,
When they were seeking bread for themselves, that they might revive
their spirit.
20 Behold, Jahveh, how distressed I am ! my bowels are moved ;
My heart is tamed within me, for I was very rebellious :
Without, the sword bereaveth [me] ; within, [it is] like death.
21 They have heard that I sigh, I have no comforter :
All mine enemies have heard of my trouble ; they are glad because Thou
hast done it.
Thou bringest the day [that] Thou hast proclaimed, that they may be
like me.
22 Let all their wickedness come before Thee,
And do to them as Thou hast done to me because of all my trans-
gressions ;
For my sighs are many and my heart is faint.
The poem begins with a doleful meditation on the deeply
degraded state into which Jerusalem has fallen ; and in the first
half (vers. 1-11), lament is made over the sad condition of the
unhappy city, which, forsaken by all her friends, and persecuted
by enemies, has lost all her glory, and, finding no comforter
in her misery, pines in want and disesteem. In the second half
(vers. 12-22), the city herself is introduced, weeping, and giving
expression to her sorrow over the evil determined against her
because of her sins. Both portions are closely connected. On
the one hand, we find, even in vers. 9 and 11, tones of lamen-
tation, like sighs from the city, coming into the description of
her misery, and preparing the way for the introduction of her
lamentation in vers. 12-22 ; on the other hand, her sin is men-
tioned even so early as in vers. 5 and 8 as the cause of her
misfortune, and the transition thus indicated from complaint
to the confession of guilt found in the second part. This
transition is made in ver. 17 by means of a kind of meditation
on the cheerless and helpless condition of the city. The second
half of the poem is thereby divided into two equal portions, and
in such a manner that, while in the former of these (vers.
12-16) it is complaint that prevails, and the thought of guilt
comes forward only in ver. 14, in the latter (vers. 18-22) the
confession of God's justice and of sin in the speaker becomes
most prominent ; and the repeated mention of misery and op-
pression rises into an ebtreaty for deliverance from the misery,
Digitized by
Google
358 THE UMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
and the hope that the Lord will requite all evil on the
enemy.
Vers. 1-11. Doleful consideration and description of the dis-
honour that has befallen Jerusalem. In these verses the pro-
phet, in the name of the godly, pours out his heart before the
Lord. The dreadful turn that things have taken is briefly
declared in ver. 1 in two clauses, which set forth the fall of
Jerusalem from its former glory into the depths of disgrace
and misery, in such a way that the verse contains the subject
unfolded in the description that follows. We have deviated
from the Masoretic pointing, and arranged the verse into three
members, as in the succeeding verses, which nearly throughout
form tristichs, and have been divided into two halves by means
of the Athnach; but we agree with the remark of Gerlach,
" that, according to the sense, DO? nn^n and not iijo??!? "in^jj is
the proper antithesis to 0^3? ^nan." nyH is here, as in ii. i , iv.
1, 2, an expression of complaint mingled with astonishment ; so
in Jer. xlviii. 17, Isa. i. 21. "She sits solitary" (cf. Jer. xv.
17) is intensified by " she has become like a widow." Her
sitting alone is a token of deep sorrow (cf. Neh. i. 4), and, as
applied to a city, is a figure of desolation ; cf. Isa. xxvii. 10.
Here, however, the former reference is the main one; for
Jerusalem is personified as a woman, and, with regard to its
numerous population, is viewed as the mother of a great multi-
tude of children. *na"i is a form of the construct state,
lengthened by Yod compaginia, found thrice in this verse, and
also in Isa. i. 21, elegiac composition; such forms are used, in
general, only in poetry that preserves and affects the antique
style, and reproduces its peculiar ring.^ According to the two-
fold meaning of 3"! (much and great), *n3"l in the first clause
designates the multiplicity, multitude of the population ; in the
1 On the different views regarding the origin and meaning of this Yod
compaginis, cf. Fr. W. M. Philippi, Wesen u. Ursprung des Status constr. im
Hebr. S. 96 fi. This writer (S. 152 ff.) takes it to be the remnant of a
primitive Semitic noun-inflexion, which has been preserved only in a num-
ber of composite proper names of ancient origin [e.g. pTf'370 etc.] ; in
the words 3K, ns, and on, in which it has become fused with the third
T T T
radical into a long vowel ; and elsewhere only between two words standing
in the construct relation [see Ges. § 90; Ewald, § 211].
"\
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. 1. 1-u. 359
second, the greatness or dignity of the position that Jerusalem
assumed among the nations, corresponding to the n^J^lf? Wfe*,
« a princess among the provinces." W^P, from t"l (properly, the
circuit of judgment or jurisdiction), is the technical expression
for the provinces of the empires in Asia (of. Esth. i. 1, 22, etc.),
and hence, after the exile, was nsed of Judah, Ezra ii. 1, Neh.
yii. 6, and in 1 Kings xx. 17 of the districts in the kingdom of
Israel. Here, however, nij^T are not the circuits or districts
of Judah (Thenius), but the provinces of the heathen nations
rendered subject to the kingdom of Israel under David and
Solomon (corresponding to D^^ii'?), as in Eccles. ii. 8. Jerusalem
was formerly a princess among the provinces, during the flour-
ishing period of the Jewish kingdom under David and Solomon.
The writer keeps this time before his mind, in order to depict
the contrast between the past and present. The city that once
ruled over nations and provinces has now become but dependent
on others. DO (the derivation of which is disputed) does not
mean soccage or tribute, but the one who giveo ^jccage service, a
soccager ; see on Ex. i. 11 and 1 Kings iv. 6. The words, " The
princess has become a soccager," signify nothing more than,
**She who once ruled over peoples and countries has now fallen
into abject servitude," and are not (with Thenius) to be held as
"referring to the fact that the remnant that has been left
behind, or those also of the former inhabitants of the city who
have returned home, have been set to harder labour by the
conquerors." When we find the same writer inferring from
this, that these words presuppose a state of matters in which
the country round Jerusalem has been for some time previously
under the oppression of Chaldean officers, and moreover holding
the opinion that the words " how she sits ..." could only
have been written by one who had for a considerable period
been looking on Jerusalem in its desolate condition, we can
only wonder at such an utter want of power to understand
poetic language. — ^Ver. 2. In this sorrow of hers she has not
a single comforter, since all her friends from whom she could
expect consolation have become faithless to her, and turned
enemies. '"i3?n ^33, " weeping she weeps," i.e. she weeps very
much, or bitterly, not continually (Meier*) ; the inf. abs. before
the verb does not express the continuation, but the intensity of
Digitized by
Google
360 TEE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
the action [Gesenins, § 131, 3, a; Ewald, § 312]. nV^a, « in the
night," not "on into the night" (Ewald). The weeping by
night does not exclude, but includes, weeping by day; cf. ii. 18 f.
Nigh^; is mentioned as the time when grief and sorrow are wont
to give place to sleep. When tears do not cease to flow even
during the night, the sorrow must be overwhelming. The fol-
lowing clause, "and her tears are upon her cheek," serves merely
to intensify, and most not be placed (with Thenius) in antithesis
to what precedes : " while her sorrow shows itself most violently
duriijg the loneliijess of the night, her cheeks are yet always
wet with tears (even during the day)." But the greatness of
this sorrow of heart is due to the fact that she has no comforter,
— a thought which is repeated in vers. 9, 16, 17, and 21. For
her friends are faithless, and have become enemies. " Lovers "
and "friends" are the nations with which Jerusalem made
alliances, especially Egypt (cf . Jer. ii. 36 f .) j then the smaller
nations round about, — Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and
Phoenicians, with which Zedekiah had conspired against the
king of Babylon, Jer. xxvii. 3. Testimony is given in Ps.
cxxxvii. 7 to the hostile dealing on the part of the Edomites
against Judah at the destruction of Jerusalem; and Ezekiel
(chap. XXV. 3, 6) charges the Ammonites and Tyrians with
having shown malicious delight over the fall of Jerusalem ; but
the hostility of the Moabites is evident from the inimical
behaviour of their King Baalis towards Judah, mentioned in
Jer. xl. 14.
With ver. 3 begins the specific account of the misery over
which Jerusalem sorrows so deeply. Judah has gone into
exile, but she does not find any rest there among the nations.
"Judah" is the population not merely of Jerusalem, but of
the whole kingdom, whose deportation is bewailed by Jerusalem
as the mother of the whole country. Although rnin^ designates
the people, and not the country, it is construed as a feminine,
because the inhabitants are regarded as the daughter of the
land; cf. Ewald, § 174, b [and Gesenius, § 107, 4, a]. 'W1 *?5«?
has been explained, since J. D. Michaelis, by most modem
expositors (Rosenmiiller, Maurer, Ewald, Thenius, Nagelsbach),
and previously by Calvin, as referring to the cause of the
emigration, " from (because of) misery and much servitude;"
N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 1-11. 361
and in harmony vpith this view, HTlii) nn?| has been understood,
not of the deportation of Judah into exile, but of the voluntary
emigration of the fugitives who sought to escape from the
power of the Chaldeans by fleeing into foreign countries, partly
before and partly after the destruction of Jerusalem. But this
interpretation neither agrees with the meaning of the words
nor the context. Those fugitives cannot be designated
"Judah," because, however numerous one may think they
were, they formed but a fraction of the inhabitants of Judah :
the flower of the nation had been carried off to Babylon into
exile, for which the usual word is nja. The context also re-
quires us to refer the words to involuntary emigration into exile.
For, in comparison with this, the emigration of fugitives to
different countries was so unimportant a matter that the writer
could not possibly have be^n silent regarding the deportation of
the people, and placed this secondary consideration in the fore-
ground as the cause of the sorrow. ''i'OO is not to be taken in
a causal sense, for |0 simply denotes the coming out of a certain
condition, " out of misery," into which Judah had fallen through
the occupation of the country, first by Pharaoh-Necho, then by
the Chaldeans; and nihv ah does not mean "much service,"
but " much labour." For fTihg does not mean " service "
( = n!n3y), but "labour, work, business," e.g. ^^1? may, "the
service of the king," i.e. the service to be rendered to the king
in the shape of work (1 Chron. xxvi. 30), and the labour con-
nected with public worship (1 Chron. ix. 13, xxviii. 14, etc.) ;
here, in connection with ''i)), it means severe labour and toil
which the people had to render, partly for the king, that he
might get ready the tribute imposed on the country, and partly
to defend the country and the capital against those who sought
to conquer them. Although Judah had wandered out from a
condition of misery and toil into exile, yet even there she found
no rest among the nations, just as Moses had already predicted
to the faithless nation, Deut. xxviii. 65. All her pursuers find
her 0*n^n pa, inter angustias (Vulgate). This word denotes
" straits," narrow places where escape is impossible (Ps. cxvi.
3, cxviii. 5), or circumstances in life from which no escape can
be found. — Ver. 4. Zion (t.«. Jerusalem, as the holy city) is
laid waste; feasts and rejoicing have disappeared from it.
Digitized by
Google
362 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMUH.
" The ways of Zion " are neither the streets of Jerusalem
(EosenmuUer), which are called nton, nor the highways or
main roads leading to Zion from different directions (Thenius,
who erroneously assumes that the temple, which was situated
on Moriah, together with its fore-courts, could only be reached
through Zion), but the roads or highways leading to Jerusalem.
These are "mourning," i.e., in plain language, desolate, deserted,
because there are no longer any going up to Jerusalem to
observe the feasts. For this same reason the gates of Zion
(i.e. the city gates) ace also in ruins, because there is no longer
any one going out and in through them, and men no longer
assemble there. The reason why the priests and the virgins
are here conjoined as representatives of the inhabitants of
Jerusalem is, that lamentation is made over the cessation of
the religious feasts. The virgins are here considered as those
who enlivened the national festivals by playing, singing, and
dancing: Jer. xxxi. 13; Fs. Ixviii. 26; Judg. xxi. 19, 21;
Ex. XV. 20. rfM (Niphal of nr) is used here, as in Zeph. ii.
13, of sorrow over the cessation of the festivals. Following
the arbitrary rendering, arfo/ievoi, of the LXX., Ewald would
alter the word in the text into nlJini, « carried captive." But
there is no necessity for this : he does not observe that this
rendering does not harmonize with the parallelism of the
clauses, and that Jnj means to drive away, but not to lead
captive.^ V!'iy\, " and she (Zion) herself " is in bitterness (of.
Euth i. 13, 20), i.e.. she feels bitter sorrow. In vers. 6, 7,
are mentioned the causes of this grief. — ^Ver. 5. Her adver-
saries or oppressors, in relation to her, have become the head
(and Judah thus the tail), as was threatened, Dent, xxviii. 44 ;
whereas, according to ver. 13 in that same address of Moses,
the reverse was intended. Her enemies, knowing that their
power is supreme, and that Judah has been completely van-
quished, are quite at ease, secure (w, cf. Jer. xii. 1). This
unhappy fate Zion has brought on herself through the mul-
titude of her own transgressions. Her children (DyjiV, chil-
dren of tender age) are driven away by the enemy like a flock.
The comparison to a flock of lambs is indicated by 'pB?. But
' See, however, 1 Sam. xx. 2, with Eeil's own rendering, and Isa. xz. 4,
■with Delitzsch's translation. — Te.
X
■Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 1-lL 363
Zion has not merely lost what she loves most (the tender
children), but all her glory ; so that even her princes, enfeebled
by hanger, cannot escape the pursuers, who overtake them and
make them prisoners. Like deer that find no pasture, they
flee exhausted before the pursuer. DyJ^a has been rendered
dx! Kpiol by the LXX., and vi arietes by the Yulgate ; hence
Kalkschmidt, Bottcher (Aehrenl. S. 94), and Thenius would
read 0"'?*?*?, against which Eosenmiiller has remarked : per-
peram, nam hirci non sunt fugacia animalioj Md cervi. Basdhi
had already indicated the point of the comparison in the words,
quibus nullcB vires sunt ad effugiendum^ fame eorum robore
debilitato. The objections raised against ob^H2 as the correct
reading are founded on the erroneous supposition that the
subject treated of is the carrying away of the princes into
exile; and that for the princes, in contrast with the young,
no more suitable emblem could be chosen than the ram. But
^liT does not mean "the driver," him who leads or drives the
captives into exile, but "the pursuer," who runs after the
fugitive and seeks to catch him. The words treat of the
capture of the princes : the flight of the king and his princes
at the taking of Jerusalem (2 Kings xxv. 3 f .) hovered before
the writer's mind. For such a subject, the comparison of the
fugitive princes to starved or badly fed rams is inappropriate ;
but it is suitable enough to compare them with harts which had
lost all power to run, because they had been unable to find
any pasture, and ni3"S<P3 (without strength, i.e. in weakness)
are pursued and caught.
The loss of all her magnificence (ven 7). brings to the
remembrance of the sorrowing city, in her trouble, the former
days of her now departed glory. " Jerusalem " is not the totality
of those who are carried away (Thenius), but the city personi-
fied as the daughter of Zion (cf. ver. 6). " The days of her
affliction," etc., is not the direct object of " remembers," as
Pareau and Kalkschmidt assume, with the LXX. ; the object
is " all her pleasant things." If " the days of her affliction "
• were also intended to be the object, ".all her pleasant things"
would be preceded by the copula 1, which Pareau indeed
supplies, but arbitrarily. Moreover, the combination of the
days of misery with the glory of bygone days is inappropriate.
Digitized by
Google
364 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMUE
because Jerusalem feels her present misery directly, and does
not need first to call them to remembrance. " The days of her
affliction," etc., is the accusative of duration. Living through
the times of her adversity, Jerusalem thinks of former happy
times, and this remembrance increases her sorrow. O^x^o
occurs only here, in iii. 19 and in Isa. Iviii. 7 : in meaning it is
connected with '^^v^, vagari, and signifies roaming, — not volun-
tary, but compulsory, — ^rejection, persecution; while the adjective
D'l'ni?, found in Isaiah, is, as regards its form, taken from Tio,
which is cognate with 'Tr\. O^iono or Dniono (ver. 11, Ketldb)
is perhaps used in a more general sense than D'«iDno, ii. 4 and
i. 11 (Qen), and signifies what is costly, splendid, viz. gracious
gifts, both of a temporal and spiritual kind, which Israel for-
merly possessed, while CjOfj? signifies costly treasures. " The
days of old" are the times of Moses and Joshua, of David
and Solomon. In the words, "when her people fell," etc.,
the days of misery are more exactly specified. The suffix in
rnNT refers to Jerusalem. D''1S are the foes into whose power
Jerusalem fell helplessly, not specially the escorts of those
who were carried away (Thenius). They made a mockery
of her D^FiBB'D. This word is cm. Xey. It is not identical in
meaning with nInaE', sabbata (Vulgate, Luther, etc.), though
connected with it; nor does it signify deletiones, destructions
(Gesenius), but cessationes. This last rendering, however, is
not to be taken according to the explanation of Bosentniiller :
quod cessasset omnis tile decor, qui nominatus este ante, prinei-
patus et prosper rerum status ; but rather as L. Capellus in his
nott. crit. expresses it : quod nunc terra ejus deserta jacet nee
colitur et quasi cessat et feriatur, though he does not quite
exliaust the meaning. As Gerlach rightly remarks, the ex-
pression is " evidently used with reference to the threatenings
given in the law, Lev. xxvi. 34, 35, that the land would ob-
serve its Sabbaths, — that it will keep them during the whole
period of the desolation, when Israel is in the land of his
enemies." We must not, however, restrict the reference
merely to the uncultivated state of the fields, but extend it so
that it shall be applied to cessation from all kinds of employ-
ment, even those connected with the worship of God, which
were necessary for the hallowing of the Sabbath. The mockery
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 1-11. 3G5
of enemies does not apply to the Jewish celebration of the
Sabbath (to which Grotius refers the words), but to the ces-
sation of the public worship of the Lord, inasmuch as the
heathen, by destroying Jerusalem and the temple, fancied
they had not only put an end to the worship of the God of the
Jews, but also conquered the God of Israel as a helpless
national deity, and made a mock of Israel's faith in Jahveh as
the only true God. — ^Ver. 8 f . But Jerusalem has brought this
unutterable misery on herself through her grievous sins. •"'KOn
is intensified, by the noun Kipn, instead of the inf. abs., as in
Jer. xlvi. 5. Jerusalem has sinned grievously, and therefore
has become an object of aversion. HTJ does not mean eh
ffdXop (LXX.), or instabilis (Vulgate); nor is it, with the
Chaldee, Baschi, and most of the ancient expositors, to be
derived from Ti3: we must rather, with modern expositors,
regard it as a lengthened form of n^3, which indeed is the
reading given in twenty codices of Kennicott. Regarding
these forms, cf. Ewald, § 84, a. rn? (jpr<^. what one should
flee from) signifies in particular the uncleanness of the men-
strual discharge in women. Lev. xii. 2, 5, etc. ; then the un-
cleanness of a woman in this condition, Lev. xv. 19, etc.; here
it is transferred to Jerusalem, personified as such an unclean
woman, and therefore shunned, ^j}, the Hiphil of ??T (as to
the form, cf. Ewald, § 114, c), occurs only in this passage, and
signifies to esteem lightly, the opposite of 133, to esteem, value
highly; hence Wf, "despised," ver. 11, as in Jer. xv. 19.
Those who formerly esteemed her — her friends, and those who
honoured her, i.e. her allies — now despise her, because they
have seen her nakedness. The nakedness of Jerusalem means
her sins and vices that have now come to the light. She her-
self also, through the judgment that has befallen her, has come
to see the infamy of her deeds, sighs over them, and turns
away for shame, Le. withdraws from the people so that they
may no longer look on her in her shame. In ver. 9 the figure
of uncleanness is further devdoped. Her uncleanness sticks to
the hems or skirts of her garment. nSDO is the defilement
caused by touching a person or thing Levitically unclean, Lev.
V. 3, vii. 21 ; here, therefore, it means defilement by sins ^d
crimes. This has now been revealed by the judgment, because
Digitized by
Google
366 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAB.
she did not think of her end. These words point to the warn-
ing given In the song of Moses, Deut xxxii. 29: "If they
were wise, they would understand this (that apostasy from the
Lord brings heavy punishment after It), they would think of
their end^" i.c. the evil issue of continued resistance to God's
commands. But the words are especially a quotation from
Isa. xlvli. 7, where they are used of Babylon, that thought she
would always remain mistress, and did not think of the end of
her pride; therefore on her also came the sentence, "Come
down from thy glory, sit in the dust," Isa. xlvii. 1, cf. Jer.
xlviii. 18. Jerusalem has now experienced this also; she has
come. down wonderfully, or fallen from the height of her glory
Into the depths of misery and disgrace, where she has none to
comfort her, and is constrained to sigh, " O Lord, behold my
misery!" These words are to be taken as a sigh from the
daughter of Zion, deeply humbled through shame and repent-
ance for her sins. This Is required by the whole tenor of the
words, and confirmed by a comparison with vers. 11 and 20.
D'S^^ is used adverbially ; cf. Ewald, § 204, b [Gesenius, § 100,
2, 6]. There is no need for supplying anything after ^?n, cf.
Jer. xlvlii. 26, 42, Dan. viii. 4, 8, 11, 25, although nit5^ ori-
ginally stood with it, e.g. Joel il. 20 ; cf . Ewald, § 122, e [and
Gesenius' Lexicon, a.v. Tii]' '^^^ clause ^"^ii) '?, which assigns
the reason, refers not merely to the sighing of Jerusalem, but
also to the words, "and she came down wonderfully." The
boasting of the enemy shows itself in the regardless, arrogant
treatment not merely of the people and their property, but also
of their holy things. This is specially mentioned in ver. 10.
The enemy has spread out his hand over all her jewels (n^TOTO,
the costly treasures of Jerusalem which were plundered), and
even forced into the sanctuary of the Lord to spoil It of its
treasures and vessels. 0. B. Michaelis, Thenius, Gerlach,
Nagelsbach, etc., would restrict the meaning of ri"^?™ to the
precious things of the sanctuary; but not only are there no
sufiicient reasons for this, but the structure of the clauses Is
against It. Neither does the expression, " all our precious
things," in Isa. Ixlv. 10, signify merely the articles used in
public worship on which the people had placed their desire;
nor are " all her pleasant vessels " merely the sacred vessels of
Digitized by
Google
N CHAP. L 1-U. 367
the temple. la the latter passage, the suiBx in 17^?^ refers to
Jerusalem ; and inasmach as the haming of all the palaces of
the city (n^nbDlS) has been mentioned immediately before, we
are so much the less at liberty to restrict ''all her precious
vessels" to the vessels of the temple, and must rather, under
that expression, include all the precious vessels of the city, i.e.
of the palaces and the temple. And Delitzsch has already
remarked, on Isa. Ixiv. 10, that "under •J'^oni? may be in-
cluded favourite spots, beautiful buildings, pleasure gardens;
and only the parallelism induces us to think especially of
articles used in public worship.". But when Thenius, in the
passage now before tis, brings forward the succeeding words,
" for she hath seen," as a proof that by <' all her pleasant
things " we are to understand especially the vessels and utensils
of the temple, he shows that he has not duly considered the
contents of the clause introduced by *3 (for). The clause
characterizes the enemy's forcing his way into the sanctuary,
i.e. the temple of Jerusalem, as an unheard of act of sacrilege,
because D^3 -were not to enter even into the ?nij of Jahveh.
The subject treated of is not by any means the robbing of the
temple — the plundering of its utensils and vessels. The pro-
hibition against the coming, i.e. the receiving of foreigners
into the " congregation," is given, Dent, xxiii. 4, with regard
to the Ammonites and Moabites: this neither refers to the
jus eonnubii (Grotius, Bosenmiiller), nor to the civil rights of
Jewish citizens (Kalkschmidt), but to reception into religious
communion with Israel, the eeclesia of the Old Covenant
(nin'' ?np). In Deut. xxiii. 8, the restriction is relaxed in
favour of the Edomites and Egyptians, but in Ezek. xliv. 7, 9,
in accordance with the ratio legis, extended to all nncircum-
cised sons of strangers. Hence, in the verse now before us,
we must not, with Eosenmiiller and Thenius, restrict the refer-
ence of D'.^3 to the Ammonites and Moabites as accomplices of
the Chaldeans in the capture of Jerusalem and the plundering
of the temple (2 Kings xxiv. 2) ; rather the Q^^a are identical
with those mentioned in the first member of the verse as "i^,
i.e. the Chaldeans, so called not " because their army was made
up of different nationalities, but because the word contains the
notice of their being heathens, — profane ones who had forced
Digitized by
Google
368 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
into the sanctuary " (Gerlach). But if we look at the structure
of the clauses, we find that " for she saw," etc., is parallel to
"for the enemy hath boasted" of ver. 9; and the clause, "for
she saw nations coming," etc., contains a further evidence of
the deep humiliation of Jerusalem ; so that we may take '3 as
showing the last step in a climax, since the connection of the
thought is this : For the enemy hath boasted, spreading his
hand over air her precious things, — he hath even forced his
way into the sanctuary of .the Lord. If this is mentioned as
the greatest disgrace that could befall Jerusalem, then the
spreading out of the hands over the precious things of Jeru-
salem cannot be understood of the plundering of the temple.
The construction ^sa D)1J nriNT is in sense exactly similar to the
Latin vidit gentes venisse, cf . Ewald, § 284, b ; and on the con-
struction 1N3J N^ !in>«, cf. Ewald, § 336, b. ?I^ ^nijl does not
stand for Ifp?? (LXX., Pareau, Eosenmiiller), for Pnijn is not
the congregation of Judah, but that of Jahveh ; and the mean-
ing is : They shall not come to thee, the people of God, into
the congregation of the Lord. — Ver. 11. Besides this disgrace,
famine also comes on her. All her people, i.e. the whole of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, sigh after bread, and part with their
jewels for food, merely to prolong their life. The participles
D^n:N3, D^E'ljiaD, are not to be translated by preterites; they ex-
press a permanent condition of things, and the words are not to
be restricted in their reference to the famine during the siege
of the city (Jer. xxxvii. 21, xxxviii. 9, Hi. 6). Even after it
was reduced, the want of provisions may have continued; so that
the inhabitants of the city, starved into a surrender, delivered
up their most valuable things to those who plundered them, for
victuals to be obtained from these enemies. Yet it is not cor-
rect to refer the words to the present sad condition of those
who were left behind, as distinguished from their condition
during the siege and immediately after the taking of the city
(Gerlach). This cannot be inferred from the participles. The
use of these is fully accounted for by the fact that the writer sets
forth, as present, the whole of the misery that came on Jerusalem
during the siege, and which did not immediately cease with the
capture of the city ; he describes it as a state of matters that
still continues. As to D^'^^'^n?, see on ver. 7. K'BJ y^<J, " to
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L 12-16. 369
bring back the soul," the life, i.e. by giving food to revive one
who is nearly fainting, to keep in his life ( = nn yf\!) ; of.
Buth iv. 15, 1 Sam. xxx. 12, and in a spiritual sense, Ps. xix.
8, xsiii. 3. In the third member of the verse, the sigh which
is uttered as a prayer (ver. 96) is repeated in an intensified
form ; and the way is thus prepared for the transition to the
lamentation and suppliant request of Jerusalem, which forms
the second half of the poem.
Vers. 12-16. The lamentation of the city. — Ver. 12. The first
words, My?5 ^> ^® difficult to explain. The LXX. have oi
irp6<; vfM<i ; but the reading ought certainly to be at ir. v. The
Vulgate is, o vos omnes ; the Chaldee, adjuro vos omnes. They
all seem to have taken Ki? as an exclamation. Hence Le Clerc
and others would read vnh ; but in this case one would require
to supply a verb : thus, Le Clerc renders utinam adspiciatis,
or, "0 that my cry might reach you!" But these insertions
are very suspicious. The same holds true of the explanation
offered by J. D. Michaelis in his edition of Lowth on Hebrew
Poetry, Lect. xxii. : non vobis, transeuntes in via, hcec acclamo
(viz. the closing words of ver. 11) : this is decidedly opposed by
the mere fact that passers-by certainly could not regard a call
addressed to Jahveh as applying to them. Without supplying
something or other, the words, as they stand, remain incompre-
hensible. Nagelsbach would connect them with what follows :
" [Look] not to yourselves . . . but look and see . . ." But
the antithesis, " Look not upon yourselves, but look on me (or
on my sorrow)," has no proper meaning. If we compare the
kindred thought presented in ver. 18, " Hear, all ye peoples,
and behold my sorrow," then Mv^ ^ seems to express an idea
corresponding to W ^^P^- But we obtain this result only if we
take the words as a question, as if Ki? = Ki?n, though not in the
sense of an asseveration (which would be unsuitable here, for
which reason also Ki?L| is not used) ; the question is shown to be
such merely by the tone, as in Ex. viii. 22, 2 Sani. xxiii, 5.
Thus, we might render the sense with Gerlach : Does not (my
sighing — 'or, more generally, my misery — come) to you ? The
Syriac, Lowth, Ewald, Thenius, and Valhinger have taken the
words as a question; Ewald, following Prov. viii. 4, would
supply K"^?^. But such an insertion gives a rendering which
VOL II. 2 A
Digitized by
Google
370 THE LAUEHTATIONS OF JEBEMTAH. '
is both harsh and anjostifiable, althongh it lies at the foundation
of Luther's "I say unto you." Hence we prefer Gerlach's
explanation, and accordingly give the free rendering, " Do ye
not observe, sc, what has befallen me,^-or, my misery?" The
words are, in any case, intended to prepare the way for, and
thereby render more impressive, the summons addressed to all
those passing by to look on and consider her sorrow. ??iy is
passive (Poal) : ** which is dene to me." Since njif has no
object, the second IK'M does not permit of being taken as
parallel with the first, though the Chaldee, Roaenmiiller,
Kalkschmidt, and others have so regarded it, and translate:
" with which Jahveh hath afflicted me." With Ewald, Thenius,
Gerlach, etc., we must refer it to v : " me whom Jahveh hath
afflicted." The expression, " on the day of the burning of His
anger," is pretty often found in Jeremiah; see iv. 8, 26, xxv. 37,
etc. — In vers. 13-15, the misfortunes that have befallen Jeru-
salem are enumerated in a series of images. " Out from the
height (i.e. down from heaven) hath He sent fire into my bones ;"
''|!'!|'!5 is rendered by Luther, " and let it have the mastery "
(Gbt. und dasselbige walten lassen). Thenius explains this as
being correct, and accordingly seeks to point the word •^Jl}'^??,
while Ewald takes ri"i"i to be cognate with nnn, and translates
it " made them red-hot ;" and Bosenmiiller, following N. G.
Schroder, attributes to HTi, from the Arabic, the meaning
collisit, percussit lapide. All these explanations are not only
far-fetched and incapable of lexical vindication, but also un-
necessary. The change of vowels, so as to make it the Hiphil,
is opposed by the fact that >Tl"i, in the Hiphil, does not mean
to cause to manage, rule, but to tread down, subdue (Isa. xli. 2).
In Kal, it means to tread, tread down, and rule, as in Jer. v. 31,
where Gesenius and Dietrich erroneously assume the meaning
of " striding, going," and accordingly render this passage, " it
stalks through them." The lexically substantiated meaning,
"spbdue, rule, govern, (or, more generally,) overpower," is
quite sufficient for the present passage, since fTlT is construed
not merely with ^, but also with the accusative: the subject is
CK, which is also construed as a masc. in Jer. xlviii. 45 ; and the
suffix na— may either be taken as a neuter, or referred to " my
bones," without compelling us to explain it as meaning unum-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 12-16. 371
quodque os (Rosenmiiller, etc.). The bones are regarded as
bodily organs in which the pain is most felt, and are not to
be explained away allegorically to mean urbes meets munitas
(Ohaldee). While fire from above penetrated the bones, God
from beneath placed nets for the feet which thus were caught.
On this figure, cf. Jer. 1. 24, Hos. vii. 12, etc. The consequence
of this was that " He tamed me back," ita ut progredi pedemque
extrieare non possem, sed capta detinerer (C. B. Michaelis), — not,
"he threw me down backwards," i.e. made me fall heavily
(Thenios). " He hath made me desolate" (nisdwy, — not ohstu-
pescentem^ perturbatam, despercdam (Rosenmiiller); the same
word is applied to Tamar, 2 Sam. xiii. 20, as one whose happi-
ness in life has been destroyed. "The whole day (i.e. con-
stantly, uninterruptedly) sick," or ill. The city is regarded as
a person whose happiness in life has been destroyed, and whose
health has been broken. This miserable condition is represented
in ver. 14, under another figure, as a yoke laid by God on the
people for their sins, li??*?, Stt. X67., is explained by Kimchi as
lanw IK IB'pJ, compacfum vel colligattim, according to which ip'f
would be allied to f^. This explanation suits the context ; on
the other hand, neither the interpretation based on the Talmudic
"•S?, punxity atimulavit, which is given by Kaschi and Aben Ezra,
nor the interpretations of the LXX., Syriac, and Vulgate,
which are founded on the reading ^pB'3, harmonize with pJj,
which must be retained, as is shown by the words 'l^w w? ^?y.
Ewald supposes that 1^^ was the technical expression for the
harnessing on of the yoke. " The yoke of my transgressions "
(not "of my chastisements," as Gesenius, Rosenmiiller, and
Ewald think) means the yoke formed of the sins. The notion
of punishment is not contained in 'ye'B, but in the imposition of
the yoke upon the neck, by which the misdeeds of sinful Jeru-
salem are laid on her, as a heavy, depressing burden which she
must bear. These sins become interwoven or intertwine them-
selves (fi'iriB''.), after the manner of intertwined vine7tendrils
(D'anb', Gen. xl. 10 ; cf. remarks on Job xl. 17), as the Ohaldee
paraphrase well shows ; and, through this interweaving, form
the yoke that has come on the neck of the sinful city. Veluti
ex contortis funibus aut complicatis lignis jugum quoddam eon-
struitur, ita h. I, prcevaricationis tanquam materia imupportabilis
Digitized by
Google
372 THE LAMENTATIONS OP JEBEMUa
jugi considerantur (0. B. Michaelis). n?;^ is used of the imposi-
tion of the yoke, as in Num. xix. 2, 1 Sam. vi. 7. The effect
of the imposition of this yoke is : " it hath made my strength
to stumble (fail)." Pareau, Thenius, Vaihinger, and Nagels-
bach assume God as the subject of the verb yv^^n ; but this
neither accords with the current of the description, nor with the
emphatic mention of the subject 'J'lN in the clause succeeding
this. Inasmuch as, in the first member of the verse, God is
not the subject, but the address takes a passive turn, it is only
the leading word b)} that can be the subject of -''B'an : the yoke
of sins which, twined together, have come on the neck, has
made the strength stumble, i.e. broken it. This effect of the
yoke of sins is stated, in the las^ member, in simple and un-
figurative speech : " the Lord hath, given me into the hands
of those whom I cannot withstand," i.e. before whom I cannot
maintain my ground. On the construction ?31N k? *T3, cf.
Ewald, § 333, b ; Gesenius, § 116, 3. Dip is here viewed in the
sense of standing fast, maintaining ground, as in Ps. xviii. 39 :
and, construed with the accusative, it signifies, to withstand any
one ; its meaning is not surgere, which Thenius, following the
Vulgate, would prefer : the construction here requires the active
meaning of the verb. — In ver. 15 this thought is further carried
out. >"i?p and ri7D, « to lift up," is only used in poetry ; in Ps.
cxix. 118 it takes the Aramaic meaning vilipendere, as if in
reference to things that can be lifted easily; here it means
tollere, to lift up, take away {LXX. i^pe, Vulgate dbstulit),
tear away forcibly, just as both meanings are combined in NB'3 :
it does not mean to outweigh, or raise with a jerk, — tlie warriors
being regarded as weighty things, that speedily were raised
when the Chaldean power was thrown into the scale (Thenius,
and Bottcher in his Aelirenl. S. 94). This meaning is not con-
firmed for the Piel by Job xxviii. IQ, 19. •»»^0 K^iJ does not
mean to summon an assembly, i.e. the multitude of foes (Raschi,
Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, Neumann), but to proclaim a festival
(cf. ii. "22), because in ver. 4 and ii. 6 (cf. Lev. xxiii. 4) IJrto
denotes the feast-day, and in ver. 21 DV Nii? means to proclaim,
a day. y» means " against me;" for those invited to the feast
are the nations that God has invited to destroy the youths, i.e.
the young troops of Jerusalem. These celebrate a feast like
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. I. 17. 373
that of the vintage, at which Jahveh treads the wine-press for
the daughter of Judah, because her young men are cut ofP like
clusters of grapes (Jer. vi. 9), and thrown into the wine-press
(Joel iv. 13). The last judgment also is set forth under this
figure, Isa. Ixiii. 2 f. ; Rev. xiv. 19 f., xix. 15. niin' nWi3^, « to
(for) the virgin of Judah ;" her young men are regarded as a
mass of grapes, whose life-sap (blood) is trodden out in the wine-
press. As to the expression '' n? njvi3, see on Jer. xiv. 17.
"The addition of the word 'virgin' brings out the contrast
between this fate, brought on through the enemy, at God's
command, and the peculiar privilege of Judah as the people
of God, in being fice from the attacks of enemies" (Gerlach).
Ver. 16 concludes this series of thoughts, since the address
returns to the idea presented in ver. 12, and the unprece-
dented sorrow (ver. 12) gives vent to itself in tears. " Because
of these things" refers to the painful realities mentioned in
vers. 13-15, which Jerusalem has experienced.. The form njala
is like the feminine form nna in Ps. cxxviii. 3, Isa. xvii. 6 ; cf.
Ges. § 75, Rem.. 5. The repetition of *' my eye" gives greater
emphasis, and is quite in the style of Jeremiah ; cf. iv. 19, vi.
14 (viii. 11), xxii. 29, xxiii. 25 ; the second ''?'?? is not to be
expunged (Pareau and Thenius), although it is not found in
the LXX., Vulgate, Arabic, and some codices. On B^o iTTi*,
cf. Jer. ix. 17, xiii. 17, xiv. 17. In these passages stands <^}/^%
but here D)P, as the stronger expression : the eye flows like
water, as if it were running to the ground in water. Gesenius,
in his Thesaurus, appositely cites the German " sich die Augen
aus dem Kopfe weinen" [with which the English corresponds :
" to weep one's eyes out of his head "]. Still stronger is the
expression in iii. 48. But the sorrow becomes thus grievous,
because the weeping one has none to comfort her ; friends who
could comfort her have faithlessly forsaken her (cf. vers. 2, 9),
and her sons are D''DDiB', i.e. destroyed, not " astonished" (Jer.
xviii. 16, xix. 8), but, as in ver. 13, made desolate, i.e. made so
unhappy that they cannot, bring their mother comfort in her
misery. On K'W ^'V^, cf. ver. 11. " Because the enemy hath
become strong," i.e. prevailed (i?3 as in Jer. ix. 2).
Ver. 17. The complaint regarding the want of comforters is
corroborated by the writer, who further developes this thought.
Digitized by
Google
374 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEHIAH.
and gives some proof of it. By this contemplative digression
}ie breaks in on the lamentation of the city, as if the voice of
the weeping one were choked with tears ; thus he introduces
into the complaint a suitable pause, that both serves to divide
the lamentation into two, and also brings a turn in its contents.
It is in vain that Zion stretches out her hands (3 ens, to make
a spreading out with the hands) for comforters and helpers;
there is none she can embrace, for Jahveh has given orders
against Jacob, [that] those round about him should act as
oppressors. '"'?''?'? are the neighbouring nations round about
Israel. These are all of hostile disposition, and strive but to
increase his miseiy ; cf. ver. 2. Jerusalem has become their
abominatioa (cf. ver. 8), since God, in punishment for sins, has
exposed her before the heathen nations (cf. ver. 8). &^T3,
" between them," the neighbouring nations, who live round
about Judah. The thought that Jahveh has decreed the suf-
fering which has come on Jerusalem, is laid to heart by her
who makes complaint, so that, in ver. 18, she owns God's
justice, and lets herself be roused to ask for pity, vers. 19-22.
Starting with the acknowledgment that Jahveh is righteous,
because Jerusalem has opposed His word, the sorrowing one
anew (ver. 18, as in ver. 12) calls on the nations to regard her
sorrow, which attains its climax when her children, in the bloom
of youth, are taken captives by the enemy. But she finds no
commiseration among men ; for some, her former friends, prove
faithless, and her counsellors have perished (ver. 19) ; there-
fore she turns to God, making complaint to Him of her great
misery (ver. 20), because the rest, her enemies, even rejoice
over her misery (ver. 21) : she prays that God may punish
these. Gerlach has properly remarked, that this conclusion of
the chapter shows Jerusalem does not set forth her fate as an
example for the warning of the nations, nor desires thereby to
obtain commiseration from them in her present state (Michaelis,
Kosenmiiller, Thenins, Vaihinger) ; but that the apostrophe
addressed to the nations, as well as that to passers-by (ver. 12),
is nothing more than a poetic turn, used to express the bound-
less magnitude of this her sorrow and her suffering. On the
confession " Righteous is Jahveh," cf. Jer. xii. 1, Deut. xxxii. 4,
2 Chron. xii. 6, Ps. cxix. 37, etc. " Because I have rebelled
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. L 18-20. Z15
against His mouth" {i.e. His words and commandments), there-
fore I am suffering what I have merited. On W*B nno, cf .
Num. XX. 24, 1 Kbgs xiii. 26. D^&jpa (without the article,
which the Qeri supplies) is a form of expression used in poetry,
which often drops the article ; moreover, we must here bear in
mind, that it is not by any means the idea of the totality of the
nations that predominates, but nations are addressed merely in
indefinite generality : the expression in the text means nations
of all places and countries. In order to indicate the greatness
of her grief, the sorrowing one mentions the carrying into
captivity of the young men and virgins, who are a mother's
joy and hope. — ^Ver. 19 is not a continuation of the direct
address to the nations, to whom she complains of her distress,
but merely a complaint to God regarding the sorrow she en-
dures. The perfects ''K^^?,, *^1B"1, are not preterites, and thus
are not to be referred to the past, as if complaint were made
that, in the time of need, the lovers of Jerusalem forsook her ;
they rather indicate accomplished facts, whose consequences
reach down to the present time. It was not merely in former
times, during the siege, that Jerusalem called to her friends
for help ; but even now she still calls, that she may be comforted
by them, yet all in vain. Her friends have deceived her, i,e.
shamefully disappointed her expectations. From those who
are connected with her, too, she can expect neither comfort nor
counsel. The priests and the elders, as the helpers and advisers
of the city, — the former as representing the community before
God, and being the medium of His grace, the latter as being
leaders in civil matters, — pined away (jnj, exspirare ; here, to
pine away through hunger, and expire). *3 is a temporal
particle : " when they were seeking for bread" to prolong their
life (i 3Tn as in ver. 11). The LXX. have added koI oix
eSpov, which Thenius is inclined to regard as a portion of the
original text ; but it is very evidently a mere conjecture from
the context, and becomes superfluous when *3 is taken as a
particle x)f time. — Ver. -20. Since neither comfort nor advice
is to be found with men, Jerusalem makes her complaint of
need to God the Lord. " See, Jahveh, that I am distressed.
My bowels glow." ^"•D'lOJJ, the passive enhancing form, from
"i?n, is found, besides, only in ii. 11, where the clause before
Digitized by
Google
376 • THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
US is repeated, and in Job xvi. 16, where it is used of the coun-
tenance, and can only mean to be glowing red ; it is scarcely
legitimate to derive it from non, /^^i to be made red, and must
rather be referred to y*^, to ferment, rise into froth ; for even
in Ps. Iv. 9 ion does not mean to be red, but to rise into froth.
O)??* " bowels," are the nobler portions of the internal organs
of the body, the seat of the affections ; cf. Delitzsch's Biblical
Psychology (Clark's translation), p. 314 ff. " My heart has
turned within me " is an expression used in Hos. xi, 8 to desig-
nate the feeling of compassion ; but here it indicates the most
severe internal pain, which becomes thus agonizing through the
consciousness of its being deserved on account of resistance to
God. iio for nho, like b?, Jer. xxii. 10, xxx. 19, etc. Both
forms occur together in other verbs also ; cf. Olshausen, Gram.
§ 245, A [Ewald, § 238, e; Gesen., § 75, Kem. 2]. But the judg-
ment also is fearful ; for " without (J^np, foris, i.e. in the streets
and the open country) the sword renders childless," through
the slaughter of the troops ; " within (1^??, in the houses) A}'??,
like death." It is difficult to account for the use of 3 ; for neither
the 3 of comparison nor the so-called 3 veritatis affords a
suitable meaning ; and the transposition of the words into sicut
mors intus (Rosenmuller, after Lowe and Wolfsohn) is an arbi-
trary change. Death, mentioned in connection with the swor.d,
does not mean death in general, but special forms of death
through maladies and plagues, as in Jer. xv. 2, xviii. 21, not
merely the fever of hunger, Jer. xiv. 18 ; on the other hand,
cf. Ezek. vii. 15, " the sword without, pestilence and hunger
within." But the difficulty connected with niQ3 is not thereby
removed. The verb ?W belongs to both clauses ; but " the
sword" cannot also be the subject of the second clause, of which
the nominative must be WB3, « all that is like death," i.e. every-
thing besides the sword that kills, all other causes of death, —
pestilences, famine, etc. 3 is used as in nsno3, Dan. x. 18.
That this is the meaning is shown by a comparison of the
present passage with Deut. xxxii. 25, which must have been
before the writer's mind, so that he took the words of the first
clause, viz. " without, the sword bereaves," almost as they stood,
but changed no^N Cl^fj?' into njs? n???, — thus preferring
Digitized by
Google
CHAP, I. 21, 23. 377
" what is like death," instead of " terror," to describe the cause
of destruction. Calvin long ago hit the sense in his paraphrase
muUce mortes, and the accompanying explanation : utitur nota
similitudiniSf quasi diceret: nihil domi occurrere nisi mortale
(more correctly mortiferurn). Much light is thrown on the ex-
pression by the parallel adduced by Kalkschmidt from ^neid,
ii. 368, 369 : crudelis ubique Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima
mortis imago.
From speaking of friends, a transition is made in ver. 21
to enemies. Kegarding the explanation of Eosenmiiller, audi-
veritnt quidem amici mei, a me implorati ver. 19, quod gemens
ego . . . imo sunt omnes kostes meiy Thenius observes that it intro-
duces too much. This remark is still more applicable to his
own interpretation : " People (certainly) hear how I sigh, (yet)
I have no comforter." The antithesis introduced by the inser-
tion of " yet" destroys the simplicity of arrangement among the
clauses, although C. B. Michaelis and Gerlach also explain the
passage in the same manner. The subject of the words, " they
have heard," in the first clause, is not the friends who are said
in ver. 19 to have been called upon for help, nor those desig-
nated in the second clause of ver. 21 as " all mine enemies,"
but persons nnnamed, who are only characterized in the second
' clause as enemies, because they rejoice over the calamity which
they have heard of as having befallen Jerusalem. The first
clause forms the medium of transition from the faithless friends
(ver. 19) to the open enemies (ver. 215) ; hence the subject is
left undefined, so that one may think of friends and enemies.
The foes rejoice that God has brought the evil on her. The
words 'yi nsan, which follow, cannot also be dependent on '?
(" that Thou hast brought the day which Thou hast an-
nounced"), inasmuch as the last clause, " and they shall be
like me," does not harmonize with them. Indeed, Nagelsbach
and Gerlach, who assume that this is the connection of the
clause " Thou hast brought," etc., take '3 vrijl adversatively :
" but they shall be like me." If, however, " they shall be,"
etc., were intended to form an antithesis to " all mine enemies
have heard," etc., the former clause would be introduced by oni.
The mere change of tense is insufficient to prove the point.
It must further be borne in mind, that in such a case there
Digitized by
Google
378 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
would be introduced by the words " and they shall be," etc., a
new series of ideas, the second great division of the prayer ;
bat this is opposed by the arrangement of the clauses. The
second portion of the prayer cannot be attached to the end of
the verse. The new series of thoughts begins rather with
" Thou hast brought," which the Syriac has rendered by the
imperative, venire fac. Similarly Luther translates : " then
(therefore) let the day come." 0. B. Michaelis, Rosenmiiller,
Pareau, etc., also take the words optatively, referring to the
Arabic idiom, according to which a wish is expressed in a vivid
manner by the perfect. This optative use of the perfect cer-
tainly cannot be shown to exist in the Hebrew ; but perhaps it
may be employed to mark what is viewed as certain to follow,
in which case the Germans use the present. The use of the
perfect shows that the occurrence expected is regarded as so
certain to happen, that it is represented as if it had already
taken place. The perfects in iii. 56-61 are taken in this sense
by nearly all expositors. Similarly we take the clause now
before us to mean, " Thou bringest on the day which Thou'
hast proclaimed (announced)," i,e. the day of judgment on the
nations, Jer. xxv., " so that they become like me," i.e. so
that the foes who rejoice over my misfortune suffer the same
fate as myself. *♦ The day [which] Thou hast proclaimed" has
been too specifically rendered in the Vulgate, adduxisti diem
consolationis, probably with a reference of the proclamation to
Isa. xl. 2. — After this expression of certainty regarding the
coming of a day of punishment for her enemies, there follows,
ver. 22, the request that all the evil they have done to Jeru-
salem may come before the face of God, in order that He may
punish it (cf. Ps. cix. 15 with ver. 14), — do to them as He has
done to Jerusalem, because of her transgressions. The clause
which assigns the reason (" for many are my sighs," etc.) does
not refer to that which immediately precedes ; for neither the
request that retribution should be taken, nor the confession of
guilt (" for all my transgressions "), can be accounted for by
pointing to the deep misery of Jerusalem, inasmuch as her
sighing and sickness are not brought on her by her enemies,
but are the result of the sufferings ordained by God regarding
her. The words contain the ground of the request that God
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IL 379
would look on the misery (ver. 20), and show to the wretched
one the compassion which men refose her. ^1 ^37 is exactly
the same expression as that in Jer. viii. 18 ; cf . also Isa. i. 5.
The reason thus given for making the entreaty forms an
abrupt termination, and with these words the sound of lamenta-
tion dies away.
CHAP. II. — LAMENTATION OVER THE JUDGMENT OF DESTRUC-
TION THAT HAS COMB ON ZION AND THE DESOLATION OF
JUDAH.
1 Alas ! how the Lord envelopes the daughter of Zion in His wrath !
He hath cast down the glory of Israel from heaven to earth ;
Nor hath He remembered His footstool in the day of His wratL
2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, He hath not
spared:
He hath broken down, in His anger, the strongholds of the daughter of
Jndah ; He hath smitten [them] down to the earth.
He hath profaned the kingdom and its princes.
3 He hath cut off, in the burning of wrath, every horn of Israel ;
He hath drawn back His right hand from before the enemy.
And hath burned among Jacob like a flaming fire, [which] devours
round about.
4 He hath bent His bow like an enemy, standing [with] His right hand
like an adversary.
And He slew all the desires of the eye ;
dn the tent of the daughter of Zion hath He poured out His fury like
fire.
5 The Lord hath become like an enemy ; He hath swallowed np Israel.
He hath swallowed up all her palaces. He hath destroyed his strongholds.
And hath increased on the daughter of Judah groaning and moaning.
6 And He hath violently treated His own enclosure, like a garden ; He
hath destroyed His own place of meeting :
Jahveh hath caused to be forgotten in Zion the festival and the Sabbath,
And in the fierceness of His wrath He hath rejected king and priest.
7 The Lord hath spumed His own altar, He hath abhorred His own
sanctuary;
He hath delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces ;
They have made a noise in the house of Jahveh, as [on] the day of a
festival.
8 Jahveh hath purposed to destroy the walls of the daughter of Zion :
He hath stretched put a line, He hath not drawn back His hand from
demolishing ;
And He hath made the rampart and the [city] wall to mourn ; they
sorrow together.
Digitized by
Google
380 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH,'
9 Her gates have sunk into the earth ; He hath destroyed and broken her
bars :
Her king and her princes are among the nations ; there is no law.
Her prophets also And no vision from Jahveh.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, they are
silent ;
They have cast up dust upon their head, they have clothed themselves
with sackcloth garments :
The virgins of Jerusalem have brought down their head to the earth.
11 Mine eyes waste away with tears, my bowels glow,
My liver is poured out on the earth, because of the destruction of the
daughter of my people ;
Because the young child and the suckling pine away in the streets of
the city.
12 They said to their mothers, Where is com and wine ?
When they were fainting like one wounded in the streets of the city.
When their soul was poured out into the bosom of their mothers.
13 What shall I testify against thee? what shall I compare to thee,
daughter of Jerusalem ?
What shall I liken to thee, that I may comfort thee, virgin daughter
of Zion?
Forthy destraction is great, like the sea ; who can heal thee?
14 Thy prophets have seen for thee vanity and absurdity.
And have not revealed thine iniquity, to turn thy captivity ;
But they have seen for thee burdens of vanity, and expulsion.
15 All that pass by the way clap [their] hands against thee ;
They hiss and shake their head against the daughter of Jerusalem,
[saying,
"Is] this the city that they call ' The perfection of beauty, a joy of the
whole earth?'"
16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee :
They hiss and gnash the teeth ; they say, " We have swallowed [her] ;
Assuredly this is the day that we have expected ; we have found [it],
we have seen [it]."
17 Jahveh hath done what He hath purposed :
He hath executed His word which He commanded from the days of
yore : He hath broken down, and hath not spared :
And He hath made the enemy rejoice over thee ; He hath raised up the
horn of thine adversaries.
18 Their heart crieth out unto the Lord.
O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a stream by day
and by night :
Give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.
19 Arise, wail in the night; at the beginning of the watches.
Pour out thy tieart like water before the face of the Lord :
Lift up thine hands to Him for the soul of thy young children,
That faint for hunger at the head of every street.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II. 1-10. 381
20 See, Jahveh, and consider to whom Thoa bast acted thus I
Shall women eat their [body's] fruit, the children of their care ?
Or shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord ?
21 The boy and the old man lie without, on the ground ;
My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword :
Thou hast slain in the day of Thy wrath, Thou hast slaughtered, Thou
hast not spared.
22 Thou summonest, as on a feast-day, my terrors round about;
And in the day of the wrath of Jahveh there was no fugitive or survivor
Whom I would have nursed and brought up ; mine enemy destroyed
them.
This second poem contains a new and more bitter lamenta-
tion regarding the fall of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah ;
and it is distinguished from the first, partly by the bitterness of
the complaint, but chiefly by the fact that while, in the first,
the oppressed, helpless, and comfortless condition of Jerusalem
is the main feature, — here, on the other hand, it is the judgment
which the Lord, in His wrath, has decreed against Jerusalem
and Judah, that forms the leading thought in the complaint, as
is shown by the prominence repeatedly given to the wrath,
rage, burning wrath, etc. (ver. 1 ff.). The description of this
judgment occupies the first part of the poem (vers. 1-10); then
follows, in the second part (vers. 11-19), the lamentation over
the impotency of human consolation, and over the scoflBng of
enemies at the misfortunes of Jerusalem (vers. 11-16). It was
the Lord who sent this judgment ; and it is He alone who
can give comfort and .help in this distress. To Him must
the daughter of Zion betake herself with her complaint (vers.
17-19) ; and this she actually does in the concluding portion
(vers. 20-22).
Vers. 1-10. Description of the judgment. — Ver. 1. The
lamentation opens with sighs for the destruction of Jerusalem
and the temple. The first member of the verse contains the
general idea that the Lord Qp^, the Lord xar' i^oxv^j ^^ry
suitably used instead of nw) has, in His wrath, enveloped
Jerusalem with clouds. This thought is particularized in the
two members that follow, and is referred to the overthrow of
Jerusalem and the temple. yv\, from a^J? (which is aw. Xey.
as a verb, and is probably a denominative from 3y, a cloud),
signifies to cover or surround with clouds. iBSa does not mean
Z'
Digitized by
Google
382 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMUH.
« with His wrath " (Ewald, Thenius), but « in His wrath," as
is shown by vers. 3, 6, 21, 22. " The danghtor of Zion " here
means the city of Jerusalem, which in the second member is
called " the glory (or ornament) of Israel," by -which we are
to Imderstand neither res Judceorum florentissimce in general
(Rosenmiiller), nor the temple in special, as the " splendid
house," Isa. Ixiv. 10 (Michaelis, Vaihinger). Jerusalem is
called the glory or ornament of Israel, in the same way as
Babylon in Isa. Ixiv. 10 is called " the glory of the splendour
of the Chaldeans " (Thenius, Gerlach). In the figurative ex-
pression, " He cast down from heaven to earth," we are not
to think there is any reference to a thunderbolt which knocks
down an object, such as a lofty tower that reaches to heaven
(Thenius) ; " from heaven " implies that what is to be thrown
down was in heaven, as has been already remarked by Kaschi in
his explanation, pos^g'twim sustulisset eos (Judceos) usque ad caelum,
eosdem dejecit in terram, where we have merely to substitute
" Jerusalem " for eos, which is too vague. Gerlach has rightly
remarked that the expression " cast down from heaven " is to
be accounted for by the fact that, in the first member of the
verse, Jerusalem is compared to a star, in the same way as
Babylon is expressly called a star in Isa. xiv. 12 ; nay, what is
more, Jerusalem is here compared to a star that has fallen from
heaven; the reference to that passage thus becomes, unmis-
takeable. Moreover, the casting down from heaven means
something more than deprivation of the glory that had come
on the city in consequence of God's dwelling in the midst of it
(Gerlach) ; it signifies, besides, the destruction of the city, viz.
that it would be laid in ashes. In all this, the Lord has not
been thinking of, i.e, paid any regard to, His footstool, i.e. the
ark of the covenant (1 Ohron. xxviii. 2 ; Ps. xcix. 5), — not the
temple (Ewald), although we cannot think of the ark without
at the same thinking of the temple as the house in which it was
kept. The ark, and not the temple, is named, because the
temple became a habitation of the Lord, and a place where He
revealed Himself, only through the ark of the covenant, with
which the Lord had graciously connected His presence among
His people. It is further implied, in the fact that God does
not think of His footstool, that the ark itself was destroyed
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II 1-10. 383
aloBg with the temple and the city. — Ver. 2. The Lord has
destroyed not merely Jerusalem, but the whole kingdom. )>?3,
" to swallow up," involves the idea of utter annihilation, the
fury of destruction, just in the same way as it [viz. the fury]
is peculiar to ^^p, the overflowing of anger. ^ He hath not
spared" forms an adverbial limitation of the previous statement,
" unsparingly." The Qeri t6l, instead of t6, is an unnecessary
and unpoetic emendation. niKl~73, all the pastures of Jacob.
According to its etymology, njj means a place where shepherds
or nomads rest, or stay, or live ; here, it is not to be understood
specially of the dwellings as contrasted with, or distinguished
from the pasture-grounds, but denotes, in contrast with the
fortresses (onyap), the open, unfortified places of the country
in which men and cattle enjoy food and rest. " The strong-
holds of the daughter of Judah " are not merely the fortifica-
tions of Jerusalem, "but the fortresses generally of the country
and kingdom of Judah ; cf. Jer. v. 17, xxxiv. 7. r^N? ?W,
" to cast down to the ground " (used of the pulling down of
walls, cf. Isa. xxv. 12), is an epexegesis of DnPl, as in Ex. xiii. 14,
and is not to be joined (in opposition to the accents) with what
succeeds, and taken figuratively. For neither does -"pn need
any strengthening, nor does l^K? r?"? suitably apply to the
kingdom and its princes. The desecration of the kingdom
consisted in its being dishonoured by the disgraceful conduct of
its rulers ; cf. Ps. Ixxxix. 40.
In vers. 3 and 4, the writer describes the hostile conduct of
the Lord towards Israel, by which the kingdom of Judah was
destroyed. Thenius utterly mistakes the poetic character of the
description given, and evidently finds in it the several events
that occurred up to the taking of the city, all mentioned in
their natural order ; according to this, the perfects would re-
quire to be translated as preterites. But this view can be made
out only by giving an arbitrary meaning to the several figures
used ; e.g., it is alleged that " every horn " means the frontier
fortresses, that the expression "before the enemy" refers to the
time when the latter turned his face against Jerusalem, and so
on. The three members of ver. 3 contain a climax: deprivation
of the power to resist; the withdrawal of aid ; the necessary con-
sequence of which was the burning like a flame of fire. " To
Digitized by
Google
384 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMUn.
cut down the horn " means to take away offensive and defensive
power ; see on Jer. xlviii. 25. " Every horn " is not the same
as "all horns," but means all that was a horn of Israel (Gerlach).
This included not merely the fortresses of Judah, but every
means of defence and offence belonging to the kingdom, in-
cluding men fit for war, who are neither to be excluded nor
(with Le Clerc) to be all that is understood by " every horn."
In the expression ^3"'D'_ . . . 3^K'n, the suffix, as in WB'jJ, ver. 4,
refers to Jahveh, because the suffix joined to "'J always points
back to the subject of the verb ^'B'n ; cf. Ps. Ixxiv. 11. God
drew back His hand before the enemy, i.e. He withdrew from
the people His assistance in the struggle against the enemy.
Such is the meaning given long ago by the Ohaldee : nee
auxiliatus est populo sua coram hoste. 3^S13 "^H?^ does not
mean " He consumed Jacob ;" but He burned (i.e. made a con-
flagration) in Jacob ; for, in every passage in which lya is
construed with 3, it does not mean to " burn something," but
to bum in or among, or to kindle a fire (cf. Job i. 16, where
the burning up is only expressed by D^si^l, Num. xi. 3, Ps. cvi.
18), or to set something on fire, Isa. xlii. 25. The burning
represents devastation ; hence the comparison of 'ija'. with " like
fire of flame (= flaming, brightly blazing fire, cf. Isa. iv. 5,
Ps. cv. 32) that devours round about." The subject of i?y is
Jahveh, not ira Jovce (Rosenmiiller), or nan? (Neumann), or
the enemy (Gerlach). The transition from the perfect with 1
consec. does not cause any change of the subject ; this is shown
by vers. 4 and 5, where also the second clause is connected with
the first by means of 1 consec. But the statement of Gerlach
— that if Jahveh and not the enemy be the subject, then the
consecutive sentence (the burning among Jacob as the result of
the withdrawal of Jahveh's hand before the enemy) would be
inexplicable — gives no evidence of its truth. The kindling or
making of the fire in Jacob is, of coarse, represented as a result
of what is previously stated, yet not as the consequence merely
of the withdrawal of his hand, but also of the cutting off of
every horn. In both of these ways, God has kindled in Jacob
a fire which grows into a destructive conflagration. — In ver. 4
the idea is still further developed : God riot merely delivered
up His people to the enemy, leaving them defenceless and help-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II. 1-10. 385
less, but also came forward Himself to fight against them as an
enemy. He bent His bow like a warrior, showing Himself, in
reference to His claims, as an adversary or oppressor. The
specification " His right hand " is added, not so much for the
purpose of defining more exactly the activity of the right hand
(using it to shoot the arrows or wield the sword ; cf. Deut. xxxii.
41 £f., Ps. vii, 13 f.), as rather with the view of expressing
more precisely the hostile attitude of God, since the right hand
of God is at other times represented as the instrument of help.
The expression " and He slew," which follows, does not require
us to think of a sword in the right hand of God, since we can
also kill with arrows. God slew as an enemy; He destroyed
everything that was precious in men's sight, i,e. not merely
omnes homines cetate, specie, dignitate eonspicuos (C. B. Michaelis,
Eosenmiiller, Thenius) ; for, in Ps. Ixxviii. 47, J"in is also used
with reference to the effect of hail on the vine ; and the arrows
shot from the bow are merely named by synecdoche, and by way
of specification, as instruments of war for destruction. Still less
can r?r*!!?G? signify omnia ea iempli omamenta, quibus merito
gloriabatur populus (Kalkschmidt), since it is not till ver. 6 ff.
that the temple is spoken of. " The word is to be taken in its
widest generality, which is indicated by * all ;' accordingly, it
comprehends everything that can be looked upon as dear," in-
cluding children (cf. Ezek. xxiv. 25) and the sanctuary, though
all these do not exhaust the meaning of the word (Gerlach).
Upon the tent of the daughter of Zion He poured out His fury
in fire. The daughter of Zion means the inhabitants of Jeru-
salem : her tent is not the temple (Kalkschmidt, Ewald), which
is never called the tent of the daughter of Zion, but only that
of Jahveh (1 Kings ii. 28, etc.) ; but her house, i.e. the city as
a collection of dwellings. The figure of the outpouring of wrath
is often used, not only in Jer. vi. 11, x. 25, xlii. 18, etc., but
also in Hos. v. 10, Zeph. iii. 8, Ps. Ixix. 25, Ixxvi. 6, etc. — Ver.
5. The Lord has become like an enemy. 3%3 is not separated
from <Tn by the accents (Pesik and Mahpak before, and Kadma
after) ; so that there appears to be nothing to justify the remark
of Gerlach, that, " as if the prophet were hesitating whether he
should state explicitly that the Lord had become an enemy, he
breaks off the sentence he had begun, * The Lord hath become
VOL. II. 2 B
Digitized by
Google
386 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
. . . ,' and continues, * He hath destroyed like a mighty one.' "
As to y??, cf. ver. 2. " Israel" is the name of Jadah viewed
as the covenant people. The swallowing or destruction of Israel
is explained in the clauses which follow as a destruction of the
palaces and fortresses. The mention of the palaces points to the
destruction of Jerusalem, while the " fortresses " similarly indi-
cate the destruction of the strong cities in the country. The
interchange of the suffixes n*— and V— is accounted for on the
ground that, when the writer was thinking of the citadels, the
city hovered before his mind ; and when he regarded the for-
tresses, the people of Israel similarly presented themselves.
The same interchange is found in Hos. viii. 14; the assump-
tion of a textual error, therefore, together with the conjectures
based on that assumption, is shown to be untenable. On the
expression, " He hath destroyed his strongholds," cf. Jer. xlvii.
18 ; on nj3Kl n*:KFi, Isa. xxix. 2 : in this latter case, two word-
forms derived from the same stem are combined for the sake
of emphasis. " Daughter of Judah," as in ver. 2, cf. i. 15.
In vers. 6 and 7, mention is made of the destruction of the
temple and the cessation of public worship. " He treated vio-
lently (cruelly)," i.e. laid waste, " like a garden. His enclosure." .
^ItP (from :pfe'=^3B', to intertwine, hedge round) signifies a hedge
or enclosure. The context unmistakeably shows that by this we
are to understand the temple, or the holy place of the temple ;
hence ^B> is not the hedging, but what is hedged in. But the
comparison I?? has perplexed expositors, and given occasion for
all kinds of artificial and untenable explanations. We must
not, of course, seek for the point of the comparison in the ease
with which a garden or garden-fence may be destroyed, for this
does not accord with the employment of the verb Don ; but the
garden is viewed as a pleasure-ground, which its owner, if it
does not suit its purpose, destroys or gives up again, without
much hesitation. The emphasis lies on the suffix in iSB*, "His own
enclosure," God's enclosure = the sacred enclosure (Gerlach),
the sanctuary protected by Himself, protected by laws intended
to keep the sanctity of the temple from profanation. The
second clause states the same thing, and merely brings into
prominence another aspect of the sanctity of the temple by the
employment of the word iijj^o. This noun, as here used, does
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II. 1-](K 887
not mean the " time," but the " place of meeting ;" this is not,
however, the place where the people assemble, but the place of
meeting of the Lord with His people, where He shows Himself
present, and grants His favour to the congregation appearing
before Him. Thus, like 1?io S^j«, the word signifies the place
where God reveals His gracious presence to His people; cf. Ex.
XXV. 22, and the explanation of ^i!i"iJ?i3 given in that passage. In
the first member of the verse, the temple is viewed as a place
sacred to God ; in the second, as the place where He specially
manifests His gracious presence in Israel. With the destruction
of the temple, Jahveh (the covenant God) caused feast and
Sabbath, i.e. all public festivals and divine service, to be for-
gotten. The destruction of the sacred spots set apart for the
worship of the Lord was attended with the cessation of the
sacred festivals. Thereby it became evident that the Lord, in
His fierce anger, had rejected king and priest. The singulars,
festival. Sabbath, king, and priest, are used in unrestricted
generality. King and priest are regarded as the divinely
chosen media of the covenant graces. The abolition of public
worship practically involved that of the priesthood, for the
service of the priests was connected with the temple. Exposi-
tors are much divided in their views regarding the object for
which the king is here mentioned in connection with the priest.
There is no special need for refuting the opinion of Thenius,
that king and priest are named as the two main factors in the
worship of God, because the seat of the king was upon Zion as
well as that of the priesthood ; for the seat of the priests was as
little on Mount Zion as the king's palace was on the temple
mount. Moreover, the words do not treat of the destruction of
the royal palace and the dwellings of the priests, but declare
that royalty and the priesthood will be rejected. The mention
of the king in connection with the priests implies a close con-
nection also of royalty with the temple. Nagelsbach, accord-
ingly, is of opinion that the kings also belong to the number of
those summoned to celebrate the feasts, and were not merely
Jehovah's substitutes before the people, but also " representa-
tives of the people before God ;" for he adopts the remark of
Oehler (in Herzog's Real Ene. viii. S. 12), that " the Israelitish
kingdom (especially in David and Solomon) bears a certain
/■
Digitized by
Google
388 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
sacerdotal character, inasmuch as the king, at the head of the
people and in their name, pays homage to God, and brings back
again to the people the blessing of God (2 Sam. vi. 17 ff. ; 1
Kings iiL 4, viii. 14 ff., 55 ff., 62 ff., ix. 25; 1 Chron. xxix. 10 ff.;
2 Chron. i. 6, compared with Ezek. xlvi. 1 ff.)." This sacerdotal
character of royalty, however, was but the outcome of the sacer-
dotal character of the people of Israel. In view of this, the
king, because of his position as the head of the people in civil
matters (for he was prcecipuum ecclesice membrum), fully brought
out the relation of the people to the Lord, without, however,
discharging any peculiarly sacerdotal function. The complaint
in the present verse, — that, with the destruction of the temple,
and the abolition of the service connected with it, Jahveh had
rejected king and priest, — implies that royalty in Israel stood in
as intimate connection with the temple as the priesthood did.
This connection, however, is not to be sought for so much in
the fact that it was the incumbent duty of the theocratic king,
in the name and at the head of the people, to pay homage to
God, and to see that the public worship of Jahveh was upheld ;
we must rather seek for it in the intimate relation instituted by
God between the maintenance of the Davidic monarchy and
the building of the house of God. This connection is exhibited
in the promise made by God to David, when the latter had
resolved to build a house for the Lord to dwell in: He (Jahveh)
shall build a house to him (David), viz. raise up his seed after
him, and establish his kingdom for ever ; and this seed of David
shall build a house to His name (2 Sam. vii. 12 ff.). This pro-
mise, in virtue of which Solomon built the temple as a dwelling
for the name of Jahveh, connected the building of the temple
so closely with the kingdom of David, that this continued exist-
ence of the temple might be taken as a pledge of the continu-
ance of David's house ; while the destruction of the temple,
together with the abolition of the public ministrations, might,
on the other hand, serve as a sign of the rejection of the
Davidic monarchy. Viewing the matter in this light, Jeremiah
laments that, with the destruction of the temple and the aboli-
tion of the public festivals, Jahveh has rejected king and priest,
i.e. the royal family of David as well as the Levitical priesthood.
— ^In ver. 7, special mention is further made of the rejection of
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. u. 1-10. 389
the altar, and of the sanctuary as the centre of divine worship.
The verbs rut and 'iw are used in Ps.lxxxix. 39, 40, in con-
nection with the rejection of the Davidic monarchy. " The
sanctuary," mentioned in connection with " the altar," does not
mean the temple in general, but its inner sanctuary, — the holy
place and the most holy place, as the places of worship corre-
sponding to the altar of the fore-court. The temple-building is
designated by " the walls of her palaces." For, that by n^rtiJOIK
we are to understand, not the palaces of the city of David, the
royal palaces, but the towering pile of the temple, is unmis-
takeably evident from the fact that, both before and after, it is
the temple that is spoken of, — not its fortifications, the castles
specially built for its defence (Thenius) ; because fiiy]^ does
not mean a fortified building, but (as derived from DiS, to be
high) inerely a lofty pile. Such were the buildings of the
temple in consequence of their lofty situation on Moriah. In
the house of Jahveh, the enemy raises a loud cry (Tip 10?, cf.
Jer. xxii. 20), as on a feast-day. The cry is therefore not a
war-cry (Pareau, Eosenmiiller), but one of jubilee and triumph,
as if they had come into the temple to a festival : in Ps. Ixxiv.
4, the word used is iSB', to roar [as a lion].
The lament over the destruction of the kingdom concludes,
in vers. 8, 9, by mentioning that the walls of Jerusalem are
destroyed ; with this the Chaldeans ended the work of demoli-
tion. The expression nin* 2^n represents this as the execution
of a divine decree,— a turn which forms an appropriate intro-
duction to the close of the work of destruction. Easchi makes
the following remark concerning this: a longo inde tempore,
in animum induxerat, hanc urbem vastare secundum illud quod
Jer. xxxii. 31 dixit. This intention He has now carried out.
The words, " He stretched out the measuring-line," are more
exactly determined by what follows, "He withdrew not His
hand from destroying;" this shows the extent to which the
destruction was carried out. The measuring-line was drawn
out for the purpose of determining the situation and direction
of buildings (Job xxxviii. 5 ; Zech. i. 15) ; but Jahveh applies
it also for the purpose of pulling down buildings (2 Kings xxi.
13 ; Isa. xxxiv. 11 ; Amos vii. 7), in order to indicate that He
carries out the destruction with the same precision as that of
Digitized by
Google
390 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMUH.
the builder in finishing his work. The rampart and the wall
sorrow over this. ?n (from h^n) is the rampart, i.e. the low
wall with the ditch, surrounding the fortress outside the city
wall; cf. 2 Sam. xx. 15, Isa. xxvi. 1. The gates of the
daughter of Zion (i.e. of Jerusalem) are sunk into the earth,
i.e. have been completely buried under rubbish by the demoli-
tion, as if they had sunk into the ground. The subject to
l3En ^3K is Jahveh. The bars of the daughter of Zion are
those with which the city gates were closed, for the protection
of the inhabitant. With the destruction of Jerusalem the
kingdom of God is destroyed. King and princes are among
the heathen, — carried away into exile. It must, indeed, be
allowed that nnin ps is conhected by the accents with what
precedes ; and Gerlach defends the construction, " they are
among the heathen without law," — not only agreeing with
Kalkschmidt in taking >Tiin j^N as a designation of the D)ia as
ethniei, — ad gentes, quibus divina nulla erat revelatio, — ^but also
with Lnther, who translates : " her king and her princes are
among the heathen, because they cannot administer the law,"
or generally, have it not. But, on the other hand, the accents
merely indicate the stichometrical arrangement, not the re-
lation of the words according to their sense ; and the remark,
"that ver. %c sets forth the fate of the persons who stood
to the city in the relation of helpers and counsellors or com-
forters (her. king, her prophets), of whose help (counsel, or
comfort) the city was deprived, as well as of the external means
of defending her" (first member), proves nothing at all, for
the simple reason that the priests also belonged to the number
of the helpers, counsellors, and comforters of the city ; hence,
if this were the meaning, and the two halves of the verse were
meant to stand in this relation, then the priests would certainly
have been mentioned also. The second half of the verse is not
connected with the first in the manner supposed by Gerlach ;
but, from the whole preceding description of the way in which
the divine wrath has been manifested against Jerusalem, it
draws this conclusion : " Judah has lost its king and its princes,
who have been carried away among the heathen : it has also
lost the law and prophecy." " Law" and " vision " are men-
tioned as both media of divine revelation. The law is the
"N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II. 1-10. 391
summary of the rule of life given by God to His people : this
exists no more for Judah, because, with the destruction of
Jerusalem and of the temple, the divinely appointed consti-
tution of Israel was abolished and destroyed. Prophecy was
the constant witnes? to the presence of God among His people ;
by this means the Lord sought to conduct Israel to the object
of their election and calling, and to fit them for becoming a
holy nation and a kingdom of priests. The perf. 'N>fO is not
a preterite, but the expression of an accomplished fact. The
prophets of the daughter of Zion no longer obtain any vision
or revelation from Jahveh : the revelation of God by prophets
has ceased for Zion. The words imply that there are still
prophets, and merely affirm that they do not receive any
revelation from God. This is not opposed to the fact that
Jeremiah, some months after the destruction of Jerusalem,
again received a revelation ; cf . Jer. xlii. 4 with ver. 7. The
meaning of the complaint is simply that Jahveh no longer owns
His people, no longer gives them a token of His gracious
presence, just as it is said in Ps. Ixxiv. 9, " There is no more
any prophet." But it is not thereby declared that prophecy
has altogether and for ever been silenced, but merely that,
when Jerusalem was destroyed, Israel received no prophetic
communication, — that God the Lord did not then send them a
message to comfort and sustain them. The revelation-which
Jeremiah (xlii. 7) received regarding the determination of the
people who sought to flee to Egypt, has no connection with this
at all, for it does not contain a word as to the futiu-e destiny of
Jerusalem. Hence it cannot be inferred, with Thenius, from
the words now before us, that the present poem was com-
posed before that revelation given in Jer. xlii. 7 ff. ; nor yet,
with Nagelsbach, that the writer had here before his mind the
condition of the great mass of the people who had been carried
away into exile. Neither, indeed, were the people in exile
without prophetic, communications ; for, even so early as six
years before the overthrow of Jerusalem, God had raised up to
the exiles a prophet in the person of Ezekiel. — Ver. 10. The
whole of the people have sunk into deep sorrow over this mis-
fortune. The elders, as the counsellors of the city, sit on the
ground in silence, from deep sorr6w; cf. Job ii. 8, 13, and
Digitized by
Google
z'
392 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH.
regarding the tokens of sorrow, Job ii. 12, Jer. iv. 8, vi. 26,
etc. The virgins of Jerusalem have renounced their gaiety
and bowed their head, sorrowing, to the ground; cf. i. 4.
Vers, Il-IG. The impotence of human comfort, and the
mockery of enemies. Ver. 11 f. The misery that has befallen
the people is so feapful, that sorrow ovei* it wears out one's life.
" Mine eyes pine away because of tears," is the complaint of
the prophet, not merely for himself personally, but in the name
of all the godly ones. " Mine eyes pine " is the expression
used in Ps. Ixix. 4. On *?p ^"'?"^?tj, cf. i. 20. The expression,
"my liver is poured out on the earth," occurs nowhere else,
and is variously explained. That the liver is fans sanguinis,
and thus the seat of the animal life (Kosenmiiller, Thenius),
cannot be made out from Prov. vii. 23. This passage rather
forms a proof that among the Hebrews, according to a view
widely prevalent in ancient times, the liver was considered the
seat of sensual desire and lust (cf. Delitzsch's Bib. Psycliology,
Clark's translation, p. 316). But this view is insufiBcient as an
explanation of the passage now before us. Besides, there are
no proofs to show that " livet " is used for " heart," or even for
"gall," although Job xvi. 13 is unwarrantably adduced in
support of this position. A closely related expression, certainly,
is found in Job xxx. 16, Ps. xlii. 5, where the soul is said to
be poured out ; but the liver is different from B'M, the principle
of the corporeal life. If the liver was called 13? because,
according to Galen, de usu partium, vi. 17 (in Gesen. Tlies. p.
655), omnium viscerum et densissimum et gravissimum est, then
it may be regarded, instead of Q'VO, as the chief bodily organ
through which not merely lust, but also pain, is felt ; and the
pouring out of the liver on the earth may thus mean that the
inner man is dissolved in pain and sorrow, — perishes, as it
were, through pain. For it is evident from the context, and
universally admitted, that it is the effect of pain in consuming
the bodily organs that is here meant to be expressed. *ey na n3B'
is a genuine Jeremianic expression (cf. Jer. vi. 14, viif. 11, 21,
etc.), which again occurs in ver. 13, iii. 47, 48, and iv. 10. In
what follows, some harrowing details are given regarding the
destruction of the daughter of Zion. ^lOV? for 1^yf?f, while
(or because) children and sucklings were pining away on the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. U 11-16. 393
•streets of the city. This figure of heartrending misery is
further carried out in ver. 12,- for the purpose of vividly set-
ting forth the terrible distress. Gerlach is wrong in thinking
that the writer brings forward such sad scenes Sis would be
likely to present themselves in the period immediately after the
destruction of the city. For, the fact that, in ver. 10, the eye
of the mourner is directed to the present, is far from being a
proof that vers, lie and 12 also treat of the present ; and the
imperfect 'i?'^', ver. 12, is not parallel in time with ^3?^.';, ver.
12, but designates the repetition of the action in past time.
" The children say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine ? "
Le. Give us bread and wine, or. Where can we eat and drink ?
Com and must (as in Jer. xxxi. 12, etc.) are mentioned as
the usual means of nourishment of the Israelites. Ji'i, " cpm,"
is used poetically for bread (cf. Ps. Ixxviii. 24), — not pounded
or roasted grain, which was used without further preparation
(Thenius), and which is called yij, Lev. xxiii. 14, 1 Sam.
xvii. 17, 2 Sam. xvii. 28. The sucklings poured out their
soul, t.e. breathed out their life, into the bosom of their mothers,
i.e. hugging their mothers, although these could not give them
nourishment; cf. iv. 4. — Ver. 13. Against such terrible misery,
human power can give neither comfort nor help. "What
shall I testify to you?" The Kethib "pW is a mistake in
transcription for jII'VK (Qen), because Tiy is not commonly
used in the Kal. Tyn^ to bear witness, is mostly construed
with 3, against or for any one, but also with ace, 1 Kings xxi.
10, 13, in malam, and Job xxix. 11, in bonam partem. Here
it is used in the latter sense : " give testimony to thee " for the
purpose of instruction and comfort, — not of a caJamity that has
happened elsewhere, as Calvin and Thenius explain, though
against the construction of the verb with the accus. ; still less
" to make one swear " (Gesenius, Ewald). That the prophetic
witness is meant here in the sense of encouragement by in-
struction, warning, and comfort, is evident from the mention
of the testimony of the false prophets in ver. 14. "What
shall I compare to thee?" i.e. what kind of misfortune shall
I mention as similar to yours? This is required by the prin-
ciple derived from experience : solamen miseris soeios habuisse
malorxim. ^t?^5^|1, " that I may comfcit thee." The reason
Digitized by
Google
/-
394 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMUH.
assigned, viz. " for thy destruction is great, like the sea " (i.e.
immense), follows the answer, understood though not expressed,
"I can compare nothing to thee." The answer to the last
question, "Who can heal thee?" (NS"} with ?) is, " no man ;"
cf . Jer. XXX. 12 ff. Reasons are assigned for this in vers. 14-16.
— Ver, 14. From her prophets', Jerusalem can expect neither
comfort nor healing. For they have brought this calamity
upon her through their careless and foolish prophesyings.
Those meant are the false prophets, whose conduct Jeremiah
frequently denounced ; cf . Jer. ii. 8, v. 12, vi. 13 f ., viii. 10,
xiv. 14 f., xxiii. 17, 32, xxvii. 10, 15. They prophesied vanity,
— peace when there was no peace, — and 7Bn, " absurdity," =
n?an, Jer. xxiii. 13. They did not expose the sin and guilt of
the people with the view of their amendment and improve-
ment, and thereby removing the misery into which they had
fallen by their sin ; nor did they endeavour to restore the
people to their right relation towards the Lord, upon which
their welfare depended, or to avert their being driven into exile.
On nWB' y^i}, cf . Jer. xxxii. 44. The meaning of this expression,
as there unfolded, applies also to the passage now before us ;
and the translation, captivitatem avertere (Michaelis, Nagels-
bach), or to " ward off thy captivity " (Luther, Thenius), is
neither capable of vindication nor required by the context.
Instead of healing the injuries of the people by discovering
their sins, they have seen (prophesied) for them TiiKB^, « bur-
dens," i.e. utterances of threatening import (not effata ; see on
Jer. xxiii. 33), which contained Nl^*, « emptiness," and Q^fTiio,
" rejection." The combination of " emptiness" with " burdens"
does not prevent the latter word from being applied to threaten-
ing oracles ; for the threats of the false prophets did not refer
to Judah, but were directed against the enemies of Israel. For
instance, that they might promise the people speedy deliverance
from exile, they placed the downfall of the Chaldean power in
immediate prospect; cf. Jer. xxviii. 2-4, 11. D^mtD is ott.
Xerf. as a noun, and is also dependent on "burdens" (cf. Ewald,
§ 289, c) : it signifies ejection from the land, not " persecution "
(Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, Ewald, etc.), for Jeremiah uses fTiJ
(in Niph. and Hiph.) always in the sense of rejection, expul-
sion from the country ; and the word has here an unmistakeable
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II. 17-19. 395
reference to Jer. xxvii. 10, 15: "They prophesy lies to yon,
that they may eject you from your country." — Ver. 15 f.
Strangers and enemies have, for the misfortune of Jerusalem,
only expressions of scorn and delight over her loss. " Those
who pass by the way " are strangers who travel past Jerusalem.
To clap the hands together is not here a gesture betokening
anger and disinclination (Num. xxiv. 10), but of delight over
the .injury of others, as in Job xxvii. 23. Pi^, to hiss, is an
expression of scorn ; see on Jer. xix. 8. The same is true as
regards the shaking of the head ; cf . Ps. xxii. 8, cix. 25, etc. :
the expression for this, in Jer. xviii. 16, is B>tha *I*3a, The
exclamation, "Is this the city which they call .'perfect in
beauty ' ? " is an expression of scornful astonishment. *?* iWs
is substantially the same as *B* ??3D, Ps. 1. 2, where the ex-
pression is applied to Zion ; in Ezek. xxvii. 3 the same is said
of Tyre. That Jeremiah had Ps. 1. 2 in his mind is shown
by the apposition, " a joy of the whole earth," which is taken
from Ps. xlviii. 3. — ^Ver. 16. The enemy in triumph express
their joy over the fall of Jerusalem. The opening of the
mouth (as in Ps. xxxv. 21, Job xvi. 10), taken in connection
with what follows, is also a gesture peculiar to scornful speech.
The gnashing of the teeth (Ps. xxxv. 16, xxxvii. 12 ; Job xvi.
9) is here an expression of rage that has burst out. The
object of " we have swallowed" is to be derived from the con-
text (" against thee "), viz. the city of Jerusalem. " Surely
this " is a strong asseveration — " this is the very day." The
asyndetic collection of the three verbs accords with the im-
passioned character of the enemy's speech. " To see " is here
equivalent to living to see.
Vers. 17-19. In this calamity, which Jahveh has ordained,
it is only He who can bring comfort and help ; [arid this He
will do], if earnest and incessant complaint be made to Him
regarding the misery. In order to turn the thoughts of the
people in this direction, the prophet lays emphasis on the fact
that God has now executed this destruction which He has
threatened long before, and has prepared for the triumph of
the enemy. "Jahveh hath done what He hath purposed,"
has now performed the word which He has commanded all
along from the days of yore. Zechariah (i. 6) also lays this
Digitized by
Google
/
396 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
truth before the heart of his contemporaries. S^, to cut off,
is used metaphorically in the sense of finishing, completing,
as in Isa. x. 12, Zech. iv. 9. To fulfil a word that has been
ordered, signifies to execute it. n« does not mean to announce,
but to command, order ; the word has been chosen, not merely
with reference to the fact that the threatened rejection of
Israel was announced in the law, but also with regard to
the circumstance that the threat of punishment for sing is
an evidence of the moral government of the world, and the
holiness of the Lord and Ruler of the world demands the
punishment of every act of rebellion against the government
and decrees of God. " The days of old " are the times of
Moses ; for Jeremiah has before his mind the threatenings of
the law. Lev. xxvi. 23 ff., Deut. xxviii. 15 ff. " Without
sparing," as Jeremiah (iv. 28) has announced to the people.
In the following clause, " He hath made thine enemy rejoice
over thee," thoughts are reproduced from Ps. Ixxxix. 43. To
" exalt the horn " means to grant power and victory ; cf .
1 Sam. ii. 1, Ps. Ixxv. 5. — Ver. 18. When it is seen that
the Lord has appointed the terrible calamity, the people are
driven to pray for mercy. Hence ver. 18 follows, yet not
at once with the summons to prayer, but with the assertion of
. the fact that this actually takes place: "their heart cries out
unto the Lord ; " and it is not till after this that there follows
the summons to entreat Him incessantly with tears. The
perfect pVV represents the crying as already begun, and reach-
ing on to the present (cf. Ewald, § 135, b), for which we use .
the present in German [and in English]. That the suffix
in " their heart" does not point to the enemies mentioned at
the close of ver. 17, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, is
indubitably evident from what is substantially stated in the
clause, viz. that crying to the Lord merely indicates the crying
to God for help in distress. , There is no sufficient reason for
Ewald's change of D3? PVV into ?I3? ''t^JW, « outcries of thine
heart," i.e. let the cry cf thine heart sound forth ; still less
ground is there for the conjecture of Thenius, that D3? should
be changed into D3n, because this is opposed to the following
summons to implore help : other more unnatural changes in
the lext it were needless to mention. The following clauses,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. II, 17-19. 397
" O wall of the daughter of Zion," etc., do not state how her
heart has cried and still cries to the Lord, but bid her con-
stantly go on imploring. Several expositors have taken objec-
tion to the direct address, "O wall of the daughter of Zion,"
and have sought to remove the difficulty by making conjectures.
Hence, e.g., Thenius still holds that there is good ground for
the objection, saying that there is a wide difference between
the poetic expression, "the wall mourns" (ver. 8), and the
summons, " O wall, let tears run down." This difference cannot
be denied, yet such personification is not without analogy. A
similar summons is found in Isa. xiv. 31 : " Howl, O gate "
(^porta). It is self-evident that it is not the wall simply as
such that is considered, but everything besides connected with
it, so that the wall is named instead of the city with its inha-
bitants, just as in Isa. xiv. 31 gate and city are synonymous.
Hence, also, all the faculties of those residing within the wall
(eyes, heart, hands) may be ascribed to it, inasmuch as the
idea of the wall easily and naturally glides over into that of
the daughter of Zion. The expression, " Let tears run down
like a stream," is a hyperbole used to indicate the exceeding
greatness of the grief. " By day and night " is intensified by
the clauses 'which follow : " give not," i.e. grant not. ?I? nJiBj
" torpidity (stagnation) to thyself." The noun HMB is air. "Key.,
like fjlBn, iii. 49 ; the verb Jia, however, occurs in Gen. xxv.
26 and Ps. Ixxvii. 3, where it is used of the torpidity of the
vital spirits, stagnation of the heart. The expression in the
text is a poetic one for ^I^JlS : " do not permit thy numbness,"
i.e. let not thy flood of tears dry up ; cf . Ewald, § 289, b.
Py na is the eyeball, not the tears (Pareau); cf. Ps.'xvii. 8.
D'tn comes from 00% to be still, as in Jer. xlvii. 6. On the
thought here presented, cf. Jer. xiv. 17. — Ver. 19. \T\ (prop, to
raise a whining cry, but commonly "to shout for joy") here
means to weep aloud, lament. nhOE'K E't^i?, at the beginning
of the night-watches (cf . Judg. vii. 19) ; not "in the first night-
watch" (Kalkschmidt, following Bochart and Nagelsbach), but
at the beginning of each night-watch, i.e. throughout the night ;
cf. Ps. Ixiii. 7. " Pour out thine heart like water before the face
of the Lord," i.e. utter the sorrow of thine heart in tears to the
Lord. The uplifting of the hands is a gesture indicative of
Digitized by
Google
r
398 THE LAMENTATIOKS OF JEBEMIAH.
prayer and entreaty (cf. Ps. xxviii. 2, Ixiii. 5, etc.), not " of
the deepest distress " (Thenius). ^vjiV ^^^^ does not mean
pro vita parvuloriim tuorum, that God may at least preserve
them (Rosenmiiller, Gerlach), but " on account of the soul of
thy children," which is more distinctly stated, in the following
relative sentence, to mean that they have breathed out their
soul through hunger. On this matter, cf. ver. 11 and the
exposition of that verse. Ewald has placed the last member of
the verse within parentheses, as an interpolation, on the ground
that a fourth member offends against the law observed in these ■
verses ; on the other hand, Thenius is of opinion that the words
do not form a member of the verse by themselves, but are a
mere prolongation of the third, " because the conclusion of the
prophet's address, begun in ver. 19, was certainly intended to
be a complete finish." But the deviation«from the rule is not
thereby accounted for. Inasmuch as the words are essential
to the expressio'n of the thought, we must simply acknowledge
the irregularity, and not arbitrarily cast suspicion on the genu-
ineness of the words.
Vers. 20-22. In ver. 20 follows the prayer which the city
has been commanded to make. The prayer sets before the
mind of the Lord the terrible misery under which Jerusalem
suffers. The question, " To whom hast Thou acted thus ? "
does not mean, " What innocent and godly ones are being sacri-
ficed I " (Thenius), but " to what nation f " — not a heathen one,
but the people of Thy choice, to whom all Thy blessed promises
have been given (Nagelsbach). This is clear from the reasons
given in the question, in which the murder of the priests and
prophets in the sanctuary of the Lord is brought forward.
But first there is mentioned a case of inhuman conduct, prompted
by necessity, viz. that women, in the extreme destitution of
hunger, have been constrained to eat the fruit of their body,
their beloved children. DK . . . DK does not, in this case, intro-
duce a disjunctive question, but merely an indirect question in
two parts. In view of such inhuman cruelties and such dese-
cration of His sanctuary, God cannot remain inactive. The
meaning of the question is not : estne hoc unquam fando audi-
tum, quod apud nos factum est, or, quod matres fame eo adactce
fuerint, ut suosfwtus comederent (C. B. Michaelis, Rosenmiiller).
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. 11. 20-22. 399
For in this case, not the imperfect, but the perfect, would be
used. It is merely asked whether something could happen
in a certain way, while it is implied that it has actually oc-
curred already. BJ^S has the masc. instead of the fem. suffix,
as pretty frequently happens. The fruit of their bodies is
meant, as the LXX. have rightly rendered ; but there is no
reason for making this the ground of alterations in the text.
The expression " their fruit," indefinite in itself, is immediately
rendered definite by 3''naD 7j^. The last word is a verbal
noun from nao (ver. 22), which again is a denominative from
nSQ, and means to bear on the hands, to care for tenderly.
Both words occur only in this passage. The Israelites, more-
over, had been threatened with this inhuman outrage as the
most extreme form of divine chastisement, Lev.xxvi. 26, Deut.
xxviii. 56 ; cf. Jer. xix. 9. While this abomination is opposed
to the moral order of the world instituted by God, the other
case (the murder of the priests and prophets in the sanctuary)
is a violation of the covenant-order which the Lord had given
His people. Neither of these arrangements can God consent
to abolish. Therein is implicitly contained the request that He
would put an end to the misery into which His people have
fallen. This request, however, is not expressly stated ; there is
merely complaint made to God regarding the terrible misery.
From the massacre in the temple, the lamentation passes to the
bloodshed on the streets of the city, in which neither age nor
sex was spared ; cf . Jer. vi. 11. ni»n is a local accus., " through
the streets," along the streets.— Ver. 22. The imperf. K"Jpn has
perhaps been chosen merely for the sake of the alphabetic
arrangement, because the description is still continued, and the
idea of custom (wont) or repetition is not very suitable in the
present instance. " Thou summonest, as for a feast-day (viz.
for the enemy, cf. i. 15), all my terrors round about." *5WD
y^BD is to be explained in conformity with the formula
3<3DD niJO, SO frequent in Jeremiali (vi. 25, xx. 4, 10, etc.) :
*n«D is therefore to be derived from 1^30, but not to be con-
fined in its reference to the enemy (as in the Vulgate, qui ter-
rent); it is rather to be understood as applying to all the
terrible powers that had come upon Jndah, — sword, famine,
plagues (cf . i. 20). On the ground that DnWD elsewhere means
Digitized by
Google
400 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
wandering, pilgrimage, and that, moreover, the sing. "»1iD in
Ps. Iv. 16 signifies a dwelling, Ewald translates the expression
in the text, " my hamlets round about," understanding by that
the inhabitants of the defenceless country towns and villages,
which stand to the capital that gave them its protection in the
relation of settlers in its neighbourhood (LXX. TrdpoiKoi).
According to this view, the verse alludes to an important event
which took place in those days of the siege, when all the
inhabitants of the country towns fled to the capital, thinking
that a great festival was going to be held there, as on former
occasions ; but this became at last for them the great festival
of death, when ihe city was taken. But the translation of the
LXX. is of no authority, since they have given a false render-
ing of 3*?Bp liJO also ; and the whole explanation is so artificial
and unnatural, that it needs no further refutation. Easchi,
indeed, had previously explained '"i^l? to mean ''3''3B', vicinos meos,
but added improboSf ut sese congregarent adversus me ad per-
detidum. Notwithstanding this, Q'^^o* " wandering " and " place
of sojourn," cannot denote the country towns as distinguished
from the capital ; nor can the flight of the inhabitants of the
low-lying regions into the capital be fitly called a summoning
together of them by the Lord. The combination "f"}^. '^vf is
used as in Jer. xUi. 17, xliv. 14. For nsD, see on ver. -20.
With the complaint that no one could escape the judgment, —
that the enemy dared to murder even the children whom she
[Jerusalem] had carefiilly nourished and brought up, — the
poem concludes, like the first, with deep sorrow, regarding
which all attempts at comfort are quite unavailing (Gerlach).
CHAP. III. — THE SUFFERING AND THE CONSOLATION OF
THE GOSPEL.
1 I [am] the man [that] have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 Me hath He led, and brought [through] darkness, and not light.
3 Only against me He repeatedly turneth His hand all the day.
4 He hath wasted away my flesh and my skin ; He hath broken my bones.
5 He buildeth up round about me poison and toil.
6 He maketh me sit down in dark places, like those for ever dead.
7 He hath hedged me about, so that I cannot gpt out ; He bath made
heavy my chain.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 401
8 Moreover, when I cry and shout, He obstrncteth my prayer.
9 He hath vailed round my ways with hewn stone, He hatii subverted
my paths.
10 He is to me [like] a bear lying in wait, a lion in secret places.
11 He removeth my ways, and teareth me in pieces; He maketh me
desolate.
12 He bendeth His bow, and setteth me up as the mark for the arrow. '
13 He causeth the sons of His quiver to go into my reins.
14 I am become a derision to all my people, their [subject of] satire all the
day.
15 He filleth me with bitterness, maketh me drink wormwood.
16 And He grindeth my teeth on gravel. He covereth me with ashes.
17 And my soul hath become despised by prosperity ; I have forgotten
[what] good [is].
18 And I said. My vital power is gone, and my hope from Jahveh,
19 Remember my misery and my persecution, wormwood and poison.
20 My soul remembereth [them] indeed, and sinketh down in me.
21 This I bring back to my mind, therefore have I hope.
22 [It is a sign of] the mercies of Jahveh that we are not consumed, for
His compassions fail not ;
23 [They are] new every morning : great is Thy faithfulness..
24 Jahveh [is] my portion, saith my soul ; therefore I hope in Him.
25 Jahveh is good unto those who wait for Him, to a soul [that] seeketh
Him.
26 It is good that [one] should wait, and that in silence, for the salvation
of Jahveh.
27 It is good for man that he should bear a yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit solitary and be silent, for [God] hath laid [the burden] on
him.
29 Let him put his mouth in the dust ; perhaps there is [still] hope.
30 Let him give [his] cheek to him that smites him, let him be filled with
reproach.
31 Because the Lord will not cast off for ever :
32 For, though He causeth grief, He also pities, according to the multitude
of His mercies.
33 For He doth not afSict from His heart, and grieve the children of men.
34 To the crushing all the prisoners of the earth under one's feet,
' 35 To the setting aside of a man's rights before the face of the Most High,
36 To the overthrowing of a man in his cause : — doth not the Lord look
[to such doings as these] ?
37 Who hath spoken, and it was done, [which] the Lord commanded not ?
38 Doth not evil and good come out of the mouth of Jahveh?
89 Why doth a man complain [because] he liveth? [Let every] man [rather
lament] because of his sins.
40 Let us search and examine our ways, and let us return to Jahveh.
41 Let us lift up our heart to [otir] hands towards God in the heavens.
42 We have transgressed and rebelled, Thou hast not pardoned.
VOL. II. > 2
Digitized by
Google
402 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
43 Thou didst cover [Thyself] with anger, and didst persecute us ; Thou hast
slain, Thou hast not jntied.^
44 Thou didst cover Thyself with a cloud, so that prayer could not pass
through.
45 Thou didst make us Qike] offscourings and refuse in the midst of the
nations.
46 AU our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
47 Terror and a snare are ours, destruction and ruin.
48 Mine eye runneth down [with] streams of water, because of the ruin of
the daughter of my people.
49 Mine eye poureth itself forth, and ceaseth not, so that there are no
stoppings,
50 Until Jt^veh shall look down and behold from heaven.
51 Mine eye causeth pain to my soul, because of all the daughters of my
city.''
52 Mine enemies closely pursued me, like a bird, without cause.
53 They were for destroying my life in the pit, and cast a stone on me.
54 Waters overflowed over my head ; I said, I am cut off.
55 I called on Thy name, Jahveh, out of the lowest dungeon.
56 Thou hast heard my voice ; hide not Thine ear at my sighing, at my
cry.
57 Thou art near in the day [when] I call on Thee ; Thou sayest. Fear
not.
58 Thou hast defended, O Lord, my soul ; Thou hast redeemed my lite.
5d Thou hast seen, O Jahveh, mine oppression ; judge my cause.
60 Thou hast seen all their vengeance, all their projects against me.
61 Thou hast heard their reproach, Jahveh, all their projects against
me;
62 The lips of those who rise up against me, and their meditation against
me all the day.
63 Behold their sitting down and their rising up : I am their satire.
64 Thou shalt return a recompense to them, Jahveh, according to the
work of theur hands.
65 Thou shalt give to them blindness of heart, — ^Thy curse to them.
66 Thou shalt pursue [them] in anger, and destroy them from under the
heavens of Jahveh.
The two preceding poems ended with sorrowful complaint.
This third poem begins with the complaint of a man over
1 In the latter part of this verse, Keil has written mitten unter den Vdlkem,
which is also (correctly) given as the rendering of the second part of ver. 45.
This obvious inadvertence has been rectified in the English translation. —
Te.
* Keil has here misread the Hebrew text, and trandated ' ' my people" (nsy)
instead of "my city" (iTJ>).— Tb.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
CHAP. Ill 403
grievoas personal suffering. Eegarding the contents of this
poem, and its relation to the two which precede, Ewald makes
the following excellent remarks: <<In consequence of experi-
ences most peculiarly his own, the individual may indeed at
first make complaint, in such a way that, as here, still deeper
despair for the third time begins (vers. 1-18); but, by the
deepest meditation for himself on the eternal relation of God to
men, he may also very readily come to the due acknowledgment
of his own sins and. the necessity for repentance, and thereby
also to believing prayer. Who is this individual that complains,
and thinks, and entreats in this fashion, whose / passes unob-
served, but quite appropriately, into wef O man, it is the very
image of thyself I Every one must now speak and think as he
does. Thus it is just by this address, which commences in the
most doleful tones, that sorrow for the first time, and imper- ,
ceptibly, has passed into true prayer." Thi^ remark contains
both the deepest truth and the key to the proper understanding
of the contents of this poem, and its position in the middle of
the Lamentations. Both of these points have been mistaken
by expositors, who (e.g. C. B. Michaelis, Parean, Maurer, Kalk-
schmidt, and Bleek in his Introduction) are of opinion that the
writer here makes his personal sufferings the subject of com-
plaint. This cannot be made out, either from ver. 14 or from
the description given in ver. 53 ff. : the reverse rather is shown
by the fact that, in vers. 22 and 40-47, we is used instead of I;
from which it is evident that the prophet, in the remainder of
the poem, is not speaking of himself, or bewailing his own per-
sonal sufferings. The confession found in ver. 42, " Wie have
transgressed and rebelled, Thou hast not pardoned," etc., neces-
sarily presupposes not only that the dealing of God towards
the sinful and apostate nation, as described in ver. 42 ff., stands
in the closest connection with the sufferings of which the pro-
phet complains in vers. 1-18, but also that the chastisement, by
means of God's wrath, which was experienced by the man who
utters his complaint in vers. 1-18, is identical with the anger
which, according to ver. 43, discharged itself on the people;
hence the suffering of the individual, which is described in vers.
1-18, is to be regarded as the reflex of but a special instance of
the suffering endured by the whole community. Perhaps this
Digitized by
Google
404 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEHIAH.
was the view of Aben Ezra, when he says that, in this lamenta-
tion, it is individual Israelites who speak ; and most expositors
acknowledge that the prophet pours forth his lamentations and
his prayers in the name of the godly.
The poem begins by setting forth the grievous soul-sufferings
of the godly in their cheerless and hopeless misery (vers. 1-18) ;
then it ascends, through meditation upon the compassion and
almighty providence of God, to hope (vers. 19-39), and thus
attains to the recognition of God's justice in sending the punish-
ment, which, however, is so intensified through the malice of
enemies, that the Lord cannot pass by the attempt to crush His
people (vers. 40-54). This reliance on the justice of God impels
to prayer, in which there is manifested confidence that God will
send help, and take vengeance on the enemy (vers. 55-66).
Vers. 1-18. Lamentation over grievous sufferings. The
author of these sufferings is not, indeed, expressly named in
the whole section, but it is unmistakeably signified that God
is meant; moreover, at the end of ver. 18 the name fTin* is
mentioned. The view thus given of the sufferings shows, not
merely that he who utters the complaint perceives in these
sufferings a chastisement by God, but also that this chastise-
ment has become for him a soul-struggle, in which he may not
take the name of God into his mouth ; and only after he has
given vent in lamentations to the deep sorrow of his soul, does
his spirit get peace to mention the name of the Lord, and make
complaint to Him of his need. Nothing certain can be inferred
from the lamentations themselves regarding the person who
makes complaint. It does not follow from vers. 1-3 that he
was burdened with sorrows more than every one else ; nor from
ver. 14 that he was a personage well known to all the people,
so that one could recognise the prophet in him. As little are
they sufferings which Jeremiah has endured alone, and for his
own sake, but sufferings such as many godly people of his time
have undergone and struggled through. Against the Jeremianic
authorship of the poem, therefore, no argument can be drawn
from the fact that the personality of him who utters the com-
plaint is concealed.
Ver. 1 ff. In the complaint, " I am the man that saw (t.e.
lived to see) misery," the misery is not specified ; and we can-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 1-a 405
not, with Bosenmiiller, refer *ij| (without the article) to the
misery announced by the prophet long before. " The rod of
His wrath," as in Prov. xxii. 8, is the rod of God's anger ; cf .
Job xxu 9, ix. 34, Isa. x. 5, etc. The sufiSx in ^^^V is not to
be referred, with Aben Ezra, to the enemy. — ^Ver. 2. " Me
hath He (God) led and brought through darkness (^f^i, local
accus.), and not light," is a combination like that in Job xii.
25 and Amos t. 18. The path of Jeremiah's life certainly lay
throQgh darkness, but was not wholly devoid of light, because
God had promised him His protection for the discharge of his
official functions. The complaint applies to all the godly, to
whom, at the fall of Jerusalem, no light appeared to cheer the
darkness of life's pathway. — Ver. 3. " Only upon (against) me
does He repeatedly turn His hand." S\^^ is subordinated to
the idea of ^jbn; in an adverbial sense ; cf. Gesenius, § 142, 3, b.
" His hand " is the smiting hand of God. ^IK, « only upon
me," expresses the feeling which makes him on whom grievous
sufferings have fallen to regard himself as one smitten in a
special manner by God. " The whole day," t.c. continually ;
cf. i. 13. — From ver. 4 onwards this divine chastisement is more
minutely set forth under rarioos figures, and first of all as a
wastbg away of the vital force. n?3 means to wear out by
rubbing, cause to fall away, from n>^, to be worn out, which
is applied to clothes, and then transferred to bodies. Job xiii.
28, Ps. xlix. 15. " Flesh and skin" are the exterior and soft
constituents of the body, while the bones are the firmer parts.
Skin, flesh, and bones together, make up the substance of the
human body. Prov. v. 11 forms the foundation of the first
clause. " He hath broken my bones " is a reminiscence from
the lamentation of Hezekiah in Isa. xxxviii. 13 ; cf. Ps. li. 10,
Job XXX. 17. The meaning is thus excellently given by Pareau :
indicantur animi, fortius tree divince malorumque sensu conqnas-
tati, angores. — ^The figure in ver. 5, " He builds round about and
encircles me," is derived from the enclosing of a city by besieg-
ing it. Y^ is to be repeated after ^lilQ. The besieging forces,
which encompass him so that he cannot go out and in, are
nsjrn rt^i. That the former of these two words cannot mean
Ke^aX^v fiov (LXX.), is abundantly evident. Vth or t^"i is
a plant with a very bitter taste, hence a poisdnous plant ; see
Digitized by
Google
X
406 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JESEUUa
on Jer. viii. 14. As in that passage B't^i *?, so here the simple
K'tJi is an emblem of bitter suffering. The combination with
nwri, « toil," is remarkable, as a case in which a figurative is
joined with a literal expression ; this, however, does not justify
the change of 'IKPFI into njw (Castell, Schleussner, etc.). The
combination is to be explained on the ground that \ffth had
b,ecome so common a symbol of bitter suffering, that the figure
was quite lost sight of behind the thing signified. — Ver. 6 is
a verbatim reminiscence from Ps, cxliii. 3c. D^ac'TO is the dark-
ness of the grave and of Sheol ; cf. Ps. Ixxxviii. 7. a^V ''flO
does not mean " the dead of antiquity" (Eosenmiiller, Maurer,
Ewald, Thenius, etc.), but, as in Ps. cxliii. 3, those eternally
dead, who lie in the long night of death, from which there is
no return into this life. In opposition to the explanation dudum
mortui, Gerlach fittingly remarks, that " it makes no difference
whether they have been dead long ago or only recently, inas-
much as those dead and buried a short time ago lie in darkness
equally with those who have long been dead ;" while it avails
nothing to point to Ps. Ixxxviii. 5-7, as NageVshach does, since
the special subject there treated of is not those who have long
been dead. — ^Ver. 7. God has hedged him round like a prisoner,
cut off all communication from without, so that he cannot
escape, and He has, loaded him with heavy chains. This figure
is based on Job xix. 8 and Hos. ii. 8. ^"3^3 Ti|, « He hath
made an hedge round me," does not suggest prison walls, but
merely seclusion within a confined space, where he is deprived
of free exit. " 1 cannot go out," as in Ps. Ixxxviii. 9. The
seclusion is increased by fetters which are placed on the prisoner.
riB'TO, " brass," for fetters, as in German [and English], " irons,"
for iron chains. — Ver. 8. This distress presses upon him all the
more heavily, because, in addition to this, the Lord does not
listen to his prayer and cries, but has rather closed His ear ; cf .
Jer. vii. 16, Ps. xviii. 42, etc. Otw for DOp (only written here
with y), to stop the prayer; i.e. not to prevent the prayer from
issuing out of the breast, to restrain supplication, but to prevent
the prayer from reaching His ear ; cf. ver. 44 and Prov. i. 28.
In ver. 9, the idea of prevention from freedom of action is
further carried out on a new side. " He hath walled in my
paths with hewn stones." Wa = WJ ^HK, 1 Kings v. 31, are
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. ra. 9-16. 407
hewn stones of considerable size, employed for making a very
strong wall. The meaning is : He has raised np insurmount-
able obstacles in the pathway of my life. " My paths hath He
turned," i.e. rendered such that I cannot walk in them. <1W is to
turn, in the sense of destroying, as in Isa. xxiv. 1, not contortas
feeit (Michaelis, Bosenmiiller, Kalkschmidt), nor per viam tor-
tuosam ire cogor (Raschi) ; for the prophet does not mean to
say (as Nagekbach imagines), " that he has been compelled to
walk in wrong and tortuous ways," but he means that God has
rendered it impossible for him to proceed further in his path ;
cf. Job XXX. 13. But we are not in this to think of the level-
ling of a raised road, as Thenios does ; for n3''ril does not mean,
a road formed by the deposition of rubbish, like a mound, but
a footpath, formed by constant treading (Gerlach). — ^Ver. 10.
Not merely, however, has God cut off every way of escape for
him who here utters the complaint, but He pursues him in
every possible way, that He may utterly destroy him. On the
figure of a bear lying in wait, cf. Hos. xiii. 8, Amos v. 19. It
is more usual to find enemies compared to lions in ambush ; cf.
Ps. X. 19, xvii. 12. The last-named passage seems to have been
present to the writer's mind. The prophets frequently compare
enemies to lions, e.g. Jer. v. 6, iv. 7, xlix. 19, 1. 44. — In ver. 11
the figure of the lion is discontinued ; for il^D '3"i'i cannot be
said of 8 beast. The verb here b not to be derived from "i^o,
to be refractory, but is the Pilel of ">W, to go aside, deviate,
make to draw back. To *' make ways turn aside" may signify
to make a person lose the right road, but not to drag back from
the road (Thenius) ; it rather means to mislead, or even/acere ut
deficiant vim, to. take away the road, so that one cannot escape.
PiB'a is &ir. Xey. in Hebrew ; in Aramean it means to cut or tear
in pieces : cf. [the Targum on] 1 Sam. xv. 33, "Samuel ne'a
Agag," hewed him in pieces ; and on Ps. vii. 3, where the word
is used for the Heb. P^B, to tear in pieces (of a lion) ; here it
signifies to tear away (limbs from the body, boughs from trees).
This meaning is required- by the context ; for the following
expression, DDit? 'JOfe', does not lead us to think of tearing in
pieces, lacerating^ but discerpere, plucking or pulling to pieces.
For Do^e>, see on i. 13, 16.— Ver. 12. " He hath bent His bow,"
as in ii. 4. The second member, " He hath made me the mark
y
Digitized by
Google
408 TBE LAMEHTATIONS OF JEBEMUH.
for His arrows," is taken almost verbatim from Job xvi. 12.
The arrows are the ills and sorrows appointed by God ; cf .
Dent, xssii. 23, Ps. xxxviii. 3, Job vi. 4. — Ver. 14. " Abased
in this way, he is the object of scoflSng and mockery" (Gerlach).
In the first clause, the complaint of Jeremiah in xx. 7 is repro-
duced. Eosenmiiller, Ewald, and Thenius are inclined to take
'Bjr as an abbreviated form of the plur. C??, presuming that
the subject of the complaint is the people of Israel. But in
none of the three passages in which Ewald {Gram. § 177, a),
following the Masoretes, is ready to recognise such a plural-
ending, does there seem any need or real foundation for the
assumption. Besides this passage, the others are 2 Sam. ^i.
44 and Ps. cxliv. 2. In these last two cases ^V gives a suitable
enough meaning as a singular (see the expositions of these pas-
sages) ; and in this verse, as Gerlach has already remarked,
against Bosenmiiller, neither the conjoined ^b nor the plural
suflBx of cnj^M requires us to take 'i?3> as ia plural, the former
objection being remoVed on a comparison of Gen. xli. 10, and
the latter when we consider the possibility of a constructio ad
sensum in the case of the collective DV. But the assumption
that here the people are speaking, or that the poet (prophet) is
complaining of the sufferings of the people in their name, is
opposed by the fact that '^3311 stands at the beginning of this
lamentation, ver. 1. If, however, the prophet complained in
the name of each individual among God's people, he could not
set up 'By^S in opposition to them, because by that very ex-
pression the scofiSng is limited to the great body of the people.
The Chaldee, accordingly, is substantially correct in its para-
phrase, omnibus protervis populi mei (following Dan. xi. 14).
But that the mass of the people were not subdued by suffering,
and that there was a great number of those who would not
recognise the chastening hand of God in the fall of the king-
dom, and who scoffed at the warnings of the prophets, is evinced,
not merely by the history of the period immediately after the
destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. xli. ff.), and by the conduct oi
Ishmael and bis followers (Jer. xli. 2 ff.), and of the insolent
men who marched to Egypt in spite of Jeremiah's warning
(xliii. 2), but also by the spirit that prevailed among the exiles,
and against which Ezekiel had to contend ; cf. e.g. Ezek. xii.-
Digitized by
Google
CHAP, ni. 17, 1& 409
22. ^''^^ is a reminiscence from Job xxx. 9 ; cf. Ps. Ixix. 13.
— ^Ver. 15. " He fills me with bitternesses " is a reminiscence
from Job ix. 18, only D^^iiDD being exchanged for ciho. Of
these two forms, the first occurs only in Job, Lc. ; the latter
denotes, in Ex. xii. 8 and Nam. ix. 11, *' bitter herbs," bnt
here " bitternesses." The reality (viz. bitter sorrow) is what
Jeremiah threatens the people with in ix. 14, xxiii. 15. The
figure employed in ver. 16 is still stronger. " He made my
teeth be ground down on gravel." Kyn means a gravel stone,
gravel, Prov. xx. 17. oni (which occurs only in Ps. cxix. 20
as well as here, and is allied to fe'^f, from which comes B'^.3,
something crushed. Lev. ii. 14, 16) signifies to be ground down,
and in Hiphil to grind down, not to cause to grind ; hence l^na
cannot be taken as a second object, " He made my teeth grind
gravel" (Ewald) ; but the words simply mean, " He ground my
teeth on the gravel," i.e. He made them grind away on the
gravel. As regards the application of the words, we cannot
follow the older expositors in thinking of bread mixed with
stones, but must view the giving of stones for bread as refer-
ring to cruel treatment. The LXX, have rendered ''it^BO'} by
(■ffrm/iurev /te <nroS6v, the Vulgate by cibavit me cinere. This
translation has not been lexically established, but is a mere
conjecture from Ps. cii. 10. The &ir. \ey. E'M is allied with
tJ'M, subigere, and means in Babbinic, deprimere ; cf . Buxtorf,
Lex. Babb. s.v. Similarly, the Chaldee had previously ex-
plained the words to mean humiliavit (V33) me in cinere; and
Baschi, nB3 inelinavit s. subegit me. Luther follows these in his
rendering, " He rolls me in the ashes," which is a figure signi-
fying the deepest disgrace and humiliation, or a hyperbolical
expression for sprinkling with ashes (Ezek. xxvii. 80), as a token
of descent into the depths of sorrow.
In vers. 17 and 18 the speaker, in his lamentation, gives ex-
pression to that disposition of his heart which has been produced
by the misery that has befallen him to so fearful an extent. He
has quite given up hopes of attaining safety and prosperity,
and his hope in the Lord is gone. In ver. 17 it is a question
whether fiMPi is second or third pers. of the imperf. Following
the LXX., who give the rendering airaxraTo i^ elpiqvr}<s -^v^riv
ftov, Bosenmiiller, Gesenius, De Wette, and Nagelsbach con-
Digitized by
Google
y^
4t0 TBE LAMEMTATIOKS OF JEBEMUH.
sider HM transitive, as in ii. 7, and take nim as of the second
pers. : " Thou didst reject my soul (me) from peace." But to
this view of the words there is the decided objection, that neither
before nor after is there any direct address to Jahveh, and that
the verbs which immediately follow stand in the first person,
and succeed the first clause appropriately enough, provided we
take T?? as the subject to nJtri (third pers.). nit has both a
transitive and an intransitive meaning in Kal ; cf . Hos. viii. 3 .
(trans.) and viiL 5 (intrans.) Nagelsbach has no ground for
casting doubt on the intrans. meaning in Hos. viii. 5. More-
over, the objection that the passage now before us is a quotation
from Ps. Ixxxviii. 15 (Nagelsbach) does not prove that ^E'W nam
is to be taken in the same sense here- as in that passage : *' O
Jahveh, Thou despisest my soul." By adding 0^?^, Jeremiah
has made an independent reproduction of that passage in the
Psalms, if he had it before his mind. This addition does not
permit of our attaching a transitive sense to naWj for the verb
means to despise, not to reject ; hence we cannot render the
words, " Thou didst reject my soul from peace." The meaning
of the clause is not " my soul loathes prosperity," as it is ren-
dered by Thenius, who further gives the sense as follows : "I
had such a thorough disgust for life, that I had no longer the
least desire for prosperity." As Gerlach has already remarked,
this explanation neither harmonizes with the meaning of Dipe^,
nor with the expression of doubt in the following verse, which
implies a very lively " sense of the prosperous ; " moreover, it
has no good lexical basis. The fundamental meaning of nir
is to stink, be rancid, from which comes the metaphorical one
of instilling disgust, — not, feeling disgust (Hos. viii. 5), — and
further, that of despising. The meaning " to instil disgust "
does not suit this passage, but only that of being despised.
" My soul is despised of prosperity," t.e. so that it shares not in
prosperity ; with this accords the intransitive use of the Hiphil
rfarn with to, 2 Chron. xi. 14. The Vulgate, which does not
catch the idea of n3j so exactly, renders the passage by expulsa
est a pace anima mea. To this there are appropriately joined
the words, " I have forgotten good " (good fortune), because I
constantly experience nothing but misfortune; and not less
appropriate is the expression of doubt, "I say (ue. I think)
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. in. 19-89. 411
my strength and my hope from Jahveh is gone (vanished),"
i.e. my strength is worn oat through saffering, and I have
nothing more to hope for from Jahveh. Starting from the
fundamental idea of stability, permanence, rnu, according to
the traditional explanation, means vigor, strength; then, by
a metaphor, vis vitalis, Isa. Ixiii. 3, 6, — not trust (Bosenmiiller,
Thenius, Nagelsbach, etc.), in support of which we are pointed
to 1 Sam. XV. 29, but without sufficient reason; see Delitzsch
on Isaiah, ^.c. The complaint here attains its deepest and
worst. The complainant in his thoughts has gone far from
God, and is on the very verge of despair. But here also
begins the turning-point. When for the first time he utters
the name of God in the expression " my hope from Jahveh,"
he shows that Jahveh is to him also still the ground of hope
and trust. Hence also he not merely complains, <' my strength
is gone," etc., but introduces this thought with the words 'i&Kl,
" I said," se. in my heart, i.e. I thought, " my strength is gone,
and my hope from Jahveh lost," i.e. vanished. The mention
of the name Jahveh^ i.e. the Covenanfc-God, keeps him ftom
sinking into despair, and urges him not to let go his trust on
the Lord, so that he can now (in what follows) complain to the
Lord of his state of distress, and beseech His help.
Vers. 19-39. Consideration of God's compassion and His
omnipotence as displayed at critical junctures in the affairs of
men. C B. Michaelis has correctly perceived, and thus set
forth, the transition from the complaint, bordering on despair,
to hope, as given in ver. 19 : htctatur hie contra desperationis
adfectum, quo tehtatm faerat, ver. 18, mox inde per fidem emer-
surus. In like manner it is said in the JSerleburger Bibel, " Li
ver. 19 he struggles with despair, to which he had been tempted,
and in the following verse soars up once more into the region
of faith." By the resumption of *?y from ver. 1, and of t^^^
and c't^T from vers. 15 and 5, the contents of the whole pre-
ceding lamentation are given in a summary, and by "o] are
presented to God in prayer. "Mine affliction" is intensified
by the addition of " my persecution " (see on i. 7), and the
contents of the lamentation thereby more plainly pointed out.
This connection of the verse has been misunderstood in many
ways. An old interpretation of the words, still maintained by
Digitized by
Google
412 THE LAMENTAnOMS OF JEBEMIAH.
Bottcher and Thenins, makes ibt an infinitive; according to
this view, ver. 19 would require to be conjoined with the pre-
ceding, and the inf. without f would stand for the grotind,
reeordando, "while I think of," — which is grammatically im-
possible.^ The same remark applies to the assumption that
ibt is an infinitive which is resumed in ver. 20: "it thinks
of my misery . . . yes, my soul thinks thereon" (Bottcher,
Thenius). Gerlach very properly remarks concerning this
view that such a construction is unexampled, and, as regards
the change in the form of the infinitive (constr. and abs.), would
be unintelligible. ■ The Gbjection of Thenius, however, that
the imperative meaning usually attached to '^bt is against the
whole context, and quite inappropriate here, is connected with
the erroneous assumption that vers. 19 and 20 form a con-
tinuation of what precedes, and that the idea of the speaker's
being completely overwhelmed by the thought of all that he
had suffered and still suffers, forms the proper conclusion of
the first part, after which, from ver. 21 onwards, there follows
relief. Gerlach has rightly opposed to these arguments the
following considerations: (1) That, after the outburst of de-
spair in ver. 18, "my strength is gone, and my hope from
Jahveh," the words " my soul is bowed down in me " form far
too feeble a conclusion ; (2) That it is undoubtedly more correct
to make the relief begin with a prayer breathed out through
sighs (ver. 19), than with such a reflection as is expressed in
ver. 21 ff. Ewald also is right in taking *)bt as an imperative,
but is mistaken in the notion that the speaker addresses any
one who is ready to hear him ; this view is shown to be erro-
neous by the simple fact that, in what precedes and succeeds,
the thoughts of the speaker are directed to God only. — ^Ver. 20.
The view taken of this verse will depend on the answer to the
question whether "ibtn is second or third pers. fem. Following
1 Seb. Miinster long since said : Secundum quosdam est ">bf infinit., ut sit
tensus: periit spes mea,, recordante me afflictionis mem. Calvin also gives
the preference to this view, with the remark ': Videtur enim hie propheta
exprimere, quomodo fere a spe exciderit, ut nihil reperiret amplius fortitudinis
in Deo, quia scilicet oppressus erat malis ; in support of which he aflinns that
it is valde absurdum, eos qui experti sunt aliquando Dei misericordiam, sic
omnem spem abjicere, ut non statuant ampUus sibi esse refiigium ad Dewn,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP, lit 19-39. 413
in the wake of Lnther (" Thou wilt assuredly think thereon "),
C. B. Michaelis, Fareau, Kosenmuller, and Kalkschmidt take
it as second pers. : " Think, yea, think wilt Thou, that my soul
is bowed down in me," or " that my soul is at rest within me "
(Nagelsbach). But it is impossible to maintain either of these
views in the face of the language employed. To take the i
before O'B'n in the meaning of quod is characterized by Nagels-
bach as an arbitrary procedure, unwarranted either by Gen.
XXX. 27 or Ezek. xiii. 11 ; but neither can the meaning of resting,
being at ease, which is attributed to fRB' or f^P by that writer,
be established. The verb means to sink down, Prov. ii. 18,
and metaphorically, to be bowed down, Ps. xliv. 26. The latter
meaning is required in the present passage, from the simple
fact that the sentence undeniably refers to Ps. xlii. 6.^ HW1
expresses the consequence of law "ibj, which therefore can only
be the third pers., and " my soul " the subject of both clauses ;
for there is no logical consecution of meaning given by such a
rendering as, " If Thou wilt remember, my soul shall be bowed
within me." The expression, ''If my soul duly meditates
thereon (on the deep suffering), it becomes depressed within
me," forms the foundation of the request that God would think
of his distress, his misery; and ver. 21, ''I will lay this to
heart," connects itself with the leading thought set forth in
yer. 19, the reason for which is given in ver. 20, viz. that my
soul is only bowed down within me over the thought of my
distress, and must complain of it to God, that He may think
of it and alleviate it : This will I lay to heart and set my hope
upon. JSv'J' is a strong inferential expression: "therefore,"
because God alone can help, will I hope. This self-encourage-
ment begins with ver. 22, inasmuch as the prophet strengthens
his hope by a consideration of the infinite compassion of the
Lord. (It is) nin' non, « the mercies of God," i.e. proofs of
His mercy (cf. Ps. Ixxxix. 2, cvii. 43, Isa. Ixiii. 7), •" that we
are not utterly consumed," as Luther [and similarly our English
translators] have excellently rendered WOlJ. • This form stands
for uitsri, as in Jer. xliv. 18, Num. xvii. 28, not for iBi?, third
' Luther's translation, " for my sonl tells me," is founded on the circum-
stance that the LXX. have mistaken typ for rpB* : ««T«SoXto;4ij«( js*
i/ii i ypv}ii /KOI/.
Digitized by
Google
414 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH.
pers., as Parean, Thenins, Vaihinger, and Ewald, referring to
his Grammar, § 84, h, would take it. The proofs of the grace
of God have their foundation in His compassion, from which
they flow. In ver. 23 we take J*, '^on as the subject of D*?^n ;
it is the proofs of the grace of God that are new every morning,
not " His compassions," although the idea remains the same.
B'liJS?, every morning, as in Isa. xsxm. 2, Ps. Ixxiii. 14. Vbi
sol et dies oritur, simul et radii hujus inexJiausta bonitafis
erumpunt (Tamovius in Eosenmiiller). The consciousness of
this constant renewal of the divine favour impels to the
prayerful exclamation, " great is Thy faithfulness ; " cf . Ps.
xxxvi. 6. — Ver. 24. " My portion is Jahveh : " this is a re-
miniscence from Ps. xvi. 5, Ixxiii. 26, cxiii. 6; cf. Ps. cxix.
57, where the expression found here is repeated almost verbatim.
The expression is based on Num. xviii. 20, where the Lord
says to Aaron, " I am thy portion and thine inheritance ; " i.e.
Jahveh will be to the tribe of Levi what the other tribes receive
in their territorial possessions in Canaan ; Levi shall have his
possession and enjoyment in Jahveh. The last clause,^ ^ there-
fore will I hope," etc., is a repetition of what is in ver. 216, as
if by way of refrain.
This hope cannot be frustrated, ver. 25. The fundamental
idea of the section contained in vers. 25-33 is thus stated by
Nagelsbach : " The Lord is well disposed towards the children
of men under all circumstances; for even when He smites
them, He seeks their highest interest : they ought so to con-
duct themselves in adversity, that it is possible for Him to
carry out His designs." On ver. 25, cf . Ps. xxxiv. 9, Ixxxvi. 5 ;
and on the general meaning, also Ps. xxv. 3, Ixix. 7. If the
Lord is kind to those who hope in Him, then it is good for
man to wait patiently for His help in suffering. Such is the
mode in which ver. 26 is attached to ver. 25. 3io, vers. 26
and 27, followed by ? dat, means to be good for one, i.e.
beneflcial. Some expositors (Gesenius, Kosenmiiller, Maurer,
Nagelsbach) take Tin* as a noun-form, substantive or adjective ;
DDW is then also, taken in the same way, and 1 — ^ as correlative :
" it is good both to wait and be silent." But although there
are analogous cases to support the view that ^'nj is a noun-form,
the constant employment of Don as an adverb quite prevents
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. in. 19-89. 415
as from taking it as an adjective. Moreover, " to be silent for
the help of the Lord," would be a strange expression, and we
would rather «xpect " to be silent and wait for ; " and finally,
waiting and silence are so closely allied, that the disjunctive
,1—1 et — et appears remarkable. We prefer, then, with Ewald
(Gram. § 235, a) and others, to take 7lT as a verbal form, and
that, too, in spite of the i in the jussive form of the Hiphil for
?nj, from biv\, in the meaning of ^rr, to wait, tarry. "It is
good that he (man) should wait, and in silence too (i.e. without
complaining), for the help of the Lord." On the thought
presented here, cf. Ps. xxxviii. 7 and Isa. xxx. 15. Hence it
is also good for man to bear a yoke in youth (ver. 27), that he
may exercise himself in calm waiting on the help of the Lord.
In the present context the yoke is that of sufferings, and the
time of youth is mentioned as the time of freshness and vigour,
which render the bearing of burdens more easy. He who has
learned in youth to bear sufferings, will not sink into despair
should they come on him in old age. Instead of l^'^'V^a, Theo-
dotion has ex yed-njTo? aiirov, which is also the reading of the
Aldine edition of the LXX.; and some codices have l^JWJD.
But this reading is evidently a correction, prompted by the
thought that Jeremiah, who composed the Lamentations in
his old age, had much suffering to endure from the time of his
call to the prophetic office, in the earlier portion of his old age;
nor is it much better than the inference of J. D. Michaelis,
that Jeremiah composed this poem when a youth, on the occa-
sion of King Josiah's death. — In vers. 28-30, the effect of
experience by suffering is set forth, yet not in such a way that
the verses are to be taken as still dependent on '3 in ver. 27
(Luther, Pareau, De Wette, Maurer, and Thenius) : " that he
should sit alone and be silent," etc. Such a combination is
opposed to the independent character of each separate alpha-
betic strophe. Bather, the result of early experience in suffering
and patience is developed in a cohortative form. The con-
nection of thought is simply as follows: Since it is good for
man that he should learn to endure suffering, let him sit still
and bear it patiently, when God puts such a burden on him.
Let him sit solitary, as becomes those in sorrow (see on i. 1),
and be silent, without murmuring (cf. ver. 26), when He lays a
r
Digitized by
Google
416 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMUH.
burden on' him. There is no object to 70i expressly mentioned,
but it is easily understood from the notion of the verb (if He
lays anything on him), or from h^jt in ver. 27 (if He lays a yoke
on him). We are forbidden to consider the verbs as indi-
catives ("he sits alone and is silent;" Gerlach, Nagelsbach) by
the apocopated form 15* in vers. 29, 30, which shows that 3?^.
and D'V. are also cohortatives. — Ver. 29. "Let him put his
month in the dust," i.e. humbly bow beneath the mighty hand
of God. The expression is derived from the Oriental custom
of throwing oneself in the most reverential manner on the
ground, and involves the idea of humble silence, because the
mouth, placed in the dust, cannot speak. The clause, " per-
haps there is hope," indicates the frame of mind to be observed
in the submission. While the man is to show such resignation,
he is not to give np the hope that God will deliver him from
trouble; cf. Job xi. 18, Jer. xxxi. 17. — Ver. 30. Let him also
learn patiently to bear abuse and reviling from men. Let him
present his cheek to him who smites him, as was done by Job
(Job xvL 10) and the servant of Jahveh (I?a. 1. 6) ; cf . Matt.
V. 39. On ver. 306, cf. Ps. Ixxxviii. 4, cxxiii. 3, etc. There
is a certain gradation in the three verses that is quite unmis-
takeable. The sitting alone and in silence is comparatively
the easiest; it is harder to place the mouth in the dust, and
yet cling to hope ; it is most difficult of all to give the cheek to
the smiter, and to satiate oneself with dishonour (Nagelsbach).
In vers. 31-33 follow the grounds of comfort. The first is in
ver. 31 : the sorrow will come to an end ; the Lord does not
cast off for ever ; cf. Jer. iii. 5, 12. The second is in ver. 32 :
when He has caused sorrow. He shows pity once more, accord-
ing to the fulness of His grace. Compassion outweighs Sorrow.
On this subject, cf. Ps. xxx. 6, Job v. 18, Isa. liv. 8. The
third ground of comfort is in ver. 33: God does not send
affliction willingly, as if it brought Him joy (cf. Jer. xxxii. 41),
but merely because chastisement is necessary to sinful man for
the increase of his spiritual prosperity ; cf . Acts xiv. 22, 2 Cor.
iv. 17. ns*} is for najp: cf. Ewald, § 232,/; Gesenius, § 69,
3, Kem. 6.
That he may bring home to the hearts of God's people the
exhortation to bear suffering with patience and resignation.
X
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 19-39. 417
and that he may lead them to see that the weight of sorrow
under which they are sighing has been sent from the Lord as
a chastisement for their sins, the prophet carries out the thought,
in vers. 34-39, that every wrong committed upon earth is under
the divine control (vers. 34-36), and generally that nothing
happens without God's permission ; hence man ought not to
mourn over the .suffering that befalls him, but rather over his
sins (vers. 37-39). — ^Verses 34-36 form one connected sen-
tence : while the subject and predicate for the three infinitival
clauses do not follow till the words fiKT to ^j'lN, the infinitives
with their objects depend on nx"i. If there were any founda-
tion for the assertion of Bottcher in his Aehrenlese, that nxT
L # T T
never occurs in construction with p, we could take the infini-
tives with f as the objects of ns"!, in the sense, " As to the
crushing of all the prisoners," etc. But the assertion is devoid
of truth, and disproved by 1 Sam. xvi. 7, nrfi n»j'}^ ns-i' D"iKrt
339? HKV. In the three infinitival clauses three modes of
unjust dealing are set forth. The treading down to the earth
of all prisoners under his (the treader's) feet, refers to cruel
treatment of the Jews by the Chaldeans at the taking of
Jerusalem and Judah, and generally to deeds of violence per-
petrated by victors in war. This explains fiK ^-'^^ '^j which
£alkschmidt and Thenius incorrectly render ''all captives of
the land (country)." Those intended are prisoners generally,
who in time of war are trodden down to the earth, i.e. cruelly
treated. The other two crimes mentioned, vers. 35 and 36,
are among the sins of which Judah and Israel have been
guilty, — the former being an offence against the proper ad-
ministration of justice, and the latter falling under the category
of unjust practices in the intercourse of ordinary life. "To
pervert the right of a man before the face of the Most High "
does not mean, in general, protervef at sine ulld numinis inspec-
tantis reverentid (0. B. Michaelis, Bosenmiiller) ; but just as
DB^ niisri is taken from the law (Ex. xxiii. 6 ; Num. xvi. 19,
etc.), so also is l^v? \3B IM to be explained in accordance with
the directions given in the law (Ex. xxii. 7, 9), that certain
causes were to be brought before D^n^Kfl, where this word
means the judge or judges pronouncing sentence in the name
VOL. II. 2 D
Digitized by
Google
418 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
of God ; cf. Ps. Ixxxii. 6, where the judges, as God's repre-
sentatives, are called ^''•P^. and D^^pK *33. " Before the face
of the Most High " thus means, before the tribunal which is
held in the name of the Most High. "To turn aside a man
in his cause " means to pervert his right in a dispute (cf . Job
viii. 3, xxxiv. 12, etc.), which may also be done in contested
matters that do not come before the public tribunal. The
meaning of the three verses depends on the explanation given
of nxn to ^jhK, which is a disputed point, nsi with p, " to look
on something," may mean to care for it, be concerned about it,
but not to select, choose, or to resolve upon, approve (Michaelis,
Ewald, Thenius). Nor can the prophet mean to say, "The
Lord does not look upon the treading down of the prisoners,
the perversion of justice." If any one be still inclined, with
Rosenmiiller and others, to view the words as the expression
of a fact, then he must consider them as an exception taken
by those who murmur against God, but repelled in ver. 37.
Moreoter, he must, in some such way as the following, show
the connection between vers. 33 and 34, by carrying out the
idea presented in the exhortation to hopie for compassion: "But
will any one say that the Lord knows nothing of this — does
not trouble Himself about such sufferings?" Whereupon, in
ver. 37, the answer follows ; " On the contrary, nothing hap-
pens without the will of God" (Gerlach). But there is no
point of attachment that can possibly be found in the words of
the text for showing such a connection; we must therefore
reject this view as being artificial, and forced upon the text.
The diflSculty is solved in a simple manner, by taking the words
nNT j6 'J'ik as a question, just as has been already done in the
Chaldee paraphrase: fierine potest ut in coni>pectu Jovoe non
reveletur? The absence of the interrogative particle forms
no objection to this, inasmuch as a question is pretty often
indicated merely by the tone. Ver. 38 must also be taken
interrogatively. Bottcher and Thenius, indeed, think that the
perfect fiN"i is incompatible with this ; but the objection merely
tells against the rendering, " Should not the Lord see it I " (De
Wette, Maurer, Kalkschmidt), which of course would require
^^N But the idea rather is, " Hath not the Lord looked upon
this ? " The various acts of injustice mentioned in the three
A
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 19-89. 419
verses are not set forth merely as possible events, but as facts
that have actually occurred. — Ver. 37 brings the answer to this
question in a lively manner, and likewise in an interrogative
form: "Who hath spoken, and it came to pass, which the
Lord hath not commanded?" The thought here presented
reminds us of the word of the Creator in Gen. i. 3 fif. The '
form of the expression is an imitation of Ps. xxxiii. 9. Rosen-
mtiller gives the incorrect rendering, Quis est qui dixit : factum
est (i.e. quis audeat dicere fieri quicquani), non proecipiente Deo;
although the similar but more free translation of Luther,
"Who dares to say that such a thing happens without the
command of the Lord I" gives the sense in a general way.
The meaning is as follows : Nothing takes place on the earth
which the Lord has not appointed; no man can give and
execute a command against the will of God. From this it
further follows (ver. 38), that evil and good will proceed from
the mouth of the Lord, i.e. be wrought by Him ; on this point,
cf. Isa. xlv. 7, Amos iii. 6. KXn iO gives no adequate mean-
ing unless it be taken interrogatively, and as indicating what
is usual — wont to be. And then there is established from this,
in ver. 39, the application of the general principle to the par-
ticular case in question, viz. the grievous suffering of individuals
at the downfall of the kingdom of Judah. " Why does' a man
sigh as long as he Kves ? Let every one [sigh] for his sins."
Man is not to sigh over suffering and sorrow, but only over
his sin. l?!t^<} occurs only here and in Num. xi. 1, and signifies
to sigh, with the accessory notion of murmuring, complaining,
^n appended to D^K is more of a predicate than a simple at-
tributive : man, as long as he lives, i.e. while he is in this life.
The verse is viewed in a different light by Pareau, Ewald,
Neumann, and Gerlach, who combine both members into one
sentence, and render it thus : " Why doth a man complain, so
long as he lives, — a man over the punishment of his sins t "
[Similar is the rendering of our ** Authorized" Version.] Neu-
mann translates : " A man in the face of [Ger. bet] his sins."
But this latter rendering is lexically inadmissible, because y^ in
this connection cannot mean ** in view of." The other mean-
ing assigned is improbable, though there is nothing against it,
lexically considered. For though KCn, sin, may also signify the
/^'
Digitized by
Google
420 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
punisbment of sin, the latter meaning does not suit the present
context, because in what precedes it is not said that the people
suffer for their sins, but merely that their suffering has been
appointed by God. If, then, in what follows, there is an ex-
hortation to return to the Lord (ver. 40 f .), and in ver. 42 a
confession of sins made ; if, moreover, ver. 39 forms the transi-
tion from vers. 33-38 to the exhortation that succeeds (ver.
40 ff .) ; then it is not abstinence from murmuring or sighing over
the punishment of sins that forms the true connecting link of
the two lines of thought, but merely the refraining from com-
plaint over sufferings, coupled with the exhortation to sigh over
their own sins. Tamov also has viewed the verse in this way,
when he deduces from it the advice to every soul labouring
under a weight of sorrows : est igitur optimus ex malts emergendi
modus Deum excusare et se ipsum accusare.
Vers. 40-54. Confession of sins, and complaint against the
cruelty of enemies, as well as over the deep misery into which all
the people have sunk. Vers. 40-42. The acknowledgment of
guilt impels to prayer, to which also there is a summons in vers.
40, 41. The transitional idea is not, " Instead of grumbling in
. a sinful spirit, let us rather examine our conduct " (Thenius) ;
for the summons to examine one's conduct is thereby placed in
contrast with ver. 39, and the thought, " let every one mourn
over his own sins," transformed into a prohibition of sinful
complaint. The real transition link is given by Rosenmiiller :
quum mala nostra a peccatis nostris oriantur, eulpas nostras et
scrutemur et corrigamus. The searching of our ways, i,e. of
our conduct, if it be entered on in an earnest spirit, must end
in a return to the Lord, from whom we have departed. It is
self-evident that nw'' nv does not stand for J^ -"N, but means as
far as (even to) Jahveh, and indicates thorough conversion —
no standing half-way. The lifting up of the heart to the
hands, also, — not merely of the hands to God, — expresses
earnest prayer, that comes from the heart. D^|3"7K, to the
hands (that are raised towards heaven). " To God in heaven,"
where His almighty throne is placed (Ps. ii. 4), that He may
look down from thence (ver. 59) and send help. With ver.
42 begins the prayer, as is shown by the direct address to
God in the second member. There is no need, however, on
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 40-54 421
this account, for supplying "ibK? before the first member ; the
command to pray is immediately followed by prayer, begin-
ning with the confession of sins, and the recognition of
God's chastisement ; cf. Ps. cvi. 6, Dan. ix. 5. unj is con-
trasted with nriK. "Thou hast not pardoned," because Thy
justice must inflict punishment. — Vers. 43-45. God has not
pardoned, but positively punished, the people for their mis-
deeds. " Thou hast covered with anger," ver. 43, corresponds
to " Thou hast covered with a cloud," ver. 44 ; hence " Thou
hast covered" is plainly used both times in the same meaning,
in spite of the fact that ^ is wanting in ver. 43. ^3D means
to " cover," here to " make a cover." " Thou didst make a
cover with anger," i.e. Thou didst hide Thyself in wrath ; there
is no necessity for taking ^3D as in itself reflexive. This mode
of viewing it agrees ako with what follows. The objection of
J. D. Michaelis, qui se obtegit non persequitur alios, ut statim
additur, which Bottcher and Thenius bave repeated, does not
hold good in every respect, but chiefly applies to material cover-
ing. And the explanation of Thenius, " Thou hast covered us
with wrath, and persecuted us," is shown to be wrong by the
fact that ^3D signifies to cover for protection, concealment, etc.,
but not to cover in the sense of heaping upon, pouring upon
(as Luther translates it) ; nor, again, can the word be taken
here in a sense different from that assigned to it in ver. 44.
" The covering of wrath, which the Lord draws around Him,
conceals under it the lightnings of His wrath, which are spoken
of immediately afterwards" (Nagelsbach). The anger vents
itself in the persecution of the people;, in killing them unspar--
ingly. For, that these two are connected, is shown not merely
in ver. 66, but still more plainly by the threatening in Jer.
xxix. 18 : "I will pursue them with sword, and famine, and
pestilence, and give them for maltreatment to all the kingdoms
of the earth." On " Thou hast slain, Thou hast not spared,"
cf. ii. 21. In ver. 44, "if? is further appended to nnisD : " Thou
makest a cover with clouds for Thyself," round about Thee, so
that no prayer can penetrate to Thee; cf. Ps. Iv. 2. These
words form the expression of the painful conclusion drawn by
God's people from their experience, that God answered no cry
for help that came to Him, i.e. granted no help. Israel was
Digitized by
Google
422 THE UMEHTATIONS OF JE^MIAH.
thereby given np, in a defenceless state, to the foe, so that they
conld treat them like dirt and abase them. *riip (from nPiDj Ezek.
XKv'i. 4), foand only here as a noan, signifies " sweepings ; "
and oS»n is a noun, " disesteem, aversion." The words of ver.
45, indeed, imply the dispersion of Israel among the nations,
bat are not to be limited to the maltreatment of the Jews in
exile ; moreover, they rather apply to the condact of their foes
when Jadah was conqaered and Jerusalem destroyed. Sach
treatment, especially the rejection, is farther dspicted in ver.
46. The verse is almost a verbatim repetition of ii. 16, and
is qnite in the style of Jeremiah as regards the reproduction
of particular thoughts ; while Thenius, from the repetition, is
inclined to infer that chaps, ii. and iii. had different authors:
cf. Gerlach on the other side. The very next verse might
have been suiHcient to keep Thenius from such a precipitate
conclusion, inasmuch as it contains expressions and figures
that are still more clearly peculiar to Jeremiah. On rnai ins,
cf . Jer. xlviii. 43 ; i3B'n is also one of the favourite expressions
of the prophet. T\K^!} is certainly air. Xey., but reminds one of
ne' '33, Num. xxiv. 17, for which in Jer. xlviii. 45 there stands
(iKE' \33. It comes from hkb^, to make a noise, roar, fall into
ruins with a loud noise, i.e. be laid waste (cf. Isa. vi. 11) ; and,
as Raschi has already observed, it has the same meaning as
njKB', " devastation," Isa. xxiv. 12. It is incorrect to derive the
word from the Hiphil of KB'J (J. D. Michaelis and Ewald),
according to which it ought to mean "disappointment," for
the i} does not form an essential portion of the word, but is the
article, as ^^f<y[ shows. Still more erroneous are the renderings
e7rapffi<s (LXX., from K'^3) and vaticinatio (Jerome, who has
confounded ns?*!? with Nto).
Over this terrible calamity, rivers of tears must be shed,
until the Lord looks down from heaven on it, vers. 48-51. The
prophet once more utters this complaint in the first person,
because he who has risked his life in his endeavour to keep the
people in the service of God must feel the deepest sympathy
for them in their misfortunes. " Rivers of water " is stronger
than "water," i. 16, and "tears like a stream," ii. 18 ; but the
mode of expression is in the main like that in those passages,
and used again in Ps. cxix. 136, but in a different connection.
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. III. 40-54. 423
The second member of the verse is the same as in il. 11..
— Ver. 49. 1M means to be poured out, empty self ; cf. 2 Sam.
xiv. 14, Mic. i. 4. <' And is not silent" = and rests not, i.e.
incessantly ; cf. Jer. xiv. 17. I^SiSn j»nd does not mean, eo quod
non sint intermissiones miseriarum vel fietus (C. B. Michaelis
and Rosenmiiller, following the Chaldee), but, ""^o that there
is no intermission or drying up." As to T\SiSn^ which means
the same as n«B, see on ii. 18. " Until the Lord look down
from heaven and examine," in order to put an end to the dis-
tress, or to take compassion on His people. On 'I'ipK'!, cf. Ps.
xiv. 2, cii. 20. — ^Ver. 51, taken literally, runs thus : " Mine
eye does evil to my soul " (iv^y with p signifies to inflict an
injury on one, cause suffering, as in i. 2, 22, ii. 20), i.e. it
causes pain to the soul, as the Chaldee has already paraphrased
it. The expression does "not merely signify " causes me grief"
(Thenius, Gerlach) ; but the eye, weakened through incessant
weeping, causes pain to the soul, inasmuch as the pain in the
eye increases the pain in the soul, i.e. heightens the pain of the
soul through the superaddition of physical pain (Nagelsbach).
Ewald has quite mi^ed the meaning of the verse in his trans-
lation, " Tears assail my soul," and in his explanatory remark
that npMy is used in a bad sense, like the Latin ajicit ; for, if
Wy had this meaning, '3'J? could not stand for tears, because it
is not the tears, but only the eyes weakened by weeping, that
affect the soul with pain. Ewald is also wrong in seeking, with
Grotius, to understand " the daughters of my city " as signi-
fying the country towns, and to explain the phrase by referring
to ii. 22. For, apart from the consideration that the appeal to
ii. 22 rests on a false conception of that passage, the meaning
attributed to the present verse is shown to be untenable by the
very fact that the expression " daughters of my city " is never
used for the daughter-towns of Jerusalem ; and such a desig-
nation, however possible it might be in itself, would yet be
quite incomprehensible in this present connection, where there
is no other subject of lamentation, either before or after, than
Jerusalem in its ruined condition, and the remnant of its
inhabitants (Gerlach). " The daughters of my city " are the
daughters of Jerusalem, the female portion of the inhabitants
of the city before and after its. destruction. Nor will what is
Digitized by
Google
424 THE LAMENTATIONS OF jfeREMIAH.
added, " because oi the daughters of my city," seem strange,
if we consider that, even in i. 4, 18 and ii. 20, 21, the fate and
the wretched condition of the virgins of the city are mentioned
as peculiarly deplorable, and that, in fact, the defenceless
virgins were most to be pitied when the city fell ; cf. v. 11.
But the objection of Bottcher and Thenius, that ^'V nl33 i>3D
forms a harsh construction, whether we view it grammatically
or in the light of the circumstances, inasmuch as tp, after
"mine eye pains me," is unsuitable, whether taken in a causal
or a comparative meaning : — this objection, certainly, has some
truth in its favour, and tells against any attempt to take the
words as indicating a comparison. But there is nothing against
the causal meaning, if " mine eye causes pain to my soul "
merely signifies "my eye pains me," because the pain of the
eye is the result of the profuse weeping. If those words,
however, possess the meaning we have given above (the pain
in the eyes increases the smart in the soul), then there is
nothing strange at all in the thought, " The evil condition of
the daughters of my city is so deplorable, that mine eyes fail
through weeping, and the sorrow of my soul is thereby intensi-
fied." Gerlach has already refuted, though more fully than
was necessary, the conjecture of Bottcher, that Tlb3 should
be changed into nbs (from all the weeping of my city). —
Vers. 52-54. His pain and Sbrrow over the sad condition of
the people recall to bis memory the persecutions and sufferings
which the godly have endured. The figure, "They who
w;ithout cause are mine enemies have hunted me like a bird,"
is an imitation of Ps. xi. 1. Bjn >2\k reminds one of D|n ''K3t!>,
Ps. XXXV. 19 and Ixix. 5. But the prophet prefers ^^^ to
^KJi?, lest any one should restrict the words to persecutions
which arose out of personal hatred. — Ver. 53. Vip^ is here used
transitively in Kal, as the Piel is elsewhere, Ps. cxix. 139, and
the Pilpel, Ps. Ixxxviii. 17. 1^33 Vipv, « they were destroying
(cutting off) my life down into the pit," is a pregnant con-
struction, and must be understood de eonatu : " they sought to
destroy my life when they hurled me down into the pit, and
cast stones on me," i.e. not " they covered the pit with a stone "
(Pareau, De Wette, Neumann). The verb rnj construed with
2 does not take this meaning, for HT merely signifies to cast,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IIL 40-54. 425
e.g. lots (Josh. iv. 3, etc.), arrows (Jer. 1. 14), or to throw
down = destroy, annihilate, Zech. il. 4 ; and '? does not mean
" in the pit in which I was," but " upon (or against) me." The
sing. t3M is to be understood in accordance with the expression
J3K DJ-i, to cast stones = stone (1 Kings xii. 18 ; Lev. xx. 2, 27).
As to ^13 for ^1!^, see on nj^ in ver. 33. " Waters flowed over
my head " is a figurative expression, denoting such misery and
distress as endanger life ; cf. Ps. Ixix. 2, 3, 15 f., cxxiv. 4 f .,
xlii. 8. " I said (thought), I am cut off (from God's eyes or
hand)," Ps. xxxi. 23, Ixxxviii. 6, is a reminiscence from these
Psalms, and does not essentially differ from <' cut off out of
the land of the living," Isa. liii. 8. For, that we must thereby
think of death, or sinking down into Sheol, is shown by
ni>nnn niao, ver. 55. The complaint in these verses (52-54) is
regarded by some expositors as a description of the personal
sufferings of Jeremiah ; and the casting into the pit is referred
to the incident mentioned in Jer. xxxviii. 6 ff. Such is the
view, for instance, taken by Vaihinger and Nagelsbach, who
point for proof to these considerations especially : (1) That the
Chaldeans certainly could not, without good cause (ver. 53),
be understood as the "enemies;" (2) that Jeremiah could not
represent the people, speaking as if they were righteous and
innocent ; and (3) that the writer already speaks of his deliver-
ance from their power, and contents himself with merely call-
ing down on them the vengeance of God (vers. 65-66). But
not one of these reasons is decisive. For, in the first place,
the contents of ver. 52 do not haimonize with the known
hostility which Jeremiah had to endure from his personal
enemies. That is to say, there is nothing mentioned or known
of his enemies having stoned him, or having covered him over
with a stone, after they had cast him into the miry pit (Jer.
xxxviii. 6 ff.). The figurative character of the whole account
thus shows itself in the very fact that the separate portions of
it are taken from reminiscences of passages in the Psalms,
whose figurative character is universally acknowledged. More-
over, in the expression Wn '3|k, even when we understand
thereby the Chaldeans, it is not at all implied that he who
complains of these enemies considers himself righteous and
innocent, but simply that he has not given them any good
Z'"
Digitized by
Google
426 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEHUH.
groand for their hostile condact towards him. And the asser-
tion, that the writer is already speaking of his deliverance from
their power, rests on the erroneous notion that, in vers. 55-66,
he is treating of past events ; whereas, the interchange of the
perfects with imperatives of itself shows that the deliverance
of which he there speaks is not an accomplished or bygone
fact, bat rather the object of that assured faith which contem-
plates the non-existent as existent. Lastly, the contrast be-
tween, personal suffering and the suffering of the people, on
which the whole reasoning rests, is quite beside the mark.
Moreover, if we take the lamentations to be merely symbolical,
then the saffeHngs and persecutions of which the prophet here
complains are not those of the people generally, but of the
godly Israelitesy on whom they were inflicted when the kingdom
was destroyed, not merely by the Chaldeans, but also by their
godless fellow-countrymen. Hence we cannot, of course, say
that Jeremiah here speaks from personal experience ; however,
he complains not merely of the persecutions that befell him
personally, but also of the sufferings that had come on him
and all godly ones. The same remark applies to the conclusion
of this lamentation, — the prayer, vers. 55-66, in which he
entreats the Lord for deliverance, and in the spirit of faith
views this deliverance as already accomplished.
Vers. 55-66. Prayer for deliverance,'and confident trust in
its realization. Ver. 55. " Out of the lowest pit I call, O Lord,
on Thy name ;" cf. Ps. Ixxxviii. 7, 14, cxxx. 1. The perfect
*ntni5 is not a preterite,^ but expresses what has already hap-
pened, and still happens. Thi& is evident from the fact that
the corresponding perfect, f'J'OE', ver. 56, is continued by the
optative D?yn-?K. ni»nnn nte is taken from Ps. Ixxxviii. 7 : " pit
of the lower regions of the earth," — the K^K ni>nnri, Ps. Ixiii.
^ The perfects are so viewed by Nagelsbach, who also thinks that the
speaker, in vers. 55-58, thanks the Lord for deliverance from the pit, and
in ver. 55 reminds the Lord of the prayer he has addressed to TTim out of
the pit. But conld he possibly think that the Lord had forgotten this ?
What, we should like to know, would be the use of this reminder, even if
'U1 D^yri"^K) ver. 66, could be taken as the words of address to the Lord?
For we can discover no thanksgiving in vers. 55-58. This whole mode of
viewing the passage breaks down before ver. 59 : " Thou hast seen mine
oppression ; judge me ! " For, if the perfects in vers. 65-58 are preterites,
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. m. 85-66. 427
10, Ezek. zxxii. 18, 24, i.e. Sheol, essentially^ the same with
DiSB'nD, ver. 6, which is therehy connected with Ps. Ixxxviii. 7,
— the dark regions of the depth, whose open month is the grave
for every one (see Delitzsch on Psalms, tc), hence the symbol
of mortal danger. — -Ver. 56. "Thou hast heard my voice" ex-
presses the full assurance of faith from which the request comes:
'* Cover not Thine ear from my sighing." nrnn, « breathing out
again ;" in Ezek. viii. 11, mitigation of oppression, yet not here
reepiratiOf relaxatio (C. B. Michaelis, Eosenmiiller, etc.), — since
the asyndetic ''f^Viy^ does not accord with such an interpreta'-
tion, — ^but a relieving of oneself by means of deeply-drawn sighs,
as in Job xxxii. 20 ; hence " sighing," as Luther has already
rendered it, following the Vulgate : ne avettas aurem tuum a
singultu meo (Thenius, Gerlach, etc.). — In vers. 57 and 58, the
writer still more fully expresses his confidence that the Lord
will accept him. " Thou art near on the day when I call on
Thee " is a sentence found in Ps. cxlv. 18, and Uttered as the
experience of all believers. " Thou sayest, Fear not," i^. Thou
assnrest me of Thine assistance ; cf. Jer. i. 8, 17, etc. " Thou
dost conduct the causes (Ger. Streitsaehen) of my soul" ('?'^
'rw), i.e. not merely " my lawsuits," but catuas quce vitam et
salutem meatn concernunt (0. B. Michaelis). This is shown by
the parallel member, " Thou redeemest my life," sc. from the
destruction which threatens it ; cf . 53 f ., Ps. ciii. 4. With this
is connected the request in ver. 59, " Thou dost certainly see
my oppression " (•'TO from ffl?* to bend, oppress), the oppression
which I suffer ; *' judge my cause," i.e. help me in my cause, cf.
Jer. vi 28. The suppliant bases this request, vers. 60-62, on
the recollection that God, as the Omniscient One, knows the
plans and intentions of his opponents. " Thou seest all their
plans for revenge." no^J is not here the outcome of revenge,
then also rUl'^0. ver. 59, can only be a preterite ; and the prophet can only
be speaking of injustice that has been done him previously: hence he cannot
add thereto the request, " Judge me," inasmuch as the Lord (according to
Nagelsbach) has already judged him by delivering him from the pit. More-
over, it is quite arbitrary to understand the perfects in vers. 59 and 62 as
referring to what has been done and is still being done to the speaker by his
enemies, if it be agreed that the perfects in vers. 55-58 refer only to past
events.
Digitized by
Google
X
428 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
bat the thought of revenge cherished in the heart ; it does not,
however, mean desire of revenge, or revengeful disposition, but
simply the thinking and meditating on revenge, which certainly
has the spirit of revenge for its basis, but is not identical with
this. Their thoughts are the plans of vengeance, y, dat. in-
comm.y " to my hurt ;" the reading vV of some codices is simply
a correction after ver. 61. This revenge they express in re-
proaches and invectives. ''IIB?', " lips," for utterances of the
lips ; and 'OiJ as in Ps. xviii. 40, 49 = '?V B'OiJ, Ps. iii. 2, etc.
'»5 •'IiBfe* corresponds to DHBin, and DM'?n to Dn^f n?, ver. 61 ;
and the whole of ver. 62 still depends on " Thou hearest," with-
out any need for supplying ^*n, as Bosenmiiller does. Thenius
and Nagelsbach would combine ver. 62 with 63, and make the
former dependent on no'an ; but this is unsuitable, nor do they
consider that utterances or words are not seen ('3*3'?), but heard
Qfof), With this proposed combination there falls to the ground
the further remark of Thenius, that " by lips, devising, sitting,
rising up, are meant the conversation and consultation of the
enemies one with another." Sitting and rising up have nothing
in common with speaking about any subject, but merely form
a circumlocution for action generally: cf. Ps. cxxxix. 2; Deut.
vi. 7, xi. 19 : Isa. xxxvii. 28. The form W^liJD for nj^jj occurs
7 ' T*;~ T*:
nowhere else : Ewald considers it a form that has been
lengthened for the purpose of designating a mocking song —
" Sing-song." This supposition has at least more to recommend
it than the ingenious but worthless idea of Bottcher, that n^aiD
is contracted from njyrno, " what a stringed instrument am I
to them ;" but it also is improbable. WMD is the subject of the
n^Mj as words formed with D often express merely the subject
of the idea contained in a noun or verb ; cf. Ewald, § 160, 6, 3.
After this statement of the hostile treatment which the speaker
has to suffer, there follows the renewed and further extended
request that God may reward the foes according to their deeds,
a^n, " Thou shalt return," is a confident expression of the re-
quest that God would do this ; hence the optative \KF\ follows
in ver. 65. In ver. 64 is condensed the substance of what is
contained in Ps. xxviii. 4. 2? n|JD, covering (veil) of the heart,
— an expression analogous to the koKv/i/mi iirl ttjv KapBiav,
2 Cor. iii. 15, — is not obduration, or hardening, but blinding of
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 429
the heart, which casts into destruction; but it can scarcely
signify "madness" (Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychology, Clark's trans-
lation), since the Arabic *Jiav<> insania, furor, has probably
received this meaning from ^^, genius, dcemon ; cf. Gesenius,
Thes. S.V., and Bosenmiiller, -ad h. I. " Thy curse to them !" is
not to be viewed as dependent on " give," but to be explained
in accordance with Ps. iii. 9, "Thy blessing [be] upon Thy
people ! " — ^thus, " May Thy curse be their poHion ! " The curse
of God is followed by destruction. " Destroy them from under
Jahveh's heaven !" i.e. not merely ut non sint amplius sub ccelis
(0. B. Michaelis), because miT is not considered in this latter
rendering. The heaven of Jahveh is the whole world, over
which Jahveh's authority extends; the meaning therefore is,
" Exterminate them wholly from the sphere of Thy dominion
in the world," or. Thy kingdom.
CHAP. IV.— SUBMISSION UNCEB THE JUDGMENT OF GOD,
AND HOPE.
1 How the gold becomes dim, — the fine gold cbangeth, —
Sacred stones are scattered about at the top of every street !
2 The dear sons of Zion, who are precious as fine gold, —
How they are esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of a potter's
hands!
3 Even the she- wolves reach the breast, they suckle their young ones;
[But] the daughter of my people [hath become] cruel, like the ostriches
in the wilderness.
4 The tongue of the suckling cleaveth to his palate for thirst ;
Young children ask for bread, [but] there is none breaking [it] for
them.
5 Those who ate dainties [before] are desolate in the streets ;
Those who were carried on scarlet embrace dunghills.
6 The iniquity of the daughter of my people became greater than the sin
of Sodom,
Which was overthrown as in a moment, though no hands were laid on her.
7 Her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk,
They were redder in body than corals, their form was [that of] a
sapphire.
8 Their form is darker than blackness,— they are not recognised in the
streets ;
Their skin adhereth closely to their bones,— it hath become dry, like wood.
Digitized by
Google
430 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
9 Better are those glain Tvith the sword than those slain -With hunger ;
For these pine away, pierced through from [want of] the fruits of the
field.
10 The hands of women [who were once] tender-hearted, have boiled their
own children ;
They became food to them in the destruction of the daughter of my
people,
tl Jahveh accomplished His wrath: He poured out the burning of His
anger;
And kindled a fire in Zion, and it devoured her foundations.
12 Would the kings of the earth, all the inhabitants of the world, not
believe
That an adversary and an enemy would enter in at the gates of Jeru-
salem?
13 Because of the sins of her prophets, the iniquities of her priests.
Who shed blood of righteous ones in her midst,
14 They wander [like] blind men in the streets ; they are defiled with blood.
So that [people] could not touch their clothes.
15 " Keep off ! it is unclean ! " they cried to them, " keep off ! keep off !
touch not!"
When they fled, they also wandered ;
[People] say among thenatiens, " They must no longer sojourn [here]."
16 The face of Jahveh hath scattered them ; no longer doth He look on
them :'
They regard not the priests, they respect not old men.
17 Still do our eyes pine away, [looking] for our help, [which is] vanity:
In our watching, we watched for a nation [that] will not help.
18 They hunt our steps, so that we cannot go in our streets ;
Our end is near, our days are full, — yea, our end is come.
19 Our persecutors were swifter than the eagles of heaven ;
They pursued us on the mountains, in the wilderness they laid wait
for us.
20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jahveh, was caught in their
pits,
[Of] whom we thought, " In His shadow we shall live among the
nations."
21 Be glad and rejoice, daughter of Edom, dwelling in the land of tJz :
To thee also shall the cup pass ; thou shalt be drunk, and make thyself
naked.
22 Thy guilt is at an end, daughter of Zion ; He will no more carry thee
captive :
He visiteth thine iniquity, daughter of Edom ; He discovereth thy sins.
The lamentation over the terrible calamity that has befallen
Jerusalem is distinguished in this poem from the lamentations
in chap. i. and ii., not merely by the fact that in it the fate
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 1-6. 431
of the several classes of the population is contemplated, but
chieflj by the circumstance that the calamity is set forth as a
well-merited punishment by God for the grievous sins of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem. This consideration forms the chief
feature in the whole poem, from the beginning to the end of
which there predominates the hope that Zion will not perish,
but that the appointed punishment will terminate, and then fall
on their now triumphant enemies. In this fundamental idea of
the poem, compared with the first two, there is plainly an ad-
vance towards the due recognition of the suffering as a punish-
ment ; from this point it is possible to advance, not merely
to the hope regarding the future, with which the poem con-
cludes, but also the prayer for deliverance in chap. v. The
contents of the poem are the following : The princes and inha-
bitants of Zion are sunk into a terrible state of misery, because
their gailt was greater than the sin of Sodom (vers. 1-11).
Jerusalem has been delivered into the hands of her enemies on
account of her prophets and priests, who have shed the blood
of righteous ones (vers. 12-16), and because the people have
placed their trust on the vain help of man (vers. 17-20). For
this they must atone ; for the present, however, the enemy
may triumph ; the guilt of the daughter of Zion will come to
an end, and then the judgment will befall her enemies (vers.
21, 22).
Vers. 1-11. The misery that has come on the inhabitants of
Jerusalem is a punishment for their deep guilt. The descrip-
tion given of this misery is divided into two strophes : for, first
(vers. 1-6), the sad lot of the several classes of the population
is set forth ; then (vers. 7-11) a conclusion is drawn therefrom
regarding the greatness of their sin. — "Vers. 1-6. The first
strophe. Ver. 1. The lamentation begins with a figurative
account of the destruction of all that is precious and glorious in
Israel: this is next established by the bringing forth of in-
stances. — Vers. 1, 2 contain, not a complaint regarding the
desolation of the sanctuary and of Zion, as Maurer, Kalk-
schmidt, and Thenius, with the LXX., assume, but, as is un-
mistakeably declared in ver. 2, a lamentation over the fearful
change that has taken place in the fate of the citizens of Zion.
What is stated in ver. 1 regarding the gold and the precious
Digitized by
Google
432 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH.
stones must be understood figuratively ; and in the case of the
''gold that has become dim," we can as little think of the
blackening of the gilding in the temple fabric when it was
burnt, as think of bricks (Thenius) when " the holy stones"
are spoken of. The l^*? '33 (inhabitants of Zion), ver. 2, are
likened to gold and sacred stones ; here Thenius would arbi-
trarily change *J3 into *W3 (houses, palaces). This change not
merely has no critical support, but is objectionable on the simple
ground that there is not a single word to be found elsewhere,
through all the chapter, concerning the destruction of the temple
and the palaces ; it is merely the fate of the men, not of the
buildings, that is bewailed. " How is gold bedimmed !" DJA'' is
the Hophal of DOV, to be dark, Ezek. xxviii. 3, and to darken,
Ezek. xxxi. 8. The second clause, " how is fine gold changed !"
expresses the same thing. NJK' = n3E', according to the Chal-
daizing usage, means to change (oneself), Mai. iii. 6. The
growing dim and the changing refer to the colour, the loss of
brilliancy ; for gold does not alter in substance. C. B. Michaelis
and Kosenmiiller are too specific when they explain that the gold
represents populus Judaicus (or the potior populi Hehrcei pars),
qui {quce) quondam auri instar in sanctuario Dei fulgelat, and
when they see in Bh|> ''33N an allusion to the stones in the breast-
plate of the high priest. Gold is generally an emblem of very
worthy persons, and " holy stones" are precious stones, intended
for a sacred purpose. Both expressions collectively form a
figurative description of the people of Israel, as called to be a
holy nation and a kingdom of priests. Analogous is the designa-
tion of the children of Israel as "iJJ y3N, Zech. ix. 16 (Gerlach).
ijBFiB'n, to be poured out (at all the corners of the streets), is a
figurative expression, signifying disgraceful treatment, as in ii.
11. In ver. 2 follows the application of the figure to the sons
{i.e. the citizens) of Zion, not merely the chief nobles of Judah
(Ewald), or the princes, nor children in the narrowest sense of
the word (Gerlach) ; for in what follows mention is made not
only of children (vers. 3, 4), but also of those who are grown up
(ver. 5), and princes are not mentioned till ver. 7. As being
members of the chosen people, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
have been held " dear," and " weighed out with gold," t.tf.
esteemed as of equal value with gold (cf. Job xxviii. 16, 19) ;
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV, 1-6. 433
but now, when Jerusalem is destroyed, they have become re-
garded as earthenware pots, i.e. treated as if they were utterly
worthless, as " a work of the hands of the potter," whereas
Israel was a work of the hands of God, Isa. Ixiv. 7. N?p = n?p^
cf. Job xxviii. !&, 19 [to weigh ; Pual, be weighed out, as an
equivalent]. This disregard or rejection of the citizens- of Zion
is evidenced in ver. 3 and onwards by many examples, begin-
ning with children, ascending to adults (3-5), and ending with
princes. The starvation to death of the children (vers. 3, 4) is
mentioned first ; and the frightful misery that has befallen Jeru-
salem is vividly set forth, by a comparison of the way in which
wild animals act towards their young with the b(ehaviour of the
mothers of Jerusalem towards their children. Even jackals (Pin
for D''?'?, see on Jer. ix. 10) give their breasts to their young ones
to suck. 1?' ^K>n, extrahunt tnammam = they present their breast.
As Junius has remarked, the expression is taken a mulieribus
laotantibus, q-uoe laxata veste mammam lactanti prwbent ; hence
also we are not, for the sake of this expression, to understand
J'jin as meaning cetus (Bochart and Nagelsbach), regarding
which animal Bochart remarks (Hieroz. iii. p. 777, ed. Kosen-
miiller), eeti papillas non esse iiru^veltf quippe in mammis
receptee tanquam in vaginis conduntur. Bosenmiiller has already
rejected this meaning as minus apta for the present passage.
From the combination of jackals and ostriches as inhabiting
desert places (Isa. xiii. 21 f. ; Job xxx. 29), we have no hesi-
tation in fixing on " jackals" as the meaning here.. " The
daughter of my people" (cf. ii. 11) here means the inhabitants
of Zion or Jerusalem. "IW???, " has become cruel." The Ketliib
Wil) 13 instead of D'?3?^3 (Qm) may possibly have arisen from
a purely accidental separation of the letters of the word in a
MS., a reading which was afterwards painfully retained by the
scribes. But in many codices noted by Kennicott and De Rossi,
as well as in several old editions, the word is found correctly
joined, without any marginal note. Q^ji^T. means ostriches,
usually njjj^ na (« daughter of crying," or according to Gesenius,
in his Thesaurus, and Ewald, following the Syriac, " the
daughter of gluttony"), the female ostrich. The comparison
with these animals is to be understood in accordance with Job
xxxix. 16 : " she (the female ostrich) treats her young ones
VOL. II. 2 E
Digitized by
Google
434 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEMIAH.
harshly, as if they were not her own." This popular belief is
founded on the fact that the animal lays her eggs in the ground, —
after having done no more than slightly scratching up the
soil, — and partly also, when the nest is fall, on the surface of the
ground ; she then leaves them to be hatched, in coarse of time,
by the heat of the sun : the eggs may thus be easily broken,
see on Job xxxix. 14-16. — Ver. 4. Sucking ifkfants and little
children perish from thirst and hunger; cf. ii. 11, 12. is^a
= ona, as in Mic. iii. 3, to break down into pieces, break bread
= divide, Isa. Iviii. 7, Jer. xvi. 7. In ver. 5 it is not children,
but adults, that are spoken of. Cll^p is variously rendered,
since »K occurs nowhere else in construction with ?. Against
the assumption that ? is the Aramaic sign of the object, there
stands the fact that ?3K is not found thus construed with ?,
either in the Lamentations or elsewhere, though in Jer. xl. 2
f is so used. Gerlach, accordingly, would take D''3"ijJ»7 ad-
verbially, as meaning " after their heart's desire," prop, for
pleasures (as to this meaning, cf. Prov. xxix. 17, 1 Sam. xv.
32), in contrast with \)W? '??, to eat for satisfaction, Ex. xvi.
3, Lev. XXV. 19, etc. But " for pleasure" is not an appropriate
antithesis to satisfaction. Hence we prefer, with Thenius, to
take f «« in the sense of nibbling round something, in which
there is contained the notion of selection in the eating ; we also
take D'|"iJ^, as in Gen. xlix. 20, to mean dainties. ^tSE'j, to be
made desolate, as in i. 13, of the destruction of happiness in
life ; with rflftna, to sit in a troubled or gloomy state of mind
on the streets. O'-iOKn, those who (as children) were carried on
purple Q)?Sp\ for W Tiypin, cochineal, crimson), embrace {i.e.
cling to) dung-heaps, seek them as places of rest. — Ver. 6. The
greatness of their guilt is seen in this misery. The i consecu-
tive joined with Sv here marks the result, so far as this
manifests itself : " thus the offence (guilt) of the daughter of
my people has become greater than the sin of Sodom." Most
expositors take f\V and TMXan here in the sense of punishment ;
but this meaning has not been established. The words simply
mean " offence " and " sin," sometimes including their conse-
quences, but nowhere do they mean unceremonious castigation.
But when Thenius is of opinion that the context demands the
meaning "punishment" (not "sin"), he has inconsiderately
N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 7-11, 435
omitted the ^ eonsee., and taken a wrong view of the context.
^Bii is the usual word employed in connection with the destruc-
tion of Sodom; cf. Gen. xix. 21, 25, Deut. xxix. 22, etc.
'vn vn t6l is translated by Thenius, et non torquebatur in ea
tnanus, i.e. without any one wringing his hands. However, Sn
(to go in a circle) means to writhe with pain, but does not agree
with Dn'> to wring the hands. In Hos. xi. 6 ^n is used of the
sword, which " circles" in the cities, i.e. cuts and kills all round
in them. In like manner it is here used of the hands that went
round in Sodom for the purpose of overthrowing (destroying)
the city. Nagelsbach wrongly derives vn from wn, to become
slack, powerless. The words, " no hands went round (were at
work) in her," serve to explain the meaning of Vi"] to|, " as in
a moment," without any need for the hands of men being
.engaged in it. By this additional remark, not merely is greater
prominence given to the sudden destruction of Sodom by the
hand of God ; but it is also pointed out how far Jerusalem, in
comparison with that judgment of God, suffers a greater punish-
ment for her greater sins : for her destruction by the hand of
man brings her more enduring torments. " Sodom's suffering
at death was brief ; for there were no children dying of hunger,
no mothers who boiled their children" (Nagelsbach). Sodom
was spared this heartrending misery, inasmuch as it was de-
stroyed by the hand of God in an instant. .
Vers. 7-11. The second strophe. — Vers. 7, 8. The picture
of the misery that has befallen the princes. Q*l'?3, princes,
prop, spparati, here non voto (Nazarites) sed dignitate, as Nolde
appropriately remarks ; see on Gen. xlix. 26. ^3T is used. Job
XV. 15, XXV. 5, of the brightness of the heaven and the stars ;
here it is used of female beauty. Thenius would refer " pure
(or bright) as snow and milk " to the white clothing, " because
the Orientals have not milk-white faces." But the second
member irrefragably shows that the reference is to bodily form ;
and for the very reason adduced by Thenius, a comparatively
whiter skin than is commonly met with is esteemed more beau-
tiful. So also does Cant. v. 10, " My friend is white and red,"
show the high esteem in which beauty was held (Gerlach).
D^N, to be reddish. DVy, " bone," for the body (pars pro toto).
D'^^JB, not (white) pearls, but (red) corals. " The white and
Digitized by
Google
436 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEHIAH.
the red are to be understood as mixed, and shading into one ■
another, as our popular poetry speaks of cheeks which ' Hke
milk and purple shine' " (Delitzsch on Job xxviii. 18, Clark's
translation). " Sapphire their form" (p'i% prop, cut, taille,
of the shape of the body). The point of the comparison is not
the colour, but the luminosity, of this precious stone. Once
on a time the princes glittered so ; but (ver. 8) now their form
is dark as blackness, i.e. every trace of beauty and splendour
has vanished. Through hunger and want their appearance
is so disfigured, that they are no longer recognised in the
streets (rtiftn, in contrast with " at home," in their own neigh-
bourhood). " The skin sticks to the bones," so emaciated are
they ; cf. Ps- cii. 4, Job xix. 20. 1?y, av. "Key., to adhere
firmly. The skin has become dry (t5^?J) like wood. — Ver. 9. This
pining away with hunger is much more horrible than a speedy
death by the sword. OHB', <' for they" = qui ipai ; '3VJ, prop.
flow away, i.e. pine away as those pierced through (D'njj'iD, cf.
Jer. xxxvii. 10, li. 4). 'tJ' rtaiwp does not mean " of the fruits,"
but V? is a brief expression for ** because there are no fruits,"
i.e. from want of the produce of the field ; cf. j^K'p c'ra ne'S^
" my flesh wastes away from oil," ue. because there is a want
of oil, Ps. cix. 24. There was thus no need for the conjecture
rt3K7riD, " from burning glow," from drought, which has been
proposed by Ewald in order to obtain the following sense, after
supplying 3 : " as if melting away through the drought of the
field, emaciated by the glowing heat of the. sun." The free
rendering of the Vulgate, consumpti a sterilitate terrce, gives no
support to the conjecture. — Ver. 10. Still more horrible was
the misery of the women. In order to keep themselves from
dying of hunger, mothers boiled their children for food to them-
selves ; cf. ii. 20. By the predicate " compassionate," applied
to bands, the contrast between this conduct and the nature, or
the innate love, of mothers to their children, is made particu-
larly prominent. Tl1"i3 is a noun=n^^3, Ps. Ixix. 22. On
" the destruction of the daughter of my people," cf. ii. 11. —
Ver. 11. This fearfiJ state of matters shows that the Lord has
fully poured out His wrath upon Jerusalem and His people.
•i?3, to complete, bring to an end. The kindling of the fire in
Zion, which consumed the fpundations, is not to be limited to
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 12-16. 437
the burning of Jerusalem, but is a symbol of the complete
destruction of Zion by the wrath of God ; cf. Deut. xxxii. 32.
Vers. 12-20. This judgment of wrath is a consequence of the
sins of the prophets and priests (vers. 12-16), as well as of their
vain trust on the help of man (vers. 17-20). Ver. 12 f. The
capture of Jerusalem by enemies (an event which none in all
the world thought possible) has been brought on through the
sins of the prophets and priests. The words, " the kings of the
earth . . . did not believe that an enemy would come in at the
gates of Jerusalem," are well explained by C. B. Michaelis, thus:
reputando fortitudinem urbis, qwx munitissima erat, turn defen-
sorem ejus Jehovam, qui ab kostibus, ad intemecionem ctesis,
urbem aliquoties, mirifice Uberaverat, e.g. 2 Reg. xix. 34, The
words certainly form a somewhat overdrawn expression of deep
subjective conviction; but they cannot properly be called a
hyperbole, because the remark of Nagelsbach, that Jerusalem
had been taken more than once before Nebuchadnezzar (1
Kings xiv. 26; 2 Kings xiv. 13 f.; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 ; 2 Kings
xxiii. 33 ff.), seems incorrect. For the occasions upon which
Jerusalem was taken by Shishak and by Joash king of Israel (1
Kings xiv. and 2 Kings xiv.) belong to those earlier times when
Jerusalem was far from being so strongly fortified as it after-
wards became, in the times of Uzziah, Jotham, and Manasseh
(2 Chron. xxvi. 9, xxvii. 3, xxxiii. 14). In 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11,
on the other hand, there is nothing said of Jerusalem being
taken; and the capture by Fharaoh-Necho does not call for
consideration, in so far as it forms the beginning of the cata-
strophe, whose commencement was thought impossible. Ewald
wrongly connects ver. 13 with ver. 12 into one sentence, thus:
" that an enemy would enter the gates of Jerusalem because of
the sins of her prophets," etc. The meaning of these verses is
thereby not merely weakened, but also misrepresented; and
there is ascribed to the kings and inhabitants of the world an
opinion regarding the internal evils of Jerusalem, which they
neither pronounced nor could have pronounced. — Ver. 1^ con-
tains an exclamation over the incredible event that has hap-
pened, and ver. 13 assigns the cause of it : the mediating and
combining thought, " this incredible thing has happened,"
suggests itself. It has taken place on account of the sins of
/'
Digitized by
Google
438 THE tAMENTATIOSS OF JEBEMIAH.
her prophets and priests, who have shed the blood of righteous
men in Jerusalem. A historic proof of this is furnished in Jer.
xxvi. 7 ff., where priests and prophets indicted Jeremiah on a
capital charge, because he had announced that Jerusalem and
the temple would suffer the fate of Shiloh ; from this, Nagels-
bach rightly concludes that, in any case, the burden of the guilt
of the martyr-blood that was shed falls on the priests and pro-
phets. Besides this, cf. the denunciations of the conduct of
the priests and prophets in Jer. vi. 13-15, xxiii. 11, xxvii. 10,
Ezek. xxii. 25 f. — In vers. 14, 15, there is described the fate of
these priests and prophets, but in such a way that Jeremiah has,
throughout, mainly the priests before his mind.- We may then,
without further hesitation, think of the priests as the subject of
^V3, inasmuch as they are mentioned last. Kalkschmidt wrongly
combines vers. 13 and 14, thus : " because of the sins of the
prophets . . . they wander about," etc.; in this way, the Israelites
would be the subject to 'PJ, and in ver. 14 the calamitas ex saeer-
dotum propJietarumque sceleribus profecta would be described.
This, however, is contradicted, not merely by the undeniable
retrospection of the expression, " they have polluted themselves
with blood " (ver. 14), to the shedding of blood mentioned in
ver. 13, but also by the whole contents of ver. 14, especially
the impossibility of touching their clothes, which does not well
apply to the people of Israel (Judah), but only to the priests
defiled with blood. Utterly en'oneous is the opinion of Parean,
Ewald, and Thenius, that in vers. 14-16 there is " presented a
fragment from the history of the last siege of Jerusalem," — a
rupture among the besieged, headed by the most eminent of the
priests and prophets, who, filled with frenzy and passion against
their fellow-citizens, because they would not believe in the speedy
return of the exiles, became furious, and caused their opponents
to be murdered. Regarding this, there is neither anything
historical known, nor is there any trace of it to be discovered
in these verses. The words, " prophets and priests hesitated
(or wavered) like blind men on the streets, soiled with blood,
so that none could touch their clothes," merely state that these
men, smitten of God in consequence of their blood-guiltiness,
wandered up and down in the streets of the city, going about
like blind men. This description has been imitated from such
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 12-16. 439
passages as Deut. xxviii. 28 f., Jer. xxiii. 12, Isa. xxix. 9,
where the people, and especially their leaders, are threatened,
as a punishment, with blind and helpless staggering ; but it is
not to be referred to the time of the last siege of Jerasalem.
ony does not mean ecedium perpetrandarum insatiabili cupiditate
occcecati (Eosenmuller), nor " as if intoxicated with blood that
has been shed" (Nagelsbach), but as if strack with blindness by-
God, so that they could no longer walk with firm and steady step.
" They are defiled with blood " is a reminiscence from Isa. lix. 3.
As to the form ?NiJ, compounded of the Niphal and Pual, cf.
Ewald, § 132, b, and Delitzsch on Isaiah, Lc. v2V toa, without
one being able, i.e. so that one could not. As to the construction
of ?i3J with a finite verb following, instead of the infinitive with
f, cf. Ewald, § 285, c, c, and Gesenius, § 142, 3, b. — ^Ver. 15.
" Yea, they (people) address to them the warning cry with
which, according to Lev. xiii. 45, lepers were obliged to warn
those whom they met not to come near." Such is the language
in which Gerlach has rightly stated the connection between
ver. 14 and ver. 15a. ^D? ^N")i5 is rendered by many, " people
shouted ojit regarding them," de iis, because, according to Lev.
xiii. 45, it was the lepers who were to shout " Unclean !" to
those they met ; the cry therefore was not addressed to the un-
clean, but to those who, being clean, were not to defile them-
selves by touching lepers. But though this meaning may be
taken from the language used (cf. Gen. xx. 13, Ps. iii. 3), yet
here, where the call is addressed to persons, it is neither probable
nor necessary. For it does not follow from the allusion to the
well-known direction given to lepers, that this prescription Is
transferred verbatim to the present case. The call is here
addressed to the priests, who are staggering towards them with
blood-stained garments. These must get out of the way, and
not touch those they meet. The sing. NOO is accounted for by
the allusion to Lev. xiii. 45, and means, " Out of the way !
there comes one who is unclean." The second half of the
verse is variously .viewed. WJ, as Milra, comes from nv3, which
in Niphal means to wrangle, in Hiphil to stir up strife. The
Vulgate, accordingly, translates jurgati quippe sunt, and Ewald
still renders, " yet they quarrelled, yet they staggered." But
this view is opposed by these considerations : (1.) '? . . . 0| can
r
Digitized by
Google
440 THE LAMENTATIOKS OF JEREMIAH.
V
neither introduce an antithesis, nor mean " yet . . . yet,
(2.) In view of the shedding of blood, wrangling is a matter of
too little importance to deserve mention. Luther's rendering,
" because they feared and fled from them," is a mere conjec-
ture, and finds no support whatever from the words employed.
Hence Gesenius, in his Thesaurus, has rightly explained 'S3,
after NXJ, Jer. xlviii. 9, " to fly, flee, or take to flight." Follow-
ing him, the moderns translate : " because they had fled, they
also staggered about." It is better to render *3 by quum, " when
they fled," sc. to other nations, not specially to the Chaldeans.
^J>3 is selected with reference to what precedes, but in the general
meaning of roaming restlessly about. The idea is as follows :
Not merely were they shunned at home, like lepers, by their
fellow-countrymen, but also, when they wished to find a place
of refuge beyond their native land, they were compelled to
wander about without finding rest; for they said among the
nations, " They shall no longer sojourn among us." Thus the
curse came on them, Deut. xxviii. 65 f. — Ver. 16. TMs was the
judgment of God. His face {i.e. in this connection. His angry
look ; cf. Lev. xvii. 10, Ps. xxi. 10) has scattered them (p?n as
in Gen. xlix. 7). No longer does He (Jahveh) look on them,
sc. graciously. The face of the priests is not regarded. Q'pB NB'3,
irpoawTTov Tui/i^dveiv, to regard the person of any one, i.e. to
have respect to his position, dignity, and age : the expression is
here synonymous with pn, to show favour. The subject is in-
definite, but the enemy is meant. Thus the threatening in
Deut. xxviii. 50 is fulfilled on them. 0'3[^ does not mean
" elders," but " old men," for the words can be referred only
to the priests and prophets formerly spoken of.
Vers. 17-20. In spite of these facts, which show that God
has poured out His fury on us, and that our prophets and priests
have been smitten by God for their sins, we still wait, vainly
relying on the help of man. In this way, ver. 17 is attached to
what precedes, — not merely to ver. 16, but also the series of
thoughts developed in vers. 12-16, viz. that in the capture of
Jerusalem (which nobody thought possible) there is plainly
made known the judgment of God upon the sins of His people
and their leaders. It is with special emphasis that ni^lij; stands
at the beginning of the verse : " still do our eyes continue to
^
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 17-20. 441
waste away." The form mnlj? (Kethib), in place of which the
Qeri substitutes y^l^y, is abnormal, since lij? does not take plural
forms of the suffix in any other instance, and nj'— does not occur
elsewhere as a noun-suffix. The form is evidently copied from
nr^sn, and must be third fem. pi., as distinguished from the
singular-suffix naniy, 1 Kings i. 22. The Qeri «n1y, which is
preferred by Michaelis, Pareau, Bosenmiiller, and Thenius, has
for its basis the idea "we still were;" this is shown by the trans-
lation €Ti oPTav rjiimv of the LXX., and cum adhuc subsisteremus
, of Jerome. But this view of the word, like most of the Qeris,
is a useless attempt at explanation ; for ^3'^^^ alone cannot have
the meaning attributed to it, and the supplements proposed, in
statu priori, or " in the city," are but arbitrary insertions into
the text. The combination njvan wniPj which is a rare one,
evidently means, "our eyes are still pining (consuming) away,"
so that the imperfect is used with the meaning of the participle;
of. Ewald, § 306, e, Bern. 2. The combination of n?3 with
7S is pregnant : " they consume away (while looking out) for
our help;" of. Deut. xxviii. 28, Ps. Ixix. 4. ?3n is not an
exclamation, " in vain !" (Thenius), but stands in apposition to
"our help;" thus, "for our help, a help of vanity," i^. for a
vain help ; cf . Ewald, § 287, c. The vain help is more dis-
tinctly specified in the second member of the verse, as a looking
out for a nation that will not help. njSS does not mean " the
watch-tower" (Chald., Syr., etc.), — because "on the watch-
tower" would require to be expressed by ??; cf. Isa. xxi. 8, 2
Chron. xx. 24, — but " watching." By the " nation that does
not help," expositors, following Jer. xxxvii. 7, think that Egypt
is intended. But the words must by no means be referred to
the event there described, inasmuch as we should then be obliged
to take the verbs as preterites, — a course which would not accord
with the interchange of the imperfect (n^pan) with the. perfect
(WBV). A strange confusion would also arise, such as is made
out by Vaihinger : for we would find the prophet placing his
readers, in ver. 14, in the time of the siege of Jerusalem ; then,
in ver. 15, into the conquered city; and in vers. 17 and 18,
back once more into the beleaguered city, which we again, in
ver. 19, see conquered (Gerlach). According to vers. 18-20,
Judah is completely in the power of the Chaldeans ; hence the
r'
Digitized by
Google
442 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
subject treated of in ver. 17 is the looking out for the assistance
of some nation, after the enemy had already taken Jerusalem
and laid it in ashes. What the prophet denounces, then, is that
help is still looked for from a nation which nevertheless will
not help. In this, perhaps, he may have had Egypt before his
mind ; f oi*, that the Jews, even after the destruction of Jeru-
salem, still looked for deliverance or help from Egypt, may be
inferred partly from the fact that those who were left in the
country fled thither for refuge, and partly from Ezek. xxix. 16.
Only, the words are not to be restricted merely to this. In
order to show convincingly how vain it is to expect help from
man, Jeremiah, in vers. 18-20, reminds his readers of the events
immediately preceding the capture of the city, which have
proved that nobody — not even the king himself — could avoid
falling into the hands of the Chaldeans. Gerlach has correctly
given the sense of these verses thus : " They still cling to their
hopes, arid are nevertheless completely in the power of the
enemy, from whom they cannot escape. All their movements
are closely watched ; it is impossible for any one to deceive
himself any longer : it is all over with the nation, now that all
attempts at flight have failed (ver. 19), and that the king, ' the
life's-breath' of the nation, has fallen into the hands of the
enemy." Gerlach and Nagelsbach have already very properly
set aside the strange and fanciful idea of Ewald, that in ver.
18 it is still Egypt that is regarded, and that the subject treated
of is, — how Egypt, merely through fear of the Chaldeans, had
at that time publicly forbidden the fugitives to go to Palestine
for purposes of trade and traffic. These same writers have also
refuted the arbitrary interpretation put upon 'Ul '3^5^ ns by
Thenius and Vaihinger, who imagine there is a reference to
towers used in a siege, from which the besiegers could not
merely perceive all that was going on within the city, but also
shoot at persons who showed themselves in exposed places. In
reply to this, Nagelsbach appropriately remarks that we must
not judge of the siege-material of the ancients by the range of
cannon. Moreover, *nv does not mean to spy out, but to search
out, pursue ; and the figure is taken from the chase. The idea
is simply this : The enemy (the Chaldeans) watch us in our
every step, so that w? can no longer move freely about. Our
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. IV. 17-20. 443
end is near, yea, it is already come; cf. Ezek. vii. 2-6. A
proof of this is given in the capture of King Zedekiah, after
he had fled in the night, ver. 19 f. For an elucidation of the
matters contained in these verses, cf. Jer. xxxix. 4 f., lii. 7 f .
The comparison of the enemy to eagles is taken from Dent,
xxviii. 49, whence Jeremiah has already derived chap. iv. 13
and xlviii. 40. P?^, prop, to barn, metaph. to pnrsue hotly, is
here (poet.) constraed with ace, bnt elsewhere with *inK ; cf.
Gen. xxxi. 36,' 1 Sam. xvii. 53. " On the hills and in the wil-
derness," i.e. on every side, even in inaccessible places. "In the
wilderness" alludes to the capture of Zedekiah ; cf. Jer. xxxix. 5.
'' The breath of our nostrils " is an expression fonnded on Gen.
ii. 7, and signifying " onr life's breath." Such is the designa-
tion given to the king, — not Zedekiah in special, whose capture
is here spoken of, because he ex initio magnam de se spetn conci-
taverat, fore ut post tristia Jojakimi et Jechoniae fata pacatior
res publica esset (Aben Ezra, Michaelis, Vaihinger), but the
theocratic king, as the anointed of the Lord, and as the one who
was the bearer of God's promise, 2 Sam. vii. In elucidation of
the figurative expression, Pareau has appropriately reminded us
of Seneca's words {Clement, i. 4) : ille (princeps) est spiritus
vitalis, quem hcec tot millia (civium) traliunt. " What the breath
is, in relation to the life and stability of the body, such is the
king in relation to the life and stability of the nation" (Gerlach).
" Of whom we said (thought). Under his shadow (i.e. protection
and covering) we shall live among the nations." It is not
implied in these words, as Nagelsbach thinks, that '< they hoped
to fall in with a frieiidly. heathen nation, and there, clustering
around their king, as their protector and the pledge of a better
future, spend their days in freedom, if no more," but merely
that, under the protection of their king, they hoped to live even
among the heathen, i.e. to be able to continue their existence,
and to prosper as a nation. For, so long as there remained to
them the king whom God had given, together with the promises
attached to the kingdom, they might cherish the hope that the
Lord would still fulfil to them these promises also. But this
hppie seemed to be destroyed when the king was taken prisoner,
deprived of sight, and carried away to Babylon into captivity.
The words "taken in their pits" are figurative, and derived
Digitized by
Google
r
444 THE LAMEMTATIOKS OF JEREMIAH.
from the capture of wild animals. Tvnf as in Ps. cvii. 20. On
the figure of the shadow, cf. Judg. ix. 15, Ezek. xssi. 17.
Vers. 21, 22. However, it is not yet all over with Israel.
Let the enemy triumph ; the guilt of the daughter of Zion will
come to an end, and then the guilt of the daughter of Edom
will be punished. With this "Messianic hope," as Ewald
rightly characterizes the contents of these verses, the lamenta-
tion resolves itself into joyous faith and hope regarding the
future of Israel. There is no external sign to mArk the transi-
tion from the depths of lamentation over the hopeless condition
of Judah, to new and hopeful confidence, just as in the Psalms
there is frequently a sudden change from the deepest lamenta-
tion to joyful confidence of final victory. But these transitions
have their origin in the firm conviction that Israel has most
assuredly been chosen as the nation with whom the Lord has
made His covenant, which He cannot break. This truth has
already been clearly and distinctly expressed iu the threatenings
and promises of the law, Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii., and is
reiterated by all the prophets. The Lord will assuredly visit
His ever-rebellious people with the heaviest punishments, until
they come to acknowledge their sin and repent of their apostasy;
but He will afterwards again take pity on the penitent remnant,
gather them from among the heathen, and fulfil all His promises
to them. The words " exult and rejoice " are ironical, and
signify : " Rejoice as much as you please ; you will not, for
all that, escape the punishment for your sins." " The daughter
of Edom," i.e. the people of Edom, is named as the repre-
sentative of the enemies of God's people, on account of their
implacable hatred against Israel ; see on Jer. xlix. 7. From
the designation, "dwelling in the land of Uz," it does not
follow that the Edomites had at that time spread themselves
widely over their original territory ; for the land of Uz, accord-
ing to Jer. XXV. 20, lay on the confines of Idumea. As to the
form *J!i3?'^', see on Jer. x. 17. ^vV D|, " towards thee also
(se. as now to Judah) shall the cup pass." On this figure,
cf. Jer. XXV. 15. •'■^V^'!', to make oneself naked, or to become
naked in consequence of drunkenness (Gen. ix. 22), is a figura-
tive expression indicative of the disgrace that will befall Edom ;
cf. i. 8, Nab. iii. 5. ri3)y tw, "Thy guilt is ended." The
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. V. 445
perfect is prophetic. The guilt is ended when it is atoned
for ; the punishment for it has reached its end, or grace begins.
That this will take place in the Messianic times (as was pointed
out long ago in the Chaldee paraphrase, et liberaheria per
manum Messice), is not indeed implied in the word DJ?, but it
is a necessary product of the Messianic hope of Israel ; cf. for
instance, Jer. 1. 20. To this it cannot be objected (with Ger-
lach), that it is inadmissible to transfer into the Messianic
time also the punishment of Edom threatened in the second
member: for, according to the prophetic mode of viewing
things, the judgment on the heathen world falls, as a matter
of course, in the Messianic age ; and to refer the words to the
chastisement of the Edomites by Nebuchadnezzar is against
the context of both verses. " To reveal (discover) sins " means
to punish them ; for God uncovers the sins in order to punish
them, quemadmodum Deus peccata tegere dicitur, cum eorum
pcenam remittit (Bosenmiiller) ; cf . Ps. xxxii. 1, 5, Ixxxv. 3, etc.
CHAP. V. — A' PRATER TO THE LORD BY THE CHURCH, LAN-
GUISHING IN MISERY, FOE THE RESTORATION OF HER
FORMER STATE OF GRACE.
1 Bemember, Jahveh, what hath happened to us; consider, and behold
our reproach.
2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to foreigners.
3 We are orphans, without a father ; our mothers are as widows.
4 Our own water we drink for money, our own wood cometb to us in
return for payment.
6 On our necks are we persecuted ; we are jaded, — there is no rest for us.
6 [Towards] Egypt we reach our hand, — [towards] Assyria, to satisfy
ourselves [with] bread.
7 Our fathers sinned, they are not ; we bear their iniquities.
8 Servants rule us ; there is none to deliver us out of their hand.
9 At the risk of our life we bring in our bread, because of the sword of
the wilderness.
10 Our skin gloweth with heat like a f omace, because of the fever-heat of
hunger.
11 They have forced women in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes are hung up by their hand; the face of the elders is not
honoured.
13 Young men carry millstones, and lads stagger under [loads of] wood.
14 Elders cease from the gate, young men from their instrumental mus;c.
Digitized by
Google
446 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEEEMIAH.
15 The joy of onr heart hath ceased, our dancing is turned into mourning.
16 The crown of our head is fallen ; woe unto us, that we have sinned !
17 Because of this our heart became sick ; because of these [things] our
eyes became dark.
18 Upon Mount Zion, which is laid waste, jackals roam through it.
19 Thou, Jahveh, dost sit [enthroned] for ever ; Thy throne is for gene-
ration and generation.
20 Why dost thou forget us for ever, — forsake us for a length of days ?
21 Lead us back, Jahveh, to Thyself, that we may return ; renew our
days, as of old.
22 Or, hast Thou indeed utterly rejected us ? art Thou very wroth against
us?
This poem begins (ver. 1) with the request addressed to the
Lord, that He would be pleased to think of the disgrace that
has befallen Judah, and concludes (vers. 19-22) with the re-
quest that the Lord may not forsake His people for ever, but
once more receive them into favour. The main portion of this
petition is formed by the description of the disgrace and misery
under which the suppliants groan, together with the acknow-
ledgment (vers. 7 and 16) that they are compelled to bear the
sins of their fathers and their own sins. By this . confession,
the description given of their misery is divided into two strophes
(vers. 2-7 and 8-16), which are followed by the request for
deliverance (vers. 19-22), introduced by vers. 17 and 18. The
author of this prayer speaks throughout in the name of the
people, or, to speak more correctly, in the name of the congre-
gation, laying their distress and their supplication before the
Lord. The view of Thenius, — that this poem originated among
a small company of Jews who had been dispersed, and who, in
the midst of constant persecution, sought a place of refuge from
the oppression of the Chaldeans, — has been forced upon the text
through the arbitrary interpretation of detached figurative ex-
pressions.
Vers. 1-7. Supplication and statement regarding the distress.
The request made in ver. 1 refers to the oppression depicted in
what follows. The words, " Remember, O Lord, what hath
happened (i.e. befallen) us," are more fully explained in the
second member, " Look, and behold our disgrace." It is quite
arbitrary in Thenius to refer the first member to the past, the
second to the present, described in what follows, vers. 12-16.
N
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. V. 1-7. 447
The Qeri ntt*3fi is an unnecessary alteration, after i. 11, iii. 63.
— With ver. 2 begins the description of the disgrace^ that has
befallen them. This consists, first of all, in the fact that their
inheritance has become the possession of strangers. Bosen-
miiller rightly explains njnj to mean, terra quce tuo nobis dono
quondam est eoncessa. 'n?p3 is used of the transference of the
property to others, as in Isa. Ix. 5. Many expositors would
refer 'J'Pia to the houses in Jerusalem which the Chaldeans
had not destroyed, on the ground that it is stated, in 2 Kings
XXV. 9 and Jer. Iii. 13, that the Chaldeans destroyed none but
large houses. There is no foundation, however, for this re-
striction ; moreover, it is opposed by the parallel ^3l?7nj. Just
as by njTO we are to understand, not merely the possession of
Jerusalem, but of the whole country, so also WH3 are the
dwelling-houses of the country in towns and villages ; in this
case, the question whether any houses still remained standing in
Jerusalem does not demand consideration at all. Nagelsbach
is wrong in his remark that wn? and 0*^3 Respectively mean
immoveable and portable property, for houses are certainly not
moveable property. — Ver. 3 is very variously interpreted by
modern expositors. Ewald and Vaihinger understand " father"
as meaning the king, while Thenius refers it specially to Zede-
kiah ; the " mothers," according to Ewald and Vaihinger, are
the cities of Jndah, while Thenius thinks they are the women
of Zedekiah's harem. But to call the women of the royal
harem " mothers " of the nation, would be as unexampled as
the attribution of the title to the cities of Judah. The second
clause, " our mothers are like widows," contains a simile : they
are not really widows, but like widows, because they have lost
the protection which the mother of a family has in her husband.
In like manner, the first clause also is to be understood as a
comparison. " We are fatherless orphans," i.e. we are like
such, as the Chaldee has paraphrased it. Accordingly, C. B.
Michaelis, Pareau, Eosenmiiller, Kalkschmidt, and Gerlach
have rightly explained the words as referring to the custom of
the Hebrews : homines oinni mode derelictos omnibusque prwsidus
destitutos, pupillos et viduas dicer e ; cf. Ps. xciv. 6, Isa. i. 17,
Jas. i. 27. — Ver. 4. And not merely are the inhabitants of
Judah without land arid property, and deprived of all pro-
A
Digitized by
Google
448 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
tection, like orphans and widows ; they are also living in
penury and want, and (ver. 5) under severe oppression and
persecution. Water and wood are mentioned in ver. 4 as the
greatest necessities of life,, without which it is impossible to
exist. Both of these they must buy for themselves, because
the country, with its waters and forests, is in the possession
of the enemy. The emphasis lies on "owr water . . . oar
wood." What they formerly had, as their own property, for
nothing, they must now purchase. We must reject the his-
torical interpretations of the words, and their application to the
distress of the besieged (Michaelis) ; or to the exiles who com-
plained of the dearness of water and wood in Egypt (Ewald) ;
or to those who fled before the Chaldeans, and lived in waste
places (Thenius) ; or to the multitudes of those taken prisoner
after the capture of Jerusalem, who were so closely watched
that they could not go where they liked to get water and wood,
but were obliged to go to their keepers for permission, and pay
dearly for their sei-vices (Nagelsbach). The purchase of water
and wood can scarcely be taken literally, but must be under-
stood as signifying that the people had to pay heavy duties for
the use of the water and the wood which the country afforded.
— ^Ver. 5. " On our necks we are persecuted," i.e. our per-
secutors are at our necks, — are always close behind us, to drive
or hunt us on. It is inadmissible to supply any specific men-
tion of the yoke (imposito eollo gravi servitutis jugo, Easchi,
Rosenmiiller, Vaihinger, etc.); and we must utterly reject the
proposal to connect " our neck " with ver. 4b (LXX., Syriac,
J. D. Michaelis), inasmuch as the symmetry of the verses is
thereby destroyed, nor is any suitable meaning obtained.
"We 'are jaded: no rest is granted us." n^n is Hophal of
D'?n, to give rest to. The Qeri O instead of ^ is quite as
unnecessary as in the case of T?, ver. 3, and DJiK and wn??! in
ver. 7. The meaning of the verse is not, " we are driven over
neck and head," according to which the subject treated of
would be the merciless treatment of the prisoners, through
their being driven on (Nagelsbach) ; still less is it meant to be
stated that the company to which the writer of the poem be-
longed was always tracked out, and hunted about in the waste
places where they wished to hide themselves (Thenius). Neither
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. V. 1-7. 449
of these interpretations snits the preceding and succeeding con-
text. Nor does the mention of being "persecuted on the
neck" necessarily involve a pursuit of fugitives: it merely
indicates incessant oppression on the side of the enemy, partly
through continually being goaded on to hard labour, partly
through annoyances of different kinds, by which the victors
made their supremacy and their pride felt by the vanquished
nation. In ^Tl there is contained neither the notion of track-
ing fugitives nor that of driving on prisoners. — Ver. 6. The
meaning of T jnj is more exactly defined by the superadded
DPI? ^Y?, which belongs to both members of the verse. " In
order to satisfy ourselves with bread (so as to prolong our lives),
we give the hand to Egypt, to Assyria." DJ'iXD and ^'B'K are
local accusatives. To give the hand is a sign of submission or
subjection ; see on Jer. 1. 15. Pareau has correctly given the
meaning thus : si victum nobis comparare velimus, vel Judcea
nobis relinquenda est atque JEgyptii sunt agnoscendi domini, vel
si hie manemus, Clialdceis victoribus nos subjiciamus necesse est ;
quocunque nos vertamus, nihil superest nisi tristissitna servitus.
This complaint shows, moreover, that it is those in Judea who
are speaking. «ri3, " we give the hand," shows that the assump-
tion of Thenius, — that the writer here brings to remembrance
the fate of two otiier companies of his fellow-countrymen who
were not carried away into exile, — is an arbitrary insertion.
AsshuTf as the name of the great Asiatic empire, stands for
Babylon, as in Ezra vi. 22, cf. Jer. ii. 18.— Ver. 7. "We
suffer more than we are guilty of ; we are compelled to bear
the iniquities of our fathers," i.e. to atone for their guilt.
There is a great truth contained in the words, " Our fathers
have sinned ; they are no more ; we bear their iniquities (or
guilt)." For the fall of the kingdom had not been brought
about by the guilt of that generation merely, and of none
before; it was due also to the sins of their fathers before
them, in previous generations. The same truth is likewise ex-
pressed in Jer. xvi. 11, xxxii. 18 ; and in 2 Kings xxiii. 26
it is stated that God did not cease from His great wrath
because of the sins of Manasseh. But thi; truth would be
perverted into error, if we were to understand the words as
intimating that the speakers bad considered themselves inno-
VOL. II. 2 F
Digitized by
Google
450 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
cent. This false view, however, they themselves opposed with
the confession in ver. 16, " for we have sinned ;" thereby they
point out their own sins as the cause of their misfortune. If
we compare this confession with the verse now before us, this
can only mean the following : " The misfortune we suffer has
not been incurred by ourselves alone, but we are compelled to
atone for the sins of our fathers also." In the same way, too,
Jeremiah (chap. xvi. 11) threatens the infliction of a penal
judgment, not merely " because your fathers have forsaken
me (the Lord)," but he also adds, " and ye do still worse than
your fathers." God does not punish the sins of the fathers in
innocent children, but in children who continue the sins of the
fathers ; cf. Isa. Ixv. 7, and the explanation given of Jer. xxxi.
29 and Ezek. xviii. 2 £f. The design with which the suffering
for the sins of the fathers is brought forward so prominently,
and with such feeling, is merely to excite the divine, compassion
for those who are thus chastised.
Vers. 8-16. Further description of the miserable condition
under which the congregation languishes. Ver. 8. " Servants
rule over us," etc. O'niy^ are not the Chaldean soldiers, who
are in 2 Kings xxiv. 10 designated the servants of Nebuchad-
nezzar (Pareau, Rosenmiiller, Maurer) ; still less the Chaldeans,
in so far as they, till shortly before, had been the subjects of the
Assyrians (Kalkschmidt) ; nor the Chaldean satraps, as servants
of the king of Babylon (Thenius, Ewald) ; nor even "slaves who
had been employed as overseers and taskmasters of the captives
while on the march " (Nagelsbach) ; but the Chaldeans. These .
are called servants, partly because of the despotic rule under
which they were placed, partly in the sense already indicated
by C. B. Michaelis, as being those qui nobis potius, si pii fuisse-
mus, servire debuissent, in accordance with the analogous desig-
nation of Jerusalem as a princess among the countries of the
world, i. 1. — Ver. 9. And in addition to this humiliation under
dishonourable servitude, we can get our daily bread only at the
risk of our life. Thus there is fulfilled to them the threatening
in Deut. xxviii. 28, " Ye shall be servants among your enemies,
in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and want of everything."
UE'Wa, « for the price of our soul," i.e. with our life at stake, we
bring in our bread. The danger is more exactly described by
Digitized by*
Google
CHAP. V. 8-16. 451
what is added : " before the sword of the wilderness." By
this expression are meant the predatory Bedouins of the desert,
who, falling npon those that were bringing in the bread,
plundered, and probably even killed them. The bringing of
the bread is not, however, to be referred (with Rosenmiiller,
Maurer, and Kalkschmidt) to the attempts made to procure
bread from the neighbouring countries; still less is it to be
referred (with Thenius, Ewald, and Nagelsbach) to the need
for " wringing the bread from the desert and its plunderers ; "
but it refers to the ingathering of the scanty harvest in the
country devastated by war and by the visitations of predatory
Bedouins : K^^n is the word constantly employed in this con-
nection ; cf. 2 Sam. ix. 10, Hag. i. 6. — Yer. 10. The bread
which we are thus obliged to struggle for, at the risk of our
life, is not even sufficient to allay hunger, which consumes our
bodies. 1D3^ does not mean to be blackened (Chaldee, Kimchi,
C. B. Michaelis, Maurer), but in Gen. xliii. SO, 1 Kings iii. 26,
and Hos. xi. 8, to be stirred up (of the bowels, compassion),
hence to kindle, glow. This last meaning is required by the
comparison with "^^^ff, oven, furnace. This comparison does
not mean cutis nostra tanquam fomace adnata est (Gesenius in
Thes., Kalkschmidt), still less '< black as an oven" (Dietrich
in Ges. Lex.), because l^Pf does not mean the oven viewed in
respect of its blackness, but (from nu) in respect of the fire
burning in it. The meaning is, " our skin glows like a baker's
oven" (Vaihinger, Thenius, Nagelsbach, Gerlach), — a strong
expression for the fever-heat produced by hunger. As to
n^BSj"!, glowing heat, see on Ps. xi. 6. — Ver. 11 ff. With this
must further be considered the maltreatment which persons of
every station, sex, and age have to endure. Ver. 11. Women and
virgins are dishonoured in Jerusalem, and in the other cities of
the land. Ver. 12. Princes are suspended by the hand of the
enemy (Ewald, contrary to the use of language, renders " along
with " them). To hang those who had been put to death was
something superadded to the simple punishment by death
(Deut. xxi. 22 f .), and so far was a shameful kind of execution.
" The old men are not honoured," i.e. dishonoured ; cf. iv. 16,
Lev. xix. 32. The words are not to be restricted to the events
mentioned in Jer. xxxix. 6, bat also apply to the present con-
y
Digitized by
Google
452 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBEHIAH.
dition of those who are complaining. — ^Ver. 13. Youths and
boys are forced to engage in heavy servile work. ^SB^J pno
does not mean " they take them for the mill," ad molendum
sumpserunt (Ewald, Rosenmiiller). Apart from the considera-
tion that there is no ground for it in the language employed,
such a view of the words does not accord with the parallelism.
KB'J, construed with a simple infinitive or accusative (without ?),
does not mean " to take for something." l^no is a substantive,
" the mill." " To bear (carry) the mill " signifies to work at
and with the mill. We must think of the hand-mill, which
was found in every household, and which could thus be carried
from one place to another. Grinding was the work of slaves ;
see on Judg. xvi. 21. The carrying of the mill (not merely
of the upper millstone) is mentioned as the heaviest portion of
the work in grinding. " Boys stagger (fall down) on the wood
laid on them to be carried," i.e. under the burden of it. 7^
with 3 means to stumble on something; here 3 denotes the
cause of the stumbling; cf. Jer. vi. 21, Lev. xxvi. 37 f. It is
arbitrary to understand KV as meaning the wooden handle of
the mill (Aben Ezra, and Bochart in Hieroz. i. 157, ed.
Sosenmiiller) ; the same must also be said regarding the
opinion of Thenius and Nagelsbach, who refer the words to the
dragging of the hand-mills, and of the wood necessary for
baking bread for the comfort of the soldiers, on the march of
the captives to Babylon. — Ver. 15 f. Under the pressure of
such circumstances, all public meetings and amusements have
ceased. " The elders cease from the gate." The gate was the
place of assembly for the people, not merely for deliberating
upon public affairs (Ruth iv. 15 ; Josh. xx. 4), but also " for
social entertainment (since there were no refreshment-rooms,
coffeehouses, and public baths, such as are now to be found in
the East), or even for quiet enjoyment in looking at the motley
multitude of passers-by ; Gen. xix. 1, 1 Sam. iv. 18, ix. 18,
Job xxix. 7" (Winer's Bibl. R.W.B. s.v. Thor). That the
gate is here to be regarded as a place of entertainment and
amusement, is shown by the parallel member, "young men
cease from their instrumental music ;" cf. i. 4. On ver. 15,
cf. Jer. vii. 34, xvi. 9, and xxxi. 13 ; Ps. xxx. 12. Lastly, in
ver. 16, the writer sums up the whole of the misery in the
Digitized by
Google
CHAP. V. 17-22. 453
complaint, " The crown of our head is fallen ! woe unto us, for
we have sinned," i.e. we suffer the punishment for our sins.
" The fallen crown can only be a figurative expression for the
honourable position of the people in its entirety, but which is
now lost." Such is the view which Ewald rightly takes ; on
the other hand, the interpretation of Thenius, that "the * crown
of our head ' is nothing else than Zion, together with its palaces,
placed on Jerusalem, as it were on the head [of the country],
and adorning it," deserves mention simply as a curious specimen
of exegetical fancy. Nagelsbach has gone too far in restricting
the figurative expression to the crown of Jerusalem, which
consisted in her being mistress among the nations, a princess
among the regions of the earth (i. 1), the perfection of beauty,
and the joy of the whole earth (ii. 15) ; for " our crown " is not
equivalent to Jerusalem, or a crown on the head of Jerusalem.
Vers. 17-22. The request that the judgment of wrath may
be averted, and that the former gracious condition may be
restored. Vers. 17 and 18 form the transition to the request
in vers. 19-22. "Beciause of this" and "because of these
[things] " refer mainly to what precedes, yet not in such a way
as that the former must be referred to the fact that sin has
been committed, and the latter to the suffering. The two
halves of the verse are unmistakeably parallel ; the sickening
of the heart is essentially similar to the dimness coming on the
eyes, the former indicating the sorrow of the soul, while the
latter is the expression of this sorrow in tears. <' Because of
this (viz. because of the misery hitherto complained of) the
heart has become sick," and the grief of the heart finds vent in
tears, in consequence of which the eyes have become dim ; cf.
ii. 11. But this sorrow culminates in the view taken of the deso-
lation of Mount Zion, which receives consideration, not because
of its splendid palaces (Thenius), but as the holy mountain on
which the house of God stood, for "Zion" comprehended Moriah;
see on Ps. ii. 6, ix. 12, Ixxvi. 3. The glory formerly attaching to
Mount Zion (Fs. xlviii. 3, 1. 2) is departed ; the mountain has
been so much laid waste, that jackals roam on it. Dv^^t^ are not
properly foxes, but jackals (as in Ps. Ixiii. 11), which lodge
among the ruins, ^^n is an intensive form, moaning to rove
or roam about. — Ver. 19 ff. The glory of Zion, the earthly
Digitized by
Google
454 . ' THE LAMEHTATIOKS OF JEBEMUH.
habitation of the Lord, is at an end, bat the throne of the
Lord endures eternally. Through this thought, the lamentation
rises to the prayer that the Lord may not forsake His people
for ever, but re-establish His kingdom on the earth. " Thou,
O Jahveh, art enthroned eternally." This thought is expressed
as the ground of hope, in nearly the same words as are found
in Ps. cii. 13. Jahveh is the God of salvation. Since His
throne endures eternally in heaven. He cannot let His kingdom
perish on the earth. On this is founded the request, '* Why
wilt Thou forget us for ever, forsake us for a length of days (i.e.
through life, always, Ps. xxiii. 6)t" This the Lord cannot
do, because of His grace. From this is developed the further
request (ver. 21), "Lead us back to Thyself, that we may
return." We must not restrict S'B'n and at? to conversion to
the Lord (Kalkschmidt, Ewald, Vaihinger, Gerlach); they
signify the re-esta'blishment of the gracious relation, which is,
of course, impossible without repentance and conversion on the
part of Israel. It is wrong to refer the words to the restora-
tion of the people to their native land, or to the re-establish-
ment of the theocracy (Dathe, Thenius), because it is not the
exiles who address this petition to the Lord. The mode in
which we are to understand the " bringing back to Jahveh "
is shown in the second hemistich, " renew our days, as they
were in former times," t.e. vouchsafe to us agdn the life (or
state of grace) which we enjoyed in former times. In ver. 22
this request is based on an argument introduced in a negative
form. BK ^3, after a negative clause, signifies nisi, but (Ger.
tondem). This meaning developed into that of a strong limita-
tion (cf. Ewald, § 356), unless = provided that. Thus literally
here: "unless Thou hast utterly rejected us, — art very wroth
against us." This case, however, is merely stated as a possi-
bility, the actual occurrence of which is out of the question.
The idea is the same as that expressed by Jeremiah (chap. xiv.
19) in the form of a question, in order to give greater emphasis
to his intercession for his nation. The Lord cannot have
utterly rejected His people Israel, because He would thereby
make His name to be despised in the eyes of the nations (Jer.
xiv. 21). Thus terminates this lamentation, with a request for
whose fulfilment faith can hope with confidence.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
CHAP. V. 17-22. . 455
In many Hebrew Mss. ver. 21 is found repeated after ver.
22, to make the whole more suitable for pnblic reading in the
synagogue, that the poem may not end with the mention of the
wrath of God, as is the case also at the close of Isaiah, Malachi,
and Ecclesiastes : the intention is, to conclude with words of
comfort. But ver. 22, rightly understood, did not require this
repetition : for, as Bhabanas has already remarked in Ghisleri
commentar. on ver. 22 : non hcec qiiasi desperando de salute
populi gui hcutus est, sed vi dolorem suum tdmium de contritione
et objecUone diutina gentis sucb manifestaret. This conclusion
entirely agrees with the character of the Lamentations, in which
complaint and supplication should continue to the end,^ — not,
however, without an element of hope, although the latter may
not rise to the heights of joyful victory, but, as Gerlach ex-
presses himself, " merely glimmers from afar, like the morning
star through the clouds, which does not indeed itself dispel
the shadows of the night, though it announces that the rising
of the sun is near, and that it shall obtain the victory."
THE END.
Library of the
UNIO^ THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
New York
UUF.BAT ASD GIBS, BDIHBDItOH,
rBIBTS£b 10 BE£ XAiHStY's 8TAI1021EBY OFFICK.
/"
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by VjOOQIC
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
I . . THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTINE.
i Edited by Marcus Dods, D.D.
I The Works issued in first three years are : —
{ The 'City of aod.' Two Vols.
I Writings In oonnection with the Donatist Controversy. Vol.1.
I The Anti-Pelagian Works of St. Augustine. Two Vols.
'Letters.' VoLI.
Treatise against Faustus the Alanichesan. One Vol.
The Harmony of the Evangelists, and the Sermon on the Mount. One Vol.
On the Trinity. One VoL
Commentary on John. Two Vols.
On Christian Doctrine, Enchiridion, de Catechezandls, and de Fida. One Vol.
MEYER'S COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT,
Messrs. Clark beg to announce tbat they have in course of preparation a
Translation of the well-known and justly esteemed
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY ON
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By Dr. H. A. TV. Meter, Oberconsistorialratb, Hanover.
Of which they have just published —
ROMANS, Vol. I. aALATIANS,OneVol.
By arrangement with Dr. Meyer, Messrs. Clabk have obtained the sole right of
translation into English, and they have the very great advantage of Dr. Meyer's
emendations to the time of his death. In order to secure perfect accuracy, the Fublisiiers
have placed the whole work under the editorial care of Kev. Dr. Dickson, Professor of
Divinlty'in the University of Glasgow, and the Bev. Dr. Crombie, Professor of Biblical
Criticism, St Mary's College, St. Andrews.
The Annual Subscription to ' St. Augustine ' and ' Meyer ' is, when paid in advance,
21s. for Pour Volumes demy 8vo (24s. when not paid in advance). Single Volumes in
either series may be obtained by non-subscribers at, on an average, lOs. 6d. each.
FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
Aknual Subscription : One Guinea (payable in advance) for Four Volumes
demy 8Vo.
The Ist issue for 1874 :-
Eeil on Jeremiah. Vol. 11. '
Christlleb's Modem Doubt and Christian Belief. One Vol, .
The vols, published during 1873 were : —
EeU's OoEomentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
Winer's Collection of the Confessions of Christendom.
Eeil's Commentary on Jeremiah. VoL I.
Martensen on Christian Ethics.
When not paid in advance, the retail bookseller is entitled Co charge 24*.
Messrs. Clark allow a Selection of Twenty Volumes (or more at the same
ratio) from the Works issued in this Series previous to 1871,
At the Subscription price of Five Guineas.
They trust that this will still more largely extend the usefulness of the
Foreign Theological Library, which has so long been recognised as holding an
1 Important place in modern theological literature.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
LANGE'S COMMENTARIES ON THE OLD AND NEW
TESTAMENTS.
Translations of the Commentaries of Dr. Lange and his Collaborateurs on the
Old and New Testaments.
Edited by Dr. Philip Schaff.
There itro now ready (in imperial 8vo, double columns), price 21s. per Vol. ;—
OLD TESTAMENT. Seven Vols.
Genesis, One Vol. ; Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, One Vol. ; Kings, One Vol. ;
Psalms, One Vol. ; P^rerbs, EJoclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, One Vol. ;
Jeremiah and Lamentations, One Vol. ; Minor Prophets, One Vol.
NEW TESTAMENT. Nine Vols.
Matthew, One Vol. ; Mark and Luke, One Vol. ; John, One Vol. ; Acts, One
Vol. ; Romans, One Vol. ; Corinthians, One Vol. ; Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, and Colossians, One Vol. ; Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus,
Philemon, and Hebrews, One Vol. ; James, Peter, John, and Jude, One Vol.
The price to Subflcribers to the Porragn Theological Library, St. Augustine's
Works, and Ante-Nicene Library, or to purchasers of Complete Sets of the
Commentary (so far as published), will be 15s. per VoL
In Demy 8vo, 570 pages, price 10b. €d.,
MODERN DOUBT AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF.
A Series of Apologetic Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. By
Theodore Oheistlieb, D.D., University Preacher and Professor of Theology
at Bonn. Translated, with the Author's sanction, chiefly by the Rev. H.
U. Weitbeecht, Ph.D., and Edited by the Rev. T. L. Kingsburt, M.A.,
Vicar of Easton Royal, and Rural Dean.
Contents.
«
FiBST Lectoee. — The existing Breach between Modem Coltnre and Christianity.
Second Leciube.— Season and Bevelation.
Tbibj} Lectobe. — Modern NonrBiblical Conceptions of God.
FouBiH Lecture. — Theology of Scripture and of the Church.
Fifth Lkctukb. — The Modem Negation of Miracles.
Sixth Lectube. — Modern Anti-Miraoutous Aocounts of the Life of Christ
Sbve!)th Lkciiibe. — Modern Denials of the BesurreotSon.
EiOBiR Lbcidbe.— The Modem Critical Theory of Primitive Christianity.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark'^ Publications.
Just published, in Dem; 8vo, price Vis.,
Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. By Faton J. Gloag, D.D.,
ilinister of Galashiels, Author of a Commentary on the Acts of the
Ajjostles.
Just published, in Demy 8vo, price Ss. 6d.,
An Introductory Hebrew Grammar, with Progressive Exercises
in Beading and Writing. By A. B. Davidson, M.A., LL.D., Professor of
Hebrew, etc., in the New College, Edinburgh.
Just published, in Two Volnnies 8vo, (Subscription Price) 148.,
Calvini Institutio Christianse Religionis. Curavit A. Tholuck.
Tholuck's edition of Calvin has been long very scarce, and the Publishers have, with
the Editor's consent, reprinted it carefully and elegantly. It conUiins Dr. Tholuck's
chapter headings and very complete indices, and the text has been carefully printed from
the very accurate edition contained in the Coi-pu» Refm-matorum ; so that, in point of
completeness and accuracy, it excels any previous edition, and it is also exceedingly
cheap.
Just published, in Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d.,
The Pastoral Epistles. The Greek Text and Translation.
With Introduction, Expository Notes, and Dissertations. By Patrick
Fairbairn, D.D., Principal and Professor of Theology in the Free Church
College, Glasgow. . ^
Just published, in Crown 8vo, price 6s.,
Apologetic Lectures on the Moral Truths of Christianity.
The Nature of Christian Morality ; Man ; The Christian and the Christian
Virtues ; The Derotional Life of the Christian, and his Attitude towards
the Church ; Christian Marriage ; The Christian Home ; The State and
Christianity ; The Life of the Christian in the State ; Culture and Christi-
anity; Humanity and Christianity. By C. E. Luthardt, D.D., Leipsic.
' The volume is remaikable for striking thoughts, and for scientific completeness. It is
rich in;xrhat sets the reader thinking, as well as in what helps him to solve social questions.'
— Freeman.
By the same Author, in Crown 8vo, Third Edition, price 6s.,
The Fundamental Truths of Christianity. The Antagonistic
Views of the World in their Historical Development; The Anomalies of
Existence ; The Personal God ; The Creation of the World ; Man ; Reli-
gion ; Revelation ; History of Revelation — Heathenism and Judaism ;
Christianity in History ; The Person of Jesus Christ.
< We do not know any volumes so suitable in these times for ^oung men entering on
life, or, let us say, even for the library of a pastor called to deal with such, than the three
volumes of this series. We commend the whole of them with the most cordial satisfaction.
They are altogether quite a specialty in our literature.' — WeeMy Reoievi.
Digitized by
Google
T. and 71 Clark's Publications.
THE FIFTH SERIES OF [CUNNINGHAM LECTURES:
In Demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.,
The Delivery and Development of Christian Doctrine. By
Rev. Professor Rainy, D.D.
In One Volume, Demy 8to, price lOs. 6d.,
A Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the
Tarioug Communities of Christendom, with Illustrations from their orig^al
Standards. Translated from the German of Dr. G. B. Winer. Edited from
the last Edition, with an Introduction, by Rev. W. B. Pope, Professor of
Theology, Didsbury College, Manchester.
' Dr. Winer's work is one demanding very high qualifications, both intellectual and
moral. The scholarship and judgment required are very great, and the moral firmness
which resists personal prepossessions is still greater. No one has impugned the absolute
impartiality with which Dr. Winer held the scales. To the ecclesiastical and theological
student the work is invaluable.' — English Independent.
In One Volume, Crown 8vo, price 4s. 6d.,
The Words of the New Testament. As altered by Trans-
mission, and ascertained by Modern Criticism. For Popular Use. By W.
MiLLiGAN, D.D., Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism, Aberdeen,
and Alexander Roberts, D.p., Professor of Humanity, St. Andrews.
' The book displays sound, accurate scholarship, and great familiarity with the subject
of the Greek Now Testament. It is also characterized by a calm and reverential spirit,
loyal to the truth, and loving the Bible as being the Scriptures of Truth.* — Church BelU.
In Two Volumes, Crown 8vo, price 12s. 6d.,
Christian Ethics. Translated from the German of Dr. Adolph
WCTTKE, late Professor of Theology in HaUe. Vol. I. History of Ethics ;
'Vol. II. Piire Ethics.
' Wuttke's Ethics should have a place in every pastor's library.' — Dr. Hengslenberg.
'We have ourselves read this treatise on Christian Ethics \vith deep Interest and
admiration, and cannot too strongly "express our gratitude to the translator and publishers
for placing it within the reach of all students of theology. We trust it may be widely
read and studied.'-:- We»feyon Met/todist Magazine.
In One Volume, Crown 8vo, price 8s. 6d.,
The Subject of Missions considered under three New Aspects :
The Church and Missions ; the Representation of the Science of Missions
at the Universities; Commerce and the Church. Translated from the
German of Carl H. C. Plath, by L. Kirkpatrick. With- a Prefatory
Note by the Rev. Dr. Duff.
'Written in a fine spirit, and full of thought and many valuable hints.' — Nonconformist.
'These topics are discussed with acuteness, freshness, and power.' — Watchman.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
(TEMPORARY) CHEAP RE-ISSUE OF
STIER'S WORDS OF THE LORD JESUS.
To meet a rery general desire that this now weU-known Work should be
brought more within the reach of all classes, both Clergy and Laity, Messrs.
Clark are now issuing, for a limited period, the Eight Volumes, handsomely
bound in Four, at the Subscription price ot
TWO GUINEAS.
As the allowance to the Trade must necessarily be small, orders sent either
direct or through booksellers must in every case be accompanied with a Post
OfiBce Order for the above amount
' The whole work is a treasury of thouRbtf al exposition. Its measure of practical and
spiritual application, with ezegetical critieism, commends it to the use of those whose duty
it is to preach as well as to understand the Gospel of Christ' — Guardian.
New and Chei^ Edition, Ui Four Vols., Demy 8to, Subscription price 28s.
THE LIFE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST:
A Complete Critical Examination of the Origin, Contents, and Connection of
the Gospels. Translated from the German oit J. P. Lange, D.D., Professor
of Dirinity in the University of Bonn. Edited, with additicmal Notes, by
Maecds Dods, D.D.
'We have arrived at a most favourable conclusion regarding the importance and ability
of this work — thu former depending upon the present condition of theological criticism,
the latter on the wide range of the work itself ; the singularly dispassionate judgment
«i the author, as well as his pious, reverential, and erudite treatment of a subject inex-
pressibly holy. . . . Wb have great pleasure in recommending this work to our readers.
We are convinced of its value and enormous range.' — Irith EccletiastietU Gazette.
BENaKL'S GNOSfON-CHEAP EDITION.
GNOMON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By John Albebt Bengel. Now First Translated into English. With
Original Notes, Explanatory and Illustrative. Edited by the Eev.
Andrew R. Facsset, M.A. The Original Translation was in Five Large
Volumes, demy 8vo, averaging more than 550 pages each, and the very
great demand for this edition has induced the Publishers to issue the
Five Volumes bound in Three, at the Subscription price ot
TWENTT-POTJR SHILLINGS.
They trust by this still further to increase its usefulness.
' It is a work which manifests the most intimate and profonnd knowledge of Scripture,
and which, if we examine it with care, Tvill often be found to condense mol^ matter into
a line than can be extracted from many pages of other yniteia,'— Archdeacon Hare.
' In respect both of its contents and its tone, Bengel's Gnomon stands alone. Even
among laymen there has arisen a healthy and vigorous desire for Scriptural knowledge,
and Bengel has done more than any other man to aid such inquirers. There is perhaps
no book every word of which has been so well weighed, or in which a single technical
term contains so often far-reaching and suggestive views. . . . The theoretical and
practical are as intimately connected as Ught and heat in the sun's ray.' — Lije ofPerthea.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Twenty-four Handsome Zvo Volumes, Subscription Price £fi, 6s. od.,
^ntcsNicetie (Kf)ri»tian Hibrarg.
A COLLECTION OP ALL THE WOEKS OP THE PATHEES OP THE
CHEISTIAN CHTJEOH PEIOE TO THE COUNCIL OP NIC^A.
EDITED BT THE
REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D., AND JAMtIS DONALDSON, IX. D.
MESSRS. CLARK are now happy to announce the completion of this Series.
It has been received with marked approval by all sections of the
Christian Church in this country and in the United States, as supplying what
has long been felt to be a want, and also on account of the impartiality, learn-
ing, and care with which Editors and Translators have executed a very difficult
task.
The Publishers do not bind themselves to continue to supply the Series at the
Subscription price.
The Works are arranged as follow : —
FIRST YEAR.
APOSTOLIC PATHEES, comprising
Clement's Epistles to the CorintbiauB ;
Polyoarp to the Ephesians; Martyr-
dom of Polycarp ; Epistle of Barnabas ;
Epistles of Ignatius (longer and shorter,
and also the Syriao version) ; Martyr-
dom of Ignatius ; Epistle to Diognetus ;
Pastor of Hermas ; Papias ; Spurious
Epistles of Ignatius. In One Volume.
JUSTIN MAETYE; ATHENAGOEAS.
In One Volume.
TATIAN; THEOPHILUS; THE CLE-
mentineBecoguitions. In One Volume.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDEIA, Volume
First, comprising Exhortation to Hea-
then; The Instructor ; and a portion
of the Miscellanies.
SECOND YEAR.
HIPPOLTTUS, Volume First ; Eefutation
of all Heresies, and Fragments from
his Commentaries.
IEEN.I!US, Volume First.
TEETULLIAN AGAINST MAECION.
CYPEIAN, Volume First; the Epistles,
and some of the Treatises.
THIRD YEAR.
IEEN.S;US (completion); HIPPOLYTUS
(comple^on); Fragments of Third
Century. In One Volume.
OEIGEN: De Prinoipiis; Letters; and
portion of Treatise agaiiKt Celsus.
CLEMENT OP ALEXANDEIA, Volume
Second ; Completion of Miscellanies.
TEETULLIAN, Volume First: To the
Martyrs; Apology; To the Nations,
etc.
FOURTH YEAR..
CYPEIAN, Volume Second (completion);
No Tatian;Minucius Felix; Fragments.
METHODIUS; ALEXANDEE OF LT-
copolis ; Peter of Alexandria ; Anato-
xins ; Clement on Virginity ; and
Fragments.
TEETULLIAN, Volume Second.
APOCEYPHAL GOSPELS; ACTS AND
Eevelations, comprising all the very
curious Apocryphal Writings of the
first Three Centuries.
FIFTH YEAR.
TEETULLIAN, Volume Third (comple-
tion).
CLEMENTINE HOMILIES; APOSTO-
lical Constitutions. In One Volume.
AENOBIUS.
DIONYSIUS; GEEGOEY THAUMA-
turgus; Syrian Fragments. In One
Volume.
SIXTH YEAR.
LACTANTIUS ; Two Volumes.
OEIGEN, Volume Second (completion).
12s. to Non-Subscribers.
EAELY LITUBGIES AND EEMAIN-
ing Fragments. 9s. to Non-Subscri-
bers.
Single Years cannot be had separately, unless to complete sets ; but any Volume
maybe had separately, price lOs. 6d., — with the exception of Okiqen, VoL II., 12s. ;
and the Earlt Litvboies, 98.
Digitized by
Google
71 and T. Clark s Publications.
%\t Worfts of 5>t. attfittstint.
EDITED BY MAECUS DODS, D.D.
SUBSCRIPTION:
Four YoInmsB for a Gtnnea, payable in advance (24a. when not paid
in advance).
FIRST YEAR.
THE 'OITT OF GOD.' Two Volumes.
WBITINGS IN CONKECTION WITH
the Don&tist Controversy. In One
Volume.
THE ANTI-PELAGIAN •WORKS OF
St. Augustine. Vol. L
SECOND YEAR.
'LETTERS.' Vol. L
TREATISES AGAINST FAUSTUS
the Manichsean. One Volume.
THE HARMONY OP THE EVAN-
gelists, and the Sermon on the Uount.
One Volume.
ON THE TRINITY. One Volume.
THIRD YEAR.
FiBST IsgUB.
COMMENTARY ON JOHN. Vol. I.
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, EN-
chlridion, etc One Volume.
Messrs. Clabk believe this will prove not the least valuable of their various
Series, and no pains will be spared to make it so. The Editor has secured a
most competent staff of Translators, and every care is being taken to secure
not only accuracy, but elegance.
The Works of St. AuoDSimE to be induded in the Series are (in addition to
the above) —
The remaining Teeatisks in the Pelagian Conteovekst.
The Lectuees on the Gospel op St. John, Vol. II., and the Confessions.
The Series will indnde a IIFE of ST. AUGUSTINE, by BOBEBlStAINY, D.D.,
Professor of Church History, New College, Edinburgh.
The Series will extend to about Eighteen Volumes. The Publishers wiU be
glad to receive the Names of Subscribers as early as possible.
It is understood that Subscribers are bound to take at least the books of the
first two years. Each Volume is sold separately at (on an average) 10s. 6d.
'For the reproduction of the "City of God" in an admirable English garb we are
greatly indebted to the well-directed enterprise and energy of Messrs. Clark, and to the
accuracy and sohoUursbip of those who have undertaken the laborious task of translation.'
— Chrutian Obtervtr.
' The present translation reads smoothly and pleasantly, and we have every reason to
be satisfied both with the erudition and the fair and sound judgment displayed by the
translators and the editor.' — John Bull.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In D«my 870, prioe lOs. 6d.,
Ohristian Dogmatics : A Oompendiiun of the Doctrines of Chris-
tianity. B7 H. Martensen, D.D., Bishop of Seeland, Denmark.
' Every reader must rise from its perusal stronger, calmer, and more hopeful, not only
for the fortunes of Chrutianity, but of dogmatical theology.' — Srititk QfiarUHy Setiew.
BY THE 8AME AUTHOR.
Just pnblished, in Demy 8vo, price lOs. 6d.,
On Chrifftian Ethics. Translated firom the Danish.
In Demy Svo, 10s. 6d.,
Biblical Theology of the New Testament Translated from the
Gennan of C. P. Schmid, D.D.
* The first part is preceded by an historical reriew of the life of Jesus, and the second
by a fruitful and snggestire sketch of the lives of the apostles. The strength of learning
and highly analytical powers of the author are reserved for the doctrinal review, and
Tery bwutif ully does he bring forth the teaching of our Lord.' — Britiih Quarterly Revieui.
In Demy 8vo, price 7b. 6d.,
Handbook of C9iiirdi History to the Reformation. From the
German of Professor Kurtz.
Handbook of Church History, from the Reformation to the pre-
sent Time. Second Edition, translated from Sixth German Edition.
' A work executed with great diligence and care, exhibiting an accurate collection of
facts, and a succinct though full account of the history and progress of the Church, both
external and intemaL . . . The work is distinguished for moderation and charity, and
for a spirit which is tnly Christian.'— £h^i«A CAttre&tnan.
In Three Volumes, Boyal Svo, price 36s.,
Histonr of the Christian Church ; From the Birth of our Lord
to Gregory the Great. By Phiup Schaff, D.D.
■ We can heartily commend this work as learned, scholarlike, and thorough. There
is throughout a breadth of view, a calmness of spirit, an occasional beauty of reflection,
and, above all, a religiousness of tone.' — Freeman.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In Demy 8to, price 10s. 6d.,
Histoiy of the Apostolic CSiorch; with a (General Introduction
to Church History.
' Worthy of a Gennan scholar, and of a disciple of Neander, and of a believing and free
Christian and Protestant' — Eunses's Hippolytut.
In Two Volumes, Demy 8vo, price 218.,
The Church of Christ : A Treatise on the Nature, Powers, Ordi-
nances, DisdpliDe, and GoTernment of the Cbiistiaa Church. By the late
Professor Banneruan.
' We are tbankfnl for this goodly gift, and we trust its reception will show that the
Church knows how to use it. We commend thes« learned and masterly volumes to the
careful study, not only of the scientific divine, but of all thoughtful men who would' desire
to understand som^ of the greatest and most vlt4l questions of onr time.' — Presbyterian.
In Demy 8vo, prioe IDs. 6d.,
Analytical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, tracing
the Train of Thought by the aid of Parallelism ; with Notes and Disserta-
tions on the Principal Difficulties in the Epistle. By John Forbes, D.D.
*In every point of view it is a valuable addition to critical biblical literature, and
possesses many attractions even for the unlearned reader. For full satisfaction on every
difficulty, we have referred with complete satisfaction to this modest yet learned and
exhaustive work.' — Contemporary Sevitte.
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Clark's Publicatiom.
M E Y E R'S
Commenfary on the New Testament
M
ESSRS. CLARK b^ to announce that they have in course of
preparation, a Translation of the well-known and justly esteemed
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL
COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT,
By Dr. H. A. W. MEYER,
Oberconsistorialrath, Hanover,
Of which they have just published —
ROMANS, Vol. I.
GALATIANS, One Volume.
The SntwerlpUon wlU to 21s. for Four VoltmMB D«my fro.
By arrangement with Dr. Meter, Messrs. Clark have obtained the sole right
of translation into English, and they have the very great advantage of Dr.
Meyer's emendations to the time of his death. In order to secure perfect
accuracy, the Publishers have placed the whole work under the editorial care of
Kev. Dr. Dickson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow.
The Volumes will vary in number of pages according to the size of the
original, but an average of about 400 pages may be assumed. Each Volume
will be sold separately at (on an average) lOs. 6d. to Non-Subscribers.
Intending Subscribers will be kind enough to fill up the accompanying
Form, which may be returned, either direct to the Publishers at 38' George
Street, Edinburgh, or through their own Booksellers.
' I need hardly add that the last edition of the accurate, perspicnons, and learned com-
mentary of Dr. Meyer has been most carefully consulted throughout ; and I most again,
as in the preface to the Galatians, avow my great obligations to the acumen and scholar-
ship of the learned editor.' — Bishop Ellioot in Preface to his Commentary on Ephenant.
' The ablest grammatical exegete of the age.' — Fhiup Scuaff, D.D.
J(r
BOOKSELLER,
IViil please enter my Name as a Subscriber, and forward, as published,
the above Translation of
MEYER'S COMMENTARIES.
Digitized by
Google
FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY,
AmnrAL STTBSCBIFTIOK:
One 6idn«* (payable in advance) for foar VoInmeB, Bemy 8yd.
Wlien not paid in adTance, the Betail BookseUer is entitled to charge 248.
fl.B. — Any too Years in this Series can be had at Snbecription Price. A tingle Tear'i
BooJa (except in the case of the current Tear) cannot be nmplied t^paraUly. Kon-
imbaariben, prict lOs. 6d. each volume, with exceptions marked.
18 64-
lADge on the Acts of the Apoetlea. Two Yolumes.
Eeil and DelitzKh on the Pentateuch.^ Vols. L and II.
1865-
Keil and Selitzwh on the Pentateuch. Tol. III.
Hengstenberg on the Gospel of John. Two Volnmes.
Keil and Delitzsch on Joehna, Jadgee, and Snth. One Volume.
186 6-
Keil and Delitzsch on SamneL One Tolame.
Keil and Selitzach on Job. Two Voliuues.
Martenaen'a System of Qhiistian Doctrine. One Yolome.
186 7-
DeUtzKh on Isaiah. Vol. I.
Delitssoh on Biblical Psychology. Ii2s.
DelltZBch on Isaiah. Vol. II.
Hangstenbeig on Danid. 12a.
186 8-
Eeil's Commentary on the Minor Prophets. Two Volumes.
BelitZBch's Commentary on Epistle to the Hebrews. Vol. I.
Earless' System of Christian Ethics. One Volume.
186 9-
Eengstenberg on Ezekiel. One Volume.
Stier on the Words of the Apostles. One Volume.
Keil's Introduction to the Old Testament. VoL I.
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament. VoL I.
1870-
Eeil's Introduction to the Old Testament. Vol. II.
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament Vol. II.
Sohmid's New Testament Theology. One Volume.
Belitzsoh'a Commentaty on Epistle to the Hebrews. Vol. II.
18 71-
Belitzsch's Commentary on the Psalms. Three Volumes.
' Hengstenberg's History of the Kingdom of God under the Old
Testament Vol. I.
18 7 2-
Eeil's Commentary on the Books of Kings. One Volume.
Keil's Commentary on the Book of Daniel. One Volume.
Keil's Commentary on the Books of Chronicles. One Volume.
Hengstenberg's slitory of the Kingdom of Qod nnder the Old
Testament VoL II.
18 7 3-
Keil's Canunenfary on I^ra, Nehemiah, and Esther. One Volume.
Winer's Collection of the Confeaaions of Christendom. One Volume.
KeO's Cimunentary on Jeremiah. Vol. 1.
Kartensen on Christian Ethics.
MESSBS. CLABK allow a SELECTION of TwBzrrr Volukss (or mare at the tame
ratio) from the various Series previous to the Volumes issued in 1870 {tee nextjmge),
At the Subscription Price of Five Guineas.
They trust that this will still more largely extend the usefulness of the EokeiOB
Theolooioal Librakt, which has so long been recognised aa holding Mu important
place in moderti Theological literature.
X
Digitized by VjOOQIC
T. and T. Clark s Publications.
CLAKKTI FORKIGN THEOLOOIOAL LIBRA BT—CoitfiMied.
The folloirini^ are the woricB from which a Selection may be made (non-subscription
prices within brackets) : —
Dr. Eengstenberg;. — Commentary ou the Psalms. By E. W. Henostznbeko, D.D.,
Professor of Theology in Berlin. In Three Volei 8vo. (838.)
Dr. Oiaseler. — Campendimn of Ecclesiastical History. By J. C. L. Gieseler,
D.D., Professor of Theology in GSttingen. Five Vols. Sro. (£2, 12s. 6d.)
Dr. Olihansen. — ^BOdioal Commentary cm the OospeU and Aoti, adapted especially
for Preachers and Students. By Hermann Oijshausen, D.D., Professor of Theology
in the University of Erlangen. In Four Vols. Sto. (£2, 28.)
Biblical Commentary on the Homaim, adapted especially for Freacheis and Stu-
dents. By Hermann Oi^hadsen, D.D. In One Vol. 8to. (lOs. 6d.)
Bttdical Commentary on St Paul's First and Second Epistles to the Coiintlilans.
By Hermann Olshaosen, D.D. In One Vol. 8to. (9s.)
Biblical Commentary on St. Fanl's Epistles to the Oalatlans, Ephesiana, Coles-
sians, and Theasaloniani. By Hekmann Ouhausen, D.D. One YoL 8vo.
(IOs. 6d.)
Biblical Commentary on St, Paul's Eiristle to the FhiUppians, to Titos, and the
FiiBt to Timothy; in oontionation of the Work of Olshansen. By Lie.
August Wiesingeb. In One Vol. 8vo. (10s. 6d.)
nUical Commentary on the Hebrews. By Dr. Ebrard. In continuation of the
Work of Olshansen. In One VoL 8vo. (10s. 6d.)
Dr. Keander. — General History of the Christian Beligion and Ohnroh. By
Augustus Kkander, D.S. Translated from the Second and Improved Edition.
Nine Vols. 8vo. (£2, Us. 6d.)
7%M w the only Edition in a Library tixe.
Prof. H. A. Ch. Havemick. — General Introdnctlon to the Old Testament By
Professor Havernick. One Vol. 8vo. (10s. 6d.)
Dr. Miiller. — The Christian Doctrine of Sin. By Dr. Julius Muixbb. Two
Vols. 8vo. (218.) Kew Edition.
Dr. Eengitenberg. — Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on the
Headanic Predictions. By£. W. Hxngstenbebo, D.D. Four Vols. (£2, 2s.)
Dr. K, Bamngarten. — ^The Acts of the Apostles ; or the History of the- Chnrch
in the Apostolic Age. By M. Bauhga&ten, Ph.D., and Professor in the
University of Eostock. Three Vols. (jEl, 7s.)
Dr. Btier.— The Words of the Lord Jesns. By Rudolph Stiek, D.D., Chief
Pastor and Superintendent of Sohkenditz. In Eight Vols. 8vo. (£4, 4s.)
Dr. Carl Ullmann. — Beformen befbie the Reformation, principally in Geimauy
and the Ketherlands. Two Vols. 8vo. (£1, Is.)
Frofeasor Eortz. — ^History of the Old Covenant ; or. Old Testament Dispensation.
By Professor Kurtz of Dorpat. In Three Vols. (£1, Us. 6d.)
Dr. Stier. — ^The Words of the Bisen Saviour, and Commentary on the Epistle of
St James. By Rudolph Stier, D.D. One -Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Prcfessor Tholnck. — Commentary on the Oospel of St John. By Professor
Tholuck of Halle. In One Vol. (98.)
Professor Tholnck. — Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount By Professor
Tholuck. In One Vol, (IOs. 6d.)
Dr. Hengstenberg. — Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes. To whish are
appended : Treatises on the Song of Solomon ; on the Book of Job ; on the
Prophet Isaiah; on the Sacrifices of Holy Scripture; and on the Jews and the
Christian Church. By E. W. Henostenbsbg, D.D. In One Vol. 8vo. (9s,)
Dr. Ebrard. — Commentary on the Epistles of St John. By Dr, John H. A.
Ebkard, Professor of Theology. In One VoL (IDs. 6d.)
Dr. Lange. — ^Theological and Homiletical Commentary on the Gospel of St
Uatttiew and Muk. Specially Designed and Adapted for the Use of Ministers
and Students. By J. P. Langb, D.D. Three Vols. (IOs. 6d. each.)
Digitized by
Google
T. and T. Claris Publications.
OLABK'S FOEEIQN THEOLOQIOAL LIBEAET— CbfKimieA
Dr. Dorner. — -ffistory of the SeTelopment of the Doctrine of the Penon of Ohrigt.
By Dr. J. A. Dobneb, Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin.
Fire Vola. (f2, 12b. 6d.)
Lange and Dr. J. J. Van Oogterzee. — ^Theological and HamQetlcal Ckmnnentary on
the Gospel of St. Lnke. Specially Designed and Adapted for the Use of
Ministers and Students. Edited by J. P. Labok, D.D. Two Vols. (ISs.)
Dr. Ebrard. — The Ooapel History : A Compendinm of Critical Inveatigationg in
■iipport of the Historical Character of the Fonr Oospela. One VoL (10s. 6d.)
Lange, Iiechler, and Gerok. — ^Theological and Homiletical Commentary on the
Acts of the ApostleB. Edited by Dr. Lanob. Two Vols. (21s.)
Dr. Hengstenbeig. — Commentary on the Gospel of St John. Two Vols. (Sis.)
Professor EeiL — Biblical Commentary on the Pentatench. Three Yols. (31s. 6d.)
ProfesBor EeiL — Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Bnth. One Vol. (lOs. 6d.)
Profeonr Delitzsch. — A System of Biblical Psychology. One Vol. (128.)*
Professor Delitzsoh. — Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah. Two Vols. (21s.)
Professor EeiL — Commentary on the Books of SamueL One VoL (lOs. 6d.)
Professor Delitzach. — Commentary on the Book of Job. Two Yols. (21s.)
Bishop Hartensen. — Chiiatiau Dogmatics. A Compendium of the Doctrines of
Christianity. One YoL (10s. 6d.)
Dr. J. P. Lange. — Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical Commentaiy on the Gospel
of St. John. Two Yols. (21s.)
Professor EeiL — Commentary on the Minor Prophets. Two Yols. (21s.)
Professor Delitzsch. — Commentary on Epistle to the Hebrews. Yol. I. (lOs. 6d.)
Dr. Earless.— A System of Christian Ethics. One YoL (10s. 6d.)
Dr. Hengstenberg. — Commentary on EzekieL One YoL (10s. 6d.)
Dr. Btier.— The Words of the Apostles Expounded. One Yol. (10s. 6d.)
Professor EeiL— Introdnstion to the Old Testament. YoL L (10s 6d.)
Professor Bleek.— Introdnction to the Kew Testament. YeL L (10s. 6d.)
And, in connection wUh the Seriet —
Alexander's OomiBentary on Isaiah. Two Yolumes. (17s.)
Bitter's (Carl) Comparative Geography of Palestine. Four Yolumes. (32s.)
Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine. Two Yolumes. (21s.)
Macdonald's Introduction to the Pentateuch. Two Yolnraes. (21s.)
Ackerman on the Christian Element in Plato. (7s. 6d.)
Robinson's Greek Lexicon of the Kew Testament. 8ro. (9s.)
Gerlach's Commentary on the Pentateuch. 8ro. (10s. 6d.)
The series, in 126 YolniBes (including 1873), priee £31, lOs., forms an Afparatta,
without which it may be truly s&id no Tkeological Library can be complete; and the Pub-
lishers take the liberty of suggesting that no more appropriate gift could be presented to
a Clergyman than the Series, m whole or in part.
*/ In reference to the above, it muit be noted that no DOmOATKS can be induthd in <Jle
Selection of Twentg Volumes ; and it will tone trotble and corretpondaux if it be
dietinctly itnderitood Aat HO I.E8S number than Tuieolg can be ei^iplied, viUte at
non-tub$cription price. '
Subscribers' Names received by all Retail Booksellers.
LoHDON : {For Works at Non-subscription price only) Hauiltom, Adams, & Co.
^ ^ _
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by
Google
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Digitized by
Google
Date Loaned
I.O^^Ifi "1VN.V«
A M V ^j i-,-
>'
r. •
Ff^:..i^
'3 >tj-:-
»'/V^.21
"; i'/ ' '*,
v;"<?v
.:0
l/i^^/
#•* *'*""■■
1 >>-' '
MfJ^m
■,</>
¥•'■'': 1
h.-v •-■'
'-•i?..!-*
/-i^V :-7>
\
^
l-
•f.rf'OCT ')'
• ,
f
^AP'^f: 2'
/—
E
M3P9?23
!
;
,/W-.
NSiiefif A t .-4*^,
^S,^a«IiI /A^
■TTrFrBo^
i ^vvD
Library Bureau Cit. No, 1138
Digitized by VjOOQIC
Keil and DUitsch
DN 48
K ?7
Jeremiah
1873
— :t^Z-
Nov 5
_J^12JL
HMAV /
il50_l_
rtMAY 00
1950 '-^
^aii^
150124
^^a
12
A-'
y
The library
Union Theological Seminary
Broadway at 120th Street
New York 27, N. Y.
IIBRARY BUREAU CAT. NO. ,,p^t zed by LjOOgll
'•'f'^
1
BBfirtffMH5[|;\'
jwttgMjKfcH
;*■
^
IfJVlBKKI
JP-'^- ■■.!
Wk^^^
?»BCi
n
B
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
ALFRED C. BARNES.
NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
685 908
Cornell University
Library
The original of this bool< is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070685908
CLAEK'S
rOEEIGN
THEOLOGICAL LIBUAEY.
FOUETH SEEIES.
VOL. XLIX.
Itetl on tl)t PropTjefiefi ol ffijjfefel.
VOL. I.
EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
18 85.
5~0
PRIMTbD BY MORRISON AND 01 SB,
FOR
1?. & T. CLAKK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, . . HAMTI.TON, ADAMS, AND Ca
DUBLIN, GEOROE HEREBBT.
SEW YORK, . . srRIBNER AND -WELFORD.
BIBLICAL COMMENTARY
ON THE
PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL
DY
CARL FRIEDRTCH KEIL, D.D.,
DOOTOK AKD PROFESSOK OF THEOLOGY.
SEransIrtlsb ham lljt (iifrmaa
BY
KEY. JAMES MAETIN, B.A
VOL. I.
EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. OLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET.
1885.
The whole of this Commentary, with the exception of the
first 99 pages of Vol. i., has been translated by Kev. James
Martin, B.A.
F.O.
University, St. Andebws.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
FAGB
I. The Person of the Prophet, ..... 1
II. The Times of the Prophet, , .... 2
III. The Book of Ezekiel, ...... 7
EXPOSITION.
FIRST HALF.— THE PROPHECIES OF JUDGMENT.
CHAP. I.-XXXII.
The Consecration and Calling of Ezekiel to the Office of Prophet
(Chap, i.-iii. 21), . . ... 17
The Destiny of Jerusalem and its Inhabitants (Chap. iii. 22-t. 17), 61
The Judgment upon the Idolatrous Places, and on the Idol-wor-
shippers (Chap, vi.), .....
The Overthrow of Israel (Chap, vii.).
Vision of the Destruction of Jerusalem (Chap, viii.-xi.), .
Departure of the King and People ; and Bread of Tears (Chap, xii
Against the False Prophets and Prophetesses (Chap, xiii.),
Attitude of God towards the Worshippers of Idols, and Certainty
of the Judgments (Chap, xiv.), ....
Jerusalem, the Useless Wood of a Wild Vine (Chap, xv.).
Ingratitude and Unfaithfulness of Jerusalem. Its Punishment
and Shame (Chap, xvi.),
Humiliation and Exaltation of the Davidic Family (Chap, xvii.).
The Retributive Justice of God (Chap, xviii.).
Lamentation for the Princes of Israel (Chap, xix.),
93
99
111
), 155
16-1
177
191
194
286
246
258
Vlll
CONTENTS.
The Past, Present, and Fature of Israel (Cliap. xx.), . . 2G3
Prophecy of the Burning Forest and the Sword of the Lord
(Chap. XX. 45 to Chap. xxi. 82 (Heb. Chap, xxi.)), . . 286
The Sins of Jerusalem and Israel (Chap, xxii.), . . . 309
Oholah and Oholibah, the Harlots Samaria and Jerusalem (Chap,
xxiii.), . . . . . ' . . .320
Prediction of the Destruction of Jerusalem both in Parable and
by Sign (Chap, xxiv.), ...... 339
PREDICTIONS OF JUDGMENT UPON THE HEATHEN NATIONS
(CHAP. XXV. -XXXII.), .
Against Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines (Chap,
Against Tyee and Sidon (Chap, xxvi.-xxviii.),
The Fall of Tyi-e (Chap, xxri.), .
Lamentation oyer the Fall of Tyre (Chap, xxvii.).
Against the Prince of Tyre (Chap, xxviii. 1-lS),
Prophecy agaiust Sidon, and Promise for Israel (Chap
20-26), ....
XXV.),
353
360
370
370
383
405
425
THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
INTEODUOTION.
I. THE PERSON OF THE PEOPHET.
ZEKIEL, Ssi?.rn^ (i. 3, xxiv. 24), i.e. btA p?n;, God
strengthens, 'le^eKirjK (LXX. and Book of Siracli,
ch. xlix. 8), in the Vulgate Ezechiel, while Luther,
after the example of the LXX., writes the name
Hesehiel, was the son of Busi, of priestly descent, and was carried
away captive into exile to Babylon in the year 599 B.C., — i.e. in
the eleventh year before the destruction of Jerusalem, — along
with King Jehoiachin, the nobles of the kingdom, many priests,
and the better class of the population of Jerusalem and of Judali
(i. 2, xl. 1 ; cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 14 ff.; Jer. xxix. 1). He lived
there in the northern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the
Ohaboras, married, and in his own house, amidst a colony of
banished Jews, in a place called Tel-Abib (i. 1, iii. 15, 24, viii.
1, xxiv. 18). In the fifth year of his banishment, i.e. 595 B.C.,
he was called to be a prophet of the Lord, and laboured in this
official position, as may be shown, twenty-two years; for the
latest of his prophecies is dated in the twenty-seventh year of
his exile, i.e. 572 B.C. (xxix. 17). Regarding the other circum-
stances and events of his life, as also of his death, nothing is
known. The apocryphal legends found in the Fathers and in
the Rabbinical writings, to the effect that he was put to death
by a prince of his own nation for rebuking his idolatry, and was
buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad, etc. (cf. Oarpzov,
Introd. ii. p. 203 ff.), are without any historical value. So much
EZEK. I. A
2 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
alone is certain, that he ended his life among the exiles, where
God had assigned him his sphere of labour, and did not, like
his contemporary Daniel (comp. Dan. i. 21, x. 1), outlive the
termination of the Captivity and the commencement of the
redemption of Israel from Babylon, as his prophecies do not
contain the slightest allusion to that effect.
II. THE TIMES OF THE PROPHET.
Ezekiel, like Daniel, is a prophet of the exile, but in a
different fashion from the latter, who had been already carried
away prisoner before him to Babylon on the first capture of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Jehoiakira, and
who lived there upwards of seventy years at the Babylonian
and Medo-Persian court, and who held from time to time very
important offices of State. Daniel was placed by God in this
high position, which afforded him a view of the formation and
evolution of the world-kingdom, in order that from this stand-
point he might be enabled to see the development of the world-
kingdoms in the struggle against the kingdom of God, and to
predict the indestructible power and glory of the latter king-
dom, which overcomes all the powers of the world. Ezekiel,
on the other hand, was appointed a watcher over the exiled
nation of Israel, and was in this capacity to continue the work
of the earlier prophets, especially that of Jeremiah, with whom
he in several ways associates himself in his prophecies ; to
preach to his contemporaries the judgment and salvation of
God, in order to convert them to the Lord their God. — Eightly
to understand his work as a prophet, the ripe fruit of which
lies before us in his prophetic writings, we must not only keep
in view the importance of the exile for the development of the
kingdom of God, but also form a clear conception of the rela-
tions amidst which Ezekiel carried on his labours.
What the Lord had caused to be announced by Moses to the
tribes of Israel while they were yet standing on the borders of
INTRODUCTION. 3
the Promised Land, and preparing to take possession of it, viz.
that if they should persistently transgress His commands. He
would not only chastise them with heavy punishments, but
would finally drive them out of the land which they were about
to occupy, and disperse them among all nations (Lev. xxvi.
14—45 ; Dent, xxviii. 15-68), — this threatening, repeated by
all the pi'ophets after Moses, had been already executed by
the Assyrians upon the ten tribes, who had revolted from the
house of David, and was now in process of fulfilment by the
Chaldeans upon the kingdom of Judah also. In the reign of
Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, for the first
time invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem, made Jehoiakim
tributary, and carried away to Babylon a number of Israelitish
youths of noble birth and of the blood-royal, amongst whom
was Daniel, along with a portion of the vessels of the temple,
in order that these youths might be trained up for the service
of his court (Dan. i. 1-7). With this invasion of the Chaldeans
begin the seventy years of Chaldean servitude and exile in
Babylon, predicted by Jeremiah. As Jehoiakim, so early as
three years afterwards, revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, the
latter, after a lengthened siege, took Jerusalem a second time,
in the third month of the reign of Jehoiachin, and carried
away into captivity to Babylon, along with the captive monarch
and the members of his court, the nobles of Judah and Jeru-
salem, a great number of priests, warriors, carpenters, and
smiths, leaving behind in the land only the meaner portion of
the people, over whom he appointed as his vassal King Mat-
taniah, the uncle of the banished monarch, whose name he
changed to Zedekiah (2 Kings xxiv. 10-17 ; Jer. xxix. 2). By
this removal of the heart and strength of the nation the power
of the kingdom of Judah was broken ; and although Nebuchad-
nezzar did not at that time destroy it, but still allowed it to
remain as a subject kingdom under his sway, yet its existence
could not be of any long duration. Judah had fallen too
deeply to recognise in the calamities which she had suffered the
4 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
chastening hand of her God, and to bow herself repentantly
under His mighty arm. Instead of listening to the voice of
the prophet Jeremiah, and bearing the Chaldean yoke in
patience (2 Chron. xxxvi. 12), both monarch and people placed
their trust in the assistance of Egypt, and Zedekiah broke the
oath of fealty which he had sworn to the king of Babylon.
To punish this perfidy, Nebuchadnezzar again marched against
Jerusalem, and by the capture and burning of the city and
temple in the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign put an end to
the kingdom of Judah. Zedekiah, who had fled from the
beleaguered city, was taken by the Chaldeans, and brought with
his sons to Riblab into the presence of King Nebuchadnezzar,
who first caused the sons of Zedekiah to be put to death before
the eyes of their father ; next, Zedekiah himself to be deprived
of sight, and then commanded the blind monarch to be con-
ducted in chains to Babylon (2 Kings xxv. 1-21 ; Jer. lii. 1-30).
!Many military officers and priests of rank were also put to
death at Riblah ; while those who had been taken prisoners at
Jerusalem, along with the deserters and a great portion of the
rest of the people, were led away into exile to Babylon
(2 Kings xxv. 1-21; Jer. lii. 1-30). By this catastrophe the
Old Testament theocracy lost its political existence ; the cove-
nant people were now driven out of their own land amongst the
heathen, to bear the punishment of their obstinate apostasy
from the Lord their God. Nevertheless this dispersion amen"-
the heathen was no entire rejection of Israel ; it was merely a
suspension, and not an annihilation, of the covenant of grace.
Man's unfaithfulness cannot destroy the faithfulness of God.
" In spite of this terrible judgment, brought down upon them
by the heaviest transgressions, Israel was, and remained," — as
Auberlen {The Prophet Daniel, p. 27, 2d ed.) well remarks, —
" tlie chosen people, through whom God was still to carry out;
His intentions towards humanity. His gifts and calling may
not be repented of " (Rom. xi. 29). Even after the Babylonian
exile the theocracy was not again restored ; the covenant people
INTRODUCTION. 5
did not after their return again recover their independence, but
remained, with the exception of the short period when under
the Maccabees they won for themselves their freedom, in con-
stant dependence upon the heathen world-rulers, until, after
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, they were com^-
pletely dispersed among all the nations of the earth. The
kingdom of God, however, was not really to perish along with
the external theocracy ; it was only to pass into a new phase of
development, which was intended to be the medium of transition
towards its renewal and perfection in that kingdom of God
which was to be founded by Christ. To pave the way to this
end, and at the same time to serve as a witness to the exiles,
that Israel, notwithstanding its dispersion among the heathen,
still remained God's people, the Lord raised up in Ezekiel, the
son of a priest, a prophet of uncommon power and energy in
the midst of the captives, " one who raised his voice aloud,
like a trumpet, and showed to Israel its misdeeds, — whose whole
manifestation furnished the most powerful testimony that the
Lord was still amongst His people ; who was himself a temple
of the Lord, before whom the visible temple, which yet remained
standing for a short time at Jerusalem, sank back into its
nothingness ; a spiritual Samson, who seized with mighty arm
the pillars of the idol temple, and dashed it to the ground ; a
powerful, gigantic nature, which was fitted by that very quali-
fication to effectually subdue the Babylonian spirit of the time,
which delighted in powerful, gigantic, and grotesque forms;
standing alone, but equal to a hundred of the sons of the
prophets " (Hengstenberg's Christol. II. p. 531).
The call of Ezekiel to the prophetic office took place in the
fifth year of the reign of Zedekiah, in the fourth month of the
year (i. 1, 2), at a point of time when, amongst those who had
remained behind in the land, as well as amongst those who had
been carried to Babylon, the hope of the speedy downfall of
the Babylonian monarchy, and of the return of the exiles to
their native country, which was then to follow, was very strong,
6 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and was powerfully encouraged by the lying statements of false
prophets; cf. Jer. xxix. In the same year and month pro-
phesied Hananiah, a prophet from Gibeon, in the temple at
Jerusalem, before the eyes of the priests and the whole people,
saying that Jehovah would break the yoke of the king of Baby-
lon, and within two years bring back to Jerusalem all the
temple-vessels carried away by Nebuchadnezzar, as well as King
Jechoniah and all the captives who had been brought to Baby-
lon, Jer. xxviii. 1-4. And the prophet Jeremiah, who with
the word of the Lord rebuked and opposed those lying predic-
tions and empty hopes, and foretold that the Babylonian servi-
tude would be of long duration, was violently assailed and
persecuted by the lying prophets, even by those of them who
were to be found in Babylon ; cf. Jer. xxviii. 5-17, xxix. 21-32.
This delnsion regarding the political condition of affairs, this
spirit of resistance to the decree of the Lord, had seized not
only upon the people, but also upon the nobles and the king,
so that they formed and eagerly carried on conspiracies against
the king of Babylon. The meeting of the kings of Edom,
Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, with Zedekiah in Jerusalem,
had no other object than this (Jer. xxvii. 3). The embassy,
moreover, sent by Zedekiah to Babylon (Jer. xxiv. 3), as well
as his own journey thither in the fourth year of his reign (Jer.
li. 59), were intended merely to deceive the king of Babylon,
by assurances of devotion and fidelity, in order that the in-
tended revolt might be carried out. But this baseless hope
of a speedy liberation from the Babylonian yoke was igno-
miniously disappointed: in consequence of the treacherous
rebellion of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, after a blockade and
siege of a year and a half, captured Jerusalem, burnt the city
and temple to the ground, and destroyed the kingdom of Judah.
By this blow all the supports upon which the God-alienated
nation had vainly relied were broken. The delusive statements
of the false prophets had proved to be lies; the predictions
of the Lord's prophets, on the contrary, had been strikingly
INTEODUCTIOK. 7
justified as divine truth. The destruction of Jerusalem, the
burning of the temple, and the downfall of the kingdom, form
accordingly a turning-point for the prophetic labours of Ezekiel.
Hitherto, prior to the calamity, he had to announce to the
people (animated with the hope of speedy liberation from exile)
the judgment of the downfall of Jerusalem and Judah, although
such preaching found little acceptance. The time, however,
had now arrived when, in order to preserve from despair the
nation languishing in exile, and given over to the scorn, con-
tempt, and tyranny of the heathen, he was able to open up the
sources of comfort by announcing that the Lord, in requital
of the ignominy heaped upon His people, would overwhelm all
the heathen nations with destruction, but that, if His people
whom they had oppressed would repent and return to Him, He
would again gather them out of their dispersion ; would make
of them a holy nation, walking in His commands and yielding
Him a willing service ; would conduct them back to their own
land; would give them His servant David for a prince, and
once more gloriously establish His kingdom.
III. THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL.
The collection of the prophecies placed together in this book,
as forming a complete unity, falls into two main divisions : —
I. Announcements of judgment upon Israel and the heathen
nations, ch. i.-xxxii. ; H. Announcements of salvation for
Israel, ch. xxxiii.-xlviii. Each of these main divisions is
subdivided into two sections. The first, namely, contains the
prophecies of judgment (a) upon Jerusalem and Israel, ch.
iii. 22-xxiv. ; (6) upon the heathen nations, ch. xxv.-
xxxii. The second main division contains (c) the predictions
of the redemption and restoration of Israel, and the downfall
of the heathen world-power, ch. xxxiii.-xxxix. ; (d) the pro-
phetic picture of the re-formation and exaltation of the king-
dom of God, ch. xl.-xlviii. ; and the entire collection opens
8 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
with the solemn dedication of Ezekiel to the prophetic ofSce,
ch. i. 1-iii. 21. The prophecies of the first, third, and
fourth parts are throughout arranged in chronological order ;
those of the second part — the threatenings predicted against
the heathen nations — are disposed according to their actual
subject-matter. This is attested by the chronological data in
the superscriptions, and confirmed by the contents of the whole
of the groups of prophecies in the first three parts. The first
part contains the following chronological notices : the fifth
year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (i. 2) as the time of
Ezekiel's call to the office of prophet, and of the first predic-
tions regarding Jerusalem and Israel ; then the sixth (viii. 1),
seventh (xx. 1), and ninth years of the captivity of that
monarch (xxiv. 1). The second part contains the predictions
against seven foreign nations, of which those against Tyre fall
in tlie eleventh (xxvi. 1), those against Egypt in the tenth
(xxix. 1), twenty-seventh (xxix. 17), eleventh (xxx. 20 and
xxxi. 1), and twelfth years of the exile. Of the two last
parts, each contains only one chronological notice, namely,
ch. xxxiii. 21, the twelfth year of the captivity, i.e. one year
after the destruction of Jerusalem ; and ch. xl. 1, the twenty-
fifth year of the captivity, or the fourteenth after the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem. The remaining prophecies, which bear at
their head no note of time, connect themselves closely as to
their contents with those which are furnished with chrono-
logical data, so that they belong to the same period with those.
From this it appears that the prophecies of the first part
wholly, those of the second part to a great extent, date before
the destruction of Jerusalem ; those of the third and fourth
parts proceed from the time aft?r this catastrophe. This
chronological relationship is in favour of the view that the
prophecies against foreign nations, ch. xxv.-xxxii., are not
— as the majority of expositors suppose — to be assigned to the
second, but rather to the first half of the book. This view is
confirmed, on the one hand, by the contents of the prophecies,
INTRODUCTION, 9
inasmuch as these, without an exception, announce only the
downfall of the heathen nations and kingdoms, making no
reference to the future forgiveness and conversion of the
residue of these nations, and through this very peculiarity con-
nect themselves closely with the prophecies of threatening
against Israel in the first part; on the other hand, by the
resemblance which exists between ch. xxx. 1-20 and ch.
iii. 16—21, compared with ch. xviii. 19-32, and which leaves
no doubt upon the point that ch. xxxiii. 1-20 marks out to
the prophet the task which was to occupy his attention after
the destruction of Jerusalem, and consequently forms the in-
troduction to the second half of his prophecies. — For further
remarks upon, the contents and subdivisions of the book, see the
expositions in the introductory observations to the individual
sections and chapters.
Ezekiel's style of proplietio representation has many peculiari-
ties. In the first place, the clothing of symbol and allegory
prevails in him to a greater degree than in all the other pro-
phets; and his symbolism and allegory are not confined to
general outlines and pictures, but elaborated in the minutest
details, so as to present figures of a boldness surpassing reality,
and ideal representations, which produce an impression of im-
posing grandeur and exuberant fulness. Even the simplest
prophetic discourse is rich in imagery, and in bold, partly
even strange, comparisons, and branches out into a copiousness
which strives to exhaust the subject on all sides, in consequence
of which many peculiar expressions and forms are repeated,
rendering his language diffuse, and occasionally even clumsy.
These peculiarities of his style of representation it has been
attempted, on the one hand, to explain by the influence of the
Babylonian spirit and taste upon the form of his prophecy;
while others, again, would regard them as the result of a
literary art, striving to supply the defect of prophetic spirit,
and the failing power of the living word, by the aid of learning
and an elaborate imitation of actual life; The supposed Baby-
10 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Ionian spirit, however, in the forms of our prophet's symbolism,
has no existence. The assertion of Haveniick, that " the
whole of these symbols has a colossal character, which points
in many ways to those powerful impressions experienced by
the prophet in a foreign land, — Chaldea, — and which here are
grasped and given out again with a mighty and independent
spirit," remains yet to be proved. For the observation that
these symbols, in reference to form and contents, resemble in
many respects the symbols of his contemporary Daniel, is not
sufficient for the purpose, and cannot in itself be accepted as
the truth, by reference to the picture of the eagle, and the
comparison of rich men to trees, cedars, in ch. xvii., because
these pictures already occur in the older prophets, and lions as
as well as cedars are native in Palestine. Just as little are
Babylonian impressions to be recognised in the visions of the
field with the dead men's bones, ch. xxxvii., and of the ne^
temple, ch. xl. , so that there only remains the representation
of the cherubim with four faces, in ch. i. and x., which is
peculiar to Ezekiel, as presumptive evidence of Chaldean in-
fluence. But if we leave out of account that the throne, upon
which the Lord appears in human form, indisputably forms
the central point of this vision, and this central point has no
specific Babylonian impress, then the representation of the
cherubim with faces of men, lions, oxen, and eagles, cannot be
derived from the contemplation of the Assyrian or Chaldean
sculptures of human figures with eagle heads and wings, or
winged oxen with human heads, or sphinxes with bodies of
animals and female heads, such as are found in the ruins of
ancient Nineveh, inasmuch as the cherubim of Ezekiel were
not pictures of oxen with lions' manes, eagles' wings, and
human countenances furnished with horns, — as W. Neumann
has still portrayed them in his treatise upon the tabernacle, —
but had, according to Ezekiel, ch. i. 5, the human form.
There are indeed also found, among the Assyrian sculptures,
winged human figures ; but these Ezekiel had no reason to
INTEODUCTION. 11
copy, because the cherubic images in human form, belonging
to Solomon's temple, lay much nearer to his hand. The whole
of Ezekiel's symbolism is derived from the Israelitish sanctuary,
and is an outcome of Old Testament ideas and views. As the
picture of the ideal temple in ch. xl. ff. is sketched according
to the relations of Solomon^s temple, which was burnt by the
Chaldeans, so the elements for the description of the majestic
theophany, in ch. i. and x., are contained in the throne
of Jehovah, which was above the cherubim, who were over
the covering of the ark of the covenant ; and in the pheno-
mena amid which was manifested the revelation of the divine
glory at the establishment of the covenant on Sinai. On the
basis of these facts, Isaiah had already represented to himself
the appearance of the Lord, as a vision, in which he beholds
Jehovah in the temple, sitting on a high and lofty throne, and,
standing around the throne, seraphim with six wings, who
began to sing, " Holy, holy " (Isa. vi.). This symbolism we
find modified in Ezekiel, so as to correspond with the aim of
his vocation, and elaborated to a greater extent. The manner
in which he works out this vision and other symbols certainly
gives evidence of his capacity to describe, distinctly and attrac-
tively in words, what he had beheld in spirit ; although the
symbolism itself is, just as little as the vision, a mere product
of poetic art, or the subjective framework of a lively fancy,
without any real objective foundation ; for it rests, in harmony
with its contents and form, upon views which are spiritually
real, i.e. produced by the Spirit of God in the soul of the pro-
phet, in which the art of the author is reduced to a faithful
and distinct reproduction of what had been seen in the spirit. —
It is only the abundance of pictures and metaphors, which is
in this I'espect characteristic of Ezekiel, and which betrays a
lively imagination, and the many-sidedness of his knowledge.
These qualities appear not merely in the sketch of the new
temple (ch. xl. ff.), but also in the description of the wide-
spread commerce of Tyre (ch. xxvii.), and of the relations of
12 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Egypt (ch, xxix. and xxxi.), as well as in the endeavours mani-
fest in all his representations, — not merely in the symbolical
descriptions and allegorical portraits (ch. xvi. and xxiii.), but
also in the simple discourses, in the rebukes of the current
vices and sins, and in the threatenings of punishment and
judgment, — to follow out the subject treated of into the most
special details, to throw light upon it from all sides, to penetrate
through it, "and not to rest until he has exhausted it, and that
without any effort, in so doing, to avoid repetitions. This style
of representation, however, has its foundation not merely in
the individuality of our prophet, but still more in the relations
of his time, and in his attitude towards that generation to
whom he had to announce the counsel and will of the Lord.
As symbolism and the employment of parables, pictures, and
proverbs is, in general, only a means for the purpose of pre-
senting in an attractive light the truths to be delivered, and
to strengthen by this attractiveness the impression made by
speech and discourse, so also the copiousness and circumstan-
tiality of the picture, and even the repetition of thoughts and
expressions under new points of view, serve the same end.
The people to whom Ezekiel was now to preach repentance,
by announcing the divine judgment and salvation, was " a
rebellious race, impudent and hard-hearted" (ch. iii. 7-9, 26,
xii. 2, etc.). If he was faithfully and conscientiously to dis-
charge the ofBce, laid upon him by the Lord, of a watcher over
the house of Israel, he must not only punish with stern words,
and in drastic fashion, the sins of the people, and distinctly
paint before their eyes the horrors of the judgment, but he
must also set forth, in a style palpable to the senses, that
salvation which was to bloom forth for the repentant nation
when the judgment was fulfilled.
Closely connected with this is the other peculiarity of
Ezekiel's style of prophecy, namely, the marked prominence
assigned to the divine origin and contents of his announce-
ments, which distinctly appears in the standing form of address
INTRODUCTION. 13
— " Son of man" — with which God summons the prophet to
speech and action ; in the continual use of nirT" ''jiN ; in the
formulae '" 10^ na or '" DW ; in the introduction to almost
every discourse of God's requirement to him to prophesy or
to do this and that; and in the formula which recurs fre-
quently in all the discourses, — " Ye shall know that I am
Jehovah." The standing address, " Son of man," and the
frequent call to speech and action, are likewise regarded by
modern critics as a token of the failure of the prophetic spirit-
power. Both phrases, however, could only be held to convey
so nmch, if — in conformity with the view of Ewald, who, agree-
ably to the naturalistic representation of prophecy, assumes it
to be a result of high poetic inspiration — they had been selected
by Ezekiel of his own free choice, and employed with the inten-
tion of expressing the feeling of his own profound distance from
God, and of imparting to himself courage to prophesy. If, on
the contrary, according to the Scriptural conception of pro-
phecy, God the Lord addressed Ezekiel as " son of man," and
called him, moreover, on each occasion to utter predictions,
then the use of the God-given name, as well as the mention of
the summons, as proceeding from God only, furnishes an
evidence that Ezekiel does not, like the false prophets, utter
the thoughts and inspirations of his own heart, but, in all that
he says aud does, acts under a divine commission and under
cZi«me*inspiration, and serves to impress the rebellious nation
more and more with the conviction that a prophet of the Lord
is in their midst (ii. 5, xxxiii. 33), and that God had not de-
parted with His Spirit from Israel, notwithstanding their banish-
ment among the heathen. In favour of the correctness of this
view of the expressions and phrases in question, there speak
decisively the manner and fashion in which Ezekiel was called
and consecrated to the prophetic office; not only the instruc-
tion which God communicates to him for the performance of
his calling (ii. 1-3, 21), — and which, immediately upon the
first act of his prophetic activity, He supplements to the effect
14 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of enjoining upon him dumbness or entire silence, only then
permitting him to open his mouth to speak when He wishes
to inspire him with a word to be addressed to the rebellious
people (iii. 26, 27 ; cf. sxiv. 27 and xxxiii. 22), — but also the
theophany which inaugurated his call to the prophetic ofBce
(ch. i.), which, as will appear to us in the course of the exposi-
tion, has nnmistakeahly the significance of an explanation of a
reality, which will not be dissolved and annihilated with the
dissolution of the kingdom of Judah, and the destruction of
Jerusalem, and of the temple of that covenant of grace which
Jehovah had concluded with Israel.
It is usual, moreover, to quote, as a peculiarity of Ezekiel's
prophecies, the prominence given to his priestly descent and
disposition, especially in the visions, ch. i., cf. ch. x., ch.
viii.-xi. and xl.-xlviii., and in individual traits, as iv. 13 £f.,
XX. 12 £f., xxii. 8, xxvi. 24, 16 ff., etc., etc., which Ewald
explains as " a result of the one-sided literary conception of
antiquity according to mere books and traditions, as well as
of the extreme prostration of spirit intensified by the long
duration of the exile and bondage of the people ;" while
de Wette, Gesenius, and others would see in it an intellectual
narrowness on the part of the prophet. The one view is as
groundless and perverse as the other, because resting upon the
superficial opinion that the copious descriptions of the sacred
articles in the temple were sketched by Ezekiel only for the
purpose of preserving for the future the elevating recollection
of the better times of the past (Ewald). When we recognise,
on the contrary, the symbolical character of these descriptions,
we may always say that for the portrayal of the conception
of the theophany in ch. i. and x., and of the picture of the
temple in ch. xl., no individual was so well fitted as a priest,
familiar with the institutions of worship. In this symbolism,
however, we may not venture to seek for the products of intel-
lectual narrowness, or of sacerdotal ideas, but must rise to the
conviction that God the Lord selected a priest, and no other, to
INTRODUCTION. 15
be His prophet, and permitted him to behold the future of His
kingdom on earth in the significant forms of the sanctuary at
Jerusalem, because this form was the symbolical covering which
presented the closest correspondence to the same. — Still less do
the passages iv. 13 ff., xx. 12 ff., and others, in which stress is
laid upon the ceremonial commands of the law, and where their
violation is mentioned as a cause of the judgment that was
breaking over Israel, furnish evidence of priestly one-sidedness
or narrowness of spirit. Ezekiel takes up towards the Mosaic
Law no other position than that which is taken by the older
prophets. He finds impressed on the precepts, not only of the
Moral, but also of the Ceremonial Law, divine thoughts, essen-
tial elements of the divine holiness, attesting itself in and to Israel ;
and penetrated by a sense of the everlasting importance of the
whole law, he urges obedience to its commands. Even the close
adherence to the Pentateuch is not at all peculiar to him, but is
common to all the prophets, inasmuch as all, without exception,
criticize and judge the life of the nation by the standard of the
prescriptions in the Mosaic Law. Ezekiel, with his nearest pre-
decessor Jeremiah, is in this respect only distinguished from
the earlier prophets, that the verbal references to the Pentateuch
in both occur with greater frequency, and receive a greater
emphasis. But this has its ground not so much in the descent
of both from a priestly family, as rather in the relations of
their time, especially in the circumstance that the falling away
of the nation from the law had become so great, in consequence
of which the penal judgments already threatened in the Penta-
teuch upon transgressors had fallen upon them, so that the
prophets of the Lord were obliged, with all their energy, to
hold up before the rebellious race not merely the command-
ments, but also the threatenings of the law, if they were faith-
fully to discharge the office to which they had been called.
The language of Ezekiel is distinguished by a great number
of words and forms, which do not occur elsewhere, and which,
probably, were for the greater part coined by himself (see an
16 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
enumeration of these in the Manual of Historico- Critical Intro-
duction, § 77, Eem. 6), and shows a strong leaning towards
the diction of the Pentateuch. It has, however, been unable to
resist the influences of the inaccurate popular dialect, and of the
Aramaic idiom, so that it betrays, in its many anomalies and
corruptions, the decline and commencement of the dying out of
the Hebrew tongue (of. § 17 of the Historico- Critical Manual),
and reminds us that the prophet's residence was in a foreign
country.
The genuineness of Ezekiel's prophecies is, at the present
day, unanimously recognised by all critics. There is, moreover,
no longer any doubt that the writing down and redaction of
them in the volume which has been transmitted to us were the
work of the prophet himself. Only Ewald and Hitzig, for the
purpose of setting aside the predictions which so much offend
them, have proposed very artificial hypotheses regarding the
manner and way in which the book originated ; but it appears
unnecessary to enter into a closer examination of these, as their
probability and trustworthiness depend only upon the dogmatic
views of their authors.
For the exegetical literature, see the Historico-Critical Manual,
vol. i. p. 353 (new ed. p. 254), where is also to be added, as of
very recent date. Das Buck Ezechiels. Uebersetzt und erklart
von Dr. Th. Kliefoth. Zwei Abtheilungen. Eostock, 1864
and 1865.
EXPOSITION.
FIEST HALF -THE PROPHECIES OF JQDGMENT.
CHAP. I.-XXXII.
CHAP. I.-III. 21. — THE CONSECRATION AND CALLING OP
EZEKIEL TO THE OPFICE OF PROPHET.
N a vision of God, Ezekiel beholds in a great cloud,
through which shone the splendour of fire, and
which a tempestuous wind drives from the north,
the glory of the Lord ahove the cherubim upon
a majestic thi'one in human form (ch. i.), and hears a
voice, which sends him as a prophet to Israel, and inspires him
with the subject-matter of his announcements (ii. 1-iii. 3).
He is thereafter transported in spirit to Tel-abib on the
Chebar, into the midst of the exiles, and the duties and
responsibilities of his calling laid before him (iii. 4-21). By
this divine appearance and the commission therewith connected
is lie consecrated, called, and ordained to the prophetic ofiice.
The whole occurrences in the vision are subdivided into the
copious description of the theophany, ch. i., by which he is
consecrated for his calling ; and into the revelation of the word,
ch. ii. 1-3, 21, which prepares him for the discharge of the
same. From these contents it clearly appears that these chap-
ters do not constitute the first section of the book, but the
introdiiction to the whole, to which the circumstantial notices
EZEK. T. ^
18 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEI-
of the time and place of this revelation of God at the com-
mencement, i. 1-3, also point.
Chap. i. The Appearance op the Gloey op the Loed.
—Vers. 1-3. Time and place of the same.— Ver. 1. Now it came
to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth (month), on the fifth
(day) of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of
Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
Ver. 2. On the fifth day of the month, it was the fifth year of King
Jehoiachin's captivity, Ver. 3. The word of the Lord came to
Ezekiel the priest, the son of Busi, in the land of the Chaldeans
by the river Chebar ; and the hand of the Lord was there upon
him.
Kegarding ''H^l at the beginning of a book, as e.g. in Jonah
i. 1, of. the note on Josh. i. 1. The two notices of the
year in vers. 1 and 2 are closely connected with the twofold
introduction of the theophany. This is described in verse
first, according to its form or phenomenal nature, and then in
verses second and third, according to its intended purpose, and
its effect upon the prophet. The phenomenon consisted in
this, that the heavens were opened, and Ezekiel saw visions of
God. The heaven opens not merely when to our eye a glimpse
is disclosed of the heavenly glory of God (Calvin), but also
when God manifests His glory in a manner perceptible to
human sight. The latter was the case here. Ciii^?* nisiD,
" visions of God," are not " visiones prcBstantissimce," but visions
which have divine or heavenly things for their object ; cf. Isa.
vi. 1 ; 1 Kings xxii. 19 ; 2 Kings vi. 17. Here it is the mani-
festation of Jehovah's glory described in the following verses.
This was beheld by Ezekiel in the thirtieth year, which, accord-
ing to verse second, was in the fifth year of the captivity of
Jehoiachin. The real identity of these two dates is placed
beyond doubt by the mention of the same day of the month,
" on the fifth day of the month " (ver. 2 compared with
ver. 1). The fifth year from the commencement of Jehoia-
CHAP I 1-3. 19
chin's ■ captivity is the year 595 B.C.; the thirtieth year, con-
sequently, is the year 625 b.c. But the era, in accordance
with which this date is reckoned, is matter of dispute, and can
no longer be ascertained with certainty. To suppose, with
Hengstenberg, that the reference is to the year of the prophet's
own life, is forbidden by the addition " in the fourth mouth, on
the fifth day of the month," which points to an era generally
recognised. In the year 625 B.C., Nabopolassar became king
of Babylon, and therefore many of the older expositors have
supposed that Ezekiel means the thirtieth year of the era of
Nabopolassar. Nothing, however, is known of any such era.
Others, as the Ohaldee paraphrast and Jerome, and in modern
times also Ideler, are of opinion that the thirtieth year is
reckoned from the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah,
because in that year the book of the law was discovered, and
the regeneration of public worship completed by a solemn cele-
bration of the Passover. No trace, however, can elsewhere be
pointed out of the existence of a chronology dating from these
events. The Kabbins in Seder Olam assume a chronology
according to the periods of the years of jubilee, and so also
Hitzig; but for this supposition too all reliable proofs are
wanting. At the time mentioned, Ezekiel found himself
npijn Tjina, " in the midst of the exiles," i.e. within the circuit of
their settlements, not, in their society ; for it is evident from
ch. iii. 15 that he was alone when the theophany was imparted
to him, and did not repair till afterwards to the residences of
the settlers. Ver. 3. By the river Ohebar, in the land of the
Chaldees, i.e. in Babylon' or Mesopotamia. The river 133, to be
distinguished from linn, the river of Gosan, which flows into
the Tigris, see on 2 Kings xvii. 6, is the Mesopotamian Chahoras,
' A^6ppa<; {Straho, xvi. 748), or Xa^wpa^ (Ptolem. v. 18, 3),
jAs^ (Edrisi Clim. iv. p. 6, ii. p. 150, ed. Jaubert and
Abulf. Mesopot. in the N. Reperlor. III. p. xxiv.), which
according to Edrisi takes its rise from " nearly three hundred
20 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
springs," near the city Ras-eV Ain, at the foot of the mountain
range of Masias, flows through Upper Mesopotamia in a direc-
tion parallel with its two principal streams, and then, turning
westward, discharges itself into the Euphrates near Kirkesion.
There the hand of Jehovah came upon Ezekiel. The expres-
sion (^^?) ^V nn^n '" t always signifies a miraculous working of
the power or omnipotence of God upon a man, — the hand being
the organ of power in action, — by which be is placed in a con-
dition to exert superhuman power, 1 Kings xviii. 46, and is
the regular expression for the supernatural transportation into
the state of ecstasy for the purpose of beholding and announcing
(cf. 2 Kings iii. 15), or undertaking, heavenly things ; and so
throughout Ezekiel, cf. iii. 22, viii. 1, xxxiii. 22, xxxvii. 1,
xl. 1.
Vers. 4-28. Description of the theophany seen by the
spirit of the prophet. — Ver. 4. And I saw, and, lo, a tem-
pestuous wind came from the north, a great cloud, and a jire
rolled together like a ball, and the brightness of light round
about it, and out of its midst, as the appearance of glowing
metal from the midst of the fire. — The description begins
with a general outline of the phenomenon, as the same pre-
sented itself to the spiritual eye of the prophet on its ap-
proach from the north. A tempestuous wind brings hither
from the north a great cloud, the centre of which appears
as a lump of fire, which throws around the cloud the bright-
ness of light, and presents in its midst the appearance of
glowing metal. The coming of the phenomenon from the
north is, as a matter of course, not connected with the Baby-
lonian representation of the mountain of the gods situated in
the extreme north, Isa. xiv. 13. According to the invariable
usage of speech followed by the prophets, especially by Jere-
miah (cf. e.g. i. 14, iv. 6, vi. 1, etc.), the north is the quarter
from which the enemies who were to execute judgment upon
Jerusalem and Judah break in. According to this usacre, the
coming of this divine appearance from the north signifies that-
CHAP. I. 5-14. 21
it is from the north that God will bring to pass the judgment
upon Judah, nnis^np E'N, " fire rolled together like a ball," is
an expression borrowed from Ex. ix. 10, i? refers to tJV? 3"<1
aaifiC" io c'Kj as we see from the words in apposition, tS'xn 'rjiriD.
The fire, which formed the centre of the cloud, had the appear-
ance of ??E'n. The meaning of this word, which occurs again
in ver. 27 and ch. viii. ver. 2, is disputed. The Septuagint
and Vulgate translate it by fjkeKTpov, electrum, i.e. a metal
having a bright lustre, and consisting of a mixture of gold and
silver. Cf. Strabo, III. 146 ; Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 4. To
the explanation of Bochart, that it is a compound of ntyn:,
" brass," and the Talmudic word ^^D or abba, " aurum rude"
and signifies " rough gold ore," is opposed the fact that the
reading N?^» in the Talmud is not certain, but purports to be
N?i3D (cf. Gesen. Thesaur. p. 535, and Buxtorf, Lexic. Talmud,
p. 1214), as well as the circumstance that raw gold ore has not
a lustre which could shine forth out of the fire. Still less
probability has the supposition that it is a compound of hv/n,
in Syriac " conflavit, fabricavii," and ntyn, "fricuit," on which
Havernick and Maurer base the meaning of " a piece of metal
wrought in the fire." The word appears simply to be formed
from DB'n, probably " to glow," with ? appended, as ?0"i3 from
Q-\2, and to denote " glowing ore." This meaning is appro-
priate both in ver. 27, where ^»fn fj? is explained by E'N-nN-jD,
as well as in ch. viii. 2, where int, " brilliancy," stands as
parallel to it. •'OB'n, however, is different from 7?i^ riB'nj in
ver. 7 and in Dan. x. 6, for -'psJ'n refers in all the three places to
the person of Him who is enthroned above the cherubim ; while
hbp riE'nj in ver. 7 is spoken of the feet of the cherubim, and
in Dan. x. 6 of the arms and feet of the personage who there
manifests Himself. In verse fifth the appearance is described
more minutely. There first present themselves to the eye of
the seer four beings, whom he describes according to their
figure and style.
Vers. 5-14. The four cherubim. -^ Ver. 5. Ajid out of its midst
22 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
there prominently appeared a figure, consisting of four creatures,
and this was their appearance : they had the figure of a man.
Ver. 6. And each had four faces, and each of them had four wings.
Ver. 7. And their feet were upright- standing feet ; and the soles
of their feet like the soles of a calf, and sparkling like the appear-
ance of shining brass. Ver. 8. And the hands of a man were
under their wings on their four sides ; and all four had faces and
wings. Ver. 9. Tlieir wings were joined one to another; they
turned not as they went ; they went each one in the direction of
his face. Ver. 10. And the form of their faces was that of a
man ; and on the right all four had a lion's face ; and on the left
all four had the face of an ox ; and all four had an eagle s face.
Ver. 11. And their faces and their wings were divided above, two
of each uniting with one another, and two covering their bodies
Ver. 12. And they went each in the direction of his face ;
ivhithersoever the spirit was to go, they went ; they turned not as
they went. Ver. 13. And the likeness of the creatures resembled
burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches : it (the fire)
went hither and thither amongst the beings ; and the fire was bril-
liant, and from the fire came forth lightning. Ver. 14. And the
beings ran hither and thither in a zig-zag manner.
From out of the fiery centre of the cloud there shows itself
the form (niDl, properly "resemblance," "picture") of four
ni'n, animantia, "living creatures;" faja, Apoc. iv. 6; not
67)pia, " wild beasts," as Luther has incorrectly rendered it,
after the animalia of the Vulgate. Tliese four creatures had
tm niD^, « the figure of a man." Agreeably to this notice,
placed at the head of the description, these creatures are to be
conceived as presenting the appearance of a human body in all
points not otherwise specified in the following narrative. Each
of them had four faces and four wings (Onx without the
article stands as a distributive, and d;d33 are " pinions " as in
Isa. vi. 2, not " pairs of wings "). Their feet were rriK'^ bjn " ^
straiglit foot;" the singular stands generically, stating only the
nature of the feet, without reference to their number. We
CHAP. I. 6-14. 23
have accordingly to assume in each of the four creatures two
legs, as iu a man. "i^'j, " straight," i.e. standing upright, not
bent, as when sitting or kneeling. PJ'i is the whole leg, includ-
ing the knee and thigh, and ?JT ^11, " sole of the foot," or the
under part of the leg, with which we ti'ead on the ground.
This part, not the whole leg, resembled the calf's foot, which is
firmly planted on the ground. The legs sparkled like the
appearance of ??ij DB'nj. The subject of D'yVi is not " the
D''3n3, which are understood to be intended under the ni'D in
verse fifth" (Hitzig), for this subject is too far distant, but
^Oy^Ij which is here construed as masculine, as in Jer. xiii. 16.
In this sense are these words apprehended in the Apocalypse,
i. 15, and <'?5 ^?'™ there translated by j^aX/coXs'ySai'o?. On this
word see Hengstenberg and Diisterdieck on the Apoc. i. 15.
bbp 'ru probably signifies " light," i.e. " bright, shining brass,"
as the old translators have rendered it. The Septuagint has
i^atTTpcuTrTtav ; the Vulgate, aes candens ; and the Chaldee para-
phrast, aes flammans. The signification " smoothed, polished
brass" (Bochart), rests upon uncertain combinations; cf. Gesen.
Thes. p. 1217, and is appropi'iate neither here nor in Dan. x. 6,
where these w^ords precede, " His face had the appearance of
lightning, and his eyes were as a flame of fire." Under the
four wings were four hands on the four sides of each cherub,
formed like the hands of a man. The wings accordingly
rested upon the shoulders, from which the hands came forth.
The Chetib H^l may certainly be defended if with Kimchi and
others we punctuate l^^l, and take the suffix distributively and
DIN elliptically, " his {i.e. each of the four creatures) hands
were (the hands of) a man;" cf. for such an ellipsis as this,
passages like that in Ps. xviii. 34, nip^xs 7J"i, « my feet as the
(feet) of hinds;" Job xxxv. 2, PKD, "before the righteousness
of God." It is extremely probable, however, that 1 is only the
error of an old copyist for i, and that the Keri ''l^l is the correct
reading, as the taking of mx elliptically is not in keeping with
the broad style of Ezekiel, which in its verbosity verges on
24 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tautology. The second half of ver. 8 is neither, with Havernick,
to be referred to the following ninth verse, where the faces are
no more spoken of, nor, with Hitzig, to be arbitrai-ily mutilated ;
but is to be taken as it stands, comprising all that has hitherto
been said regarding the faces and wings, in order to append there-
to in ver. 9 sqq. the description of the use and nature of these
members. The definite statement, that " the wings were joined
one to another," is in ver. 11 limited to the two upper wings,
according to which we have so to conceive the matter, that the
top or the upper right wing of each cherub came in contact
with the top of the left wing of the neighbouring cherub.
This junction presented to the eye of the seer the unity and
coherence of all the four creatures as a complete whole — a n'ri,
and implied, as a consequence, the harmonious action in common
of the four creatures. They did not turn as they went alonar
but proceeded each in the direction of his face. VJQ ^3V"?^?,
" over against his face." The meaning is thus rightly given by
Kliefoth : " As they had four faces, they needed not to turn as
tiiey went, but went on as (i.e. in the direction in which) they
were going, always after the face." In the closer description
of the faces in ver. 10, the face of the man is first mentioned
as that which was turned towards the seer, that of the lion to
the right side, the ox to the left, and that of the eagle (behind).
In naming these three, it is remarked that all the four creatures
had these faces : in naming the man's face, this remark is
omitted, because the word Dri''p3 (referring to all the four)
immediately precedes. In ver. 11, it is next remarked of the
faces and wings, that they were divided above (n^yiD^D^ « from
above," " upward ") ; then the direction of the wings is more
precisely stated. The word Qri\ja!i is neither to be referred to
the preceding, " and it was their faces," nor, with Hitzig, to be
expunged as a gloss ; but is quite in order as a statement that
not only the wings but also the faces were divided above, con-
sequently were not like Janus' faces upon one head, but the
four faces were planted upon four heads and necks. In the
CHAP. I. 5-14. 25
description that follows, ty'Sj! nhnin is not quite distinct, and
B'''K is manifestly to be taken as an abbreviation of 'b« nfvt
riniriN in ver, 9 : on each were two wings joining one another,
i.e. touching with their tops the tips of the wings of the cherub
beside them, in accordance with which we have to conceive
the wings as expanded. Two were covering their bodies, i.e.
each cherub covered his body with the pair of wings that folded
downwards ; not, as Kliefoth supposes, that the lower wings of
the one cherub covered the body of the other cherub beside
him, which also is not the meaning in ver. 23 ; see note on
that verse. In ver. 12, what is to be said about their move-
ments is brought to a conclusion, while both statements are
repeated in ver. 96, and completed by the addition of the
principium movens. In whatever direction the nn " was to go,
in that direction they went ;" i.e. not according to the action of
their own will, but wherever the n^"i impelled them, nn, how-
ever, signifies not " impulse," nor, in this place, even " the
wind," as the vehicle of the power of the spiritual life palpable
to the senses, which produced and guided their movements,
(Kliefoth), but spirit. For, according to ver. 20, the move-
ment of the wheels, which was in harmony with the movements
of the cherubim, was not caused by the wind, but proceeded
from the n>nn nn, i.e. from the spirit dwelling in the creature.
On the contrary, there is not in the whole description, with the
exception of the general statement that a tempestuous wind
drove from the north the great cloud in which the theophany
was enwrapped, any allusion to a means of motion palpable
to the senses. In the 13th and 14th verses is described the
entire impression produced by the movement of the whole
appearance. ni>nn rumi precedes, and is taken absolutely " as
regards the form of the creatures," and corresponds to the
ni»n yanx mm in ver. 5, with which the description of the indi-
vidual figures which appeared in the brightness of the fire was
introduced. Their appearance was like burning coals of fire,
like the appearance of torches. K^T refers to tf's as the principal
26 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
conception. Fire, like the fire of burning coals and torches,
went, moved hither and thither amongst the four creatures.
This fire presented a bright appearance, and out of it came
forth lightnings. The creatures, moreover, were in constant
motion, ^<is^, from KSi? an Aramaising form for the Hebrew
yv\, to run. The infin. ahsal. stands instead of the finite verb.
The conjecture of KiV^, after Gen. viii. 7 (Hitzig), is inappro-
priate, because here we have not to think of " coming out," and
no reason exists for the striking out of the words, as Hitzig
proposes. The continued motion of the creatures is not in
contradiction with their perpetually moving on straight before
them. "They went hither and thither, and yet always in the
direction of their countenances ; because they had a countenance
looking in the direction of every side " (Kliefoth). Pt3 signi-
fies not " lightning" (^P'la), but comes from pt3 ; in Syriac,
" to be split," and denotes " the splitting," i.e. the zigzag course
of the lightning (Kliefoth).
Vers. 15-21. The four wheels beside the cherubim. —
Ver. 15. And I saw the creatures, and, lo, there teas a wheel upon
the earth beside the creatures, toioards their four fronts. Ver. 16.
TJie appearance of the wheels and their work loas like the appear-
ance of the chrysolite ; and all four had one kind of figure : and
their appearance and their work was as if one wheel were within
the other. Ver. 17. Towards their four sides they went when
they onoved : they turned not as they went. Ver. 18. And their
felloes, tliey were high and terrible ; and their felloes icere full of
eyes round about in all the four. Ver. 19. And when the
creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them ; and when the
creatures raised themselves up from the earth, the wheels also
raised themselves. Ver. 20. Whithersoever the spirit was to go,
they went in the direction in luhich the spirit was to go ; and the
wheels raised themselves beside them : for the spirit of the creatures
was in the wheels. Ver. 21. When the former moved, the latter
moved also ; ichen the former stood, the latter stood ; and when
the former raised themselves from the ground, the wheels raised
CHAP. I. 15-21. 27
themselves hekide them : for the spirit of the creatures was in the
wheels. — The words, " and I saw ' the creatures," prepare the
way for the transition to the new object which presented itself
in these creatures to the eye of the seer. By the side of these
creatures upon the ground he sees a wheel, and that at the four
fronts, or front faces of the creatures. The singular suffix in
VJQ nvaiN? can neither be referred, with Eosenmiiller, to the
chariot, which is not mentioned at all, nor, with Hitzig, to the
preposition PXX, nor, with Havernick, Maurer, and Kliefoth, to
I3it<, and so be understood as if every wheel looked towards four
sides, because a second wheel was inserted in it at right' angles.
This meaning is not to be found iu the words. The suffix
refers ad sensum to ni>n (Ewald), or, to express it more correctly,
to the figure of the cherubim with its four faces turned to the
front, conceived as a unity — as one creature (fij^ri, ver. 22). Ac-
cordingly, we have so to represent the matter, that by the side
of the four cherubim, namely, beside his front face, a wheel
was to be seen upon the earth. Ezekiel then saw four wheels,
one on each front of a cherub, and therefore immediately
speaks in ver. 16 of wheels (in the plural). In this verse '">?"!?
is adspectus, and HB'yD " work ;" i.e. both statements employing
the term " construction," although in the first hemistich only
the appearance, in the second only the construction, of the
wheels is described. E'''E'"in is the chrysolite of the ancients,
the topaz of the moderns, — a stone having the lustre of gold.
The construction of the wheels was as if one wheel were
within a wheel, i.e. as if in the wheel a second were inserted at
right angles, so that without being turned it could go towards
all the four sides. in''33, in ver. 18, stands absolutely. " As
regards their felloes," they possessed height and terribleness,
— the latter because they were full of eyes all round. Hitzig
arbitrarily understands !=l3a of the upper sides ; and HK")^, after
the Arabic, of the under side, or that which lies towards the
back. The movement of the wheels completely followed the
movement of the creatures (vers. 19-21), because the spirit of
28 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
the creature was in the wheels. '^\^^, in vers. 20 and 21, is
not the " principle of life " (Havernick), but the cherubic
creatures conceived as a unity, as in ver. 22, where the mean-
incr is undoubted. The sense is : the tyheels were, in their
motion and rest, completely bound by the movements and rest
of the creatures, because the spirit which ruled in them was
also in the wheels, and regulated their going, standing, and
rising upwards. By the n>nn mn the wheels are bound in one
with the cherub-figures, but not by means of a chariot, to or
upon which the cherubim were attached.
Vers. 22-28. The throne of Jehovah.— Ver. 22. Atid over the
heads of the creature there appeared an expanse like the appear-
ance of the terrible crystal, stretched out over their heads above.
Ver. 23. And under the expanse icere their wings, extended
straight one toioards another : each had two wings, covering to these,
and each two (wings), covering to those, their bodies, Ver. 24.
And I heard the sound of their wings, as the sound of many waters,
like the voice of the Almighty, as they went: a loud rushing like
the clamour of a camp : when they stood, they let down their
wings. Ver. 25. And there came a voice from above the ex-
panse which was above their heads; when they stood, they let
their wings sink down. Ver. 26. Over the expanse above their
heads was to be seen, like a sapphire stone, the fgure of a throne:
and over the figure of the throne was a figure resembling a man
above it. Ver. 27. And I saw like the appearance of glowing
brass, like the appearance of fire within the same round about ;
from the appearance of his loins upwards, and from the appear-
ance of his loins downwards, I saw as of the appearance of fire,
and a shining light was round about it. Ver. 28. Like the
appearance of the boio, which is in the clouds in the day of rain,
teas the appearance of the shining light round about. This was
the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah. And 1
saw it, and fell upon my face, and I heard the voice of one that
spake. — Above, over the heads of the figures of the cherubim
Ezekiel sees something like the firmament of heaven (ver.
CHAP. L 22-28. 29
22 sq.), and hears from above this canopy a voice, which re-
echoes ill the rushing of the v\rings of the cherubim, and deter-
mines the movement as well as the standing still of these
creatures. The first sentence of ver. 22 literally signifies :
" And a likeness was over the heads of the creature, — a canopj-,
as it were, stretched out." ^[>1 is not the genitive after niD'n,
but an explanatory apposition to it, and before J?''i?"i ; neither
has 3 fallen out (as Hitzig supposes), nor is it to be supplied.
For niO'i denotes not any definite likeness, with which another
could be compared, but, properly, similitudo, and is employed
by Ezekiel in the sense of " something like." TiP^, without the
article, does not mean the firmament of heaven, but any ex-
panse, the appearance of which is first described as resembling
the firmament by the words n^jsn j^jjs. It is not the firmament
of heaven which Ezekiel sees above the heads of the cherubim,
but an expanse resembling it, which has the shining appearance
of a fear-inspiring crystal, t^'fii, used of crystal, in so far as
the appearance of this glittering mass dazzles the eyes, and
assures terror, as in Judg. xiii. 6, of the look of tlie angel ; and
in Job xxxvii. 22, of the divine majesty. The description is
based upon Ex. xxiv. 10, and the similitude of the crystal has
passed over to the Apocalypse, iv. 6. Under the canopy were
the wings of the cherubim, rinB''_, standing straight, i.e. spread
out in a horizontal direction, so that they appeared to support
the canopy. nniriN'PN riB'X is not, with Jerome and others, to
be referred to the cherubim (i^'ni]), but to Dn''B33j as in ver. 9.
The ^''iO which follows does refer, on the contrary, to the
cherub, and literally signifies, " To each were two vikings, cover-
ing, namely, to these and those, their bodies." nan? corresponds
to C''^^, in a manner analogous to on? nriN? in ver. 6. By the
repetition of the n|n?, "to these and those," the four cherubim
are divided into two pairs, standing opposite to one another.
That this statement contradicts, as Hitzig asserts, the first half
of the verse, is by no means evident. If the two creatures on
each side covered their bodies with the two wings, then two
30 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Other wings could very easily be so extended under the canopy
that the tops of the one should touch those of the other. As
the creatures moved, Ezekiel hears the sound, i.e. the rustling
of their wings, like the roaring of mighty billows. This is
strengthened by the second comparison, " like the voice of the
Almighty," i.e. resembling thunder, cf. x. 5. The n?Dn ?ip
that follows still depends on VOfK. "pon, which occurs only
here and in Jer. xi. 6, is probably synonymous with iion,
" roaring," " noise," " tumult." This rushing sound, however,
was heard only when the creatures were in motion ; for when
they stood, they allowed their wings to fall down. This, of
course, applies only to the upper wings, as the under ones,
which covered the body, hung downwards, or were let down.
From this it clearly appears that the upper wings neither sup-
ported nor bore up the canopy over their heads, but only were
so extended, when the cherubim were in motion, that they
touched the canopy. In ver. 25 is also mentioned whence the
loud sound came, which was heard, during the moving of the
wings, from above the canopy, consequently from him who was
placed above it, so that the creatures, always after this voice
resounded, went on or stood still, i.e. put themselves in motion,
or remained without moving, according to its command. With
the repetition of the last clause of ver. 24 this subject is con-
cluded in ver. 25. Over or above upon the firmament was to
be seen, like a sapphire stone, the likeness of a throne, on which
sat one in the form of a man — i.e. Jehovah appeared in human
form, as in Dan. vii. 9 sq. Upon this was poured out a fiery,
shining light, like glowing brass (^DB'n py, as in ver. 4) and
like fire, 3^30 n^-n*3, "within it round about" (n''3p = n''3,
" within," and a?, pointing back to NB3 niOT). This appears
to be the simplest explanation of these obscure words. They
are rendered differently by Hitzig, who translates them : " like
fire which has a covering round about it, i.e. like fire which is
enclosed, whose shining contrasts so much the more brightly on
account of the dark surroundings." But, to say nothing of
CHAP. I. 22-28. 31
the change which would then be necessary of ri'3 into n^3,
this meaning seems very far-fetched, and cannot be accepted
for this reason alone, that B'K f^^?10, neither in the following
hemistich (ver. 276) nor in viii. 2, has any such or similar
strengthening addition. The appearance above shows, as the
centre of the cloud (ver. 4), a fiery gleam of light, only there
is to be perceived upon the throne a figure resembling a man,
fiery-looking from the loins upwards and downwards, and
round about the figure, or rather round the throne, a shining
light (Hii, cf. ver. 4), like the rainbow in the clouds, cf. Apoc.
iv. 3. This [nw, ver. 28, does not refer to i^iSn, but to the whole
appearance of him who was enthroned, — the covering of light
included, but throne and cherubim (x. 4, 19) excluded (Hitzig)]
was the appearance of the likeness of Jehovah's glory. With
these words closes the description of the vision. The following
clause, " And I saw, etc.," forms the transition to the word of
Jehovah, which follows on the second chapter, and which sum-
moned Ezekiel to become a prophet to Israel. Before we pass,
however, to an explanation of this word, we must endeavour to
form to ourselves a clear conception of the significance of this
theophany.
For its full understanding we have first of all to keep in
view that it was imparted to Ezekiel not merely on his being
called to the office of prophet, but was again repeated three
times, — namely, in ch. iii. 22 sqq., where he was commissioned
to predict symbolically the impending siege of Jerusalem ; ch.
viii. 4 sqq., when he is transported in spirit to the temple-court
at Jerusalem for the purpose of beholding the abominations of
the idol-worship practised by the people, and to announce the
judgment which, in consequence of these abominations, was to
burst upon the city and the temple, in which it is shown to
him how the glory of the Lord abandons, first the temple and
thereafter the city also; and in ch. xliii. 1 sqq., in which is
shown to him the filling of the new temple with the glory of
the Lord, to dwell for ever among the children of Israel. In
32 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
all tliree passages it is expressly testified that the divine ap-
pearance was like the first which he witnessed on the occasion
of his call. From this Kliefoth has drawn the right con-
clusion, that the theophany in ch. i. 4 sqq. bears a relation not
to the call only, but to the whole prophetic work of Ezekiel :
" We may not say that God so appears to Ezekiel at a later
time, because He so appeared to him at his call ; but we must
say, conversely, that because God wills and must so appear to
Ezekiel at a later time while engaged in his prophetic vocation,
therefore He also appears to him in this form already at his
call." The intention, however, with which God so appears to
him is distinctly contained in the two last passages, ch. viii.— xi.
and ch. xliii : " God withdraws in a visible manner from the
temple and Jerusalem, which are devoted to destmction on
account of the sin of the people: in a visible manner God
enters into the new temple of the future ; and because
the whole of what Ezekiel was inspired to foretell was
comprehended in these two things, — the destruction of the
existing temple and city, and the raising up of a new and
a better; — because the whole of his prophetic vocation had
its fulfilment in these, therefore God appears to Ezekiel on
his call to be a prophet in the same form as that in which He
departs from the ancient temple and Jerusalem, in order to
their destruction, and in which He enters into the new edifice
in order to make it a temple. The form of the theophany, there-
fore, is what it is in i. 4 sqq., because its purpose was to show
and announce to the prophet, on the one side the destrnction
of the temple, and on the other its restoration and glorification."
These remarks are quite correct, only the significance of the
theophany itself is not thereby made clear. If it is clear from
the purpose indicated why God here has the cherubim with Him
wliile on the occasion of other appearances (e.g. Dan. vii. 9 •
Isa. vi. 1) He is without cherubim ; as the cherubim here have
no other significancy than what their figures have in the taber-
nacle, viz. that God has there His dwelling-place, the seat of
CHAP, I. 22-28. 33
His gracious presence; yet this does not satisfactorily explain
either the special marks by which the cherubim of Ezekiel are
distinguished from those in the tabernacle and in Solomon's
temple, or the other attributes of the theophany. Kliefoth,
moreover, does not misapprehend those diversities in the figures
of the cherubim, and finds indicated therein the intention of
causing it distinctly to appear that it is the one and same
Jehovah, enthroned amid the cherubim, who destroys the
temple, and who again uprears it. Because Ezekiel was called
to predict both events, he therefore thinks there must be
excluded, on the one hand, such attributes in the form of the
manifestation as would be out of harmony with the different
aims of the theophany; while, on the other, those which are
important for the different aims must be combined and com-
prehended in one form, that this one form may be appropriate
to all the manifestations of the theophany. It could not there-
fore have in it the ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat ;
because, although these would probably have been appropriate
to the manifestation for the destruction of the old temple (viii.
1 sqq.), they would not have been in keeping with that for
entering into the new temple. Instead of this, it must show
the living God Himself upon the throne among "the living
creatures;" because it belongs to the new and glorious existence
of the temple of the future, that it should have Jehovah Him-
self dwelling within it in a visible form. From this, too, may
be explained the great fulness of the attributes, which are
divisible into three classes : 1. Those which relate to the mani-
festation of God for the destruction of Jerusalem; 2. Those
which relate to the manifestation of God for entering into the
new temple ; and, 3. Those which serve both objects in com-
mon. To the last class belongs everything which is essential
to the manifestation of God in itself, e.g. the visibiHty of God in
general, the presence of the cherubim in itself, and so on : to
tlie first class all the signs that indicate wrath and judgment,
consequently, first, the coming from the north, especially the
EZEK. I. O
34 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
fire, the lightnings, in which God appears as He who is coming
to judgment ; but to the second, besides the rainbow and the
appearance of God in human form, especially the wheels and
the fourfold manifestation in the cherubim and wheels. For the
new temple does not represent the rebuilding of the temple by
Zerubbabel, but the economy of salvation founded by Christ at
His appearing, to which they belong as essential tokens ; to be
founded, on the one hand, by God's own coming and dwelling
upon the earth ; on the other, to be of an cecumenic character,
in opposition to the particularities and local nature of the pre-
vious ancient dispensation of salvation. God appears bodily,
in human form ; lowers down to earth the canopy on which
His throne is seated; the cherubim, which indicate God's
gracious presence with His people, appear not merely in symbol,
but in living reality, plant their feet upon the ground, while
each cherub has at his side a wheel, which moves, not in the
air, but only upon the earth. By this it is shown that God
Himself is to descend to the earth, to walk and to dwell visibly
among His people ; while the cecumenic character of the new
economy of salvation, for the establishment of which God is
to visit the earth, is represented in the fourfold form of the
cherubim and wheels. The number four — the sign of the
cecnmenicity which is to come, and the symbol of its being
spread abroad into all the world — is assigned to the cherubim
and wheels, to portray the spreading abroad of the new kingdom
of God over the whole earth. But how much soever that is
true and striking this attempt at explanation may contain in
details, it does not touch the heart of the subject, and is not
free from bold combinations. The correctness of the assump-
tion, that in the theophany attributes of an opposite kind are
united, namely, such as should refer only to the destruction of
Jerusalem and of the temple, and such as relate only to tlie
foundation and nature of the new economy of salvation is
beset with well-founded doubts. Wliy, on such a hypothesis
should the form of the theophany remain the same throutrhout
CHAP. I. 22-28. 35
in all three or four cases? This question, which lies on the
surface, is not satisfactorily answered by the remark that
Ezekiel had to predict not only the destruction of the old, but
also the foundation of a new and much more glorious kingdom
of God. For not only would this end, but also the object of
showing that it is the same God who is to accomplish both,
have been fully attained if the theophany had remained the
same only in those attributes which emblemize in a general
way God's gracious presence in His temple ; while the special
attributes, which typify only the one and the other purpose of
the divine appearance, would only then have been added, or
brought prominently out, where this or that element of the
theophany had to be announced. Moreover, the necessity in
general of a theophany for the purpose alleged is not evident,
much less the necessity of a theophany so peculiar in form.
Other prophets also, e.g. Micah, without having seen a theo-
phany, have predicted in the clearest and distinctest manner
both the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the
raising up of a new and more glorious kingdom of God. The
reason, then, why Ezekiel witnessed such a theophany, not
only at his call, but had it repeated to him at every new turn
in his prophetic ministry, must be deeper than that assigned ;
and the theophany must have another meaning than that of
merely consecrating the prophet for the purpose of announcing
both the judgment upon Jerusalem and the temple, and the
raising up of a new and more glorious economy of salvation,
and strengthening the word of the prophet by a symbolical
representation of its contents.
To recognise this meaning, we must endeavour to form a
distinct conception, not merely of the principal elements of our
theophany, but to take into consideration at the same time their
relation to other theophanies. In our theophany three elements
are unmistakeably prominent, — 1st, The peculiarly formed
cherubim ; 2d, The wheels are seen beside the cherubim ; and,
3d, The firmament above, both with the throne and the form of
36 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
God in human shape seated upon the throne. The order of
these three elements in the description is perhaps hardly of
any importance, but is simply explicable from this, that to the
seer who is on earth it is the under part of the figure which,
appearing visibly in the clouds, first presents itself, and that
his look next turns to the upper part of the theophany.
Especially significant above all, however, is the appearance of
the cherubim under or at the throne of God ; and by this it is
indisputably pointed out that He who appears upon the throne
is the same God that is enthroned in the temple between the
cherubim of the mercy - seat upon their outspread wings.
Whatever opinion may be formed regarding the nature and
significance of the cherubim, this much is undoubtedly estab-
lished, that they belong essentially to the symbolical repre-
sentation of Jehovah's gracious presence in Israel, and that
this portion of our vision has its real foundation in the plastic
representation of this gracious relation in the Holy of Holies
of the tabernacle or temple. As, however, opinions are divided
on the subject of the meaning of these symbols, and the
cherubim of Ezekiel, moreover, present no inconsiderable differ-
ences in their four faces and four wings from the figures of
the cherubim upon the mercy-seat and in the temple, which
had only one face and two wings, we must, for the full under-
standing of our vision, look a little more closely to the nature
and significance of the cherubim.
While, according to the older view, the cherubim are angelic
beings of a higher order, the opinion at the present day is
widely prevalent, that they are only symbolical figures, to which
nothing real corresponds, — merely ideal representations of
creature life in its highest fulness.^ This modern view, how-
' Compare the investigation of the cherubim in my Handhuch der Bih-
Uaclten Arclimologie, I. pp. 86 sqq. and 113 sqq. ; also 'K-lMoth.'s Ahlandlmg
uber die ZaUensymbolik der heiligen Schrift in der Theolog. Zeitschrift von
Dieckhoffund Kliefoth, III. p. 381 sqq., where especially the older view-
that the cherubim are angelic beings of a higher rank— is defended in a
thorough manner, and the daring hypothesis of Hofmann signally refuted •
CHAP. I. 22-28. 37
ever, finds in the circumstance that the cherubim iu the Israel-
itish sanctuary, as well as in Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse,
are symbolical figures of varying shape, only an apparent but
no real support. The cherubim occur for the first time in the
history of Paradise, where, in Gen. iii. 22-24, it is related that
God, after expelling the first human pair from Paradise, placed
at the east side of the garden the cherubim and the flame of a
sword, which turned hither and thither, to guard the way to the
tree of life. If this narrative contains historical truth, and is
not merely a myth or philosopheme ; if Paradise and the Fall,
with their consequences, extending over all humanity, are to
remain real things and occurrences, — then must the cherubim
also be taken as real beings. " For God will not have placed
symbols — pure creations of Hebrew fancy — at the gate of
Paradise," Kliefoth. Upon the basis of this narrative, Ezekiel
also held the cherubim to be spiritual beings of a higlier rank.
This appears from ch. xxviii. 14-16, where he compares the
prince of Tyre, in reference to the high and glorious position
which God had assigned him, to a cherub, and to Elohim.
It does not at all conflict with the recognition of the cherubim
as real beings, and, indeed, as spiritual or angelic beings, that
they are employed in visions to represent super-sensible rela-
tions, or are represented in a plastic form in the sanctuary of
Israel. " When angels," as Kliefoth correctly remarks in re-
ference to this, " sing the song of praise in the holy night, this
is an historical occurrence, and these angels are real angels,
who testify by their appearance that there are such beings as
angels ; but when, in the Apocalypse, angels pour forth sounds
of wrath, these angels are figures in vision, as elsewhere, also,
men and objects are seen in vision." But even this employment
of the angels as " figures " in vision, rests upon the belief that
lastly, Ed. C. Aug. Riehm, De natura et noiione synibolica Cheruhorum,
Commentat. Basil. 186i, who, proceeding from the view— adopted by Bahr,
Heiigstenberg, and others— that the cherubim were only symbolical figures,
has sought to determine more minutely the meaning of these symbols.
38 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
there are actually beings of this kind. Biblical symbolism
furnishes not a single undoubted instance of abstract ideas, or
ideal creations of the imagination, being represented by the
prophets as living beings. Under the plastic representation of
the cherubim upon the mercy-seat, and in the most holy and
holy place of the tabernacle and the temple, lies the idea, that
these are heavenly, spiritual beings ; for in the tabernacle and
temple (which was built after its pattern) essential relations of
the kingdom of God are embodied, and all the symbols derived
from things having a real existence. When, however, on the
other hand, Hengstenberg objects, on Apoc. iv. 6, " that what
Vitrinca remarks is sufficient to refute those who, under the
cherubim, would understand angels of rank, — viz. that these
four creatures are throughout the whole of this vision connected
with the assembly of the elders, and are distinguished not only
from the angels, but from all the angels, as is done in ch.
vii. 11," — we must regard this refutation as altogether futile.
From the division of the heavenly assembly before the throne
into two choirs or classes (Apoc. v. and vii.), — in which the ^aia
(cherubim) and the elders form the one (v. 8), the ayjeXoi
the other choir (ver. 11), — an argument can be as little derived
against the angelic nature of the cherubim, as it could be
shown, from the distinction between the aTpana ovpdvLO^ and
dyyeXo'i, in Luke ii. 13, that the " multitude of the heavenly
host" were no angels at all. And the passage in Apoc. vii. 11
would only then furnish the supposed proof against the re-
lationship of the cherubim to the angels, if Trwre? ajyeXot
in general — all angels, how numerous soever they may be —
were spoken of. But the very tenor of the words, Travre? ol
dyyeXoi, "all the angels," points back to the choir of ano-els
already mentioned in ch. v. 11, which was formed by ttoXXoi
dyyeXoi, whose number was ten thousand times ten thousand
and thousands of thousands.^ From the distinction between
' See on this distinction Winer's Grammar of New Testament Greek
(Moulton's translation), p. 137, where, among other remarks, it is observed
CHAP. I. 22-28. 39
the 0a and the ayryeKoi in the Apocalypse, no further in-
ference can be deduced than that the cherubim are not common
angels, "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister" (Heb. i.
14), but constitute a special class of angels of higher rank.
More exact information regarding the relationship of the cheru-
bim to the other angels, or their nature, cannot indeed be
obtained, either from the name cheruhim or from the circum-
stance that, with the exception of Gen. iii., they occur always
only in connection with the throne of God. The etymology of
the word 3113 is obscure: all the derivations that have been
proposed from the Hebrew or any other Semitic dialect cannot
make the slightest pretensions to probability. The word appears
to have come down from antiquity along with the tradition of
Paradise. See my Biblical ArchcBology, p. 88 sqq. If we take
into consideration, however, that Ezekiel calls them rii*n, and
first in ch. x. employs the name C?'"!?, known from the taber-
nacle, or rather from the history of Paradise ; since, as may
be inferred from x. 20, he first recognised, from the repetition
of the theophany related in ch, x., that the living creatures
seen in the vision were cherubim, — we may, from the designa-
tion ni*n, form a supposition, if not as to their nature, at least
as to the significance of their position towards the throne of
God. They are termed ni>n, " living," not as being " ideal
representatives of all living things upon the earth " (Hengsten-
berg), but as beings which, among all the creatures in heaven
and earth, possess ^nd manifest life in the fullest sense of the
word, and on that very account, of all spiritual beings, stand
nearest to the God of the spirits of all flesh (who lives from
eternity to eternity), and encircle His throne. With this repre-
sentation harmonises not only the fact, that after the expulsion
of the first human beings from Paradise, God commanded them
to guard the way to the tree of life, but also the form in which
that " irccatit yivia-t are all generations, whatever their number; ■Traaui
ai yn/eai (Matt. i. 17), all the generations, — those which, either from the
context or in some other way, are familiar as a definite number."
40 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tliey were represented in the sanctuary and in tlie visions.
The cherubim in the sanctuary had the form of a man, and
were only marked out by their wings as super-terrestrial beings,
not bound by the earthly limits of space. The cherubim in
Ezekiel and the Apocalypse also preserve the appearance of a
man. Angels also assume the human form when they appear
visibly to men on earth, because of all earthly creatures man,
created in the image of God, takes the first and highest place.
For although the divine image principally consists in the
spiritual nature of man, — in the soul breathed into him by the
Spirit of God, — yet his bodily fonn, as the vessel of this soul,
is the most perfect corporeity of which we have any know-
ledge, and as such forms the most appropriate garment for
rendering visible the heavenly spiritual being within. But the
cherubim in our vision exhibit, besides the figure of the human
body with the face of a man, also the face of the lion, of the
ox, and of the eagle, and four wings, and appear as four-sided,
square-formed beings, with a face on each of their four sides,
so that they go in any direction without turning, and yet,
while so doing, they can always proceed in the direction of one
face ; while in the vision in the Apocalypse, the four faces of
the creatures named are divided among the four cherubim, so
that each has only one of them. In the countenance of man
is portraj^ed his soul and spirit, and in each one also of the
higher order of animals, its nature. The union of the lion, ox,
and eagle-faces with that of man in the cherubim, is intended,
doubtless, to represent them as beings which possess the ful-
ness and the power of life, which in the earthly creation is
divided among the four creatures named. The Rabbinical
dictum (Schemoth Rahha, Schottgen, Eora Hebraicce,-^. 1168) :
Quatuor sunt qui principatum in hoc mundo tenent. Int&i'
creaturas homo, inter aves aquila, inter pecora bos, inter bestias
leo, contains a truth, even if there lies at the foundation
of it the idea that these four creatures represent the entire
earthly creation. For in the cherub, the living powers of these
CHAP. I. 22-28. 41
four creatures are actually united. That the eagle, namely,
comes into consideration only in reference to his power of
flight, in which he excels all other birds, may be concluded
from the circumstance that in Apoc. iv. 7 the fourth ^wov is
described as resembling an eagle flying. According to this
principle, the ox and the lion are only to be considered in
reference to their physical strength, in virtue of which the ox
amongst tame animals, the lion amongst wild beasts, take the
first place, while man, through the power of his mind, asserts
his supremacy over all earthly creatures.^ The number four,
lastly, both of the cherubim and of the four faces of each
cherub in our vision, is connected with their capacity to go in
all directions without turning, and can contribute nothing in
favour of the assumption that these four indicate the whole
living creation, upon the simple ground that the number four
is not essential to them, for on the mercy-seat only two cheru-
bim are found. That they are also represented in the vision
as higher spiritual beings, appears not only from Ezek. x. 7,
where a cherub stretches forth his hand and fetches out fire
from between the cherubim, and places it in the hands of the
angel clothed in white linen, who was to accomplish the burn-
ing of Jerusalem ; but, still more distinctly, from what is said
in the Apocalypse regarding their working. Here we observe
them, as Khefoth has already pointed out, " in manifold
activity : they utter day and night the Tersanctus ; they offer
worship, iv. 8, 9, v. 8, xix. 4 ; they repeat the Amen to the
song of praise from all creation, v. 14 ; they invite John to see
what the four first seals are accomplishing, vi. 1, 3, 5, 7 ; one
of them gives to the seven angels the seven phials of wrath,
XV. 7."
1 This has been already rightly recognised hy Eiehm, I.e. p. 21 ff., who
has dra\rn from it the inference : quaternis igitur faciehus eximiae vires
atque facultates significantur clierahis a deo ad munus suum. sustinendum
impertiiae, which is connected with the erroneous representation that the
cherubim are intended to bear the throne of God, and to carry the Lord of
the world.
42 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Besides this activity of theirs in the carrying out of the
divine counsel of salvation, we must, in order to gain as clear
a vievy as possible of the significance of the cherubim in our
vision, as well as in Biblical symbolism generally, keep also in
view the position which, in the Apocalypse, they occupy around
the throne of God. Those who are assembled about the throne
form these three concentric circles : the four fwa (cherubim)
form the innermost circle; the twenty-four elders, seated upon
thrones, clothed in white garments, and wearing golden crowns
upon their heads, compose the wider circle that follows; while
the third, and widest of all, is formed by the many angels, whose
number was many thousands of thousands (Apoc. iv. 4, 6, v. 6,
8, vii. 11). To these are added the great, innumerable host,
standing before the throne, of the just made perfect from
among all heathens, peoples, and languages, in white raiment,
and with palms in their hands, who have come out of great
tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them w'hite
in the blood of the Lamb, and now, before the throne of God,
serve Him day and night in His temple (vii. 9, 14, 15). Ac-
cordingly the twenty-four elders, as the patriarchs of the Old
and New Testament congregation of God, have their place
beside God's throne, between the cherubim and the myriads of
the other angels ; and in the same manner as they are exalted
above the angels, are the cherubim exalted even above them.
This position of the cherubim justifies the conclusion that they
have the name of ^coa from the indwelling fulness of the ever-
lasting blessed life which is within them, and which streams
out from the Creator of spirits— the King of all kino-s, and
Lord of all lords — upon the spiritual beings of heaven, and
that the cherubim immediately surround the throne of God, as
being representatives and bearers of the everlasting life of
blessedness, which men, created in the image of God, have for-
feited by the Fall, but which they are again, from the infini-
tude of the divine compassion, to recover in the divine kinc^dom
founded for the redemption of fallen humanity.
CHAP. I. 22-28. 43
It is easier to recognise the meaning of the wheels which in
our vision appear beside the cherubim. The wheel serves to
put the chariot in motion. Although the throne of God is not
now expressly represented and designated as a chariot-throne,
yet there can be no doubt that the wheels which Ezekiel sees
under the throne beside the cherubim are intended to indicate
the possibility and ease with which the throne can be moved in
the direction of the four quarters of the heavens. The mean-
ing of the eyes, however, is matter of controversy, with which,
according to i. 18, the felloes of the wheels, and, as is expressly
mentioned in ch. x. 12, and also noted in Apoc. iv. 6, the
cherubim themselves are furnished all round. According to
Kliefoth, the eyes serve the purpose of motion; and as the
movement of the cherubim and wheels indicates the spreading
abroad over the whole earth of the new economy of salvation,
this mass of eyes in the cherubim and wheels must indicate that
this spreading abroad is to take place, not through blind acci-
dent, but with conscious clearness. The meaning is not appro-
priate to Apoc. iv. 6, where the cherubim have no wheels
beside them, and where a going forth into all countries is not
to be thought of. Here therefore, according to Kliefoth, the
eyes only serve to bring into view the moral and physical
powers which have created and supported the kingdom of God
upon earth, and which are also to bring it now to its consum-
mation. This is manifestly arbitrary, as any support from
passages of the Bible in favour of the one view or the other is
entirely wanting. The remark of Eosenmiiller is nearer the
truth, that by the multitude of the eyes is denoted Coelestium
naturarum perspicacia et o^vwiria, and leads to the correct
explanation of Apoc. v. 6, where the seven eyes of the Lamb
are declared to be tu eina irvevfjiaTa rov Qeov, ra aireaTaXfiiva
ei? iraerav ttjv yriv ; the eyes consequently indicate the spiritual
effects which proceed from the Lamb over the entire earth in a
manner analogous to His seven horns, which are the symbols
of the completeness of His power. The eye, then, is the
44 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
picture and mirror of the Spirit ; and the ornamentation of the
cherubim and wheels with eyes, shows that the power of the
divine Spirit dwells within theui, and determines and guides
their movements.
The remaining objects of the vision are not difficult to explain.
The appearance of the expanse over above the cherubim and
wheels, upon which a throne is to be seen, represents the firma-
ment or heaven as the place of God's throne. God appears
upon the throne in human form, in the terrible glory of His
holy majesty. The whole appearance draws nigh to the
prophet in the covering of a great fiery cloud (ver. 4). This
cloud points back to the " thick cloud " in which Jehovah, in the
ancient time, descended upon Mount Sinai amid thunders and
lightnings (Ex. xix. 16) to establish His covenant of grace,
promised to the patriarchs with their seed, — the people of Israel
brought forth from Egypt, — and to found His kingdom of
grace upon the earth. If we observe the connection of our
theophany with that manifestation of God on Sinai for the
founding of the Old Testament dispensation of salvation, we
shall neither confine the fire and the lightnings in our vision to
the manifestation of God for the destruction of Jerusalem and
the temple, nor refer the splendour which appears above the
throne in the form of a rainbow to the grace which returns
after the execution of judgment, or to the new dispensation of
salvation which is to be established. Nor may we regard these
differing attributes, by referring them specially to individual
historical elements of the revelation of God in His kingdom, as
in opposition ; but must conceive of them, more generally and
from the point of view of unity, as symbols of the righteousness,
holiness, and grace which God reveals in the preservation,
government, and consummation of His kingdom. It holds
true also of our theophany what Diisterdieck remarks on Apoc.
iv. 3 (cf. p. 219 of the second edition of his Commentary) re-
garding the importance of the divine appearance described in
that passage : " We may not hastily apply in a general way
CHAP. L 22-28. 45
the description befoi'e us by special reference to the judgments
of God (which are seen at a later time) in their relation to the
divine grace ; it is enough that here, where the everlasting and
personal ground of all that follows is described, the sacred
glory and righteousness of God appear in the closest connec-
tion with His unchanging, friendly grace, so that the entire
future development of the kingdom of God, and of the world
down to the final termination, as that is determined by the
marvellous unity of being which is in the holy, righteous, and
gracious God, must not only according to its course, but also
according to its object, correspond to this threefold glory of the
living God." As this fundamental vision (of the Apocalypse)
contains all that serves to alarm the enemies and to comfort'
the friends of Him who sits on the throne, so the vision of
Ezekiel also has its fundamental significance not only for the
whole of the prophet's ministry, but, generally, for the con-
tinuation and development of the kingdom of God in Israel,
until its aim has been reached in its consummation in glory
This, its fundamental significance, unmistakeably appears from
the twofold circumstance, — firstly, that the theophany was
imparted to the prophet at his call, and was then repeated at
the principal points in his prophetic ministry, at the announce-
ment both of the dissolution of the old kingdom of God by the
destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, ch. ix.-xi., and also
at the erection of the new temple and a new arrangement of
the kingdom (ch. xl.-xlviii.). Since, as was formerly already
remarked (p. 35), a theophany was not required either for the
calling of Ezekiel to the office of a prophet, or for the announce-
ment which was entrusted to him of the annihilation of the old
and the foundation of the new kingdom of God, so the revela-
tion of God, which pointed in its phenomenal shape to the
dwelling of the Lord among His people in the Holy of Holies
in the temple (and which was imparted in this place to Ezekiel,
living among the exiles in the land of Chaldea by the banks of
the Ohebar), could only be intended, in view of the dissolution
46 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of the theocracy, which had already begun, and was shortly
to be completed, to give to the prophet and those of his con-
temporaries who were living with him in exile, a real pledge
that the essential element of the theocracy was not to be
removed by the penal judgment which was passing over the
sinful people and kingdom ; but that God the Lord would still
continue to attest Himself to His people as the living God, and
preserve His kingdom, and one day bring it again to a glorious
consummation. — In correspondence with this aim, God appears
in the temple in the symbolical forms of His gracious presence
as He who is throned above the cherubim ; but cherubim and
throne are furnished with attributes, which represent the
movement of the throne in all directions, not merely to indicate
the spreading of the kingdom of God over all the earth, but to
reveal Himself as Lord and King, whose might extends over
the whole world, and who possesses the power to judge all the
heathen, and to liberate from their bondage His people, who
have been given into their hands, if they repent and turn unto
Him ; and who will again gather them together, and raise them
in the place of their inheritance to the glory which had been
promised.
Such is the significance of the theophany at the inaugura-
tion of Ezekiel to the prophetic office. The significance, how-
ever, which its repetition possesses is clearly contained in the
facts which the prophet was herewith permitted by God to
behold. From the temple and city, polluted by sinful abomi-
nations, the gracious presence of God departs, in order that
temple and city may be given over to the judgment of de-
struction ; into the new and glorious temple tliere enters
again the glory of God, to dwell for ever among the children
of Israel.
Chap. ii. 1-iii. 3. Call of Ezekiel to the PEOPnETio
Office — Vers. 1 and 2. Upon the manifestation of the Lord
follows the word of vocation. Having, in the feeling of his
CHAP. II. 1, 2. 47
weakness and sinfulness, fallen to the ground before the terrible
revelation of Jehovah's glory, Ezekiel is first of all raised up
again by the voice of God, to hear the word which calls him to
the prophetic function. — Ver. 1. And He said to me, Son of man,
stand upon thy feet, I will speak with thee. Ver. 2. The7i came
spirit unto me as He spake unto me, and it placed me on my feet,
and I heard Him speaking unto me. — The address D'lH'ia occurs
so frequently in Ezekiel, that it must be regarded as one of the
peculiarities of his prophecies. Elsewhere it occurs only once,
Dan. viii. 17. That it is significant, is generally recognised,
although its meaning is variously given. Most expositors take
it as a reminder of the weakness and frailness of human nature ;
Coccejus and Kliefoth, on the contrary, connect it with the
circumstance that God appears to Ezekiel in human form, and
find in it a TeKfiijpiov amicitice, that God speaks in him as man
to man, converses with him as a man with his friend. This
last interpretation, however, has against it the usus loquendi.
As DIN'p denotes man according to his natural condition, it is
T T ' V O 7
used throughout as a synonym with SJ'iJX, denoting the weakness
and fragility of man in opposition to God ; cf. Ps. viii. 5 ;
Job XXV. 6 ; Isa. li. 12, Ivi. 2 ; and Num. xxiii. 19. This is
the meaning also of 0"]^'|3 in the address, as may be distinctly
seen from the various addresses in Daniel. Daniel is addressed,
where comfort is to be imparted to him, as niian B'''K, " man
greatly beloved," Dan. x. 11, 19, cf. ix. 23; but, on the con-
trary, in ch. viii. 17, where he has fallen on his face in terror
before the appearance of Gabriel, with the words, " Under-
stand, O son of man," in order to remind him of his human
weakness. This is also the case in our verse, where Ezekiel, too,
had fallen upon his face, and by God's word spoken to him, is
again raised to his feet. It is only in Ezekiel that this address
is constantly employed to mark the distance between the human
weakness of his nature and the divine power which gives him
the capacity and the impulse to speak. Not, however, with
the design, mentioned by Jerome on Dan. viii. 17, "that he
48 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
may not be elated on account of his high calling," because, as
Havernick subjoins, Ezekiel's extremely powerful and forcible
nature may have needed to be perpetually reminded of what it
is in reality before God. If this were the meaning and object
of this address, it would also probably occur in the writings of
several of the other prophets, as the supposition that the nature
of Ezekiel was more powerful and forcible than that of the
other prophets is altogether without foundation. The constant
use of this form of address in Ezekiel is connected rather with
the manner and fashion in which most of the revelations were
imparted to hira, that is, with the prevalence of " vision," in
which the distinction between God and man comes out more
prominently than in ordinary inspiration or revelation, effected
by means of an impression upon the inner faculties of man. The
bringing prominently forward, however, of the distance between
God and men is to remind the prophet, as well as the people
to whom he commuuicated his revelations, not merely of the
weakness of humanity, but to show them, at the same time,
how powerfully the word of God operates in feeble man, and
also that God, who has selected the prophet as the organ of His
will, possesses also the power to redeem the people, that were
lying powerless under the oppression of the heathen, from their
misery, and to raise them up again. — At the word of the Lord,
" Stand upon thy feet," came TOT into the prophet, which raised
him to his feet, rm here is not " life, consciousness " (Hitzig),
but the spirit-power which proceeds from God, and which is
conveyed through the word which imparted to him the strength
to stand before the face of God, and to undertake His command.
"'?'!!*?, partic. Hithpa., properly "collocutor," occurs here and
in ch. xliii. 6, and in Num. vii. 89; elsewhere, only in
2 Sam. xiv. 13.
Vers. 3-7. The calling of the prophet begins with the Lord
describing to Ezekiel the people to whom He is sending him
in order to make him acquainted with the difficulties of his
vocation, and to encourage him for the discharge of the same.
CHAP. It 3-7. 49
Ver. 3. And He said to me, Son of man, T send thee to the chil-
dren of Israel, to the rebels loho have rebelled against me : they
and their fathers have fallen aioay from, me, even until thii
veiy day. Ver. 4. And the children are of hard face, and
hardened heart. To them I send thee ; and to them shalt thou speak :
Thus says the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 5. And they, — they may hear
thee or fail {to do so) ; for they are a stiff-necked race, — they shall
experience that a prophet has been in their midst. Ver. 6. J3ut
thou, son of man, fear not before them, and be not afraid of their
words, if thistles and thorns are round about thee, and thou sittest
upon scorpions; fear not before their loords, and tremble not
before their faces ; for they are a stiff-necked race. Ver. 1. And
speak my words to them, whether they may hear or fail (to do so) ;
for they are stiff-necked.
The children of Israel have become heathen, no longer a
people of God, not even a heathen nation (^ij, Isa. i. 4), but
D^ia, " heathens," that is, as being rebels against God, D'''i"]ii3n
(with the article) is not to be joined as an adjective to D'.iii,
•which is without the article, but is employed substantively in
the form of an apposition. They have rebelled against God in
this, that they, like their fathers, have separated themselves
from Jehovah down to this day (as regards 3 VB'3, see on Isa.
i. 2 ; and njn Di>n DVy, as in the Pentateuch ; cf . Lev. xxiii. 14 ;
Gen. vii. 13, xvii. 23, etc.). Like their fathers, the sons are
rebellious, and, in addition, they are D'?S 'K'p, of hard counte-
nance " = nSD 'i5tn, « of hard brow " (iii. 7), i.e. impudent,
without hiding the face, or lowering the look for shame. This
shamelessness springs from hardness of heart. To these
hardened sinners Ezekiel is to announce the word of the Lord.
Whether they hear it or not (DXI — DN, sive — sive, as in Josh.
xxiv. 15 ; Eccles. xi. 3, xii. 14), they shall in any case experi-
ence that a prophet has been amongst them. That they will
neglect to hear is very probable, because they are a stiff-necked
race {n% " house " = family). The Vau before WT (ver. 5)
introduces the apodosis. n^n is perfect, not present. This is
EZEK. I. D
50 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
demanded by tlie it.vts loquendi and the connection of the
thought. The meaning is not : they shall know from his testi-
mony that a prophet is there ; but they shall experience from
the result, viz. when the word announced by him will have
been fulfilled, that a prophet has been amongst them. Ezekiel,
therefore, is not to be prevented by fear of them and their
words from delivering a testimony against their sins. The aira^
Xeyo/Msva, B''?'^D and C^ipp, are not, with the older expositors, to
be explained adjectively: " rebelles et reniientes," but are sub-
stantives. As regards !i?p, the signification " thorn " is placed
beyond doubt by fvPO in xxviii. 24, and 3^0 in Aramaic does
indeed denote " refractarius ;" but this signification is a derived
one, and inappropriate here. 3^p is related to ^'IV, " to burn,
to singe," and means " urtica,'" " stinging-nettle, thistle," as
Donasch in Raschi has already explained it. Tjnix is, accordiui;
to the later usage, for ^JJN, expressing the " by and with of
association," and occurs frequently in Ezekiel. Thistles and
thorns are emblems of dangerous, hostile men. The thought
is strengthened by the words "to sit on (?N for ^V) scorpions," as
these animals inflict a painful and dangerous wound. For the
similitude of dangerous men to scorpions, cf. Sir. xxvi. 10, and
other proof passages in Bochart, Hierozoic. III. p. 551 sq,, ed.
Rosenmlill.
Ver. 8 ad fin. and ch. iii. 3.— After the Lord had pointed
out to the propliet the difficulties of the call laid upon him, He
prepares him for the performance of his office, by inspirino- him
with the divine word which he is to announce.— Ver. 8. And
thou, son of man, hear tohat I say to thee, Be not stiff-necked
like the stiff-necked race ; open thy mouth, and eat what I give
unto thee. Ver. 9. Then T saw, and, lo, a hand outstretched
towards me ; and, lo, in the same a roll of a book. Ver.
10. And He spread it out before me ; the same ivas loritten upon
the front and back : and there were loritten upon it lamentations,
and sighing, and woe. Ch. iii. 1. And He said to me : Son oj
man, what thou findest eat; eat the roll, and go and speak to the
CHAP. II. 8-III. 3. 51
house of Israel. Ver. 2. Then opened I my mouthy and He gave
me this roll to eat. Ver. 3. And said to me : Son of man, feed
thy belly, and fill thy body with this roll lohich I give thee* And
1 ate it, and it was in my mouth as honey and sweetness.- — The
prophet is to announce to the people of Israel only that which
the Lord inspires him to announce. Tliis thought is emhodied
in symbol, in such a way that an outstretched hand reaches to
him a book, which he is to swallow, and which also, at God's
command, he does swallow ; cf. Apoc. x. 9 sqq. This roll was
inscribed on both sides with lamentations, sighing, and woe ("n
is either abbreviated from 'n^, not = ''X, or as Ewald, § 101c,
thinks, is only a more distinct form of ''in or in). The meaning
is not, that upon the roll was inscribed a multitude of mournful
expressions of every kind, but that there was written upon it
all that the prophet was to announce, and what we now read in
his book. These contents were of a mournful nature, for they
related to the destruction of the kingdom, the destruction of
Jerusalem and of the temple. That Ezekiel may look over the
contents, the roll is spread out before his eyes, and then handed
to him to be eaten, with the words, " Go and speak to the
children of Israel," i.e. announce to the children of Israel what
you have received into yourself, or as it is termed in ver. 5,
•■lai, " my words." The words in iii. 3a were spoken by God
while handing to the prophet the roll to be eaten. He is not
merely to eat, i.e. take it into his mouth, but he is to fill his
body and belly therewith, i.e. he is to receive into his innermost
being the word of God presented to him, to change it, as it
were, into sap and blood. "Whilst eating it, it was sweet in his
mouth. The sweet taste must no.t, with Kliefoth, be explained
away into a sweet " after-taste," and made to bear this refer-
ence, that the destruction of Jerusalem would be followed by a
more glorious restoration. The roll, inscribed with lamentation,
sorrow, and woe, tasted to him sweetly, because its contents was
God's word, which sufficed for the joy and gladness of his
heart (Jer. xv. 16); for it is "infinitely sweet and lovely to
X
52 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
be the-organ and spokesman of the Omnipotent," and even the
most painful of divine truths possess to a spiritually-minded
man a joyful and quickening side (Hengstenberg on the Apoc.
X. 9). To this it is added, that the divine penal judgments
reveal not only the holiness and righteousness of God, but also
prepare the way for the revelation of salvation, and minister to
the saving of the soul.
Chap. iii. 4-21. The Sending op the Prophet. —
This consists in God's promise to give him power to over-
come the diflBculties of his vocation (vers. 4-9) ; in next trans-
porting him to the place where he is to labour (vers. 10-15) ;
and lastly, in laying upon him the responsibility of the souls
entrusted to his charge (vers. 16-21). After Ezekiel had
testified, by eating the roll which had been given him, his
willingness to announce the word of the Lord, the Lord
acquaints him with the peculiar difficulties of his vocation, and
promises to bestow upon him strength to overcome them. —
Ver. 4. And He said to me, Son of man, go away to the house
of Israel, and speak with my words to them. Ver. 5. For not
to a people of hollow lips and heavy tongue art thou sent, (but) to
the house of Israel. Ver. 6. Not to many nations of hollow lips
and heavy tongue, whose words thou dost not understand ; but to
them have I sent thee, they can understand thee. Ver. 7. But the
house of Israel will not hear thee, because they will not hear me ;
for the whole house of Israel, of hard brow and hardened heart
are they. Ver. 8. Lo, I make thy countenance hard like their
countenances, and thy brow hard like their brow. Ver. 9. hike
to adamant, horde)- than rock, do I make thy brow : fear not, and
tremble not before them, for they are a stiff-necked race. — The
contents of this section present a great similarity to those in
ch. ii. 3-7, inasmuch as here as well as there the obduracy and
stiff-neckedness of Israel is stated as a hindrance which opposes
the success of Ezekiel's work. This is done here, however, in
a different relation than there, so that there is no tautolotry.
CHAP. III. 4-9. 53
Here, where the Lord is sending the prophet, He first brings
prominently forward what lightens the performance of his
mission ; and next, the obduracy of Israel, which surrounds it
with difficulty for him, in order at the same time to promise
him strength for the vanquishing of these difficulties. Ezekiel
is to speak, in the words communicated to him by God, to the
house (people) of Israel. This he can do, because Israel is not
a foreign nation with an unintelligible language, but possesses
the capacity of understanding the words of the prophet
(vers. 5-7), nSK' "iippy Dy, " a people of deep lips," i.e. of a style
of speech hollow, and hard to be understood ; cf. Isa. xxxiii. 19.
''e> "ipOJJ is not genitive, and DP is not the status constructus, but
au adjective belonging to DV, and used in the plural, because DV
contains a collective conception. "And of heavy tongue," i.e.
with a language the understanding of which is attended with
great difficulty. Both epithets denote a barbarously sounding,
unintelligible, foreign tongue. The unintelligibility of a lan-
guage, however, does not alone consist in unacquaintance with
the meaning of its words and sounds, but also in the pecu-
liarities of each nation's style of thought, of which language is
only the expression in sounds. In this respect we may, with
Coccejus and Kliefoth, refer the prophet's inability to under-
stand the language of the heathen to this, that their manner of
thinking and speaking was not formed according to the word
of God, but was developed out of purely earthly, and even
God-resisting factors. Only the exclusive prominence given
by Kliefoth to this side of the subject is incorrect, because
irreconcilable with the words, "many nations, whose words
(discourse) thou dost not understand " (ver. 6). These words
show that the unintelligibility of the language lies in not
understanding the sounds of its words. Before ''^ ri''?"''^, in
ver. 5, the adversative particle sed is omitted (cf . Ewald, § 354a) ;
the omission here is perhaps caused by this, that nwB* nriN, in
consequence of its position between both sentences, can be
referred to both> In ver. 6 the thought of ver. 5 is expanded
54 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
by the addition of D''31 Q^sy, "many nations" wltli different
languages, in order to show that it is not in the ability, but in
the willingness, to hear the word of the Lord that the Israelites
are wanting. It is not to many nations with unintelligible
languages that God is sending the prophet, but to such men as
are able to hear him, i.e. can understand his language. The
second hemistich of ver. 6 is rendered by the old translators as
if they had not read N? after DX, " if J sent thee to them (the
heathen), they viould hear thee." Modern expositors have
endeavoured to extract this meaning, either by taking N? DN as
a particle of adjuration, profecto, " verily" (Rosenmiiller, Haver-
nick, and others), or reading t<p D^<, as Ewald does, after Gen.
xsiii. 13. But the one is as untenable as the other : acrainst
f^.p 0^5 stands the fact that !i^ is written with i, not with k ;
against the view that it is a particle of adjuration, stands partly
tlie position of the words before ?B' Q^vX, which, according to
the sense, must belong to 'OC' iiDH, partly the impossibility of
taking '^''FinPSf conditionally after the preceding i6 DN. " If
such were the case, Ezekiel would have really done all he could
to conceal his meaning" (Hitzig), for ii'? DX, after a negative
sentence preceding, signifies " but ;" cf. Gen. xxiv. 38.
Consequently neither the one view nor the other yields an
appropriate sense. "If I had sent thee to the heathen,"
involves a repenting of the act, which is not beseeming in God.
Against the meaning "profecto" is the consideration that the
idea, " Had I sent thee to the heathen, verily they would hear
thee," is in contradiction with the designation of the heathen as
those whose language the prophet does not understand. If the
heathen spoke a language unintelligible to the prophet, they
consequently did not understand his speech, and could not
therefore comprehend his preaching. It only remains, then, to
apply the sentence simply to the Israelites, " not to heathen
nations, but to the Israelites have I sent thee," and to take
WOw". as potential, "they are able to fear thee," "they can
understand thy words*" This in ver. 7 is closed by the antithesis
CHAP. III. 10-15. 55
" But the house of Israel will not hear tliee, because they will
not hear me (Jehovah), as they are morally hardened." With
Ih, cf. ii. 4, The Lord, however, will provide His prophet with
power to resist this obduracy ; will lend him unbending courage
and unshaken firmness, ver. 8 ; cf. Jer. xv. 20. He will make
his brow hard as adamant (cf. Zech. vii. 12), which is harder
than rock ; therefore he shall not fear before the obduracy of
Israel. IV, as in Ex. iv. 25, = 1W. As parallel passages in
regard of the subject-matter, cf. Isa. 1. 7 and Jer. i. 18.
Vers. 10-15. Prepared then for his vocation, Ezekiel is
now transported to the sphere of his activity. — Ver. 10. And
He said to me, Son of man, all m,y words which 1 shall speak to
thee, take into thy heart, and hear with thine ears. Ver. 11. And
go to the exiles, to the children of thy people, and speak to them,
and say to them, " Tims saith the Lord Jehovah," whether they
may hear thee or fail (to hear thee). Ver, 12. And a wind
raised me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great tumult,
" Praised he the glory of Jehovah," from, their place hitherward.
Ver, 13, And the noise of the wings of the creatures touching
each other, and the noise of the wheels beside them, the noise of a
great tumult. Ver. 14. And a wind raised me up, and took rfie,
and I went thither embittered in the warmth of my spirit ; and the
hand of Jehovah was strong upon me. Ver, 15. And I came to
Tel~A bib to the exiles, who dwelled by the river Chehar, and where
they sat tliere sat I down seven days, motionless and dumb, in
their midst. — The apparent hysteron proteron, " take into thy
heart, and hear with thine ears" (ver. 10), disappears so soon
as it is observed that the clause " hear with thine ears " is con-
nected with the following " go to the exiles," etc. The meaning
is not, " postquam auribus tuis percepisses mea mandata, ea ne
oblivioni tradas, sed corde suscipe et animo infge" (Rosen-
miiller), but this, " All my words which I shall speak to thee
lay to heart, that thou mayest obey them. When thou hast
heard my words with thine ears, then go to the exiles and an-
nounce them to them." With ver. 11 cf. ii. 4, 5. Observe that
56 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
it is Still 1I3J? "33, " the children of thy " (not " my ") " people."
Stiff-necked Israel is no longer Jehovah's people. The com-
mand " to go to the people " is, in ver. 12 sqq., immediately
executed by the prophet, the wind raising him up and transport-
ing him to Tel-Abib, among the exiles, nin, phenomenally
considered, is a wind of which God makes use to conduct the
prophet to the scene of his labour ; but the wind is only the
sensible substratum of the spirit which transports him thither.
The representation is, that " he was borne thither through the
air by the wind " (Kliefoth) ; but not as Jerome and Kliefoth
suppose, in ipso corpore, i.e. so that an actual bodily removal
through the air took place, but the raising up and taking away
by the wind was effected in spirit in the condition of ecstasy.
Not a syllable indicates that the theophany was at an end before
this removal ; the contrary rather is clearly indicated by the
remark that Ezekiel heard behind him the noise of the wings
of the cherubim and of the wheels. And that the words "3>?tS'n
nil do not necessitate us to suppose a bodily removal is shown
by the comparison with viii. 3, xi. 1, 24, where Kliefoth also
understands the same words in a spiritual sense of a merely
internal — i.e. experienced in a state of ecstasy — removal of the
prophet to Jerusalem and back again to Chaldea. The great
noise which Ezekiel hears behind him proceeds, at least in part,
from the appearance of the 'n" 1)23 being set in motion, but
(according to ver. 13) not in order to remove itself from the
raptured prophet, but by changing its present position, to
attend the prophet to the sphere of his labour. It tells
decidedly in favour of this supposition, that the prophet,
according to ver. 23, again sees around him the same theophany
in the valley where he begins his work. This reappearance,
indeed-, presupposes that it had previously disappeared from his
sight, but the disappearance is to be supposed as taking place
only after his call has been completed, i.e. after ver. 21. While
being removed in a condition of ecstasy, Ezekiel heard the
rushing sound, "Praised be the glory of Jehovah." iaipSD
CHAP. III. 10-15. 57
belongs not to 'W1 ^112, which would yield no appropriate sense,
but to yof'x, where it makes no difference of importance in the
meaning whether the suffix is referred to miT' or to lua.
Ezekiel heard the voice of the praise of God's glory issuing
forth from the place where Jehovah or His glory were to be
found, t.e. where they had appeared to the prophet, not at all
from the temple. Who sounded this song of praise is not
mentioned. Close by Ezekiel heard the sound, the rustling of
the wings of the cherubim setting themselves in motion, and
how the wings came into contact with the tips of each other,
touched each other (nip'E'a, from pB'J, " to join," " to touch one
another"). Ver. 14 describes the prophet's mood of mind as
he is carried away. Raised by the wind, and carried on, he
went, i.e. drove thither, nn nana ID, " bitter in the heat of his
spirit." Although 1J? is used as well of grief and mourning as
of wrath and displeasure, yet mourning and sorrow are not
appropriate to norij " warmth of spirit," " anger." The suppo-
sition, however, that sorrow as well as anger were in him, or
that he was melancholy while displeased (Kliefoth), is incom-
patible with the fundamental idea of lO as " sharp," " bitter."
Ezekiel feels himself deeply roused, even to the bitterness of
anger, partly by the obduracy of Israel, partly by the commis-
sion to announce to this obdurate people, without any prospect
of success, the word of the Lord. To so heavy a task he feels
himself unequal, therefore his natural man rebels against the
Spirit of God, which, seizing him with a strong and powerful
grasp, tears him away to the place of his work ; and he would
seek to withdraw himself from the divine call, as Moses and
Jonah once did. The hand of the Lord, however, was strong
upon him, i.e. " held him up in this inner struggle with unyield-
ing power" (Kliefoth) ; cf.Isa.viii.il. p|n, " firm," " strong,"
differs from I??, " heavy," Ps. xxxii. 4. n''3N br\, i.e. " the hill
of ears," is the name of the place where resided a colony of the
exiles. The place was situated on the river Ohebar (see on ch.
L 3), and derived its name, no doubt, from the fertility of the
58 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
valley, rich in grain (njjpan, ver. 23), by wliich it was sur-
rounded ; nothing further, however, is known of it ; cf. Gesen.
Tlmaur. p. 1505. The Chetih -\m\ at which the Masoretes
and many expositors have unnecessarily taken offence, is to be
read iti'XJ, and to be joined with the following DB', " where they
sat" (so rightly the Chaldee, Syriac, and Vulgate). That this
signification would be expressed differently, as Hitzig thinks,
cannot be established by means of Job xxxix. 30. The Keri
atf'NI is not only unnecessary, but also inappropriate, which
holds true also of other conjectures of modern expositors.
Ezekiel sat there seven days, D''?"-"'?, Le, neither " deprived of
sensation," nor "being silent," but as the partic. Hiphil from
DOB', as DDiiyp in Ezra ix. 3, 4, " rigidly without moving," there-
fore " motionless and dumb." The seven days are not regarded
as a period of mourning, in support of which Job ii. 13 is
referred to ; but as both the purification and the dedication and
preparation for a holy service is measured by the number seven,
as being the number of God's works (cf. Ex. xxix. 29 sqq. ;
Lev. viii. 33 sqq.; 2 Chron. xxix. 17), so Ezekiel sits for a
week " motionless and dumb," to master the impression which
the word of God, conveyed to him in ecstatic vision, had made
upon his mind, and to prepare and sanctify himself for his
vocation (Kliefoth).
Vers. 16-21. When these seven days are completed, there
comes to liim the final word, which appoints him watchman
over Israel, and places before him tlie task and responsibility
of his vocation. — Ver. 16. And it came to pass after the lapse
of seven days, that the luord of Jehovah came to tne as follows :
Ver. 17. Son of man, I have set thee to be a watchman over the
house of Israel ; thou shalt hear the ivord from my mouth, and
thou shalt laarn them from me Ver. 18. If I say to the sinner,
Thou shalt surely die, and thou loarnest him not, and speakest not
to warn the sinner from his evil way that he may live, then shall
he, the sinner, die because of his evil deeds, but his blood loill I
require at thy hand, Ver. 19. Bat if thou luarnest the sinner
CHAP. in. 16-21. 59
and he turn not from his ivickedness and Ms evil way, then shall
he die because of Ms evil deeds, hut thou hast saved thy soul.
Ver. 20. And if a righteous man turn from Ms righteousness,
and do unrighteousness, and T lay a stumblingblock before Mm,
then shall he die; if thou hast not warned Mm, he shall die
because of his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall
not be remembered, but his blood will I require at thy hand.
Ver. 21. But if thou loarnest him — the righteous man — so that
the righteous man sin not, and he do not sin, then will he live,
because he has been warned, and thou hast saved thy soul. — As a
prophet for Israel, Ezekiel is like one standing upon a watch-
tower (Hah. ii. 1), to watch over the condition of the people,
and warn them of the dangers that threaten them (Jer. vi. 17 ;
Isa. Ivi. 10). As such, he is responsible for the souls entrusted
to his charge. From the mouth of Jehovah, i.e. according; to
God's word, he is to admonish the wicked to turn from their
evil ways, that they die not in their sins. ''2?l?, " from me,"
i.e. in my name, and with my commission. " If I say to the
sinner," i.e. if I commission thee to say to him (Kimcbi). As
JTiDPi DID reminds us of Gen. ii. 17, so is the threatening, " his
blood will I require at thy hand," an allusion to Gen. ix. 5.
If the prophet does not warn the wicked man, as God has
commanded him, he renders himself guilty of a deadly sin, for
which God will take venceance on him as on the murderer for
the shedding of blood. An awfully solemn statement for all
ministers of the word. '^^J^'^J), in vers. 18 and 19, at which the
LXX. have stumbled, so that they have twice omitted it, is
not a substantive, and to be changed, with Hitzig, into nvty'l,
but is an adjective, foemin. gen., and belongs to iS^l, which is
construed as feminine. The righteous man who backslides is,
before God, regarded as equal with the sinner who persists
in his sin, if the former, notwithstanding the warning, perse-
veres in his backsliding (ver. 20 sqq.). iPI^."!? ^IB*, " to turn
oneself from his righteousness," denotes the formal falling
away from the path of righteousness, not mere " stumbling or
60 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
sinning from weakness." '?)V HE'y, " to do unrighteousness,"
"to act perversely," is '^ se prorsus dedere impietati" (Calvin).
fiityao 'rinjl belongs still to the protasis, ni»^ «in forming the
apodosis, not a relative sentence, — as Ewald and Hitzig
suppose, — " so that he, or, in consequence of which, he die."
i'iB'bo, " object of offence," by which any one comes to fall, is
not destruction, considered as punishment deserved (Calvin,
Havernick), but everything that God puts in the way of the
sinner, in order that the sin, which is germinating in his soul,
may come forth to the light, and ripen to maturity. God,
indeed, neither causes sin, nor desires the death of the sinner;
and in this sense He does not tempt to evil (Jas. i. 13), but He
guides and places the sinner in relations in life in which he
must come to a decision for or against what is good and divine,
and either suppress the sinful lusts of his heart, or burst the
barriers which are opposed to their satisfaction. If he does
not do the former, but the latter, evil gains within hira more
and more strength, so that he becomes the servant of sin, and
finally reaches a point where conversion is impossible. In this
consists the ?i5J'3'?, which God places before him, who turns
away from righteousness to unrighteousness or evil, but not in
this, that God lets man run on in order that he may die or
perish. For nvo^ does not stand for riDJ^ and there is therefore
no ground for a change of punctuation to carry forward
Athnach to W'lD.''? (Hitzig). For the subject spoken of is not
that the backsliding righteous man " in general only dies if he
is not warned" (Hitzig), — that meaning is not in ver. 21, " that
he, in contrast to the Vf"}, gives sure obedience to the warninw,"
— but only the possibility is supposed that a p^'iv, who has
transgressed upon the way of evil, will yield obedience to the
warning, but not that he will of a certainty do this. As with
the J'K'n in ver. 19, only the case of his resisting the warning
is expressly mentioned ; while the opposite case — that he may,
in consequence of the warning, be converted — is not excluded ;
so in ver. 21, with tlie P^IS, who has entered upon the path of
CHAP. III. 22-V. 17. 61
unrighteousness, only the case of conversion in consequence of
the warning is expressly mentioned, without the possibility of
his hardening himself against the prophet's word being thereby
excluded. For the instruction of the prophet it was sufficient
to bring forward the two cases mentioned, as it appears from
them that in the one case as well as in the other he has done
his duty, and saved his soul.
CHAP. III. 22- V. 17. THE DESTINY OF JERUSALEM AND ITS
INHABITANTS.
Vers. 22—27 in ch. iii. no longer belong to the prophet's
inauguration and introduction into office, nor do they form the
conclusion of his call, but the introduction to his first prophetic
act and prediction, as has been rightly recognised by Ewald
and Kliefoth. This appears already from the introductory
formula, "The hand of Jehovah came upon me" (ver. 22),
and, more distinctly still, from the glory of Jehovah appearing
anew to the prophet (when, in obedience to a divine impulse,
he bad gone down into the valley), in the form in which he had
seen it by the river Chebar, and giving him a commission to
announce by word and symbol the siege of Jerusalem, and
the fate of its inhabitants. For, that the divine commission did
not consist merely in the general directions, ch. iii. 25-27, but
is first given in its principal parts in ch. iv. and v., is indis-
putably evident from the repetition of the words ^1^"i^ i^?^)
in ch. iii. 25, iv. 1, and v. 1. With nriw neither can the first
nor, in general, a new prophecy begin. This has been recognised
by Hitzig himself in ch. iv. 1, where he remarks that the first
of the three oracles which follow down to viii. 1, and which he
makes begin with iv. 1, " attaches itself to ch. iii. 25-27 as a
continuation of the same." But what holds true of iv. 1 must
hold true also of iii. 25, viz. that no new oracle can begin
with this verse, but that it is connected with iii. 22-24. The
commencement, then, we have to seek in the formula, " and
62 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEUIEL.
the lianil of Jehovah came upon me" (iii. 22), with which
also viii. 1 (where only PaW stands instead of ''^'^]) and xl. 1 —
new oracles — are introduced. No doubt these passages are
preceded by chronological notices, while in iii. 22 every note of
time is wanting. But nothing further can be inferred from
this, than that the divine word contained in iii. 25-v. 17 was
imparted to the prophet immediately after his consecration and
call, so that it still falls under the date of ch. i. 2 ; which may
also be discovered from this, that the DB* in ver. 22 points to
the locality named in ver. 15.
Immediately after his call, then, and still in the same place
where the last word of calling (iii. 16-21) was addressed to
him, namely, at Tel-Abib, in the midst of the exiles, Ezekiel
received the first divine revelation which, as prophet, he was
to announce to the people. This revelation is introduced by
the words in ch. iii. 22-24; and divided into three sections by
the thrice-occurring, similar address, " And thou, son of man "
(iii. 25, iv, 1, v. 1). In the first section, ch. iii. 25-27, God
gives him general injunctions as to his conduct while carrying
out the divine commission ; in the second, ch. iv.. He com-
mands him to represent symbolically the siege of Jerusalem
with its miseries ; and in the third, ch. v., the destiny of the
inhabitants after the capture of the city.
Chap. iii. 22-27. Introduction to the first prophetic announce-
ment. — Ver. 22. And there came upon me there the hand of
Jehovah^ and He said to me, Up I go into the valley, there will 1
speak to thee. Ver. 23. And I arose, andwent into the valley : and,
lo, there stood the glory of Jehovah, like the glory which I had seen
at the river Chebar : and I fell upon my face. Ver. 24. And
spirit came into me, and placed me on my feet, and He spake
with we, and said to me. Go, and shut thyself in thy house. —
nypan is, without doubt, the valley situated near Tel-Abib.
Ezekiel is to go out from the midst of the exiles — where,
according to ver. 15, he had found himself — into the valley,
because God will reveal Himself to him only in solitude.
CHAP. III. 22-24 63
When he had complied with this command, there appears to
him there the glory of Jehovah, in the same form in which it
had appeared to him at the Chaboras (i. 4-28) ; before it he
falls, a second time, on his face ; but is also, as on the first
occasion, again raised to his feet, cf. i. 28-ii. 2. Hereupon
the Lord commands him to shut himself up in his house, —
which doubtless he inhabited in Tel-Abib, — not probably " as
a sign of his future destiny," as a realistic explanation of the
words, " Thou canst not walk in their midst (ver. 25) ; they
will prevent thee by force from freely exercising thy vocation
in the midst of the people." For in that case the " shutting of
himself up in the house " would be an arbitrary identification
with the " binding with fetters " (ver. 25) ; and besides, the
significance of the address D'lf* |3 nriKI, and its repetition in
iv. 1 and v. 1, would be misconceived. For as in iv. 1 and
V. 1 there are introduced with this address the principal parts
of the duty which Ezekiel was to perform, so the proper divine
instruction may also first begin with the same in iii. 25 ; conse-
quently the command " to shut himself up in his house " can
only have the significance of a preliminary divine injunction,
without possessing any significancy in itself ; but only " serve
as a means for carrying out what the prophet is commissioned
to do in the following chapters " (Kliefoth), i.e. can only mean
that he is to perform in his own house what is commanded him
in cli. iv. and v., or that he is not to leave his house during their
performance. More can hardly be sought in this injunction,
nor can it at all be taken to mean that, having shut himself up
from others in his house, he is to allow no one to approach
him ; but only that he is not to leave his dwelling. For,
according to iv. 3, the symbolical representation of the siege of
Jerusalem is to be a sign for the house of Israel ; and accord-
in<^ to iv. 12, Ezekiel is, during this symbolical action, to
bake his bread before their eyes. From this it is seen that
his contemporaries might come to him and observe his pro-
ceedings.
64 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Vers. 25-27. The general divine instructions. — Ver. 25.
And thou, son of man, lo, they will lay cords upon thee, and
bind thee therewith, so that thou canst not go out into their midst.
Ver. 26. And I shall make thy tongue cleave to thy palate, that
thou mayest be dumb, and may est not serve them as a reprover :
for they are a stiff-necked generation. Ver. 27. But when 1
speak to thee, I will open thy mouth, that thou mayest say to them,
Tims sayeth the Lord Jehovah, Let him who wishes to hear, hear ,
and let him who neglects, neglect {to hear) : for they are a stiff
necked generation. — The meaning of this general injunction
depends upon the determination of the subject in linj, ver. 25.
Most expositors think of the prophet's countrymen, who are to
bind him with cords so that he shall not be able to leave his
house. The words D3ina NVn NP1 appear to support this, as the
suffix in Daina indisputably refers to his countrymen. But this
circumstance is by no means decisive ; while against this view
is the twofold difficulty, — firstly, that a binding of the prophet
with cords by his countrymen is scarcely reconcilable with
what he performs in ch. iv. and v. ; secondly, of hostile attacks
by the exiles upon the prophet there is not a trace to be
discovered in the entire remainder of the book. The house of
Israel is indeed repeatedly described as a stiff-necked race, as
hardened and obdurate towards God's word ; but any embitter-
ment of feeling against the prophet, which should have risen
so far as to bind him, or even to make direct attempts to pre-
vent him from exercising his prophetic calling, can, after what
is related in xxxiii. 30-33 regarding the position of the people
towards him, hardly be imagined. Further, the binding and
fettering of the prophet is to be regarded as of the same kind
with the cleaving of his tongue to his jaws, so that he should
be silent and not speak (ver. 26). It is God, however, who
suspends this dumbness over him ; and according to iv. 8, it is
also God who binds him with cords, so that he cannot stir from
one side to the other. The demonstrative power ojf the latter
passage is not to be weakened by the objection that it is a
CHAP. III. 25-27. 65
passage of an altogether different kind, and the connection
altogether different (Havernick). For the complete difference
between the two passages would first have to, be proved. The
object, indeed, of the binding of the prophet in iv. 8 is different
from that in our verse. Here it is to render it impossible for
the prophet to go out of the house ; in iv. 8, it is to prevent
him from moving from one side to the other. But the one
object does not exclude the other ; both statements coincide,
rather, in the general thought that the prophet must adapt
himself entirely to the divine will, — not only not leave the
house, but lie also for 390 days upon one side without turn-
ing. — We might rather, with Kliefoth, understand iv. 8 to
mean that God accomplished the binding of the prophet by
human instruments — viz. that He caused him to be bound
by foreigners (iii. 25). But this supposition also would only
be justified, if either the sense of the words in iii. 25, or other
good reasons, pronounced in favour of the view that it was
the exiles who had bound the prophet. But as this is not
the case, so we are not at liberty to explain the definite 'lynj,
" I lay on " (iv. 8), according to the indefinite 13113, " they lay
on," or " one lays on " (iii. 25) ; but must, on the contrary,
understand our verse in accordance with iv. 8, and (with
Hitzig) think of heavenly powers as the subject to wnj, — as in
Job vii. 3 ; Dan. iv. 28 ; Luke xii. 20, — without, in so doing,
completely identifying the declaration in our verse with that in
iv. 8, as if in the latter passage only that was brought to com-
pletion which had been here (iii. 25) predicted. If, however,
the binding of the prophet proceeds from invisible powers, the
expression is not to be understood literally, — of a binding with
material cords ; — but God binds him by a spiritual power, so
that he can neither leave his house nor go forth to his country-
men, nor, at a later time (iv. 8), change the position prescribed
to him. This is done, however, not to prevent the exercise of
his vocation, but, on the contrary, to make him fitted for the
successful performance of the work commanded him. He is
VOL. T. E
66 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
not to quit his house, nor enter into fellowship and intercourse
with his exiled countrymen, that he may show himself, by
separation from them, to be a prophet and organ of the Lord.
On the same grounds he is also (vers. 26, 27) to keep silence,
and not even correct them with words, but only to speak when
God opens his mouth for that purpose; to remain, moreover,
unconcerned whether they listen to his words or not (cf. ii.
4, 7). He is to do both of these things, because his contem-
poraries are a stiff-necked race ; cf . ver. 9 and ii. 5, 7. That
he may not speak from any impulse of his own, God will cause
his tongue to cleave to his jaws, so that he cannot speak ; cf.
Ps. cxxxvii. 6. " That the prophet is to refrain from all
speech — even from the utterance of the words given him by
God — will, oa the one hand, make the divine words which
he utters appear the more distinctly as such; while, on the
other, be an evidence to his hearers of the silent sorrow
with which he is filled by the contents of the divine
word, and with which they also ought justly to be filled "
(Kliefoth).
This state of silence, according to which he is only then to
speak when God opened his mouth for the utterance of words
which were to be given him, is, indeed, at first imposed upon
the prophet — as follows from the relation of vers. 25-27 to ch.
iv. and v. — only for the duration of the period ch. iii. 25 to
V. 17, or rather vii. 27. But the divine injunction extends, as
Kliefoth has rightly recognised, still further on — over the
whole period up to the fulfilment of his prophecies of threaten-
ing by the destruction of Jerusalem. This appears especially
from this, that in xxiv. 27 and xxxiii. 22 there is an undeni-
able reference to the silence imposed upon him in our verse
and with reference to which it is said, that when the messenaei-
should bring back the news of the fall of Jerusalem, his mouth
should be opened and he should be no longer dumb. The
reference in xxiv. 27 and in xxxiii. 22 to the verse before us
has been observed by most expositors; but several of them
CHAP. III. 25-27. 67
would limit the silence of the prophet merely to the time
which lies between ch. xsiv. and xxxiii. 21 sqq. This is quite
arbitrary, as neither in ch. xxiv. nor in ch. xxxiii. is silence
imposed upon him ; but in both chapters it is only stated that
he should no longer be dumb after the receipt of the intelli-
gence that Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Chaldeans.
The supposition of Schmieder, moreover, is untenable, that the
injunction of ver. 25 refers to the turning-point in the pro-
phet's office, which commenced on the day when the siege of
Jerusalem actually began. For although this day forms a
turning-point in the prophetic activity of Ezekiel, in so far as
he on it announced to the people for the last time the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem, and then spake no more to Israel until the
occurrence of this event, yet it is not said in xxiv. 27 that he
was then to be dumb from that day onwards. The hypothesis
then only remains, that what was imposed and enjoined on the
prophet, in vers. 26 and 27, should remain in force for the
whole period from the commencement of his prophetic activity
to the receipt of the news of the fall of Jerusalem, by the
arrival of a messenger on the banks of the Chaboras. There-
with is also connected the position of this injunction at the
head of the first prophecy delivered to him (not at his call), if
only the contents and importance of this oracle be understood
and recognised, that it embraces not merely the siege of
Jerusalem, but also the capture and destruction of the city,
and the dispersion of the people among the heathen, — conse-
quently contains in nuce all that Ezekiel had to announce to
the people down to the occurrence of this calamity, and which,
in all the divine words from ch. vi. to ch. xxiv., he had again
and again, though only in different ways, actually announced.
If all the discourses down to ch. xxiv. are only further exposi-
tions and attestations of the revelation of God in ch. iv. and v.,
then the behaviour which was enjoined on him at the time of
this announcement was to be maintained during all following
discourses of similar contents. Besides, for a correct apprecia-
68 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tion of the divine precept in vers. 26 and 27, it is also to be
noticed that the prophet is not to keep entire silence, except
when God inspires him to speak; but that his keeping silence
is explained to mean, that he is to be to his contemporaries no
n''3iD {}'''!<, " no reprover," and consequently will place their sins
before them to no greater extent, and in no other way, than
God expressly directs him. Understood in this way, the
silence is in contradiction neither with the words of God
communicated in eh. vi. to xxiv., nor with the predictions
directed against foreign nations in eh. sxv.-xxxiii., several of
which fall within the time of the siege of Jerusalem. Of. with
this the remark upon xxiv. 27 and xxxiii. 22.
Chap. iv. The Sign of the Siege op Jerusalem. — This
sign, which Ezekiel is to perform in his own house before
the eyes of the exiles who visit him, consists in three inter-
connected and mutually-supplementary symbolical acts, the
first of which is described in vers. 1—3, the second in vers. 4—8,
and the third in vers. 9-17. In the first place, he is symboli-
cally to represent the impending siege of Jerusalem (vers. 1-3);
in the second place, by lying upon one side, he is to announce
the punishment of Israel's sin (vers. 4-8) ; in the third place,
by the nature of his food, he is, while lying upon one side, to
hold forth to view the terrible consequences of the siege to
Israel. The close connection as to their subject-matter of these
three actions appears clearly from this, that the prophet, accord-
to ver. 7, while lying upon one side, is to direct his look and
his arm upon the picture of the besieged city before him ; and,
according to ver. 8, is to lie upon his side as long as the siege
lasts, and during that time is to nourish himself in the manner
prescribed in ver. 9 sqq. In harmony with this is the formal
division of the chapter, inasmuch as the three acts, which the
prophet is to perform for the purpose of portraying the im-
pending siege of Jerusalem, are co-ordinated to each other
by the repetition of the address nriNl in vers. 3, 4, and 8
CHAP. IV. 1-3. 69
and subordinated to the general injunction — to portray Jeru-
salem as a besieged city — introduced in ver. 1 with the words
tua n nnxi.
T T ' V T - :
Vers. 1-3. The first symbolical action. — Ver. 1. And ihoUj
son of man, take to thyself a brickj and lay it before thee, and
draw thereon a city, Jerusalem : Ver. 2. And direct a siege
against it ; luild against it siege-towers, raise up a mound against
it, erect camps against it, and place battering-rams against it
roundabout. Ver. ,3. And thou, take to thyself an iron pan,
and place it as an iron wall between thee and the city, and direct
thy face towards it ; thus let it be in a state of siege, and besiege
it. Let it be a sign to the house of Israel,
The directions in vers. 1 and 2 contain the general basis for
the symbolical siege of Jerusalem, which the prophet is to lay
before Israel as a sign. Upon a brick he is to sketch a city
(Pisrij to engrave with a writing instrument) which is to repre-
sent Jerusalem : around the city he is to erect siege-works —
towers, walls, camps, and battering-rams ; i.e. he is to inscribe
the representation of them, and place before himself the picture
of the besieged city. The selection of a brick, i.e. of a tile-
stone, not burnt in a kiln, but merely dried in the sun, is not,
as Havernick supposes, a reminiscence of Babylon and monu-
mental inscriptions ; in Palestine, also, such bricks were a
common building material (Isa. ix. 9), in consequence of which
the selection of such a soft mass of clay, on which a picture
might be easily inscribed, was readily suggested. liSD \T^ =
niV» DItJ'j Mic. iv. 14, " to make a siege,'' i.e. " to bring forward
siege-works." l^VD is therefore the general expression which
is specialized in the following clauses by p^.'n, "siege-towers"
(see on 2 Kings xxv. 1) ; by nppb, " mound " (see on 2 Sam.
XX. 15) ; niJnn, " camps" in the plural, because the hostile army
raises several camps around the city ; C^s, " battering-rams,"
" wall-breakers," arietes ; according to Joseph Kimchi, " iron
rams," to break in the walls (and gates, xxi. 27). They con-
sisted of strong beams of hard wood, furnished at the end
70 THE PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
with a ram's head made of iron, which were suspended by a
chain, and driven forcibly against the wall by the soldiers.
Compare the description of them by Josephus, de bello Judai'-o
iii. 7. 19. The suffix in nvV, in ver. 2, refers to I'V. The siege-
works which are named were not probably to be placed by
Ezekiel as little figures around the brick, so that the latter
would represent the city, but to be engraved upon the brick
around the city thereon portrayed. The expressions, " to make
a siege," " to build towers," " to erect a mound," etc., are
selected because the drawing was to represent what is done
when a city is besieged. In ver. 3, in reference to this, the
inscribed picture of the city is at once termed " city," and in
ver. 7 the picture of the besieged Jerusalem, " the siege of
Jerusalem." The meaning of the picture is clear. Everyone
who saw it was to recognise that Jerusalem will be besieged.
But the prophet is to do still more ; he is to take in hand the
siege itself, and to carry it out. To that end, he is to place an
iron pan as an iron wall between himself and the city sketched
on the brick, and direct his countenance stedfastly towards the
city (PD)j and so besiege it. The iron pan, erected as a wall,
is to represent neither the wall of the city (Ewald) nor the
enemies' rampart, for this was already depicted on the brick ;
while to represent it, i.e. the city wall, as " iron," i.e. immove-
ably fast, would be contrary to the meaning of the prophecy.
The iron wall represents, as Eosenmiiller, after the hints of
Theodoret, Cornelius a Lapide, and others, has already observed,
a firm, impregnable wall of partition, which the prophet as
messenger and representative of God is to raise between himself
and the beleaguered city, ut significaret, quasi ferveum munim
interjectum esse cives inter et se, i.e. Deum Deique decretum et
sententiam contra illos latam esse irrevocahilem, nee Deum. civium
preces et querimonias auditurum aut iis ad misericordiam flec-
tendum. Of. Isa lix. 2 ; Lam. iii. 44. nana, " pan," i.e. an
iron plate for baking their loaves and slices of cakes ; see on
Lev. ii. 5. The selection of such an iron plate for the purpose
CHAP. IV. 4-8. 7i
mentioned is not to be explained, as Kliefoth thinks, from the
circumstance that the pan is primarily to serve the prophet for
preparing his food while he is occupied- in completing his
sketch. The text says nothing of that. If he were to liave
employed the pan for such a purpose, he could not, at the same
time, have placed it as a wall between himself and the city.
The choice is to be explained simply from this, that such a plate
was to be found in every household, and was quite fitted for the
object intended. If any other symbolical element is contained
in it, the hard ignoble metal might, perhaps, with Grotius, be
taken to typify the hard, wicked heart of the inhabitants of
Jerusalem ; cf. xxii. 18 ; Jer. xv. 12. The symbolical siege
of Jerusalem is to be a sign for the house of Israel, i.e.
a pre-announcement of its impending destiny. The house
of Israel is the whole covenant people, not merely the ten
tribes as in ver. 5, in contradistinction to the house of Judali
(ver. 6).
Vers. 4-8. The second symbolical act. — Ver. 4. And do thou
lay thyself upon thy left side., and lay upon it the evil deeds of the
house of Israel ; for the number of the days during which thou
liest thereon shalt thou hear their evil deeds. Ver. 5. And 1
reckon to thee the years of their evil deeds as a number of days ;
three hundred and ninety days shalt thou bear the evil deeds of
the house of Israel. Ver. 6. And (when) thou hast completed
these, thou shalt then lay thyself a second time upon thy right side,
and bear the evil deeds of the house of Judah forty days ; each
day I reckon to thee as a year. Ver. 7. And upon the siege of
Jerusalem, shalt thou stedfastly direct thy countenance, and thy
naked arm, and shalt prophesy against it. Ver. 8. And, lo,
I lay cords upon thee, that thou stir not from one side to the other
until thou hast ended the days of thy siege. — Whilst Ezekiel, as
HS God's representative, carries out in a symbolical manner the
siege of Jerusalem, he is in this situation to portray at the
same time the destiny of the people of Israel beleaguered in
their metropolis. Lying upon his left side for 390 days without
72 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
turning, he is to bear the guilt of Israel's sin ; then, lying 40
days more upon his right side, he is to bear the guilt of Judah's
sin. In so doing, the number of the days during which he
reclines upon his sides shall be accounted as exactly equal to
the same number of years of their sinning. |iy KJ'J, " to bear
the evil deeds," i.e. to take upon himself the consequence of sin,
and to atone for them, to suffer the punishment of sin ; cf. Num.
xiv. 34, etc. Sin, which produces guilt and punishment, is re-
garded as a burden or weight, which Ezekiel is to lay upon the
side upon which he reclines, and in this way bear it. This bear-
ing, however, of the guilt of sin is not to be viewed as vicarious
and mediatorial, as in the sacrifice of atonement, but is intended
as purely epideictic and symbolical ; that is to say, Ezekiel,
by his lying so long bound under the burden of Israel and
Judah which was laid upon his side, is to show to the people
how they are to be cast down by the siege of Jerusalem, and
how, while lying on the ground, without the possibility of
turning or rising, they are to bear the punishment of their
sins. The full understanding of this symbolical act, bow-
ever, depends upon the explanation of the specified periods
of time, with regard to which the various views exhibit great
discrepancy.
In the first place, the separation of the guilt into that of the
house of Israel and that of the house of Judah is closely con-
nected with the division of the covenant people into the two
kingdoms of Israel and Judah. That Ezekiel now is to bear
the sin of Israel upon the left, that of Judah on the right side,
is not fully explained by the circumstance that the kingdom of
the ten tribes lay to the left, i.e. to the north, the kingdom
of Judah to the right, i.e. to the sonth of Jerusalem, but
must undoubtedly point at the same time to the pre-eminence
of Judah over Israel ; cf. Eccles. x. 2. This pre-eminence of
Judah is manifestly exhibited in its period of punishment
extending only to 40 days = 40 years; that of Israel, on the
contrary, 390 days = 390 years. These numbers, however,
CHAP. IV. 4-8. 73
cannot be satisfactorily explained from a chronological point of
view, whether they be referred to the time during which Israel
and Judah sinned, and heaped upon themselves guilt which
was to be punished, or to the time during which they were to
atone, or suffer punishment for their sins. Of themselves, both
references are possible ; the first, viz. in so far as the days in
which Ezekiel is to bear the guilt of Israel, might be propor-
tioned to the number of the years of their guilt, as many
Eabbins, Vatablus, Calvin, Lightfoot, Vitringa, J. D. Michaelis,
and others suppose, while in so doing the years are calculated
very differently ; cf. des Vignoles, Chronol. I. p. 479 sqq., and
Eosenmiiller, Scholia, Excvrs. to ch. iv. All these hypotheses,
however, are shattered by the impossibility of pointing out the
specified periods of time, so as to harmonize with the chro-
nology. If the days, reckoned as years, correspond to the
duration of their sinning, then, in the case of the house of
Israel, only the duration of this kingdom could come into con-
sideration, as the period of punishment began with the captivity
of the ten tribes. But this kingdom lasted only 253 years.
The remaining 137 years the Rabbins have attempted to supply
from the period of the Judges ; others, from the time of the
destruction of the ten tribes down to that of Ezekiel, or even
to that of the destruction of Jerusalem. Both are altogether
arbitrary. Still less can the 40 years of Judah be calculated,
as all the determinations of the beginning and the end are mere
phantoms of the air. The fortieth year before our prophecy
would nearly coincide with the eighteenth year of Josiah's
reign, and therefore with the year in which this pious king
effected the reformation of religion. Ezekiel, however, could
not represent this year as marking the commencement of
Judah's sin. We must therefore, as the literal meaning of the
■words primarily indicates, regard the specified periods of time
as periods of punishment for Israel and Judah. Since Ezekiel,
then, had to maintain during the symbolical siege of Jerusalem
this attitude of reclining for Israel and Judah, and after the
74 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
completion of the 390 daj's for Israel must lie a second time
(IT'JB', ver. 6) 40 days for Judah, he had to recline in all 430
(390 + 40) days. To include the forty days in the three hun-
dred and ninety is contrary to the statements in the text. But
to reckon the two periods together has not only no argument
against it, but is even suggested by the circumstance that the
prophet, while reclining on his left and right sides, is to repre-
sent the siege of Jerusalem. Regarded, however, as periods of
punishment, both the numbers cannot be explained consistently
with the chronology, but must be understood as having a sym-
bolical signification. The space of 430 years, which is an-
nounced to both kingdoms together as the duration of their
cliastisement, recalls the 430 years which in the far past Israel
had spent in Egypt in bondage (Ex. xii. 40). It had been
already intimated to Abraham (Gen. xv. 13) tliat the sojourn
in Egypt would be a period of servitude and humiliation for
his seed ; and at a later time, in consequence of the oppression
which the Israelites then experienced on account of the rapid
increase of their number, it was — upon the basis of the threat
in Deut. xxviii. 68, that God would punish Israel for their per-
sistent declension, by bringing them back into ignominious
bondage in Egypt — taken by the prophet as a type of the
banishment of rebellious Israel among the heathen. In this
sense Hosea already threatens (viii. 13, ix. 3, 6) the ten tribes
with being carried back to Egypt; see on Hos. ix. 3. Still
more frequently, upon the basis of this conception, is the
i-edemption from Assyrian and Babylonian exile announced as
a new and miraculous exodus of Israel from the bondage of
Egypt, e.g. Hos. ii. 2 ; Isa. xi. 15, 16. — This typical meaning
lies also at the foundation of the passage before us, as, in
accordance with the statement of Jerome,^ it was already ac-
cepted by the Jews of his time, and has been again recognised in
' Alii vero et maxime Judaei a secundo anno Vespasiani, quando Hieru-
salem a Romanis capta templumque subversum est, supputari volunt in trihula-
tione et angustia et captivitatis jugo populi constitui annos quadringentos
CHAP. IV. 4-8. 75
modern times by Haveniick and Hitzig, That Ezekiel looked
upon the period during which Israel had been subject to the
heathen in the past as " typical of the future, is to be assumed,
because only then does the number of 430 cease to be arbitrary
and meaningless, and at the same time its division into 390 + 40
become explicable." — Hitzig. This latter view is not, of
course, to be understood as Hitzig and Havernick take it, i.e. as
if the 40 years of Judah's chastisement were to be viewed apart
from the 40 years' sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness,
upon which the look of the prophet would have been turned bv
the sojourn in Egypt. For the 40 years in the wilderness are
not included in the 430 years of the Egyptian sojourn, so that
Ezekiel could have reduced these 430 years to 390, and yet
have added to them the 40 years of the desert wanderings.
For the coming period of punishment, which is to commence
for Israel with the siege of Jerusalem, is fixed at 430 years with
reference to the Egyptian bondage of the Israelites, and this
period is divided into 390 and 40 ; and this division therefore
must also have, if not its point of commencement, at least a
point of connection, in the 430 years of the Egyptian sojourn.
The division of the period of chastisement into two parts is to
be explained probably from the sending of the covenant people
into the kingdom of Israel and Judah, and the appointment of
a longer period of chastisement for Israel than for Judah, from
the greater guilt of the ten tribes in comparison with Judah,
but not the incommensurable relation of the divisions into 390
and 40 years. The foundation of this division can, first of all,
only lie in this, that the number forty already possessed the
symbolical significance of a measured period of divine visitation.
This significance it had already received, not through the 40
years of the desert wandering, but through the 40 days of rain
at the time of the deluge (Gen. vii. 17), so that, in conformity
trlginta, et sic redire populum ad pristinum staium ut quomodo
filii Israel 430 annis fuerunt in A.egypto, sie in eodem numero
finiatur: scriptumque esse in Ex.xii. 40. — Hieronyjius.
7 b THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
with this, the punishment of dying in the wilderness, suspended
over the rebellious race of Israel at Kadesh, is already stated at
40 years, although it included in reality only 38 years ; see on
Num. xiv. 32 sqq. If now, however, it should be supposed that
this penal sentence had contributed to the fixing of the number
40 as a symbolical number to denote a longer period of punish-
ment, the 40 years of punishment for Judah could not yet have
been viewed apart from this event. The fixing of the chastise-
ment for Israel and Judah at 390 + 40 years could only in
that case be measured by the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt,
if the relations of this sojourn presented a point of connection
for a division of the 430 years into 390 and 40, i.e. if the 40
last years of the Egyptian servitude could somehow be dis-
tinguished from the preceding 390. A point of contact for
this is offered by an event in the life of Moses which falls
within that period, and was fertile in results for him as well as
for the whole of Israel, viz. his flight from Egypt in conse-
quence of the slaughter of an Egyptian who had ill-treated an
Israelite. As the Israelites, his brethren, did not recognise the
meaning of this act, and did not perceive that God would save
them by his hand, Moses was necessitated to flee into the land
of Midian, and to tarry there 40 years as a stranger, until the
Lord called him to be the saviour of his nation, and sent him as
His messenger to Pharaoh (Ex. ii. 11-iii. 10; Acts vii. 23-30).
These 40 years were for Moses not only a time of trial and
purification for his future vocation, but undoubtedly also the
period of severest Egyptian oppression for the Israelites, and in
this respect quite fitted to be a type of the coming time of
punishment for Judah, in which was to be repeated what Israel
had experienced in Egypt, that, as Israel had lost their helper
and protector with the fiight of Moses, so now Judah was to
lose her king, and be given over to the tyranny of the heathen
world-power.^
' Another ingenious explauation of the numbers in question has been
attempted by Kliefoth, Comment, p. 123. Proceeding from the symbolical
CHAP. IV. 4-8. 77
While Ezekiel thus reclines upon one side, he is to direct
his look unchangingly upon the siege of Jerusalem, i.e. upon
the picture of the besieged city, and keep his arm bare, i.e.
ready for action (Isa. lii. 10), and outstretched, and prophesy
against the city, especially through the menacing attitude
which he had taken up against it. To be able to carry this
out, God will bind him with cords, i.e. fetter him to his conch
(see on iii. 25), so that he cannot stir from one side to another
until he has completed the time enjoined upon him for the
siege. In this is contained the thought that the siege of Jeru-
signification of the number 40 as a measure of time for divine visitation
and trial, he supposes that the prescription in Deut. xxv. 3 — that if an
Israelite were to be subjected to corporal punishment, he was not to receive
more than 40 stripes — is founded upon this symbolical signification, — a
prescription which, according to 2 Cor. xi. 24, was in practice so carried
out that only 39 were actually inflicted. From the application and bearing
thus given to the number 40, the symbolical numbers in the passage before
us are to be explained. Every year of punishment is equivalent to a stripe
of chastisement. To the house of Israel 10 X 39 years = stripes, were
adjudged, i.e. to each of the ten tribes 39 years = stripes ; the individual
tribes are treated as so many single individuals, and each receives the
amount of chastisement usual in the case of one individual. Judah, on the
contrary, is regarded as the one complete historical national tribe, because
in the two faithful tribes of Judah and Benjamin the people collec-
tively were represented. Judah, then, may receive, not the number of
stripes falling to individuals, but that only which fell upon one, although,
as a fair compensation, not the usual number of 40, but the higher number —
compatible with the Torah — of 40 stripes = years. To this explanation we
would give our assent, if only the transformation into stripes or blows of
the days of the prophet's reclining, or of the years of Israel's punishment,
could be shown to be probable through any analogous Biblical example,
and were not merely a deduction from the modern law of punishment, in
which corporal punishment and imprisonment hold the same importance.
The assumption, then, is altogether arbitrary irrespective of this, that in
the case of the house of Israel the measure of punishment is fixed differently
from that of Judah ; in the former case, according to the number of the
tribes; in the latter, according to the unity of the kingdom: in the former
at 39, in the latter at 40 stripes. Finally, the presupposition that the later
Jewish practice of inflicting only 89 instead of 40 stripes — in order not to
transgress the letter of the law in the enumeration which probably was
made at the infliction of the punishment — goes back to the time of the
exile, is extremely improbable, as it altogether breathes the spirit of
Pharisaic micrology.
78 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
salem is to be mentally carried on until its capture : but no
new symbol of the state of prostration of the besieged Jerusalem
is implied. For such a purpose the food of the prophet
(ver. 9 sqq.) during this time is employed.
Vers. 9-17. The third symbolical act. — Ver. 9. And do
thou take to thyself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles,
and millet, and spelt, and put them in a vessel, and prepare them
as bread for thyself, according to the number of the days on which
thou liest on thy side ; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou
eat it. Ver. 10. And thy food, which thou eatest, shall be ac-
cording to weight, twenty shekels for a day ; from time to time
shalt thou eat it. Ver. 11. And water shalt thou drink accord-
ing to measure, a sixth part of the hin, from time to time shalt
thou drink it. Ver. 12. Aiid as barley cakes shalt thou eat it,
and shalt bake it before their eyes with human excrement.
Ver. 13. And Jeliovali spake; then shall the children of Israel
eat their bread polluted amongst the heathen, ivhither I shall drive
them. Ver. 14. Then said I: Ah! Lord, Jehovah, my soul has
never been polluted ; and of a carcase, and of that which is torn,
have I never eaten from my youth up until now, and abominable
flesh has not come into my mouth. Ver. li Then said He unto
me: Lo, I allow thee the dung of animals instead of that of
man; therewith mayest thou prepare thy bread. Ver. 16. And
He said to me. Son of man, lo, I will break the staff of bread in
Jerusalem, so that they will eat bread according to weight, and
in affliction, and drink water by measure, and in amazement.
Ver. 17. Because bread and water shall fail, and they shall pine
away one with another, and disappear in their guilt. — For the
whole duration of the symbolical siege of Jerusalem, Ezekiel is to
furnish himself with a store of grain corn and leguminous fruits,
to place this store in a vessel beside him, and daily to prepare
in the form of bread a measured portion of the same, 20 shekels
in weight (about 9 ounces), and to bake this as barley cakes
upon a fire, prepared with dried dung, and then to partake of
it at the different hours for meals throughout the day. In
CHAP. IV. 9-17. 79
addition to this, he is, at the hours appointed for eating, to
drink water, in like manner according to measure, a sixth part
of the hin daily, i.e. a quantity less than a pint (cf. Bihliscli.
Archdol. II. p. 141). The Israelites, probably, generally pre-
pared the nijy from wheat flour, and not merely when they had
guests (Gen. xviii. 6). Ezekiel, however, is to take, in addi-
tion, other kinds of grain with leguminous fruits, which were
employed in the preparation of bread when wheat was deficient ;
barley — baked into bread by the poor (Judg. vii. 13 ; 2 Kings
iv. 42 ; John vi. 9 ; see on 1 Kings v. 8) ; i>i2, " beans," a com-
mon food of the Hebrews (2 Sam. xvii. 28), which appears to
have been mixed with other kinds of grain for the purpose of
being baked into bread.^ This especially holds true of the
lentiles, a favourite food of the Hebrews (Gen. xxv. 29 sq.),
from which, in Egypt at the present day, the poor still bake
bread in times of severe famine (Sonnini, R. II. 390 ; apTO'i
^aKivo'i, Athenaeus, IV. 158). jn'l, "millet," tei'med by the
Arabs " Dochn" ( .yi.o), panicum, a fruit cultivated in Egypt,
and still more frequently in Arabia (see Wellsted, Arab. I.
295), consisting of longish round brown grain, resembling rice,
from which, in the absence of better fruits, a sort of bad bread
is baked. Cf. Celsius, JHerobotartj i. 453 sqq. ; and Gesen.
Thesaur. p. 333. D'?B3, " spelt or German corn " (cf. Ex. ix.
32), a kind of grain which produces a finer and whiter flour
than wheat flour ; the bread, however, which is baked from it is
somewhat dry, and is said to be less nutritive than wheat bread ;
cf. Celsius, Hierobotan, ii. 98 sq. Of all these fruits Ezekiel
is to place certain quantities in a vessel — to indicate that all
kinds of grain and leguminous fruits capable of being converted
into bread will be collected, in order to bake bread for the
appeasing of hunger. In the intermixture of various kinds
of flour we are not, with Hitzig, to seek a transgression of the
1 Cf. Plinii Histor. Natur. xviii. 30 : " Inter legumina maximus honos
fabae, quippe ex qua tantalus sit etiam panis . . . Frumento etiam miscetur
apud plerasque gentes et maxime panico solida ac delicatius fracta."
80 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
law in Lev. xix. 19 ; Deut. xxii. 9. ISD^ '^ ^lie accusative of
measure or duration. The quantity is to be fixed according to
the number of the days. In ver. 9 only the 390 days of the
house of Israel's period of punishment are mentioned — quod
pliires essent et fere universa summa (Prado) ; and because this
was sufficient to make prominent the hardship and oppression
of the situation, the 40 days of Judah were omitted for the
sake of brevity.^ 'W1 1^?>«0, " thy food which thou shalt
eat," i.e. the definite portion which thon shalt have to eat,
shall be according to weight (between subject and predicate
the substantive verb is to be supplied). Twenty shekels = 8 or
9 ounces of fionr, yield 11 or 12 ounces of bread, i.e. at most
the half of what a man needs in southern countries for his
daily support.^ The same is the case with the water. A
sixth part of a hin, i.e. a quantity less than a pint, is a very
niggardly allowance for a day. Both, however, — eating the
^ Kliefoth's supposition is untenable, that what is required in vers. 9-17
refers in reality only to the 390 days of Israel, and not also to the 40 days
of Judah, so that so long as Ezekiel lay and bore the sins of Israel, he
■was to eat his food by measure, and unclean. For this is in contradic-
tion with the distinct announcement that during the whole time that
he lay upon the one side and the other, he was besieging Jerusalem ; and
by the scanty and unclean food, was to portray both the deficiency of
bread and water which occurred in the besieged city (ver. 17), as well as
the eating of unclean bread, which impended over the Israelites when
among the heathen nations. The famine which took place in Jerusalem
during the siege did not affect the ten tribes, but that of Judah ; while
unclean bread had to be eaten among the heathen not only by the Israelites,
but also by the Jews transported to Babylon. By the limitation of what is
prescribed to the prophet in vers. 9-15 to the time during which the sin of
Israel was to be borne, the significance of this symbolical act for Jerusalem
and Judah is taken away.
2 In our climate (Germany) we count 2 lbs. of bread for the daily supply
of a man ; but in warm countries the demand for food is less, so that
scarcely 1^ lbs. are required. Wellsted {Travels in Arabia, II. p. 200)
relates that "the Bedoweens wiU undertake a journey of 10 to 12 days
without carrying with them any nutriment, save a bottle full of small cakes,
baked of white flour and camel or goat's milk, and a leather bag of water.
Such a cake weighs about 5 ounces. Two of them, and a mouthful of water,
the latter twice within 24 hours, is all which they then partake of."
CHAP. IV. 9-17. 81
bread and drinking the water, — he shall do from time to time,
i.e. " not throughout the entire fixed period of 390 days "
(Havernick) ; but he shall not eat the daily ration at once, but
divided into portions according to the daily hours of meals, so
that he will never be completely satisfied. In addition to this
is the pollution (ver. 12 sqq.) of the scanty allowance of food
by the manner in which it is prepared. D''"iVb> nay is predicate :
" as barley cakes," " prepared in the form of barley cakes,"
shalt thou eat them. The suffix in WpNn is neuter, and refers
to on? in ver. 9, or rather to the kinds of grain there enumerated,
which are ground and baked before them : Dnp, i.e. " food."
The addition C'lV?' is not to be explained from this, that the
principal part of these consisted of barley, nor does it prove
that in general no other than barley cakes were known (Hitzig),
but only that the cakes of barley meal, baked in the ashes,
were an extremely frugal kind of bread, which that prepared
by Ezekiel was to resemble. The ns^ was probably always
baked on hot ashes, or on hot stones (1 Kings xix. 6), not on
pans, as Kliefoth here supposes. The prophet, however, is to
bake them in (with) human ordure. This is by no means to
be understood as if he were to mix the ordure with the food, for
which view Isa. xxxvi. 12 has been erroneously appealed to ; but
— as Di}vj) in ver. 15 clearly shows — he is to bake it over the
dung, i.e. so that dung forms the material of the fire. That the
bread must be polluted by this is conceivable, although it can-
not be proved from the passages in Lev. v. 3, vii. 21, and Deut.
xxiii. 13 that the use of fire composed of dung made the food
prepared thereon levitically unclean. The use of fire with human
ordure must have communicated to the bread a loathsome smell
and taste, by which it was rendered unclean, even if it had not
been immediately baked in the hot ashes. That the pollution
of the bread is the object of this injunction, we see from the
explanation which God gives in ver. 13: "Thus shall the
children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the heathen."
The heart of the prophet, however, rebels against such food.
EZEK. I. P
82 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
He says he has never in his life polluted himself by eating food
forbidden in the law; from his youth up he has eaten no
unclean flesh, neither of a carcase, nor of that which was torn
by wild beasts (cf. Ex. xxii. 30 ; Dent. xiv. 21), nor flesh of
sacrifices decayed or putrefying (-"133, see on Lev. vii. 18 ;
Isa. Ixv. 4). On this God omits the requirement in ver, 12,
and permits him to take for firing the dung of oxen instead of
that of men/ In ver. 16 sq., finally, is given the explanation
of the scanty allowance of food meted out to the prophet,
namely, that the Lord, at the impending siege of Jerusalem, is
to take away from the people the staff of bread, and leave them
to languish in hunger and distress. The explanation is in
literal adherence to the threatenings of the law (Lev. xxvi. 26
and 39), which are now to pass into fulfilment. Bread is
called " staff of bread" as being indispensable for the preserva-
tion of life. To ^ijfi?3. Lev. xxvi. 26, nj^l?, "in sorrow," is
added ; and to the water, pOB?'?, " in astonishment," i.e. in fixed,
silent pain at the miserable death, by hunger and thirst, which
they see before them. D:ip ^pai as Lev. xxvi. 39. If we, finally,
cast a look over the contents of this first sign, it says that
Jerusalem is soon to be besieged, and during the siege is to
suffer hunger and terror as a punishment for the sins of Israel
1 The use of dung as a material for burning is so common in the East,
that it cannot be supposed that Ezekiel first became acquainted with it
in a foreign country, and therefore regarded it with peculiar loathing.
Human ordure, of course, so far as our knowledge goes, is never so em-
ployed, although the objection raised by Hitzig, on the other hand, that it
would not yield so much heat as would be necessary for roasting without
immediate contact, i.e. through the medium of a brick, rests upon an
erroneous representation of the matter. But the employment of cattle-
dung for firing could not be unknown to the Israelites, as it forms in the
Hauran (the ancient Bashan) the customary firing material ; cf. Wetzstein's
remarks on Delitzsch's Job, vol. I. pp. 377, 8 (Eng. tran.), where the pre-
paration of the ^elle — this prevalent material for burning in the Hauran—
from cow-dung mixed with chopped straw is minutely described ; and this
remark is made among others, that the flame of the gelle, prepared and
dried from the dung of oxen that feed at large, is entirely without smoke
nnd that the ashes, which retain their heat for a lengthened time, are as
clean as those of wood-
CHAP. V 1-4. 83
and Judah ; that upon the capture of the city of Israel (Judah)
they are to be dispersed among the heathen, and will there be
obliged to eat unclean bread. To this in ch. v. is joined a
second sign, which shows further how it shall fare with the
people at and after the capture of Jerusalem (vers. 1-4) ; and
after that a longer oracle, which developes the significance of
these signs, and establishes the necessity of the penal judgment
(vers. 5-17).
Chap. V. 1-4. — The Sign which is to poetray
Israel's impending Destiny. — Ver. 1. And thou, son of
man, take to thyself a sharp sword, as a razor shalt thou take it
to thyself, and go with it over thy head, and over thy chin,
and take to thee scales, and divide it (the hair). Ver. 2,
A third part burn with fire in the midst of the city, when
the days of the siege are accomplished: and take the (other)
third, sm.ite with the sword round about it: and the (re-
maining) third scatter to the winds ; and the sword will I draw
out after them. Ver. 3. Yet take a few of them by number, and
bind them in the skirt of thy garment. Ver. 4. And of these
again take a few, and cast them into the fire, and burn them with
fire ; from, thence a fire shall go forth over the whole house of
Israel. — The description of this sign is easily understood.
D''D^3n 13;^, " razor of the barbers," is the predicate, which is to
be understood to the sufiSx in nsnipri ; and the clause states the
purpose for which Ezekiel is to use the sharp sword — viz. as a
razor, in order to cut off therewith the hair of his head and
beard. The hair, when cut off, he is to divide into three parts
with a pair of scales (the suflBx in Dnippn refers ad sensum to
the hair). The one third he is to burn in the city, i.e. not in
the actual Jerusalem, but in the city, sketched on the brick,
which he is symbolically besieging (iv. 3). To the city also is
to be referred the suffix in ri''ni3''3D, ver. 2, as is placed beyond
doubt by ver. 12. In the last clause of ver. 2, which is taken
from Lev. xxvi. 33, the description of the sign passes over into
8-4 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
its exposition, for D?'''!!!!]^ does not refer to the hair, but to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem. The significance also of this sym-
bolical act is easily recognised, and is, moreover, stated in ver.
12. Ezekiel, in this act, represents the besieged Jerusalem.
What he does to his hair, that will God do to the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. As the hair of the prophet falls under the
sword, used as a razor, so will the inhabitants of Jerusalem fall,
when the city is captured, into destruction, and that verily an
ignominious destruction. This idea is contained in the picture
of the hair-cutting, which was a dishonour done to what forms
the ornament of a man. See on 2 Sam. x. 4 sqq. A third of
the same is to perish in the city. As the fire destroys the hair,
so will pestilence and hunger consume the inhabitants of the
beleaguered city (ver. 12). The second third will, on the
capture of the city, fall by the sword in the environs (ver. 12) ;
the last third will God scatter to the winds, and — as Moses has
already threatened the people — will draw forth the sword after
them, still to persecute and smite them (ver. 12). This sign is
continued (vers. 3 and 4) in a second symbolical act, which
shadows forth what is further to happen to the people when
dispersed among the heathen. Of the third scattered to the
winds, Ezekiel is to bind a small portion in the skirt of his
garment. DtJ'O, "from thence," refers not to JVp'^W'?, but,
ad sensum, to n^l? nnjn : « from the place where the third
that is scattered to the winds is found " — i.e., as regards the
subject-matter, of those who are to be found among the dis-
persion. The binding up into the O^B^I, " the corners or ends
of the garment " (cf . Jer. ii. 34), denotes the preservation of
the few, who are gathered together out of the whole of those
who are dispersed among the heathen ; cf. 1 Sam. xxv. 29 ;
Ezek. xvi. 8. But even of these few He shall still cast some
into the fire, and consume them. Consequently those who are
gathered together out of exile are not all to be preserved, but
are still to be sifted by fire, in which process a part is con-
sumed. This image does not refer to those who remain behind
CHAP. V. 1-4. 85
in the land, when the nation is led away captive to Babylon
(Theodoret, Grotius, and others), but, as Ephrem the Syrian
and Jerome saw, to those who were saved from Babylon, and
to their further destiny, as is already clear from the Qf'l?, rightly
understood. The meaning of the last clause of ver. 4 is dis-
puted ; in it, as in the final clause of ver. 2, the symbolical
representation passes over into the announcement of the thing
itself. WBD, which Ewald would arbitrarily alter into ''|)BD,
cannot, with Haveniick, be referred to Cijin TI^n"^^?, because
this yields a very forced sense, but relates to the whole act
described in vers. 3 and 4 : that a portion thereof is rescued
and preserved, and yet of this portion many are consumed by
fire, — from that a fire shall go forth over the whole house of
Israel. This fire is explained by almost all expositors, from
Theodoret and Jerome onwards, of the penal judgments which
were inflicted after the exile upon the Jews, which reached their
culminating point in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem
by the Romans, and which still continue in their dispersion
throughout the whole world. But this view, as Kliefoth has
already remarked, is not only in decided antagonism to the in-
tention of the text, but it is, moreover, altogether impossible to
see how a judgment of extermination for all Israel can be
deduced from the fact that a small number of the Israelites,
who are scattered to the winds, is saved, and that of those who
are saved a part is still consumed with fire. From thence
there can only come forth a fire of purification for the whole of
Israel, through which the remnant, as Isaiah had already pre-
dicted (vi. 12 sqq.), is converted into a holy seed. In the last
clause, consuming by fire is not referred to. The fire, how-
ever, has not merely a destructive, but also a cleansing, purify-
ing, and quickening power. To kindle such a fire on earth
did Christ come (Luke xii. 49), and from Him the same goes
out over the whole house of Israel. This view, for which
Kliefoth has already rightly decided, receives a confirmation
through ch. vi. 8-10, where is announced the conversion of the
86 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
remnant of those Israelites who had been dispersed among the
nations.
So far the symbolical acts. Before, however, we pass on to
the explanation of the following oracle, we must still briefly
touch the question, whether these acts were undertaken and
performed by the prophet in the world of external reality, or
whether they were occurrences only internally real, which
Ezekiel experienced in spirit — i.e. in an ecstatic condition —
and afterwards communicated to the people. Amongst modem
expositors, Kliefoth has defended the former view, and has
adduced the following considerations in support : A significant
act, and yet also a silent, leisurely one, must be performed, that
it may show something to those who behold it. Nor is the case
such, as Hitzig supposes, that it would have been impossible to
carry out what had been required of the prophet in ch. iv.
1-17. It had, indeed, its difficulty; but God sometimes re-
quires from His servants what is difiicult, although He also
helps them to the performance of it. So here He will make it
easy for the prophet to recline, by binding him (iv. 8). " In
the sign, this certainly was kept in view, that it should be per-
formed; and it, moreover, was performed, although the test,
in a manner quite intelligible with reference to an act com-
manded by God, does not expressly state it." For these latter
assertions, however, there is anything but convincing proof.
The matter is not so simple as Kliefoth supposes, although we
are at one with him in this, that neither the diflBculty of
carrying out what was commanded in the world of external
reality, nor the non-mention of the actual performance, furnishes
sufficient grounds for the supposition of merely internal, spiritual
occurrences. We also are of opinion that very many of the
symbolical acts of the prophets were undertaken and performed
in the external world, and that this supposition, as that which
corresponds most fully with the literal meaning of the words, is
on each occasion the most obvious, and is to be firmly adhered
to, unless there can be good grounds for the opposite view. In
CHAP. V. 1-4. 87
the case now before us, we have first to take into consideration
that the oracle which enjoins these symbolical acts on Ezekiel
stands in close connection, both as to time and place, with the
inauguration of Ezekiel to the prophetic office. The hand of
the Lord comes upon him at the same place, where the con-
cluding word at his call was addressed to him (the ^f, iii. 22,
points back to DK" in iii. 15) ; and the circumstance that Ezekiel
found himself still on the same spot to which he had been
transported by the Spirit of God (iii. 14), shows that the new
revelation, which he here still received, followed very soon, if
not immediately, after his consecration to the office of prophet.
Then, upon the occasion of this divine revelation, he is again,
as at his consecration, transported into an ecstatic condition, as
is clear not only from the formula, " the hand of the Lord
came upon me," which in our book always has this signification,
but also most undoubtedly from this, that he again sees the
glory of Jehovah in the same manner as he had seen it in ch. i.
— viz. when in an ecstatic condition. But if this were an
ecstatic vision, it is obvious that the acts also which the divine
appearance imposed upon him must be regarded as ecstatic
occurrences ; since the assertion that every significant act must
be performed, in order that something may be shown to those
who witness it, is fundamentally insufficient for the proof that
this act must fall within the domain of the earthly world of
sense, because the occurrences related in ch. viii.-xi. are viewed
even by Kliefoth himself as purely internal events. As decisive,
however, for the purely internal character of the symbolical acts
under consideration (ch. iv. and v.), is the circumstance that
the supposition of Ezekiel having, in his own house, actually
lain 390 days upon his left, and then, again, 40 days upon his
right side without turning, stands in irreconcilable contradiction
with the fact that he, according to ch. viii. 1 sqq., was carried
away in ecstasy to Jerusalem, there to behold in the temple the
monstrosities of Israel's idolatry and the destruction of Jeru-
salem. For the proof of this, see the introduction to ch. viii.
88 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEEIEL.
Vers. 5-17. The Divine Word which explains the
Symbolical Signs, in which the judgment that is announced
is laid down as to its cause (5-9) and as to its nature (10-17).
— Ver. 5. Thus says the Lord Jehovah : Tliis Jerusalem have I
placed in the midst of the nations, and raised about her the countries.
Ver. 6. But in wickedness she resisted my laws more than the
nations, and my statutes more than the countries which are round
about her; for they rejected my laws, and did not walk in my statutes.
Ver. 7. Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah : Because ye have
raged more than the nations round about you, and have not walked
in my statutes, and have not obeyed my laws, and have not done
even according to the laws of the nations which are round about
you ; Ver. 8. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah : Lo, I, even
I, shall be against thee, and loill perform judgments in thy midst
before the eyes of the nations. Ver. 9. And I will do unto thee
what I have never done, nor will again do in like manner, on
account of all thine abominations.
'!:'n^ nsr, not " this is Jerusalem," i.e. this is the destiny of
Jerusalem (Havernick), but " this Jerusalem " (Hitzio-) ; nxr
is placed before the noun in the sense of iste, as in Ex. xxxii. 1 ;
cf. Ewald, § 2936. To place the culpability of Jerusalem in
its proper prominence, the censure of her sinful conduct opens
with the mention of the exalted position which God had assitmed
her upon earth. Jerusalem is described in ver. 5 as forming the
central point of the earth : this is done, however, neither in an
external, geographical (Hitzig), nor in a purely typical sense,
as the city that is blessed more than any other (Calvin, Haver-
nick), but in a historical sense, in so far as " God's people and
city actually stand in the central point of the God-directed
world-development and its movements " (Kliefoth) ; or in
relation to the history of salvation, as the city in which God
hath set up His throne of grace, from which shall go forth the
law and the statutes for all nations, in order that the salvation
of the whole world may be accomplished (Isa. ii. 2 sqq. ; Mic.
iv. 1 sqq.). But instead of keeping the laws and statutes of
CHAP. V. 5-9. 89
the Lord, Jerusalem has, on the contrary, turned to do wicked-
ness more than the heathen nations in all the lands round about
(iTiDn, cum accusal, object., " to act rebeliiously towards").
Here we may not quote Eom. ii. 12, 14 against this, as if the
heathen, who did not know the law of God, did not also trans-
gress the same, but sinned avo/iKB?; for the sinning aw/iw?,
of which the apostle speaks, is really a transgression of the
law written on the heart of the heathen. With 15^; in ver. 7,
the penal threatening is introduced ; but before the punishment
is laid down, the correspondence between guilt and punishment
is brought forward more prominently by repeatedly placing in
juxtaposition the godless conduct of the rebellious city. D??^!!!
is infinitive, from \'Q'), a secondary form iion, in the sense of
non "to rage," i.e. to rebel against God : of. Ps. ii. 1. The
last clause of ver. 7 contains a climax : " And ye have not even
acted according to the laws of the heathen." This is not in any
real contradiction to eh. xi. 12 (where it is made a subject of
reproach to the Israelites that they have acted according to the
laws of the heathen), so that we would be obliged, with Ewald
and Hitzig, to expunge the NP in the verse before us, because
wanting in the Peshito and several Hebrew manuscripts.
Even in these latter, it has only been omitted to avoid the sup-
posed contradiction with xi. 12. The solution of the apparent
contradiction lies in the double meaning of the D^ijn ''i???'!?.
The heathen had laws which were opposed to those of God,
but also such as were rooted in the law of God written upon
their hearts. Obedience to the latter was good and praise-
worthy ; to the former, wicked and objectionable. Israel, which
hated the law of God, followed the wicked and sinful laws of the
heathen, and neglected to observe their good laws. Tlie passage
before us is to be judged by Jer. ii. 10, 11, to which Easehi
had already made reference.^ In ver. 8 the announcement of
' Coccejus had already well remarked on ch. xi. 12: " Haec probe con-
cordant. Imitabantur Judaei gentiles vel fovendo opiniones gentiles, vel etiam
assumendo ritus et sacra gentilium. Sed nonfaciehant ut gentes, quae integre
90 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the punishment, interrupted by tlie repeated mention of the
cause, is again resumed with the words '131 ns \p7. Since Jeru-
salem has acted worse than the heathen, God will execute His
judgments upon her before the eyes of the heathen. D'taSB' nb^
or D'DBB'p n\i>V (vers. 10, 15, ch. si. 9, xvi. 41, etc.), " to accom-
plish or execute judgments," is used in Ex. xii. 12 and Num.
xxxiii. 4 of the judgments which God suspended over Egypt.
The punishment to be suspended shall be so great and heavy,
that the like has never happened before, nor will ever happen
again. These words do not require us either to refer the
threatening, with Coccejus, to the last destruction of Jerusalem,
which was marked by greater severity than the earlier one, or
to suppose, with Havernick, that the prophet's look is directed
to both the periods of Israel's punishment — the times of the
Babylonian and Koman calamity together. Both suppositions
are irreconcilable with the words, as these can only be referred
to the first impending penal judgment of the destruction of
Jerusalem. This was, so far, more severe than any previous
or subsequent one, inasmuch as by it the existence of the people
of God was for a time suspended, while that Jerusalem and
Israel, which were destroyed and annihilated by the Eomans,
were no longer the people of God, inasmuch as the latter con-
sisted at that time of the Christian community, which was not
affected by that catastrophe (Kliefoth).
Vers. 10-17. Further execution of this threat. Ver. 10.
Therefore shall fathers devour their children in thy midst, and
children shall devour their fathers : and I will exercise judgments
upon thee, and disperse all thy remnant to the winds. Ver. 11.
Tlierefore, as I live, is the declaration of the Lord Jehovah,
Verily, because thou hast polluted my sanctuary with all thine
abominations and all thy crimes, so shall 1 take away mine
eye without mercy, and will not spare. Ver. 12. A third of
thee shall die by the pestilence, and perish by hunger in thy
diissuis serviebant. Nam Israelitae nomine Dei abutebaniur et ipsius populus
videri volebant."
CHAP. V. 10-17. 91
midst; and the third part shall fall hy the sword about thee;
and the third part will I scatter to all the winds ; and will draw
out the sword after them. Ver. 13. And my anger shall he fulfilled,
and I will cool my wrath against them, and will take vengeance.
And they shall experience that I, Jehovah, have spoken in my
zeal, when I accomplish my wrath upon them. Ver. 14. And I
will make thee a desolation and a mockery among the nations
which are round about thee, before the eyes of every passer-by.
Ver. 15. And it shall be a mockery and a scorn, a warning and
a terror for the nations round about thee, when 1 exercise my
judgments upon thee in anger and wrath and in grievous visita-
tions. I, Jehovah, have said it. Ver. 16. When I send against
thee the evil arrows of hunger, which minister to destruction,
which I shall send to destroy you ; for hunger shall I heap upon
you, and shall break to you the staff of bread : Ver. 17. And I
shall send hunger upon you, and evil beasts, which shall make
thee childless ; and pestilence and blood shall pass over thee; and
the sword will I bring upon thee. I, Jehovah, have spoken it. —
As a proof of the unheard-of severity of the judgment, there is
immediately mentioned in ver, 10 a most horrible circumstance,
which had been already predicted by Moses (Lev. sxvi. 29 ;
Deut. sxviii. 53) as that which should happen to the people when
hard pressed by the enemy, viz. a famine so dreadful, during
the siege of Jerusalem, that parents would eat their children,
and children their parents ; and after the capture of the city,
the dispersion of those who remained " to all the winds, i.e. to
all quarters of the world." This is described more minutely, as
an appendix to the symbolical act in vers. 1 and 2, in vers. 11
and 12, with a solemn oath, and with repeated and prominent
mention of the sins which have drawn down such chastisements.
As sin, is mentioned the pollution of the temple by idolatrous
abominations, which are described in detail in ch. viii. The
Jf]JN, which is variously understood by the old translators (for
which some Codices offer the explanatory correction vux), is
to be explained, after Job xxxvi. 7, of the " turning away of the
92 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
eye," and the '^''V following as the object ; while Dinn-N?l, " that
it feel no compassion," is interjected between the verb and its
object with the adverbial signification of " mercilessly." For
that the words DlPin K^l are adverbially subordinate to jn^K,
distinctly appears from the correspondence— indicated by "^S D31
between JJ13K and ^ions »b. Moreover, the thought, " Jehovah
will mercilessly withdraw His care for the people," is not to be
termed " feeble " in connection with what follows ; nor is the
contrast, which is indicated in the clause ''^^y^], lost, as Haver-
nick supposes. 'iX-oai does not require jn3 to be understood of
a positive act, which would correspond to the desecration of the
sanctuary. This is shown by the last clause of the verse. The
withdrawal without mercy of the divine providence is, besides,
in reality, equivalent to complete devotion to destruction, as it
is particularized in ver. 12. For ver. 12 see on vers. 1 and 2.
By carrying out the threatened division of the people into three
parts, the wrath of God is to be fulfilled, i.e. the full measure
of the divine wrath upon the people is to be exhausted (cf. 7, 8),
and God is to appear and "cool " His anger. HDH mn^ " sedavit
iram" occurs again in xvi. 42, sxi. 22, sxiv. 13. '''!"?n.3i?>
Hithpael, pausal form for ■'JjiDnJiij " se consolari" " to procure
satisfaction by revenge ; " cf . Isa. i. 24, and for the thing.
Dent, xxviii. 63. In ver. 14 sqq. the discourse turns again
from the people to the city of Jerusalem. It is to become a
wilderness, as was already threatened in Lev. xsvi. 31 and 33
to the cities of Israel, and thereby a " mockery " to all nations,
in the manner described in Deut. xxix. 23 sq. ^^''.'}], in ver. 15,
is not to be changed, after the LXX., Vulgate, and some MSS.,
into the second person ; but Jerusalem is to be regarded as the
subject which is to become the object of scorn and hatred, etc.,
when God accomplishes His judgments. "iWD is a warning-
example. Among the judgments which are to overtake it, in
ver. 16, hunger is again made specially prominent (cf. iv. 16);
and first in ver. 17 are wild beasts, pestilence, blood, and
sword added, and a quartette of judgments announced as in
CHAP. VI. 1-7. 93
xiv. 21. For pestilence and blood are comprehended together
as a unity by means of the predicate. Their connection is to
be understood according to xiv. 19, and the number four is sig-
nificant, as in xiv. 21; Jer. xv. 3sqq. For more minute details
as to the meaning, see on xiv. 21. The evil arrows point back
to Deut. xxxii. 23; the evil beasts, to Lev. xxiv. 22 and Dent,
xxxii. 24 sqq. To produce an impression, the prophet heaps his
words together. Unum ejus consilium fuit penetrare in animos
populi quasi lapideos etferreos. Hcec igitur est ratio, cur hie tania
varietate utatur et exomet suam doctnnam, variis Jiguris (Calvin).
CHAP. VI. THE JUDGMENT UPON THE IDOLATROUS PLACES,
AND ON THE IDOL-WOESHIPPEES.
To God's address in vers. 5-17, explaining the signs in
ch. It. 1-5, are appended in ch. vi. and vii. two additional
oracles, which present a further development of the contents of
these signs, the judgment portrayed by them in its extent and
greatness. In ch. vi. there is announced, in the first section, to
the idolatrous places, and on their account to the land, desola-
tion, and to the idolaters, destruction (vers. 3-7) ; and to this is
added the prospect of a remnant of the people, who are dis-
persed among the heathen, coming to be converted to the Lord
(vers. 8-10). In the second section the necessity and terrible
character of the impending judgment is repeatedly described at
length as an appendix to vers. 12, 14 (vers. 11-14).
Vers. 1-7. The desolation of the land, and destruction of the
idolaters. — Ver. 1. And the word of the Lord came to me, say-
ing : Ver. 2. Son of man, turn thy face towards the mountains
of Israel, and prophesy against them. Ver. 3. And say. Ye
mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah : Tims
saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains, and to the hills, to the
valleys, and to the low grounds, Behold, I bring the sword upon
you, and destroy your high places. Ver. 4. Your altars shall be
made desolate, and your sun-pillars shall be broken ; and I shall
94 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
make your slain fall in the presence of your idols. Ver. 5. And
I will lay the corpses of the children of Israel before their idols,
and will scatter your bones round about your altars. Ver. 6. In
all your dwellings shall the cities be made desolate, and the high
places waste; that your altars may be desolate and waste, and your
idols broken and destroyed, and your sun-pillars hewn down, and
the works of your hands exterminated. Ver. 7. And the slain
will fall in your midst ; that you may know that I am Jehovah. —
"With ver. 1 cf. iii. 16. The prophet is to prophesy against
the mountains of Israel. That the mountains are mentioned
(ver. 2) as pars pro toto, is seen from ver. 3, when to the moun-
tains and hills are added also the valleys and low grounds, as
the places where idolatry was specially practised ; cf . Hos. iv.
13 ; Jer. ii. 20, iii. 6 ; see on Hos. I.e. and Deut. xii. 2. D''p''SS,
in the older writings, denotes the " river channels," " the beds
of the stream;" but Ezekiel uses the word as equivalent to
valley, i.e. ?nj, a valley with a brook or stream, like the Arabic
wady. v.\i, properly " deepening," " the deep ground," " the
deep valley;" on the form nvw, cf. Ewald, § \Uda. The
juxtaposition of mountains and hills, of valleys and low
grounds, occurs again in xxxvi. 4, 6, and xxxv. 8 ; the opposi-
tion between mountains and valleys also, in xxxii. 5, 6, and
xxxiv. 13. The valleys are to be conceived of as furnished
with trees and groves, under the shadow of which the worship of
Astarte especially was practised ; see on ver. 15. On the moun-
tains and in the valleys were sanctuaries erected to Baal and
Astarte. The announcement of their destruction is appended
to the threatening in Lev. xxvi. 30, which Ezekiel takes up
and describes at greater length. Beside the niD3, the places of
sacrifice and worship, and the C^iisn, pillars or statues of Baal,
dedicated to him as the sun-god, he names also the altars,
which, in Lev. I.e. and other places, are comprehended along
with the nioa ; see on Lev. xxvi. 30 and 1 Kings iii. 3. With
the destruction of the idol temples, altars, and statues, the idol-
worshippers are also to be smitten, so as to fall down in the
CHAP. VI. 8-10. 95
presence of their idols. The fundamental meaning of the
word WT^Pij "idols," borrowed from Lev. I.e., and frequently-
employed by Ezekiel, is uncertain ; signifying either " logs of
wood," from PpJ, " to roll " (Gesen.), or siercorei, from 73,
"dung;" not "monuments of stone" (Hiivernick). Ver. 5a
is taken quite literally from Lev. xxvi. 306. The ignominy of
the destruction is heightened by the bones of the slain idolaters
being scattered round about the idol altars. In order that the
idolatry may be entirely rooted out, the cities throughout the
whole land, and all the high places, are to be devastated, ver. 6.
The forms n:DE''ri and I'^E'N'; are probably not to be derived
from DOE' (Ewald, § 138&), but to be referred back to a stem-
form DB'J, with the signification of DBK', the existence of which
appears certain from the old name jiD'B''. in Ps. Ixviii. and else-
where. The N in IDB'N' is certainly only mater lectionis. In
ver. 7, the singular 77n stands as indefinitely general. The
thought, " slain will fall in your midst" involves the idea that
not all the people will fall, but that there will survive some who
are saved, and prepares for what follows. The falling of the
slain — the idolaters with their idols — leads to the recognition
of Jehovah as the omnipotent God, and to conversion to Him.
Vers. 8-10. The survivors shall go away into banishment
amongst the heathen, and shall remember the word of the Lord
that will have been fulfilled. — Ver. 8. But I shall preserve a rem-
nant, in that there shall be to you some who have escaped the sword
among the nations, when ye shall be dispersed among the lands.
Ver. 9. And those of you who have escaped, luill make mention of
me among the nations ichither they are led captive, when I have
broken to me their whorish heart, which had departed from me,
and their eyes, which went a whoring after their idols : and they
shall loathe themselves because of the evil which they have done in
reference to all their abominations. Ver. 10. And ye shall know
that 1 am Jehovah. Not in vain have I spoken this evil to you. —
l^nin^ superstites facere, " to make or preserve survivors." The
connection with 'i3l ni^na is analogous to the construction of
96 THE PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
"i^nin^ in the sense of " giving a superabundance," with 3 m,
Deut. xxviii. 11 and xxx. 9, and is not to be rejected, with
Ewald and Hitzig, as inadmissible. For rii''na is supported by
the old versions, and the change of '''yiinini into ''J?"^?!'!, which
would have to be referred to ver. 7, is in opposition to the two-
fold repetition of the nini iJN 13 Dn^T] (IVTI), vers. 10 and 14,
as this repetition shows that the thought in ver. 7 is different
from that in 17, 21, not " they shall know that Jehovah has
spoken," but " they shall know that He who has done this is
Jehovah, the God of Israel." The preservation of a remnant
will be shown in this, that they shall have some who have
escaped the sword. D3''rii"ijn is infin. Niph. with a plural form
of the suffix, as occurs elsewhere only with the plural ending
ni of nouns, while Ezekiel has extended it to the ni of the
infinitive of ni> verbs ; cf. xvi. 31, and Ewald, § 2596. The
remembrance of Jehovah (ver. 9) is the commencement of
conversion to Him. 1t?'f? before WSB'J is not to be connected
as relative pronoun with D3p, but is a conjunction, though not
used conditionally, " if," as in Lev. iv. 22, Deut. xi. 27, and else-
where, but of time, ore, "when," as Deut. xi. 6 and 2 Chron.
XXXV. 20, and 'n'lSB'J in the signification of the futur. exact.
The Niphal "laK'J here is not to be taken as passive, but middle,
sibi frangere, i.e. D3?, poenitentid conterere animum eorum ut ad
ipsum (Deum) redeant (Maurer, Havernick). Besides the heart,
the eyes also are mentioned, which God is to smite, as the
external senses which allure the heart to whoredom. itJpJI cor-
responds to 113T) at the beginning of the verse. Dip, the later
form for J'^ip, " to feel a loathing," HipMl, " to be filled with
loathing;" cf. Job x. 1 with 3 object., "in (on) their CJEi,
faces," i.e. their persons or themselves : so also in xx. 43,
xxxvi. 31. nijrin ^js^ in allusion to the evil things ; 'ajrin-bai', in
reference to all their abominations. This fruit, which is pro-
duced by chastisement, namely, that the idolaters are inspired
with loathing for themselves, and led to the knowledge of Jeho
vah, will furnish the proof that God has not spoken in vain.
CHAP. VI. 11-14. 97
Vers. 11-14. The punishment is just and well deserved. —
Ver. 11. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Smite with thy hand,
and stamp with thy foot, and say, Woe on all the wicked abomi-
nations of the house of Israel! that they must perish by sword,
hunger, and pestilence. Ver. 12. He that is afar off will die by
the pestilence; and he that is near at hand shall fall by the sword;
and he who survives and is preserved will die of hunger : and I
shall accomplish my wrath upon them. Ver. 13. And ye shall
know that I am Jehovah, when your slain lie in the midst of your
idols round about your altars, on every high hiU, upon all the
summits of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under
every thick-leaved terebinth, on the places where they brought their
pleasant incense to all their idols. Ver. 14. And I will stretch
out my hand against them, and make the land waste and desolate
inore than the wilderness of Diblath, in all their dwellings : so
shall ye know that I am Jehovah. — Through clapping of the
hands and stamping of the feet — the gestures which indicate
violent excitement — the prophet is to make known the dis-
pleasure of Jehovah at the horrible idolatry of the people,
and thereby make manifest that the penal judgment is well
deserved. ^33? <^rf\! is in xxi. 19 expressed more distinctly by
f)3 7N ^12 ^jn, " to strike one hand against the other," i.e. " to
clap the hands ; " cf . Num. xxiv. 10. ns, an exclamation of
lamentation, occurring only here and in xxi. 20. IK'S, ver. 11,
is a conjunction, " at." Their abominations are so wicked, that
they must be exterminated on account of them. This is spe-
cially mentioned in ver. 12. No one will escape the judgment :
he who is far removed from its scene as little as he who is close
at hand ; while he who escapes the pestilence and the sword is
to perish of hunger. I^^J, servatus, preserved, as in Isa. xlix. 6.
The signification " besieged " (LXX., Vulgate, Targum, etc.),
Hitzig can only maintain by arbitrarily expunging ifjf^n as a
gloss. On ver. 126, cf. v. 13; on 13a, cf. ver. 5; and on IBb,
cf. ver. 3, and Hos. iv. 13; Jer. ii. 20, iii. 6; Deut. xii. 2.
'aJ-Ss bvi, according to later usage, for 'srb hv. nm nn, used
EZEK. I. &
98 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
in the Pentateuch of sacrifices pleasing to God, is here trans-
ferred to idol sacrifices; see on Lev. i. 9 and Gen. viii. 21.
On account of the prevalence of idolatry in all parts, God will
make the land entirely desolate. The union of riBB'ai nDDU'
serves to strengthen the idea ; of. xxxiii. 8 sqq., xxxv. 3. The
words finpn^ i3']l?l? are obscure, either " in the wilderness
towards Diblath " (even to Diblath), or " more than the wilder-
ness of Diblath " (ID of comparison). There is no doubt that
nn?ai is a nom. prop. ; cf . the name of the city D!n?3'n in Jer.
xlviii. 22 ; Num. xxxiii. 46. The second acceptation of the
words is more probable than the first. For, if "i?'!'?'? is the
terminus a quo, and f^QPaT the terminus ad quern of the extent of
the land, then must i^nsp be punctuated not only as status
absolut,, but it must also have the article ; because a definite
wilderness — that, namely, of Arabia — is meant. The omission
of the article cannot be justified by reference to xxi. 3 or to
Ps. Ixxv. 7 (Hitzig, Ewald), because both passages contain
general designations of the quarters of the world, with which
the article is always omitted. In the next place, no Dihla can
be pointed out in the north ; and the change of Diblatlia into
Itibla, already proposed by Jerome, and more recently brought
forward again by J. D. Michaelis, has not only against it the
authority of all the old versions, but also the circumstance that
the Ribla mentioned in 2 Kings xxili. 33 did not form the
northern boundary of Palestine, but lay on the other side of it,
in the land of Hamatli ; while the fi?3")ri, named in Num. xxxiv.
11, is a place on the eastern boundary to the north of the Sea
of Gennesareth, which would, moreover, be inappropriate as a
designation of the northern boundary. Finally, the extent of
the land from the south to the north is constantly expressed in
a different way; cf. Num. xiii. 21 (xxxiv. 8); Josh. xiii. 5;
1 Kings viii. 65; 2 Kings xiv. 65; Amos vi. 14; 1 Chron.
xiii. 5 ; 2 Chron. vii. 8 ; and even by Ezekiel himself (xlviii. 1)
riDH Nb? is named as the boundary on the north. The form
Pin^a^js similar to nnjDn for njon, although the name is hardly
CHAP. VII. 1-4. 99
to be explained, with Hiiv-ernick, as an appellation, after the
Arabic Jjo, calamitas, exitium. The wilderness of Diblah is
unknown. With 'W1 'S ^VTI the discourse is rounded of in
returning to the beginning of ver. 13, while the thoughts in
vers. 13 and 14 are only a variation of vers. 4—7.
CHAP. VII. THE OVERTHROW OF ISRAEL.
The second " word of God," contained in this chapter, com-
pletes the announcement of judgment upon Jerusalem and
Jndah, by expanding the thought, that the end will come
both quickly and inevitably upon the land and people. This
word is divided into two unequal sections, by the repetition of
the phrase, " Thus saith Adonai Jehovah " (vers. 2 and 5).
In the first of these sections the theme is given in short, expres-
sive, and monotonous clauses; namely, the end is drawing nigh,
for God will judge Israel without mercy according to its
abominations. The second section (vers. 5-27) is arranged in
four strophes, and contains, in a form resembling the lamenta-
tion in chap, xix., a more minute description of the end predicted.
Vers. 1-4. The end cometh. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jeho-
vah came to me thus : Ver. 2. And thou, son of man, thus saith
the Lord Jehovah : An end to the land of Israel ! the end cometh
upon the four borders of the land. Ver. 3. Now (cometh') the
end upon thee, and I shall send my wrath upon thee, and judge
thee according to thy ways, and bring upon thee all thine abomi-
nations. Ver. 4. A nd my eye shall not look with pity upon thee,
and T shall not spare, but bring thy ways upon thee ; and thy
abominations shall be in the midst of thee, that ye may know that
I am Jehovah. — ^^^\, with the copula, connects this word of
God with the preceding one, and shows it to be a continuation.
It commences with an emphatic utterance of the thought, that
the end is coming to the land of Israel, i.e. to the kingdom of
Judah, with its capital Jerusalem. Desecrated as it has been
100 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
by the abominations of its inhabitants, it will cease to be the
land of God's people Israel. "^ nons^ (to the land of Israel)
is not to be taken with i»X ns (thus saith the Lord) in opposi-
tion to the accents, but is connected with Yi?. (an end), as in
the Targ. and Vulgate, and is placed first for the sake of greater
emphasis. In the construction, compare Job vi. 14. njfa^x
jn^n niSJS is limited by the parallelism to the four extremities
of the land of Israel. It is used elsewhere for the whole earth
(Isa. xi. 12). The Chetib nj)|i"}S is placed, in opposition to the
ordinary rule, before a noun in the feminine gender. The
Kei'i gives the regular construction (vid. Ewald, § 267c). In
ver. 3 the end is explained to be a wrathful judgment. " Give
(trij) thine abominations upon thee ;" i.e. send the consequences,
inflict punishment for them. The same thought is expressed
in the phrase, " thine abominations shall be in the midst of
thee ;" in other words, they would discern them in the punish-
ments which the abominations would bring in their train. For
ver. 4a compare ch. v. 11.
Vers. 5-27. The execution of the judgment announced in
vers. 2-4, arranged in four strophes : vers. 5-9, 10-14, 15-22,
23-27. — The first strophe depicts the end as a terrible calamity,
and as near at hand. Vers. 3 and 4 are repeated as a refrain
in vers. 8 and 9, with slight modifications, Ver. 5. Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah : Misfortune, a singular misfortune, behold, it
cometh. Ver. 6. End cometh : there cometh the end ; it waketh
upon thee ; behold, it cometh. Ver. 7. Tlie fate cometh upon thee,
inhabitants of the land : the time cometh, the day is near ; tumidt
and not joy upon the mountains. Ver. 8. Now speedily will 1
pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine anger on
thee ; and judge thee according to thy ways, and bring upon thee
all thine abominations. Ver. 9. My eye shall not look with
pity upon thee, and I shall not spare ; according to thy ways will
I bring it upon thee, and thy abominations shall be in the midst
of thee, that ye may know that I, Jehovah, am smiting. — Misfor-
tune of a singular kind shall come, nyn is made more emphatic
CHAP. VII. 5-9. 101
by nj)"i nns, in which Dns is placed first for the sake of
emphasis, in the sense of unicus, singularis; a calamity singular
(unique) of its kind, such as never had occurred before (cf.
ch. V. 9). In ver. 6 the poetical TPD, it (the end) waketh
upon thee, is suggested by the paronomasia with Y\?JI}- The
force of the words is weakened by supplying Jehovah as the
subject to ri?^j in opposition to the context. And it will not
do to supply nj)T (evil) from ver. 5 as the subject to nsa njin
(behold, it cometh). nsa is construed impersonally : It cometh,
namely, every dreadful thing which the end brings with it.
The meaning of tz^phirdh is doubtful. The only other passage
in which it occurs is Isa. xxviii. 5, where it is used in the sense
of diadem or crown, which is altogether unsuitable here. Easchi
has therefore had recourse to the Syriac and Chaldee S^I^Vj
aurora, tempus matutinum, and Havernick has explained it
accordingly, " the dawn of an evil day." But the dawn is
never used as a symbol or omen of misfortune, not even in
Joel ii. 2, but solely as the sign of the bursting forth of light
or of salvation. Abarbanel was on the right track when he
started from the radical meaning of 13V, to twist, and taking
tz'phirdli in the sense of orbisj ordo, or periodical return, under-
stood it as probably denoting rerum fatique vicissiticdinem in
orhem redeuntem (Ges. Tlies. p. 1188). But it has been justly
observed, that the rendering succession, or periodical return,
can only give a forced sense in ver. 10. Winer has given a
better rendering, viz. fatum, malum fatale, fate or destiny, for
which he refers to the Arabic /»,Jw>, intortum, then fatum Jtaud
mutaiidum inevitabile. Different explanations have also been
given of Ciii Ii]. But the opinion that it is synonymous with
TVn, the joyous vintage cry (Jer. xxv. 30 ; Isa. xvi. 10), is a
more probable one than that it is an unusual form of nin,
splendor, gloria. So much at any rate is obvious from the
context, that the liapax legomenon 1\} is the antithesis of
HDinp, tumult, or the noise of war. The shouting of the
102 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
mountains, is shouting, a rejoicing upon the mountains. Siii^P,
from the immediate vicinity, in a temporal not a local sense,
as in Deut. xxxii. 17 ( = immediately). For ^l^ n^3, see ch.
vi. 12. The remainder of the strophe (vers. 86 and 9) is a
repetition of vers. 3 and 4 ; but nap is added in the last clause.
They shall learn that it is Jehovah who smites. This thought
is expanded in the following strophe.
Vers. 10-14. Second strophe. — Ver. 10. Behold the day, he-
hold, it Cometh; the fate springeth up; the rod sprouteth; the pride
blossometh. Ver. 11. Tlie violence riseth up as the rod of evil:
nothing of them, nothing of their multitude, nothing of their
crowd, and nothing glorious upon them. Ver. 12. Tlie time
Cometh, the day approacheth : let not the buyer rejoice, and let not
the seller trouble himself ; for wrath cometh upon the whole mul-
titude thereof. Ver. 13. For the seller will not return to that
which was sold, even though his life were still among the living :
for the prophecy against its whole multitude will not turn back; and
no one will strengthen himself as to his life through his iniquity.
Ver. 14. They blow the trumpet and make everything ready ; but
no one goeth into the battle : for my wrath cometh upon all their
multitude. — The rod is already prepared ; nothing will be left of
the ungodly. This is the leading thought of the strophe. The
three clauses of ver. 10b are synonymous ; but there is a grada-
tion in the thought. The approaching fate springs up out of the
earth (t<VJ, applied to the springing up of plants, as in 1 Kings
V. 13; Isa. xi. 1, etc.); it sprouts as a rod, and flowers as
pride. Matteh, the rod as an instrument of chastisement (Isa.
x. 5). This rod is then called zddhon, pride, inasmuch as God
makes use of a proud and violent people, namely the Chaldeans
(Hab. i. 6 sqq. ; Jer. 1. 31 seq.), to inflict the punishment.
Sprouting and blossoming, which are generally used as figura-
tive representations of fresh and Joyous prosperity, denote here
the vigorous growth of that power which is destined to inflict
the punishment. Both chdmds (violence) and zddhon (pride)
refer to the enemy who is to chastise Israel. The violence
CHAP. VII. 10-14. 103
which he employs rises up into the chastening rod of " evil,"
i.e. of ungodly Israel. In vei'. 116 the effect of the blow is
described in short, broken sentences. The emotion apparent
in the frequent repetition of N? is intensified by the omission
of the verb, which gives to the several clauses the character of
exclamations. So far as the meaning is concerned, we have to
insert n^^) in thought, and to take p in a partitive sense : there
will not be anything of them, i.e. nothing, will be left of them
(the Israelites, or the inhabitants of the land), onp (of them)
is explained by the nouns which follow, tion and the ott. \ey.
^\}^[}., plural of DH or ^^[}, both derivatives of HDn, are so com-
bined that liisn signifies the tumultuous multitude of people,
ncn the multitude of possessions (like !i!2n, Isa. Ix. 2 ; Ps,
xxxvii. 16, etc.). The meaning which Havernick assigns to
hdmeh, viz. anxiety or trouble, is unsupported and inappro-
priate. The UTT. \ey. nb is not to be derived from nnj, to
lament, as the Eabbins affirm ; or interpreted, as Kimclii — who
adopts this derivation — maintains, on the ground of Jer. xvi,
4 sqq., as signifying that, on account of the multitude of the
dying, there will be no more lamentation for the dead. This
leaves the Mappik in n unexplained, nj is a derivative of a
root W3 ; in Arabic, is\j, elata fuit res, eminuit, magnijicus fuit ;
lience nj, res magnijica. When everything disappears in such
a way as this, the joy occasioned by the acquisition of property,
and the sorrow caused by its loss, will also pass away (ver. 12).
The buyer will not rejoice in the property he has bought, for
he will not be able to enjoy it ; and the seller will not mourn
that he has been obliged to part with his possession, for he
would have lost it in any case.' The wrath of God is kindled
against their whole multitude ; that is to say, the judgment
falls equally upon 'them all. The suffix in wion refers, as
I " It is a natural thing to rejoice in the purchase of property, and to
mourn over its sale. But when slavery and captivity stare you in the face,
rejoicing and mourning are equally absurd." — Jerome.
104 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Jerome has correctly shown, to the " land of Israel " (admatli,
Yisraei) in ver. 2, i.e. to the inhabitants of the land. The
words, " the seller will not return to what he has sold," are to
be explained from the legal regulations concerning the year of
jubilee in Lev. xxv., according to which all landed property
that had been sold was to revert to its original owner (or his
heir), without compensation, in the year of jubilee ; so that he
would then return to his mimkdr (Lev. xxv. 14, 27, 28).
Henceforth, however, this will take place no more, even if
Dnjn, their (the sellers') life, should be still alive (sc. at the
time when the return to his property would take place, accord-
ing to the regulations of the year of jubilee), because Israel
will be banished from the land. The clause 'n Ci''>na lijn is a
conditional circumstantial clause. The seller will not return
(niK'J N?) to his possession, because the prophecy concerning
the whole multitude of the people will not return (3ltJ'^ NP), i.e.
will not turn back (for this meaning of 2Vi}, compare Isa. xlv.
23, Iv. 11). As ^Vff\ ^h corresponds to the previous a^ti^J N^,
so does njion ^'n'm pn to njion-b-iiiS; inn in ver. 12. In the
last clause of ver. 13, injn is not to be taken with i^iya in the
sense of "in the iniquity of his life," which makes the suffix in
iMjJ3 superfluous, but with ^?VT\\^ the Hithpael being construed
with the accusative, " strengthen himself in his life." Whether
these words also refer to the year of jubilee, as Havernick
supposes, inasmuch as the regulation that every one was to
recover his property was founded upon the idea of the restitu-
tion and re-creation of the theocracy, we may leave undecided ;
since the thought is evidently simply this: ungodly Israel shall
be deprived of its possession, because the wicked shall not
obtain the strengthening of his life through his sin. This
thought leads on to ver. 14, in which we have a description
of the utter inability to offer any successful resistance to the
enemy employed in executing the judgment. There is some
difficulty connected with the word 5?iplJ3, since the injin. ab-
solute, which the form Jjipn seems to indicate, cannot be con-
CHAP. VII. 15-22. lOS
strued with either a preposition or the article. Even if the
expression Wpn ilipn? in Jer. vi, 1 was floating before the mind
of Ezekiel, and led to his employing the bold phrase 5)ipn3, this
would not justify the use of the infinitive absolute with a pre-
position and the article, Vip)J must be a substantive form, and
denote not clangour, but the instrument used to sound an
alarm, viz. the shophdr (ch. xxxiii. 3). T'^^, an unusual form
of the inf. abs. (see Josh. vii. 7), used in the place of the
finite tense, and signifying to equip for war, as in Nah. ii. 4.
Pian, everything requisite for waging war. And no one goes
into the battle, because the wrath of God turns against them
(Lev. xxvi. 17), and smites them with despair (Deut. xxxii.
30).
Vers. 15-22. Tldrd strophe. Thus will they fall into irre-
sistible destruction ; even their silver and gold they will not
rescue, but will cast it away as useless, and leave it for the
enemy. — Ver. 15. The sword ivithout, and pestilence and famine
within: he who is in the field will die by the sword; and famine
and pestilence will devour him that is in the city. Ver. 16. And
if their escaped ones escape, they will be upon the mountains like
the doves of the valleys, all moaning, every one for his iniquity.
Ver, 17. All hands will become feeble, and all knees flow with
water, Ver. 18. Tliey will gird themselves ivith sackcloth, and
terrors will cover them. ; on all faces there will be shame, and
baldness on all their heads. Ver. 19. lliey will throio their
silver into the streets, and their gold will be as filth to them.
Their silver and their gold will not be able to rescue them in the
day of Jehovalis wrath ; they will not satisfy their souls there-
with, nor fill their stomachs thereby, for it was to them a stum-
bling-block to guilt. Ver. 20. And His beautiful ornament, they
used it for pride ; and their abominable images, their abomina-
tions they made thereof: therefore I make it filth to them. Ver.
21. And I shall give it into the hand of foreigners for prey, and
to the wicked of the earth for spoil, that they may defile it. Ver.
22, I shall turn my face from them, that they defile my treasure ;
106 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and oppressors shall come upon it and defile it. — The chastise-
ment of God penetrates everywhere (ver. 15 compare with
ch. V. 12) ; even flight to the mountains, that are inaccessible
to the foe (compare 1 Mace. li. 28 ; Matt. xxiv. 16), will only
bring misery. Those who have fled to the mountains will coo
—i.e. mourn, moan— like the doves of the valleys, which (as
Bochart has correctly interpreted the simile in his Hieroz. II.
p. 546, ed. Eos.), " when alarmed by the bird-catcher or the
hawk, are obliged to forsake their natural abode, and fly else-
where to save their lives. The mountain doves are contrasted
with those of the valleys, as wild with tame." In nion D?3 the
figure and the fact are fused together. The words actually re-
late to the men who have fled ; whereas the gender of nton is
made to agree with that of 'P.V3. The cooing of doves was
regarded by the ancients as a moan (Jidgdli), a mournful note
(for proofs, see Gesen. on Isa. xxxviii. 14) ; for which Ezekiel
uses the still stronger expression hdmdh fremere, to howl or
growl (cf. Isa. lix. 11). The low moaning has reference to
their iniquity, the punishment of which they are enduring.
When the judgment bursts upon them, they will all (not
merely those who have escaped, but the whole nation) be over-
whelmed with terror, shame, and suffering. The words, " all
knees flow with water " (for Jidlak in this sense, compare Joel
iv. 18), are a hyperbolical expression used to denote the entire
loss of the strength of the knees (here, ver. 17 and ch. xxi. 12),
like the heart melting and turning to water in Josh. vii. 5.
With this utter despair there are associated grief and horror at
the calamity that has fallen upon them, and shame and pain at
the thought of the sins that have plunged them into such
distress. For n«j)3 nnB3, compare Ps. Iv. 6 ; for n^a D'':3-i'3-^X,
Mic. vii. 10, Jer. li. 51 ; and for nn-)!^ VNT^'aa, Isa. xv. 2,
Amos viii. 10. On the custom of shaving the head bald on
account of great suffering or deep sorrow, see the coram, on
Mic. i. 16. — In this state of anguish they will throw all their
treasures away as sinful trash (ver. 19 sqq.). By the silver
CHAP. VII. 15-22. 107
and gold which they will throw away (ver. 19), we are not to
understand idolatrous images particularly, — these are first
spoken of in ver. 20, — but the treasures of precious metals
on which they had hitherto set their hearts. They will not
merely throw these away as worthless, but look upon them as
nidddh, filth, an object of disgust, inasmuch as they have been
the servants of their evil lust. The next clause, " silver and
gold cannot rescue them," are a reminiscence from Zeph. i. 18.
But Ezekiel gives greater force to the thought by adding,
" they will not appease their hunger therewith," — that is to
say, they will not be able to protect their lives thereby, either
from the sword of the enemy (see the comm. on Zeph. i. 18) or
from death by stan^ation, because there will be no more food
to purchase within the besieged city. The clause 'l31 PiK'JD ''3
assigns the reason for that which forms the leading thought of
the verse, namely, the throwing away of the silver and gold as
filth ; OjiJ? jiK'^Dj a stumbling-block through which one falls into
guilt and punishment ; Vnj? 'av, the beauty of his ornament, i.e.
his beautiful ornament. The allusion is to the silver and gold;
and the singular suffix is to be explained from the fact that the
prophet fixed his mind upon the people as a whole, and used
the singular in a general and indefinite sense. The words are
written absolutely at the commencement of the sentence ; hence
the suffix attached to WDK'. Jerome has given the true mean-
ing of the words: "what I (God) gave for an ornament of the
possessors and for their wealth, they turned into pride." And
not merely to ostentatious show (in the manner depicted in Isa.
iii. 16 sqq.), but to abominable images, i.e.. idols, did they
apply the costly gifts of God (cf. Hos. viii. 4, xiii. 2). a na'j?^
to make of (gold and silver) ; 3 denoting the material with
which one works and of which anything is made (as in Ex.
xxxi. 4, xxxviii. 8). God punishes this abuse by making it
(gold and silver) into nidddh to them, i.e., according to ver. 19,
by placing them in such circumstances that they cast it away
as filth, and (ver. 21) by giving it as booty to the foe. The
108 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
enemy is described as " the wicked of the earth " (cf . Ps. Ixxv.
9), i.e. godless men, who not only seize upon the possession of
Israel, but in the most wicked manner lay hands upon all that
is holy, and defile it. The Clietib ™^?n is to be retained, not-
withstanding the fact that it was preceded by a masculine
suffix. "What is threatened will take place, because the Lord
will turn away His face from His people (Q™, from the
Israelites), i.e. will withdraw His gracious protection from
them, so that the enemy will be able to defile His treasure.
Tsdphun, that which is hidden, the treasure (Job xx. 26 ;
Obad. ver. 6). Ts^phuni is generally supposed to refer to the
temple, or the Most Holy Place in the temple. Jerome renders
it arcanum meum, and gives this explanation : " signifying the
Holy of Holies, which no one except the priests and the high
priest dared to enter." This interpretation was so commonly
adopted by the Fathers, that even Theodoret explains the ren-
dering given in the Septuagint, ttjv i-jna-KOTrriv fiov, as signify-
ing the Most Holy Place in the temple. On the other hand,
the Chaldee has 'n^'^T^ nn Xjjnx, "the land of the house of my
majesty ; " and Calvin understands it as signifying " the land
which was safe under His {i.e. God's) protection." But it is
difficult to reconcile either explanation with the use of the word
tsdphun. The verb tsdphan signifies to hide, shelter, lay up in
safety. Tiiese meanings do not befit either the Holy of Holies
in the temple or the land of Israel. It is true that the Holy of
Holies was unapproachable by the laity, and even by the ordi-
nary priests, but it was not a secret, a hidden place ; and still
less was this the case with the land of Canaan. We therefore
adhere to the meaning, which is so thoroughly sustained by
Job XX. 26 and Obad. ver. 6, — namely, " treasure," by which,
no doubt, the temple-treasure is primarily intended. This
rendering suits the context, as only treasures have been re-
ferred to before; and it may be made to harmonize with
H3 !iN3 which follows. 3 Nia signifies not merely intrare in
locum, but also venire in (e.g. 2 Kings vi. 23 ; possibly Ezek.
CHAP. VII. 23-27. 109
XXX. 4), and may therefore be very properly rendered, " to get
possession of," since it is only possible to obtain possession of a
ti'easure by peneti'atiug into the place where it is laid up or
concealed. There is nothing at variance with this in the word
/^rij profanare, since it has already occurred in ver. 21 in con-
nection with the defiling of treasures and jewels. Moreover,
as Calvin has correctly observed, the word is employed here to
denote " an indiscriminate abuse, when, instead of considering
to what purpose things have been entrusted to us, we squander
them rashly and without selection, in contempt and even in
scorn."
Vers. 23-27. Fourth strophe. Still worse is coming, namely,
the captivity of the people, and overthrow of the kingdom. —
Ver. 23. Make the chain, for the land is full of capital crime,
and the city full of outrage. Ver. 24. / shall bring evil ones of
the nations, that they may take possession of their houses ; and I
shall put an end to the pride of the strong, that their sanctuaries
may be defiled. Ver. 25. Ruin has come ; they seek salvation,
but there is none. Ver. 26. Destruction upon destruction
Cometh, and report upon report ariseth ; they seek visions from
prophets, but the law will vanish away from the priest, and
counsel from the elders. Ver. 27. Tlie king will mourn, and the
prince will clothe himself in horror, and the hands of the common
people will tremble. I will deal with them according to their
way, and according to their judgments will I judge them, that they
may learn that I am Jehovah. — Those who have escaped death
by sword or famine at the conquest of Jerusalem have captivity
and exile awaiting them. This is the meaning of the command
to make the chain, i.e. the fetters needed to lead the people into
exile. This punishment is necessary, because the land is full
of mishpat ddinim, judgment of blood. This cannot mean,
there is a judgment upon the shedding of blood, i.e. upon
murder, which is conducted by Jehovah, as Havernick sup-
poses. Such a thought is irreconcilable with nN7D, and with
the parallel Don rt^ba. D^m DBB")? is to be explained after the
110 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
same manner as nio tisa'D (a matter for sentence of death, a
capital crime) in Deut. xix. 6, 21, 22, as signifying a matter
for sentence of bloodshed, i.e. a crime of blood, or capital
crime, as the Chaldee has already rendered it. Because the
land is filled with capital crime, and the city (Jerusalem) with
violence, the Lord will bring 0\'ii ''JTij evil ones of the heathen,
i.e. the worst of the heathen, to put an end to the pride of the
Israelites. DVy iixi is not " pride of the insolents ; " for CIJ?
does not stand for C^B ''W (Deut. xxviii. 50, etc.). The ex-
pression is rather to be explained from TJJ tiS3, pride of strength,
in ch. xxiv. 21, xxs. 6, 18 (cf. Lev. xxvi. 19), and embraces
everything on which a man (or a nation) bases his power and
rests his confidence. The Israelites are called DM?, because they
tliouuht themselves strong, or, according to ch. xxiv. 21, based
their strength upon the possession of the temple and the holy
land. This is indicated by Dr\'fl\yo 6m which follows, bnj,
Niphal of '^hn and Q.^ty-ipD, not a participle Piel, from Bni^D,
witli the Dagesh dropped, but an unusual form, from B^pp for
Dn^'^pp (vid. Ew. § 215a). — The dir. Xey. n-jsi?, with the tone
drawn back on account of the tone-syllable which follows (cf.
Ges. § 29. 3. 6), signifies excidium, destruction (according to
the Rabbins), from ISj^, to shrink or roll up (Isa. xxxviii. 12).
N3 is a prophetic perfect. In ver. 25 the ruin of the kingdom
is declared to be certain, and in vers. 26 and 27 the occurrence
of it is more minutely depicted. Stroke upon stroke does the
ruin come ; and it is intensified by reports, alarming accounts,
which crowd together and increase the terror, and also by the
desperation of the spiritual and temporal leaders of the nation,
— the prophets, priests, and elders, — whom God deprives of
revelation, knowledge, and counsel; so that all ranks (king
and princes and the common people) sink into mourning,
alarm, and horror. That it is to no purpose that visions or
prophecies are sought from the prophets (ver. 26), is evident
from the antithetical statement concerning the priests and
elders which immediately follows. The three statements serve
CHAP. Vin.-SL 111
as complements of one another. They seek for predictions
from prophets, but the prophets receive no vision, no revelation.
They seek instruction from priests, but instruction is with-
drawn from the priests ; and so forth. Tordh signifies instruc-
tion out of the law, which the priests were to give to the
people (Mai. ii. 7). In ver. 27, the three classes into whicli
the people were divided are mentioned — viz. king, prince {i.e.
tribe-princes and heads of families), and, in contradistinction to
both, V'lXn DJ?, the common people, the people of the land, in
distinction from the civil rulers, as in 2 Kings xxi. 24, xxiii.
30. 03"!'^'?, literally from their way, their mode of action, will
I do to them : i.e. my action will be derived from theirs, and
regulated accordingly, cnis for DR^5, as in ch. iii. 22, etc. (See
the comm. on ch. xvi. 59.)
CHAP. VIII.-XI. VISION OP THE DESTRUCTION OF
JERUSALEM.
A year and two months after his call, the glory of the Lord
appeared to the prophet a second time, as he had seen it by the
Ohebar. He is transported in spirit to Jerusalem into the
court of the temple (ch. viii. 1-4), where the Lord causes him
to see, first the idolatry of Israel (ch. viii. 5-18), and secondly,
the judgment why, on account of this idolatry, all the inhabi-
tants of Jerusalem are smitten (chap, ix.), the city is burned
with fire, and the sanctuary forsaken by God (ch. x.). Lastly,
after he has been charged to foretell to the representatives of
the people more especially the coming judgment, and to those
who are sent into exile a future salvation (ch. xi. 1-21), he
describes how the gracious presence of God forsakes the city
before his own eyes (ch. xi. 22, 23). After this has taken
place, Ezekiel is carried back in the vision to Ghaldea once
more ; and there, after the vision has come to an end, he
announces to the exiles what he has seen and heard (ch. xi.
24, 25).
112 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Chap. viii. Abominations of the Idolatry of the House
OP Israel.— Vers. 1-4. Time and place of the divine revela-
tion. — Ver. 1. And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth
(month), on the fifth (day) of the month, I was sitting in my house,
and the elders ofjudah were sitting before me ; there fell upon me
the hand of the Lord Jehovah there. Ver. 2. And 1 saw, and
behold a figure like the look of fire, from the look of its loins down-
wards fire, and from its loins upwards like a look of brilliance, like
the sight of red-hot brass. Ver. 3. And he stretched out the form
of a hand, and took me by the locks of my head, and wind carried
me away between earth and heaven, and brought me to Jerusalem
in visions of God, to the entrance of the gate of the inner court,
which faces towards the north, where the image of jealousy exciting
jealousy had its stand. Ver. 4. And, behold, the glory of the
God of Israel was there, like the vision which I have seen in the
valley. — The place where Ezekiel received this new theophany
agrees with the statements in eh. iii. 24 and iv. 4, 6, that he
was to shut himself up in his house, and lie 390 days upon the
left side, and 40 days upon the right side — in all, 430 days.
The use of the word atri^, " I sat," is not at variance with this,
as 3B') does not of necessity signify sitting as contrasted with
lying, but may also be used in the more general sense of stay-
ing, or living, in the house. Nor is the presence of the elders
of Judah opposed to the command, in ch. iii. 24, to shut himself
up in the house, as we have already observed in the notes on
that passage. The new revelation is made to him in the pre-
sence of these elders, because it is of the greatest importance to
them. They are to be witnesses of his ecstasy ; and after this
has left the prophet, are to hear from his lips the substance of
the divine revelation (ch. xi. 25). It is otherwise with the
time of the revelation. If we compare the date given in
ch. viii. 1 with those mentioned before, this new vision ap-
parently falls within the period required for carrying out the
symbolical actions of the previous vision. Between ch. i. 1, 2
(the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year) and
CHAP. VIII. 1-4. 113
ch. viii. 1 (the fifth day of the sixth month in the sixth year)
we have one year and two months, that is to say (reckoning
the year as a lunar year at 354 days, and the two months at
59 days), 413 days ; whereas the two events recorded in ch. i.
1-vIi. 27 require at least 437 days, namely 7 day.s for ch. iii. 15,
and 390 + 40 = 430 days for ch. iv. 5, 6. Consequently the
new theophany would fall within the 40 days, during which
Ezekiel was to lie upon the right side for Judah. To get rid
of this difficulty, Hitzig conjectures that the fifth year of
Jehoiachin (ch. i. 2) was a leap year of 13 months or 385 days,
by which he obtains an interval of 444 days after adding 59
for the two months, — a period sufficient not only to include the
7 days (ch. iii. 15) and 390 + 40 days (ch. iv. 5, 6), but to leave
7 days for the time that elapsed between ch. vii. and viii.
But however attractive this reckoning may appear, the assump-
tion that the fifth year of the captivity of Jehoiachiawas a
leap year is purely conjectural ; and there is nothing whatever
to give it probability. Consequently the only thing that could
lead us to adopt such a solution, would be the impossibihty of
reconciling the conclusion to be drawn from the chronological
data, as to the time of the two theophanies, with the substance
of these divine revelations. If we assume that Ezekiel carried
out the symbolical acts mentioned in ch. iv. and v. in all their
entirety, we can hardly imagine that the vision described in the
chapters before us, by which he was transported in spirit to
Jerusalem, occurred within the period of forty days, during
which he was to typify the siege of Jerusalem by lying upon
his right side. Nevertheless, Kliefoth has decided in favour
of this view, and argues in support of it, that the vision de-
scribed in ch. viii. 1 sqq. took place in the prophet's own house,
that it is identical in substance with what is contained in
ch. iii. 22-vii. 27, and that there is no discrepancy, because all
that occurred here was purely internal, and the prophet himself
was to address the words contained in ch. xi. 4—12 and xi.
14-21 to the inhabitants of Jerusalem in his state of ecstasy.
EZEK. I, H
114 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Moreover, when it is stated in ch. xi. 25 that Ezekiel related
to the exiles all that he had seen in the vision, it is perfectly
open to us to assume that this took place at the same time as
his report to them of the vt^ords of God in ch. vi. and vii., and
those which follow in ch. xii. But, on the other hand, it may
be replied that the impression produced by ch. xi. 25 is not that
the prophet waited several weeks after his visionary transport to
Jerusalem before communicating to the elders what he saw in
the vision. And even if the possibility of this cannot be dis-
puted, we cannot imagine any reason why the vision should be
shown to the prophet four weeks before it was to be related to
the exiles. Again, there is not sufficient identity between the
substance of the vision in ch. viii.-xi. and the revelation in
ch. iv.-vii., to suggest any motive for the two to coincide. It
is true that the burning of Jenisalem, vrhich Ezekiel sees in
ch. viii.-xi., is consequent upon the siege and conquest of that
city, which he has already predicted in ch. iv.-vii. both in
figure and word ; but they are not so closely connected, that it
was necessary on account of this connection for it to be shown
to him before the completion of the symbolical siege of Jeru-
salem. And, lastly, although the ecstasy as a purely internal
process is so far reconcilable with the prophet's lying upon his
right side, that this posture did not preclude a state of ecstasy
or render it impossible, yet this collision would ensue, that
while the prophet was engaged in carrying out the former word
of God, a new theophany would be received by him, which
must necessarily abstract his mind from the execution of the
previous command of God, and place him in a condition in
which it would be impossible for him to set his face firmly upon
the siege of Jerusalem, as he had been commanded to do in
ch. iv. 7. On account of this collision, we cannot subscribe to
the assumption, that it was during the time that Ezekiel was
lying bound by God upon his right side to bear the sin of
Jerusalem, that he was transported in spirit to the temple at
Jerusalem. On the contrary, the fact that this transport
CHAP. VIII. 1-4. 115
occurred, according to oh. viii. 1, at a time when he could not
have ended the symbolical acts of ch. iv., if he had been
required to carry them out in all their external reality, furnishes
us with conclusive evidence of the correctness of the view we
have already expressed, that the symbolical acts of ch. iv. and v.
did not lie within the sphere of outward reality (see comm.
on ch. V. 4). — And if Ezekiel did not really lie for 430 days,
there was nothing to hinder his having a fresh vision 14 months
after the theophany in ch. i. and ch. iii. 22 sqq. For vj? pan
'*' ^l, see at ch. iii. 22 and i. 3.
The figure which Ezekiel sees in the vision is described in
ver. 2 in precisely the same terms as the appearance of God in
ch. i. 27. The sameness of the two passages is a sufficient
defence of the reading t:'S"ns'i03 against the arbitrary emenda-
tion B'''K 'D3, after the Sept. rendering ofiolwfia wSpo?, in sup-
port of which Ewald and Hitzig appeal to ch. i. 26, though
without any reason, as the reading there is not B'''N, but
dlX. It is not expressly stated here that the apparition was
in human form — the fiery appearance is all that is mentioned ;
but this is taken for granted in the allusion to the Q^^na (the
loins), either as self-evident, or as well known from ch. i. "inf
is synonymous with Mi in ch. i. 4, 27. What is new in the
present theophany is the stretching out of the hand, which
grasps the prophet by the front hair of his head, whereupon he
is carried by wind between heaven and earth, i.e. through the
air, to Jerusalem, not in the body, but in visions of God (cf.
ch. i. 1), that is to say, in spiritual ecstasy, and deposited at
the entrance of the inner northern door of the temple. n^P^JSn
is not an adjective belonging to "^V^, for this is not a feminine
noun, but is used as a substantive, as in ch. xliii. 5 (="'-?nn
n^P'JSn : cf . ch. xl. 40) : gate of the inner court, i.e. the gate
on the north side of the inner court which led into the outer
court. We are not informed whether Ezekiel was placed on
the inner or outer side of this gate, i.e. in the inner or outer
court ; but it is evident from ver. 5 that he was placed in the
116 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
inner court, as his position commanded a view of the image
which stood at the entrance of the gate towards the north.
The further statement, " where the standing place of the
image of jealousy was," anticipates what follows, and points
out the reason why the prophet was placed just there. The
expression " image of jealousy " is explained by naperij which
excites the jealousy of Jehovah (see the comm. on Ex. xx, 5).
Consequently, we have not to think of any image of Jehovah,
but of an image of a heathen idol (cf. Deut. xxxii. 21) ; pro-
bably of Baal or Asherah, whose image had already been
placed in the temple by Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 7) : certainly
not the image of the corpse of Adonis moulded in wax or clay.
This opinion, which Havernick advances, is connected with the
-.rroneous assumption that all the idolatrous abominations men-
tioned in this chapter relate to the celebration of an Adonis-
festival in the temple. There (ver. 4) in the court of the
temple Ezekiel saw once more the glory of the God of Israel,
as he had seen it in the valley (ch. iii. 22) by the Chaboras,
i.e. the appearance of God upon the throne with the cherubim
and wheels; whereas the divine figure, whose hand grasped
him in his house, and transported him to the temple (ver. 2),
showed neither throne nor cherubim. The expression " God
of Israel," instead of Jehovah (ch. iii. 23), is chosen as an
antithesis to the strange god, the heathen idol, whose image
stood in the temple. As the God of Israel, Jehovah cannot
tolerate the image and worship of another god in His temple.
To set up such an image in the temple of Jehovah was a prac-
tical renunciation of the covenant, a rejection of Jehovah on
the part of Israel as its covenant God.
Here, in the temple, Jehovah shows to the prophet the
various kinds of idolatry which Israel is practising both publicly
and privately, not merely in the temple, but throughout the
whole land. The arrangement of these different forms of
idolatry in four groups or abomination scenes (vers. 5, 6, 7-12,
13-15, and 16-18), which the prophet sees both in and from
CHAP. VIII. 5, 6. 117
the court of the temple, belong to the visionary drapery of this
divine revelation. It is altogether erroneous to interpret the
vision as signifying that all these forms of idolatry were prac-
tised in the temple itself; an assumption which cannot be
carried out without doing violence to the description, more
especially of the second abomination in vers. 7-12. Still more
untenable is Havernick's view, that the four pictures of idola-
trous practices shown to the prophet are only intended to
represent different scenes of a festival of Adonis held in the
temple. The selection of the courts of the temple for depicting
the idolatrous worship, arises from the fact that the temple was
the place where Israel was called to worship the Lord its God.
Consequently the apostasy of Israel from the Lord could not
be depicted more clearly and strikingly than by the following
series of pictures of idolatrous abominations practised in the
temple under the eyes of God.
Vers. 5 and 6. First abomination-picture. — Ver. 5. And He
said to me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now towards the
north. And I lifted vp my eyes towards the north, and, behold,
to the north of the gate of the altar was this image of jealousy at
the entrance. Ver. 6. And He. said to me. Son of man, seest
thou what they do ? great abominations, which the house of Israel
doeth here, that I may go far away from my sanctuary ; and thou
shalt yet again see greater abominations still. — As Ezekiel had
taken his stand in the inner court at the entrance of the north
gate, and when looking thence towards the north saw the image
of jealousy to the north of the altar gate, the image must have
stood on the outer side of the entrance, so that the prophet saw
it as he looked through the open doorway. The altar gate is
the same as the northern gate of the inner court mentioned in
ver. 3. But it is impossible to state with certainty how it came
to be called the altar gate. Possibly from the circumstance
that the sacrificial animals were taken through this gate to the
altar, to be slaughtered on the northern side of the altar, accord-
in "• to Lev. i. 4, v. 11, etc. Dn», contracted from CiTHD, like
118 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
niD from nr na in Ex. iv. 2. The words "what they are doing
here " do not force us to assume that at that very time they were
worshipping the idol. They simply describe what was generally
practised there. The setting up of the image involved the wor-
ship of it. The subject to •"'i^p^? is not the house of Israel, but
Jehovah. They perform great abominations, so that Jehovah is
compelled to go to a distance from His sanctuary, i.e. to forsake
it (cf. ch. xi. 23), because they make it an idol-temple.
Vers. 7-12. Second abomination ; Worship of beasts. — Ver.
7. And He brought me to the entrance of the court, and I saw,
and behold there was a hole in the wall, Ver. 8. And He said
to me, Son of man, break through the wall : and I broke through
the wall, and behold there was a door. Ver. 9. And He said to
m.e. Come and see the wicked abominations which they are doing
here. Ver. 10. And I came and saw, and behold there were all
kinds of figures of reptiles, and beasts, abominations, and all kinds
of idols of the house of Israel, drawn on the wall round about.
Ver. 11. And seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel,
with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them, stood
in front, every man with his censer in his hand ; and the smell of
a cloud of incense arose. Ver. 12. And He said to me, Seest
thou, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel do in the
dark, every one in his image-chambers ? For they say : Jehovah
doth not see us ; Jehovah hath forsaken the land. — The entrance
of the court to which Ezekiel was now transported cannot be
the principal entrance to the outer court towards the east
(Ewald). This would be at variance with the context, as we
not only find the prophet at the northern entrance in vers. 3
and 5, but at ver. 14 we find him there still. If he had been
taken to the eastern gate in the meantime, this would certainly
have been mentioned. As that is not the case, the reference
must be to that entrance to the court which lay between the
entrance-gate of the inner court (ver. 3) and the northern
entrance-gate to the house of Jehovah (ver. 14), or northern
gate of the outer court, in other words, the northern entrance
CHAP. VIII. 7-12. 119
into the outer court. Thus the prophet was conducted out of
the inner court through its northern gate into the outer court,
and placed in front of the northern gate, which led out into the
open air. There he saw a hole in the wall, and on breaking
through the wall, by the command of God, he saw a door, and
having entered it, he saw all kinds of figures of animals en-
graved on the wall round about, in front of which seventy of
the elders of Israel were standing and paying reverence to the
images of beasts with burning incense. According to ver. 12,
the prophet was thereby shown what the elders of Israel did in
the dark, every one in his image-chamber. From this explana-
tion on the part of God concerning the picture shown to the
prophet, it is very evident that it had no reference to any
idolatrous worship practised by the elders in one or more of the
cells of the outer court of the temple. For even though the
objection raised by Kliefoth to this view, namely, that it can-
not be proved that there were halls with recesses in the outer
court, is neither valid nor correct, since the existence of such
halls is placed beyond the reach of doubt by Jer. xxxv. 4,
2 Kings^xxiii. 11, and 1 Ohron. xxviii. 12 ; such a supposition
is decidedly precluded by the fact, that the cells and recesses at
the gates cannot have been large enough to allow of seventy-one
men taking part in a festive idolatrous service. The supposition
that the seventy-one men were distributed in different chambers
is at variance with the distinct words of the text. The prophet
not only sees the seventy elders standing along with Jaazaniah,
but he could not look through one door into a number of
chambers at once, and see the pictures drawn all round upon
their walls. The assembling of the seventy elders in a secret
cell by the northern gate of the outer temple to worship the
idolatrous images engraved on the walls of the cell, is one
feature in the visionary form given to the revelation of what
the elders of the people were doing secretly throughout the
' whole land. To bring out more strikingly the secrecy of this
idolatrous worship, the cell is so completely hidden in the wall,
120 THE PBOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
that the prophet is obliged to enlarge the hole by breaking
through the wall before he cau see the door which leads to the
cell and gain a view of them and of the things it contains, and
the things that are done therein.^ And the number of the
persons assembled there suggests the idea of a symbolical repre-
sentation, as well as the secrecy of the cell. The seventy elders
represent the whole nation ; and the number is taken from
Ex. xxiv. Isqq. and Num. xi. 16, xxiv. 25, where Moses, by the
command of God, chooses seventy of the elders to represent the
whole congregation at the making of the covenant, and after-
wards to support his authority. This representation of the
congregation was not a permanent institution, as we may see
from the fact that in Num. xi. seventy other men are said to
have been chosen for the purpose named. The high council,
consisting of seventy members, the so-called Sanhedrim, was
formed after the captivity on the basis of these Mosaic types.
In the midst of the seventy was Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan,
a different man therefore from the Jaazaniah mentioned in
ch. xi. 1. Shaphan is probably the person mentioned as a man
of distinction in 2 Kings xxii. 3 sqq. ; Jer. xxix. 3, xxxvi. 10,
xxxix. 14. It is impossible to decide on what ground Jaazaniah
is specially mentioned by name ; but it can hardly be on
account of the meaning of the name he bore, " Jehovah hears,"
as Havernick supposes. It is probable that he held a prominent
position among the elders of the nation, so that he is mentioned
here by name as the leader of this national representation.
— On the wall of the chamber round about there were drawn
all kinds of figures of nonnn bm^ reptiles and quadrupeds (see
Gen. i. 24). TP^ is in apposition not only to nona, but also
to b'»7, and therefore, as belonging to both, is not to be con-
nected with nana in the construct state. The drawing of
' " Because the -whole is exhibited pictorially and figuratively, he says
that he saw one hole in a wall, and was directed to dig through and make
it larger, that he might enter as if through an open door, and see the
things which he could not possiby have seen while stationed outside."
Jebome.
CHAP. Via 13-15. 121
reptiles and quadrupeds became a sheqetz, or abomination, from
the fact that the pictures had been drawn for the purpose of
religious worship. The following clause, " and all the idols of
the house of Israel," is co-ordinate with '131 rripari-ps. Besides
the animals drawn on the walls, there were idols of other kinds
in the chamber. The drawing of reptiles and quadrupeds
naturally suggests the thought of the animal-worship of Egypt.
We must not limit the words to this, however, since the worship
of animals is met with in the nature-worship of other heathen
nations, and the expression n''33n-p3j « all kinds of figures," as
well as the clause, "all kinds of idols of the house of Israel,"
points to every possible form of idol-worship as spread abroad
in Israel, "inyj according to the Aramaean usage, signifies
suffimentum, perfume, ^B'na, in the dark, i.e. in secret, like
inea in 2 Sam. xii. 12 ; not in the sacred darkness of the
cloud of incense (Havernick). fT'Sb'D ''n'ln, image-chambers, is
the term applied to the rooms or closets in the dwelling-
houses of the people in which idolatrous images were set up and
secretly worshipped. ri''3b'D signifies idolatrous figures, as in
Lev. xxvi. 1 and Num. xxxiii. 52. This idolatry was justified
by the elders, under the delusion that " Jehovah seeth us not ;"
that is to say, not : *' He does not trouble Himself about us,"
but He does not see what we do, because He is not omniscient
(cf. Isa. xxix. 15) ; and He has forsaken the land, withdrawn
His presence and His help. Thus they deny both the omni-
science and omnipresence of God (cf. ch. ix. 9).
Vers. 13-15. TJiird abomination : Worship of Thammuz. —
Ver. 13. And He said to me, Tliou shall yet again see still greater
abominations which they do, Ver. 14. And He brought me to the
entrance of the gate of the house of Jehovah, which is towards the
north, and behold there sat the women, weeping for Thammuz.
Ver. 15. And He said to me, Dost thou see it, son of man ?
Tliou shalt yet again see still greater abominations than these. —
The prophet is taken from the entrance into the court to the
entrance of the gate of the temple, to see the women sitting
122 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
there weeping for Tliammuz. The article in D^B'jn is used
generically. Whilst the men of the nation, represented by
the seventy elders, were secretly carrying on their idolatrous
worship, the women were sitting at the temple gate, and indulg-
ing in public lamentation for Thammuz. Under the weeping
for Thammuz, Jerome (with Melito of Sardis and all the Greek
Fathers) has correctly recognised the worship of Adonis.
" tien, Ganfiov^ or ea/j./j.ov'i" says Jerome, " whom we have
interpreted as Adonis, is called Thamuz both in Hebrew and
Syriac; and because, according to the heathen legend, this lover
of Venus and most beautiful youth is said to have been slain in
the month of June and then restored to life again, they call
this month of June by the same name, and keep an annual
festival in his honour, at which he is lamented by women as
though he were dead, and then afterwards celebrated in songs
as having come to life again." This view has not been shaken
even by the objections raised by Chwolson in his Ssaabins (II.
27. 202 sqq.), his relics of early Babylonian literature (p. 101),
and his Tammuz and human-worship among the ancient Baby-
lonians. For the myth of Thammuz, mentioned in the
Nabataean writings as a man who was put to death by the
king of Babylon, whom he had commanded to introduce the
worship of the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac,
and who was exalted to a god after his death, and honoured
with a mourning festival, is nothing more than a refined inter-
pretation of the very ancient nature-worship which spread over
the whole of Hither Asia, and in which the power of the sun
over the vegetation of the year was celebrated. The etymology
of the word Tammuz is doubtful. It is probably a contraction
of nron, from W = DDD, so that it denotes the decay of the force
of nature, and corresponds to the Greek aj>avi(7iio<i 'AScovtSof
(see Havernick in loc).
Vers. 16-18. Fourth abomination : Worship of the sun by
the priests. — Ver. 16. And He took me into the inner court of ihe
house of Jehovah, and behold, at the entrance into the temple of
CHAP. VIII. 16-18. 123
Jeliovah, between the porch and the altar, as it were Jive and
twenty men, with their backs towards the temple of Jehovah and
their faces towards the east; they were worshipping the sun
towards the east. Ver. 17. And He said to me, Seest thou this,
son of man ? Is it too little for the house of Judah to perform
the abominations which they are performing here, that they also
fill the land with violence, and provoke me to anger again and
again ? For behold they stretch out the vine-branch to their nose-
Ver. 18. But 1 also will act in fury ; my eye shall not look com-
passionately, and I will not spare ; and if they cry with a loud
voice in my ears, I will not hear them. — After Ezekiel has seen
the idolatrous abominations in the outer court, or place for
the people, he is taken back into the inner court, or court of
the priests, to see still greater abominations there. Between
the porch of the temple and the altar of burnt-offering, the
most sacred spot therefore in the inner court, which the priests
alope were permitted to tread (Joel ii. 17), he sees as if twenty-
five men, with their backs toward the temple, were worshipping
the sun in the east. 3 before ^''1?'^ is not a preposition, circa,
about, but a particle of comparison (an appearance) : as if
twenty-five men ; after the analogy of 3 before an accusative
{vid. Ewald, § 282e). For the number here is not an approxi-
mative one ; but twenty-five is the exact number, namely, the
twenty-four leaders of the classes of priests (1 Chron. xxiv.
5 sqq. ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 14 ; Ezra x. 5), with the high priest at
the head (see Lightfoot's Chronol. of 0. T., 0pp. I. 124). As
the whole nation was seen in the seventy elders, so is the entire
priesthood represented here in the twenty-five leaders as deeply
sunk in disgraceful idolatry. Their apostasy from the Lord is
shown in the fact that they turn their back upon the temple,
and therefore upon Jehovah, who was enthroned in the temple,
and worship the sun, with their faces turned towards the east.
The worship of the sun does not refer to the worship of Adonis,
as Havernick supposes, although Adonis was a sun-god; but
generally to the worship of the heavenly bodies, against which
124 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Moses had warned the people (Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3), and which
found its way in the time of Manasseh into the courts of the
temple, whence it was afterwards expelled by Josiah (2 Kings
sxiii. 5, 11). The form Dn^inna'D must be a copyist's error for
D''inpiE'-D; as the supposition that it is an unusual form, with a
play upon n'ne'"n,i is precluded by the fact that it would in that
case be a 2d 'per. plur. perf., and such a construction is ren-
dered impossible by the nen which immediately precedes it (cf.
Ewald, § 118a). — To these idolatrous abominations Judah has
added other sins, as if these abominations were not bad enough
in themselves. This is the meaning of the question in ver. 17,
'm i^psn : is it too little for the house of Judah, etc. ? 7\)i with
ID, as in Isa. xlix. 6. To indicate the fulness of the measure of
guilt, reference is again briefly made to the moral corruption
of Judah. Don embraces all the injuries inflicted upon men ;
ninyiRj impiety towards God, i.e. idolatry. By violent deeds
they provoke God repeatedly to anger {2W, followed by an in-
finitive, expresses the repetition of an action). The last clause
of ver. 17 ('l31 D^npa' Dsni) is very obscure. The usual explana-
tion, which has been adopted by J. D. Michaelis and Gesenius :
" they hold the twig to their nose," namely, the sacred twig
Barsom, which the Parsees held in their hands when praying
(vid. Hyde, de relig. vet. Pars. p. 350, ed. 2 ; and Kleuker,
Zend-Avesta, III. p. 204), suits neither the context nor the
words. According to the position of the clause in the context,
we do not expect an allusion to a new idolatrous rite, but an
explanation of the way in which Judah had excited the wrath
of God by its violent deeds. Moreover, nnior is not a suitable
word to apply to the Barsom, — Z'mOrdh is a shoot or tendril
of the vine (cf. ch. xv. 2 ; Isa. xvii. 10 ; Num. xiii. 23).
The Barsom, on the other hand, consisted of bunches of twigs
of the tree Gez or Horn, or of branches of the pomegranate,
the tamarisk, or the date (cf. Kleuker Z.c, and Strabo, XV. 733),
1 " An extraordinary form, invented for the purpose of more effectually
expressing tbeir extraordinary abomination." — Lightfoot.
CHAP. IX. 1-3. 1^5
and was not held to the nose, but kept in front of the mouth
as a magical mode of driving demons away (yid. Hyde, I.e.).
Lastly, 7^ npB' does not mean to hold anything, but to stretch
out towards, to prepare to strike, to use violence. Of the
other explanations given, only two deserve any consideration, —
namely, first, the supposition that it is a proverbial expression,
" to apply the twig to anger," in the sense of adding fuel to the
fire, which Doederlein {ad Grotii adnott.) applies in this way,
" by these things they supply food, as it were, to my wrath,
which burns against themselves," i.e. they bring fuel to the fire
of my wrath. Lightfoot gives a similar explanation in his
Hor. Iiebr. ad John xv. 6. The second is that of Hitzig :
" they apply the sickle to their nose," i.e. by seeking to injure
me, they injure themselves. In this case nnlDI must be taken
in the sense of fTJ?!9> ^ sickle or pruning-knife, and pointed
rriiDt. The saying does appear to be a proverbial one, but the
origin and meaning of the proverb have not yet been satisfac-
torily explained. — Ver. 18. Therefore will the Lord punish
unsparingly (cf. eh. vii. 4, 9, v. 11). This judgment he shows
to the prophet in the two following chapters.
Chap. ix. The Angels which smite Jerusalem. —
Vers. 1-3. At the call of Jehovah, His servants appear to
execute the judgment. — Ver. 1. And He called in my ears with
a loud voice, saying, Come hither, ye watchnen of the city, and
every one his instrument of destruction in his hand. Ver. 2.
And behold six men came ly the way of the upper gate, which is
directed toward the north, every one with his smashing-tool in his
hand ; and a man in the midst of them, clothed in white linen,
and writing materials by his hip ; and they came and stood near
the brazen altar. Ver. 3. And the glory oj the God of Israel
rose up from the cherub, upon which it was, to the threshold of
the house, and called to the man clothed in white linen, by whose
hip the writing materials were. — ^^''Vn nni^Q does not mean the
punishments of the city. This rendering does not suit the con-
126 THE rEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
text, since it is not tlie punishments that are introduced, but
the men who execute them ; and it is not established by the
usage of the language. "'npQ is frequently used, no doubt, in
the sense of visitation or chastisement (e.g. Isa. x. 3; Hos.
ix. 7) ; but it is not met with in the plural in this sense. In
the plural it only occurs in the sense of supervision or protec-
torate, in which sense it occurs not only in Jer. Hi. 11 and
Ezek. xliv. 11, but also (in the singular) in Isa. Ix. 17, and as
early as Num. iii. 38, where it relates to the presidency of the
priests, and very frequently in the Chronicles. Consequently
nwpa are those whom God has appointed to watch over the
city, the city-guard (2 Kings xi. 18), — not earthly, but heavenly
watchmen, — who are now to inflict punishment upon the un-
godly, as the authorities appointed by God. I3ni5 is an impera-
tive Piel, as in Isa. xli. 21, and must not be altered into nnp
(Kal), as Hitzig proposes. The Piel is used in an intransitive
sense, festinanter appropinquavif, as in ch. xxxvi. 8. The
persons called come by the way of the upper northern gate of
the temple, to take their stand before Jehovah, whose glory had
appeared in the inner court. The upper gate is the gate lead-
ing from the outer court to the inner, or upper court, whicli
stood on higher ground, — the gate mentioned in ch. viii. 3
and 5. In the midst of the six men furnished with smashimr-
tools there was one clothed in white byssus, with writing
materials at his side. The dress and equipment, as well as the
instructions which he afterwards receives and executes, show
him to be the prince or leader of the others. Kliefoth calls in
question the opinion that these seven men are angels ; but
without any reason. Angels appearing in human form are
frequently called D^JN or c'^*, according to their external
Jiahitus. But the number seven neither presupposes the
dogma of the seven archangels, nor is copied from the seven
Parsic amschaspands. The dress worn by the high priest
when presenting the sin-offering on the great day of atone-
ment (Lev. xvi. 4, 23), was made of na, i.e. of white material
CHAP. IX. 1-3. 127
woven from byssus thread (see the comm. on Ex. xxviii. 42).
It has been inferred from this, that the figure clothed in white
linen was the angel of Jehovah, who appears as the heavenly
high priest, to protect and care for his own. In support of
this, the circumstance may be also adduced, that the man whom
Daniel saw above the water of the Tigris, and whose appearance
is described, in Dan. x. 5, 6, in the same manner as that of
Jehovah in Ezek. i. 4, 26, 27, and that of the risen Christ in
Eev. i. 13-15, appears clothed in C'na (Dan. x. 5, xii. 6, 7).^
Nevertheless, we cannot regard this view as established. The
shining white talar, which is evidently meant by the plural C^l,
occurring only here and in Daniel {ut. sup.), is not a dress
peculiar to the angel of Jehovah or to Christ. The seven
angels, with the vials of wrath, also appear in garments of
shining white linen (^ivSeSvfievoi, \ivov KaOapov \afjiTrp6v, Eev.
XV. 6) ; and the shining white colour, as a symbolical represen-
tation of divine holiness and glory (see comm. on Lev. xvi. 4
and Eev. xix. 8), is the colour generally chosen for the clothing
both of the heavenly spirits and of "just men made perfect"
(Eev. xix. 8). Moveover, the angel with the writing materials
here is described in a totally different manner from the appear-
ance of Jehovah in Ezek. i. and Dan. x., or that of Christ in
Eev. i. ; and there is nothing whatever to indicate a being
equal with God. Again, the distinction between him and the
other sjx men leads to no other conclusion, than that he stood
in the same relation to them as the high priest to the Levites,
or the chancellor to the other officials. This position is indi-
cated by the writing materials on his hips, i.e. in the girdle on
1 D^13 tWD^J is rendered by the LXX., in the passage before us, luh'Suxa;
T
'x-olipyj. It is in accordance with this that Christ is described in Rev.
i. 13 as clothed with a ^olti^yis, and not after Dan, x. 5, as Hengstenberg
supposes. In Dan. x. 5, the Septuagint has iyii'Sufiho; /3«33/i/ or tx jixioh.
In other places, the Sept. rendering of 13 is A/i/o* (thus Lev. xvi. 4, 23,
vi. 3 ; Ex. xxviii. 42, etc.) ; and hence the A/'i/oi/ T^afiirpiv of Eev. xv. 6
answers to the 13 made of {^{^, fivaaa;, and is really the same as the
^iaamaii T^aft'iTpoii oi Eev. xix. 8.
128 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
liis hips, in which scribes in the East are accustomed to carry
their writing materials (vid. Rosenmiiller, A. u. N. Morgenland,
IV. p. 323). He is provided with these for the execution of
the commission given to him in ver. 4. In this way the de-
scription can be very simply explained, without the slightest
necessity for our resorting to Babylonian representations of
the god Nebo, i.e. Mercury, as the scribe of heaven. The
seven mea take their station by the altar of burnt-offering,
because the glory of God, whose commands they were about
to receive, had taken up its position there for the moment
(Kliefoth) ; not because the apostate priesthood was stationed
there (Havernick). The glory of Jehovah, however, rose up
from the cherub to the threshold of the house. The meanins
of this is not that it removed from the interior of the sanctuary
to the outer threshold of the temple-building (Havernick), for
it was already stationed, according to ch. viii. 16, above the
cherub, between the porch and the altar. It went back from
thence to the threshold of the temple-porch, through which one
entered the Holy Place, to give its orders there. The reason for
leaving its place above the cherubim (the singular 3n3 is used
collectively) to do this, was not that " God would have had to
turn round in order to address the seven from the throne, since,
according to ch. viii. 4 and 16, He had gone from the north
gate of the outer court into the inner court, and His servants
had followed Him " (Hitzig) ; for the cherubim moved in all
four directions, and therefore God, even from the throne,
could turn without difficulty to every side. God left His
throne, that !0e might issue His command for the judgment
upon Israel from the threshold of the temple, and show Him-
self to be the judge who would forsake the throne which He
had assumed in Israel. This command He Issues from the
temple court, because the temple was the place whence God
attested Himself to His people, both by mercy and judgment.
Vers. 4-7. The divine command. — Ver. 4. And Jehovah said
to him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of
CHAP. IX. 4-7. 129
Jerusalem, and mark a cross upon the foreheads of the men who
sigh and groan over all the abominations which take place in their
midst. Ver. 5. And to those he said in my ears : Go through
the city behind him, and smite. Let not your eye look compas-
sionately, and do not spare. Ver. 6. Old men, young men, and
maidens, and children, and women, slay to destruction : but ye
shall not touch any one who has the cross upon him ; and begin at
my sanctuary. And they began with the old men, who were before
the house. Ver. 7. And He said to them. Defile the house, and
fill the courts with slain; go ye out. And they ivent out, and
smote in the city. — God commands the man provided with the
writing materials to mark on the forehead with a cross all the
persons in Jerusalem who mourn over the abominations of the
nation, in order that they may be spared in the time of the
judgment. W, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, had the
form of a cross in the earlier writing, in njnn, to mark a D, is
therefore the same as to make a mark in the form of a cross;
although there was at first no other purpose in this sign than
to enable the servants employed in inflicting the judgment of
God to distinguish those who were so marked, so that they
might do them no harm. Ver. 6. And this was the reason
why the W was to be marked upon the forehead, the most
visible portion of the body ; the early Christians, according to
a statement in Origen, looked upon the sign itself as significant,
and saw therein a prophetic allusion to the sign of the cross as
the distinctive mark of Christians. A direct prophecy of the
cross of Christ is certainly not to be found here, since the form
of the letter Tdv was the one generally adopted as a sign, and,
according to Job xxxi. 35, might supply the place of a signa-
ture. Nevertheless, as Schmieder has correctly observed, there
is something remarkable in this coincidence to the thoughtful
observer of the ways of God, whose counsel has carefully con-
sidered all beforehand, especially when we bear in mind that
in the counterpart to this passage (Rev. vii. 3) the seal of the
living God is stamped upon the foreheads of the servants of
EZEK. I, I
130 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
God, who are to be exempted from the judgment, and that
according to Eev. xiv. 1 they had the name of God written
upon their foreheads. So much, at any rate, is perfectly
obvious from this, namely, that the sign was not arbitrarily
chosen, but was inwardly connected with the fact which it
indicated ; just as in the event upon which our vision is based
(Ex. xii. 13, 22 sqq.) the distinctive mark placed upon the
houses of the Israelites in Egypt, in order that the destroying
angel might pass them by, namely, the smearing of the door-
posts with the blood of the paschal lamb that had been slain,
was selected on account of its significance and its corresponding
to the thing signified. The execution of this command is
passed over as being self-evident; and it is not till ver. 11 that
it is even indirectly referred to again. — In vers. 5, 6 there
follows, first of all, the command given to the other six men.
They are to go through the city, behind the man clothed in
white linen, and to smite without mercy all the inhabitants of
whatever age or sex, with this exception, that they are not to
touch those who are marked with the cross. The '?V for ^K
before Dinn is either a slip of the pen, or, as the continued
transmission of so striking an error is very improbable, is to be
accounted for from the change of N into y, which is so com-
mon in Aramaean. The Chetib t33\3''j; is the unusual form
grammatically considered, and the singular, which is more
correct, has been substituted as Keri. wnnn is followed by
^'1?^°?, to increase the force of the words and show the impos-
sibility of any life being saved. They are to make a commence-
ment at the sanctuary, because it has been desecrated by the
worship of idols, and therefore has ceased to be the house of
the Lord. To this command the execution is immediately
appended ; they began with the old men who were before the
house, i.e. they began to slay them. DVi?^^! ^''P^^^ are neither
the twenty-five priests (ch. viii. 16) nor the seventy elders
(ch. viii. 11). The latter were not n;an '•JB^, but in a chamber
by the outer temple gate; whereas n;an •'Jb!', in front of the
CHAP. IX. 8-n. 131
temple house, points to the inner court. This locality makes
it natural to think of priests, and consequently the LXX.
rendered ''^^pBt? by otto t&v a/yuov fiov. But the expression
D''ii3r CB'jk is an unsuitable one for the priests. We have there-
fore no doubt to think of men advanced in years, who had
come into the court possibly to offer sacrifice, and thereby had
become liable to the judgment. In ver. 7 the command, which
was interrupted in ver. 66, is once more resumed. They are to
defile the house, i.e. the temple, namely, by filling the courts
with slain. It is in this way that we are to connect together,
so far as the sense is concerned, the two clauses, " defile . . .
and fill." This is required by the facts of the case. For those
slain " before the house " could only have been slain in the
courts, as there was no space between the temple house and the
courts in which men could have been found and slain. But
n^an •'psp cannot be understood as signifying "in the neigh-
bourhood of the temple," as Kliefoth supposes, for the simple
reason that the progressive order of events would thereby be
completely destroyed. The angels who were standing before
the altar of burnt-offering could not begin their work by going
out of the court to smite the sinners who happened to be in the
neighbourhood of the temple, and then returning to the court
to do the same there, and then again going out into the city to
finish their work there. They could only begin by slaying the
sinners who happened to be in the courts, and after having
defiled the temple by their corpses, by going out into the city
to slay all the ungodly there, as is related in the second clause
of the verse (ver. lb).
Vers. 8-11. Intercession of the prophet, and the answer of
the Lord. — Ver. 8. And it came to pass when they smote and I
remained, I fell upon my face, and cried, and said: Alas! Lord
Jehovah, wilt Thou destroy all the remnant of Israel, by pouriny
out Thy wrath upon Jerusalem ? Ver. 9. And He said to me :
The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is immeasurably
great, and the land is full of blood-guiltiness, and the city full of
132 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
perversion ; for they say Jehovah hath forsaken the land, and
Jehovah seeth not. Ver. 10. -So also shall my eye not look with
pity, and I will not spare; I will give their way upon their head.
"Ver. 11. And, behold, the man clothed in white linen, who had the
writing materials on his hip, brought answer, and said : I have
done as thou hast commanded me.— The Chetib nXB-KJ is an in-
congruous form, composed of participle and imperfect fused
into one, and is evidently a copyist's error. It is not to be
altered into i??f X, however (the 1st pers. imperf. Niph.), but to
be read as a participle 1X^3, and taken with nniana as a con-
tinuation of the circumstantial clause. For the words do not
mean that Ezekiel alone was left, but that when the angels
smote and he was left, i.e. was spared, was not smitten with the
rest, he fell on his face, to entreat the Lord for mercy. These
words and the prophet's intercession both apparently presup-
pose that among the inhabitants of Jerusalem there was no one
found who was marked with the sign of the cross, and therefore
could be spared. But this is by no means to be regarded as
established. For, in the first place, it is not stated that all bad
been smitten by the angels ; and, secondly, the intercession of
the prophet simply assumes that, in comparison with the multi-
tude of the slain, the number of those who were marked with
the sign of the cross and spared was so small that it escaped the
prophet's eye, and he was afraid that they might all be slain
without exception, and the whole of the remnant of the cove-
nant nation be destroyed. The ri'l^B' of Israel and Judah is
the covenant nation in its existing state, when it had been so
reduced by the previous judgments of God, that out of the whole
of what was once so numerous a people, only a small portion
remained in the land. Although God has previously promised
that a remnant shall be preserved (ch. v. 3, 4), He does not
renew this promise to the prophet, but begins by holding up the
greatness of the iniquity of Israel, which admits of no sparine
but calls for the most merciless punishment, to show him that,
according to the strict demand of justice, the whole nation has
CHAP. X 1-8. 133
deseiTed destruction. n^D (ver. 9) is not equivalent to t^I^io,
oppression (Isa. Iviii. 9), but signifies perversion of justice;
although OBK'a is not mentioned, since this is also omitted in
Ex. xxiii. 2, where nan occurs in the same sense. For ver. 96,
vid. ch. viii. 12. For ''000 -\2 D3-in (ver. 10 and ch. xi. 21,
22, 31), vid. 1 Kings viii. 32. While God is conversing with
the prophet, the seven angels have performed their work; and
in ver. 11 their leader returns to Jehovah with the announce-
ment that His orders have been executed. He does this, not
in his own name only, but in that of all the rest. The first act
of the judgment is thus shown to the prophet in a figurative
representation. The second act follows in the next chapter.
Cliap. X. Burning or Jekusalem, and Withdraaval op
THE Glory op Jehovah prom the Sanctuary. — This
chapter divides itself into two sections. In vers. 1-8 the
prophet is shown how Jerusalem is to be burned with fire. In
vers. 9-22 he is shown how Jehovah will forsake His temple.
Vers. 1-8. The angel scatters coals of fire over Jerusalem. —
Ver. 1. And I saw, and heliold upon the firmament, which was
above the cherubim, it was like sapphire- stone, to look at as the
likeness of a throne ; He appeared above them. Ver. 2. And He
spake to the man clothed in white linen, and said : Come between
the wheels below the cherubim, and fill thy hollow hands ivith
fire-coals from, between the cherubim^ and scatter them over the
city : and he came before my eyes. Ver. 3. And the cherubim
stood to the right of the house lohen the man came, and the cloud
filled the inner court. Ver. 4. And the glory of Jehovah had
lifted itself up from the cherubim to the threshold of the house ;
and the house was filled toith the cloud, and the court was full of
the splendour of the glory of Jehovah. Ver. 5. And the noise of
the wings of the cherubim was heard to the outer court, as the
voice of the Almighty God when He speaketh. Ver. 6. And it
came to pass, when He commanded the man clothed in white linen,
and said, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the
134 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cherubim, and he came and stood by the side of the wheel, Ver. 7.
Tliat the cherub stretched out 7iis hand between the cherubim to
the fire, which was between the cherubim, and lifted (some) off
and gave it into the hands of the man clothed in white linen.
And he took it, and went out. Ver. 8. And there appeared
by .the cherubim the likeness of a man's hand nnder their wings. —
Ver. 1 introduces the description of the second act of the judg-
ment. According to ch. ix. 3, Jehovah had come down from
His throne above the cherubim to the threshold of the temple
to issue His orders thence for the judgment upon the inhabit-
ants of Jerusalem, and according to ch. x. 4 He goes thither
once more. Consequently He had resumed His seat above the
cherubim in the meantime. This is expressed in ver. 1, not in-
deed in so many words, but indirectly or by implication. Ezekiel
sees the theophany ; and on the firmament above the cherubim,
like sapphire-stone to look at, he beholds the likeness of a
throne on which Jehovah appeared. To avoid giving too great
prominence in this appearance of Jehovah to the bodily or
human form, Ezekiel does not speak even here of the form of
Jehovah, but simply of His throne, which he describes in the
same manner as in ch. i. 26. ^N stands for pV according to the
later usage of the language. It will never do to take h^ in its
literal sense, as Kliefoth does, and render the words : " Ezekiel
saw it move away to the firmament ; " for the object to nN")Xi
nsm is not nin^_ or nin| nina, but the form of the throne spark-
ling in sapphire-stone ; and this throne had not separated itself
from the firmament above the cherubim, but Jehovah, or the
glory of Jehovah, according to ch. ix. 3, had risen up from the
cherubim, and moved away to the temple threshold. The 3
before nN"iD is not to be erased, as Hitzig proposes after the
LXX., on the ground that it is not found in ch. i. 26; it is
quite appropriate here. For the words do not affirm that
Ezekiel saw the likeness of a throne like sapphire-stone ; but
that he saw something like sapphire-stone, like the appearance
of the form of a throne. Ezekiel does not see Jehovali, or the
CHAP. X. 1-8. 135
glory of Jehovah, move away to the firmament, and then return
to the throne. He simply sees once more the resemblance of
a throne upon the firmament, and the Lord appearing thereon.
The latter is indicated in OnyS? nxni. These words are not to
be taken in connection with 'W1 nxnoa^ so as to form one sen-
tence ; but have been very properly separated by the athnach
under t<B3, and treated as an independent assertion. The
subject to nx"i3 might, indeed, be SB3 niCT, " the likeness of a
throne appeared above the cherubim;" but in that case the
words would form a pure tautology, as the fact of the throne
becoming visible has already been mentioned in the preceding
clause. The subject must therefore be Jehovah, as in the case
of ION'1 in ver. 2, where there can be no doubt on the matter.
Jehovah has resumed His throne, not " for the purpose of
removing to a distance, because the courts of the temple have
been defiled by dead bodies" (Hitzig), but because the object
for which He left it has been attained. He now commands
the man clothed in white linen to go in between the wheels
under the cherubim, and fill his hands with fire-coals from
thence, and scatter them over the city (Jerusalem). This he
did, so that Ezekiel could see it. According to this, it appears
as if Jehovah had issued the command from His throne ; but
if we compare what follows, it is evident from ver. 4 that the
glory of Jehovah had risen up again from the throne, and
removed to the- threshold of the temple, and that it was not
till after the man in white linen had scattered the coals over
the city that it left the threshold of the temple, and ascended
once more up to the throne above the cherubim, so as to for-
sake the temple (ver. 18 sqq.). Consequently we can only
understand vers. 2-7 as implying that Jehovah issued the com-
mand in ver. 2, not from His throne, but from the threshold of
the temple, and that He had therefore returned to the threshold
of the temple for this purpose, and for the very same reason as
in ch. ix. 3. The possibility of interpreting the verses in this
way is apparent from the fact that ver. 2 contains a summary
136 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of the whole of the contents of this section, and that vers. 3-7
simply furnish more minute explanations, or contain circum-
stantial clauses, which throw light upon the whole affair. This
is obvious in the case of ver. 3, from the form of the clause ;
and in vers. 4 and 5, from the fact that in vers. 6 and 7 the com-
mand (ver. 2) is resumed, and the execution of it, which was
already indicated in 'y'v'^ tih^] (ver. 2), more minutely described
and carried forward in the closing words of the seventh verse,
f^X'l "!?'!!• '^^%'^ in ver. 2 signifies the whirl or rotatory motion,
i.e. the wheel-work, or the four ophannim under the cherubim
regarded as moving. The angel was to go in between these,
and take coals out of the fire there, and scatter them over the
city. " In the fire of God, the fire of His wrath, will kindle
the fire for consuming the city " (Kliefoth). To depict the
scene more clearly, Ezekiel observes in ver. 3, that at this
moment the cherubim were standing to the right of the house,
i.e. on the south or rather south-east of the temple house, on
the south of the altar of burnt-offering. According to the
Hebrew usage the right side was the southern side, and the
prophet was in the inner court, whither, according to ch. viii. 16,
the divine glory had taken him ; and, according to ch. ix. 2, the
seven angels had gone to the front of the altar, to receive the
commands of the Lord. Consequently we have to picture to
ourselves the cherubim as appearing in the neighbourhood of
the altar, and then taking up their position to the south thereof,
when the Lord returned to the threshold of the temple. The
reason for stating this is not to be sought, as Calvin supposes,
in the desire to show " that the way was opened for the angel
to go straight to God, and that the cherubim were standing
there ready, as it were, to contribute their labour." The posi-
tion in which the cherubim appeared is more probably given
with prospective reference to the account which follows in
vers. 9-22 of the departure of the glory of the Lord from the
temple. As an indication of the significance of this act to
Israel, the glory which issued fi-om this manifestation of the
CHAP. X. 9-22. 137
divine doxa is described in vers. 3&-5. The cloud, as the
earthly vehicle of the divine doxa, filled the inner court ; and
when the glory of the Lord stood upon the threshold, it filled
the temple also, while the court became full of the splendour
of the divine glory. That is to say, the brilliancy of the divine
nature shone through the cloud, so that the court and the
temple were lighted by the shining of the light-cloud. The
brilliant splendour is a symbol of the light of the divine grace.
The wings of the cherubim rustled, and at the movement of
God (i. 24) were audible even in the outer court.
After this picture of the glorious manifestation of the divine
doxa, the fetching of the fire-coals from the space between the
wheels under the cherubim is more closely described in vers. 6
and 7. One of the cherub's hands took the coals out of the
fire, and put them into the hands of the man clothed in white
linen. To this a supplementary remark is added in ver. 8, to
the effect that the figure of a hand was visible by the side of
the cherubim under their wings. The word ^'i}'}., " and he went
out," indicates that the man clothed in white linen scattered the
coals over the city, to set it on fire and consume it.
Vers. 9-22. The glory of the Lord forsakes the temple. —
Ver. 9. And 1 saw, and behold four wheels by the side of the
cherubim^ one wheel by the side of every cherub, and the appear-
ance of the wheels was like the look of a chrysolith stone. Ver.
10. And as for their appearance, they had all four one form, as
if one wheel were in the midst of the oilier. Ver. 11. When they
went, they went to their four sides ; they did not turn in going ;
for to the place to which the head wasi directed, to that they went ;
they did not turn in their going. Ver. 12. And their whole body,
and their back, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels,
were full of eyes round about : by all four their wheels. Ver. 13.
To the wheels, to them was called, ''^ whirl !" in my hearing.
Ver. 14. And every one had four faces ; the face of the first
was the face of the cherub, the face of the second a man^s face,
and the third a lion's face, and the fourth an eagle s face.
138 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Ver. 15. And the cheruhim ascended. This was the being tvhich
T saw by the river Chebar. Ver. 16. And when the cherubim
toent, the wheels went by them ; and when the cherubim raised
their wings to ascend from the earth, the wheels also did not turn
from their side. Ver. 17. When those stood, they stood; and
when those ascended, they ascended with them; for the spirit of
the being was in them. Ver. 18. And the glory of Jehovah went
out from the threshold of the house, and stood above the cherubim.
Ver. 19. And the cherubim raised their icings, and ascended from
the earth before my eyes on their going out, and the wheels beside
them ; and they stopped at the entrance of the eastern gate of the
house of Jehovah ; and the glory of the God of Israel was above
them. Ver. 20. Tliis was the being which I saw under the God
of Israel by the river Chebar, and I perceived that they were
cherubim. Ver. 21. Every one had four faces, each and every
one four wings, and something like a man^s hands under their
wings. Ver. 22. And as for the likeness of their faces, they were
the faces which I had seen by the river Chebar, their appearance
and they themselves. They went every one according to its face. —
AVith the words " I saw, and beliold," a new feature in the
vision is introduced. The description of the appearance of the
cherubim in these verses coincides for the most part verbatim
with the account of the theophany in ch. i. It differs from this,
however, not only in the altered arrangement of the several
features, and in the introduction of certain points which serve
to complete the former account ; but still more in the insertion
of a number of narrative sentences, which show that we have
not merely a repetition of the first chapter here. On the con-
trary, Ezekiel is now describing the moving of the appearance
of the glory of Jehovah from the inner court or porch of the
temple to the outer entrance of the eastern gate of the outer
court ; in other words, the departure of the gracious presence
of the Lord from the tem,ple : and in order to point out more
distinctly the importance and meaning of this event, he depicts
once more the leading features of the theophany itself. The
CHAP. X. 9-22. 139
narrative sentences are found in vers. 13, 15, 18, and 19. In
ver. 13 we have the exclamation addressed to the wheels by the
side of the cherubim to set themselves in motion ; in ver. 15,
the statement that the cherubim ascended; and in vers. 18
and 19, the account of the departure of the glory of the Lord
from the inner portion of the temple. To this we may add the
repeated remark, that the appearance was the same as that
which the prophet had seen by the river Chebar (vers. 15, 20,
22). To bring clearly out to view both the independence of
these divine manifestations and their significance to Israel,
Ezekiel repeats the leading features of the former description ;
but while doing this, he either makes them subordinate to the
thoughts expressed in the narrative sentences, or places them
first as introductory to these, or lets them follow as explanatory.
Thus, for example, the description of the wheels, and of the
manner in which they moved (vers. 9-12), serves both to intro-
duce and explain the call to the wheels to set themselves in
motion. The description of the wheels in vers. 9-11 har-
monizes with ch. i. 16 and 17, with this exception, however,
that certain points are given with greater exactness here ; such,
for example, as the statement that the movements of the wheels
were so regulated, that in whichever direction the front one
turned, the others did the same. lyNin, the head, is not the
head-wheel, or the wheel which was always the first to move, but
the front one, which originated the motion, drawing the others
after it and determining their direction. For ver. 12b and the
fact that the wheels were covered with eyes, see ch. i. 18. In
ver. 12a we have the important addition, that the whole of the
body and back, as well as the hands and wings, of the cherubim
were full of eyes. There is all the less reason to question this
addition, or remove it (as Hitzig does) by an arbitrary erasure,
inasmuch as the statement itself is apparently in perfect har-
mony with the whole procedure ; and the significance possessed
by the eyes in relation to the wheels was not only appropriate
in the case of the cherubim, but necessarily to be assumed in
140 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
such a connection. Tlie fact that the suffixes in nnra, Dri35, etc.,
refer to the cherubim, is obvious enough, if we consider that the
wheels to which immediate reference is made were by the side
of the cherubim (ver. 9), and that the cherubim formed the
principal feature in the whole of the vision. — Ver. 13 does not
point back to ver. 2, and bring the description of the wheel-
work to a close, as Hitzig supposes. This assumption, by
which the meaning of the whole description has been obscured,
is based upon the untenable rendering, " and the wheels they
named before my ears whirl" (J. D. Mich., Eos., etc.).
Havernick has already pointed out the objection to this,
namely, that with such a rendering '^J^? forms an unmeaning
addition ; whereas it is precisely this addition which shows that
i<"JP is used here in the sense of addressing, calling, and not of
naming. One called to the wheels Pi?^^, whirl ; i.e. they were
to verify their name galgal, viz. to revolve or whirl, to set
themselves in motion by revolving. This is the explanation
given by Theodoret : avaKVKXelaOai kuI avaKivelaOai, irpoa-e-
Td-)(dr]C!-av. These words therefore gave the signal for their
departure, and accordingly the rising up of the cherubim is
related in ver. 15. Ver. 14 prepares the way for their ascent
by mentioning the four faces of each cherub ; and this is still
further expanded in vers. 16 and 17, by the statement that the
wheels moved according to the movements of the cherubim.
nnxp without an article is used distributively (every one), as in
ch. i. 6 and 10. The fact that in the description which fol-
lows only one face of each of the four cherubs is given, is not
at variance with ch. i. 10, according to which every one of the
cherubs had the four faces named. It was not Ezekiel's inten-
tion to mention all the faces of each cherub here, as he had
done before ; but he regarded it as sufficient in the case of each
cherub to mention simply the one face, which was turned
toward him. The only striking feature which still remains is
the statement that the face of the one, i.e. of the first, was the
face of the cherub instead of the face of an ox (cf. ch. i. 10),
CHAP. X. 9-22. 141
Since the faces of the man, the lion, and the eagle were also
cherubs' faces. We may, no doubt, get rid of the difficulty by
altering the text, but this will not solve it ; for it would still
remain inexplicable how 3^13lI could have grown out of "iw by a
copyist's error ; and still more, how such an error, which might
have been so easily seen and corrected, could have been not
only perpetuated, but generally adopted. Moreover, we have
the article in 2!i"i3n, which would also be inexplicable if the word
had originated in an oversight, and which gives us precisely the
index required to the correct solution of the difficulty, showing
as it does that it was not merely a cherub's face, but the face
of the cherub, so that the allusion is to one particular cherub,
who was either well known from what had gone before, or
occupied a more prominent position than the rest. Such a
cherub is the one mentioned in ver. 7, who had taken the coals
from the fire between the wheels, and stood nearest to Ezekiel.
There did not appear to be any necessity to describe his face
more exactly, as it could be easily seen from a comparison with
ch. i. 10. — In ver. 15, the fact that the cherubim arose to depart
from their place is followed by the remark that the cherubic
figure was the being (fi'nn, singular, as in ch. i. 22) which
Ezekiel saw by the Chaboras, because it was a matter of im-
portance that the identity of the two theophanies should be
established as a help to the correct understanding of their real
signification. But before the departure of the theophany from
the temple is related, there follows in vers. 16 and 17 a repeti-
tion of the circumstantial description of the harmonious move-
ments of the wheels and the cherubim (cf. ch. i. 19-21) ; and
then, in ver. 18, the statement which had such practical
significance, that the glory of the Lord departed from the
threshold of the temple, and resumed the throne above the
cherubim ; and lastly, the account in ver. 19, that the glory of
the God of Israel, seated upon this throne, took up its position
at the entrance o£ the eastern gate of the temple. The entrance
of this gate is not the gate of the temple, but the outer side of
142 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the eastern gate of the outer court, which formed tlie principal
entrance to the whole of the temple-space. The expression
"God of Israel" instead of "Jehovah" is significant, and is
used to intimate that God, as the covenant God, withdrew His
gracious presence from the people of Israel by this departure
from the temple ; not, indeed, from the whole of the covenant
nation, but from the rebellious Israel which dwelt in Jerusalem
and Judah ; for the same glory of God which left the temple
in the vision before the eyes of Ezekiel had appeared to the
prophet by the river Chebar, and by calling him to be the
prophet for Israel, had shown Himself to be the God who kept
His covenant, and proved that, by the judgment upon the
corrupt generation. He simply desired to exterminate its
ungodly nature, and create for Himself a new and holy people.
This is the meaning of the remark which is repeated in vers.
20-22, that the apparition which left the temple was the same
being as Ezekiel had seen by the Chaboras, and that he recog-
nised the beings under the throne as cherubim.
Chap. xi. Threatening of Judgment and Promise of
Mercy. Conclusion of the Vision. — This chapter con-
tains the concluding portion of the vision ; namely, first, the
prediction of the destruction of the ungodly rulers (vers. 1-13) ;
secondly, the consolatory and closing promise, that the Lord
would gather to Himself a people out of those who had been
carried away into exile, and would sanctify them by His Holy
Spirit (vers. 14-21) ; and, thirdly, the withdrawal of the
gracious presence of God from the city of Jerusalem, and the
transportation of the prophet back to Chaldea with the termi-
nation of his ecstasy (vers. 22-25).
Vers. 1-13. Judgment upon tlie rulers of the nation. — Ver. 1.
And a wind lifted me up, and took me to the eastern gate of the
house of Jehovah, which faces toioards the east ; and behold, at
the entrance of the gate were five and twenty men, and I saw
among them Jaazaniah the son of Azzur, and Pelatiah tlie son of
CHAP. XI. ]-4. 143
Benaiali, the chiefs of the nation, Ver. 2. And he said to me :
Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity, and counsel
evil counsel in this city ; Ver. 3. Who say, It is not near to build
houses ; it is the pot, and vie are the flesh. Ver. 4. Therefore
prophesy against them ; prophesy, son of man. — Ezekiel is once
more transported from the inner court (ch. viii. 16) to the
outer entrance of the eastern gate of the temple (n>n i^fe'n, as in
ch. viii. 3), to which, according to ch. s. 19, the vision of God
had removed. There he sees twenty-five men, and among
them two of the princes of the nation, whose names are given.
These twenty-five men are not identical with the twenty-five
priests mentioned in ch. viii. 16, as Havernick supposes. This
is evident, not only from the difference in the locality, the
priests standing between the porch and the altar, whereas the
men referred to here stood at the outer eastern entrance to the
court of the temple, but from the fact that the two who are
mentioned by name are called Wn ^"v^ (princes of the people),
so that we may probably infer from this that all the twenty-
five were secular chiefs. Havernick's opinion, that DJ/n ^'i|' is
a term that may also be applied to princes among the priests,
is as erroneous as his assertion that the priest-princes are
called " pi'inces " in Ezra viii. 20, Neh. x. 1, and Jer. xxxv. 4,
whereas it is only to national princes that these passages refer.
Havernick is equally incorrect in supposing that these twenty-
five men take the place of the seventy mentioned in ch. viii. 11 ;
for those seventy represented the whole of the nation, whereas
these twenty-five (according to ver. 2) were simply the coun-
sellors of the city — not, however, the twenty-four duces of
twenty-four divisions of the city, with a prince of the house of
Judah, as Prado maintains, on the strength of certain Rabbinical
assertions ; or twenty-four members of a Sanhedrim, with their
president (Rosenmiiller) ; but the twelve tribe-princes (princes
of the nation) and the twelve royal officers, or military com-
manders (1 Chron. xxvii.), with the king himself, or possibly with
the commander-in-chief of the army ; so that these twenty-five
144 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
men represent the civil government of Israel, just as the twenty-
four priest-princes, together with the high priest, represent the
spiritual authorities of the covenant nation. The reason why-
two are specially mentioned by name is involved in obscurity,
as nothing further is known of either of these persons. The
words of God to the prophet in ver. 2 concerning them are
perfectly applicable to representatives of the civil authorities or
temporal rulers, namely, that they devise and give unwholesome
and evil counsel. This counsel is described in ver. 3 by the
words placed in their mouths : " house-building is not near ; it
(the city) is the caldron, we are the flesh." These words are
difficult, and different interpretations have consequently been
given. The rendering, "it (the judgment) is not near, let us
build houses," is incorrect; for the infinitive construct niJ3
cannot stand for the imperative or the infinitive absolute, but
must be the subject of the sentence. It is inadmissible also to
take the sentence as a question, "Is not house-building near?"
in the sense of " it is certainly near," as Ewald does, after some
of the ancient versions. For even if an interrogation is some-
times indicated simply by the tone in an energetic address, as,
for example, in 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, this cannot be extended to
cases in which the words of another are quoted. Still less can
2)-i\>2 K? mean non est tempus, it is not yet time, as Maurer
supposes. The only way in which the words can be made to
yield a sense in harmony with the context, is by taking them as
a tacit allusion to Jer. xxix. 5. Jeremiah had called upon
those in exile to build themselves houses in their banishment,
and prepare for a lengthened stay in Babylon, and not to allow
themselves to he deceived by the words of false prophets, who
predicted a speedy return ; for severe judgments had yet to
fall upon those who had remained behind in the land. This
word of Jeremiah the authorities in Jerusalem ridiculed, saying
" house-building is not near," i.e. the house-building in exile is
still a long way off ; it will not come to this, that Jerusalem
should fall either permanently or entirely into the hands of the
CHAP. SI. 5-12. 145
king of Babylon. On the contrary, Jerusalem is the pot, and
we, its inhabitants, are the flesh. The point of comparison is
tliis : as the pot protects the flesh from burning, so does the
city of Jerusalem protect us from destruction.'^ On the other
hand, there is no foundation for the assumption that the words
also contain an allusion to other sayings of Jeremiah, namely,
to Jer, i. 13, where the judgment about to burst in from the
north is represented under the figure of a smoking pot ; or to
Jer. xix., where Jerusalem is depicted as a pot about to be
oroken in pieces by God; for the reference in Jer. xix. is
simply to an earthen pitcher, not to a meat-caldron ; and the
words in the verse before us have nothing at all in common
with the figure in Jer. i. 13. Tlie correctness of our explana-
tion is evident both from ch. xxiv. 3, 6, where the figure of
pot and flesh is met with again, though differently applied,
and from the reply which Ezekiel makes to the saying of these
men in the verses that follow (vers. 7—11). This saying
expresses not only false confidence in the strength of Jerusalem,
but also contempt and scorn of the predictions of the prophets
sent by God. Ezekiel is therefore to prophesy, as he does in
vers. 5-12, against this pernicious counsel, which is confirming
the people in their sins.
Ver. 5. And the Spirit of Jehovah fell upon me, and said to
me : Say, Thus saith Jehovah, So ye say, house of Israel, and
what riseth up in your spirit, that I hnoio. Ver. 6. Ye have
increased your slain in this city, and filled its streets with slain.
Ver. 7. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Your slain, whom
ye have laid in the midst of it, they are the flesh, and it is the pot ;
but men will lead you out of it. Ver. 8. The sword you fear ;
hut the sword shall I bring upon you, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Ver. 9. / shall lead you out of it and give you into
1 " This city is a pot, our receptacle and defence, and we are the flesh
enclosed therein ; as flesh is preserved in its caldron till it is perfectly boiled,
so shall we continue here till an extreme old age." — Hulsemann in Calov.
Bill. Illustr.
EZEK. I. K
146 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the hand of foreigners, and shall execute judgments upon you.
Ver. 10. By the sword shall ye fall: on the frontier of Israel
shall I judge you ; and ye shall learn that I am Jehovah. Ver. 11.
It shall not be as a pot to you, so that you should he flesh therein :
on the frontier of Israel shall I judge. Ver. 12. And ye shall
learn that I am Jehovah, in whose statutes ye have not walked,
and my judgments ye have not done, but have acted according to
the judgments of the heathen who are round about you. — For VsPi
'" ™"' ''^V) compare cli. viii. 1. Instead of the "hand" (ch.
viii. 1), the Spirit of Jehovah is mentioned here; because
what follows is simply a divine inspiration, and there is no
action connected with it. The words of God are directed
against the " house of Israel," whose words and thoughts are
discerned by God, because the twenty-five men are the leaders
and counsellors of the nation. TO") ni^jJa, thoughts, suggestions
of the mind, may be explained from the phrase 3? ?y rbv, to
come into the mind. Their actions furnish the proof of the
evil suggestions of their heart. They have filled the city with
slain ; not " turned the streets of the city into a battle-field,"
however, by bringing about the capture of Jerusalem in the
time of Jeconiah, as Hitzig would explain it. The words are
to be understood in a much more general sense, as signifying
murder, in both the coarser and the more refined signification
of the word.^ ■^'Jinto is a copyist's error for orispo. Those
who have been murdered by you are the flesh in the caldron
(ver. 7). Ezekiel gives them back their own words, as words
which contain an undoubted truth, but in a different sense from
that in which they have used them. By their bloodshed they
have made the city into a pot in which the flesh of the slain is
pickled. Only in this sense is Jerusalem a pot for them ; not
a pot to protect the flesh from burning while cooking, but a
• Calyin has given the correct explanation, thus : " He does not mean
that men had been openly assassinated in the streets of Jerusalem ; but
under this form of speech he embraces all kinds of injustice. For we know
that all who oppressed the poor, deprived men of their possessions, or shed
innocent blood, were regarded as murderers in the sight of God,"
CHAP. XI. 13. 147
pot into wliich the flesh of the slaughtered is thrown. Yet
even in this sense will Jerusalem not serve as a pot to these
worthless counsellors (ver. 11). They will lead you out of the
city (t<''Vifl, in ver. 7, is the 3d pers. sing, with an indefinite
subject). The sword which ye fear, and from which this city
is to protect you, will come upon you, and cut you down — not
in Jerusalem, but on the frontier of Israel. 7^2i-7}}, in ver. 10,
cannot be taken in the sense of " away over the frontier," as
Kliefoth proposes ; if only because of the synonym ''^rpN in
ver. 11. This threat was literally fulfilled in the bloody scenes
at Eiblah (Jer. lii. 24-27). It is not therefore a vaticinium
ex eventu, but contains the general thought, that the wicked
who boasted of security in Jerusalem would not find protection
either in Jerusalem or in the land of Israel as a whole, but were
to be led out of the land, and judged outside. This threat
intensifies the punishment, as Calvin has already shown.* In
ver. 11 the negation (t^?) of the first clause is to be supplied in
the second, as, for example, in Deut. xxxiii. 6. For ver. 12,
compare the remarks on ch. v. 7. The truth and the power of
this word are demonstrated at once by what is related in the
following verse.
Ver. 13. And it came to pass, as I was prophesying, that
Pelatiah the son of JBenaiah died : then I fell upon my face,
and cried with a loud voice, and said : Alas ! Lord Jehovah,
dost Thou make an end of the remnant oj Israel ? — The sudden
death of one of the princes of the nation, while Ezekiel was
prophesying, was intended to assure the house of Israel of the
certain fulfilment of this word of God. So far, however, as
1 " He threatens a double punishment ; Jirst, that God will cast them out
of Jerusalem, in whiclj they delight, and where they say that they will
still make their abode for a long time to come, so that exile may be the
first punishment. He then adds, secondly, that He will not be content
with exile, but will send a severer punishment, after tbey have been cast
out, and both home and land have spued them out as a stench which they
could not bear. 1 will judge you at the frontier of Israel, i.e. outside the
holy land, so that when one curse shall have become manifest in exile, a
severer and more formidable puuishment shall still await you."
148 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the fact itself is concerned, we must bear iu mind, that as
it was only in spirit that Ezekiel was at Jerusalem, and pro-
phesied to the men whom he saw in spirit there, so the death
of Pelatiah was simply a part of the vision, and in all pro-
bability was actually realized by the sudden death of this prince
during or immediately after the publication of the vision. But
the occurrence, even when the prophet saw it in spirit, made
such an impression upon his mind, that with trembling and
despair he once more made an importunate appeal to God, as
in ch. ix. 8, and inquired whether He meant to destroy the
whole of the remnant of Israel. n?3 nby, to put an end to a
thing, with nx before the object, as in Zeph. i. 18 (see the
comm. on Nah. i. 8). The Lord then gives him the comfort-
ing assurance in vers. 14-21, that He will preserve a remnant
among the exiles, and make them His people once more.
Vers. 14-21. Promise of the gathering of Israel out of the
nations. — Ver. 14. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 15. Son of man, thy brethren, thy brethren are the people
of thy proxy, and the whole house of Israel, the whole of it, to
whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem say, Remain far away from
Jehovah; to us the land is given for a possession. Ver. 16.
Therefore say, TIius saith the Lord Jehovah, Yea, I have sent
them far away, and have scattered them in the lands, but I have
become to them a sanctuary for a little while in the lands whither
they have come. Ver. 17. Therefore say, T7ius saitli the Lord
Jehovah, And I will gatlier you from the nations, and will collect
you together from the lands in which ye are scattered, and will
give you the land of Israel. Ver. 18. And they will come thither,
and remove from it aU its detestable things, and all its abomina-
tions. Ver. 19. And I will give them one heart, and give a new
spirit within you ; and will take the heart of stone out of their
flesh, and give them a heart of flesh ; Ver. 20. That they may
waUc in my statutes, and preserve my rights, and do them : and
they will be my people, and I will be their God. Ver. 21. But
those ivhose heart goeth to the heart of their detestable things and
CHAP. XI. U-2L 149
thei}' abominations, I wiU give their way upon their head, is the
saying of the Lord Jehovah. — The prophet had interceded, first
of all for the inhabitants of Jerusalem (ch. ix. 8), and then
for the rulers of the nation, and had asked God whether He
would entirely destroy the remnant of Israel. To this God
replies that his brethren, in whom he is to interest himself, are
not these inhabitants of Jerusalem and these rulers of the
nation, but the Israelites carried into exile, who are regarded
by these inhabitants at Jerusalem as cut off from the people of
God. The nouns in ver. 15a are not " accusatives, which are
resumed in the suffix to O'lfipri'in in ver. 16," as Hitzig imagines,
but form an independent clause, in which T^^. is the subject,
and in>)W 'MK as well as W^iT- "''?'^? the predicates. The
repetition of " thy brethren " serves to increase the force of the
expression : thy true, real brethren ; not in contrast to the
priests, who were lineal relations (Havernick), but in contrast
to the Israelites, who had only the name of Israel, and denied
its nature. These brethren are to be the people of his proxy ;
and toward these he is to exercise n?N5. n?K^ is the business,
or the duty and right, of the Goel. According to the law, the
Goel was the brother, or the nearest relation, whose duty it was
to come to the help of his impoverished brother, not only by
redeeming (buying back) his possession, which poverty had
compelled liim to sell, but to redeem the man himself, if he
bad been sold to pay his debts (vid. Lev. xxv. 25, 48). The
Goel therefore became the possessor of the property of which
his brother had been unjustly deprived, if it were not restored
till after his death (Num. v. 8). Consequently he was not
only the avenger of blood, but the natural supporter and agent
of his brother; and njsj signifies not merely redemption or
kindred, but proxy, i.e. both the right and obligation to act as
the legal representative, the avenger of blood, the heir, etc., of
the brother. The words " and the whole of the house of Israel "
are a second predicate to " thy brethren," and affirm that the
brethren, for whom Ezekiel can and is to intercede, form the
150 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
whole of the house of Israel, the term " whole" being rendered
more emphatic by the repetition of b's in n'pa. A contrast is
drawn between this " whole house of Israel " and the inhabi-
tants of Jerusalem, who say to those brethren, "Remain far
away from Jehovah, to us is the land given for a possession."
It follows from this, first of all, that the brethren of Ezekiel,
towards whom he was to act as Goel, were those who had been
taken away from the land, his companions in exile ; and,
secondly, that the exiles formed the whole of the house of
Israel, that is to say, that they alone would be regarded by God
as His people, and not the inhabitants of Jerusalem or those
left in the land, who regarded the exiles as no longer a portion
of the nation : simply because, in their estrangement from God,
they looked upon the mere possession of Jerusalem as a pledge
of participation in the grace of God. This shows the prophet
where the remnant of the people of God is to be found. To
this there is appended in ver. 16 sqq. a promise of the way in
whjch the Lord will make this remnant His true people, p'?,
therefore, viz. because the inhabitants of Jerusalem regard the
exiles as rejected by the Lord, Ezekiel is to declare to them
tliat Jehovah is their sanctuary even in their dispersion (ver. 16) ;
and because the others deny that they have any share in the
possession of the land, the Lord will gather them together
again, and give them the land of Israel (ver. 17). The two p^
are co-ordinate, and introduce the antithesis to the disparaging
sentence pronounced by the inhabitants of Jerusalem upon
those who have been carried into exile. The ''3 before the two
leading clauses in ver. 16 does not meau " because," serving to
introduce a protasis, to which ver. 17 would form the apodosis,
as Ewald affirms ; but it stands before the direct address in the
sense of an assurance, which indicates that there is some truth
at the bottom of the judgment pronounced by their opponents,
the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The thought is this : the present
position of affairs is unquestionably that Jehovah has scattered
them (the house of Israel) among the Gentiles ; but He has
CHAP. SI. 14-21, 151
not therefore cast them off. He has become a sanctuary to
them in the lands of their dispersion. Migddsh does not mean
either asylum or an object kept sacred (Hitzig), but a sanc-
tuary, more especially the temple. They had, indeed, lost the
outward temple (at Jerusalem) ; but the Lord Himself had
become their temple. What made the temple into a sanctuary
was the presence of Jehovah, the covenant God, therein.
This even the exiles were to enjoy in their banishment, and in
this they would possess a substitute for the outward temple.
This thought is rendered still more precise by the word tajJD,
which may refer either to time or measure, and signify " for a
short time," or " in some measure." It is difficult to decide
between these two renderings. In support of the latter, which
Kliefoth prefers (after the LXX. and Vulgate), it may be
argued that the manifestation of the Lord, both by the mission
of prophets and by the outward deliverances and inward con-
solations which He bestowed upon the faithful, was but a partial
substitute to the exile for His gracious presence in the temple
and in the holy land. Nevertheless, the context, especially the
promise in ver. 17, that He will gather them again and lead
them back into the land of Israel, appears to favour the former
signification, namely, that this substitution vras only a provi-
sional one, and was only to last for a short time, although it
also implies that this could not and was not meant to be a per-
fect substitute for the gracious presence of the Lord. For
Israel, as the people of God, could not remain scattered abroad ;
it must possess the inheritance bestowed upon it by the Lord,
and have its God in the midst of it in its own land, and that
in a manner more real than could possibly be the case in
captivity among the Gentiles. This will be fully realized in
the heavenly Jerusalem, where the Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb will be a temple to the redeemed (Rev. xxi. 22).
Therefore will Jehovah gather together the dispersed once
more, and lead them back into the land of Israel, i.e. into the
land which He designed for Israel ; whereas the inhabitants of
152 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Jerusalem, who boast of their possession of Canaan (ver. 15),
will lose what they now possess. Those who are restored will
then remove all idolatrous abominations (ver. 17), and receive
from God a new and feeling heart (ver. 19), so that they will
walk in the ways of God, and be in truth the people of God
(ver. 20).
The fulfilment of this promise did, indeed, begin with the
return of a portion of the exiles under Zerubbabel ; but it was
not completed under either Zerubbabel or Ezra, or even in the
Maccabean times. Although Israel may have entirely relin-
quished the practice of gross idolatry after the captivity, it did
not then attain to that newness of heart vrhich is predicted in
vers. 19, 20. This only commenced with the Baptist's preach-
ing of repentance, and with the coming of Christ ; and it was
realized in the children of Israel, who accepted Jesus in faith,
and suffered Him to make them children of God. Yet even
by Christ this prophecy has not yet been perfectly fulfilled in
Israel, but only in part, since the greater portion of Israel has
still in its hardness that stony heart which must be removed out
of its flesh before it can attain to salvation. The promise in
ver. 19 has for its basis the prediction in Deut. xxx. 6. " What
the circumcision of the heart is there, viz. the removal of all
uncleanliness, of which outward circumcision was both the type
and pledge, is represented here as the giving of a heart of flesh
instead of one of stone" (Hengstenberg). I give them one
heart, inx a?, which Hitzig is wrong in proposing to alter into
1"? 2^, another heart, after the LXX., is supported and ex-
plained by Jer. xxxli. 39, " I give them one heart and one way
to fear me continually " (cf. Zeph. iii. 9 and Acts iv. 32). One
heart is not an upright, undivided heart (ab^ 3^), but a har-
monious, united heart, in contrast to the division or plurality of
hearts which prevails in the natural state, in which every one
follows his own heart and his own mind, turning " every one to
his own way" (Isa. liii. 6). God gives one heart, when He
causes all hearts and minds to become one. This can only be
CHAP. XI. 22-25. 153
effected by His giving a " new spirit," taking away the stone-
heart, and giving a heart of flesh instead. For the old spirit
fosters nothing bat egotism and discord. The heart of stone
has no susceptibihty to the impressions of the word of God and
the drawing of divine grace. In the natural condition, the
heart of man is as hard as stone. " The word of God, the
external leadings of God, pass by and leave no trace behind.
The latter may crush it, and yet not break it. Even the frag-
ments continue hard; yea, the hardness goes on increasing"
(Hengstenberg). The heart of flesh is a tender heart, suscep-
tible to the drawing of divine grace (compare ch. xxxvi. 26,
where these figures, which are peculiar to Ezekiel, recur ; and
for the substance of the prophecy, Jer. xxxi. 33). The fruit
of this renewal of heart is walking in the commandments of
the Lord ; and the consequence of the latter is the perfect
realization of the covenant relation, true fellowship with the
Lord God. But judgment goes side by side with this renewal.
Those who will not forsake their idols become victims to the
judgment (ver. 21). The first hemistich of ver. 21 is a relative
clause, in which "IB'K is to be supplied and connected with
D3? : " Whose heart walketh after the heart of their abomina-
tions." The heart, which is attributed to the abominations
and detestations, i.e. to the idols, is the inclination to idolatry,
the disposition and spirit which manifest themselves in the
worship of idols. Walking after the heart of the idols forms
the antithesis to walking after the heart of God (1 Sam. xiii.
14). For 'W1 a^-n, " I will give their way," see ch. ix. 10.
Vers. 22—25. The promise that the Lord would preserve to
Himself a holy seed among those who had been carried away
captive, brought to a close the announcement of the judgment
that would fall upon the ancient Israel and apostate Jerusalem.
All that is now wanting, as a conclusion to the whole vision, is
the practical confirmation of the announcement of judgment.
This is given in the two following verses. — Ver. 22. And the
cherubim raised their wings, and the wheels beside them ; and the
154 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
glory of the God of Israel was tip above them. Ver. 23. And
the glory of Jehovah ascended from the midst of the city, and
took its stand upon the mountain which is to the east of the city.
Ver. 24. And wind lifted me up, and brought me to Chaldea to
the exiles, in the vision, in the Spirit of God; and the vision
ascended away from me, which I had seen. Ver. 25. And I
spoke to the exiles all the words of Jehovah, which He had shown
to me. — The manifestation of the glory of the Lord had already-
left the temple, after the announcement of the burning of
Jerusalem, and had taken its stand before the entrance of the
eastern gate of the outer court, that is to say, in the city
itself (ch. X. 19, xi. 1). But now, after the announcement had
been made to the representatives of the authorities of their
removal from the city, the glory of the God of Israel forsook
the devoted city also, as a sign that both temple and city had
ceased to be the seats of the gracious presence of the Lord.
The mountain on the east of the city is the Mount of Olives,
which affords a lofty outlook over the city. There the glory
of God remained, to execute the judgment upon Jerusalem.
Thus, according to Zech. xiv. 4, will Jehovah also appear at
the last judgment on the Mount of Olives above Jerusalem, to
fight thence against His foes, and prepare a way of escape for
those who are to be saved. It was from the Mount of Olives
also that the Son of God proclaimed to the degenerate city
the second destruction (Luke xix. 21 ; Matt. xxiv. 3) ; and from
the same mountain He made His visible ascension to heaven
after His resurrection (Luke xxiv. 50 ; cf. Acts L 12) ; andj
as Grotius has observed, "thus did Ciirist ascend from this
mountain into His kingdom, to execute judgment upon the
Jews."
After this vision of the judgments of God upon the ancient
people of the covenant and the kingdom of God, Ezekiel was
carried back in the spirit into Chaldea, to the river Chaboras.
The vision then vanished ; and he related to the exiles all that
he had seen.
CHAP. SII. 155
CHAP. XII. DEPARTURE OF THE KING AND PEOPLE ;
AND BREAD OF TEARS.
The words of God which follow in ch. xii.-xix. do not con-
tain any chronological data defining the exact period at which
they were communicated to the prophet and reported by him.
But so far as their contents are concerned, they are closely con-
nected with the foregoing announcements of judgment ; and
this renders the assumption a very probable one, that they were
not far removed from them in time, but fell within the space of
eleven months intervening between ch. viii. 1 and xx. 1, and
were designed to carry out still further the announcement of
judgment in ch.,viii.-xi. This is done more especially in the
light thrown upon all the circumstances, on which the im-
penitent people rested their hope of the preservation of the
kingdom and Jerusalem, and of their speedy liberation from
the Babylonian yoke. The purpose of the whole is to show the
worthlessness of this false confidence, and to affirm the cer-
tainty and irresistibility of the predicted destruction of Judali
and Jerusalem, in the hope of- awakening the rebellious and
hardened generation to that thorough repentance, without
which it was impossible that peace and prosperity could ever
be enjoyed. This definite purpose in the prophecies which
follow is clearly indicated in the introductory remarks in ch.
xii. 2, xiv. 1, and xx. 1. In the first of these passages the
hardness of Israel is mentioned as the motive for the ensuing
prophecy ; whilst in the other two, the visit of certain elders of
Israel to the prophet, to seek the Lord and to inquire through
him, is given as the circumstance which occasioned the further
prophetic declarations. It is evident from this that the previous
words of God had already made some impression upon the
hearers, but that their hard heart had not yet been broken by
them.
In ch. xii., Ezekiel receives instructions to depict, by means
of a symbolical action, the departure of the king and people
156 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
from Jerusalem (vers. 3-7), and to explain the action to the
refractory generation (vers. 8-16). After this he is to exhibit,
by another symbolical sign, the want and distress to vfhich the
people will be reduced (vers. 17-20). And lastly, he is to
rebut the frivolous sayings of the people, to the effect that
what is predicted will either never take place at all, or not till
a very distant time (vers. 21-28).
Vers. 1-7. Symbol op the Emigration. — Ver. 1. And
the word of Jehovali came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man,
thou dwellesi amidst the refractory generation, who have eyes to
see, and see not ; and have ears to hear, and hear not ; for they are
a refractory generation. Ver. 3. And thou, son of man, make
thyself an outfit for exile, and depart hy day before their eyes ; and
depart from thy place to another place before their eyes : perhaps
they might see, for they are a refractory generation. Ver. 4,
And carry out thy things like an outfit for exile hy day before
their eyes ; but do thou go out in the evening before their eyes, as
tuhen going out to exile. Ver. 5. Before their eyes break through
the wall, and carry it out there. Ver. 6. Before their eyes taJce it
upon thy shoulder, carry it out in the darkness : cover thy face,
and look not upon the land ; for I have set thee as a sign to the
house of Israel. Ver. 7. And I did so as I was commanded : I
carried out my things like an outfit for exile by day, and in the
evening I broke through the wall with my hand ; I carried it out
in the darkness ; I took it upon my shoulder before their eyes. —
In ver. 2 the reason is assigned for the command to perform
the symbolical action, namely, the hard-heartedness of the
people. Because the generation in the midst of which Ezekiel
dwelt was blind, with seeing eyes, and deaf, with hearing ears,
the prophet was to depict before its eyes, by means of the sio-n
that followed, the judgment which was approaching; in the hope,
as is added in ver. 3, that they might possibly observe and lay
the sign to heart. The refractoriness Cip n''3, as in ch. ii.
5, 6, iii. 26, etc.) is described as obduracy, viz. having eyes.
CHAP. XII. 1-7. 157
and not seeing ; having ears, and not hearing, after Dent. xsix.
3 (cf. Jer. V. 21 ; Isa. vi. 9 ; Matt., xiii. 14, 15). The root of
this mental blindness and deafness was to be found in obsti-
nacy, i.e. in not willing ; " in that presumptuous insolence," as
Michaelis says, " through which divine light can obtain no ad-
mission." nbiJ ''P3, the goods (or outfit) of exile, were a pilgrim's
staff and traveller's wallet, with the provisions and utensils
necessary for a journey. Ezekiel was to carry these out of the
house into the street in the day-time, that the people might see
them and have their attention called to them. Then in the
evening, after dark, he was to go out himself, not by the door
of the house, but through a hole which he had broken in the
wall. He was also to take the travelling outfit upon his
shoulder and carry it through the hole and out of the place,
covering his face all the while, that he might not see the land
to which he was going. "Thy place" is thy dwelling-place.
n5iJ 'S^'ioa : as the departures of exiles generally take place,
i.e. as exiles are accustomed to depart, not " at the usual time
of departure into exile," as Havernick proposes. For ^5ViD, see
the comm. on Mic. v. 1. ni:7j)3 differs from 3nj)3 and signifies
the darkness of the depth of night (cf. Gen. xv. 17) ; not,
however, " darkness artificially produced, equivalent to, with
the eyes shut, or the face covered; so that the words which
follow are simply explanatory of fi^?^3," as Schmieder imagines.
Such an assumption would be at variance not only with ver. 7,
but also with ver. 12, where the covering or concealing of the
face is expressly distinguished from the carrying out " in the
dark." The order was to be as follows: In the day-time
Ezekiel was to take the travelling outfit and carry it out into
the road ; then in the evening he was to go out himself, having
first of all broken a hole through the wall as evening was
coming on ; and in the darkness of night he was to place upon
his shoulders whatever he was about to carry with him, and
take his departure. This he was to do, because God had made
him a mopheth for Israel : in other words, by doing this he was
158 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
to show himself to be a marvellous sign to Israel. For mOpliSth,
see the comm. on Ex. iv. 21. In ver. 7, the execution of the
command, which evidently took place in the strictness of the
letter, is fully described. There was nothing impracticable in
the action, for breaking through the wall did not preclude the
use of a hammer or some other tool.
Vers. 8-16. Explanation of the symbolical action. — Ver. 8.
And the word of Jehovah came tome in the marning, sayivg, Ver. 9.
Son of maiiy have they not said to thee, the house of Israel, the
refractory generation, What art thou doing ? Ver. 10. Say to them,
TIius sailh the Lord Jehovah, This burden applies to the prince in
Jerusalem, and to all the house of Israel to whom, they belong.
Ver. 11. Say, lam your sign: as I have done, so shall it happen
to them; into exile, into captivity, will they go. Ver. 12. And
the prince who is in the midst of them he will lift it upon his
shoulder in the dark, and will go out : they will break through the
wall, and cany it out thereby : he will cover his face, that he may
not see the land with eyes. Ver. 13. And I will spread my net
over him, so that he will be caught in my snare : and I will take
him to Babel, into the land of the Chaldeans ; but he will not see
it, and will die there. Ver. 14. And all that is about him, his
help and all his troops, I will scatter into all winds, and draio out
the sword behind them. Ver. 15. And they shall learn that lam
Jehovah, when I scatter them among the nations, and winnow them
in the lands. Ver. 16. Yet I will leave of them a small number
of men from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence;
that they may relate all their abominations among the nations
whither they have come ; and learn that I am Jehovah. — As
queries introduced with N^q have, as a rule, an affirmative sense,
the words " have they not asked," etc., imply that the Israel-
ites had asked the prophet what he was doing, though not in a
proper state of mind, not in a penitential manner, as the epithet
nan iria plainly shows. The prophet is therefore to interpret
the action which he had just been performing, and all its
different stages. The words njn ston N'^E'sn, to which very
CHAP. XII. 8-16. 159
different renderings have been given, are to be translated simply
" the prince is this burden," i.e. the object of this burden,
Hammassd does not mean the carrying, but the burden, i.e. the
threatening prophecy, the prophetic action of the prophet, as
in the headings to the oracles (see the comm. on Nah. i. 1).
The " prince " is the king, as in ch. xxi. 30, though not
Jehoiachin, who had been carried into exile, but Zedekiah.
This is stated in the apposition " in Jerusalem," which belongs
to " the prince," though it is not introduced till after the predi-
cate, as in Gen. xxiv. 24. To this there is appended the
further definition, " the whole house of Israel," which, being
co-ordinated with ^''^\^, affirms that all Israel (the covenant
nation) will share the fate of the prince. In the last clause of
ver. 10 Daina does not stand for f^aina, so that the suffix would
refer to Jerusalem, " in the midst of which they (the house of
Israel) are." IK'S cannot be a nominative, because in that
case nan would be superfluous ; it is rather to be taken with
D3ina, and nan to be understood as referring to the persons
addressed, i.e. to the Israelites in exile (Hitzig, Kliefoth) : in
the midst of whom they are, i.e. to whom they belong. The
sentence explains the reason why the prophet was to announce
to those in exile the fate of the prince and people in Jerusalem ;
namely, because the exiles formed a portion of the nation, and
would be affected by the judgment which was about to burst
upon the king and people in Jerusalem. In this sense Ezekiel
was also able to say to the exiles (in ver. 11), " I am your
sign ; " inasmuch as his sign was also of importance for them,
as those who were already banished would be so far affected by
the departure of the king and people which Ezekiel depicted, that
it would deprive them of all hope of a speedy return to their
native land. DH^, in ver. 11, refers to the king and the house
of Israel in Jerusalem, npiaa is rendered more forcible by the
addition of ''?B'a. The announcement that both king and people
must go into exile, is carried out still further in vers. 12 and
13 with reference to the king, and in ver. 14 with regard to the
160 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
people. The king will experience all that Ezekiel has described.
The literal occurrence of what is predicted here is related in
Jer. xxxix. 1 sqq., lii. 4 sqq. ; 2 Kings xxv. 4 sqq. When the
Chaldeans forced their way into the city after a two years'
siege, Zedekiah and his men of war fled by night out of the
city through the gate between the two walls. It is not expressly
stated, indeed, in the historical accounts that a breach was made
in the wall ; but tlie expression " through the gate between the
two walls " (Jer. xxxix. 4, lii. 7 ; 2 Kings xxv. 4) renders this
very probable, whether the gate had been walled up during the
siege, or it was necessary to break through the wall at one par-
ticular spot in order to reach the gate. The king's attendants
would naturally take care that a breach was made in the wall,
to secure for him a way of escape ; hence the expression, " they
will break through." The covering of the face, also, is not
mentioned in the historical accounts ; but in itself it is by no
means improbable, as a sign of the shame and grief with which
Zedekiah left the city. The words, " that he may not see the
land with eyes," do not appear to indicate anything more than
the necessary consequence of covering the face, and refer
primarily to the simple fact that the king fled in the deepest
sorrow, and did not want to see the land; but, as ver. 13
clearly intimates, they were fulfilled in another way, namely,
by the fact that Zedekiah did not see with his eyes the land of
the Chaldeans into which he was led, because he had been
blinded at Riblah (Jer. xxxix. 5, lii. 11 ; 2 Kino-s xxv. 7).
Tvh, by eye = with his eyes, is added to give prominence to the
idea of seeing. For the same purpose, the subject, which is
already implied in the verb, is rendered more emphatic by Nin ;
and this Sffl is placed after the verb, so that it stands in con-
trast with p?'?- The capture of the king was not depicted by
Ezekiel; so that in this respect the announcement (ver. 13)
goes further than the symbolical action, and removes all doubt
as to the credibility of the prophet's word, by a distinct predic-
tion of the fate awaiting him. At the same time, his not seeino-
CHAP. XIL 17-20. 161
the land of Babylon is left so indefinite, that it cannot be
regarded as a vaticinium post eventum. Zedekiah died in prison
at Babylon (Jer. lii. 11). Along with the king, the whole of
his military force will be scattered in all directions (ver. 14).
n'ltj?, his help, i.e. the troops that break through with him.
I'SiS"?!, all his wings (the wings of his army), i.e. all the rest
of his forces. The word is peculiar to Ezekiel, and is rendered
" wings" by Jos. Kimchi, like k^ndphaim in Isa. viii. 8. For the
rest of the verse compare ch. v. 2 ; and for the fulfilment, Jer.
lii. 8, xl. 7, 12. The greater part of the people will perish,
and only a small number remain, that they may relate among
the heathen, wherever they are led, all the abominations of
Israel, in order that the heathen may learn that it is not from
weakness, but simply to punish idolatry, that God has given
up His people to them (cf. Jer. xxii. 8).
Vers. 17-20. Sign depicting the Terrors and Conse-
quences OF the Conquest of Jerusalem. — Ver. 17. And
the loord of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 18. Son of man,
thou shah eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with
trembling and trouble ; Ver. 19. And say to the people of the
land. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the inhabitants of Jeru-
salem, in the land of Israel, They will eat their bread in trouble,
and drink their water in amazement, because her land is laid
waste of all its fulness for the wickedness of all who dwell therein.
Ver. 20. And the inhabited cities become desolate, and the land
will be laid waste ; that ye may learn that I am Jehovah. —
The carrying out of this sign is not mentioned ; not that there
is any doubt as to its having been done, but that it is simply
taken for granted. The trouble and trembling could only be
expressed by means of gesture. B'jn, generally an earthquake
or violent convulsion ; here, simply shaking, synonymous with
nU"!, trembling. " Bread and water " is the standing expression
for food ; so that even here the idea of scanty provisions is not
to be sought therein. This idea is found merely in the signs
ezek. I. li
162 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEEIEL.
of anxiety and trouble with which Ezekiel was to eat his food.
riDlS-^K = 'ns-bjJ, "upon the land," equivalent to "in the land."
This is appended to show that the prophecy does not refer
to those who had already been carried into exile, but to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem who were still in the land. For the
subject-matter, compare ch. iv. 16, 17. \Vg? indicates not the
intention, " in order that," but the motive, " because."
Vers. 21-28. Declaeations to eemove all Doubt as
TO THE Teuth of THE THREAT. — The scepticism of the
people as to the fulfilment of these threatening prophecies,
which had been made still more emphatic by signs, manifested
itself in two different ways. Some altogether denied that the
prophecies would ever be fulfilled (ver. 22) ; others, who did
not go so far as this, thought that it would be a long time
before they came to pass (ver. 27). These doubts were fed
by the lying statements of false prophets. For this reason the
refutation of these sceptical opinions (vers. 21-28) is followed
in the next chapter by a stern reproof of the false prophets and
prophetesses who led the people astray. — Ver. 21. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying^ Ver. 22. Son of man, what
kind of proverb have ye in the land of Israel, that ye say, Tlie
days become long, and every prophecy comes to nothing ? Ver. 23.
Therefore say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will pxit
an end to this saying, and they shall say it no more in Israel; but
say to them, The days are near, and the word of every prophecy.
Ver. 24. For henceforth there shall be no vain prophecy and
flattering soothsaying in the midst of the house of Israel. Ver. 25.
For I am Jehovah ; I speak; the word which I speak will come
to pass, and no longer be postponed ; for in your days, refractory
generation, I speak a word and do it, is the saying of the Lord Jeho-
vah. — Mdshdl, a proverb, a saying current among the people,
and constantly repeated as a truth. " The days become lon^,"
etc., i.e. the time is lengthening out, and yet the prophecy is
not being fulfilled. 1?N, perire, to come to nothing, to fail of
CHAP. XIL 21-28. 163
fulfilment, is the opposite of Kl3, to come, to be fulfilled. God
will put an end to these sayings, by causing a very speedy
fulfilment of the prophecy. The days are near, and every
word of the prophecy, i.e. the days in which every word pre-
dicted shall come to pass. The reason for this is given in
vers. 24 and 25, in two co-ordinate sentences, both of which are
introduced with 'S. First, every false prophecy shall henceforth
cease in Israel (ver. 24) ; secondly, God will bring about the
fulfilment of His own word, and that without delay (ver. 25).
Different explanations have been given of the meaning of
ver. 24. Kliefoth proposes to take J^W and p?n DppD as the
predicate to \vn : no prophecy in Israel shall be vain and flatter-
ing soothsaying, but all prophecy shall become true, i.e. be
fulfilled. Such an explanation, however, is not only artificial
and unnatural, since Qpi^? would be inserted as a predicate in a
most unsuitable manner, but it contains this incongruity, that
God would apply tlie term DPP», soothsaying, to the predictions
of prophets inspired by Himself. On the other hand, there is
no force in the objection raised by Kliefoth to the ordinary
rendering of the words, namely, that the statement that God
was about to put an end to false prophecy in Israel would
anticipate the substance of the sixth word of God (i.e. ch. xiii.).
It is impossible to see why a thought should not be expressed
here, and then still further expanded in ch. xiii. p?n, smooth,
i.e. flattering (compare Hos. x. 2; and for the prediction, Zech.
xiii. 4, 5). The same reply serves also to overthrow the sceptical
objection raised by the frivolous despisers of the prophet's
words. Hence there is only a brief allusion made to them in
vers. 26-28. — Ver. 26. And the word of Jehovah came to me,
saying. Ver. 27. Son of man, behold, the house of Israel saith,
Tlie vision that he seeth is for many days off, and he prophesies
for distant times. Ver. 28. Therefore say to them, Tims saith
the Lord Jehovah, All my words shall be no longer postponed:
the word which I shall speak shall come to pass, saith the Lord
Jehovah. — The words are plain ; and after what has already
164 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
been said, they need no special explanation. Ver. 20 com-
pare with ver. 25.
CHAP. XIII. AGAINST THE FALSE PEOPHETS AND
PEOPHETESSES.
The way was already prepared for the address in this chapter
by the announcement in ch. xii. 24. It divides itself into two
parts, viz. vers. 1-16, directed against the false prophets; and
vers. 17-23, against the false prophetesses. In both parts
their conduct is first described, and then the punishment fore-
told. Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, and sometimes still more strongly,
denounces the conduct of the false prophets, who are therefore
to be sought for not merely among the exiles, but principally
among those who were left behind in the land (vid. Jer. xxiii.
9 sqq.). A lively intercourse was kept up between the two, so
that the false prophets extended their operations from Canaan
to the Chaboras, and vice versa.
Vers. 1-16. Against the False Peophets. — Vers. 1-7.
Their conduct. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me,
saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of
Israel who prophesy, and say to the prophets out of their heart.
Hear ye the word of Jehovah. Ver. 3. Thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, Woe upon the foolish prophets, who go after their spiiit,
and that lohich they have not seen ! Ver. 4. Like foxes in ruins
have thy prophets become, Israel. Ver. 5. Ye do not stand
before the breaches, nor wall up the wall around the house of Israel
to stand firm in the battle on the day of Jehovah. Ver. 6. They
see vanity and lying soothsaying, who say, " Oracle of Jehovah;"
and Jehovah hath not sent them ; so that they might hope for the
fulfilment of the word. Ver. 7. Do ye not see vain visions, and
speak lying soothsaying, and say, Oracle of Jehovah ; and I have
not spoken ? — The addition 13''N33n^ " who prophesy," is not super-
fluous. Ezekiel is not to direct iiis words against the prophets
CHAP. XIII. 1-7. 165
as a body, but against those who follow the vocation of prophet
in Israel without being called to it by God on receiving a divine
revelation, but simply prophesying out of their own heart, or
according to their own subjective imagination. In the name
of the Lord he is to threaten them with woes, as fools who
follow their own spirit; in connection with which we must
bear in mind that folly, according to the Hebrew idea, was not
merely a moral failing, but actual godlessness (cf. Ps. xiv. 1).
The phrase "going after their spirit" is interpreted and ren-
dered more emphatic by =1X7 w?f, which is to be taken as a
relative clause, " that which they have not seen," i.e. whose
prophesying does not rest upon intuition inspired by God.
Consequently they cannot promote the welfare of the nation,
but (ver. 4) are like foxes in ruins or desolate places. The
point of comparison is to be found in the undermining of the
ground by foxes, qui per cuniculos suhjectam terram excavant et
suffodiunt (Bochart). For the thought is not exhausted by the
circumstance that they withdraw to their holes instead of stand-
ing in front of the breach (Hitzig) ; and there is no force in
the objection that, with this explanation, nu"ina is passed over
and becomes in fact tautological (Havernick). The expression
" in ruins " points to the fall of the theocracy, which the false
prophets cannot prevent, but, on the contrary, accelerate by
undermining the moral foundations of the state. For (ver. 5)
they do not stand in the breaches, and do not build up the wall
around the house of Israel (n? belongs to both clauses). He
who desires to keep off the enemy, and prevent his entering the
fortress, will stand in the breach. For the same purpose are
gaps and breaches in the fortifications carefully built up. The
sins of the people had made gaps and breaches in the walls of
Jerusalem ; in other words, had caused the moral decay of the
city. But they had not stood in the way of this decay and
its causes, as the calling and duty of prophets demanded, by
reproving the sins of the people, that they might rescue the
people and kingdom from destruction by restoring its moral
166 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and religious life. 'iDnptsa Ibjj?, to stand, or keep ground, i.e.
so that ye might have kept your ground in the war. The
subject is the false prophets, not Israel, as Havernick supposes.
" In the day of Jehovah," i.e. in the judgment which Jehovah
has decreed. Not to stand, does not mean merely to avert the
threatening judgment, but not to survive the judgment itself,
to be overthrown by it. This arises from the fact that their
prophesying is a lie ; because Jehovah, whose name they have
in their mouths, has not sent them (ver. 6). vn)! is dependent
upon Onb^ : God has not sent them, so that they could hope
for the fulfilment of the word which they speak. The render-
ing adopted by others, " and they cause to hope," is untenable ;
for ^n^ with ? does not mean " to cause to hope," or give hope,
but simply to hope for anything. This was really the case ;
and it is affirmed in the declaration, which is repeated in the
form of a direct appeal in ver. 7, to the effect that their visions
were vain and lying soothsaying. For this they are threatened
with the judgment described in the verses which follow.
Vers. 8-16. Punishment of the false prophets. — Ver. 8.
Tlierefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because ye speak vanity
and prophesy lying, therefore, behold, I will deal with you, is the
saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 9. And my hand shall be
against the prophets who see vanity and divine lies : in the council
of my people they shall not be, and in the register of the house of
Israel they shall not be registered, and into the land of Israel shall
they not come ; and ye shall learn that I am the Lord Jehovah.
Ver. 10. Because, yea because they lead my people astray, and
say, " Peace," though there is no peace ; and when it {my people)
build a wall, behold, they plaster it with cement: Ver. 11. Say
to the plasterers, that it will fall : there cometh a pouring rain ;
and ye hailstones fall, and thou stormy wind break loose J Ver. 12.
And, behold, the wall falleth ; will men not say to you. Where is
the plaster loith which ye have plastered itf Ver. 13. Tlierefore
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I cause a stormy wind to break
CHAP. Xni. 8-16. 167
forth in my wrath, and a pouring rain will come in my anger,
and hailstones in wrath, for destruction, Ver. 14, And I demo-
lish the wall which ye have plastered, and cast it to the ground,
that its foundation may he exposed, and it shall fall, and ye shall
perish in the midst of it ; and shall learn that I am Jehovah,
Ver. 15. And I will exhaust my wrath upon the wall, and upon
those who plaster it ; and will say to you, It is all over with the
wall, and all over with those who plastered it ; Ver. 1 6. With the
prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem, and saw visions of
peace for Jier, though there is no peace, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah, — In ver. 8 the punishment which is to fall upon the
false prophets is threatened in general terms ; and in ver. 9 it
is more specifically described in the form of a climax, rising
higher and higher in the severity of its announcements. (1)
They are no longer to form part of the council of the people of
God ; that is to say, they will lose their influential position
among the people. ("liD is the sphere of counsellors, not the
social sphere.) (2) Their names shall not be registered in the
book of the house of Israel. The book of the house of Israel
is the register in which the citizens of the kingdom of God are
entered. Any one whose name was not admitted into this book,
or was struck out of it, was separated thereby from the citizen-
ship of Israel, and lost all the privileges which citizenship
conferred. The figure of the book of life is a similar one (cf.
Ex. xxxii. 32). For Israel is not referred to here with regard
to its outward nationality, but as the people of God ; so that
exclusion from Israel was also exclusion from fellowship with
God. The circumstance that it is not the erasure of their
names from the book that is mentioned here, but their not
being entered in the book at all, may be accounted for from
the reference contained in the words to the founding of the
new kingdom of God. The old theocracy was abolished,
although Jerusalem was not yet destroyed. The covenant
nation had fallen under the judgment ; but out of that portion
of Israel which was dispersed among the heathen, a remnant
168 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
would be gathered together again, and having been brought
back to its own land, would be made anew into a holy people
of God (cf. ch. xi. 17 sqq.). But the false prophets are not to
be received into the citizenship of the new kingdom. (3) They
are not even to come into the land of Israel ; i.e. they are not
merely to remain in exile, but to lose all share in the privileges
and blessings of the kingdom of God. This judgment will
come upon them because they lead astray the people of God,
by proclaiming peace where there is no peace ; i.e. by raising
and cherishing false hopes of prosperity and peace, by which
they encourage the people in their sinful lives, and lead them to
imagine that all is well, and there is no judgment to be feared
(cf. Jer. xxiii. 17 and Mic. iii. 5). The exposure of this offence
is introduced by the solemn \Viy> IV', because and because (cf.
Lev. xxvi. 43) ; and the offence itself is exhibited by means
of a figure. When the people build a wall, the false prophets
plaster the wall with lime. f<im. (ver. 10) refers to ''^V, and the
clause is a circumstantial one. ?3IJ signifies the plaster coating
or cement of a wall, probably from the primary meaning of
ban, to stick or plaster over (=?aD, conglutinare, to glue, or
fasten together), from which the secondary meaning of weak,
insipid, has sprung. The proper word for plaster or cement is
n^ta (ver. 12), and ?5n is probably chosen with an allusion to
the tropical signification of that which is silly or absurd (Jer.
xxiii. 13; Lam. ii. 14). The meaning of the figure is intelli-
gible enough. The people build up foolish hopes, and the pro-
phets not only paint these hopes for them in splendid colours,
but even predict their fulfilment, instead of denouncing their
folly, pointing out to the people the perversity of their ways,
and showing them that such sinful conduct must inevitably be
followed by punishment and ruin. The plastering is therefore
a figurative description of deceitful flattery or hypocrisy, i.e.
the covering up of inward corruption by means of outward
appearance (as in Matt, xxiii. 27 and Acts xxiii. 3). This
figure leads the prophet to describe the judgment which they
CHAP. XIII. 8-16. 169
are bi'inging upon the nation and themselves, as a tempest
accompanied with hail and pouring rain, which throws down
the wall that has been erected and plastered over; and in
connection with this figure he opens out this double thought :
(1) the conduct of the people, which is encouraged by the false
prophets, cannot last (vers. 11 and 12) ; and (2) when this
work of theirs is overthrown, the false prophets themselves will
also meet with the fate they deserve (vers. 13-16). The threat
of judgment commences with the short, energetic -"S^l, let it
(the wall) fall, or it shall fall, with Vav to indicate the train of
thought (Ewald, § 347a). The subject is i'Sn, to which ':>h\
suggests a resemblance in sound. In ver. 12 this is predicted
as the fate awaiting the plastered wall. In the description of
the bursting storm the account passes with njriXI (and ye) into
a direct address ; in other words, the description assumes the
form of an appeal to the destructive forces of nature to burst
forth with all their violence against the work plastered over by
the prophets, and to destroy it. ^tSiB* OB'S, pouring rain ; cf.
ch. xxxviii. 22. ti'''?3pK ''33K here and ch. xxxviii. 22 are hail-
stones. The word ti"???*?, which is peculiar to Ezekiel, is pro-
bably B'''33 (Job xxviii. 18), with the Arabic article ?K ; ice,
then crystal, niiyo mi, wind of storms, a hurricane or tempest.
J?i33fi (ver. 11) is used intransitively, to break loose; but in
ver. 13 it is transitive, to cause to break loose. The active
rendering adopted by Kliefoth, " the storm will rend," so. the
plaster of the wall, is inappropriate in ver. 11; for a tempest
does not rend either the plaster or the wall, but throws the wall
down. The translation which Kliefoth gives in ver. 13, " I
will rend by tempest," is at variance with both the language
and the sense. Jehovah will cause this tempest to burst forth
in His wrath and destroy the wall, and lay it level with the
around. The suffix in ri3iri3 refers {ad sensum) to Jerusalem,
not to "i^i? (the wall), which is masculine, and has no T^n (midst).
The words pass from the figure to the reality here ; for the
plastered wall is a symbol of Jerusalem, as the centre of the
170 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
theocracy, which is to be destroyed, and to bury the lying
prophets in its ruins. 'O'^^l (ver. 15) contains a play upon the
word nw in ver. 13. By a new turn given to rh::, Ezekiel
repeats the thought that the wrath of God is to destroy the
wall and its plasterers ; and through this repetition he rounds
off the threat with the express declaration, that the false
prophets who are ever preaching peace are the plasterers to
whom he refers.
Vers. 17-23. Against the False Prophetesses. — An
the Lord had not endowed men only with the gifts of prophecy,
but sometimes women also, e.g. Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah ;
so women also rose up along with the false prophets, and pro-
phesied out of their own hearts without being impelled by the
Spirit of God. Vers. 17-19. Their conduct.— Ver. 17. And
thou, son of man, direct thy face towards the daughters of thy
people^ who prophesy out of their heart and prophesy against
them, Ver. 18. And say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Woe to
those who sew coverings together over all the joints of my hands,
and make caps for the head of every size, to catch souls ! Ye
catch the souls of my people, and keep your souls alive. Ver. 19.
And ye profane me ivith my people for handfuls of barley and
for pieces of bread, to slay souls which should not die, and to
keep alive which shoidd not live, by your lying to my people who
hearken to lying.— Uk^ the prophets in ver. 2, the prophetesses
are here described as prophesying out of their own heart
(ver. 17) ; and in vers. 18 and 19 their offences are more
particularly described. The meaning of these verses is en-
tirely dependent upon the view to be taken of ''1^, which the
majority of expositors, following the lead of the LXX., the
Syriac, and the Vulgate, have regarded as identical with D^'IJ or
i;, and understood as referring to the hands of the women or
prophetesses. But there is nothing to justify the assumption
that ^T is an unusual form for d;t, which even Ewald takes
it to be {Lehrbuch, § 177a). Still less can it stand for the
CHAP. XIII. 17-19. 171
singular T. And we have not sufficient ground for altering
the text, as the expression Q3''njJil? in ver. 20 (I will tear the
ninpa from your arms) does not require the assumption that
the prophetesses had hidden their arms in ninD3; and such
a supposition is by no means obviously in harmony with the
facts. The word ^liripi, from riD3, with n fern, treated as a
radical letter (cf. Ewald, § 186e), means a covering or conceal-
ment =niD3. The meaning "cushion" or "pillow" (LXX.
7rpo(7Ke(f)aXaia, Vnlg. pulvilli) is merely an inference drawn
from this passage, and is decidedly erroneous ; for the word IBH
(to sew together) is inapplicable to cushions, as well as the
phrase "'1!^ y''?^"''? -"S; inasmuch as cushions are not placed
upon the joints of the hands, and still less are they sewed
together upon them. The latter is also a decisive reason for
rejecting the explanation given by Havernick, namely, that the
k'sdthoth were carpets, which were used as couches, and upon
which these voluptuous women are represented as reclining.
For cushions or couches are not placed upon, but under, the
arm-joints (or elbows) and the shoulders, which Havernick
understands by T v''2f^. This also overthrows another expla-
nation given of the words, namely, that they refer to carpets,
which the prophetesses had sewed together for all their arm-
joints, so as to form comfortable beds upon splendid carpets,
that they may indulge in licentiousness thereon. The explana-
tion given by Ephraem Syrus, and adopted by Hitzig, namely,
that the k'sdthoth were amulets or straps, which they wound
round their arm-joints when they received or delivered their
oracles, is equally untenable. For, as Kliefoth has observed,
" it is evident that there is not a word in the text about adultery,
or amulets, or straps used in prayer," And again, when we
proceed to the next clause, the traditional rendering of linsDD,
as signifying either pillows {vTravj(evia, Symm. ; cervicalia,
Vnlg.) or broad cloaks = ninstOD (Hitzig, Havernick, etc.), is
neither supported by the usage of the language, nor in har-
mony with E'Xl '?V. Mispdchoth, from sdphach, to join, cannot
172 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
have any other meaning in the present context tlian a cap
fitting close to the head ; and 73? must denote the pattern which
was followed, as in Ps. ex, 4, Esth. ix. 26 : they make the caps
after (answering to) the head of every stature. The words of
both clauses are figurative, and have been correctly explained
by Kliefoth as follows: "A double charge is brought against
the prophetesses. In the first place, they sew coverings to-
gether to wrap round all the joints of the hand of God, so that
He cannot touch them ; i.e. they cover up and conceal the word
of God by their prophesying, more especially its rebukiag and
threatening force, so that the threatening and judicial arm of
God, which ought above all to become both manifest and effec-
tive through His prophetic word, does not become either one or
the other. In the second place, they make coverings upon the
heads of men, and construct them in such a form that they
exactly fit the stature or size of every individual, so that the
men neither hear nor see ; i.e., by means of their fiattering lies,
which adapt themselves to the subjective inclinations of their
hearers at the time, they cover up the senses of the men, so
that they retain neither ear nor eye for the truth." They do
both of these to catch souls. The inevitable consequence of
their act is represented as having been intended by them ; and
this intention is then still further defined as being to catch the
souls of the people of God ; i.e. to allure them to destruction,
and take care of their own souls. The clause HJinisn niB'SJn
is not to be taken as a question, " Will ye catch the souls ? "
implying a doubt whether they really thought that they could
carry on such conduct as theirs with perfect impunity (Haver-
nick). It contains a simple statement of what really took
place in their catching of souls, namely, " they catch the souls
of the people of God, and preserve their own souls ;" i.e. they
rob the people of God of their lives, and take care of their
own (Kliefoth). W^ is used instead of the genitive (staf.
constr.) to show that the accent rests upon 'sy. And in the
same way we have n^^h instead of the suffix. The construction
CHAP. XIII. 20-23. 173
is the same as in 1 Sam xiv. 16. Ver. 19 shows how great tbeir
sin had been. They profane God among His people ; namely,
by delivering the suggestions of their own heart to the people
as divine revelations, for the purpose of getting their daily
bread thereby (cf. Mic. iii. 5); by hurling into destruction,
through their lies, those who are only too glad to listen to
lying ; by slaying the souls of the people which ought to live,
and by preserving those which ought not to live, i.e. their own
souls (Deut. xviii. 20). The punishment for this will not fail
to come.
Vers. 20-23. Punishment of the false prophetesses. — Ver. 20.
Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal with
your coverings with which ye catch, 1 will let the souls fly ; and
I will tear them away from your arms, and set the souls free,
which ye catch, the souls to fly, Ver. 21. And I will tear your
caps in pieces, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they
shall no more become a prey in your hand ; and ye shall learn
that I am Jehovah. Ver. 22. Because ye grieve the heart of the
righteous with lying, when I have not pained him ; and strengthen
the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his evil
way, to preserve his life. Ver. 23. Therefore ye shall no more
see vanity, and no longer practise soothsaying : and I will deliver
my people out of your hand; and ye shall learn that I am
Jehovah. — The threat of judgment is closely connected with
the reproof of their sins. Vers. 20 and 21 correspond to the
reproof in ver. 18, and vers. 22 and 23 to that in ver. 19.
In the first place, the Lord will tear in pieces the coverings
and caps, i.e. the tissue of lies woven by the false prophetesses,
and rescue the people from their snares (vers. 20 and 21) ; and,
secondly, He will entirely put an end to the pernicious conduct
of the persons addressed (vers. 22 and 23). The words from
n-iPix "lE'X to nin"is? (ver. 20a), when taken as one clause, as
they generally are, offer insuperable difficulties, since it is
impossible to get any satisfactory meaning from DB', and
ninisf' will not fit in. Whether we understand by k'sdthoth
174 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
coverings or cushions, the connection of DE' with "iB'X (where ye
catch the souls), which the majority of commentators prefer, is
untenable; for coverings and cushions were not the places
where the souls were caught, but could only be the means
employed for catching them. Instead of DB' we should expect
D3 or Dn3 ; and Hitzig proposes to amend it in this way. Still
less admissible is the proposal to take DE' as referring to Jeru-
salem (" wherewith ye catch souls there ") ; as DE' would not
only contain a perfectly superfluous definition of locality, but
would introduce a limitation altogether at variance with the
context. It is not affirmed either of the prophets or of the
prophetesses that they lived and prophesied in Jerusalem
alone. In vers. 2 and 17 reference is made in the most gene-
ral terms to the prophets of Israel and the daughters of thy
people; and in ver. 16 it is simply stated that the false prophets
prophesied peace to Jerusalem when there was no peace at all.
Consequently we must regard the attempt to find in DE' an
allusion to Jerusalem (cf. ver. 16) as a mere loophole, which
betrays an utter inability to get any satisfactory sense from the
word. Moreover, if we construe the words in this manner,
nimap is also incomprehensible. Commentators have for the
most part admitted that nns is used here in the Aramaean
sense of volare, to fly. In the second half of the verse there is
no doubt about its having this meaning. For n^B' is used in
Deut. xxii. 7 for liberating a bird, or letting it fly ; and the
combination nimb? 'asn-ns n^B* is supported by the expression
^^r'i? n^?' in Ex. xxi, 26, while the comparison of souls to
birds is sustained by Ps. xi. 1 and cxxiv. 7. Hence the true
meaning of the whole passage ninVa^ . . , nlti'S3n-ns 'nn^B' is,
I send away (set free) the souls, which ye have caught, as
flying ones, i.e. so that they shall be able to fly away at liberty.
And in the first half also we must not adopt a different render-
ing for nin-iab, since niB'san-ns is also connected with it there.
But if the words in question are combined into one clause in
the first hemistich, they will give us a sense which is obviously
CHAP. XIII. 20-23. 175
wrong, viz. " wherewith ye catch the souls to let them fly."
As the impossibility of adopting this rendering has been clearly
seen, the attempt has been made to cloak over the difficulty by
means of paraphrases. Ewald, for example, renders nirrib? in
both cases " as if they were birds of passage ; " but in the first
instance he applies it to birds of passage, for which nets are
spread for the purpose of catching them ; and in the second, to
birds of passage which are set at liberty. Thus, strictly speak-
ing, he understands the first rtnnbp as signifying the catching
of birds ; and the second, letting them fly : an explanation which
refutes itself, as pdrach, to fly, cannot mean " to catch " as
well. The rendering adopted by Kimchi, Kosenmiiller, and
others, who translate riinibp ut advolent ad vos in the first
hemistich, and ut avolent in the second, is no better. And the
difiiculty is not removed by resorting to the dialects, as Haver-
nick, for the purpose of forcing upon nirria the meaning dis-
soluteness or licentiousness, for which there is no authority in
the Hebrew language itself. If, therefore, it is impossible to
obtain any satisfactory meaning from the existing text, it can-
not be correct ; and no other course is open to us than to alter
the unsuitable DE' into OB', and divide the words from n|FiN "iB^x
to ninib? into two clauses, as we have done in our translation
above. There is no necessity to supply anything to the re-
lative lE'N, as "VDi is construed with a double accusative {e.g.
Mic. vii. 2, D^n ^?S, to catch with a net), and the object to
niins?) viz. the souls, can easily be supplied from the next
clause. D^, as a participle, can either be connected with
''^?'?) " behold, I make," or taken as introducing an explanatory
clause : " making the souls into flying ones," i.e. so that they
are able to fly (? WB', Gen. xii. 2, etc.). The two clauses of
the first hemistich would then exactly correspond to the two
clauses of the second half of the verse, oni' ''Wli^l. is explana-
tory of 'noa ?N ''Jjn, I will tear off the coverings from their
arms. These words do not require the assumption that the
prophetesses wore the ninoi" on their arms, but may be fully
176 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
explained from the supposition that the persons in question
prepared them with their own hands. 'W1 "'JiinWl. corresponds
to '1J1 nityBJnTiN nf ; and nimb^ is governed by "'rinW. The
insertion of D'B'san'nK is to be accounted for from the copious
nature of Ezekiel's style ; at the same time, it is not merely a
repetition of nityajn-ns, which is separated from ninnb? by the
relative clause 'SD DPis "iB-K, but as the unusual plural form
D''E'D3 shows, is intended as a practical explanation of the fact,
tliat the souls, while compared to birds, are regarded as living
beings, whicli is the meaning borne by tJ'B.3 in other passages.
The omission of the article after ON may be explained, however,
from the fact that the souls had been more precisely defined
just before ; just as, for example, in 1 Sam. xxiv. 6, 2 Sam.
xviii. 18, where the more precise definition follows immediately
afterwards (cf. Ewald, § 277a, p. 683).— The same thing is
said in ver. 21, with regard to the caps, as has already been
said of the coverings in ver. 20. God will tear these in pieces
also, to deliver His people from the power of the lying pro-
phetesses. In what way God will do this is explained in vers.
22 and 23, namely, not only by putting their lying prophecies
to shame through His judgments, but by putting an end to
soothsaying altogether, and exterminating the false prophetesses
by making them an object of ridicule and shame. The reason
for this threat is given in ver. 22, where a further description
is given of the disgraceful conduct of these persons ; and here
the disgracefulness of their conduct is exhibited in literal terms
and without any figure. They do harm to the righteous and
good, and strengthen the hands of the wicked. niNaflj Hiphil
of ns3, in Syriac, to use harshly or depress ; so here in the
Hiphil, connected with 3?, to afflict the heart. Ij?.?' is used
adverbially : with lying, or in a lying manner ; namely, by
predicting misfortune and divine punishments, with which they
threatened the godly, who would not acquiesce in their conduct ;
whereas, on the contrary, they predicted prosperity and peace
to the ungodly, who were willing to be ensnared by them, and
CHAP. XIV. 1. 177
thus strengthened them in their evil ways. For this God would
put them to shame through His judgments, which would make
their deceptions manifest, and their soothsaying loathsome.
CHAP. XIV. ATTITUDE OF GOD TOWARDS THE WOESHIPPEKS
OF IDOLS, AND CERTAINTY OF THE JUDGMENTS.
This chapter contains two words of God, which have obvi-
ously an internal connection with each other. The first (vers.
1-11) announces to the elders, who have come to the prophet
to inquire of God, that the Lord will not allow idolaters to
inquire of Him, but will answer all who do not turn from
idolatry with severe judgments, and will even destroy the pro-
phets who venture to give an answer to such inquirers. The
second (vers. 12-23) denounces the false hope that God will
avert the judgment and spare Jerusalem because of the right-
eousness of the godly men therein.
Vers. 1-11. The Lord gives no Answer to the Idola-
ters. — Ver. 1 narrates the occasion for this and the following
words of God : There came to me men of the elders of Israel,
and sat down before me. These men were not deputies from
the Israelites in Palestine, as Grotius and others suppose, but
elders of the exiles among whom Ezekiel had been labouring.
They came to visit the prophet (ver. 3), evidently with the in-
tention of obtaining, through him, a word of God concerning
the future of Jerusalem, or the fate of the kingdom of Judah.
But Havernick is wrong in supposing that we may infer, from
either the first or second word of God in this chapter, that they
had addressed to the prophet a distinct inquiry of this nature,
to which the answer is given in vers. 12-23. For although
their coming to the prophet showed that his prophecies had
made an impression upon them, it is not stated in ver. 1 that
they had come to inquire of God, like the elders in ch. xx. 1,
and there is no allusion to any.definite questions in the words of
EZEK. I. M
178 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
God themselves. The first (vers. 2-11) simply assumes that
they have come with the intention of asking, and discloses the
state of heart vvliich keeps them from coming to inquire ; and
the second (vers. 12-23) points out the worthlessness of their
false confidence in the righteousness of certain godly men.
Ver. 2. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 3.
Son of man, these men have let their idols rise up in their heart,
and have set the stumbling-block to guilt before their face : shall I
allow myself to be inquired of by them'? Ver. 4. llierefore
speak to them, and say to them, Tlius saith the Lord Jehovah,
Every man of the house of Israel who lifteth up his idols in his
heart, and setteth the stumbling-block to his sin before his face, and
Cometh to the prophet, to him do I, Jehovah, show myself, answering
according thereto, according to the multitude of his idols ; Ver. 5.
To grasp the house of Israel by their heart, because they have turned
away from me, all of them through their idols. — We have not to
picture these elders to ourselves as given up to gross idolatry.
^.< 'V '"^fJCO means, to allow anything to come into the mind, to
permit it to rise up in the heart, to be mentally busy therewith.
"To set before one's face" is also to be understood, in a
spiritual sense, as relating to a thing which a man will not put
out of his mind, D3ij> 7iE'3D, stumbling-block to sin and guilt
(cf. ch. vii. 19), i.e. the idols. Thus the two phrases simply
denote the leaning of the heart and spirit towards false gods.
God does not suffer those whose heart is attached to idols to
seek and find Him. The interrogative clause 'Ul B'TiNn con-
tains a strong negation. The emphasis lies in the infinitive
absolute BO^S placed before the verb, in which the n is softened
into S, to avoid writing D twice. E'll^, to allow oneself to be
sought, involves the finding of God ; hence in Isa. Ixv. 1 we
have Bnnj as parallel to K^^fJ. In vers. 4, 5, there follows a
positive declaration of the attitude of God towards those who
are devoted to idolatry in their heart. Every such Israelite
will be answered by God according to the measure of the
multitude of his idols. The Niphal njV.J has not the significa-
CHAP. XIV. 6-8. 179
tion of the Eal, and does not mean " to be answerable," as
Ewald supposes, or to converse ; but is generally used in a
passive sense, " to be answered," i.e. to find or obtain a hearing
(Job xi. 2, xix. 7). It is employed here in a reflective sense,
to hold or show oneself answering, nn, according to the
Chetib 1^3, for which the Keri suggests the softer gloss N3,
refers to '-"J S'lB which follows; the nominative being antici-
pated, according to an idiom very common in Aramaean, by a
previous pronoun. It is written here for the sake of emphasis,
to bring the following object into more striking prominence.
3 is used here in the sense of secundum, according to, not
because, since this meaning is quite unsuitable for the 3 in
ver. 7, where it occurs in the same connection C?). The
manner in which God will show Himself answering the
idolatry according to their idols, is reserved till ver. 8. Here,
in ver. 5, the design of this procedure on the part of God is
given : viz. to grasp Israel by the heart; i.e. not merely to touch
and to improve them, but to bring down their heart by judg-
ments (cf. Lev. xxvi. 41), and thus move them to give up
idolatry and return to the living God. '"ifj, as in Isa. i. 4, to
recede, to draw away from God. D?3 is an emphatic repetition
of the subject belonging to '"IW.
Vers. 6-8. In these verses the divine threat, and the summons
to repent, are repeated, expanded, and uttered in the clearest
words. — Ver. 6. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, Repent, and turn away from your idols ; and
turn away your face from all your abominations. Ver. 7. For
every one of the house of Israel, and of the foreigners who sojourn
in Israel, if he estrange him,self from me, and let his idols rise up
in his heart, and set the stumbling-block to his sin before his face,
and come to the prophet to seek me for himself; I will show my-
self to him, answering in my own way. Ver. 8. 1 will direct
my face against that man, and ivill destroy him, for a sign and
for proverbs, and will cut him off out of my people ; and ye shall
learn that I am JehovaJi. — |3J in ver. 6 is co-ordinate with the
180 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
I?^ in ver. 4, so far as the thought is concerned, but it is directly
attached to ver. 56 ; because they have estranged themselves
from God, therefore God requires them to repent and turn.
For God will answer with severe judgments every one who
would seek God with idols in his heart, whether he be an
Israelite, or a foreigner living in the midst of Israel. U^itJ',
turn, be converted, is rendered still more emphatic by the
addition of DaVD . . . ^ypn. This double call to repentance
corresponds to the double reproof of their idolatry in ver. 3,
viz. ^2r^, to ab bv 'hi n^JJn ; and aysa O^B'n, to their setting the
idols omB nsb. ^2yn is not used intransitively, as it apparently
is in ch. xviii. 30, but is to be taken in connection with the
object D?*P.3, which follows at the end of the verse ; and it is
simply repeated before W^D for the sake of clearness and
emphasis. The reason for the summons to repent and give up
idolatry is explained in ver. 7, in the threat that God will
destroy every Israelite, and every foreigner in Israel, who
draws away from God and attaches himself to idols. The
phraseology of ver. 7a is adopted almost verbatim from Lev.
xvii. 8, 10, 13. On the obligation of foreigners to avoid
idolatry and all moral abominations, vid. Lev. xx. 2, xviii. 26,
xvii. 10 ; Ex. xii. 19, etc. The 1 before "i.TJ^. and bT does not
stand for the Vav relat., but simply supposes a case : " should
he separate himself from my followers, and let his idols rise up,
etc." ''? i^'CJ"]? does not mean, " to seek counsel of him (the
prophet) from me," for Sb cannot be taken as referring to the
prophet, although ^"^ with ? does sometimes mean to seek any
one, and ? may therefore indicate the person to whom one goes
to make inquiry (cf. 2 Chron. xv. 13, xvii. 4, xxxi. 21), be-
cause it is Jehovah who is sought in this case ; and Havernick's
remark, that " ^Tl with ? merely indicates the external object
sought by a man, and therefore in this instance the medium or
organ through whom God speaks," is proved to be erroneous by
the passages just cited. Sb is reflective, or to be taken as a dat.
commodi, denoting the inquirer or seeker. The person ap-
CHAP. XIV. 9-11. 181
proaclied for the purpose of inquiring or seeking, i.e. God, is
indicated by the preposition ?, as in 1 Chron. x. 14 (niiTia t^n^);
and also frequently, in the case of idols, when either an oracle
or help is sought from them (1 Sam. xxviii. 7 ; 2 Kings i.
2 sqq.). It is only in this way that i? and ''3 can be made to
correspond to the same words in the apodosis : Whosoever seeks
counsel of God, to him will God show Himself answering ''3, ip
Him, i.e. in accordance with His nature, in His own way, —
namely, in the manner described in ver. 8. The threat is com-
posed of passages in the law : 'Wl ''33 ''Pinj and 'Wl ''Jji']?!?, after
Lev. XX. 3, 5, 6 ; and 'iJl W'niDE'm, though somewhat freely,
after Dent, xxviii. 37 ('lil ^'foi> r\B^ n;n). There is no doubt,
therefore, that ''nio?''!! is to be derived from ^^f, and stands for
iniBE'n, in accordance with the custom in later writings of re-
solving the Dagesh forte into a long vowel. The allusion to
Deut. xxviii. 37, compared with niNP njn in ver. 46 of the same
chapter, is sufficient to set aside the assumption that iniDtyn is
to be derived from C?', and pointed accordingly ; although the
LXX., Targ., Syr., and Vulg. have all renderings of CB* (cf.
Ps. xliv. 16). Moreover, D''?' in the perfect never takes the
Hiphil form; and in ch. xx. 26 we have DSB'N in a similar
connection. The expression is a pregnant one : I make him
desolate, so that he becomes a sign and proverbs.
Vers. 9-11. No prophet is to give any other answer. — Ver. 9.
But if a prophet allow himself to he persuaded, and give a word,
I have persuaded this prophet, and will stretch out my hand
against him, and cut him off out of my people Israel. Ver. 10.
Tliey shall bear their guilt : as the guilt of the inquirer, so shall
the guilt of the prophet be ; Ver. 11. In order that the house of
Israel may no more stray from me, and may no more defile itself
with all its transgressions ; but they may be my people, and I
their God, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — The prophet who
allows himself to be persuaded is not a prophet i3?p (ch.
xiii. 2), but one who really thinks that he has a word of God,
nria, to persuade, to entice by friendly words (in a good sense,
182 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Hos. ii. 16) ; but generally sensu malo, to lead astray, or seduce
to that which is unallowable or evil. " If he allow himself to
be persuaded:" not necessarily "with the hope of payment
from the hypocrites who consult hina " (Michaelis). This
weakens the thought. It might sometimes be done from un-
selfish good-nature. And "the word" itself need not have
been a divine oracle of his own invention, or a false prophecy.
The allusion is simply to a word of a different character from
that contained in vers. 6—8, which either demands repentance
or denounces judgment upon the impenitent : every word,
therefore, which could by any possibility confirm the sinner in
his security. — By nin^ "'3N (ver. 9) the apodosis is introduced in
an emphatic manner, as in vers. 4 and 7 ; but ''n^riB cannot be
taken in a future sense ("I will persuade"). It must be a
perfect ; since the persuading of the prophet would necessarily
precede his allowing himself to be persuaded. The Fathers
and earlier Lutheran theologians are wrong in their interpreta-
tion of 'n''ns, which they understand in a permissive sense,
meaning simply that God allowed it, and did not prevent their
being seduced. Still more wrong are Storr and Schmieder,
the former of whom regards it as simply declaratory, " I will
declare him to have gone aatiay from the worship of Jehovah;"
the latter, "I will show him to be a fool, by punishing him for
his disobedience." The words are rather to be understood in
accordance with 1 Kings xxii. 20 sqq., where the persuading
(pittdh) is done by a lying spirit, which inspires the prophets of
Ahab to predict success to the king, in order that he may fall.
As Jehovah sent the spirit in that case, and put it into the
mouth of the prophets, so is the persuasion in this instance also
effected by God : not merely divine permission, but divine
ordination and arrangement; though this does not destroy
human freedom, but, like all "persuading," presnpposes the
possibility of not allowing himself to be persuaded. See the
discussion of this question in the commentary on 1 Kings xxii.
20 sqq. The remark of Calvin on the verse before us is
CHAP. XIV. 12-23. 183
correct: "it teaches that neither impostures nor frauds take
place apart from the will of God " {nisi Deo volente). But this
willing on the part of God, or the persuading of the prophets
to the utterance of self-willed words, which have not been in-
spired by God, only takes place in persons who admit evil into
themselves, and is designed to tempt them and lead them to
decide whether they will endeavour to resist and conquer the
sinful inclinations of their hearts, or will allow them to shape
themselves into outward deeds, in which case they will become
ripe for judgment. It is in this sense that God persuades such
a prophet, in order that He may then cut him off out of His
people. But this punishment will not fall upon the prophet
only. It will reach the seeker or inquirer also, in order if
possible to bring Israel back from its wandering astray, and
make it into a people of God purified from sin (vers. 10 and
11). It was to this end that, in the last times of the kingdom
of Judah, God allowed false prophecy to prevail so mightily, —
namely, that it might accelerate the process of distinguishing
between the righteous and the wicked ; and then, by means of
the judgment which destroyed the wicked, purify His nation
and lead it on to the great end of its calling.
Vers. 12-23. The Eighteousness of the Godly will
NOT AVERT THE JUDGMENT. — The threat contained in the
preceding word of God, that if the idolaters did not repent,
God would not answer them in any other way than with an
exterminating judgment, left the possibility still open, that He
would avert the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem for the
sake of the righteous therein, as He had promised the patriarch
Abraham that He would do in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah
(Gen. xviii. 23 sqq.). This hope, which might be cherished
by the people and by the elders who had come to the prophet,
is now to be taken from the people by the word of God which
follows, containing as it does the announcement, that if any
land should sin so grievously against God by its apostasy, He
184 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
would be driven to inflict upon it the punishments threatened
by Moses against apostate Israel (Lev. xxvi. 22, 25, 26, and
elsewhere), namely, to destroy both man and beast, and make
the land a desert ; it would be of no advantage to such a land
to have certain righteous men, such as Noah, Daniel, and Job,
living therein. For although these righteous men would be
saved themselves, their righteousness could not possibly secure
salvation for the sinners. The manner in which this thought
is carried out in vers. 13-20 is, that four exterminating punish-
ments are successively supposed to come upon the land and lay
it waste ; and in the case of every one, the words are repeated,
that even righteous men, such as Noah, Daniel, and Job, would
only save their own souls, and not one of the sinners. And
thus, according to vers. 21-23, will the Lord act when He
sends His judgments against Jerusalem ; and He will execute
them in such a manner that the necessity and righteousness of
His acts shall be made manifest therein. — This word of God
forms a supplementary side-piece to Jer. xv. 1-4, where the
Lord replies to the intercession of the prophet, that even the
intercession of a Moses and a Samuel on behalf of the people
would not avert the judgments which were suspended over them.
Ver. 12, And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 13. Son of man, if a land sin against me to act treacher-
ously, and T stretch out my hand against it, and break in pieces
for it the support of bread, and send famine into it, and
cut off from it man and beast : Ver. 14. And there should be
these three men therein, Noah, Daniel, and Job, they would
through their righteousness deliver their soul, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah. Ver. 15. If [bring evil beasts into the land, so
that they make it childless, and it become a desert, so that no one
passeth through it because of the beasts: Ver. 16. TJiese three
men therein, as 1 live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, would
not deliver sons and daughters ; they only would be delivered, but
the land would become a desm^t. Ver. 17. Or I bring the sword into
that land, and say, Let the sword go through the land; and I cut off
CHAP. XIV. 12-20. 185
/rom it man and beast: Ver. 18. These three men therein, as I
live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, would not deliver sons
and daughters, but they only would be delivered. Ver. 19. Or
I send pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in
blood, to cut off from it man and beast : Ver. 20. Verily, Noah,
Daniel, and Job, in the midst of it, as I live, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah, would deliver neither son nor daughter; they
would only deliver their own soul through their righteousness. —
p^ in ver. 13 is intentionally left indefinite, that the thought
may be expressed in the most general manner. On the other
hand, the sin is very plainly defined as ?JJD"7yDp. 7J?Dj literally,
to cover, signifies to act in a secret or treacherous manner,
especially towards Jehovah, either by apostasy from Him, in
other words, by idolatry, or by withholding what is due to Him
(see comm. on Lev. v. 15). In the passage before us it is
the treachery of apostasy from Him by idolatry that is intended.
As the epithet used to denote the sin is taken from Lev. xxvi.
40 and Dent, xxxii. 51, so the four punishments mentioned in
the following verses, as well as in ch. v. 17, are also taken from
Lev. xxvi., — viz. the breaking up of the staff of bread, from
ver. 26 ; the evil beasts, from ver. 22 ; and the sword and
pestilence, from ver. 25. The three men, Noah, Daniel, and
Job, are named as examples of true righteousness of life, or
'^P^'^ (vers. 14, 20) ; i.e., according to Calvin's correct explana-
tion, quicquid pertinet ad regulam sancte et juste vivendi. Noah
is so described in Gen. vi. 9 ; and Job, in the Book of Job i. 1,
xii. 4, etc. ; and Daniel, in like manner, is mentioned in Dan.
i. 8 sqq., vi. 11 sqq., as faithfully confessing his faith in his life.
The fact that Daniel is named before Job does not warrant the
conjecture that some other older Daniel is meant, of whom
nothing is said in the history, and whose existence is merely
postulated. For the enumeration is not intended to be chrono-
logical, but is arranged according to the subject-matter ; the
order being determined by the nature of the deliverance ex-
perienced by these men for their righteousness in the midst of
186 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
great judgments. Consequently, as Havernick and Kliefoth
have shown, we have a climax here : Noah saved his family
along with himself; Daniel was able to save his friends (Dan.
ii. 17, 18) ; but Job, with his righteousness, was not even
able to save his children. — The second judgment (ver. 15) is
introduced with 5^, which, as a rule, supposes a case that is not
expected to occur, or even regarded as possible ; here, however,
^b is used as perfectly synonymous with DX. nnjSB' has no
Mappik, because the tone is drawn back upon the pennltima
(see coram, on Amos i. 11). In ver. 19, the expression " to
pour out my wrath in blood" is a pregnant one, for to pour out
my wrath in such a manner that it is manifested in the shed-
ding of blood or the destruction of life, for the life is in the
blood. In this sense pestilence and blood were also associated
in ch. v. 17. — If we look closely at the four cases enumerated,
we find the following difference in the statements concerning
the deliverance of the righteous : that, in the first instance, it
is simply stated that Noah, Daniel, and Job would save their
soul, i.e. their life, by their righteousness ; whereas, in the three
others, it is declared that as truly as the Lord liveth they would
not save either sons or daughters, but they alone would be
delivered. The difference is not merely a rhetorical climax or
progress in the address by means of asseveration and anti-
thesis, but indicates a distinction in the thought. The first
case is only intended to teach that in the approaching judtr-
ment the righteous would save their lives, i.e. that God would
not sweep away the righteous with the ungodly. The three
cases wliich follow are intended, on the other hand, to exemplify
the truth that the righteousness of the righteous will be of no
avail to the idolaters and apostates; since even such patterns
of righteousness as Noah, Daniel, and Job would only save
their own lives, and would not be able to save the lives of
others also. This tallies with the omission of the asseveration
in ver. 14, The first declaration, that God would deliver the
righteous in the coming judgments, needed no asseveration.
CHAP. XIV. 21-23. 187
inasmuch as this truth was not called in question ; but it was
required in the case of the declaration that the righteousness
of the righteous would bring no deliverance to the sinful
nation, since this was the hope which the ungodly cherished,
and it was this hope which was to be taken from them. The
other differences which we find in the, description given of the
several cases are merely formal in their nature, and do not in
any way affect the sense ; e.g. the use of ^b, in ver. 18, instead
of the particle D^', which is commonly employed in oaths, and
which we find in vers. 16 and 20 ; the choice of the singular t?
and na, in ver. 20, in the place of the plural 01331 D^JS, used in
vers. 16 and 18 ; and the variation in the expressions, DB'DJ v>!:\
(ver. 14), nfs: 6'^ (ver. 20), and lijsr. D'n?^ nan (vers. 16 and
18), which Hitzig proposes to remove by altering the first two
forms into the third, though without the slightest reason. For
although the Piel occurs in Ex. xii. 36 in the sense of taking
away or spoiling, and is not met with anywhere else in the
sense of delivering, it may just as well be used in this sense, as
the Hiphil has both significations.
Vers. 21—23. The rule expounded in vers. 13-20 is here
applied to Jerusalem. — Ver. 21. For thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, How much more when 1 send my four evil judgments,
sword, and famine, and evil beasts, and pestilence, against Jeru-
salem, to cut off from it man and beast ? Ver. 22. And, behold,
there remain escaped ones in her loho will be brought out, sons
and daughters ; behold, they will go out to you, that ye may see
their walk and their works ; and console yourselves concerning the
evil which I have brought upon Jerusalem. Ver. 23. And they
will console you, when ye see their walk and their works : and
ye will see that I have not done without cause all that I have
done to her, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — By ''3 in
ver. 21 the application of the general rule to Jerusalem
is made in the form of a reason. The meaning, however, is
not, that the reason why Jehovah was obliged to act in this
unsparing manner was to be found in the corrupt condition of
188 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the nation, as Havernick supposes, — a thought quite foreign to
the context; but ''3 indicates that the judgments upon Jerusalem
will furnish a practical proof of the general truth expressed
in vers. 13—20, and so confirm it. This ''3 is no more an
emphatic yea than the following " ^^ is a forcible introduction
to the antithesis formed by the coming fact, to the merely
imaginary cases mentioned above" (Hitzig). ^1^ has un-
doubtedly the force of a climax, but not of an asseveration,
" verily " (Hav.) ; a meaning which this particle never has.
It is used here, as in Job iv. 19, in the sense of ''3 ^X ; and
the ''3 which follows ^s< in this case is a conditional particle of
time, " when." Consequently ''3 ought properly to be written
twice ; but it is only used once, as in ch. xv. 5; Job ix. 14, etc.
The thought is this : how much more will this be the case,
namely, that even a Noah, Daniel, and Job will not deliver
either sons or daughters when I send my judgments upon
Jerusalem. The perfect ''ijinjE' is used, and not the imperfect,
as in ver. 13, because God has actually resolved upon sending
it, and does not merely mention it as a possible case. The
number four is significant, symbolizing the universality of the
judgment, or the thought that it will fall on all sides, or upon
the whole of Jerusalem ; whereby it must also be borne in
mind that Jerusalem as the capital represents the kingdom of
Judah, or the whole of Israel, so far as it was still in Canaan.
At the same time, by the fact that the Lord allows sons and
daughters to escape death, and to be led away to Babylon, He
forces the acknowledgment of the necessity and righteousness
of His judgments among those who are in exile. This is in
general terms the thought contained in vers. 22 and 23, to
which very different meanings have been assigned by the latest
expositors. Havernick, for example, imagines that, in addition
to the four ordinary judgments laid down in the law, ver. 22
announces a new and extraordinary one ; whereas Hitzig and
Kliefoth have found in these two verses the consolatory assur-
ance, that in the time of the judgments a few of the younger
CHAP. XIV. 21-23. 189
geueratiou will be rescued and taken to those already in exile
in Babylon, there to excite pity as well as to express it, and to
give a visible proof of the magnitude of the judgment which
has fallen upon Israel. They differ so far from each other,
however, that Hitzig regards those of the younger generation
who are saved as Ci''ip'''iS, who have saved themselves through
their innocence, but not their guilty parents, and who will
excite the commiseration of those already in exile through
their blameless conduct ; whilst Kliefoth imagines that those
who are rescued are simply less criminal than the rest, and
when they come to Babylon will be pitied by those who have
been longer in exile, and will pity them in return. — Neither of
these views does justice to the words themselves or to the con-
text. The meaning of ver. 22a is clear enough ; and in the
main there has been no difference of opinion concerning it.
When man and beast are cut off out of Jerusalem by the four
judgments, all will not perish ; but <^^''?.^, i-e. persons who
have escaped destruction, will be left, and will be led out of
the city. These are called sons and daughters, with an allusion
to vers. 16, 18, and 20 ; and consequently we must not take
these words as referring to the younger generation in contrast
to the older. They will be led out of Jerusalem, not to remain
in the land, but to come to " you," i.e. those already in exile,
that is to say, to go into exile to Babylon. This does not imply
either a modification or a sharpening of the punishment ;
for the cutting off of man and beast from a town may be
effected not only by slaying, but by leading away. The design
of God in leaving some to escape, and carrying them to
Babylon, is explained in the clauses which follow from OniNIl
onwards, the meaning of which depends partly upon the more
precise definition of Dl"!"! and Dnw'Sjf, and partly upon the ex-
planation to be given of r\vyrhv DPiipm and oariN ^oq?). The
ways and works are not to be taken without reserve as good
and righteous works, as Kliefoth has correctly shown in his
reply to Hitzig. Still less can ways and works denote their
190 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
experience or fate, wliich is the explanation given by Kiiefoth
of the words, when expounding the meaning and connection of
vers. 21-23. The context certainly points to wicked ways and
evil works. And it is only the sight of such works that could
lead to the conviction that it was not Dsrij in vain, i.e. without
cause, that God had inflicted such severe judgments upon
Jerusalem. And in addition to this effect, which is mentioned
in ver. 23 as produced upon those who were already in exile,
by the siglit of the conduct of the na''7a that came to Babylon,
the immediate desiijn of God is described in ver. 226 as DDOrui
'i3l njjirrpj;. The verb Dna with '?V cannot be used here in the
T T T - ' •
sense of to repent of anything, or to grieve over it (Hitzig) ;
still less can it mean to pity any one (Kiiefoth). For a man
cannot repent of, or be sorry for, a judgment which God has
inflicted upon him, but only of evil which he himself has done ;
and DHi does not mean to pity a person, either when construed
in the Piel with an accusative of the person, or in the Niphal
c. 7V, rei. ^^P^i is Niphal, and signifies here to console one-
self, as in Gen. xxxviii. 12 with pV, concerning anything, as in
2 Sam. xiii. 39, Jer. xxxi. 15, etc. ; and IDHJ (ver. 23), with
the accusative of the person, to comfort any one, as in Gen.
li. 21 ; Job ii. 11, etc. But the works and doings of those who
came to Babyh n could only produce this effect upon those who
were already there, from the fact that they were of such a
character as to demonstrate the necessity for the judgments
which had fallen upon Jerusalem. A conviction of the neces-
sity for the divine judgments would cause them to comfort
themselves with regard to the evil inflicted by God ; inasmuch
as they would see, not only that the punishment endured was
a chastisement well deserved, but that God in His righteousness
would stay the punishment when it had fulfilled His purpose,
and restore the penitent sinner to favour once more. But
the consolation which those who were in exile would derive
from a sight of the works of the sons and daughters who had
escaped from death and come to Babylon, is attributed in
CHAP. XV. 1-8. 191
ver. 23 (D^'?? '"^H?) to the persons themselves. It is in this
sense that it is stated that " they will comfort yon ; " not by
expressions of pity, but by the sight of their conduct. This is
directly affirmed in the words, " when ye shall see their conduct
and their works." Consequently ver. 23a does not contain
a new thought, but simply the thought already expressed in
ver. 22b, which is repeated in a new form to make it the more
emphatic. And the expression '^IpV "T"*?? "'^^"^1 ^^, in ver. 22,
serves to increase the force ; whilst nx, in the sense of quoad,
serves to place the thought to be repeated in subordination to
the whole clause (cf. Ewald, § 277a, p. 683).
CHAP. XV. JEEUSALEM, THE USELESS WOOD OF A WILD VINE.
As certainly as God will not spare Jerusalem for the sake of
the righteousness of the few righteous men therein, so certain
is it that Israel has no superiority over other nations, which
could secure Jerusalem against destruction. As the previous
word of God overthrows false confidence in the righteousness
of the godly, what follows in this chapter is directed against
the fancy that Israel cannot be rejected and punished by the
overthrow of the kingdom, because of its election to be the
people of God.
Ver. 1. And Hie word of JehovoJi came to me, saying, Ver. 2.
Son of man, what advantage lias the wood of the vine over every
wood, the vine-branch, which was among the trees of the forest ?
Ver. 3. Is wood taken from it to use for any work ? or do men
take a peg from it to hang all kinds of vessels upon ? Ver. 4.
Behold, it is given to the fire to consume. If the fire has con-
sumed its two ends, and the middle of it is scorched, will it then
be fit for any work ? Ver. 5. Behold, when it is uninjured, it is
not used for any work : how much less when the fire has con-
sumed it and scorched it can it be still used for work ! Ver. 6.
Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, As the wood of the vine
among the wood of the forest, which I give to the fire to consume,
192 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
so do I give up the inliahitants of Jermalem, Ver. 7. And direct
my face against them. They have gone out of the fire, and the
are will consume them ; that ye may learn that I am Jehovah, when
I set my face against them. Ver. 8. And I make the land a desert,
because they comm,itted treachery, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.
— Israel is like the wood of the wild vine, wliich is put into the
fire to burn, because it is good for nothing. From Deut.
xxxii. 32, 33 onwards, Israel is frequently compared to a vine
or a vineyard (cf. Ps. Ixxx. 9 sqq. ; Isa. v. ; Hos. x. 1 ; Jer. ii.
21), and always, with the exception of Ps. Ixxx., to point out
its degeneracy. This comparison lies at the foundation of the
figure employed, in vers. 2-5, of the wood of the wild vine.
This wood has no superiority over any other kind of wood. It
cannot be used, like other timber, for any useful purposes; but
is only fit to be burned, so that it is really inferior to all other
wood (vers. 2 and 3a). And if, in its perfect state, it cannot
be used for anything, how much less when it is partially
scorched and consumed (vers. 4 and 5) ! n.)!''"'^?, followed by
tp, means, what is it above (ip, comparative) ? — i.e. what
superiority has it to Y'P.''''^, all kinds of wood? i.e. any other
wood. 'lJ1 IK'^ rriioin is in apposition to 1B3[! YV, and is not to
be connected with j'J^'Pap, as it has been by the LXX. and
Vulgate, — notwithstanding the Masoretic accentuation, — so as
to mean every kind of fagot ; for H'liDT does not mean a fagot,
but the tendril or branch of the vine (cf. ch. viii. 17), which is
still furtlier defined by the following relative clause : to be a
wood-vine, i.e. a wild vine, which bears only sour, uneatable
grapes. The preterite njn (which was ; not, " is ") may be ex-
plained from the idea that the viue had been fetched from the
forest in order that its wood might be used. The answer given
in ver. 3 is, that this vine-wood cannot be used for any pur-
pose whatever, not even as a peg for hanging any kind of
domestic utensils upon (see comm. on Zech. x. 4). It is too
weak even for this. The object has to be supplied to niB'V^
"?'*?'?? : to make, or apply it, for any work. Because it cannot
CHAP. XV. 1-8. 193
be used as timber, it is burned. A fresh thought is Inti'oduced
in ver. 46 by the words 'P ^?.f riK, The two clauses in ver. 46
are to be connected together. The first supposes a case, from
which the second is deduced as a conclusion. The question,
" Is it fit for any work ? " is determined in ver. 5 in the
negative. ''3 H^: as in ch. xiv. 21. i™ ; perfect; and "ini:
imperfect, Niphal, of "iin, in the sense of, to be burned or
scorched. The subject to "in^!! is no doubt the wood, to which
the suffix in inn^ax refers. At the same time, the two clauses
are to be understood, in accordance with ver. 46, as relating to
the burning of the ends and the scorching of the middle. —
Vers. 6-8. In the application of the parable, the only thing to
which prominence is given, is the fact that God will deal with
the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the same manner as with the
vine-wood, which cannot be used for any kind of work. This
implies that Israel resembles the wood of a forest-vine. As
this possesses no superiority to other wood, but, on the contrary,
is utterly useless, so Israel has no superiority to other nations,
but is even worse than they, and therefore is given up to the
fire. This is accounted for in ver. 7 : " They have come out
of the fire, and the fire will consume them " (the inhabitants of
Jerusalem). These words are not to be interpreted proverbi-
ally, as meaning, " he who escapes one judgment falls into
another " (Havernick), but show the application of vers. 46
and 5 to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Out of a fire one must
come either burned or scorched. Israel has been in the fire
already. It resembles a wild vine which has been consumed
at both ends by the fire, while the middle has been scorched,
and which is now about to be given up altogether to the fire.
We must not restrict the fire, however, out of which it has
come half consumed, to the capture of Jerusalem in the time
of Jehoiachin, as Hitzig does, but must extend it to all the judg-
ments which fell upon the covenant nation, from the destruction
of the kingdom of the ten tribes to the catastrophe in the reign
of Jehoiachin, and in consequence of which Israel now resembled
EZEK. I. N
194 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
a vine burned at both ends and scorched in the middle. The
threat closes in the same manner as the previous one. Compare
ver. 76 with ch. xiv. 86, and ver. 8 with ch. xiv. 15 and 13.
CHAP. XVI. INGRATITUDE AND UNFAITHFULNESS OP
JERUSALEM. ITS PUNISHMENT AND SHAME.
The previous word of God represented Israel as a wild and
useless vine, which had to be consumed. But as God had
planted this vine in His vineyard, as He had adopted Israel
as His own people, the rebelHous nation, though met by these
threatenings of divine judgment, might still plead that God
would not reject Israel, on account of its election as the
covenant nation. This proof of false confidence in the divine
covenant of grace is removed by the word of God in the
present chapter, which shows that by nature Israel is no better
than other nations ; and that, in consequence of its shameful
ino-ratitude towards the Lord, who saved it from destruction in
the days of its youth, it has sinned so grievously against Him,
and has sunk so low among the heathen through its excessive
idolatry, that God is obliged to punish and judge it in the
same manner as the others. At the same time, the Lord will
continue mindful of His covenant ; and on the restoration of
Sodom and Samaria, He will also turn the captivity of Jeru-
salem, — to the deep humiliation and shame of Israel, — and will
establish an everlasting covenant with it. — The contents of this
word of God divide themselves, therefore, into three parts. In
the first, we have the description of the nation's sin, through
its falling away from its God into idolatry (vers. 2-34) ; in
the second, the announcement of the punishment (vers. 35-52);
and in the third, the restoration of Israel to favour (vers. 53-
63). The past, present, and future of Israel are all embraced,
from its first commencement to its ultimate consummation. —
These copious contents are draped in an allegory, which is
carried out ou a magnificent scale. Starting from the repre-
CHAP. XVI. 1-5. 195
sentation of the covenant relation existing between the Lord
and His people, under the iigure of a marriage covenant, —
which runs through the whole of the Scriptures, — Jerusalem,
the capital of the kingdom of God, as the representative of
Israel, the covenant nation, is addressed as a wife ; and the
attitude of God to Israel, as well of that of Israel to its God, is
depicted under this figure.
Vers. 1-14. Israel, by nature unclean, miserable, and near
to destruction (vers. 3-5), is adapted by the Lord and clothed
in splendour (vers. 6-14). Vers. 1 and 2 form the introduc-
tion. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 2. Son of man, shoto Jerusalem her abominations. — The
" abominations " of Jerusalem are the sins of the covenant
nation, which were worse than the sinful abominations of
Canaan and Sodom. The theme of this word of God is the
declaration of these abominations. To this end the nation is
first of all shown what it was by nature. — Ver. 3. And say.
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to Jerusalem, Thine origin and thy
birth are from the land of the Canaanites ; thy father was the
Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite. Ver. 4. And as for thy
birth, in the day of thy birth thy navel was not cut, and thou
wast not bathed in water for cleansing ; and not rubbed with salt,
and not wrapped in bandages. Ver. 5. No eye looked upon
thee with pity, to do one of these to thee in compassion ; but
thou wast cast into the field, in disgust at thy life, on the day of
thy birth. — According to the allegory, which runs through the
whole chapter, the figure adopted to depict the origin of the
Israelitish nation is that Jerusalem, the existing representative
of the nation, is described as a child, born of Canaanitish
parents, mercilessly exposed after its birth, and on the point of
perishing. Hitzig and Kliefoth show that they have com-
pletely misunderstood the allegory, when they not only explain
the statement concerning the descent of Jerusalem, in ver. 3,
as relating to the city of that name, but restrict it to the city
alone, on the ground that " Israel as a whole was not of
196 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Canaanitish origin, whereas the city of Jerusalem was radically
a Canaanitish, Amoritish, and Hittite city." But were not all
the cities of Israel radically Canaanaean? Or was Israel not
altogether, but only half, of Aramaean descent? Eegarded
merely as a city, Jerusalem was neither of Amoritish nor
Hittite origin, but simply a Jebnsite city. And it is too obvi-
ous to need any proof, that the prophetic word does not refer
to the city as a city, or to the mass of houses ; but that Jeru-
salem, as the capital of the kingdom of Judah at that time, so
far as its inhabitants were concerned, represents the people of
Israel, or the covenant nation. It was not the mass of houses,
but the population, — which was the foundling, — that excited
Jehovah's compassion, and which He multiplied into myriads
(ver. 7), clothed in splendour, and chose as the bride with
whom He concluded a marriage covenant. The descent and
birth referred to are not physical, but spiritual descent.
Spiritually, Israel sprang from the land of the Canaanites ;
and its father was the Amorite and its mother a Hittite, in the
same sense in which Jesus said to the Jews, " Ye are of your
father the devil " (John viii. 44). The land of the Canaanites
is mentioned as the land of the worst heathen abominations ;
and from among the Canaanitish tribes, the Amorites and
Hittites are mentioned as father and mother, not because the
Jebusites are placed between the two, in Num. xiii. 29, as
Hitzig supposes, but because they were recognised as the
leaders in Canaanitish ungodliness. The iniquity of the
Amorites OI'OJI'^) was great even in Abraham's time, though
not yet full or ripe for destruction (Gen. xv. 16); and the
daughters of Heth, whom Esau married, caused Kebekah great
bitterness of spirit (Gen. xxvii. 46). These facts furnish the
substratum for our description. And they also help to explain
the occurrence of ''"ibxn with the article, and iT'rin without it.
The plurals ^Iin'lbD and ■n'.rthb also point to spiritual descent ;
for physical generation and birth are both acts that take place
once for all. n;bD or htod (ch. xxi. 35, xxix. 14) is not the
CHAP. XVI. 3-5. 197
place of begetting, but generation itself, from "i13 = iTi3, to dig
= to beget (cf. Isa. li. 1). It is not equivalent to "lipo, or a
plural corresponding to the Latin naiales, origines. n"ipiD :
birth. Vers. 4 and 5 describe the circumstances connected
with the birth. 'Hin'^pO^ (ver. 4) stands at the head as an
absolute noun. At the birth of the child it did not receive the
cleansing and care which were necessary for the preservation
and strengthening of its life, but was exposed without pity.
The construction 'j]niN )Ti?n (the passive, with an accusative of
the object) is the same as in Gen. xl. 20, and many other
passages of the earlier writings. n^3 ; for JTia (Judg. vi. 28),
Pual of TyQ ; and 'H'ilB' : from "W, with the reduplication of the
-\, which is very rare in Hebrew (vid. Ewald, § 71). By
cutting the navel-string, the child is liberated after birth from
the blood of the mother; with which it was nourished in the
womb. If the cutting be neglected, as well as the tying of the
navel-string, which takes place at the same time, the child
must perish when the decomposition of the placenta begins.
The new-born child is then bathed, to cleanse it from the im-
purities attaching to it. ''J'E'O cannot be derived from nj?^ =
VV^ ; because neither the meaning to see, to look (nVE'), nor the
other meaning to smear {VV^, yields a suitable sense. Jos.
Kimchi is evidently right in deriving it from V^^, in Arabic
tMy*, ii. and iv., to wipe off, cleanse. The termination '• is the
Aramaean form of the absolute state, for the Hebrew fT'JJE'D,
cleansing (cf. Ewald, § 165a). After the washing, the body
was rubbed with salt, according to a custom very widely spread
in ancient times, and still met with here and there in the East
(vid. Hieron. ad h. I. Galen, de Sanit. i. 7 ; Troilo Eeisebeschr. p.
721) ; and that not merely for the purpose of making the skin
drier and firmer, or of cleansing it more thoroughly, but pro-
bably from a regard to the virtue of salt as a protection from
putrefaction, " to express in a symbolical manner a hope and
desire for the vigorous health of the child" (Hitzig and Haver-
nick). And, finally, it was bound round with swaddling-
198 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
clothes. Not one of these things, so indispensable to the pre-
servation and strengthening of the child, was performed in the
case of Israel at the time of its birth from any feeling of com-
passionate love {^ii?\}?, infinitive, to show pity or compassion
towards it) ; but it was cast into the field, i.e. exposed, in order
that it might perish ^E'W bj)iJ3 in disgust at thy life (compare
?Vij to thrust away, reject, despise. Lev. xxvi. 11, xv. 30). The
day of the birth of Jerusalem, i.e. of Israel, was the period of
its sojourn in Egypt, where Israel as a nation was born, — the
sons of Jacob who went down to Egypt having multiplied into
a nation. The different traits in this picture are not to be in-
terpreted as referring to historical peculiarities, but have their
explanation in the totality of the figure. At the same time,
they express much more than " that Israel not only stood upon
a level with all other nations, so far as its origin and its nature
were concerned, but was more helpless and neglected as to both
its nature and its natural advantages, possessing a less gifted
nature than other nations, and therefore inferior to the rest "
(Kliefoth). The smaller gifts, or humbler natural advantages,
are thoughts quite foreign to the words of the figure as well as
to the context. Both the Canaanitish descent and the merciless
exposure of the child point to a totally different point of view,
as indicated by the allegory. The Canaanitish descent points
to the moral depravity of the nature of Israel; and the ne-
glected condition of the child is intended to show how little
there was in the heathen surroundings of the youthful Israel
in Canaan and Egypt that was adapted to foster its life and
health, or to educate Israel and fit it for its future destination.
To the Egyptians the Israelites were an abomination, as a race
of shepherds; and not long after the death of Joseph, the
Pharaohs began to oppress the growing nation.
Vers. 6-14. Israel therefore owes its preservation and exalta-
tion to honour and glory to the Lord its God alone. — Ver. 6.
Then I passed by thee, and saw thee stamphig in thy blood, and
said to thee, In thy blood live ! and said to thee, Tn thy blood
CHAP. SVI. 6-14. 199
live! Ver. 7. / made thee into myriads as the growth of the
field, and thou grewest and becamest tall, and earnest to ornament
of cheehs. The breasts expanded, and thy hair grew, whereas
thou wast naked and hare. Ver. 8. And I passed by thee, and
saio thee, and, behold, it was thy time, the time of love ; and I
spread my wing over thee, and covered thy nakedness ; and I
swore to thee, and entered into covenant with thee, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah, and thou becamest mine. Ver. 9. And I
bathed thee in water, and rinsed thy blood from thee, and anointed
thee with oil. Ver. 10. And I clothed thee with embroidered
work, and shod thee with morocco, and wrapped thee round with
byssus, and covered thee with silk. Ver. 11. / adorned thee
with ornaments, and put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain
around thy neck. Ver. 12. And I gave thee a ring in thy nose,
and earrings in thine ears, and a splendid crown upon thy
head. Ver. 13. And thou didst adorn thyself with gold and
silver ; and thy clothing was byssus, and silk, and embroidery.
Wheaten-flour, and honey ^ and oil thou didst eat ; and thou wast
very beautiful ; and didst thrive to regal dignity. Ver. 14. Thy
name went forth among the nations on account of thy beauty ; for it
was perfect through my glory, which I put upon thee, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah. — The description of what the Lord did for
Israel in His compassionate love is divided into two sections by
the repetition of the phrase " 1 passed by thee" (vers. 6 and 8).
The first embraces what God had done for the preservation and
Increase of the nation ; the second, what He had done for the
glorification of Israel, by adopting it as the people of His
possession. When Israel was lying in the field as a neglected
new-born child, the Lord passed by and adopted it, promising
it life, and giving it strength to live. To bring out the mag-
nitude of the compassion of God, the fact that the child was
lying in its blood is mentioned again and again. The explana-
tion to be given of nODiariD (the Hithpolel of D'la, to trample
upon, tread under foot) is doubtful, arising from the difficulty
of deciding whether the Hithpolel is to be taken in a passive or
200 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
a reflective sense. The passive rendering, "trampled upon '
(Umbreit), or ad conculcandum projectus, thrown down, to be
trodden under foot (Gesenius, etc.), is open to the objection
that the RopJial is used for this. "We therefore prefer the
reflective meaning, treading oneself, or stamping ; as the objec-
tion offered to this, namely, that a new-born child thrown into
a fleld would not be found stamping with the feet, has no force
in an allegorical description. In the clause ver. 6b, which is
written twice, the question arises whether T.IPI} is to be taken
with ';n or with ^^ lO^l : I said to thee, " In thy blood live;"
or, " I said to thee in thy blood, ' Live.' " "We prefer the former,
because it gives a more emphatic sense. ^IP"}^ is a concise
expression ; for although lying in thy blood, in which thou
wouldst inevitably bleed to death, yet thou shalt live. Hitzig's
proposal to connect ^lOlii in the first clause with ^Tl, and in the
second with lOX, can hardly be entertained. A double con-
struction of this kind is not required either by the repetition of
r\b "IDX, or by the uniform position of T]'d13 before ^Tl in botli
clauses, as compared with 1 Kings xx. 18 and Isa. xxvii. 5. —
In ver. 7a the description of the real fact breaks through the
allegory. The word of God ''^n, live, was visibly fulfilled in
the innumerable multiplication of Israel. But the allegory is
resumed immediately. The child grew (i^^l? ^s in Gen. xxi. 20 ;
Deut. XXX. 16), and came into ornament of cheeks (sia with 3,
to enter into a thing, as in ver. 8 ; not to proceed in, as Hitzig
supposes). D""!!? ''"ly, not most beautiful ornament, or highest
cliarms, for D"ny is not the plural of '"ll^ ; but according to the
Chetib and most of the editions, with the tone upon the
penultima, is equivalent to ^)11^., a dual form; so that ''']V
cannot mean ornament in this case, but, as in Ps. xxxix. 9 and
ciii. 5, " the cheek," which is the traditional meaning (cf. Ges.
Thes. p. 993). Ornament of cheeks is youthful freshness and
beauty of face. The clauses which follow describe the arrival
of puberty. ti^J, when applied to the breasts, means to expand,
lit. to raise oneself up. iVb" = w^ii -ijjb>j pubes. The descrip-
CHAP. XVI. 6-14. 201
tion given in these verses refers to the preservation and mar-
vellous multiplication of Israel in Egypt, where the sons of
Israel grew into a nation under the divine blessing. Still it
was quite naked and bare (Ci'"i3? and nnj? are substantives in the
abstract sense of nakedness and bareness, used in the place of
adjectives to give greater emphasis). Naked and bare are
figurative expressions for still destitute of either clothing or
ornaments. This implies something more than "the poverty
of the people in the wilderness attached to Egypt " (Hitzig).
Nakedness represents deprivation of all the blessings of salva-
tion with which the Lord endowed Israel and made it glorious,
after He had adopted it as the people of His possession. In
Egypt, Israel was living in a state of nature, destitute of the
gracious revelations of God. — Ver. 8. The Lord then went
past again, and chose for His bride the virgin, who had already
grown up to womanhood, and with whom He contracted mar-
riage by the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai. 'n5J', thy
time, is more precisely defined as C'l'i njf, the time of conjugal
love, I spread my wing over thee, i.e. the lappet of my
garment, which also served as a counterpane ; in other words,
I married thee (cf. Ruth iii. 9), and thereby covered thy
nakedness. " I swore to thee," sc. love and fidelity (cf. Hos.
ii. 21, 22), and entered into a covenant with thee, i.e. into
that gracious connection formed by the adoption of Israel as
the possession of Jehovah, which is represented as a marriage
covenant (compare Ex. xxiv. 8 with six. 5, 6, and Deut. v. 2 :
— ^ni? for ^P"?). Vers. 9 sqq. describe how Jehovah provided
for the purification, clothing, adorning, and maintenance of
His wife. As the bride prepares herself for the wedding by
washing and anointing, so did the Lord cleanse Israel from the
blemishes and impurities which adhered to it from its birth.
The rinsing from the blood must not be understood as specially
referring either to the laws of purification given to the nation
(Hitzig), or as relating solely to the purification effected by the
covenant sacrifice (Havernick). It embraces all that the Lord
202 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
did for the purifying of the people from the pollution of sin,
i.e. for its sanctification. The anointing with oil indicates the
powers of the Spirit of God, which flowed to Israel from the
divine covenant of grace. The clothing with costly garments,
and adorning with all the jewellery of a wealthy lady or
princess, points to the equipment of Israel with all the gifts
that promote the beauty and glory of life. The clothing is
described as made of the costliest materials with which queens
were accustomed to clothe themselves, ^^i?"!, embroidered
cloth (Ps. xlv. 15). t^'OI', probably the sea-cow, Manati (see
the comm. on Ex. xxv. 5). The word is used here for a fine
description of leather of which ornamental sandals were m.ade ;
a kind of morocco. " I bound thee round with byssus : " this
refers to the headband ; for tJ'an is the technical expression for
the binding or winding round of the turban-like headdress
(cf. ch. xxiv. 17; Ex. xxix. 9; Lev. viii. 13), and is applied
by the Targum to the headdress of the priests. Consequently
covering with "K'D, as distinguished from clothing, can only
refer to covering with the veil, one of the principal articles of
a woman's toilet. The aTr. X67. ''t^'D (vers. 10 and 13) is
explained by the Rabbins as signifying silk. The LXX.
render it rpu^aTrrov. According to Jerome, this is a word
formed by the LXX.: quod tantae suhtilltatis fuerit vestimen-
fum, ut pilorum et capillorum tenuitatem habere credaiur. The
jewellery included not only armlets, nose-rings, and ear-rings,
which the daughters of Israel were generally accustomed to
wear, but also necklaces and a crown, as ornaments worn by
princesses and queens. For T'^n, see comm. on Gen. xli. 42.
Ver. 13 sums up the contents of vers. 9-12. ''K'tJ' is made to
conform to ''B'D; the food is referred to once more; and the
result of the whole is said to have been, that Jerusalem became
exceedingly beautiful, and flourished even to royal dicnaity.
The latter cannot be taken as referring simply to the establish-
ment of the monarchy under David, any more than merely to
the spiritual sovereignty for which Israel was chosen from the
CHAP. XVI. 15-22. 203
very beginning (Ex. xix. 5, 6). The expression includes both,
viz. the call of Israel to be a kingdom of priests, and the his-
torical realization of this call through the Davidic sovereignty.
The beauty, i.e. glory, of Israel became so great, that the name or
fame of Israel sounded abroad in consequence among the nations.
It was perfect, because the Lord had put His glory upon His
Church. This, too, we must not restrict (as Havernick does) to
the far-sounding fame of Israel on its departure from Egypt
(Ex. XV. 14 sqq.) ; it refers pre-eminently to the glory of the theo-
cracy under David and Solomon, the fame of which spread into
all lands.-: — Thus had Israel been glorified by its God above all
the nations, but it did not continue in fellowship with its God.
Vers. 15-34. The apostasy of Israel. Its origin and nature,
vers. 15-22 ; its magnitude and extent, vers. 23-34. In close
connection with v^hat precedes, this apostasy is described as
whoredom and adultery. — Ver. 15. But thou didst trust in thy
beauty, and didst commit fornication upon thy name, and didst
pour out thy fornication over every one who passed by: his it
became. Ver. 16. Thou didst take of thy clothes, and didst
make to thyself spotted heights, and didst commit fornication upon
them : things which should not come, and that which should not
take place. Ver. 17. And thou didst take jewellery of thine
ornament of my gold and of my silver, tohich I had given thee,
and didst make thyself male images, and didst commit fornication
with them ; Ver. 18. And thou didst take thy embroidered
clothes, and didst cover them therewith : and my oil and my
incense thou didst set before them. Ver. 19. And my bread,
lohich I gave to thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, whereivith I
fed thee, thou didst set before them for a pleasant odour : this
came to pass, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 20. And
thou didst take thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou barest
to me, and didst sacrifice them to them to devour. Was thy
fornication too little? Ver. 21. Thou didst slay my sons, and
didst give them up, devoting them to them. Ver. 22. Atid in
all thine abominations and thy fornications thou didst not
204 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
remember the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and
bare, and layest stamping in thy blood. — The beauty, i.e. the
glory, of Israel led to its fall, because it made it the ground
of its confidence; that is to say, it looked upon the gifts
and possessions conferred upon it as its desert; and for-
getting the giver, began to traffic with the heathen nations,
and allowed itself to be seduced to heathen ways. For the
fact, compare Deut. xxxii. 15 and Hos. xiii. 6. "We are
inflamed with pride and arrogance, and consequently profane
the gifts of God, in which His glory ought to be resplendent "
(Calvin), '^t?^ ^J/ "'3Tn does not mean either " thou didst com-
mit fornication notwithstanding thy name " (Winer and Ges.
Thes. p. 422), or "against thy name" (Havernick) ; for ?J/
connected with nil has neither of these meanings, even in Judg.
six. 2. It means, " thou didst commit fornication upon thy
name, i.e. in reliance upon thy name " (Hitzig and Maurer) ;
only we must not understand DE> as referring to the name of
the city of God, but must explain it, in accordance with ver. 14,
as denoting the name, i.e. the renown, which Israel had acquired
among the heathen on account of its beauty. In the closing
words, ''<}] V, '\b refers to isij?'??, and N'l^ stands for 'n^l, the copula
having been dropped from ^'^:!! because iis ought to stand first,
and only ^n^ remaining (compare m, Hos. vi. 1). The subject
to ^n^. is ''&1 ; the beauty became his (cf. Ps. xlv. 12). This
fornication is depicted in concrete terms in vers. 16-22; and
with the marriage relation described in vers. 8-13 still in
view, Israel is represented as giving up to idolatry all that
it had received from its God. — Ver. 16. With the clothes it
made spotted heights for itself. riiD2 stands for riiD2 ^na
temples of heights, small temples erected upon heights by the
side of the altars (1 Kings xiii. 32 ; 2 Kings xvii. 29 ; for the
fact, see the comm. on 1 Kings iii. 2), which may probably
have consisted simply of tents furnished with carpets. Compare
2 Kings xxiii. 7, where the women are described as weaving
tents for Astarte, also the tent-like temples of the Slavonian
CHAP. XVI. 15-22. 205
tribes in Germany, which consisted of variegated carpets and
curtains (see Mohne on Creuzer's Symbolik, V. p. 176). These
bamoth Ezekiel calls niKpDj not variegated, but spotted or
speckled (cf. Gen. xxx. 32), possibly with the subordinate idea
of patched (''^^9> Josh. ix. 5), because they used for the carpets
not merely whole garments, but pieces of cloth as well; the
word being introduced here for the purpose of indicating con-
temptuously the worthlessness of such conduct. " Thou didst
commit whoredom upon them," i.e. upon the carpets in the tent-
temples. The words 'l^l niX3 N? are no doubt relative clauses ;
but the usual explanation, '' which has not occurred, and will
not be," after Ex. x. 14, cannot be vindicated, as it is impossible
to prove either the use of Nia in the sense of occurring or
happening (= '"'i'^), or the use of the participle instead of the
preterite in connection with the future. The participle nii<3 in
this connection can only supply one of the many senses of the
imperfect (Ewald, § IGSc), and, like i^)^\, express that which
ought to be. The participial form nixa is evidently chosen for
the sake of obtaining, a paronomasia with riiD3: the heights
which should not come (i.e. should not be erected) ; while i<?
'^)i)\ points back to ^\r?V ''?W!!: "what should not happen." —
Ver. 17. The jewellery of gold and silver was used by Israel
for "131 "''Oyi, idols of the male sex, to commit fornication with
TT " : - 7 /
them. Ewald thinks that the allusion is to Penates (teraphim),
which were set up in the house, with ornaments suspended upon
them, and worshipped with lectisternia. But there is no more
allusion to lectisternia here than in ch. xxiii. 41. And there is
still less ground for thinking, as Vatke, Movers, and Havernick
do, of Lingam- or Phallus-worship, of which it is impossible to
find the slightest trace among the Israelites. The arguments
used by Havernick have been already proved by Hitzig to have
no force whatever. The context does not point to idols of any
particular kind, but to the many varieties of Baal-worship;
whilst the worship of Moloch is specially mentioned in vers.
20 sqq. as being the greatest abomination of the whole. The
206 THE FEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
fact that Oi}^?P? IDJ, to set before them (the idols), does not
refer to lectisternia, but to sacrifices offered as food for the gods,
is indisputably evident from the words 0^3 nn?, the technical
expression for the sacrificial odour ascending to God (cf. Lev.
i. 9, 13, etc.). ''H';! (ver. 19), and it came to pass {sc. this
abomination), merely serves to give emphatic expression to the
disgust which it occasioned (Hitzig). — Vers. 20; 21. And not
even content with this, the adulteress sacrificed the children
which God had given her to idols. The revulsion of feeling
produced by the abominations of the Moloch- worship is shown
in the expression ?i3NP, thou didst sacrifice thy children to idols,
that they might devour them ; and still more in the reproachful
question 'DD tJI^pn, "was there too little in thy whoredom?"
IP before ii'now is used in a comparative sense, though not to
signify " was this a smaller thing than thy whoredom?" which
would mean far too little in this connection. The !P is rather
used, as in ch. viii. 17 and Isa. xlix. 6, in the sense of too: was
thy whoredom, already described in vers. 16—19, too little, that
thou didst also slaughter thy children to idols ? The Chetih
7ini3tn (vers. 20 and 25) is a singular, as in vers. 25 and 29 ;
whereas the Keri has treated it as a plural, as in vers. 15, 22,
and 33, but without any satisfactory ground. The indignation
comes out still more strongly in the description given of these
abominations in ver. 21: "thou didst slay my sons" (whereas
in ver. 20 we have simply " thy sons, whom thou hast born to
me"), "and didst give them up to them, "fayna, by making
them pass through," sc. the fire. lUVn is used here not merely
for lustration or febr nation by fire, but for the actual burning
of the children slain as sacrifices, so that it is equivalent to
^%b E'Ka 'Vivn (2 Kings xxiii. 10). By the process of burning,
the sacrifices were given to Moloch to devour. Ezekiel has
the Moloch-worship in his eye in the form which it bad assumed
from the times of Ahaz downwards, when the people began to
burn their children to Moloch (cf. 2 Kings xvi. 3, xxi. 6
xxiii. 10), whereas all that can be proved to have been practised
CHAP. XVI. 23-34. 207
in earlier times by the Israelites was the passing of children
through fire without either slaying or burning ; a februation by
fire (compare the remarks on this subject in the comm. on
Lev. xviii. 21). — Amidst all these abominations Israel did not
remember its youth, or how the Lord had adopted it out of the
deepest wretchedness to be His people, and had made it glorious
through the abundance of His gifts. This base ingratitude
shows the depth of its fall, and magnifies its guilt. For ver.
225 compare vers. 7 and 6.
Vers. 23-34. Extent and magnitude of the idolatry. — Ver.
23. And it came to pass after all thy wickedness — Woe, woe to
thee I is the saying of the Lord Jehovah — Ver. 24. TIwu didst
build thyself arches, and didst make thyself high places in all
the streets. Ver. 25. TJtou didst build thy high places at every
cross road, and didst disgrace thy beauty, and stretch open thy
feet for every one that passed by, and didst increase thy whore-
dom. Ver. 26. Thou didst commit fornication with the sons of
Egypt thy neighbours, great in flesh, and didst increase thy
whoredom to provoke me. Ver. 27. And, behold, 1 stretched
out my hand against thee, and diminished thine allowance, and
gave thee up to the desire of those who hate thee., the daughters of
the Philistines, who are ashamed of thy lewd way. Ver. 28. And
thou didst commit fornication with the sons of Asshur, because
thou art never satisfied; and didst commit fornication with them,
and wast also not satisfied. Ver. 29. And thou didst increase
thy whoredom to Canaan's land, Chaldaea, and even thereby wast
not satisfied. Ver. 30. How languishing is thy heart ! is the
saying of the Lord Jehovah, that thou doest all this, the doings
of a dissolute prostitute. Ver. 31. When thou buildest thy
arches at every cross road, and madest thy high places in every
road, thou wast not like the harlot^ since thou despisedst payment.
Ver. 32. The adulterous wife taketh strangers instead of her hus-
band. Ver. 33. Men give presents to all prostitutes ; but thou gavest
thy presents to all thy suitors, and didst reward them for coming to
thee from all sides, for fornication with thee, Ver. 34. And there
208 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
was in thee the very opposite of the women in thy whoredom, that
men did not go whoring after thee. In that thou givest payment,
and payment was not given to thee, thou wast the very opposite. —
By tiriy'i'i'3 ''^n^, the picture of the wide spread of idolatry,
commenced in ver. 22, is placed in the relation of chronological
sequence to the description already given of the idolatry itself.
For all sin, all evil, must first exist before it can spread. The
spreading of idolatry was at the same time an increase of
apostasy from God. This is not to be sought, however, in the
fact that Israel forsook the sanctuary, which God had ap-
pointed for it as the scene of His gracious presence, and built
itself idol-temples (Kliefoth). It consisted rather in this, that
it erected idolatrous altars and little temples at all street-corners
and cross-roads (vers. 24, 25), and committed adultery with
all heathen nations (vers. 26, 28, 29), and could not be induced
to relinquish idolatry either by the chastisements of God (ver.
27), or by the uselessness of such conduct (vers. 32-34).
Tinyypa is the whole of the apostasy from the Lord depicted
in vers. 15-22, which prevailed more and more as idolatry
spread. The picture of this extension of idolatry is introduced
with woe! woe! to indicate at the outset the fearful judgment
which Jerusalem was bringing upon itself thereby. The ex-
clamation of woe is inserted parenthetically ; for "'^^m (ver. 24)
forms the apodosis to ^T1 in ver. 23. 33 and nan are to be
taken as general terms ; but, as the singular ^133 with the
plural Tj^nbT in ver. 39 plainly shows, 3a is a collective word,
Havernick has very properly called attention to the analogy
between 33 and nap in Num. xxv. 8, which is used there to
denote an apartment furnished or used for the service of Baal-
Peor. As nap, from 33p, signifies literally that which is arched,
a vault ; so 32, from 332, is literally that which is curved or
arched, a hump or back, and hence is used here for buildings
erected for idolatrous purposes, small temples built on heights,
which were probably so called to distinguish them as chapels
for fornication. The ancient translations suggest this, viz.:
CHAP. XVI. 23-34. 209
LXX. o'lKijfia iropviKov and e/cOe/xa, which Polychron. explains
thus : irpoajarytov, evOa ra? iropva'i rpe^eiv etwOaai ; Vulg. :
lupanar and prostibulum.. ODT signifies artificial heights, i.e.
altars built upon eminences, commonly called hdmoth. The
word rdmdh is probably chosen here with an allusion to the
primary signification, height, as Jerome has said : quod excelsus
sit ut volentibus fornicari procul appareat fornicationis locus et
non necesse sit quaeri. The increase of the whoredom, i.e. of
the idolatry and illicit intercourse with heathenish ways, is
individualized in vers. 26-29 by a specification of historical
facts. We cannot agree with Hitzig in restricting the illicit
intercourse with Egypt (ver. 26), Asshur (ver. 28), and
Chaldaea (ver. 29) to political apostasy, as distinguished from
the religious apostasy already depicted. There is nothing to
indicate any such distinction. Under the figure of whoredom,
both in what precedes and what follows, the inclination of
Israel to heathen ways in all its extent, both religious and
political, is embraced. Egypt stands first ; for the apostasy of
Israel from the Lord commenced with the worship of the golden
calf, and the longing in the wilderness for the fleshpots of
Egypt. From time immemorial Egypt was most deeply sunken
in the heathenish worship of nature. The sons of Egypt are
therefore described, in accordance with the allegory, as IB'a ibia,
magni came {bazar, a euphemism ; cf. ch. xxiii. 20), i.e. accord-
ing to the correct explanation of Theodoret : /xeS' vTrep^o\rj<;
Trj Twv elBmXcev Bepaireia irpoffTeTTiicora';, ovtoi ryap Kal rpdyov^
Kal ^owi Kal irpo^ara, Kvva<; re Kai iridrjKov^ Kal KpoKoSeiXov^
Kal i'ySet? Kal lepaKa'; •jrpocreKWTjaav. The way in which God
punished this erring conduct was, that, like a husband who
endeavours by means of chastisement to induce his faithless
wife to return. He diminished the supply of food, clothing, etc.
{cJiog, as in Prov. xxx. 8), intended for the wife (for the fact
compare Hos. ii. 9, 10) ; this He did by " not allowing Israel
to attain to the glory and power which would otherwise have
been conferred upon it ; that is to say, by not permitting it to
EZEK. I. O
210 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
acquire the undisturbed and undivided possession of Canaan,
but giving it up to the power and scorn of the princes of the
Philistines" (Kliefoth). K'333 tOJ, to give any one up to the
desire of another. The daughters of the Philistines are the
Philistian states, corresponding to the representation of Israel
as an adulterous wife. The Philistines are mentioned as the
principal foes, because Israel fell completely into their power at
the end of the period of the Judges (cf. Judg. xiii.-xvi.; 1 Sam.
iv.) ; and they are referred to here, for the deeper humiliation
of Israel, as having been ashamed of the licentious conduct of
the Israelites, because they adhered to their gods, and did not
exchange them for others as Israel had done (compare Jei\
ii. 10, 11). nsT (ver. 27) is in apposition to i]?"}^: thy way,
which is zimmdh. Zimmdh is applied to the sin of profligacy,
as in Lev. xviii. 17. — But Israel was not improved by this
chastisement. It committed adultery with Asshur also from
the times of Ahaz, who sought help from the Assyrians
(2 Kings xvi. 7 sqq.) ; and even v^ith this it was not satisfied ;
that is to say, the serious consequences brought upon the king-
dom of Judah by seeking the friendship of Assyria did not
sober it, so as to lead it to give up seeking for help from the
heathen and their gods. In ver. 28, ^^ '3fn is distinguished
from Q^3m (njr, with accus.). The former denotes the immoral
pursuit of a person for the purpose of procuring his favour ;
the latter, adulterous intercourse with him, when his favour
has been secured. The thought of the verse is this : Israel
sought the favour of Assyria, because it was not satisfied with
illicit intercourse with Egypt, and continued to cultivate it ;
yet it did not find satisfaction or sufficiency even in this, but
increased its adultery nD'W| |W3 p^'^, to the Canaan's-laud
Chaldaea. 1^3 H? is not the proper name of the land of
Canaan here, but an appellative designation applied to Chaldaea
(Kasdim) or Babylonia, as in ch. xvii. 4 (Easchi). The explana-
tion of the words, as signifying the land of Canaan, is precluded
by the fact that an allusion to Canaanitish idolatry and inter-
CHAP. XVI. 23-34. 211
course after the mention of Asshur would be out of place, and
would not coincide with the historical order of things ; since it
cannot be shown that " a more general diffusion of the religious
customs of Canaan took place after the Assyrian era." And
it is still more decidedly precluded by the introduction of the
word nD'''n!i'3, which cannot possibly mean as far as, or unto,
Ohaldaea, and can only be a more precise definition of pN
tW3. The only thing about which a question can be raised, is
the reason why the epithet 1W3 should have been applied to
Chaldaea ; whether it merely related to the commercial spirit,
in which Babylon was by no means behind the Canaanitish
Tyre and Sidon, or whether allusion was also made to the
idolatry and immorality of Canaan. The former is by no
means to be excluded, as we find that in ch. xvii. 4 " the land
of Canaan" is designated "a city of merchants" (rokJiHim).
But we must not exclude the latter either, inasmuch as in the
Belus- and Mylitta-worship of Babylon the voluptuous character
of the Baal- and Astarte-worship of Canaan had degenerated
into shameless unchastity (cf. Herodotus, i. 199).
In ver. 30, the contents of vers. 16-29 are summed up in the
verdict which the Lord pronounces upon the harlot and adul-
teress : " yet how languishing is thy heart ! " '"^J?^. (as a
participle Kal air. "Key. ; since the verb only occurs elsewhere
in the Pual, and that in the sense of faded or pining away)
can only signify a morbid pining or languishing, or the craving
of immodest desire, which has grown into a disease. The
form na? is also cltt. \ey. ; but it is analogous to the plural
nia^.' HBiiB', powerful, commanding ; as an epithet applied to
zondli, one who knows no limit to her actions, unrestrained ;
' Hitzig objects to the two forms, which do not occur elsewhere ; and
with the help of the Sept. rendering ti "iiaiu riiv ivyaTipa aov, which is a
mere guess founded upon the false reading ^ni'? rhon HD, he adopts the
conjectural reading ^f\J? n^DS ilD, "what hopeis therefor thy daughter?"
by which he enriches the Hebrew language with a new word (nPDN), and
the prophecy contained in this chapter with a thought which is completely
foreign to it, and altogether unsuitable.
212 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
hence in Arabic, insolent, shameless. Ver. 31 contains an
independent sentence, which facilitates the transition to the
thought expanded in vers. 32-34, namely, that Jerusalem had
surpassed all other harlots in her whoredoms. If we take ver. 31
as dependent upon the protasis in ver. 30, we not only get a very
draggling style of expression, but the new thought expressed in
ver. 316 is reduced to a merely secondary idea ; whereas the
expansion of it in vers. 32 sqq. shows that it introduces a new
feature into the address. And if this is the case, "n^rrN^'i
cannot be taken as co-ordinate with '"TV' but must be construed
as the apodosis : " in thy building of rooms . . . thou wast not
like the (ordinary) harlot, since thou disdainest payment." For
the plural suffix attached to ^^nijaa, see the commentary on
ch. vi. 8. The infinitive o)>\>'? answers to the Latin gerund in
ndo [vid. Ewald, § 237c and 280d), indicating wherein, or in
what respect, the harlot Jerusalem differed from an ordinary
prostitute ; namely, in the fact that she disdained to receive
payment for her prostitution. That this is the meaning of the
words, is rendered indisputable by vers. 32-34. But the
majority of expositors have taken tj'?? ^ppp as indicating the
point of comparison between Israel and other harlots, i.e. as
defining in what respect Israel resembled other prostitutes ; and
then, as this thought is at variance with what follows, have
attempted to remove the discrepancy by various untenable
explanations. Most of them resort to the explanation : thou
wast not like the other prostitutes, who disdain to receive the
payment offered for their prostitution, in the hope of thereby
obtaining still more,^ — an explanation which imports into the
' Jerome adopts this rendering : non facta es quasi nicretrix fastidio
aitgens preiium, and gives the foUo-sving explanation : " thou hast not imi-
tated the cunning prostitutes, who are accustomed to raise the price of lust
by increasing the difficulties, and in this way to excite their lovers to
greater frenzy." Rosenmiiller and Maurer have adopted a similar explana-
tion : " thou differest greatly from other harlots, who despise the payment
offered them by their lovers, that they may get still more ; for thou acceptest
any reward, being content with the lowest payment ; yea, thou dost even
offer a price to thine own lovers."
CHAP. XVI. 23-34. 213
words a thought that has no existence in them at all. Haver-
nick seeks to fix upon chp, by means of the Aramaean, the
meaning to cry out (crying out payment), in opposition to the
ordinary meaning of obp, to disdain, or ridicule, in which sense
Ezekiel also uses the noun nD?p in ch. xxii. 4. Hitzis falls
T T - O
back upon the handy method of altering the text ; and finally,
Kliefoth gives to ? the imaginary meaning " so far as," i.e. " to
such a degree that," which cannot be defended either through
Ex. xxxix. 19 or from Deut. xxiv. 5. — With the loose way in
which the infinitive construct with ? is used, we grant that the
words are ambiguous, and might have the meaning which the
majority of the commentators have discovered in them ; but
this view is by no means necessary, inasmuch as the subordinate
idea introduced by Ijnsjl o))\>7 may refer quite as well to the sub-
ject of the sentence, " thou," as to the sondli with whom the
subject is compared. Only in the latter case the tjriN D?i5 would
apply to other harlots as well as to Israel; whereas in the
former it applies to Israel alone, and shows in what it was that
Israel did not resemble ordinary prostitutes. But the explana-
tion which followed was a sufficient safeguard against mistake.
In this explanation adulteresses are mentioned first (ver. 32),
and then common prostitutes (vers. 33, 34). Ver. 32 must not
be taken, as it has been by the majority of commentators, as an
exclamation, or a reproof addressed to the adulteress Jerusalem:
O thou adulterous wife, that taketh strangers instead of her
husband ! Such an exclamation as this does not suit the con-
nection at all. But the verse is not to be struck out on that
account, as Hitzig proposes. It has simply to be construed in
another way, and taken as a statement of what adulteresses do
(Kliefoth). They take strangers instead of their husband, and
seek their recompense in the simple change, and the pleasure
of being with other men. P<f^\A nnri, lit. under her husband, i.e.
as a wife subject to her husband, as in the connection with njT
in ch. xxiii. 5 and Hos. iv. 12 (see thecomm. on Num. v. 19). —
Vers. 33, 34. Common prostitutes give themselves up for pre-
214 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
sents ; but Israel, on the contrary, gave presents to its lovers, so
that it did the very opposite to all other harlots, and the practice
of ordinary prostitutes was left far behind by that of Israel.
The change of forms iTli and HJ (a present) is probably to be
explained simply on the ground that the form N13 was length-
ened into \i: with a consonant as the termination, because the
suffix could be attached more easily to the other, ^an, the
reverse, the opposite, i.e. with the present context, something
unheard of, which never occurred in the case of any other
harlot. — Ezekiel has thus fulfilled the task appointed him
in ver. 2, to charge Jerusalem with her abominations. The
address now turns to an announcement of the punishment.
Vers. 35-52. As Israel has been worse than all the heathen,
Jehovah will punish it notwithstanding its election, so that its
shame shall be uncovered before all the nations (vers. 36-42), and
the justice of the judgment to be inflicted upon it shall be made
manifest (vers. 43-52). According to these points of view,
the threat of punishment divides itself into two parts in the
following manner : — In the first (vers. 35-42) we have, first of
all (in ver. 36), a recapitulation of the guilty conduct described
in vers. 16-34 ; and secondly, an announcement of the punish-
ment corresponding to the guilt, as the punishment of adultery
and murder (vers. 37 and 48), and a picture of its infliction, as
retribution for the enormities committed (vers. 39-42). In
the second part (vers. 43-52) there follows a proof of the
justice of this judgment.
Vers. 35-42. The punishment will correspond to the sin.
— Ver. 35. Therefore, harlot, hear the word of Jehovah!
Ver. 36. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thy brass has
been lavished, and thy shame exposed in thy whoredom icith thy
lovers, and because of all the idols of thine abominations, and
according to the blood of thy sons, which thou hast given them ;
Ver. 37. Therefore, behold, 1 will gather together all thy lovers,
whom thou hast pleased, and all whom thou hast loved, together
loith all whom thou hast hated, and loill gather them against thee
CHAP. XVI. 35-42. 215
from round about, and will expose thy shame to them, that they
may see all thy shame. Ver. 38. / will judge thee according to
the judgment of adulteresses and murderesses, and make thee into
Hood of wrath and jealousy, Ver. 39. And I will give thee into
their hand, that they may destroy thy arches, and pull down thy
heights; that they may strip thy clothes off thee, and take thy
splendid jewellery, and leave thee naked and bare. Ver. 40.
And they shall bring up a company against thee, and stone thee,
and cut thee in pieces with their swords. Ver. 41. And they
shall burn thy houses with fire, and execute judgment upon thee
before the eyes of many women. Thus do 1 put an end to thy
tvhoredom ; and thou wilt also give payment no more. Ver. 42.
And I quiet my fury toward thee, and will turn away my
jealousy from thee, that I may repose and vex myself no more.
— In the brief summary of the guilt of the whore, the follow-
ing objects are singled out, as those for which she is to be
punished : (1) the pouring out of her brass and the exposure of
her shame ; (2) the idols of her abominations (with pV before
the noun, corresponding to Wl before the infinitive) ; (3) the
blood of her sons, with the preposition 3, according to, to
indicate the measure of her punishment. Two things are
mentioned as constituting the first ground of punishment.
The first is, " because thy brass has been poured out." Most
of the commentators have explained this correctly, as referring
to the fact that Israel had squandered the possessions received
from the Lord, viz. gold, silver, jewellery, clothing, and food
(vers. 10-13 and 16-19), upon idolatry. The only difficulty
connected with this is the use of the word n'chosheth, brass or
copper, in the general sense of money or metal, as there are no
other passages to support this use of the word. At the same
time, the objection raised to this, namely, that n^chosheth cannot
signify money, because the Hebrews had no copper coin, is an
assertion without proof, since all that can be affirmed with cer-
tainty is, that the use of copper or brass as money is not men-
tioned anywhere in the Old Testament, with the exception of
216 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the passage before us. But we cannot infer with certainty
from this that it was not then in use. As soon as the Hebrews
began to stamp coins, bronze or copper coins were stamped as
well as the silver shekels, and specimens of these are still in
existence from the time of the Maccabees, with the inscription
" Simon, prince of Israel " (cf . Cavedoni, Bill. Numismatik,
transl. by Werlhof, p. 20 sqq.). Judging from their size,
these coins were in all probability worth a whole, a half, and a
quarter gerah (Caved, pp. 50, 51). If, then, the silver shekel
of the value of 21 grains contained twenty gerahs in Moses'
time, and they bad already silver pieces of the weight of a
shekel and half shekel, whilst quarter shekels are also men-
tioned in the time of Samuel, there would certainly be metal
coins in use of the value of a gerah for the purposes of trade and
commerce, and these would in all probability be made of brass,
copper, or bronze, as silver coins of the value of a penny would
have been found too small. Consequently it cannot be positively
denied that brass or copper may have been used as coin for the
payment of a gerah, and therefore that the word n"ch6sheih
may have been applied to money. We therefore adhere to
the explanation that brass stands for money, which has been
already adopted by the LXX. and Jerome ; and we do so all
the more, because every attempt that has been made to fasten
another meaning upon rfclwslieth, whether by allegorical inter-
pretation (Eabb.), or from the Arabic, or by altering the text,
is not only arbitrary, but does not even yield a meaning that
suits the context. ^??fn, to be poured out = squandered or
lavished. To the squandering of the possessions bestowed by
the Lord upon His congregation, there was added the exposure
of its shame, i.e. the disgraceful sacrifice of the honour and
dignity of the people of God, of which Israel had made itself
guilty by its whoredom with idols, i.e. by falling into idolatry,
and adopting heathen ways. ■^!?n?<lp"^y, to (towards), i.e. with
thy lovers (>V. standing for i'K, according to later usage : vid.
Ewald, § 217i, p. 561), is to be explained after the analogy of
CHAP. XVI. 35-42. 217
''^ ™I} as signifying to commit adultery towards a person, i.e.
with him. But it was not enough to sacrifice the gifts of the
Lord, i.e. His possessions and His glory, to the heathen and
their idols ; Israel also made for itself niaj^in iwrpSj all kinds
of logs of abominations, i.e. ,of idols, upon which it hung its
ornaments, and before which it set oil and incense, meal and
honey (vers. 18 and 19). And it was not even satisfied with
this, but gave to its idols the blood of its sons, by slaying its
children to Moloch (ver. 20). Therefore (vers. 37 sqq.) the
Lord will uncover the shame of His people before all the
nations. He will gather them together, both friend and foe,
against Jerusalem, and let them execute the judgment. The
punishment will correspond to the sin. Because Israel has
cultivated friendship with the heathen, it shall now be given up
altogether into their power. On the uncovering of the naked-
ness as a punishment, compare Hos. ii. 12. The explanation
of the figure follows in ver. 38. The heathen nations shall
inflict upon Jei'usalem the punishment due to adultery and
bloodshed. Jerusalem (i.e. Israel) had committed this twofold
crime. It had committed adultery, by falling away from
Jehovah into idolatry ; and bloodshed, by the sacrifices offered
to Moloch. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning
(see the comm. on ver. 40) ; and blood demanded blood (Gen.
ix. 6 ; Ex. xxi. 12). 'U1 D!! ^''J?":? does not mean, " I will put
blood in thee " (Ros.), or " I will cause thy blood to be shed in
anger " (De Wette, Maurer, etc.) ; but I make thee into blood ;
which we must not soften down, as Hitzig proposes, into cause
thee to bleed. The thought is rather the following : thou shalt
be turned into blood, so that nothing but blood may be left of
thee, and that the blood of fury and jealousy, as the working
of the wrath and jealousy of God (compare ver. 42). To this
end the heathen will destroy all the objects of idolatry (32
and niD^, ver. 39, as in vers. 24, 25), then take from the harlot
both clothes and jewellery, and leave her naked, i.e. plunder
Jerusalem and lay it waste, and, lastly, execute upon her the
218 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
punishment of death by stoning and by sword ; in other words,
destroy both city and kingdom. The words 'Wl vj|n, they bring
(up) against thee an assembly, may be explained from the
ancient mode of administering justice, according to which the
popular assembly (qdhdl, cf. Prov. v. 14) sat in judgment on
cases of adultery and capital crimes, and executed the sentence,
as the law for stoning expressly enjoins (Lev. xx. 2 ; Num.
XV. 36 ; Dent. xxii. 21 ; compare my Bibl. Arcli&ol. II. p. 257).
But they are also applicable to the foes, who would march
against Jerusalem (for qdlidl in this sense, compare ch. xvii. 17).
The punishment of adultery (according to Lev. xx. 10) was
death by stoning, as we may see from Lev. xx. 2-27 and Dent.
XX. 24 compared with John viii. 5. This was the usual mode
of capital punishment under the Mosaic law, when judicial
sentence of death was pronounced upon individuals (see my
Archdol. II. p. 264). The other form of punishment, slaying
by the sword, was adopted when there were many criminals to
be put to death, and was not decapitation, but cutting down or
stabbing (bdthaq, to hew in pieces) with the. sword (see my
Archdol. I.e.). The punishment of death was rendered more
severe by the burning of the corpse (Lev. xx. 14, xxi. 9).
Consequently the burning of the houses in ver. 41 is also to be
regarded as intensifying the punishment ; and it is in the same
light that the threat is to be regarded, that the judgment would
be executed " before the eyes of many women. ' The many
women are the many heathen nations, accoi-ding to the descrip-
tion of Jerusalem or Israel as an unfaithful wife. " As it is
the greatest punishment to an adulterous woman to be exposed
in her sin before the eyes of other women ; so will the
severest portion of Israel's punishment be, that it will stand
exposed in its sin before the eyes of all other nations"
(Kliefoth). This is the way in which God will put an end to
the fornication, and appease His wrath and jealousy upon the
harlot (vers. 41 & and 42). IT'aa'n, with ]1?, to cause a person to
cease to be or do anything. For ver, 42, compare ch. v. 13.
CHAP. XVI. 43-52. 219
By the execution of the judgment the jealousy (i^^^i?) of the
injured husband is appeased.
Vers. 43-52. This judgment is perfectly just ; for Israel has
not only forgotten the grace of its God manifested towards it
in its election, but has even surpassed both Samaria and Sodom
in its abominations. — Ver. 43. Because thou hast not remembered
the days of thy youth, and hast raged against me in all this ;
behold, I also give thy way upon thy head, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah, that I may not do that which is wrong above all
thine abominations. Ver. 44. Behold, every one that useth
proverbs will use this proverb concerning thee : as the mother, so
the daughter. Ver. 45. Thou art the daughter of thy mother,
who casteth off her husband and her children ; and thou art the
sister of thy sisters, who cast off their husbands and their children.
Your mother is a Hittite, and your father an Amorite. Ver. 46.
And thy great sister is Samaria with her daughters, who dwelleth
at thy left ; and thy sister, who is smaller than thou, who dwelleth
at thy Tight, is Sodom with her daughters. Ver. 47. But thou
hast not walked in their ways and done according to their
abominations a little only ; thou didst act more corruptly than
they in all thy ways. Ver. 48. As 1 live, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah, Sodom thy sister, she with her daughters hath not
done as thou hast done with thy daughters. Ver. 49. Behold,
this was the sin of Sodom, thy sister: pride, superabundance
of food, and rest undisturbed had she with her daughters, and
the hand of the poor and needy she did not hold. Ver. 50.
They were haughty, and did abominations before me ; and I.
swept them away when I saw it. Ver. 51. And Samaria, she
hath not sinned to the half of thy sins ; thou hast increased
thine abominations more than they, and hast made thy sisters
righteous by all thine abominations lehich thou hast done.
Ver. 52. Bear, then, also thy shame, which thou hast adjudged
to thy sisters. Through thy sins, which thou hast committed
more abominably than they, they become more righteous than
thou. Be thou, then, also put to shame, and bear thy disgrace,
220 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
as thou hast justified thy sisters. — "iK'N IV^, which corresponds
to IJ^;; in ver. 36, introduces a new train of thought. Most of
the commentators take ver. 43 in connection with what pre-
cedes, and place the pause at ver. 44. But the perfect ''iyinj
shows that this is wrong. If ver. 43 simply contained a
recapitulation, or a concluding summary, of the threat of
judgment in vers. 35-42, the punishment would be announced
in the future tense, as it is in ver. 37. By the perfect WJ, on
the contrary, the punishment is exhibited as a completed fact,
and further reasons are then assigned in vindication of the
justice of the divine procedure, which we find in vers. 44 sqq
To this end the guilt of Jerusalem is mentioned once more :
"thou didst not remember the days of thy youth," i.e. what
thou didst experience in thy youth ; the misery in which thou
didst find thyself, and out of which I rescued thee and exalted
thee to glory (vers. 4-14). To this there was added rage
against Jehovah, which manifested itself in idolatrous acts.
? W"i, to be excited upon or against any person, to rage j thus
in Hithpael with ^S in 2 Kings xix. 27, 28. For t^-Nia 'hit tOJ,
compare ch. ix. 10. The last clause of ver. 43, 'li1 TT'by N71j has
been misinterpreted in many ways. According to the Masoretic
pointing, TT'iJ'j? is the second person ; but this does not yield
a suitable meaning. For HBt T(&'!3 is not used in the sense
adopted by the Targum, upon which the Masoretic pointing is
undoubtedly based, and which Raschi, Kimchi, and Rosen-
miiller retain, viz. cogitationem facere : " thou hast not taken
. any thought concerning all thy abominations," i.e. hast not felt
any remorse. The true meaning is to commit a crime, a
wrong, and is used for the most part of unnatural offences
(cf. Judg. XX. 6 ; Hos. vi. 9). There is all the more reason
for retaining this meaning, that nsr (apart from the plural
nlist = niBID) only occurs sensu malo, and for the most part in
the sense of an immoral action {yid. Job xxxi. 11). Coft-
sequently we should have to adopt the rendering : and thou no
longer committest this immorality above all thine abominations.
CHAP. XVI. 43-52. 221
But in that case not only would *iiy have to be supplied, tut a
distinction would be drawn between the abominations committed
by Israel and the sin of lewdness, i.e. adultery, which is quite
foreign to the connection and to the contents of the entire
chapter ; for, according to these, the abominations of Israel
consisted in adultery or the sin of lewdness. We must there-
fore take WB>y as the first person, as Symm. and Jerome have
done, and explain the words from Lev. xix. 29, where the
toleration by a father of the whoredom of a daughter is de-
signated as zimmdh. If we adopt this interpretation, Jehovah
says that He has punished the spiritual whoredom of Israel, in
order that He may not add another act of wrong to the abomina-
tions of Israel by allowing such immorality to go on unpunished.
If He did not punish, He would commit a zimmdh Himself, —
in other words, would make Himself accessory to the sins of
Israel. The concluding characteristic of the moral degrada-
tion of Israel fits in very appropriately here in vers. 44 sqq., in
which Jerusalem is compared to Samaria and Sodom, both of
which had been punished long ago with destruction on account
of their sins. This characteristic is expressed in the form of
proverbial sayings. Every one who speaks in proverbs (mosJiel,
as in Num. xxi. 27) will then say over thee: as the mother, so
her daughter. Her abominable life is so conspicuous, that it
strikes every one, and furnishes occasion for proverbial sayings,
nss may be a feminine form of DX, as nap is of 3? (ver. 30) ;
or it may also be a Raphe form for nox : as her (the daughter's)
mother, so her (the mother's) daughter (cf. Ewald, § 174e,
note, with § 21, 22^). The daughter is of course Jerusalem, as
the representative of Israel. The mother is the Canaanitish
race of Hittites and Amorites, whose immoral nature had been
adopted by Israel (cf . vers. 3 and 456). In ver. 45 the sisterly
relation is added to the maternal, to carry out the thought still
further. Some difficulty arises here from the statement, that
the mothers and the sisters despise their husbands and their
children, or put them away. For it is unquestionable that the
222 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
participle ro]li belongs to ^isx, and not to na, from the parallel
relative clause vW "iK'X^ which applies to the sisters. The
husband of the wife Jerusalem is Jehovah, as the matrimonial
head of the covenant nation or congregation of Israel. The
children of the wives, viz. the mother, her daughter, and her
sisters, are the children offered in sacrifice to Moloch. The
worship of Moloch was found among the early Canaanites, and
is here attributed to Samaria and Sodom also, though we have
no other proofs of its existence there than the references made
to it in the Old Testament. The husband, whom the mother
and sisters have put away, cannot therefore be any other than
Jehovah ; from which it is evident that Ezekiel regarded
idolatry generally as apostasy from Jehovah, and Jehovah as
the God not only of the Israelites, but of the heathen also."^
T]ninx (ver. 45) is a plural noun, as the relative clause which
follows and ver. 46 clearly show, and therefore is a contracted
form of ■n^ninx (ver. 51) or ^ni''nx (ver. 52 ; vid. Ewald, § 212b,
p. 538). Samaria and Sodom are called sisters of Jerusalem,
not because both cities belonged to the same mother-land of
Canaan, for the origin of the cities does not come into con-
sideration here at all, and the cities represent the kingdoms, as
the additional words " her daughters," that is to say, the cities
of a land or kingdom dependent upon the capital, clearly prove.
Samaria and Sodom, with the daughter cities belonging to
them, are sisters of Jerusalem in a spiritual sense, as animated
by the same spirit of idolatry. Samaria is called the great
(greater) sister of Jerusalem, and Sodom the smaller sister.
This is not equivalent to the older and the younger, for Samaria
was not more deeply sunk in idolatry than Sodom, nor was
her idolatry more ancient than that of Sodom (Theodoret and
Grotius) ; and Havernick's explanation, that " the finer form
■ Theodoret has explained it correctly in this way : " He shows by this,
that He is not the God of Jews only, but of Gentiles also ; for God once
gave oracles to them, before they chose the abomination of idolatry.
Therefore he says that they also put away both the husband aud the chil-
dren by denying God, and slaying the children to demons."
CHAP. XVI. 43-52. 223
of idolatry, the mixture of the worsliip of Jehovah with that of
nature, as represented by Samaria, was the first to find an
entrance into Judah, and this was afterwards followed by the
coarser abominations of heathenism," is unsatisfactory, for the
simple reason that, according to the historical books of the Old
Testament, the coarser forms of idolatry forced their way into
Judah at quite as early a period as the more refined. The
idolatry of the time of Kehoboam and Abijam was not merely
a mixture of Jehovah-worship with the worship of nature, but
the introduction of heathen idols into Judah, along with which
there is no doubt that the syncretistic worship of the high
places was also practised. ^ilJ! and iO|5 do not generally mean
old and young, but great and small. The transferred meaning
old and young can only apply to men and animals, when great-
ness and littleness are really signs of a difference in age ; but
it is altogether inapplicable to kingdoms or cities, the size of
which is by no means dependent upon their age. Consequently
the expressions great and small simply refer to the extent of
the kingdoms or states here named, and correspond to the de-
scription given of their situation : " at the left hand," i.e. to
the north, and " at the right hand," i.e. to the south of Jeru-
salem and Judah.
Jerusalem had not only equalled these sisters in sins and
abominations, but had acted more corruptly than they (ver. 47).
The first hemistich of this verse, " thou walkest not in their
ways," etc., is more precisely defined by pD ''nn^'ni in the second
half. The link of connection between the two statements is
formed by ts^ '^^'??' This is generally rendered, " soon was
there disgust," i.e. thou didst soon feel disgust at walking in
their ways, and didst act still worse. But apart from the fact
that while disgust at the way of the sisters might very well
constitute a motive for forsaking those ways, i.e. relinquishing
their abominations, it could not furnish a motive for surpassing
those abominations. This explanation is exposed to the philo-
logical difficulty, that t^ij by itself cannot signify taeduit te, and
224 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the impersonal use of Dip would at all events require 'H?, which
could not be omitted, even if tOi^ were intended for a substan-
tive. These difficulties fall away if we interpret tii? from the
Arabic lajs, omnino, tantum, as Alb. Schultens has done, and con-
nect the definition "a little only" with the preceding clause.
We then obtain this very appropriate thought : thou didst walk
in the ways of thy sisters ; and that not a little only, but thou
didst act still more corruptly than they. This is proved in
vers. 48 sqq. by an enumeration of the sins of Sodom. They
were pride, satiety, — i.e. superabundance of bread {vid. Prov.
XXX. 9), — and careless rest or security, which produce haughti-
ness and harshness, or uncharitableness, towards the poor and
wretched. In this way Sodom and her daughters (Gomorrah,
Admah, and Zeboira) became proud and haughty, and com-
mitted abominations ''JQ?, i.e. before Jehovah (alluding to Gen.
xviii. 21) ; and God destroyed them when He saw this. The
sins of Samaria (ver. 51) are not specially mentioned, because
the principal sin of this kingdom, namely, image-worship, was
well known. It is simply stated, therefore, that she did not
sin half so much as Jerusalem ; and in fact, if we except the
times of Ahab and his dynasty, pure heathenish idolatry did
not exist in the kingdom of the ten tribes, so that Samaria
seemed really a righteous city in comparison with the idolatry
of Jerusalem and Judah, more especially from the time of
Ahaz onward (yid. Jer. iii. 11). The punishment of Samaria
by the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes is also
passed over as being well known to every Israelite; and in
ver. 52 the application is directly made to Jerusalem, i.e. to
Judah : " Thou also, bear thy shame, thou who hast adjudged
to thy sisters," — sc. by pronouncing an uncharitable judgment
upon them, thinking thyself better than they, whereas thou
hast sinned more abominably, so that they appear more right-
eous than thou. P'lV, to be righteous, and p'^.S, to justify, are
used in a comparative sense. In comparison with the abomi-
CHAP. SVI. 53-63. 225
nations of Jerusalem, the sins of Sodom and Samaria appeared
perfectly trivial. After ^^? Oil., the announcement of punish-
ment is repeated for the sake of emphasis, and that in the form
of a consequence resulting from the sentence with regard to
the nature of the sin : therefore be thou also put to shame,
and bear thy disgrace.
Vers. 53-63. But this disgrace will not be the conclusion.
Because of the covenant which the Lord concluded with Israel,
Jerusalem will not continue in misery, but will attain to the
glory promised to the people of God ; — and that in such a way
that all boasting will be excluded, and Judah, with the deepest
shame, will attain to a knowledge of the true compassion of
God. — Yet, in order that all false confidence in the gracious
promises of God may be prevented, and the sinful nation be
thoroughly humbled, this last section of our word of God
announces the restoration of Sodom and Samaria as well as
that of Jerusalem, so that all boasting on the part of Israel is
precluded. — ^Ver. 53. And I will turn their captivity^ the cap-
tivity of Sodom and her daughters^ and the captivity of Samaria
and her daughters, and the captivity of thy captivity in the midst
of them : Ver. 54. That thou mayest bear thy shame, and he
ashamed of all that thou hast done, in comforting them. Ver. 55.
And thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, will return to their
first estate ; and Samatia and her daughters will return to their
first estate ; and thou and thy daughters will return to your first
estate. Ver. 56. And Sodom thy sister was not a discourse in
thy mouth in the day of thy haughtinesses, Ver. 57. Before thy
wickedness was disclosed, as at the time of the disgrace of the
daughters of Aram and all its surroundings, the daughters of the
Philistines, loho despised thee round about. Ver. 58. Thy wrong-
doing and all thy abominations, thou bearest them, is the saying
of Jehovah. Ver. 59. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, And I
do with thee as thou hast done, who hast despised oath to break
covenant. Ver. 60. And 1 shall remember my covenant with
thee in the days of thy youth, and shall establish an everlasting
EZEK. I. P
226 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
covenant with thee. Ver. 61. And thou wilt remember thy ways,
and be ashamed, when thou receivest thy sisters, those greater than
thou to those smaller than thou ; and I give them to thee for
daughters, although they are not of thy covenant. Ver. 62. And
I will establish my covenant with thee ; and thou wilt perceive that
I am Jehovah ; Ver. 63. Tliat thou mayest remember, and be
ashamed, and there may no longer remain to thee an opening of
the mouth because of thy disgrace, when I forgive thee all that
thou hast done, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — The promise
commences with an announcement of the restoration, not of
Jerusalem, but of Sodom and Samaria. The two kingdoms, or
peoples, upon which judgment first fell, shall also be the first
to receive mercy ; and it will not be till after then that Jeru-
salem, with the other cities of Judah, will also be restored to
favour, in order that she may bear her disgrace, and be ashamed
of her sins (ver. 54) ; that is to say, not because Sodom and
Samaria have borne their punishment for a longer time, but to
the deeper shaming, the more complete humiliation of Jeru-
salem. ril2B' 3^B', to turn the captivity, not " to bring back the
captives" (see the comm. on Deut. xxx. 3), is here used in a
figurative sense for restitutio in statum integritatis, according to
the explanation given of the expression in ver. 55. No carry-
ing away, or captivity, took place in the case of Sodom. The
form ^''2^, which the Chetib has adopted several times here,
has just the same meaning as WaC'. ^'.n''2B' n''3B' does not
mean the captives of thy captivity, since the same word cannot
be used first as a concrete and then as an abstract noun ; nor
does the combination serve to give greater emphasis, in the
sense of a superlative, — viz. " the captivity of thy captivities,
equivalent to thy severest or most fearful captivity," — as
Stark and Havernick suppose. The genitive must be taken as
explanatory, as already proposed by Hengstenberg and Kiie-
foth : " captivity, which is thy captivity ; " and the pleonastic
mode of expression is chosen to give greater prominence to the
thought, " thine own captivity," than would have been given to
CHAP. XVI. 53-63. 227
it by a suffix attached to the simple noun, njnaina, in their
midst, does not imply, that just as Judah was situated now in
the very midst between Sodom and Samaria, so its captives
would return home occupying the centre between those two
(Hitzig) ; the reference is rather to fellowship in captivity, to
the fact that Jerusalem would share the same fate, and endure
the same punishment, as Samaria and Sodom (Hengst., Klief.).
The concluding words of ver. 54, " in that thou comfortest
them," do not refer to the sins already committed by Israel (as
Kliefoth, who adopts the rendering, " didst comfort them,"
imagines), but to the bearing of such disgrace as makes Jeru-
salem ashamed of its sins. By bearing disgrace, i.e. by its
endurance of well-merited and disgraceful punishment, Jeru-
salem consoles her sisters Samaria and Sodom ; and that not
merely by fellowship in misfortune, — solamen miserisy etc.
(Oalvin, Hitzig, etc.), — but by the fact that from the punish-
ment endured by Jerusalem, both Samaria and Sodom can
discern the righteousness of the ways of God, and find therein
a foundation for their hope, that the righteous God will bring
to an end the merited punishment as soon as its object has
been attained (see the comm. on ch. xiv. 22, 23). The turning
of the captivity, according to ver. 55, will consist in the fact
that Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem return in?"jp?, to their
original state. 'I^lp does not mean the former or earlier state,
but the original state (co? •^(rav air ap^rji;, LXX.), as in Isa.
xxiii. 7. Kliefoth is wrong, however, in explaining this as
meaning : " as they were, when they came in Adam from the
creative hand of God." The original state is the status integri-
tatis, not as a state of sinlessness or original righteousness and
holiness, — for neither Jerusalem on the one hand, nor Samaria
and Sodom on the other, had ever been in such a state as this,
— but as an original state of glory, in which they were before
they had fallen and sunk into ungodly ways.
But how could a restoration of Sodom and her daughters
(Gomorrah, etc.) be predicted, when the destruction of these
228 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cities was accompanied by the sweeping away of all their in-
habitants from off the face of the earth? Many of the com-
mentators have attempted to remove the difficulty by assuming
that Sodom here stands for the Moabites and Ammonites, who
were descendants of Lot, who escaped from Sodom. But the
untenableness of such an explanation is obvious, from the
simple fact that the Ammonites and Moabites were no more
Sodomites than Lot himself. And the view expressed by
Origen and Jerome, and lately revived by Havernick, that
Sodom is a typical name denoting heathenism generally, is
also unsatisfactory. The way in which Sodom is classed with
Samaria and Jerusalem, and the special reference to the judg-
ment that fell upon Sodom (vers. 49, 50), point undeniably to
the real Sodom. The heathen world comes into consideration
only so far as this, that the pardon of a heathen city, so deeply
degraded as Sodom, carries with it the assurance that mercy
will be extended to all heathen nations. We must therefore
take the words as referring to the literal Sodom. Yet we cer-
tainly cannot for a moment think of any earthly restoration of
Sodom. For even if we could conceive of a restoration of the
cities that were destroyed by fire, and sunk into the depths of
the Dead Sea, it is impossible to form any conception of an
earthly and corporeal restoration of the inhabitants of those
cities, who were destroyed at the same time ; and in this con-
nection it is chiefly to them that the words refer. This does
not by any means prove that the thing itself is impossible, but
simply that the realization of the prophecy must be sought for
beyond the present order of things, in one that extends into the
life everlasting.
As ver. 55 elucidates the contents of ver. 53, so the thought
of ver. 54 is explained and still further expanded in vers. 56
and 57 The meaning of ver. 56a is a subject of dispute ; .but
so much is indisputable, that the attempt of Kliefoth to explain
vers. 56 and 57 as referring to the future, and signifying that
in the coming day of its glory Israel will no longer carry
CHAP. XVI. 53-63. 229
Sodom as a legend in its mouth as it does now, does violence to
the grammar, and is quite a mistake. It is no more allowable
to take nri''ri o as a future, in the sense of " and will not be,"
than to render riSin nj; iD? (ver. 57), " it will be like the time
of scorn." Moreover, the application of 'H!^'''? ^i''? to the day
of future glory is precluded by the fact that in ver. 49 the
word tiN3 is used to denote the pride which was the chief sin of
Sodom ; and the reference to this verse very naturally suggests
itself. The meaning of ver. 56 depends upon the rendering to
be given to njJlD^p. The explanation given by Eosenmiiller
and Maurer, after Jerome, — viz. non erat in auditione, i.e. non
audiehatur, thou didst not think at all of Sodom, didst not take
its name into thy mouth, — is by no means satisfactory. rij)!|»K''
means proclamation, discourse, and also report. If we adopt
the last, we must take the sentence as interrogatory Q/ch for
Ni7n)j as Hengsteuberg and Hitzig have done. Although this
is certainly admissible, there are no clear indexes here to
warrant our assumption of an interrogation, which is only
hinted at by the tone. We therefore prefer the meaning
" discourse : " thy sister Sodom was not a discourse in thy
mouth in the day of thy haughtinesses, that thou didst talk of
the fate of Sodom and lay it to heart when thou wast in pro-
sperity. The plural ^l^iNa is more emphatic than the singular.
The day of the haughtinesses is defined in ver. 57 as the
period before the wickedness of Judah had been disclosed.
This was effected by means of the judgment, which burst upon
Jerusalem on the part of Babylon. Through this judgment
Jerusalem is said to have been covered with disgrace, as at the
time when the daughters of Aram, i.e. the cities of Syria, and
those of the Philistines (Aram on the east, and the Philistines
on the west, Isa. ix. 11), scorned and maltreated it round
about. This refers primarily to the times of Ahaz, when the
Syrians and Philistines pressed hard upon Judah (2 Kings
XV. 37, xvi. 6; and 2 Chron. xxviii. 18, 19). It must not be
restricted to this, however ; but was repeated in the reign of
230 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Jehoiachin, when Jehovah sent troops of the Chaldaeans,
Aramaeans, Ammonites, and Moabites against him, to destroy
Judah (2 Kings xxiv. 2). It is true, the Philistines are not
mentioned here ; but from the threat in Ezek. xxv. 15, we may
infer that they also attempted at the same time to bring dis-
grace upon Judah. DNB* = DIB', according to Aramaean usage,
to treat contemptuously, or with repudiation (cf. ch. xxviii.
24, 26). Jerusalem will have to atone for this pride, and to
bear its wrong-doing and its abominations (ver. 58). For
zimmdh, see the comm. on ver. 43. The perfect D''nXB'J indi-
cates that the certainty of the punishment is just as great as
if it had already commenced. The reason assigned for this
thought in ver. 59 forms a transition to the further expansion
of the promise in vers. 60 sqq. n^b'yi (ver. 59) has been
correctly pointed by the Masoretes as the 1st person. The i is
copulative, and shows that what follows forms the concluding
summary of all that precedes. t]nis for 'HRN, as in vers. 60,
etc., to deal with any one. The construction of nbjf, with an
accusative of the person, to treat any one, cannot be sustained
either from ch. xvii. 17 and xxiii. 25, or from Jer. xsxiii. 9;
and Gesenius is wrong in assuming that we meet with it in
Isa. xlii. 16. — Despising the oath (H^^) points back to Dent,
xxix. 11, 12, where the renewal of the covenant concluded at
Sinai is described as an entrance into the covenant and oath
which the Lord then made with His people. — But even if
Israel has faithlessly broken the covenant, and must bear the
consequent punishment, the unfaithfulness of man can never
alter the faithfulness of God. This is the link of connection
between the resumption and further expansion of the promise
in ver. 60 and the closing words of ver. 59. The remembrance
of His covenant is mentioned in Lev. xxvi. 42 and 45 as the
only motive that will induce God to restore Israel to favour
again, when the humiliation effected by the endurance of
punishment has brought it to a confession of its sins. The
covenant which God concluded with Israel in the day of its
CHAP. SVI. 53-63. 231
youth, i.e. when He led it out of Egypt, He will establish as an
everlasting covenant. Consequently it is not an entirely new
covenant, but simply the perfecting of the old one for ever-
lasting duration. For the fact itself, compare Isa. Iv. 3, where
the making of the everlasting covenant is described as granting
the stedfast mercies of David, i.e. as the fulfilment of the pro-
mise given to David (2 Sam. vii.). This promise is called by
David himself an everlasting covenant which God had made
with him (2 Sam. xxiii. 5). And the assurance of its ever-
lasting duration was to be found in the fact that this covenant
did not rest upon the fulfilment of the law, but simply upon
the forgiving grace of God (compare ver. 63 with Jer. xxxi.
31-34). — The bestowal of this grace will put Israel in remem-
brance of its ways, and fill it with shame. In this sense iyi";3J1
(and thou shalt remember), in ver. 61, is placed side by side
with ''iif^at (I will remember) in ver. 60. This shame will seize
upon Israel when the establishment of an everlasting covenant
is followed by the greater and smaller nations being associated
with it in glory, and incorporated into it as children, though they
are not of its covenant. The greater and smaller sisters are
the greater and smaller nations, as members of the universal
family of man, who are to be exalted to the glory of one large
family of God. The restoration, which is promised in vers. 53
and 55 to Sodom and Samaria alone, is expanded here into a
prophecy of the reception of all the greater and smaller nations
into fellowship in the glory of the people of God. We may
see from this that Sodom and Samaria represent the heathen
nations generally, as standing outside the Old Testament dis-
pensation : Sodom representing those that were sunk in the
deepest moral degradation, and Samaria those that had fallen
from the state of grace. The attitude in which these nations
stand towards Israel in the everlasting covenant of grace, is
defined as the relation of daughters to a mother. If, therefore,
Israel, which has been thrust out among the heathen on account
of its deep fall, is not to return to its first estate till after the
232 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
return of Sodom, which has been destroyed, and Samaria,
which has been condemned, the election of Israel before all the
nations of the earth to be the first-born son of Jehovah will
continue unchanged, and Israel will form the stem of the new
kingdom of God, into which the heathen nations will be incor-
porated. The words, " and not of thy covenant," have been
taken by most of the commentators in the sense of, " not be-
cause thou hast kept the covenant ; " but this is certainly
incorrect. For even if "thy covenant" really formed an anti-
thesis to "my covenant" (vers. 60 and 62), " thy covenant "
could not possibly signify the fulfilment of thy covenant
obligations. The words belong to hdnoth (daughters), who are
thereby designated as extra-testamental, — i.e. as not included
in the covenant which God made with Israel, and consequently
as having no claim by virtue of that covenant to participate in
the glory of the everlasting covenant which is hereafter to be
established. — When this covenant has been established, Israel
will know that God is Jehovah, the unchangeably true (for the
meaning of the name Jehovah, see the commentary on Gen.
ii. 4) ; that it may call to mind, sc. both its sinful abominations
and the compassionate grace of God, and be so filled with
shame and penitence that it will no more venture to open its
mouth, either for the purpose of finding excuses for its previous
fall, or to murmur against God and His judgments, — uamely,
when the Lord forgives all its sins by establishing the ever-
lasting covenant, the kernel and essence of which consists in
the forgiveness of sins (cf. Jer. xxxi. 34). Thus will the ex-
perience of forgiving grace complete what judgment has already
begun, viz. the transformation of proud and haughty sinners
into meek and humble children of God, for whom the kin'^dom
has been prepared from the beginning.
This thought brings the entire prophecy to a close, — a pro-
pliecy which embraces the whole of the world's history and the
New Testament, the parallel to which is contained in the apostle's
words, " God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He
CHAP. XVI. 53-C3. 233
might have mercy upon all" (Eom. xi. 32). — As the punish-
ment threatened to the adulteress, i.e. to the nation of Israel
that had despised its God and King, had been fulfilled upon
Jerusalem and the Jews, and is in process of fulfilment still,
so has the promise also been already fulfilled, so far as its
commencement is concerned, though the complete and ultimate
fulfilment is only to be expected in time to come. The turning
of the captivity, both of Jerusalem and her daughters, and of
Samaria and her daughters, commenced with the establishment
of the everlasting covenant, i.e. of the covenant made through
Christ, and with the reception of the believing portion of Israel
in Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee (Acts viii. 5 sqq., 25, ix. 31).
And the turning of the captivity of Sodom commenced with
the spread of the gospel among the heathen, and their entrance
into the kingdom of Christ, inasmuch as Sodom with her
daughters represents the morally degraded heathen world.
Their reception into the kingdom of heaven, founded by Christ
on earth, forms the commencement of the return of the for-
given to their first estate on the " restitution of all things," i.e.
the restoration of all moral relations to their original normal
constitution (compare Acts iii. 21 and Meyer's comm. thereon
with Matt. xvii. 11), which will attain its perfection in the
■yraXiyyevea-La, the general restoration of the world to its origi-
nal glory (compare Matt. xix. 28 with Rom. viii. 18 sqq. and
2 Pet. iii. 13). The prophecy before us in ver. 55 clearly
points to this final goal. It is true that one might understand
the return of Jerusalem and Samaria to their original state,
which is predicted here as simply relating to the pardon of the
covenant nation, whose apostasy had led to the rejection of
both its parts ; and this pardon might be sought in its recep-
tion into the kingdom of Christ and its restoration as the people
of God. In that case the complete fulfilment of our prophecy
would take place during the present aeon in the spread of the
gospel among all nations, and the conversion of that portion of
Israel which still remained hardened after the entrance of the
234 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
full number of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. But
this limitation would be out of harmony with the equality of
position assigned to Sodom and her daughters on the one hand,
and Samaria and Jerusalem on the other. Though Sodom is
not merely a type of the heathen world, the restoration of
Sodom and her daughters cannot consist in the reception of the
descendants of the cities on which the judgment fell into the
kingdom of God or the Christian Church, since the peculiar man-
ner in which those cities were destroyed prevented the possibility
of any of the inhabitants remaining alive whose descendants
could be converted to Christ and blessed in Him during the
present period of the world. On the other hand, the opinion
expressed by C. a Lapide, that the restoration of Sodom is to be
referred and restricted to the conversion of the descendants of the
inhabitants of Zoar, which was spared for Lot's sake, when the
other cities of the plain were destroyed, is too much at variance
with the words of the passage to allow of our accepting such a
solution as this. The turning of the captivity of Sodom and
her daughters, i.e. the forgiveness of the inhabitants of Sodom
and the other cities of the plain, points beyond the present
aeon, and the realization can only take place on the great day
of the resurrection of the dead in the persons of the former
inhabitants of Sodom and the neighbouring cities. And in the
same way the restoration of Samaria and Jerusalem will not be
completely fulfilled till after the perfecting of the kingdom of
Christ in glory at the last day.
Consequently the prophecy before us goes beyond Kom.
xi. 25 sqq., inasmuch as it presents, not to the covenant nation
only, but, in Samaria and Sodom, to all the larger and smaller
heathen nations also, the prospect of being eventually received
into the everlasting kingdom of God ; although, in accordance
with the main purpose of this prophetic word, namely, to brinw
the pride of Israel completely down, this is simply hinted at,
and no precise intimation is given of the manner in which the
predicted apokatastasis will occur. But notwithstanding this
CHAP. XVI. 53-03. 235
indefiniteness, we must not explain away the fact itself by
arbitrary expositions, since it is placed beyond all possible doubt
by other passages of the Scriptures. The words of our Lord
in Matt. x. 15 and xi. 24, to the effect that it will be more
tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom than for Capernaum
and every other city that shall have rejected the preaching of
the gospel, teach most indisputably that the way of mercy
stands open still even for Sodom itself, and that the judgment
which has fallen upon it does not carry with it the final deci-
sion with regard to its inhabitants. For Sodom did not put
away the perfect revelation of mercy and salvation. If the
mighty works which were done in Capernaum had been done
in Sodom, it would have stood to the present day (Matt. xi. 23).
And from this it clearly follows that all the judgments which
fell before the time of Christ, instead of carrying with them
the final decision, and involving eternal damnation, leave the
possibility of eventual pardon open still. The last judgment,
which is decisive for eternity, does not take place till after the
full revelation of grace and truth in Christ. Not only will the
gospel be preached to all nations before the end comes (Matt,
xxiv. 14), but even to the dead ; to the spirits in prison, who did
not believe at the time of Noah, it has been already preached,
at the time when Christ went to them in spirit, in order that,
although judged according to man's way in the flesh, they
might live according to God's way in the spirit (1 Pet. iii. 19,
iv. 6). What the apostle teaches in the first of these passages
concerning the unbelievers before the flood, and affirms in the
second concerning the dead in general, is equally applicable
according to our prophecy to the Sodomites who were judged
after man's way in the flesh, and indeed generally to all heathen
nations who either lived before Christ or departed from this
earthly life without having heard the gospel preached. — It is
according to these distinct utterances of the New Testament
that the prophecy before us respecting the apokatastasis of
Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem is to be interpreted ; and this
236 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
is not to be confounded with the heretical doctrine of the
restoration, i.e. the uhimate salvation of all the ungodly, and
even of the devil himself. If the preaching of the gospel pre-
cedes the last judgment, the final sentence in the judgment
will be regulated by the attitude assumed towards the gospel
by both the living and the dead. All souls that obstinately
reject it and harden themselves in unbelief, will be given up to
everlasting damnation. The reason why the conversion of
Sodom and Samaria is not expressly mentioned, is to be found
in the general tendency of the promise, in which the simple
fact is announced without the intermediate circumstances, for
the purpose of humbling Jerusalem. The conversion of Jeru-
salem also is not definitely stated to be the condition of pardon,
but this is assumed as well known from the words of Lev. xsvi.,
and is simply implied in the repeated assertion that Jerusalem
will be seized with the deepest shame on account of the pardon
which she receives.
CHAP. XVII. HUMILIATION AND EXALTATION OF THE
DAVIDIC FAMILY.
The contents of this chapter are introduced as a riddle and a
parable, and are divided into three sections. Vers. 1-10 con-
tain the parable ; vers. 11-21, the interpretation and application
of it to King Zedekiah ; and vers. 22-24, the promise of the
Messianic kingdom.
Vers. 1-10. The Parable. — Ver. 1. And the word of JeJiovah
came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, give a riddle, and relate
a parable to the house of Israel; Ver. 3. And say. Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, A great eagle, with great icings and long pinions,
full of feathers of variegated colours, came to Lebanon and took
the top of the cedar : Ver. 4. He plucked off the topmost of its
shoots, and brought it into Canaan's land ; in a merchant-city he
set it. Ver. 5. And he took of the seed of the land, and put it
into seed-land ; took it away to many waters, set it as a willow.
CHAP. XVII. 1-10. 237
Ver. 6. And it grew, and became an overhanging vine of low
stature., that its branches might turn towards him, and its roots
might be under him ; and it became a vine, and produced shoots,
and sent out foliage, Ver. 7. There was another great eagle with
great wings and many feathers ; and, behold, this vine stretched
its roots languishingly towards him, and extended its branches
toioards him, that he might water it from the beds of its planting.
Ver. 8. It was planted in a good field by many waters, to send
out roots and bear fruit, to become a glorious vine. Ver. 9. Say,
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Will it thrive ? ivill they not pull
up its roots, and cut off its fruit, so that it wilhereth ? all the
fresh leaves of its sprouting will wither, and not with strong arm
and with much -people will it be possible to raise it up from its
roots. Ver. 10. And, behold, although it is planted, will it
thrive ? will it not wither when the east loind touches it ? upon
the beds hi which it grevj it will wither.
The parable (mdshdl, corresponding exactly to the New
Testament irapa^oXrj) is called cMdhdh, a riddle, because of the
deeper meaning lying beneath the parabolic shell. The sym-
bolism of this parable has been traced by many commentators
to Babylonian influences working upon the prophet's mind ; but
without any tenable ground. The figure of the eagle, or bird
of prey, applied to a conqueror making a rapid descent upon a
country, has as little in it of a specifically Babylonian character
as the comparison of the royal family to a cedar or a vine.
Not only is Nebuchadnezzar compared to an eagle in Jer.
xlviii. 40, xlix. 22, as Cyrus is to a bird of prey in Isa.
xlvi. 11 ; but even Moses has described the paternal watchful-
ness of God over His own people as bearing them upon eagle's
wings (Ex. xix. 4; Deut. xxxii. 11). The cedar of Lebanon
and the vine are genuine Israelitish figures. The great eagle
in ver. 3 is the great King Nebuchadnezzar (compare ver. 12)
The article is simply used to indicate the species, for which we
should use the indefinite article. In ver. 7, instead of the
article, we have in^J in the sense of " another." This first
238 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
eagle has large wings and long pinions ; he has already flown
victoriously over wide-spread countries, i^^pi.ii v'lB'N, literally,
which is to liiin the variegated ornament, i.e. which he has
as such an ornament. The feathers of variegated ornamental
colours point to the many peoples, differing in language,
manners, and customs, which were united under the sceptre of
Nebuchadnezzar (Hitzig, etc.) ; not to the wealth and splendour
of the conqueror, as such an allusion is altogether remote from
the tendency of the parable. He came to Lebanon. This is
not a symbol of the Israelitish land, or of the kingdom of
Judah ; but, as in Jer. xxii. 23, of Jerusalem, or Mount Zion,
with its royal palace so rich in cedar wood (see the comm. on
Hab. ii. 17 and Zech. xi. 1), as being the place where the cedar
was planted (compare the remarks on ver. 12). The cedar is
the royal house of David, and the top of it is King Jehoiachin.
The word tzammereth is only met with in Ezekiel, and there
only for the top of a cedar (compare ch. xxxi. 3 sqq,). The
primary meaning is doubtful. Some derive it from the curly,
or, as it were, woolly top of the older cedars, in which the small
twigs that constitute their foliage are only found at the top of
the tree. Others suppose it to be connected with the Arabic
^, to conceal, and understand it as an epithet applied to the
foliage, as the veil or covering of the tree. In ver. 4, tzammereth
is explained to be Vnip'j-i K'N-i, the topmost of its shoots. This
the eagle plucked off and carried tW3 n>«"^^?, an epithet applied
to Babylonia here and in ch. xvi. 29. as being a land whose
trading spirit had turned it into a Canaan. This is evident
from the parallel D"'^3t ■rv^ city of traders, i.e. Babylon (com-
pare ver. 12). The seed of the land, according to ver. 13, is
King Zedekiah, because he was of the land, the native king,
in contrast to a foreign, Babylonian governor, n;?, for nj^S,
after the analogy of Dnj? in Hos. xi. 3, and pointed with Kametz
to distinguish it from the imperative. ^N n\h is used as in
Num. xxiii. 27. The air. \ey. nsvss signifies, in Arabic and the
Talmud, the willow, probably so called because it grows in well.
CHAP. XVII. i-io. 239
watered places ; acGorcling to Gesenius, it is derived from fpi,
to overflow, literally, the inundated tree. This meaning is per-
fectly appropriate here. " He set it as a willow " means ha
treated it as one, inasmuch as he took it to many waters, set it
in a well-watered soil, i.e. in a suitable place. The cutting
grew into an overhanging vine, i.e. to a vine spreading out its
branches in all directions, though not growing very high, as
the following expression HDip npDB' more clearly shows. The
object of this growth was, that its branches might turn to him
(the eagle), and its roots might be under him (the eagle).
The suffixes attached to V^K and vnnn refer to IB'X This
allusion is required not only by the explanation in ver. 14
(? vers. 14, 15), but also by ver. 7, where the roots and
branches of the vine stretch to the (other) eagle. In ver. 6&,
what has already been affirmed concerning the growth is briefly
summed up again. Tlie form nnss is peculiar to Ezekiel.
Isaiah has !Tisa = rTlXB in eh. x. 33. The word signifies branch
and foliage, or a branch covered with foliage, as the ornament
of a tree. — The other eagle mentioned in ver. 7 is the king of
Egypt, according to ver. 15. He had also large wings and
many feathers, i.e. a widely spread and powerful kingdom ;
but there is nothing said about pinions and variegated colours,
for Pharaoh had not spread out his kingdom over many coun-
tries and peoples, or subjugated a variegated medley of peoples
and tribes. 1S3, as a verb o-tt. Xey., signifies to yearn or pine
after a thing; in Chaldee, to hunger. nipE'npj that he (the
eagle-Pharaoh) might give it to drink, or water it. The words
nytSD riiJnj(D are not connected with T\)pfrh, but with nrhsf and
nsjia, from the beds of its planting, i.e. in which it was planted ;
it stretched out roots and branches to the other eagle, that he
might give it to drink. The interpretation is given in ver.
15. The words HniK nipOT?, which are added by way of ex-
planation, do not interrupt the train of thought ; nor are they
superfluous, as Hitzig supposes, because the vine had water
enough already (vers. 5 and 8). For this is precisely what the
240 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
passage is intended to show, namely, that there was no occasion
for this pining and stretching out of the branches towards the
other eagle, inasmuch as it could thrive very well in the place
where it was planted. The latter is expressly stated once more
in ver. 8, the meaning of which is perfectly clear, — namely,
that if Zedekiah had remained quiet under Nebuchadnezzar, as
a hanging vine, his government might have continued and
prospered. But, asks Ezekiel in the name of the Lord, will
it prosper ? n^Vri is a question, and the third person, neuter
gender. This question is answered in the negative by the
following question, which is introduced with an affirmative fivn.
The subject to pn^. and DDip'. is not the first eagle (Nebuchad-
nezzar), but the indefinite " one " (man, they). In the last
clause of ver. 9 rii>?U'D is a substantive formation, used instead
of the simple form of the infinitive, after the form N'B'D in
2 Chron. xix. 7, with the termination ni, borrowed from the verb
n'b (compare Ewald, § IQOb and 239a), and the construction is
the same as in Amos vi. 10: it will not be to raise up = it
will not be possible to raise it up (compare Ges. § 132,
3, Anm. 1). To raise it up from its root does not mean to tear
it up by the root (Havernick), but to rear the withered vine
from its roots again, to cause it to sprout again. This rendering
of the words corresponds to the interpretation given in ver. 17.
— In ver. 10 the leading thought is repeated with emphasis,
and rounded off. The east wind is peculiarly dangerous to plants
on account of its dryness (compare Gen. xli. 6, and Wetstein on
Job xxvii. 21 in Delitzsch's Commentary) ; and it is used very
appropriately here, as the Chaldeans came from the east.
Vers. 11-21. Interpretation of the riddle. — Ver. 11. And
the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 12. Say to the
refractory race : Do ye not know what this is ? Say, Behold,
the king of Babel came to Jerusalem, and took its king and its
princes, and brought them io himself to Babel. Ver. 13. And
he took of the royal seed, and made a covenant with him, and
caused him to enter into an oath ; and he took the strong ones
CHAP. XVII. 11-21. 241
of the land : Ver. 14. TJiat it might be a lowly kingdom, not
to lift itself up, that he might keep his covenant, that it might
stand. Ver. 15. But he rebelled against him by sending his
messengers to Egypt, that it might give him horses and much
people. Will he prosper ? will he that hath done this escape ?
He has broken the covenant, and should he escape? Ver. 16.
As I live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, surely in the plact
of the king, who made him king, ivhose oath he despised, and whose
covenant he broke with him, in Babel he will die. Ver. 17. And
not with great army and much people will Pharaoh act with him
in the war, lohen they cast up a rampart and build siege-towers, to
cut off many souls. Ver. 18. lie has despised an oath to break
the covenant, and, behold, he has given his hand and done all this ;
he will not escape. Ver. 19. Therefore thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, As I live, surely my oath which he has despised, and
my covenant which he has broken, I loill give upon his head.
Ver. 20. / will spread out my net over him, so that he will be
taken in my snare, and will bring him to Babel, and contend with
him there on account of his treachery which he has been guilty of
towards me. Ver. 21. And all his fugitives in all his regiments,
by the sword will they fall, and those who remain will be scattered
to all winds ; and ye shall see that I Jehovah have spoken it.
In vers. 12-17 the parable in vers. 2-10 is interpreted ; and
in vers. 19—21 the threat contained in the parable is confirmed
and still further expanded. We have an account of the carry-
ing away of the king, i.e. Jehoiacliin, and his princes to Babel
in 2 Kings xxiv. 11 sqq., Jer. xxiv. 1, and xxix. 2. The king's
seed (r^^-hm in, ver. 13, as in Jer. xli. 1 = TlbBn jn.r, 1 Kings
xi. 14) is Jehoiachin's uncle Mattaniah, whom Nebuchadnezzar
made king under the name of Zedekiah (2 Kings xxiv. 17),
and from whom he took an oath of fealty (2 Chron. xxxvi. 13).
The strong of the land ('•^''N = "i^W, 2 Kings xxiv. 15), whom
Nebuchadnezzar took {npb), i.e. took away to Babel, are not
the heads of tribes and families (2 Kings xxiv. 15) ; but the
expression is used in a wide sense for the several classes of
EZEK. I. Q
242 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
men of wealth, who are grouped together in 2 Kings xxiv. 14
under the one term ijin niarb {h]n -t^JS, 2 Kings xxiv. 16),
including masons, smiths, and carpenters (2 Kings xxiv. 14 and
16), whereas the heads of tribes and families are classed with
the court officials (D''P''"?D, 2 Kings xxiv. 15) under the title
nna' (princes) in ver. 12. The design of these measures was
to make a lowly kingdom, which could not raise itself, i.e.
could not revolt, and to deprive the vassal king of the means
of breaking the covenant. The suffix attached to i^^^Vr
is probably to be taken as referring to '^^^^^ rather than
"n""!!!, although both are admissible, and would yield precisely
the same sense, inasmuch as the stability of the kingdom was
dependent upon the stability of the covenant. But Zedekiah
rebelled (2 Kings xxiv. 20). The Egyptian king who was to
give Zedekiah horses and much people, in other words, to come
to his assistance with a powerful army of cavalry and fighting
men, was Hophrah, the Apries of the Greeks, according to
Jer. xliv. 30 (see the comm. on 2 Kings xxiv. 19, 20). nps^n
points back to npxn in ver. 9 ; but here it is applied to the
rebellious king, and is explained in the clause "lil t^ps^n. The
answer is given in ver. 16 as a word of God confirmed by a
solemn oath : he shall die in Babel, the capital of the king,
who placed him on the throne, and Pharaoh will not render
him any effectual help (ver. 17). inis T\^}}, as in ch. xv. 59, to
act with him, that is to say, assist him, come to his help, inix
refers to Zedekiah, not to Pharaoh, as Ewald assumes in an
inexplicable manner. For 'li1 Tupo 'ilDB', compare ch. iv. 2 ; and
for the fact itself, Jer. xxxiv. 21, 22, and xxxvii. 5, according
to which, although an Egyptian army came to the rescue of
Jerusalem at the time when it was besieged by the Chal-
deans, it was repulsed by the Chaldeans who marched to meet
it, without having rendered any permanent assistance to the
besieged. — In ver. 18, the main thought that breach of faith
can bring no deliverance is repeated for the sake of appending
the further expansion contained in vers. 19-21. iT jna he
CHAP. XVII. 11-21, 243
gave his hand, i.e. as a pledge of fidelity. The oath which
Zedekiah swore to the king of Babel is designated in ver. 19
as Jehovah's oath C'^PK), and the covenant made witli him as
Jehovah's covenant, because the oath had been sworn by
Jehovah, and the covenant of fidelity towards Nebuchadnezzar
had thereby been made implicite with Jehovah Himself ; so
that the breaking of the oath and covenant became a breach of
faith towards Jehovah. Consequently the very same expres-
sions are used in vers. 16, 18, and 19, to designate this breach
of oath, which are applied in eh. xvi. 59 to the treacherous
apostasy of Jerusalem (Israel) from Jehovah, the covenant
God. And the same expressions are used to describe the
punishment as in eh. xii. 13, 14. WK tiSK'J is construed with
the accusative of the thing respecting which he was to be
judged, as in 1 Sam. xii. 7. Jehovah regards the treacherous
revolt from Nebuchadnezzar as treachery against Himself
Q3. P5!D) ; not only because Zedekiah had sworn the oath of
fidelity by Jehovah, but also from the fact that Jehovah had
delivered np His people and kingdom into the power of
Nebuchadnezzar, so that revolt from him really became re-
bellion against God. HX before imaD"73 is nota accus., and
is used in the sense of quod adtinet ad, as, for example, in
2 Kings vi. 5. ''CI!?'?, his fugitives, is rendered both by the
Chaldee and Syriac "his brave men," or "heroes," and is
therefore identified with 1"^!7?? (his chosen ones), which is the
reading in some manuscripts. But neither these renderings
nor the parallel passage in ch. xii. 14, where vnia^aD apparently
corresponds to it, will warrant our adopting this explanation, or
making any alteration in the text. The Greek versions have
Trao-as (pvyaBeia<; avrou ; Theodoret : eV •jrdcrai,^ rah ^vyaBeiai<}
ai/TOv ; the Vulgate : omnes profugi ejus ; and therefore they all
had the reading im3D, which also yields a very suitable meaning.
The mention of some who remain, and who are to be scattered
toward all the winds, is not at variance with the statement that all
the fugitives in the wings of the army are to fall by the sword.
244 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
The latter threat simply declares that no one will escape death
by flight. But there is no necessity to take those who remain
as being simply fighting men ; and the word " all " must not
be taken too literally.
Vers. 22-24. The planting of the true twig of the stem of
David. — Ver. 22. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, And T will
take from the top of the high cedar, and will set it ; from the
topmost of its shoots will I pluck off a tender one, and will
plant it upon a high and exalted mountain. Ver. 23. On the
high mountain of Israel will I plant it, and it will put forth
branches, and bear fruit, and become a splendid cedar, so that
all the birds of every plumage will dwell under it. In the
shade of its branches will they dwell. Ver. 24. And all the
trees of the field will learn that I Jehovah have lowered the
lofty tree, lifted up the low tree, made the green tree wither,
and the withered tree become green. I Jehovah have said it, and
have done it. — Although the sprout of David, whom Nebuchad-
nezzar had made king, would lose the sovereignty because of
his breach of faith, and bring about the destruction of the
kingdom of Jndah, the Lord would not let His kingdom be
destroyed, but would fulfil the promise which He had given to
the seed of David. The announcement of this fulfilment takes
its form from the preceding parable. As Nebuchadnezzar
broke off a twig from the top of the cedar and brought it to
Babel (ver. 13), so will Jehovah Himself also pluck off a shoot
from the top of the high cedar, and plant it upon a high moun-
tain. The Vav before ''JJinp? is the Vav consec, and ''P^ is
appended to the verb for the sake of emphasis ; but in antithesis
to the acting of the eagle, as described in ver. 3, it is placed
after it. The cedar, which it designated by the epithet rdmdh,
as rising above the other trees, is the royal house of David, and
the tender shoot which Jehovah breaks off and plants is not
the Messianic kingdom or sovereignty, so that Zerubbabel could
be included, but the Messiah Himself as " a distinct historical
personage" (Havernick). The predicate ^1, tender, refers to
CHAP. XVII. 22-24. 245
Him ; also the word ??)\ a sprout (Isa. liii. 2), which indicates
not so much the 3-outhful age of the Messiah (Hitzig) as
the lowliness of His origin (compare Isa. xi. 1, liii, 2) ; and
even when applied to David and Solomon, in 2 Sam. iii. 39,
1 Chron. xxii. 5, xxix. 1, expresses not their youthfulness,
but their want of strength for the proper administration of
such a government. The high mountain, described in ver. 23
as the high mountain of Israel, is Zion, regarded as the seat
and centre of the kingdom of God, which is to be exalted by
the Messiah above all the mountains of the earth (Isa. ii. 2,
etc.). The twig planted by the Lord will grow there into a
glorious cedar, under which all birds will dwell. The Messiah
grows into a cedar in the kingdom founded by Him, in which
all the inhabitants of the earth will find both food (from the
fruits of the tree) and protection (under its shadow). For this
figure, compare Dan. iv. 8, 9. ^J?'''^ ""is^, birds of every kind
of plumage (cf. ch. xxxix. 4, 17), is derived from Gen. vii.
14, where birds of every kind find shelter in Noah's ark.
The allusion is to men from every kind of people and tribe.
By this will all the trees of the field learn that God lowers the
lofty and lifts up the lowly. As the cedar represents the royal
house of David, the trees of the field can only be the other
kings or royal families of the earth, not the nations outside
the limits of the covenant. At the same time, the nations are
not to be entirely excluded because the figure of the cedars
embraces the idea of the kingdom, so that the trees of the field
denote the kingdoms of the earth together with their kings.
The clauses, " I bring down the high tree," contain a purely
general thought, as in 1 Sam. ii. 7, 8, and the perfects are not
to be taken as preterites, but as statements of practical truths.
It is true that the thought of the royal house of David in its
pre\'ious greatness naturally suggests itself in connection with
the high and green tree, and that of Jehoiachin in connection
with the dry tree (compare Jer. xxii. 30) ; and these are not to
be absolutely set aside. At the same time, the omission of the
246 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
article from nba YV and the objects which follow, is sufficient
to show that the words are not to be restricted to these parti-
cular persons, but are applicable to every high and green, or
withered and lowly tree ; i.e. not merely to kings alone, but to
all men in common, and furnish a parallel to 1 Sam. ii. 4-9,
"The bows of the mighty men 'are broken; and they that
stumbled are girded with strength," etc.
CHAP. XVIII. THE KETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE OF GOD.
In the word of God contained in this chapter, the delusion
that God visits the sins of fathers upon innocent children is
overthrown, and the truth is clearly set forth that every man
bears the guilt and punishment of his own sins (vers. 1-4).
The righteous lives through his righteousness (vers. 5-9), but
cannot save his wicked son thereby (vers. 10-13) ; whilst the
son who avoids the sins and wickedness of his father, will live
through his own righteousness (vers. 14-20). The man who
repents and avoids sin is not even charged with his own sin ;
and, on the other hand, the man who forsakes the way of
righteousness, and gives himself up to unrighteousness, will not
be protected from death even by his own former righteousness
(vers. 21-29). Thus will God judge every man according to
his way ; and it is only by repentance that Israel itself can live
(vers. 30-32). The exposition of these truths is closely con-
nected with the substance and design of the preceding and
following prophecies. In the earlier words of God, Ezekiel
had taken from rebellious Israel every support of false con-
fidence in the preservation of the kingdom from destruction.
But as an impenitent sinner, even when he can no longer
evade the punishment of his sins, endeavours as much as
possible to transfer the guilt from himself to others, and com-
forts himself with the thought that he has to suffer for sins that
others have committed, and hardens himself ai^ainst the chas-
tisement of God through such false consolation as this ; so even
CHAP. XVIII. 1-4. 247
among the people of Israel, when the divine judgments burst
upon them, the delusion arose that the existing generation had
to suffer for the fathers' sins. If, then, the judgment were ever
to bear the fruit of Israel's conversion and renovation, which
God designed, the impenitent generation must be deprived even
of this pretext for covering over its sins and quieting its con-
science, by the demonstration of the justice which characterized
the government of God in His kingdom.
Vers. 1-4. The proverb and the word of God. — Ver. 1.
And the word of Jeliovali came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Why
do you use this proverb in the land of Israel, saying. Fathers
eat sour grapes, and the sons teeth are set on edge. Ver. 3.
As I live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, this proverb shall
not he used any more in Israel. Ver. 4. Behold, all souls
are mine; as the father's soul, so also the soul of the son, —
they are mine ; the soul which sinneth, it shall die. — On ver. 2a
compare ch. xii. 22. D3?"nD, what is to you, what are you
thinking of, that . . . ? is a question of amazement, nioi^'pyj
in the land of Israel (ch. xii. 22), not " concerning the land of
Israel," as Havernick assumes. The proverb was not, " The
fathers have eaten sour grapes," for we have not v3Xj as in
Jer. xxxi. 29, but l^^', they eat, are accustomed to eat, and
niSK has no article, because it applies to all who eat sour grapes.
Bosgr, unripe, sour grapes, like hesgr in Job xvi. 33 (see the
conim. in loc). The meaning of the proverb is self-evident.
The sour grapes which the fathers eat are the sins which they
commit ; the setting of the children's teeth on edge is the con-
sequence thereof, i.e. the suffering which the children have to
endure. The same proverb is quoted in Jer. xxxi. 29, 30, and
there also it is condemned as an error. The origin of such a
proverb is easily to be accounted for from the inclination of th^
natural man to transfer to others the guilt which has brought
suffering upon himself, more especially as the law teaches that
the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children (Ex. xx. 5),
and the prophets announce that the Lord would put away
248 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Judah from before His face on account of the sins of Manasseh
(2 Kings xxiv. 3; Jer. xv. 4), while Jeremiah complains in
Lam. V. 7 that the people are bearing the fathers' sins. Never-
theless the proverb contained a most dangerous and fatal error,
for which the teaching of the law concerning the visitation of
the sins of the fathers, etc., was not accountable, and which
Jeremiah, who expressly mentions the doctrine of the law (Jer.
xxxii. 18), condemns as strongly as Ezekiel. God will visit
the sins of the fathers upon the children who hate Him, and
who also walk in the footsteps of their fathers' sins ; but to
those who love Him, and keep His commandments, He will
show mercy to the thousandth generation. The proverb, on
the other hand, teaches that the children would have to atone
for their fathers' sins without any culpability of their own.
How remote such a perversion of the truth as to the trans-
mission of sins and their consequences, viz. their punishment,
was from the law of Moses, is evident from the express com-
mand in Dent. xxiv. 16, that the children were not to be put
to death with the fathers for the sins which the latter had
committed, but that every one was to die for his own sin.
What God here enjoins upon the judicial authorities must
apply to the infliction of His own judgments. Consequently
what Ezekiel says in the following verses in opposition to the
delusion, which this proverb helped to spread abroad, is simply
a commentary upon the words, "everyone shall die for his own
sin," and not a correction of the law, which is the interpretation
that many have put upon these prophetic utterances of Jeremiah
and Ezekiel. In ver. 3, the Lord declares with an oath that
this proverb shall not be used any more. The apodosis to
'm njn; DS, which is not expressed, would be an imprecation, so
that the oath contains a solemn prohibition. God will take
care that this proverb shall not be used any more in Israel, not
so much by the fact that He will not give them any further
occasion to make use of it, as by the way in which He will
convince them, through the judgments which He sends, of the
CHAP. XVIII. 1-4. 249
justice of His ways. The following is Calvin's admirable
paraphrase : " I will soon deprive you of this boasting of yours ;
for your iniquity shall be made manifest, so that all the world
may see that you are but enduring just punishment, which you
yourselves have deserved, and that you cannot cast it upon
your fathers, as you have hitherto attempted to do." At the
same time, this only gives one side ; we must also add the other,
which is brought out so prominently in Jer. xxxi. 29 sqq.,
namely, that after the judgment God will manifest His grace
so gloriously in the forgiveness of sins, that those who are for-
given will fully recognise the justice of the judgments inflicted.
Experience of the love and compassion of the Lord, manifesting
itself in the forgiveness of sin, bows down the heart so deeply
that the pardoned sinner has no longer any doubt of the justice
of the judgments of God. "In Israel" is added, to show that
such a proverb is opposed to the dignity of Israel. In ver. 4,
the reason assigned for the declaration thus solemnly confirmed
by an oath commences with a general thought which contains
the thesis for further discussion. All souls are mine, the soul of
the father as well as that of the son, saith the Lord. In these
words, as Calvin has well said, " God does not merely vindicate
His government or His authority, but shows that He is moved
with paternal affection toward the whole of the human race
which He created and formed." There is no necessity for God
to punish the one for the other, the son for the father, say
because of the possibility that the guilty person might evade
Him ; and as the Father of all, He cannot treat the one in a
different manner from the other, but can only punish the one
by whom punishment has been deserved. The soul that
sinneth shall die. ^^}J] is used here, as in many other passages,
for " man," and niD is equivalent to suffering death as a punish-
ment. " Death " is used to denote the complete destruction
with which transgressors are threatened by the law, as in Deut.
XXX. 15 (compare Jer. xxi. 8 ; Prov. xi. 10). This sentence is
explained in the verses which follow (vers. 5-20).
250 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Vers. 5-9. The righteous man shall not die. — Ver. 5. If
a man is righteous, and doeili right and righteousness, Ver. 6.
And doth not eat upon the mountains, and doth not lift up his
eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, and doth not defile his
neighbour's wife, and doth not approach his wife in her unclean-
ness, Ver. 7. Oppresseth no one, restoreth his security (lit. debt-
pledge), committeth no rohhery, giveth his bread to the hungry,
and covereth the naked leith clothes, Ver. 8. Doth not give vpon
usury, and taheth not interest, withholdeth his hand from, wrong,
executeth judgment of truth between one and another, Ver. 9.
Walketh in my statutes, and heepeth my rights to execute truth ; he
is righteous, he shall live, is the saying of the Lord " Jehovah."
— The exposition of the assertion, that God only punishes the
sinner, not the innocent, commences with a picture of the
righteousness which has the promise of life. The righteous-
ness consists in the fulfilment of the commandments of the
law : viz. (1) those relating to religious duties, such as the
avoidance of idolatry, whetlier of the grosser kind, such as
eating upon the mountains, i.e. observing sacrificial festivals,
and therefore sacrificing to idols (cf. Deut. xii. 2 sqq.), or of a
more refined description, e.g. lifting up the eyes to idols, to
look to them, or make them the object of trust, and offer sup-
plication to them (cf. Ps. cxxi. 1 ; Deut. iv. 19), as Israel had
done, and was doing still (cf. ch. vi. 13); and (2) those relating
to moral obligations, such as the avoidance of adultery (com-
pare Ex. XX. 14 ; Lev. xx. 10 ; Deut. xxii. 22 ; and for NBtp,
Gen. xxxiv. 5), and of conjugal intercourse with a wife durino-
menstruation, which was a defilement of the marriage relation
(cf. Lev. xviii. 19, xx. 18). All these sius were forbidden in
the law on pain of death. To these there are appended duties
to a neighbour (vers. 7 sqq.), viz. to abstain from oppressing
any one (Ex. xxii. 28 ; Lev. xxv. 14, 17), to restore the pledge
to a debtor (Ex. xxii. 25 ; Deut. xxiv. 6, 10 sqq.). nin is
hardly to be taken in any other sense than as in apposition to
^n^hn, "his pledge, which is debt," equivalent to his debt-pledge
CHAP. xvin. 10-13. 251
or security, like nm ^'s-n in ch. xvi. 27. The supposition of
Hitzig, that nin is a participle, like Dip in 2 Kings xvi. 7, in the
sense of debtor, is a far less natural one, and has no valid
support in the free rendering of the LXX., ive^xypacyfibv
o^eiXovTOi. The further duties are to avoid taking unlawful
possession of the property of another (cf. Lev. v. 23) ; to feed
the hungry, clothe the naked (cf. Isa. Iviii. 5 ; Matt. xxv. 26;
Jas. ii. 15, 16) ; to abstain from practising usury (Deut.
xxiii. 20 ; cf. Ex. xxii. 24) and taking interest (Lev. xxv. 36,
37) ; in judicial sentences, to draw back the hand from wrong,
and promote judgment of truth, — a sentence in accordance with
the true nature of the case (see the coram, on Zech. vii. 9) ;
and, lastly, to walk in the statutes and rights of the Lord, — an
expression which embraces, in conclusion, all that is essential to
the righteousness required by the law. — This definition of the
idea of true righteousness, which preserves from death and
destruction, and ensures life to the possessor, is followed in
vers. 10 sqq. by a discussion of the attitude which God sustains
towards the sons.
Vers. 10-13. The righteousness of the father does not
protect the wicked, unrighteous son from death. — Ver. 10.
If, however, he begetteih a violent son, who sheddeth blood, and
doeth only one of these things, Ver. 11. Bat he himself hath
not done all this, — if he even eateth upon the mountains, and
defileth his neighbour's wife, Ver. 12. Oppresseth the suffering
and poor, committeth robbery, doth not restoj'e a pledge, lifteth up
his eyes to idols, committeth abomination, Ver. 13. Giveth upon
usury, and taketh interest : should he live f He shall not live !
He hath done all these abominations ; he shall be put to death ; his
blood shall be upon him. — The subject to Ivini, in ver. 10, is the
righteous man described in the preceding verses. r"!|, violent,
literally, breaking in or through, is rendered more emphatic by
the words " shedding blood " (cf. Hos. iv. 2). "We regard nx
in the next clause as simply a dialectically different form of
writing and pronouncing, for ^f?, " only," and he doeth only
252 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
one of these, the sins previously mentioned (vers. 6 sqq.). inSD,
with a partitive \1?, as in Lev. iv. 2, where it is used in a similar
connection ; the form insD is also met with in Deut. xv. 7.
The explanation given by the Targum, " and doeth one of these
to his brother," is neither warranted by the language nor com-
mended by the sense. Hb'^ is never construed with the accusa-
tive of the person to whom anything is done ; and the limitation
of the words to sins against a brother is unsuitable in this
connection. The next clause, nby i6 . . . NWi, which has also
been variously rendered, we regard as an adversative circum-
stantial clause, and agree with Kliefoth in referring it to the
begetter (father) : " and he (the father) has not committed
any of these sins." For it yields no intelligible sense to refer
tliis clause also to the son, since '1?S?"''3 cannot possibly refer to
different things from the preceding n?S», and a man cannot at
the same time both do and not do the same thing. The ''3
which follows signifies " if," as is frequently the case in the
enumeration of particular precepts or cases; compare, for
example, Ex. xxi. 1, 7, 17, etc., where it is construed with the
imperfect, because the allusion is to things that may occur.
Here, on the contrary, it is followed by the perfect, because the
sins enumerated are regarded as committed. The emphatic D3
(even) forms an antithesis to inSD ^^^! (il^), or rather an epanor-
thosis of it, inasmuch as D? ''3 resumes and carries out still
further the description of the conduct of the wicked son, which
was interrupted by the circumstantial clause; and that not
only in a different form, but with a gradation in the thought.
The thought, for instance, is as follows : the violent son of a
righteous father, even if he has committed only one of the sins
which the father has not committed, shall die. And if he has
committed even the gross sins named, viz. idolatry, adultery,
violent oppression of the poor, robbery, etc., should he then
continue to live ? The ) in ''nj introduces the apodosis, which
contains a question, that is simply indicated by the tone, and is
immediately denied. The antique form ''n for n^n, 3d pers.
CHAP. XVIII. 14-20. 253
perf., is taken from the Pentateuch (cf. Gen, iil. 22 and Num.
xxi. 8). The formulae n»V ni» and 13 VOT are also derived
from the language of the law (cf. Lev. xx. 9, 11, 13, etc.).
Vers. 14-20. The son who avoids his father's sin will live ;
but the father will die for his own sins. — Ver. 14. And
hekold, he begettetk a son, who seeth all his father's sins which
he doeth ; he seeth them, and doeth not such things. Ver. 15.
Se eateth not upon the mountains, and lifteth not up his eyes to
the idols of the house of Israel; he defileth not his neighbour's
wife, Ver. 16. And oppresseth no one; he doth not withhold a
pledge, and committeth not robbery ; giveth his bread to the hungry,
and covereth the naked with clothes. Ver. 17. He holdeth back
his hand from the distressed one, taketh not usury and interest,
doeth my rights, walketh in my statutes ; he will not die for the sin
of his father ; he shall live. Ver. 18. His father, because he
hath practised oppression, committed robbery upon his brother,
and hath done that which is not good in the midst of his people ;
behold, he shall die for his sin. Ver. 19. And do ye say. Why
doth the son not help to bear the father's sin ? But the son hath
done right and righteousness, hath kept all my statutes, and done
them; he shall live. Ver. 20. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die, A son shall not help to bear the father's sin, and a father
shall not help to bear the sin of the son. The righteousness
of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness cf the
wicked shall be upon him. — The case supposed in these verses
forms the antithesis to the preceding one ; the father is
the transgressor in this instance, and the son a keeper of
the law. The subject to Tpin in ver. 14 is not the righteous
man described in ver. 15, but a man who is described imme-
diately afterwards as a transgressor of the commandments of
God. The Chetib KiM in the last clause of ver. 14 is not to be
read N"i*!!, kcu ^o^Tjdfj, et timuerit, as it has been by the transla-
tors of the Septuagint and Vulgate ; nor is it to be altered into
nKn»1, as it has been by the Masoretes, to make it accord with
ver. 28 ; but it is the apocopated form K"j!3, as in the preceding
254
THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
clause, and the object is to be repeated from what precedes, as
in the similar case which we find in Ex. xx. 15 (18). Ewald
and Hitzig propose to alter 'JVD in ver. 17 into ^JW? after ver. 8,
but without the slightest necessity. The LXX. are not to be
taken as an authority for this, since the Chaldee and Syriac
have both read and rendered '^V ; and Ezekiel, when repeating
the same sentences, is accustomed to make variations in par-
ticular words. Holding back the hand from the distressed, is
equivalent to abstaining from seizing upon him for the purpose
of crushing him (compare ver. 12) ; VBV i]in3, in the midst of
his countrymen =iBj; Tjina, is adopted from the language of the
Pentateuch, n? after nsn is a participle. The question, " Why
does the son not help to bear ? " is not a direct objection on the
part of the people, but is to be taken as a pretext, which the
people might offer on the ground of the law, that God would
visit the sin of the fathers upon the sons in justification of their
proverb. Ezekiel cites this pretext for the purpose of meetinc
it by stating the reason why this does not occur. 3 NB>:, to
carry, near or with, to join in carrying, or help to carry (cf.
Num. xi. 17). This proved the proverb to be false, and con-
firmed the assertion made in ver. ib, to which the address
therefore returns (ver. 20). The righteousness of the righteous
man will come upon him, i.e. upon the righteous man, namely,
in its consequences. The righteous man will receive the bless-
ing of righteousness, but the unrighteous man the curse of his
wickedness. There is no necessity for the article, which the
Keri proposes to insert before y»"i.
Vers. 21-26. Turning to good leads to life ; turning to evil
is followed by death.— Ver. 21. But if the wicked man turneth
from all Ms sins loliich he hath committed, and keepeth all my
statutes, and doeth right and righteousness, he shall lice, and not
die. Ver. 22. All his transgressions which he hath committed,
shall not be remembered to him : for the sake of the righteousness
ichich he hath done he will live. Ver. 23. Have I then pleasure
in the death of the wicked'^ is the saying of Jehovah: and not
CHAP. XVIII, 21-26. 255
rather that he turn from his ways^ and live ? Ver. 24. But if
the righteous man turn from his righteousness, and doeth wicked-
nesSj and acteth according to all the abominations which the
ungodly man hath done, should he live? All the righteousness that
he hath done shall not be remembered : for his unfaithfulness that
he hath committed, and for his sin that he hath sinned, for these
he shall die. Ver. 25. And ye say, " Tlie way of the Lord is not
right" Hear now, house of Israel : Is my way not right ? Is
it not your ways that are not right ? Ver. 26. i/ a righteous
man turneth from his righteousness, and doeth wickedness, and
dieth in consequence, he dieth for his wickedness that he hath done.
— The proof that every one must bear his sin did not contain
an exhaustive reply to the question, in what relaition the right-
eousness of God stood to the sin of men ? For the cases sup-
posed in vers. 5—20 took for granted that there was a constant
persistence in the course once taken, and overlooked the in-
stances, which are by no means rare, when a man's course of
life is entirely changed. It still remained, therefore, to take
notice of such cases as these, and they are handled in vers.
21-26. The ungodly man, who repents and turns, shall live ;
and the righteous man, who turns to the way of sin, shall die.
"As the righteous man, who was formerly a sinner, is not
crushed down by his past sins ; so the sinner, who was once a
righteous man, is not supported by his early righteousness.
Every one will be judged in that state in which he is found"
(Jerome). The motive for the pardon of the repenting sinner
is given in ver. 23, in the declaration that God has no pleasure
in the death of the wicked man, but desires his conversion, that
he may live. God is therefore not only just, but merciful and
gracious, and punishes none with death but those who either
will not desist from evil, or will not persevere in the way of
His commandments. Consequently the complaint, that the
way of the Lord, i.e. His conduct toward men, is not weighed
(I3?!> see comm. on 1 Sam. ii. 3), i.e. not just and right, is
altogether unfounded, and recoils upon those who make it. It
256 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
is not God's ways, but the sinner's, that are wrong (ver. 25).
The proof of this, which Hitzig overlooks, is contained in the
declarations made in vers. 23 and 26, — viz. in the fact that God
does not desire the death of the sinner, and in His mercy for-
gives the penitent all his former sins, and does not lay them to
his charge; and also in the fact that He punishes the man who
turns from the way of righteousness and gives himself up to
wickedness, on account of the sin which he commits ; so that
He simply judges him according to his deeds. — In ver. 24, HB'id
is the continuation of the infinitive 3^, and ''nj is interrogatory,
as in ver. 13.
Vers. 27-32. The vindication of the ways of God might
have formed a' fitting close to this divine oracle. But as the
prophet was not merely concerned with the correction of the
error contained in the proverb which was current among the
people, but still more with the rescue of the people themselves
from destruction, he follows up the refutation with another
earnest call to repentance. — Ver. 27. If a wicked man turneth
from his wickedness which he hath done, and doeth right and
righteousness, lie will keep his soul alive. Ver. 28. If he seeth
and turneth from all his transgressions which he hath committed,
he shall live and not die. Ver. 29. And the house of Israel
saith, The way of the Lord is not right. Are my ways not tight,
house of Israeli Is it not rather your ways that are not
right"? Ver. 30. Tlierefore, every one according to his ways,
will I judge you, house of Israel, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Turn and repent of all your transgressions, that it
may not become to you a stumbling-hlock, to guilt. Ver. 31.
Cast from you all your transgressions which ye have committed,
and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! And
why will ye die, house of Israel? Ver. 32, For 1 have
no pleasure in the death of the dying, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah. Therefore repent, that ye may live.— For the
purpose of securing an entrance into their hearts for the call
to repentance, the prophet not only repeats, in vers. 27
CHAP. XVIII. 27-32. 257
and 28, the truth declared in vers. 21 and 22, that he who
turns from his sin finds life, but refutes once more in ver. 29,
as he has already done in ver. 25, the charge that God's ways
are not right. The fact that the singular ]^l^\ is connected
with the plural SJ^?"!!, does not warrant our altering the plural
into D??"!'!?, but may be explained in a very simple manner, by
assuming that the ways of the people are all summed up in
one, and that the meaning is this : what you say of my way
applies to your own ways, — namely, " it is not right ; there is
just measure therein." 15^, " therefore, etc. ; " because my way,
and not yours, is right, I will judge you, every one according
to his way. Repent, therefore, if ye would escape from death
and destruction. ^2^^ is rendered more emphatic by 1^''?'^, sc.
D3\3Ei, as in ch. xiv. 6. In the last clause of ver. 30, PP is not
to be taken as the subject of the sentence according to the
accents, but is a genitive dependent upon ?itJ'3^, as in ch.
vii. 19 and xiv. 3 ; and the subject is to be found in the
preceding clause : that it (the sinning) may not become to you
a stumbling-block of iniquity, Le. a stumbling-block through
which ye fall into guilt and punishment. — The appeal in ver.
31 points back to the promise in ch. xi. 18, 19. T?f'}, to cast
away. The application of this word to transgressions may be
explained from the fact that they consisted for the most part of
idols and idolatrous images, which they had made. — " Make'
yourselves a new heart and a new spirit : " a man cannot,
indeed, create either of these by his own power ; God alone
can give them (ch. xi. 19). But a man both can and should
come to God to receive them : in other words, he can turn to
God, and let both heart and spirit be renewed by the Spirit of
God. And this God is willing to do ; for He has no pleasure
non niD3, in the death of the dying one. In the repetition of
the assurance given in ver. 23, nan is very appropriately substi-
tuted for Vfl, to indicate to the people that while in sin they
are lying in death, and that it is only by conversion and
renewal that they can recover life again.
EZEK I E
258 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
CHAP, XIX, LAMENTATION FOR THE PRINCES OF ISRAEL.
Israel, the lioness, brought up young lions in the midst of
lions. But when they showed their leonine nature, they were;
taken captive by the nations and led away, one to Egypt, the.-
other to Babylon (vers. 1-9). The mother herself, once a vine
planted by the water with vigorous branches, is torn from the
soil, so that her strong tendrils wither, and is transplanted into
a dry land. Fire, emanating from a rod of the branches, has
devoured the fruit of the vine, so that not a cane is left to form
a ruler's sceptre (vers. 10-14). — This lamentation, which
bewails the overthrow of the royal house and the banishment
of Israel into exile, forms a finale to the preceding prophecies
of the overthrow of Judah, and was well adapted to annihilate
every hope that things might not come to the worst after all.
Vers. 1-9. Capture and Exile of the Princes. —
Ver. 1. And do thou raise a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
Ver. 2. And say, Why did thy mother, a lioness, lie doicn among
lionesses ; bring up her whelps among young lions ? Ver. 3.
A nd she brought up one of her whelps : it became a young lion,
and he learned to take prey; he devoured man. Ver. 4. And
nations heard of him. ; he was caught in their pit, and they
brought him with nose-rings into Hie land of Egypt. Ver. 5.
And when she saw that her hope was exhausted, overthrown, she
took one of her whelps, made it a young lion. Ver. 6, And lie
walked among lionesses, he became a young lion, and learned to
take prey. Be devoured man. Ver. 7. Me knew its widows,
and laid waste their cities ; and the land and its fulness became
waste, at the voice of his roaring. Ver. 8. Then nations round
about from the provinces set up against him, and spread over him
their net: he was caught in their pit. Ver, 9. And they put him.
in the cage with nose-rings, and brought him to the king of
Babylon: brought him into a fortress, that his voice might not be
heard any more on the mountains of Israel.
CHAP. XIX. 1-9. 259
The princes of Israel, to whom the lamentation applies, are
the kings ('*''B'3, as in ch. xii. 10), two of whom are so clearly-
pointed out in vers. 4 and 9, that there is no mistaking
Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin. This fact alone is sufficient to protect
the plural ''^^B'3 against the arbitrary alteration into the singular
N^B'J, proposed by Houbigant and Hitzig, after the reading of
the LXX. The lamentation is not addressed to one particular
prince, either Zedekiah (Hitzig) or Jehoiachin (Eos., Maurer),
but to Israel as a nation ; and the mother (ver. 2) is the
national community, the theocracy, out of which the kings
were born, as is indisputably evident from ver. 10. The words
from ^BX no to nsaT form one sentence. It yields no good
sense to separate 1135< rio from fi-??"3, whether we adopt the
rendering, " what is thy mother ? " or take no with N»3? and
render it, "how is thy mother a lioness?" unless, indeed, we
supply the arbitrary clause " now, in comparison with what she
was before," or change the interrogative into a preterite : " how
has thy mother become a lioness ? " The lionesses, among
which Israel lay down, are the other kingdoms, the Gentile
nations. The words have no connection with Gen. xlix. 9,
where Judah is depicted as a warlike lion. The figure is a
different one here. It is not so much the strength and courage
of the lion as its wildness and ferocity that are the points of
resemblance in the passage before us. The mother brings up
her young ones among young lions, so that they learn to take
prey and devour men. "iw is the lion's whelp, catulus ; "i^BS,
the young lion, which is old enough to go out in search of
prey. -"Vni is a Hiphil, in the tropical sense, to cause to spring
up, or grow up, i.e. to bring up. The thought is the following:
Why has Israel entered into fellowship with the heathen
nations? Why, then, has it put itself upon a level with the
heathen nations, and adopted the rapacious and tyrannical
nature of the powers of the world ? The question " why
then ? " when taken with what follows, involves the reproof
that Israel has struck out a course opposed to its divine calling,
260 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and will now have to taste the bitter fruits of this assumption
of heathen ways. The heathen nations have taken captive its
king, and led him away into heathen lands. V^X ivaf'., they
heard of him (V^« for V^y). The fate of Jehoahaz, to which
ver. 4 refers, is related in 2 Kings xsiii. 31 sqq. — Vers. 5-7
refer to Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, and not to Zedekiah,
as Hitzig imagines. For the fact that Jehoiachin went out of
his own accord to the king of Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 12), is
not at variance with the figure contained in ver. 8, according to
which he was taken (as a lion) in a net. He simply gave him-
self up to the king of Babylon because he was unable to escape
from the besieged city. Moreover, Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin
are simply mentioned as examples, because they both fell into
the hands of the world-powers, and their fate showed clearly
enough " what the end must inevitably be, when Israelitish
kings became ambitious of being lions, like the kings of the
nations of the world " (Kliefoth). Jehoiakim was not so suit-
able an example as the others, because he died in Jerusalem.
npnijj which has been explained in different ways, we agree
with Ewald in regarding as the Niphal of ^n' =r b^n, in the
sense of feeling vexed, being exhausted or deceived, like the
Syriac ^^jLto], viribus defecit, desperavit. For even in Gen.
viii. 12, bm simply means to wait; and this is inapplicable
here, as waiting is not equivalent to waiting in vain. The
change from ^^n to i"]^ is established by Judg. iii. 25, where b^n
or b'n occurs in the sense of bn\ In ver. 7, the fi<7urative
language passes into a literal description of the ungodly course
pursued by the king. He knew, i.e. dishonoured, its (Israel's,
the nation's) widows. The Targum reads yn^ here instead of
jn^l, and renders it accordingly, " he destroyed its palaces ; " and
Ewald has adopted the same rendering. But jjyi, to break or
smash in pieces, e.g. a vessel (Ps. ii. 9), is never used for the
destruction of buildings; and niJO^^X does not mean palaces
(ni:D-ix), but windows. There is nothing in the use of the
CHAP. XIX. 10-14. 261
word in Isa. xiii. 22 to support the meaning " palaces," because
the palaces are simply called 'almdnoth (widows) there, with a
sarcastic side glance at their desolate and widowed condition.
Other conjectures are still more inadmissible. The thought is
as follows : Jehoiachin went much further than Jehoahaz.
He not only devoured men, but laid hands on defenceless
widows, and laid the cities waste to such an extent that the
land with its inhabitants became perfectly desolate through his
rapacity. The description is no doubt equally applicable to his
father Jehoiakim, in whose footsteps Jehoiachin walked, since
Jehoiakim is described in Jer. xxii. 13 sqq. as a grievous
despot and tyrant. In ver. 8 the object DPiK'n also belongs to
isn', : they set up and spread out their net. The plural nhSD
is used in a general and indefinite manner : in lofty castles,
mountain-fortresses, i.e. in one of them (cf. Judg. xii. 7).
Vers. 10-14. Destkuction of the Kingdom, and Banish-
ment OF THE People. — Ver. 10. Thy mother was like a vine,
planted hy the water in thy repose; it became fruitful and rich
in tendrils from many waters. Ver. 11. And it had strong
shoots for rulers' sceptres ; and its growth ascended among the
clouds, and was visible in its height in the multitude of its
branches. Ver. 12. Then it was torn up in fury, cast to the
ground, and the east wind dried up its fruit ; its strong shoots
ivere broken off, and withered; fire devoured them. Ver. 13.
And now it is planted in the desert, in a dry and thirsty land.
Ver. 14. There goeth out fire from the shoot of its branches,
devoureth its fruit, so that there is no more a strong shoot
upon it, a sceptre for ruling. — A lamentation it is, and it
will be for lamentation. — From the lamentable fate of the
princes transported to Egypt and Babylon, the ode passes
to a description of the fate, which the lion-like rapacity of
the princes is preparing for the kingdom and people. Israel
resembled a vine planted by the water. The difficult word
'ip'ia we agree with Havernick and Kliefoth in tracing to the
262 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
verb nOT, to rest (Jer. xiv. 17), and regard it as synonymous
with ''O'la in Isa. xxxviii. 10 : " in thy repose," i.e. in the time
of peaceful, undisturbed prosperity. For neither of the other
renderings, "in thy blood" and "in thy likeness," yields a
suitable meaning. The latter explanation, which originated
with Raschi and Kimchi, is precluded by the fact that Ezekiel
always uses the word Tfxn to express the idea of resemblance.
— For the figure of the vine, compare Ps. Ixxx. 9 sqq. This
vine sent out strong shoots for rulers' sceptres ; that is to say,
it brought forth powerful kings, and grew up to a great height,
even into the clouds. D^nbjJ signifies " clouds," lit. thicket of
clouds, not only here, but in ch. xxxi. 3, 10, 14. The render-
ing " branches " or " thicket of foliage " is not suitable in any
of these passages. The form of the word is not to be taken as
that of a new plural of niav^ the plural of sy, which occurs in
2 Sam. xxiii. 4 and Ps. Ixxvii. 18 ; but is the plural of riiay, an
interlacing or thicket of foliage, and is simply transferred to
the interlacing or piling up of the clouds. The clause 'Ul N^.^l,
and it appeared, was seen, or became visible, simply serves to
depict still further the glorious and vigorous growth, and needs
no such alteration as Hitzig proposes. This picture is followed
in ver. 12 sqq., without any particle of transition, by a descrip-
tion of the destruction of this vine. It was torn up in fury by
the wrath of God, cast down to the ground, so that its fruit
withered (compare the similar figures in ch. xvii. 10). W ntSD
is used collectively, as equivalent to T'y nitSD (ver. 11); and the
suffix in wriP3« is written in the singular on account of this
collective use of ntsD. The uprooting ends in the transplanting
of the vine into a waste, dry, unwatered land, — in other words,
in the transplanting of the people, Israel, into exile. The dry
land is Babylon, so described as being a barren soil in which
the kingdom of God could not flourish. According to ver. 14,
this catastrophe is occasioned by the princes. The fire, which
devours the fruit of the vine so that it cannot send out any
more branches, emanates n^l.? ntsep, from the shoot of its
CHAP. XX. 263
branches, i.e. from its branches, which are so prolific in shoots.
riED is the shoot which grew into rulers' sceptres, i.e. the royal
family of the nation. The reference is to Zedekiah, whose
treacherous breach of covenant (ch. xvii. 15) led to the over-
throw of the kingdom and of the earthly monarchy. The
picture from ver. 12 onwards is prophetic. The tearing up of
the vine, and its transplantation into a dry land, had already
commenced with the carrying away of Jeconiah ; but it was
not completed till the destruction of Jerusalem and the carry-
ing away of Zedekiah, which were still in the future at the
time when these words were uttered. — The clause 'W1 N'n nrp
does not contain a concluding historical notice, as Havernick
supposes, but simply the finale of the lamentation, indicating
the credibility of the prediction which it contains. ^7Jjll is
prophetic, like the perfects from tJ'nni in ver. 12 onwards ; and
the meaning is this : A lamentation forms the substance of the
whole chapter; and it will lead to lamentation, when it is
fulfilled.
CHAP. XX. THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF ISRAEL.
The date given in ch. xx. 1 applies not only to ch. xx., but
also to ch. xx.-xxiii. (compare ch. xxiv. 1) ; the prophetic
utterances in these four chapters being bound together into a
group of connected words of God, both by their contents and
by the threefold repetition of the expression, " wilt thou judge ?"
{vid. ch. XX. 4, xxii. 2, and xxiii. 36). The formula tilBK'nn,
which is only omitted from the threat of punishment contained
in ch. xxi., indicates at the same time both the nature and
design of these words of God. The prophet is to judge, i.e. to
hold up before, the people once more their sinful abominations,
and to predict the consequent punishment. The circumstance
which occasioned this is narrated in ch. xx. 1-3. Men of the
elders of Israel came to the prophet to inquire of the Lord.
The occasion is therefore a similar one to that described in the
264 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
previous group ; for we have already been informed, in
ch. siv. 1, that elders had come to the prophet to hear God's
word from him; but they had not gone so far as to inquire.
Here, however (ch. xx.), they evidently address a question to
the prophet, and through him to the Lord ; though the nature
of their inquiry is not given, and can only be gathered from
the answer, which was given to them by the Lord through the
prophet. The ground for the following words of God is there-
fore essentially the same as for those contained in ch. xiv.— xix. ;
and this serves to explain the relation in which the two groups
stand to each other, namely, that ch. xx.-xxiv. simply contain
a further expansion of the reproachful and threatening ad-
dresses of ch. xiv.— xix.
In ch. XX. the prophet points out to the elders, in the form of
a historical survey, how rebellions Israel had been towards the
Lord from the very first, even in Egypt (vers. 5-9) and the
desert (vers. 10-17 and 18-26), both the older and later
generations, how they had sinned against the Lord their God
through their idolatry, and how it was only for His own name's
sake that the Lord had not destroyed them in His anger
(vers. 27-31). And as Israel hath not given up idolatry even
in Canaan, the Lord would not suffer Himself to be inquired
of by the idolatrous generation, but would refine it by severe
judgments among the nations (vers. 32-38), and sanctify it
thereby into a people well-pleasing to Him, and would then
gather it again out of the dispersion, and bring it into the land
promised to the fathers, where it would serve Him with sacri-
fices and gifts upon His holy mountain (vers. 39-44). This
word of God is therefore a more literal repetition of the
allegorical description contained in ch. xvi.
Vers. 1-4. Date, occasion, and theme of the discourse which
follows.— Ver. 1. And it came to pass in the seventh year, in
the fifth (moon), on the tenth of the moon, there came men
of the elders of Israel, to inquire of Jehovah, and sat down
before me. Ver. 2. Then the word of Jehovah came to me.
CHAP. XX 1-4. 265
saying, Ver. 3. Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and
say to them. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Have ye come to
inquire of me? As Hive, if I suffer myself to be inquired of
by you, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 4. Wilt
thou judge them ? Wilt thou judge, son of man ? Make
known the abominations of their fathers to them. — If we com-
pare the date given in ver. 1 with ch. viii. 1, we shall find
that this word of God was uttered only eleven months and five
days after the one in chap. viii. ; two years, one month, and
five days after the call of Ezekiel to be a prophet (ch. i. 2) ;
and two years and five months before the blockading of Jeru-
salem by the Chaldeans (ch. xxiv. 1). Consequently it falls
almost in the middle of the first section of Ezekiel's prophetic
work, nin^ ns tJn'Hj to seek Jehovah, i.e. to ask a revelation
from Him. The Lord's answer in ver. 3 is similar to that
in ch. xiv. 3. Instead of giving a revelation concerning the
future, especially with regard to the speedy termination of the
penal sufferings, which the elders had, no doubt, come to solicit,
the prophet is to judge them, i.e. as the following clause
explains, not only in the passage before us, but also in cb. xxii. 3
and xxiii. 36, to hold up before them the sins and abominations
of Israel. It is in anticipation of the following picture of the
apostasy of the nation from time immemorial that the sins of
the fathers are mentioned here. "No reply is given to the
sinners, but chiding for their sins ; and He adds the oath, ' as I
live,' that the sentence of refusal may be all the stronger"
(Jerome). The question DisE'nn, which is repeated with
emotion, " gives expression to an impatient wish, that the thing
could have been done already " (Hitzig). The interrogative
form of address is therefore adopted simply as a more earnest
mode of giving expression to the command to go and do the
thing. Hence the literal explanation of the word t3^S|'nn is
also appended in the form of an imperative (DJ/'lin). — The
prophet is to revert to the. sins of the fathers, not merely for
the purpose of exhibiting the magnitude of the people's guilt.
266 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
but also to hold up before the sinners themselves, the patience
and long-suffering which have hitherto been displayed by the
Lord.
Vers. 5-9. Election of Israel in Egypt. Its resistance to
the commandments of God. — Ver. 5. And say to them, Tims
saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day that I chose Israel, and lifted
my hand to the seed of Jacob, and made myself known to them
in the land of Egypt, and lifted my hand to them, saying, I
am Jehovah, your God: Ver. 6. In that day I lifted my
hand to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into
the land which I sought out for them, luhich floioeth with milk
and honey — it is an ornament of all lands : Ver. 7. And said
to them. Cast aioay every man the abominations of his eyes, and
do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am Jehovah,
your God. Ver. 8. But they were rebellious against me, and
would not hearken to me. Not one of them threw aioay the abo -
minations of his eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt-
Tlien 1 thought to pour out my wrath upon them, to accomplish
my anger upon them, in the midst of the land of Egypt. Ver. 9.
Bat I did it for my namis sake, that it might not he pro-
faned before the eyes of the nations, in the midst of which
they were, before whose eyes I had made myself known to
them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. — Vers. 5 and 6
form one period, ''"ina Di'3 (ver. 5) is resumed in Ninn DV3
(ver. 6), and the sentence continued. With ^'^^\ the constrnc-
tion with the infinitive passes over into the finite verb. Lift-
ing the hand, sc. to heaven, is a gesture employed in taking an
oath (see the comm. on Ex. vi. 8). The substance of the oath
is introduced by the word "ii2N? at the close of ver. 5 ; but the
clause '121 J'lJNI (and made myself known) is previously inserted,
and then the lifting of the hand mentioned again to indicate
the importance of this act of divine grace. The contents of
vers. 5 and 6 rest upon Ex, vi. 2 sqq., where the Lord makes
Himself known to Moses, and through him to the children of
Israel, according to the nature involved in the name Jehovah,
CHAF. XX. 5-9. 267
in which He had not yet revealed Himself to the patriarchs
(Ex. vi. 3). Both ''T >r\iim (I lifted my hand) and nin; '3S are
taken from Ex. vi. 8. The word ''fiin, from l^in, to seek out,
explore, also belongs to the Pentateuch (compare Deut. i. 33) ,
and the same may be said of the description given of Canaan
as " a land flowing with milk and honey" (vid. Ex. iii. 8, etc.).
But ''3y, ornament, as an epithet applied to the land of Israel,
is first employed by the prophets of the time of the captivity —
namely, in vers. 6 and 15 of this chapter, in Jer. iii. 19, and
in Dan. viii. 9, xi. 16, 41. The election of the Israelites to be
the people of Jehovah, contained eo ipso the command to give
up the idols of Egypt, although it was at Sinai that the worship
of other gods was for the first time expressly prohibited (Ex.
XX. 3), and Egyptian idolatry is only mentioned in Lev. xvii. 7
(cf. Josh. xxiv. 14). Ezekiel calls the idols " abominations of
their eyes," because, " although they were abominable and
execrable things, they were looked upon with delight by them "
(Rosenmiiller). It is true that there is nothing expressly stated
in the Pentateuch as to the refusal of the Israelites to obey
the command of God, or their unwillingness to give up idolatry
in Egypt; but it may be inferred from the statements con-
tained in Ex. vi. 9 and 12, to the effect that the Israelites did
not hearken to Moses when he communicated to them the
determination of God to lead them out of Egypt, and still
more plainly from their relapse into Egyptian idolatry, from
the worship of the golden calf at Sinai (Ex. xxxii.), and from
their repeated desire to return to Egypt while wandering in
the desert.^ Nor is there anything said in the Pentateuch
concerning the determination of God to pour out His wrath
' The remarks of Calvin upon this point are very good. "We do not
learn directly from Moses," he says, " that they had been rebels against
God, because they would not throw away their idols and superstitions; but
the conjecture is a very probable one, that they had always been so firmly
fixed in their abominations as to prevent in a certain way the hand of God
from bringing them relief. And assuredly, if they had embraced what
Moses promised them in the name of God with promptness of mind, the
268 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEEIEL.
upon the idolatrous people in Egypt. We need not indeed
assume on this account that Ezekiel derived his information
from some special traditional source, as Vitringa has done
Observv. ss. I. 263), or regard the statement as a revelation
made by God to Ezekiel, and through him to us. The words
do not disclose to us either a particular fact or a definite decree
of God ; they simply contain a description of the attitude which
God, from His inmost nature, assumes towards sinners who rebel
against His holy commandments, and which He displayed both
in the declaration made concerning Himself as a zealous, or
jealous God, who visits iniquities (Ex. xx. 5), and also in the
words addressed to Moses when the people fell into idolatry at
Sinai, " Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against
them, and that I may consume them" (Ex. xxxii. 10). All
that God expresses here. His heart must have felt in Egypt
towards the people who would not desist from idolatry. For
the words themselves, compare eh. vii. 8, vi. 12, v. 13. ^i}]
(ver. 9), " but I did it for my name's sake." The missing
object explaining what He did, namely, abstain from pouring
out His wrath, is to be gathered from what follows : " that I
might not profane my name." This would have taken place if
God had destroyed Israel by pouring out His wrath ; in other
words, have allowed them to be destroyed by the Egyptians.
The heathen might then have said that Jehovah had been unable
to liberate His people from their hand and power (cf. Num.
xiv. 16 and Ex. xxxii. 12). ?nn is an in/in. Niphal of TPn for
?nn (cf. Lev. xxi. 4).
Vers. 10-17. Behaviour of Israel in the desert. — Ver. 10.
And I led them out of the land of Egypt^ and brought them
execution o£ the promise would have been more prompt and swift. But
we may learn that it was their own obtnseness which hindered God from
stretching out His hand forthwith and actually fulfilling all that He had
promised It was necessary, indeed, that God should contend with Pharaoh,
that His power might be more conspicuously displayed; but the people
would not have been so tyrannically afflicted if they had not closed the
door of divine mercy."
CHAP. XX. 10-17. 269
into tlie desert; Ver. 11. And gave them my statutes, and my
rights I made known to them, which man is to do that he may
live through them. Ver. 12. / also gave them my Sabbaths, that
they might be for a sign between me and them, that they might
know that I Jehovah sanctify them. Ver. 13. But the house of
Israel was rebellious against me in the desert : they did not walk
in my statutes, and my rights they rejected, which man is to
do, that he may live through them, and my Sabbaths they greatly
profaned: Then 1 thought to pour out my wrath upon them, in
the desert to destroy them. Ver. 14. But I did it for my
name's sake, that it might not be profaned before the eyes of the
nations, before whose eyes T had led them out. Ver. 15. I also
lifted my hand to them in the desert, not to bring them into the
land which I had given (them), which jloweth with milk and honey ;
it is an ornament of all lands, Ver. 16. Because they rejected
my rights, did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my Sabbaths,
for their heart went after their idols. Ver. 17. But my eye
looked with pity upon them, so that I did not destroy them, and
make an end of them in the desert. — God gave laws at Sinai to
the people whom He had brought out of Egypt, through which
they were to be sanctified as His own people, that they might
live before God. On ver. 11 compare Deut. xxx. 16 and 19.
Ver. 12 is taken almost word for word from Ex. xxxi. 13, where
God concludes the directions for His worship by urging upon
the people in the most solemn manner tlie observance of His
Sabbaths, and thereby pronounces the keeping of the Sabbath
the kernel of all divine worship. And as in that passage we
are to understand by the Sabbaths the actual weekly Sabbaths,
and not the institutions of worship as a whole, so here we must
retain the literal signification of the word. It is only of the
Sabbath recurring every week, and not of all the fasts, that it
could be said it was a sign between Jehovah and Israel. It
was a sign, not as a token, that they who observed it were
Israelites, as Hitzig supposes, but to know (that they might
know) that Jehovah was sanctifying them, namely, by the
270 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Sabbath rest — as a refreshing and elevation of the mind, in
which Israel was to have a foretaste of that blessed resting
from all works to which the people of God was ultimately to
attain (see the comm. on Ex. xx. 11). It is from this deeper
signification of the Sabbath that the prominence given to the
Sabbaths here is to be explained, and not from the outward
circumstance that in exile, when the sacrificial worship was
necessarily suspended, the keeping of the Sabbath was the only
bond which united the Israelites, so far as the worship of God
was concerned (Hitzig). Historical examples of the rebellion
of Israel against the commandments of God inthe desert are
given in Ex. xxxii. 1-6 and Num. xxv. 1-3; and of the dese-
cration of the Sabbath, in Ex. xvi. 27 and Num. xv. 32. For
the threat referred to in ver. 136, compare Ex. xxxii. 10 ; Num.
xiv. 11, 12. — Vers. 15 and 16 are not a repetition of ver. 13
(Hitzig) ; nor do they introduce a limitation of ver. 14 (KHefoth).
They simply relate what else God did to put bounds to the
rebellion after He had revoked the decree to cut Israel off, at
the intercession of Moses (Num. xiv. 11—19). He lifted His
hand to the oath (Num. xiv. 21 sqq.), that the generation
which had come out of Egypt should not come into the land of
Canaan, but should die in the wilderness. Therewith He
looked with pity upon the people, so that He did not make an
end of them by following up the threat with a promise that
the children should enter the land. n?D nb*!?, as in ch. xi. 13.
Vers. 18-26. The generation that grew up in the desert. —
Ver. 18. And I spake to their sons in the desert, Walk not in
the statutes of your fathers, and keep not their rights, and do not
defile yourselves loith their idols. Ver. 19. / am Jehovah your
God ; walk in my statutes, and keep my rights, and do them,
Ver. 20. And sanctify my Sabbaths, that they may be for a sign
between me and you, that ye may know that I am Jehovah your
God. Ver. 21. But the sons were rebellious against me; they
walked not in my statutes, and did 7iot keep my rights, to do them,
which man should do that he may live through them; they pro-
CHAP. XX 18-26. 271
faned my Sabbaths. Tlien I thougJit to pour out my wrath upon
them, to accomplish my anger upon them in the desert. Ver. 22.
But I turned back my hand and did it for my name's sake, that it
might not be profaned before the eyes of the nations, before whose
eyes I had them out. Ver. 23. / also lifted my hand to them in
the desert, to scatter them among the nations, and to disperse them
in the lands ; Ver. 24. Because they did not my rights, and
despised my statutes, profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were
after the idols of their fathers. Ver. 25. And I also gave them
statutes, which were not good, and rights, through which they did not
live ; Ver. 26. And defiled them in their sacrificial gifts, in that
they caused all that openeth the womb to pass through, that I might
fill them with horror, that they might know that I am Jehovah. —
The sons acted like their fathers in the wilderness. Historical
proofs of this are furnished by the accounts of the Sabbath-
breaker (Num XV. 32 sqq.), of the rebellion of the company of
Korah, and of the murmuring of the whole congregation
against Moses and Aaron after the destruction of Korah's
company (Num. xvi. and xvii.). In the last two cases God
threatened that He would destroy the whole congregation (of.
Num. xvi. 21 and xvii. 9, 10) ; and on both occasions the
Lord drew back His hand at the intercession of Moses, and
his actual intervention (Num. xvi. 22 and xvii. 11 sqq.), and
did not destroy the whole nation for His name's sake. The
statements in vers. 216 and 22 rest upon these facts. The
words of ver. 23 concerning the oath of God, that He would
scatter the transgressors among the heathen, are also founded
upon the Pentateuch, and not upon an independent tradition,
or any special revelation from God. Dispersion among the
heathen is threatened in Lev. xxvi. 33 and Dent, xxviii. 64,
and there is no force in Kliefoth's argument that " these
threats do not refer to the generation in the wilderness, but
to a later age." For in both chapters the blessings and curses
of the law are set before the people who were then in the
desert ; and there is not a single word to intimate that either
272 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
blessinc or curse would only be fulfilled upon the generations
of later times. On the contrary, when Moses addressed to the
people assembled before him his last discourse concerning the
renewal of the covenant (Dent. xxix. and xxx.), he called upon
them to enter into the covenant, " which Jehovah maketh with
thee this day " (Deut. xxix. 12), and to keep all the words of
this covenant and do them. It is upon this same discourse, in
which Moses calls the threatenings of the law n7«, an oath
(Deut. xxix. 13), that "the lifting of the hand of God to
swear," mentioned in ver. 23 of this chapter, is also founded.
Moreover, it is not stated in this verse that God lifted His
hand to scatter among the heathen the generation which had
grown up in the wilderness, and to disperse them in the lands
before their entrance into the land promised to the fathers ;
but simply that He had lifted His hand in the wilderness to
threaten the people with dispersion among the heathen, without
in any way defining the period of dispersion. In the blessings
and threatenings of the law contained in Lev. xxvi. and
Deut. xxviii.-xxx., the nation is regarded as a united whole ;
so that no distinction is made between the successive genera-
tions, for the purpose of announcing this particular blessing or
punishment to either one or the other. And Ezekiel acts in
precisely the same way. It is true that he distinguishes the
generation which came out of Egypt and was sentenced by
God to die in the wilderness from the sons, i.e. the generation
which grew up in the wilderness ; but the latter, or the sons
of those who had fallen, the generation which was brought
into the land of Canaan, he regards as one with all the succes-
sive generations, and embraces the whole under the common
name of " fathers " to the generation living in his day (" your
fathers " ver. 27), as we may clearly see from the turn given
to the sentence which describes the apostasy of those who came
into the land of Canaan ('iJl HNt niy). In thus embracing the
generation which grew up in the wilderness and was led into
Canaan, along with the generations which followed and lived in
CHAP. XS. 18-26. 273
Canaan, Ezekiel adheres very closely to the view prevailing in
the Pentateuch, where the nation in all its successive genera-
tions is regarded as one united whole. The threat of dispersion
among the heathen, which the Lord uttered in the wilderness to
the sons of those who were not to see the land, is also not
mentioned by Ezekiel as one which God designed to execute
upon the people who were wandering in the desert at the time.
For if he had understood it in this sense, he would have
mentioned its non-fulfilment also, and would have added a
'1J1 ^»B' \Sa? (yysi, as he has done in the case of the previous
threats (cf. vers. 22, 14, and 9). But we do not find this
either in ver. 24 or ver. 26. The omission of this turn clearly
shows that ver. 23 does not refer to a punishment which God
designed to inflict, but did not execute for His name's sake ;
but that the dispersion among the heathen, with which the
transgressors of His commandments were threatened by God
when in the wilderness, is simply mentioned as a proof that
even in the wilderness the people, whom God had determined
to lead into Canaan, were threatened with that very punish-
ment which had now actually commenced, because rebellious
Israel had obstinately resisted the commandments and rights
of its God.
These remarks are equally applicable to vers. 25 and 26.
These verses are not to be restricted to the generation which
was born in the wilderness and gathered to its fathers not long
after its entrance into Canaan, but refer to their descendants
also, that is to say, to the fathers of our prophet's coutempo-
raries, who were born and had died in Canaan. God gave
them statutes which were not good, and rights which did not
bring them life. It is perfectly self-evident that we are not to
understand by these statutes and rights, which were not good,
either the Mosaic commandments of the ceremonial law, as
some of the Fathers and earlier Protestant commentators sup-
posed, or the threatenings contained in the law ; so that this
needs no elaborate proof. The ceremonial commandments
EZEK. I. S
274 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
given by God were good, and had the promise attached to
them, that obedience to them would give life; whilst the threats
of punishment contained in the law are never called D''ipn and
D''tpBB'D. Those statutes only are called " not good " the fulfil-
ment of which did not bring life or blessing and salvation.
The second clause serves as an explanation of the first. The
examples quoted in ver. 26 show what the words really mean.
The defiling in their sacrificial gifts (ver. 26), for example,
consisted in their causing that which opened the womb to pass
through, i.e. in the sacrifice of the first-born. DHT i^S"?? I^aj;."!
points back to Ex. xiii. 12; only riinj5, which occurs in that
passage, is omitted, because the allusion is not to the command-
ment given there, but to its perversion into idolatry. This
formula is used in the book of Exodus (I.e.) to denote the
dedication of the first-born to Jehovah ; but in ver. 13 this
limitation is introduced, that the first-born of man is to be
redeemed. 'T'?S![i signifies a dedication through fire (=i''?J!'r
tyxa, ver. 31), and is adopted in the book of Exodus, where it is
Joined to njn^?, in marked opposition to the Canaanitish custom
of dedicating children to Moloch by februation in fire (see the
comm. on Ex. xiii. 12). The prophet refers to this Canaanitish
custom, and cites it as a striking example of the defilement of
the Israelites in their sacrificial gifts (''5'?> to make unclean, not
to declare unclean, or treat as unclean). That this custom also
made its way among the Israelites, is evident from the repeated
prohibition against offering children through the fire to Moloch
(Lev. xviii. 21 and Dent, xviii. 10). When, therefore, it is
affirmed with regard to a statute so sternly prohibited in the
law of God, that Jehovah gave it to the Israelites in the wilder-
ness, the word 103 (give) can only be used in the sense of a
judicial sentence, and must not be taken merely as indicat-
ing divine permission ; in other words, it is to be understood,
like 2 Thess. ii. 11 (" God sends them strong delusion ") and
Acts vii. 42 (" God turned, and gave them up to worship the
host of heaven "), in the sense of hardening, whereby whoever
CHAP. XX. 27-31. 275
will not renounce idolatry is so given up to its power, that it
draws him deeper and deeper in. This is in perfect keeping
•with the statement in ver. 26 as the design of God in doing
this : " that I might fill them with horror ; " i.e. might excite
such horror and amazement in their minds, that if possible they
might be brought to reflect and to return to Jehovah their God.
Vers. 27-31, Israel committed these sins in Canaan also,
and to this day has not given them up ; therefore God will not
allow the idolatrous generation to inquire of Him. — Ver. 27.
T/wefore speak to the house of Israel^ son of man, and say to
them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Still further have your
fathers blasphemed me in this, with the faithlessness which they
have shown toward me. Ver. 28. WhenI had brought them into
the land, lohich I had lifted my hand to give them, then they
looked out every high hill and every thickly covered tree, and
offered their sacrifices there, and gave their irritating gifts there,
and presented the fragrance of their pleasant odour there, and
poured out their drink-offerings there. Ver. 29. And I said to
them, IVhat height is that to which ye go? And its name is
called Height to this day. Ver. 30. Therefore say to the house of
Israel, Thus saith the Lord Jehovali, What ? Do ye defile your-
selves in the way of your fathers ; and go whoring after their
abominations ; Ver. 31. And defile yourselves in all your idols
to this day, by lifting up your gifts, and causing your sons to
pass through the fire; and should I let myself be inquired
of by you? As I live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah,
I will not let myself be inquired of by you. — The )?? in
ver. 27 is resumed in ver. 30; and there the answer given
by God to the elders, who had come to inquire of Him,
is flrst communicated, after an express declaration of the fact
that Israel had continued its idolatry in the most daring
manner, even after its entrance into Canaan. But the form
in which this is done — riNt I^J/, " still further in this " — is to be
understood as intimating that the conduct of the fathers of the
existing generation, and therefore not merely of those who
276 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
grew up in the wilderness, but also of those who had lived in
Canaan, has already been described in general terms in the
preceding verses, and that what follows simply adds another
novel feature. But this can only be the case if vers. 23-26
are taken in the sense given above. riNt is an accusative ; and
t)!!? is construed with the accusative both of the person and
thing. The more precise definition of riNt is not given in
'3 Q^Voa at the end of the verse, but in the idolatry depicted in
ver. 28. ^VO refers to the faithlessness involved in the breach
of the covenant and in idolatry. This is the general descrip-
tion ; whilst the idolatry mentioned in ver. 28b constituted one
particular feature, in which the faithlessness appeared in the
foVm of blasphemy. For the fact itself, namely, the worship
on high places, which was practised on every hand, see ch.
vi. 13, xvi. 24, 25; 1 Kings xiv. 23; 2 Kings xvii. 10. In
the enumeration of the offerings, there is something striking
in the position in which 0J3"ii5 DJJ3 stands, namely, between
the slaughtered sacrifices (Q''n3T) and the increase- and drink-
offerings ; and this is no doubt the reason why the clause
'Ul Of «n>l is omitted from the Cod. Vat. and Alex, of the
LXX. ; and even Hitzig proposes to strike it out. But
Theodoret found this reading in the Alex. Version ; and Hitzig
is wrong in affirming that |3"ii? is used in connection with sacri-
fices, meat-offerings, and drink-offerings. The meat-offerings
are not expressly named, for nin^J nn does not signify meat-
offerings, but is used in the law for the odour of all the
offerings, both slaughtered sacrifices and meat-offerings, even
though in Ezek. xvi. 19 it is applied to the odour of the
bloodless offerings alone. And in the same way does I3"ii5
embrace all the offerings, even the slain offerings, in Ezek.
xl. 43, in harmony with Lev. i. 2, ii. 1, and other passages.
That it is used in this general signification here, is evident from
the introduction of the word Djfs, irritation or provocation of
their gifts, i.e. their gifts which provoked irritation on the part
of God, because they were offered to idols. As this sentence
CHAP. XX. 27-31. 277
applies to all the sacrifices (bloody and bloodless), so also does
the clause which follows, 'W1 DK* ^D^E'jl, refer to all the offerings
which were burned upon the altar, without regard to the
material employed. Consequently Ezekiel mentions only slain
offerings and drink-offerings, and, by the two clauses in-
serted between, describes the offering of the slaughtered sacri-
fices as a gift of irritation to God, and of pleasant fragrance to
the idolatrous worshippers who presented them. He does not
mention the meat-offerings separately, because they generally
formed an accompaniment to the slain offerings, and therefore
were included in these. But although God had called the
people to account for this worship on high places, they had not
relinquished it even " to this day." This is no doubt the
meaning of ver. 29, which has been interpreted in very
different ways. The context shows, in the most conclusive
manner, that nDan is to be taken collectively, and that the use
of the singular is to be explained from the antithesis to the
one divinely appointed Holy Place in the temple, and not, as
Kimchi and Havernick suppose, from any allusion to one
particular bdmdh of peculiar distinction, viz. " the great high'
place at Gibeon." The question nD3ri riD is not expressive of
contempt (Hitzig), but " is founded upon the assumption that
they would have to give an account of their doings ; and merely
asks, What kind of heights are those to which you are going ?
Who has directed yon to go thither with your worship ? "
(Kliefoth). There is no need to refute the trivial fancy of J.
D. Michaelis, which has been repeated by Hitzig, namely, that
Ezekiel has taken nD3 as a derivative from i<3 and HD. Again,
the question does not presuppose a word addressed by God to
Israel, which Ezekiel only has handed down to us; but is simply
a rhetorical mode of presenting the condemnation by God of
the worship of the high places, to which both the law and the
earlier prophets had given utterance. The next clause, " and
their name was called Height" (high place), is not to be
regarded as containing merely a historical notice of the name
278 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
given to these idolatrous places of worship ; but the giving of
the name is a proof of the continued existence of the thing ; so
that the words affirm, that notwithstanding the condemnation
on the part of God, Israel had retained these high places,— had
not abolished them to this day.— Vers. 30 and 31 facilitate the
transition from the first part of this word of God to the second.
What has already been said in vers. 5-29 concerning the
idolatry of the people, from the time of its election onwards, is
here expressly applied to the existing generation, and carries
with it the declaration to them, that inasmuch as they are
defiling themselves by idolatry, as their fathers did, Jehovah
cannot permit Himself to be inquired of by them. The thought
is couched in the form of a question, to express astonishment
that those vrho denied the Lord, and dishonoured Him by their
idolatry, should nevertheless imagine that they could obtain
revelations from Him. The lifting up (nx2', from SB'J) of gifts
signifies the offering of sacrifices upon the altars of the high
places. For ver. 31b, compare ver. 3. — With this declaration
God assigns the reason for the refusal to listen to idolaters,
which had already been given in ver. 3. But it does not rest
with this refusal. God now proceeds to disclose to them the
thoughts of their own hearts, and announces to them that He
will refine them by severe judgments, and bring them thereby
to repentance of their sins, that He may then gather them out
of the dispersion, and make them partakers of the promised
salvation as a people willingly serving Him. — In this way do
vers. 32-44 cast a prophetic glance over the whole of the
future history of Israel.
Vers. 32-38. The judgment awaiting Israel of purification
among the heathen. — Ver. 32. And that which riseth up in your
mind shall not come to pass, in that ye say. We will be like the
heathen, like the families of the lands, to serve wood and stone.
Ver. 33. As I live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, with
strong hand and with outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out,
will I rule over you. Ver. 34. And I will bring you out of the
CHAP. XX. 32-38. 279
nations, and gather you out of the lands in ivhich ye have heen
scattered, with strong hand and with outstretched arm, and laith
wrath poured out, Ver. 35. And will bring you into the desert
of the nations, and contend with you there face to face. Ver. 36.
As 1 contended with your fathers in the desert of the land of
Egypt, so will I contend with you, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Ver. 37. And I will cause you to pass tlirough
under the rod, and bring you into the bond of the covenant.
Ver. 38. And I will separate from you the rebellious, and those
icho are apostates from me ; out of the land of their sojourning
will T lead them out, but into the land of Israel shall they not
come; that ye may know that I am Jehovah, — niT ?J? fi?yi"i, that
which rises up in the spirit, is the thought that springs up in
the mind. What this thought was is shown in ver. S2b, viz.
we will be like the heathen in the lands of the earth, to serve
wood and stone ; that is to say, we will become idolaters like the
heathen, pass into heathenism. This shall not take place ; on
the contrary, God will rule over them as King with strong
arm and fury. The words, " with strong hand and stretched-
out arm," are a standing expression in the Pentateuch for the
mighty acts by which Jehovah liberated His people from the
power of the Egyptians, and led them out of Egypt (cf. Ex.
vi. 1, 6; Dent. iv. 34, v. 15, vii. 19, etc.), and are connected
in Ex. vi. 6 with D''i'in|i D'pSB'pni. Here, on the contrary, they
are connected with naiD^ i^^D?) and are used in vex. 33 with
reference to the government of God over Israel, whilst in
ver. 34 they are applied to the bringing out of Israel from the
midst of the heathen. By the introduction of the clause " with
fury poured out," the manifestation of the omnipotence of God
which Israel experienced in its dispersion, and which it was
still to experience among the heathen, is described as an ema-
nation of the divine wrath, a severe and wrathful judgment.
The leading and gathering of Israel out of the nations
(ver. 34) is neither their restoration from the existing captivity
in Babylon, nor their future restoration to Canaan on the con-
280 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
version of the people who were still hardened, and therefore
rejected by God. The former assumption would be decidedly
at variance with both D''Byn [D and '^i^'^t?'!? P, since Israel was
dispersed only throughout one land and among one people at
the time of the Babylonian captivity. Moreover, neither of the
assumptions is reconcilable with the context, more especially with
ver. 35. According to the context, this leading out is an act of
divine anger, which Israel is to feel in connection therewith ; and
this cannot be affirmed of either the redemption of the people
out of the captivity in Babylon, or the future gathering of
Israel from its dispersion. According to ver. 35, God will con-
duct those who are brought out from the nations and gathered
together out of the lands into the desert of the nations, and
contend with them there. The " desert of the nations " is not
the desert lying between Babylonia and Palestine, on the coast-
lands of the Mediterranean, through which the Israelites would
have to pass on their way home from Babylon (Rosenmiiller,
Hitzig, and others). For there is no imaginable reason why
this should be called the desert of the nations in distinction
from the desert of Arabia, which also touched the borders of
several nations. The expression is doubtless a typical one, the
future guidance of Israel being depicted as a repetition of the
earlier guidance of the people from Egypt to Canaan ; as it
also is in Hos. ii. 16. All the separate features in the descrip-
tion indicate this, more especially vers. 36 and 37, where it is
impossible to overlook the allusion to the guidance of Israel in
the time of Moses. The more precise explanation of the words
must depend, however, upon the sense in which we are to
understand the expression, "desert of the land of Egypt."
Here also the supposition that the Arabian desert is referred
to, because it touched the border of Egypt, does not furnish a
sufficient explanation. It touched the border of Canaan as
well. Why then did not Ezekiel name it after the land of
Canaan? Evidently for no other reason than that the time
spent by the Israelites in the Arabian desert resembled their
CHAP. XS. 32-88. 281
sojourn in Egypt much more closely than their settlement in
Canaan, because, while there, they were still receiving their
training for their entrance into Canaan, and their possession
and enjoyment of its benefits, just as much as in the land of
Egypt. And in a manner corresponding to this, the " desert of
the nations " is a figurative expression applied to the world of
nations, from whom they were indeed spiritually distinct, whilst
outwardly they were still in the midst of them, and had to
suffer from their oppression. Consequently the leading of
Israel out of the nations (ver. 34) is not a local and corporeal
deliverance out of heathen lands, but a spiritual severance from
the heathen world, in order that they might not be absorbed
into it or become inseparably blended with the heathen. God
will accomplish this by means of severe chastisements, by con-
tending with them as He formerly contended with their fathers
in the Arabian desert. God contends with His people when
He charges them with their sin and guilt, not merely in words,
but also with deeds, i.e. through chastening and punishments.
The words " face to face " point back to Deut. v. 4 : " Jehovah
talked with you face to face in the mount, out of the midst of
the fire." Just as at Sinai the Lord talked directly with Israel,
and made known to it the devouring fire of His own holy
nature, in so terrible a manner that all the people trembled and
entreated Moses to act the part of a mediator between them,
promising at the same time obedience to him (Ex. xx. 19) ; so
will the Lord make Himself known to Israel in the desert of
the world of nations with the burning zeal of His anger, that
it may learn to fear Him.- This contending is more precisely
defined in vers. 37 and 38. I will cause you to pass through
under the (shepherd's) rod. A shepherd lets his sheep pass
through under his rod for the purpose of counting them, and see-
ing whether they are in good condition or not (vid, Jer. xxxiii.
13). The figure is here applied to God. Like a shepherd,
He will cause His flock, the Israelites, to pass through under
His rod, i.e. take them into His special care, and bring them
282 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
" into the bond of the covenant " (TibD, not from nOD [Raschi],
but from "IDN^ for ni'DKD, a fetter) ; that is to say, not " I will
bind myself to you and you to me by a new covenant " (Bochart,
Hieroz. I. p. 508), for this is opposed to the context, but, as the
Syriac version has rendered it, 'jZoj^iors {in disuipUna), " the
discipline of the covenant." By this we are not merely to
understand the covenant punishments, with which transgressors,
of the law are threatened, as Havernick does, but the covenant
promises must also be included. For not only the threats of
the covenant, but the promises of the covenant, are bonds by
which God trains His people ; and "IDK is not only applied to
burdensome and crushing fetters, but to the bonds of love as
well {yid. Song of Sol. vii. 6). Kliefoth understands by the
fetter of the covenant the Mosaic law, as being the means
employed by God to preserve the Israelites from mixing with
the nations while placed in the midst of them, and to keep them
to Himself, and adds the following explanation, — " this law,
through which they should have been able to live, they have
now to wear as a fetter, and to feel the chastisement thereof."
But however correct the latter thought may be in itself, it is
hardly contained in the words, " lead them into the fetter (band)
of the law." Moreover, although the law did indeed preserve
Israel from becoming absorbed into the world of nations, the
fact that the Jews were bound to the law did not bring them
to the knowledge of the truth, or bring to pass the purging of
the rebellious from among the people, to which ver. 38 refers.
All that the law accomplished in this respect in the case of
those who lived among the heathen was effected by its threaten-
ings and its promises, and not by its statutes and their faithful
observance. This discipline will secure the purification of the
people, by severing from the nation the rebellious and apostate.
God will bring them forth out of the land of their pilgrimage,
but will not bring them into the land of Israel. D^-iWD pN is
the standing epithet applied in the Pentateuch to the land of
CHAP. XX. 39-44. 283
Canaan, in which the patriarchs lived as pilgrims, without
coming into actual possession of the land (cf. Gen. xvii. 8,
xxviii. 4, xxxvi. 7 ; Ex. vi. 4). This epithet Ezekiel has trans-
ferred to the lands of Israel's exile, in which it was to lead a
pilgrim-life until it was ripe for entering Canaan. s^'Vii^, to
lead out, is used here for clearing out by extermination, as the
following clause, " into the land of Israel shall they not come,"
plainly shows. The singular 5<i3^ is used distributively : not
one of the rebels will enter.
Vers. 39-44. The ultimate gathering of Israel, and its con-
version to the Lord. — Ver. 39. Ye then, house of Im'ael, thus
saith the Lord JehovcJi, Go ye, serve every one his idols ! but after-
wards — truly ye will hearken to me, and no longer desecrate my
holy name with your sacrificial gifts and your idols, Ver. 40. But
upon my holy mountain, upon the high mountain of Israel, is the
saying of the Lord Jehovah, there will all the house of Israel
serve me, the whole of it in the land ; there will I accept them
gladly ; there will I ask for your heave-offerings and the first-
fruits of your gifts in all that ye make holy. Ver. 41. As a
pleasant odour will I accept you gladly, when I bring you out
from the nations, and gather you out of the lands, in which you
have been scattered, and sanctify myself in you before the eyes of
the heathen nations. Ver. 42. And ye shall know that I am
Jehovah, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land
which I lifted up my hand to give to your fathers ; Ver. 43. And
there ye will think of your ways and your deeds, with which ye
have defiled yourselves, and will loathe yourselves (lit. experience
loathing before yourselves) on account of all your evil deeds
which ye have performed ; Ver. 44. And ye will know that I am
Jehovah, when I deal with you for my namis sake, not according
to your evil ways and according to your corrupt deeds, O house of
Israel, is the saying of Jehovah. — After the Lord has declared to
the people that He will prevent its being absorbed into the heathen
world, and will exterminate the ungodly by severe judgments, the
address passes on, with the direction henceforth to serve idols
284 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
only, to aprediction of theeventual conversion, and tlie restoration
to Canaan of the purified nation. The direction, " Go ye, serve
every one his idols," contains, after what precedes it, a power-
ful appeal to repent. God thereby gives up the impenitent to
do whatever they will, having first of all told them that not
one of them will come into the land of Canaan. Their oppo-
sition will not frustrate His plan of salvation. The words
which follow from in«1 onwards have been interpreted in dif-
ferent ways. It is opposed to the usage of the language to
connect "inxi with 'l^'3y, serve ye hereafter also (De Wette, etc.),
for 1 has not the force of the Latin et^=etiam, and still less
does it signify '' afterwards just as before." Nor is it allow-
able to connect "insi closely with what follows, in the sense of
" and hereafter also, if ye will hearken to me, profane ye my
name no more" (Rosenmiiller, Maurer). For if v^inri were
used as an imperative, either it would have to stand at the
beginning of the sentence, or it would be preceded by bii
instead of tib. Moreover, the antithesis between not being
■willing to hear and not profaning the name of God, is imported
arbitrarily into the text. The name of the Lord is profaned
not only by sacrifices offered in external form to Jehovah and
in the heart to idols, but also by disobedience to the word
and commandments of God. It is much better to take inNI by
itself, and to render the following particle, D!*, as the ordinary
sign of an oath : " but afterwards (i.e. in the future) . . . verily,
ye will hearken to me ; " that is to say, ye will have been con-
verted from your idolatry through the severe judgments that
have fallen upon you. The ground for this thought is intro-
duced in ver. 40 by a reference to the fact that all Israel will
then serve the Lord upon His holy mountain. '3 is not " used
emphatically before a direct address " (Hitzig), but has a causal
signification. For 'B''' Dn» in, see the comm. on ch. xvii. 23.
In the expression " all Israel," which is rendered more emphatic
by the addition of n?3, there is an allusion to the eventual
termination of the severance of the people of God (compare
CHAP, XX. 39-44. 285
ch. xxxvii. 22). Then will the Lord accept with delight both
them and their sacrificial gifts. ni»nn, heave-offerings (see
the comm. on Ex. xxv. 2 and Lev. ii. 9), used here in the
broader sense of all the sacrificial gifts, along with which the
gifts of first-fruits are specially named. nixb'D, as applied to
holy offerings in the sense of avaO-qfiaTa, belongs to the later
usage of the language. D2''B'1i?-i)33, consisting of all your con-
secrated gifts. Q''?'']!?., as in Lev. xxii. 15. This promise
includes implicite the bringing back of Israel from its banish-
ment. This is expressly mentioned in vei*. 41 ; but even there
it is only introduced as self-evident in the subordinate clause,
whei'eas the cheerful acceptance of Israel on the part of God
constitutes the leading thought. nrTiJ nina, as an odour of
delight (2, the so-called Beth essentiae), will God accept His
people. n'n''3 ly-i^ odour of satisfaction, is the technical expres-
sion for the cheerful (well-pleased) acceptance of the sacrifice,
or rather of the feelings of the worshipper presenting the
sacrifice, which ascend to God in the sacrificial odour (see the
comm. on Gen. viii. 21). The thought therefore is the follow-
ing : When God shall eventually gather His people out of
their dispersion. He will accept them as a sacrifice well-pleasing
to Him, and direct all His good pleasure towards them. ''n?''ii??1
03? does not mean, I shall be sanctified through you, and is
not to be explained in the same sense as Lev. xxii. 32 (Rosen-
mtiller), for 3 is not equivalent to ?lin3 ; but it signifies " I will
sanctify myself on you," as in Num. xx. 13, Lev. x. 3, and
other passages, where ^?^ is construed with 3 pers. (cf. Ezek.
xxviii. 25, xxxvi. ,.23, xxxviii. 16, xxxix. 27), in the sense of
proving oneself holy, mostly by judgment, but here through
having made Israel into a holy nation by the refining judg-
ment, and one to which He can therefore grant the promised
inheritance. — Vers. 42 sqq. Then will Israel also recognise its
God in His grace, and be ashamed of its former sins. For
ver. 43, compare ch. vi. 9 and xvi. 61. — With regard to the
fulfilment, as Kliefoth has correctly observed, " in the predic-
286 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tion contained in vers. 32-38, the whole of the searching
judgments, by which God would lead Israel to conversion, are
summed up in one, which includes not only the Babylonian
captivity, the nearest and the first, but the still more remote"
judgment, namely, the present dispersion ; for it is only in the
present dispersion of Israel that God has really taken it into
the wilderness of the nations, just as it was only in the rejection
of Christ that its rebellious attitude was fully manifested. And
as the prophecy of the state of punishment combines in this
way both the nearer and more remote ; so are both the nearer
and more distant combined in what vers. 40 to 44 afiSrm with
regard to the ultimate fate of Israel." The gathering of Israel
from among the heathen will be fulfilled in its conversion to
Christ, and hitherto it has only taken place in very small
beginnings. The principal fulfilment is still to come, when
Israel, as a nation, shall be converted to Christ. With regard
to the bringing back of the people into " the land of Israel,"
see the comm. on ch. xxxvii., where this promise is more fully
expanded.
CHAP. XX. 45 TO CHAP. XXI. 32 (HEB. CHAP. XXI.^). PRO-
PHECY or THE BURNING FOREST AND THE SWORD OF
THE LORD.
A fire kindled by the Lord will burn the forest of the south
(ch. XX. 45-48). This figurative announcement is explained
in what follows, in order that the divine threat may make an
impression upon the people (ver. 49). The Lord will draw His
sword from its scabbard, and cut off from Jerusalem and the
land of Israel both righteous and wicked (ch. xxi. 1-17) ; that
is to say, the king of Babylon will draw his sword against
1 In the Hebrew Bible the previous chapter closes at ver. 44, and
ch. xxi. commences there. Keil has adhered to this division of chapters ;
but for the sake of convenience we have followed the arrangement adopted
iu the English authorized version. — Tr.
CHAP. XX. 46-49. 287
Jerusalem and the sons of Ammon, and will, first of all, put an
end to the kingdom of Judah, and then destroy the Ammonites
(vers. 18-32). The prophecy divides itself accordingly into
three parts : viz. (1) the prediction of the destruction of the
kingdom of Judah ; (2) the explanation of this prediction by
the threat that the sword of the Lord will smite all the inha-
bitants of Judah, which threat is divisible into three sections,
ch. xxi. 1—7, 8-13, and 14-17 ; (3) the application of what is
said with regard to the sword to Nebuchadnezzar's expedition
against Jerusalem and the Ammonites, which may also be
divided into three sections, — viz. (a) the general announcement
of Nebuchadnezzar's design (vers. 18-23) and its execution ;
(b) by his expedition against Jerusalem, to destroy the king-
dom of Judah (vers. 24-27) ; and (c) by his expedition against
the Ammonites (vers. 28-32). — The first four or five verses are
taken by many in connection with chap. xx. ; and Kliefoth
still maintains that they should be separated from what follows,
and attached to that chapter as a second word of God. But
neither ch. xx. 49 nor the formula in ch. xxi. 1, " the word
of Jehovah came to, me," warrants our separating the parabolic
prediction in ch. xx. 45-48 from the interpretation in vers.
1—17. And the third part is also connected with what precedes,
so as to form one single discourse, by the allusion to the sword
in vers. 19 and 28, and by the fact that the figure of the
fire is resumed in vers. 31 and 32. And there is all the less
ground for taking the formula, " and the word of Jehovah came
to me," as determining the division of the several portions in
this particular instance, from the circumstance that the section
(vers. 1—17) in which it occurs both at the commencement
and in the middle (vers. 1 and 8), is obviously divided into the
minor sections or turns by the threefold occurrence of the verb
snani (« and prophesy : vers. 2, 9, and 14).
Chap. XX. 45-49. The burning forest. — Ver. 45. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 46. Son of man, direct
thy face toward the south, and trickle down toioards the southf
288 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
and prophesy concerning the forest of the field in the south land;
Ver. 47. And say to the forest of the south land, Hear the word
of Jehovah ; Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I kindle a
fire in thee, which will consume in thee every green tree, and
every dry tree : the blazing flame will not be extinguished, and all
faces from the south to the north will be burned thereby. Ver. 48.
And all flesh shall see that I, Jehovah, have kindled it : it shall not
he extinguished. Ver. 49. And I said, Ah, Lord Jehovah ! they
say of me. Does he not speak in parables ? — The prophet is to turn
his face toward the south, and prophesy concerning the forest
of the field there. H''?'? is used for prophesying, as in Amos
vii. 16 and Mic. ii. 6, 11. The distinction hetween the three
epithets appHed to the south is the following : JCi'ri is literally
that which lies on the right hand, hence the south is a particular
quarter of the heavens; Dii'], which only occurs in Ezekiel
and Ecclesiastes, with the exception of Deut. xxxiii. 23 and
Job xxxvii. 17, is derived from "il'n, to shine or emit streams of
light, and probably signifies the brilliant quarter ; 335, the dry,
parched land, is a standing epithet for the southern district of
Palestine and the land of Judah (see the comm. on Josh.
XV. 21). — The forest of the field in the south is a figure
denoting the kingdom of Judah (333 is in apposition to '^'}^>},
and is appended to it as a more precise definition). n'lE' is not
used here for a field, as distinguished from a city or a garden ;
but for the fields in the sense of country or territory, as in
Gen. xiv. 7 and xxxii. 3. In ver. 47, 333n ly^^ forest of the
south land, is the expression applied to the same object (33311',
with the article, is a geographical term for the southern portion
of Palestine). The forest is a figure signifying the population,
or the mass of people. Individual men are trees. The green
tree is a figurative representation of the righteous man, and
the dry tree of the ungodly (ver. 3, compare Luke xsiii. 31).
The fire which Jehovah kindles is the fire of war. The com-
bination of the synonyms nanptf' ^^\f?, flame of the flaming
brightness, serves to strengthen the expression, and is equiva-
CHAP. SSI. 1-7. 289
lent to the strongest possible flame, the blazing fire. Q^^Q"?!,
all faces are not human faces or persons, in which case the
prophet would have dropped the figure; but pdnim denotes
generally the outside of things, which is the first to feel the
force of the flame. " All the faces " of the forest are every
single thing in the forest, which is caught at once by the
flame. In ver. 4, kSl-pdnim (all faces) is interpreted by h6l-
bdsar (all flesh). From south to north, i.e. through the whole
length of the land. From the terrible fierceness of the fire,
which cannot be extinguished, every one will know that God
has kindled it, that it has been sent in judgment. The words
of the prophet himself, in ch. xx. 49, presuppose that he has
uttered these parabolic words in the hearing of the people, and
that they have ridiculed them as obscure (mdshdl is used here in
the sense of obscure language, words difficult to understand, as
. nrapa^oXri also is in Matt. xiii. 10). At the same time, it con-
tains within itself a request that they may be explained. This
request is granted ; and the simile is first of all interpreted in
ch. xxi. 1-7, and then still further expanded in vers. 8 sqq.
Chap. xxi. 1-7. The sword of the Lord and its disastrous
effects. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 2. Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem, and trickle
over the holy places, and prophesy over the land of Israel,
Ver. 3. And say to the land of Israel, Tlius saith Jehovah,
Behold, I will deal with thee, and will draw my sioord out of its
scabbard, and cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.
Ver. 4. Because T will cut off from thee the righteous and the
wicked, therefore shall my sword, go forth from its scabbard
against all flesh from south to north. Ver. 5. And all 'flesh
shall know that I, Jehovah, have drawn my sword out of its
scabbard : it shall not return again, Ver. 6. And thou, son of
man, sigh ! so that the hips break ; and with bitter pain sigh
before their eyes ! Ver. 7. And when they say to thee. Where-
fore dost thou sigh ? say. Because of a report that it is coming ;
and every heart will sink, and all hands become powerless, and every
EZEK. I. T
290 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
spirit will become dull, and all knees turn into water: EeJioldf
it cometh, and will happen, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. —
In the preceding parable, the expression " forest of the field in
the south," or " forest of the south-land," was enigmatical.
This is explained to signify Jerusalem with its holy places
(D^B^i?p, see ccfmm. on ch. vii. 24), and the land of Israel, i.e.
the kingdom of Judah. In accordance with this, the fire
kindled by the Lord is interpreted as being the sword of the
Lord. It is true that this is a figurative expression ; but it is
commonly used for war, which brings with it devastation and
death, and would be generally intelligible. The sword will cut
off both righteous and wicked. This applies to the outer side
of the judgment, inasmuch as both good and bad fall in war.
This is the only aspect brought into prominence here, since the
great purpose was to alarm the sinners, who were boastincr of
their security ; but the distinction between the two, as described
in ch. ix. 4 sqq., is not therefore to be regarded as no longer
existing. This sword will not return, sc. into the scabbard,
till it has accomplished the result predicted in ver. 3 (cf. 2 Sam.
i. 22 ; Isa. Iv. 11). As Tremellius has aptly observed upon this
passage, " the last slaughter is contrasted with the former ones,
in which, after the people had been chastened for a time, the
sword was returned to its scabbard again." In order to depict
the terrors of this judgment before the eyes of the people, the
prophet is commanded to groan before their eyes in the most
painful way possible (vers. 6 sqq.). t^^JHD ii'i3B'3j with breakini^
of the hips, i.e. with pain sufficient to break the hips, the
seat of strength in man (compare Nah. ii. 11 ; Isa. xxi. 3).
irnnOj bitterness, i.e. bitter anguish. The reason which he is
to assign to the questioners for this sighing is " on account of the
report that is coming," — an antiptosis for " on account of the
coming report " (cf. Gen. i. 4, etc.). The report comes when
the substance of it is realized. The reference is to the report
of the sword of the Lord,— that is to say, of the approach
of the Chaldeans to destroy Jerusalem and the kingdom of
CHAP. XXI. 8-17. 291
Judali. The impression which this disclosure will make upon
the hearers will be perfectly paralyzing (ver. 76). All courage
and strength for offering resistance will be crippled and broken,
ai^-i)! DDJ (cf. Nah. ii. 11) is strengthened by TOT^a nnqa,
every spirit will become dull, so that no one will know what
counsel to give. 'W1 nw^n D)3"i3"73 corresponds to OIIP? ''^1
(cf. ch. vii. 17). The threat is strengthened by the words,
" behold, it cometh, and will take place." The subject is •^^'if^ip,
the report, i.e. the substance of the report. — This threat is more
fully expanded in vers. 8-17 ; vers. 8-13 corresponding to vers.
1-5, and vers. 14-17 to vers. 6, 7.
Vers. 8-17. The sword is sharpened for slaying. — Ver. 8.
And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 9. Son of
man, prophesy, and say, Tims saith Jehovah, A sword, a sword
sharpened and also polished: Ver. 10. That it may effect a
slaughter is it sharpened; that it may flash is it polished: or
shall we rejoice (sayitig), the sceptre of my son despiseth all
wood? Ver. 11. But it has been given to be polished, to take it
in the hand; it is sharpened, the sword, and it is polished, to
give it into the hand of the slayer. Ver. 12. Cry and howl, son
of man, for it goeth over my people, it goeth over all the pnnces
of Israel : they have fallen by the sword along with my people :
therefore smite upon the thigh. Ver. 13. For the trial is made,
and what if the despising sceptre shall not come ? is the saying of
the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 14. And thou, son of man, prophesy
and smite the hands together, and the sword shall double itself
into threefold, the sword of the pierced : it is the sword of a
pierced one, of the great one, which encircles them, Ver. 15.
TJiat the heart may be dissolved, and stumbling-blocks may be
multiplied, I have set the drawing of the sword against all their
gates : Alas ! it is made into flashing, drawn for slaying.
Ver. 16. Gather thyself up to the right hand, turn to the left,
lohithersoever thine edge is intended. Ver. 17. And I also will
smite my hands together, and quiet my wrath : I, Jehovah, have
spoken it. — The description of the sword is thrown into a lyrical
292 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEI..
form (vers. 8-13), — a kind of sword-song, commemorating tlie
terrible devastation to be effected by the sword of the Lord.
The repetition of 3"in in ver. 9 is emphatic, n'lmn is the per-
fect Hoplial of Tin, to sharpen. ncniD is the passive participle
of tiiD, to polish ; ^ifp (ver. 10), the participle Pual, with »
dropped, and Dagesh eiiplion. n^ri, a rare form of the infinitive
for ni-n. The polishing gives to the sword a flashing brilliancy,
which renders the sharpness of its edge still more terrible.
The very obscure words, 'ui '^''^i iN, I agree with Schmieder
and Kliefoth in regarding as a protest, interposed by the
prophet in the name of the people against the divine threat of
the sword of vengeance, qn the ground of the promises which
had been given to the tribe of Judah. iS, or perhaps ; intro-
ducing an opposite case, or an exception to what has been said.
The words 'Ul ''J3 tsaB' are to be taken as an objection, so that
ibN^ is to be supplied in thought. The objection is taken from
the promise given in Jacob's blessing to the tribe of Judah :
"the sceptre will not depart from Judah" (Gen. slix. 10).
••ja a2B' points unquestionably to this. '33 is taken from ver. 9,
where the patriarch addresses Judah, whom he compares to a
young lion, as ''J3. Consequently the sceptre of my son is the
command which the patriarch holds out to view before the
tribe of Judah. This sceptre despises all wood, i.e. every other
ruler's staff, as bad wood. This view is not rendered a
doubtful one by the fact that t33ti' is construed as a feminine
here, whereas it is construed as a masculine in every other
case; for this construction is unquestionable in ver. 7 (12),
and has many analogies in its favour. All the other explana-
tions that have been proposed are hardly worth mentioning, to
say nothing of refuting, as they amount to nothing more than
arbitrary conjectures ; whereas the assumption that the words
are to be explained from Gen. xlix. 10 is naturally suggested
by the unquestionable allusion to the prophecy in that passage,
which we find in ver. 27 of the present chapter. JH^I in ver. 11
is to be taken adversatively, " but he gave it (the sword) to be
CHAP. SXI. 8-17. 293
sharpened." The subject to t?!5 is not Jehovah, but is inde-
finite, " one " (man, Angl. they), although it is actually God
who has prepared the sword for the slaughter of Israel. The
train of thought is the following: Do not think we have no
reason to fear the sharply-ground sword of Jehovah, because
Judah has received the promise that the sceptre shall not
depart from it ; and this promise will certainly be fulfilled, and
Judah be victorious over every hostile power. The promise
will not help you in this instance. The sword is given to be
ground, not that it may be put into the scabbard, but that it
may be taken in the hand by a slayer, and smite all the people
and all its princes. In the phrase ^^n n^ran N''n, nnn is in
apposition to the subject N''n, and is introduced to give emphasis
to the words. It is not till ver. 19 that it is stated who the
slayer is; but the hearers of the prophecy could be in no
doubt. Consequently — this is the connection with ver. 12 —
there is no ground for rejoicing from a feeling of security and
pride, but rather an occasion for painful lamentation. This is
the meaning contained in the command to the prophet to cry
and howl. For the sword will come upon the nation and its
princes. It is the simplest rendering to take N''n as referring
to 3'?.n, 3 '^''n^ to be at a person, to fasten to him, to come upon
him, as in 1 Sam. xxiv. 14; 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. '''?.1JIp, not from
")W, but the passive participle of "i^O in the Pual, to overthrow,
cast down (Ps. Ixxxix. 45) : " fallen by the sword have they
(the princes) become, along with my people." The perfects
are prophetic, representing that which will speedily take place
as having already occurred. — Smiting upon the thigh is a sign
of alarm and horror (Jer. xxxi. 19). |n3, perfect Pual, is
used impersonally: the trial is made. The words allude to
the victories gained already by Nebuchadnezzar, which have
furnished tests of the sharpness of his sword. The question
which follows rittl contains an aposiopesis: and what? Even
if the despising sceptre shall not come, what will be the case
then? npsjib DDB', according to ver. 10, is the sceptre of
294 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Judah, which despises all other sceptres as bad wood. n)nij in
this instance, is not " to be," in the sense of to remain, but to
become, to happen, to come (come to pass), to enter. The
meaning is, if the sceptre of Judah shall not display, or prove
itself to possess, the strength expected of it. — With ver. 14 the
address takes a new start, for the purpose of depicting still
further the operations of the sword. Smiting the hands together
(smiting hand in hand) is a gesture expressive of violent emotion
(cf. ch. vi. 11 ; Num. xxiv. 10). The sword is to double, i.e.
multiply itself, into threefold (nm^hf, adverbial), namely, in its
strength, or its edge. Of course this is not to be taken arith-
metically, as it has been by Hitzig, but is a bold paradoxical
statement concerning the terrible effect produced by the sword.
It is not even to be understood as referring to three attacks
made at different times by the Chaldeans upon Jerusalem, as
many of the commentators suppose. The sword is called
^Y^n ^I'a, sword of pierced ones, because it produces the
pierced or slain. The following words are rendered by Hitzig
and Kliefoth : the great sword of the slain. But apart from
the tautology which this occasions, the rendering can hardly be
defended on grammatical grounds. For, in the first place, we
cannot see why the singular 7Pn should have been chosen, when
the expression was repeated, instead of the plural QY?t!; and
secondly, •'iisn cannot be an adjective agreeing with 37.0} for
y\n is a noun of the feminine gender, and is construed here as
a feminine, as nTj^nn clearly shows. i>n|n is in apposition to
bbn^ " sword of a pierced man, the great one ; " and the great
man pierced is the king, as Ewald admits, in agreement with
Hengstenberg and Havernick. The words therefore affirm
that the sword will not only slay the mass of the people, but
pierce the king himself. (See also the comm. on ver. 25.) —
Ver. 15a is not dependent upon what precedes, but introduces
a new thought, viz. for what purpose the sword is sharpened.
God has placed the flashing sword before all the gates of the
Israelites, in order that (? ]Vab, pleonastic for I5?o^) the heart
CHAP. XXI. 18-22. 295
may dissolve, the inhabitants may lose all their courage for
defence, and to multiply offendicula, i.e. occasions to fall by
the sword. The air. Xey. nn3N signifies the rapid motion or
turning about of the sword (cf. Gen. iii. 24) ; riDN, related to
7)Dn, in the Miskna ^Qti. The air. Xey. ntajJO, fem. of to'va, does
not mean smooth, i.e. sharpened, synonymous with tSI^' ^"*»
according to the Arabic kst^, eduxit e vagina gladium, drawn
(from the scabbard). In ver. 16 the sword is addressed, and
commanded to smite right and left, ''ir!^'?'?, gather thyself up,
i.e. turn with all thy might toward the right (Tanchum). To
the verb W^n it is easy to supply TJ^JS, from the context,
" direct thine edge toward the left." njN, whither, without an
interrogative, as in Josh. ii. 5 and Neh. ii. 16. J^i^VO, from
fV), intended, ordered ; not, directed, turned. The feminine
form may be accounted for from a construction ad sensum^
the gender regulating itself according to the 3"in addressed in
?l)3a. The command to the sword is strengthened by the
explanation given by Jehovah in ver. 17, that He also (like the
prophet, ver. 14) will smite His hands together and cool His
wrath upon them (cf. ch. v. 13).
Vers. 18-22. The sword of the king of Babylon will smite
Jerusalem, and then the Ammonites also. — Ver. 18. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 19. And thou, son
of man, make to thyself tivo ways, that the sword of the king
of Babylon may come by them ; out of one land shall they both
come forth, and draw a hand, at the cross road of the city do
thou draw it. Ver. 20. Make a way that the sword may come to
Rabbah of the sons of Ammon, and to Judah into fortified Jeru-
salem. Ver. 21. For the king of Babylon is stopping at the cross
road, at the parting of the tivo ways, to practise divination. He is
shaking the arrows, inquiring of the teraphim, looking at the liver.
Ver. 22. The divination falls to his right : Jerusalem, to set bat-
tering-rams, to open the mouth with a death-cry, to lift up the voice
with a war-cry, to set battering-rams at the gates, to heap up a ram-
part, to build siege towers.— Aitev the picture of the terrible devas-
296 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tation which the sword of the Lord will produce, the last word
of God in this prophecy answers the questions, in whose hand
Jehovah will place His sword, and whom it will smite. The
slayer into whose hand the sharpened sword is given (ver. 11)
is the king of Babylon, and it will smite not only Judah, hut
the Ammonites also. Jerusalem and Judah will be the first to
fall, and then the arch-enemy of the covenant nation, namely
Ammon, will succumb to the strokes of the sword of Jehovah^
in order that the embittered enemies of the Lord and His
people may learn that the fall of Jerusalem is not, as they
fancy, a proof of the impotence, but rather of the omnipotence,
of its God. In this way does our prophecy expand into a
prediction of the judgment which will fall upon the whole of
the world in hostility to God. For it is only as the arch-
enemies of the kingdom of God that the Ammonites come into
consideration here. The parallel between Israel and the sons
of Ammon is carried out in such a way as to give constant
prominence to the distinction between them. Jerusalem will
fall, the ancient theocracy will be destroyed till he shall come
who will restore the right (vers. 26 and 27). Ammon, on the
other hand, will perish, and not a trace be left (vers. 31, 32). —
This prediction is exhibited to the eye by means of a sign.
The prophet is to make two ways, i.e. to prepare a sketch
representing a road leading from a country, viz. Babylon, and
dividing at a certain spot into two roads, one of which leads to
Eabbath-Ammon, the capital of the kingdom of the Ammonites,
the other to Judah, into Jerusalem. He is to draw the ways
for the coming (^^i^J) of the sword of the king of Babylon. At
the fork of the road he is to engrave a hand, T, i.e. an index.
N"}! signifies in the Fiel to cut away (Josh. xvii. 15, 18), to dig
or hew (Ezek. xxiii. 47), here to engrave written characters in
hard material. The selection of this word shows that Ezekiel
was to sketch the ways upon some hard material, probably a
brick or tile (cf . ch. iv. 1). "i) does not mean locus spatium, but
a hand, i.e. an index. 'H'l.'n B't^n, the beginning of the road, i.e.
CHAP. XXI. 18-22. 297
the fork of the road (ch. xvi. 25), is explained in ver. 21, where
it is called ^"I'nn DN, mother of the road, inasmuch as the roads
start from the point of separation, and C^'Jin ''ip tJ'S<i, begin-
ning of the two roads. I'JJ ^7'n, the road to a city. For Rah-
bath-Ammon, which is preserved in the ruins of Amman, on the
Upper Jabbok {Nalir Amman), see the comm. on Dent. iii. 11.
The road to Judah is still more precisely defined by DPB'!n''3
iTllva, into fortified Jerusalem, because the conquest of Jerusalem
was the purpose of Nebuchadnezzar's expedition. The omission
of the article before n"i!|Vii may be explained from the nature of
the participle, in which, even in prose, the article may be left
out after a definite noun (cf. Ewald, § 335a). The drawing is
explained in vers. 21 and 22. The king of Babylon is halting
(1DJ), to stand still, stop) to consult his oracles, and inquire
which of the two roads he is to take. DDi5 Qbp, to take in hand,
or practise divination. In order that he may proceed safely,
he avails himself of all the means of divination at his command.
He shakes the arrows (more strictly, the quiver with the arrows).
On the practice itself Jerome writes as follows : " Pie consults
the oracle according to the custom of his nation, putting his
arrows into a quiver, and mixing them together, with the names
of individuals inscribed or stamped upon them, to see whose
arrow will come out, and which state shall be first attacked." ^
He consults tiie TerapMm, or Penates, worshipped as oracular
deities and gods of good fortune (see the comm. on Gen. xxxi. 19
and my Biblical Archaeology, § 90). Nothing is known con-
cerning the way in which these deities were consulted and gave
their oracles. He examines the liver. The practice of y-n-aro-
1 The arrow-lot (Belomantie) of the ancient Greeks (Homer, II. iii. 324,
vii. 182, 183) was similar to this; also that of the ancient Arabs (vkl.
Pococke, Specim. hist. Arab. pp. 327 sqq., and the passages from Nnweiri
quoted by Reiske, Samml. einiger Arab. Sprichworter von den StecJcen oder
Staben, p. 21). Another kind, in which the lot was obtained by shooting
off the arrows, was common according to the Fihrist el Ulum of En-Nedlm
among the Hananian Ssabians (see Chwolsohn, Ssabier, ii. pp. 26 and 119,
200.
298 THE rEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(TKOTTia, extispicium, in which signs of good or bad luck, of the
success or failure of any enterprise, were obtained from the
peculiar condition of the liver of the sacrificial animals, was a
species of divination to which great importance was attached
by both the Babylonians (vid. Diod. Sic. ii. 29) and the Komans
(Cicero, de divin. vi. 13), and of which traces were found, accord-
ing to Barliebr. Cliron. p. 125, as late as the eighth century
of the Christian era among the Ssabians of Haran. — The
divination resulted in a decision for Jerusalem, n^n i3''P''3 is not
to be translated " in his right hand was," but "into his right
hand there came." -Tn : eVez/ero (LXX.), i'^W (Chald.), DD^
does not mean lot (Ges.), but soothsaying, divination. D;?OT"i]
is connected with this in the form of a noun in apposi-
tion : the divination which indicated Jerusalem. The right
hand is the more important of the two. The meaning of the
words cannot be more precisely defined, because we are not
acquainted with the kind of divination referred to ; even if we
were to take the words as simply relating to the arrow in this
sense, that an arrow with the inscription " Jerusalem " came
into his right hand, and thus furnished the decision, which was
afterwards confirmed by consulting the Teraphim and examining
the liver. But the circumstance itself, that is to say, the fact
that the divination coincided with the purpose of God, must
not be taken, as Havernick supposes, as suggesting a point of
contact between Hebraism and the soothsaying of heathenism,
which was peculiar to Ezekiel or to the time of the captivity.
All that is proved by this fact is, that even heathenism is subject
to the rule and guidance of Almighty God, and is made subser-
vient to the accomplishment of the plans of both His kingdom
and His salvation. In the words, to set battering rams, etc.,
the substance of the oracle obtained by Nebuchadnezzar is
more minutely given. It is a double one, showing what he is
to do : viz. (1) to set battering rams, i.e. to proceed to the siege
of Jerusalem, as still further described in the last portion of the
verse (ch. iv. 2) ; and (2) to raise the war-cry for storming the
CHAP. XXI. 23-27. 299
city, that is to say, to take it by storm. The two clauses '1J1 nrisp
and 'Wl 0^\f? are synonymous ; they are not " pure tautology,"
however, as Hitzig affirms, but are chosen for the purpose of
giving greater emphasis to the thought. The expression nv^a
creates some difficulty, inasmuch as the phrase " ut aperiat os
in caede " (Vulg.), to open the mouth in murder or ruin, i.e. to
put to death or lay in ruins, is a very striking one, and could
hardly be justified as an " energetic expression for the battle-
cry " (Havernick). 3 does not mean " to," and cannot indicate
the intention, all the less because n^na is parallel to n^^nna,
where njJ'nn is that in which the raising of the voice expresses
itself. There is nothing left then but to take nvn in the sense
of field- or war-cry, and to derive this meaning either from nvTi
or, per metathesin, from nnv.
Vers. 23-27. This announcement will appear to the Judaeans,
indeed, to be a deceptive divination, but nevertheless it will be
verified. — Ver. 23. And it is like deceptive divination in their eyes ;
sacred oaths are theirs (lit. to them) ; but he brings the iniquity to
remembrance, that they may be taken. Ver. 24. Therefore thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Because ye bring your iniquity to remem-
brance, in that your offences are made manifest, so that your sins
appear in all your deeds, because ye are remembered ye shall be
taken with the hand. Ver. 25. And thou pierced one, sinner, prince
of Israel, whose day is come at the time of the final transgression,
Ver. 26. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The turban will be removed,
the crown taken off. This is not this ; the low will be lifted up, and
the lofty lowered. Ver. 27. Overthrown, overthrown, overthrown
will I niahe it ; even this shall not be, till He cometh, to whom is
the right, to Him do I give it. — In ver. 23 (28), On?, which is more
precisely defined by Q[i\Vi!?, refers to the Israelites, i.e. the
Judaeans. This also applies to the following on?, which cannot
possibly be taken as referring to a different subject, say, for
example, the Chaldeans. It is evident, therefore, that it is
impossible to sustain the rendering given in Gesenius' Thesaurus
{s.v.) to the obscure words nijJaB' ''V.^^, viz. qui juramenta
300 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
jurarunt eis (sc. Chaldaeis), which Maurer has modified and
expounded thus : " they will not fear these auguries ; they will
swear oaths to them (the Chaldeans), that is to say, according
to their usual custom, these truce-breakers will take fresh oaths,
hoping that the Chaldeans will be conciliated thereby." More-
over, the thought itself is an unsuitable one, inasmuch as " the
defiant attitude of confidence with which they looked such
awfully threatening danger in the face must have had some
other ground than a reliance upon false oaths and Chaldean
credulity" (Havernick). The common explanation, which
Eosenmiiller and Kliefoth uphold, is, " because the Chaldeans
are sworn allies, sworn confederates of theirs;" or as Kliefoth
explains it, " on account of the oath of fealty or vassalage
sworn by Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar, they have sworn con-
federates in the Chaldeans, and relying upon this, they are
coufident that they have no hostile attack to fear from them."
But this is altogether untenable, not only because it is perfectly
arbitrary to supply " the Chaldeans," but still more for the
reason adduced by Mararer. " How," he justly asks, " could the
Judaeaus despise these auguries because the Chaldeans were
bound to them by an oath when they themselves had broken
faith ? When a treaty has been violated by one party, is not
the other released from his oath?" We therefore adopt the
same explanation as Havernick : " oaths of oaths are theirs (to
them), Le. the most sacred oaths are (made) to them, namely,
by God." They rely upon that which God has solemnly sworn
to them, without considering upon what this promise was con-
ditional, namely, upon a faithful observance on their part of the
commandments of God. For the fact itself, compare ch. xx. 42,
and such passages as Ps. cv. 9 sqq., etc. The form ^p?' by the
side of nm^ may be explained in a very simple way from the
relation of the construct state, i.e. from the endeavour to secure
an obvious form for the construct state, and cannot in any
case furnish a well-founded argument against the correct-
ness of our explanation. As Ezekiel uses Q''^'^: for nitra? in ch.
CHAP. XXI. 23-27. 301
xiii. 20, he may also have formed Q''W^ 0????') by the side of
niyaip. — As they rely upon the promises of God without reflect-
ing upon their own breach of covenant, God will bring their
sin to remembrance through His judgment. S^Wi is Jehovah,
upon whose oaths they rely, liy must not be restricted to
Zedekiah's breach of covenant, since ver. 24 clearly shows that
it is the wrong-doing of Judah generally. K'annp in ver. 24 (29)
is also to be understood of the whole nation, which is to be
taken and punished by the king of Babylon. For ver. 24 (29)
introduces the reason for the statement made in the last clause
of ver. 23 (28). God must put the people in remembrance of
their iniquity by inflicting punishment, because they have called
it to remembrance by sins committed without any shame, and
thereby have, so to speak, compelled God to remember them,
and to cause the sinners to be grasped by the hand of the
slayer. f^V T'Stn is used in ver. 24 (29) in a different sense
from ver. 23 (28), and is therefore explained by 'lJ1 riipsfla.
^133, which is indefinite in itself, points back to J^in T in ver.
11 (16), and receives from that its more exact definition.
With ver. 25 the address turns to the chief sinner, the god-
less King Zedekiah, vf ho was bringing the judgment of destruc-
tion upon the kingdom by his faithless breach of oath. The
words ??n, yB*'"!, and '"B" H'^'^i, are asyndeta, co-ordinate to one
another. ?Pn does not mean profane or infamous (fie^TJke,
LXX.), but simply pierced, slain. This meaning is to be
retained here. This is demanded not only by the fixed usage
of the language, but also by the relation in which ??n stands
both to ver. 14 and to Ci''J'E>-i 'hhn in ver. 29 (34). It is true
that Zedekiah was not pierced by the sword either at that time
or afterwards, but was simply blinded and led in captivity to
Babylon, where he died. But all that follows from this is, that
??n is used here in a figurative sense, given up to the sword, i.e.
to death ; and Zedekiah is so designated for the purpose of
announcing in a more energetic manner the certainty of his
fate. The selection of the term TPn is the more natural, because
302 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
throughout the whole prophecy the description of the judg-
ment takes its character from the figure of the sword of Jehovah.
As God does not literally wield a sword, so pbn is no proof of
actual slaying with the sword, iai'', his day, is the day of his de-
struction (cf. 1 Sam. xxvi. 10), or of the judgment upon him. The
time of the final transgression is not the time when the transgres-
sion reaches its end, i.e. its completion, but the time when the
wickedness brings the end, i.e. destruction (cf. ch. xxxv. 5, and
for Y?. in this sense, ch. vii. 2, 3). The fact that the end, the
destruction, is come, i.e. is close at hand, is announced in ver. 26
to the prince, and in his person to the whole nation. If we
understand the connection in this way, which is naturally
suggested by ver. 2ob, we get rid of the objection, which led
Kliefoth to question the fact that it is the king who is addressed
in ver. 25a, and to take the words as collective, " ye slaughtered
sinners, princes of Israel," and to understand them as referring
to the entire body of rulers, including the priests, — an explana-
tion that is completely upset by the words H^'^: . . . nPiN (thou
. . . prince), which are so entirely opposed to the collective
view. Again, the remark that " what follows in ver. 26, viz.
the statement to be made to the t^V^, has really nothing to do
with him, since the sweeping away of the priesthood did not
affect Zedekiah personally" (Kliefoth), is neither correct nor
conclusive. For ver. 26 contains an announcement not only of
the abrogation of the priesthood, but also of the destruction of
the kingdom, which did affect Zedekiah both directly and per-
sonally. Moreover, we must not isolate the king addressed,
even as an individual, from the position which he occupied, or,
at any rate, which he ought to have occupied as a theocratic
monarch, so as to be able to say that the abrogation of the
priesthood did not affect him. The priesthood was one of the
fundamental pillars of the theocracy, the removal of which
would necessarily be followed by the collapse of the divine
state, and therefore by the destruction of the monarchy.
Hence it is that the abolition of the priesthood is mentioned
CHAP. SXL 23-27. 303
first. The infinitives absolute (not imperatives) T'On and
Dnn are selected for the purpose of expressing the truth in
the most emphatic manner ; and the verbs are synonymous.
Cin, to lift up, i.e. not to elevate, but to take away, to abolish,
as in Isa. Ivii. 14; Dan. viii. 11. najSD does not mean the
royal diadem, like ^*3S in Isa. Ixii. 3, but the tiara of the high
priest, as it does in every instance in the Pentateuch, from
vrhich Ezekiel has taken the word. iT^^yii, the king's crown.
The diadem of the priest and the regal crown are the insignia
of the offices of high priest and king ; and consequently their
removal is the abolition of both high-priesthood and monarchy.
These words contain the sentence of death upon the theocracy,
of which the Aaronic priesthood and the Davidic monarchy
constituted the foundations. — They predict not merely a tem-
porary, but a complete abolition of both offices and dignities ;
and their fulfilment took place when the kingdom of Judah
was destroyed by the king of Babylon. The earthly sovereignty
of the house of David was not restored again after the captivity ;
and the high-priesthood of the restoration, like the second
temple, was only a shadowy outline of the glory and essential
features of the high-priesthood of Aaron. As the ark with the
Shechinah, or the gracious presence of God, was wanting in the
temple of Zerubbabel ; so were the Urim and Thummim want-
ing to the high-priesthood, and these were the only means by
which the high priest could really carry out the mediation
between the Lord and the people, mil iib niil (this is not this)
does not refer to the tiara (mitre) and crown. riNt is neuter,
and therefore construed with the masculine n*n. This (mitre
and crown) will not be this (njn is prophetic), i.e. it will not
continue, it will be all over with it (Havernick, Maurer, and
Kliefoth). To this there is appended the further thought, that
a general inversion of things will take place. This is the
meaning of the words — the low will be lifted up, and the lofty
lowered. i?33n and b'^S^n are infinitives, and are chosen in the
same sense as in the first hemistich. The form njSE'n, with n
304 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
without the tone, is masculine ; the n— probably serving merely
to give greater fulness to the form, and to make it correspond
more nearly to rfliT}} — This general thought is expressed still
more definitely in ver. 27a. >^\V, which is repeated twice to give
greater emphasis to the thought, is a noun derived from njy,
inversion, overthrow ; and the suffix in ri|0''K'N points back to
nsr in ver. 26 (31). This, the existing state, the high-priest-
hood and the monarchy, will I make into destruction, or utterly
overthrow. But the following riNI cannot also refer to the tiara
and crown, as Kliefoth supposes, on account of the Da which
precedes it. This shows that mil relates to the thing last men-
tioned. Even this, the overthrow, shall have no durability;
or, as Tanch. has correctly expressed it, neque liaec conditio erit
durahilis. The following ^<3"^y attaches itself not so much to
this last clause as to the main thought : overthrow upon over-
throw will ensue. The thought is this : " nowhere is there
rest, nowhere security ; all things are in a state of flux till the
coming of the great Kestorer and Prince of peace " (Hengsten-
berg). It is generally acknowledged that the words N^"^y
iDSB'ffln i^-iB'N contain an allusion to Gen. xlix. 10, SU', ''3 ly
iV>^fi> ; and it is only by a false interpretation of the preceding
clauses, wrung from the words by an arbitrary alteration of
the text, that Hitzig is able to set this connection aside. At
' Hitzig has given a most preposterous exposition of this verse. Taking
the words TiDH and Qi-in as antithetical, in the sense of removing and
exalting or sustaining in an exalted position, and regarding the clauses as
questions signifying, " Shall the high-priesthood be abolished, and the
real dignity, on the contrary, remain untouched?" he finds the answer to
these questions in the words DXT tib DNT (this, not this). They contain,
in his opinion, an affirmation of the former and a negation of the latter.
But he does not tell us how riNt tib flNt without a verb can possibly
mean, " the former (the abrogation of the high-priesthood) will take place,
but the latter (the exaltation of the monarchy) will not occur." And,
finally, the last clause, " the low shall be lifted up," etc., is said to contain
simply a watchword, which is not for the time being to be followed by any
result. Such trifling needs no refutation. We simply observe, therefore,
that there is no ground for the assertion, that onn without p cannot
possibly signify to abolish.
CHAP. SSI. 28-32. 305
the same time, CBB-'Bri 6~iE'S is of course not to be taken as a
philological explanation of the word •'i'p''^, but is simply a theo-
logical interpretation of the patriarchal prophecy, with direct
reference to the predicted destruction of the existing relations
in consequence of the ungodliness and unrighteousness of the
leaders of the theocracy up to that time. tJSE'tsn is not the
rightful claim to the mitre and crown, but right in an objective
sense, as belonging to God (Dent. i. 17), and entrusted by God
to the earthly government as His representative. He then, to
whom this right belongs, and to whom God will give it, is the
Messiah, of whom the prophets from the times of David
onwards have prophesied as the founder and restorer of perfect
right on earth (cf. Ps. Ixxii. ; Isa. ix. 6, xlii. 1 ; Jer. xxiii, 5,
xxxiii. 17). The suffix attached to VririJ is not a dative, but an
accusative, referring to tSBtyp (cf. Ps. Ixxii. 1). There was no
necessity to mention the person again to whom God would
give the right, as He had already been designated in the pre-
vious expression v "1E'5<.
Vers, 28-32. Overthrow of the Ammonites. — Ver. 28. And
thou, son of man, ■prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
concerning the sons of Ammon, and concerning their scorn, sword,
sword, drawn to slay, polished, that it may devour, tliat it may
flash ! Ver. 29. While they prophesy deceit to thee, while they
divine lying to thee, it shall lay thee by the necks of the sinnet's
slain, whose day coraeth at the time of the final transgression.
Ver. 30. Put it in its scabbard again. At the place where thou
wast created, in the land of thy birth will I judge thee, Ver. 31.
And pour out my anger upon thee, kindle the fire of my wrath
against thee, and give thee into the hand of foolish men, of
smitJis of destruction. Ver. 32. Thou shalt be for the fire to
devour ; thy blood shall remain in the midst of the land ; thou
shall be remembered no more ; for I Jehovah have spoJcen it. —
As Judah in Jerusalem will fall by the sword of the king of
Babylon, contrary to all expectation ; so will the Ammonites
be punished for their scorn with utter extermination. ns"in is
EZEK. I. U
306 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
scorn at the overthrow of Israel (cf. ch. xxv. 3, 6, and Zeplu
ii 8). The sword is already drawn against them. nmns,
taken out of the scabbard, as in Ps. xxxvii. 14. n3D^ is to
be connected with nmns, notwithstanding the accents, and.
b'^rh with HDi-iD. This is required by the correspondence of
thJ clauses. ' ^'3" is regarded as a derivative of ^« by Ewald
and others, in the sense of ad sustinendum, according to capa-
city, i.e. as much as possible. But the adverbial rendering is
opposed to the context, and cannot be sustained from ch.
xxiii. 32. Moreover, ^«, to contain, is applicable enough to
goblets and other vessels, but not to a sword. Hitzig therefore
explains it from the Arabic J^, to blunt (sc. the eyes), i.e. to
blind. But this is open to the objection that the form P'-an
points to the verb b^2 rather than ^^3 ; and also to a still greater
one, namely, that there is nothing in the Hebrew usage to
suggest the use of hhs in such a sense as this, and even if it
were used in the sense of blunting, it would be perfectly arbi-
trary to supply DJ^'V ; and lastly, that even the flashing of the
sword does not suggest the idea of blinding, but is intended to
heighten the terror occasioned by the sharpness of the sword.
We therefore adhere to the derivation of ^'^n from 7?S, and
regard it as a defective form for ^'35<n, like iioii for r\tim
in 2 Sam. xix. 14, '?\)''_ as syncopated form for ^^^\ (Isa. xiii.
20), and trim for tn^ni in 2 Sam. xx. 9 ; literally, to cause it
to eat or devour, i.e. to make it fit for the work of devouring.
p-ia JJIO^, literally, for the sake of the lightning (flash) that shall
issue therefrom (cf. ver. 10).— In ver. 29 (34), nrh (to lay,
or place) is also dependent upon nrans ym^ drawn to lay
thee; so that the first half of the verse is inserted as a
parenthesis, either to indicate the occasion for bringing the
sword into the land (Hitzig), or to introduce an attendant
circumstance, according to the sense in which the 3 in niina is
taken. The parenthetical clause is understood by most of the
commentators as referring to deceptive oracles of Ammonitish
CHAP. XXI. 28-32. 307
soothsayers, which either determined the policy of Ammon, as
Hitzig supposes (cf. Jer. xxvii. 9, 10), or inspired the Ammon-
ites with confidence, that they had nothing to fear from the
Chaldeans. Kliefoth, on the other hand, refers the words to
the oracles consulted by Nebuchadnezzar, according to ver. 23.
" These oracles, which directed the king not to march against
the Ammonites, but against Jerusalem, proved themselves,
according to ver. 29, to be deceptive prophesying to the Ammon-
ites, inasmuch as they also afterwards fell by the sword ; just as,
according to ver. 23, they proved themselves to be genuine so
far as the Israelites were concerned, inasmuch as they were
really the first to be smitten." This view is a very plausible
one, if it only answered in any degree to the words. But it is
hard to believe that the words, " while it (one) prophesies false-
hood to thee," are meant to be equivalent to " while its prophecy
proves itself to be false to thee." Moreover, Nebuchadnezzar
did not give the Ammonites any oracle, either false or true, by
the circumstance that his divination at the cross-road led him
to decide in favour of the march to Jerusalem ; for all that he
did in consequence was to postpone his designs upon the
Ammonites, bnt not to relinquish them. We cannot under-
stand the words in any other sense, therefore, than as relating
to oracles, which the Ammonites received from soothsayers of
their own. — Hitzig takes offence at the expression, " that it
(the sword) may lay thee by (to) the necks of the sinners
slain," because colla cannot stand for corpora decollata, and
consequently proposes to alter 'ni}i'' into riniN, to put it (the
sword) to the necks. But by this conjecture he gets the not
less striking thought, that the sword was to be put to the necks
of those already slain ; a thing which would be perfectly un-
meaning, and is therefore not generally done. The sinners
slain are the Judaeans who have fallen. The words point
back to ver. 25, the second half of which is (repeated here,
and predict the same fate to the Ammonites. It is easy
to supply 310 to '^■lyn'^N ag'n : put the sword into its scabbard
308 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
again. These words can only be addressed to the Ammonites ;
not to the Chaldeans, as Kliefoth imagines, for the latter does
not harmonize in any way with what follows, viz. in the place of
thy birth will I judge thee. God does not execute the judg-
ment independently of the Chaldeans, but through the medium
of their sword. The difficulties occasioned by taking the
words as referring to the Ammonites are not so great as to
necessitate an alteration of the text (Hitzig), or to call for the
arbitrary explanation : put it now or for the present into the
scabbard (Kliefoth). The use of the masculine 3B'n (with
Patach for ntrn, as in Isa. xlii. 22), if Ammon is addressed by
the side of the feminine "^Xf^^, may be explained in a very simple
way, from the fact that the sword is carried by men, so that
here the thought of the people, the warriors, is predominant,
and the representation of the kingdom of the Ammonites as a
woman falls into the background. The objection that the
suffix in iTJV'ii can only refer to the sword (of the Chaldean)
mentioned in ver. 28, is more plausible than conclusive. For
inasmuch as the scabbard presupposes a sword, and every sword
has a scabbard, the suffix may be fully accounted for from the
thing itself, as the words, " put the sword into its scabbard,"
would lead any hearer to think at once of the sword of the
person addressed, without considering whether that particular
sword had been mentioned before or not. The meaning of the
words is this : every attempt to defend thyself with the sword
and avert destruction will be in vain. In thine own land will
God judge thee. For T^ninaD, see the comm. on ch. xvi. 3.
This judgment is still further explained in ver. 31, where the
figure of the sword is dropped, and that of the fire of the wrath
of God introduced in its place. n'SK . . . B'Sa, we render : " the
fire of my wrath I blow (kindle) against thee," after Isa. liv. 16,
and not " with the fire ... do I blow, or snort, against thee,"
as others have done ; because blowing with the fire is an un-
natural figure, and the interpretation of the words in accordance
with Isa. l.c. is all the more natural, that in the closing words of
CHAP. XSII. 309
the verse, n^nc-D ''tJ'-in, the allusion to that passage is indisputable,
and it is only from this that the combination of the two words
can be accounted for. — ^Different explanations have been given
of ^'''W^' Some render it ardentes, and in accordance with
Isa. XXX. 27 : burning with wrath. But "iV^ is never used in
this sense. Nor can the rendering " scorching men " (Kliefoth)
be sustained, for IW, to burn, only occurs in connection with
things which are combustible, e.g. fire, pitch, coals, etc. The
word must be explained from Ps. xcii. 7, " brutish," foolish,
always bearing in mind that the Hebrew associated the idea of
godlessness with folly, and that cruelty naturally follows in its
train. — Ver. 32. Thus will Ammon perish through fire and
sword, and even the memory of it be obliterated. For ver. 32a
compare ch. xv. 4. The words, " thy blood will be p?'? ^i'^?
in the midst of the land," can hardly be understood in any
other sense than " thy blood will fiow over all the land." For
the rendering proposed by Ewald, " remain in the midst of
the earth, without thy being mentioned," like that given by
Kliefoth, " thy blood will the earth drink," does not harmonize
with ch. xxiv. 7, where ^^■^ RDina na'n is affirmed of blood,
which cannot penetrate into the earth, or be covered with dust.
For '"i^W, see ch. xxv. 10. Ammon as the enemy of the king-
dom of God will utterly perish, leaving no trace behind, and
without any such hope of restoration as that held out in ver.
27 to the kingdom of Judah or the people of Israel.
CHAP. XXII. THE SINS OF JEEUSALEM AND ISEAEL.
To the prediction of the judgment in ch. xxi. there is appended
another description of the sins of Jerusalem and Israel, by
which this judgment is occasioned. The chapter contains
three words of God, which are connected together both in
substance and design, viz. (1) The blood-guiltiness and idolatry
of Jerusalem accelerate the coming of the days when the city
will be an object of scorn to all the world (vers. 1-16);
310 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(2) The house of Israel has become dross, and is to be melted
in the fire of tribulation (vers. 17-22) ; (3) All ranks of the
kingdom — prophets, priests, princes, and people — are thoroughly
corrupt, therefore has the judgment burst upon them (vers.
23-31).
Vers. 1-16. Blood-guiltiness of Jerusalem and the burden of
its sins. Vers. 1—5 contain the principal accusation relating
to bloodshed and idolatry; and vers. 6-16 a further account of
the sins of the people and their rulers, with a brief threatening
of punishment. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me,
saying, Ver. 2. And thou, son of man, wilt thou judge'? wilt thou
judge the city of blood-guiltiness ? then show it aU its abominations,
Ver. 3. And say. Thus saiih the Lord Jehovah, City, which sheddeth
blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols
within itself for defilement. Ver. 4. Through thy blood which
thou hast shed hast thou made thyself guilty, and through thine
idols which thou hast made hast thou defiled thyself, and hast drawn
thy days near, and hast come to thy years ; therefore I mahe thee a
scorn to the nations, and ridicule to all lands. Ver. 5. T7iose near
and those far off from thee shall ridicule thee as defied in name,
rich in confusion. — The expression 'W1 tJJSB'nri proves this ad-
dress to be a continuation of the reproof of Israel's sins, ■which
commenced in ch. xx. 4. The epithet city of blood-guiltiness,
as in ch. xxiv. 6, 9 (compare Nah. iii. 1), is explained in ver. 3.
The apodosis commences with riri?nini, and is continued in ver. 3
(fi'|'??1). ^^V ^i3^, that her time, i.e. her time of punishment,
may come : nPiy, like ini^ in ch. xxi. 30. >^^^>^\ is not a con-
tinuation of the infinitive NU^, but of the participle nasb'.
r}\V, of which different renderings have been given, does not
mean " over itself," i.e. as a burden with which it has laden itself
(Havernick); still less "for itself" (Hitzig), a meaning which bjJ
never has, but literally « upon," i.e. in itself, covering the city
with it, as it were, "^^ip, thou hast brought near, brought on
thy days, that is to say, the days of judgment, and bast come
to, arrived at thy years, so. the years of visitation and punish-
CHAP. XXII. 6-12. 311
ment (cf. Jei-. xi. 23). This meaning is I'eadily supplied by
the context. DtS'n nsDD, defiled, unclean with regard to the
name, i.e. having forfeited the name of a holy city through
capital crimes and other sinful abominations, nainp is internal
confusion, both moral and religious, as in Amos iii. 9 (cf. Ps.
Iv. 10-12).
In vers. 6-12 there follows an enumeration of a multitude of
sins which had been committed in Jerusalem. — Ver. 6. Behold,
the princes of Israel are every one, according to his arm, in thee
to shed blood. Ver. 7. Father and mother they despise in thee;
toward the fot iiyner they act violently in the midst of thee ; orphans
and widoios they oppress in thee. Ver. 8. Tliou despisest my
holy things, and desecratest my Sabbaths. Ver. 9. Slanderer's are
in thee to shed blood, and they eat upon the mountains in thee;
they practise lewdness in thee. Ver. 10. They uncover the father^ s
nakedness in thee; they ravish the defiled in her uncleanness in
thee. Ver. 11. And one committeth abomination with his neigh-
bour's wife, and another defileth his daughter-in-law by incest,
and the third ravisheth his sister, his father's daughter in thee.
Ver. 12. They take gifts in thee to shed blood; interest and
usury thou takest, and overreachest thy neighbours with violence,
and thou forgettest me, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. —
By the repetition of the refrain, to shed blood (vers. 6, 9,
and 12), the enumeration is divided into three groups of sins,
which are placed in the category of blood-guiltiness by the fact
that they are preceded by this sentence and the repetition of
it after the form of a refrain. The first group (vers. 6-8)
embraces sins which are committed in daring opposition to all
the laws of morality. By the princes of Israel we are to
understand primarily the profligate kings, who caused innocent
persons to be put to death, such, for example, as Jehoiakim
(2 Kings xxiv. 4), Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 16), and others.
The words vn ijlht^ »'''« are rendered by Hitzig and Kliefoth,
they were ready to help one another ; and in support of the ren-
dering they appeal to Ps. Ixxxiii. 9. But in that case S:i'-if? B''K
312 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
would stand for ti'''N V'lt^, or rather for ti'\S^ ynt ^%—a. substitu-
tion which cannot be sustained. Nor can they be taken in the
sense proposed by Havernick, every one relying upon his arm,
i.e. looking to physical force alone, but simply every one
according to his arm, i.e. according to his strength or violence,
are they in thee. In this case Vn does not require anything to
be supplied, any more than in the similar combination in ver. 9.
Followed by ]^g? with an infinitive, it means to be there witli
the intention of doing anything, or making an attempt, i.e. to
direct his efforts to a certain end. In ver. 7 it is not the
princes who are the subject, but the ungodly in general. I?i5n is
the opposite of 13| (Ex. xx. 12). In the reproofs which follow,
compare Ex. xxii. 20 sqq. ; Lev. xix. 13 ; Deut. xxiv. 14 sqq.
With insolence and violence toward men there is associated con-
tempt of all that is holy. For ver. 8b, see ch. xx. 13. — In the
second group, vers. 9-11, in addition to slander and idolatry,
the crimes of lewdness and incest are the principal sins for
which the people are reproved ; and here the allusion to Lev.
xviii. and xix. is very obvious. The reproof of slander also
points back to the prohibition in Lev. xix. 16. Slander to
shed blood, refers to malicious charges and false testimony in a
court of justice (vid. 1 Kings xxi. 10, 11). For eating upon
the mountains, see ch. xviii. 6. The practice of zimmdli is
more specifically described in vers. 10 and 11. For the thinfr
itself, compare Lev. xviii. 7, 8, xix. 15 and 9. The threefold
^"•^ in ver. 11 does not mean every one, but one, another, and
the third, as the correlative =injn shows. — The third group,
ver. 12, is composed of sins of covetousness. For the first
clause, compare the prohibition in Ex. xxiii. 2 ; for the second,
ch. xviii. 8, 13. The reproof finishes with forgetfulness of God,
which is closely allied to covetousness.
Vers. 13-16. The Lord is enraged at such abominable doings.
He will interfere, and put an end to them by scattering Judah
among the heathen.— Ver. 13. And, behold, I smite my liand
because of thy gain which thou hast made, and over thy blood-
a
CHAP. XXII. 17-22. 313
guiltiness which is in the midst of thee. Ver. 14. Will thy heart
indeed stand firm, or will thy hands he strong for the day when I
shall deal with thee ? / Jehovah have spoken it, and also do it.
Ver. 15. i will scatter thee among the nations, and disperse thee
in the lands, and will utterly remove thine uncleanness from thee.
Ver. 16. And thou wilt he desecrated through thyself hefore the eyes
of the nations, and know that I am Jehovah. — Ver. 13 is closely
connected with the preceding verse. This serves to explain the
fact that the only sins mentioned as exciting the wrath of God
are covetousness and blood-guiltiness. ^3 nan, as 2 Kings
xi. 12 clearly shows, is a contracted expression for ^1? n3n
^3 ?« (ch. xxi. 19), and the smiting of the hands together is a
gesture indicative of wrathful indignation. For the form ^O'n,
contracted from ^IP'J, see the comm. on ch. xvi. 45. — As ver. 13
leads on to the threatening of judgment, so does ver. 14 point
in anticipation to the terrible nature of the judgment itself.
The question, "will thy heart stand firm?" involves-a warning
against security. ipV is the opposite of DO: (cf. ch. xxi. 12),
as standing forms the antithesis to passing away (cf. Ps. cii. 27).
:inis rwVj as in ch. xvi. 59 and vii. 27. The Lord will scatter
them (cf. ch. xii. 15, xx. 23), and remove the uncleanness of sin,
namely, by purifying the people in exile (cf. Isa. iv. 4). Dnn^
from Di?)J, to cause to cease, with t^, to take completely away.
pk'^h Niphal of ^^n, connected with D^iJ ''p/J??, as in ch. xx. 9,
not from ^n:, as many of the commentators who follow the Sep-
tuagint and Vulgate suppose. t]3, not in te, in thyself, but through
thee, i.e. through thy sinful conduct and its consequences.
Vers. 17-22. Eefining of Israel in the furnace of besieged
Jerusalem. — Ver. 17. And the word of Jehovah came to me, say-
ing, Ver. 18. Son of man, the house of Israel has hecome to me
as dross ; they are all hrass, and tin, and iron, and lead in the
furnace; dross of silver have they hecome. Ver. 19. Therefore
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because ye have all hecome dross,
therefore, hehold, I gather you together in Jerusalem. Ver. 20. As
men gather together silver, and hrass, and iron, and lead, and tin
314 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
into the furnace, to blow the fire upon it for melting^ so will I
gather {you) together in my anger and my wrath, and put you in
and melt you. Ver. 21. And I will collect you together, and blow
the fire of my wrath upon you, that ye may be melted therein.
Ver. 22. As silver is melted in the furnace, so shall ye be melted
therein (viz. in Jerusalem), and shall learn that I Jehovah
have poured out my ivrath upon you. — This second word of God
rests no doubt upon the figure in ver. 15b, of the uncleanness
or dirt of sin ; but it is not an exposition of the removal of the
dirt, as predicted there. For that was to be effected through
the dispersion of Israel among the nations, whereas the word of
God, from ver. 17 onwards, represents the siege awaiting Jeru-
salem as a melting process, through which God will separate
the silver ore contained in Israel from the baser metals mingled
with it. In ver. 18 it commences with a description of the
existing condition of Israel. It has turned to dross. ^''H is
^,learly a perfect, and is not to be taken as a prophetical future,
as Kliefoth proposes. Such a rendering is not only precluded
by the clause '1J1 ni^n ]yi in ver. 19, but could only be made to
yield an admissible sense by taking the middle clause of the
verse, " all of them brass and tin," etc., as a statement of what
Israel had become, or as a preterite in opposition to all the rules
of Hebrew syntax, inasmuch as this clause merely furnishes
an explanation of ilDP'Vn. jid, which only occurs here, for
yp signifies dross, not smelting-ore (Kliefoth), literally, rece-
danea, the baser ingredients which are mixed with the silver,
and separated from it by smelting. This is the meaning here,
where it is directly afterwards interpreted as consisting of
brass, tin, iron, and lead, and then still further defined as CSt?
fip3, dross of silver, i.e. brass, tin, iron, and lead, with a mixture
of silver. Because Israel had turned into silver-dross of this
kind, the Lord would gather it together in Jerusalem, to smelt
it there as in a smelting furnace ; just as men gather together
brass, iron, lead, and tin in a furnace to smelt them, or rather
to separate the silver contained therein. f)D3 nvap^ literally, a
CHAP. XXII. 23-31. 315
collection of silver, etc., for " like a collection." The 3 simil. is
probably omitted for the sake of euphony, to avoid the discord
occasioned by prefixing it to riv?i?. Ezekiel mentions the silver
as well, because there is some silver contained in the brass,
iron, etc., or the dross is silver-dross, ^wn, nomen verbale, from
■iirij in the Hiphil, smelting ; literally, as the smelting of silver
takes place in the furnace. The smelting is treated here simply
as a figurative representation of punishment, and consequently
the result of the smelting, namely, the refining of the silver by
the removal of the baser ingredients, is not referred to any
further, as is the case in Isa. i. 22, 25; Jer. vi. 27-30; Mai.
iii. 2, 3. This smelting process was experienced by Israel in
the last siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans.
Vers. 23-31. The corrupt state of all classes in the kingdom
is the immediate cause of its destruction. — Ver. 23. And the
ivord of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 24. Son of manj^.,say
to it, Tliou art a land which is not shined upon, nor rained upvii
in the day of anger. Ver. 25. Conspiracy of its prophets is
loithin it ; like a roaring lion, which rends in pieces the prey, they
devour souls, take possessions and money ; they multiply its
widows within it. Ver. 26. Its priests violate my law and pro-
fane my holy things ; they make no distinction between holy and
unholy, and do not teach the difference between clean and unclean,
and they hide their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned
among them. Ver. 27. Its princes in the midst of it are like
ivolves, which rend prey in pieces, that they may shed blood,
destroy souls, to acquire gain. Ver. 28. And its prophets plaster
it with cement, seeing lohat is worthless, and divining lies for
them, saying, " Thus saith the Lord Jehovah," when Jehovah hath
not spoken. Ver. 29. The common people offer violence and
commit theft ; they crush the wretched and the poor, and oppress
the foreigner against right. Ver. 30. I seek among them for a
man who might build a wall and step into the breach before me
on behalf of the land, that I might not destroy it, but I find none.
Ver. 31. Therefore 1 pour out my anger upon them; I destroy
316 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
them in the fire of my wrath, I give their way upon their
head, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — To show the
necessity for the predicted judgment still more clearly, in
the third word of God contained in this chapter a descrip-
tion is given of the spread of deep corruption among all
classes of the people, and the impossibility of saving the king-
dom is plainly shown. The words r)?~H3N, " say unto her," are
taken by most of the commentators as referring to Jerusalem,
the abominations of which the prophet is commanded to declare.
But although the clause, " thou art aland," etc. (ver. 24), could
unquestionably be made to harmonize with this, yet the words
of ver. 30, " I sought for a man who might stand in the gap
before Jehovah for the land," indicate most unquestionably that
this word of God is directed against the land of Judah, and
consequently R? must be taken as referring to px which
*-'11q5\'s, the pronoun in this case being placed before the noun
to which it refers, as in Num. xxiv. 17. Any allusion to the
city of Jerusalem would therefore be somewhat out of place,
inasmuch as in the preceding word of God the object referred
to was not the city, but the house of Israel, or the nation
generally, from which a transition is here made to the land, or
th^kingdom of Judah. The meaning of ver. 24 is a disputed
question. 5<^n ^I'^'^P '^'-'j which is rendered 57 ov ^pexofievr) in
the Sept., is taken by most of the expositors to mean, " it is not
cleansed," the form nnnbp being correctly rendered as a parti-
ciple Pual of "inci. But this rendering does not furnish any
appropriate sense, unless the following words i=ipt^'3 K? are taken
as a threat : there shall not be rain, or it shall not be rained
upon in the day of wrath. But this view is hardly reconcilable
with the form of the word. i^9K''3, according to the Masoretic
pointing with Mappih in the n, is evidently meant to he taken
as a noun OB'S = DE'J. In that case, if the words were intended
to contain a threat, nw ought not to be omitted. But without
a verb the words contain a statement in harmony with what
precedes. We regard the Chetib r\mi as the perfect Pual
CHAP. XXII. 23-31. 317
HDE'J, And let it not be objected to this that the Fual of this
verb is not met with elsewhere, for the form of the noun Om
with the u sound does not occur anywhere else. As a perfect
Fual, nttE'3 iib is a simple continuation of the participial clause
N'n iTjnbD iib, containing like this an affirmation, and cannot
possibly be taken as a threat or prediction. But " not
cleansed " and " not rained upon " do not agree together, as
rain is not a means of purification according to the Hebrew
idea. It is true that in the law the withdrawal or suspension
of rain is threatened as a punishment from God, and the pour-
ing out of rain is promised as a theocratical blessing. But even
if the words are taken in a tropical sense, as denoting a with-
drawal of the blessings of divine grace, they will not harmonize
with the other clause, " not cleansed." We therefore take
nnnbp in the sense of " shined upon by the light," or provided
with brightness; a meaning which is sustained by Ex. xxiv. 10,
where tohar occurs in the sense of splendour, and by the
kindred word tzohar, light. In this way we obtain the suitable
thought, land which has neither sunlight nor rain in the day of
wrath, i.e. does not enjoy a single trace of the divine blessing,
but is given up to the curse of barrenness. The reason for this
threat is given in vers. 25 sqq., where a picture is drawn of the
moral corruption of all ranks ; viz. of the prophets (ver. 25),
the priests (ver. 26), the princes (ver. 27), and the common
people (ver. 29). There is something very striking in the
allusion to the prophets in ver. 25, not so much because they are
mentioned again in ver. 28, — for this may be accounted for on
the ground that in the latter passage they are simply introduced
as false advisers of the princes, — as on account of the statement
made concerning them in ver. 25, namely, that, like lions tear-
ing their prey, they devour souls, etc. ; a description which
is not given either in chap. xiii. or elsewhere. Hitzig there-
fore proposes to alter n^N'^a into "''^''B'J, after the rendering
d(f)7jyovfievoi, given by the LXX. This alteration of the
text, which confines itself to a single letter, is rendered very
318 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
plausible by the fact that almost the same is affirmed of the
persons mentioned in ver. 25 as of the princes in ver. 27, and
that in the passage in Zephaniah (iii. 3, 4), which is so similar
to the one before us, that Ezekiel appears to have had it in his
mind, the princes ('i''?.^) and the judges ("''^s'E') are called the
prophets and the priests. The D''K^B'3 here would correspond to
the D^IB' of Zephaniah, and the O'lB* to the D^DStJ'. According
to ver. 6, the CX'^'i would indicate primarily the members of
the royal family, possibly including the chief officers of the
crown ; and the Cl^* (ver. 27) would be the heads of tribes,
of families, and of fathers' houses, in whose hands the national
administration of justice principally lay (cf. Ex. xviii. 19sqq. ;
Deut. i. 13-18; and my Bill. Archdol. ii. § 149). I therefore
prefer this conjecture, or correction, to the Masoretic reading,
although the latter is supported by ancient witnesses, such as the
Chaldee with its rendering S<i|i'iSp, scribes, and the version of
Jerome. For the statement which the verse contains is not
applicable to prophets, and the best explanation given of the
Masoretic text — namely, that by Michaelis, " they have made
a compact with one another as to what kind of teaching they
would or would not give ; and in order that their authority
may continue undisturbed, they persecute even to blood those
who do not act with them, or obey them, but rather contradict"
— does not do justice to the words, but weakens their sense, "it^p
is not a predicate to '33, " they are (i.e. form) a conspiracy ; "
but '35 is a genitive. At the same time, there is no necessity
to take iB'i^ in the sense of " company," a rendering which
cannot be sustained. The fact that in what follows, where the.
comparison to lions is introduced, the D''N''33 (D''N''B'5) are the
subject, simply proves that in the first clause also these men
actually form the prominent idea. There is no ground for sup-
plying HEn to '131 ''■1N3 (they are like, etc.) ; but the simile is to
be linked on to the following clause, ibx K'SJ is to be explained
from the comparison to a lion, which devours the prey that it
has captured in its blood, in which is the soul, or nephesh (Gen,
CHAP. XXII. 23-31. 319
ix. 4 ; Lev, xvii. 11 sqq.). The thought is this : In their insa-
tiable greed for riches they sacrifice men and put them to death,
and thereby multiply the number of victims (for the fact, see
chap. xix. 5, 7). What is stated in ver. 26 concerning the
priests is simply a further expansion of Zeph. iii. 4, where the
first two clauses occur word for word ; for ^"p in Zephaniah is
really equivalent to ''^P^, holy things and deeds. The desecra-
tion of the holy things consisted in the fact that they made no
distinction between sacred and profane, clean and unclean.
For the fact, compare Lev. x. 10, 11. Their covering their
eyes from the Sabbaths showed itself in their permitting the
Sabbaths to be desecrated by the people, without offering any
opposition (cf. Jer. xvii. 27). — The comparison of the rulers
(sdrim) to ravening wolves is taken from Zeph. iii. 3. For the
following clause, compare ver. 12 and ch, xiii. 10. Destroying
souls to acquire gain is perfectly applicable to unjust judges,
inasmuch as, according to Ex. xviii. 21, the judges were to hate
W?, All that is affirmed in ver. 28 of the conduct of the false
prophets is repeated for the most part verbatim from ch. xiii.
10, 9, and 7. By on?, which points back to the three classes
of men already mentioned, and not merely to the sarim, the
prophets are represented as helpers of those who support the
ungodly in their wicked ways, hy oracles which assured them
of prosperity. H?? ^'^ (^^''* ^^)' ^^ distinguished from the
spiritual and secular rulers of the nation, signifies the common
people. With reference to their sins and wickedness, see
ch. xviii. 7, 12, 18 ; and for the command against oppressing
the poor and foreigners, compare Ex. xxii. 20, 21 ; Dent,
xxiv. 17. — The corruption is so universal, that not a man is to
be found who could enter into the gap as a righteous man, or
avert the judgment of destruction by his intercession. Onp
refers not merely to the prophets, who did not enter into the
gap according to ch. xiii. 5, but to all the classes previously
mentioned. At the same time, it does not follow from this, that
entering into the gap by means of intercession cannot be the
320 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
thing intended, as Hitzig supposes. The expression "Va '337
pxn clearly refers to intercession. This is apparent from the
simple fact that, as Hitzig himself observes, the intercession of
Abraham for Sodom (Gen. xviii, 13 sqq.) was floating before
the mind of Ezekiel, since the concluding words of the verse
contain an obvious allusion to Gen. xviii. 28. Because the
Lord does not find a single righteous man, who might intercede
for the land. He pours out His anger upon it, to destroy the
inhabitants thereof. With reference to the fact and the
separate words employed, compare ch. xxi. 36, vii. 4, ix. 10,
xi. 21, and xvi. 43. It does not follow from the word ^S?'??),
that Ezekiel "is speaking after the catastrophe'' (Hitzig). For
although 'ilSB'XJ expresses the consequence of Jehovah's seeking
a righteous man and not finding oue, it by no means follows
from the occurrence of the preterite '^f<^'9 ^^] that ^S?'?i!J is
also a preterite. "^^P^) is simply connected with tJ'l?^) as a
consequence ; and in both verbs the Vav consec. expresses the
sequence of thought, and not of time. The seeking, therefore,
with the result of not having found, cannot be understood in a
chronological sense, i.e. as an event belonging to the past, for
the simple reason that the preceding words do not record the
chronological order of events. It merely depicts the existing
moral condition of the people, and ver. 30 sums up the result
of the description in the thought that there was no one to be
found who could enter in the gap before God. Consequently
we cannot determine from the imperfect with Vav consec. either
the time of the seeking and not finding, or that of the pouring
out of the wrath.
CHAP. XXIII. OHOLAH AND OHOLIBAH, THE HARLOTS
SAMARIA AND JERUSALEM.
Samaria and Jerusalem, as the capitals and representatives
of the two kingdoms Israel and Judah, are two sisters, who
have practised whoredom from the days of Egypt onwards
CHAP. XXIII. 1-4. 321
(vers. 2-4). Samaria has carried on this whoredom with
Assyria and Egypt, and has been given up by God into the
power of the Assyrians as a consequent punishment (vers. 5-10).
But Jerusalem, instead of allowing this to serve as a warning,
committed fornication still more grievously with Assyria and
the Chaldeans, and, last of all, with Egypt again (vers. 11-21).
In consequence of this, the Lord will permit the Chaldeans to
make war upon them, and to plunder and put them to shame,
so that, as a punishment for their whoredom and their forget-
fulness of God, they may, in the fullest measure, experience
Samaria's fate (vers. 22-35). In conclusion, both kingdoms
are shown once more, and in still severer terms, the guilt of
their idolatry (vers. 36-44), whilst the infliction of the punish-
ment for both adultery and murder is foretold (vers. 45-49).
In its general character, therefore, this word of God is co-
ordinate with the two preceding ones in ch. xxi. and xxii.,
setting forth once more in a comprehensive way the sins and
the punishment of Israel. But this is done in the form of an
allegory, which closely resembles in its general features the
allegorical description in ch. xvi. ; though, in the particular
details, it possesses a character peculiarly its own, not only in
certain original turns and figures, but still more in the arrange-
ment and execution of the whole. The allegory in ch. xvi.
depicts the attitude of Israel towards the Lord in the past, the
present, and the future ; but in the chapter before us, the guilt
and punishment of Israel stand in the foreground of the picture
throughout, so that a parallel is drawn between Jerusalem and
Samaria, to show that the punishment of destruction, which
Samaria has brought upon itself through its adulterous inter-
course with the heathen, will inevitably fall upon Jerusalem
and Judah also.
Vers. 1-4. The sisters Oholah and Oholibah. — Ver. 1. And
the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man,
two women, daughters of one mother were they, Ver. 3. They
committed whoredom in Egypt, in their youth they committed
EZEK. I. X
322 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
whoredom ; there were their breasts pressed, and there men
handled their virgin bosom. Ver. 4. Their names are Oholah,
the greater, and Oholibah her sister ; and they became mine, and
bare sons and daughters. But their names are: Samaria is
Oholah, and Jerusalem is Oholibah. — The name nD''S"!t< is ■
formed from Pi3 v^i?) " ™y tent in her ; " and, accordingly,
npnsj is to be derived from i^JJIi?} " ^^^ tent," and not to bet
regarded as an abbreviation of na npriK, " her tent in her," as
Hitzig and KHefoth maintain. There is no ground for this
assumption, as " her tent," in contrast with " my tent in her,"
expresses the thought with sufficient clearness, that she had a
tent of her own, and the place where her tent was does not
come into consideration. The " tent " is the sanctuary : both
tabernacle and temple. These names characterize the two
kingdoms according to their attitude toward the Lord. Jeru-
salem had the sanctuary of Jehovah ; Samaria, on the other
hand, had her own sanctuary, i.e. one invented by herself.
Samaria and Jerusalem, as the historical names of the two
kingdoms, represent Israel of the ten tribes and Judah.
Oholah and Oholibah are daughters of one mother, because
they were the two halves of the one Israel ; and they are
called women, because Jehovah had married them (ver. 4).
Oholah is called npinsn, the great, i.e. greater sister (not the
elder, see the comm. on ch. xvi. 46) ; because ten tribes, the
greater portion of Israel, belonged to Samaria, whereas Judah
had only two tribes. They committed whoredom even in
Egypt in their youth, for even in Egypt the Israelites defiled
themselves with Egyptian idolatry (see the comm. on ch. xx. 7).
W^, to press, to crush : the Pual is used here to denote lewd
handling. In a similar manner the Hel ntS'J? is used to signify
tractare, contrectare mammas, in an obscene sense.
Vers. 5-10. Samaria's whoredom and punishment. — Ver. 5,
And Oholibah played the harlot under me, and burned towards
her lovers, even as far as Assyria, standing near ; Ver. 6.
Clothed in purple, governors and officers, all of them choice men
CHAP. XXIII. 5-10. 323
of good deportment, horsemen riding upon Iwrses. Ver. 7. A nd
she directed her whoredom toward them, to the choice of the sons
of Assyria all of them, and with all towards whom she burned,
with all their idols she defiled herself . Ver. 8. Also her whoredom
from Egypt she did not give up ; for they had lain with her in her
youth, and they had handled her virgin bosom, and had poured
out their lust upon her. Ver. 9. Therefore I have given her into
the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the sons of Assyria, towards
whom she was inflamed. Ver. 10. They uncovered her nakedness,
took away her sons and her daughters, and slew her with the
sword, so that she became a legend among the women, and executed
judgments upon her. — Coquetting and whoring with Assyria
and Egypt denote religious and political leaning towards and
connection with these nations and kingdoms, including idolatry
and the formation of alliances with them, as in chap. xvi. 'nnri
is to be interpreted in accordance with i^B'''X nnn (ch. xvi. 32).
3jy, which only occurs in Ezekiel and once in Jeremiah, denotes
the eager desire kindled by passionate love towards any one.
By the words WN"?}* the lovers are more precisely defined.
D'Hinp without an article is not an adjective, belonging to
rr'ansDj but in apposition, which is continued in the next verse.
In these appositions the particular features, which excited the
ardent passion towards the lovers, are pointed out. 3i"iiJ is not
to be taken in an outward or local sense, but as signifying
inward or spiritual nearness : standing near, equivalent to
inwardly related, as in Ps. xxxviii. 12 ; Job xix. 14. The
description given of the Assyrians in ver. 6 contains the thought
that Israel, dazzled by Assyria's splendonr, and overpowered by
the might of that kingdom, had been drawn into intercourse
with the Assyrians, which led her astray into idolatry. The
predicate, clothed in purple, points to the splendour and glory
of this imperial power ; the other predicates, to the magnitude
of its military force. C^Jpl niriQ are rulers of higher and lower
grades (cf. Jer. li. 57). " Here the expression is a general
one, signifying the different classes of office-bearers in the
324 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
kingdom" (Havernick). With regard to nns, see my comm.
on Hag. i. 1 ; and for IJD, see Delitzsch on Isa. xli. 25. " Rid-
ing upon horses" is added to D''B'"i3 to denote the noblest
horsemen, in contrast to riders upon asses and camels ( cf.
Isa. xsi. 7). In ver. 76 Dn'^i^-^33 is in apposition to "^f« ^33
naJJJ, and defines more precisely the instigation to pollution:
with all towards whom she burned in love, namely, with all their
(the lovers') idols. The thought is as follows : it was not
merely through her intercourse with the Assyrians that Israel
defiled herself, but also through their idols. At the same time,
Samaria did not give up the idolatry which it had derived from
Egypt. It was from Egypt that the worship of God under the
image of the golden calves had been imported. The words are
much too strong for us to understand them as relating simply
to political intercourse, as Hitzig has done. We have already
observed at ch. sx. 7, that even in Egypt itself the Israelites
had defiled themselves with Egyptian idolatry, as is also stated
in ver. 8b. — Vers. 9, 10. As a punishment for this, God gave
Samaria into the power of the Assyrians, so that they executed
judgment upon the harlot. In ver. 106 the prophecy passes
from the figure to the fact. The uncovering of the nakedness
consisted in the transportation of the sons and daughters, i.e.
the population of Samaria, into exile by the Assyrians, who slew
the woman herself with the sword ; in other words, destroyed
the kingdom of Samaria. Thus did Samaria become a name
for women ; that is to say, her name was circulated among
the nations, her fate became an object of conversation and
ridicule to the nations, not " a nickname for the nations," as
Havernick supposes (vid. ch. xxxvi. 3). D*^13E', a later form for
D^pSB' (cf. ch. xvi. 41).
Vers. 11-21. Whoredom of Judah. — Ver. 11. And her sister
Oholibah saw it, and carried on her coquetry still more wantonly
than she had done, and her whoredom more than the whoredom of
her sister. Ver. 12. She was inflamed with lust towards the sons
of Asshur, governors and officers, standing near, clothed in
CHAP. XXIII. 11-21. 325
•perfect beauty,, horsemen riding upon horses, choice men of good
deportment. Ver. 13. And I saw that she had defiled herself;
they both went one way. Ver. 14. And she carried her ivhoredom
still further; she saw men engraved upon the wall, figures of
Chaldeans engraved with red ochre, Ver. 15. Girded about the
hips with girdles, with overhanging caps upon their heads, all of
them knights in appearance, resembling the sons of Babel, the
land of whose birth is Chaldea : Ver. 16. And she was inflamed
with lust toward them, when her eyes saw them, and sent messen-
gers to them to Chaldea. Ver. 17. TJien the sons of Babylon
came to her to the bed of love, and defiled her with their whore-
dom ; and when she had defiled herself with them, her soul tore
itself aioay from them. Ver. 18. And when she uncovered her
whoredom, and uncovered her nakedness, my soul tore itself away
from her, as my soul had torn itself away from her sister.
Ver. 19. And she increased her ivhoredom, so that she remem-
bered the days of her youth, when she played the harlot in
the land of Egypt. Ver. 20. And she burned toward their
paramours, who have members like asses and heat like horses.
Ver. 21. Thou lookest after the lewdness of thy youth, when
they of Egypt handled thy bosom because of thy virgin breasts. —
The train of thought in these verses is the following : — Judah
went much further than Samaria. It not only indulged in
sinful intercourse with Assyria, which led on to idolatry as the
latter had done, but it also allowed itself to be led astray by
the splendour of Chaldea, to form alliances with that imperial
power, and to defile itself with her idolatry. And when it
became tired of the Chaldeans, it formed impure connections
with the Egyptians, as it had done once before during its
sojourn in Egypt. The description of the Assyrians in ver. 12
coincides with that in vers. 5 and 6, except that some of the
predicates are placed in a different order, and 7y>2'a 'tyap is
substituted for ripan ^tJ'np. The former expression, which occurs
again in ch. xxxviii. 4, must really mean the same as nP3n 'ap.
But it does not follow from this that ?i?3l? signifies purple, as
326 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Hitzig maintains. The true meaning is perfection ; and when
used of the clothing, it signifies perfect beauty. The Septuagint
rendering, evTrdpvfa, with a beautiful border, — more especially
a variegated one, — merely expresses the sense, but not the
actual meaning of ^i^??. The Chaldee rendering is nD3 ''^2'?,
perfecte induti. — There is great obscurity in the statement in
ver. 14 as to the way in which Judah was seduced to cultivate
intercourse with the Chaldeans. She saw men engraved or
drawn upon the wall (^isno, a participle Pual of Pi^n, engraved
work, or sculpture). These figures were pictures of Chaldeans,
engraved (drawn) with "^^p, red ochre, a bright-red colour,
'nian, an adjective form "liJn, wearing a girdle. Q^^^3!?, coloured
cloth, from ?20j to colour; here, according to the context,
variegated head -bands or turbans. ^^lO, the overhanging,
used here of the cap. The reference is to the tiarae tinctae
(Vulgate), the lofty turbans or caps, as they are to be seen
upon the monuments of ancient Nineveh. Q'K'w, not chariot-
warriors, but knights : " tristatae, the name of the second grade
after the regal dignity" (Jerome. See the comm. on Ex.
xiv. 7 and 2 Sam. xxiii. 8). The description of these engrav-
ings answers perfectly to the sculptures upon the inner walls of
the Assyrian palaces in the monuments of Nimrud, Khorsabad,
and Kouyunjik (see Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, and
Vaux, Nineveh and Persepolis). The pictures of the Chaldeans
are not mythological figures (Havernick), but sculptures depict-
ing war-scenes, triumphal processions of Chaldean rulers and
warriors, with which the Assyrian palaces were adorned. We
have not to look for these sculptures in Jerusalem or Palestine.
This cannot be inferred from ch. viii. 10, as Havernick sup-
poses ; nor established by Hitzig's argument, that the woman
must have been in circumstances to see such pictures. The
intercourse between Palestine and Nineveh, which was carried
on even in Jonah's time, was quite sufficient to render it
possible for the pictures to be seen. When Israelites travelled
to Nineveh, and saw the palaces there, they could easily make
CHAP. XXIII. 11-21. S27
the people acquainted with the glory of Nineveh by the
accounts they would give on their return. It is no reply to
this, to state that the woman does not send ambassadoi's till
afterwards (ver. 16), as Hitzig argues; for Judah sent am-
bassadors to Chaldea not to view the glories of Assyria, but to
form alliances with the Chaldeans, or to sue for their favour.
Such an embassy, for example, was sent to Babylon by Zede-
kiah (Jer. xxix. 3) ; and there is no doubt that in ver. IQb
Ezekiel has this in his mind. Others may have preceded this,
concerning which the books of Kings and Chronicles are just
as silent as they are concerning that of Zedekiah. The thought
in these verses is therefore the following : — The acquaintance
made by Israel (Judah) with the imperial splendour of the
Chaldeans, as exhibited in the sculptures of their palaces,
incited Judah to cultivate political and mercantile intercourse
with this imperial power, which led to its becoming entangled
in the heathen ways and idolatry of the Chaldeans. The
Chaldeans themselves came and laid the foundation for an in-
tercourse which led to the pollution of Judah with heathenism,
and afterwards filled it with . disgust, because it was brought
thereby into dependence upon the Chaldeans. The conse-
quence of all this was, that the Lord became tired of Judah
(vers. 17, 18). For instead of returning to the Lord, Judah
turned to the other power of the world, namely, to Egypt ; and
in the time of Zedekiah renewed its ancient coquetry with that
nation (vers. 19-21 compared with ver. 8). The form naaj?rii
in ver. 20, which the Keri also gives in ver. 18, has taken ah as
a feminine termination (not the cohortative ah), like nann in
Prov. i. 20, viii. 1 {vid. Delitzsch, On Job, pp. 117 and 268).
ff'K'^pS are scoria mascula here (Kimchi), — a drastically sarcastic
epithet applied to the sdrisim, the eunuchs, or courtiers. The
figurative epithet answers to the licentious character of the
Egyptian idolatry. The sexual heat both of horses and asses
is referred to by Aristotle, Hist. anim. vi. 22, and Columella,
de re rust. vi. 27; and that of the horse has already been
328 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
applied to the idolatry of the people by Jeremiah (yid. Jer.
V. 8). 1B>3, as in ch. xvi. 26. 1i?3 (ver. 21), to look about for
anything, i.e. to search for it ; not to miss it, as Havernick
imagines.
Vers. 22-35. Punishment of the harlot Jerusalem. — Ver. 22.
Therefore, Oholibali, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I
raise up thy lovers against thee, from whom thy soul has torn
itself away, and cause them to come upon thee from every side ;
Ver. 23. The sons of Babel, and all the Chaldeans, rulers, lords,
and nobles, all the sons of Assyria with them: chosen men of
graceful deportment, governors and officers together, knights and
counsellors, all riding upon horses. Ver. 24. And they will
come upon thee with weapons, chariots, and wheels, and with a
host of peoples ; target and shield and helmet will they direct
against thee round about : and I commit to them the judgment,
that they may judge thee according to their rights. Ver. 25.
And I direct my jealousy against thee, so that they shall deal
with thee in wrath: nose and ears will they cut off from thee;
and thy last one shall fall by the sword : they will take thy sons
and thy daughters ; and thy last one will be consumed by fire.
Ver. 26. They will strip off thy clothes from thee, and take thy
splendid jewellery. Ver. 27. / will abolish thy lewdness from
thee, and thy whoredom from the land of Egypt: that thou may est
no more lift thine eyes to them, and no longer remember Egypt.
Ver. 28. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I give tliee
into the hand of those whom thou hatest, into the hand of those
from whom thy soul has torn itself away : Ver. 29. And they
shall deal with thee in hatred, and take all thy gain, and leave
thee naked and bare ; that thy whorish shame may be uncovered,
and thy lewdness and thy whoredom. Ver. 30. This shall
happen to thee, because thou goest whoring after the nations, and
on account of thy defiling thyself with their idols. Ver. 31. In
the way of thy sister hast thou walked ; therefore I give her cup
into thy hand. Ver. 32. 27ms saith the Lm-d Jehovah, The cup
of thy sister thou shalt drink, the deep and broad one ; it will
CHAP. XXIII. 22-35. 329
le for laughter and for derision, because it contains so much.
Ver. 33. Thou wilt become full of drunkenness and misery : a cup
of desolation and devastation is the cup of thy sister Samaria.
Ver. 34. Thou wilt drink it up and drain it, and gnaw its frag-
ments, and tear thy breasts (therewith^ ; for I have spoken it, is the
saying of the Lord Jehomah. Ver. 35. Tlierefore thus saith the
Lord Jehovah, Because thou hast forgotten me, and hast cast me
behind thy back, thou shalt also bear thy lewdness and thy whore-
dom. — As Jerusalem has given herself up to whoredom, like
her sister Samaria, she shall also share her sister's fate. The
paramours, of whom she has become tired, God will bring
against her as enemies. The Chaldeans will come with all
their might, and execute the judgment of destruction upon
her. — For the purpose of depicting their great and powerful
forces, Ezekiel enumerates in vers. 23 and 24 the peoples and
their military equipment: viz. the sons of Babel, i.e. the
inhabitants of Babylonia, the Chaldeans, — the ruling people of
the empire at that time, — and all the sons of Asshur, i.e. the
inhabitants of the eastern portions of the empire, the former
rulers of the world. There is some obscurity in the words
yipl JfiB'l lipa, which the older theologians have almost unani-
mously taken to be the names of different tribes in the
Chaldean empire. Ewald also adopts this view, but it is
certainly incorrect ; for the words are in apposition to D'''=!B'3"P3'ij
as the omission of the copula 1 before ^ip^ is sufficient to show.
This is confirmed by the fact that JfiC is used, in Isa. xxxii. 5
and Job xxxiv. 19, in the sense of the man of high rank, dis-
tinguished for his prosperity, which is quite in harmony with
the passage before ns. Consequently lipS is not to be taken in
the sense of visitation or punishment, after Jer. 1. 21 ; but the
meaning is to be sought in the verb ^P^, to exercise super-
vision, or lead ; and the abstract oversight is used for overseer,
or ruler, as an equivalent to TpSi. Lastly, according to
Eabbins, the Vulgate, and others, J/iP signifies princes, or
nobles. The predicates in ver. 236 are repeated from vers. 6
330 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and 12, and a''»r\p alone is added. This is a word taken from
the Pentateuch, where the heads of the tribes and families, as
being members of the council of the whole congregation of
Israel, are called nnj^n ''snp or IVp ''^iip, persons called or
summoned to the meeting (Num. i. 16, xvi. 2). As Michaelis
has aptly observed, " he describes them sarcastically in the very
same way in which he had previously described those upon
whom she doted." — There is a difficulty in explaining the air.
^ey. l^n, — for which many MSS. read )^n, — as regards not only
its meaning, but its position in the sentence. The fact that it
is associated with ?3?31 a3T would seem to indicate that isn is
also either an implement of war or some kind of weapon. At
the same time, the words cannot be the subject to 1N11 ; but as
the expression Ctsy -'L'i??^ which follows, clearly shows, they
simply contain a subordinate definition of the manner in which,
or the things with which, the peoples mentioned in vers. 23, 24
will come, while they are governed by the verb in the freest
way. The attempts which Ewald and Hitzig have made to
remove the difficulty, by means of conjectures, are forced and
extremely improbable. Dii''2Sp Wi, I give up to them (not, 1
place before them) ; ''23? tnj, as in 1 Kings viii. 46, to deliver up,
or give a thing into a person's hand or power. '33? is used in
this sense in Gen. xiii. 9 and xxiv. 51. — In vers. 25, 26, the
execution of the judgment is depicted in detail. The words,
" tliey take away thy nose and ears," are not to be interpreted,
as the earlier expositors suppose, from the custom prevalent
among the Egyptians and other nations of cutting off the nose
of an adulteress ; but depict, by one particular example, the
mutilation of prisoners captured by their enemies. T'lnN : not
posterity, which by no means suits the last clause of the verse,
and cannot be defended from the usage of the language (see
the comm. on Amos iv. 2) ; but the last, according to the figure
employed in the first clause, the trunk; or, following the
second clause, the last thing remaining in Jerusalem, after the
taking away of the sons and daughters, i.e. after the slaying
CHAP. XXIII. 22-35. 331
and the deportation of the inhabitants, — viz. the empty houses.
For ver. 26, compare ch. xvi. 39. — In ver. 27, "from the land
of Egypt " is not equivalent to " dating from Egypt ; " for
according to the parallel ^t?D, from thee, this definition does not
belong to ^nut, " thy whoredom," but to ''ij'S^'n, " I cause thy
whoredom to cease from Egypt" (Hitzig). — For ver. 28a,
compare ch. xvi. 37; for ver. 28&, vid. ver. 17 above; and for
ver. 29, see vers. 25 and 26, and ch. xvi. 39. — Ver. 31 looks
back to ver. 13 ; and vei\ 316 is still further expanded in
vers. 32-34. Judah shall drink the cup of the wrathful
judgment of God, as Samaria has done. For the figure of the
cup, compare Isa. li. 17 and Jer. xxv. 15. This cup is described
in ver. 32 as deep and wide, i.e. very capacious, so that whoever
exhausts all its contents must be thoroughly intoxicated. n)nn
is the third person ; but the subject is fl|"]'?, and not Di3. The
greatness or breadth of the cup will be a subject of laughter
and ridicule. It is very arbitrary to supply " to thee," so as to
read : will be for laughter and ridicule to thee, which does not
even yield a suitable meaning, since it is not Judah but the
nations who laugh at the cup. Others regard HJiin as the
second person, thou wilt become ; but apart from the anomaly
in the gender, as the masculine would stand for the feminine,
Hitzig has adduced the forcible objection, that according to
this view the words would not only anticipate the explanation
given of the figure in the next verse, but would announce the
consequences of the ti3J] !il|?' mentioned there. Hitzig there-
fore proposes to erase the words from rrinn to 3J)p7l as a gloss,
and to alter n3"i» into naiD ; which contains much, is very
capacious. But there is not sufficient reason to warrant such
critical violence as this. Although the form na"ip is dv. f^ey.,
it is not to be rejected as a nomen subst.; and if we take
i)''3n^ '''31'?, the magnitude to hold, as the subject of the
sentence, it contains a still further description of the cup,
which does not anticipate what follows, even though the cup
will be an object of laughter and ridicule, not so much for its
332 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
size, as because of its being destined to be drunk completely
empty. In ver. 33 the figure and the fact are combined, —
lij;, lamentation, misery, being added to Ii13?', drunkenness,
and the cup being designated a cup of devastation. The
figure of drinking is expanded in the boldest manner in ver. 34
into the gnawing of the fragments of the cup, and the tearing
of the breasts with the fragments. — In ver. 35 the picture of
the judgment is closed with a repetition of the description of
the nation's guilt. For ver. 356, compare ch. xvi. 52 and 58.
Vers. 36-49. Another summary of the sins and punishment
of the two women. — Ver. 36. And Jehovah said to me, Son of
man, wilt thou judge Oholah and Oholibah, then show them their
abominations; Ver. 37. For they have committed adulteri/, and
blood is in their hands ; and they have committed adultery with
their idols ; and their sons also whom they bare to me they have
caused to pass through to them to be devoured. Ver. 38. Yea
more, they have done this to me ; they have defiled my sanctuary
the same day, and have desecrated my Sabbaths. Ver. 39. Wlien
they slaughtered their sons to their idols, they came into my
sanctuary the same day to desecrate it; and, behold, they have
acted thus in the midst of my house. Ver. 40. Yea, they have
even sent to men coming from afar ; to them was a message sent,
and, behold, they came, for whom thou didst bathe thyself, paint
thine eyes, and put on ornaments, Ver. 41. And didst seat thy-
self upon a splendid cushion, and a table was spread before them,
thou didst lay thereon my incense and my oil. Ver. 42. And the
loud noise became still thereat, and to the men out of the multitude
there loere brought topers out of the desert, and they put armlets
upon their hands, and glorious crowns upon their heads. Ver. 43.
Then I said to her who was debilitated for adultery, Now will
her whoredom itself go whoring, Ver. 44. And they will go in to
her as they go in to a whore ; so did they go in to Oholah and
Oholibah, the lewd women. Ver. 45. But righteous men, these
shall judge them according to the judgment of adulteresses and
according to the judgment of murderesses ; for they are adulter-
CHAP. SSIII. 3G-19. 333
esses, and there is blood in their hands. Ver. 46. For thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, I ivill bring up against them an assembly,
and deliver 'them up for maltreating and for booty. Ver. 47.
And the assembly shall stone them, and cut them in pieces ivith
their swords ; their sons and their daughters shall they kill, and bum
their houses with fire. Ver. 48. Thus will I eradicate lewdness
from the land, that all women may take warning and not practise
lewdness like you. Ver. 49. And they shall bring your levjdness
upon you, and ye shall bear the sins of your idols, and shall learn
that I am the Lard Jehovah. — The introductory words '1J1 OiSB^'rin
point back not only to ch. xxii. 2, but also to ch. xx. 4, and show-
that this section is really a summary of the contents of the whole
group (ch. XX. 23). The actual subject-matter of these verses
is closely connected with ver. 16, more especially in the desig-
nation of the sins as adulteiy and bloodshed (compare vers. 37
and 45 with ch. xvi. 38). '«"nx f\v.i, to commit adultery with
the idols, whereby the idols are placed on a par with Jehovah
as the husband of Israel (compare Jer. iii. 8 and ii. 27). For
the Moloch-worship in ver. 37&, compare ch, xvi. 20, 21, and
ch.xx. 31. The desecration of the sanctuary (ver. 38a) is more
minutely defined in ver. 39. i'lnn Di>3 in ver. 38, which has
so offended the LXX. and Hitzig that it is omitted by the
former, while the latter proposes to strike it out as a gloss, is
added for the purpose of designating the profanation of the
sanctuary as contemporaneous with the Moloch-worship of
ver. 376, as is evident from ver. 39. For the fact itself, com-
pare 2 Kings xxi. 4, 5, 7. The desecration of the Sabbaths, as
in ch. XX. 13, 16. For ver. 39a, compare ch. xvi. 21. The
words are not to be understood as signifying that they sacrificed
children to Moloch in the temple, but simply that immediately
after they had sacrificed children to Moloch, they went into the
temple of Jehovah, that there they might worship Jehovah also,
and thus placed Jehovah upon a par with Moloch. This was
a profanation ('sC) of His sanctuary.
In vers. 40-44 the allusion is not to actual idolatry, but to
334
THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the ungodly alliance into which Judah had entered with
Chaldea. Judah sent ambassadors to Chaldea, and for the
purpose of receiving the Chaldeans, adorned herself "as a woman
would do for the reception of her paramours. She seated her-
self upon a splendid divan, and in front of this there was a
table spread, upon which stood the incense and the oil that she
ought to have offered to Jehovah. This is the explanation
which Kliefoth has correctly given of vers. 40 and 41. The
emphatic ''3 ^f?1. in ver. 40 is sufficient to show that the refer-
ence is to a new crime deserving of punishment. This cannot
be idolatry, because the worship of Moloch has already been
mentioned in vers. 38 and 39 as the worst of all the idolatrous
abominations. Moreover, sending for (or to) men who come
from afar does not apply to idolatry in the literal sense of the
word ; for men to whom the harlot sent messengers to invite
them to come to her could not be idols for which she sent to a
distant land. The allusion is rather to Assyrians or Chaldeans,
and, according to ver. 42, it is the former who are referred to
here (compare Isa. xxxix. 3). There is no force in Hitzig's
objection, namely, that the one woman sent to these, and that
their being sent for and coming have already been disposed of
in ver. 16. For the singulars in the last clause of ver. 40 show
that even here only one woman is said to have sent for the men.
Again, njnpt'n might even be the third person singular, as this
form does sometimes take the termination nj (^vid. Ewald, § 191c,
and Ges. § 47, Anm. 3). At the same time, there is nothing in
the fact that the sending to Chaldea has already been men-
tioned in ver. 16 to preclude another allusion to the same
circumstance from a different point of view. The woman
adorned herself that she might secure the favour of the men
for whom she had sent, ^na is the Arabic J^£=>, to paint the
eyes with stibium {kohol). For the fact itself, see the remarks
on 2 Kings ix. 30. She then seated herself upon a cushion
(not lay down upon a bed; for 3B'"J does not mean to lie down),
and in front of this there was a table, spread with different
CHAP. XXIII. 36-49. 335
kinds of food, upon which she placed incense and oil The
suffix to n''7S? refers to ]fj>^, and is to be taken as a neuter,
which suits the table as a thing, whilst ]n>^ generally takes the
termination ni in the plural. In ver. 41, Ewald and Havernick
detect a description of the lectisternia and of the licentious
worship of the Babylonian Mylitta. But neither the sitting
(3B'^) upon a cushion (divan), nor the position taken by the
woman behind the table, harmonizes with this. As Hitzig has
correctly observed, " if she has taken her seat upon a cushion,
and has a table spread before her, she evidently intends to dine,
and that with the men for whom she has adorned herself. The
oil is meant for anointing at meal-time (Amos vi. 6; Prov.
xxi. 17; cf. Ps. xxiii. 5), and the incense for burning." "My
incense and my oil " are the incense and oil given to her by
God, which she ought to have devoted to His service, but had
squandered upon herself and her foreign friends (cf. ch. xvi. 18 :
Hos. ii. 10). The oil, as the produce of the land of Palestine,
was the gift of Jehovah ; and although incense was not a pro-
duction of Palestine, yet as the money with which Judah
purchased it, or the goods bartered for it, were the gifts of
God, Jehovah could also call it His incense. Ver. 42 is very
obscure. Such renderings of the first clause as et vox multi-
tudinis exultantis in ea (Vulg.), and " the voice of a careless
multitude within her" (Havernick), can hardly be sustained.
In every other passage in which lion 7ip occurs, it does not sig-
nify the voice of a multitude, but a loud tumult; compare Isa.
xiii. 4, xxxiii. 3, Dan. x. 6, and 1 Sam. iv. 14, where liisnn ?ip
is used as synonymous with ni?s?sn pip. Even in cases where
lion is used for a multitude, it denotes a noisy, boisterous,
tumultuous crowd. Consequently vB* cannot be taken as an
adjective connected with lion, because a quiet tumult is a con-
tradiction, and vB* does not mean either exultans or recklessly
breaking loose (Havernick), but simply living in quiet, peace-
ful and contented, li?^ must therefore be the predicate to
tiDH b^p•, the sound of the tumult or the loud noise was (or
336 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
became) quiet, still. ri3, thereat (neuter, like 33, thereby. Gen.
xxiv. 14). The words which follow, 'ill Q'^fiK bm^ are not to
be taken with the preceding clause, as the connection would
yield no sense. They belong to what follows. DIK liD D''K'3X
can only be the men who came from afar (ver. 40). In addi-
tion to these, there were brought, i.e. induced to come, topers
from the desert. The Chetib CSaiD is no doubt a participle of
i<3D, drinkers, topers ; and the Hophal D''K31D is chosen instead
of the Kal D''K3, for the sake of the paronomasia, with D''«3iD.
The former, therefore, can only be the Assyrians (llt^K \33,
vers. 5 and 7), the latter (the topers) the Chaldeans (^33 ''pa,
ver. 15). The epithet drinkers is a very appropriate one for
the sons of Babylon ; as Curtius (ver. 1) describes the Baby-
lonians as maxime in vinum et quae ehrietatem sequuntur effusi.
The phrase "from the desert" cannot indicate the home of
these men, although I3"]i3ip corresponds to pn^SD in ver. 40, bnt
simply the place from which they came to Judah, namely, from
the desert of Syria and Arabia, which separated Palestine from
Babylon. These peoples decorated the arms of the harlots
with clasps, and their heads with splendid wreaths (crowns).
The plural suffixes indicate that the words apply to both women,
and this is confirmed by the fact that they are both named in
ver. 44. The subject to ^Jri'i is not merely the Ct'SiDj but also
the pniisp D''C'3i« in ver. 40. The thought is simply that Samaria
and Judah had attained to wealth and earthly glory through
their intercourse with these nations ; the very gifts with which,
according to ch. xvi. 11 sqq., Jehovah Himself had adorned
His people. The meaning of the verse, therefore, when taken
in its connection, appears to be the following: — When the
Assyrians began to form alliances with Israel, quiet was the
immediate result. The Chaldeans were afterwards added to
these, so that through their adulterous intercourse with both
these nations Israel and Judah acquired both wealth and glory.
The sentence which God pronounced upon this conduct was,
that Judah had sunk so deeply into adultery that it would be
CHAP. XXIII. 36-49. 337
impossible for it ever to desist from the sin. Tliis is the way
in which we understand ver. 43, connecting D^SNJ n?a? with
"inkl : " I said concerning her who was debilitated with whore-
dom." npa, feminine of Hpa, used up, worn out; see, for
example, Josh. ix. 4, 5, where it is applied to clothes ; here it
is transferred to persons decayed, debilitated, in which sense
the verb occurs in Gen. xviii. 12. ^''S^'ji, which is co-ordinated
with np3, does not indicate the means by which the strength
has been exhausted, but is an accusative of direction or refer-
ence, debilitated with regard to adultery, so as no longer to be
capable of practising it.^ In the next clause 'W1 H^t) rij?^ [^^^''^I'lii
is the subject to njr, and the Clietib is correct, the Keri being
erroneous, and the result of false exposition. If nTiWtn were
the^object to njp, so that the woman would be the subject, we
should have the feminine HMri. But if, on the other hand,
nTiiarn is the subject, there is no necessity for this, whether we
regard the word as a plural, from D''ni3tn, or take it as a singular,
as Ewald (§ 259a) has done, inasmuch as in either case it is
still an abstract, which might easily be preceded by the verb in
the masculine form. ^''^J gives greater force, not only to the
suffix, but also to the noun — and that even she (her whoredom).
The sin of whoredom is personified, or regarded as D^Jl^t n>n
(Hos. iv. 12), as a propensity to whoredom, which continues in
all its force after the capacity of the woman herself is gone. —
Ver. 44 contains the result of the foregoing description of the
adulterous conduct of the two women, and this is followed in
vers. 45 sqq. by an account of the attitude assumed by God, and
the punishment of the sinful women. S^iajl, with an indefinite
subject, they (jiian, one) went to her. nvX, the one woman,
1 The proposal of Ewald to take D''QN3 n?3? as an independent clause,
" adultery to the devil," cannot be defended by the usage of the language ;
and that of Hitzig, " the withered hag practises adultery," is an unnatural
invention, inasmuch as p, if taken as nota dativi, would give this meaning :
the hag has (possesses) adultery as her property — and there is nothing to
indicate that it should be taken as a question.
EZEK. I. Y
338 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Oholibali. It is only in the apodosis that what has to be said
is extended to both women. This is the only interpretation
of ver. 44 which does justice both to the verb Kiljl (imperfect
with Vav consec. as the historical tense) and the perfect 1X3.
The plural nis'N does not occur anywhere else. Hitzig would
therefore alter it into the singular, as " unheard of," and con-
fine the attribute to Oholibah, who is the only one mentioned
in the first clause of the verse, and also in vers. 43, 40, and 41.
The judgment upon the two sisters is to be executed by right-
eous men (ver. 45). The Chaldeans are not designated as
righteous in contrast to the Israelites, but as the instruments of
the punitive righteousness of God in this particular instance,
executing just judgment upon the sinners for adultery and blood-
shed (vid. ch. xvi. 38). The infinitives npyn and tinj in ver. 46
stand for the third person future. For other points, compare the
commentary on ch. xvi. 40 and 41. The formula niyp \m is
derived from Deut. xxviii. 25, and has been explained in the
exposition of that passage. Nnai is the inf. abs. Piel. For the
meaning of the word, see the comm. on ch. xxi. 24. From this
judgment all women, i.e. all nations, are to take warning to
desist from idolatry. ^nraJ is a mixed form, compounded of
the NiphaL and Hiihpael, for 'iiBinn, like l??? in Deut. xxi. 8
(see the comm. in loe.). — For ver. 49, vid. ch. xvi. 58. — The
punishment is announced to both the women, Israel and Judah,
as still in the future, although Oholah (Samaria) had been
overtaken by the judgment a considerable time before. The
explanation of this is to be found in the allegory itself, in which
both kingdoms are represented as being sisters of one mother ;
and it may also be defended on the ground that the approach-
ing destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah affected
the remnants of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which were still
to be found in Palestine ; whilst, on the other hand, the judg-
ment was not restricted to the destruction of the two kingdoms,
but also embraced the later judgments which fell upon the
entire nation.
CHAP. SXIV. 1, 2. 339
CHAP. XXIV. PEEDICTION OF THE DESTRUCTION OF
JERUSALEM BOTH IN PARABLE AND BY SIGN.
On the day on which the king of Babylon commenced tlie
siege and blockade of Jerusalem, this event was revealed by
God to Ezekiel on the Chaboras (vers. 1 and 2) ; and he was
commanded to predict to the people through the medium of a
parable the fate of the city and its inhabitants (vers. 3-14). God
then foretold to him the death of his own wife, and commanded
him to show no sign of mourning on account of it. His wife
died the following evening, and he did as he was commanded.
When he was asked by the people the reason of this, he ex-
plained to them, that what he was doing was symbolical of
the way in which they were to act when Jerusalem fell (vers.
15-24). The fall would be announced to the prophet by a
fugitive, and then he would no longer remain mute, but would
speak to the people again (vers. 25-27). — Apart, therefore, fi-om
the last three verses, this chapter contains two words of God, the
first of which unfolds in a parable the approaching calamities,
and the result of the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans
(vers. 1-14) ; whilst the second typifies by means of a sign the
pain and mourning of Israel, namely, of the exiles at the
destruction of the city with its sanctuary and its inhabitants.
-These two words of God, being connected together by their
contents, were addressed to the prophet on the same day, and
that, as the introduction (vers. 1 and 2) expressly observes, the
day on which the siege of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon
began.
Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me in the ninth
year, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, saying,
Ver. 2. Son of man, write for thyself the name of the day,
this same day ! Tlie king of Babylon has fallen upon Jeru-
salem this same day. — The date given, namely, the tenth day
of the tenth month of the ninth year after the carrying away
of Jehoiachin (ch. i. 2), or what is the same thing, of the
340 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
reign of Zedekiah, who was appointed king in his stead, is
mentioned in Jer. hi. 4, xxxix. 1, and 2 Kings xxv. 1, as the
day on which Nebuchadnezzar blockaded the city of Jerusalem
by throwing up a rampart ; and after the captivity this day was
still kept as a fast-day in consequence (Zech. viii. 19). What
•ffas thus taking place at Jerusalem was revealed to Ezekiel on
the Chaboras the very same day ; and he was instructed to
announce it to the exiles, " that they and the besieged might
learn both from the time and the result, that the destruction of
the city was not to be ascribed to chance or to the power of the
Babylonians, but to the will of Him who had long ago foretold
that, on account of the wickedness of the inhabitants, the city
would be burned with fire ; and that Ezekiel was a true prophet,
because even when in Babylon, which was at so great a dis-
tance, he had known and had publicly announced the state of
Jerusalem." The definite character of this prediction cannot
be changed into a vaticinium post eventum, either by arbitrary
explanations of the words, or by the unfounded hypothesis
proposed by Hitzig, that the day was not set down in this de-
finite form till after the event. — Writing the name of the day
is equivalent to making a note of the day. The reason for this
is given in ver. 2b, namely, because Nebuchadnezzar had fallen
upon Jerusalem on that very day. "^ipo signifies to support,
hold up (his hand) ; and hence both here and in Ps. Ixxxviii. 8
the meaning to press violently upon anything. The rendering
" to draw near," which has been forced upon the word from
the Syriac (Ges., Winer, and others), cannot be sustained.
Vers. 3-14. Parable op the Pot with the Boiling
Pieces. — Ver. 3. And relate a parable to the rebellious house,
and say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Set on the pot, set
on and also pour water into it. Ver. 4. Gather its pieces of
flesh into it, all the good pieces, haunch and shoulder, fill it with
choice bones. Ver. 5. Take the choice of the flock, and also a
pile of wood underneath for the bones ; make it boil well, also
CHAP. XXIV. 3-14, 341
cooTc its hones therein. Ver. 6. Therefore, thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, Woe ! city of murders ! pot in which is rust^ and
whose rust doth not depart from it ; piece hy piece fetch it out,
the lot hath not fallen upon it. Ver. 7. For her blood is in the
midst of her ; she hath placed it upon the naked rock ; she hath
not poured it upon the ground, that they might cover it with dust.
Ver. 8. To bring up fury, to take vengeance, I have made her
blood come upon the naked rock, that it might not be covered.
Ver. 9. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Woe to the city
of murders I I also will make the pile of wood great. Ver. 10.
Heap up the wood, stir the fire, do the flesh thoroughly, make the
broth boil, that the bones may also be cooked away. Ver. 11.
And set it empty upon the coals thereof, that its brass may
become hot and glowing, that the uncleanness thereof may melt
xcithin it, its rust pass away. Ver. 12. He hath exhausted the
pains, and her great rust doth not go from her ; into the fire with
her rust! Ver. 13. In thine uncleanness is abomination; be-
cause I have cleansed thee, and thou hast not become clean, thou
wilt no more become clean from thy uncleanness, till I guiet my
fury upon thee. Ver. 14. 1 Jehovah have spoken it; it cometh,
and I will do it ; I will not cease, nor spare, nor let it repent me.
According to thy ways, and according to thy deeds, shall they
judge thee, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.
The contents of these verses are called PE'D, a proverb or par-
able; and Ezekiel is to communicate them to the refractory-
generation. It follows from this that the ensuing act, which
the prophet is commanded to perform, is not to be regarded as
a symbolical act which he really carried out, but that the act
forms the substance of the mdshdl, in other words, belongs to
the parable itself. Consequently the interpretation of the
parable in vers. 10 sqq. is clothed in the form of a thing
actually done. The pot with the pieces of flesh and the bones,
which are to be boiled in it and boiled away, represents Jeru-
salem with its inhabitants. The flre, with which they are
boiled, is the fire of war, and the setting of the pot upon the
342 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
fire is the commencement of the siege, by which the popula-
tion of the city is to be boiled awaj' like the flesh and bones in
a pot. nSB' is used, as in 2 Kings iv. 38, to signify the setting
of a pot by or upon the fire. 'Ul ^ibs : put in its pieces all
together. O''-"-) i*^ pieces of flesh, i.e. the pieces belonging to
the cooking-pot. These are defined still more minutely as the
best of the pieces of flesh, and of these the thigh (haunch) and
shoulder are mentioned as the most important pieces, to which
the choicest of the bones are to be added. This is rendered
still more emphatic by the further instruction to take the choice
of the flock in addition to these. The choicest pieces of flesh
and the pieces of bone denote the strongest and ablest portion
of the population of the city. To boil these pieces away, more
especially the bones, a large fire is requisite. This is indicated
by the words, " and also a pile of wood underneath for the
bones." "IIT in ver. 5, for which rrjilD is substituted in
ver. 9, signifies a pile of wood, and occurs in this sense in
Isa. XXX. 33, from "in, to lay round, to arrange, pile up.
CDVyn "m cannot mean a heap of bones, on account of the
article, but simply a pile of wood for the (previously mentioned)
bones, namely, for the purpose of boiling them away. If we
pay attention to the article, we shall see that the supposition
that Ezekiel was to place a heap of bones under the pot, and the
alteration proposed by Bottcher, Ewald, and Hitzig of Q''l?^'J!i|!
into D'VJ/j are alike untenable. Even if "m in itself does not
mean a pile of wood, but simply strues, an irregular heap, the
fact that it is wood which is piled up is apparent enough from
the context. If C?^'J|'T had grown out of 2''>'y through a
corruption of the text, under the influence of the preceding
D^DVy, it would not have had an article prefixed. Hitzig also
proposes to alter l^^n^l. into '^''D0^ though without any necessity.
The fact that D^nOl <^°ss "^^t occur again proves nothing at all.
The noun is added to the verb to intensify its force, and is
plurale tant. in the sense of boiling. '131 li'Ea'Dj is dependent
upon the previous clause D| taking the place of the copula-
CHAP. XXIV. 3-14. 343
tive 1. On ^^^, to be cooked, thoroughly done, see the comm.
on Ex. xii. 9.
In vers. 6-8 the interpretation of the parable is given, and
that in two trains of thought introduced by 15? (vers. 6 and 9).
The reason for commencing with 15?, therefore, may be found
in the fact that in the parable contained in vers. 3 sqq., or
more correctly in the blockade of Jerusalem, which furnished
the occasion for the parable, the Judgment about to burst upon
Jerusalem is plainly indicated. The train of thought is the
following: — Because the judgment upon Jerusalem is now about
to commence, therefore woe to her, for her blood-guiltiness is
so great that she must be destroyed. But the punishment
answering to the magnitude of the guilt is so distributed in the
two strophes, vers. 6-8 and vers. 9-13, that the first strophe
treats of the punishment of the inhabitants of Jerusalem ; the
second, of the punishment of the city itself. To account for the
latter feature, there is a circumstance introduced which is not
mentioned in the parable itself, namely, the rust upon the pot,
and the figure of the pot is thereby appropriately extended.
Moreover, in the explanation of the parable the figure and the
fact pass repeatedly the one into the other. Because Jeru-
salem is a city of murders, it resembles a pot on which there
are spots of rust that cannot be removed. Ver. 66 is difficult,
and has been expounded in various ways. The ? before the
twofold n^nnj is, no doubt, to be taken distributively : accord-
ing to its several pieces, i.e. piece by piece, bring it out. But
the suffix attached to nx'Sin cannot be taken as referring to
"I'D, as Kliefoth proposes, for this does not yield a suitable
meaning. One would not say : bring out the pot by its pieces
of flesh, when nothing more is meant than the bringing of the
pieces of flesh out of the pot. And this difficulty is not
' removed by giving to s^'Sin the meaning to reach hither. For,
apart from the fact that there is nothing in the usage of the
language to sustain the meaning, reach it hither for the purpose
of setting it upon the fire, one would not say : reach hither
344 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the pot according to its several pieces of flesh, piece by piece,
when all that was meant was, bring hither the pot filled
with pieces of flesh. The suffix to n^'Vin refers to the city
("•"J'), i.e. to its popnlation, " to which the blood-guiltiness
really adhered, and not to its collection of houses" (Hitzig).
It is only in appearance also that the suffix to y}''^^^ refers to
the pot ; actually it refers to the city, i.e. to the whole of its
population, the different individuals in which are the separate
pieces of flesh. The meaning of the instructions therefore is
by no means doubtful : the whole of the popnlation to be found
in Jerusalem is to be brought out, and that without any excep-
tion, inasmuch as the lot, which would fall upon one and not
upon another, will not be cast upon her. There is no necessity
to seek for any causal connection between the reference to the
rust upon the pot and the bringing out of the pieces of flesh
that are cooking within it, and to take the words as signifying
that all the pieces, which had been rendered useless by the rust
upon the pot, were to be taken out and thrown away (Haver-
nick) ; but through the allusion to the rust the interpretation
already passes beyond the limits of the figure. The pieces of
flesh are to be brought out, after they have been thoroughly
boiled, to empty the pot, that it may then be set upon the fire
again, to burn out the rust adhering to it (ver. 11). There is
no force in Kliefoth's objection, that this exposition does not
agree with the context, inasmuch as, " according to the last
clause of ver. 5 and vers. 10 and 11, the pieces of flesh and
even the bones are not to be taken out, but to be boiled away
by a strong fire ; and the pot is to become empty not by the
fact that the pieces of flesh are taken out and thrown away,
but by the pieces being thoroughly boiled away, first to broth
and then to nothing." For " boiling away to nothing" is not
found in the text, but simply that even the hones are to be
thoroughly done, so as to turn into the softness of jelly. — So
far as the fact is concerned, we cannot follow the majority of
commentators, who suppose that the reference is simply to the
CHAP. X5IV. 3-14. 345
carrying away of the inhabitants into exile. Bringing the
pieces of flesh out of the pot, denotes the sweeping away of the
inhabitants from the city, whether by death {vid. ch. xi. 7) or
by their being carried away captive. The city is to be emptied
of men in consequence of its being blockaded by the king of
Babylon. The reason of this is given in vers. 7 and 8, where
the guilt of Jerusalem is depicted. The city has shed blood,
which is not covered with earth, but has been left uncovered,
like blood poured out upon a hard rock, which the stone cannot
absorb, and which cries to God for vengeance, because it is un-
covered (cf. Gen. iv. 10 ; Job xvi. 18 ; and Isa. xxvi. 21). The
thought is this : she has sinned in an insolent and shameless
manner, and has done nothing to cover her sin, has shown no
sign of repentance or atonement, by which she might have
got rid of her sin. This has all been ordered by God. He
has caused the blood that was shed to fall upon a bare rock,
that it might lie uncovered, and He might be able to execute
vengeance for the crime.
The second turn in the address (ver. 9) commences in just
the same manner as the first in ver. 6, and proceeds with a
further picture of the execution of punishment. To avenge
the guilt, God will make the pile of wood large, and stir up a
fierce fire. The development of this thought is given in ver. 10
in the form of a command addressed to the prophet, to put
much wood underneath, and to kindle a fire, so that both flesh
and bones may boil away. Dnn, from !3»)p, to finish, complete ;
with IK'S, to cook thoroughly. There are differences of opinion
as to the true meaning of nn|5")an ni?nn ; but the rendering some-
times given to npn, namely, to spice, is at all events unsuitable,
and cannot be sustained by the usage of the language. It is
true that in Ex. xxx. 25 sqq. the verb npn is used for the pre-
paration of the anointing oil, but it is not the mixing of the
different ingredients that is referred to, but in all probability
the thorough boiling of the spices, for the purpose of extracting
their essence, so that " thorough boihng " is no doubt the true
346 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
meaning of the word. In Job xli. 23 (31), '^^\P^ is the
boiling unguent-pot. 'ilH''. is a cohortative Hiphil, from T]n, to
become red-hot, to be consumed. — Ver. 11. When the flesh
and bones have thus been thoroughly boiled, the pot is to be
placed upon the coals empty, that the rust upon it may be
burned away by the heat. The emptying of the pot or kettle
by pouring out the flesh, which has been boiled to broth, is
passed over as self-evident. The uncleanness of the pot is the
rust upon it. DOlii is an Aramaean form for d™ = Don.
Michaelis has given the true explanation of the words : " civi-
bus caesis etiam urhs consumetur " (when the inhabitants are
slain, the city itself will be destroyed).^ — In vers. 12 sqq. the
reason is given, which rendered it necessary to inflict this
exterminating judgment. In ver. 12 the address still keeps to
the figure, but in ver. 13 it passes over to the actual fact. It
(the pot) has exhausted the pains (Ci^ri, air. Xe7.), namely, as
ver. 13 clearly shows, the pains, or wearisome exertions, to make
it clean by milder means, and not (as Hitzig erroneously infers
from the following clause) to eat away the rust by such
extreme heat, fl??!^, third pers. Hiphil of ns7, is the earlier
form, which fell into almost entire disuse in later times (vid.
' Hitzig discovers a Hysteronproteron in this description, because the
cleaning of the pot ought to have preceded the cooking of the flesh in it,
and not to have come afterwards, and also because, so far as the actual
fact is concerned, the rust of sin adhered to the people of the city, and not
to the city itself as a collection of houses. But neither of these objections
is sufficient to prove -what Hitzig wants to establish, namely, that the
untenable character of the description shows that it is not really a prophecy ;
nor is there any force in them. It is true that if one intended to boil
flesh in a pot for the purpose of eating, the first thing to be done would
be to deau the pot itself. But this is not the object in the present instance.
The flesh was simply to be thoroughly boiled, that it might be destroyed
and thrown away, and there was no necessity to clean the pot for this
purpose. And so far as the second objection is concerned, the defilement
of sin does no doubt adhere to man, though not, as Hitzig assumes, to man
alone. According to the Old Testament view, it extends to things as well
{pid. Lev. xviii. 25, xxvii. 28). Thus leprosy, for example, did not pollute
men only, but clothes and houses also. And for the same reason judg-
ments were not restricted to men, but also fell upon cities and lands.
CHAP. XXIV. 15-24. 347
Ges. § 75, Anm. 1). The last words of ver. 11, 1 agree with
Hitzig, Havernick, and others, in taking as an exclamation.
Because the pot has exhausted all the efforts made to cleanse
it, its rust is to go into the fire. In ver. 13 Jerusalem is
addressed, and net is not a genitive belonging to Tinxpca, " on
account of thy licentious uncleanness" (Ewald and Hitzig),
but a predicate, " in thine uncleanness is (there lies) nat, i.e.
an abomination deserving of death" (see Lev. xviii. 17 and
XX. 14, where the fleshly sins, which are designated as zimmah,
are ordered to be punished with death). The cleansings which
God had attempted, but without Jerusalem becoming clean,
consisted in the endeavour, which preceded the Chaldean judg-
ment of destruction, to convert the people from their sinful
ways, partly by threats and promises communicated through
the prophets (vid. 2 Ohron. xxxvi. 15), and partly by means of
chastisements. For non tVin^ see ch. v. 13. In ver. 14 there
is a summary of the whole, which brings the threat to a
close.
Vers. 15-24. The Sign of silent Sorrow concerning
THE Destruction of Jerusalem. — Ver. 15. And the word
of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 16. Son of man, behold, I
take from thee thine eyes' delight by a stroke, and thou shalt not
mourn nor weep, and no tear shall come from tJiee. Ver. 17.
Sigh in silence ; lamentation for the dead thou shalt not make ;
bind thy head-attire upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet,
and do not cover thy beard, and eat not the bread of men.
Ver. 18. And I spake to the people in the morning, and in the
evening my wife died, and I did in the morning as I was com-
manded. Ver. 19. Then the people said to me. Wilt thou not
show us lohat this signifies to us that thou doest so ? Ver. 20.
And I said to them. The word of Jehovah has come to me, saying,
Ver. 21. Say to the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your strength,
the delight of your eyes, and the desire of your soul; and your
348 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
sons and your daughters, whom ye have left, will fall hy the
sword. Ver. 22. Then will ye do as I have done, ye will not
cover the heard, nor eat the bread of men ; Ver. 23. And ye will
have your head-attire upon your heads, and your shoes upon your
feet ; ye will not mourn nor weep, hut will pine away in your
iniquity, and sigh one toward another. Ver. 24. 77ms will
Ezekiel be a sign to you ; as he hath done will ye do ; when
it Cometh, ye will know that I the Lord am Jehovah. — From
the statements in ver. 18, to the effect that the prophet
spoke to the people in the morning, and then in the evening
his wife died, and then again in the (following) morning,
according to the command of God, he manifested no grief, and
in answer to the inquiry of the people explained to them the
meaning of what he did, it is evident that the word of God
contained in this section came to him on the same day as the
preceding one, namely, an the day of the blockade of Jeru-
salem ; for what he said to the people on the morning of this
day (ver. 18) is the prophecy contained in vers. 3-14. Imme-
diately after He had made this revelation to him, God also
announced to him the approaching death of his wife, together
with the significance which this event would have to the people
generallj'. The delight of the eyes (ver. 16) is his wife
(ver. 18) fi??.'?? by a stroke, i.e. by a sudden death inflicted by
God {vid. Num. xiv. 37, xvii. 13). On the occurrence of her
death, he is neither to allow of any loud lamentings, nor to
manifest any sign of grief, but simply to sigh in silence. D*riD
?5?? does not stand for Q^ni? -'5^, but the words are both accu-
satives. The literal rendering would be : the dead shalt thou
not make an object of mourning, i.e. thou shalt not have any
mourning for the dead, as Storr {Observv. p. 19) has correctly
explained the words. On occasions of mourning it was cus-
tomary to uncover the head and strew ashes upon it (Isa. Ixi. 3),
to go barefoot (2 Sam. xv. 30 ; Isa. xx. 2), and to cover the
beard, that is to say, the lower part of the face as far as the nose
(Mic. iii. 7). Ezekiel is not to do any of these things, but
CHAP. XXIV. 15-24. 349
to arrange his head-attire ("ixa, the head-attire generally, or
turban, vid. ver. 23 and Isa. Ixi. 3, and not specially that of the
priests, which is called nyajtsn inxa in Ex. xxxix. 28), and to
put on his shoes, and also to eat no mourning bread. D'^JX On?
does not mean panis miserorum, cibus lugentium, in which case
D'B'JX would be equivalent to D''?'^^, but bread of men, i.e. of
the people, that is to say, according to the context, bread which
the people were accustomed to send to the house of mourning
in cases of death, to manifest their sympathy and to console
and refresh the mourners, — a custom which gave rise in the
course of time to that of formal funeral meals. These are not
mentioned in the Old Testament ; but the sending of bread or
food to the house of mourning is clearly referred to in Deut.
xxvi. 14, Hos. ix. 4, and Jer. xvi. 7 (see also 2 Sam. iii. 35). —
When Ezekiel thus abstained from all lamentation and outward
sign of mourning on the death of his dearest one, the people
conjectured that such striking conduct must have some signi-
ficance, and asked him what it was that he intended to show
thereby. He then announced to them the word of God (vers.
20—24). As his dearest one, his wife, had been taken from him,
so should its dearest object, the holy temple, be taken from the
nation by destruction, and their children by the sword. When
this occurred, then would they act as he was doing now ; they
would not mourn and weep, but simply in their gloomy sorrow
sigh in silence on account of their sins, and groan one toward
another. The profanation (??'?) of the sanctuary is effected
through its destruction (cf. ch. vii. 24). To show the magnitude
of the loss, the worth of the temple in the eyes of the nation
is dwelt upon in the following clauses. 03W jiNJ is taken from
Lev. xxvi. 19. The temple is called the pride of your strength,
because Israel based its might and strength upon it as the scene
of the gracious presence of God, living in the hope that the
Lord would not give up His sanctuary to the heathen to be
destroyed, but would defend the temple, and therewith Jeru-
salem and its inhabitants also (cf. Jer. vii. 4). oae-'EiJ iiDriD,
350 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the desire or longing of the soul (from ^»n, in Arabic, desiderio
ferri ad aliquam rem). The sons and daughters of the people
are the relatives and countrymen whom the exiles had been
obliged to leave behind in Canaan.— The explanation of this
lamentation and mourning on account of the destruction of the
sanctuary and death of their relations, is to be found in the
antithesis : "iW £^^P"?^^ ye will pine or languish away in your
iniquities (compare ch. iv. 17 and Lev. xxvi. 39). Conse-
quently we have not to imagine either " stolid indifference "
(Eichhorn and Hitzig), or " stolid impenitence " (Ewald), but
overwhelming grief, for which there were no tears, no lamenta-
tion, but only deep inward sighing on account of the sins whicli
had occasioned so terrible a calamity. DHJ, lit. to utter a deep
growl, like the bears (Isa. lix. 11) ; here to sigh or utter a deep
groan. " One toward another," i.e. manifesting the grief to
one another by deep sighs ; not " full of murmuring and seek-
ing the sin which occasioned the calamity in others rather than
in themselves," as Hitzig supposes. The latter exposition is
entirely at variance with the context. This grief, which con-
sumes the bodily strength, leads to a clear perception of the
sin, and also to true repentance, and through penitence and
atonement to regeneration and newness of life. And thus will
they attain to a knowledge of the Lord through the catastrophe
which bursts upon them (cf. Lev. xxvi. 40 sqq.). For naiD, a
sign, see the comm. on Ex. iv. 21.
Vers. 25-27. Sequel of the Destruction of Jerusalem
TO THE Prophet himself. — Ver. 25. And thou, son of man,
behold, in the day when I take from them their might, their
glorious joy, the delight of their eyes and the desire of their soul,
their sons and their daughters, Ver. 26. In that day will a
fugitive come to thee, to tell it to thine ears. Ver. 27. In
that day will thy mouth be opened with the fugitive, and thou
wilt speak, and no longer be mute; and thus shalt thou be a
sign to them that they may know that I am Jehovah.— As
CHAP. XXIV. 25-27. 351
the destruction of Jerusalem would exert a powerful influence
upon the future history of the exiles on the Oliaboras, and
be followed by most important results, so was it also to be a
turning-point for the prophet himself in the execution of his
calling. Havernick has thus correctly explained the connection
between these closing verses and what precedes, as indicated by
nriSI in ver. 25. As Ezekiel up to this time was to speak to
the people only when the Lord gave him a word for them, and
at other times was to remain silent and dumb (ch. iii. 26 and
27) ; from the day on which a messenger should come to bring
him the tidings of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple,
he was to open his mouth, and not continue dumb any longer.
The execution of this word of God is related in ch. xxxiii. 21, 22.
The words, "when I take from them their strength," etc., are
to be understood in accordance with ver. 21. Consequently
DWD is the sanctuary, which was taken from the Israelites
through the destruction of Jerusalem. The predicates which
follow down to DB'SJ HfQ refer to the temple (cf. ver. 21).
C'SJ «|'D, an object toward which the soul lifts itself up
(XB'3), i.e. for which it cherishes a desire or longing; hence
synonymous with tyw PDTO in ver. 21. The sons and daughters
are attached aavvSerm. Kinn Qi'3 (in that day), in ver. 26,
which resumes the words '1J1 ''nnp Di*3 (in the day when I take,
etc.) in ver. 25, is not the day of the destruction of the temple,
but generally the time of this event, or more precisely, the day
on which the tidings would reach the prophet, ts^sn, with the
generic article, a fugitive {vid. Gen. xiv. 13). ti)i1^ nyjo^n?, to
cause the ears to hear (it), i.e. to relate it, namely to the bodily
ears of the prophet, whereas he had already heard it in spirit
from God. D'J'??''], a verbal noun, used instead of the infini-
tive Hipliil. ISvsnTiK, with the escaped one, i.e. at the same
time " with the mouth of the fugitive " (Hitzig). n« expresses
association, or so far as the fact is concerned, simultaneousness.
The words, " then wilt thou speak, and no longer be dumb," do
not imply that it was only from that time forward that Ezekiel
352 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
was to keep silence, but point back to eh. iii. 26 and 27, where
silence is imposed upon him, with the exceptions mentioned
there, from the very commencement of his ministry'; and in
comparison with that passage, simply involve impUcite the
thought that the silence imposed upon him then was to be
observed ii; the strictest manner from the present time until
the receipt of the intelligence of the fall of Jerusalem, when
his mouth would be opened once more. Through the " words
of God" that were given to His prophet (ch. iv.-xxiv.), the
Lord had now said to the people of Israel all that He had to
say concerning the approaching catastrophe for them to con-
sider and lay to heart, that they might be brought to acknow-
ledge their sin, and turn with sorrow and repentance to their
God. Therefore was Ezekiel from this time forward to keep
perfect silence toward Israel, and to let God the Lord speak
by His acts and the execution of His threatening words. It
was not till after the judgment had commenced that his mouth
was to be opened again for still further announcements (vid.
ch. xxxiii. 22). — Ezekiel was thereby to become a sign to the
Israelites. These words have a somewhat different meaning in
ver. 27 from that which they have in ver. 24. There, Ezekiel,
by the way in which he behaved at the death of his wife, was
to be a sign to the people of the manner in which they were to
act when the judgment should fall upon Jerusalem ; whereas
here (ver. 27), naiop refers to the whole of the ministry of the
prophet, his silence hitherto, and that which he was still to
observe, as well as his future words. Through both of these
he was to exhibit himself to his countrymen as a man whose
silence, speech, and action were alike marvellous and full of
meaning to them, and all designed to lead them to the know-
ledge of the Lord, the God of their salvation.
CHAP. XXV.-XXXII. 353
Chap. XXV.-XXXIL— PEEDICTIONS OF JUDGMENT
UPON THE HEATHEN NATIONS.
While the prophet's mouth was to be mute to Israel, the
Lord directed him to speak against the heathen nations, and to
foretell to them the judgment of destruction, that they might
not be lifted up by the fall of the people and kingdom of God,
but might recognise in the judgment upon Israel a work of the
omnipotence and righteousness of the Lord, the Judge of the
whole earth. There are seven heathen nations whose destruc-
tion Ezekiel foretells in this section of his book, viz. (1) Ammon ;
(2) Moab; (3) Edom; (4) the Philistines (ch.xxv.); (5) Tyre,
(6) Sidon (ch. xxvi.-xxviii.) ; and (7) Egypt (ch. xxix.-xxxii.).
These prophecies are divided into thirteen words of God by the
introductory formula, " The word of Jehovah came to me," the
utterances against Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines,
being all comprehended in one word of God ; whereas there are
four separate words of God directed against Tyre, one against
Sidon, and seven against Egypt. In the seven nations and
the seven words of God directed against Egypt we cannot fail
to discover an allusion to the symbolical significance of the
number. Sidon, which had lost its. commanding position and
become dependent upon Tyre long before the time of Ezekiel,
is evidently selected for a special word of God only for the
purpose of making up the number seven. And in order to
make it the more apparent that the number has been chosen
on account of its significance, Ezekiel divides his announcement
of the judgment upon the seventh people into seven words of
God. On the basis of Gen. i., seven is the number denoting
the completion of the works of God. When, therefore, Ezekiel
selects seven nations and utters seven words of God concerning
the principal nation, namely Egypt, he evidently intends to
indicate thereby that the judgment predicted will be executed
and completed upon the heathen world and its peoples through
EZEK. I. Z
354 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the word and acts of God.— The predictions of judgment upon
these seven heathen nations are divisible, accordingly, into two
groups. Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, and Sidon
form one group, while the second treats of Egypt alone. This
is certainly the way in which the cycle of these prophecies is
to be divided rather than the plan ordinarily adopted, according
to which the nations included in ch. xxv., as representatives of
the one phase of the world-power, are placed in contrast with
the other phase of heathenism represented by Tyre, Sidon, and
Egypt. The latter is the opinion entertained by Havernick,
for example, with regard to the " beautiful and symmetrical
arrangement" of these prophecies. "First of all," says he,
" the prophet shows in one series of nations how the idea of the
judgment of God was realized in the case of those nations
which rose up in direct and open hostility to the theocracy,
and thereby represented the might of heathenism as turned
away from God and engaged in downright rebellion against Him
(ch. XXV.). The prophecies concerning Tyre and Sidon con-
template heathenism in a second aspect (ch. xxvi.-xxviii.). In
Tyre we have an exhibition of pride or carnal security, which
looks away from God, and plunges deeper and deeper into the
sin and worthlessness of the natural life. Both aspects are
then finally combined in Egypt, that ancient foe of the cove-
nant nation, which had grown into a world-power, and while
displaying in this capacity unbending arrogance and pride, was
now, like all the rest, about to be hurled down from the summit
of its ancient glory into a bottomless deep." But this inter-
pretation is, in more than one respect, manifestly at variance
with the substance of the prophecies. This applies, in the first
place, to the antithesis which is said to exist between the nations
threatened in ch. xxv. on the one hand, and Tyre and Sidon
on the other. In the case of Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the
Philistines, for example, the sins mentioned as those for which
they would be overthrown by the judgment are their malicious
delight at the fall of Israel, and their revengeful, hostile beha-
CHAP. XXV.-XXXII. 855
viour towards the covenant nation (ch, xxv. 3, 8, 12, 15).
And in the same way, according to ch. xxvi. 2, Tyre had
involved itself in guilt by giving utterance to its delight at the
destruction of Jerusalem, which inspired the hope that every-
thing would now flow into its own store. On the other hand,
nothing is said in the case of Pharaoh and Egypt about mali-
cious pleasure, or hostility, or enmity towards Israel or the
kingdom of God ; but Pharaoh has rendered himself guilty by
saying : the Nile is mine, I have made it for myself ; and by the
fact that Egypt had become a staff of reed to the house of Israel,
which broke when they sought to lean upon it (ch. xxix. 3, 6, 7).
According to these obvious explanations, Ezekiel reckoned Tyre
and Sidon among the nations that were inimically disposed
towards Israel, even though the hostile attitude of the Phoeni-
cians was dictated by different motives from those of Edom
and the other nations mentioned in ch. xxv.; and the heathen
nations are arranged in two groups, and not in three. This is
established beyond all doubt, when we observe that each of these
two groups terminates with a promise for Israel. To the threat
of judgment uttered against Sidon there is appended the pro-
mise : and there shall be no more for Israel a malicious briar
and smarting thorn from all that are round about them who
despise them ; and when the Lord shall gather Israel from its
dispersion, then will He cause it to dwell safely and prosper-
ously in His land, inasmuch as He will execute judgment upon
all round about them who despise them (ch. xxviii. 24-26).
And the prediction of judgment upon Egypt in the last pro-
phecy uttered concerning this land, in the twenty-seventh year
of the captivity (ch. xxix. 17), closes in a similar manner, with
the promise that at the time when the Lord gives Egypt as
spoil to the king of Babylon, He will cause a horn to grow to
the house of Israel (ch. xxix. 21). The fact that these two
prophecies correspond to each other would not have been over-
looked by the commentators if the prophecy concerning Egypt,
which was really the last in order of time, had been placed in
356 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
its proper chronological position in the book of Ezekiel, namely,
at the close of the words of God directed against that land.
The date of the great mass of these prophecies falls within
the period of the last siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, that
is to say, in the interval between ch. xxiv. and ch. xxxiii., as
the chronological data in the headings plainly affirm. The first
word concerning Tyre is from the eleventh year of the captivity
of Jehoiachin (ch. xxvi. 1). Of the prophecies against Egypt,
the one in ch. xxix. 1-16 dates from the tenth month of the
tenth year; that in ch. xxx. 20-26, from the first month of the
eleventh year ; that in ch. xxxi., from the third montb of the
same year; the two in ch. xxxii. 1 sqq. and 17 sqq., from the
twelfth month of the twelfth year; and lastly, the brief utter-
ance in ch. xxix. 17-21, from the twenty-seventh year of the
captivity. There are no chronological data attached to the
others. But the short, threatening words against the Am-
monites, Moabites, Edomites, and Philistines in ch. xxv. belong
to the time immediately succeeding the fall of Jerusalem, since
they presuppose its having occurred. The second and third
utterances concerning Tyre in ch. xxvii. and ch. xxviii. 1-19,
as well as that concerning Sidon in ch. xxviii. 20 sqq., are closely
connected, so far as their contents are concerned, with the first
word of God against Tyre belonging to the eleventh year of
the captivity. And lastly, the threatening word concerning
Egypt in ch. xxx. 1-19, to which no definite chronological
data are attached, appears to stand nearer in point of time to
ch. xxix. 1-16 than to ch. xxix. 17—21. — Consequently the
arrangement is based upon the subject-matter of the prophecies,
and the chronological sequence is kept subordinate to this, or
rather to the comparative importance of the several nations in
relation to the theocracy.
These prophecies evidently rest upon the predictions of
the earlier prophets against the same nations, so far as their
contents are concerned ; and in the threats directed against
Tyre and Egypt, more especially, many of the thoughts con-
CHAP. XXV.-XXXII. 357
tained in tlie prophecies of Isaiah (Isa. xxiii. and xix.) are
reproduced and expanded. But notwithstanding this resting
upon the utterances of earlier prophets, Ezekiel's prophecy
against the heathen nations is distinguished in a characteristic
manner from that of the other prophets, by the fact that he
does not say a word about the prospect of these nations being
ultimately pardoned, or of the remnant of them being converted
to the Lord, but stops with the announcement of the utter
destruction of the earthly and temporal condition of all these
kingdoms and nations. The prophecy concerning Egypt in
ch. xxix. 13—16, to the effect that after forty years of chastise-
ment God will turn its captivity, and gather it together again,
is only an apparent and not a real exception to this ; for this
turning of the judgment is not to bring about a restoration of
Egypt to its former might and greatness or its glorification in
the future ; but, according to vers. 14 sqq., is simply to restore
a lowly and impotent kingdom, which will offer no inducement
to Israel to rely upon its strength. Through this promise,
therefore, the threat of complete destruction is only somewhat
modified, but by no means withdrawn. The only thing which
Ezekiel positively holds out to view before the seven heathen
nations is, that in consequence of the judgment falling upon them,
they will learn that God is Jehovah, or the Lord. This formula
regularly returns in the case of all the nations (vid. ch. xxv. 5,
7, 11, 17, xxvi. 6, xxviii. 22, 23, xxix. 6, 9, xxx. 8, 19, 25, 26,
xxxii. 15) ; and we might take it to mean, that through the
judgment of their destruction in a temporal respect, these
nations will come to the knowledge of the God of salvation.
And with this interpretation it would contain a slight allusion
to the salvation, which will flourish in consequence of and after
the judgment, in 'the case of those who have escaped destruc-
tion. If, however, we consider, on the one hand, that in the
case of Edom (ch. xxv. 14) the formula takes a harsher form,
namely, not that they shall know Jehovah, but that they shall
experience His vengeance; and, on the other hand, that the
358 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
mighty Tyre is repeatedly threatened with destruction, even
eternal extinction (ch. xxvi. 20, 21, xxvii. 36, xxviii. 19), and
that the whole cycle of these prophecies closes with a funeral-
dirge on the descent of all the heathen nations into Sheol
(ch. xxxii. 17-32), — we shall see that the formula in question
cannot be taken in the sense indicated above, as Kliefoth main-
tains, but must be understood as signifying that these nations
will discern in their destruction the punitive righteousness of
God, so that it presents no prospect of future salvation, but
simply increases the force of the threat. There is nothing in
this distinction, however, to establish a discrepancy between
Ezekiel and the earlier prophets ; for Ezekiel simply fixes his
eye upon the judgment, which will fall upon the heathen
nations, partly on account of their hostile attitude towards the
kingdom of God, and partly on account of their deification of
their own might, and is silent as to the salvation which will
accrue even to them out of the judgment itself, but without in
the least degree denying it. The reason for his doing this is
not that the contemplation of the particular features, which
form the details of the immediate fulfilment, has led him to
avert his eye from the more comprehensive survey of the entire
future ; * but that the proclamation of the spread of salvation
among the heathen lay outside the limits of the calling which
he had received from the Spirit of God. The prophetic mis-
sion of Ezekiel was restricted to the remnant of the covenant
nation, which was carried into exile, and scattered among the
heathen. To this remnant he was to foretell the destruction
^ DrecMer (in his commentary on Isa. xxiii.) has given the following
explanation of the distinction to be observed between the prophecies of
Isaiah and those of Ezekiel concerning Tyre,— namely, that in the case of
Isaiah the spirit of prophecy invests its utterances .with the character of
totality, in accordance with the position assigned to this prophet at the
entrance upon a new era of the world, embracing the entire future even
to the remotest times, and sketching with grand simplicity the ground-
plan and outline of the whole ; whereas in the case of the later prophets,
such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who were living in the midst of the historical
execution, the suiTey of the whole gives place to the contemplation of
CHAP. XXV.-XXSII. 359
of the kingdom of Judali, and after the occurrence of that
catastrophe the preservation and eventual restoration of the
kingdom of God in a renewed and glorified form. With this
commission, which he had received from the Lord, there was
associated, it is true, the announcement of judgment upon the
heathen, inasmuch as such an announcement was well fitted to
preserve from despair the Israelites, who were pining under the
oppression of the heathen, and to revive the hope of the fulfil-
ment of the promise held out before the penitent of their future
redemption from their state of misery and restoration to the
position of the people of. God. But this would not apply to
the prophecies of the reception of the heathen into the renovated
kingdom of God, as they contained no special element of con-
solation to the covenant people in their depression.
In connection with this we have the equally striking circum-
stance, that Ezekiel does not mention Babylon among the
heathen nations. This may also be explained, not merely from
the predominance of the idea of the judgment upon Israel and
Jerusalem, which the Chaldeans were to execute as " righteous
men" (ch. xxiii. 45), so that they only came before him as
such righteous men, and not as a world-power also (KHefoth),
but chiefly from the fact that, for the reason described above,
Ezekiel's prophecy of the judgment upon the heathen is re-
stricted to those nations which had hitherto cherished and
displayed either enmity or false friendship toward Israel, and
the Chaldeans were not then reckoned among the number. —
For the further development of the prophecy concerning the
future of the whole heathen world, the Lord had called the
particular features belonging to the details of the immediate fulfilment.
But this explanation is not satisfactory, inasmuch as Jeremiah, notwith-
standing the fact that he lived in the midst of the execution of the judg-
ment, foretold the turning of judgment into salvation at least in the case
of some of the heathen nations. For example, in ch. xlviii. 47 he prophesies
to the Moabites, and in ch. xlix. 6 to the Ammonites, that in the future
time Jehovah will turn their captivity ; and in ch. xlvi. 26 he says, con-
cerning Egypt, that after the judgment it will be inhabited as in the days
of old.
360 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
prophet Daniel at the same time as Ezekiel, and assigned him
his post at the seat of the existing heathen imperial power.
CHAP. XXV. AGAINST AMMON, MOAB, EDOM, AND THE
PHILISTINES.
The prophecies, comprehended in the heading (ver. 1) in one
" word of the Lord," against Ammon (vers. 1-7), Moab (vers.
8-11), Edom (vers. 12-14), and the Philistines (vers. 15-17),
those four border-nations of Israel, are very concise, the judg-
ment of destruction being foretold to them, in a few forcible
lines, partly on account of their scorn at the fall of the people
and kingdom of God, and partly because of actual hostility
manifested toward them. The date of these utterances is not
given in the heading ; but in vers. 3, 6, and 8 the destruction
of Jerusalem is presupposed as having already occurred, so
that they cannot have been delivered till after this catastrophe.
Vers. 1-7. Against the Ammonites. — ^Ver. 1. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, direct
thy face towards the sons of Ammon, and prophesy against them,
Ver. 3. And say to the sons of Ammon, Hear ye the word of
the Lord Jehovah ! Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou
say est, Aha! concerning my sanctuary, that it is profaned; and
concerning the land of Israel, that it is laid waste ; and concern-
ing the house of Judah^ that they have gone into captivity ;
Ver. 4. Therefore, behold, I will give thee to the sons of the east
for a possession, that they may pitch their tent-villages in thee^
and erect their dwellings in thee; they shall eat thy fruits, and
they shall drink thy milk. Ver. 5. And Rahhah will I make
a camel- ground^ and the sons of Ammon a resting-place for
Socks ; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. Ver. 6. For thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou hast clapped thy hand, and
stamped with ihy foot, and hast rejoiced in soul with all thy con-
tempt concerning the house of Israel, Ver. 7. Therefore, behold, I
CHAP. X5V. 1-7. 361
will stretch out my hand against thee, and give thee to the nations for
booty, and cut thee off from the peoples, and exterminate thee from the
lands; Twill destroy thee, that thou mayst learn that lam Jehovah.
— In ch. xxi. 28 sqq., when predicting the expedition of Nebu-
chadnezzar against Jerusalem, Ezekiel had already foretold the
destruction of the Ammonites, so that these verses are simply a
resumption and confirmation of the earlier prophecy. In the
passage referred to, Ezekiel, like Zephaniah before him (Zeph.
ii. 8, 10), mentions their reviling of the people of God as the
sin for which they are to be punished with destruction. This
reviling, in which their hatred of the divine calling of Israel
found vent, was the radical sin of Ammon. On the occasion
of Judah's fall, it rose even to contemptuous and malicious joy
at the profanation of the sanctuary of Jehovah by the destruc-
tion of the temple (a comparison with ch. xxiv. 21 will show
that this is the sense in which ?n|i is to be understood), at the
devastation of the land of Israel, and at the captivity of Judah,
— in other words, at the destruction of the religious and political
existence of Israel as the people of God. The profanation of
the sanctuary is mentioned first, to intimate that the hostility
to Israel, manifested by the Ammonites on every occasion that
presented itself (for proofs, see the comm. on Zeph. ii. 8), had
its roots not so much in national antipathies, as in antagonism
to the sacred calling of Israel. As a punishment for this, they
are not only to lose their land (vers. 4 and 5), but to be cut off
from the number of the nations (vers. 6 and 7). The Lord
will give up their land, with its productions, for a possession to
the sons of the east, i.e., according to Gen. xxv. 13-18, to the
Arabs, the Bedouins (for D'l.i^ 'p.a, see the comm. on Judg. vi. 3
and Job i. 3). The Fiel ^3^'!, although only occurring here, is
not to be rejected as critically suspicious, and to be changed
into Kal, as Hitzig proposes. The Kal would be unsuitable^
because the subject of the sentence can only be D"]iJ ''pa, and
not D/TniT'tp; and 3B'J in the Kal has an intransitive sense.
For niTtp, tent-villages of nomads, see the comm. on Gen.
360 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
prophet Daniel at the same time as Ezekiel, and assigned Lim
his post at the seat of the existing heathen imperial power.
CHAP. XXV. AGAINST AMMON, MOAB, EDOM, AND THE
PHILISTINES.
The prophecies, comprehended in the heading (ver. 1) in one
" word of the Lord," against Ammon (vers. 1-7), Moab (vers.
8-11), Edom (vers. 12-14), and the Philistines (vers. 15-17),
those four border-nations of Israel, are very concise, the judg-
ment of destruction being foretold to them, in a few forcible
lines, partly on account of their scorn at the fall of the people
and kingdom of God, and partly because of actual hostility
manifested toward them. The date of these utterances is not
given in the heading ; but in vers. 3, 6, and 8 the destruction
of Jerusalem is presupposed as having already occurred, so
that they cannot have been delivered till after this catastrophe.
Vers. 1-7. Against the Ammonites. — Ver. 1. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, direct
thy face towards the sons of Ammon, and prophesy against them,
Ver. 3. And say to the sons of Ammon, Hear ye the word of
the Lord Jehovah ! Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou
say est, Aha! concerning my sanctuary, that it is profaned; and
concerning the land of Israel, that it is laid waste ; and concern-
ing the house of Judah, that they have gone into captivity ;
Ver. 4. Therefore, behold, I will give thee to the sons of the east
for a possession, that they may pitch their tent-villages in thee,
and erect their dwellings in thee; they shall eat thy fruits, and
they shall drink thy milk. Ver. 5. And Rabbah will I make
a camel-ground, and the sons of Ammon a resting-place for
flocks ; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. Ver. 6. For thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou hast clapped thy hand, and
stamped with thy foot, and hast rejoiced in soul with all thy con-
tempt concerning the house of Israel^ Ver. 7. Therefore, behold, I
CHAP. XXV. 1-7. 361
will stretch out my hand against thee, and give thee to the nations for
booty, and cut thee off from the peoples, and exterminate thee from the
lands; I will destroy thee, that thou mayst learn that lam Jehovah.
— In ch. xxi. 28 sqq., when predicting the expedition of Nebu-
chadnezzar against Jerusalem, Ezekiel had already foretold the
destruction of the Ammonites, so that these verses are simply a
resumption and confirmation of the earlier prophecy. In the
passage referred to, Ezekiel, like Zephaniah before him (Zeph.
ii. 8, 10), mentions their reviling of the people of God as the
sin for which they are to be punished with destruction. This
reviling, in which their hatred of the divine calling of Israel
found vent, was the radical sin of Ammon. On the occasion
of Judah's fall, it rose even to contemptuous and malicious joy
at the profanation of the sanctuary of Jehovah by the destruc-
tion of the temple (a comparison with ch. xxiv. 21 will show
that this is the sense in which p™ is to be understood), at the
devastation of the land of Israel, and at the captivity of Judah,
— in other words, at the destruction of the religious and political
existence of Israel as the people of God. The profanation of
the sanctuary is mentioned first, to intimate that the hostility
to Israel, manifested by the Ammonites on every occasion that
presented itself (for proofs, see the comm. on Zeph. ii. 8), had
its roots not so much in national antipathies, as in antagonism
to the sacred calling of Israel. As a punishment for this, they
are not only to lose their land (vers. 4 and 5), but to be cut off
from the number of the nations (vers. 6 and 7). The Lord
will give up their land, with its productions, for a possession to
the sons of the east, i.e., according to Gen. xxv. 13-18, to the
Arabs, the Bedouins (for D^p ija, see the comm. on Judg. vi. 3
and Job i. 3). The Piel ^'^'f\, although only occurring here, is
not to be rejected as critically suspicious, and to be changed
into Kal, as Hitzig proposes. The Kal would be unsuitable^
because the subject of the sentence can only be Qlp ''ia, and
not Dn''nh''D; and 3?'J in the Kal has an intransitive sense.
For niTiD, tent-villages of nomads, see the comm. on Gen.
362 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
xsv. 16. COSK'p, dwellings, are the separate tents of the
shepherds. In the last clauses of ver. 4, nen is repeated for the
sake of emphasis ; and Hitzig's opinion, that the first HDn corre-
sponds to the subject in the clause 'Ul 13^;i, the second to that
in ^^njl, is to be rejected as a marvellous flight of imagination,
which approaches absurdity in the assertion that H?? ''1?
si<Tnifies the folds, i.e. the animals, of the land. Along with
the fruit of the land, i.e. the produce of the soil, milk is also
mentioned as a production of pastoral life, and the principal
food of nomads. On the wealth of the Ammonites in flocks
and herds, see Judg. vi. 5. The words are addressed to
Ammon, as a land or kingdom, and hence the feminine suffix.
The capital will also share the fate of the land. Rabbali (see
the coram, on Deut. iii. 11) will become a camel-ground, a
waste spot where camels lie down and feed. This has been
almost literally fulfilled. The ruins of Amman are deserted by
men, and Seetzen found Arabs with their camels not far off
(vid. von Raumer, Palestine, p. 268). In the parallel clause, the
sons of Ammon, i.e. the Ammonites, are mentioned instead of
their land. — In vers. 6 and 7, the Lord announces to the
nation of the Ammonites the destruction that awaits them, and
reiterates with still stronger emphasis the sin which occasioned
it, namely, the malicious delight they had manifested at Israel's
fall. 1t3KK'-p33 is strengthened by tysjB : with all thy contempt
in the soul, i.e. with all the contempt which thy soul could
cherish. In ver. 7 the air. Xey. J3p occasions some difficulty.
The Keri has substituted t3p, for booty to the nations (cf. ch.
xxvi. 5) ; and all the ancient versions have adopted this. Con-
sequently J3 might be a copyist's error for D ; and in support
of this the circumstance might be adduced, that in ch. xlvii. 13,
where na stands for HI, we have unquestionably a substitution
of 3 for t. But if the Clieiib ta be correct, the word is to be
explained— as it has been by Benfey (Die Montasnamen, p. 194)
and Gildemeister (in Lassen's Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des
Morgenlandesy iv. 1, p. 213 sqq.) — from the Sanscrit blidgO)
CHAP. XXV. 8-11. 363
parSfportio, and has passed into the Semitic languages from
the Aryan, lilte the Syriac l-j.^, esca, which P, Boetticher
(Horae aram. p. 21) has correctly traced to the Sanscrit bhaj,
coquere. — The executors of the judgment are not named ; for
the threat that God will give up the land of the Ammonites to
the Bedouins for their possession, does not imply that they are
to exterminate the Ammonites. On the contrary, a comparison
of this passage with Amos i. 13-15 and Jer. xlix. 1-5, where
the Ammonites are threatened not only with the devastation of
their land, but also with transportation into exile, will show
that the Chaldeans are to be thought of as executing the
judgment. (See the comm. on ver. 11.)
Vers. 8-11. Against the Moaeites. — Ver. 8. Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, Because Moab, like Seir, saith, Behold, like
all other nations is the house of Judah : Ver. 9. Tlierefore,
behold, I will open the shoulder of Moab from the cities, from its
cities even to the last, the ornament of the land, Beth-liayeshimoth,
Baal-meon, and as far as Kiryathaim, Ver. 10. To the sons of
the east, together with the sons of Amnion, and will give it for a
possession, that the sons of Ammon may no more be remem-
bered among the nations. Ver. 11. Upon Moab will I execute
judgments ; and they shall learn that I am Jehovah. — Moab has
become guilty of the same sin against Judah, the people of
God, as Ammon, namely, of misunderstanding and despising
the divine election of Israel. Ammon gave expression to this,
when Judah was overthrown, in the malicious assertion that
the house of Judah was like all the heathen nations, — that
is to say, had no pre-eminence over them, and shared the same
fate as they. There is something remarkable in the allusion to
Seir, i.e. Edom, in connection with Moab, inasmuch as no
reference is made to it in the threat contained in vers. 9-11 ;
and in vers. 12, 13, there follows a separate prediction con-
cerning Edom. Hitzig therefore proposes to follow the example
364 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of the LXX., and erase it from the text as a gloss, but without
being able in the smallest degree to show in what way it is
probable that such a gloss could have found admission into an
obviously unsuitable place. Seir is mentioned along with
Moab to mark the feeling expressed in the words of Moab as
springing, like the enmity of Edom towards Israel, from hatred
and envy of the spiritual birthright of Israel, i.e. of its peculiar
prerogatives in sacred history. As a punishment for this, Moab
was to be given up, like Ammon, to the Bedouins for their
possession, and the people of the Moabites were to disappear
from the number of the nations. Vers. 9 and 10 form one
period, D^ip ''n^ in ver. 10 being governed by nna in ver. 9.
The shoulder of Moab is the side of the Moabitish land. In
the application of the word ^ra to lands or provinces, regard is
had to the position of the shoulder in relation to the whole
body, but without reference to the elevation of the district.
We find an analogy to this in the use of ^TQ in connection with
the sides of a building. In '1J1 ^'''^Vnp, the iP cannot be taken,
in a privative sense, for ni^np ; for neither the article S''"ivn, nor
the more emphatic ^nVjjD V'lVD, allows this ; but 1? indicates the
direction, " from the cities onwards," " from its cities onwards,
reckoning to the very last," — that is to say, in its whole extent.
insjjD, as in Isa. Ivi. 11, Gen. xix. 4, etc. This tract of land is
first of all designated as a glorious land, with reference to its
worth as a possession on account of the excellence of its soil
for the rearing of cattle (see the comm. on Num. xxxii. 4), and
then defined with geographical minuteness by the introduction
of the names of some of its cities. Beth-Hay eshimoth, i.e.
house of wastes (see the comm. on Num. xxil. 1), has probably
been preserved in the ruins of Suaime, which F. de Saulcy
discovered on the north-eastern border of the Dead Sea, a little
farther inland (yid. Voyage en terre sainte, Paris 1865, t. i.
p. 315). Baal-Meon, — when written fully, Beth-Baal-Meon
(Josh. xiii. 17),— contracted into Beth-Meon in Jer. xlviii. 23,
is to be sought for to the south-east of this, in the ruins of
CHAP. XXV. 8-11. 365
Myun, thre6-quai'ters of an hour's journey to the south of
Heshbon (see the comm. on Num. sxxii. 38). Kiryathaim
was still farther south, probably on the site of the ruins of' El
Teym (see the comm. on Gen. xiv. 5 and Num. xxxii. 37).
The Chetib nDn''"ii3 is based upon the form Cinnp^ a secondary
form of 0!DJ"]i?, like in'l, a secondary form of pn'^? in 2 Kings
vi. 13. The cities named were situated to the north of the
Arnon, in that portion of the Moabitish land which had been
taken from the Moabites by the Amorites before the entrance
of the Israelites into Canaan (Num. xxi. 13, 26), and was
given to the tribe of Reuben for its inheritance after the defeat
of the Amoritish kings by the Israelites ; and then, still later,
when the tribes beyond the Jordan were carried into captivity
by the Assyrians, came into the possession of the Moabites
again, as is evident from Isa. xv. and xvi., and Jer. xlviii. 1, 23,
where these cities are mentioned once more among the cities of
the Moabites. This will explain not only the naming of this
particular district of the Moabitish country, but the definition,
" from its cities." For the fact upon which the stress is laid
in the passage before us is, that the land in question rightfully
belonged to the Israelites, according to Num. xxxii. 37, 38,
xxxiii. 49, Josh. xii. 2, 3, xiii. 20, 21, and that it was there-
fore unlawfully usurped by the Moabites after the deportation
of the trans-Jordanic tribes ; and the thought is this, that the
judgment would burst upon Moab from this land and these
cities, and they would thereby be destroyed (Havernick and
Kliefoth). !il3r\33 ^?, not " over the sons of Ammon," but " in
addition to the sons of Ammon." They, that is to say, their
land, had already been promised to the sons of the east (ver. 4).
In addition to this, they are now to receive Moab for their
possession (Hitzig and Kliefoth). Thus will the Lord execute
judgments upon Moab. Ver. 11 sums up what is affirmed
concerning Moab in vers. 9 and 10, in the one idea of the
judgments of God upon this people. — The execution of these
judgments commenced with the subjugation of the Ammonites
366 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and Moabites by Nebuchadnezzar, five years after the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem (vid. Josephus, Antt. x. 9. 7, and M. von
Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, etc., p. 215). Nevertheless the
Ammonites continued to exist as a nation for a long time after
the captivity, so that Judas the Maccabaean waged war against
them (1 Mace. v. 6, 30—43) ; and even Justin Martyr speaks
of ' AfifiaviToiv vvv TraiXv ifkrido<; {Dial. Tryph. p. 272). — But
Origen includes their land in the general name of Arabia (lib. i.
in Job). The name of the Moabites appears to have become
extinct at a much earlier period. After the captivity, it is
only in Ezra ix. 1, Neh. xiii. 1, and Dan. xi. 41, that we find
any notice of them as a people. Their land is mentioned bv
Josephus in the Antiq. xiii. 14. 2, and xv. 4, and in the Bell.
Jud. iii. 3. 3. — A further fulfilment by the Messianic judgment,
which is referred to in Zeph. ii. 10, is not indicated in these
words of Ezekiel; but judging from the prophecy concerning
the Edomites (see the coram, on ver. 14), it is not to be
excluded.
Vers. 12-14. Against the Edomites.— Ver. 12. Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, Because Edom acteth revengefully toioards
the house of Judah, and hath been very guilty in avenging itself
upon them, Ver. 13. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, T
tcill stretch out my hand over Edom, and cut off man and beast
from it, and make it a desert from Teman, and unto Dedan
they shall fall by the sword. Ver. 14. And T ivill inflict
my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel,
that they may do to Edom according to my anger and my
wrath; and they shall experience my vengeance, is the saying
of the Lord Je/iowa/i.— Whilst the Ammonites and the Moabites
are charged with nothing more than malicious pleasure at the
fall of Israel, and disregard of its divine calling, the Edomites
are reproached with revengeful acts of hostility towards the
house of Judah, and threatened with extermination in con-
sequence. The nib-y, doing or acting of Edom, is more pre-
CHAP. XXV. 12-14. 367
cisely defined as 'Ul D^i?|i3, i.e. as consisting in the taking of
vengeance, and designated as very guilty, DitJ'K ICB'N''. n'B'V,
followed by 3 with an infinitive, as in ch. xvii. 17. Edom had
sought every opportunity of acting thus revengefully towards
Israel (yid. Obad. vers. 11 sqq. ; Amos i. 11), so that in
ch. XXXV. 5 Ezekiel speaks of the "eternal enmity" of Edom
against Israel. For this reason we must not restrict the
reproach in ver. 12 to particular outbreaks of this revenge at
the time of the devastation and destruction of Judah by the
Chaldeans, of which the Psalmist complains in Ps. cxxxvii., and
for which he invokes the vengeance of God upon Edom. Man
and beast are to be cut off from Edom in consequence, and the
land to become a desert from Teman to Dedan. These names
denote not cities, but districts. Teman is the southern portion
bf Idumaea (see the comm. on Amos i. 12) ; and Dedan is
therefore the northern district. Dedan is probably not the
Cushite tribe mentioned in Gen. x. 7, but the tribe of the same
name which sprang from the sons of Abraham by Ketnrah
(Gen. XXV. 3), and which is also mentioned in Jer. xlix. 8 in
connection with Edom. nj'i'i has n local with Seghol instead
of Kametz, probably on account of the preceding a (vid. Ewald,
§ 216c). There is no necessity to connect \'0''f\0 with the
following clause, as Hitzig and Kliefoth have done, in opposi-
tion to the accents. The two geographical names, which are
used as a periphrasis for Idumaea as a whole, are distributed
equally through the parallelismus memhrorum between the two
clauses of the sentence, so that they belong to both clauses, so
far as the sense is concerned. Edom is to become a desert
from Teman to Dedan, and its inhabitants from Teman to
Dedan are to fall by the sword. This judgment of vengeance
will be executed by God through His people Israel. The fulfil-
ment of this threat, no doubt, commenced with the subjugation
of the Edomites by the Maccabees ; but it is not to be limited
to that event, as Eosenmiiller, Kliefoth, and others suppose,
although the foundation was thereby laid for the disappearance
368 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of the national existence of Edom. For it is impossible with
this limitation to do justice to the emphatic expression, " my
people Israel." On the ground, therefore, of the prophecies in
Amos ix. 12 and Obad. vers. 17 sqq., that the people of God
are to take possession of Edom, when the fallen tabernacle of
David is raised up again, i.e. in the Messianic times, which
prophecies point back to that of Balaam in Num. xxiv. 18, and
have their roots, as this also has, in the promise of God con-
cerning the twin sons of Isaac, " the elder shall serve the
younger" (Gen. xxv. 23), we must seek for the complete
fulfilment in the victories of the people of God over all their
foes, among whom Edom from time immemorial had taken the
leading place, at the time when the kingdom of God is per-
fected. For even here Edom is not introduced merely as a
single nation that was peculiarly hostile to Judah, but also as
a type of the implacable enmity of the heathen world towards
the people and kingdom of God, as in ch. xxxv., Isa. xxxiv. 63,
etc. The vengeance, answering to the anger and wrath of
Jehovah, which Israel, as the people of God, is to execute
upon Edom, consists not merely in the annihilation of the
national existence of Edom, which John Hyrcanus carried into
effect by compelling the subjugated Edomites to adopt circum-
cision (see the comm. on Num. xxiv. 18), but chiefly in the
wrathful judgment which Israel will execute in the person of
Christ upon the arch-enemy of the kingdom of God by its
complete extinction.
Vers. 15-17. Against the Philistines. — Ver. 15. Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Because the Philistines act with revenge,
and avenge themselves with contempt in the soul to destroy in
everlasting enmity, Ver. 16. Therefore thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, Behold, I will stretch out my hand over the Philistines,
and cut off the Cretans, and destroy the remnant by the sea-
shore. Ver. 17. And I will execute great vengeance upon
them through chastisements of wrath, and they shall know that
CHAP. XXV. 15-17. 369
I am JeJiovah, wJien I bring my vengeance upon them. —
The Philistines resembled the Edomites and Ammonites in
their disposition towards the covenant nation, the former in
tlieir thirst for revenge, the latter in their malicious rejoicing
at Israel's fall. For this reason they had already been classed
by Isaiah (xi. 14) with Edom, Moab, and Ammon as enemies,
who would be successfully attacked and overcome by Israel,
when the Lord had gathered it again from its dispersion. In
the description of its sin towards Israel we have a combination
of elements taken from the conduct of Edom and Ammon
(vers. 12 and 6). They execute revenge with contempt in the
soul (t5'333 t3NK', as in ver. 6), with the intention to destroy
(tvnpiy?') Israel ; and this revenge springs from eternal, never-
ending hostility. The Lord will cut off the whole of the
people of the Philistines for this. ^''^'}3, Cretans, originally a
branch of the Philistian people, settled in the south-west of
Canaan. The name is used by Ezekiel for the people, as it
had already been by Zephaniah (ii. 5), for the sake of the
paronomasia with ''R13n. The origin of the name is involved
in obscurity, as the current derivation from Creta rests upon a
very doubtful combination (cf. Stark, Gaza, pp. 66 and 99 sqq.).
By the " remnant of the sea-coast," i.e. the remnant of the
inhabitants of the coast of the Mediterranean, in other words,
of the Philistines, the destruction of which had already been
predicted by Amos (i. 8), Isaiah (xiv. 30), and Jeremiah
(xlvii. 4), we are to understand the whole nation to the very
last man, all that was still left of the Philistines (see the comm.
on Amos i'. 8). — The execution of the vengeance threatened by
God began in the Chaldean period, in which Gaza was attacked
by Pharaoh, and, judging from Jer. xlvii., the whole of Philistia
was laid waste by the Chaldeans (see the fuller comments on
this in the exposition of Jer. xlvii.). But the ultimate fulfil-
ment will take place in the case of Philistia also, through the
Messianic judgment, in the manner described in the commeu'
tary on Zeph. ii. 10.
EZEK. I. ^ A
370 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
CHAP. XXVI.-XXVIII.— AGAINST TYRE AND SIDON.
The greater portion of these three chapters is occupied with
the prophecy concerning Tyre, which extends from eh. xxvi. ]
to ch. xxviii. 19. The prophecy against Sidon is limited tc
ch. xxviii. 20-26. The reason for this is, that the grandeur
and importance of Phoenicia were concentrated at that time in
the power and rule of Tyre, to which Sidon had been obliged
to relinquish the hegemony, which it had formerly possessed
over Phoenicia. The prophecy against Tyre consists of four
words of God, of which the first (ch. xxvi.) contains the threat
of destruction to the city and state of Tyre ; the second
(ch. xxvii.), a lamentation over this destruction ; the third
(ch. xxviii. 1-10), the threat against the king of Tyre; the
fourth (ch. xxviii. 11—19), a lamentation over his fall.
CHAP. XXVI. THE FALL OF TYRE.
In four sections, commencing with the formula, " thus saith
the Lord," Tyre, the mistress of the sea, is threatened with
destruction. In the first strophe (vers. 2-6) there is a general
threat of its destruction by a host of nations. In the second
(vers. 7-14), the enemy is mentioned by name, and designated
as a powerful one ; and the conquest and destruction emanating
from him are circumstantially described. In the third (vers.
15-18), the impression which this event would produce upon
the inhabitants of the islands and coast-lands is depicted. And
in the fourth (vers. 19-21), the threat is repeated in an energetic
manner, and the prophecy is thereby rounded off.
This word of God bears in the introduction the date of its
delivery to the prophet and enunciation by him. Ver. 1. It
came to pass in the eleventh year, on the first of the month, that
the word of Jehovah came to me, saying. — The eleventh year of
the exile of Jehoiachin was the year of the conquest and de-
struction of Jerusalem (Jer, Hi. 6, 12), the occurrence of which
CHAP. XXVI. 2-6. 371
is presupposed in ver. 2 also. There is something striking in the
omission of the number of the month both here and in ch. xxxii.
17, as the day of the month is given. The attempt to discover
in the words ^jb inN3 an indication of the number of the
month, by understanding Cinnp as signifying the first month of the
year: "on the first as regards tlie month," equivalent to, "in
the first month, on the first day of it" (LXX., Luther, Kliefoth,
and others), is as forced and untenable as the notion that that
particular nionth is intended which had peculiar significance
for Ezekiel, namely, the month in which Jerusalem was con-
quered and destroyed. The first explanation is proved to be
en'oneous by ver, 2, where the destruction of Jerusalem, which
occurred in the fifth month of the year named, is assumed to
have already happened. The second view is open to the objec-
tion that the conquest of Jerusalem happened in the fourth
month, and the destruction in the fifth (Jer, Hi. 6 and 12) ; and
it cannot be affirmed that the conquest was of less importance to
Ezekiel than the destruction. We cannot escape the conclu-
sion, therefore, that the number of the month has been dropped
through a con-uption of the text, which has occurred in copying ;
but in that case we must give up all hope of being able to de-
termine what the month really was. The conjecture offered
by Ewald and Hitzig, that one of the last months of the year
is intended, because Ezekiel could not have known before then
what impression the conquest of Jerusalem had made upon
Tyre, stands or falls with the naturalistic view entertained by
these writers with regard to prophecy.
Vers, 2-6. Tyre shall be broken and utterly destroyed. —
Ver. 2. Son of man, because Tyre saith concerning Jerusalem,
" Aha, the door of the nations is broken ; it turneth to me ; I
shall become full; she is laid waste;" Ver. 3. Therefore thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will come upon thee,
Tyre, and will bring up against thee many nations, as the sea
bringing up its waves. Ver. 4. They will destroy the walk
of Tyre, and throw down her tovjers ; and I leill sweep away
372 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
her dust from lier^ and make her a hare rock. Ver, 5. She shall
become a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea,
for I have spoken it, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah ; and she
shall become booty for the nations. Ver. 6. And her daughters
which are in the land shall be slain ivith the sword; and
they shall learn that I am Jehovah. — Ttee, as in the pro-
phecy of Isaiah (ch. xxiii.), is not the city of that name upon
the mainland, 17 'irdXai Tvpo^ or UaXaiTvpo^, Old Tyre, which
was taken by Shalinaneser and destroyed by Alexander (as
Perizon., Marsh, Vitringa, J. D. Michaelis, and Eichhorn
supposed), but Insular Tyre, which was three-quarters of a
mile farther north, and only 1200 paces from the land, being
built upon a small island, and separated from the mainland by a
strait of no great depth (yid. Movers, Phoenizier, II. p. 288
sqq.). This Insular Tyre had successfully resisted the Assy-
rians (Josephus, Antt, ix. 14. 2), and was at that time the
market of the nations ; and in Ezekiel's day it had reached the
summit of its greatness as mistress of the sea and the centre of
the commerce of the world. That it is against this Tyre that
our prophecy is chiefly directed, is evident from vers. 5 and 14,
according to which Tyre is to become a bare rock in the midst
of the sea, and from the allusion to the daughter cities, iTlfe'a, in
the field, i.e. on the mainland (in ver. 6), as contrasted with
the position occupied by Tyre upon a rocky island in the sea ;
and, lastly, from the description given in ch. xxvii. of the mari-
time trade of Tyre with all nations, to which Old Tyre never
attained, inasmuch as it possessed no harbour (vid. Movers,
I.e. p. 176). This may easily be reconciled with such passages
as vers. 6, 8, and ch. xxvii., xxviii., in which reference is also
made to the continental Tyre, and the conquest of Tyre is
depicted as the conquest of a land-city (see the exposition of
these verses). — The threat against Tyre commences, as in the
case of the nations threatened in ch. xxv., with a brief descrip-
tion of its sin. Tyre gave expression to its joy at the fall of
Jerusalem, because it hoped to derive profit therefrom through
CHAP. XXYI. 2-6. 373
the extension of its commerce and increase of its wealth.
Different explanations have been given of the meaning of the
words put into the mouth of Tyre. " The door of the nations
is broken in pieces." The plural nin^^ indicates the folding
doors which formed the gate, and are mentioned in its stead.
Jerusalem is the door of the nations, and is so called according
to the current opinion of expositors, because it was the centre of
the commerce of the nations, i.e. as a place of trade. But
nothing is known to warrant the idea that Jerusalem was ever
able to enter into rivalry with Tyre as a commercial city. The
importance of Jerusalem with regard to other nations was to
be found, not in its commerce, nor in the favourable situation
which it occupied for trade, in support of which Havernick
refers to Herodotus, iii. 5, and Hitzig to Ezekiel xxiii. 40, 41,
but in its sanctuary, or the sacred calling which it had received
for the whole world of nations. Kliefoth has therefore decided
in favour of the following view: That Jerusalem is called a
gate of the nations, not because it had hitherto been open to
the nations for free and manifold intercourse, but for the very
opposite reason, namely, because the gate of Jerusalem had
hitherto been closed and barred against the nations, but was
now broken in pieces through the destruction of the city, and
thereby opened to the nations. Consequently the nations, and
notably Tyre, would be able to enter now ; and from this fact
the Tyrians hoped to derive advantage, so far as their com-
mercial interests were concerned. But this view is not in
harmony with the text. Although a gate is opened by being
broken in pieces, and one may force an entrance into a house
by breaking the door (Gen. xix. 9), yet the expression " door of
the nations " cannot signify a door which bars all entrance on
the part of the nations, inasmuch as doors and gates are not
made to secure houses and cities against the forcible entrance
of men and nations, but to render it possible for them to go out
and in. Moreover, the supposition that " door of the nations"
is equivalent to shutting against the nations, is not in harmony
374 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
with the words ''^N napi which follow. The expression " it has
turned to me," or it is turned to me, has no meaning unless it
signifies that through the breaking of the door the stream of the
nations would turn away from Jerusalem to Tyre, and there-
fore that hitherto the nations had turned to Jerusalem, naoj
is the 3d pers. perf. Niplial of 330, for naoj, formed after the
analogy of D»3, etc. The missing subject to napj is to be found
ad sensum in D'BVn nmbx It is not the door itself, but the
entrance and streaming in of the nations, which had previously
been directed towards Jerusalem, and would now turn to Tyre.
There is no necessity, therefore, for Hitzig's conjecture, that
nxljEi^! should be altered into R^'^'?, and the latter taken as the
subject. Consequently we must understand the words of the
Tyrians as signifying that they had regarded the drawing of
the nations to Jerusalem, i.e. the force of attraction which
Jerusalem had hitherto exerted upon the nations, as the seat of
the divine revelation of mercy, or of the law and judgment of
the Lord, as interfering with their endeavour to draw all nations
to themselves and gain them over to their purposes, and that
they rejoiced at the destruction of Jerusalem, because they
hoped that henceforth they would be able to attract the nations
to themselves and enrich themselves with their possessions.
This does not require that we should accredit the Tyrians with
any such insight into the spiritual calling of Jerusalem as would
lie beyond their heathen point of view. The simple circum-
stance, that the position occupied by Jerusalem in relation to
the world apparently interfered with the mercantile interests of
the Tyrians, would be quite sufficient to excite a malignant
pleasure at the fall of the city of God, as the worship of God
and the worship of Mammon are irreconcilably opposed. The
source from which the envy and the enmity manifesting itself
in this malicious pleasure took their rise, is indicated in the last
words: "I shall fill myself, she (Jerusalem) is laid waste,"
which Jerome has correctly linked together thus: quia ilia
deserta est, idcirco ego implebor. Nipsn, to be filled with mer-
CHAP. XXVI. 7-14. 375
chandise and wealth, as in ch. xxvii. 25. On account of this
disposition toward the kingdom of God, which led Tyre to
expect an increase of power and wealth from its destruction,
the Lord God would smite it with ruin and annihilation. ''33^
^vy, behold, I will come upon thee, as in ch. xiii. 8 ; Jer. 1. 31 ,
Nah. iii. 5. God will lead a powerful army against Tyre, which
shall destroy its walls and towers. Instead of the army, " many
nations" are mentioned, because Tyre is hoping to attract
more nations to itself in consequence of the destruction of
Jerusalem. This hope is to be fulfilled, though in a different
sense from that which Tyre intended. The comparison of the
advancing army to the advancing waves of the sea is very
significant when the situation of Tyre is considered. D*n is the
subject to ni?yn3j and the Hiphil is construed with ? instead of
the accusative (compare Ewald, § 292c with § 211e). Accord-
to Arrian, ji. 18. 3, and Ourtius, iv. 2. 9, 12, and 3. 13, Insular
Tyre was fortified all round with lofty walls and towers, which
were certainly in existence as early as Nebuchadnezzar's time.
Even the dust of the demolished buildings ('^'^SJ'.) God would
sweep away (''n''np, air. "Key., with a play upon wriB'), so that
the city, i.e. the site on which it had stood, would become a
bare and barren rock (y?D n''nv, as in ch. xxiv. 7), a place where
fishermen would spread out their nets to dry. " Her daughters "
also, that is to say, the towns dependent upon Tyre, " on the
field," I.e. the open country, — in other words, their inhabitants,
— would be slain with the sword.
In vers. 7-14 the threat is carried still further. — Ver. 7. For
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will bring against Tyre
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, from the north, the king
of kings, with horses, and chariots, and horsemen, and a multitude
of much 'people. Ver. 8. Thy daughters in the field he will slay
with the sword, and he will erect siege-towers against thee, and
throw up a rampart against thee, and set up shields against thee,
Ver. 9. And direct his battering-rams against thy walls, and
throw down thy towers with his swords, Ver. 10. From the
376 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
multitude of Ms horses their dust will cover thee; from the noise
of the horsemen, wheels, and chariots, thy walls will shake when
he shall enter into thy gates, as they enter a city broken open.
Ver. 11. With the hoofs of his horses he will tread down all thy
streets ; thy people he will slay with the sword, and thy glorious
pillars will fall to the ground. Ver. 12. They will make booty
of thy possessions, and plunder thy merchandise, destroy thy walls,
and throw down thy splendid mansions, and sink thy stones, thy
wood, and thy dust in the water. Ver. 13. J will put an end
to the sound of thy songs, and the music of thy harps shall be
heard no more. Ver. 14. I will make thee a bare rock; thou
shall be a place for the spreading of nets, and be built no
more ; for 1 Jehovah have spoken it, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah. — Nebuchadnezzar, the great king of Babylon,
— this is the meaning of the rhetorical description in these
verses, — will come with a powerful army (ver. 7), smite with
the sword the inland cities dependent upon Tyre (ver. 8, com-
pare ver. 6), then commence the siege of Tyre, destroy its
walls and towers (vers. 86 and 9), enter with his army the city
in which breaches have been made, put the inhabitants to death
(vers. 10 and 11), plunder the treasures, destroy walls and build-
ings, and cast the ruins into the sea (ver. 12). Nebuchadrezzar,
or Nebuchadnezzar (for the name see the comm. on 2 Kings
xxiv. 1), is called king of kings, as the supreme ruler of the
Babylonian empire, because the kings of conquered provinces
and lands were subject to him as vassals (see the comm. on
Isa. X. 8). His army consists of war-chariots, and cavalry, and
a great multitude of infantry. 3yDj)1 hnp^ are co-ordinate, so
far as the rhetorical style is concerned; but in reality 3yDJ? is
subordinate to ^nj^, as in ch. xxiii. 24, inasmuch as the hr\'i>^ con-
sisted of nvaj). On the siege-works mentioned in ver. 86, see
the comm. on ch. iv. 2. nas ti>\>n signifies the construction of
a roof with shields, by which the besiegers were accustomed to
defend themselves from the missiles of the defenders of the
city wall while pursuing their labours. Herodotus repeatedly
CHAP. XXVI. 7-14. 377
mentions such shield-roofs as used by the Persians (ix. 61. 99,
102), though, according to Layard, they are uot to be found
upon the Assyrian monuments (see the comm. on Nah. ii. 6).
There is no doubt that \P^\>^ 'np signifies the battering-rara,
called 13 in ch. xxi. 27, though the meaning of the words is
disputed, "'no, literally, thrusting or smiting. \b2p, from ?5"p, to
be pointed either l^^i? or ^?3iP (the form i?3p^ adopted by v. d.
Hooght and J. H. Michaelis is opposed to the grammatical
rules), has been explained by Gesenius and others as signifying
res opposita, that which is opposite ; hence l73p TID, the thrust-
ing or demolishing of that which stands opposite. In the
opinion of others, ?3"p is an instrument employed in besieging;
but there is nothing in the usage of the language to sustain
either this explanation or that adopted by Havernick, " destruc-
tion of his defence." ^''^i^'irij bis swords, used figuratively for
his weapons or instruments of war, " his irons," as Ewald has
very aptly rendered it. The description in ver. 10 is hyper-
bolical. The number of horses is so great, that on their
entering the city they cover it with dust, and the walls shake
with the noise of the horsemen and chariots. '3D TJ? ^i?i3p3,
literally, as the marchings into a broken city, i.e. a city taken by
storm, generally are. The simile may be explained from the
peculiar situation of Insular Tyre. It means that the enemy
will enter it as they march into a land-fortress into which a
breach has been made by force. The words presuppose that
the besieger has made a road to the city by throwing up an
embankment or dam. 'HJV fli^VP, the memorial pillars of thy
might, and the pillars dedicated to Baal, two of which are
mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 44) as standing in the temple of
Hercules at Tyre, one of gold, the other of emerald ; not images
of gods, but pillars, as symbols of Baal. These sink or fall to
the ground before the overwhelming might of the foe (compare
Isa. xlvi. 1, xxi. 9, and 1 Sam. v. 3). After the slaughter of
the inhabitants and the fall of the gods, the plundering of the
treasures begins, and then follows the destruction of the city.
378 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
man ■<m are not pleasure-houses (" pleasure-towers, or garden-
houses of the wealthy merchants," as Ewald supposes), for there
was not space enough upon the island for gardens (Strabo, xvi.
2. 23), but the lofty, magnificent houses of the city, the palaces
mentioned in Isa. xxiii. 13. Yea, the whole city shall be
destroyed, and that so completely that they will sweep stones,
wood, and rubbish into the sea. — Thus will the Lord put an
end to the exultation and rejoicing in Tyre (ver. 13 ; compare
Isa. xlv. 11 and Amos v. 23). — The picture of the destruction of
this powerful city closes with the repetition of the thought from
ver. 5, that Tyre shall be turned into a bare rock, and shall
never be built again.
Vers. 15-18. The tidings of the destruction of Tyre will
produce great commotion in all her colonies and the islands
connected with her. — Ver. 15. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to
Tyre, Will not the islands tremble at the noise of thy fall, at the
groaning of the wounded, at the slaughter in the midst of thee ?
Ver. 16. And all the princes of the sea will come down from
their thrones, and will lay aside their robes and take off their
embroidered clothes, and dress themselves in terrors, sit upon the
earth, and they will tremble every moment, and he astonished at
thee. Ver. 17. They will raise a lamentation for thee, and say
to thee : How hast thou jpei'ished, thou who wast inhabited from
out of the 6'«a, thou renowned city, she who was mighty upon the
sea, she and her inhabitants, who inspired all her inhabitants with
fear of her ! Ver. 18. Now do the islands tremble on the day
of thy fall, and the islands in the sea are confounded at thy
departure. — N7'!j, nonne, has the force of a direct affirmation.
n?SD ?ip, the noise of the fall, stands for the tidings of the
noise, since the noise itself could not be heard upon the islan3s.
The fall takes place, as is added for the purpose of depicting
the terrible nature of the event, at or amidst the groaninc of
the wounded, and the slaughter in the midst of thee. J^na is
the infinitive Niphal, with the accent drawn back on account of
the following Milel, and should be pointed J^na. The word
CHAP. XXVI. 15-18. 379
C'^N, islands, is frequently used so as to embrace the coast lands
of the Mediterranean Sea ; we have therefore to understand it
here as applied to the Phoenician colonies on the islands and
coasts of that sea. The " princes of the sea " are not kings of
the islands, but, according to Isa. xxiii. 8, the merchants pre-
siding over the colonies of Tyre, who resembled princes. niXDS,
not royal thrones, but chairs, as in 1 Sam. iv. 13, etc. The
picture of their mourning recalls the description in Jonah iii. 6 ;
it is not derived from that passage, however, but is an indepen-
dent description of the mourning customs which commonly
prevailed among princes. The antithesis introduced is a very
striking one : clothing themselves in terrors, putting on terrors
in the place of the robes of state which they have laid aside
(see the similar trope in ch. vii. 27). The thought is rendered
still more forcible by the closing sentences of the verse : they
tremble O'Wy, by moments, i.e. as the moments return, —
actually, therefore, " every moment " (yid. Isa. xxvii. 3). — In
the lamentation which they raise (ver. 17), they give pro-
minence to the alarming revolution of all things, occasioned by
the fact that the mistress of the seas, once so renowned, has
now become an object of horror and alarm. D^B'fD naC'iJ,
inhabited from the seas. This is not to be taken as equivalent
to " as far as the seas," in the sense of, whose inhabitants
spread over the seas and settle there, as Gesenius (Thes.) and
Havernick suppose ; for being inhabited is the very opposite of
sending the inhabitants abroad. If 11? were to be taken in the
geographical sense of direction or locality, the meaning of the
expression could only be, whose inhabitants spring from the
seas, or have migrated thither from all seas; but this would
not apply to the population of Tyre, which did not consist of
men of all nations under heaven. Hitzig has given the correct
interpretation, namely, from the sea, or out of the seas, which
had as it were ascended as an inhabited city out of the bosom
of the sea. It is not easy to explain the last clause of ver. 17 :
who inspired all her inhabitants with their terror, or with terror
380 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of them (of themselves) ; for if the relative ^B'■x is taken in
connection with the preceding n'3f , the thought arises that the
inhabitants of Tyre inspired her inhabitants, i.e. themselves,
with their terror, or terror of themselves. Kimchi, Eosen-
muller, Ewald, Kiiefoth, and others, have therefore proposed
to take the suffix in the second nuii'l' as referring to Djn, ail the
inhabitants of the sea, i.e. all her colonies. But this is open to
the objection, that not only is D^ of the masculine gender, but
it is extremely harsh to take the same suffix attached to the two
n''3E''' as referring to different subjects. We must therefore
take the relative "iti'K and the suffix in Dn'rin as both referring
to n''3C'''l X'n : the city with its population inspired all its several
inhabitants with fear of itself. This is not to be understood,
however, as signifying that the inhabitants of Tyre kept one
another in a state of terror and alarm ; but that the city with
its population, through its power upon the sea, inspired all the
several inhabitants with fear of this its might, inasmuch as the
distinction of the city and its population was reflected upon
every individual citizen. This explanation of the words is con-
firmed by the parallel passages in ch. xxxii. 24 and 26. — This
city had come to so appalling an end, that all the islands
trembled thereat. The two hemistichs in ver. 18 are synony-
mous, and the thought returns by way of conclusion to ver. 15.
r^X has the Aramaean form of the plural, which is sometimes
met with even in the earlier poetry (vid. Ewald, § 177a). HNS,
departure, i.e. destruction.
Vers. 19-21. Thus will Tyre, covered by the waves of the
sea, sink into the region of the dead, and vanish for ever from
the earth.— Ver. 19. For thus saitJi the Lord Jehovah, When I
make thee a desolate city^ like the cities which are no longer in-
habited, when I cause the deep to rise over thee, so that the many
waters cover thee, Ver. 20. I cast thee down to those who have
gone into the grave, to the people of olden time, and cause thee to
dwell in the land of the lower regions, in the ruins from the olden
time, with those who have gone into the grave, that thou mayest be
CHAP. XSVI. 19-21. 381
no longer inJiahitedj and 1 create that which is glorious in the
land of the living, Ver. 21. / make thee a terror, and thou
art no more ; they will seek thee, and find thee no more for
ever, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — Not only will ruin
and desolation come upon Tyre, but it will sink for ever into
the region of the dead. In this concluding thought the
whole threat is summed up. The infinitive clauses of ver. 19
recapitulate the leading thoughts of the previous strophes, for
the purpose of appending the closing thought of banishment td
the under-world. By the rising of the deep we are to under-
stand, according to ver. 12, that the city in its ruins will be
sunk into the depths of the sea. in ■''iii^, those who go down
into the pit or grave, are the dead. They are described still
further as a^SV Dy, not " those who are sleeping the long sleep
of death," or the generation of old whom all must join ; but the
people of the " old world " before the flood (2 Pet. ii. 5), who
were buried by the waters of the flood, in accordance with
Job xxii. 15, where D^iy denotes the generations of the primeval
world, and after the analogy of the use of a7SV Dy in Isa.
xliv. 7, to describe the human race as existing from time
immemorial. In harmony with this, oTiVa niinn are the ruins
of the primeval world which perished in the flood. As Djij; US
adds emphasis to the idea of li3 ''ini'', so also does Djiyo ninnna
to that of ni'rinn pK. Tyre shall not only descend to the dead
in Sheol, but be thrust down to the people of the dead, who
were sunk into the depths of the earth by the waters of the
flood, and shall there receive its everlasting dwelling-place
among the rilins of the primeval world which was destroyed by
the flood, beside that godless race of the olden time, px
ni'Jinri, land of the lowest places (cf. ch. xxxii. 18, 24), is a
periphrasis for Sheol, the region of the dead (compare Eph,
iv. 9, " the lower parts of the earth "). On 'W1 '^i WJI Hitzig
has observed with perfect correctness : " If we retain the point-
ing as the first person, with which the place assigned to the
Athnach (») coincides, we must at any rate not regard the
382 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
clause as still dependent upon tVl?^, and the force of the tib as
continued. "We should then have to take the clause as inde-
pendent and affirmative, as the accentuators and the Targutn
have done." But as this would give rise to a discrepancy
between the two halves of the verse, Hitzig proposes to alter ''fi™
into the second person "'nnjl., so that the clause would still be
governed bv S<^ IV^^. But the want of agreement between the
two halves of the verse does not warrant an alteration of the
text, especially if it lead to nothing better than the forced
rendering adopted by Hitzig, " and thou no longer shinest with
glory in the land of the living," which there is nothing in the
language to justify. And even the explanation proposed by
Havernick and Kliefoth, " that I no longer produce anything
glorious from thee (Tyre) in the land of the living," is open to
this objection, that " from thee" is arbitrarily interpolated into
the text ; and if this were what Ezekiel meant, he would either
have added ^^ or written ^''Ji'ni. Moreover, the change of
person is a sufficient objection to our taking 'nnj as dependent
upon 1^1??, and supplying iih. 'Jiinjl is evidently a simple con-
tinuation of ^''riau'ini. And nothing but the weightiest objec-
tions should lead us to give up a view which so naturally
suggests itself. But no such objections exist. Neither the
want of harmony between the two halves of the verse, nor the
context, — according to which Tyre and its destruction are
referred to both before and immediately after, — forces us to
the adoption of explanations at variance with the simple mean-
ing of the words. We therefore adhere to the natural inter-
pretation of the words, " and I set (establish) glory in the land
of the living ; " and understand by the land of the living, not
the theocracy especially, but the earth, in contrast to the region
of the dead. The words contain the general thought, that on
and after the overthrow of the glory of the ungodly power of
the world. He will create that which is glorious on the earth
to endure for ever ; and this He really does by the establishing
of His kingdom. — Tyre, on the contrary, shall become, through
CHAP. XXVII. x-u. 383
its fate, an otject of terror, or an example of sudden destruc-
tion, and pass away with all its glory, not leaving a trace
behind. For ver. 216, compare Isa. xli. 12 and Ps. xxxvii. 36.
''B'panij imperf. Pual, has Chateph-patach between the two u, to
indicate emphatically that the syllable is only a very loosely
closed one (vid. Ewald, § 31b, p. 95).
CHAP. XXVII. LAMENTATION OVEE THE FALL OF TYKE.
The lamentation commences with a picture of the glory of
the city of Tyre, its situation, its architectural beauty, its mili-
tary strength and defences (vers. 3-11), and its wide-spread
commercial relations (vers. 12-25); and then passes into mourn-
ful lamentation over the ruin of all this glory (vers. 26-36).
Vers. 1-11. Introduction and description of the glory and
might of Tyre. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me,
saying, Ver. 2. And do thou, son of man, raise a lamentation
over Tyre, Ver. 3. And say to Tyre, Thou who dwellest at the
approaches of the sea, merchant of the nations to many islands,
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Tyre, thou sayest, I am perfect in
beauty. Ver. 4. In the heart of the seas is thy territory ; thy
builders have made thy beauty perfect. Ver. 5. Out of cypresses
of Senir they built all double-plank-ioorh for thee ; they took cedars
of Lebanon to make a mast upon thee. Ver. 6. lliey made thine
oars of oaks of Bashan, thy benches they made of ivory set in box
from the islands of the Chittaeans. Ver. 7. Byssus in em-
broidery from Egypt was thy sail, to serve thee for a banner ;
blue and red purple from the islands ofElishah was thine awning,
Ver. 8. Tlie inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were thy rowers ;
thy skilful men, Tyre, were in thee, they were thy sailors.
Ver. 9. Tlie elders of Gebal and its skilful men were with thee to
repair thy leaks ; all the ships of the sea and their mariners were
in thee to barter thy goods. Ver. 10. Persian and Lydian and
Jjibyan were in thine army, thy men of loar ; shield and helmet they
hung up in thee; they gave brilliancy to thee. Ver. 11. The sons
384 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of Arvad and thine army were upon thy walls round about, and
brave men were upon thy towers ; they hung up their shields
xipon thy walls round about ; they have made thy beauty perfect. —
The lamentation commences with an address to Tyre, in which
its favourable situation for purposes of trade, and the perfect
beauty of which she was conscious, are placed in the fore-
ground (ver. 3). Tyre is sitting, or dwelling, at the approaches
of the sea. QJ riKUp, approaches or entrances of the sea, are
harbours into which ships sail and from which they depart, just
as T'l'i^ ^^^P, the gate of the city, is both entrance and exit.
This description does not point to the city on the mainland, or
Old Tyre, but answers exactly to Insular Tyre with its two
harbours.^ '''^??''', with the connecting i, which is apparently
confounded here after the Aramaean fashion with the i of the
feminine pronoun, and has therefore been marked by the
Masora as superfluous {vid. Ewald, § 2116). The combination
of npa'i with '"• C^X PX may be accounted for from the primary
meaning of i'3'J, to travel about as a merchant : thou who didst
go to the nations on many shores to carry on thy trade. Tyre
itself considers that she is perfect in her beauty, partly on
account of her strong position in the sea, and partly because of
her splendid edifices.' In the description which follows of this
' lusular Tyre possessed two harbours, a northeru one called the
Sidonian, because it was on the Sidonian side, and one on the opposite or
south-eastern side, which was called the Egyptian harbour from the direc-
tion in which it pointed. The Sidonian was the more celebrated of the
two, and consisted of an inner harbour, situated within the wall of the city,
and an outer one, formed by a row of rocks, which lay at a distance of
about three hundred paces to the north-west of the island, and ran parallel
to the opposite coast of the mainland, so as to form a roadstead in which
ships could anchor {vid. Arrian, ii. 20 ; Strabo, xvi. 2. 2S). This northern
harbour is still held by the city of Sur, whereas the Egyptian harbour with
the south-eastern portion of the island has been buried by the sand driven
against the coasts by the south winds, so that even the writers of the
Middle Ages make no allusion to it. (See Movers, Phoiiizier, II. 1,
pp. 214 sqq.)
" Curtius, iv. 2 : Tynis et daritate et magnitudine ante onines urbes Syriae
Phoevicesqae memorabilis. (Cf. Strabo, xvi. 2. 22.)
CHAP. XXVII. 1-11. 385
beauty and glory, from ver. 4 onwards, Tyre is depicted
allegorlcally as a beautiful ship, splendidly built and equipped
throughout, and its destruction is afterwards represented as a
shipwreck occasioned by the east wind (vers. 26 sqq.).^ The
words, " in the heart of the seas is thy territory " (ver. 4a), are
equally applicable to the city of Tyre and to a ship, the build-
ing of which is described in what follows. The comparison of
Tyre to a ship was very naturally suggested by the situation of
the city in the midst of the sea, completely surrounded by
water. As a ship, it must of necessity be built of wood. The
shipbuilders selected the finest kinds of wood for the purpose ;
cypresses of Antilibanus for double planks, which formed the
sides of the vessel, and cedar of Lebanon for the mast. S^nir,
according to Deut. iii. 9, was the Amoritish name of Hermon
or A ntilibanus, whereas the Sidonians called it Sirion. On the
other hand, S^nir occurs in 1 Chron. v. 23, and Sh^nir in Song
of Sol. iv. 8, in connection with Hermon, where they are used
to denote separate portions of Antilibanus. Ezekiel evidently
uses Senir as a foreign name, which had been retained to his
own time, whereas Sirion had possibly become obsolete, as the
names had both the same meaning (see the comm. on Deut.
iii. 9). The naming of the places from which the several
materials were obtained for the fitting out of the ship, serve to
heighten the glory of its construction and give an ideal charac-
ter to the picture. All lands have contributed their produc-
tions to complete the glory and might of Tyre. Cypress-wood
was frequently used by the ancients for buildings and (accord-
ing to Virgil, Georg. ii. 443) also for ships, because it was
1 Jerome recognised this allegory, and has explained it correctly as
follows: " He (the prophet) speaks rpo^/xSf, as though addressing a ship,
and points out its beauty and the abundance of everything. Then, after
having depicted all its supplies, he announces that a storm will rise, and
the south wind {auster) will blow, by which great waves wiU be gathered
up, and the vessel will be wrecked. In all this he is referring to the over-
throw of the city by King Nabuchodonosor," etc. Easchi and others
give the same explanation.
EZEK. I. 2 B
386 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
exempt from the attacks of worms, and was almost imperishable,
and yet very light (Theophr. Hist, plant, v. 8 ; Plinii Hist. nat.
xvi. 79). D*nn^, a dual form, like D^nbh in 2 Kings xxv. 4,
Isa. xxii. 11, double-planks, used for the two side-walls of the
ship. For oars they chose oaks of Bashan (Oity'D as well as
DiB'D in ver. 29 from DIB', to row), and the rowing benches (or
deck) were of ivory inlaid in box. C'li? is used in Ex. xxvi.
15 sqq. for the boards or planks of the wooden walls of the
tabernacle ; here it is employed in a collective sense, either for
the rowing benches, of which there were at least two, and
sometimes three rows in a vessel, one above another, or more
properly, for the deck of the vessel (Kitzig). This was made
of shen, or ivory, inlaid in wood. The ivory is mentioned first
as the most valuable material of the B'V, the object being
to picture the ship as possessing all possible splendour. The
expression □''"lE'STia occasions some difficulty, partly on account
of the use of the word na, and partly in connection with the
meaning of Q''"]f''?, although so much may be inferred from the
context, that the allusion is to some kind of wood inlaid with
ivory, and the custom of inlaying wood with ivory for the
purpose of decoration is attested by Virgil, Aen. x. 137 :
" Vel quale per artem
Inclusum huxo, aut Oricia tereUutlw
Lucet ebur."
But the use of ^3 does not harmonize with the relation of the
wood to the ivory inserted in wood ; nor can it be defended by
the fact that in Lam. iii. 3 an arrow is designated " the son of
the quiver." According to this analogy, the ivory ought to
have been called the son of the Ashurim, because the ivory is
inserted in the wood, and not the wood in the ivory.' We must
therefore adopt the solution proposed by R. Salomo and others,
— namely, that the Masoretic division of D''itS'X"nn into two
words is founded upon a mistake, and that it should be read as
^ The Targum has paraphrased it in this way : paiaaia pjn^C'XT p3T
Ttil ]^2, i.e. planks of box or pine inlaid with ivory.
CHAP. XXVII. 1-11, 387
one word Q''■^|'^5n3, ivory in tJ^u^KPi, i.e. either sherbin-cedar
(according to more recent expositors), or box-wood, for which
Bochart' (Phal. III. 5) has decided. The fact tliat in Isa.
Ix. 13 the "ilE'xn is mentioned among the trees growing upon
Lebanon, whereas here the DnE'sn are described as coming
from the islands of the D>n3, does not furnish a decisive argu-
ment to the contrary. We cannot determine with certainty
what species of tree is referred to, and therefore it cannot be
affirmed that the tree grew upon Lebanon alone, and not upon
the islands of the Mediterranean. D>n3 are the Kixiet?, the
inhabitants of the port of KItiov in Cyprus ; then the Cyprians
generally ; and here, as in Jer. ii. 10, where ti'^N of the
Dfna are mentioned, in a still broader sense, inhabitants of
Cyprus and other islands and coast-lands of the Mediterranean.
In 1 Mace. i. 1 and viii. 5, even Macedonia is reckoned as
belonging to the 7^ XerTeieifj, or Kiriecov. Consequently the
place from which the D''"iE'XPi were brought does not furnish
any conclusive proof that the Cyprian pine is referred to,
although this was frequently used for ship-building. There is
just as much ground for thinking of the box, as Bochart does,
and we may appeal in support of this to the fact that, according
to Theophrastus, there is no place in which it grows more
vigorously than on the island of Corsica. In any case, Ezekiel
mentions it as a very valuable kind of wood; though we can-
not determine with certainty to what wood he refers, either
from the place where it grew or from the accounts of the
ancients concerning the kinds of wood that ship-builders used.
The reason for this, however, is a very simple one, — namely,
that the whole description has an ideal character, and, as Hitzig
has correctly observed, " the application of the several kinds
of wood to the different parts of the ship is evidently only
poetical."
The same may be said of the materials of which, according
to ver. 7, the sails and awning of the ship were made. Byssus
in party-coloured work ('i^^l; see comm. on Ex. xxvi. 36), i.e.
388 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
woven in mixed colours, probably not merely in stripes, but
woven with figures and flowers.^ " From Egypt ;" the byssus-
weaving of Egypt was celebrated in antiquity, so that byssus-
linen formed one of the principal articles of export (yid. Movers,
ut supra, pp. 317 sqq.). tihap, literally, spreading out, evidently
signifies the sail, which we expect to find mentioned here, and
with which the following clause, " to serve thee for a banner,"
can be reconciled, inasmuch as it may be assumed either that
the sails also served for a banner, because the ships had no
actual flag, like those in Wilkinson's engraving, or that
the flag (D3) being also extended is included under the term
enQD (Hitzig). The covering of the ship, i.e. the awning which
was put up above the deck for protection from the heat of the
sun, consisted of purple (n?3n and i^?"!??, see the comm. on Ex.
XXV. 4) from the islands of Elishah, i.e. of the Grecian Pelopon-
nesus, which naturally suggests the Laconian purple so highly
valued in antiquity on account of its splendid colour (Plin.
Hist. nat. ix. 36, xxi. 8). The account of the building of the
ship is followed by the manning, and the attention paid to its
condition. The words of ver. 8a may be taken as referring
quite as much to the ship as to the city, which was in possession
of ships, and is mentioned by name in ver. 86. The reference
to the Sidonians and Arvad, i.e. to the inhabitants of Aradus, a
rocky island to the north of Tripolis, as rowers, is not at variance
with the latter ; since there is no need to understand by the
rowers either slaves or servants employed to row, and the
Tyrians certainly drew their rowers from the whole of the
Phoenician population, whereas the chief men in command of
• See Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, III. PI. xvi., where engravings are
given of Egyptian state-ships with embroidered sails. On one ship a large
square sail is displayed in purple-red and purple-blue checks, surrounded
by a gold border. The vessel of Antony and Cleopatra in the battle of
Actium had also purple sails ; and in this case the purple sails were the
sign of the admiral's ship, just as in Ezekiel they serve as a mark of dis-
tinction (d3). See Movers, II. 3, p. 165, where the accounts of ancient
writers concerning such state-ships are collected together.
CHAP. XXVII. 1-11. 389
the ships, the captain and pilot (Q^ah), were no doubt as a
rule citizens of Tyre. The introduction of the inhabitants of
Gebal, i.e. the Byblos of the Greeks, the present Jebail, between
Tripolis and Berytus (see the comm. on Josh. xiii. 5), who were
noted even in Solomon's time as skilful architects (1 Kings
V. 32), as repairers of the leak, decidedly favours the supposi-
tion that the idea of the ship is still kept in the foreground ;
and by the naming of those who took charge of the piloting
aud condition of the vessel, the thought is expressed that all
the cities of Phoenicia assisted to maintain the might and glory
of Tyre, since Tyre was supreme in Phoenicia. It is not till
ver. 96 that the allegory falls into the background. Tyre now
appears no longer as a ship, but as a maritime city, into which
all the ships of the sea sail, to carry on and improve her com-
merce. — Vers. 10, 11. Tyre had also made the best provision
for its defence. It maintained an army of mercenary troops
from foreign countries to protect its colonies and extend its
settlements, and entrusted the guarding of the walls of the city
to fighting men of Phoenicia. The hired troops specially
named in ver. 10 are Pharas, Lud, and Phut. tilS is no doubt
an African tribe, in Coptic Phaiat, the Libyans of the ancients,
■who had spread themselves over the whole of North Africa as
far as Mauretania (see the comm. on Gen. x. 6). nii> is not
the Semitic people of that name, the Lydians (Gen. x. 22),
but here, as in ch. xxx. 5, Isa. Ixvi. 19, and Jer. xlvi. 9, the
Hamitic people of ^'''w (Gen. x. 13), probably a general name
for the whole of the Moorish tribes, since 111' (ch. xxx. 5)
and D''1v (Jer. xliv. 9) are mentioned in connection with
Bia as auxiliaries in the Egyptian army. There is something
striking in the reference to Dnsi, the Persians. Havernick
points to the early intercourse carried on by the Phoenicians
with Persia through the Persian Gulf, through which the
former would no doubt be able to obtain mercenary soldiers,
for which it was a general rule to select tribes as remote as
possible. Hitzig objects to this, on the ground that there is no
390 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
proof that this intercourse with Persia through the Persian
Gulf was carried on in Ezekiel's time, and that even if it were,
it does not follow that there were any Persian mercenaries.
He therefore proposes to understand by OIZ, Persians who had
settled in Africa in the olden time. But this settlement can-
not be inferred with sufficient certainty either from Sallust,
Jug. c. 18, or from the occurrence of the African MciKai of
Herodotus, iv. 175, along with the Asiatic (Ptol. vi. 7. 14),
to take it as an explanation of D"]3. If w^e compare ch.
xxxviii. 5, where Paras is mentioned in connection with Cush
and Phut, Gomer and Togarmah, as auxiliaries in the army of
Gogi there can be no doubt that Asiatic Persians are intended
there. And we have to take the word in the same sense here ;
for Hitzig's objections consist of pure conjectures which have no
conclusive force. Ezekiel evidently intends to give the names
of tribes from the far-off east, west, and south, who were
enlisted as mercenaries in the military service of Tyre. Hang-
ing the shields and helmets in the city, to ornament its walls,
appears to have been a Phoenician custom, which Solomon also
introduced into Judah (1 Kings x. 16, 17; Song of Sol. iv. 4),
and which is mentioned again in the times of the Maccabees
(1 Mace. iv. 57). — A distinction is drawn in ver. 11 between
the mercenary troops on the one hand, and the Aradians,
and ^?''0, thine army, the military corps consisting of Tyrians,
on the other. The latter appear upon the walls of Tyre,
because native troops were employed to watch and defend the
city, whilst the mercenaries had to march into the field. The ott.
X£7. Dnsa (Gammddim) signifies brave men, as Eoediger has
conclusively shown from the Syrian usage, in his Addenda to
Gesenius' Thes. p. 70 seq. It is therefore an epitheton of the
native troops of Tyre. — With the words, " they (the troops) com-
pleted thy beauty," the picture of the glory of Tyre is rounded
off, returning to its starting-point in vers. 4 and 5.
Vers. 12-25. This is followed by a description of the com-
merce of Tyre with all nations, who delivered their productions
CHAP. XSVII, 12-25. 391
in the market of this metropolis of the commerce of the world,
and received the wares and manufactures of this city in return.
— Ver. 12. Tarshish traded with thee for the multitude of goods
of all kinds ; with silver, iron^ tin, and lead they paid for thy
sales. Ver. 13. Javan, Tubal, and Mesheeh, they were thy mer-
chants ; with souls of men and brazen vessels they made thy
barter. Ver. 14. From the house of Togarmah they paid horses,
riding-horses, and mules for thy sales. Ver. 15. The sons of
Dedan were thy merchants ; many islands were at thy hand for
commerce ; ivory horns and ebony they brought thee in payment.
Ver. 16. Aram traded with thee for the multitude of thy produce
tions ; with carbuncle, red purple, and embroidery, and byssus,
and corals, and rubies they paid for thy sales. Ver. 17. Judah
and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants ; with wheat of
Minnith and confectionery, and honey and oil, and balsam they
made thy barter. Ver. 18. Damascus traded with thee in the
multitude of thy productions, for the m,ultitude of goods of all
kinds, with wine of Chelbon and white wool. Ver. 19. Vedan
and Javan from Uzal gave wrought iron for thy sales ; cassia
and calamus were for thy barter. Ver. 20. Vedan was thy mer-
chant in cloths spread for riding. Ver. 21. Arabia and all the
princes of Kedar, they were at thy hand for commerce; lambs
and rams and he-goats, in these they traded with thee. Ver. 22.
The merchants of Sheba and Ragmah, they were thy merchants ;
with all kinds of costly spices and with all kinds of precious
stones and gold they paid for thy sales. Ver. 23. Haran, and
Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshm; Chilmad,
were thy merchants ; Ver. 24. They were thy merchants in
splendid clothes, in purple and embroidered robes, and in
treasures of twisted yam, in wound and strong cords for thy
wares. Ver. 25. The ships of Tarshish were thy caravans, thy
trade, and thou wast filled and glorious in the heart of the
seas. — The enumeration of the different peoples, lands, and
cities, which carried on trade with Tyre, commences with
Tarshish (Tartessus) in the extreme west, then turns to the
392 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
north, passes through the different lands of Anterior Asia and
the Mediterranean to the remotest north-east, and ends by
mentioning Tarshish again, to round off the list. But the
lands and peoples, which are mentioned in vers. 5-11 as
furnishing produce and manufactures for the building of Tyre,
viz. Egypt and the tribes of Northern Africa, are left out. — To
avoid wearisome uniformity in the enumeration, Ezekiel has
used interchangeably the synonymous words which the language
possessed for trade, besides endeavouring to give life to the
description by a variety of turns of expression. Thus 'H'T'I']^
(vers. 12, 16, 18), ^p.nb (ver. 21), and tit mho (ver. 15), or
T}.l ''!!n° (ver. 21), are interchanged with T73T (vers. 13, 15,
17, 22, 24), Tinb'T (vers. 20, 23), and Tiri>3np (ver. 24) ; and,
again, Tl^Jury inj (vers. 12, 14, 22) or Ti^jurya inj (vers. 16,
19) with Ti3-ij|D ]n: (vers. 13, 17), and n;ri -lan^a (ver. 19), and
^^sc'X 2''CT} (ver. 15). The words "inb, participle of ino, and
?3ij from ?3"J, signify merchants, traders, who travel through
different lands for purposes of trade. n'lnb, literally, the
female trader ; and i^^nD, literally, trade ; then used as abstract
for concrete, the tradesman or merchant, ^"'j the travelling
merchant. — ^7^\ the female trader, a city carrying on trade.
TObyp, trade or a place of trade, a commercial town. Q''?i3Ty
(pluralet.) does not mean a place of trade, market, and profits
(Gesenius and others) ; but according to its derivation from
W, to leave, relinquish, literally, leaving or giving up, and as
Gusset, has correctly explained it, " that which you leave with
another in the place of something else which he has given up
to you." Ewald, in accordance with this explanation, has
adopted the very appropriate rendering Absatz, or sale, inj
T1^3i3Ty, with a, or with a double accusative, literally, to make
thy sale with something, i.e. to pay or to give, i.e. pay, some-
thing as an equivalent for the sale ; 'atya in:, to give something
for the sale, or the goods to be sold. a"i3{p, barter, goods
bartered with IDJ, to give bartered goods, or carry on trade by
barter.
CHAP. XXVII. 12-25. 393
The following are the countries and peoples enumerated : —
^''P')^, the Tyrian colony of Tarshish or Tartessus, in Hispania
Baetica, which was celebrated for its wealth in silver (Jer.
X. 9), and, according to the passage before us, also supplied
iron, tin, and lead (vid. Plin. Hist. nat. iii. 3 (4), xxxiii. 6 (31),
xxxiv. 14 (41) ; Diod. Sic. v. 38). Further particulars con-
cerning Tarshish are to be found in Movers, Phoeniz. II. 2,
pp. 588 sqq., and II. 3, p. 36. — Javan, i.e. Jania, Greece or
Greeks. — Tubal and Meshech are the Tibareni and Moschi of
the ancients between the Black and Caspian Seas (see the
comm. on Gen. x. 2). They supplied souls of men, i.e. slaves,
and things in brass. The slave trade was carried on most
vigorously by the lonians and Greeks (see Joel iv. 6, from
which we learn that the Phoenicians sold prisoners of war to
them) ; and both Greeks and Romans drew their largest sup-
lies and the best slaves from the Pontus (for proofs of this, see
Movers, II. 3, pp. 81 seq.). It is probable that the principal
supplies of brazen articles were furnished by the Tibareni and
Moschi, as the Colchian mountains still contain an inexhaustible
quantity of copper. In Greece, copper was found and wrought
in Euboea alone ; and the only other rich mines were in Cyprus
{vid. Movers, II. 3, pp. 66, 67). — Ver. 14. " From the house
of Togarmah they paid," i.e. they of the house of Togarmah
paid. Togarmah is one of the names of the Armenians (see
the comm. on Gen. x. 3) ; and Strabo (XI. 14. 9) mentions the
wealth of Armenia in horses, whilst that in asses is attested by
Herodotus (i. 194), so that we may safely infer that mules
were also bred there. — Ver. 15. The sons of Dedan, or the
Dedanites, are, no doubt, the Dedanites mentioned in Gen. x. 7
as descendants of Cush, who conducted the carrying trade
between the Persian Gulf and Tyre, and whose caravans are
mentioned in Isa. xxi. 13. Their relation to the Semitic
Dedanites, who are evidently intended in ver. 20, and by the
inhabitants of Dedan mentioned in connection with Edom in
oh. XXV. 13 and Jer. xlix, 8, is involved in obscurity (see the
394 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
coram, on Gen. x. 7). The corabination with D'a"] Q'^N and the
articles of coramerce which they brought to Tyre, point to a
people of southern Arabia settled in the neighbourhood of the
Persian Gulf. The many D''?X are the islands and coasts of
Arabia on the Persian Gulf and Erythraean Sea.^ 'HX rmo,
the comraerce of thy hand, i.e. as abstr. pro concr., those who
were ready to thy hand as merchants. ]^ ^i^'Ji'?) ivory horns.
This is the terra applied to the elephants' tusks (shen) on
account of their shape and resemblance to horns, just as Pliny
(Hist. nat. xviii. 1) also speaks of cornua elephanti, although he
says, in viii. 3 (4), that an elephant's weapons, which Juba calls
cornua, are more correctly to be called denies." The air. \ey.
D'jain, Keri ^''^'^\}, signifies e/Sez/o?, liebenum, ebony. The
ancients obtained both productions partly from India, partly
from Ethiopia (Plin. xii. 4 (8)). According to Dioscor. i. 130,
the Ethiopian ebony was preferred to the Indian, "ilf^ ^''^?>
to return payment (see the coram, on Ps. Ixxii. 10). — In ver. 16,
J. D. Michaelis, Ewald, Hitzig, and others read D"if< for D'lN,
after the LXX. and Pesh., because Aram did not lie in the road
frora Dedan and the D"N to Israel (ver. 17), and it is not till
ver. 18 that Ezekiel reaches Arara. Moreover, the corruption
Dns for onx could arise all the more readily from the simple
fact that the defective form D"IN only occurs in Ezekiel (xxv. 14),
and is altogether an extraordinary one. These reasons are un-
doubtedly worthy of consideration ; still they are not conclusive,
since the enumeration does not follow a strictly geographical
' Movers (II. 8, pp. 803 sqq.) adduces still further evidence in addition
to that given above, namely, that " unquestionable traces of the ancient
name have been preserved in the region in which the ancient Dedanites
are represented as living, partly on the coast in the names Attana, Attene,
which have been modified according to well-known laws, — the former, a
commercial town on the Persian Gulf, visited by Roman merchants (Plin.
vi. 32, § 147) ; the latter, a tract of country opposite to the island of Tylos
(Plin. Ic. § 49),— and partly in the islands of the Persian Gulf " (p. 804).
2 The Ethiopians also call ivory Kama nage, i.e. cornu elephanti, and
suppose that it is from horns, and not from tusks, that ivory comes (vid.
Hiob Ludolph, Hist. Aeth. I. c. 10)
CHAP. XXVII. 12-25. 395
order, inasmuch as Damascus is followed in vers. 19 sqq. by
many of the tribes of Southern Arabia, so that Aram might
stand, as Havernick supposes, for Mesopotamian Aram, for
which the articles mentioned in ver. 16 would be quite as
suitable as for Edom, whose chief city Petra was an important
place of commerce and emporium for goods. ^l^J?? 3h, the
multitude of thy works, thy manufactures. Of the articles of
commerce delivered by D'lX, the red purple, embroidery, and
pa (the Aramaean name for byssus, which appears, according
to Movers, to have originally denoted a species of cotton),
favour Aram, particularly Babylonia, rather than Edom. For
the woven fabrics of Babylonia were celebrated from the
earliest times (vid. Movers, II. 3, pp. 260 sqq.) ; and Babylon
was also the oldest and most important market for precious
stones (vid. Movers, p. 266). ^Si is the carbuncle (see the
comra. on Ex. xxviii. 18). "^^I?, probably the ruby ; in any
case, a precious stone of brilliant splendour (vid. Isa. Hv. 12).
nias*"!, corals or pearls (vid. Delitzsch on Job xxviii. 18). — Judah
(ver. 17) delivered to Tyre wheat of Minnith, i.e. according to
Judg. xi. 33, an Ammonitish place, situated, according to the
Onomast, four Roman miles from Heshbon in the direction of
Philadelphia. That Ammonitis abounded in wheat, is evident
from 2 Ohron. xxvii. 5, although the land of Israel also sup-
plied the Tyrians with wheat (1 Kings v. 25). The meaning of
the uTT. Xey. J33 cannot be definitely ascertained. The render-
ing confectionery is founded upon the Aramaean P3S, deliciari,
and the Chaldee translation, s^^ip, i.e. KoXia, according to Hesy-
chius, ra ex /Lte'XtTO? rpayaXia, or sweetmeats made from honey.
Jerome renders it balsamum, after the fivpcov of the LXX. ;
and in Hitzig's opinion, Pannaga (literally, a snake) is a name
used in Sanscrit for a sweet-scented wood, which was employed
in medicine as a cooling and strengthening drug(?). Honey
(from bees) and oil are well-known productions of Palestine.
'IS is balsam ; whether resina or the true balsam grown in
gardens about Jericho (opobalsamum), it is impossible to decide
396 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(see my Bihl. Archaol. I. p. 38, and Movers, II. 3, pp. 220 sqq.).
Damascus supplied Tyre with wine of Chelbon. lis^n still
exists in the village of Helbdn, a place with many rnins, three
hours and a half to the north of Damascus, in the midst of a
valley of the same name, which is planted with vines wherever
it is practicable, from whose grapes the best and most costly
wine of the country is made (yid. Kobinson, Biblical Researches).
Even in ancient times this wine was so celebrated, that, accord-
ing to Posidonius (in Atlien. Deipnos. i. 22), the kings of
Persia drank only Chalybonian wine from Damascus {md.
Strabo, XV. 3. 22). "inv ids, wool of dazzling whiteness ; or,
according to others, wool of Zacliar, for which the Septuagint
has epia e/c MCKrjTOV, Milesian wool.^ — Ver. 19. Various expla-
nations have been given of the first three words. I'll, is not to be
altered into I'l'i, as it has been by Ewald, both arbitrarily and
unsuitably with ver. 20 immediately following ; nor is it to be
rendered "and Dan." It is a decisive objection to this, that
throughout the whole enumeration not a single land or people
is introduced with the copula 1. Vedan, which may be com-
pared with the Vaheb of Num. xxi. 14, a place also mentioned
only once, is the name of a tribe and tract of land not men-
tioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. Movers (p. 302)
conjectures that it is the celebrated city of Aden (^^sc-).
Javan is also the name of an Arabian place or tribe ; and,
according to a notice in the Kamus, it is a place in Yemen.
Tuch {Genesis, p. 210) supposes it to be a Greek (Ionian)
settlement, the founders of which had been led by their enter-
prising spirit to cross the land of Egypt into Southern Arabia.
For the purpose of distinguishing this Arabian Javan from
Greece itself, or in order to define it more precisely, 'WO is
1 According to Movers (II. 3, p. 269), inV is the Sicharia of Aethicus
(Cosm. § 108) : SiCHARiA regio, quae posiea Nabathaea, nuncupaiur, sil-
vestris valde, ubi Ismaeliiae eminus, — an earlier name for the land of the
Nabathaeans, who dwelt in olden time between Palestine and the
Euphrates, and were celebrated for their wealth in flocks of sheep.
CHAP. XXVII. 12-25. 397
appended, which all the older translators have taken to be a
proper name. According to the Masoretic pointing '>W^, the
word is, no doubt, to be regarded as a participle Pual of ^TX, in
the sense of spun, from PTtJ, to spin. But apart from the fact
that it would be a surprising thing to find spun goods men-
tioned in connection with the trade of the Arabian tribes, the
explanation itself could not be sustained from the usage of the
language ; for there is nothing in the dialects to confirm the
idea that b^H is a softened form of blV, inasmuch as they have
all hia (Aram.) and Jji (Arab.), and the Talmudic bin, texere,
occurs first of all in the Gemara, and may possibly have been
derived in the first instance from the Rabbinical rendering of
our i)TlX» by " spun." Even the fact that the word is written
with Shurek is against this explanation rather than in its favour ;
and in all probability its origin is to be traced to the simple
circumstance, that in vers. 12, 14, 16 the articles of commerce
are always mentioned before ^^^iaty ^Jnj, and in this verse they
would appear to be omitted altogether, unless they are covered
by the word ^flND. But we can very properly take the follow-
ing words niB'V ?na as the object of the first hemistich, since
the Masoretic accentuation is founded upon the idea that PDND
is to be taken as the object here. We therefore regard 7^'lXp as
the only admissible pointing, and take PJ^i? as a proper name,
as in Gen. x. 27 : " from Uzal" the ancient name of Sanaa,
the subsequent capital of Yemen. The productions mentioned
bear this out. Forged or wrought iron, by which Tuch (I.e.
p. 260) supposes that sword-blades from Yemen are chiefly
intended, which were celebrated among the Arabs as much as
the Indian. Cassia and calamus (see the comm. on Ex. xxx.
23 and 24), two Indian productions, as Yemen traded with
India from the very earliest times. — Dedan (ver. 20) is the
inland people of that name, living in the neighbourhood of
Edom (cf. ch. xxv. 13; see the comm. on ver. 15). They
furnished t^'a^ nja, tapetes straguli, cloths for spreading out,
most likely costly riding-cloths, like the middim of Judg. v. 10.
398 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
3"]J( and l"it! represent the nomad tribes of Central Arabia, the
Bedouins. For 3"]!! is never used in the Old Testament for the
whole of Arabia ; but, according to its derivation from >^^1V., a
steppe or desert, simply for the tribes living as nomads in the
desert (as in Isa. xiii. 20 ; Jer. iii. 2 ; of. Ewald, Grammat.
Arab. I. p. 5). Kedar, descended from Ishmael, an Arabian
nomad tribe, living in the desert between Arabia Petraea and
Babylonia, the Cedrei of Pliny (see the comm. on Gen. xxv. 13).
They supplied lambs, rams, and he-goats, from the abundance
of their flocks, in return for the goods obtained from Tyre. —
Ver. 22. Next to these the merchants of Sheba and Ragmah
(■^^Vl) are mentioned. They were Arabs of Cushite descent
(Gen. X. 7) in south-eastern Arabia (Oman) ; for 'IDJCij 'Peyfia,
was in the modern province of Oman in the bay of the same
name in the Persian Gulf. Their goods were all kinds of
spices, precious stones, and gold, in which southern Arabia
abounded. tv^^'pS {^''^5^J the chief or best of all perfumes (on
this use of {yxi, see the comm. on Ex. xxx. 23 ; Song of Sol.
iv. 14), is most likely the genuine balsam, which grew in Yemen
{Arabia felix), according to Diod. Sic. iii. 45, along with other
costly spices, and grows there still ; for Forskal found a shrub
between Mecca and Medina, called Abu sham, which he believed
to be the true balsam, and of which he has given a botanical
account in his Flora Aeg. pp. 79, 80 (as Amyris opobalsamiwi),
as well as of two other kinds. Precious stones, viz. onyx-stones,
rubies, agates, and cornelians, are still found in the mountains
of Hadramaut ; and in Yemen also jaspers, crystals, and many
good rubies (vid. Niebuhr, Descript. p. 125, and Seetzen in
Zach's Monatl. Corresp. xix. p. 339). And, lastly, the wealth of
Yemen in gold is too strongly attested by ancient writers to be
called in question (cf. Bochart, Phal. II. 28), although this
precious metal is not found there now. — In vers. 23, 24 the
trade with Mesopotamia is mentioned. t^H, the Carrhae of the
Romans iu north-western Mesopotamia (see the comm. on
Gen. xi. 31), was situated at the crossing of the caravan-roads
CHAP. XXVII. 12-25. 399
which intersect Mesopotamia ; for it was at this point that the
two caravan routes from Babylonia and the Delta of the
Persian Gulf joined the old military and commercial road to
Canaan (Movers, p. 247). The eastern route ran along the
Tigris, where Calneh, the later Ktesiphon, was the most im-
portant commercial city. It is here called nsa (Oanneh), con-
tracted from n2P| (see the comm. on Gen. x. 10; Amos vi. 2).
The western route ran along the Euphrates, past the cities
mentioned in ver. 236. HJ? is not the Syrian, but the Mesopo-
tamian Eden (2 Kings xix. 12 ; Isa. xxxvii. 12), the situation
of which has not yet been determined, though Movers (p. 257)
has sought for it in the Delta of the Euphrates and Tigris.
The singular circumstance that the merchants of Sheba should
be mentioned in connection with localities in Mesopotamia,
which has given rise both to arbitrary alterations of the text
and to various forced explanations, has been explained by
Movers (p. 247 compared with p. 139) from a notice of Juba
in Pliny's Hist. nat. xii. 17 (40), namely, that the Sabaeans,
the inhabitants of the spice country, came with their goods
from the Persian Gulf to Carrhae, where they held their
yearly markets, and from which they were accustomed to
proceed to Gabba (Gabala in Phoenicia) and Palestinian Syria.
Consequently the merchants of Sabaea are mentioned as those
who carried on the trade between Mesopotamia and Tyre, and
are not unsuitably placed in the centre of those localities which
formed the most important seats of trade on the two great
commercial roads of Mesopotamia. Asshur and Chilmad, as
we have already observed, were on the western road which ran
along the Euphrates. 1??3 has already been discovered by
Bochart (Phal. I. 18) in the Charmande of Xenophon (Anab.
i. 5. 10), and Sophaenetus (see Steph. Byz. s.v. Xap/xdvSrf), a
large and wealthy city in a desert region " beyond the river
Euphrates." The Asshur mentioned along with Chilmad, in the
midst of purely commercial cities, cannot be the land of Assyria,
bat must be the emporium Sura (Movers, p. 252), the present
400 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
JEssurieh, which stands upon the bank on this side of the
Euphrates above Thapsacus and on the caravan route, which
runs from Palmyra past Rusapha (^Rezeph, Isa. xxxvii.' 12 ;
2 Kings xix. 12) to Nicephorium or Rakka, then in a northerly
direction to Haran, and bending southwards, runs along the
bank of the river in the direction of Chilmad or Charmande
(Ritter, Erdh XI. pp. 1081 sqq.). The articles of commerce
from these emporia, which were brought to Tyre by Sabaean
caravans, consisted of Q v^3e, literally, articles of perfect beauty,
either state-dresses (cf. ?^3I?, ch. xxiii. 12 and xxxiv. 4), or
more generally, costly works of art (Havernick). The omis-
sion of the copula 1 before ^?i733 is decisive in favour of the
former, as we may infer from this that '\>i2 is intended as
an explanatory apposition to Qy'SO. ncpni npsn "'mi, cloaks
(DiP3 connected with p^Xa/ii;?) of hyacinth -purple and embroi-
dery, for which Babylonia was celebrated (for proofs of this,
see Movers, pp. 258 sqq.). The words which follow cannot be
explained with certainty. All that is evident is, that Qv^na
'INI 'sn is appended to D^Dii3 V333 without a copula, as 'l31 ^I3i^33
is to D7?3I33 in the first hemistich, and therefore, like the latter,
is intended as an explanatory apposition. Qv^n does not mean
either cloths or threads, but lines or cords. D^B'an signifies
literally bound or wound up ; probably twisted, i.e. formed
of several threads wound together or spun ; and ^''nx, firm,
compact, from .jl, to be drawn together. Consequently 'W3
'iJl D^Dna can hardly have any other meaning than treasures of
spun yarns, i.e. the most valuable yarns formed of different
threads. For " treasures " is the only meaning which can be
assigned to D'rjs with any certainty on philological grounds, and
D'Diia, from Dia, ^y, contorsit, is either yarn spun from
several or various threads, or cloth woven from such threads.
But the latter would not harmonize with D?3n. Movers (11. 3
pp. 263 sqq.) adopts a similar conclusion, and adduces evi-
dence that silk yarn, bombyx, and cotton came to Tyre
tJHAP. XXVII. 26-36. 401
through the Mesopotamian trade, and were there dyed in the
splendid Tyrian purples, and woven into cloths, or brought for
sale with the dyeing complete. All the other explanations
which have been given of these difficult words are arbitrary
and untenable ; not only the Rabbinical rendering of D''0il3 ''H3,
viz. chests of damask, but that of Ewald, " pockets of damask,"
and that proposed by Hartmann, Havernick, and others, viz.
girdles of various colours, ^wvai a-KicoraL In ver. 25 the de-
scription is rounded off with a notice of the lever of this world-
wide trade. niiE' cannot mean " walls " in this instance, as in
Jer. V. 10, and like nilltJ' in Job xxiv. 11, because the ships,
through which Tyre became so rich, could not be called walls.
The word signifies " caravans," after iw'=jLj (Isa. Ivii. 9),
corresponding to the Aramaean ^"^If. '^?}V.''? might be regarded
as an accusative of more precise definition : caravans, with re-
gard to (for) thy bartering trade. At the same time it is more
rhetorical to take ^?";y.*? as a second predicate : they were thy
trade, i.e. the carriers of thy trade. What the caravans were
for the emporia of trade on the mainland, the ships of Tarshish
were for Tyre, and these on the largest sea-going ships are
mentioned instar omnium. By means of these vessels Tyre
was filled with goods, and rendered weighty (IS^^), i.e. rich
and glorious. — But a tempest from the east would destroy
Tyre with all its glory.
Vers. 26-36. Destruction of Tyre. — Ver. 26. Thy rowers
brought thee into great waters : the east wind broke thee up in the
heart of the seas. Ver. 27. Thy riches and thy sales, thy bar-
tering wares, thy seamen and thy sailors, tJie repairers of thy leaks
and the traders in thy wares, and all thy fighting men in thee,
together with all the multitude of people in thee, fell into the heart
of the seas in the day of thy fall. Ver. 28. At the noise of the
cry of thy sailors the places tremble. Ver. 29. And out of their
ships come all the oarsmen, seamen, all the sailors of the sea ;
they come upon the land, Ver. 30. And make their voice heard
over thee, and cry bitterly, and put dust upon their heads, and
EZEK. I. 2 C
402 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cover themselves with ashes ; Ver. 31. And shave themselves haH
on thy account, and gird on sackcloth, and weep for thee in anguish
of soul a bitter wailing, Ver. 32. They raise over thee in their
grief a lamentation, and lament over thee: Who is like Tyre!
like the destroyed one in the midst of the sea ! Ver. 33. When
thy sales came forth out of the seas, thou didst satisfy many
nations; with the abundance of thy goods and thy wares thou
didst enrich kings of the earth. Ver. 34. Now that thou art
wrecked away from the seas in the depths of the water, thy
wares and all thy company are fallen in thee. Ver, 35. All
the inhabitants of the islands are amazed at thee, and their
kings shudder greatly ; their faces quiver. Ver. 36. The traders
among the nations hiss over thee ; thou hast become a terror,
and art gone for ever. — The allusion to the ships of Tarshish,
to which Tyre was indebted for its glory, serves as an
introduction to a renewal in ver. 26 of the allegory of
vers. 5— 9a ; Tyre is a ship, which is wrecked by the east wind
(of. Ps. xlviii. 8). In Palestine (Arabia and Syria) the east
wind is characterized by continued gusts ; and if it rises into a
tempest, it generally causes great damage on account of the
violence of the gusts (see Wetzstein in Delitzsch's commentary
on Job xxvii. 1). Like a ship broken in pieces by the storm.
Tyre with all its glory sinks into the depths of the sea. The
repetition of D^s^ 3?3 in vers. 26 and 27 forms an effective
contrast to ver. 25 ; just as the enumeration of all the posses-
sions of Tyre, which fall with the ship into the heart of the sea,
does to the wealth and glory in ver. 256. They who manned
the ship also perish with the cargo, — " the seamen," i.e. sailors,
rowers, repairers of leaks (calkers), also the merchants on
board, and the fighting men who defended the ship and its
goods against pirates, — the whole qdhdl, or gathering of people,
in the ship. The difficult expression TjPnp-Ma can only be taken
as an explanatory apposition to tja IB'N .- all the men w^ho are in
thee, namely, in the multitude of people in thee. Ver. 28.
When the vessel is wrecked, the managers of the ship raise
CHAP. XXVII. 26-'3e. 403
such a cry that the migreshoth tremble. tJnJD is used in Num.
XXXV. 2 for the precincts around the Levitical cities, which
were set apart as pasture ground for the flocks ; and in Ezek.
xlv. 2, xlviii. 17, for the ground surrounding the holy city.
Consequently nw'ijp cannot mean the suburbs of Tyre in the
passage before us, but must signify the open places on the
mainland belonging to Tyre, i.e. the whole of its territory, with
the fields and villages contained therein. The rendering " fleet,"
which Ewald follows the Vulgate in adopting, has nothing to
support it. — Vers. 29 sqq. The ruin of this wealthy and power-
ful metropolis of the commerce of the world produces the
greatest consternation among all who sail upon the sea, so that
they forsake their ships, as if they were no longer safe in them,
and leaving them for the land, bewail the fall of Tyre with
deepest lamentation. rpK'n with ?ip3, as in Ps. xxvi. 7 ; 1 Chron.
XV. 19, etc. For the purpose of depicting the lamentation as
great and bitter in the extreme, Ezekiel groups together all the
things that were generally done under such cii'cumstances, viz.
covering the head with dust (cf. Josh. vii. 6; 1 Sam. iv. 12 ;
and Job ii. 12) and ashes (ti'??nn, to strew, or cover oneself,
not to roll oneself : see the comm. on Mic. i. 10) ; shaving a
bald place (see ch. vii. 18 and the comm. on Mic. i. 16) ;
putting on sackcloth ; loud, bitter weeping (E'SJ nra^ as in Job
vii. 11 and x. 1) ; and singing a mournful dirge (vers. 32 sqq.).
Dn''33, in lamento eorum; ''i contracted from ^n? (Jer. ix. 17, 18;
■ cf . ''•}, ch. ii. 10). The reading adopted by the LXX., Theodot.,
Syr., and eleven Codd. (D'!'''-'!) is unsuitable, as there is no
allusion to sons, but the seamen themselves raise the lamenta-
tion. The correction proposed by Hitzig, Dn''33, is altogether
inappropriate. The exclamation. Who is like Tyre ! is more
precisely defined by '^?7?> '''^® t^® destroyed one in the midst
of the sea. ns"l, participle Pual, with the D dropt, as in 2 Kings
ii. 10, etc. (vid. Ges. § 52. 2, Anm. 6). It is quite superfluous
to assume that there was a noun ns'i signifying destruction.
'yiV nsva has been aptly explained by Hitzig : " inasmuch as
404 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
thy wares sprang out of the sea, like the plants and field-fruits
out of the soil " (the selection of the word rivabn also suggested
this simile) ; " not as being manufactured at Tyre, and there-
fore in the sea, but because the sea floated the goods to land
for the people in the ships, and they satisfied the desire of the
purchasers." Tyre satisfied peoples and enriched kings with
its wares, not only by purchasing from them and paying for
their productions with money or barter, but also by the fact
that the Tyrians gave a still higher value to the raw material
by the labour which they bestowed upon them. 'n!?iii jn the
plural is only met with here. — Ver. 34. But now Tyre with its
treasures and its inhabitants has sunk in the depths of the sea.
The antithesis in which ver. 34 really stands to ver. 33 does
not warrant our altering niayo ny into )ji"!?B'? W, as Ewald and
Hitzig propose, or adopting a different division of the second
hemistich. W is an adverbial accusative, as in ch. xvi. 57 :
" at the time of the broken one away from the seas into the
depth of the waters, thy wares and thy people have fallen, i.e.
perished." ^'}^P^ njj, tempore quo fracta es. D'i??l? ^n^p: is
intentionally selected as an antithesis to D''I3;d natvii in ch.
xxvi. 17. — Ver. 35. All the inhabitants of the islands and their
kings, i.e. the inhabitants of the (coast of the) Mediterranean
and its islands, will be thrown into consternation at the fall of
Tyre ; and (ver. 36) the merchants among the nations, i.e. the
foreign nations, the rivals of Tyre in trade, will hiss thereat ;
in other words, give utterance to malicious joy. DDK', to be
laid waste, or thrown into perturbation with terror and amaze-
ment. D'SS Djri, to tremble or quiver in the face, i.e. to tremble
so much that the terror shows itself in the countenance. — In
ver. 36& Ezekiel brings the lamentation to a close in a similar
manner to the threat contained in ch. xxvi. (yid. ch. xxvi. 21).
CHAP, sxv: I. 1-10. 405
CHAP. XXVIII. 1-19. AGA"i»irST THE PETNCE OF TYRE.
As the city of Tyre was first of all threatened with destruction
(ch. xxvi.), and then her fall was confirmed hy a lamentation
(eh. xxvii.), so here the prince of Tyre is first of all forewarned
of his approaching death (vers. 1-10), and then a lamentation
is composed thereon (vers. 11-19).
Vers. 1-10. Fall of the Prince of Tyke. — Ver. 1. And
the word of Jehovah came to me, sai/ing,Yev. 2. Son of man, say
to the prince of Tyre, Tims saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thy
heart has lifted itself up, and thou say est, " I am a God, I sit upon
a seat of Gods, in the heart of the seas" when thou art a man
and not God, and cherishest a mind like a God^s mind, Ver. 3.
Sehold, thou art wiser than Daniel; nothing secret is obscure to
thee; Ver. 4. Through thy wisdom and thy understanding hast
thou acquired might, and put gold and silver in thy treasuries ;
Ver. 5. Through the greatness of thy wisdom hast thou increased
thy might by thy trade, and thy heart has lifted itself up on account
of thy might, Ver. 6. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Because thou cherishest a mind like a God's mind, Ver. 7. There-
fore, behold, I will bring foreigners upon thee, violent men of the
nations; they will draw their swords against the beauty of thy
wisdom, and pollute thy splendour. Ver. 8. TJiey will cast thee
down into the pit, that thou mayest die the death of the slain in the
heart of the seas. Ver. 9. Wilt thou indeed say, I am a God, in
the face of him that slayeth thee, when thou art a man and not God
in the hand of him that killeth thee f Ver. 10. Thou wilt die the
death of the uncircumcised at the hand of foreigners ; for I have
spoken it, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — This threat of judg-
ment follows in general the same course as those addressed to
other nations (compare especially ch. xxv.), namely, that the sin is
mentioned first (vers. 2-5), and then the punishment consequent
upon the sin (vers. 6-10). In ver. 12 ^?0 is used instead of
TJJ, dux. In the use of the term T'JJ to designate the king,
406 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Kliefoth detects an indication of the peculiar position occupied
by the prince in the commercial state of Tyre, which had been
reared upon municipal foundations; inasmuch as he was not
so much a monarch, comparable to the rulers of Babylon or to
the Pharaohs, as the head of the great mercantile aristocracy.
This is in harmony with the use of the word l^JJ f°r ^^e prince
of Israel, David for example, whom God chose and anointed
to be the tidgld over His people ; in other words, to be the leader
of the tribes, who also formed an independent commonwealth
(vid. 1 Sam. xiii. 14; 2 Sam. vii. 8, etc.). The pride of the
prince of Tyre is described in ver. 2 as consisting in the fact
that he regarded himself as a God, and his seat in the island of
Tyre as a God's seat. He calls his seat D^n?s^ aa'iD, not " be-
cause his capital stood out from the sea, like the palace of God
from the ocean of heaven" (Ps. civ. 3), as Hitzig supposes;
for, apart from any other ground, this does not suit the subse-
quent description of his seat as God's mountain (ver. 16), and
God's holy mountain (ver. 14). The God's seat and God's
mountain are not the palace of the king of Tyre, but Tyre as
a state, and that not because of its firm position upon a rocky
island, but as a holy island {ayia vfjaoi;, as Tyre is called in
Sanchun. ed. Orelli, p. 36), the founding of which has been
glorified by mj'^ths (yid. Movers, Phoenizier, I. pp. 637 sqq.).
The words which Ezekiel puts into the mouth of the king of
Tyre may be explained, as Kliefoth has well expressed it,
" from the notion lying at the foundation of all natural reli-
gions, according to which every state, as the production of its
physical factors and bases personified as the native deities of
house and state, is regarded as a work and sanctuary of the
gods." In Tyre especially the national and political develop-
ment went hand in hand with the spread and propagation of its
religion. " The Tyrian state was the production and seat of
its gods. He, the prince of Tyre, presided over this divine
creation and divine seat ; therefore he, the prince, was himself
a god, a manifestation of the deity, having its work and home
CHAP. XXVIII. 1-19. 407
in the state of Tyre." All heathen rulers looked upon them-
selves in this light ; so that the king of Babylon is addressed in
a similar manner in Isa. xiv. 13, 14. This self-deification is
shown to be a delusion in ver. 26; He who is only a man makes
his heart like a God's heart, i.e. cherishes the same thought as
the Gods. 37, the heart, as the seat of the thoughts and imagi-
nations, is named instead of the disposition. This is carried out
still further in vers. 3-5 by a description of the various sources
from which this imagination sprang. He cherishes a God's
mind, because he attributes to himself superhuman wisdom,
through which he has created the greatness, and might, and
wealth of Tyre. The words, " behold, thou art wiser," etc.
(ver. 3), are not to be taken as a question, " art thou indeed
wiser?" as they have been by the LXX., Syriac, and others;
nor are they ironical, as Havernick supposes ; but they are to be
taken literally, namely, inasmuch as the prince of Tyre was
serious in attributing to himself supernatural and divine wisdom.
Thou art, i.e. thou regardest thyself as being, wiser than Daniel.
No hidden thing is obscure to thee (Q?5^, a later word akin to
the Aramaean, " to be obscure "). The comparison with Daniel
refers to the fact that Daniel surpassed all the magi and wise
men of Babylon in wisdom through his ability to interpret
dreams, since God gave him an insight into the nature and
development of the power of the world, such as no human
sagacity could have secured. The wisdom of the prince of
Tyre, on the other hand, consisted in the cleverness of the
children of this world, which knows how to get possession of all
the good things of the earth. Through such wisdom as this
had the Tyrian prince acquired power and riches. i>\t], might,
possessions in the broader sense ; not merely riches, but the whole
of the might of the commercial state of Tyre, which was founded
upon riches and treasures got by trade. In ver. 5 11???"^? is
in apposition to lO*??? ^"''■?) ^nd is introduced as explanatory.
The fulness of its wisdom showed itself in its commerce and the
manner in which it conducted it, whereby Tyre had become
408 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
rich and powerful. It is not till we reach ver. 6 that we meet
with the apodosis answering to '131 H2j jy^ in ver. 2, which has
been pushed so far back by the intervening parenthetical sen-
tences iu vers. 2b-5. For this reason the sin of the prince of
Tyre in deifying himself is briefly reiterated in the clause iJ?!
'iJl 'HPin (ver. 6&, compare ver. 2b), after which the announce-
ment of the punishment is introduced with a repetition of pP in
ver. 7. Wild foes approaching with barbarous violence will
destroy all the king's resplendent glory, slay the king himself
with the sword, and hurl him down into the pit as a godless
man. The enemies are called D^is ^s^"!!?, violent ones of the
peoples, — that is to say, the wild hordes composing the Chaldean
army (cf. ch. xxx. 11, xxxi. 12). They drew the sword " against
the beauty (^S], the construct state of ^B^^.) of thy wisdom," i.e.
the beauty produced by thy wisdom, the beautiful Tyre itself,
with all that it contains (ch. xxvi. 3, 4). '^VP\, splendour; it is
only here and in ver. 17 that we meet with it as a noun. The
king himself they hurl down into the pit, i.e. the grave, or the
nether world, -"^n ''niDD, the death of a pierced one, substan-
tially the same as C^^JJ 'niD. The plural *ni»D and "rno here
and Jer. xvi. 4 (mortes) is a pluralis exaggerativus, a death so
painful as to be equivalent to dying many times (see the comm.
on Isa. liii. 9). In ver. 9 Ezekiel uses the Piel -'?no in the
place of the Poel -"^ino, as -'Pn in the Piel occurs elsewhere only
in the sense of profanare, and in Isa. li. 9 the Poel is used for
piercing. But there is no necessity to alter the pointing in
consequence, as we also find the Pual used by Ezekiel in ch.
xxxii. 26 in the place of the Pool of Isa. liii. 5. The death
of the uncircumcised is such a death as godless men die — a
violent death. The king of Tyre, who looks upon himself as a
god, shall perish by the sword like a godless man. At the same
time, the whole of this threat applies, not to the one king,
Ithohal, who was reigning at the time of the siege of Tyre by
the Chaldeans, but to the king as the founder and creator of
the might of Tyre (vers. 3-5), i.e. to the supporter of that
CHAP. XSVIII. 11-19. 409
royalty which was to perish along with Tyre itself. — It is to the
king, as the representative of the might and glory of Tyre, and
not merely to the existing possessor of the regal dignity, that
the following lamentation over his fall refers.
Vers. 11-19. Lamentation ovee the King of Tyre. —
Ver. 11. And the word of Jehovah, came to me, saying, Ver. 12.
Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to
him, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Tliou seal of a well-measured
building, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Ver. 13. In
Eden, the garden of God, wast thou ; all kinds of precious stones
were thy covering, coimelian, topaz, and diamond, chrysolite,
beryl, and jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald, and gold : the
service of thy timbrels and of thy women was with thee ; on the
day that thou wast created, they were prepared. Ver. 14. Thou
wast a cherub of anointing, which covered, and I made thee for
it ; thou wast on a holy mountain of God ; thou didst walk in the
midst of fiery stones. Ver. 15. Thou wast innocent in thy ways
from the day on which thou wast created, until iniquity loas found
in thee. Ver. 16. On account of the multitude of thy commerce,
thine inside was filled with wrong, and thou didst sin : I will
therefore profane thee away from the mountain of God ; and
destroy thee, covering cherub, away from the fiery stones !
Ver. 17. Thy lieart has lifted itself up because of thy beauty,
thou hast corrupted thy wisdom together with thy splendour: I
cast thee to the ground, I give thee up for a spectacle before kings.
Ver. 18. Through the multitude of thy sins in thine unrighteous
trade thou hast prof aned thy holy places ; I therefore cause fire
to proceed from the midst of thee, which shall devour thee, and make
thee into ashes upon the earth before the eyes of all who see thee.
Ver. 19. All who know thee among the peoples are amazed at
thee : thou hast become a terror, and art gone for ever. —
The lamentation over the fall of the king of Tyre commences
with a picture of the super-terrestrial glory of his position, so
as to correspond to his self-deification as depicted in the fore-
410 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
going word of God. In ver. 12 he is addressed as n'Hn nnh.
This does not mean, " artistically wrought signet-ring ;" for nnh
does not stand for OnHj but is a participle of Onrij to seal.
There is all the more reason for adhering firmly to this mean-
ing, that the following predicate, n»3n t<b», is altogether inap-
plicable to a signet-ring, though Hitzig once more scents a
corruption of the text in consequence. ^''}~^, from i^ri, to
weigh, or measure off, does not mean perfection (Ewald),
beauty (Ges.), fagon (Hitzig), or symmetry (Havernick) ; but
just as in ch. xliii. 10, the only other passage in which it
occurs, it denotes the measured and well-arranged building of
the temple, so here it signifies a well-measured and artistically
arranged building, namely, the Tyrian state in its artistic
combination of well-measured institutions (Kliefoth). This
building is sealed by the prince, inasmuch as he imparts to the
state firmness, stability, and long duration, when he possesses
the qualities requisite for a ruler. These are mentioned after-
wards, namely, " full of wisdom, perfect in beauty." If the
prince answers to his position, the wisdom and beauty manifest
in the institutions of the state are simply the impress received
from the wisdom and beauty of his own mind. The prince of
Tyre possessed such a mind, and therefore regarded himself as
a God (ver. 2). His place of abode, which is described in
vers. 13 and 14, corresponded to his position. Ezekiel here
compares the situation of the prince of Tyre with that of the
first man in Paradise; and then, in vers. 15 and 16, draws a
comparison between his fall and the fall of Adam. As the
first man was placed in the garden of God, in Eden, so also
was the prince of Tyre placed in the midst of paradisaical
glory, nv is shown, by the apposition CnpS iJ, to be used as
the proper name of Paradise ; and this view is not to be upset
by the captious objection of Plitzig, that Eden was not the
garden of God, but that this was situated in Eden (Gen. ii. 8).
The fact that Ezekiel calls Paradise Hri? in ch. xxxvi. 35,
proves nothing more than that the terms Eden and Garden of
CHAP. XSVIII. 11-19. 411
God do not cover precisely the same ground, inasmuch as the
garden of God only occupied one portion of Eden. But not-
withstanding this difference, Ezekiel could use the two expres-
sions as synonymous, just as well as Isaiah (Isa. li. 3). And
even if any one should persist in pressing the difference, it
would not follow that HW was corrupt in this passage, as
Hitzig fancies, but simply that wrhvi p defined the idea of
r^S. more precisely — in other words, restricted it to the garden
of Paradise. There is, however, another point to be observed
in connection with this expression, namely, that the epithet
D^^^^< |J is used here and in ch. xxxi. 8, 9 ; whereas, in other
places. Paradise is called nini p (yid. Isa. li. 3; Gen, xiii. 10).
Ezekiel has chosen Elohim instead of Jehovah, because Para-
dise is brought into comparison, not on account of the historical
significance which it bears to the human race in relation to the
plan of salvation, but simply as the most glorious land in all
the earthly creation. The prince of Tyre, placed in the plea-
sant land, was also adorned with the greatest earthly glory.
Costly jewels were his coverings, that is to say, they formed the
ornaments of his attire. This feature in the pictorial descrip-
tion is taken from the splendour with which Oriental rulers are
accustomed to appear, namely, in robes covered with precious
stones, pearls, and gold. '"'IP'?, as a noun avr. Xe7., signifies a
covering. In the enumeration of the precious stones, there is
no reference to the breastplate of the high priest. For, in the
first place, the order of the stones is a different one here ;
secondly, there are only nine stones named instead of twelve ;
and lastly, there would be no intelligible sense in such a refer-
ence, so far as we can perceive. Both precious stones and
gold are included in the glories of Eden {vid. Gen. ii. 11, 12).
For the names of the several stones, see the commentary on
Ex. xxviii. 17-20. The words 'Wl 'l^an nas^D— which even the
early translators have entirely misunderstood, and which the
commentators down to Hitzig and Ewald have made marvellous
attempts to explain — present no peculiar difiiculty, apart from
412 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the plural 'i''3p3, which is only met with here. As the meaning
timbrels, tambourins {aduffa), is well established for D'Si;!, and
in 1 Sam. x. 5 and Isa. v. 12 flutes are mentioned along with
the timbrels, it has been supposed by some that C^iJ? must
signify flutes here. But there is nothing to support such a
rendering either in the Hebrew or in the other Semitic dialects.
On the other hand, the meaning pala gemmarum (Vulgate), or
ring-casket, has been quite arbitrarily forced upon the word by
Jerome, Kosenmiiller, Gesenius, and many others. We agree
with Hiivernick in regarding C^i^J as a plural of nnipj (foeminae),
formed, like a masculine, after the analogy of D'B'J, CK'Jpa, etc.,
and account for the choice of this expression from the allusion
to the history of the creation (Gen. i. 27). The service
(nasppj performance, as in Gen. xxxix. 11, etc.) of the women
is the leading of the circular dances by the odalisks who beat
the timbrels : " the harem-pomp of Oriental kings." This was
made ready for the king on the day of his creation, i.e. not his
birthday, but the day on which he became king, or commenced
his reign, when the harem of his predecessor came into his
possession with all its accompaniments. Ezekiel calls this the
day of his creation, with special reference to the fact that it
was God who appointed him king, and with an allusion to the
parallel, underlying the whole description, between the position
of the prince of Tyre and that of Adam in Paradise.* The
next verse (ver. 14) is a more difficult one. RN is an abbrevia-
tion of rit<, nriK, as in Num. si. 15 ; Deut. v. 24 (see Ewald,
§ 184a). The air. Xey. HE'DD has been explained in very
different ways, but mostly according to the Vulgate rendering,
1 In explanation of the fact alluded to, Havernick has very appropriately
called attention to a passage of Athen. (xii. 8, p. 531), in which the following
statement occurs with reference to Strato, the Sidonian king : " Strato,
with flute-girls, and female harpers and players on the cithara, made pre-
parations for the festivities, and sent for a large number of hetaerae from
the Peloponnesus, and many singing-girls from Ionia, and young hetaerae
from the whole of Greece, both singers and dancers." See also other
passages in Brissonius, de regio Pers. princ. pp. 142-3.
CHAF. XXVIII. lt-19. 413
tu Cherub extentus et protegens, as signifying spreading out or
escension, in the sense of "with outspread wings" (Gesenius
and many others). But HB'D does not mean either to spread
out or to extend. The general meaning of the word is simply
to anoint ; and judging from nPiB'p and nriE'D, portio, Lev.
vii. 35 and Num. xviii. 8, also to measure off, from which the
idea of extension cannot possibly be derived. Consequently
the meaning " anointing " is the only one that can be estab-
lished with certainty in the case of the word nc'DD. So far as
the form is concerned, riE'ap might be in the construct state ;
but the connection with iJ^iBi], anointing, or anointed one, of
the covering one, does not yield any admissible sense. A com-
parison with ver. 16, where ^siBH 2?"i| occurs again, will show
that the na'Dp^ which stands between these two words in the
verse before us, must contain a more precise definition of ^silSj
and therefore is to be connected with 31"i3 in the construct
state : cherub of anointing, i.e. anointed cherub. This is the
rendering adopted by Kliefoth, the only commentator who has
given the true explanation of the verse. nBipp is the older
form, which has only been retained in a few words, such as
Dp"ip in Isa. X. 6, together with the tone-lengthened a (vid.
Ewald, § 160a). The prince of Tyre is called an anointed
cherub, as Ephraem Syrus has observed, because he was a
king even though he had not been anointed. Jl^iBH is not an
abstract noun, either here or in Nah. ii. 6, but a participle ; and
this predicate points back to Ex. xxv. 20, " the cherubim
covered (D''33iD) the capporeth with their wings," and is to be
explained accordingly. Consequently the king of Tyre is
called a cherub, because, as an anointed king, he covered or
overshadowed a sanctuary, like the cherubim upon the ark of
the covenant. What this sanctuary was is evident from the
remarks already made at ver. 2 concerning the divine seat of
the king. If the " seat of God," upon which the king of Tyre
sat, is to be understood as signifying the state of Tyre, then
the sanctuary which he covered or overshadowed as a cherub
414 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
will also be the Tynan state, with its holy places and sacred
things. In the next clause, T'nno^ is to be taken by itself
according to the accents, " and I have made thee (so)," and
not to be connected with Bnp nna. We are precluded from
adopting the combination which some propose — viz. " I set thee
upon a holy mountain ; thou wast a God " — by the incongruity
of first of all describing the prince of Tyre as a cherub, and
then immediately afterwards as a God, inasmuch as, according
to the Biblical view, the cherub, as an angelic being, is simply
a creature and not a God; and the fanciful delusion of the
prince of Tyre, that he was an El (ver. 2), could not furnish
the least ground for his being addressed as Eloliim by Ezekiel.
And still more are we precluded from taking the words in this
manner by the declaration contained in ver. 16, that Jehovah
will cast him out " from the mountain of Elohim," from which
we may see that in the present verse also Eloliim belongs to
liar, and that in ver. 16, where the mountain of God is men-
tioned again, the predicate tjnp is simply omitted for the sake
of brevity, jnst as ne'aD is afterwards omitted on the repetition
of ^siBH nina. The missing but actual object to IWJ can
easily be supplied from the preceding clause, — namely, this, i.e.
an overshadowing cherub, had God made him, by placing him
as king in paradisaical glory. The words, " thou wast upon a
holy mountain of God," are not to be interpreted in the sense
suggested by Isa. xiv. 13, namely, that Ezekiel was thinking of
the mountain of the gods (Alborj) met with in Asiatic mytho-
logy, because it was there that the cherub had its home, as
Hitzig and others suppose ; for the Biblical idea of the cherub
is entirely different from the heathen notion of the griffin
keeping guard over gold. It is true that God placed the
cherub as guardian of Paradise, but Paradise was not a moun-
tain of God, nor even a mountainous land. The idea of a holy
mountain of God, as being the seat of the king of Tyre, was
founded partly upon the natural situation of Tyre itself, built
as it was upon one or two rocky isknds of the Mediterranean,
CHAP. XXVIII. 11-19. 415
and partly upon the heathen notion of the sacredness of this
island as the seat of the Deity, to which the Tyrians attributed
the grandeur of their state. To this we may probably add a
reference to Mount Zion, upon which was the sanctuary, where
the cherub covered the seat of the presence of God. For
although the comparison of the prince of Tyre to a cherub
was primarily suggested by the description of his abode as
Paradise, the epithet ^aiBH shows that the place of the cherub
in the sanctuary was also present to the prophet's mind. At the
same time, we must not understand by B'Yp "in Mount Zion
itself. The last clause, " thou didst walk in the midst of
(among) fiery stones," is very diflBcult to explain. It is ad-
mitted by nearly all the more recent commentators, that " stones
of fire " cannot be taken as equivalent to " every precious
stone " (ver. 13), both because the precious stones could hardly
be called stones of fire on account of their brilliant splendour,
and also being covered with precious stones is not walking in
the midst of them. Nor can we explain the words, as Haver-
nick has done, from the account given by Herodotus (II. 44)
of the two emerald pillars in the temple of Hercules at Tyre,
which shone resplendently by night ; for pillars shining by
night are not stones of fire, and the king of Tyre did not walk
in the temple between these pillars. The explanation given by
Hofmann and Kliefoth appears to be the correct one, namely,
that the stones of fire are to be regarded as a wall of fire
(Zech. ii. 9), which rendered the cherubic king of Tyre unap-
proachable upon his holy mountain.
In ver. 15, the comparison of the prince of Tyre to Adam
in Paradise is brought out still more prominently. As Adam
was created sinless, so was the prince of Tyre innocent in his
conduct in the day of his creation, but only until perverseness
was found in him. As Adam forfeited and lost the happiness
conferred upon him through his fall, so did the king of Tyre
forfeit his glorious position through unrighteousness and sin, and
cause God to cast him from his eminence down to the ground.
416 TnE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
He fell into perverseness in consequence of the abundance of
his trade (ver. 16a). Because his trade lifted him up to wealth
and power, his heart was filled with iniquity, va for 'ii<pO, like
i^a for Ki^o in ch. xli. 8, and IB'J for l«t5'J in ch. xxxix. 26.
^ain is not the subject, but the object to w; and the plural
vD, with an indefinite subject, " they filled," is chosen in the
place of the passive construction, because in the Hebrew, as in
the Aramaean, active combinations are preferred to passive
whenever it is possible to adopt them {vid. Ewald, § 2946 and
1286). ^'?I^ is used by Ezekiel in the transitive sense "to fill"
(ch. viii. 17 and xxx. 11). 'n).!|i, the midst, is used for the
interior in a physical sense, and not in a spiritual one ; and the
expression is chosen with an evident allusion to the history of
the fall. As Adam sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of the
tree, so did the king of Tyre sin by filling himself with wicked-
ness in connection with trade (Havernick and Kliefoth). God
would therefore put him away from the mountain of God, and
destroy him. ??n with p is a pregnant expression ; to desecrate
away from, i.e. to divest of his glory and thrust away from.
113K1 is a contracted form for ^"13NSJ (yid. Ewald, § 232/i and
§ 72c). — Vers. 17 and 18 contain a comprehensive description
of the guilt of the prince of Tyre, and the approaching judg-
ment is still further depicted. ITOS] ^V cannot mean, "on
account of thy splendour," for this yields no appropriate
thought, inasmuch as it was not the splendour itself which
occasioned his overthrow, but the pride which corrupted the
wisdom requisite to exalt the might of Tyre, — in other words,
tempted the prince to commit iniquity in order to preserve and
increase his glory. We therefore follow the LXX., Syr., Eos.,
and others, in taking '?]} in the sense of una cum, together with.
niNl is an infinitive form, like nans for nis"), though Ewald
(§ 238e) regards it as so extraordinary that he proposes to alter
the text. HNT with 3 is used for looking upon a person with
malicious pleasure, in^a*) %a shows in what the guilt (fiV)
consisted (^W is the construct state of ^W), The sanctuaries
CHAP. XSVIII. 11-19. 417
(miqddshim) which the king of Tyre desecrated by the unright-
eousness of his commerce, are not the city or the state of Tyre,
but the tenaples which made Tyre a holy island. These the
king desecrated by bringing about their destruction through his
own sin. Several of the codices and editions read '^B'^pD in
the singular, and this is the reading adopted by the Chaldee,
Syriac, and Vulgate versions. If this were the true reading,
the sanctuary referred to would be the holy mountain of God
(vers. 14 and 16). But the reading itself apparently owes
its origin simply to this interpretation of the words. In the
clause, " I cause fire to issue from the midst of thee," 13iRi? is
to be understood in the same sense as ipin in ver. 16. The
iniquity which the king has taken into himself becomes a fire
issuing from him, by which he is consumed and burned to
ashes. All who know him among the peoples will be astonished
at his terrible fall (ver. 19, compare ch. xxvii. 36).
If we proceed, in conclusion, to inquire into the fulfilment
of these prophecies concerning Tyre and its king, we find the
opinions of modern commentators divided. Some, for example
Hengstenberg, Havernick, Drechsler (on Isa. xxiii.), and others,
assuming that, after a thirteen years' siege, Nebuchadnezzar
conquered the strong Island Tyre, and destroyed it; while
others — viz. Gesenius, Winer, Hitzig, etc. — deny the conquest
by Nebuchadnezzar, or at any rate call it in question ; and
many of the earlier commentators suppose the prophecy to refer
to Old Tyre, which stood upon the mainland. For the history
of this dispute, see Hengstenberg, De rebus Tyriorum comment.
(Berol. 1832); Havernick, OnEzekiel, pp.420 sqq.; and Movers,
Phoenizier, II. 1, pp. 427 sqq. — The denial of the conquest of
Insular Tyre by the king of Babylon rests partly on the silence
which ancient historians, who mention the siege itself, have
maintained as to its result ; and partly on the statement con-
tained in Ezek. xxix. 17-20. — All that Josephus (Antt. x. 11. 1)
is able to quote from the ancient historians on this point is tlie
following : — In the first place, he states, on the authority of the
EZEK. I. 2d
418 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
third book of tlie Chaldean history of Berosus, that when
the father of Nebuchadnezzar, on account of his own age and
consequent infirmity, had transferred to bis son tlie conduct of
the war against the rebellious satrap in Egypt, Coelesyria, and
Phoenicia, Nebuchadnezzar defeated him, and brought the
whole country once more under his sway. But as the tidings
reached him of the death of his father just at the same time,
after arranging affairs in Egypt, and giving orders to some of
his friends to lead into Babylon the captives taken from among
the Judaeans, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians,
together with the heavy armed portion of the army, he him-
self hastened through the desert to Babylon, with a small
number of attendants, to assume the government of the empire.
Secondly, he states, on the authority of the Indian and Phoe-
nician histories of Philostratus, that when Ithobal was on the
throne, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre for thirteen years. The
accounts taken from Berosus are repeated by Josephus in his
c. Apion (i. § 19), where he also adds (§ 20), in confirmation of
their credibility, that there were writings found in the archives
of the Phoenicians which tallied with the statement made by
Berosus concerning the king of Chaklea (Nebuchadnezzar),
viz. "that he conquered all Syria and Phoenicia;" and that
Philostratus also agrees with this, since lie mentions the siege
of Tyre in his histories (/xe/ii'r/ju.ei'o? Ti]9 Tvpov iroXiopKia^").
In addition to this, for synchronistic purposes, Josephus
(c. Ap. i. 21) also communicates a fragment from the Phoe-
nician history, containing not only the account of the thirteen
years' siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Ithobal,
but also a list of the kings of Tyre who followed Ithobal,
down to the time of Cyrus of Persia.^ The siege of Tyre is
' The passage reads as follows : " In the reign of Ithobal the king,
Nebuchadnezz.ir besieged Tyre for thirteen years. After him judges were
appointed. Ecnibalus, the son of Baslachus, judged for two months;
Chelbes, the son of Abdaeus, for ten months ; Abbiirus, the high priest,
for three mouths; Myttoniis and Gerastartus, the sons of Abdelemus, for
CHAP. xxvm. 11-19. 419
therefore mentioned three times by Josephus, ou the authority
of Plioenician histories ; but he never says anything of the
conquest and destruction of that city by Nebuchadnezzar.
From this circumstance the conclusion has been drawn, that
this was all he found there. For if, it is said, the siege had
terminated with the conquest of the city, this glorious result of
the thirteen years' exertions could hardly have been passed
over in silence, inasmuch as in Antt. x. 11. 1 the testimony of
foreign historians is quoted to the effect that Nebuchadnezzar
was " an active man, and more fortunate than the kings that
were before him." But the argument is more plausible than
conclusive. If we bear in mind that Berosus simply relates the
account of a subjugation and devastation of the whole of Phoe-
nicia, without even mentioning the siege of Tyre, and that it is
only in Phoenician writings therefore that the latter is referred
to, we cannot by any means conclude, from their silence as to
the result or termination of the siege, that it ended gloriously
for the Tyrians and with humiliation to Nebuchadnezzar, or
that he was obliged to relinquish the attempt without success
after the strenuous exertions of thirteen years. On the con-
trary, considering how all the historians of antiquity show the
same anxiety, if not to pass over in silence such events as were
unfavourable to their country, at all events to put them in as
favourable a light as possible, the fact that the Tyrian his-
torians observe the deepest silence as to the result of the
thirteen years' siege of Tyre would rather force us to the con-
clusion that it was very humiliating to Tyre. And this could
only be the case if Nebuchadnezzar really conquered Tyre at
the end of thirteen years. If he had been obliged to relinquish
the siege because he found himself unable to conquer so strong
a city, the Tyrian historians would most assuredly have related
six years ; after whom Balatorus reigned for one year. When he died,
they sent for and fetched Merbalus from Babylon, and he reigned four
years. At his death they sent for his brother Eiramus, who reigned twenty
years. During his reign, Cyrus ruled over the Persians."
420 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
this termination of the thirteen years' strenuous exertions of
the great and mighty king of Babylon.
The silence of the Tyrian historians concerning the conquest
of Tyre is no proof, therefore, that it did not really take place.
But Ezek. xxix. 17-20 has also been quoted as containing posi-
tive evidence of the failure of the thirteen years' siege ; in other
words, of the fact that the city was not taken. We read in
this passage, that Nebuchadnezzar caused his army to perform
hard service against Tyre, and that neither he nor his army
received any recompense for it. Jehovah would therefore give
him Egypt to spoil and plunder as wages for this work of theirs
in the service of Jehovah. Gesenius and Hitzig (on Isa. xxiii.)
infer from this, that Nebuchadnezzar obtained no recompense
for the severe labour of the siege, because he did not succeed
in entering the city. But Movers (I.e. p. 448) has already
urged in reply to this, that " the passage before us does not
imply that the city was not conquered any more than it does
the opposite, but simply lays sti-ess upon the fact that it vms
not plundered. For nothing can be clearer in this connection
tiian that what we are to understand by the wages, which
Nebuchadnezzar did not receive, notwithstanding the exertions
connected with his many years' siege, is simply the treasures of
Tyre ; " though Movers is of opinion that the passage contains
an intimation that the siege was brought to an end with a
certain compromise which satisfied the Tyrians, and infers,
from the fact of stress being laid exclusively upon the neglected
plundering, that the termination was of such a kind that
plundering might easily have taken place, and therefore that
Tyre was either actually conquered, but treated mildly from
wise considerations, or else submitted to the Chaldeans upon
certain terms. But neither of these alternatives can make the
least pretension to probability. In Ezek. xxix. 20 it is expressly
stated that "as wages, for which he (Nebuchadnezzar) has
worked, I give him the land of Egypt, because they (Nebu-
chadnezzar and his army) have done it for me ;" in other words,
CHAP. XXVIII. 11-19. 42 i
have done the work for me. When, therefore, Jeliovah pro-
mises to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as a reward or wages
for the hard work wliicli has been done for Him at Tyre, the
words presuppose that Nebuchadnezzar had really accomplished
against Tyre the task entrusted to him by God. But God had
committed to him not merely the siege, but also the conquest
and destruction of Tyre. Nebuchadnezzar must therefore
have executed the commission, though without receiving the
expected reward for the labour which he had bestowed ; and
on that account God would compensate him for his trouble
with the treasures of Egypt. This precludes not only the
supposition that the siege was terminated, or the city sur-
rendered, on the condition that it should not be plundered, but
also the idea that for wise reasons Nebuchadnezzar treated the
city leniently after he had taken possession. In either case
Nebuchadnezzar would not have executed the will of Jehovah
upon Tyre in such a manner as to be able to put in any claim
for compensation for the hard work performed. The only
thing that could warrant such a claim would be the circum-
stance, that after conquering Tyre he found no treasures to
plunder. And this is the explanation which Jerome has given
of the passage ad litteram. "Nebuchadnezzar," he says, " being
unable, when besieging Tyre, to bring up his battering-rams,
besieging towers, and vineae close to the walls, on account of the
city being surrounded by the sea, employed a very large number
of men from his army in collecting rocks and piling up mounds
of earth, so as to fill up the intervening sea, and make a con-
tinuous road to the island at the narrowest part of the strait.
And when the Tyrians saw that the task was actually accom-
plished, and the foundations of the walls were being disturbed
by the shocks from the battering-rams, they placed in ships
whatever articles of value the nobility possessed in gold, silver,
clothing, and household furniture, and transported them to the
islands ; so that when the city was taken, Nebuchadnezzar
found nothing to compensate him for all his labour. And
422 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
because he had done the will of God in all this, some j-ears
after the conquest of Tyre, Egypt was given to him by God.'"
It is true that we have no historical testimony from any other
quarter to support this interpretation. But we could not expect
it in any of the writings which have come down to us, inasmuch
as the Phoenician accounts extracted by Josephus simply con-
tain the fact of the thirteen years' siege, and nothing at all
concerning its progress and result. At the same time, there is
the greatest probability that this was the case. If Nebuchad-
nezzar really besieged the city, which was situated upon an
island in the sea, he could not have contented himself with
cutting off the supply of drinking water from the city simply
on the land side, as Shalmanezer, the king of Assyria, is said
to have done (vid. Josephus, Antt. ix. 14. 2), but must have
taken steps to fill up the strait between the city and the main-
land with a mound, that he might construct a road for besieging
:ind assaulting the walls, as Alexander of Macedonia afterwards
did. And the words of Ezek. xxix. 18, according to which
every head was bald, and the skin rubbed off every shoulder
with the severity of the toil, point indisputably to the under-
taking of some such works as these. And if the Chaldeans
really carried out their operations upon the city in this way, as
the siege-works advanced, the Tyrians would not neglect any
precaution to defend themselves as far as possible, in the event
of the capture of the city. They would certainly send the pos-
sessions and treasures of the city by ship into the colonies,
and thereby place them in security ; just as, according to
Curtius, iv. 3, they sent off their families to Carthage, when
the city was besieged by Alexander.
This view of the termination of the Chaldean siege of Tyre
receives a confirmation of no little weight from the fragment
of Menander already given, relating to the succession of rulers
in Tyre after the thirteen years' siege by Nebuchadnezzar. It
is there stated that after Ithobal, Baal reigned for ten years,
1 Cyrill. Alex, gives tlie same explanation in his commentary on Isa. xxiii.
CHAP. XXVIII. 11-19. 423
that judges {svffetes) were then appointed, nearly all of whom
held ofSce for a few months only ; that among the last judges
there was also a king JBalatorus, who reigned for a year ; that
after this, however, the Tyrians sent to Babylon, and brought
thence Merbal, and on his death Hiram, as kings, whose genuine
Tyrian names undoubtedly show that they were descendants
of the old native royal family. This circumstance proves not
only that Tyre became a Chaldean dependency in consequence
of the thirteen years' siege by Nebuchadnezzar, but also that
the Chaldeans had led away the royal family to Babylonia,
which would hardly have been the case if Tyre had submitted
to the Chaldeans by a treaty of peace.
If, however, after what has been said, no well-founded doubt
can remain as to the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, our
prophecy was not so completely fulfilled thereby, that Tyre
became a bare rock on which fishermen spread their nets, as is
threatened in ch. xxvi. 4, 5, 14. Even if Nebuchadnezzar
destroyed its walls, and laid the city itself in ruins to a con-
siderable extent, he did not totally destroy it, so that it was not
restored. On the contrary, two hundred and fifty years after-
wards, we find Tyre once more a splendid and powerful royal
city, so strongly fortified, that Alexander the Great was not able
to take it till after a siege of seven months, carried on with extra-
ordinary exertions on the part of both the fleet and army, the
latter attacking from the mainland by means of a mound of
earth, which had been thrown up with considerable difficulty
(Diod. Sic. xvii. 40 sqq. ; Arrian, Alex. ii. 17 sqq. ; Curtius,
iv. 2-4). Even after this catastrophe it rose once more into a
distinguished commercial city under the rule of the Seleucidae
and afterwards of the Komans, who made it the capital of
Phoenicia. It is mentioned as such a city in the New Testa-
ment (Matt. XV. 21 ; Acts xxi. 3, 7) ; and Strabo (xvi. 2. 23)
describes it as a busy city with two harbours and very lofty
houses. But Tyre never recovered its ancient grandeur. In
the first centuries of the Christian era, it is frequently men-
424 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tioiied as an archbishop's see. From a.d. 636 to a.d. 1125 it
was under tlie rule of the Saracens, and was so strongly for-
tified, that it was not till after a siege of several months' duration
that they succeeded in taking it. Benjamin of Tudela, who
visited Tyre in the year 1060, describes it as a city of distin-
guished beauty, v^ith a strongly fortified harbour, and surrounded
by walls, and with the best glass and earthenware in the East.
" Saladin, the conqueror of Palestine, broke his head against
Tyre in the year 1189. But after Acre had been taken by
storm in the year 1291 by the Sultan El-Ashraf, on the day
following this conquest the city passed without resistance into
the hands of the same Egyptian king ; the inhabitants having
forsaken Tyre by night, and fled by sea, that they might not
fall into the power of such bloodthirsty soldiers " (Van de Velde).
AVhen it came into the hands of the Saracens once more, its
fortifications were demolished; and from that: time forward
Tyre has never risen from its ruins again. Moreover, it had
long ceased to be an insular city. The mound which Alexander
piled up, grew into a broader and fii-mer tongue of land in
consequence of the sand washed up by the sea, so that the
island was joined to the mainland, and turned into a peninsula.
The present Sur is situated upon it, a market town of three or
four thousand inhabitants, which does not deserve the name of
a city or town. The houses are for the most part nothing but
huts; and the streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty lanes.
The ruins of the old Phoenician capital cover the surronndinc
country to the distance of more than half an hour's journey
from the present town gate. The harbour is so thoroughly
choked up with sand, and filled with the ruins of innumerable
pillars and building stones, that only small boats can enter.
The sea has swallowed up a considerable part of the greatness
of Tyre; and quite as large a portion of its splendid temples
and fortifications lie buried in the earth. To a depth of many
feet the soil trodden at the present day is one solid mass of
building stones, shafts of pillars, and rubbish composed of
CHAP. XXVIII. 20-26. 425
marble, porphyry, and granite. Fragments of pillars of the
costly verde antiquo (green marble) also lie strewn about in
lar<;e quantities. The crust, which forms the soil that is trodden
to-day, is merely the surface of this general heap of ruins.
Thus has Tyre actually become "a bare rock, and a place for
the spreading of nets in the midst of sea ; " and " the dwelling-
places, which are now erected upon a portion of its former site,
are not at variance with the terrible decree, ' thou shalt be built
no more'" (compare Robinson's Palestine, and Van de Velde's
Travels). — Thus has the prophecy of Ezekiel been completely
fulfilled, though not directly by Nebuchadnezzar ; for the
prophecy is not a bare prediction of historical details, but is
pervaded by the idea of the judgment of God. To the prophet,
Nebuchadnezzar is the instrument of the punitive righteousness
of God, and Tyre the representative of the ungodly commerce
of the world. Hence, as Havernick has already observed,
Nebuchadnezzar's action is more than an isolated deed in the
prophet's esteem. " In his conquest of the city he sees the
whole of the ruin concentrated, which history places before us
as a closely connected chain. The breaking of the power of
Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar stands out before his view as insepar-
ably connected with its utter destruction. This was required
by the internal theocratic signification of the fact in its relation
to the destruction of Jerusalem." Jerusalem will rise again to
new glory out of its destruction through the covenant faithful-
ness of God (ch. xxviii. 25, 26). But Tyre, the city of the
world's commerce, which is rejoicing over the fail of Jerusalem,
will pass away for ever (ch. xxvi. 14, xxvii. 36).
CHAP. XXVIII. 20-26. PROPHECY AGAINST SIDON AND PROMISE
FOR ISRAEL.
The threatening word against Sidon is very brief, and
couched in general terms, because as a matter of fact the
prophecy against Tyre involved the announcement of the fall
426 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of Sidon, which was dependent npon it ; and, as we have already
observed, Sidon received a special word of God simply for the
purpose of making up the nnraber of the heathen nations
mentioned to the significant number seven. The word of God
against Sidon brings to a close the cycle of predictions of judg-
ment directed against those heathen nations which had given
expression to malicious pleasure at the overthrow of the king-
dom of Judah. There is therefore appended a promise for
Israel (vers. 25, 26), which is really closely connected w-ith
the threatening words directed against the heathen nations, and
for which the way is prepared by ver. 24. The correspond-
ence of I^^ ''^'^''^p^ (I shall be sanctified in her) in ver. 22 to
D2 ^Pi\i>'^_\>i (l shall be sanctified in them) in ver. 25, serves to
place the future fate of Israel in antithesis not merely to the
future fate of Sidon, but, as vers. 24 and 26 clearly show, to
that of all the heathen nations against which the previous
threats have been directed.
Ver. 20. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 21. Son of man, direct thy face towards Sidon, and provhesy
against it, Ver. 22. And say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Behold, I will he against thee, Sidon, and will glorify myself in
the midst of thee ; and they shall knoiv that I am Jehovah, u-hen J
execute judgments upon it, and sanctify myself upon it. Ver. 23.
I will send pestilence into it, and blood into its streets ; slain will
fall in the midst of it by the sword, which cometh upon it from
every side ; and they shall learn that I am. Jehovah, Ver. 24.
And there shall be no more to the house of Israel a malignant
thorn and smarting sting from all round about them, who
despise them ; but they shall learn that I am the Lord Jehovah.
— Jehovah will glorify Himself as the Lord upon Sidon,
as He did before upon Pharaoh (compare Ex. xiv. 4, 16, 17, to
which the word ''n"]333 in ver. 22, an unusual expression for
Ezekiel, evidently points). The glorification is effected by
judgments, through which He proves Himself to be holy upon
the enemies of His people. He executes the judgments thruiigli
CHAP. XXVIII. 25, 26. 427
pestilence and blood (yid. ch. v. 17, xxxviii. 22), i.e. through
•disease and bloodshed occasioned by war, so that men fall, slain
by the sword (of. ch. vi, 7). Instead of ^BS we have the inten-
sive form ??B?, which is regarded by Ewald and Hitzig as a
■copyist's error, because it is only met with here. Through
ihese judgments the Lord will liberate His people Israel from
all round about, who increase its suffering by their contempt.
These thoughts sum up in ver. 24 the design of God's judg-
ments upon all the neighbouring nations which are threatened
in ch. xxv.-xxviii., and thus prepare the way for the concluding
promise in vers. 25 and 26. The figure of the sting and thorn
points back to Num. xxxiii. 55, where it is said that the
danaanites whom Israel failed to exterminate would become
thorns in its eyes and stings in its sides. As Israel did not
keep itself free from, the Canaanitish nature of the heathen
nations, God caused it to feel these stings of heathenism.
Having been deeply hurt by them, it was now lying utterly
prostrate with its wounds. The sins of Canaan, to which
Israel had given itself up, had occasioned the destruction of
Jerusalem (chap. xvi.). But Israel is not to succumb to its
wounds. On the contrary, by destroying the heathen powers,
the Lord will heal His people of the wounds which its heathen
neighbours have inflicted upon it. ti?D, synonymous with
|i!?D in ch. ii. 6, a word only found in Ezekiel. 1''!^!?^^ on
the contrary, is taken from Lev. xiii. 51 and xiv. 44, where it
is applied to malignant leprosy (see the comm. on the former
passage). — For Qnif< D''t:xE'n, see ch. xvi. 57 and xxv. 6.
Ver. 25. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Wlien I shall gather
the house of Israel out of the peoples among whom they have been
scattered, I shall sanctify myself upon them before the eyes of the
heathen nations, and they will dwell in their land which I have
given to my servant Jacob. Ver. 26. Tliey will dwell there
securely, and build houses and plant vineyards, and will dwell
securehi when I execute judgments upon all ivho despise them of
those round about them ; and they shall learn that I Jehovah am
428 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
their God. — Whilst the heathen nations succumb to the judg-
ments of God, Israel passes on to a time of blessed peace.
The Lord will gather His people from their dispersion among
the heathen, bring them into the land which He gave to the
patriarch Jacob, His servant, and give them in that land rest,
security, and true prosperity. (For the fact itself, compare
ch. xi. 17, XX. 41, xxxvi. 22 sqq.)
END OF VOL. I.
HURRAT AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
FBINT£Ba TG HEK MAJESTl'S STATIOMBKT OFFICK
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
ANNUAL STJBSCEIPTION: One Guinea for Four Volumes, Demy 8vo.
ESSES. CLARK beg to invite the attention of Clergymen and educated
Laymen to this Series.
M
_ The Foreign Theological Library was commenced in 1846, and from that
time to this Four Volumes yearly (or about 170 in all) have appeared with the
utmost regularity. The favour with which the Series has, during so mauy
years, been received, encourages the Publishers to believe that a Library con-
taining the works of writers so eminent, upon the most important subjects,
cannot fail to secure a continuance of the support hitherto accorded to it.
The Issue for 18S8 comprises: —
CASSEL'S COMMENTARY ON ESTHER.
EWALD'S OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY.
KEIL'S BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. Vol. IL (completion).
DELITZSCH'S NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS. Vol. I.
The Volumes issued during 1883-1887 were: —
iS53.— WEISS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Vols. 1. and II.
WEISS ON BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF NEW TESTAMENT. Vol. II. (completion).
GOEBEL ON THE PARABLES. One Vol.
^5S^.— WEISS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Vol. III. (completion).
SARTORIDS ON THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE LOVE. One Vol.
RABIGER'S ENCYCLOP.ffiDIA OF THEOLOGY. Vol. I.
EWALD'S REVELATION : ITS NATURE AND RECORD.
^SS5.— RABIGER'S ENCTCLOF.ffiDIA OF THEOLOGY. Vol. II. (completion).
ORELLI'S OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY REGARDING THE CONSUMMATION
OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
SCHtJRER'S HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE TIME OF JESUS
CHRIST. Second Division. Vols. I. and II.
^5Se.-SCHiJRER'S HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE TIME OF JESUS
CHRIST. Second Division. VoL IIL
EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS. Vol. I.
FRANK'S SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
GODET-S COMMENTARY ON FIRST CORINTHIANS. Vol. I.
^SS7.— EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS. Vols. II. and III.
GODET'S COMMENTARY ON FIRST CORINTHIANS. Vol. II. (completion).
KEIL'S HANDBOOK ARCH.ffiOLOGY. Vol. I.
N,B. Any Two of the above Yearly Issues can be had at Subscription Price. A single
Tears Boohs (except in the case of the current Year) ccmnot be supplied separately.
Non-subscribers, price 10s. 6d. each volume.
In order to bring the Foreign Theological Library more within the reach of
all, it has been decided to allow a selection of
EIGHT VOLUMES at the Subscription Price of TWO GUINEAS
(or more at the same ratio), from the works issued previous to 1888, a complete
list of which will be found on the two following pages.
428 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
their God. — Whilst the heathen nations succumb to the judg-
ments of God, Israel passes on to a time of blessed peace.
The Lord will gather His people from their dispersion among
the heathen, bring them into the land which He gave to the
patriarch Jacob, His servant, and give them in that land rest,
security, and true prosperity. (For the fact itself, compare
ch. xi. 17, XX. 41, xxxvi. 22 sqq.)
END OF VOL. I.
MUSRAT AND GIBB, EDINBUnOH,
PEINTER9 TO HER MAJESTl's STATIOMKRT OFFICE
r. and T. Clark's Publications.
FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY,
ANNTIAL SUBSCRIPTION : One Guinea for Four Volumes, Demy 8vo.
MESSRS. CLARK beg to invite the attention of Clergymen and educated
Laymen to this Series.
The Foreign Theological Library was commenced in 1846, and from that
time to this Four Volumes yearly (or about 170 in all) have appeared with the
utmost regularity. The favour with which the Series has, during so many
years, been received, encourages the Publishers to believe that a Library con-
taining the works of writers so eminent, upon the most important subjects,
cannot fail to secure a continuance of the support hitherto accorded to it.
The Issue for 1888 comprises: —
CASSEL'S COMMENTARY ON ESTHER.
EWALD'S OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY.
KEIL'S BIBLICAL ARCHffiOLOGY. Vol. II. (completion).
DELITZSCH'S NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS. Vol. I.
TTie Volumes issued during 1883-1887 were: —
1SS5.— WEISS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Vols. I. and II.
WEISS ON BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF NEW TESTAMENT. Vol. II. (completion).
GOEBEL ON THE PARABLES. One Vol.
ISS^.— WEISS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Vol. III. (completion).
SARTORIUS ON THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE LOVE. One Vol.
RAEIGER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY. Vol. I.
EWALD'S REVELATION : ITS NATURE AND RECORD.
1555.— RABIGER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY. Vol. II. (completion).
ORELLI'S OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY REGARDING THE CONSUMMATION
OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
SCHtJRER'S HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE TIME OF JESUS
CHRIST. Second Division. Vols. I. and II.
JSSS.-SCHURER'S HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN THE TIME OF JESUS
CHRIST. Second Division. Vol. III.
EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS. Vol. I.
FRANK'S SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.
GODErS COMMENTARY ON FIRST CORINTHIANS. Vol. I.
18Sr —EBRARD'S APOLOGETICS. Vols. II. and III.
GODET'S COMMENTARY ON FIRST CORINTHIANS. Vol. II. (completion).
KEIL'S HANDBOOK ARCHEOLOGY. Vol. I.
N B —Any Two of the above Yearly Issues can be had at Subscription Price. A single
Tears Books (except in the case o£ the current Tear) cannot be supplied sepm-ately.
Non-subscribers, price 10s. 6d. each volume.
In order to bring the Foreign Theological Library more within the reach of
all it has been decided to allow a selection of
EIGHT VOLUMES at the Subscription Price of TWO GUINEAS
(or more at the same ratio), from the works issued previous to 1883, a complete
list of which will be found on the two following pages.
T. and T. Clark s Publications.
Glark's Foreign Theological Library.
MESSES. CLAEK allow a SELECTION of Eight Volumes {or more at the same
ratio) from the Volumes issued in this Series previous to 1883 {see helow\
At the Subscription Price of Two Guineas
(Duplicates cannot he supplied in such selections).
NON-SUBSCKIPTION PkICES WITHIN BRACKETS.
(21s.)
One Vol.
(10s. 6d.)
(21s.)
(21s.)
or, The
Chnrch of
(7s. 6d.
Alexander (J. A,, D.D.) — Commentary on Isaiah. Two Vols. (17s.)
Auberlen (C. A., D.D.)— The Divine Revelation. One Vol. ■ (10s. 6d.)
Baumgarten (M., Ph.D.) — The Acts of the Apostles; or, The History of the
Chnrch in the Apostolic Age. Three Vols. (27s. )
Bleek (Professor) — Introduction to the New Testament. Two Vols. (21s.)
Christlieh (Theo., D.D.) — Modem Doubt and Christian Belief. One Vol.
(10s. 6d.)
Delitzsch (Franz, D. D. ) — Commentary on Job. Two Vols. (21s.)
Commentary on the Psalms. Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon. Two Vols.
Commentary on Song of Solomon and Eccleslastes.
Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah. Two Vols.
Commentary on Epistle to the Hebrews. Two Vols.
A System of BlbEcal Psychology. One Vol. (12s. )
DoUinger (J. J. Ign. von, D. D. )— Hippolytns and CaUistus;
Eome in the First Half of the Third Century. One Vol.
Doruer (I. A., D.D.) — A System of Chiistlan Doctrine. Four Vols. (42s.)
History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ
Five Vols. (52s. 6d.)
Ebrard (J. H. A., D.D.) —Commentary on the Epistles of St. John. One Vol
(10s. ad.)
■ The Gospel History : A Compendium of Critical Investigations in support
of the Historical Character of the Four Gospels. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Gebhardt(H.) — Doctrine of the Apocalypse. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Gerlach (Otto ron) — Commentary on the Pentateuch. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Gieseler (J. 0. L., D. D. ) —Compendium of Ecclesiastical History. Four Vols
(42..)
Godet (F., D.D.)— Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two Vols. (21s.)
.— Commentary on St. John's Gospel. Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Epistle to ttie Eomana. Two Vols. (21s.)
Hagenbaoh (K. R., D.D.) — History of the Reformation. Two Vols. (21s.)
History of Christian Doctrines. Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
Harless (G. C. A. von, D.D.)— A System of Christian Ethics. One Vol. (10s 6d )
Haupt (E.)— Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John. One Vol. (10s.' 6d.)
Havernick (Professor)— General Introduction to the Old Testament. One Vol
(10s. 6d.)
Hengatenberg (E. W., D.D.)— Christology of the Old Testament, and a Com-
mentary on the Messiamo Predictions. Four Vols. (42s.)
Commentary on the Psalms. Three Vols. (33s.)
On the Book of Eccleslastes. To which are appended : Treatises on the Son"
of Solomon ; the Book of Job ; the Prophet Isaiah ; the Sacrifices of Holy
Scripture ; and on the Jews and the Christian Church. One Vol. (9s )
Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Two Vols. (21s.)
— Commentary on Ezeklel. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Dissertations on the Genuineness of Daniel, etc. One Vol. (12s)
The Eingdom of God under the Old Covenant. Two Vols.' (21s.)
[Continued on next pagp.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
OLAKK'S FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL lASKABY— Continued.
Keil (C. F., D.D.)— Introduction to the Old Testament. Two Vols. (21s.)
Commentary on the Pentateuch. Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
Commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Kuth, One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Books of Samuel. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Books of Kings. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Books of Chronicles. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on Jeremisih and Lamentations. Two Vols. (21s.)
Commentary on Ezekiel. Two Vols. (21s.)
Commentary on the Book of Daniel. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Minor Prophets. Two Vols. (21s.)
Kurtz (J. H., D.D.) — ^History of the Old Covenant ; or. Old Testament Dispensation.
Three Vols. (31s. 6d. )
Lange (J. P., D.D.) — Commentary on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark.
Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke. Two Vols. (18s.)
Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Two Vols. (21s. j
Luthardt (C. E., D.D.)— Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Three Vols.
(31s. 6d.)
Macdonald (D., M.A.) — ^Introduction to the Pentateuch. Two Volumes. (21s.)
Martensen (Bishop) — Christian Dogmatics. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Christian Ethics. General — Social — Individual. Three Vols. (31s. 6d.)
MuUer (Dr. Julius)— The Christian Doctrine of Sin. Two Vols. (21s.)
Murphy (Professor)— Commentary on the Psalms. To count as Two Volumes.
One Vol. (12s.)
Neander (A., D.D.)— General History of the Christian Religion and Church.
Nine Vols. (67s. 6d.)
Oehler (Professor)— Biblical Theology of the Old Testament. Two Vols. (21s.)
Olshausen (H., D.D.)— Commentary on the Gospels and Acta. Four Vols. (42s.)
Commentary on Epistle to the Romans. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
. Commentary on Epistles to the Corinthians. One Vol. (9s.)
Commentary on Philippians, Titus, and 1st Timothy. One Vol. (lOs. 6d.)
Philippi (F. A., D. D.) — Commentary on Epistle to Romans. Two Vols. (21s.)
Ritter (Carl)— Comparative Geography of Palestine. Four Vols. (26s.)
Schmid (0. F., D.D.)— New Testament Theology. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Shedd (W. G. T., D.D.) — History of Christian Doctrine. Two Vols. (21s.)
Steinmeyer (F. L., D.D.) — History of the Passion and Resurrection of our lord.
One Vol. '(10s. 6d.) ^ ,^ ,
The Miracles of our Lord in relation to Modern Criticism. One Vol.
(7s. 6d.)
Stler (Rudolf, n.D.)— The Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight Vols. (84s.)
The Words of the Risen Saviour, and Commentary on the Epistle of Bt.
James. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
• The Words of the Apostles Expounded. One Vol. (10s. 6d.)
Tholuck (A., D.D.) — Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. One Vol. (9s.)
UUmann (C, D.D.)— Reformers before the Reformation, principally In Germany
and the Netherlands. Two Vols. (21s. )
Weiss (B., D.D.)— Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Vol. I. (10s. 6d.)
Winer (6. B., D.D.) — Collection of the Confessions of Christendom. One Vol.
(10s. 6d.)'
The series, in 173 Volumes (including 1887), price £i5, 8s. 3d., forms an Apparatus
without which it may be truly said no Theological Librcury can be complete; and the
Publishers take the liberty of suggesting that no more appropriate gift could be
presented to a Clergyman than the Series, in whole or in part.
Subscribers' Names received by all Retail Booksellers.
London : (For Works at Non-subscription price only) Hamilton, Adams, & Co.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Twenty Handsome 8vo Volumes, Sdbsckiption Price £5, 5s.,
MEYER'S
Commentary on the New Testament.
' Meyer has been long and well known to scholars as one of the very ablest of the Grerman
expositors of the New Testament. We are not sure whether we ought not to say that he Is
unrlTallea as an Interpreter of the grammatical and historical meaning of the sacred
writers. The Publishers have now rendered another seasonable and Important service to
EngUsb students In producing this translation.'— (fuardian.
A Selection may now be made of any EIGHT VOLUMES at the Subscription Price of TWO GUINEAS.
Each Volume will be sold separately at Ws. 6d. to Non-Subscribers.
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL
COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By De. H. A. W. MEYEE,
Oberconsistorialrath, Hannover.
The portion contributed by Dr. Meyer has been placed under the editorial
care of Rev. Dr. Dickson, ProfeBsor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow ;
Rev. Dr. Crombie, Professor of Biblical Criticism, St. Mary's College, St.
Andrews ; and Rev. Dr. Stewart, Professor of Biblical Criticism, University
of Glasgow.
1st Year — Eomans, Two Volumes.
Galatians, One Volume.
St. John's Gospel, Vol. I.
2d Year— St. John's Gospel, Vol. II.
Phllippians and Colossians, One Volume.
Acts of the Apostles, Vol. I.
Corinthians, Vol. I.
Sd. Year— Acts of the Apostles, Vol. II.
St. Matthew's Gospel, Two Volumes.
Corinthians, Vol. II.
4th Year — Mark and Luke, Two Volumes.
Ephesians and Philemon, One Volume.
Thessalonians. {Dr. Lunemann.)
5th Year— Timothy and Titus. {Dr. Huther.)
Peter and Juda. {Dr. Huther. )
Hebrews. (Dr. Lilnemann.)
James and John. (Dr. Huther.)
The series, as written by Meyer himself, is computed by the publication of Ephesians
with Philemon in one volume. But to this the Publishers have thought it right to add
Thessalonians and Hebrews, by Dr. LMnemann, and the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles,
by Dr. Huther. So few, however, of the SubsaHbers have expressed a desire to have Dr.
Diisterdieck's Commentary on Revelation included, that it has been resolved in the mean-
time Twt to undertake it.
' I need hardly add that the last edition of the accurate, perepicuoue, and learned com-
mentary of Dr. Meyer has been most carefully consulted throughout ; and I must again,
as in the preface to the Galatians, avow my great obligations to the acumen and scholar-
ship of the learned editor.' — Bishop Ellicott in Preface to his ' Commentary on Ephesians.'
' The ablest grammatical exegete of the age.' — Philip Schai'f, D.D.
_' In accuracy of scholarship and freedom from prejudice, he is equalled by few.' —
Literary Churchman.
' We have only to repeat that it remains, of its own kind, the very best Commentary
of the New Testament which we possess.' — Church Bells.
' No exegetical work is on the whole more valuable, or stands in higher public esteem.
As a oritio be is candid and cautious; exact to minuteness in philology; a master of the
grammatical and historical method of interpretation,' — Princeton Review
T. and T. ClarUs Piiblications.
LANGE'S COMMENTARIES.
(^Subscription price, nett), 15s. each.
HTHEO LOGICAL AND HOMILETICAL COMMENTARY
-*■ ON THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.
Specially designed and adapted for the use of Ministers and Students. By
Prof. John Peter Lange, D.D., in connection with a number of eminent
European Divines. Translated, enlarged, and revised under the general
editorship of Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, assisted by leading Divines of the various
Evangelical Denominations.
OLD TESTAMENT— 14 VOLUMES.
I. GENESIS. With a General Introduction to tlie Old Testament. By Prof. J. P. Lahge, D.D.
Translated from the Gennan, with Additions, by Prof. Tatlee Lewis, LL.D., and A. Gosmah, D.D.
—II. EXODUS and LEVITICUS. By J. P. Lanois, D.D. With General Introduction hy Rev. Dr.
OsGOon.— III. NUMBERS. By Prof. J. P. Lahge, D.D. DEUTERONOMY. By W. J. Scbeoedek.
—IV. JOSHUA. By Rev. F. R. Fay. JUDGES and RUTH. By Prof. Padlos Cassell, D.D.— V.
SAMUEL. By Professor Ekdmann, D.D.— VI. KINGS. By Kakl Che. W. F Babe, D.D.— VII.
CHRONICLES. By Otto Zooklek. EZRA. By Fh. W.Sohdltz. NEHEMIAH. ByRev. Howako
Ceosbi, D.D., LL.D. ESTHER. By Fb. W. Schdite.— VIII. JOB. With an Inti-odnotion and
Annotations hy Prof. Tatlbh Lewis, LL.D. A Commentary hy Dr. Otto Zockleh, together with
an Introductory Essay on Hehrew Poetry hy Prof. Philip ScHArr. D.D.— IX. THE PSALMS. By
C. B. Moll, D.D.— X. PROVERBS, ECCLESIASTES, and THE SONG OF SOLOMON. By Prof.
O. ZocKlEK, D.D.— XI. ISAIAH. By C. W. E, Naegblsbach.— XII. JEREMIAH aad LAMENTA-
TIONS. By C. W.E. Naegelseaoh, D.D.— XIII. EZEKIEL. By F. W. SceeOdee, D.D. DANIEL.
By Professor Zocklee, D.D.— XIV. THE MINOR PROPHETS. HOSEA, JOEL, and AMOS. By
Otto Schmollek, Ph.D. OBADIAH, MICAH, JONAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, and ZEPHANIAH.
By Rev. Padl Kleinekt. HAGGAI. By Rev. James E. M'CnEnT. ZEOHARIAH. ByT.W.CHAu-
BEB8, D.D. MALACHI. By Joseph Packabd, D.D.
THE APOCKYPHA. By E. 0. Eissell, D.D. One Volume.
NEW TESTAMENT— 10 VOLUMES.
I. MATTHEW. With a General Introdnctlon to the New Testament. By J. P. Lahge, D.D.
Translated, with Additions, hy Philip Schaff, D.D —II. MARK. By J. P. Lasge, D.D. LUKE.
By J. J. Van Oostekzee.— III. JOHN. By J. P. Lahge, D.D.— IV. ACTS. By G. V. Lechlke,
D.D., and Rev Chaeles Geeok.— V. ROMANS. By J. P. Lahge, D.D., and Rev. F. R. Fay.- VI.
CORINTHIANS. By Cbeistiah F. Klihg.— VII. GALATIANS. By Otto Schmollee, Ph.D.
EPHESIANS, COLOSSIANS, and PHILIPPLiNS. By Kael Beadhe, D.D.— VIH. THESSA-
LONIANS. By Drs Adeeeleh and Riggkhbach. TIMOTHY, TITUS, and PHILEMON. By J.
J. Van Oosteezbe, D.D. HEBREWS. By Kakl B. Moll, D.D.— IX. JAMES. By J. P. Lahge,
D.D., and J. J. Vas Oosteezee, D.D. PETER and JUDE. By G. F. C. FeohmBllee, Ph.D.
JOHN. By Kael Beadhe, D.D.— X. THE REVELATION OF JOHN. By Dr. J. P. Lahge.
Together with double Alphabetical Index to all the Ten Volumes on the New Testament, hy Johh
H. Woods.
PROFESSOR EADIE'S COMMENTARIES.
MESSES. OLARK, with the concurrence of the Trustees of the late Peofessoe
Eadie, beg to announce the issue, in Three Volumee 8vo, of the following Com-
mentaries : —
EPHESIANS. PHILIPPUNS. COLOSSIANS.
The Three Volumes will be supplied by Subscription at the price of
EIGHTEEN SHILLINGS,
or, in separate Volumes, at Ten Shillinge and Sixpence each.
They have been carefully Edited by
The Rev. "WILLIAM YOUNG, M.A., Glasgow.
The value of these Commentaries is well known. They occupy a firat and distinctive
place in Kew Testament exegetical literature.
These Volumes have been out of print for a, considerable time, and all of them are
much in demand.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Fifteen Volumes, demy 8vo, Subscription Price £3, 198.
(Yearly issues of Four Yolurms, 21s.)
Wi)t OT:0rlis 0f St augustm
EDITED BY MAECUS DODS, D.D.
SUBSCRIPTION:
Four Volumes for a Guinea, payable in advance (24s. when not paid
in advance).
FIRST YEAR.
THE ' CITY OF GOD.' Two Volumes.
WRITINGS IN OONNEOTION WITH
the Donatist Controversy. In One
Volume.
THE ANTI-PELAGIAN WOEKS OF
St. Augustine. Vol. I.
SECOND YEAR.
' LBTTEBS.' Vol. I.
TREATISES AGAINST FAUSTUS
the Manichsean. One Volume.
THE HAEMONY OF THE EVAN-
gelists, and the Sermon on the Mount.
One Volume.
ON TEE TEINITY.
One Volume.
THIRD YEAR.
COMMENTARY ON JOHN.
Volumes.
Two
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, Eh-
CHTREDioN, On Catechizing, and Os
Faith and thb Creed. One Volume.
THE ANTI-PELAGIAN WORKS OF
St. Augustine Vol. II.
FOURTH YEAR.
■ LETTERS.' Vol. IL
'CONFESSIONS.' With Copious Notes
by Rev. J. G. Pilkihgton.
ANTI-PELAGIAN WRITINGS.
III.
Vol.
Messrs. Clark believe tliis will prove not the least valuable of their various
Series. Every care has been taken to secure not only accuracy, but elegance.
It is understood that Subscribers are bound to take at least the issues for
two years. Each volume is sold separately at 10s. 6d.
'For the reproduction of the "City of God" in an admirable English garb we are
greatly indebted to the well-directed enterprise and energy of Messrs. Clark, and to the
accuracy and scholarship of those who have undertaken the laborious task of translation.'
— Christian Observer.
' Tbe present translation reads smoothly and pleasantly, and we have every reason to
be satisiied both with the erudition and the fair and sound judgment displayed by the
translators and the editor.' — John Butt.
SELECTION FROiM
ANTE-NICENE LIBRARY
AND
ST. AUGUSTINE'S WORKS.
T'HE Ante-Nicene Library being now completed in 24 volumes, and the
I St. Augustine Series being also complete in 16 volumes, Messrs. Clark
will, as in the case of tbe Foreign Theological Library, give a Selection of
12 Volumes from both of those series at the Subscription Price of Three
Guineas (or a larger number at same proportion).
T. and T. Clark's Ptiblicatii.
Tons.
In Twenty-four Handsome Svo Volumes, Subscription Price £6, 6s. od.,
^nte=TS[icene (»I|)tistian iLifitarg.
i. OOLLEOTION OF ALL THE WORKS OP THE FATHERS OF THE
OHKISTIAN OHUECH PKIOK TO THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A.
EDITED BY THE
REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D., AND JAMES DONALDSON, LL D.
MESSRS. CLARK are now happy to announce the completion of this Series.
It has been received with marked approval by all sections of the
Christian Church in this coimtry and in the United States, as supplying what
has long been felt to be a want, and also on account of the impartiality, learn-
ing, and care with which Editors and Translators have executed a very difficult
task.
The Publishers do not bind themselves to continue to supply the Series at
the subscription price.
The Works are arranged as follow : —
FIRST YEAR.
APOSTOLIC FATHERS, comprising
Olement's Epistles to the Gorintliians ;
Polycarp to the Ephesians; Martyr-
dom of Polycarp; Epistle of ^Barnabas;
Epistles of Ignatius Qonger and shorter,
and also the Syriac version); Martyr-
dom of Ignatius ; Epistle to Diognetus ;
Pastor of Hermae; Papias; Spurious
Epistles of Ignatius. In One Volume.
JUSTIN MARTYR; ATHENAGORAS.
In One Volume.
TATIAN; THEOPHILUS; THE CLE-
mentine Recognitions. In One Volume.
CLEMENT OP ALEXANDRIA, Volume
First, comprising Exhortation to Hea-
then; The Instructor; and a portion
of the Miscellanies.
SECOND YEAR.
HIPPOLYTUS , Volume First ; Refutation
of all Heresies, and Fragments from
his Commentaries.
lREN.a!US, Volume First.
TERTULLIAN AGAINST MARCION.
CYPRIAN, Volume First ; the Epistles,
and some of the Treatises.
THIRD YEAR.
IREN.«;US (completion); HIPPOLYTUS
(completion) ; Fragments of Third
Century. In One Volume.
ORIGEN : De Principiis ; Letters ; and
portion of Treatise against Celsus.
CLEMENT OP ALEXANDB[A, Volume
Second ; Completion of Miscellanies.
TERTULLIAN, Volume First; To the
Martyrs; Apology; To the Nations,
etc.
FOURTH YEAR,
CYPRIAN, Volume Second (completion);
Novatian; Minucius Felix; Fragments.
METHODIUS; ALEXANDER OF LY-
copolis ; Peter of Alexandria ; Anato-
lius; Clement on Virginity; and
Fragments.
TBETOLLIAN, Volume Second.
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS, ACTS, AND
Revelations ; comprising all the very
curious Apocryphal "Writings of the
first three Centuries.
FIFTH YEAR.
TERTULLIAN, Volume Third (comple-
tion).
CLEMENTINE HOMILIES; APOSTO-
lical Constitutions. In One Volume.
AENOBIUS.
DIONYSIUS; GREGORY THAUMA-
turgus; Syrian Fragments. In One
Volume.
SIXTH YEAR.
L ACTANTIUS ; together with The Testa-
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and
Fragments of the Second and Third
Centuries. Two Volumes.
ORIGEN, Volume Second (completion).
12s. to Non-Subscribers.
EARLY LITURGIES & REMAINING
Fragments. 9s. to Non-Subscribers.
Single Years cannot be bad separately, unless to complete sets; but any Volume
may be had separately, price 10s. 6d. — with the exception of Okigen, Vol. II., 12s.
and the Eaelt LrroKGiES, 9s.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
CHEAP RE-ISSUE OF
STIER'S WORDS OF THE LORD JESUS.
To meet a very general deBire that this now well-known Work should be
brought more within the reach of all classes, both Clergy and Laity, Messrs.
Clark are now issuing, for a limited period, the Eight Volumes, handsomely
bound in Four, at the Subscription Price of
T"WO GUINEAS.
Ah the allowance to the Trade must necessarily be small, orders sent either
direct or through Booksellers must in every case he accompanied with a Post
Ofl&ce Order for the above amount.
*The whole work is a treasury of thoTightfnl exposition. Its measure of practical and
spiritual application, with exegetical criticism, commends it to the use of those whose duty
it is to preach as well as to understand the Gospel of Christ.* — Guardian.
New and Cheap Edition, in Four Vols., demy 8vo, Subscription Price 28e.,
THE LIFE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST:
A Complete Critical Examination of the Origin, Contents, and Connection of
the Gospels. Translated from the German of J. P. Lange, D.D., Professor
of Divinity in the University of Bonn. Edited, with additional Notes, by
Marcus Dods, D.D.
' "We have arrived at a most favourable conclusion regarding the importance and ability
of this work — the former depending upon the present condition of theological criticism,
the latter on the wide range of the work itscH; the singularly dispassionate judgment
of the Author, as well as his pious, reverential, and erudite treatment of a subject inex-
pressibly holy. . . . We have great pleasure in recommending this work to our readers
We are convinced of ite value and enormous range.* — Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette.
BENGEL'S GNOMON-CHEAP EDITION.
GNOMON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By John Albert Bengel. Now first translated into English. With
Original Notes, Explanatory and Illustrative. Edited by the Rev.
Andrew R. Fausset, M.A. The Original Translation was in Five Large
Volumes, demy 8vo, averaging more than 550 pages each, and the very
great demand for ttiis Edition has induced the Publishers to issue the
Five Volumes bound in Three, at the Subscription Price of
TWENTY-FOTJR SHILLINGS.
They trust by this still further to increase its usefulness.
'It is a work which manifests the most intimate and profound knowledge of Scripture,
and which, if we examine it with care, will often be found to condense more matter into
a line than can be extracted from many pages of other writers.' — Archdeacon Hake.
' In respect both of its contents and its tons, Bengel'a Guomon stands alone. Even
among laymen there has arisen a healthy and vigorous desire for scriptural knowledge,
and Benge! has done more than any other man to aid such inquirers. There is perhaps
no book every word of which has been so well weighed, or in which a single technical
term contains 80 often far-reaching and suggestive viewe. . . .The theoretical and
practical are as intimately connected as light and heat in the sun's ray.' — o Perthes.
^^
^B^^^B
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
924 070 685 916
Cornell University
Library
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070685916
CLARK'S
FOEEIGH
THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.
POUETH SEEIE8.
VOL. L.
ia«tl on t|)« 5ropI)ettt3 of CEjefeitl.
VOL. II
EDIlfBUEGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
18 8 5.
PRH^TED BT MORRtgON ANK OIBB.
FOR
T ^ T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND 00.
DTTBLm, .... OEORGE HERBERT.
KEW TURK aCBIBNEB AND WELFOBJL
EIBLIOAL COMMENTARY
ON THE
PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
BT
CARL FRIEDRTCH KEIL, D.D.,
DOCrOB AND PROFESSOR OF THKOLOGT.
E^ranslahi from t^t (§txmnix
EEV. JAMES MAETIN, B.A
VOL. II.
EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK:, 38 GEOEGE STEEET.
18 8 5.
CONTENTS.
E X P S I T I JH— continued.
PREDICTIONS OF JUDGMENT UPON THE HEATHEN NATIONS—
continued (CHAP. XXIX.-XXXII.).
PAOB
1
Against Egtpt (Chap. xxix.-xxxn.),
The Judgment upon Pharaoh and his People and Land (Chap,
xxix. 1-16), ......
Conquest and Plundering of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar (Chap
xxix. 17-21), 10
The Day of Judgment upon Egypt (Chap. xxi. 1-19), . . 15
Destruction of the Might of Pharaoh by Nebuchadnezzar (Chap
, 20-26),
The Glory and Fall of Asshur a Type of Egypt (Chap, xxxi.).
Lamentations over the Ruin of Pharaoh and his People (Chap,
26
28
41
SECOND HALF.— THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF SALVATION.
CHAP. XXXIIl.-XLVin.
The Calling of the Prophet, and his Future Attitude towards the
People (Chap, xxxiii.), . .... 64
Calling of the Prophet for the Future (Vers. 1-20), . . 66
Preaching of Repentance after the Fall of Jerusalem (Vers.
23-83), 72
6
VI
CONTENTS.
The Restoration of Israel, and Destruction of Goe and Magog
(Chap, xxxiv.-xxxix.), ..••■•
Deposition of the Bad Shepherds ; Collecting and Tending of the
Flock ; and Appointment of the One Good Shepherd (Chap,
xxriv.), ....•••
Devastation of Edom, and Restoration of tie Land of Israel
(Chap. XXXV. 1-xxxvi. 15), . . . . •
The Salvation of Israel founded upon its Sanctiflcation (Chap,
xxxvi. 16-38), .......
Resurrection of Israel and Reunion as one Nation (Chap. xxxviL),
Resurrection of Israel to new Life (Vers. 1-14),
Reunion of Israel as one Nation under the future King David
(Vers. 15-28),
Destruction of Gog with his great Army of Nations (Chap
xxxviii. and xxxix.), .....
The New Kingdom of God (Chap, xl.-xlviii.),
The New Temple (Chap, xl.-xliii. 12),
Introduction (Chap. xl. 1-i), ....
The Outer Court, with Boundary Wall, Gate-Buildings, and
Cells (Vers. 5-27),
The Inner Court, with its Gates, Cells, and Slaughtering
Tables (Vers. 28^7), ....
The Temple-house, with the Porch, Side-storeys, and Back
building (Chap. xl. 48-xli. 26),
The Holy Cells in the Court, and the Extent of the Holy
Domain around the Temple (Cliap. xlii.).
Entrance of the Glory of the Lord into the New Temple
(Chap, xliii. 1-12),
The new Ordinances of Divine Worship (Chap, xliii. 13-xlvi. 24),
Descriptiou and Consecratiou of the Altar of Burnt- Off eriug
(Chap, xliii. 18-27),
Position of the different Classes of the People in relation to the
New Sanctuary (Chap, xliv.), ....
79
80
94
106
114
114
129
157
180
182
182
186
209
223
253
273
283
284
208
CONTEMTS. VIl
FAGK
The Holy Heave of the Land and the Heave-offerings of the
People (Chap. xlv. 1-17), . . . . .318
Instructions concerning the Festal and Daily Sacrifices (Chap.
xlv. 18-xlvi. 15), 332
Sacriflcas for the Sabbath and New Moon, Freewill-OfferiDgs,
and Daily Sacrifices (Ohap. xlvi. 1-15), . . . 339
Blessing of the Land of Canaan, and Distribution of it among the
Tribes of Israel (Chap, xlvii. and xlviii.), . . . 350
The River of Water of Life (Chap, xlvii. 1-12), . . 351
Boundaries and Division of the Holy Land. Descriptiou of the
City of God (Chap, xlvii. 13-xlviii. 35), . . .861
THE PEOPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
Chap. XXIX.-XXXII.— AGAINST EGYPT,
ilHE announcement of the judgment upon Egypt is
proclaimed in seven " words of God." The first
five are threats. The first (ch. xxix. 1-16) con-
tains a threat of the judgment upon Pharaoh and
his people and land, expressed in grand and general traits.
The second (ch. xxix. 17-21) gives a special prediction of the
conquest and plundering of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The
third (ch. xxx. 1-19) depicts the day of Judgment which will
break upon Egypt and its allies. The fourth (ch. xxx. 20-26)
foretells the annihilation of the might of Pharaoh by the king
of Babylon ; and the fifth (ch. xxxi.) holds up as a warning to
the king and people of Egypt the glory and the overthrow of
Assyria. The last two words of God in ch. xxxii. contain
lamentations over the destruction of Pharaoh and his might,
viz. ch. xxxii. 1-16, a lamentation over the king of Egypt;
and ch. xxxii. 17-32, a second lamentation over the destruc-
tion of his imperial power. — Ezekiel's prophecy concerning
Egypt assumes this elaborate form, because he regards the
power of Pharaoh and Egypt as the embodiment of that
phase of the imperial power which imagines in its ungodly
self-deification that it is able to uphold the kingdom of God,
and thus seduces the people of God to rely with false confidence
upon the imperial power of this world.
£Z£K. II. A
2 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
CHAP. XXIX. 1-16. THE JUDGMENT UPON PHAEAOH AND HIS
PEOPLE AND LAND.
Because Pharaoh looks upon himself as the creator of his
kingdom and of his might, he is to be destroyed with his men
of war (vers. 2-5a). In order that Israel may no longer put
its trust in the fragile power of Egypt, the sword shall cut off
from Egypt both man and beast, the land shall be turned into
a barren wilderness, and the people shall be scattered over the
lands (vers. 55-12). But after the expiration of the time
appointed for its punishment, both people and land shall be
restored, though only to remain an insignificant kingdom
(vers. 13-16). — According to ver. 1, this prophecy belongs to
the tenth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin ; and as we may
see by comparing it with the other oracles against Egypt of
which the dates are given, it was the first word of God uttered
by Ezekiel concerning this imperial kingdom. The contents
also harmonize with this, inasmuch as the threat which it con-
tains merely announces in general terms the overthrow of the
might of Egypt and its king, without naming the instrument
employed to execute the judgment, and at the same time the
future condition of Egypt is also disclosed.
Vers. 1-12. Destruction of the might of Pharaoh, and
devastation of Egypt. — Ver. 1. In the tenth year, in the tenth
(month), on the twelfth of the month, the word of Jehovah came to
me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, direct thy face against Pharaoh
the king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all
Egypt. Ver. 3. Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Behold, Twill deal with iliee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, thou great
dragon which lieth in its rivers, which saith, " Mine is the river,
and I Jiave made it for myself." Ver. 4. I will put a ring into
thy jaws, and cause the fishes of thy rivers to hang upon thy
scales, and draw thee out of thy rivers, and all the fishes of thy
rivers which hang upon thy scales ; Ver. 5. And will cast thee
into the desert, thee and all the fishes of thy rivers ; upon the
CHAP. XXIX. 1-12. 3
surface of the field wilt thou fall, thou wilt not be lifted up nor
gathered together ; I give thee for food to the beasts of the earth
and the birds of the heaven. Ver. 6. And all the inhabitants of
Egypt shall learn that I am Jehovah. Because it is a reed-staff
to the house of Israel, — Ver. 7. Wlien they grasp thee by thy
branches, thou crackest and tearest open all their shoulder ; and
when they lean upon thee, thou breahest and causest all their loins
to shake, — Ver. 8. Therefore thus saith the Lord JeJiovah,
Behold, I bring upon thee the sword, and will cut off from thee
man and beast ; Ver. 9. And the land of Egypt will become a
waste and desolation, and they shall learn that I am Jehovah.
Because he saith: "The river is mine, and I have made it"
Ver. 10. Therefore, behold, I will deal with thee and thy rivers,
and will make the land of Egypt into barren waste desolations
from Migdol to Syene, even to the border of Cush. Ver. 11. The
foot of man will not pass through it, and the foot of beast
will not pass through it, and it will not be inhabited for forty
years. Ver. 12. / make the land of Egypt a waste in the
midst of devastated lands, and its cities shall be waste among
desolate cities forty years ; and I scatter the Egyptians among the
nations, and disperse them in the lands. — The date given, viz.
" in the tenth year," is defended even by Hitzig as more correct
than the reading of the LXX., ev rm eVei tw BaSeKar^ ; and
he supposes the Alexandrian reading to have originated in the
fact that the last date mentioned in ch. xxvi. 1 had already
brought down the account to the eleventh year. — Pharaoh, the
king of Egypt, against whom the threat is first directed, is
called " the great dragon " in ver. 3. 0'?^} (here and ch.
xxxii. 2) is equivalent to fW, literally, the lengthened animal,
the snake ; here, the water-snake, the crocodile, the standing
symbol of Egypt in the prophets (cf. Isa. li. 9, xxvii. 1 ; Ps.
Ixxiv. 13), which is here trailsferred to Pharaoh, as the ruler of
Egypt and representative of its power. By Cl^^ we are to
understand the arms and canals of the Nile {vid. Isa. vii. 18).
The predicate, " lying in the midst of his rivers," points at once
4 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
to the proud security in his own power to which Pharaoh gave
himself up. As the crocodile lies quietly in the waters of the
Nile, as though he were lord of the river ; so did Pharaoh regard
himself as the omnipotent lord of Egypt. His words affirm
this : " the river is mine, I have made it for myself." The
suffix attached to 'itV'W stands in the place of ''>, as ver. 9, where
the suffix is wanting, clearly shows. There is an incorrectness
in this use of the suffix, which evidently passed into the language
of literature from the popular phraseology (cf. Ewald, § 3155).
The rendering of the Vulgate, ego feci memetipsum, is false.
nK'. is the expression used by him as a king who regards the
land and its rivers as his own property; in connection with
which we must bear in mind that Egypt is indebted to the
Nile not only for its greatness, but for its actual existence. In
this respect Pharaoh says emphatically v, it is mine, it belongs
to me, because he regards himself as the creator. The words,
" I have made it for myself," simply explain the reason for the
expression y, and affirm more than " I have put myself in pos-
session of this through my own power, or have acquired its
blessings for myself " (Havernick) ; or, " I have put it into its
present condition by constructing canals, dams, sluices, and
buildings by the river-side " (Hitzig). Pharaoh calls himself
the creator of the Nile, because he regards himself as the
creator of the greatness of Egypt. This pride, in which he
forgets God and attributes divine power to himself, is the cause
of his sin, for which he will be overthrown by God. God will
draw the crocodile Pharaoh out of his Nile with hooks, and cast
him upon the dry land, where he and the fishes that have been
drawn out along with him upon his scales will not be gathered
up, but devoured by the wild beasts and birds of prey. The
figure is derived from the manner in which even in ancient
times the crocodile was caught with large hooks of a peculiar
construction (compare Herod, ii. 70, and the testimonies of
travellers in Oedmann's Vermischten Sammlungen, III. pp. 6 sqq.,
and Jomard in the Ascription de VEgypte, I. p. 27). The
CHAP. XXIX 1-12. 5
form Qi^nn with a double Yod is a copyist's error, probably
occasioned by the double Yod occurring after n in 1\^n?3, which
follows. A dual form for D''nri is unsuitable, and is not used
anywhere else even by Ezekiel (cf. ch. xix. 4, 9, and more
especially ch. xxxviii. 4). — The fishes which hang upon the
scales of the monster, and are drawn along with it out of the
Nile, are the inhabitants of Egypt, for the Nile represents the
land. The casting of the beast into the wilderness, where it
putrefies and is devoured by the beasts and birds of prey, must
not be interpreted in the insipid manner proposed by Hitzig,
namely, that Pharaoh would advance with his army into the
desert of Arabia and be defeated there. The wilderness is the
dry and barren land, in which animals that inhabit the water
must perish ; and the thought is simply that the monster will
be cast upon the desert land, where it will finally become the
food of the beasts of prey. — ^In ver. 6 the construction is a sub-
ject of dispute, inasmuch as many of the commentators follow
the Hebrew division of the verse, taking the second hemistich
'U1 Drii''n ]T. as dependent upon the first half of the verse, for
which it assigns the reason, and then interpreting ver. 7 as a
further development of ver. 66, and commencing a new period
with ver. 8 (Hitzig, Kliefoth, and others). But it is decidedly
wrong to connect together the two halves of the sixth verse, if
only for the simple reason that the formula i^l^) '3S ^3 ^ijnjl,
which occurs so frequently elsewhere in Ezekiel, invariably
closes a train of thought, and is never followed by the addition
of a further reason. Moreover, a sentence commencing with
]T. is just as invariably followed by an apodosis introduced by
15^, of which we have an example just below in vers. 96 and
10a. For both these reasons it is absolutely necessary that we
should regard 'U1 oniin jj?^ as the beginning of a protasis, the
apodosis to which commences with J3? in ver. 8. The cor-
rectness of this construction is established beyond all doubt by
the fact that from ver. 66 onwards it is no longer Pharaoh who
is spoken of, as in vers. 3-5, but Egypt ; so that 13/! introduces
6 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
a new train of thought. But ver. 7 is clearly shown, both by
the contents and the form, to be an explanatory intermediate
clause inserted as a parenthesis. And inasmuch as the protasis
is removed in consequence to some distance from its apodosis,
Ezekiel has introduced the formula " thus saith the Lord
Jehovah " at the commencement of the apodosis, for the pur-
pose of giving additional emphasis to the announcement of the
punishment. Ver. 7 cannot in any case be regarded as the
protasis, the apodosis to which commences with the p? in ver. 8,
as Havernick maintains. The suffix attached to on^n, to which
Hitzig takes exception, because he has misunderstood the con-
struction, and which he would conjecture away, refers to D^VD
as a land or kingdom. Because the kingdom of Egypt was
a reed-staff to the house of Israel (a figure drawn from the
physical character of the banks of the Nile, with its thick
growth of tall, thick rushes, and recalling to mind Isa. xxxvi. 6),
the Lord would bring the sword upon it and cut off, from it
both man and beast. But before this apodosis the figure of
the reed-staff is more clearly defined : " when they (the Israel-
ites) take thee by thy branches, thou breakest," etc. This
explanation is not to be taken as referring to any particular
facts either of the past or future, but indicates the deceptive
nature of Egypt as the standing characteristic of that kingdom.
At the same time, to give greater vivacity to the description,
the words concerning Egypt are changed into a direct address
to the Egyptians, i.e. not to Pharaoh, but to the Egyptian
people regarded as a single individual. The expressio°n naan
causes some difficulty, since the ordinary meaning of «!? (hand)
is apparently unsuitable, inasmuch as the verb f\-\F\ from
rn to break or crack (not to break in pieces, i.e. to break
quite through), clearly shows that the figure of the reed is still
continued. The Eeri m is a bad emendation, based upon the
rendering" to grasp with the hand," which is grammatically
inadmissible. E-sri with 2 does not mean to grasp with some-
thing, but to seize upon something, to take held of a person
CHAP. SXIX. 1-12. 7
(Isa. iii. 6 ; Deut. ix. 17), so that IBsa can only be an explana-
tory apposition to 13. The meaning grip, or grasp of the
hand, is also nnsuitable and cannot be sustained, as the plural
niS3 alone is used in this sense in Song of Sol. v. 5. The
only njeaning appropriate to the figure is that of branches,
which is sustained, so far as the language is concerned, by the
use- of the plural nisa for palm-branches in Lev. xxiii. 40, and
of thfe singular nS3 for the collection of branches in Job xv. 32,
and Isa. ix. 13, xix. 15 ; and this is apparently in perfect
harmony with natural facts, since the tall reed of the Nile,
more especially the papyrus, is furnished with hollow, sword-
shaped leaves at the lower part of the stalk. When it cracks,
the reed-staff pierces the shoulder of the man who has grasped
it, and tears it ; and if a man lean upon it, it breaks in pieces
and causes all the loins to tremble. T'PiiD cannot mean to
cause to stand, or to set upright, still less to render stiff and
rigid. The latter meaning cannot be established from the
usage of the language, and would he unsuitable here. For if
a stick on which a man leans should break and penetrate his
loins, it would inflict such injury upon them as to cause him to
fall, and not to remain stiff and rigid. IDVn cannot have any
other meaning than that of IVOn, to cause to tremble or relax,,
as in Ps. Ixix. 24, to shake the firmness of the loins, so that the
power to stand is impaired. — In the apodosis the thought of the
land gives place to that of the people ; hence the use of the
feminine suffixes ''Ivy and ^BO in the place of the masculine
suflBxes ^3 and ^vJ? in ver. 7. Man and beast shall be cut off,
and the land made into a desert waste by the sword, i.e. by
war. This is carried out still further in vers. 9J-12; and once
again in the protasis 96 (cf. ver. 36) the inordinate pride of
the king is placed in the foreground as the reason for the
devastation of his land and kingdom. The Lord will make of
Egypt the most desolate wilderness. ri^2")0 is intensified into a
superlative by the double genitive fi»»f 3"jn> desolation of the
wilderness. Throughout its whole extent from Migdol, i.e.
g THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
Magdolo, according to the Itiner. Anton, p. 171 (ed. Wessel),
twelve Roman miles from Pelusium; in the Coptic Meshtol,
E-yptian Ma'Mr (Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. I. pp. 261 seq.), the
most northerly place in Egypt. nJlD, to Syene (for the con-
struction see ch. XXX. 6 and xxi. 3), Svr^vv, Sun in the mscr.p-
tions, according to Brugsch (Geogr. Inschr.I. p. 155), probably
the profane designation of the place (Coptic Souan), the most
southerly border town of Egypt in the direction of Cush, i.e.
Ethiopia, on the eastern bank of the Nile, some ruins of which
are still to be seen iu the modern Assvan (Assuan, ^Jy^\) •
which is situated to the north-east of them (vid. Brugsch,
Reiseber. aiis Aegypten, p. 247, and Leyrer in Herzog's Ency-
clopaedm). The additional clause, " and to the border of
Cush," does not give a fresh terminal point, still further
advanced, but simply defines with still greater clearness the
boundary toward the south, viz. to Syene, where Egypt ter-
minates and Ethiopia begins. In ver. 11a the desolation is
more fully depicted, a?'!} N?, it will not dwell, poetical for
"be inhabited," as in Joel iv. (iii.) 20, Isa. xiii. 20, etc. This
devastation shall last for forty years, and so long shall the
people of Egypt be scattered among the nations. But after
the expiration of that time they shall be gathered together
again (ver. 13). The number forty is neither a round number
(Hitzig) nor a very long time (Ewald), but is a symbolical
term denoting a period appointed by God for punishment and
penitence (see the comm. on ch. iv. 6), which is not to be under-
stood in a chronological sense, or capable of being calculated.
Vers. 13-16. Restoration of Egypt. — Ver. 13. For thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, At the end of forty years I will gather the
Egyptians out of the nations, whither they were scattered. Ver. 14.
And I will turn the captivity of Egypt, and will bring them back
into the land of Pathros, into the land of their origin, and they shall
be a lowly kingdom there. Ver. 15. Lowlier than the kingdoms
shall a be, and exalt itself no more over the nations; and I will
CHAP. XXIX. 13-16. 9
malee them small, so that they shall rule no more over the nations.
Ver, 16. And it shall he no more the confidence of the house of
Israel, bringing iniquity to remembrance when they incline towards
it ; and they shall learn that I am the Lord Jehovah. — The turn-
ing of the period of Egypt's punishment is connected by ''3, which
refers to the time indicated, viz. " forty years." For forty
years shall Egypt be utterly laid waste ; for after the expira-
tion of that period the Lord will gather the Egyptians again
from their dispersion among the nations, turn their captivity,
i.e. put an fend to their suffering (see the comm. on ch. xvi. 53),
and lead them back into the land of their birth, i.e. of their
origin (for n^WD, see ch. xvi. 3), namely, to Pathros. Di^^lSJ
the Egyptian Petores (IlaBovpr]';, LXX. Jer. xliv. 1), or south
land, i.e. Upper Egypt, the Thebais of the Greeks and Komans-
The designation of Upper Egypt as the mother country of the
Egyptians, or the land of their nativity, is confirmed not only by
the accounts given by Herodotus (ii. 4 and 15) and Diodorus Sic.
(i. 50), but also by the Egyptian mythology, according to which
the first king who reigned after the gods, viz. Meiies or Mena,
sprang from the city of Thinis (Thynis), Egypt. Tenj, in the
neighbourhood of Abydos in Upper Egypt, and founded the city
of Memphis in Lower Egypt, which became so celebrated in later
times (yid. Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte, I. p. 16). But Egypt
shall not attain to its former power any more. It will be and
continue a lowly kingdom, that it may not again become a ground
of confidence to Israel, a power upon which Israel can rely, so
as to fall into guilt and punishment. The subject to n^n* xpi is
Egypt as a nation, notwithstanding the fact that it has pre-
viously been construed in the feminine as a land or kingdom, and
in onnriN the Egyptians are spoken of in the plural number.
For it is out of the question to take I^V "i*3|0 as the subject to
'^)!)\ ^ in the sense of " no more shall one who calls guilt to
remembrance inspire the house of Israel with confidence," as
Kliefoth proposes, not only because of the arrangement of
the words, but because the more precise definition of \SS TSjO
10 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
as 'ns DniJSa clearly shows that Egypt is the subject of the
sentence; whereas, in order to connect this definition in any
way, Kliefoth is compelled to resort to the interpolation of
the words, " which it committed." tiJ? "Taf? is in apposition to
nuno ; making Egypt the ground of confidence, brings into
remembrance before God the guilt of Israel, which consists in
the fact that the Israelites turn to the Egyptians and seek
salvation from them, so that He is obliged to punish them (vid.
ch. xxi. 28, 29). — The truth of the prediction in vers. 13-16
has been confirmed by history, inasmuch as Egypt never
recovered its former power after the Chaldean period. — More-
over, if we compare the Messianic promise for Egypt in Isa.
xix. 18-25 with the prediction in vers. 13-15, we are struck at
once with the peculiarity of Ezekiel, already referred to in the
introductory remarks on ch. xxv.-xxxii., namely, that he leaves
entirely out of sight the Messianic future of the heathen nations.
CHAP. XXIX. 17-21. CONQUEST AND PLUNDERING OF EGYPT
BY NEBUCHADNEZZAJR.
Ver. 17. In the seven and twentieth year, in the first {moon),
on the first of the moon, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 18. Son of man, Nebuclmdnezzar, the king of Babylon, has
made his army perform hard work at Tyre: every head is bald,
and every shoulder grazed, and no wages have been given to Mm
and to his army from Tyre for the work which he performed
against it. Ver. 19. Therefore this saith the Lord Jehovah,
Behold, I give Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the land of
Egypt, that he may carry away its possessions, and plunder its
plunder, and make booty of its booty, and this may be the wages
of his army. Ver. 20. As the pay for which he wcyrked, I give
Um the land of Egypt, because they did it for me, is the saying
of tie Lord Jehovah. Ver. 21. In that day will I cause a horn
to sprout to the house of Israel, and I will open the mouth for thee
in the midst of th^m; and they shall know that lam Jehovah -
CHAP. XXIX. 17-21. 11
This brief prophecy concerning Egypt was uttered about seven-
teen years after the preceding word of God, and was the latest
of all the predictions of Ezekiel that are supplied with dates.
But notwithstanding its brevity, it is not to be taken in connec-
tion with the utterance which follows in eh. xxx. 1-19 so as to
form one prophecy, as Hitzig supposes. This is at variance
not only with the formula in eh. xxx. 1, which is the usual
introduction to a new word of God, but also with ver. 21 of
the present chapter, which is obviously intended to bring the
previous word of God to a close. This termination, which is
analogous to the closing words of the prophecies against Tyre
and Sidon in eh. xxviii. 25, 26, also shows that the present
word of God contains the last of Ezekiel's prophecies against
the Egyptian world-power, and that the only reason why the
prophet did not place it at the end when collecting his pro-
phecies — that is to say, after ch. xxxii.' — was, that the promise
in ver. 30, that the Lord would cause a horn to bud to the
house of Israel, contained the correlate to the declaration that
Egypt was henceforth to be but a lowly kingdom. Moreover,
this threat of judgment, which is as brief as it is definite, was
well fitted to prepare the way and to serve as an introduction
for the more elaborate threats which follow. The contents of
the prophecy, namely, the assurance that God would give Egypt
to Nebuchadnezzar as spoil in return for the hard labour which
he and his army had performed at Tyre, point to the time
immediately following the termination of the thirteen years'
siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. If we compare with this
the date given in ver. 17, the siege was brought to a close in
the twenty-seventh year of the captivity of Jeboiachin, i.e.
B.C. 572, and must therefore have commenced in the year B.C.
586, or about two years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and
with this the extract given by Josephus (c. Ap. i. 21) from the
Tyrian annals agrees.^ nibj; l^a^n, to cause a work to be
1 For the purpose of furnishing the proof that the temple at Jerusalem
lay in ruins for fifty years, from the time of its destruction till the com-
12 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
executed, or service to be rendered. This labour was so severe,
that every head was bald and every shoulder grazed. These
words have been correctly interpreted by the commentators,
even by Ewald, as referring to the heavy burdens that had to
be carried in order to fill up the strait which separated Insular
Tyre from the mainland. They confirm what we have said
above, in the remarks on ch. xxvi. 10 and elsewhere, concerning
the capture of Tyre. But neither he nor his army had received
any recompense for their severe toil. This does not imply that
Nebuchadnezzar had been unable to accomplish the work which
he had undertaken, i.e. to execute his design and conquer the
city, but simply that he had not received the recompense which
he expected after this severe labour ; in other words, had not
found the booty he hoped for when the city was taken (see the
introductory remarks on ch. xxvi.-xxviii.). To compensate him
for this, the Lord will give him the land of Egypt with its
possessions as booty, rl3bn tWi), that he may carry off the abun-
dance of its possessions, its wealth ; not that he may lead away
the multitude of its people (De Wette, Kliefoth, etc.), for
"Nlyi is not the appropriate expression for this" (Hitzig).
lion, abundance of possessions, as in Isa. Ix. 5, Ps. xxxvii. 16,
etc. n^jJS, the doing of a thing ; then that which is gained by
working, the recompense for labour, as in Lev. xix. 13 and
other passages. "^ m IB'N is taken by Hitzig as referring to
the Egyptians, and rendered, " in consequence of that which
they have done to me." But although IB'N may be taken in this
sense (yid. Isa. Ixv. 18), the arguments employed by Hitzig in
mencement of its rebuilding, Josephus gives in the passage referred to
above the years of the several reigns of the kings and judges of Tyre from
Ithobal to Hirom, in whose reign Cyrus took the kingdom; from which it
is apparent that fifty years elapsed from the commencement of the siege of
Tyre to the fourteenth year of Hirom, in which Cyrus began to reign At
the same time, the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar is given by mistake
mstead of the seventeenth or nineteenth as the date of the beginning of
the siege. (Compare on this point Movers, PhSnizier, II 1 pp 437 sqn .
M. V Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs u. Bab. pp. 106 sqq.; and M. Duncker!
Gescn. des Altert. I. p. 841.)
CHAP. XXIX 17-21. 13
opposition to the ordinary rendering — "for they (Nebuchad-
nezzar and his army) have done it for me," i.e. have performed
their hard work at Tyre for me and by my commission — have
no force whatever. This use of v nB*^ is thoroughly estabhshed
by Gen. xxx. 30 ; and the objection which he raises, namely,
that " the assertion that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre in the
service of Jehovah could only have been properly made by
Ezekiel in the event of the city having been really conquered,"
is out of place, for this simple reason, that the assumption that
the city was not taken is a mere conjecture ; and even if the
conjecture could be sustained, the siege itself might still be a
work undertaken in the service of Jehovah. And the principal
argument, namely, " that we should necessarily expect HB")^
(instead of IW), inasmuch as with V£>y every Hebrew reader
would inevitably take "IK'S as referring to onVP," is altogether
wide of the mark ; for D^.'iitO does not signify the Egyptians in
this passage, but the land of Egypt alone is spoken of both in
the verse before us and throughout the oracle, and for this VifS^
is quite unsuitable, whereas the context suggests in the most
natural way the allusion to Nebuchadnezzar and his army.
But what is absolutely decisive is the circumstance that the
thought itself, "in consequence of what the Egyptians have
done to me," Le. what evil they have done, is foreign to, if not
at variance with, all the prophecies of Ezekiel concerning Egypt.
For the guilt of Egypt and its Pharaoh mentioned by Ezekiel
is not any crime against Jehovah, but simply Pharaoh's deifica-
tion of himself, and the treacherous nature of the help which
Egypt afforded to Israel. njn"ip = 7 nfc'y is not the appropriate
expression for this, in support of which assertion we might
point to "'? Vi>S in ch. xxiii. 38. — Ver. 21. On that day, namely,
when the judgment upon Egypt is executed by Nebuchadnezzar,
the Lord will cause a horn to sprout or grow to the house
(people) of Israel. The horn is a symbol of might and strength,
by which the attacks of foreigners are warded off. By the
overthrow of Judah the horn of Israel was cut off (Lam. ii. 3 ;
14 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
compare also Jer. xkiii. 25). In H^ n^??«< the promise coin-
cides, so far as the words are concerned, with Ps. cxxxu. 17 ;
but it also points back to the prophetic words of the godly
Hannah in 1 Sam. ii. 1, " My horn is exalted in Jehovah, my
month hath opened itself wide over my enemies," and is Mes-
sianic in the broader sense of the word. The horn which the
Lord will cause to sprout to the people of Israel is neither
Zerubbabel nor the Messiah, but the Messianic salvation. The
reason for connecting this promise of salvation for Israel with
the overthrow of the power of Egypt, as Havernick has observed,
is that " Egypt presented itself to the prophet as the power in
which the idea of heathenism was embodied and circumscribed."
In the might of Egypt the world-power is shattered, and the
overthrow of the world-power is the dawn of the unfolding of
the might of the kingdom of God. Then also will the Lord
give to His prophet an opening of the month in the midst of
Israel. These words are unquestionably connected with the
promise of God in ch. xxiv, 26, 27, that after the fall of Jeru-
salem the mouth of Ezekiel should be opened, and also with the
fulfilment of that promise in ch. xxxiii. 22 ; but they have a
much more comprehensive meaning, namely, that with the dawn
of salvation in Israel, i.e. in the church of the Lord, the word
of prophecy would sound forth in the richest measure, inasmuch
as, according to Joel (ch. ii.), a universal outpouring of the
Spirit of God would then take place. In this light Theodoret
is correct in his remark, ' that " through Ezekiel He signified
the whole band of prophets." But Kliefoth has quite mistaken
the meaning of the words when he discovers in them the
thought that " God would then give the prophet a new word
of God coricerning both Egypt and Israel, and that this is
contained in the oracle in ch. xxx. 1-19." Such a view as this
is proved at once to be false, apart from other grounds, by the
expression D3in3 (in the midst of them), which cannot be taken
as applying to Egypt and Israel, but can only refer to ri'3
''^'iT; the house of Israel.
CHAP. XXX. 1-19. 15
CHAP. XXX. 1-19. THE DAT OF JUDGMENT UPON EGYPT.
Commencing with a call to lamentation, the prophet announces
that the Lord's day of judgment upon the nations is near at
hand, and will burst upon Egypt, and the nations in alliance
with it (vers. 2-5). He then depicts in three strophes, with
the introductory words ''''' "lOK nbj the execution of this judg-
ment, namely : (a) the destruction of the might of Egypt and
the derastation of the land (vers. 6—9) ; (b) the enemy by
whom the judgment will be accomplished (vers. 10-12) ; and
(c) the extermination of the idols of Egypt, the conquest and
demolition of its fortresses, the slaughter of its male population,
and the captivity of the daughters of the land (vers. 13-19).
The heading does not contain any chronological information ;
and the contents furnish no definite critena for determining
with precision the date of the prophecy. Jerome assigns this
oracle to the same period as the prophecy in ch. xxix. 1-16,
whilst others connect it more closely with ch. xxix. 17-21, and
regard it as the latest of all Ezekiel's prophecies. The latter is
the conclusion adopted by Rosenmiiller, Havernick, Hitzig,
Kliefoth, and some others. The principal argument adduced
for linking it on to cji. xxix. 1 7 sqq. is, that in ver. 3 the day
of judgment upon Egypt is threatened as near at hand, and
this did not apply to the tenth year (ch. xxix. 1), though it was
perfectly applicable to the twenty-seventh (ch. xxix. 17), when
the siege of Tyre was ended, and Nebuchadnezzar was on the
point of attacking Egypt. But the expression, " the day of the
Lord is near at hand," is so relative a chronological phrase,
that nothing definite can be gathered from it as to the date at
which an oracle was composed. Nor does the fact that our
prophecy stands after the prophecy in ch. xxix. 17-21, which
is furnished with a date, prove anything ; for the other pro-
phecies which follow, and are furnished with dates, all belong
to a much earlier period. It is very evident from this that
ch. xxix. 17-21 is inserted without regard to chronological
16 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
sequence, and consequently ch, xsx. 1-19 may just as well
belong to the period between the tenth month of the tenth
year (ch. xxix. 1) and the first month of the eleventh year
(ch, XXX. 20), as to the twenty-seventh year (ch. xxix. 17),
since all the reasons assigned for the closer connection of our
prophecy with the one immediately preceding (ch. xxix. 17—21),
which is supposed to indicate similarity of date, are invalid ;
whilst, on the other hand, the resemblance of vers. 6 and 17
to ch. xxix. 10 and 12 is not suflScient to warrant the assump-
tion of a contemporaneous origin.
Vers. 1-5. Announcement of the judgment upon Egypt and
its allies. — Ver. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,
Ver. 2. Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, Howl ye ! Woe to the day ! Ver. 3. For the day is
mar, the day of Jehovah near, a day of cloud, the time of the
heathen will it be. Ver. 4. And the sword will come upon Egypt,
and there will be pangs in Ethiopia, when the slain fall in Egypt,
and they take her possessions, and her foundations are destroyed.
Ver. 5. Ethiopians and Libyans andLydians, and all the rabble,
and Chub, and the sons of the covenant land, will fall by the
sword with them.— In the announcement of the judgment in
vers. 2b and 3, Ezekiel rests upon Joel i. 13, 15, and ii. 2
where the designation already applied to the judgment upon the
heathen world by Obadiah, viz. " the day of Jehovah " (Obad.
ver. 15), is followed by such a picture of the nearness and
terrible nature of that day, that even Isaiah (Isa. xiii. 6, 9) and
Zephaniah (Zeph. i. 7, 14) appropriate the words of Joel.
Ezekiel also does the same, with this exception, that he uses nn
instead of Pins, and adds to the force of the expression by the
repetition of 0\> ain^. !„ ver. 3b, the words from py Di' to
njn: are not to be taken together as forming one sentence, «a
day of cloud will the time of the nations be" (De Wette) be
cause the idea of a "time of the nations" has not been men-
tioned before, so as to prepare the way for a description of its
real nature here. IJV D^' and D^ij nv contain two co-ordinate
CHAP. XXX. 1-5. 17
affirmations concerning the day of Jehovah. It will be a day
of cloud, i.e. of great calamity (as in Joel ii. 2), and a time of
the heathen, i.e. when heathen (D*l3 without the article) are
judged, when their might is to be shattered (cf. Isa. xiii. 22).
This day is coming upon Egypt, which is to succumb to the
sword. Ethiopia will be so terrified at this, that it will writhe
convulsively with anguish (fij^pn, as in Nah. ii. 11 and Isa.
xxi. 3). I=i3bPi nj?? signifies the plundering and removal of the
possessions of the land, like Hjbn NB'3 in ch. xxix. 19. The
subject to ini5? is indefinite, " they," i.e. the enemy. The
foundations of Egypt, which are to be destroyed, are not the
foundations of its buildings, but may be understood in a
figurative sense as relating to persons, after the analogy of
Isa. xix. 10 ; but the notion that Cush, Phut, etc. (ver. 9), i.e.
the mercenary troops obtained from those places, which are
called the props of Egypt in ver. 6, are intended, as Hitzig
assumes, is not only extremely improbable, but decidedly
erroneous. The announcement in ver. 6, that Cush, Phut, etc.,
are to fall by the sword along with the Egyptians (D^N), is
sufficient of itself to show that these tribes, even if they were
auxiliaries or mercenaries of Egypt, did not constitute the
foundations of the Egyptian state and kingdom ; but that, on
the contrary, Egypt possessed a military force composed of
native troops, which was simply strengthened by auxiliaries
and allies. We there interpret n''nilD*, after the analogy of
Ps. xi. 3 and Ixxxii. 5, as referring to the real foundations of
the state, the regulations and institutions on which the stability
and prosperity of the kingdom rest. The neighbouring,
friendly, and allied peoples will also be smitten by the judg-
ment together with the Egyptians. Cush, i.e. the Ethiopians,
Phut and Lud, i.e. the Libyans and African Lydians (see the
comm. on ch. xxvii. 10), are mentioned here primarily as
auxiliaries of Egypt, because, according to Jer. xlvi. 9, they
served in Necho's army. By 3"ijjn*?3, the whole of the mixed
crowd (see the comm. on 1 Kings x. 15, — Travre? oi iiriniicToi,
EZEK. II. B
18 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
LXX.), we are then to understand the mercenary soldiers its.
the Egyptian army, which were obtained from diffei-ent
nations (chiefly Greeks, lonians, and Oarians, oi iirUovpoi,, as
they are called hy Herodotus, iii. 4, etc.). In addition to
these, 3=13 {air. Xey.) is also mentioned. Havernick connects
this name with the people of Kufa, so frequently met with on
the Egyptian monuments. But, according to Wilkinson {^Man-
ners, etc., I. 1, pp. 361 sqq.), they inhabited a portion of Asia,
farther north even than Palestine ; and he ranks them (p. 379)
among the enemies of Egypt. Hitzig therefore imagines that
Kufa is probably to be found in Kohistan, a district of Media,
from which, however, the Egyptians can hardly have obtained
mercenary troops. And so long as nothing certain can be
gathered from the advancing Egyptological researches with
regard to the name Cub, the conjecture that ya is a mis-spelling
for DIP is not to be absolutely set aside, the more especially as
this conjecture is naturally suggested by the D''317 of Nah. iii. 9
and 2 Chron. xvi. 8, and the form 2'h by the side of DOli" is
analogous to 'ih by the side of D'l^b in Jer. xlvi. 9, whilst the
Liby-Aegyptii of the ancients, who are to be understood by
the term D'^a?^ (see the comm. on Gen. x. 13), would be quite
in keeping here. On the other hand, the conjecture offered by
Gesenius {Thes. p. 664), viz. 3«, Nubia, has but a very weak
support in the Arabic translator ; and the supposition that :i.i?
may have been the earlier Hebrew form for Nubia (Hitzig), is
destitute of any solid foundation. Maurer suggests Cob, a city
(municipium) of Mauretania, in the Itiner. Anton, p. 17, ed.
Wessel. — The following expression, "sons of the covenant
land," is also obscure. Hitzig has correctly observed, that it
cannot be synonymous with Dnna ^bya, their allies. But we
certainly cannot admit that the covenant land (made definite by
the article) is Canaan, the Holy Land (Hitzig and Kliefoth) ;
although Jerome writes without reserve, de Jiliis terrae foederis,
Ke. dep<>pulo Judaeorum; and the LXX. in their translation,
Ka, rcov vlwv t^j Biud^Kri, ^ov, undoubtedly thought of the
CHAP. XXX. 6-9. 19
Jews, who fled to Egypt, according to Theodoret's exposition,
along with Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem and
the murder of the governor Gedaliah, for fear of the vengeance
of the Chaldeans (Jer. xlii., xliii., and xliv.). For the applica-
tion of the expression " land of the covenant " to the Holy Land
is never met with either in the Old or New Testament, and
cannot be inferred, as Hitzig supposes, from Ps. Ixxiv. 20 and
Dan. xi. 28, or supported in any way from either the epithet
"the land of promise" in Heb. xi. 9, or from Acts iii. 25,
where Peter calls the Jews " the children of the prophets and
of .the covenant." We therefore agree with Schmieder in
regarding nnan ps as signifying a definite region, though one
unknown to us, in the vicinity of Egypt, which was inhabited
by a tribe that was independent of the Egyptians, yet bound
to render help in time of war.
Vers. 6-9. All the supports and helpers of Egypt will fall, and
the whole land with its cities will be laid waste. — Ver. 6. Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Those who support Egypt will fall, and
its proud might will sink ; from Migdol to Syene will they fall
by the sword therein, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 7.
And they will lie waste in the midst of xoaste lands, and its cities
be in the midst of desolate cities. Ver. 8. They shall learn that
I am Jehovah, when I bring fire into Egypt, and all its helpers
are shattered, Ver. 9. In that day will messengers go forth from
me in ships to terrify the confident Ethiopia, and there will be
writhing among them as in the day of Egypt; for, behold, it
Cometh. — "Those who support Egypt" are not the auxiliary
tribes and allies, for they are included in the term n'^fj? in
ver. 8, but the idols and princes (ver. 13), the fortified cities
(ver. 15), and the warriors (ver. 17), who formed the founda-
tion of the might of the kingdom. WV fitii, " the pride of its
might," which is an expression applied in ch. xxiv. 21 to the
temple at Jerusalem, is to be taken here in a general sense,
and understood not merely of the temples and idols of Egypt,
but as the sum total of all the things on which the Egyptians
20 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
rested the might of their kingdom, and on the ground of which
they regarded it as indestructible. For 'U1 i'''=lJ'?!?, see the comm.
on ch. sxix. 10. The subject to M 1% is the 'iSD >2ao. Ver. 7
is almost a literal repetition of ch. xxis. 12 ; and the subject to
iBtyj is DHV? regarded as a country, though the number and
gender of the verb have both been regulated by the form of
the noun. The fire which God will bring into Egypt (ver. 8)
is the fire of war. Ver. 9. The tidings of this judgment of
God will be carried by messengers to Ethiopia, and there
awaken the most terrible dread of a similar fate. In the first
hemistich, the prophet has Isa. xviii. 2 floating before his mind.
The messengers, who carry the tidings thither, are not the
warlike forces of Ohaldea, who are sent thither by God ; for
they would not be content with performing the service of mes-
sengers alone. We have rather to think of Egyptians, who
flee by ship to Ethiopia. The messengers go, 'JSppj from
before Jehovah, who is regarded as being present in Egypt,
while executing judgment there (cf. Isa. xix. 1). D''Vj as in
Num. xxiv. 24 = D'^v (Dan. xi. 30), ships, trieres, according to
the Rabbins, in Hieron. Symm. on Isa. xxxiii. 21, and the
Targum on Num. (cf. Ges. Thes. p. 1156). nD3 is attached
to iyi3. Gush secure or confident, equivalent to the confident
Gush (Ewald, § 287c). 'rhn nn^ni, repeated from ver. 4.
Dna, among the Ethiopians. '"iSD Di''3, as in the day of Egypt,
i.e. not the present day of Egypt's punishment, for the
Ethiopians have only just heard of this from the messengers;
but the ancient, well-known day of judgment npon Egypt
(Ex. XV. 12 sqq.). Ewald and Hitzig follow the LXX. in
taking Di^3 for Di'S; but this is both incorrect and unsuitable,
and reduces 'iSD Di''3 into a tame repetition of NSnn ni>3. The
subject to nN3 nan is to be taken from the context, viz. that
which is predicted in the preceding verses (vers. 6-8).
Vers. 10-12. The executors of the judgment.— Ver. 10.
Thus saith the Lord JehovaJi, And I will put an end to tJie
tumult of Egypt through Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
CHAP. XXX. 13-19. 21
Ver. 11. He and Ms people with him, violent of the nations, will
he brought to destroy the land; they will draw their swords
against Egypt, and fill the land loiiJi slain. Ver. 12. And I
will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of wicked
men, and lay waste the land and its fulness hy the hand of
foreigners; 1 Jehovah have spohen it. — lion cannot be under-
stood as signifying either the multitude of people only, or the
abundance of possessions alone ; for n''aB'ri is not really ap-
plicable to either of these meanings. They are evidently both
included in the )ion, which signifies the tumult of the people in
the possession and enjoyment of their property (cf. ch. xxvi. 13).
The expression is thus specifically explained in vers. 11 and 12.
Nebuchadnezzar ■will destroy the land with his men of war,
slaying the people with its possessions. D;i2 ■'•flV, as in ch.
xxviii. 7. D^saiD, as in ch. xxiii. 42. 'W1 P''"in, cf. ch. xii. 14,
xxviii. 7. -"jn . . . 'KPD, as in ch. xi. 6. Q''"!'*';, the arms and
canals of the Nile, by which the land was watered, and on which
the fertility and prosperity of Egypt depended. The drying up
of the arms of the Nile must not be restricted, therefore, to the
fact that God would clear away the hindrances to the entrance
of the Chaldeans into the land, but embraces also the removal of
the natural resources on which the country depended. 130, to
sell a land or people into the hand of any one, i.e. to deliver it
into his power (cf. Deut. xxxii. 30 ; Judg. ii. 14, etc.). For
the fact itself, see Isa. xix. 4-6. For '1J1 ''n'B?'L|, see ch. xix. 7.
Vers. 13-19. Further description of the judgment. — Ver. 13.
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, 1 will exterminate the idols and cut
off Hie deities from Noph, and there shall be no more a prince
from the land of Egypt ; and I put terror upon the land of
Egypt. Ver. 14. And I lay Pathros waste, and bring fire into
Zoan, and execute judgments upon No; Ver. 15. And I pour out
my fury upon Sin, the stronghold of Egypt, and cut off the multi-
tude of No ; Ver. 16. And I put fire in Egypt ; Sin will writhe
in pain, and No will be broken open, and Noph — enemies by day.
Ver. 17. T/ie men of On and Buhastus will fall by the sword,
22 ■ THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and they themselves will go into captivity. Ver. 18. At Tach-
panches the day will be darkened when I shatter the yokes
of Egypt there, and an end will he put to its proud haughti-
ness ; cloud will cover it, and its daughters will go into cap-
tivity. Ver. 19. And thus I execute judgments upon Egypt,
that they may know that I am Jehovah. — Egypt will lose its
idols and its princes (cf. Jer. xlvi. 25). D'toJ and DyvS
are synonymous, signifying not . the images, but the deities ;
the former being the ordinary epithet applied to false deities
by Ezekiel (see the comm. on ch. vi. 4). the latter trace-
able to the reading of Isa. xix. 1. fji, contracted from ^liD,
Manoph or Menoph = fja in Hos. ix. 6, is Memphis, the ancient
capital of Lower Egypt, with the celebrated temple of Ptah,
one of the principal seats of Egyptian idolatry (see the comm.
on Hos. ix. 6 and Isa. xix. 13). In ver. 135 '"iXO pxD belongs
to N'B'3, there shall be no more a prince from the land of Egypt,
i.e. a native prince. nsT [nj, to put fear upon (cf. ch.
xxvi. 175). From Lower Egypt Ezekiel passes in ver. 14
to Upper Egypt {Pathros, see the comm. on ch. xxix. 14),
which is also to be laid waste, and then names several more of
the principal cities of Lower Egypt along with the chief city
of Upper Egypt. tJJS, Egypt. Zane, Copt. Jane, is the Tavk,
Tanis, of the Greeks and Romans, on the Tanitic arm of the
Nile, an ancient city of Lower Egypt ; see the comm. on Num.
xiii. 22 and Isa. xix. 11. t<3=tiDN sJj in Nah. iii. 8, probably
" ^^°<^e of Amon," Egypt. P-amen, i.e. house of Amon, the
sacred name of 'Hiebes, the celebrated royal city of Upper
Egypt, the Aih<; it^Xk; ^ fieydXr) of the Greeks (see the comm,
on Nah. iii. 8). r? (literally, mire ; compare the Aram.
i::D) IS nr,\o{,nov, Pelusium, which derives its name from
TT^Xo? (wv6,,aarai d-77o rov TrriXov ttt^Xo?, Strab. xvii. p. 802),
because there were swamps all round. It was situated on the
eastern arm of the Nile, to which it gave its name, at a distance
of twenty stadia from the sea. The Egyptian name Pheromi
also signifies dirty, or muddy. From this the Arabs have made
CHAP. XXX. 13-19. 23
Elfarama ; and in tlie vicinity of the few ruins of the ancient
Pelusium there is still a castle called "SJuds, Tineh (compare the
Chaldee W't?, clay, in Dan. ii. 41). Ezekiel calls it the
'• fortress or bulwark of Egypt," because, as Strabo (I.e.)
observes, " Egypt is difficult of access here from places in the
East ;" for which reason Hirtius {de hell. Al. c. 27) calls it
"the key of Egypt," and Suidas {s.v.) " the key both of the
entrance and exit of Egypt." On the history of this city, see
Leyrer in Herzog's Encyclopaedia. In N3 lion many of the
commentators find a play upon the name of the god iiON (Jer.
xlvi. 25), the chief deity of Thebes, which is possible, but not
very probable, as we should not expect to find a god mentioned
again here after ver. 13 ; and 'lliisn would be inappropriate. —
In ver. 16 Sin (= Pelusium) is mentioned again as the border
fortress. No (= Thebes) as the chief city of Upper Egypt,
and Noph {— Memphis) as the capital of Upper Egypt, as all
falling within the range of the judgment. The expression
noil ''nv fjj has caused some difficulty and given occasion to
various conjectures, none of which, however, commend them-
selves as either simple or natural explanations.' As Hitzig has
correctly observed, DOi'' ''"Vi is the same as Q'lnsa Tw in Jer.
XV. 8, and is the opposite of HT? ''TW in Obad. ver. 5. The
enemy who comes by day, not in the night, is the enemy who
does not shun open attack. The connection with fii is to be
explained by the same rule as Jer. xxiv. 2, " the one basket —
very good figs." Memphis will have enemies in broad daylight,
^ Ewald proposes to alter iiV into nv (after the Aramaean), " rust," and
renders it : " Memphis will be eternal rust." But to this Hitzig has very
properly objected thatia ch. xxiv. 6, 11, rust is called nspn ; and that even
in Ps. vi. 3 Doii does not mean perpetual or eternal. Havemick proposes
to explain Qiiv, from the Aramaean |3», to rend or tear in pieces,
" Memphis shall become perpetual rents." To this also it maybe objected,
that n'lV in Hebrew has the standing meaning of oppressors ; and that
•T
DOi') interdiu, is not equivalent to perpetual ; and still further, that the
preposition ? could not be omitted before inv-
24 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
i.e. will be filled with them, tj? = lis, J«, in Gen. xli. 45, 50
(Egyptian An, or Anu), is the popular name of Heliopolis in
Lower Egypt (see the comm. on Gen. xli. 45) ; and the form
)1S (a vain thing, or idol) is probably selected intentionally in
the sense of an idol-city (see the comm. on Hos. iv. 15),
because On-Heliopolis (tJ'OB'Tl''? in Jer. xliii. 13) was from time
immemorial one of the principal seats of the Egyptian worship
of the sun, and possessed a celebrated temple of the sun, with
a numerous and learned priesthood (see the comm. on Gen.
xli. 45, ed. 2). "??"'?', i.e. Bov^aa-ro-; (LXX.) or Bov-
^acrrk (Herod, ii. 59), Egyptian Pi-Pasht, i.e. the place of
Pasht, so called from the cat-headed Bubastis or Pasht, the
Egyptian Diana, which was worshipped there in a splendid
temple. It was situated on the royal canal leading to Suez,
which was begun by Necho and finished under Ptolemy II., not
far from its junction with the Pelusiac arm of the Nile. It
was the chief seat of the Nomas Bubastites, was destroyed by
the Persians, who demolished its walls (Diod. Sic. xvi. 51), and
has entirely disappeared, with the exception of some heaps
of ruins which still bear the name of Tel Bastah, about seven
hours' journey from the Nile (compare Ges. Thes. pp. 1101 sqq.,
and Leyrer in Herzog's Encyclopaedia^ s.v.). The Nomos of
Bubastis, according to Herod, ii. 166, was assigned to the
warrior-caste of Calaslrians. The D''"]!in3, the young military
men, will fall by the sword ; and nan^ not al ywaiKe^ (LXX.
and others), but the cities themselves, i.e. their civil population
as distinguished from the military garrison, shall go into exile.
This explanation of nan is commended by ^''^133 in ver. 18.
Dn:ann or Dmanri (Jer. xliii. 7 sqq., xliv. 1, xlvi. 14), and
Dpann in Jer. ii. 16 (Chetib), is Tdcfivat,, Td^vt} (LXX.), or
Ad(j)vai (Herod, ii. 30. 107), a frontier city of Egypt in the
vicinity of Pelusium, after the time of Psammetichus a forti-
fication with a strong garrison, where a palace of Pharaoh was
also to be found, according to Jer. xliii. 9. After the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem, a portion of the Jews took refuge there
CHAP. XXX. 13-19. 25
and to them Jeremiah predicted the punishment of God on
the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xliii. 7 sqq.,
xliv. 1 sqq.). In the case of "[Hfn the reading varies ; the
printed Masora at Gen. xxxix. 3 giving %^r\ as the reading to
be found in all the codices examined by the author of the
Masora; whereas many of the codices and printed editions
have ^B'n, and this is adopted in all the ancient versions. This
is evidently the correct reading, as TiETi does not furnish an
appropriate meaning, and the parallel passages, ch. xxxii. 8,
Isa. xiii. 10, Joel iii. 4, Amos viii. 9, all favour r[^n. The
darkening of the day is the phenomenal prognostic of the
dawning of the great day of judgment upon the nations (cf.
Joel ii. 10, iii.. 4, iv. 15; Isa. xiii. 10, etc.). This day is
to dawn upon Egypt at Tachpanches, the border fortress of
the land towards Syria and Palestine, when the Lord will break
the yokes of Egypt. These words point back to Lev. xxvi. 13,
where the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt is
called the breaking in pieces of its yokes (see also Ezek.
xxxiv. 27). That which took place then is to be repeated here.
The yokes which Egypt put upon the nations are to be broken ;
and all the proud might of that kingdom is to be brought to an
end (aj5? I^^?} ^s in ver. 6). In ver. 186, N^n, which stands at the
head in an absolute form, points back to DHjanna. The city
(^Daphne) will be covered with cloud, i.e. will be overthrown by
the judgment ; and her daughters, i.e. the smaller cities and
hamlets dependent upon her (cf. ch. xvi. 46 and xxvi. 6), will
go into captivity in the persons of their inhabitants. It follows
from this that Daphne was the chief city of a Nomas in Lower
Egypt ; and this is confirmed by the circumstance that there
was a royal palace there. If we compare the threat in this
verse, that in Tachpanches an end is to be put to the proud
might of Pharaoh, with the threatening words of Jer. xliii. 9 sqq.,
to the effect that Nebuchadnezzar would set up his throne at
Tachpanches and smite Egypt, it is evident that the situation
of Daphne must at that time have been such that the war
26 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
between Egypt and Babylonia would necessarily be decided
in or near this city. These prophetic utterances cannot be
explained, as Kliefoth supposes, from the fact that many Jews
had settled in Daphne; nor do the contents of this verse
furnish any proof that Ezekiel did not utter this prophecy of
his till after the Jews had settled there (Jer. xliii. and sliv,).
Ver. 19 serves to round off the prophecy.
CHAP. XXX. 20-2G. DESTRUCTION OF THE MIGHT OP PHAEAOH
BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR.
According to the heading in ver. 20, " In the eleventh year,
in tlie first {month'), on the seventh of the month, the word of
Jehovah came to me, saying," this short word of threatening
against Egypt falls in the second year of the siege of Jeru-
salem by the Chaldeans, and, as ver. 21 clearly shows, after the
army of Pharaoh Hophra, which marched to the relief of
Jerusalem, had been defeated by the Chaldeans who turned to
meet it (Jer. xxxvii. 5, 7). If we compare with this the date of
the first prophecy against Egypt in ch. xxix. 1, the prophecy
before us was separated from the former by an interval of
three months. But as there is no allusion whatever in ch. xxix.
to Pharaoh's attempt to come to the relief of the besieged city
of Jerusalem, or to his repulse, the arrival of the Egyptian
army in Palestine, its defeat, and its repulse by the Chaldeans,
seems to have occurred in the interval between these two pro-
phecies, towards the close of the tenth year.
Ver. 21. Son of man, the arm of Pharaoh the king of Egypt
have I broken ; and, behold, it will no more be bound up, to apply
remedies, to put on a bandage to bind it up, that it may grow
strong to grasp the sword. Ver. 22. Therefore thus saith the
Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal with Pharaoh the king of
Egypt, and will break both his arms, the strong one and the
broken one, and will cause the sword to fall out of his hand.
Ver. 23. And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and
CHAP. XXX. 21-26. 27
disperse them in the lands, Ver. 24. And will strengthen the arms
of the king of Babylon, and give my sword into his hand, and will
break the arms of Pharaoh, so that he shall groan the groanings
of a pierced one before him. Ver. 25. I will strengthen the arms
of the king of Babylon, and the arms of Pharaoh will fall ; and
they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I give my sword into
the hand of the Mng of Babylon, that he may stretch it against the
land of Egypt. Ver. 26. I will scatter the Egyptians among the
nations, and disperse them in the lands ; and they shall know that
lam Jehovah.. — The perfect '^fp^^ in ver. 21 is not a prophetic
utterance of the certainty of the future, but a pure preterite.
This may be seen " both from the allusion in ver. 216 to the
condition resulting from the n^E', and also to the obviously
antithetical relation of ver. 22, in which future events are
predicted " (Hitzig). The arm is a figurative expression for
power, here for military power, as it wields the sword. God
broke the arm of Pharaoh by the defeat which the Chaldeans
inflicted upon Pharaoh Hophra, when he was marching to the
relief of besieged Jerusalem. fiE'in is a present, as is apparent
from the infinitive clauses ('W1 nn?) which follow, altogether
apart from nan ; and B'an signifies to bind up, for the purpose
of healing a broken limb, that remedies may be applied and a
bandage put on. ^\^Vp, that it may become strong or sound,
is subordinate to the preceding clause, and governs the infini-
tive which follows. The fact that the further judgment which
is to fall upon Pharaoh is introduced with 15? (therefore) here
(ver. 22), notwithstanding the fact that it has not been preceded
by any enumeration of the guilt which occasioned it, may be
accounted for on the ground that the causal t?? forms a link
with the concluding clause of ver. 21 : the arm shall not be
healed, so as to be able to grasp or hold the sword. Because
Pharaoh is not to attain any more to victorious power, there-
fore God will shatter both of his arms, the strong, i.e. the
sound one and the broken one, that is to say, will smite it so
completely, that the sword will fall from his hand. Tho
28 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Egyptians are to be scattered among the nations, as is repeated
in ver. 23 verbatim from ch. xxix. 12. God will give the
sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and equip and
strengthen him to destroy the might of Pharaoh, that the latter
may groan before him like one who is pierced with the sword.
This thought is repeated in vers. 25 and 26 with an intimation
of the purpose of this divine procedure. That purpose is :
that men may come to recognise Jehovah as God the Lord.
The subject to iP;'! is indefinite ; and the rendering of the
LXX. is a very good one, Koi yvScromai, Trai/re?.
CHAP. XXXI. THE GLOET AND FALL OF ASSHUE A TYPE
OF EGTPT.
In two months minus six days from the time when the pre-
ceding word of God was uttered, Ezekiel received anothei
threatening word against the king and the people of Egypt,
in which the former announcement of the destruction of the
might of Egypt was confirmed by a comparison drawn between
the power of Egypt and that of Asshur. Ezekiel having
opened his prophecy with the question, whom does Pharaoh
with his might resemble (ver. 2), proceeds to depict Asshur as
a mighty towering cedar (vers. 3-9) which has been felled and
cast down by the prince of the nations on account of its height
and pride (vers. 10-14), so that everything mourned over its
fall, because many nations went down with it to hell (vers.
15-17). The question, whom Pharaoh resembles, is then repeated
in ver. 18 ; and from the preceding comparison the conclusion
is drawn, that he will perish like that lofty cedar. — The remi-
niscence of the greatness of the Assyrian empire and of its
destruction was well adapted to overthrow all reliance upon the
might and greatness of Egypt. The fall of that great empire
was still so fresh in the mind at the time, that the reminiscence
could not fail to make a deep impression upon the prophet's
hearers.
CHAP. XXSI. 1-9. 29
Vers. 1-9. The might of Pharaoh resembles the greatness
and glory of Asshur.— Ver. 1. In the eleventh year, in the third
(month), on the first of the month, the word of Jehovah came to
me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, say to Pharaoh the king of
Egypt, and to his tumult. Whom, art thou like in thy greatness ?
Ver. 3. Behold, Asshur was a cedar-tree upon Lebanon, beautiful
in branches, a shadowing thicket, and its top was high in growth,
and among tlm clouds. Ver. 4. Water brought him up, the flood
made him high, its streams went round about its plantation, and
it sent its channels to all the trees of the field. Ver. 5. There-
fore its growth became higher than all the trees of the field,
and its branches became great, and its boughs long from many
waters in its slwoting out. Ver. 6. In its branches all the birds
of the heaven made their nests, and under its boughs all the
beasts of the field brought forth, and in its shadow sat great
nations of all kinds. Ver. 7. And he was beautiful in his
greatness, in the length of his shoots ; for his root was by many
waters. Ver. 8. Cedars did not obscure him in the garden of
God, cypresses did not resemble his branches, and plane-trees
were not like his boughs; no tree in the garden of God resem-
bled him in his beauty. Ver. 9. I had made him beautiful
in the multitude of his shoots, and all the trees of Eden
which were in the garden of God envied him. — The word of
God is addressed to King Pharaoh and to ^JiO'!!, his tumult,
i.e. whoever and whatever occasions noise and tumult in the
land. We must not interpret this, however, as Hitzig has done,
as signifying the ruling classes and estates in contrast with the
quiet in the land, for no such use of licn is anywhere to be
found. Nor must we regard, the word as applying to the mul-
titude of people only, but to the people with their possessions,
their riches, which gave rise to luxury and tumult, as in ch,
XXX. 10. The inquiry, whom does Pharaoh with his tumult
resemble in his greatness, is followed in the place of a reply by
a description of Asshur as a glorious cedar (vers. 3-9). It is
true that Ewald has followed the example of Meibom (vanarum
30 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ill Cod. Hehr. interprett. spec. III. p. 70) and J. D. Mlchaelis,
and endeavours to set aside the allusion to Asshnr, by taking
the word TIB'S in an appellative sense, and understanding "ills'??
PK as signifying a particular kind of cedar, namely, the tallest
species of all. But apart altogether from there being no foun-
dation virhatever for such an explanation in the usage of the
language, there is nothing in the fact to justify it. For it is
not anywhere affirmed that Pharaoh resembled this cedar ; on
the contrary, the question, whom does he resemble? is asked
again in ver. 18 (Hitzig). Moreover, Michaelis is wrong in
the supposition that " from ver. 10 onwards it becomes perfectly
obvious that it is not Assyria but Egypt itself which is meant
by the cedar-tree previously described." Under the figure of
the felling of a cedar there is depicted the overthrow of a king
or monarchy, which has already taken place. Compare vers.
12 and 16, where the past is indicated quite as certainly as the
future in ver. 18. And as ver. 18 plainly designates the over-
throw of Pharaoh and his power as still in the future, the cedar,
whose destruction is not only threatened in vers. 10—17, but
declared to have already taken place, can only be Asshnr, and
not Egypt at all.
The picture of the glory of this cedar recalls in several
respects the similar figurative description in ch. xvii. Asshur
is called a cedar upon Lebanon, because it was there that the
most stately cedars grew. ^VP ^P, a shade-giving thicket
(7X0 is a Hiphil participle of ^J^s), belongs to s^jy ns' as a further
expansion of f\}V, corresponding to the further expansion of
no'p n3| by " its top was among the clouds." If we bear this
in mind, the reasons assigned by Hitzig for alterintr Enh into
an adjective mn., and taking i'Sp as a substantive formation
after the analogy of aOD, lose all their force. Analogy would
only reqm're an adjective in the construct state in the event of
the three statements 'V ns|, '» tyVn, and 'p ^35 being co-ordinate
with one another. But what is decisive against the proposed
conjecture is the fact that neither the noun ^iXD nor the ad-
CHAP. XXXL 1-9. 31
jective t5nn is ever met with, and that, in any case, ^'^0 can-
not signify foliage. The rendering of the Vulgate, ^'■frondibus
nemorosus," is merely guessed at, whilst the Seventy have
omitted the word as unintelligible to them. For ^''^^V., thicket
of clouds, see the comm. on ch. xix. 11 ; and for JTISV, that on
ch. xvii. 3. The cedar grew to so large a size because it was
richly watered (ver. 4). A flood poured its streams round about
the place where the cedar was planted, and sent out brooks
to all the trees of the field. The difficult words 'U1 ^''^I'lnrns
are to be taken literally thus : as for its (the flood's) streams, it
(the flood) was going round about its plantation, i.e. round
about the plantation belonging to the flood or the place situated
near it, where the cedar was planted. flN is not to be taken as
a preposition, but as a sign of the accusative, and ^''^liir'^^ as
an accusative used for the more precise definition of the manner
in which the flood surrounded the plantation. It is true that
there still remains something striking in the masculine ^7'n,
since Qinrij although of common gender, is construed throughout
as a feminine, even in this very verse. But the difficulty remains
even if we follow Ewald, and take ^?n to be a defectively
written or irregular form of the Hipliil Jlvi'"'; a conjecture
which is precluded by the use of W^<^, to cause to run = to
cause to flow away, in ch. xxxii. 14. i^ysD, its (the flood's)
plantation, i.e. the plantation for which the flood existed. Dinn
is used here to signify the source or starting-point of a flood,
as in Deut. viii. 7, where niD'nri are co-ordinate with niJ^y. —
While the place where the cedar was planted was surrojinded
by the streams of the flood, only the brooks and channels of
this flood reached to the trees of the field. The cedar therefore
surpassed all the trees of the field in height and luxuriance of
growth (ver. 5). ^'i]'^\, an Aramean mode of spelling for nri3|i ;
and JiSjTjDj a-jT. Xery., an Aramean formation with T inserted,
for nsyp, branches. For rhiis, see the comm. on ch. xvii. 6.
in?B'3 cannot mean " since it (the stream) sent out the water "
(Ewald) ; for although Dinn in ver. 4 is also construed as a
32 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
masculine, the sufSx cannot be taken as referring to CAnn, for
this is much too far off. And the explanation proposed by
Rosenmiiller, Havernick, Kliefoth, and others, " as it (the tree)
sent them (the branches) out," is open to this objection, that
in^ra would then contain a spiritless tautology; since the
stretching out of the branches is already contained in the fact
of their becoming numerous and long. The tautology has no
existence if the object is left indefinite, " in its spreading out,"
Le. the spreading not only of the branches, but also of the
roots, to which njB' is sometimes applied (cf. Jer. xvii. 8). By
the many waters which made the cedar great, we must not
understand, either solely or especially, the numerous peoples
which rendered Assyria great and mighty, as the Chaldee and
many of the older commentators have done. It must rather
be taken as embracing everything which contributed to the
growth and greatness of Assyria. It is questionable whether
the prophet, when describing the flood which watered the cedar
plantation, had the description of the rivers of Paradise in
Gen. ii. 10 sqq. floating before his mind. Ewald and Havernick
think that he had ; but Hitzig and Kliefoth take a decidedly
opposite view. There is certainly no distinct indication of
any such allusion. We meet with this for the first time from
ver. 8 onwards. In vers. 6-9 the greatness and glory of
Asshur are still further depicted. Upon and under the branches
of the stately tree, all creatures, birds, beasts, and men, found
shelter and protection for life and increase (ver. G; cf. oh.
xvii. 23 and Dan. iv. 9). In Can D';ri>3, all kinds of great
nations, the fact glimmers through the figure. The tree was
so beautiful («1'5 from nsj) in its greatness, that of all the trees
in the garden of God not one was to be compared with it, and
all envied it on that account ; that is to say, all the other nations
and kingdoms in God's creation were far inferior to Asshur in
greatness and glory. D'-n^N ]i is the garden of Paradise ; and
consequently OJ? in vers. 9, 16, and 18 is also Paradise, as in
ch. xxviii. 13. There is no ground for Kliefoth's objection,
CHAP. XXXI. 10-14. 33
that if I'ly be takeii-ifj this sense, the words " which are in the
garden of God " will contain a superfluous pleonasm, a mere
tautology. In Gen. ii. 8 a distinction is also made between HJ?
and the garden in Eden. It was not all Eden, but the garden
planted by Jehovah in Eden, which formed the real paradisaical
creation ; so that the words " which are in the garden of God "
give intensity to the idea of the " trees of Eden." Moreover,
as Havernick has correctly pointed out, there is a peculiar
emphasis in the separation of CnpN J3a from CyjX in ver. 8 :
" cedars • • . even such as were found in the garden of God."
Not one even of the other and most glorious trees, viz. cypresses
and planes, resembled the cedar Asshur, planted by God by
many waters, in its boughs and branches. It is not stated in
so many words in vers. 8 and 9 that the cedar Asshur stood
in the garden of God ; but it by no means follows from this,
that by the garden of God we are to understand simply the
world and the earth as the creation of God, as Kliefoth
imagines, and in support of which he argues that " as all the
nations and kingdoms of the world are regarded as trees planted
by God, the world itself is quite consistently called a garden or
plantation of God." The very fact that a distinction is made
between trees of the field (vers. 4 and 5) and trees of Eden in
the garden of God (vers. 8 and 9), shows that the trees are not
all regarded here as being in the same sense planted by God.
If the garden of God stood for the world, where should we
then have to look for the field (H'lfe'n)? The thought of vers.
8 and 9 is not that " not a single tree in all God's broad earth
was to be compared to the cedar Asshur," but that even of the
trees of Paradise, the garden in Eden, there was not one so
beautiful and glorious as the cedar Asshur, planted by God by
many waters.
"Vers. 10-14. The felling of this cedar, or the overthrow of
Asshur on account of its pride. — Ver. 10. Tlierefore thus said
the Lord Jehovah, Because thou didst exalt thyself in height, and
he stretched his top to the midst of the clouds, and his heart exalted
EZEK. II.
34 THE PBOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
itself in its height, Ver. 11. I tvill give him into the hand of the
prince of the nations ; he shall deal with him : for his wickedness
I rejected him. Ver. 12. And strangers cut him down, violent
one^ of the nations, and cast him away : ripon the mountains and
in all the valleys his shoots fell, and his boughs were broken in
pieces into all the deep places of the earth ; and all the nations of
the earth withdrew from his shadow, and let him lie, Ver. 13.
Upon his fallen trunk all the birds of the heaven settle, and all the
beasts of the field are over his branches : Ver. 14. ^lat no trees by
the water may exalt themselves on account of their height, or stretch
their top to the midst of the clouds, and no water-drinkers stand
upon themselves in their exaltation : for they are all given up to death
into hell, in the midst of the children of men, to those tliat go into the
grave. — In the description of the cause of the overthrow of Asshur
which commences with IK'S \)i\^ the figurative language changes
in the third clause into the literal fact, the towering of the
cedar being interpreted as signifying the lifting up of the heart
in his height, — that is to say, in his pride. In the first clause
the tree itself is addressed ; but in the clauses which follow, it is
spoken of in the third person. The direct address in the first
clause is to be explained from the vivid manner in which the
fact presented itself. The divine sentence in vers. 10 and 11
is not directed against Pharaoh, but against the Assyrian, who
is depicted as a stately cedar ; whilst the address in ver. 10a,
and the imperfect (future) in ver. 11a, are both to be accounted
for from the fact that the fall of Asshur is related iu the form
in which it was denounced on the part of Jehovah upon that
imperial kingdom. The perfect "ION is therefore a preterite
here: the Lord said ... for His part; because Asshur has
exalted itself in the pride of its greatness, I give it up. The
form wansi is not to be changed into inansj, but is defended
against critical caprice by the imperfect T\V^T which follows.
That the penal sentence of God is not to be regarded as being
first uttered in the time then present, but belongs to the past,—
and therefore the words merely communicate what God had
CHAP. XXXT. 10-14 35
already spoken, — is clearly shown by the preterites commencing
with in''nBn3j the historical tenses Wnnasi and ^i^^% and the
preterite W3J, which must not be turned into futures in violation
of grammar, noipa Piaa does not mean, to be high in its height,
which would be a tautology ; but to exalt itself (be proud) in,
or on account of, its height. And in the same way is DIT also
affirmed of the heart, in the sense of exultation from pride.
For the fact itself, compare Isa. x. 5 sqq. D;i3 i'N does not
mean God, but a powerful one of the nations, Le. Nebuchad-
nezzar. ?K is a simple appellative from ^^b?, the strong one ;
and is neither a name of God nor a defective form for ^'?<, the
construct state of ?^«, a ram. For this defective form is only
met with once in the case of ?'S, a ram, namely, in Job xlii. 8,
where we have the plural Dv??> and nowhere else ; whereas, in
the case of ?N, DvN, in the sense of a strong one, the scriptio
plena very frequently alternates with the defectiva. Compare,
for example, Job xlii. 8, where both readings occur just as in
this instance, where many mss. have ^'N (yid. de Eossi, variae
kctt. ad h. I.) ; also Ex. xv. 15 and Ezek. xvii. 13, "");% com-
pared with vN in Ezek. xxxii. 21, after the analogy of 'TJ,
2 Sam. xxii. 29, and n''T?,.2 Chron. ii. 16. i^ nfc'j);| May jg not a
relative clause, " who should treat him ill," nor is the 1 relat.
omitted on account of the preceding itt'JJ, as Hitzig imagines ;
but it is an independent sentence, and nE"))^ is a forcible expres-
sion for the imperative : he will deal with him, equivalent to,
" let him deal with him." p HE'V, to do anything to a person,
used here as it frequently is in an evil sense; compare Ps.
Ivi. 5. ^J'K'"!? — or iJ'?n|, which Norzi and Abarbanel (in de
Eossi, variae lectt. ad h. I.) uphold as the reading of many of
the more exact manuscripts and editions — belongs to 'n'riE'"i|! :
for, or according to, his wickedness, I rejected him. In ver. 12
the figure of the tree is resumed; and the extinction of the
Assyrian empire is described as the cutting down of the proud
cedar. D^i3 'sn^ C^t as in eh. xxviii. 7 and xxx. 11, 12.
inK'tS^I : they cast him away and let him lie, as in ch. xxix. 5,
36 THE PEOPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
xxxii. 4 ; so that in the first sentence the idea of casting away
predominates, and in the second that of letting lie. By the
casting away, the tree became so shattered to atoms that its
boughs and branches fell upon the mountains and on the low
ground and valleys of the earth, and the nations which had sat
under its shadow withdrew. 1T).5 (they descended) is to be
explained from the idea that the tree had grown upon a high
mountain (namely Lebanon); and Hitzig is mistaken in his
conjecture that V^-p}. was the original reading, as TI3, to fly, is
not an appropriate expression for CBJ?. On the falling of the
tree, the birds which had made their nests in its branches
naturally flew away. If, then, in ver. 13, birds and beasts are
said to settle upon the fallen trunk, as several of the commen-
tators have correctly observed, the description is based upon the
idea of a corpse, a rbso (Judg. xiv. 8), around which both birds
and beasts of prey gather together to tear it in pieces (cf. ch.
xxxii. 4 and Isa. xviii. 6). -'^ njn, to come towards or over
any one, to be above it. The thought expressed is, that many
nations took advantage of the fall of Asshur and rose into new
life upon its ruins. — Ver. 14. This fate was prepared for
Asshur in order that henceforth no tree should grow up to the
sky any more, i.e. that no powerful one of this earth (no king
or prince) should strive after superhuman greatness and might.
"itys \Vv? is dependent upon liT'riB'n|i in ver. 11 ; for vers. 12
and 13 are simply a further expansion of the thought expressed
in that word. O^o ^sj? are trees growing near the water, and
therefore nourished by water. For '^J^ ^naj] h\ see ver. 10.
The words '«i Dn'^K navi «i'l are difficult. As Dn^^N, with
Teere under N, to which the Masora calls attention, cannot be
the preposition ^^ with the suffix, many have taken titxh^ to be
a noun, in the sense of fortes, principes, or terebinthi (vid. Isa.
Ixi. 3), and have rendered the clause either ut non perstent tere-
binthi eorum in altitudine sua, omnes (ceterae arbores) bibentes
aquam (Vatabl., Starck, Maurer, and Kliefoth), or, that their
princes may not lift themselves up in their pride, all the
CHAP. XXXI. 10-14. 37
drinkers of water (Havernick). But both renderings founder
on the simple fact that they leave the suffix ian in oni^N either
unnoticed or unexplained. As only the trees of the water have
been spoken of previously, the suffix must be taken as referring
to them. But the water-trees have neither terebinths nor
princes ; on the contrary, these are what they must either be,
or signify. Terebinths, or princes of the water-trees, would be
senseless ideas. Ewald has therefore taken On'''?» as the object,
and rendered it thus : " and (that) no water-drinkers may con-
tend with their gods in their pride." He has not proved,
however, but has simply asserted, that 1W is to endure = to
contend (!). The only remaining course is to follow the
LXX., Targum, and many commentators, and to take nni^N
as a pronoun, and point it cnips, ^ iDy : to station oneself
against, or upon = 7J? 1ȴ (ch. xxxiii. 26), in the sense of
resting, or relying upon anything. The suffix is to be taken
in a reflective sense, as in ch. xxxiv. 2, etc. {vid. Ewald, § 314c),
and precedes the noun to which it refers, as in Prov. xiv. 20 for
example. 1311233, as in ver. 10, referring to pride. D;a 'nB'"i'3,
the subject of the sentence, is really synonymous with D^io ''Sy.'i'B,
except that the figure of the tree falls into the background
behind the fact portrayed. The rendering of the Berleburg
Bible is very good: "and no trees abounding in water stand
upon themselves (rely upon themselves) on account of their
height." The water-drinkers are princes of this earth who
have attained to great power through rich resources. " As a
tree grows through the moisture of water, so men are accus-
tomed to become proud through their abundance, not reflecting
that these waters have been supplied to them by God " (Starck).
The reason for this warning against proud self-exaltation is
given in ver. 146 in the general statement, that all the proud
great ones of this earth are delivered up to death. DjI3, all of
them, the water-drinkers or water-trees already named, by
whom kings, earthly potentates, are intended. rCFim Y^.^ =
ni>nnn ns (ch. xxvi. 20). D"in '?3 ^ina : in the midst of the
38 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
children of men, le. like all other men. " Thus the prophet
teaches that princes must die as well as the people, that death
and decomposition are common to both. Hence he takes all
ground of proud boasting away " (Starck).
Vers. 15-18. Impression made upon the nations by the fall
of Asshur; and its application to Pharaoh. — Ver. 15. Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day that he went down to hell I
caused a mourning : covered the flood for his sake, and stopped
its streams, and the great waters were held back: I caused
Lebanon to blacken itself for him, and all the trees of the field
pined for him. Ver. 16. I made the nations tremble at the noise
of his fall, when I cast him down to hell to those loho go into the
grave : and they comforted themselves in the nether world, even
all the trees of Eden, the choice and most beautiful of Lebanon,
all the water-drinkers. Ver. 17. They also went with him into
hell, to those pierced with the sword, who sat as his helpers in
his shade among the nations. Ver. 18. Whom dost thou thus
resemble in glory and greatness among the trees of Eden f So
shalt thou be thrust down to the trees of Eden into the nether
world, and lie among uncircumcised ones with those pierced with
the sword. This is Pliaraoh and all his tumult, is the saying of
the Lord Jehovah. — In order that the overthrow of the Assyrian,
i.e. the destruction of the Assyrian empire, may be placed in
the clearest light, a picture is drawn of the impression which it
made upon the whole creation. There is no necessity to under-
stand IKK nb in a past sense, as in ver. 10. What God did on
the overthrow of Asshur He may even now, for the first time,
make known through the prophet, for a warning to Pharaoh
and the people of Israel. That this is the way in which the
words are to be interpreted, is evident from the use of the per-
fect ''l^i-'^Kn, followed by the historical imperfects, which cannot
be taken in a prophetical sense, as Kliefoth supposes, or turned
into futures. It is contrary to Hebrew usage to connect ''iji^?!*'}
and ■'HES together as asyndeton, so as to form one idea, viz. " to
veil in mourning," as Ewald and Havernick propose. The
CHAP. XXXI. 15-18. 39
circumstances under which two verbs are joined together to
form one idea are of a totally different kind. In this instance
''???5i? is placed first as an absolute; and in the sentences
which follow, it is more specifically defined by a detail of the
objects which were turned into mourning. Dinri-ns vbv riDS
cannot mean here, " to cover the flood upon (over) him " (after
ch. xxiv. 7 and xxvi, 19) ; for this is altogether unsuitable to
either the more remote or the more immediate context. The
tree Asshur was not destroyed by a flood, but cut down by
strangers. The following clauses, "I stopped its streams,"
etc., show very plainly that the connection between the flood
(Dinn) and the tree which had been felled is to be understood
in accordance with ver. 4. A flood, which poured its nnnj
round about its plantation, made the cedar-tree great; and
now that the tree has been felled, God covers the flood on its
account. nS3 is to be explained from p^ HBS, to veil or wrap
in mourning, as Easchi, Kimchi, Vatablus, and many others
have shown. The word p^ is omitted, because it appeared
inappropriate to DinPl. The mourning of the flood is to be
taken as equivalent to drying up, so that the streams which
issued from it were deprived of their water. Lebanon, i.e. the
cedar-forest (Isa. x. 34), and all the other trees, mourned over
the fall of the cedar Asshur. T'lpi?, to clothe in black, i.e. to
turn into mourning, nspj? is regarded by Ewald as a Pual
formed after the Aramean mode, that is to say, by attaching
the syllable ae instead of doubling the middle radical ; whilst
Hitzig proposes to change the form into nSjiy. In any case the
word must be a perfect Pual, as a nomen verbale appears unsuit-
able ; and it must also be a third person feminine, the termina-
tion n— being softened into n— , as in nnit (Isa. lix. 5), and the
doubling of the '? being dropped on account of the Sheva ; so
that the plural is construed with the singular feminine (Ewald,
§ 317a). f^V, to faint with grief (cf. Isa. li. 20). The
thought is the following : all nature was so painfully affected
by the fall of Asshur, that the whole of the resources from
,40 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
which its prosperity and might had been derived were dried up.
To interpret the different figures as specially relating to princes
and nations appears a doubtful procedure, for the simple reason
that in ver. 16 the trembling of the nations is expressly named.
— "Whilst all the nations on the surface of the earth tremble at
the fall of Assyria, because they are thereby warned of the
perishable nature of all earthly greatness and of their own
destruction, the inhabitants of the nether world console them-
selves with the thought that the Assyrian is now sharing their
fate (for this thought, compare eh. xxxii. 31 and Isa. xiv. 9, 10).
"All the trees of Eden" are all the powerful and noble princes.
The idea itself, " trees of Eden," is explained by the apposi-
tion, " the choice and beautiful ones of Lebanon," i.e. the
picked and finest cedars, and still further strengthened by the
expression 0)0 ''"'t*''''! (cf. ver. 14). 3it01 "in3D are connected, as
in 1 Sam. ix. 2 ; and both words are placed side by side in the
construct state, as in Dan. i. 4 (cf. Ewald, § 3395). They
comfort themselves because they have gone down with him into
Sheol, so that he has no advantage over them. They come
thither to those pierced with the sword, i.e. to the princes and
peoples whom Asshur slew in wars to establish his imperial
power, iynll might also belong to ITV as a second subject. In
that case ipsa >i2f<^ should be taken in a relative sense : " and
his arm," i.e. his resources, " which sat in his shadow among
the nations." With this explanation ij)nr would be different
from on, and could only denote the army of the Assyrian. But
this does not harmonize with the sitting in his shadow among
the nations, for these words obviously point back to ver. 6 ; so
that ^ynr is evidently meant to correspond to Can D^iriia (ver. 6),
and is actually identical with Dn, i.e. with all the trees of Eden.
We therefore agree with Osiander, Grotius, and others, in
regarding the whole of the second hemistich as more precisely
determining the subject,— in other words, as a declaration of
the reason for their descending into hell along with the Assy-
rians,— and render the passage thus : " for as his arm (as his
CHAP. XXXII. 1-16. 41
might) they sat in his shadow among the nations ; " so that the
cop. 1 is used in place of a causal particle. In any case, the
conjecture which Ewald has adopted from the LXX. and
the Syriac, viz. ^JHTI., and his seed, in support of which appeal
might be made to Isa. xiv. 21, is unsuitable, for the simple
reason that the statement, that it sat in his shadow among the
nations, does not apply. — After this description of the greatness
and the destruction of the imperial power of Assyria, Ezekiel
repeats in ver. 18 the question already asked in ver. 3 : to whom
is Pharaoh like? '133, so, i.e. under such circumstances,
when the glorious cedar Asshur has been smitten by such a
fate (Hitzig). The reply to this question is really contained
in the description given already ; so that it is immediately
followed by the announcement, " and thou wilt be thrust down,"
etc. ^YlV., uncircumcised, equivalent to ungodly heathen
'a tan, not " he is," as that would require XW njjna ; but N^in
is the predicate: this is (i.e. so does it happen to) Pharaoh.
^3iDn, as in ver. 2.
CHAP. XXXII. LAMENTATIONS OVER THE RUIN OF PHARAOH
AND HIS PEOPLE.
The chapter contains two lamentations composed at different
times : the first, in vers. 1-1 6, relating to the fall of Pharaoh,
which rests upon the prophecy contained in ch. xxix. 1-16 and
oh. XXX. 20-26 ; the second, in vers. 17-32, in which the pro-
phecy concerning the casting down of this imperial power into
hell (ch. xxxi. 14-17) is worked out in elegiac form.
Vers. 1-16. Lamentation over the King of Egypt. —
Pharaoh, a sea-monster, is drawn by the nations out of his
waters with the net of God, and cast out upon the earth. His
flesh is given to the birds and beasts of prey to devour, and the
earth is saturated with his blood (vers. 2-6). At Iiis destruction
the lights of heaven lose their brightness, and all the nations
42 THE PEOPHECIES OP EZEKIEL.
will be amazed thereat (vers. 7-10). The king of Babel will
come upon Egypt, will destroy both man and beast, and will
make the land a desert (vers. 11-16).— The date given in
ver. 1 " In the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, on the first of tlie
month, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying " — agrees entirely
with the relation in which the substance of the ode itself stands to
the prophecies belonging to the tenth and eleventh years in ch,
xxix. 1-16 and ch. xxx. 20-26 ; whereas the different date found
in the Septuagint cannot come into consideration for a moment.
Vers. 2-6. The destruction of Pharaoh.— Ver. 2. Son of
man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and
say to him. Thou wast compared to a young lion among the nations,
and yet wast like a dragon in the sea ; thou didst break forth in
thy streams, and didst trouble the waters with thy feet, and didst
tread their streams. Ver. 3. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Therefore will I spread out my net over thee in the midst of many
nations, that they may draw thee up in my yam ; Ver. 4. And
will cast thee upon the larid, hurl thee upon the surface of the
field, and will cause all the birds of the heaven to settle upon thee,
and the beasts of the whole earth to satisfy themselves with thee,
Ver. 5. Thy flesh will I put upon the mountains, and fill the
valleys toith thy funeral heap, Ver. 6. I will saturate the earth
with thine outflow of thy blood even to the mountains, and the low
places shall become full of thee, — This lamentation begins, like
others, with a picture of the glory of the fallen king. Hitzig
objects to the ordinary explanation of the words ^''P'l? D^iS T'BS,
"keovTi. i9va)v vjjxoiwdr}^ (LXX.), leoni gentium assimilatus es
(Vulg.), on the ground that the frequently recurring n»"l3 would
only have this meaning in the present passage, and that -'B'pp,
which would then be synonymous, is construed in three other
ways, but not with the nominative. For these reasons he
adopts the rendering, " lion of the nations, thou belongest to
death." But it would be contrary to the analogy of all the
ni3''p to commence the lamentation with such a threat; and
Hitzig's objections to the ordinary rendering of the words will
CHAP. XXXII. 2-6. 43
Hot beat exatninatiou. The circumstance that the Niphal nDlJ
is only met with here in the sense of ofioiovadat, proves nothing ;
for T\m has this meaning in the Kal, Piel, and Hithpael, and
the construction of the Niphal with the accusative (not nomi-
native, as Hitzig says) may be derived without difficulty from
the construction of the synonymous -'E'loa with 3. But what is
decisive in favour of this rendering is the fact that the following
clause is connected by means of the adversative nrixi (but thou),
which shows that the comparison of Pharaoh to a D''3lii forms an
antithesis to the clause in which he is compared to a young lion.
If n''K)'!? 'i "i''S3 contained a declaration of destruction, not only
would this antithesis be lost, but the words addressed to it as a
lion of the nations would float in the air and be used without
any intelligible meaning. The lion is a figurative representa-
tion of a powerful and victorious ruler ; and 0)13 T'SB is really
equivalent to D]i3 ??< in ch. xxxi. 11. Pharaoh was regarded
as a mighty conqueror of the nations, " though he was rather
to be compared to the crocodile, which stirs up the streams, the
fresh waters, and life-giving springs of the nations most per-
niciously with mouth and feet, and renders turbid all that is
pure" (Ewald). D'sn, as in ch. xxix. 3. Ewald and Hitzig
have taken offence at the words I^^'Ilj^I njn, « thou didst break
forth in thy streams," and alter 'l^nhqja into T'Ohnaa, with thy
nostrils (Job xli. 12) ; but they have not considered that nw
would be quite out of place with such an alteration, as n'a in
both the Kal and Hiphil (Judg. xx. 33) has only the intransi-
tive meaning to break out. The thought is simply this: the
crocodile lies in the sea, then breaks occasionally forth in its
streams, and makes the waters and their streams turbid with its
feet. Therefore shall Pharaoh also end like such a monster
(vers. 3-6). The guilt of Pharaoh did not consist in the fact
that he had assumed the position of a ruler among the nations
(Kliefoth) ; but in his polluting the water-streams, stirring up
and disturbing the life-giving streams of the nations. God will
take him in His net by a gathering of nations, and cause him
44 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
to be drawn out of his element upon the dry land, where he shall
become food to the birds and beasts of prey (cf. ch. xxix. 4, 5,
xxxi. 12, 13). The words 'i 0''BJf bnpa are not to be understood as
referring to the nations, as spectators of the event (Havernick) ;
but a denotes the instrument, or medium employed, here the
persons by whom God causes the net to be thrown, as is evident
from the ^i^J!"! which follows. According to the parallelismm
membrorum, the air. Xey. nm-l can only refer to the carcase of
the beast, although the source from which this meaning of the
word is derived has not yet been traced. There is no worth
to be attached to the reading nien in some of the codices, as
nip. does not yield a suitable meaning either in the sense of
reptile, or in that of putrefaction or decomposed bodies, which
has been attributed to it from the Arabic. Under these
circumstances we adhere to the derivation from Cfn, to be high,
according to which TfiO"] may signify a height or a heap, which
the context defines as a funeral-pile, nsx, strictly speaking, a
participle from fflS, to flow, that which flows out, the outflow
(Hitzig), is not to be taken in connection with T}^, but is a
second object to ''n''i?B'n ; and the appended word 1»'i«? indicates
the source whence the flowing takes place, and of what the
outflow consists. D''"inn ?«, to the mountains, i.e. up to the top
of the mountains. The thought in these verses is probably
simply this, that the fall of Pharaoh would bring destruction
upon the whole of the land of Egypt, and that many nations
would derive advantage from his fall.
Vers. 7-10. His overthrow fills the whole world with mourn-
ing and terror. — Ver. 7. When I extinguish thee, I will cover the
sky and darken its stars ; I will cover the sun with cloud, and the
moon will not cause its light to shine. Ver. 8. All the shining
lights in the sky do I darken because of thee, and I bring darkness
over thy land, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 9. And
I will trouble the heart of many nations when I bring out thine
overthrow among the nations into lands which thou knowest not,
Ver. 10. And I will make many nations amazed at thee, and their
CHAP. XXS.ll. 7-10. 45
kings shall shudder at thee when I brandish my sword before their
face ; and they shall tremble every moment, every one for his life
on the day of his fall. — The thought of vers. 7 and 8 is not
exhausted by the paraphrase, " when thou art extinguished, all
light will be extinguished, so far as Egypt is concerned,"
accompanied with the remark, that the darkness consequent
thereupon is a figurative representation of utterly hopeless
circumstances (Schmieder). The thought on which the figure
rests is that of the day of the Lord, the day of God's judgment,
on which the lights of heaven lose their brightness (cf. ch.
XXX. 3 and Joel ii. 10, etc.). This day bursts upon Egypt
with the fall of Pharaoh, and on it the shining stars of heaven
are darkened, so that the land of Pharaoh becomes dark.
Egypt is a world-power represented by Pharaoh, which col-
lapses with his fall. But the overthrow of this world-power
is an omen and prelude of the overthrow of every ungodly
world-power on the day of the last judgment, when the present
heaven and the present earth will perish in the judgment-fire.
Compare the remarks to be found in the commentary on Joel
iii. 4 upon the connection between the phenomena of the
heavens and great catastrophes on earth. The contents of
both verses may be fully explained from the biblical idea of
the day of the Lord and the accompanying phenomena ; and
for the explanation of 1^333, there is no necessity to assume,
as Dereser and Hitzig have done, that the sea-dragon of Egypt
is presented here under the constellation of a dragon ; for there
is no connection between the comparison of Egypt to a tannim
or sea-dragon, in ver. 2 and ch. xxix. 3 ( = 3111, Isa. li. 9), and
the constellation of the dragon (see the comm. on Isa. li. 9 and
XXX. 7). In ini333 Pharaoh is no doubt regarded as a star of
the first magnitude in the sky ; but in this conception Ezekiel
rests upon Isa. xiv. 12, where the king of Babylon is desig-
nated as a bright morning-star. That this passage was in the
prophet's mind, is evident at once from the fact that ver. 7
coincides almost verbatim with Isa. xiii. 10. — The extinction
46 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and obscuration of the stars are not merely a figurative repre-
sentation of the mourning occasioned by the fall of Pharaoh ;
still less can vers. 9 and 10 be taken as an interpretation in
literal phraseology of the figurative words in vers. 7 and 8.
For vers. 9 and 10 do not relate to the mourning of the nations,
but to anxiety and terror into which they are plunged by God
through the fall of Pharaoh and his might. 3^ O'ljian, to afflict
the heart, does not mean to make it sorrowful, but to fill it with
anxiety, to deprive it of its peace and cheerfulness. " When I
bring thy fall among the nations " is equivalent to " spread the
report of thy fall." Consequently there is no need for either
the arbitrary alteration of I'!?!?' into T}}W, which Ewald proposes,
with the imaginary rendering announcement or report ; nor for
the marvellous assumption of Havernick, that Tl^P describes
the prisoners scattered among the heathen as the ruins of the
ancient glory of Egypt, in support of which he adduces the
rendering of the LXX. alyjiaXma-iav aov, which is founded
upon the change of 1132' into T'3E'. For ver. 10a compare
ch. xxvii. 35. ^SiV, to cause to fly, to brandish. The sword
is brandished before their face when it falls time after time
upon their brother the king of Egypt, whereby they are thrown
into alarm for their own lives. Q'WI?, by moments = every
moment (see the comm. on Isa. xxvii. 3).
Vers. 11-16. The judgment upon Egypt will be executed by
the king of Babylon. — Ver. 11. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
The sword of the king of Babylon mil come upon thee. Ver. 12.
Br/ swords of heroes will I cause thy tumult to fall, violent ones
of the nations are tliey all, and will lay waste the pride of Egypt,
and all its tumult will be destroyed. Ver. 13. And 1 will cut
off all its cattle from the great ivaters, that no foot of man may
disturb them any more, nor any hoof of cattle disturb them.
Ver. 14. Then will I caiise their waters to settle and their streams
to flow like oil, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, Ver. 15. When
I make the land of Egypt a desert, and the land is made desolate
of its fulness, because I smite all the inhabitants therein, and they
CHAP. XXXII. 11-16. 47
shall know that lam Jehovah. Ver. 16. A lamentation (mourn-
ful ode) is this, and they will sing it mournfully ; the daughters
of the nations will sing it mournfully, over Egypt and over all its
tumult will they sing it mournfully, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. — In this concluding strophe the figurative announce-
ment of the preceding one is summed up briefly in literal terms ;
and toward the close (ver. 14) there is a slight intimation of a
better future. The destruction of the proud might of Egypt
will be effected through the king of Babylon and his brave and
violent hosts. D'ii T"!?j as in ch. xxxi. 12 (see the comm. on
eh. xxviii. 7). p»n in vers. 12 and 13 must not be restricted
to the multitude of people. It signifies tumult, and embraces
everything in Egypt by which noise and confusion were made
(as in ch. xxxi, 2 and 18) ; although the idea of a multitude of
people undoubtedly predominates in the use of lion in ver. 12a.
Dnsp fm, the pride of Egypt, is not that of which Egypt is
proud, but whatever is proud or exalts itself in Egypt. The
utter devastation of Egypt includes the destruction of the cattle,
i.e. of the numerous herds which fed on the grassy banks of the
Nile and were driven to the Nile to drink (cf. Gen. xlvii. 6,
xli. 2 sqq.; Ex. ix. 3) ; and this is therefore specially mentioned
in ver. 13, with an allusion to the consequence thereof, namely,
that the waters of the Nile would not be disturbed any more
either by the foot of man or hoof of beast (compare ver. 136
with ch. xxix. 11). The disturbing of the water is mentioned
with evident reference to ver. 2, where Pharaoh is depicted as
a sea-monster, which disturbs the streams of water. The
disturbance of the water is therefore a figurative representation
of the wild driving of the imperial power of Egypt, by which
the life-giving streams of the nations were stirred up. — Ver. 14.
Then will God cause the waters of Egypt to sink. Hitzig and
Kliefoth understand this as signifying the diminution of the
abundance of water in the Nile, which had previously over-
flowed the land and rendered it fertile, but for which there was
no further purpose now. According to this explanation, the
48 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
words would contain a continued picture of the devastation of
the land. But this is evidently a mistake, for the simple reason
that it is irreconcilable with the fS, by which the thought is
introduced. IK, tunc, is more precisely defined by 'Wl 'Wa in
ver. 15 as the time when the devastation has taken place;
whereas Kliefoth takes the 15th verse, in opposition both to the
words and the usage of the language, as the sequel to ver. 14,
or in other words, regards 'ona as synonymous with W^l. The
verse contains a promise, as most of the commentators, led by
the Chaldee and Jerome, have correctly assumed.^ V'iPf''!!, to
make the water sink, might no doubt signify in itself a dimi-
nution of the abundance of water. But if we consider the
context, in which reference is made to the disturbance of the
water through its being trodden with the feet (ver. 1 3), Jj'pss'n
can only signify to settle, i.e. to become clear through the
sinking to the bottom of the slime which had been stirred up
(cf. ch. xxxiv. 18). The correctness of this explanation is
confirmed by the parallel clause, to make their streams flow
with oil. To understand this as signifying the slow and gentle
flow of the diminished water, would introduce a ficure of which
there is no trace in Hebrew. Oil is used throughout the
Scriptures as a figurative representation of the divine blessing,
or the power of the divine Spirit. IOK'3, like oil, according to
Hebrew phraseology, is equivalent to " like rivers of oil." And
oil-rivers are not rivers which flow quietly like oil, but rivers
which contain oil instead of water (cf. Job xxix. 6), and are
symbolical of the rich blessing of God (cf. Deut. xxxii. 13).
The figure is a very appropriate one for Egypt, as the land is
indebted to the Nile for all its fertility. Whereas its water
had been stirred up and rendered turbid by Pharaoh ; after the
fall of Pharaoh the Lord will cause the waters of the stream,
> The explanation of Jerome is the following: " Then will purest waters,
which had been disturbed by the sway of the dragon, be restored not hy
another, but by the Lord Hiinself ; so that their streams flow like oil, and
are the nutriment of true light."
CHAP. XXXII. 17-21, 49
which pours its blessing upon the land, to purify themselves,
and will make its streams flow with oil. The clarified water
and flowing oil are figures of the life-giving power of the word
and Spirit of God. But this blessing will not flow to Egypt
till its natural power is destroyed. Ewald has therefore given
the following as the precise meaning of ver. 14 : " The Messianic
times will then for the first time dawn on Egypt, when the
waters no more become devastating and turbid, that is to say,
through the true knowledge to which the chastisement leads."
Ver. 16 " rounds off the passage by turning back to ver. 2 "
(Hitzig). The daughters of the nations are mentioned as the
singers, because mourning for the dead was for the most part the
business of women (cf. Jer. ix. 16). The words do not contain
a summons to the daughters of the nations to sing the lamen-
tation, but the declaration that they will do it, in which the
thought is implied that the predicted devastation of Egypt will
certainly occur.
Vers. 17-32. Funeeal-diege foe the Desteuction op
THE Might of Egypt. — This second lamentation or mourn-
ing ode, according to the heading in ver. 17, belongs to the
same year as the preceding, and to the 15th of the month, no
doubt the 12th month; in which case it was composed only
fourteen days after the first. The statement of the month is
omitted here, as in ch. xxvi. 1 ; and the omission is, no doubt,
to be attributed to a copyist in this instance also. In the ode,
which Ewald aptly describes as a " dull, heavy lamentation,"
we have six regular strophes, preserving the uniform and
inonotonous character of the lamentations for the dead, in
which the thought is worked out, that Egypt, like other great
nations, is cast down to the nether world. Tlie whole of it
is simply an elegiac expansion of the closing thought of the
previous chapter (ch. xxxi.).
Vers. 18-21. Introduction and first strophe. — Ver. 18. Son
of man, lament over the tumult of Egypt, and hurl it down, her,
EZEK. 11. D
50 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIKL.
like the daugJders of glorious nations, into the nether world, to
those who go into the pit .' Ver. 19. Whom dost thou surpass
in loveliness? Go down and lay thyself with the uncircumcised.
Ver. 20. Among tliose slain with the sword will they fall ; ike
sword is handed, draw her down and all her tumult. Ver. 21.
Tlie strong ones of the heroes say of it out of the midst of Ml
with its helpers : they are gone down, they lie there, the uncir-
cumcised, slain with the sword.— T^ni, utter a lamentation, and
winini, thrust it (the tumult of Egypt) down, are co-ordinate.
"With the lamentation, or by means thereof, is Ezekiel to
thrust down the tumult of Egypt into hell. The lamentation
is God's word; and as such it has the power to accomplish
what it utters. Pinis is not intended as a repetition of the
suffix in~, but resumes the principal idea contained in the
object already named, viz. D^ip, Egypt, i.e. its population.
rinis and the daughters of glorious nations are co-ordinate.
ni33, as in the expression, daughter Tyre, daughter Babel,
denotes the population of powerful heathen nations. The D'.i3
DiiK can only be the nations enumerated in vers. 22, 24 sqq.,
which, according to these verses, are already in Sheol, not about
to be thrust down, but thrust down already. Consequently
the copula 1 before ni33 is to be taken in the sense of a com-
parison, as in 1 Sam. xli. 15 (cf. Ewald, § 3406). AH these
glorious nations have also been hurled down by the word of
God ; and Egypt is to be associated with them. By thus
placing Egypt on a level with all the fallen nations, the
enumeration of which fills the middle strophes of the ode, the
lamentation over Egypt is extended into a funeral-dirge on the
fall of all the heathen powers of the world. For ni'nnri pS
and "113 ni.i'', compare ch. xxvi. 20. The ode itself commences
in ver. 19, by giving prominence to the glory of the falling
kingdom. But this prominence consists in the brief inquiry
rittj): ''DD, before whom art thou lovely 1 i.e. art thou more lovely
than any one else? The words are addressed either to l^^^i!!
^IIV? (ver. 18), or what is more probable, to Pharaoh with all
CHAP. XXXII. 18-21. 51
his tumult (cf. ver. 32), i.e. to the world-power, Egypt, as em-
hodied in the person of Pharaoh; and the meaning of the
question is the following: — Thou, Egypt, art indeed lovely;
but thou art not better or more lovely than other mighty heathen
nations ; therefore thou canst not expect any better fate than
to go down into Sheol, and there lie with the uncircumcised.
^r!}J!) 3S '° c'^' xxxi. 18. This is carried out still further in
ver. 20, and the ground thereof assigned. The subject to vai
is the Egyptians, or Pharaoh and his tumult. They fall in
the midst of those pierced with the sword. The sword is
already handed to the executor of the judgment, the king of
Babel (ch. xxxi. 11). Their destruction is so certain, that the
words are addressed to the ^bearers of the sword : " Draw
Egypt and all its tumult down into Sheol " (WB'O is imperative
for WE'D in Ex. xii. 21), and, according to ver. 21, the heathen
already in Sheol are speaking of his destruction, v 1121'_ is
rendered by many, " there speak to him, address him, greet
him," with an allusion to Isa. xiv. 9 sqq., where the king of
Babel, when descending into Sheol, is greeted with mahcious
pleasure by the kings already there. But however obvious the
fact may be that Ezekiel has this passage in mind, there is no
address in the verse before us as in Isa. xiv. 10, but simply a
statement concerning the Egyptians, made in the third person.
Moreover, VntilTlK could hardly be made to harmonize with
ii> ^lai'., if Sh signified ad eum. For it is not allowable to
connect VntriK (taken in the sense of along with their helpers)
with Dn.iaJ ''!?K as a noun in apposition, for the simple reason
that the two are separated by 'y^Hf ^in». Consequently VnrjJ'nK
can only belong to lia'i''. : they talk (of him) with his helpers.
Vnrj?, his (Pharaoh's) helpers are his allies, who have already
gone down before him into hell (cf. ch. xxx. 8). The singular
suflSx, which has offended Hitzig, is quite in order as corre-
sponding to 'h. The words, "they have gone down, lie there,"
etc., point once more to the fact that the same fate has hap-
pened to the Egyptians as to all the rest of the rulers and
52 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
nations of the world whom God has judged. For D^niaJ 7K,
strong ones of the heroes, compare the comm. on ch. xxsi. 11.
P^KB', hell = the nether world, the gathering-place of the dead ;
not the place of punishment for the damned. 2nn ''ppn without
the article is a predicate, and not in apposition to ^''r'^VJ}. On
the application of this epithet to the Egyptians, Kliefoth has
correctly observed that " the question whether the Egyptians
received circumcision is one that has no bearing upon this
passage ; for in the sense in which Ezekiel understands circum-
cision, the Egyptians were uncircnmcised, even if they were
accustomed to circumcise their flesh."
In the four following strophes (vers. 22-30) a series of
heathen nations is enumerated, whom the Egyptian finds
already in hell, and with whom he will share the same fate.
There are six of these — namely, Asshur, Elam, Meshech-Tubal,
Edom, the princes of the north, and Sidon. The six are
divisible into two classes — three great and remote world-powers,
and three smaller neighbouring nations. In this no regard is
paid to the time of destruction. "With the empire of Asshur,
which had already fallen, there are associated Elam and
Meshech-Tubal, two nations, which only rose to the rank of
world-powers in the more immediate and more remote future ;
and among the neighbouring nations, the Sidonians and princes
of the north, i.e. the Syrian kings, are grouped with Edom,
although the Sidonians had long ago given up their supremacy
to Tyre, and the Aramean kings, who had once so grievously
oppressed the kingdom of Israel, had already been swallowed up
in the Assyrian and Chaldean empire. It may, indeed, be said
that " in any case, at the time when Ezekiel prophesied, princes
enough had already descended into Sheol both of the Assyrians
and Elamites, etc., to welcome the Egyptians as soon as they
came " (Kliefoth) ; but with the same justice may it also be
said that many of the rulers and countrymen of Egypt had also
descended into Sheol already, at the time when Pharaoh,
reigning in Ezekiel's day, was to share the same fate. It is
CHAP. XSXII. 22, 23. 53
evident, therefore, that " any such reflection upon chronological
relations is out of place in connection with onr text, the inten-
tion of which is merely to furnish an exemplification" (Kliefoth),
and that Ezekiel. looks upon Egypt more in the light of a world-
power, discerning in its fall the overthrow of all the heathen
power of the world, and predicting it under the prophetic
picture, that Pharaoh and his tumult are expected and welcomed
by the princes and nations that have already descended into
Sheol, as coming to share their fate with them.
Vers. 22, 23. Second strophe. — Ver. 22. There is Asshur
and all its multitude, round about it their, graves, all of them
slain, fallen by the sword. Ver. 23. Whose graves are made in
the deepest pit, and its multitude is round about its grave ; all
slain, fallen by the sword, who spread terror in the land of the
living. — The enumeration commences with Asshur, the world-
power, which had already been overthrown by the Chaldeans.
It is important to notice here, that "HB'X, like D?'J> in ver. 24,
and pari TjB'D in ver. 26, is construed as a feminine, as
njion which follows in every case plainly shows. It is obvious,
therefore, that the predominant idea is not that of the king
or people, but that of the kingdom or world-power. It is
true that in the suffixes attached to Vnilip Vr!i3''3p in ver. 22,
and vnil'ap in vers. 25 and 26, the masculine alternates with
the feminine, and Hitzig therefore proposes to erase these
words ; but the alternation may be very simply explained, on
the ground that the ideas of the kingdom and its king are not
kept strictly separate, but that the words oscillate from one idea
to the other. It is affirmed of Asshur, that as a world-power it
lies in Sheol, and the graves of its countrymen are round about
the graves of its ruler. They all lie there as those who have
fallen by the sword, i.e. who have been swept away by a judg-
ment of God. To this is added in ver. 23 the declaration that
the graves of Asshur lie in the utmost sides, i.e. the utmost or
deepest extremity of Sheol ; whereas so long as this power
together with its people was in the land of the living, i.e. so
54 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
lone as they ruled on earth, they spread terror all around them
by their violent deeds. From the loftiest height of earthly
might and greatness, they are hurled down to the lowest hell.
The higher on earth, the deeper in the nether world. Haver-
nick has entirely misunderstood the words " round about
Asshur are its graves " (ver. 22), and " its multitude is round
about its grave " (the grave of this world-power), when he finds
therein the thought that the graves and corpses are to be
regarded as separated, so that the dead are waiting near their
graves in deepest sorrow, looking for the honour of burial,
but looking in vain. There is not a word of this in the text,
but simply that the graves of the people lie round about the
grave of their ruler.
Vers. 24 and 25. Third strophe. — Ver. 24. There is Elam,
and all its multitude round about its grave ; all of them slain,
fallen by the sword, who went down uncircumcised into the
nether world, who spread terror before them in the land of the
living, and bear their shame with those who went into the pit,
Ver. 25. In the midst of the slain have they made it a bed with
all its multitude, round about it are their graves ; all of them
uncircumcised, pierced with the sword ; because terror was spread
before them in the land of the living, they bear their shame with
those who have gone into the pit. In the midst of slain ones is
he laid. — Asshur is followed by dW, Elam, the warlike people
of Elymais, i.e. Susiana, the modern Chusistan, whose archers
served in the Assyrian army (Isa. xxii. 6), and which is men-
tioned along with the Medes as one of the conquerors of
Babylon (Isa. xxi. 2), whereas Jeremiah prophesied its destruc-
tion at the commencement of Zedekiah's reign (Jer. xlix. 34 sqq.).
Ezekiel says just the same of Elam as he has already said of
Asshur, and almost in the same words. The only difference is,
that his description is more copious, and that he expresses more
distinctly the thought of shameful destruction which is implied
in the fact of lying in Sheol among the slain, and repeats
it a second time, and that he also sets the bearing of shame
CHAP. XXXII. 26-28. 55
into Sheol in contrast with the terror which Elam had spread
around it during its life on earth, nepa St^i, as in ch. xvi. 52.
The 3 in njiDn-?33 is either the " with of association," or
the fact of being in the midst of a crowd, pf? refers to
oP^P. ; and l^nj has an indefinite subject, " they gave " = there
was given. M^P, the resting-place of the dead, as in 2 Chron.
xvi. 14. The last clause in ver. 25 is an emphatic repetition
of the leading thought : he (Elam) is brought or laid in the
midst of the slain.
Vers. 26-28. Fourth strophe. — Ver. 26. Tliere is Meshech-
Tubal and all its multitude, its graves round about it ; ail of
them uncircumcised, slain with the sword, because they spread
terror before them in the land of the living. Ver. 27. They lie
not with the fallen heroes of imcircumcised men^ who went down
into hell with their weapons of war, whose swords they laid under
their heads ; their iniquities have come upon their bones, because
they were a terror of the heroes in the land of the living. Ver. 28.
Thou also wilt be dashed to pieces among uncircumcised men, and
lie with those slain with the sword. — '^^K> and ?3ri, the Moschi
and Tibareni of the Greeks (see the comm. on ch. xxvii. 13),
are joined together acrwSeTcSs here as one people or heathen
power ; and Ewald, Hitzig, and others suppose that the refer-
ence is to the Scythians, who invaded the land in the time of
Josiah, and the majority of whom had miserably perished not
very long before (Herod, i. 106). But apart from the fact that
the prophets of the Old Testament make no allusion to any inva-
sion of Palestine by the Scythians (see Minor Prophets, vol. ii.
p. 124, Eng. transl.), this view is founded entirely upon the
erroneous supposition that in this funeral-dirge Ezekiel men-
tions only such peoples as had sustained great defeats a longer
or shorter time before. Meshech-Tubal comes into considera-
tion here, as in ch, xxxviii., as a northern power, which is
overcome in its conflict with the kingdom of God, and is pro-
phetically exhibited by the prophet as having already fallen
under the judgment of death. In ver. 26 Ezekiel makes the
56 THE PBOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
same announcement as he has ah-eady made concerning Asshur
in vers. 22, 23, and with regard to Elam in vers. 24, 25. But
the announcement in ver. 27 is obscure. Kosenmiiller, Ewald,
Havernick, and others, regard this verse as a question (K?1 in
the sense of N^Q) : " and should they not lie with (rest with)
other fallen heroes of the uncircumcised, who . . .?" i.e. they do
lie with them, and could not possibly expect a better fate. But
although the interrogation is merely indicated by the tone
where the language is excited, and therefore N?1 might stand
for ^'>\}., as in Ex. viii. 22, there is not the slightest indication
of such excitement in the description given here as could render
this assumption a probable one. On the contrary, k?) at the
commencement of the sentence suggests the supposition that an
antithesis is intended to the preceding verse. And the pro-
bability of this conjecture is heightened by the allusion made to
heroes, who have descended into the nether world with their
weapons of war ; inasmuch as, at all events, something is
therein affirmed which does not apply to all the heroes who
have gone down into hell. The custom of placing the weapons
of fallen heroes along with them in the grave is attested by
Diod. Sic. xviii. 26; Arrian, i. 5; Virgil, Am. vi. 233 (cf.
Dongtaei Analectt. ss. i. pp. 281, 282) ; and, according to the
ideas prevailing in ancient times, it was a mark of great respect
to the dead. But the last place in which we should expect to
meet with any allusion to the payment of such honour to the
dead would be in connection with Meshech and Tubal, those
wild hordes of the north, who were only known to Israel by
hearsay. "We therefore follow the Vulgate, the Rabbins, and
many of the earlier commentators, and regard the verse before
us as containing a declaration that the slain of Meshech-Tubal
would not receive the honour of resting in the nether world
along with those fallen heroes whose weapons were buried
with them in the grave, because they fell with honour.^ "hs
^ C. a Lapi.de has already giyea the true meaning : " He compares them,
therefore, not with the righteous, but with the heathen, who, although
CHAP. SXSII. 26-28. 57
nDHj-a, instruments of war, weapons, as in Deut. i. 41. The
text leaves it uncertain who they were who had been buried
with such honours. The Seventy have confounded Qy']]!*? with
D?i5)p, and rendered D?';J|P ^V^^, t&v ireiTTtoKOTav dtr alwvo<s,
possibly thinking of the gibhorim of Gen. vi. 4. Dathe and
Hitzig propose to alter the test to this ; and even Havernick
imagines that the prophet may possibly have had such passages
as Gen. vi. 4 and x. 9 sqq. floating before liis mind. But
there is not sufficient ground to warrant an alteration of the
text ; and if Ezekiel had had Gen. vi. 4 in his mind, he would
no doubt have written C'liajn. The clause Cnisiv ''riffl is re-
garded by the more recent commentators as a continuation
of the preceding '1J1 13n^1, which is a very natural conclusion, if
we simply take notice of the construction. But if we consider
the sense of the words, this combination can hardly be sus-
tained. The words, " and so were their iniquities upon their
bones " (or they came upon them), can well be understood as an
explanation of the reason for their descending into Sheol with
their weapons, and lying upon their swords. We must there-
fore regard DHi^iJ? ''i?'?! as a continuation of 133^'^, so that their
not resting with those who were buried with their weapons of
war furnishes the proof that their guilt lay upon their bones.
The words, therefore, have no other meaning than the phrase
Dnts^a INB'^ in vers. 24 and 30. Sin comes upon the bones
when the punishment consequent upon it falls upon the bones
of the sinner. In the last clause we connect D'niaj with
n''fin, terror of the heroes, i.e. terrible even to heroes on account
of their savage and cruel nature. In ver. 28 we cannot take
nns as referring to Meshech-Tubal, as many of the commen-
tators propose. A direct address to that people would be at
vaiiance with the whole plan of the ode. Moreover, the
declaration contained in the verse would contradict what pre-
unoiroumoised, had met with a glorious death, i.e. they will be more wretched
than these ; for the latter went down to the shades with glory, but they
with ignominy, as if conquered and slain."
58 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cedes. As Meshech-Tubal is already lying in Sheol among the
slain, according to ver. 26, the announcement cannot be made
to it for the first time here, that it is to be dashed in pieces and
laid with those who are slain with the sword. It is the Egyptian
who is addressed, and he is told that this fate will also fall
upon him. And through this announcement, occurring in the
midst of the list of peoples that have already gone down to
Sheol, the design of that list is once more called to mind.
Vers. 29 and 30. Fifth strophe.— Ver. 29. Tliere are Edom,
its kings and all its princes, who in spite of their bravery are
associated with those that are pierced with the sword; they Ue
with the uncircumcised and with those that have gone down into
the pit. Ver. 30. There are the princes of the north, all of them,
and all tJie Sidonians who have gone down to the slain, been put
to shame in spite of the dread of them because of their bravery ;
they lie there as uncircumcised, and bear their shame with those who
have gone into the pit. — In this strophe Ezekiel groups together
the rest of the heathen nations in the neighbourhood of Israel ;
and in doing so, he changes the DB' of the preceding list for
naB*, thither. This might be taken prophetically : thither will
they come, " to these do they also belong " (Havernick), only
such nations being mentioned here as are still awaiting their
destruction. But, in the first place, the perfects ^03 12^8*,
AT IK'S, in vers. 29, 30, do not favour this explanation, inas-
much as they are used as preterites in vers. 22, 24, 25, 26, 27 ;
and, secondly, even in the previous strophes, not only are such
peoples mentioned as have already perished, but some, like
Elam and Meshech-Tubal, which did not rise into historical
importance, or exert any influence upon the development of
the kingdom of God till after Ezekiel's time, whereas the
Edomites and Sidonians were already approaching destruction.
We therefore regard nsB' as simply a variation of expression in
the sense of " thither have they come," without discovering any
allusion to the future. — In the case of Edom, kings and D^^!^?'3,
i.e. tribe-princes, are mentioned. The allusion is to the 'allu-
CHAP. XXXII. 31, 32. 59
■phim or phylarchs, literally chiliarchs, the heads of the leading
families (Gen. xxxvi. 15 sqq.), in whose hands the government
of the people lay, inasmuch as the kings were elective, and
were probably chosen by the phylarchs (see the comm. on Gen.
xxxvi. 31 sqq.). Dmiaja, in, or with their bravery, i.e. in spite
of it. There is something remarkable in the allusion to princes
of the north ('^/DJ, lit. persons enfeoffed, vassal- princes ; see the
comin. on Josh. xiii. 21 and Mic. v. 4) in connection with the
Sidonians, and after Meshech-Tubal the representative of the
northern nations. The association with the Sidonians renders
the conjecture a very natural one, that allusion is made to the
north of Palestine, and more especially to the Aram of Scrip-
ture, with its many separate states and princes (Havernick) ;
although Jer. XXV. 26, "the kings of the north, both far and
near," does not furnish a conclusive proof of this. So much,
at any rate, is certain, that the princes of the north are not to
be identified with the Sidonians. For, as Kliefoth has cor-
rectly observed, " there are six heathen nations mentioned,
viz. Asshur, Elam, Meshech-Tubal, Edom, the princes of the
north, and Sidon ; and if we add Egypt to the list, we shall
have seven, which would be thoroughly adapted, as it was
eminently intended, to depict the fate of universal heathenism."
A principle is also clearly discernible in the mode in which
they are grouped. Asshur, Elam, and Meshech-Tubal repre-
sent the greater and more distant world-powers; Edom the
princes of the north, and Sidon the neighbouring nations of
Israel on both south and north. Dnnwja n)ri''rin3, literally, in
dread of them, (which proceeded) from their bravery, i.e. which
their bravery inspired. 'U1 'iNf'^j as in ver. 24.
Vers. 31 and 32. Sixth and last strophe. — Ver. 31. Pharaoh
will see them, and comfort himself over all Ms multitude. Pliaraoh
and all his army are slain with the sword, is tJie saying of the
Lord Jehovah. Ver. 32. For I caused him to spread terror in
the land of the living, therefore is he laid in the midst of uncir-
cumcised, those slain with the sword, Pharaoh and all his multi-
60 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
tilde, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — ^In these verses the
application to Egypt follows. Pharaoh will see in the nether
world all the greater and smaller heathen nations with their
rulers ; and when he sees them all given up to the judgment
of death, he will comfort himself over the fate which has fallen
upon himself and his army, as he will perceive 'that he could
not expect any better lot than that of the other rulers of
the world, bv Dm, to comfort oneself, as in ch. xxxi. 16 and
xiv. 22. Hitzig's assertion, that ?? Dn? never signifies to
comfort oneself, is incorrect (see the comm. on ch. xiv, 22).
in^flHTix ''nnj, I have given terror of him, i.e. I have made him
an instrument of terror. The Keri ''n''rin arose from a mis-
understanding. The Chetib is confirmed by vers. 24 and 26.
In ver. 326 the ode is brought to a close by returning even in
expression to vers. 19 and 20a.
If, now, we close with a review of the whole of the contents
of the words of God directed against Egypt, in all of them is
the destruction of the might of Pharaoh and Egypt as a world-
power foretold. And this prophecy has been completely
fulfilled. As Kliefoth has most truly observed, " one only
needs to enter the pyramids of Egypt and its catacombs to
see that the glory of the Pharaohs has gone down into Sheol.
And it is equally certain that this destruction of the glory of
ancient Egypt dates from the times of the Babylonio-Persian
empire. Moreover, this destmction was so thorough, that even
to the New Egypt of the Ptolemies the character of the Old
Egypt was a perfect enigma, a thing forgotten and incompre-
hensible." But if Ezekiel repeatedly speaks of Nebuchad-
nezzar the king of Babylon as executing this judgment upon
Egypt, we must bear in mind that here, as in the case of Tyre
(see the comm. on ch. xxviii. 1-19), Ezekiel regards Nebuchad-
nezzar as the instrument of the righteous punishment of God
in general, and discerns in what he accomplishes the sum of
all that in the course of ages has been gradually fulfilling itself
in history. At the same time, it is equally certain that this
CHAP. XXXII. 31, 33. 61
view of the prophet would have no foundation in truth unless
Nebuchadnezzar really did conquer Egypt and lay it waste,
and the might and glory of this ancient empire were so shattered
thereby, that it never could recover its former greatness, but
even after the turning of its captivity, i.e. after its recovery
from the deadly wounds which the imperial monarchy of
Babylonia and afterwards of Persia inflicted upon it, still
remained a lowly kingdom, which could " no more rule over
the nations" (ch. xxix. 13-16). Volney, however, in his
Recherch. nouv. sur VMst. anc. (III. pp. 151 sqq.), and Hitzig
{Ezek. p. 231), dispute the conquest and devastation of Egypt
by Nebuchadnezzar, because the Greek historians, with Hero-
dotus (il. 161 sqq.) at their head, make no allusion whatever to
an invasion of Egypt ; and their statements are even opposed
to such an occurrence. But the silence of Greek historians,
especially of Herodotus, is a most " miserable " argument. The
same historians do not say a word about the defeat of Necho by
Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish ; and yet even Hitzig accepts
this as an indisputable fact. Herodotus and his successors
derived their accounts of Egypt from the communications of
Egyptian priests, who suppressed everything that was humili-
ating to the pride of Egypt, and endeavoured to cover it up
with their accounts of glorious deeds which the Pharaohs had
performed. But Hitzig has by no means proved that the
statements of the Greeks are at variance with the assumption
of a Chaldean invasion of Egypt, whilst he has simply rejected
but not refuted the attempts of Perlzonius, Vitringa, Haver-
nick, and others, to reconcile the biblical narrative of the con-
quest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar with the accounts given by
Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other Greeks, concerning the
mighty feats of Necho, and his being slain by Amasis. The
remark that, in the description given by Herodotus, Amasis
appears as an independent king by the side of Cambyses, only
less powerful than the Persian monarch, proves nothing more,
even assuming the correctness of the fact, than that Amasis
62 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
had made Egypt once more independent of Babylonia on the
sudden overthrow of the Chaldean monarchy.
The conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, after the atti-
tude which Pharaoh Necho assumed towards the Babylonian
empire, and even attempted to maintain in the time of Zede-
kiah by sending an army to the relief of Jerusalem when
besieged by the Chaldeans, is not only extremely probable in
itself, but confirmed by testimony outside the Bible. Even if
no great importance can be attached to the notice of Megas-
thenes, handed down by Strabo (xv. 1. 6) and Josephus
(c. Ap. i. 20) : " he says that he (Nebuchadnezzar) conquered
the greater part of Libya and Iberia;" Josephus not only
quotes from Berosus (I.e. i. 19) to the effect that " the Baby-
lonian got possession of Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Arabia," but,
on the ground of such statements, relates the complete fulfil-
ment of the prophecies of Scripture, saying, in Antt. x. 9. 7,
with reference to Nebuchadnezzar, " he fell upon Egypt to
conquer it. And the reigning king he slew ; and having
appointed another in his place, made those Jews prisoners who
had hitherto resided there, and led them into Babylon." And
even if Josephus does not give his authority in this case, the
assertion that he gathered this from the prophecies of Jeremiah
is untrue ; because, immediately before the words we have
quoted, he says that what Jeremiah had prophesied (Jer. xliii.
and xliv.) had thus come to pass; making a distinction, therefore,
between prophecy and history. And suspicion is not to be cast
upon this testimony by such objections as that Josephus does
not mention the name of the Egyptian king, or state precisely
the time when Egypt was conquered, but merely affirms in
general terms that it was after the war with the Ammonites
and Moabites.
SECOND HALF
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF SALVATION.
CHAP. XXXIII.-XLVIII.
i i
|N the first half of his book, Ezekiel has predicted
severe judgments, both to the covenant nation and
to the heathen nations. But to the people of Israel
he has also promised the turning of its captivity,
after the judgment of the destruction of the kingdom and the
dispersion of the refractory generation in the heathen lands ;
not merely their restoration to their own land, but the setting
up of the covenant made with the fathers, and the renewing of
the restored nation by the Spirit of God, so that it will serve
the Lord upon His holy mountain with offerings acceptable to
Him (compare ch. xi. 16-21, xvi. 60, and xx. 40 sqq.). On
the other hand, he has threatened the heathenish peoples and
kingdoms of the world with devastation and everlasting destruc-
tion, so that they will be remembered no more (compare cli.
xxi. 36, 37, XXV. 7, 10, 16, xxvi. 21, xxvii. 36, and xxviii. 19),
or rather with the lasting humiliation and overthrow of their
glory in the nether world (compare ch. xxix. 13 sqq., xxxi.
15 sqq., and xxxii. 17 sqq.) ; whilst God will create a glorious
thing in the land of the living, gather Israel from its dispersion,
cause it to dwell safely and happily in the land given to His
servant Jacob, and a horn to grow thereto (ch. xxvi. 20,
xxviii. 25 sqq., and xxix. 21). — This announcement is carried
out still further in the second half of the book, where first of
64 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
all the pardon, blessing, and glorification promised to the
covenant nation, after its sifting by the judgment of exile, are
unfolded according to their leading features, and the destruc-
tion of its foes is foretold (ch. xxxiv.-xxxix.) ; and then,
secondly, there is depicted the establishment of the renovated
kingdom of God for everlasting continuance (ch. xl.-xlviii.).
The prophet's mouth was opened to make the announcement
when a fugitive brought the tidings of the destruction both of
Jerusalem and of the kingdom to the captives by the Ohaboras;
and this constitutes the second half of the prophetic ministry of
Ezekiel. The introduction to this is contained in ch. xxxiii.,
whilst the announcement itself is divisible into two parts,
according to its contents, as just indicated, — namely, first, the
promise of the restoration and glorification of Israel (ch.
xxxiv.-xxxix.) ; and secondly, the apocalyptic picture of the
new constitution of the kingdom of God (ch. xl.-xlviii.).
CHAP. XXXIII. THE CALLING OP THE PROPHET, AND HIS
FUTURE ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE PEOPLE.
This chapter is divided into two words of God of an intro-
ductory character, which are separated by the historical state-
ment in vers. 21 and 22, though substantially they are one.
The first (vers. 1-20) exhibits the calling of the prophet for
the time to come ; the second (vers. 23-33) sets before him his
own attitude towards the people, and the attitude of the people
towards his further announcement. The first precedes the
arrival of the messenger, who brought to the prophet and the
exiles the tidings of the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem
by the Chaldeans (ver, 21). The second was uttered after-
wards. The fall of the holy city formed a turning-point in the
prophetic work of Ezekiel. Previous to this catastrophe, God
had appointed him to be a watchman over Israel : to show the
people their sins, and .to proclaim the consequent punishment,
namely, the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah, together with
CHAP. XXXIII. 65
the dispersion of the people among the heathen. But after the
city had fallen, and the judgment predicted by him had taken
place, the object to be aimed at was to inspire those who were
desponding and despairing of salvation with confidence and
consolation, by predicting the restoration of the fallen kingdom
of God in a new and glorious form, to show them the way to
new life, and to open the door for their entrance into the new
kingdom of God. The two divisions of our chapter correspond
to this, which was to be henceforth the task imposed upon the
prophet. In the first (vers. 1-20), his calling to be the spiritual
watchman over the house of Israel is renewed (vers. 2—9), with
special instructions to announce to the people, who are inclined
to despair under the burden of their sins, that the Lord has no
pleasure in the death of the sinner, but will give life to him
who turns from his iniquity (vers. 10—20). The kernel and
central point of this word of God are found in the lamentation
of the people : " Our transgressions and sins lie upon us, and
we are pining away through them ; how then can we live ? "
(ver. 10), together with the reply given by the Lord : " By my
life, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked . . . turn
ye, turn yourselves; why do ye wish to die?" (ver. 11). The
way is prepared for this by vers. 2-9, whilst vers. 12-20 carry
out this promise of God still further, and assign the reason for
it. — The thoughts with which the promise of the Lord, thus
presented as "an antidote to despair, is introduced and explained
are not new, however, but repetitions of earlier words of God.
The preparatory introduction in vers. 2—9 is essentially a return
to the word in ch. iii. 17-21, with which the Lord closes the
prophet's call by pointing out to him the duty and responsi-
bility connected with his vocation. And the reason assigued
in vers. 12-20, together with the divine promise in ver. 11, is
taken from ch. xviii., where the prophet unfolds the working of
the righteousness of God ; and more precisely from vers. 20-32
of that chapter,, where the thought is more fully expanded, that
the judgments of God can be averted by repentance and con-
EZEK. II. E
66 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
version. From all this it is indisputably evident that the first
section of this chapter contains an introduction to the second
half of the prophecies of Ezekiel; and this also explains the
absence of any date at the head of the section, or the "remark-
able" fact that the date (vers. 21 and 22) is not given till the
middle of the chapter, where it stands between the first and
second of the words of God contained therein. — The word of
God in vers. 23 sqq. was no doubt addressed to the prophet
after the fugitive had arrived with the tidings of the fall of
Jerusalem ; whereas the word by which the prophet was pre-
pared for his further labours (vers. 1-20) preceded that event,
and coincided in point of time with the working of God upon
the prophet on the evening preceding the arrival of the fugi-
tive, through which his mouth was opened for further speaking
(ver. 22) ; and it is placed before this historical statement
because it was a renewal of his call.'
Vers. 1-20. Calling of the Prophet for the Future.
Vers. 1-9. The prophet's office of watchman. — Ver. 1. And
the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man,
speak to the sons of thy people, and say to them, When I bring
the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man
from their company and set him for a watchman, Ver. 3. And
he seeth the sword come upon the land, and bloweth the trumpet,
and warneth the people ; Ver. 4. If, then, one should hear Uu
blast of the trumpet and not take warning, so that the sword
1 It is incomprehensible how Kliefoth could find "no sign of introduc-
tory thoughts " in this section, or could connect it with the preceding
oracles against the foreign nations, for no other reason than to secure
fourteen words of God for that portion of the book which contains the
prophecies against the foreign nations. For there is no force in the other
arguments which he adduces in support of this combination ; and the
assertion that "the section, ch. xxxiii. 1-20, speaks of threatenings and
warnings, and of the faithfulness with which Ezekiel is to utter them, and
of the manner m which Israel is to receive them," simply shows that he
has neither correctly nor perfectly understood the contents of this section
and its train of thought.
CHAP. XXXIII. 1-9. 67
should come and take Mm away, Ms blood would come upon Ms
own head. Ver. 5. He heard the blast of the trumpet, and took
not warning ; his blood will come upon Mm : whereas, if he had
taken warning, he would have delivered his soul. Ver. 6. But if
the watchman seeth the sword come, and bloweth not the trumpet,
and the people is not warned ; and the sword should come and
take away a soul from them, he is taken away through Ms guilt ;
but his blood will I demand from the watchman's hand. Ver. 7.
Thou, then, son of man, I have set thee for the watchman to the
house of Israel ; thou shalt hear the word from my mauth, and
warn them for me. Ver. S. If F say to the sinner. Sinner, thou
wilt die the death ; and thou speakest not to warn the sinner from
his way, he, the sinner, will die for Ms iniquity, and his blood I
will demand from thy hand. Ver. 9. But if thou hast warned
the sinner from his way, to turn from it, and he does not turn
from his way, he will die for Ms iniquity ; hut thou hast delivered
thy soul. — Vers. 7-9, with the exception of slight deviations
which have little influence upon the sense, are repeated verbatim
from ch. iii. 17-19. The repetition of the duty binding upon
the prophet, and of the responsibility connected therewith, is
introduced, however, in vers. 2-6, by au example taken from
life, and made so plain that every one who heard the words
must see that Ezekiel was obliged to call the attention of the
people to the judgment awaiting them, and to warn them of
the threatening danger, and that this obligation rested upon
him still. In this respect the expansion, which is wanting in
ch. iii., serves to connect the following prophecies of Ezekiel
with the threats of judgment contained in the first part. The
meaning of it is the following: As it is the duty of the
appointed watchman of a land to announce to the people the
approach of the enemy, and if he fail to do this he is deserving
of deathr; so Ezekiel also, as the watchman of Israel appointed
by God, not only is bound to warn the people of the approach-
ing judgment, in order to fulfil his duty, but has already
warned them of it, so that whoever has not taken warning has
68 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
been overtaken by the sword because of his sin. As, the
Ezekiel has only discharged his duty and obligation by
doing, so has he the same duty still further to perform. —
ver. 2 n^ is placed at the head in an absolute form; a:
'l31 XUN '3, " if I bring the sword upon a land," is to be und(
stood with this restriction : " so that the enemy is on the w
and an attack may be expected " (Hitzig). Qn''?fij'», from t
end of the people of the land, i.e. one taken from the wh(
body of the people, as in Gen. xlvii. 2 (see the comm. on Ge
xix. 4). Blowing the trumpet is a signal of alarm on t
approach of an enemy (compare Amos iii. 6 ; Jer. iv. i
"inw in ver. 55 is a participle ; on the other hand, both befc
and afterwards it is a perfect, pointed with Kamete <
account of the tone. For vers. 7-9, see the exposition
ch. iii. 17-19.
Vers. 10-20. As watchman over Israel, Ezekiel is to announ
to those who are despairing of the mercy of God, that the Lo
will preserve from destruction those who turn from their si
and lead them into life. — Ver. 10. T7iou then, son of man, s
to the house of Israel, Ye rightly say, Our transgressions and o
sins lie upon us, and in them we vanish away ; how, then, c<
we live? Ver. 11. Say to them. As truly as I live, is the sayi
of the Lord Jehovah, 1 haw no pleasure in the death of the sinne
but when the sinner tumeth from his way, he shall live. Tu
ye, turn ye from your evil ways ! for why will ye die, house
Israel? Ver. 12. And thou, son of man, say to the sons oft
people. The righteousness of the righteous man will not delk
him in the day of his transgression, and the sinner will not f
through his sin in the day that he tumeth from his sin, and i
righteous man will not be able to live thereby in the day lliat
sinneth. Ver. 13. If I say to the righteous man that he sh
live, and he relies upon his righteousness and does wrong, all i
righteousnesses will not be remembered ; and for his wrong tl
he has done, he will die. Ver. 14. Jf I say to the sinner, Th
shalt die, and he turns from his sin, and does justice and righteo\
CHAP. XXXIII. 10-20. 69
ness, Ver. 15. So that the wicied returns the pledge., restores
what has been robbed, walks in the statutes of life witlwut doing
wrong J he will live, not die. Ver. 16, All his sins which he has
committed shall not be remembered against him; he has done
justice and righteousness, he will live, Ver. 17. And the sons of
thy people say, The way of the Lord is not right ; but they —
their way is not right, Ver. 18. If the righteous man turneth
from his righteousness and doeth wrong, he shall die thereby;
Ver. 19. But if the wicked man turneth from his wickedness and
doeth right and righteousness, he will live thereby. Ver. 20. And
yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not right, I will judge you
every one according to his ways, house of Israel. — In vers. 10
and 11 the prophet's calling for the future is set before him,
inasmuch as God instructs him to announce to those who are
in despair on account of their sins the gracious will of the
liord. The threat contained in the law (Lev. xxvi. 39), 'pS'
DjiV3, of which Ezekiel had repeatedly reminded the people
with warning, and, last of all, when predicting the conquest
and destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans (compare ch.
iv. 17 and xxiv. 23), had pressed heavily upon their heart,
when the threatened judgment took place, so that they quote
the words, not " in self-defence," as Havernick erroneously
supposes, but in despair of any deliverance. Ezekiel is to meet
this despair of little faith by the announcement that the Lord
has no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but desires his con-
version and his life. Ezekiel had already set this word of grace
before the people in ch. xviii. 23, 32, accompanied with the
summons to salvation for them to lay to heart : there, it was
done to overthrow the delusion that the present generation had
to atone for the sins of the fathers ; but here, to lift up the
hearts of those who were despairing of salvation ; and for this
reason it is accompanied with the asseveration (wanting in ch.
xviii. 23 and 32) : " as truly as I live, saitli the Lord," and
with the urgent appeal to repent and turn. But in order to
preclude the abuse of this word of consolation by making it a
70 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ground of false confidence in their own righteonsneas, Ezeki{
repeats in vers. 12-20 the principal thoughts contained in tin
announcement (ch. xviii. 20-32) — namely, first of all, in veri
12-16, the thought that the righteousness of the righteous :
of no avail to him if he gives himself up to the unrighteoui
ness, and that the sinner will not perish on account of his si
if he turns from his wickedness and strives after righteousnes
(ri3 PB'S', ver. 12, as in Hos. v. 5, Jer. vi. 15 ; compare cl
xviii. 24, 25, and xxi., xxil. ; and for vers. 14 and 15, moi
especially ch. xviii. 5 and 7) ; and then, secondly, in ver
17-20, the reproof of those who find fault with the way of th
Lord (compare ch. xviii. 25, 27, 29, 30).
Vers. 21 and 22. Tidings of the fall of Jerusalem, and th
consequences with regard to the prophet. — Ver. 21. And
came to pass in the twelfth year, in the tenth (month), on the fift
of the month after our being taken captive, th&'e came to me
fugitive from Jerusalem, and said. The city is smitten. Ver. 21
And the hand of Jehovah had come upon me in the eveniri
before the arrival of the fugitive, and He opened my irtouii
till he came to me in the m.orning ; and so wa^ my moui
opened, and I was silent no more. — In these verses the fulfi
ment of the promise made by God to the prophet in ch. xxi'
25-27, after the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalen
is recorded. The chronological datum, as to the precis
time at which the messenger arrived with the account of ti
destruction of Jerusalem, serves to mark with precision tl
point of time at which the obstacle was removed, and the propb
was able to speak and prophesy without restraint. — The fa
that the tidings of the destruction of Jerusalem, which toe
place in the fifth month of the eleventh year, are said to hai
only reached the exiles in the tenth month of the twelfth yea
that is to say, nearly a year and a half after it occurred, do
not warrant our following the Syriac, as Doederlein and Hitz
have done, calling in question the correctness of the text ai
substituting the eleventh year for the twelfth. With the di
CHAP. XXXIII. 21, 22. 71
tance at which Ezekiel was living, namely, in northern Meso-
potamia, and with the fearful confusion w^hich followed the
catastrophe, a year and a half might very easily pass by before
a fugitive arrived with the information. But Hitzig's assertion,
that Ezekiel would contradict himself, inasmuch as, according
to ch. xxvi. 1, 2, he received intelligence of the affair in the
eleventh year, is founded upon a misinterpretation of the pas-
sage quoted. It is not stated there that Ezekiel received this
information through a fugitive or any man whatever, but
simply that God had revealed to him the fall of Jerusalem
even before it occurred, wnffj?, after our being led away
(ver. 21 and ch. xl. 1), coincides with ]''y\'< i)^Bn nhb in ch. i. 2.
nnarij smitten, i.e. conquered and destroyed, exterminated. In
the clause 'l31 nin< 1*ij the verb nriNT is a pluperfect, and vN
stands for vV, according to the later usage. The formula
indicates the translation of the prophet into an ecstatic state
(see the comm. on ch. i. 3), in which his mouth was opened to
speak, that is to say, the silence imposed upon him was taken
away. The words, " till he came to me in the morning," etc.,
are not to be understood, as signifying that the prophet's mouth
had only been opened for the time from evening till morning ;
for this would be opposed to the following sentence. They
simply affirm that the opening of the mouth took place before
the arrival of the fugitive, the night before the morning of his
arrival. ''S nria>l^ which follows, is an emphatic repetition, in-
troduced as a link with which to connect the practically impor-
tant statement that from that time forward he was not speechless
any more. — It was in all probability shortly afterwards that
Ezekiel was inspired with the word of Grod which follows in
vers. 23-3'3, as we may infer from the contents of the word
itself, which laid the foundation for the prophet's further pro-
phesying. But nothing can be gathered from ver. 22 with
regard to the time when this and the following words of God
(as far as ch. xxxix.), of which no chronological data are given,
were communicated to the prophet and uttered by him. His
72 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
being " silent no more " by no means involves immediate or
continuous speaking, but simply recalls the command to be
speechless. There is no ground for the assumption that all
these words of God were communicated to him in one night
(Havernick, Hengstenberg, and others), either in ver. 22 or in
the contents oi these divine revelations.
Vers. 23-33. Preaching of Repentance after the Fall of
Jerusalem.
The first word of God, which Ezekiel received after the
arrival of the fugitive with the intelligence of the destruction
of Jerusalem, was not of a consolatory, but of a rebuking
nature, and directed against those who, while boasting in an
impenitent state of mind of the promise given to the patriarchs
of the everlasting possession of the Holy Land, fancied that
they could still remain in possession of the promised land even
after the destruction of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of
Judah. This delusion the prophet overthrows by the announce-
ment that the unrighteous are to have no share in the posses-
sion of the land of Israel, but are to perish miserably, and that
the land is to be utterly waste and without inhabitants (vers.
23-29). The Lord then shows him that his countrymen will
indeed come to him and listen to his words, but will only do
that which is pleasant to themselves ; that they will still seek
after gain, and not do his words ; and that it will not be ti'il
after his words have been fulfilled that they will come to the
knowledge of the fact that he really was a prophet (vers. 30-33).
We perceive from these last verses that the threat uttered in
vers. 24-29 was to form the basis for Ezekiel's further pro-
phecies, so that the whole of this word of God has only the
force of an introduction to his further labours. But however
the two halves of this word of God may appear to differ, so far
as their contents are concerned, they are nevertheless closely
connected. The state of heart disclosed in the first half with
reference to the judgment that has already fallen upon the
CHAP. XXXIII. 23-29. 73
land and kingdom, is to preclude the illusion, that the fact of
the people's coming to the prophet to hear his words is a sign
of penitential humiliation under the punishing hand of God,
and to bring out the truth, that the salvation which he is about
to foretell to the people is only to be enjoyed by those who
turn with sincerity to the Lord.
Vers. 23-29. False reliance upon God's promises. — Ver. 23.
And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 24. Son of
man, the inhabitants of these ruins in the land of Israel speak
thus : Abraham was one, and received the land for a possession ;
but we are m,any, the land is given to us for a possession.
Ver. 25. Therefore say to them. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Ye eat upon the blood, and lift up your eyes to your idols, and
shed blood, and would ye possess the land? Ver. 26. Ye rely
upon your sword, do abomination, and one defileth another's wife,
and would ye possess the land? Ver. 27. Speak thus to them.
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, By my life, those who are in the
ruins shall fall by the sword, and whoever is in the open field
him do I give to the beasts to devour, and those who are in the
fortresses and caves shall die of the pestilence. Ver. 28. And I
make the land devastation and waste, and its proud might shall
have an end, and the mountains of Israel shall be waste, so that
no one passeth through. Ver. 29. And they shall know that I
am Jehovah, when I make the land devastation and waste because
of all the abominations lohich they have done. — This threat is
directed against the people who remained behind in the land of
Judah after the destruction of -Jerusalem, niannn nii'i are the
Israehtes who dwelt amidst the ruins of the Holy Land, the
remnant of the people left behind in the land. For it is so
evident as to need no proof that Kliefoth is wrong in asserting
that by niannn we are to understand the district bordering on
the Chaboras, which was not properly cultivated; and by the
inhabitants thereof, the exiles who surrounded Ezekiel. It is
only by confounding ipS and lai that Kliefoth is able to set
aside the more precise definition of the inhabitants of these
74 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ruins contained in the words ^X'Jf''! nonx py, and to connect
'{y 'la bv with CIPN, " they speak concerning the land of
Israel;" and in ver. 27 it is only in a forced manner that he
can generalize riia^nn, and take it as referring to the waste
places both in the Holy Land and on the Chaboras. The
fact, moreover, that vers. 30-33 treat of the Israelites by the
Chaboras, is no proof whatever that they must also be referred
to in vers. 24-29. For the relation in which the two halves of
this word of God stand to one another is not that " vers. 30-33
depict the impression made upon the hearers by the words
contained in vers. 24-29," so that " the persons alluded to in
vers. 30-33 must necessarily be the hearers of vers. 24-29."
Vers. 30-33 treat in quite a general manner of the attitude
which the prophet's countrymen would assume towards his
words — that is to say, not merely to his threats, but also to his
predictions of salvation ; they would only attend to that which
had a pleasant sound to them, but they would not do his words
(vers. 31, 32). It is quite in harmony with this, that in vers.
23-29 these people should be told of the state of heart of those
who had remained behind on the ruins of the Holy Land, and
that it should be announced to them that the fixed belief in the
permanent possession of the Holy Land, on which those whc
i-emained behind in the land relied, was a delusion, and thai
those who were victims of this delusion should be destroyed bj
sword and pestilence. Just as in the first part of this bool
Ezekiel uttered the threatened prophecies concerning thf
destruction of Jerusalem and Judah in the presence of hii
countrymen by the Chaboras, and addressed them to these
because they stood in the same internal relation to the Lord a
their brethren in Jerusalem and Judah ; so here does he hoi
up this delusion before them as a warning, in order that h
may disclose to them the worthlessness of such vain hope, an
preach repentance and conversion as the only way to lit
The meaning of the words spoken by these people, " Abrahai
was one," etc., is, that if Abraham, as one solitary individua
CHAP. XXXIII. 23-29. 75
received the land of Canaan for a possession by the promise of
God, the same God could not take this possession away from
them, the many sons of Abraham. The antithesis of the
" one " and the " many " derived its significance, in relation to
their argument, from the descent of the many from the one,
which is taken for granted, and also from the fact, which is
assumed to be well known from the book of Genesis, that the
land was not promised and given to the patriarch for his own
possession, but for his seed or descendants to possess, They
relied, like the Jews of the time of Christ (John viii. 33, 39),
upon their corporeal descent from Abraham (compare the similar
words in ch. xi. 15). Ezekiel, on the other hand, simply
reminds them of their own sinful conduct (vers. 25, 26), for the
purpose of showing them that they have thereby incurred the
loss of this possession. Eating upon the blood, is eating flesh
in which the blood is still lying, which has not been cleansed
from blood, as in Lev. xix. 26 and 1 Sam. xiv. 32, 33 ; an act
the prohibition of which was first addressed to Noah (Gen. ix. 4),
and is repeatedly urged in the law (cf. Lev. vii. 26, 27). This
is also the case with the prohibition of idolatry, lifting up the
eyes to idols (cf. ch. xviii. 6), and the shedding of blood (cf.
ch, xviii. 10, xxii. 3, etc.). iann 75? ipy, to support oneself, or
rely (IW, used as in ch. xxxi. 14) upon the sword, i.e. to put
confidence in violence and bloodshed. In this connection we
are not to think of the use of the sword in war. To work
abomination, as in ch. xviii. 12. \f)''py. is not a feminine, " ye
women," but } is written in the place of D on account of the n
which follows, after the analogy of li''']? for Di*"]? (Hitzig). On
the defiling of a neighbour's wife, see the comm. on ch. xviii. 6.
Such daring sinners the Lord would destroy wherever they
might be. In ver. 37 the punishment is individualized (cf. ch.
xiv. 21). Those in the n'^nn shall fall by the 3nn (the play upon
the word is very obvious) ; those in the open country shall perish
by wild beasts (compare 2 Kings xvii. 25; Ex. xxiii. 19; Lev.
xxvi. 22) ; those who are in mountain fastnesses and caves.
76 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
where they are safe from the sword and ravenous beasts, shall
perish by plague and pestilence. This threat is not to be
restricted to the acts of the Chaldeans in the land after the
destruction of Jerusalem, but applies to all succeeding times.
Even the devastation and utter depopulation of the land,
threatened in ver. 28, are not to be taken as referring merely
to the time of the Babylonian captivity, but embrace the
devastation which accompanied and followed the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Komans. For nw Jixa, see the comm. on ch.
vii. 24. For ver. 29, compare ch. vi. 14.
Vers. 30-33. Behaviour of the people towards the prophet.—
Ver. 30. And thou, son of man, the sons of thy people converse
about thee by the walls and in the house-doors; one talheth to
another, every one to his brother, saying, Come and let us hear
what kind of word goeth out from Jehovah, Ver. 31. And they
will come to thee, like an assembly of the people, and sit before
thee as my people, and will hear thy words, but not do them ; but
that which is pleasant in their mouth they do ; their heart goeth
after their gain. Ver. 32. And, behold, thou art unto them like
a pleasant singer, beautiful in voice and playing well ; they will
hear thy words, but they will not do them, Ver. 33. But when
it Cometh — behold, it cometh — they will know that a prophet was in
the midst of them, — This addition to the preceding word of God,
which is addressed to Ezekiel personally, applies to the whole
of the second half of his ministry, and stands in obvious con-
nection with the instructions given to the prophet on the
occasion of his first call (ch. iii. 16 sqq.), and repeated, so far
as their substance is concerned, in vers. 7-9, as Kliefoth
himself acknowledges, in opposition to his assumption that
vers. 1-20 of this chapter belong to the prophecies directed
against the foreign nations. As God had directed the propheti's
attention, on the occasion of his call, to the difficulties connected
■with the discharge of the duties of a watchman with which he
was entrusted, by setting before him the object and the respon-
sibility of his vocation, and had warned him not to allow himself
CHAP. XKXIII. 30-83. 77
to be turned aside by the opposition of the people ; so here in
vers. 30—33, at the commencement of the second section of his
ministry, another word is addressed to him personally, in order
that he may not be influenced in the further prosecution of his
calling by either the pleasure or displeasure of men. — His
former utterances had already induced the elders of the people
to come to him to hear the word of God (cf. ch. xiv. 1 and
XX. 1). But now that his prophecies concerning Jerusalem
had been fulfilled, the exiles could not fail to be still more
attentive to his words, so that they talked of him both secretly
and openly, and encouraged one another to come and listen to
his discourses. God foretells this to him, but announces to
him at the same time that this disposition on the part of his
countrymen to listen to him is even now no sign of genuine
conversion to the word of God, in order that he may not be
mistaken in his expectations concerning the people. Kliefoth
has thus correctly explained the contents, design, and connec-
tion of these verses as a whole. In ver. 30 the article before
the participle Q''"131? takes the place of the relative '^B'^5, and the
words are in apposition to ^Dy 'ja, the sons of thy people who
converse about thee, ill? is reciprocal, as in Mai. iii. 13, 16,
and Ps. cxix. 23. But 3 is to be understood, not in a hostile
sense, as in the passage cited from the Psalms, but in the sense
of concerning, like 3 13'^ in 1 Sam. xix. 3 as contrasted with
3 131 in Num. xxi. 7, to speak against a person. The participle
is continued by the finite lail, and the verb belonging to
IDy ''iS follows, in the lN3;i of ver. 31, in the form of an apodosis.
There is something monstrous in Hitzig's assumption, that the
whole passage from ver. 30 to ver. 33 forms but one clause,
and that the predicate to lOV '33 does not occur till the WTi of
ver. 33.— nil'ipri 'p'i^, by the side of the walls, i.e. sitting against
the walls, equivalent to secretly ; and in the doors of the houses,
in other words publicly, one neighbour conversing with another,
in, Aramean for ir\H, and tS'^s by the side of ins, every one ;
not merely one here or there, but every man to his neighbour.
78 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
D3)-Ni3D3, lit. as the coining of a people, i.e. as when a crowd of
men flock together in crowds or troops. ^SV is a predicate, as
my people, i.e. as if they wished, like my people, to hear my
word from thee. But they do not think of doing thy words, i.e.
what thou dost announce to them as my word. D''3JJj are things
for which one cherishes an eager desire, pleasant things in
their month, i.e. according to their taste (cf. Gen. xxv. 28).
Havernick is wrong in taking Q''3jy to mean illicit love. The
word Dn^33 is quite inapplicable to such a meaning. The
rendering, they do it with their mouth, is opposed both to the
construction and the sense. 05?V?, their gain, the source from
which they promise themselves advantage or gain. In ver. 32
a clearer explanation is given of the reason why they come to
the prophet, notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish to
do his words. " Thou art to them Q''3JJ'. T'?'? ;" this cannot
mean like a pleasant song, but, as JM 3^» (one who can play
well) clearly shows, like a singer of pleasant songs. The
abstract ">''?' stands for the concrete IE', a singer, a man of song
(Hitzig). In ver. 32b, "they hear thy words, but do them
not," is repeated with emphasis, for the purpose of attaching
the threat in ver. 33. But when it conieth, — namely, what thou
sayest, or prophesiest, — behold, it cometh, i.e. it will come as
surely as thy prophecies concerning the destruction of Jeru-
salem ; then will they know that a prophet was among them
(cf. ch. ii. 5), that is to say, that he proclaimed God's word to
them. Therefore Ezekiel is not to be prevented, by the misuse
which will be made of his words, from preaching the truth.—
This conclusion of the word of God, which points back to
ch. ii. 5, also shows that it forms the introduction to the pro-
phecies which follow.
CHAP. XSXIV.-XXXIS. 79
Chap. XXXIV.-XXXIX.— THE RESTORATION OP ISRAEL,
AND DESTRUCTION OF GOG AND MAGOG.
The promise of the salvation, which is to blossom for the
covenant nation after the judgment, commences with the
announcement that the Lord will deliver Israel out of the
hand of its evil shepherds, who only feed themselves and de-
stroy the flock, and will take care of His own flock, gather
them together, feed and tend them on a good meadow, protect
the weak sheep against the strong, and through His servant
David bring security and blessing to the whole of the flock
(ch. xxxiv.). This comprehensive promise is carried out still
further in the following chapters in various phases. Because
Edom cherishes perpetual enmity against the sons of Israel,
and has sought to take possession of their land, in which
Jehovah was, the mountains of Seir shall become a perpetual
desert (ch. xxxv.) ; whereas the devastated land of Israel shall be
rebuilt, and sown once more, bear fruit, and be filled with man
and beast (ch. xxxvi. 1-15). The Lord will do this for His
holy name's sake, will cleanse His people from their sins, when
gathered out of the nations, by sprinkling them with pure
water, and renew them by His Spirit in heart and mind, that
they may walk in His commandments, and multiply greatly in
their land, when it has been glorified into a garden of God
(ch. xxxvi. 16-38). The house of Israel, which has been slain
with the sword, and has become like a field full of dry bones of
the dead, the Lord will awaken to new life, and bring in peace
into the lard of Israel (ch. xxxvii. 1-14) ; the two divided
peoples and kingdoms of Israel He will unite into one people
and kingdom, will liberate them from their sins, cause them to
dwell in the land given to His servant Jacob under the sove-
reignty of His servant David, will make with them a covenant
of peace for ever, and dwell above them as their God for ever
in the sanctuary, which He will establish in the midst, of them
(ch. xxxvii. 15-28). And, finally, in the last time, when Israel
80 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
is dwelling in its own land in security and peace, the Lord will
bring Gog from the land of Magog, the prince of Kosh,
Meshech, and Tubal, with a powerful army of numerous
peoples, into the land that has been restored from the sword ;
but when he has come to plunder and prey, the Lord will
destroy him with all his army, and by this judgment display
His glory among the nations, and so have compassion upon the
whole house of Israel, and because He has poured out His Spirit
upon it, will hide His face from it no more (ch. xxxviii. and
xxxix.). — From this general survey it is evident that the words
of God contained in ch. xxxiv.-xxxvii. announce the restoration
and exaltation of Israel to be the sanctified people of God, and
ch. xxxviii. and xxxix. the lasting establishment of this salva-
tion, through the extermination of those eneruies who rise up
against the restored people of God.
CHAP. XXXIV. DEPOSITION OF THE BAD SHEPHERDS; COL-
LECTING AND TENDING OP THE FLOCK ; AND APPOINT-
MENT OF THE ONE GOOD SHEPHERD.
The shepherds, who have fed themselves and neglected the
flock, so that it has been scattered and has become a prey to
wild beasts, will be deprived by the Lord of their office of
shepherd (vers. 1-10). And He will take charge of His own
flock, gather it, together from its dispersion in the lands, feed
and tend it on good pasture in the land of Israel, and sift it by
the extermination of the fat and violent ones (vers. 11-22). He
will appoint His servant David shepherd over His flock, make
a covenant of peace with His people, and bless the land with
fruitfulness, so that Israel may dwell there in security, and no
more be carried off either as booty for the nations or by famine,
and may acknowledge Jehovah as its God (vers. 23-31).
This word of God is a repetition and further expansion of
the short prophecy of Jeremiah in Jer. xxiii. 1-8. The threat
against the bad shepherds simply forms the foil for the promise,
CHAP. SXXIV. 81
that the flock, which has been plwiged into misery by bad
shepherds, shall be gathered and tended by the Lord and His
servant David, whom Jehovah will appoint prince over His
people, so that it is essentially a prophecy of salvation for
Israel. — The question in dispute among the commentators,
whether we are to understand by the shepherds, out of whose
hand and tyranny the Lord will rescue Israel His flock, the
priests and kings (Ephr., Syr., and Theodoret), or the false
prophets and false teachers of the people (Glass and others), or
simply the kings (Hengst., Hav., and others), or all those who,
by reason of their office, were leaders of the people, rulers,
priests, and prophets, " the whole body of > official persons
charged with the direction of the nation " (Kliefoth), may be
settled by the simple conclusion, that only the rulers of the
nation are intended. This is proved not only by the biblical
idea of the shepherd generally, which (probably in distinction
from the idea of the bell-wether) is everywhere employed to
denote rulers alone, but more particularly by the primary
passage already referred to (Jer. xxiii. 1-8), where we are to
understand by the shepherds, kings and princes, to the exclu-
sion of priests and prophets, against whom Jeremiah first
prophesies from ver. 9 onwards ; and, lastly, by the antithesis
to the good shepherd, David, who is to feed the flock of
Jehovah as prince C*'?'?), and not as priest or prophet (vers.
23, 24). Only we must not take the term rulers as applying to
the kings alone, but must understand thereby all the persons
entrusted with the government of the nation, or the whole body
of the civil authorities of Israel, among whom priests and
prophets come into consideration, not on account of their
spiritual calling and rank, but only so far as they held magis-
terial offices. And apart from other grounds, we are not
warranted in restricting the idea of shepherds to the kings
alone; for the simple reason that our prophecy, which dates
from the time succeeding the destruction of Jerusalem, does
not apply to the former rulers only, i.e. the kings who had
EZEK. II. ^
82 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
fallen along with the kingdom of Jndah, but although treating
of shepherds, who had scattered Israel among the nations,
assumes that the rule of these shepherds is still continuing, and
announces their removal, or the deliverance of the flock out of
their hand, as something to be effected in the future (cf. vers.
8-10) ; so that it also refers to the civil rulers who governed
Israel after the overthrow of the monarchy, and even after the
captivity until the coming of the Messiah, the promised Prince
of David.
Vers. 1-10. Woe to the bad shepherds. — Ver. 1. And the
word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man, pro-
phesy concerning the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to
them, to the shepherds. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Woe to the
shepherds of Israel, who fed themselves ; should not the shiq>herdi
feed the flock? Ver. 3. Ye eat the fat, and clothe yourselves with
the wool ; ye slay the fattened ; the flock ye do not feed. Ver. 4.
The weak ones ye do not strengthen, and that which is sick ye do
not cure, the wounded one ye hind not up, the scattered ye bring
not hack, and the lost one ye do not seek ; and ye rule over them
with violence and with severity. Ver. 5. Therefore they wen
scattered, because without shepherd, and became food to all
the beasts of the field, and were scattered. Ver. 6. My sheep
wander about on all the mountains, and on every high hill; and
over all ilie land have my sheep been scattered, and there is no one
who asks for them, and no one who seeks them. Ver. 7. There-
fore, ye shepherds, hear ye the word of Jehovah : Ver. 8. As 1
live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, because my sheep become
a prey, and my sheep become food to all the beasts of the field,
because there is no shepherd, and my shepherds do not inquire after
my sheep, and the shepherds feed themselves, but do not feed the
sheep, Ver. 9. Therefore, ye shepherds, hear ye the word oj
Jehovah, Ver. 10. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, 1
will deal with the shepherds, and will demand my sheep from
their hand, and cause them to cease to feed my flock, that the}
may feed themselves no more; and I will deliver my sheep from
CHAP. XXXIV. 1-10. 83
their mouth, that they may be food to them no more. — ^In ver. 2
fyi? is an explanatory apposition to on''7S, and is not to be
taken in connection with " "lOK na^ in opposition to the constant
use of this formnla, as Kliefoth maintains. The reason for the
woe pronounced is given in the apposition, who fed themselves,
whereas they ought to have fed the flock ; and the charge that
they only care for themselves is still further explained by a de-
scription of their conduct (vers. 3 and 4), and of the dispersion
of the flock occasioned thereby (vers. 5 and 6). Observe the
periphrastic preterite D'VT '''0> ^^^7 were feeding, which shows
that the woe had relation chiefly to the former shepherds or
rulers of the nation. DHiN is reflective, se ipsos (of. Gesen
§ 124. 16). The disgracefulness of their feeding themselves is
brought out by the question, " Ought not the shepherds to feed
the flock ? " Ver. 3 shows how they fed themselves, and ver. 4
how they neglected the flock. 3?n, the fat, which Bochart and
Hitzig propose to alter into 3?n^, the milk, after the Septuagint
and Vulgate, is not open to any objection. The fat, as the
best portion of the flesh, which was laid upon the altar, for
example, in the case of the sacrifices, as being the flower of all
the flesh, is mentioned here as pars melior pro toto. Havernick
has very properly pointed, in vindication of the reading in the
text, to Zech. xi. 16, where the two clauses, ye eat the fat, and
slay the fattened, are joined together in the one clause, " the
flesh of the fattened one will he eat." There is no force in the
objection raised by Hitzig, that " the slaughtering of the fat
beasts, which ought to be mentioned first, is not introduced
till afterwards;" for this clause contains a heightening of the
thought that they use the flock to feed themselves : they do not
even kill the leaner beasts, but those that are well fattened ;
and it follows very suitably after the general statement, that
they make use of both the flesh and the wool of the sheep for
their own advantage. They care nothing for the wellbeing of
the flock : this is stated in the last clause of ver. 3, which is
explained in detail in ver. 4. "1^™ is the Mphal participle of
84 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
rhn, and is a contracted form of rmra^ like n^TO in Isa. xvii. 11
The distinction between Tmn and nAn is determined h
the respective predicates p?n and NSn. According to these
rbm signifies that which is weak in consequence of sickness
and n^n that which is weak in itself. ^'laB'J, literally, tha
which is broken, an animal with a leg or some other membei
injured. n^3, scattered, as in Dent. xxii. 1. In the last clana
of ver. 4, the neglect of the flock is summed up in the posi
tive expression, to rule over them with violence and severity
^123 ITIT is taken from Lev. xxv. 43, 46 ; but there as well ai
here it points back to Ex. i. 13, 14, where T|isa is applied to th(
tyrannical measures adopted by Pharaoh for the oppression ol
the Israelites. The result of this (vers. 5, 6) was, that the sheej
were scattered, and became food to the beasts of prey. Vr"-
nj)'"!, on account of there not being a shepherd, i.e. because then
was no shepherd worthy of the name. This took place wher
Israel was carried away into exile, where it became a prey t(
the heathen nations. When we find this mournful fate of the
people described as brought about by the bad shepherds, anc
attributable to faults of theirs, we must not regard the words si
applying merely to the mistaken policy of the kings with regarc
to external affairs (Hitzig) ; for this was in itself simply a con-
sequence of their neglect of their theocratic calling, and of theii
falling away from the Lord into idolatry. It is true that the
people had also made themselves guilty of this sin, so that ii
was obliged to atone not only for the sins of its shepherds, bul
for its own sin also ; but this is passed by here, in accordanct
with the design of this prophecy. And it could very properlj
be kept out of sight, inasmuch as the rulers had also occasionec
the idolatry of the people, partly by their neglect of their duty
and partly by their bad example. n^»sm is repeated vritl
emphasis at the close of ver. 5 ; and the thought is still furthei
expanded in ver. 6. The wandering upon all the mountaini
and hills must not be understood as signifying the straying ol
the people to the worship on high places, as Theodoret an(
CHAP. XXXIV. 1-10. 85
Kliefoth suppose. The fallacy of this explanation is clearly-
shown by the passage on which this figurative description rests
(1 Kings xxii. 17), where the people are represented as scat-
tered upon the mountains in consequence of the fall of the
king in battle, like a flock that had no shepherd. The words
in the next clause, corresponding to the mountains and hills,
are p.?" ''Ja"^?, the whole face of the land, not « of the earth "
(Kliefoth). For although the dispersion of the flock actually
consisted in the carrying away of the people into heathen
lands, the actual meaning of the figure is kept in the back-
ground here, as is evident from the fact that Ezekiel constantly
uses the expression nisnKri (plural) when speaking of the dis-
persion among the heathen (cf. ver. 13). The distinction
between Vrri and t^'ipa is, that c'lT signifies rather to ask, inquire
for a thing, to trouble oneself about it, whereas E'pa means to
seek for that which has strayed or is lost. In vers. 7-10, the
punishment for their unfaithfulness is announced to the shep-
herds themselves ; but at the same time, as is constantly the
case with Ezekiel, their guilt is once more recapitulated as an
explanation of the threatening of punishment, and the earnest
appeal to listen is repeated in ver. 9, The Lord will demand
His sheep of them ; and because sheep have been lost through
their fault. He will depose them from the office of shepherd,
and so deliver the poor flock from their violence. If we com-
pare with this Jer. xxiii. 2 : " Behold, I will visit upon you the
wickedness of your doings," the threat in Ezekiel has a much
milder sound. There is nothing said about the punishment of
the shepherd, but simply that the task of keeping the sheep
shall be taken from them, so that they shall feed themselves no
more. This distinction is to be explained from the design of
our prophecy, which is not so much to foretell the punishment of
the shepherds, as the deliverance from destruction of the sheep
that have been plunged into misery. The repetition of ''JNX,
my flock (vers. 8 and 10, as before in ver. 6), is also connected
with this. The rescue of the sheep out of the hand of the bad
86 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
shepherds had already commenced with the overthrow of the
monarchy on the destruction of Jerusalem. If, then, it is here
described as only to take place in the future, justice is not
done to these words by explaining them, as Hitzig does, as
signifying that what has already actually taken place is now to
be made final, and not to be reversed. For although this is
implied, the words clearly affirm that the deliverance of the
sheep out of the hand of the shepherds has not yet taken place,
but still remains to be effected, so that the people are regarded
as being at the time in the power of bad shepherds, and their
rescue is predicted as still in the future. How and when it will
be accomplished, by the removal of the bad shepherds, is shown
in the announcement, commencing with ver. 11, of what the
Lord will do for His flock.
Vers. 11-22. Jehovah Himself will seek His flock, gather it
together from the dispersion, lead it to good pasture, and sift
it by the destruction of the bad sheep. — Ver. 11. For thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I myself j I will inquire after my
flock, and take charge thereof. Ver. 12. As a shepherd tahth
charge of his flock in the day when he is in the midst of his
scattered sheep, so mil I take charge of my flock, and deliver them
out of all the places whither they have been scattered in the day
of cloud and cloudy night. Ver. 13. And I will bring them out
from the nations, and gather them together out of the lands, and
bring them into their land, and feed them upon the mountains of
Israel, in the valleys, and in all the dwelling-places of the land.
Ver. 14. I will feed them in a good pasture, and on the high
mountains of Israel will their pasture-ground be : there shall tliey
lie dojon in a good pasture-ground, and have fat pasture on the
mountains of Israel. Ver. 15. I will feed my flock, and I will
cause them to lie down, is the saying of the Lord JehovaJu
Ver. 16. That which is lost will I seek, and t/iat which is diiven,
away will I bring back ; that which is wounded will I bind up,
and that which is sick will 1 strengthen: but that which isfai
and strong will I destroy, and feed them according to justice.
CHAP. XXXIV. 11-22. 87
Ver. 17. And you, my sheep, thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
BelioJd, I will judge between sheep and sheep, and the rams and
the he-goats. Ver. 18. Is it too little for you, that ye eat up the
good pasture, and what remains of your pasture ye tread down
with your feet ? and the clear water ye drink, and render muddy
tvhat remains with your feet? Ver. 19. And are my sheep to
have for food that which is trodden down by your feet, and to
drink that which is made muddy by your feet ? Ver. 20. Tliere-
fore thus saith the Lord Jehovah to them. Behold I, I will judge
between fat sheep and lean. Ver. 21. Because ye press with side
and shoulder, and thrust all the weak with your horns, till ye have
driven them out ; Ver. 22. I will help my sheep, so that they shall
no more become a prey ; and will judge between sheep and sheep,
— All that the Lord will do for His flock is summed up in
ver. 11, in the words 0<pnt^yi yxvnx ''PIB'^'!, which stand in
obvious antithesis to '1J1 tynil pNl in ver. 6, — an antithesis sharply
accentuated by the emphatic "'3X "iMn, which stands at the head
in an absolute form. The fuller explanation is given in the
verses which follow, from ver. 12 onwards. Observe here that
1133 is substituted for t^ips. "li?.?, to seek and examine minutely,
involves the idea of taking affectionate charge. What the
Lord does for His people is compared in ver. 12a to the care
which a shepherd who deserves the name manifests towards
sheep when they are scattered (^^t^''^a3 without the article is
connected with iJNV in the form of apposition) ; and in ver. 125
it is still more particularly explained. In the first place, He
will gather them from all the places to which they have been
scattered. 7*2fri implies that in their dispersion they have fallen
into a state of oppression and bondage among the nations (cf.
Ex. vi. 6). ^^1V\ |3? Qi''3 belongs to the relative clause : whither
they have been scattered. The circumstance that these words
are taken from Joel ii. 2 does not compel us to take them in
connection with the principal clause, as Hitzig and Kliefoth
propose, and to understand them as relating to the time when
God will hold His judgment of the heathen world. The
88 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
notion that the words in Joel signify " God's day of judgment
upon all the heathen " (Kliefoth), is quite erroneous ; and even
Hitzig does not derive this meaning from Joel ii. 2, but from
the combination of our verse with Ezek. xxx. 3 and xxix. 21.
The deliverance of the sheep out of the places to which they
have been scattered, consists in the gathering together of Israel
out of the nations, and their restoration to their own land, and
their feeding upon the mountains and all the dwelling-places of
the land (SB'io, a place suitable for settlement), and that in good
and fat pasture (ver. 14) ; and lastly, in the fact that Jehovah
bestows the necessary care upon the sheep, strengthens and
heals the weak and sick (vers. 15 and 16), — that is to say, does
just what the bad shepherds have omitted (ver. 4), — and
destroys the fat and strong. In this last clause another side
is shown of the pastoral fidelity of Jehovah. T'PfK has been
changed by the LXX., Syr., and Vulg. into liOfK, i^uXo^w ;
and Luther has followed them in his rendering, " I will watch
over them." But this is evidently a mistake, as it fails to
harmonize with tiSKioa nayi.K. The fat and strong sheep are
characterized in vers. 18 and 19 as those which spoil the food
and water of the others. The allusion, therefore, is to the rich •
and strong ones of the nation, who oppress the humble and
poor, and treat them with severity. The destruction of these
oppressors shows that the loving care of the Lord is associated
with righteousness — that He feeds the flock t2SB'»3. This
thought is carried out still further in vers. 17—21, the sheep
themselves being directly addressed, and the Lord assuring
them that He will judge between sheep and sheep, and put an
end to the oppressive conduct of the fat sheep and the strong.
•^Y? 'W ''? • between the one sheep and the other, ntt^ is
extended in the apposition, " the rams and he-goats," which
must not be rendered, " with regard to the rams and he-goats,"
as it has been by Kliefoth. The thought is not that Jehovah
will divide the rams and he-goats from the sheep, as some have
explained it, from an inappropriate comparison with Matt.
CHAP. XXXIV. 23-31r 89
XXV. 32; but the division is to be effected in sucli a manner
that sheep will be separated from sheep, the fat sheep beincr
placed on one side with the rams and he-goats, and kept apart
from the lean (nrij ver. 20) and the sickly sheep QVi'^ni, ver. 21).
It is to the last-named sheep, rams, and he-goatS that vers. 18
and 19 are addressed. With regard to the charge brought
against them, that they eat up the pasture and tread down the
remainder with their feet, etc., Bochart has already correctly
observed, that " if the words are not quite applicable to actual
sheep, they are perfectly appropriate to the mystical sheep
intended here, i.e. to the Israelites, among whom many of the
rich, after enjoying an abundant harvest and vintage, grudged
the poor their gleaning in either one or the other." VppO, a
substantive formation, like DD"1D, literally, precipitation of the
water, i.e. the water purified by precipitation ; for J'pE', to sink,
is the opposite of tJ'?'}, to stir up or render muddy by treadincr
with the feet (compare ch. xxxii. 14 and 2). nna, ver. 20 =
nsia or nna. Ver. 22 brings to a close the description of the
manner in which God will deliver His flock, and feed it with
righteousness. ''fiJ?B'ini points back to w^i}] in ver. 12, and
•ipiDaBh to tasfpa nars in ver. 16.— To this there is appended
in vers. 23 sqq. a new train of thought, describing how God
will still further display to His people His pastoral fidelity.
Vers. 23-31. Appointment of David as shepherd, and bless-
ing of the people. — Ver. 23. And I will raise up one shepherd
over them, who shall feed them, my servant David ; he will feed
them, and he will he to them a shepherd. Ver. 24. And I,
Jehovah, will be God to them, and my servant David prince in the
midst of them : I, Jehovah, have spoken it. Ver. 25. And I will
make a covenant of peace with them, and destroy the evil beasts
out of the land, so that they will dwell safely in the desert and
sleep in the forests. Ver, 26. And I will make them and the
places round my hill a blessing, and cause th6 rain to fall in its
season : showers of blessing shall there be. Ver, 27. The tree of
the field will give its fruit, and the land will give its produce, and
90 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
they will he safe in their land, and will know that I am Jehovah,
when I break their yoke-bars in pieces, and deliver them out of
the hand of those who made them servants. Ver. 28. They will
be no more a prey to the nations, and the wild beasts will not
devour them ; but they will dwell safely, and no one will terrify
them. Ver. 29. And I vnll raise up for them a plantation
for a name, so that they will no more be swept away by famine
in the land, and shall no longer bear the disgrace of the heathen
nations. Ver. 30. And they shall know that I, Jehovah, tlieir
God, am with them, and they are my people, the house of
Israel, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 31. Ard
ye are my sheep, the flock of my pasture; ye are men, I
am your God, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. — God will
cause to stand up, raise up, one single shepherd over His
flock, ^l''i?!^, the standing expression for the rising up of a
person in history through the interposition of God (cf. Deut.
xviii. 15, 2 Sam. vii. 12, and other passages). in« n^h, not
unicus, singularis, a shepherd unique in his kind, but o»i«
shepherd, in contrast not only with the many bad shepherds,
but with the former division of the people into two kingdoms,
each with its own separate king. Compare oh. xxxvii. 24 with
Jer. xxiii. 6, where it is expressly said that the David to be
raised up is to feed Israel and Judah, the two peoples that had
been divided before. " My servant David : " Jehovah calls
him '^^V, not merely with reference to the obedience rendered
(Havernick), but also with regard to his election (Isa. xlii. 1 ;
Hengstenberg). There is no necessity to refute the assertion
of Hitzig, David Strauss, and others, that Ezekiel expected the
former King David to be raised from the dead. The reference
is to the sprout of David (Jer. xxiii. 5), already called simply
David in Hos. iii. 5 and Jer. xxx. 9. In ver. 24 the relation
of Jehovah to this David is more precisely defined: Jehovah
will then be God to His people, and David be prince in the
midst of them. The last words point back to 2 Sam. vii. 85.
Through the government of David, Jehovah will become in
CHAP. XXXIV. 23-31. 91
truth God of His people Israel ; for David will feed the people
in perfect unity with Jehovah, — will merely carry out the will
of Jehovah, and not place himself in opposition to God, like the
bad shepherds, because, as is therewith presupposed, he is con-
nected with God by unity of nature. — In vers. 25 sqq. the
thought is carried out still further, — how God will become God
to His people, and prove Himself to be its covenant God
through the pastoral fidelity of the future David. God will
fully accomplish the covenant mercies promised to Israel. The
making of the covenant of peace need not be restricted, in
accordance with Hos. ii. 20 (18), to a covenant which God
would make with the beasts in favour of His people. The
thought is a more comprehensive one here, and, according to
Lev. xxvi. 4-6, the passage which Ezekiel bad in his mind
involves all the salvation which God had included in His
promises to His people : viz. (1) the extermination of every-
thing that could injure Israel, of all the wild beasts, so that they
would be able to sleep securely in the deserts and the forests
(ver. 25; compare Lev. xxvi. 6); (2) the pouring out of an
abundant rain, so that the field and land would yield rich pro-
duce (vers. 26, 27; cf. Lev. xxvi. 4, 5). "I make them, the
Israelites, and the surroundings of my hill, a blessing." Waa,
the hill of Jehovah, is, according to Isa. xxxi. 4, Mount Zion,
the temple-mountain, including the city of Jerusalem. The
surroundings of this hill are the land of Israel, that lay around
it. But Ziou, with the land around, is not mentioned in the
place of the inhabitants ; and still less are we to understand by
the surroundings of the hill the heathen nations, as Hengsten-
berg does, in opposition both to the context and the usage of
the language. The thought is simply that the Lord will make
both the people and the land a blessing (Havernick, Kliefoth).
nana, a blessing, is stronger than " blessed " (cf. Gen. xii. 2)
The blessing is brought by the rain in its season, which fertilizes
the earth. This will take place when the Lord breaks the
yokes laid upon His people. These words are from Lev.
92 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
xxvi. 13, where they refer to the deliverance of Israel from the
bondage of Egypt ; and they are transferred by Ezekiel to the
future redemption of Israel from the bondage of the heathen.
For ona '^''l^s?, compare Ex. i. 14. This thought is carried
out still further in ver. 28 ; and then, in ver. 29, all that has
been said is summed up in the thoughts, " I raise up for them
a plantation for a name," etc. y^D, a plantation, as in ch.
xvii. 7 ; not a land for planting (Hitzig). DB'?, for a name,
i.e. not for the glory of God (De Wette) ; but the plantation,
which the Lord will cause to grow by pouring down showers
of blessing (ver. 26), is to bring renown to the Israelites,
namely, among the heathen, who will see from this that Israel
is a people blessed by its God. This explanation of the words
is supplied by the following clause: they shall no more he
swept away by famine in the land, and no more hear the dis-
grace of the heathen, i.e. the disgrace which the heathen
heaped upon Israel when in distress (compare Zeph. iii. 19 ;
Jer. xiii. 11 ; and the primary passage, Deut. xxvi. 29). From
this blessing they will learn that Jehovah their God is with
them, and Israel is His people. The promise concludes in
ver. 31 with these words, which set a seal upon the whole : " Ye
are my flock, the flock of my pasture (lit. my pasture-flock;
n^jno txs, Jer. xxiii. 1, the flock fed by God Himself) ; men
are ye, I am your God." That these last words do not serve
merely as an explanation of the figurative expression " flock,"
is a fact of which no proof is needed. The figure of a flock
was intelligible to every one. The words " call attention to
the depth and greatness of the divine condescension, and meet
the objection of men of weak faith, that man, who is taken
from the earth no-iNn, and returns to it again, is incapable of
so intimate a connection with God " (Hengstenbercr).
If we take another survey, in conclusion, of the contents of
our prophecy, the following are the three features of the sal-
vation promised to the people of Israel :— (1) The Lord will
liberate His people from the hand of the bad shepherds, and
CHAP. XXXIV. 23-31. 93
He Himself will feed it as His flock ; (2) He will gather it
together from its dispersion, bring it back to the land of Israel
and feed it there, will take charge of the sheep in need of help,
and destroy the fat and strong sheep by which the weak ones
are oppressed ; (3) He will raise up the future David for a
shepherd, and under his care He will bestow upon His people
the promised covenant blessings in richest measure. These
saving acts of God for His people, however, are not depicted
according to their several details and historical peculiarities, as
Kliefoth has correctly observed, nor are they narrated in the
chronological order in which they would follow one another in
history ; but they are grouped together according to their
general design and character, and their essential features. If,
then, we seek for the fulfilment, the Lord raised up His servant
David as a shepherd to Israel, by sending Jesus Christ, who
came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke six. 10 ;
Matt, xviii. 11), and who calls Himself the Good Shepherd with
obvious reference to this and other prophetic declarations of a
similar kind (John x, 11 sqq.). But the sending of Christ was
preceded by the gathering of Israel out of the Babylonian
exile, by which God had already taken charge of His flock.
Yet, inasmuch as only a small portion of Israel received the
Messiah, who appeared in Jesus, as its shepherd, there fell
upon the unbelieving Israel a new judgment of dispersion
among all nations, which continues still, so that a gathering
together still awaits the people of Israel at some future time.
No distinction is made in the prophecy before us between these
two judgments of dispersion, which are associated with the
twofold gathering of Israel ; but they are grouped together as
one, so that although their fulfilment commenced with the
deliverance of Israel from the Babylonian captivity and the
coming of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd of the family oi
David, it was only realized in that portion of Israel, numerically
the smallest portion, which was willing to be gathered and fed
by Jesus Christ, and the full realization will only be effected
94 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
when that conversion of Israel shall take place, wliich the
Apostle Paul foretells in Eom. xi. 25 sqq.— For further remarks
on the ultimate fulfilment, we refer the reader to a later page.
CHAP. XXXV. l-XXXVI. 15. DEVASTATION OF EDOM, AND
EESTOKATION OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL.
The two sections, ch. xxxv. 1-15 and ch. xxxvi. 1-15, form
a connected prophecy. This is apparent not only from their
formal arrangement, both of them being placed together under
the introductory formula, " And the word of Jehovah came to
me, saying," but also from their contents, the promise in rela-
tion to the mountains of Israel being so opposed to the threat
against the mountains of Seir (ch. xxxv. 1-15) as to form the
obverse and completion of the latter ; whilst allusion is evi-
dently made to it in the form of expression employed (com-
pare ch. xxxvi. 4, 6, with ch. xxxv. 8 ; and ch. xxxvi. 5a with
ch. xxxv. 15b). The contents are the following : The moun-
tains of Seir shall be laid waste (ch. xxxv. 1-4), because Edom
cherishes eternal enmity and bloody hatred towards Israel
(vers. 5-9), and because it has coveted the land of Israel and
blasphemed Jehovah (vers. 10-15). On the other hand, the
mountain-land of Israel, which the heathen have despised on
account of its devastation, and have appropriated to themselves
as booty (ch. xxxvi. 1-7), shall be inhabited by Israel again,
and shall be cultivated and no longer bear the disgrace of the
heathen (vers. 8-15). This closing thought (ver. 15) points
back to ch. xxxiv. 29, and shows that our prophecy is intended
as a further expansion of that conclusion ; and at the same time,
that in the devastation of Edom the overthrow of the heathen
world as a whole, with its enmity against God, is predicted, and
in the restoration of the land of Israel the re-erection of the
fallen kingdom of God.
Chap. xxxv. The Devastation of Edom. — Ver. 1. And
CHAP. XXXV. 1-15. 95
the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man,
set thy face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, Ver. 3.
And say to it, TIius saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal
with thee, Mount Sdr, and will stretch out my hand against
thee, and make thee waste and devastation. Ver. 4. Thy cities
will I make into ruins, and thou wilt become a waste, and shalt
know that I am Jehovah, Ver. 5. Because thou cherishest
eternal enmity, and gavest up the sons of Israel to the sword at the
time of their distress, at the time of the final transgression, Ver. 6.
Therefore, as truly as I live, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah,
1 will make thee blood, and blood shall pursue thee ; since thou
hast not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue thee. Ver. 7.
/ will make Mount Seir devastation and waste, and cut off there-
from, him that goeth away and him that returneik, Ver. 8. And
fill his mountains with his slain ; upon thy hills, and in thy
valleys, and in all thy low places, those pierced with the sword
shall fall. Ver. 9. I will make thee eternal wastes, and thy cities
shall not be inhabited ; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.
Ver. 10. Because thou sayest, The two nations and the two lands
they shall be mine, and we will take possession of it, when Jehovah
was there ; Ver. 11. Therefore, as truly as I live, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah, 1 will do according to thy wrath and thine
envy, as thmi hast done because of thy hatred, and will make my-
self known amang them, as I shall judge thee. Ver. 12. And
thou shalt know that I, Jehovah, have heard all thy reproaches
which thou hast uttered against the mountains of Israel, saying,
" tJiey are laid waste, they are given to us for food." Ver. 13.
Ye have magnified against me with your mouth, and heaped up
your sayings against me ; I have heard it. Ver. 14. Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah, When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will prepare
devastation for thee. Ver. 15. As thou hadst thy delight in the
inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was laid waste, so
will I do to thee ; thou shalt become a waste. Mount Seir and all
Edom together ; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.
The theme of this prophecy, viz. " Edom and its cities are
96 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
to become a desert" (vers. 2-4), is vindicated and earnestly
elaborated in two strophes, commencing with 'U1 \V] (vers. 5 and
10), and closing, like the announcement of the theme itself
(ver. 46), with ''''' ''3K '3 (1VT1) DriVI'l, by a distinct statement of
the sins of Edom.— Already, in ch. xxv., Edom has been named
among the hostile border nations which are threatened with
destruction (vers. 12-14). The earlier prophecy applied to the
Edomites, according to their historical relation to the people of
Israel and the kingdom of Judah. In the present word of
God, on the contrary, Edom comes into consideration, on the
ground of its hostile attitude towards the covenant people, as
the representative of the world and of mankind in its hostility
to the people and kingdom of God, as in Isa. xxxiv. and Ixiii.
1-6. This is apparent from the fact that devastation is to be
prepared for Edom, when the whole earth rejoices (ver. 14),
which does not apply to Edom as a small and solitary nation,
and still more clearly from the circumstance that, in the pro-
mise of salvation in ch. xxxvi., not all Edom alone (ver. 5), but
the remnant of the heathen nations generally (ch. xxxvi. 3-7
and 15), are mentioned as the enemies from whose disgrace
and oppression Israel is to be delivered. For ver. 2, compare
ch. xiii. 17. T'J'B' "in is the name given to the mountainous
district inhabited by the Edomites, between the Dead Sea and
the Elanitic Gulf (see the comm. on Gen. xxxvi. 9). The
prophecy is directed against the land ; but it also applies to the
nation, which brings upon itself the desolation of its land by its
hostility to Israel. For ver. 3, compare ch. vi. 14, etc. na"in,
destruction. The sin of Edom mentioned in ver. 5 is eternal
enmity toward Israel, which has also been imputed to the
Philistines in ch. xxv. 15, but which struck deeper root, in the
case of Edom, in the hostile attitude of Esau toward Jacob
(Gen. xxv. 22 sqq. and xxvii. 37), and was manifested, as Amos
(i. 11) has already said, in the constant retention of its malignity '
toward the covenant nation, so that Edom embraced every
opportunity to effect its destruction, and according to the chai'ge
CHAP XXXV. 1-15. 97
brought against it by Ezekiel, gave up the sons of Israel to the
sword when the kingdom of Judah fell. T}ri ni ^•^ T'an, lit. to
pour upon ( — into) the hands of the sword, i.e. to deliver up
to the power of the sword (cf. Ps. Ixiii. 11 ; Jer. xviii. 21).
DTK nj?3 recalls to mind OVH ni''3 in Obad. 13 ; but here
it is more precisely defined by Ti?. l^J? ^IW, and limited to the
time of the overthrow of the Israelites, when Jerusalem was
taken and destroyed by the Chaldeans. J*i?, liJ? nj??, as in
ch. xxi. 30. On account of this display of its hostility, the
Lord will make Edom blood (ver. 6). This expression is
probably chosen for the play upon the words C} and DIN.
Edom shall become what its name suggests. Making it blood
does not mean merely filling it with bloodshed, or reddening
the soil with blood (Hitzig) ; but, as in ch. xvi. 38, turning it as
it were into blood, or causing it to vanish therein. Blood shall
pursue thee, " as blood-guiltiness invariably pursues a murderer,
cries for vengeance, and so delivers him up to punishment"
(Havernick). K? DS cannot be the particle employed in swear-
ing, and dependent upon '??"'l?, since this particle introduces an
affirmative declaration, which would be unsuitable here, inas-
much as Ci in this connection cannot possibly signify blood-
relationship. K? DS means " if not," in which the conditional
meaning of DN coincides with the causal, " if " being equivalent
to " since." The unusual separation of the N^ from the verb
is occasioned by the fact that D'n is placed before the verb to
avoid collision with D"11.. To hate blood is the same as to have
a horror of bloodshed or murder. This threat is carried out
still further in vers. 7 and 8. The land of Edom is to become
a complete and perpetual devastation ; its inhabitants are to
be exterminated by war. The form nDDB" stands for "»»?', and
is not to be changed into naB'D. Considering the frequency
with which naK'p occurs, the supposition that we have here a
copyist's error is by no means a probable one, and still less
probable is the perpetuation of such an error. ^Bn "15V, as in
Zech. vii. 14, For ver. 8 compare ch. xxxii. 5, 6 and ch.
EZEK. II. G
98 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
xxxi. 12. The Chetib n33E'''n is scriptio plena for ni3B>Fij the
imperfect Kal of 3E'J in the intransitive sense to be inhabited.
The Keri njaOT, from 2W, is a needless and unsuitable correc-
tion, since 31B' does not mean restitui.
In the second strophe, vers. 10-15, the additional reason
assigned for the desolation of Edom is its longing for the pos-
session of Israel and its land, of which it desired to take
forcible possession, although it knew that they belonged to
Jehovah, whereby the hatred of Edom toward Israel became
contempt of Jehovah. The two peoples and the two lands are
Israel and Jndah with their lands, and therefore the whole of
the holy people and land. HN is the sign of the accusative : as
for the two peoples, they are mine. The suffix appended to
nMEni is neuter, and is to be taken as referring generally to
what has gone before. HNT 02* ninil is a circumstantial clause,
through which the desire of Edom is placed in the right light,
and characterized as an attack upon Jehovah Himself. Jehovah
was there — namely, in the land of which Edom wished to take
possession. Kliefoth's rendering, " and yet Jehovah is there,"
is opposed to Hebrew usage, by changing the preterite njn into
a present ; and the objection which he offers to the only render-
ing that is grammatically admissible, viz. " when Jehovah was
there," to the effect " that it attributes to Ezekiel the thought
that the Holy Land had once been the land and dwelling-place
of God, but was so no longer," calls in question the actual
historical condition of things without the slightest reason. For
Jehovah had really forsaken His dwelling-place in Canaan
before the destruction of the temple, but without thereby re-
nouncing His right to the land ; since it was only for the sins
of Israel that He had given up the temple, city, and land to be
laid waste by the teathen. " But Edom had acted as if Israel
existed among the nations without God, and Jehovah had
departed from it for ever " (Havernick) ; or rather as if Jehovah
were a powerless and useless Deity, who had not been able to
defend His people against the might of the heathen nations.
CHAP. XXXV. 1-15. 99
The Lord will requite Edom for this, in a manner answering
to its anger and envy, which had both sprung from hatred.
D3 ''PiVli^, " I will make myself known among them (the Israel-
ites) when I judge thee ;" i.e., by the fact that He punishes
Edom for its sin, He will prove to Israel that He is a God who
does not suffer His people and His possession to be attacked
with impunity. From this shall Edom learn that He is
Jehovah, the omniscient God, who has heard the revilings of
His enemies (vers. 12, 13), and the almighty God, who rewards
those who utter such proud sayings according to their deeds
(vers. 14 and 15). niXSJ has retained the Kametz on account of
the guttural in the first tone, in contrast with HlSKJ in Neh.
ix. 18, 26 (cf. Ewald, § 696). — The expression " mountains of
Israel," for the land of Israel, in ver. 12 and ch. xxxvi. 1, is occa-
sioned by the antithesis "mountain (mountain-range) of Seir."
The Chetib nODty is to be pronounced f^ODB', and to be retained in
spite of the Keri. The singular of the neuter gender is used with
emphasis iu a broken and emotional address, and is to be taken
as referring ad sensum to the land, nsa t^'^^T}^ to magnify or
boast with the mouth, i.e. to utter proud sayings against God,
in other words, actually to deride God (compare '13 P^'ijri in
Obad. 12, which has a kindred meaning). ""Wn, used here
according to Aramean usage for "'''?'JJJ, to multiply, or heap up.
In nbto, in ver. 14, 3 is a particle of time, as it frequently
is before infinitives (e.g. Josh. vi. 20), when all the earth
rejoices, not " over thy desolation " (Hitzig), which does not
yield any rational thought, but when joy is prepared for all the
world, I will prepare devastation for thee. Through this anti-
thesis }*isn"?3 is limited to the world, with the exception of
Edom, i.e. to that portion of the human race which stood in a
different relation to God and His people from that of Edom ; in
other words, which acknowledged the Lord as the trtfe God.
It follows from this, that Edom represents the world at enmity
against God. In ''inripb'3 (ver. 15) 3 is a particle of compari-
son : and the meaning of ver. 15 is : as thou didst rejoice over
100 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the desolation of the inheritance of the house of Israel, so will
I cause others to rejoice over thy desolation. In ver. 15J we
agree with the LXX., Vulgate, Syriac, and others, in taking
n'rin as the second person, not as the third. !^?3 l^^lg"?? serves
to strengthen "i^yt?""!" (compare eh. xi. 15 and xxxvi. 10).
Chap, xxxvi. 1-15. The Kestoeation and Blessing of
ISEAEL. — Ver. 1. And thou, son of man, prophesy to tJie moun-
tains of Israel, and say. Mountains of Israel, hear the word of
Jehovah: Ver. 2. ITivs saith the Lord Jehovah, Because th
enemy saith concerning you.. Aha I the everlasting heigJUs have
become ours for a possession : Ver. 3. Therefore prophesy, and
say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because, even because they lay
you waste, and pant for you round about, so tJiat ye have become
a possession to the remnant of the nations, and have come to the
talk of the tongue and gossip of the people : Ver. 4. Therefore,
ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah :
TVjms saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and hills, to the
low places and valleys, and to the waste ruins and the forsaken
cities, which have become a prey and derision to the remnant of
the nations round about ; Ver. 5. Therefore thus saitJi the Lord
Jehovah, Truly in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against
the remnant of the nations, and against Edam altogether, which
Jiave made my land a possession for themselves in all joy of
heart, in contempt of soul, to empty it out for booty. Ver. 6,
Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and say to the
mountains and hills, to the low places and valleys, Thus saith the
Lord JehovaJi, Behold, in my jealousy and fury have 1 spoken,
because ye have borne the disgrace of the nations. Ver. 7.
TJierefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, /, / have lifted up my
hand ; truly the nations round about you, they shall bear their
disgrace. Ver. 8. But ye, ye mountains of Israel, sJiall put forth
your branches, and bear your fruit to my people Israel; for
they will soon come. Ver. 9. For, behold, I will deal with you,
and turn toward you, and ye shall be tilled and sown. Ver. 10.
CHAP. XXXVI. 1-15. 101
I leill multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel at once ;
and the cities shall he inhabited, and the ruins built. Ver. 11.
And I will multiply upon you man and beast; they shall multiply
and he fruitful: and I will make you inhabited as in your former
time, and do more good to you than in your earlier days ; and
ye shall know that I am Jehovah. Ver. 12. I will cause men,
my people Israel, to walk upon you ; and they shall possess thee,
and thou shall he an inheritance to them, and make them childless
no more. Ver. 13. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because they
say to you, " Thou art a devourer of men, and hast' made thy
people childless ;" Ver. 14. Therefore thon shalt no more devour
men, and no more cause thy people to stumble, is the saying of tJie
Lord Jehovah. Ver. 15. A7id I will no more cause thee to hear
the scoffing of the 7iationSf and the disgrace of the nations thou
shalt hear no more, and shalt no more cause thy people to stumble,
is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.
This prophecy is uttered concerning the land of Israel, as
is plainly declared in ver. 6; whereas in vers. 1 and 4 the
mountains of Israel are mentioned instead of the land, in
antithesis to the mountains of Seir (eh. xxxv. ; see the comm.
on eh. xxxv. 12). The promise takes throughout the form of
antithesis to the threat against Edom in ch. xxxv. Because
Edom rejoices that the Holy Land, which has been laid waste,
has fallen to it for a possession, therefore shall the devastated
land be cultivated and sown again, and be inhabited by Israel
as in the former time. The heathen nations round about shall,
on the other hand, bear their disgrace; Edom, as we have
already observed, being expanded, so far as the idea is con-
cerned, into all the heathen nations surrounding Israel (vers.
3-7). In ver. 2, 3),isri, the enemy, is mentioned in quite a
general manner ; and what has already been stated concerning
Edom in ch. xxxv. 5 and 10, is here predicted of the enemy.
In vers. 3 and 4 this enemy is designated as a remnant of the
heathen nations ; and it is not till ver. 5 that it is more pre-
cisely defined by the clause, " and all Edom altogether." The
102 TOE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
D;i3 round about (3'3EiD nc'N, ver. 4, compared with ver. 3) are
the heathen nations which are threatened with destruction in
eh. XXV. and xxvi., on account of their malicious rejoicing at
the devastation of Jerusalem and Judah. This serves to
explain the fact that these nations are designated as D^ijn JinsB',
the rest, or remnant of the heathen nations, which presupposes
that the judgment has fallen upon them, and that only a
remnant of them is left, which remnant desires to take
possession of the devastated land of Israel. The epithet
applied to this land, a?\y niDa, everlasting, i.e. primeval heights,
points back to the th\y nij)33 of Gen. xlix. 26 and Dent,
xxxiii. 15, and is chosen for the purpose of representing the
land as a possession secured to the people of Israel by primeval
promises, in consequence of which the attempt of the enemy to
seize upon this land has become a sin against the Lord God.
The indignation at such a sin is expressed in the emotional
character of the address. As Ewald has aptly observed,
" Ezekiel is seized with unusual fire, so that after the brief
statement in ver. 2 ' therefore ' is repeated five times, the
charges brought against these foes forcing themselves in again
and again, before the prophecy settles calmly upon the moun-
tains of Israel, to which it was really intended to apply." For
IJ!!? ]V1, see the comm. on ch. xiii. 10. niS2> is an infinitive
Kal, formed after the analogy of the verbs n'i> (cf. Ewald,
§ 238e), from DOB', to be waste, to devastate, as in Dan. viii. 13,
ix. 27, xii. 11, and is not to be taken in the sense of DB^ji, after
Isa. xlii. 14, as Hitzig supposes. ^NB', to pant for a thing;
here it is equivalent to snapping at anything. This is required
by a comparison with ver. Ab, where ni) njn corresponds to
fiUm niBB*, and iv'^ to '1J1 nsB' hy 6vK ' In' the connection
liB^ nsty, nSB' signifies the lip as an organ of speech, or, more
precisely, the words spoken ; and i^B^, the tongue, is personified,
and stands for li.B^^ V'<H (Ps. cxl. 12), a tongue-man, i.e. a talker.
In ver. 4 the idea expressed in "the mountains of Israel" is
expanded into mountains, hills, lowlands, and valleys (cf. ch.
CHAP. XXXVI. 1-15. 103
xsxi. 12, xxxil. 5, 6) ; and this periphrastic description of the
land is more minutely defined by the additional clause, " waste
ruins and forsaken cities." K? OK in ver. 5 is the particle used
in oaths (cf. ch. v. 11, etc.) ; and the perfect ''W'13'n is not
merely prophetic, but also a preterite. God has already uttered
a threatening word concerning the nations round about in ch.
XXV., xxvi., and xxxv. ; and here He once more declares that
they shall bear their disgrace. ns:p c'K is the fiery jealousy
of wrath. Xp3 is an Aramean form for H?3 (ch. xxxv. 15).
For E'SJ mm, see ch. xxv. 6. In the expression ^f\yo \sa'?
t3?, which has been rendered in various ways, we agree with
Gesenius and others in regarding ty'ilD as an Aramean form of
the infinitive of ^"^i, with the meaning to empty out, which is
confirmed by the Syriac ; for ^^ip cannot be a substantive, on
account of the IVot ; and Hitzig's conjecture, that D^ should be
pointed w, and the clause rendered " to plunder its produce,"
is precluded by the fact that the separation of the preposition
? \Vv?, by the insertion of a word between, is unexampled, to
say nothing of the fact that K^il? does not mean produce at all.
The thought expressed in vers. 6 and 7 is the following:
because Israel has hitherto borne the contempt of the heathen,
the heathen shall now bear their own contempt. The lifting
of the hand is a gesture employed in taking an oath, as in ch.
XX. 6, etc. But the land of Israel is to receive a blessing.
This blessing is described in ver. 8 in general terms, as the
bearing of fruit by the mountains, i.e. by the land of Israel ;
and its speedy commencement is. predicted. It is then depicted
in detail in vers. 9 sqq. In the clause Ki3p I3"ii3 ''3, the
Israelites are not to be regarded as the subject, as Kliefoth
supposes, in which case their speedy return from exile would
be announced. The ''3 shows that this cannot be the meaning ;
for it is immediately preceded by 'E'' 'ayj", which precludes
the supposition that, when speaking of the mountains, Ezekiel
had the inhabitants in his mind. The promised blessings are
the subject, or the branches and fruits, which the mountains
104 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
are to bear. Nearly all the commentators have agreed in
adopting this explanation of the words, after the analogy of
Isa. Ivi. 1. With the '3 in ver. 9 the carrying out of the
blessing promised is appended in the form of a reason assigned
for the general promise. The mountains shall be cultivated,
the men upon them, viz. all Israel, multiplied, the desolated
cities rebuilt, so that Israel shall dwell in the land as in the
former time, and be fruitful and blessed. This promise was no
doubt fulfilled in certain weak beginnings after the return of a
portion of the people under Zerubbabel and Ezra ; but the
multiplying and blessing, experienced by those who returned
from Babylon, did not take place till long after the salvation
promised here, and more especially in vers. 12—15. According
to ver. 12, the land is to become the inheritance of the people
Israel, and will no more make the Israelites childless, or (accord-
ing to ver. 14) cause them to stumble ; and the people are no
more to bear the contempt of the heathen. But that portion
of the nation which returned from exile not only continued
under the rule of the heathen, but had also in various ways to
bear the contempt of the heathen still ; and eventually, because
Israel not only stumbled, but fell very low through the rejection
of its Saviour, it was scattered again out of the land among the
heathen, and the land was utterly wasted . . . until this day.
In ver. 12 the masculine suffix attached to ^'^^y\ refers to
the land regarded as in, which is also the subject to n^? and
eipin. It is not till vers. 13, 14, where the idea of the land
becomes so prominent, that the feminine is used. 0^3?', to
make them (the Israelites) childless, or bereaved, is explained
in vers. 13, 14 by D"JS nbs, devouring men. That the land
devours its inhabitants, is what the spies say of the land of
Canaan in Num. xiii. 32 ; and in 2 Kings ii. 19 it is affirmed
of the district of Jericho that it causes rhsm, i.e. miscarriages,
on account of its bad water. The latter passage does not come
into consideration ; but the former (Num. xiii. 32) probably
does, and Ezekiel evidently refers to this. For there is no
CHAP. XXXVI. 1-15. 105
doubt whatever that he explains or expands o?3^ by D'lS fl??X.
Although, for example, the charge that the land devours men
is brought against it by the enemies or adversaries of Israel
(D37 CiDt^, they say to you), the truth of the charge is admitted,
since it is said that the land shall henceforth no more devour
men, though without a repetition of the 53B'. But the sense in
which Ezekiel affirms of the land that it had been D*18 ri?3K,
IT VV >
and was henceforth to be so no more, is determined by ^5? ^)i31.
niV y^'^O, thou wilt no more cause thy people to stumble, which
is added in ver. 146 in the place of n''^n :])i3 ri!^3E'» in ver. 14a.
Hence the land became a devourer of men by the fact that it
caused its people to stumble, i.e. entangled them in sins (the
Keri Y??'1' for y^'^n is a bad conjecture, the incorrectness of
which is placed beyond all doubt by the I^Jt '•pB'ari'K? of ver. 15).
Consequently we cannot understand the " devouring of men,"
after Num. xiii. 32, as signifying that, on account of its situa-
tion and fruitfulness, the land is an apple of discord, for the
possession of which the nations strive with one another, so that
the inhabitants are destroyed, or at all events we must not
restrict the meaning to this ; and still less can we agree with
Ewald and Hitzig in thinking of the restless hurrying and
driving by which individual men were of necessity rapidly
swept away. If the sweeping away of the population is con-
nected with the stumbling, the people are devoured by the
consequences of their sins, i.e. by penal judgments, unfruitful-
ness, pestilence, and war, with which God threatened Israel for
its apostasy from Him. These judgments had depopulated the
land ; and this fact was attributed by the heathen in their own
way to the land, and thrown in the teeth of the Israelites as a
disgrace. The Lord will henceforth remove this charge, and
take away from the heathen all occasion to despise His people,
namely, by bestowing upon His land and people the blessing
which He promised in the law to those who kept His com-
mandments. But this can only be done by His removing the
occasion to stumble or sin, i.e., according to vers. 25 sqq. (com*
106 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
pared with ch. xi. 18 sqq.), by His cleansing His people from
all uncleannesses and idols, and giving them a new heart and a
new spirit. The Keri t]'.;;ia in vers. 13, 14, and 15 is a needless
alteration of the Chetib ^.ja. — In ver. 15 this promise is rounded
off and concluded by another summing up of the principal
thoughts.
CHAP. XXXVI. 16-38. THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL FOUNDED .
UPON ITS SANOTIFICATION.
Because Israel has defiled its land by its sins, God has
scattered the people among the heathen ; but because they also
profaned His name among the heathen, He will exercise forbear-
ance for the sake of His holy name (vers. 16-21), will gather
Israel out of the lands, cleanse it from its sins, and sanctify it
by the communication of His Spirit, so that it will walk in His
ways (vers. 22-28), and will so bless and multiply it, that both
the nations around and Israel itself will know that He is the
Lord (vers. 29-38). — This promise is shown by the introduc-
tory formula in ver. 16 and by the contents to be an independent
word of God ; but it is substantially connected in the closest
manner with the preceding word of God, showing, on the one
hand, the motive which prompted God to restore and bless His
people ; and, en the other hand, the means by which He would
permanently establish the salvation predicted in ch. xxxiv. and
ch. xxxvi. 1-15. — The kernel of this promise is formied by
vers. 25-28, for which the way is prepared in vers. 17-24,
whilst the further extension is contained in vers. 29-38.
Vers. 16-21. The Lord will extend His forbearance, for the
sake of His holy name, to the people who have been rejected
on account of their sins. — Ver. 16. And the word of Jehovah
came to me, saying, Ver. 17. Son of man, the house of Israel
dioelt in its land, and defied it with its way and its doings ; like
the uncleanness of the unclean woman, was its way before me,
Ver. 18. Then I poured out my fury vpon them on account of
CHAP. XXXVI. 16-21. 107
the blood which they had shed in the land, and because they had
defiled it through their idols, Ver. 19. And scattered them among
the nations, and they were dispersed in the lands ; according to
their way and their doings I judge them. Ver. 20. And they
came to the nations whither they came, and profaned my holy
name, for men said of them, " These are Jehovalis people, and
they have come out of His land" Ver, 21. And so 1 had
pity upon my holy name, which the house of Israel profaned
among the nations whither they came. — The address commences
with a description of the reasons why God had thrust out
His people among the heathen, namely, on account of their
sins and idolatrous abominations, by which the Israelites
had defiled the land (cf. Lev. xviii. 28 and Num. xxxv. 34).
Their conduct resembled the most offensive uncleanness, namely,
the uncleanness of a woman in her menstruation (Lev. xv. 19),
to which the moral depravity of the people had already been
compared in Isa. Ixiv. 5. — In ver. 18 the consequence of the
defiling of the land by the people is introduced with the ex-
pression ^aK'KJ. In ver. 17, 'K13D',1 is the continuation of the
participle D'3E'"' ; and the participle is expressive of the condition
in the past, as we may see from the words 'W1 ^Sfii!). The
simile in ver. 175 is an explanatory, circumstantial clause.
For ver. 18, compare ch. vii. 8, and for 'Wl D'nn pj;, ch. sxii.
3, 6. The last clause, " and through their idols they have
defiled it," is loosely appended ; but it really contains a
second reason for the pouring out of the wrath of God
upon the people. For ver. 19, compare ch, sxii. 15, si^jl in
ver, 20 refers to PN'iE'^'n'H ; but there is no necessity to read
?XD*1 on that account. It is perfectly arbitrary to supply the
subject proposed by Kliefoth, viz. "the report of what had
happened to Israel" came to the heathen, which is quite
foreign to the connection ; for it was not the report concerning
Israel, but Israel itself, which came to the heathen, and
profaned the sacred name of God. This is not only plainly
expressed in ver, 216, but has been already stated in ver. 20.
108 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
The fact that the words of the heathen, by which the name of
God was profaned, are quoted here, does not prove that it is
the heathen nations who are to be regarded as those who pro-
faned the name of God, as Kliefoth imagines. The words,
"these are Jehovah's people, and have come out of His
(Jehovah's) land," could only contain a profanation of the
holy name of God, if their coming out was regarded as in-
voluntary, i.e. as an exile enforced by the power of the heathen ;
or, on the other hand, if the Israelites themselves had denied
the holiness of the people of God through their behaviour
among the heathen. Most of the commentators have decided
in favour of the former view. Vatablus, for example, gives
this explanation : " if their God whom they preach had been
omnipotent. He would not have allowed them to be expelled
from His land." And we must decide in favour of this exposi-
tion, not only because of the parallel passages, such as Num.
xiv. 16 and Jer. xxxiii. 24, which support this view ; but chiefly
on account of the verses which follow, according to which- the
sanctification of the name of God among the nations consists
in the fact that God gathers Israel out of its dispersion among
the nations, and leads them back into His own land (yid. vers.
23 and 24). Consequently the profanation of His name can
only have consisted in the fact that Israel was carried away out
of its own land, and scattered in the heathen lands. For, since
the heathen acknowledged only national gods, and regarded
Jehovah as nothing more than such a national god of Israel,
they did not look upon the destruction of the kingdom of Judah
and the carrying away of the people as a judgment of the
almighty and holy God upon His people, but concluded that
that catastrophe was a sign of the inability of Jehovah to defend
His land and save His people. The only way in which God
could destroy this delusion was by manifesting Himself to the
heathen as the almighty God and Lord of the whole world
through the redemption and glorification of His people, hbm]
p Dty-^V ; so I had pity, compassion upon my holy name. The
CHAP. XXXVI. 22-28. 109
preterite Is prophetic, Inasmuch as the compassion consists in
the gathering of Israel out of the nations, which is announced
In vers. 22 sqq. as still in the future. The rendering, "I
spared (them) for my holy name's sake" (LXX., Havernick),
is false ; for ?on is construed with Py, governing the person or
the thing toward which the compassion is shown (vid. ch. xvi. 5
and 2 Chron. xxxvl. 15, 17).
Vers. 22-28. For His holy name's sake the Lord will bring
Israel back from its dispersion into His own land, purify it
from its sins, and sanctify it by His Spirit to be His own
people. — Ver. 22. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, I do it not for your sokes, house of
Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which ye have profaned
among the nations whither ye have come. Ver. 23. / will
sanctify my great name, which is pi-ofaned among the nations,
which ye have profaned in the midst of them, so that the nations
shall Mow tliat I am Jehovah, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah,
when I prove myself holy upon you before their eyes. Ver. 24.
I will take you out of the nations, and gather you out of all
lands, and bring you into your land, Ver. 25. And will sprinkle
clean water upon you, that ye may become clean ; from all your
uncleannesses and from all your idols will I cleanse you, Ver. 26.
And I will give you a new heart, and give a new spirit within
you ; I will take the heart of stone out of your fleshy and give
yov, a heart of flesh. Ver. 27. / will put my Spirit within
you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my rights,
and do them. Ver. 28. And ye shall dwell in the land which
I have given to you/r fathers, and shall become my people, and
, I will be your God. — These verses show in what way the
Lord will have compassion upon His holy name, and how
He will put an end to the scofBng thereat, and vindicate
His honour in the sight of the heathen. " Not for your
sake," {.e. not because you have any claim to deliverance
on account of your behaviour (cf. Isa. xlviii. 11 and Deut.
ix. 6), but for my holy name's sake, i.e. to manifest as holy
110 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the Dame which has been profaned among the heathen, I do
it, namely, what follows from ver. 23 onwards. The Lord
will sanctify His name, i.e. show it to be holy by proving Him-
self to be holy upon Israel, ^p. is not equivalent to glorify,
although the holiness of God involves the idea of glory.
Sanctifying is the removing or expunging of the blots and
blemishes which adhere to anything. The giving up of His
people was regarded by the heathen as a sign of the weakness
of Jehovah. This blot through which His omnipotence and
glory were dishonoured, God would remove by gathering Israel
out of the heathen, and glorifying it. Instead of D9\3''yp, the
ancient versions have rendered ^\}''}'^vh. This reading is also
found in many of the codices and the earliest editions, and is
confirmed by the great Masora, and also commended by the
parallel passages, ch. xx. 41 and xxviii. 25, so that it no doubt
deserves the preference, although D3''3''JJ? can also be justified.
For inasmuch as Israelites had despaired in the midst of their
wretchedness through unbelief, it was necessary that Jehovah
should sanctify His great name in their sight as well. The
great name of Jehovah is His almighty exaltation above all
gods (cf. Mai. i. 11, 12). The first thing that Jehovah does
for the sanctification of His name is to bring back Israel from
its dispersion into its own land (ver. 24, compare ch. xi. 17
and XX, 41, 42) ; and then follows the purifying of Israel from
its sins. The figurative expression, " to sprinkle with clean
water," is taken from the lustrations prescribed by the law,
more particularly the purifying from defilement from the dead
by sprinkling with the water prepared from the ashes of a red
heifer (Num. xix. 17-19 ; compare Ps. li. 9). Cleansing from
sins, which corresponds to justification, and ds not to be con-
founded with sanctification (Schmieder), is followed by renewal
with the Holy Spirit, which takes away the old heart of stone
and puts within a new heart of flesh, so that the man can fulfil
the commandments of God, and walk in newness of life (vers.
26-28 ; compare ch. xi. 18-20, where this promise has already
CHAP. XXXVI. 29-38. Ill
occurred, and the necessary remarks concerning its fulfilment
have been made). — With regard to the construction ns nby
'U^ IB'K, to make or effect your walking, compare Ewald,
§ 3376.
Vers. 29-38. The Lord will richly bless, multiply, and glorify
His people, when thus renewed and sanctified. — Yer. 29. And
I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and will call the cwn,
and multiply it, and no more bring famine upon you; Ver. 30.
But I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the
field.) so that ye will no more hear the reproach of famine among
the nations, Ver. 31. But ye will remember your evil ways,
and your deeds which were not good, and will loathe yourselves
on account of your iniquities and your abominations. Ver. 32.
Not for your sake do I this, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah,
be this known to you ; be ye ashamed and blush for your ways,
house of Israel ! Ver. 33. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In
the day when I shall cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will
make the cities inhabited, and the ruins shall be built, Ver. 34.
And the devastated land shall be tilled instead of being a desert
before the eyes of every one who passed by, Ver. 35. And men
will say. This land, which was laid waste, has become like the
garden of Eden, and the desolate and ruined cities are fortified
and inhabited. Ver. 36. And the nations, which have been left
round about you, shall hww that I Jehovah build up that which
is destroyed^ and plant that which is laid waste. I, Jehovah,
have said it, and do it. Ver. 37. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
1 will still let myself be sought by the house of Israel in this,
to do it for them ; I will multiply them, like a flock, in men ;
Ver. 38. Ldhe a flock of holy sacrifices, like the flock of Jeru-
salem on its feast-days, so shall the desolate cities be full of flocks
of men ; and they shall know that I am Jehovah. — The words
'U^ ''WB'in, I help or save you from all your uncleannesses, cannot
be understood as relating to their purification from the former
uncleannesses ; for they have already been cleansed from these,
according to ver. 25. The niSDB can only be such defilements
112 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
as are still possible even after the renewing of the people ; and
VB'in, to help, means to guard them against any further recur-
rence of such defilements (of. oh. xxxvii. 23), and not to deliver
them from the consequences of their former pollutions. But if
God preserves His people from these, there is no longer any
occasion for a fresh suspension of judgments over them, and
God can bestow His blessing upon the sanctified nation without
reserve. It is in this way that the further promises are ap-
pended ; and, first of all, in vers. 296 and 30, a promise that
He will bless them with an abundant crop of fruits, both of the
orchard and the field. " I call to the corn," i.e. I cause it to come
or grow, so that famine will occur no more (for the fact, com-
pare ch. xxxiv. 29). In consequence of this blessing, Israel
will blush with shame at the thought of its former sins, and
will loathe itself for those abominations (ver. 31) ; compare ch.
XX. 43, where the same thought has already occurred. To this,
after repeating what has been said before in ver. 22, namely,
that God is not doing all this for the sake of the Israelites
themselves, the prophet appends the admonition to be ashamed
of their conduct, i.e. to repent, which is so far inserted appro-
priately in the promise, that the promise itself is meant to entice
Israel to repent and return to God. Then^ secondly, in two
strophes introduced with '" "i»s iVS, the promise is still further
expanded. In vers. 33-36, the prophet shows how the de-
vastated land is to be restored and rebuilt, and to become a
paradise ; and in vers. 37 and 38, how the people are to be
blessed through a large increase in their numbers. Both of
these strophes are simply a further elaboration of the promise
contained in vers. 9-12. y^Ti, causative of 3?';, to cause to
be inhabited, to populate, as in Isa. liv. 3. "i^iJI"^? '^V^, as in
ch. V. 14. The subject to IIDNI in ver. 35 is, "those who
pass by," For the comparison to the garden of Eden, see
ch. xxxi. 9. nhiva is a circumstantial word belonging to
13B'J : they shall be inhabited as fortified cities, that is to say,
shall afford to their inhabitants the security of fortresses, from
CHAP. SXXVI. 29-38. 113
which there is no fear of their being expelled. In ver. 36 the
expression, " the heathen nations which shall be left round
about you," presupposes that at the time of Israel's redemption
the judgment will have fallen upon the heathen (compare
ch. XXX. 3 with eh. xxix. 21), so that only a remnant of them
will be still in existence ; and this remnant will recognise the
work of Jehovah in the restoration of Israel. This recognition,
however, does not involve the conversion of the heathen to
Jehovah, but is simply preparatory to it. For the fact itself,
compare ch. xvii. 24. ^Tl^, to let oneself be asked or entreated,
as in ch. xiv. 3. nsT, with regard to this, is explained by
Dn^ niB>j;^. What God will do follows in 'W n3"is<. God will
multiply His people to such an extent, that they will resemble
the flock of lambs, sheep, and goats brought to Jerusalem to
sacrifice upon the feast days. Compare 2 Ohron. xxxv. 7,
where Josiah is said to have given to the people thirty thousand
lambs and goats for the feast of the passover. D'JK jxsa does
not mean, like a flock of men. D'lN cannot be a genitive
dependent upon ;kv, on account of the article in \VS3, but
belongs to fi31N, either as a supplementary apposition to Oflis,
or as a second object, so that nsis* would be construed with a
double accusative, after the analogy of verbs of plenty, to
multiply them in men. Kliefoth's rendering, " I will multiply
them, so that they shall be the flock of men " (of mankind), is
grammatically untenable. CE'^iJ', INV, a flock of holy beasts, i.e.
of sacrificial lambs. The flock of Jerusalem is the flock
brought to Jerusalem at the yearly feasts, when the male
population of the land came to the sanctuary (Deut. xvi. 16) :
So shall the desolate cities be filled again with flocks of men
(compare Mic. ii. 12).
EZEK. II.
114 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
CHAP. XXXVII. EESUKKECTION OP ISRAEL AND EEUNION AS
ONE NATION.
This chapter contains two revelations from God (vers. 1-14
and vers. 15-28). In the first, the prophet is shown in a vision
the resurrection of Israel to a new life. In the second, he is
commanded to exhibit, by means of a symbolical act, the reunion
of the divided kingdoms into a single nation under one king.
Both of these he is to announce to the children of Israel. The
substantial connection between these two prophecies will be
seen from the exposition.
Vers. 1—14. Resurrection of Israel to new Life.
Ver. 1. There came upon me the hand of Jehovah, and Jehovah
led me out in the spirit, and set me down in the midst of the
valley ; this was full of bones. Ver. 2. And He led me past
them round about; and, behold, there were very many on the
surface of the valley, and, behold, they were very dry. Ver. 3.
And He said to me. Son of man, will these bones come to life?
and I said, Lord, Jehovah, thou knowest. Ver. 4. Then He said
to me, Prophesy over these bones, and say to them. Ye dry bones,
hear ye the word of Jehovah. Ver. 5. Thus saiih the Lord
Jehovah to these bones. Behold, I bring breath into you, that ye
may come to life. Ver. 6. / will create sinews upon you, and
cause flesh to grow upon you, and cover you with skin, and bring
breath into you, so that ye shall live and know that I am Jehovali.
Ver. 7. And I prophesied as I loas commanded; and there was
a noise as I prophesied, and behold a rumbling, and the bones
came together, bone to bone. Ver. 8. And I saw, and behold
sinews came over them, and flesh grew, and skin drew over it
above; but there was no breath in them. Ver. 9. Then He said
to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to
the breath. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Come from the four
loinds, thou breath, and blow upon these slain, that tlwy may
come to life. Ver. 10. And I prophesied as I was commanded;
CHAP. XXXVII. 1-14. 115
then the breath came into them, and they came to life, and stood
upon their feet, a very, very great army. Ver. 11. And He said
to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel ;
behold, they say, our bones are dried, and our hope has perished ;
we are destroyed! Ver. 12. Tlierefore prophesy, and say to
them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will open your
graves, and cause you to come out of your graves, my people, and
bring you into the land of Israel. Ver. 13. And ye shall know
that I am Jehovah, when I open your graves, and cause you to
come out of your graves, my people. Ver. 14. And I will put my
Spirit into you, and will place you in your land, and ye shaU know
that I, Jehovah, have spoken and do it, is the saying of Jehovah.
— This revelation divides itself into two sections. Vers. 1—10
contain the vision, and vers. 11-14 give the interpretation.
There are no particular difficulties in the description of the
■vision, so far as the meaning of the words is concerned. By a
supernatural intervention on the part of God, Ezekiel is taken
from his own home in a state of spiritual ecstasy into a valley
which was full of dead men's bones. For the expression nn^T
'« 1^ 'r^y^ see the oomm. on ch. i. 3. In the second clause of
ver. 1 njni is the subject, and is not to be taken as a genitive in
connection with ni"i3, as it has been by the Vulgate and Hitzig
in opposition to the accents, n^na stands for D'^Pf? H'n? (ch.
xi. 24), and CnPN is omitted simply because nin* follows imme-
diately afterwards, n^jn, to set down, here and ch. xl. 2 ;
whereas in other cases the form n'3n is usually employed in
this sense. The article prefixed to f itfpsi^ appears to point back
to ch. iii. 22, to the valley where Ezekiel received the first
revelation concerning the fate of Jerusalem and its inhabitants.
That Coyv are dead men's hones is evident from what follows.
°\}''/!V. ''^y^y^!, not " He led me over them round about," but past
them, in order that Ezekiel might have a clear view of them,
and see whether it were possible for them to come to life again.
They were lying upon the surface of the valley, i.e. not under,
but upon the ground, and not piled up in a heap, but scattered
116 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
over the valley, and they were very dry. The question asked
by God, whether these bones could live, or come to hfe again,
prepares the way for the miracle ; and Ezekiel's answer, " Lord,
Thou knowest" (cf. Eev. vii. 14), implies that, according to
human judgment, it was inconceivable that they could come to
life any more, and nothing but the omnipotence of God could
effect this. — After this introduction there follows in vers. 4 sqq.
the miracle of the raising to life of these very dry bones,
accomplished through the medium of the word of God, which
the prophet addresses to them, to show to the people that the
power to realize itself is inherent in the word of Jehovah pro-
claimed by Ezekiel; in other words, that Jehovah possesses the
power to accomplish whatever He promises to His people.
The word in ver. 5, " Behold, I bring breath into you, that ye
may come to life," announces in general terms the raising of
them to life, whilst the process itself is more minutely described
in ver. 6. God will put on them (clothe them with) sinews,
flesh, and skin, and then put nn in them, n^n is the animating
spirit or breath = D''>n nn (Gen. vi. 17, vii. 17). Onj), air.
X67. in Syriac incrustare, obducere. When Ezekiel prophesied
there arose or followed a sound (-"ip), and then a shaking (}^}n),
and the bones approached one another, every bone to its own
bone. Different explanations have been given of the words ^p
and Cyi. iip signifies a sound or voice, and E'J?'i a trembling,
an earthquake, and also a rumbling or a loud noise (compare
ch. iii. 12 and Isa. ix. 4). The relation between the two words
as they stand here is certainly not that the sound (^p) passes
at once into a loud noise, or is continued in that form ; whilst
B'JJT denotes the rattling or rustling of bones in motion. The
fact that the moving of the bones toward one another is repre-
sented by 11")i^ni (with Vav consec.), as the sequel to ^Ti, is
decisive against this. Yet we cannot agree with Kliefoth, that
by ^1p we are to understand the trumpet-blast, or voice of God,
that wakes the dead from their graves, according to those
passages of the New Testament which treat of the resurrection,
CHAP. XXXVII. 1-14. 117
and by B'jn the earthquake which opens the graves. This
explanation is precluded, not only by the philological difficulty
that '?\p. without any further definition does not signify either
the blast of a trumpet or the voice of God, but also by the
circumstance that the 7\p is the result of the prophesying of
Ezekiel; and we cannot suppose that God would make His
almighty call dependent upon a prophet's prophesying. And
even in the case of tJ'jn> the reference to ch. xxxviii. 19 does
not prove that the word must mean earthquake in this passage
also, since Ezekiel uses the word in a different sense in ch.
xii. 18 and iii. 12. We therefore take '?\i> in the general sense
of a loud noise, and B'jn in the sense of shaking (sc. of the
bones), which was occasioned by the loud noise, and produced,
or was followed by, the movement of the bones to approach
one another. The coming together of the bones was followed
by their being clothed with sinews, flesh, and skin ; but there
was not yet any breath in them (ver. 8). To give them this
the prophet is to prophesy again, and that to the breath, that it
come from the four winds or quarters of the world and breathe
into these slain (ver. 9). Then, when he prophesied, the breath
came into them, so that they received life, and stood upright
upon their feet. In vers. 9 and 10 nil is rendered by some
"wind," by others "spirit;" but neither of these is in con-
formity with what precedes it. nil does not mean anything
else than the breath of life, which has indeed a substratum in
the wind, perceptible to the senses, but is not identical with it.
The wind itself brings no life into dead bodies. If, therefore,
the dead bodies become living, receive life through the blowing
of the nil into them, what enters into them by the blowing
cannot be a symbol of the breath of life, but must be the breath
of life itself — namely, that divine breath of life which pervades
all nature, giving and sustaining the life of all creatures (cf.
Ps. civ. 29, 30). The expression O'ljnna 'HB points back to
Gen. ii. 7. The representation of the bringing of the dead
bones to life in two acts may also be explained from the fact
118 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
that it is based upon the history of the creation of man in
Gen. ii., as Theodoret^ has observed, and serves plainly to
depict the creative revivification here, like the first creation
there, as a work of the almighty God. For a correct under-
standing of the vision, it is also necessary to observe that in
ver. 9 the dead bones, clothed with sinews, flesh, and skin, are
called CJ^iin, slain, killed, and not merely dead. It is apparent
at once from this that our vision is not intended to symbolize
the resurrection of all the dead, but simply the raising up of
the nation of Israel, which has been slain. This is borne out
by the explanation of the vision which God gives to the prophet
in vers. 11—14, and directs him to repeat to the people. The
dead bones are the " whole house of Israel " that has been
given up to death; in other words, Judah and Ephraim,
" These bones" in ver. 11 are the same as in vers. 3 and 5, and
not the bodies brought to life in ver, 10 ; though Hitzig main-
tains that they are the latter, and then draws the erroneous
conclusion that vers. 11-14 do not interpret the vision of the
first ten verses, but that the bones in the valley are simply
explained in these verses as signifying the dead of Israel. It
is true that the further explanation in ver. 12 sqq. of what is
described in vers. 5-10 as happening to the dead bones is not
given in the form of an exposition of the separate details of
that occurrence, but is summed up in the announcement that
God will open their graves, bring them out of their graves, and
transport them to their own land. But it does not follow from
this that the announcement is merely an application of the
vision to the restoration of Israel to new life, and therefore that
something different is represented from what is announced in
vers. 12-14. Such a view is at variance with the words,
" these bones are the whole house of Israel." Even if these
words are not to be taken so literally as that we are to under-
» " For as the body of our forefather Adam was first moulded, and then
the soul was thus breathed into it ; so here also both combined in fitting
harmony." — THEonOEfT.
CHAP. XXSVII. 1-14. 119
stand that the prophet was shown in the vision the boiies of the
slain and deceased Israelites, but simply mean : these dead bones
represent the house of Israel, depict the nation of Israel in its
state of death, — they express so much in the clearest terms
concerning the relation in which the explanation in vei's. 12-14
stands to the visionary occurrence in vers. 4-10, namely, that
God has shown to Ezekiel in the vision what He commands
him to announce concerning Israel in vers. 12-14; in other
words, that the bringing of the dead bones to life shown to
him in the vision was intended to place visibly before him the
raising of the whole nation of Israel to new life out of the
death into which it had fallen. This is obvious enough from
the words : these bones are the whole house of Israel. n''a"^3
''^'i^. points forward to the reunion of the tribes of Israel that
are severed into two nations, as foretold in vers. 15 sqq. It is
they who speak in ver. 116. The subject to D''"iDS< is neither
the bones nor the dead of Israel (Hitzig), but the -'K'ltJ'l n''a"i'3
already named, which is also addressed in ver. 12. All Israel
says : our bones are dried, i.e. our vital force is gone. The bones
are the seat of the vital force, as in Ps. xxxii. 3 ; and ^y, to
dry up, applied to the marrow, or vital sap of the bones, is
substantially the same as W3 in the psalm (I.e.). Our hope
has perished (cf. ch. xix. 5). nipn is here the hope of rising
into a nation once more. '3? I^'IWJ : literally, we are cut off for
ourselves, sc. from the sphere of the living (cf. Lam. iii. 54 ;
Isa. liii. 8), equivalent to " it is all over with us."
To the people speaking thus, Ezekiel is to announce that the
Lord will open their graves, bring them out of them, put His
breath of life into them, and lead them into their own land.
If we observe the relation in which vers. 12 and 13 stand to
ver. 14, namely, that the two halves of the 14th verse are
parallel to the two verses 12 and 13, the clause '^ "'J« '^ ari:|ni'!
in ver. 146 to the similar clause in ver. 13, there can be no
doubt that the contents of ver. 14a also correspond to those of
ver. 12 — that is to say, that the words, "I put my breath
120 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(Spirit) into you, that ye may live, and place you in your own
land " (bring you to rest therein), affirm essentially the same as
the words, " I bring you out of your graves, and lead you into
the land of Israel ;" with this simple difference, that the bringing
out of the graves is explained and rendered more emphatic by
the more definite idea of causing them to live through the
breath or Spirit of God put into them, and the N''3n by ri'?n, the
leading into the land by the transporting and bringing them to
rest therein. Consequently we are not to understand by ''m:
D33 imn either a divine act differing from the raising of the
dead to life, or the communication of the Holy Spirit as dis-
tinguished from the imparting of the breath of life, ''nil, the
Spirit of Jehovah, is identical with the nil, which comes,
according to vers. 9 and 10, into the bones of the dead when
clothed with sinews, flesh, and skin, i.e. is breathed into them.
This spirit or breath of life is the creative principle both of the
physical and of the ethical or spiritual life. Consequently
there are not three things announced in these verses, but only
two : (1) The raising to life from a state of death, by bringing
out of the graves, and communicating the divine Spirit of hfe;
(2) the leading back to their own land to rest quietly therein.
When, therefore, Klief oth explains these verses as signifying that
for the consolation of Israel, which is mourning hopelessly in its
existing state of death, " God directs the prophet to say — (1)
That at some future time it will experience a resurrection in
the literal sense, that its graves will be opened, and that all its
dead, those deceased with those still alive, will be raised up out
of their graves; (2) that God will place them in their own
land; and (3) that when He has so placed them in their land,
He will put His Spirit within them that they may live : in the
first point the idea of the future resurrection, both of those
deceased and of those still living, is interpolated into the text ;
and in the third point, placing them in their land before they
are brought to life by the Spirit of God, would be at variance
with the text, according to which the giving of the Spirit
CHAP. XXXYIL 1-14. 121
precedes the removal to their own land. The repetition of ''isj?
in vers. 12 and 13 is also worthy of notice: you who are my
people, which bases the comforting promise upon the fact that
Israel is the people of Jehovah.
If, therefore, our vision does not set forth the resurrection of
the dead in general, but simply the raising to life of the nation
of Israel which is given up to death, it is only right that, in
order still further to establish this view, we should briefly
examine the other explanations that have been given. — The
Fathers and most of the orthodox commentators, both of
ancient and modern times, have found in vers. 1-10 a locus
classicus for the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and
that quite correctly. But their views differ widely as to the
strict meaning and design of the vision itself ; inasmuch as some
regard the vision as a direct and immediate prophecy of the
general resurrection of the dead at the last day, whilst others
take the raising of the dead to life shown to the prophet in the
vision to be merely a figure or type of the waking up to new
life of the Israel which is now dead in its captivity. The first
view is mentioned by Jerome ; but in later times it has been
more especially defended by Calov, and last of all most decidedly
by Kliefoth. Yet the supporters of this view acknowledge that
vers. 11-14 predict the raising to life of the nation of Israel.
The question arises, therefore, how this prediction is to be
brought into harmony with such an explanation of the vision.
The persons noticed by Jerome, who supported the view that
in vers. 4-10 it is the general resurrection that is spoken of,
sought to remove the difficulties to which this explanation is
exposed, by taking the words, " these bones are the whole house
of Israel," as referring to the resurrection of the saints, and
connecting them with the first resurrection in Rev. xx. 5, and
by interpreting the leading of Israel back to their own land
as equivalent to the inheriting of the earth mentioned in Matt.
V. 5. Calov, on the other hand, gives the following explanation
of the relation in which vers. 11—14 stand to vers. 1-10: " In
122 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
this striking vision there was shown by the Lord to the prophet
the resurrection of the dead ; but the occasion, the cause, and the
scope of this vision were the resurrection of the Israelitish people,
not so much into its earlier political form, as for the restoration
of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the establishment of the
worship of God, both of which were indeed restored in the time
of Zerubbabel, but were first brought to perfection at the
coming of Jesus Christ." He also assumes that the raising of
the dead is represented in the vision, "because God would
have this representation exhibited for a figure and confirmation
of the restitution of the people." And lastly, according to
Kliefoth, vers. 11-14 do not furnish a literal exposition of the
vision, but simply make an application of it to the bringing of
Israel to life. — We cannot regard either of these views as
correct, because neither of them does justice to the words of
the test. The idea of the Fathers, that vers. 11-14 treat of
the resurrection of the saints (believers), cannot be reconciled
either with the words or with the context of our prophecy,
and has evidently originated in perplexity. And the assump-
tion of Oalov and Kliefoth, that vers. 11-14 contain simply an
application of the general resurrection of the dead exhibited in
vers. 1—10 to the resurrection of Israel, by no means exhausts
the meaning of the words, " these bones are the whole house of
Israel," as we have already observed in our remarks on ver. 11.
Moreover, in the vision itself there are certain features to be
found which do not apply to the general resurrection of the
dead. In proof of this, we will not lay any stress upon the
circumstance that Ezekiel sees the resurrection of the dead
within certain limits; that it is only the dead men's bones
lying about in one particular valley, and not the dead of the
whole earth, though a very great army, that he sees come to
life again ; but, on the other hand, we must press the fact that
in ver. 9 those who are to be raised to life are called DWn, a
word which does not signify the dead of all kinds, but simply
those who have been slain, or have perished by the sword, by
CHAP. XXXVII. 1-14. 123
famine, or by other violent deaths, and which indisputably
proves that Ezekiel was not shown the resurrection of all the
dead, but simply the raising to life of Israel, which had been
swept away by a violent death. Kliefoth would account for
this restriction from the purpose for which the vision was shown
to the prophet. Because the design of the vision was to com-
fort Israel concerning the wretchedness of its existing condition,
and that wretchedness consisted for the most part in the fact
that the greater portion of Israel had perished by sword, famine,
and pestilence, he was shown the resurrection of the dead
generally and universally, as it would take place not in the case
of the Israelites alone, but in that of all the dead, though here
confined within the limits of one particular field of dead ; and
stress is laid upon the circumstance that the dead which Ezekiel
saw raised to life instar omnium, were such as had met with a
violent death. This explanation would be admissible, if only
it had been indicated or expressed in any way whatever, that
the bones of the dead which Ezekiel saw lying about in the
ny|33 represented all the dead of the whole earth. But we find
no such indication ; and because in the whole vision there is
not a single feature contained which would warrant any such
generalization of the field of the dead which Ezekiel saw, we
are constrained to affirm that the dead men's bones seen by
Ezekiel in the valley represent the whole house of Israel alone,
and not the deceased and slain of all mankind ;, and that the
vision does not set forth the resurrection of all the dead, but
only the raising to life of the nation of Israel which had been
given up to death.
Consequently we can only regard the figurative view of the
vision as the correct one, though this also has been adopted in
very different ways. When Jerome says that Ezekiel " is pro-
phesying of the restoration of Israel through the parable of the
resurrection," and in order to defend himself from the charge
of denying the dogma of the resurrection of the dead, adds
that " the similitude of a resurrection would never have been
124 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
employed to exhibit the restoration of the Israelitish people, if
that resurrection had been a delusion, and it had not been
believed that it would really take place ; because no one con-
firms uncertain things by means of things which have no
existence;" — Havernick very justly replies, that the resurrection
of the dead is not to be so absolutely regarded as a dogma
already completed and defined, or as one universally known
and having its roots in the national belief; though Havernick
is wrong in affirming in support of this that the despair of
the people described in ver. 11 plainly shows that so general a
belief cannot possibly be presupposed. For we find just the
same despair at times when faith in the resurrection of the
dead was a universally accepted dogma. The principal error
connected with this view is the assumption that the vision was
merely a parable formed by Ezekiel in accordance with the
dogma of the resurrection of the dead. If, on the contrary,
the vision was a spiritual intuition produced by God in the
soul of the prophet, it might set forth the resurrection of the
dead, even if the belief in this dogma had no existence as yet
in the consciousness of the people, or at all events was not yet a
living faith ; and God might have shown to the prophet the
raising of Israel to life under this figure, for the purpose of
awakening this belief in Israel.^ In that case, however, the
vision was not merely a parable, but a symbolical representation
of a real fact, which was to serve as a pledge to the nation of
^ No conclusive evidence can be adduced that the doctrine of the resur-
rection of the dead was not only known to Ezekiel, but was regarded by
the people as indisputably sure, as both Hengstenberg (Christology, vol. III.
T). 51, transl.) and Pareau (^Comment, de immortal, p. 109) assume. Such
passages as Isa. xxv. 8 and xxvi. 19, even if Ezekiel referred to them,
merely prove that the belief or hope of the resurrection of the dead could
not be altogether unknown to the believers of Israel, because Isaiah had
already declared it. But the obvious announcement of this dogma in
Dan. xii. 2 belongs to a later period than our vision ; and even Daniel does
not speak of it as a belief that prevailed throughout the nation, but simply
communicates it as a consolation offered by the angel of the Lord in
anticipation of the times of severe calamity awaiting the people of God.
CHAP. XXXVII. 1-14. 125
its restoration to life. Theodoret comes much nearer to the
truth when he gives the following as his explanation of the
vision: that " on account of the unbelief of the Jews in exile, who
were despairing of their restoration, the almighty God makes
known His might; and the resurrection of the dead bodies,
which was much more difficult than their restoration, is shown
to the prophet, in order that all the nation may be taught
thereby that everything is easy to His will ;" ^ and when,
accordingly, he calls what occurs in the vision " a type not of
the calling to life of the Jews only, but also of the resurrection
of all men." The only defect in this is, that Theodoret regards
the dead bones which are brought to life too much as a figura-
tive representation of any dead whatever, and thereby does
justice neither to the words, " these bones are the whole house
of Israel," which he paraphrases by twos tov ^laparjK Tama, nor
to the designation applied to them as CJIIlI, though it may fairly
be pleaded as a valid excuse so far as Q^Jnn is concerned, that
the force of this word has been completely neutralized in the
Septuagint, upon which he was commenting, by the rendering
To^s ve/cpoii'} TovTovi. — Havernick has interpreted the vision in
a much more abstract manner, and evaporated it into the
general idea of a symbolizing of the creative, life-giving power
of God, which can raise even the bones of the dead to life
again. His exposition is the following : " There is no express
prediction of the resurrection in these words, whether of a
general resurrection or of the particular resurrection of Israel ;
but this is only thought of here, inasmuch as it rests upon the
creative activity of God, to which even such a conquest of
death as this is possible." *
* His words are these : Ib-e/S^ yap J/' ^v hocow aitWTlau raj x^nffrori^af
ditinyofiivatci) IAti'Sk; oi ex Tri; 'lovBa/a; icl'jifiahuzou yevofiSfoi, riiii oixtlau
ai/Tol; 6 rau ohaii ©eoj iviiiixwai ^vvec/^tv, xxi Tttu aroTiTip r^; ecuemhiiiia;
exiiiivis ^vaxoTioripttu run uixpav ttuf^onuv Aiiaoriciiiii i'lriiiixwai t^ 'spo<()7tTy
xcti B<' ixiivov itcniTO, iiii,(jxii roil Tieeo'ii, us iroivtK xliT^ ^aiiix fiovM/^in^,
^ The view expressed by Hofmann {Schri/tbeweis, II. 2, pp. 507 aqq,) is
a kindred one, namely, that it is not the future resurrection of the dead, or
126 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
The calling to life of the thoroughly dried dead bones shown
to the prophet in the vision, is a figure or visible representation
of that which the Lord announces to him in vers. 11-14,
namely, that He will bring Israel out of its gravesj give it life
with His breath, and bring it into its own land ; and conse-
quently a figure of the raising of Israel to life from its existing
state of death. The opening of the graves is also a figure ; for
those whom the Lord will bring out of their graves are they
who say, " Our bones are dried," etc. (ver. 11), and therfefore
not those who are deceased, nor even the spiritually dead, but
those who have lost all hope of life. We are not, however,
to understand by this merely mors civilis and vita civilis, as
Grotius has done. For Israel was destroyed, not only politi-
cally as a nation, but spiritually as a church of the Lord,
through the destruction of its two kingdoms and its dispersion
amon" the heathen ; and in a very large number of its members
it had also been given up to the power of physical death and
sunk into the grave. Even then, if we keep out of sight those
who were deceased, Israel, as the people of God, was slain
(3nn), without any hope of coming to life again, or a resurrec-
tion to new life. But the Lord now shows the prophet this
resurrection under the figure of the raising to life of the very
dry bones that lie scattered all around. This is fulfilled
through the restoration of Israel as the people of Jehovah, to
which the leading of the people back into the land of Israel
essentially belongs. The way was opened and prepared for
this fulfilment by the return of a portion of the people from the
Babylonian captivity under Zerubbabel and Ezra, which was
the resurrection of the deceased Israelites, which is indicated in the vision,
and that it does not even set forth to yiew the unconditioned power of God
over death, or an idea which is intended as a pledge of the resurrection of
the dead ; but that by the revelation made manifest to the prophet in the
state of ecstasy, the completeness of that state of death out of which Israel
is to be restored is exhibited, and thus the truth is set before his eyes that
the word of prophecy has the inherent power to ensure its own fulfilment,
even when Israel is in a condition which bears precisely the same resem-
blance to a nation as the state of death to a human being.
CHAP. XSXVII. 1-14. 127
brought to pass by the Lord, by the rebuilding of the cities of
Judah and the temple which had been destroyed, and by the
restoration of political order. But all this was nothing more
than a pledge of the future and complete restoration of Israel.
For although the Lord still raised up prophets for those who
had returned and furthered the building of His house. His
glory did not enter the newly erected temple, and the people
never attained to independence again, — that is to say, not to
permanent independence, — but continued in subjection to the
imperial power of the heathen. And even if, according to Ezra,
very many more of the exiles may have returned to their native
land, by whom, for example, Galilee was repopulated and
brought into cultivation again, the greater portion of the nation
remained dispersed among the heathen. The true restoration
of Israel as the people of the Lord commenced with the found-
ing of the new kingdom of God, the " kingdom of heaven,"
through the appearing of Christ upon the earth. But inas-
much as the Jewish nation as such, or in its entirety, did not
acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah foretold by the pro-
phets and sent by God, but rejected its Saviour, there burst
afresh upon Jerusalem and the Jewish nation the judgment of
dispersion among the heathen ; whereas the kingdom of God
founded by Christ spread over the earth, through the entrance
of believers from among the Gentiles. This judgment upon
the Jewish people, which is hardened in unbelief, still con-
tinues, and will continue until the time when the full number
of the Gentiles has entered into the kingdom of God, and Israel
as a people shall also be converted to Christ, acknowledge the
crucified One as its Saviour, and bow the knee before Him
(Rom. xi. 25, 26). Then will " all Israel " be raised up out
of its graves, the graves of its political and spiritual death, and
brought back into its own land, which will extend as far as the
Israel of God inhabits the earth. Then also will the hour come
in which all the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,
and come forth out of their graves to the resurrection (Dan.
128 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
xii. 2 ; John v. 25-29) ; when the Lord shall appear in His
glory, and descend from heaven with the trump of God
(1 Thess. iv. 16), to call all the dead to life, and through the
judgment upon all the nations to perfect His kingdom in
glory, and bring the righteous into the Canaan of the new
earth, into the heavenly Jerusalegi, to the imperishable life of
everlasting blessedness.
All these several factors in the restoration of Israel, which
has been given up to the death of exile on account of its sins,
though far removed from one another, so far as the time of
their occurrence is concerned, are grouped together as one in
the vision of the coming to life of the dead bones of the whole
house of Israel. The two features which are kept distinct in
the visionary description — namely, (1) the coming together of
the dry bones, and their being clothed with sinews, flesh, and
skin ; and (2) the bringing to life of the bones, which have
now the form of corpses, through the divine breath of life —
are not to be distinguished in the manner proposed by Heng-
stenberg, namely, that the first may be taken as referring to
the restoration of the civil condition — the external restitutio in
integrum; the second, to the giving of new life through the
outpouring of the Spirit of God. — Even according to our view,
the vision contains a prophecy of the resurrection of the dead,
only not in this sense, that the doctrine of the general resurrec-
tion of the dead is the premiss, or the design, or the direct
meaning of the vision ; but that the figurative meaning consti-
tutes the foreground, and the full, literal meaning of the words
the background of the prophetic vision, and that the fulfilment
advances from the figurative to the literal meaning, — the
raising up of the people of Israel out of the civil and spiritual
death of exile being completed in the raising up of the dead
out of their graves to everlasting life at the last day.
CHAP. XXXVII. lfi-28, 129
Vers. 15-28. Reunion of Israel as one Nation under the
future King David.
This word of God directs the prophet to represent by a sign
the reunion of the tribes of Israel, which have been divided
into two kingdoms (vers, 15-17), and to explain this sign to
the people (vers. 18-21), and predict its sanctification and
blessedness under the reign of the future David (vers. 22-28).
What is new in this word of God is the express prediction,
embodied in a symbolical action, of the reunion of the divided
tribes of Israel into one single people of God, which has been
already hinted at in the promise of the raising to life of " the
whole house of Israel" (ver. 11). This brief indication is here
plainly expressed and more fully developed.
Ver. 15. And the word of JehovaJi came to me, saying,
Ver. 16. And thou, son of man, take to thyself a piece of wood,
and write upon it : Of Judah, and the sons of Israel, his asso-
ciates ; and take another piece of wood, and write upon it : Of
Joseph, the wood of Ephraim, and the wJwle house of Israel, his
associates ; Ver. 17. And put them together, one to the other,
into one piece of wood to thee, that they may he united in thy
hand. Ver. 18. And when the sons of thy people say to thee.
Wilt thou not show us what thou meanest by this ? Ver. 19. Say
to them. Thus saith the Lord Jelwvah, Behold, 1 will take the
wood of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes
of Israel, his associates, which I put thereon, with the wood of
Judah, and will make them into one stick, that they may be one
in my hand. Ver. 20. And the pieces of wood upon which thou
hast written shall be in thy hand before their eyes. Ver. 21.
And say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will
take the sons of Israel out of the imtions among whom they walk,
and will gather them from round about, and lead them into their
land. Ver. 22. / will make them into one nation in the land,
upon the mountains oflsj^ael, and one king shall be king over them
all ; and it shall not become two nations any more, and they shall
EZEK. II. I
130 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
not henceforth he divided into two kingdoms any more ; Ver. 23.
And shall not defile themselves hy their idols and their abomina-
tions, and hy all their transgressions ; hut I will help them from
all their dwelling-places^ in which they have sinned, and will
cleanse them ; so that they shall be my people, and I will he their
God. Ver. 24. And my servant David will he king over them,
and he a shepherd for them all ; and they will walk in my rights,
and keep my statutes and do them. Ver. 25. And they will
dwell in the land which I gave to my servant Jacoh, in which
their fathers dwelt; there will they dwell, and their children's
children for ever ; and my servant David will he a prince to
them for ever, Ver. 26. And I make a covenant of peace with
them for ever, an everlasting covenant shall he with them ; and I
will place them, and multiply them, and put my sanctuary in the
midst of them for ever. Ver. 27. And my dwelling will he over
them ; I will he their God, and they will, be my people. Ver. 28.
And the nation shall know that I am Jehovah, who saTutifieth
Israel, when my sanctuary shall he in the midst of them for ever.
The symbolical action commanded in vers. 16 and 17, which
the prophet no doubt performed in all its external reality (cf.
vers. 19 and 20), is easily understood, and expresses the thing
to be represented in the clearest manner. The writing of the
names of the tribes composing the two kingdoms recalls to
mind the similar act on the part of Moses (Num. xvii. 17 sqq.).
But the act itself is a different one here, and neither the
passage referred to nor Ezek. xxi. 15 furnishes any proof that
yv signifies a staff or rod. Ezekiel would undoubtedly have
used ilBD for a staff. Nor have we even to think of flat boards,
but simply of pieces of wood upon which a few words could be
written, and which could, be held in one hand. The i before
the names to be written upon each piece of wood is the sign of
the genitive, indicating to whom it belongs, as in the case of
the heading to David's psalms pn^). This is evident from the
fact that in D^ISK fTi, the construct state is used instead. The
name is to indicate that the piece of wood belongs to Judah or
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 131
Ephraim, and represents it. The command to Ezekiel to write
upon one piece of wood, not only Judah, but " the sons of
Israel, his associates," arose from the circumstance that the
kingdom of Judah included, in addition to the tribe of Judah,
the greater portion of Benjamin and Simeon, the tribe of Levi
and those pious Israelites who emigrated at different times from
the kingdom of the ten tribes into that of Judah, who either
were or became associates of Judah (2 Chron. xi. 12 sqq.,
XV, 9, XXX. 11, 18, xxxi. 1). In the writing upon the second
piece of wood, D^ISS yV. is an explanatory apposition to IDiy,
and an accusative governed by 3h3. But the command is not
to be understood as signifying that Ezekiel was to write the
words D''ias 1*3? upon the piece of wood ; all that he was to
write was, "Joseph and the whole house of Israel, his asso-
ciates." The name of Joseph is chosen, in all probability, not
as the more honourable name, as Havernick supposes, but
because the house of Joseph, consisting of the two powerful
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, formed the trunk of the
kingdom of the ten tribes (Kliefoth). The " whole house of
Israel, his associates," are the rest of the tribes belonging to
that kingdom. The two pieces of wood, with these inscrip-
tions upon them, Ezekiel is to put together, and hold in his
hand bound together in one. 1? nSS'TOj what these (two
pieces of wood) are to thee, is equivalent to, what thou meanest
to indicate by them. For the rest, compare ch. xxiv. 19. In
the word of God explaining the action (ver. 19), the wood of
Joseph is not the piece of wood with Joseph's name written
upon it, but the kingdom represented by this piece of wood
which was in Ephraim's hand, inasmuch as the hegemony was
with the tribe of Ephraim. Instead of the wood, therefore,
the tribes (not staffs) of Israel, i.e. the Israelites who consti-
tuted these trib3S, are mentioned as his associates. God will
put these upon the wood of Joseph Q''^^), i.e. will join them
together, and then place them with the wood of Judah, i.e. the
kingdom of Judah, and unite them into one wood (or nation).
132 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
nnwj KjrriK, the construction of which has been misunderstood
by Hitzig, is neither in apposition to V7Jf, nor governed by
■-rini : " and will put them thereupon, upon the wood of Judah"
(Hitzig and Kliefoth), or, " I add them to it, (namely) with
the wood of Judah " (De Wette) ; but it is dependent upon
npi', " I take the wood of Joseph . . . and the tribes of Israel,
his associates, which I put thereon, along with the wood of
Judah, and make them into one wood." The construction is
rendered obscure simply by the fact that the relative clause,
" which I put thereon," is attached to the principal clause
'1J1 ri]}^ '<iK by Fav consec. In 'I)?, " they shall be one in my
hand," there is probably an antithesis to O'^I^H T3, those who
have come into Ephraim's hand, the tribes severed by Ephraim
from the kingdom of God, will God once more bring together
with Judah, and hold in His hand as an undivided nation. — In
ver. 20 the description of the sign is completed by the addi-
tional statement, that the pieces of wood on which the prophet
has written are to be in his hand before their eyes, and conse-
quently that the prophet is to perform the act in such a way
that his countrymen may see it ; from which it follows that he
performed it in its outward reality. The fulfilment of the
instructions is not specially mentioned, as being self-evident;
but in vers. 21-28 the further explanation of the symbolical
action is given at once ; and the interpretation goes beyond the
symbol, inasmuch as it not only describes the manner in which
God will effect the union of the divided tribes, but also what
He will do for the preservation of the unity of the reunited
people, and for the promotion of their blessedness. This
explanation is arranged in two strophes through the repetition
of the concluding thought : " they will be my people," etc., in
vers. 23 and 27. Each of these strophes contains a twofold
promise. The first (vers. 21-23) promises (a) the gathering of
the Israelites out of their dispersion, their restoration to their
own land, and their union as one nation under the rule of
David (vers. 21, 22) ; (b) their purification from all sins, and
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 133
sanctification as the true people of the Lord (ver. 23). The
second strophe (vers. 24-27) promises (a) their undisturbed
eternal abode in the land, under David their prince (ver. 25);
(b) the blessedness conferred upon them through the conclusion
of an everlasting covenant of peace (vers. 26 and 27). This
second promise, therefore, constitutes the completion of the
first, securing to the nation of Israel its restoration and sanctifi-
cation for all time. The whole promise, however, is merely a
repetition of that contained in ch. xxxiv. 11-31 and xxxvi. 22-30.
— The three factors — the gathering out of the nations, restora-
tion to the land of Israel, and reunion as one people — form the
first act of divine grace. The union of the Israelites, when
brought back to their land, is accomplished by God giving them
in David a king who will so rule the reunited people that they
will not be divided any more into two peoples and two king-
doms. The Chetib n^ri' is not to be altered into the plural
vn^, as in the Keri; but ''13 is to be supplied in thought, from
the preceding clause, as the subject to the verb. The division
of the nation into two kingdoms had its roots, no doubt, in the
ancient jealousy existing between the two tribes Ephraim and
Judah; but it was primarily brought to pass through the
falling away of Solomon from the Lord. Consequently it
could only be completely and for ever terminated through the
righteous government of the second David, and the purification
of the people from their sins. This is the way in which ver. 23
is attached to ver. 22. For ver. 23a compare ch. xiv. 11 and
xxxvi. 25. Different interpretations have been given of the
words, " I help them from all their dwelling-places, in which
they have sinned." They recall to mind ch. xxxvi. 29, "I
help them from all their nncleannesses." As ID J/B^in signifies,
in that case, " to preserve therefrom," so in the present instance
the thought can only be, " God will preserve them from all the
dwelling-places in, which they have sinned." Hengstenberg is
of opinion that the redemption from the dwelling-places does
not take place locally, but spiritually, through the cleansing
134 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
away of all traces of sin, first from the hearts, and then, in
consequence, from all around. In this way is the land changed,
through the power of the Lord, into another land, from a sinful
to a holy one ; just as before it had been changed from a holy
to a sinful one through the guilt of the people. But if this
were the only thought which the words contained, Ezekiel
would certainly have placed the onis wntJl before 'W1 'PiSIB^im.
As the words read, the deliverance of the people from their
sinful dwelling-places is to precede their purification, to prepare
the way for it and bring it to pass, and not to follow after it
The dwelling-places, at or in which they have sinned, cannot
be the settlements in foreign lands, as Hitzig supposes, but
only the dwelling-places in Canaan, to which the Lord would
bring them after gathering them from their dispersion. Vftn
does not signify, " leading out from these dwelling-places,"
which is the explanation given by Kliefoth, who consequently
thinks that we must understand the words as denoting the
leading over of Israel from the present Canaan, or the Canaan
of this life, to which its sins adhere, to the glorified, new, and
eternal Canaan. This view is utterly irreconcilable both with
the words themselves and also with the context. Even if Wi^
meant to lead out, it would not be allowable to transform the
" leading out" from the sinful Canaan into a " leading in" to
the glorified and heavenly Canaan. Moreover, the further
development of this promise in ver. 25 also shows that it is not
in the glorified, eternal Canaan that Israel is to dwell, hut in
the earthly Canaan in which its fathers dwelt. It is obvious
from this, that in all the promise here given there is no allusion
to a transformation and glorification of Canaan itself. The
helping or saving from all dwelling-places in which they have
sinned would rather consist in the fact, therefore, that God
would remove from their dwelling-places everything that could
offer them an inducement to sin. For although sin has its
seat, not in the things without us, but in the heart, the external
circumstances of a man do offer various inducements to sin.
CHAP. XXXVII. 16-28. 135
Before the captivity, Canaan offered such an inducement, to
the Israelites through the idolatry and moral corruption of the
Canaanites who were left in the land. And with reference to
this the Lord promises that in future, when His people are
brought back to Canaan, He will preserve them from the sinful
influence of their dwelling-places. But this preservation will
only be effected with complete success when God purifies
Israel itself, and, by means of its renovation, eradicates all
sinful desire from the heart (cf. ch. xxxvi. 26, 27). In this
way ■"l?")']'?'! is appended in the most fitting way to 'Ul ''HjJE'ini. —
Through the removal of all sinful influences from around them,
and the purifying of the heart, Israel will then become in truth
the people of God, and Jehovah the God of Israel (ver. 23). —
Israel, when thus renewed, will walk in the rights of the Lord
and fulfil His commandments, under the protection of its one
shepherd David, i.e. of the Messiah (ver. 24, cf. ch. xxxvi. 27,
and xxxiv. 23) ; and its children and children's children will
dwell for ever in its own land, David being its prince for ever
(ver. 25, cf. ch. xxxvi, 28 and xxxiv. 24). What is new in
this promise, which is repeated from ch. xxxiv. and xxxvi., is
contained in Q?iJ'?, which is to be taken in the strict sense of
the word. Neither the dwelling of Israel in Canaan, nor the
government of the David -Messiah, will ever have an end.
Djiy? is therefore repeated in ver. 26 in the promise of the
covenant which the Lord will make with His people. The
thought itself has already been expressed in ch. xxxiv. 25, and
QSbf TVna. is to be understood, both here and there, as compre-
hending all the saving good which the Lord will bestow upon
His sanctified people. There are only two factors of this salva-
tion mentioned here in vers. 266 and 27, namely, the multipli-
cation of the people, as the earthly side of the divine blessing,
and the establishing of His eternal sanctuary in the midst of
them as the spiritual side. These two points refer back to the
former acts of God, and hold up to view the certain and full
realization in the future of what has hitherto been neither per-
136 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
fectly nor permanently accomplished on account of the sins of
the people. QW31, in ver. 26, is not to be taken in connection
■with Driis ''n^S'ini, so as to form one idea in the sense of dabo
eos multiplicatos (Venema and Hengstenberg), for we have no
analogies of such a mode of combination ; but OWJ, I make,
or place them, is to be taken by itself, and completed from the
context, " I make them into a nation, and I multiply them (of.
eh. xxxvi. 10, 11, 37). Ezekiel has here Lev. xxvi. 9 and 11
in his mind, as we may see from the fact that the words, " I
give my sanctuary in the midst of them for ever," are obviously
formed after Lev. xxvi. 11, " I give my dwelling in the midst
of them ; " in such a manner, however, that by the substitution
of WpD for 'JlifD, and the addition of q'p'iv'?, the promise is
both deepened and strengthened. In the change of ^^^^ into
''?^i??, he may indeed have had the words of Ex. xxv. 8 floating
before his mind, " they shall make me a sanctuary, that I may
dwell among them ; " nevertheless he deliberately selected the
expression " my sanctuary," to indicate that the Lord would
dwell in the midst of Israel as the Holy One, and the Sanctifier
of His people. Moreover, the words are not, "my dwelling
will be in the midst of them, or among them" (D3in3), but
DCyS^, over them. This expression is transferred from the site
of the temple, towering above the city (Ps. Ixviii. 30), to the
dwelling of God among His people, to give prominence to the
protective power and saving grace of the God who rules in
Israel (cf. Hengstenberg on Ps. Ixviii. 30). The sanctuary
which Jehovah will give in Israel for ever, i.e. will found and
cause to endure, that He may dwell in the midst of it to shelter
and bless, is the temple, but not the temple built by Zerub-
babel. As an objection to this Jewish interpretation, Jerome
has justly said : " but how could it be said to stand 'for ever,'
when that temple which was built in the time of Zerubbabel,
and afterwards restored by many others, was consumed by
Eoman fire ? All these things are to be taken as referring to
the church in the time of the Saviour, when His tabernacle
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 137
was placed in the church." There is no reference whatever
here to the rebuilding of the temple by Zerubbabel; not
because that temple did not stand for ever and was destroyed
by the Romans, but chiefly because God did not make it His
abode, or fill this temple with His gracious presence (Shechinah).
The sanctuary which God will place for ever among His people
is the sanctuary seen by Ezekiel in ch. xl. sqq. ; and this is
merely a figurative representation of the " dwelling of God in
the midst of His people through His Son and Holy Spirit " (cf .
Vitringa, Observv. I. p. 161), which began to be realized in the
incarnation of the Logos, who is set forth in John i. 14 as the
true t??''?, in the words eaKi^vmaev iv fjiuv, and is continued in
the spiritual dwelling of God in the heart of believers (1 Cor.
iii. 16, vi. 19), and will be completed at the second coming of
our Lord in the " tabernacle (ct/cjjw^ of God with men" of the
new Jerusalem, of which the Lord God Almighty and the
Lamb are the temple, since Israel will then first have become
in truth the people of God, and Jehovah (God with them)
their God (Rev. xsi. 3, 22). — The promise concludes in ver. 28
with an allusion to tlie impression which these acts of God in
Israel will make upon the heathen (cf. ch. xxxvi. 36). From
the fact that Jehovah erects His sanctuary in the midst of
Israel for ever, they will learn that it is He who sanctifietli
Israel. ^p_, to sanctify, means, " to remove from all connec-
tion either with sin or with its consequences. Here the refer-
ence is to the latter, because these alone strike the eyes of the
heathen ; but the former is presupposed as the necessary foun-
dation" (Hengstenberg). The words rest upon the promises
of the Pentateuch, where God describes Himself as He who
will and does sanctify Israel (compare Ex. xxxi. 13; Lev.
xxii. 31—33). This promise, which has hitherto been only
imperfectly fulfilled on account of Israel's guilt, will be per-
fectly realized in the future, when Israel will walk in the ways
of the Lord, renewed by the Spirit of God.
Thus does this prophecy of Ezekiel span the whole future of
138 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the people of God even to eternity. But the promise in which
it culminates, namely, that the Lord will erect His sanctuary
in the midst of His restored people, and there take up His
abode above them for ever (ch. xxxvii. 26 sqq.), is of importance
as helping to decide the question, how we are to understand the
fulfilment of the restoration to Canaan into the land given to
the fathers, which is promised to all Israel ; whether, in a literal
manner, by the restoration of the Israelites to Palestine; or
spiritually, by the gathering together of the Israelites converted
to the Lord their God and Saviour, and their introduction into
the kingdom of God founded by Christ, in which case Canaan,
as the site of the Old Testament kingdom of God, would be a
symbolical or typical designation of the earthly soil of the
heavenly kingdom, which has appeared in the Christian church.
— These two different views have stood opposed to one another
from time immemorial, inasmuch as the Jews expect from the
Messiah, for whose advent they still hope, not only their restora-
tion to Palestine, but the erection of the kingdom of David and
the rebuilding of the temple upon Mount Zion, together with
the sacrificial worship of the Levitical law; whereas in the
Christian church, on the ground of the New Testament doc-
trine, that the old covenant has been abolished along with the
Levitical temple-worship through, the perfect fulfilment of the
law by Christ and the perpetual efficacy of His atoning sacri-
fice, the view has prevailed that, with the abolition of the Old
Testament form of the kingdom of God, even Palestine has
ceased to be the chosen land of the revelation of the saving
grace of God, and under the new covenant Canaan extends
as far as the Israel of the new covenant, the church of Jesus
Christ, is spread abroad over the earth, and that Zion or Jeru-
salem is to be sought wherever Christendom worships God in
spirit and in truth, wherever Christ is with His people, and
dwells in the hearts of believers through the Holy Spirit. It
was by J. A. Bengel and C. F. Oetinger that the so-called
"realistic" interpretation of the Messianic prophecies of the
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 139
Old Testament — according to which, after the future conver-
sion to Christ of the Jewish people who are hardened still, the
establishment of the kingdom of God in Palestine and its
capital Jerusalem is to be expected — has been revived and
made into one of the leading articles of Christian hope. By
means of this " realistic " exposition of the prophetic word
the chiliastic dogma of the establishment of a kingdom of glory-
before the last judgment and the end of the world is then de-
duced from the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse ; and many
of the theologians of our day regard this as the certain resultant
of a deeper study of the Scriptures. In the more precise
definition of the dogma itself, the several supporters diverge
very widely from one another ; but they all agree in this, that
they base the doctrine chiefly upon the prophetic announce-
ment of the eventual conversion and glorification of all Israel.
— As Ezekiel then stands out among all the prophets as the
one who gives the most elaborate prediction of the restoration
of Israel under the government of- the Messiah, and he not
only draws in ch. xl.-xlviii. a detailed picture of the new form
of the kingdom of God, but also in ch. xxxviii. and xxxix., in
the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog, foretells an attack
on the part of the heathen world upon the restored kingdom
of God, which appears, according to Eev. xx. 7-9, to constitute
the close of the thousand years' reign ; we must look somewhat
more closely at this view, and by examining the arguments pro
and con, endeavour to decide the question as to the fulfilment
of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the future of
Israel. In doing this, however, we shall fix our attention
exclusively upon the exegetical arguments adduced in support
of the chiliastic view by its latest supporters.'
1 These are, C. A. Auberlen, " The Prophet Daniel and the Revelation of
John ; " also in a treatise on the Messianic Prophecies of the Mosaic times,
in the Jahrbb. f. dentsche Thediogie, IV. pp. 778 sqq. ; J. C. K. Hofmann,
in his Weissagung und Erfullung im. A. u. N. Testamente, and in the
Schri/tbeweis, vol. II. p. 2 ; Mich. Baumgarten, article " Ezekiel" in Herzog's
140 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
The prophetic announcement, that the Lord will one day
gather together again the people of Israel, which has been
thrust out among the heathen for its unfaithfulness, will bring
it back into the land given to the fathers, and there bless and
greatly multiply it, has its roots in the promises of the law. If
the stiff-necked transgressors of the commandments of God —
these are the words of Lev. xxvi. 40-45 — bear the punishment
of their iniquity in the land of their enemies, and confess their
sins, and their uncircumcised heart is humbled, then will the
Lord remember His covenant with the patriarchs, and not cast
them off even in the land of their enemies, to destroy them,
and to break His covenant with them ; hut will remember
the covenant which He made with their ancestors, when He
brought them out of Egypt before the eyes of the nations to be
their God.- He will, as this is more precisely defined in Deut.
XXX. 3 sqq., gather them together again out of the heathen
nations, lead them back into the land which their fathers pos-
sessed, and multiply Israel more than. its fathers. On the ground
of this promise, of which Moses gives a still further pledge to the
people in his dying song (Deut. xxxii. 36—43), all the prophets
announce the restoration and ultimate glorification of Israel.
This song, which closes with the promise, " Kejoice, ye nations,
over His people ; for He will avenge the blood of His servants,
and repay vengeance to His adversaries, and expiate His land.
His people," continues to resound — to use the words of Hof-
mann (Schriftbeweis, II. 2, pp. 89, 90)— "through all the Old
Testament prophecy. Not only when Obadiah (ver. 17) and
Joel (ch. iii. 5) promise good to their nation do they call
Mount Zion and the city of Jerusalem the place where there
is protection from the judgment upon the nations of the world ;
but Micah also, who foretells the destruction of the temple and
Cyclopaedia, and here and there in his commentary on the Old Testament ;
C. B. Luthardt, The Doctrine of the Last Things in Treatises and Expositions
of Scripture (1851) ; and Dr. Volck, in the Dorpater Zeitschrift fur TUo-
logie und Kirehe, IX. pp. 142 sqc[. ; and others.
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 141
the carrying away of his people to Babylon, beholds Mount
Zion exalted at last above all the seats of worldly power, and
his people brought back to the land of their fathers (ch. iv. 1,
vii. 14). The same Isaiah, who was sent to harden his people
with the word of his prophecy, is nevertheless certain that at
last a holy nation will dwell in Jerusalem, a remnant of Israel
(Isa. iv. 3, X. 21) ; and the holy mountain of Jehovah, to which
His scattered people return from all the ends of the world, is
that abode of peace where even wild beasts do no more harm
under the rule of the second David (Isa. xi. 9, 11). After all
the calamities which it was the mournful lot of Jeremiah to
foretell and also to witness, Jehovah showed this prophet the
days when He would restore His people, and bring them back
to the land which He gave to their fathers (Jer. xxx. 3). . . .
And the same promise is adhered to even after the return. In
every way is the assurance given by Zechariah, that Judali
shall be God's holy possession in Grod's holy land."^ This re-
storation of Israel Ezekiel describes, in harmony with Jer. xxxi.,
1 Compare with this the words of Auberlen (der Prophet Daniel, p.- 399,
ed. 2) : " The doctrine of the glorious restoration of Israel to Canaan, after
severe chastisement and humiliation, is so essential and fundamental a
thought of all prophecy, that the difficulty is not so much to find pasisages
to support itj as to make a selection from them. By way of example, let
us notice Isa. ii. 2-4, iv. 2-6, ix. 1-6, xi. and xii. ; more especially xi.
11 sqq., xxiv. sqq., Ix. sqq. ; Jer. xxx.-xxxiii. ; Ezek. xxxiv. 23-31, xxxvi.,
xxxvii. ; Hos. ii. 16-25, iii. 4, 5, xL 8-11, xiv. 2 sqq. ; Joel iii. 1-5, iv.
16-21; Amos ix. 8-15; Obad. vers. 17-21; Mic. iL 12, 13, iv., v., vii.
11-20 ; Zeph. iii. 14-20 ; Zech. ii. 4 sqq., vui. 7 sqq., ix. 9 sqq., x. 8-12,
xii. 2-xiii. 6, xiv. 8 sqq." Auberlen (pp. 400 sq.) then gives the following
as the substance of these prophetic descriptions : " Israel having been
brought back to its own land, will be the people of Grod in a much higher
and deeper sense than before ; inasmuch as sin will be averted, the know-
ledge of God will fill the land, and the Lord will dwell again in the midst
of His people at Jerusalem. A new period of revelation is thus com-
menced, the Spirit of God is richly poured out, and with this a plenitude
of such gifts of grace as were possessed in a typical manner by the apostolic
church. And this rich spiritual life has also its perfect external manifes-
tation both in a priestly and a regal form. The priesthood of Israel was
more especially seen by Ezekiel, the son of a priest, in his mysterious
vision in ch. xl.-xlviii. ; the monarchy by Daniel, the statesman ; whila
142 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
though in a much more detailed picture, in the following way :
— " The condition of things in the future will differ from that
in the past, simply in the fact that Israel will then have a heart
converted to fidelity and obedience by the Spirit of God
(ch. xi. 19, xxxvi. 27), and will live in good peace and pro-
sperity under the shelter of its God, who is known and acknow-
ledged by all the world (ch. xxxvi. 23). The land to which it
is restored, a land most decidedly represented by Ezekiel as the
same as that in which its fathers lived (ch. xxxvii. 25), appears
throughout merely as a happy earthly dwelHng-place, and the
promise of its possession as an assurance given to a nation
continuing to propagate itself in peace" (Hofmann, p. 576).
This manner of depicting the condition of the Israel restored
and glorified by ihe Messiah, as a peaceful settlement and a
happy life in the land of the fathers, a life rich in earthly
possessions, is not confined, however, to Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
but stands out more or less conspicuously in the Messianic
pictures of all the prophets. What follows, then, from this in
Jeremiah, for example, unites the two (oh. xxxiii. 17-22). What took
place only in an outward way, i.e. in the letter, during the Old Testament
times, and withdrew, on the other hand, into the inward and hidden spirit-
life during the time of the Christian church, will then manifest itself out-
wardly also, and assume an external though pneumatic form. In the Old
Testament the whole of the national life of Israel in its several forms of
manifestation, domestic and political life, labour and art, literature and
culture, was regulated by religion, though only at first in an outward and
legal way. The church, on the other hand, has, above all, to urge a
renewal of the heart, and must give freedom to the outward forms which
life assumes, enjoining upon the conscience of individual men, in these also
to glorify Christ. In the thousand years' reign all these departments of
lite will be truly Christianized, and that from within. Looked at in this
light, there wUl be nothing left to give offence, if we bear in mind that the
ceremonial law of Moses corresponds to the priesthood of Israel, and the
civil law to the monarchy. The Gentile church has only been able to
adopt the moral law, however certainly it has been directed merely to the
inwardly working means of the word, or of the prophetic office. But when
once the priesthood and the kingly ofiRce have been restored, then, without
doing violence to the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ceremonial and civil law
of Moses will unfold its spiritual depths in the worship and constitution of
the thousand years' reign."
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-2a 143
relation to the mode in which these prophecies are to be fulfilled ?
Is it that the form assumed by the life of the people of Israel
when restored will be only a heightened repetition of the condi-
tions of its former life in Palestine, undisturbed by sin ? By no
means. On the contrary, it follows from this that the prophets
have depicted the glorious restoration of Israel by the Messiah
by means of figures borrowed from the past and present of the
national life of Israel, and therefore that their picture is not to
be taken literally, but symbolically or typically, and that we are
not to expect it to be literally fulfilled.
Wo are forced to this conclusion by the fact that, through
the coming of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven which began
with Him, the idea of the people of God has been so expanded,
that henceforth not the lineal descendants of Abraham, or the
Jewish nation merely, but the church of confessors of Jesus
Christ, gathered together out of Israel and the Gentiles, has
become the people of God, and the economy of the Old Testa-
ment has ceased to constitute the divinely appointed form of
the church of God. If, therefore, the Jewish people, who have
rejected the Saviour, who appeared in Jesus Christ, and have
hardened themselves against the grace and truth revealed in
Him, are not cast off for ever, but, according to the promises
of the Old Testament and the teaching of the Apostle Paul
(Horn, xi.), will eventually repent, and as a people turn to the
crucified One, and then also realize the fulfilment of the pro-
mises of God ; there is still lacking, with the typical character
of the prophetic announcement, any clear and unambiguous
biblical evidence that all Israel, whose salvation is to be looked
for in the future, will be brought back to Palestine, when
eventually converted to Christ the crucified One, and continue
there as a people separated from the rest of Christendom, and
form the earthly centre of the church of the Lord gathered
out of all nations and tongues. For, however well founded the
remark of Hofmann (ut sup. p. 88) may be, that " holy people
and holy land are demanded by one another ;" this proves
144 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
nothing more than that the holy people, gathered out of all the
families of the earth through the believing reception of the
gospel, will also have a holy land for its dwelling-place ; in
other words, that, with the spread of the church of the Lord
over all the quarters of the globe, the earth will become holy
land or Canaan, so far as it is inhabited by the followers of
Christ. The Apostle Paul teaches this in the same Epistle in
which he foretells to Israel, hardened in unbelief, its eventual
restoration and blessedness ; when he explains in Kom. iv. 9-13
that to Abraham or his seed the promise that he was to be the
heir of the world was not fulfilled through the law, but through
the righteousness of the faith, which Abraham had when still
uncircumcised, that he might become a father of all those who
believe, though they be not circumcised, and a father of the
circumcision, not merely of those who are of the circumcision,
but of those also who walk in the footsteps of his faith. As
the apostle, when developing this thought, interprets the promise
given to the patriarch in Gen. xii. 7 and xv. 18 : " to thy seed
will I give this land " (i.e. the land of Canaan), by Kkqpovoimv
Koafiov (inheriting the world), he regards Canaan as a type of
the world or of the earth, which would be occupied by the
children born of faith to the patriarch.
This typical interpretation of the promise, given in the Old
Testament to the seed of Abraham, of the everlasting possession
of the land of Canaan, which is thus taught by the Apostle
Paul, and has been adopted by the church on his authority,
corresponds also to the spirit and meaning of the Old Testa-
ment word of God. This is evident from Gen. xvii., where
the Lord God, when instituting the covenant of circumcision,
gives not to Abraham only, but expressly to Sarah also, the
promise to make them into peoples (DliJ^), that kings of nations
(D'^sy i3pp) shall come from them through the son, whom they
are to receive (vers. 6 and 16), and at the same time promises
to give to the seed of Abraham, thus greatly to be multiplied,
the land of his pilgrimage, the whole land of Canaan, for an
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 145
everlasting possession (ver. 8). This promise the Lord, as the
" almighty God," has not carried into effect by making Abraham
and Sarah into nations through the lineal posterity of Isaac,
but only through the spiritual seed of Abraham, believers out
of all nations, who have become, and still will become, chil-
dren of Abraham in Christ. It was only through these that
Abraham became the father of a multitude of nations (lilOji 3Np
D^.ia, ver. 5). For although two peoples sprang from Isaac, the
Israelites through Jacob, and the Edomites through Esau, and
Abraham also became the ancestor of several tribes through
Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, the divine promise in question
refers to the people of Israel alone, because Esau was separated
from the seed of the promise by God Himself, and the other
sons of Abraham were excluded by the fact that they were not
born of Sarah. The twelve tribes, however, formed but one
people; and although Ezekiel calls them two peoples (ch,
XXXV. 10 and xxxvii. 22), having in view their division into
two kingdoms, they are never designated or described in the
Old or New Testament as 0'<Si Jian. To this one people God
did indeed give the land of Canaan for a possession, according
to the boundaries described in Num. xxxiv., so that it dwelt
therein until it was driven out and scattered among the heathen
for its persistent unfaithfulness. But inasmuch as that portion
of the promise which referred to the multiplication of the seed
of Abraham into peoples was only to receive its complete
fulfilment in Christ, according to the counsel and will of God,
through the grafting of the believing Gentile nations into the
family of Abraham, and has so received it, we are not at liberty
to restrict the other portion of this promise, relating to the
possession of the land of Canaan, to the lineal posterity of tlie
patriarch, or the people of Israel by lineal descent, but must
assume that in the promise of the land to be given to the seed
of Abraham God even then spoke of Canaan as a type of the
land which was to be possessed by the posterity of Abraham
multiplied into nations.
EZEK. II. K
146 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
This typical phraseology runs through all the prophetical
writings of the Old Testament, and that both with regard to
the promised seed, which Abraham received through Isaac
(Gen. xxi. 12) in the people of Israel, and also with reference
to the land promised to this seed for an inheritance, although,
while the old covenant established at Sinai lasted, Israel
according to the flesh was the people of God, and the earthly
Canaan between the Euphrates and the river of Egypt was the
dwelling-place of this people. For inasmuch as Abraham
received the promise at the very time of his call, that in his
seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, and the
germs of the universal destination of the people and kingdom
of God were deposited, according to Gen. xvii., in the subse-
quent patriarchal promises, the prophets continued to employ
the names of Israel and Canaan more and more in their Mes-
sianic prophecies as symbolical terms for the two ideas of the
people and kingdom of God. And from the time when the
fortress of Jerusalem upon Mount Zion was exalted by David
into the capital of his kingdom and the seat of his government
over Israel, and was also made the site of the dwelling of
Jehovah in the midst of His people, by the removal of the ark
of the covenant to Zion, and the building of the temple which
was planned by David, though only carried into execution by
Solomon his son, they employed Zion and Jerusalem in the
same typical manner as the seat and centre of the kingdom of
God ; so that, in the Messianic psalms and the writings of the
prophets, Zion or Jerusalem is generally mentioned as the place
from which the king (David-Messiah), anointed by Jehovah as
prince over His people, extends His dominion over all the
earth, and whither the nations pour to hear the law of the Lord,
and to be instructed as to His ways and their walking in His
paths.
Consequently neither the prominence expressly given to the
land in the promises contained in Lev. xxvi. 42 and Deut,
xxxii. 43, upon which such stress is laid by Auberlen (die
CHAP. XXSVII. 15-^8. 147
messianiscTie Weissagungen, pp. 827 and 833), nor the fact that
Mount Zion or the city of Jerusalem is named as the place of
judgment upon the world of nations and the completion of the
kingdom of God, to which both Hofmann and Anberlen appeal
in the passages already quoted, furnishes any valid evidence
that the Jewish people, on its eventual conversion to Christ,
will be brought back to Palestine, and that the Lord, at His
second coming, will establish the millennial kingdom in the
earthly Jerusalem, and. take up His abode on the material
Mount Zion, in a temple built by human hands.
Even the supporters of the literal interpretation of the Mes-
sianic prophecies cannot deny the symbolico-typlcal character
of the Old Testament revelation. Thus Auberlen, for example,
observes (die mess. Weiss, p. 821) that, " in their typical cha-
racter, the sacrifices furnish us with an example of the true
signification of all the institutions of the Old Testament kingdom
of God, while the latter exhibit to us in external symbol and
type the truly holy people and the Messianic kingdom in its
perfection, just as the former set forth the sacrifice of the
Messiah." But among these institutions the Israelitish sanc-
tuary (tabernacle or temple) undoubtedly occupied a leading
place as a symbolico-typical embodiment of the kingdom of
God established in Israel, as is now acknowledged by nearly
all the, expositors of Scripture who have any belief in revelation.
It is not merely the institutions of the old covenant, however,
which have a symbolico-typical signification, but this is also
the case with the history of the covenant nation of the Old
Testament, and the soil in which this history developed itself.
This is so obvious, that Auberlen himself (ut sup. p. 827) has
said that "it is quite a common thing with the prophets to
represent the approaching dispersion and enslaving of Israel
among the heathen as a renewal of their condition in Egypt,
and the eventual restoration of both the people and kingdom
as a new exodus from Egypt and entrance into Canaan (Hos.
ii. 1, 2 and 16, 17, ix. 3 and 6, xi. 5, 11; Mic. ii. 12, 13,
148 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
vii. 15, 16; Isa. x, 24, 26, xi. 11; Jer. xvi. 14, 15, and other
passages)." And even Hofmann, who sets: aside this typical
phraseology of the prophets in Isa. xi. 11—15, where the
restoration of Israel from Its dispersion throughout all the
world is depicted as a repetition of its deliverance from Egypt
through the miraculous division of the Eed Sea, with the
simple remark, " that the names of the peoples mentioned in
the 14th as well as in the 11th verse, and the obstacles described
in the 15th verse, merely serve to elaborate the thought"
(Schriftbeweis, II. 2, p. 548), cannot help admitting (at p. 561)
" that in Isa. xxxiv. 5 Dn??. is not to be understood as a special
prophecy against the Edomitish people, but as a symbolical
designation of the world of mankind in its enmity against prod."
But if Edom is a type of the human race in its hostility to
God in this threatening of judgment, " the ransomed of
Jehovah" mentioned in the corresponding announcement of
salvation in Isa. xxxv., who are to " return to Zion with songs,
and everlasting joy upon their heads," cannot be the rescued
remnant of the Jewish people, or the Israel of the twelve tribes
who will ultimately attain to blessedness, nor can the Zion to
which they return be the capital of Palestine. If Edom in
this eschatological prophecy denotes the world in its enmity
against God, the ransomed of Jehovah who return to Zion are
the people of God gathered from both Gentiles and Jews, who
enter into the blessedness of the heavenly Jerusalem. By
adopting this view of Edom, Hofmann has admitted the typical
use of the ideas, both of the people of Jehovah (Israel) and of
Zion, by the prophets, and has thereby withdrawn all firm
foundation from his explanation of similar Messianic prophecies
when the Jewish nation is concerned. The same rule which
applies to Edom and Zion in Isa. xxxiv. and xxxv. must also be
applicable in Isa. xl.-lxvi. The prophecy concerning Edom in
Isa. xxxv. has its side-piece in Isa. Ixiii. 1-6 ; and, as Delitzsch
has said, the announcement of the return of the ransomed of
Jehovah to Zion in oh. xxxvi., " as a whole and in every
CHAP. XSXVII. 15-28. , 149
particular, both in thought and language, is a prelude of this
book of consolation for the exiles (i.e. the one which follows in
Isa. xl.-lxvi)." Ezekiel uses Edom in the same way, in the
prediction of the everlasting devastation of Edom and the
restoration of the devastated land of Israel, to be a lasting
blessing for its inhabitants. As Edom in this case also repre-
sents the world in its hostility to God (see the comm. on cli.
xxsv. 1-xxxvi. 15), the land of Israel also is not Palestine, but
the kingdom of the Messiah, the boundaries of which extend
from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the world
(Ps. Ixxii. 8 and Zech. ix. 10). It is true that in the case of
our prophet there is no express mention made of the spread of
the kingdom of God over the lands, inasmuch as he is watch-
man over the house of Israel, and therefore, for the most part,
principally speaks of the restoration of Israel ; but it is also
obvious that this prophetic truth was not unknown to him, from
the fact that, according to ch. xlvii. 22, 23, in the fresh division
of the land among the tribes by lot, the foreigners as well as
the natives are to be reckoned among the children of Israel,
and to receive their portion of the land as well, which plainly
abolishes the difference in lineal descent existing under the old
covenant. Still more clearly does he announce the reception
of the heathen nations into the kingdom of God in ch. xvi. 53
sqq., where he predicts the eventual turning of the captivity,
not of Jerusalem only, but also of Samaria and Sodom, as the
goal of the ways of God with His people. If, therefore, in His
pictures of the restoration and glorification of the kingdom of
God, he speaks of the land of Israel alone, the reason for this
mode of description is probably also to be sought in the fact
that he goes back to the fundamental prophecies of the Pen-
tateuch more than other prophets do ; and as, on the one hand,
he unfolds the fulfilment of the threats in Lev. xxvi. and Deut.
xxviii.-xxxii. in his threatenings of judgments, so, on the other
hand, does he display the fulfilment of the promises of the law
in his predictions of salvation. If we bear this in mind, we
150 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
must not take his prophecy of the very numerous multiplication
of Israel and of the eternal possession of Canaan and its
blessings in any other sense than in that of the divine promise
in Gen. xvii. ; that is to say, we must not restrict the numerous
multiplication of Israel to the literal multiplication of the
remnant of the twelve tribes, but must also understand thereby
the multiplication of the seed of Abraham into peoples in the
manner explained above, and interpret in the same way the
restoration of Israel to the land promised to the fathers.
This view of the Old Testament prophecy concerning the
eventual restoration of Israel on its conversion to Christ is
confirmed as to its correctness by the New Testament also ; if,
for example, we consider the plain utterances of Christ and
His apostles concerning the relation of the Israel according to
the flesh, i,e. of the Jewish nation, to Christ and His kingdom,
and do not adhere in a one-sided manner to the literal inter*
pretation of the eschatological pictures contained in the language
of the Old Testament prophecy. For since, as Hofmann has
correctly observed in his Schriftbmeis (II. 2, pp. 667, 668),
" the apostolical doctrine of the end of the present condition of
things, namely, of the reappearance of Christ, of the glorifica-
tion of His church, and the resurrection of its dead, or even of
the general resurrection of the dead, of the glorification of the
material world, the destruction of the present and the creation
of a new one, stands in this relation to the Old Testament
prophecy of the end of things, that it is merely a repetition of
it under the new point of view, which accompanied the appear-
ing and glorification of Jesus and the establishment of His
church of Jews and Gentiles;" these eschatological pictures
are also clothed in the symbolico-typical form peculiar to the
Old Testament prophecy, the doctrinal import of which can
only be determined in accordance with the unambiguous doc-
trinal passages of the New Testament. Of these doctrinal
passages the first which presents itself is Rom. xi., where the
Apostle Paul tells the Christians at Rome as a fivax'qpiop, that
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 151
hardness in part has happened to Israel, till the pleroma of the
Gentiles has entered into the kingdom of God, and so (i.e.
after this has taken place) all, Israel will be rescued or saved
(vers. 25, 26). He then supports this by a scriptural quotation
formed from Isa. lix. 20 and xxvii. 9 (LXX.), with an evident
allusion to Jer. xxxi. 34 (? 33) also : " there shall come out of
Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob,"
etc. ; whilst he has already shown how, as the fall of Israel, or
its awo^oKri, is the riches of the Gentiles and reconciliation of
the world, the irpo&kriylnt will be nothing else than life from
the dead {^(orj 6« veKpcav, vers. 11-15). The apostle evidently
teaches here that the partial hardening of Israel, in consequence
of which the people rejected the Saviour, who appeared in
Jesus, and were excluded from the salvation in Christ, is not
an utter rejection of the old covenant nation ; but that the
hardening of Israel will cease after the entrance of the pleroma
of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God, and so all Israel (7ra?
''IcrparjK in contrast with en /lepov^, i.e. the people of Israel as
a whole) will attain to salvation, although this d6es not teach
the salvation of every individual Jew.^ But Auberlen (die
mess. Weissagungen, pp. 801 sqq.) puts too much into these words
of the apostle when he combines them with Ex. xix. 5, 6, and
vfrom the fact that Israel in the earlier ages of the Old Testa-
' "All Israel," says Philippi in the 3d ed. of his Commentary on the
Epistle to the Eomans (p. 537), " as contrasted with Ix fiipov; (in part) in
ver. 25, and also in the connection in which it stands with the train of
thought in ch. ix.— xi., which, as the chapter before us more especially
shows, has only to do with the bringing of the nations as a whole to the
Messianic salvation, cannot be understood in any other sense than as signi-
fying the people of Israel as a whole (see also vers. 28-32). The explanation
of the words as denoting the spiritual Israel, the 'Israel of God' (Gal.
vi. 16), according to which all the true children of Abraham and of God
are to be saved through the entrance of the chosen Gentiles, and at tha'
same time also of the ixT^oyi of the Israel that has not been hardened, is
just as arbitrary as it is to take 'all Israel' as referring merely to the
believing portion of the Jews, the portion chosen by God, who have belonged
in all ages to the 'Ktiftfist x«t' txMyviii xapnox" But in the appendix to
the third edition he has not only given full expression to the opposite view,
152 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ment was once a people and kingdom, but not really a holy
and priestly one, and that in the first ages of the New Testament
it was once holy and priestly, though not as a people and
kingdom, draws the conclusion, not only that the Jewish nation
must once more become holy as a people and kingdom, but also
that the apostle of the Gentiles here declares " that the promise
given to the people of Israel, that it is to be a holy people, will
still be fulfilled in its experience, and that in connection with
this, after the present period of the kingdom of God, there is
a new period in prospect, when the converted and sanctified
Israel, being called once for all to be a priestly kingdom, will
become the channel of the blessing of fellowship with God to
the nations in a totally different and far more glorious manner
than before." For if the apostle had intended to teach the
eventual accomplishment of this promise in the case of the
Israel according to the flesh, he would certainly have quoted
it, or at all events have plainly hinted at it, and not merely
have spoken of the ada^ea-Oat. of the Israel which was hardened
then. There is nothing to show, even in the remotest way,
that Israel will eventually be exalted into the holy and priestly
people and kingdom for the nations, either in the assurance
that " all Israel shall be saved," or in the declaration that the
" receiving " (Trp6(T\7]i{rt,s:) of Israel will work, or be followed
which Besser in his Bihehtunden has supported in the most decided man-
ner, after the example of Luther and many of the Lutheran expositors, hut
is inclined to give the preference, even above the view which he previously
upheld, to the idea that " all Israel is the whole of the Israel intended hy
■the prophetic word, and included in the divine word of promise, to which
alone the name of Israel truly and justly belongs according to the correct
understanding of the Old Testament word of God— that is to say, those
lineal sons of Abraham who walk in the footsteps of his faith (ch. iv. 12),
those Jews who are so not merely outwardly in the flesh, but also inwardly
in the spirit, through circumcision of heart (ch. ii. 28, 29) ;" and also to
the following exposition which Calovius gives of the whole passage, namely,
that " it does not relate to a simultaneous or universal conversion of the
IsraeKtea, or to the conversion of a great multitude, which is to take place
at the last times of the world, and is to be looked forward to still, but
rather to successive conversions continuing even to the end of the world."
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 153
by, "Tife from tlie dead" (ver. 15); and the proposition from
which Paul infers the future deliverance of the people of Israel —
viz., " if the first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy ; and if the
root be holy, so are the branches" (ver. 16) — shows plainly that
it never entered the apostle's mind to predict for the branches
that were broken off the olive tree for a time an exaltation to
even greater holiness than that possessed by the root and begin-
ning of Israel when they should be grafted in again.
There is also another way in which Hofmann {ScJiriftheweis,
II. 2, pp. 96 and 668) makes insertions in the words of the apostle,
— namely, when he draws the conclusion from the prophetic
quotation in vers. 25, 26, that the apostle takes the thought
from the prophetic writings, that Zion and Israel are the place
where the final revelation of salvation will be made, and then
argues in support of this geographical exposition of the words,
" shall come out of Zion," on the ground that in these words
we have not to think of the fii'st coming of the Saviour alone,
but the apostle extends to the second coming with perfect pro-
priety what the Old Testament prophecy generally affirms
with regard to the coming of Christ, and what had already been
verified at His first coming. This argument is extremely
weak. Even if one would or could insist up6n the fact that,
when rendering the words ??<13 li'S? X2!| (there will come for
Zion a Redeemer), in Isa. lix. 20, by ^^et e/e Swv 6 pvofievo^
(the Redeemer will come out of Zion), the apostle designedly
adopted the expression e« ^mv, it would by no means follow
'* that he meant the material Zion or earthly Jerusalem to be
regarded as the final site of the New Testament revelation."
For if the apostle used the expression " come out of Ziou,"
with reference to the second coming of the Lord, because it
had been verified at the first coming of Jesus, although Jesus
did not then come out of Zion, but out of Bethlehem, accord-
ing to the prophecy of Mic. v. 1 (cf. Matt. i. 5, 6), he cannot
have meant the material Mount Zion by e/e ^imv, but must
have taken Zion in the prophetico-typical sense of the central
154 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
seat of the kingdom of God ; a meaning which it also has in
such passages in the Psalms as Ps. xiv. 7, liii. 7, and ex. 2,
which he appears to have had floating before his mind. It
was only by taking this view of Zion that Paul could use ex
Siwv for the li'V? of Isaiah, without altering the meaning of
the prophecy, that the promised Redeemer would come for
Zion, i.e. for the citizens of Zion, the Israelites. The apostle,
when making this quotation from the prophets, had no more
intention of giving any information concerning the place where
Christ would appear to the now hardened Israel, and prove
Himself to be the Redeemer, than concerning the land in which
the Israel scattered among the nations would be found at the
second coming of our Lord. And there is nothing whatever
in the New Testament to the effect that " the Lord will not
appear again till He has prepared both Israel and Zion for the
scene of His reappearing" (Hofmann, p. 97). All that Christ
says is, that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached
in the whole world for a witness concerning all nations, and
then will the end come (Matt. xxiv. 14). And if, in addition
to this, on His departing for ever from the temple, He exclaimed
to the Jews who rejected Him, " Your house will be left unto
you desolate ; for I say unto you, Ye will not see me henceforth,
till ye shall say. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the
Lord" (Matt, xxiii. 38, 39), all that He means is, that He will
not appear to them or come to them before they receive Him
with faith, " greet Him as the object of their longing expecta>-
tion ; " and by no means that He will not come till they havd
been brought back from their dispersion to Palestine and
Jerusalem.
Even Matt, xxvii. 53 and Rev. xi. 2, where Jerusalem is
called the holy city, do not furnish any tenable proof of this,
because it is so called, not with regard to any glorification to be
looked for in the future, but as the city in which the holiest events
in the world's history had taken place ; just as Peter (2 Pet. i. 18)
designates the Mount of Transfiguration the holy mount, with
CHAP. XXXVII. 15-28. 155
reference to that event, arid not with any anticipation of a
future glorification of the mountain ; and in 1 Kings xix. 8
Horeb is called the Mount of God, because in the olden time
God revealed Himself there. " The old Jerusalem is even
now the holy city still to those who have directed their hopeful
eyes to the new Jerusalem alone " (Hengstenberg). This also
applies to the designation of the temple as the " holy place " in
Matt. xxiv. 15, by which Hofmann (p. 91) would also, though
erroneously, understand Jerusalem.
And the words of Christ in Luke xxi. 24, that Jerusalem
will be trodden down by the Gentiles, a%/Jt ifKrjpojOaia-iv icaipol
iOvMv, cannot be used as furnishing a proof that the earthly
Jerusalem will be occupied by the converted Jews before or at
the second coming of the Lord. For if stress be laid upon the
omission of the article, and the appointed period be understood
in such a manner as to lead to the following rendering, viz. :
" till Gentile periods shall be fulfilled," i.e. " till certain
periods which have been appointed to Gentile nations for the
accomplishment of this judgment of wrath from God shall
have elapsed" (Meyer), we may assume, with Hengstenberg
(die Juden und die christl. Kirche, 3 art.), that these times
come to an end when the overthrow of the might of the
Gentiles is effected through the judgment of God, and the
Christian church takes their place ; and we may still further say
with him, that " the treading down of Jerusalem by the heathen,
among whom, according to the Christian view, the Mahometans
also are to be reckoned, has ceased twice already, — namely, in
the reign of Constantino, and in the time of the Crusades,
when a Christian kingdom existed in Jerusalem. And what
then happened, though only in a transient way, will eventually
take place again, and that definitively, on the ground of this
declaration of the Lord. Jerusalem will become the posses-
sion of the Israel of the Christian church." If, on the other
hand, we adopt Hofmann's view (pp. 642, 643), that by xaipol
iOvoiv we are to understand the times of the nations, when the
156 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
world belonn's to them, in accordance with Dan. vlli. 14, in
support of which Rev. xi. 2 may also be adduced, these times
" come to an end when the people of God obtain the supre-
macy ; " and, according to this explanation, it is affirmed " that
this treading down of the holy city will not come to an end till
the filling up of the time, during which the world belongs to
the nations, and therefore not till the end of the present course
of this world." But if the treading down of Jerusalem by the
Gentiles lasts till then, even the converted Jews cannot recover
possession of it at that time ; for at the end of the present
course of this world the new creation of the heaven and earth
will take place, and the perfected church of Christ, gathered
out of Israel and the Gentile nations, will dwell in the heavenly
Jerusalem that has come down upon the new earth. — However,
therefore, we may interpret these words of the Lord, we are
not taught in Luke xxi. 24 any more than in Matt. xxiv. 15
and xxvii. 53, or Rom. xi. 26, that the earthly Jerusalem will
come into the possession of the converted Jews after its libera-
tion from the power of the Gentiles, that it will hold a central
position in the world, or that the temple will be erected there
again.
And lastly, a decisive objection to these Jewish, millenarian
hopes, and at the same time to the literal interpretation of the
prophetic announcements of the restoration of Israel, is to be
found in the fact that the New Testament says nothing what-
ever concerning a rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple and a
restoration of the Levitical worship ; but that, on the contrary,
it teaches in the most decided manner, that, with the completion
of the reconciliation of men with God through the sacrifice of
Christ upon Golgotha, the sacrificial and temple service of the
Levitical law was fulfilled and abolished (Heb. vii.-x.), on the
ground of the declaration of Christ, that the hour cometh, and
now is, when men shall worship neither upon Gerizim nor at
Jerusalem ; but the true worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth (John iv. 21-24), in accordance with the
CHAP. XXXVIIL, XXXIX 157
direction given by the apostle in Kom. xii. 1. But the prophets
of the Old Testament do not merely predict the return of the
Israelites to their own land, and their everlasting abode in that
land under the rule of the Messiah ; but this prediction of theirs
culminates in the promise that Jehovah virill establish His
sanctuary, i.e. His temple, in the midst of His redeemed people,
and dwell there with them and above them for ever (Ezek.
xxxvii. 27, 28), and that all nations will come to this sanctuary
of the Lord upon Zion year by year, to worship before the
King Jehovah of hosts, and keep the Feast of tabernacles
(Zech. xiv. 16 ; of. Isa. Ixvi. 23). If, then, the Jewish people
should receive Palestine again for its possession either at or
after its conversion to Christ, in accordance with the promise
of God, the temple with the Levitical sacrificial worship would
of necessity be also restored in Jerusalem. But if such a
supposition is at variance with the teaching of Christ and the
apostles, so that this essential feature in the prophetic picture
of the future of the kingdom of God is not to be understood
literally, but spiritually or typically, it is an unjustifiable in-
consistency to adhere to the literal interpretation of the pro-
phecy concerning the return of Israel to Canaan, and to look
for the return of the Jewish people to Palestine, when it has
come to believe in Jesus Christ.
CHAP. XXXVIII. AND XXXIX. DESTEUCTION OF GOG WITH
HIS 6EEAT AEMY OP NATIONS.
Gog, in the land of Magog, prince of Eosh, Meshech, and
Tubal, will invade the restored land of Israel from the far
distant northern land by the appointment of God in the last
times, and with a powerful army of numerous nations (ch.
xxxviii. 1-9), with the intention of plundering Israel, now
dwelling in security, that the Lord may sanctify Himself upon
him before all the world (vers. 10-16). But when Gog, of
whom earlier prophets have already prophesied, shall fall upon
158 THE PBOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Israel, he is to be destroyed by a wrathful judgment from the
Lord, that the nations may know that God is the Lord (vers.
17-23). On the mountains of Israel will Gog with all his
hosts and nations succumb to the judgment of God (ch. xxxix.
1-8). The inhabitants of the cities of Israel will spend seven
years in burning the weapons of the fallen foe, and seven
months in burying the corpses in a valley, which will receive
its name from this, so as to purify the land (vers. 9-16) ; whilst
in the meantime all the birds and wild beasts will satiate them-
selves with the flesh and blood of the fallen (vers. 17-20). By
this judgment will all the nations as well as Israel know that
it was on account of its sins that the Lord formerly gave up
Israel into the power of the heathen, but that now He will no
more forsake His redeemed people, because He has poured out
His Spirit upon it (vers. 21-29).
Vers. 1-9. Introduction. Preparation of Gog and his army
for the invasion of the restored land of Israel. — Ver. 1. And
the word of Jehovali came to me, saying, Ver. 2. Son of man,
set Uiy face toward Gog in the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh,
Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against Mm, Ver. 3. And
say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal with tliee^
Gog, thou prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, Ver. 4. And
will mislead thee, and will put rings in thy jaws, and lead thee
out, and all thine army, horses, and riders, all clothed in perfect
beauty, a great assembly, with buckler and shield, all wielding
swords ; Ver. 5. Persian, Ethiopian, and Libyan with them, ail
of them with shield and helmet ; Ver. 6. Gomer and all his hosts,
the house of Togannah in the uttermost north with all his hosts ;
many peoples with thee. Ver. 7. Be prepared and make ready,
thou and all thine assembly, who have assembled together to thee,
and be thoti their guard. Ver. 8. After many days shaU thou
be visited^ at the end of the years shalt tJiou come into the land,
which is brought back from the sword, gathered out of many
peoples, upon the mountains of Israel, which were constantly laid
waste, but now it is brought out of the nations, and they dwell
CHAP. XXXVIII. 1-9. 159
together in safety ; Ver, 9. And thou shall come up, come like
a storm, like a cloud to cover the land, thou and all thy hosts
and many peoples with thee. — Vers. 1 and 2. Command
to prophesy against Gog. Jia, Gog, the name of the prince
against whom the prophecy is directed, is probably a name
which Ezekiel has arbitrarily formed from the name of the
country, Magog ; although Gog does occur in 1 Chron. v. 4 as
the name of a Keubenite, of whom nothing further is known.
The construction J^3» p.? ^i', Grog of the land of Magog, is an
abbreviated expression for " Gog from the land of Magog ; "
and '3D pN is not to be taken in connection with ''I^JB Ck*, as
the local object ("toward Gog, to the land of Magog"), as
Ewald and Havernick would render it; since it would be very
difficult in that case to explain the fact that 3^3 is afterwards
resumed in the apposition 'W^ N^?'-!. 3iJD, Magog, h the name
of a people mentioned in Gen. x. 2 as descended from Japhet,
according to the early Jewish and traditional explanation, the
great Scythian people ; and here also it is the name of a people,
and is written with the article (3i3Bri), to mark the people as
one well known from the time of Genesis, and therefore pro-
perly the land of the Magog (-people). Gog is still further
described as the prince of Eosh, Meshech, and Tubal. It is
true that Ewald follows Aquila, the Targum, and Jerome, and
connects tyj^T with i?*B'3 as an appellative in the sense of princeps
capitis, chief prince. But the argument used in support of this
explanation, namely, that there is no people of the name of
Rosh mentioned either in the Old Testament or by Josephus,
is a very weak one ; whilst, on the other hand, the appellative
rendering, though possible, no doubt, after the analogy of jnbn
B'NT in 1 Chron xxvii, 5, is by no means probable, for the simple
reason that the tJ^ST N^B'J occurs again in ver. 3 and ch. xxxix. 1,
and in such repetitions circumstantial titles are generally
abbreviated. The Byzantine and Arabic writers frequently
mention a people called 'Pws, ijhjj, Rus, dwelling in the
country of the Taurus, and reckoned among the Scythian tribes
160 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEt.
(for the passages, see Ges. Thesaurus, p. 1253), so that tliere
is no reason to question the existence of a people known by
the name of Rosh ; even though the attempt of Bochart to find
a trace of such a people in the 'Pw^aXavoi (Ptol. iii. 5) and
Roxalani (Plin. h. n. iv. 12), by explaining this name as
formed from a combination of Rhos (Rhox) and Alani, is just
as doubtful as the conjecture, founded upon the investigations
of Frahn (Ibn Foszlan, u. a. Araber Berichte ilber die Russen
alterer Zeit, St. Petersburg 1823), that the name of the Rus-
sians is connected with this 'Pc3?, ijtj^, and our B'Ni. Meshech
and Tubal (as in ch. xxvii. 13 and xxxii. 26), the Moschi and
Tibareni of classical writers (see the comm. on Gen. x. 2),
dwelt, according to the passage before us, in the neighbourhood
of Magog. There were also found in the array of Gog, accord-
ing to ver. 5, Pharos (Persians), Cush, and Phut (Ethiopians
and Libyans, see the comm. on ch. xxx. 5 and xxvii. 10), and,
according to ver. 6, Gomer and the house of Togarmah. From
a comparison of this list with Gen. x. 2, Kliefoth draws the
conclusion that Ezekiel omits all the peoples mentioned in Gen.
X. 2 as belonging to the family of Japhet, who had come into
historical notice in his time, or have done so since, namely, the
Medes, Greeks, and Thracians ; whilst, on the other hand, he
mentions all the peoples enumerated, who have never yet
appeared upon the stage of history. But this remark is out of
place, for the simple reason that Ezekiel also omits the Japhetic
tribes of Ashkenaz and Kiphath (Gen. x. 3), and still mare
from the fact that he notices not only the D"]Q, or Persians,
■who were probably related to the 'lo, but also the Hamitic
peoples Cush and Phut, two African families. Consequently
the army of Gog consisted not only of wild Japhetic tribes,
who had not yet attained historical importance, but of Hamitic
tribes also, that is to say, of peoples living at the extreme
north (liSX 'nST, ver. 6) and east (Persians) and south
(Ethiopians), i.e. on the borders of the then known world.
These are all summoned by Gog, and gathered tot^ether for an
CHAP. XXXVIII. 1-9, 161
attack upon the people of God. This points to a time when
their former foes, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistines, and
Syrians, and the old imperial powers, Egypt, Asshur, Babel,
Javan, will all have passed away from the stage of history, and
the people of God will stand in the centre of the historical life
of the world, and will have spread so widely over the earth, that
its foes will only be found on the borders of the civilised world
(compare Eev. xx. 8).
Vers. 3-9 contain in general terms the determinate counsel
of God concerning Gog. — Vers. 3-6. Jehovah is about to
mislead Gog to a crusade against His people Israel, and sum-
mons him to prepare for the invasion of the restored land of
Israel. The announcement of the purpose for which Jehovah
will make use of Gog and his army, and the summons addressed
to him to make ready, form two strophes, which are clearly
marked by the similarity of the conclusion in vers. 6 and 9. —
Ver. 3. God will deal with Gog, to sanctify Himself upon him
by means of judgment (cf. ver. 10). He therefore misleads
him to an attack upon the people of Israel. ^aitJ', an intensive
form from 3ity, may signify, as vox media, to cause to return
.(ch. xxxix. 27), and to cause to turn away, to lead away from
the right road or goal, to lead astray (Isa. xJvii. 10). Here
and in ch. xxxix. 2 it means to lead or bring away from his
previous attitude, i.e. to mislead or seduce, in the sense of
enticing to a dangerous enterprise ; according to which the
Chaldee has rendered it correctly, so far as the actual sense is
concerned, ^|?*]?'i?., alliciam te. In the words, " I place rings
in thy jaws " (cf. ch. xxix. 4), Gog is represented as an un-
manageable beast, which is compelled to follow its leader (cf.
Isa. xxxvii. 29) ; and the thought is thereby expressed, that Gog
is compelled to obey the power of God against his will. ''''Vif,
to lead him away from his land, or natural soil. The passage
in Rev. xx. 8, " to deceive the nations (TrXavrjtyai, tu edrnj),
Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle," corresponds
to these words so far as the material sense is concerned ; with
£Z££. II. L
162 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
this exception, that Satan is mentioned as the seducer of the
nations in the Apocalypse, whereas Ezekiel gives prominence
to the leading of God, which controls the manifestations even
of evil, " so that these two passages stand in the same relation
to one another as 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 and 1 Chron. xxi. 1 " (Hav.).
In vers. 45-6 the army is depicted as one splendidly equipped
and very numerous. For ^ra!? ''^^7, see the comm. on ch. xxiii.
12, where the Assyrian satraps are so described. 3T ?ni^, as
in ch. xvii. 17. The words buckler and shield are loosely
appended in the heat of the discourse, without any logical sub-
ordination to what precedes. Besides the defensive arms, the
greater and smaller shield, they carried swords as weapons of
offence. In the case of the nations in ver. 5, only the shield
and helmet are mentioned as their equipment, for the sake of
variation, as in ch. xxvii. 10 ; and in ver. 6 two other nations
of the extreme north with their hosts are added. Gomer : the
Cimmerians ; and the Jiouse of Togarmah : the Armenians (see
the comm. on ch. xxvii. 14). For Q'SSX, see the comm. on
ch. xii. 14. The description is finally rounded off with D'BV
r[m D''a"i. In ver. 7, the infin. abs. Niphal ti3!l, which occurs
nowhere else except in Amos iv. 12, is used emphatically in the
place of the imperative. The repetition of the same verb, though
in the imperative Hiphil, equip, i.e. make ready, sc. everything
necessary (cf. ch. vii. 14), also serves to strengthen the thought.
Be thou to them lOB'pp, for heed, or watch, i.e. as abstr. pro
concr., one who gives heed to them, keeps watch over them (cf.
Job vii. 12 and Neh. iv. 3, 16), in actual fact their leader.
Vers. 8 and 9 indicate for what Gog was to hold himself ready.
The first clause reminds so strongly of 'nps* D''P'' 3hp in Isa.
xxiv. 22, that the play upon this passage cannot possibly be
mistaken ; so that Ezekiel uses the words in the same sense as
Isaiah, though Havernick is wrong in supposing that li?.sn is
used in the sense of being missed or wanting, i.e. of perishing.
The word never has the latter meaning ; and to be missed does
not suit the context either here or in Isaiah, where I^Bi) means
CHAP, xxxvm. 1-9. 163
to be visited, i.e. brought to punishment. And here also this
meaning, visitari (Vulg.), is to be retained, and that in the
sense of a penal visitation. The objection raised, namely, that
there is no reference to punishment here, but that this is first
mentioned in ver. 16 or 18, loses all its force if we bear in mind
that visiting is a more general idea than punishing ; and the
visitation consisted in the fact of God's leading Gog to invade
the land of Israel, that He might sanctify Himself upon him by
judgment. This might very fittingly be here announced, and
it also applies to the parallel clause which follows : thou wilt
come into the land, etc., with which the explanation commences
of the way in which God would visit him. The only other
meaning which could also answer to the parallelism of the
clauses, viz. to be commanded, to receive command (Hitzig and
Kliefoth), is neither sustained by the usage of the language,
nor in accordance with the context. In the passages quoted in
support of this, viz. Neh. vii. 1 and xii. 44, Ipsa merely signifies
to be charged with the oversight of a thing; and it never means
only to receive command to do anything. Moreover, Gog has
already been appointed leader of the army in ver. 7, and there-
fore is not " to be placed in the supreme command " for the
first time after many days. C?"! CPJO, after many days, i.e.
after a long time (cf. Josh, xxiii. 1), is not indeed equivalent
in itself to D'JK'n nnnsa, but signifies merely the lapse of a
lengthened period ; yet this is defined here as occurring in the
DyB'n nnns. — Q'<:m nnnx, equivalent to D'ajn mm (ver. 16),
is the end of days, the last time, not the future generally, but
the final future, the Messianic time of the completing of the
kingdom of God (see the comm. on Gen. xlix. 1). This meaning
is also applicable here. For Gog is to come up to the mountains
of Israel, which have been laid waste I'"?'?, continually, i.e. for a
long time, but are now inhabited again. Although, for example,
TDFi signifies a period of time relatively long, it evidently indi-
cates a longer period than the seventy or fifty years' desolation
of the land during the Babylonian captivity ; more especially
164 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
if we take it in connection with the preceding and following
statements, to the effect that Gog will come into the land, which
has been brought back from the sword and gathered out of
many peoples. These predicates show that in p.? the idea of
the population of the land is the predominant one ; for this
alone could be gathered out of many nations, and also brought
back from the sword, Le. not from the consequences of the
calamity of war, viz. exile (Kosenmiiller), but restored from
being slain and exiled by the sword of the enemy. Oaiie'D,
passive participle of the Pilel ^7^^, to restore (fcf. Isa. Iviii. 12);
not turned away from the sword, i.e. in no expectation of war
(Hitzig), which does not answer to the parallel clause, and can-
not be sustained by Mic. ii. 8. D'3"] D'?>V», gathered out of
manT/ peoples, points also beyond the Babylonian captivity
to the dispersion of Israel in all the world, which did not
take place till the second destruction of Jerusalem, and shows
that l^M denotes a much longer devastation of the land than
the Chaldean devastation was. X\71 introduces a circumstantial
clause ; and X\T points back to p^, i-e. to the inhabitants of
the land. These are now brought out of the nations, i.e. at
the time when Gog invades the land, and are dwelling in their
own land upon the mountains of Israel in untroubled security.
nPV signifies the advance of an enemy, as in Isa. vii. 1, etc.
nsiB', a tempest, as in Prov. i. 27, from nsB', to roar. The
comparison to a cloud is limited to the covering ; but this does
not alter the signification of the cloud as a figurative representa-
tion of severe calamity.
Vers. 10-16. Account of the motive by which Gog was
induced to undertake his warlike expedition, and incurred guilt,
notwithstanding the fact that he was led by God, and in conse-
quence of which he brought upon himself the judgment of
destruction that was about to fall upon him. — Ver. 10. Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, It shall come to pass in that day, that
things mil come up in thy heart, and thou wilt devise an evil
design, Ver. 11. And say, I will go xip into the open country, 1
CHAP, xxsvin. 10- w. 165
tcill come upon the peaceful ones, who are all dioelUng in safety,
who dwell without walls, and have not bars and gates, Ver. 12.
To take plunder and to gather spoil, to bring back thy hand
against the rtiins that are inhabited again, and against a people
gathered out of the nations, carrying on trade and commerce,
who dwell on the navel of the earth. Ver. 13. Sabaea and Dedan,
and the merchants of Tarshish, and all her young lions, will say
to thee, Dost thou come to take plunder ? Hast thou gathered
thy multitude of people to take spoil ? Is it to carry away gold
and silver, to take possession and gain, to plunder a great spoil ?
Ver. 14. Therefore prophesy, son of man, and say to Gog,
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Is it not so ? On that day, when
my people Israel dwelleth in security, thou wilt observe it,
Ver. 15. And come from thy place from the extreme north, thou
and many peoples with thee, all riding upon horses, a great crowd
and a numerous army, Ver. 16. And wilt march against my
people Israel, to cover the land like a cloud; at the end of
the days it will take place; then shall I lead thee against
my land, that the nations may know me, when I sanctify
myself upon thee before their eyes, Gog. — In ver. 10
D^nn are not words, but things which come into his mind.
What things these are, we learn from vers, 11 and 12 ; but
first of all, these things are described as evil thoughts or de-
signs. Gog resolves to fall upon Israel, now living in peace
and security, and dwelling in open unfortified places, and to rob
and plunder it. nins ^'^8J, literally, land of plains, i.e. a land
which has no fortified towns, but only places lying quite exposed
(see the comm. on Zech. ii. 8); because its inhabitants are living
in undisturbed peace and safe repose, and therefore dwell in
places that have no walls with gates and bars (cf. Judg. xviii. 7 ;
Jer. xlix. 31). This description of Israel's mode of life also
points beyond the times succeeding the Babylonian captivity to
the Messianic days, when the Lord will have destroyed the
horses and war-chariots and fortresses (Mic. v. 9), and Jeru-
salem will be inhabited as an open country because of the
166 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
multitude of the men and cattle, and the Lord will be a wall of
fire round about her (Zech. ii. 8, 9). For ver. 12a, compare
Isa. X. 6. Til y^'^'? is not dependent upon npys, like the
preceding infinitives, but is subordinate to 'W1 npyx rmK :
" thou sayest, I will go up ... to turn thy hand." S^K'n, to
bring back, is to be explained from the fact that the heathen
had already at an earlier period turned their hand against the
towns of Israel, and plundered their possessions and goods.
niatyij niain in this connection are desolate places which are
T tt: ±
inhabited again, and therefore have been rebuilt (cf. eh. xii. 20,
xxvi. 19). '"i3i?J? and IJ^ip are synonyms; and njpp does not
mean fiocks or herds, but gain, possession (cf. Gen. xxxvi. 6,
xxxi. 18, xxxiv. 23). One motive of Gog for making the
attack was to be found in the possessions of Israel ; a second is
given in the words : who dwell upon the navel of the earth.
This figurative expression is to be explained from ch. v. 5 :
" Jerusalem in the midst of the nations." The navel is not
a figure denoting the high land, but signifies the land situated
in the middle of the earth, and therefore the land most glorious
and most richly blessed ; so that they who dwell there occupy
the most exalted position among the nations. A covetous desire
for the possessions of the people of God, and envy at bis exalted
position in the centre of the world, are therefore the motives
by which Gog is impelled to enter upon his predatory expedi-
tion against the people living in the depth of peace. This
covetousness is so great, that even the rich trading populations
of Sabaea, Dedan, and Tarshish (cf. ch. xxvii. 22, 20, and 12)
perceive it, and declare that it is this alone which has determined
Gog to undertake his expedition. The words of these peoples
(ver. 13) are not to be taken as expressing their sympathies
(Kliefoth), but serve to give prominence to the obvious thirst
for booty which characterizes the multitude led by Goer. nn'-BS,
their young lions, are the rapacious rulers of these trading
communities, according to ch. xix. 3 and xxxii. 2 ^Ver. 14
introduces the announcement of the punishment, which consists
CHAP. XXXVIIl. 17-23. 167
of another summary account of the daring enterprise of Gog
and his hosts (cf. vers. 14, 15, and 16a with vers. 4-9), and a
clear statement of the design of God in leading him against His
people and land. V1^ (ver. 14, close), of which different ren-
derings have been given, does not mean, thou wilt experience,
or be aware of, the punishment ; but the object is to be taken
from the context : thou wilt know, or perceive, sc. that Israel
dwells securely, not expecting any hostile invasion. The
rendering of the LXX. {iyepO-qarj) does not furnish any satis-
factory ground for altering JflR into "iJJn = "i^JJPi (Ewald, Hitzig).
With the words '121 Tni'<''?01 (ver. 16&).the opening thought of
the whole picture (ver. 4a) is resumed and defined with greater
precision, for the purpose of attaching to it the declaration of the
design of the Lord in bringing Gog, namely, to sanctify Himself
upon him before the eyes of the nations (cf. ver. 23 and ch.
xxxvi. 23).
Vers. 17-23. Announcement of the wrathful judgment upon
Gog, as a proof of the holiness of the Lord. — Ver. 17. Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Art thou he of whom I spoke in the
former days through my servants the prophets of Israel, who
prophesied for years in those days, that I would bring thee over
them ? Ver. 18. And it cometh to pass in that day, in the day
when Gog cometh into the land of Israel, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah, that my wrath will ascend into my nose. Ver. 19. And
in my jealousy, in the fire of my anger, have I spoken. Truly in
that day will a great trembling come over the land of Israel ;
Ver. 20. The fishes of the sea, and the birds of heaven, and the
beasts of the field, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
ground, and all the men that are upon the ground, will tremble
before me; and the mountains will be destroyed, and the rocky
heights fall, and every wall will fall to the ground. Ver, 21. I
will call the sword against him to all my holy mountains, is the
saying of the Lord Jehovah : the sword of the one will be against
the other. Ver. 22. And I will strive with him by pestilence
and by blood, and overflowing rain-torrents and hailstones ; fire
168 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
and brimstone will I rain upon him and all Ids hosts, and upon
the many peoples that are with him ; Ver. 23. And will prove my-
self great and holy, and will make myself known before the eyes
of many nations, that they may know that I am Jehovah —
The announcement of the way in which the Lord will sanctify
Himself upon Gog (ver. 16) commences with the statement in
ver. 17, that Gog is he of whom God has already spoken by
the earlier prophets. This assertion is clothed in the form of
a question : nnsin, not nns ^r\, which is the interrogative form
used for an emphatic assurance; whereas nnsn does not set
down the point in question as indisputably certain, but suggests
the inquiry for the purpose of giving a definite answer. The
afBrmative reply to the question asked is contained in the last
clause of the verse : " to bring thee upon them ; " so that
Nin nrisn really means, thou art truly he. The statement, that
Gog is he of whom God had already spoken by the earlier pro-
phets, does not mean that those prophets had actually men-
tioned Gog, but simply that Gog was the enemy of whose
rising up against the people of God the prophets of the former
time had prophesied, as well as of his destruction by a wrathful
judgment of the Lord. CJB' (for years, or years long) is an
accusative of measure, not asyndeton to C?'?, as the LXX.
and many of the commentators down to Havernick have taken
it to be. The design of this remark is not to accredit the pro-
phecy by referring to the utterances of earlier prophets, but to
show that the attack of the peoples gathered together by Gog,
upon the land and people of the Lord, is not an unexpected
event, or one at variance with the promise of the restoration of
Israel as a kingdom of peace. To what utterances of the
older prophets these words refer is a question difficult to
answer. Zechariah (xii. 2, 3, xiv. 2, 3) is of course not to be
thought of, as Zechariah himself did not prophesy till after the
captivity, and therefore not till after Ezekiel. But we may
recall Joel iv. 2 and 11 sqq. ; Isa. xxv. 5, 10 sqq.,,xxvi. 21 ;
Jer. XXX. 23 and 25 ; and, in fact, all the earlier prophets who
CHAP. XXXVIIL 17-23. 169
prophesied of Jehovah's day of judgment upon all the heathen.^
— Vers. 18 and 19 do not contain words which Jehovah spoke
through the ancient prophets, and which Ezekiel now transfers
to Gog and the time of his appearing (Hitzig and Kliefoth).
The perfect W?'! in ver. 19 by no means warrants such an
assumption; for this is purely prophetic, expressing the cer-
tainty of the divine determination as a thing clearly proved.
Still less can '"IN fisj: in ver. 18 be taken as a preterite, as
Kliefoth supposes; nor can vers. 18 and 19 be regarded as a
thing long predicted, and so be separated from vers. 20—23 as
a word of God which is now for the first time uttered. For
the anthropopathetic expression, " my wrath ascends in my
nose," compare Ps. xviii. 9, " smoke ascends in His nose." The
outburst of wrath shows itself in the vehement breath which
the wrathful man inhales and exhales through his nose (see the
comm. on the Psalm, I.e.). The bursting out of the wrath of
God is literally explained in ver. 19. In the jealousy of His
wrath God has spoken, Le. determined, to inflict a great
trembling upon the land of Israel. ''0??i?? (cf. ch. v. 13) is
strengthened by ''n-ja?? mi (cf. ch. xxi. 36, xxii. 21). The
trembling which will come upon the land of Israel, so that all
creatures in the sea, in the air, and upon the ground, tremble
before Jehovah (^?sp), who appears to judgment, will rise in
nature into an actual earthquake, which overthrows mountains,
hills, and walls. ni^niD are steep heights, which can only be
ascended by steps (Song of Sol. ii. 14). This picture of the
trembling of the whole world, with all the creatures, before the
Lord who is coming to judgment, both here and in Joel iv. 16,
^ Aug. Kueper (Jeremias lihrr. sacrr. interpr. atque vindex, p. 82) has
correctly observed concerning this verse, that " it is evident enough that
there is no reference here to prophecies concerning Gog and Magog, which
have been lost ; but those general prophecies, which are met with on
every hand directed against the enemies of the church, are here referred to
Gog." And before him, J. F. Starck had already said • " In my opinion,
we are to understand all those passages in the prophets which treat of the
enemies of the church and its persecutions . . . these afflictions were pre-
ludes and shadows of the bloody persecution of Gog."
170 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Zech. xiv. 4, 5, rests upon the fact which actually occurred in
connection with the revelation of God upon Sinai, when the
whole mountain was made to quake (Ex. xix. 16 sqq.). The
inhabitants of the land of Israel tremble at the terrible pheno-
mena attending the revelation of the wrath of God, although
the wrathful judgment does not apply to them, but to their
enemies, Gog and his hosts. The Lord calls the sword against
Gog, that his hosts may wound and slay one another. This
feature of the destruction of the enemy by wounds inflicted
by itself, which we meet with again in Zech. xiv. 13, has its
typical exemplar in the defeat of the Midianites in the time of
Gideon (Judg. vii. 22), and also in that of the enemy invading
Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx. 23). In
nn"?3? the ? is not distributive, but indicates the direction : " to
all my mountains." The overthrow of the enemy is intensi-
fied by marvellous plagues inflicted by God — pestilence and
blood (cf. ch. xxviii. 23), torrents of rain and hailstones (cf.
ch. xiii. 11), and the raining of fire and brimstone upon Gog,
as formerly upon Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. xix. 24). —
Thus will Jehovah prove Himself to be the almighty God hy
judgment upon His enemies, and sanctify Himself before all
the nations (ver. 23, compare ver. 16 and ch. xxxvi. 23).
Ch. xxxix. 1-20. Further description of the judgment to
fall upon Gog and his hosts. — Vers. 1-8. General announce-
ment of his destruction. — Ver. 1. And thou, son of man,
prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
Behold, I will deal with thee, Gog, thou prince of Mosh, Meshech,
and Tubal. Ver. 2. / will mislead thee, and conduct thee, and
cause thee to come up from the uttermost north, and bring thee to
the mountains of Israel; Ver. 3. And will smite thy bow from
thy left hand, and cause thine arrows to fall from thy right hand.
Ver. 4. Upon the mountains of Israel wilt thou fall, thou and
all thy hosts, and the peoples which are with thee : I give thee for
food to the birds of prey of every plumage, and to the beasts of
the field. Ver. 5. Upon the open field shalt thou fall, for I
CHAP. XXXIX. 1-8. 171
have spoken it, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 6. And
I mil send fire in Magog, and among those who dwell in
security upon the islands, that they may know that I am Jehovah.
Ver. 7. I will make known my holy name in the midst of
my people Israel, and will not let my holy name be profaned
any more, that the nations may know that I am Jehovah, holy
in Israel. Ver. 8. Behold, it comes and happens, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah; this is the day of which I spoke. —
The further description of the judgment with which Gog and
his hosts are threatened in ch. xxxviii. 21—23, commences with
a repetition of the command to the prophet to prophesy against
Gog (ver. 1, of. ch. xxxviii. 2, 3). The principal contents of
ch. xxxviii. 4-15 are then briefly summed up in ver. 2. 1''iii33B',
as in ch. xxxviii. 4, is strengthened by '^''t^f^. NB'B', dira^ Aey.,
is not connected with ^^ in the sense of " I leave a sixth part
of thee remaining," or afflict thee with six punishments ; but
in the Ethiopia it signifies to proceed, or to climb, and here,
accordingly, it is used in the sense of leading on (LXX. Ka6o-
St]y^(reo <re, or, according to another reading, KOTa^to ; Vulg.
educam). For ver. 2b, compare ch. xxxviii. 15 and 8. In the
land of Israel, God will strike his weapons out of his hands, i.e.
make him incapable of figliting (for the fact itself, compare the
similar figures in Ps. xxxvii. 15, xlvi. 10), and give him up
with all his army as a prey to death. W, a beast of prey, is
more precisely defined by liss, and still further strengthened
by the genitive ^51"-'? : birds of prey of every kind. The
judgment will not be confined to the destruction of the army of
Gog, which has invaded the land of Israel, but (ver. 6) will
also extend to the land of Gog, and to all the heathen nations
that are dwelling in security. E'X, fire, primarily the fire of
war; then, in a further sense, a figure denoting destruction
inflicted directly by God, as in ch. xxxviii. 22, which is there-
fore represented in Rev. xx. 9 as fire falling from heaven.
Magog is the population of the land of Magog (ch. xxxviii. 2).
With this the inhabitants of the distant coastlands of the west
172 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(the D''>X) are associated, as representatives of the remotest
heathen nations. "Vers. 7, 8. By this judgment the Lord will
make known His holy name in Israel, and ■ show the heathen
that He will not let it be blasphemed by them any more. For
the fact itself, compare ch xxxvi. 20 Foi ver. 8, compare ch.
xxi. 12 , and for bi>n, see ch. xxxviii. 18, 19.
Vers. 9-20 Total destruction of Gog and his hosts. — Ver. 9.
Then will the inhabitants of the cities of Israel go forth, and hum
and heat with armour and shield and target, with how and arrows
and hand-staves and spears, and will bum fire with them for seven
years; Ver. 10 And will not fetch wood from the field, nor cut
wood out of the forests, but will burn fire with the armour, and
will spoil those who spoiled them, and plunder those who plundered
them, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 11. And it will
come to pass in that day, that I will give Gog a place where his
grave in Israel shall be, the valley of the travellers on the front
of the sea ; and it will stop the way to the travellers, and there
will they bury Gog and all his multitude, and will call it the valley
of Gog's multitude. Ver 12 They of the house of Israel will
bury them, to purify the land for seven months. Ver. 13. And
all the people of the land will bury, and it will he to them for a
name on the day when I glorify myself, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Ver. 14. And they will set apart constant men, such as
rove about in the land, and such as hury with them that rove about
those who remain upon the surface of the ground, to cleanse it,
after the lapse of seven months will they search it through. Ver. 15.
And those who rove about will pass through the land; and if one
sees a man's bone, he will set up a sign by it, till the huriers of
the dead hury it in the valley of the multitude of Gog. Ver. 16.
The name of a city shall also he called Hamonah (multitude).
And thus will they cleanse the land. Ver 17. And thou, son of
man- thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Say to the birds of every
•plumage, and to all the beasts of the field. Assemble yourselves,
and come, gather together from round about to my sacrifice, which
I slaughter for you, to a great sacrifice upon the mountains of
CHAP. XXXIX. 9-20. 173
Israel, and eat flesh and drink blood. Ver 18 Flesh of Iieroes
shall ye eat, and drink blood of princes of the earth; rams,
lamhs, and he-goats, bullocks, all fattened in BasJian. Ver. 9.
And ye shall eat fat to satiety, and drink blood to intoxication,
of my sacrifice which I have slaughtered for you. Vei 20.
And ye shall satiate yourselves at my table with horses and
riders, heroes and ail kinds of men of war, is the saying
of the Lard Jehovah. — ^To show how terrible the judgment
upon Gog will be, Ezekiel depicts in three special ways
the total destruction of his powerful forces. In the first place,
the burning of all the weapons of the fallen foe will furnish
the inhabitants of the land of Israel with wood for firing for
seven years, so that there will be no necessity for them to fetch
fuel from the field or from the forest (vers 9 and 10). But
Havernick is wrong in supposing that the reason for burning
the weapons is that, according to Isa. ix. 5, weapons of war
are irreconcilable with the character of the Messianic times of
peace. This is not referred to here; but the motive is the
complete annihilation of the enemy, the removal of every trace
of him. The prophet therefore crowds the words together for
the purpose of enumerating every kind of weapon that was
combustible, even to the hand-staves which men were accus-
tomed to carry (cf. Num. xxii. 27). The quantity of the
weapons will be so great, that they will supply the Israelites
with all the fuel they need for seven years. The number seven
in the seven years as well as in the seven months of burying
(ver. 11) is symbolical, stamping the overthrow as a punishment
inflicted by God, the completion of a divine judgment. — With
the gathering of the weapons for burning there is associated
the plundering of the fallen foe (ver. 106), by which the
Israelites do to the enemy what he intended to do to them
(ch. xxxviii. 12), and the people of God obtain possession of
the wealth of their foes (cf. Jer. xxx. 16). In the second place,
God will assign a large burying-place for the army of Gog in
a valley of Israel, which is to be named in consequence " the
174 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
multitude of Gog ;" just as a city in that region will also he
called Hamonah from this event. The Israelites will bury the
fallen of Gog there for seven months long, and after the
expiration of that time they will have the land explored by
men specially appointed for the purpose, and bones that may
still have been left unburied will be sought out, and they will
have them interred by buriers of the dead, that the land may
be thoroughly cleansed (vers. 11-16). "i^i? DB* DipD, a place
where there was a grave in Israel, i.e. a spot in which he might
be buried in Israel. There are different opinions as to both
the designation and the situation of this place. There is no
foundation for the supposition that Cl^Vn ''3 derives its name
from the mountains of Abarim in Num. xxvii. 12 and Deut.
xsxii. 49 (Michaelis, Eichhorn), or that it signifies valley of the
haughty ones (Ewaid), or that there is an allusion to the valley
mentioned in Zech. xiv. 4 (Hitzig), or the valley of Jehoshaphat
(Kliefoth). The valley cannot even have derived its name
(Dna'yn) from the D''"]3y, who passed through the land to search
out the bones of the dead that still remained unburied, and
have them interred (vers. 14, 15). For C^^Vn cannot have
any other meaning here than that which it has in the circum-
stantial clause which follows, where those who explored the land
cannot possibly be intended, although even this clatise is also
obscure. The only other passage in which DDH occurs is Deut.
xxv. 4, where it signifies a muzzle, and in the Arabic it means
to obstruct, or cut off ; and hence, in the passage before us, pro-
bably, to stop the way. D'laVn are not the Scythians (Hitzig),
for the word "laV is never applied to their invasion of the land,
but generally the travellers who pass through the land, or more
especially those who cross from Peraea to Canaan. The valley
of D''"!3Vn is no doubt the valley of the Jordan above the Dead
Sea. The definition indicates this, viz. Djn riDlp^ on the front
of the sea ; not to the east of the sea, as it is generally rendered,
for nD"ii? never has this meaning (see the comm. on Gen. ii. 14).
By Qjn we cannot understand "the Mediterranean," as the
CHAP. XXXIX, 9-20. 175
majority of the commentators have done, as there would then be
no meaning in the words, since the whole of the land of Israel
was situated to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. D*n is the
Dead Sea, generally called ''?^D']i3n Djn (eh. xlvii. 18) ; and
D'i!! '^?'!i?, " on the front side of the (Dead) Sea," as looked at
from Jerusalem, the central point of the land, is probably the
valley of the Jordan, the principal crossing place from Gilead
into Canaan proper, and the broadest part of the Jordan-valley,
which was therefore well adapted to be the burial-place for the
multitude of slaughtered foes. But in consequence of the
army of Gog having there found its grave, this valley will in
future block up the way to the travellers who desire to pass to
and fro. This appears to be the meaning of the circumstantial
clause. — ^From the fact that Gog's multitude is buried there,
the valley itself will receive the name of Hamon-Oog. The
Israelites will occupy seven months in burying them, so enor-
mously great will be the number of the dead to be buried
(ver. 12), and this labour will be for a name, i.e. for renown,
to the whole nation. This does not mean, of course, " that it
will be a source of honour to them to assist in this work;" nor
is the renown to be sought in the fact, that as a privileged
people, protected by God, they can possess the grave of Gog in
their land (Hitzig), — a thought which is altogether remote, and
perfectly foreign to Israelitish views ; but the burying of Gog's
multitude of troops will be for a name to the people of Israel,
inasmuch as they thereby cleanse the land and manifest their
zeal to show themselves a holy people by sweeping all unclean-
ness away. Di'' is an accusative of time : on the day when I
glorify myself. — Vers. 14, 15. The effort made to cleanse the
land perfectly from the uncleanness arising from the bones of
the dead will be so great, that after the great mass of the slain
have been buried in seven months, there will be men specially
appointed to bury the bones of the dead that still lie scattered
here and there about the land. Ton ''tpJN are people who have
a permanent duty to discharge. The participles B'lajf and
176 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
Dnajja are co-ordinate, and are written together asyndetos, men
who go about the land, and men who bury with those who go
about. That the words are to be understood in this sense is
evident from ver 15, according to which those who go about
do not perform the task of burying, but simply search for bones
that have been left, and put up a sign for the buriers of the
dead. HN"!, with the subject indefinite; if one sees a human
bonej he builds (erects) a 1^'V, or stone, by the side of it (cf.
2 Kings xxiii. 17). — Ver 16. A city shall also receive the name
of Hamonah, i.e. multitude or tumult. To T'yDE' we may
easily supply iTn'' from the context, since this puts in the future
the statement, "the name of the city is," for which no verb was
required in Hebrew. In the last words, H?? '"'i!!'?'!} the main
thought is finally repeated and the picture brought to a close. —
Vers. 17-20. In the third place, God will provide the birds
of prey and beasts of prey with an abundant meal from this
slaughter. This cannot be understood as signifying that only
what remain of the corpses, and have not been cleared away in
the manner depicted in vers. 11-16, will become the prey of
wild beasts ; but the beasts of prey will make their meal of the
corpses before it is possible to bury them, since the burying
cannot be effected immediately or all at once. — The several
features in the picture, of the manner in which the enemies
are to be destroyed till the last trace of them is gone, are not
arranged in chronological order, but according to the subject-
matter; and the thought that the slaughtered foes are to
become the prey of wild beasts is mentioned last as being the
more striking, because it is in this that their ignominious
destruction culminates. To give due prominence to this
thought, the birds and beasts of prey are summoned by God
to gather together to the meal prepared for them. The picture
given of it as a sacrificial meal is based upon Isa. xxxiv. 6 and
Jer. xlvi. 10. In harmony with this picture the slaughtered
foes are designated as fattened sacrificial beasts, rams, lambs,
he-goats, bullocks; on which Grotius has correctly remarked,
CHAP. XXXIX. 21-29. 177
that " these names of animals, which were generally employed
in the sacrifices, are to be understood as signifying different
orders of men, chiefs, generals, soldiers, as the Chaldee also
observes."
Vers. 21-29. The result of this Judgment, and the concluding
promise. — Ver. 21. Then will I display my glory among the
nations, and all nations shall see my judgment which I shall
execute, and my hand which I shall lay upon them. Ver. 22.
And the house of Israel shall know that I am Jehovah their God
from this day and forward. Ver. 23. And the nations shall know
that because of their wickedness the house of Israel went into cap-
tivity ; because they have been unfaithful toward me, I hid my
face from them, and gave them into the hand of their oppressors,
so that they all fell by the sword. Ver. 24. According to their
nncleanness, and according to their transgressions, 1 dealt with
them, and hid my face from them. Ver. 25. Therefore thus
saith the Lord Jehovah, Now will I bring back the captivity of
Jacob, and have pity upon all the house of Israel, and be jealous
for my holy name. Ver. 26. Then loill they bear their reproach
and all their faithlessness which they have committed toward me
when they dwell in their land in security, and no one alarms them ;
Ver. 27. When I bring them back out of the nations, and gather
them out of the lands of their enemies, and sanctify myself upon
them before the eyes of the many nations. Ver. 28. And they
will know that I, Jehovah, am their God, when I have driven them
out to the nations, and then bring them together again into their
land, and leave none of them there any more. Ver. 29. And
I will not hide my face fi^om them any more, because I have
poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, is the saying
'\of tlie Lord Jehovah. — The terrible judgment upon Gog will
-have this twofold effect as a revelation of the glory of God —
first, Israel will know that the Lord is, and will always continue
to be, its God (ver. 22) ; secondly, the heathen will know that
He gave Israel into their power, and thrust it out of its own
land, not from weakness, but to punish it for its faithless
EZEK. II. M
178 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
apostasy (vers. 23 and 24; compare ch. xxxvi. 17 sqq.) n^'j
DOK (ver. 24), as in cli. vii. 27, etc. But because this was the
purpose of the Lord with His Judgments, He will now bring
back the captives of Israel, and have compassion upon all His
people. This turn of the prophecy in ver. 25 serves to intro-
duce the promise to Israel with which the prophecy concerning
Gog and the whole series of prophecies, contained in ch. xxxv. I
onwards, are brought to a close (vers. 25-29). This promise
reverts in 'Wl S^E'K nnj.' to the prophet's own time, to which
Ezekiel had already gone back by mentioning the carrying
away of Israel in vers. 23 and 24. The restoration of the
captives of Jacob commences with the liberation of Israel from
the Babylonian exile, but is not to be restricted to this. It
embraces all the deliverances which Israel will experience from
the termination of the Babylonian exile till its final gathering
out of the nations on the conversion of the remnant which is
still hardened and scattered. !??, therefore, sc. because God
will prove Himself to be holy in the sight of the heathen
nations by means of the judgment, and will make known to
them that He has punished Israel solely on account of its sins,
and therefore will He restore His people and renew it by His
Spirit (ver. 29). — In what the jealousy of God for His holy
name consists is evident from ver. 7, and still more plainly
from ch. xxxvi. 22, 23, namely, in the fact that by means of
the judgment He manifests Himself as the holy God. ^tJ'Jl is
not to be altered into ^itJ'i], " they will forget," as Dathe and
Hitzig propose, but is a defective spelling for >iKB'31 (like 1^0 for
^i6a in ch. xxviii. 16) : they will bear their reproach. The
thought is the same as in ch. xvi. 54 and 61, where the bearing
of reproach is explained as signifying their being ashamed of
their sins and their consequences, and feeling disgust thereat.
They will feel this shame when the Lord grants them lasting
peace in their own land. Kaschi has correctly explained it thus :
" When I shall have done them good, and not rewarded them as
their iniquity deserved, they will be filled with shame, so that
CHAP. XXXIX. 21-29. 179
they will not dare to lift up their face." — Ver. 27 is only a
further expansion of ver. 266. For the fact itself, compare
ch. xxxvi. 23, 24, xx. 41, etc. And not only will Israel then
be ashamed of its sins, but (vers. 28, 29) it will also know that
Jehovah is its God from henceforth and for ever, as was affirmed
in ver, 22, when He shall fully restore to their own land the
people that was thrust into exile, and withdraw His favour
from it no more, because He has poured out His Spirit upon it,
and thei'eby perfectly sanctified it as His own people (cf. ch.
xxxvi. 27).
The promise with which the prophecy concerning the destruc-
tion of Gog is brought to a close, namely, that in this judgment
all nations shall see the glory of God, and all Israel shall know
that henceforth Jehovah will be their God, and will no more
hide His face from them, serves to confirm the substance of
the threat of punishment ; inasmuch as it also teaches that, in
the destruction of Gog and his gathering of peoples, the last
attack of the heathen world-power upon the kingdom of God
will be judged and overthrown, so that from that time forth the
people of God will no more have to fear a foe who can disturb
its peace and its blessedness in the everlasting possession of the
inheritance given to it by the Lord. Gog is not only depicted
as the last foe, whom the Lord Himself entices for the purpose
of destroying him by miracles of His almighty power (ch.
xxxviii. 3, 4, 19-22), by the fact that his appearance is assigned
to the end of the times, when all Israel is gathered out of the
nations and brought back out of the lands, and dwells in secure
repose in the open and unfortified towns of its own land
(ch. xxxviii. 8, 11, 12) ; but this may also be inferred from the
fact that the gathering of peoples led by Gog against Israel
belongs to the heathen nations living on the borders of the
known world, since this points to a time when not only will the
ancient foes of the kingdom of Gog, whose destruction was
predicted in ch. xxv.-xxxii., have departed from the stage of
history and perished, but the boundaries of Israel will also
180 THE PBOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
stretch far beyond the limits of Palestine, to the vicinity of
these hordes of peoples at the remotest extremities on the
north, the east, and the south of the globe. — So much may be
gathered from the contents of our prophecy in relation to its
historical fulfilment. But in order to determine with greater
precision what is the heathen power thus rising up in Gog of
Magog against the kingdom of God, we must take into con-
sideration the passage in the Apocalypse (Eev. xx. 8 and 9),
where our prophecy is resumed. Into this, however, we will
not further enter till after the exposition of ch. xl.-xlviii., when
we shall take up the question as to the historical realization of
the new temple and kingdom of God which Ezekiel saw.
Chap. XL.-XLVIII.— THE NEW KINGDOM OF GOD.
The last nine chapters of Ezekiel contain a magnificent
vision, in which the prophet, being transported in an ecstatic
state into the land of Israel, is shown the new temple and the
new organization of the service of God, together with the new
division of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, who have been
brought back from among the nations. This last section of
our book, which is perfectly rounded off in itself, is indeed
sharply distinguished by its form from the preceding pro-
phecies; but it is closely connected with them so far as the
contents are concerned, and forms the second half of the entire
book, in which the announcement of salvation for Israel is
brought to its full completion, and a panoramic vision displays
the realization of the salvation promised. This announcement
(ch. xxxiv.-xxxvii.) commenced with the promise that the Lord
would bring back all Israel from its dispersion into the land of
Canaan given to the fathers, and would cause it to dwell there
as a people renewed by His Spirit and walking in His com-
CHAP. XU-XLYUL 181
mandments ; and closed with the assurance that He would
make an eternal covenant of peace ,with His restored people,
place His sanctuary in the midst of them, and there dwell
above them as their God for ever (ch. xxxvii. 26-28). The
picture shown to the prophet in the chapters before us, of the
realization of this promise, commences with the description
and measuring of the new sanctuary (ch. xl.-xlii.), into which
the glory of the Lord enters with the assurance, "This is the
place of my throne, where I shall dwell for ever among the
sons of Israel " (ch. xliii. 1-12) ; and concludes with the defini-
tion of the boundaries and the division of Canaan among the
twelve tribes, as well as of the extent and building of the new
Jerusalem (ch. xlvii. 13-xlviii. 35). The central portion of
this picture is occupied by the new organization of the service
of God, by observing which all Israel is to prove itself to be a
holy people of the Lord (ch. xliii. 13-xlvi. 24), so as to partici-
pate in the blessing which flows like a river from the threshold
of the temple and spreads itself over the land (ch. xlvii. 1-12).
From this brief sketch of these nine chapters, it is evident
that this vision does not merely treat of the new temple and
the new order of the temple-worship, although these points are
described in the most elaborate manner ; but that it presents a
picture of the new form assumed by the whole of the kingdom
of God, and in this picture exhibits to the eye the realization of
the restoration and the blessedness of Israel. The whole of
it may therefore be divided into three sections: viz. (a) the
description of the new temple (ch. xl.— xliii. 12) ; (b) the new
organization of the worship of God (ch. xliii. 13-xlvi. 24);
(c) the blessing of the land of Canaan, and the partition of it
among the tribes of Israel (ch. xlvii. 1— xlviii. 35); although
this division is not strictly adhered to, inasmuch as in the
central section not only are several points relating to the
temple — such as the description of the altar of burnt-offering
(ch. xliii. 13-17), and the kitchens for the sacrifices (ch. xlvi.
19-24) — repeated, but the tJierumah to be set apart as holy on
182 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
the division of the land, and the prince's domain, are also
mentioned and defined (ch. xlv. 1-8).
CHAP. XL.-XLIII. 12. THE NEW TEMPLE.
After a short introduction announcing the time, place, and
design of the vision (ch. xl. 1-4), the picture of the temple
shown to the prophet commences with a description of the
courts, with their gates and cells (ch. xl. 5-47). It then turns
to the description of the temple - house, with the porch and
side -building, of the erection upon the separate place (ch.
xi. 48-xli. 26), and also of the cells in the outer court set apart
for the sacrificial meals of the priests, and for the custody of
their official robes ; and proceeds to define the extent of the
outer circumference of the temple (ch. xlii.). It closes with
the consecration of the temple, as the place of the throne of
God, by the entrance into it of the glory of the Lord (ch.
xliii. 1-12).*
Chap. xl. 1—4. Introduction.
Ver. 1. In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, at the
beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month, in the fourteenth
1 For the exposition of this section, compare the thorough, thougli
critically one - sided, work of Jul. Fr. Bottcher (Exegetisch kritischer
Versuch Uber die ideale Beschreibung der Tenipelgebaude Ezech. ch. xl.-xlii.,
xlvi. 19-24) in the Proben alttestamentlicher Schrifterklarung, Lpz. 1833,
pp. 218-365, with two plates of illustrations. — On the other hand, the
earlier mouographs upon these chapters : Jo. Bapt. Villalpando, de pas-
trema Ezechielis visione, Pars II. of Pradi et Villalpandi in Ezech. explanatt,
Rom. 1604 ; Matth. Hafenreffer, Templum Ezechielis s. in IX. postr. pro-
pJietiae capita, Tiib. 1613 ; Leonh. Cph. Sturm, SciagrapMa tempU Hierosol.
. . . praesertim ex visione Ezech., Lips. 1694 ; and other writings mentioned
in RosenmUUer's Scholia ad Ez. XL., by no means meet the scientific
demands of our age. This also applies to the work of Dr. J. J. Balmer-
Rinck, with its typographical beauty, Des Propheten Ezechiel Ansicht vom
Tempel, mil 5 Tafeln und 1 Karte, Ludwigsb. 1858, and to the description
and engraving of Ezekiel's temple in Gust. Unruh's das alte Jerusalem und
seine Bauwerke, Langensalza 1861.
CHAP. XL. 1-4. 183
year after the city was smitten, on this same day the hand of
Jehovah came upon me, and He brought me thither, Ver. 2. In
visions of God He brought me into the land of Israel, and set me
down upon a very high mountain ; and upon it there was like a
city-edifice toward the south, Ver. 3. And He brought me thither,
and behold there was a man, his appearance like the appearance
of brass, and a flaxen cord in his hand, and the measuring-rod ;
and he stood by the gate, Ver. 4. And the man spake to me :
Son of man, see with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, and set
thy heart upon all that I show thee ; for thou art brought hither
to show it thee. Tell all that thou seest to the house of Israel, —
The twofold announcement of the time when the prophet was
shown the vision of the new temple and the new kingdom of
God points back to ch. i. 1 and xxxiii. 21, and places this
divine revelation concerning the new building of the kingdom
of God in a definite relation, not only to the appearance of
God by which Ezekiel was called to be a prophet (ch. i. 1, 3),
but also to the vision in ch. viii.-xi., in which he was shown
the destruction of the ancient, sinful Jerusalenr, together with
its temple. The twenty-fifth year of the captivity, and the
fourteenth year after the city was smitten, i,e. taken and
reduced to ashes, are the year 575 before Christ. There is a
difference of opinion as to the correct explanation of HJE'ri \i}^-\2,
at the beginning of the year; but it is certainly incorrect to
take the expression as denoting the beginning of the economical
or so-called civil year, the seventh month (Tishri), For, in the
first place, the custom of beginning the year with the month
Tishri was introduced long after the captivity, and was pi'obably
connected with the adoption of the era of the Seleucidae ; and,
secondly, it is hardly conceivable that Ezekiel should have
deviated from the view laid down in the Torah in so important
a point as this. The only thing that could render this at all
probable would be the assumption proposed by Hitzig, that the
year 575 B.C. was a year of jubilee, since the year of jubilee
did commence with the day of atonement on the tenth of the
184 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
seventh month. But the supposition that a jubilee year fell in
the twenty-fifth year of the captivity cannot be raised into a
probability. We therefore agree with Havernick and Kliefoth
in adhering to the view of the older commentators, that sy'ST
nJE'n is a contracted repetition of the definition contained in
Ex. xii. 2, WE'n ■^vnnb litrN-i n^B'in csn, and signifies the opening
month of the year, i.e. the month Abib (^Nisari). The tenth
day of this month was the day on which the preparations for
the Passover, the feast of the elevation of Israel into the people
of God, were to com^mence, and therefore was well adapted for
the revelation of the new constitution of the kingdom of God.
On that day was Ezekiel transported, in an ecstatic state, to the
site of the smitten Jerusalem. For '" "i^ vjf nn^n, compare ch.
xxxvii. 1 and i. 3. HSB' evidently points back to T'^n in ver. 2b ;
thither, where the city was smitten, ^''•f^^. niX"iD, as in ch.
i. 1. 'i in ?K ''im\-. he set me down upon (not by) a very
high mountain (b^ for '?V, as in many other instances ; e.g. ch.
xviii. 6 and xxxi. 12). The very high mountain is Mount
Zion, which is exalted above the tops of all the mountains
(Mic. iv. 1 ; Isa. ii. 2), — the mountain upon which, according
to what follows, the new temple seen in the vision stood, and
which has already been designated as the lofty mountain of
Israel in ch. xvii. 22, 23.^ Upon this mountain Ezekiel saw
something like a city-edifice toward the south (lit. from the
south hither). I^P n;!^!p is not the building of the new Jeru-
salem (Havernick, Kliefoth, etc.). For even if what was to be
seen as a city-edifice really could be one, although no tenable
proof can be adduced of this use of 3 simil., nothing is said
about the city till ch. xlv. 6 and xlviii. 15 and 30 sqq., and
even there it is only in combination with the measuring and
dividing of the land ; so that Havernick's remark, that " the
^ J. H. Michaelis has already explained it correctly, viz. : "The highest
mountain, such as Isaiah (ii. 2) had also predicted that Mount Zion would
be, not physically, but iu the eminence of gospel dignity and glory: cf.
Rev. xxi. 10."
CHAP. XL. 1-4 185
revelation hss reference to the sanctuary and the city ; these
two principal objects announce themselves at once as such in
the form of vision," is neither correct nor conclusive. The
revelation has reference to the temple and the whole of the
holy land, including the city; and the city itself does not
come at all into such prominence as to warrant us in assuming
that there is already a reference made to it here in the intro-
duction. If we look at the context, the man with the measure,
whom Ezekiel saw at the place to which he was transported,
was standing at the gate (ver. 3). This gate in the wall round
about the building was, according to vers. 5, 6, a temple gate.
Consequently what Ezekiel saw as a city-edifice can only be
the building of the new temple, with its surrounding wall
and its manifold court buildings. The expressions VPV and
3J3p can both be brought into harmony with this. IvJ? refers
to the very high mountain mentioned immediately before, to
the summit of which the prophet had been transported, and
upon which the temple-edifice is measured before his eyes.
But 31SP does not imply, that as Ezekiel looked from the
mountain he saw in the distance, toward the south, a magnifi-
cent building like a city-edifice ; but simply that, looking from
his standing-place in a southerly direction, or southwards, he
saw this building upon the mountain, — that is to say, as he had
been transported from Chaldea, i.e. from the north, into the
land of Israel, he really saw it before him towards the south ;
so that the rendering of 3330 by airevavn in the Septuagint is
substantially correct, though without furnishing any warrant to
alter 3),3p into njjp. In ver. 3a, r\m ''niK K''3;5 is repeated from
the end of ver. 1, for the purpose of attaching the following
description of what is seen, in the sense of, " when He brought
me thither, behold, there (was) a man." His appearance was
like the appearance of brass, i.e. of shining brass (according to
the correct gloss of the LXX. ')(a\Kov aTCK^ovro'i = ??i^ nc'm,
ch. i. 7). This figure suggests a heavenly being, an angel, and
as he is called Jehovah in ch. xliv. 2, 5, the angel of Jehovah.
186 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Kliefoth's opinion, that in ch. xliv. 2, 5, it is not the man who
is speaking, but that the prophet is there addressed directly by
the apparition of God (ch. xliii. 2 sqq.), is proved to be unten-
able by the simple fact that the speaker (in ch. xliv.) admonishes
the prophet in ver. 5 to attend, to see, and to hear, in the same
words as the man in ver. 4 of the chapter before us. This
places the identity of the two beyond the reach of doubt. He
had in his hand a flaxen cord for measuring, and the measuring
rod, — that is to say, two measures, because he had to measure
many and various things, smaller and larger spaces, for the
former of which he had the measuring rod, for the latter the
measuring line. The gate at which this man stood (ver. 3) is
not more precisely defined, but according to ver. 5 it is to he
sought for in the wall surrounding the building ; and since he
went to the east gate first, according to ver. 6, it was not the
east gate, but probably the north gate, as it was from the north
that Ezekiel had come.
Vers. 5-27. The Outer Court, with Boundary Wall, Gate-
Buildings, and Cells.
Ver. 5.— The Surrounding Wall.— ^wcZ, behold, a wall
(ran) on the outside round the house; and in the mail's hand
was the measuring rod of six cubits, each a cubit and a hand-
breadth ; and he measured the breadth of the building a rod, and
the height a rod.— The description of the temple (for, accord-
ing to what follows, n^an is the house of Jehovah) (cf. ch.
xliii. 7) commences with the surrounding wall of the outer
court, whose breadth {i.e. thickness) and height are measured
{see the illustration, Plate l.aaa a), the length of the measur-
ing rod having first been given by way of parenthesis. This
was six cubits {se. measured) by the cubit and handbreadth—
that is to say, six cubits, each of which was of the length of a
(common) cubit and a handbreadth (cf. ch. xliii. 13) ; in all,
therefore, six cubits and six handbreadths. The ordinary or
common cubit, judging from the statement in 2 Ohron. iii. 3,
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 187
tliat the measure of Solomon's temple was regulated according
to the earlier measure, had become shorter in the course of time
than the old Mosaic or sacred cubit. For the new temple, there-
fore, the measure is regulated according to a longer cubit, in all
probability according to the old sacred cubit of the Mosaic law,
which was a handbreadth longer than the common cubit accord-
ing to the passage before us, or seven handbreadths of the ordi-
nary cubit. I'??!], the masonry, is the building of the wall, which
was one rod broad, i.e. thick, and the same in height. The length
of this wall is not given, and can only be learned from the further
description of the whole wall (see the comm. on ch. xl. 27).
Vers, 6-16. The Buildings of the East Gate.— (See
Plate II. 1). — Ver. 6. And he went to the gate, the direction of
which was toward the east, and ascended the steps thereof, and
measured the threshold of the gate one rod broad, namely, the first
threshold one rod broad, Ver. 7. And the guard-room one rod
long and one rod broad, and between the guard-rooms five cubits,
and the threshold of the gate by the porch of the gate from the
temple hither one rod. Ver. 8. And he measured the porch of
the gate from the temple hither one rod. Ver. 9. And he
measured the porch of the gate eight cubits, and its pillars two
cubits ; and the porch of the gate was from the temple hither.
Ver, 10. And of the guard-rooms of the gate toward the east there
loere three on this side and three on that side ; all three had one
measure, and the pillars also one measure on this side and on that.
Ver, 11, And he measured the breadth of the opening of the gate
ten cubits, the length of the gate thirteen cubits. Ver. 12. And
there was a boundary fence before the guard-rooms of one cubit,
and a cubit was the boundary fence on that side, and the guard-
rooms were six cubits on this side and six cubits on that side.
Ver. 13. And he measured the gate from the roof of the guard-
rooms to the roof of them five and twenty cubits h-oad, door
against door. Ver. 14. And he fixed the pillars at sixty cubits,
and the court round about the gate reached to the pillars. Ver. 15.
188 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
And the front of the entrance gate to the front of the porch of the
inner gate was fifty cubits. Ver. 16. And there were closed win-
dows in the guard-rooms, and in their pillars on the inner side of
the gate round about, and so also in the projections of the walls ;
there were windows round about on the inner side, and palms on
the pillars. — 1VB' b^ SU>1 is not to be rendered, " he went in at
the gate." For although this would be grammatically admis-
sible, it is not in harmony with what follows, according to
which the man first of all ascended the steps, and then com-
menced the measuring of the gate-buildings with the threshold
of the gate. The steps {B in the illustration) are not to bef
thought of as in the surrounding wall, but as being ontside in
front of them ; but in the description which follows they are
not included in the length of the gate-buildings. The number
of steps is not given here, but they have no doubt been fixed
correctly by the LXX. at seven, as that is the number given
in vers. 22 and 26 in connection with both the northern and
southern gates. From the steps the man came to the threshold
(C), and measured it. "The actual description of the first
building, that of the eastern gate, commences in the inside;
first of all, the entire length is traversed (vers. 6-9), and the
principal divisions are measured on the one side; then (vers.
10-12) the inner portions on both sides are given more defi-
nitely as to their character, number, and measure ; in vers.
13-15 the relations and measurement of the whole building are
noticed; and finally (ver. 16), the wall-decorations observed
round about the inside. The exit from the gate is first men-
tioned in ver. 17; consequently all that is given in vers. 6-16
must have been visible within the building, just as in the case
of the other gates the measurements and descriptions are
always to be regarded as given from within " (Bottcher). The
threshold (C) wa-s a rod in breadth,— that is to say, measuring
from the outside to the inside,— and was therefore just as broad
as the wall was thick (ver. 5). But this threshold was the one,
or first threshold, which had to be crossed by any one who
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 189
entered the gate from the outside, for the gate-building had a
second threshold at the exit into the court, which is mentioned
in ver. 7. Hence the more precise definition in? fjD nxi, " and
that the one, i.e. first threshold," in connection with which the
breadth is given a second time, nx is neither nota nominaiivi,
nor is it used in the sense of T\v,1 ; but it is nota accus., and is
also governed by TSJl. And inx is not to be taken in a
pregnant sense, " only one, i.e. not broken up, or composed
of several" (Bottcher, Havernick), but is employed, as it
frequently is in enumeration, for the ordinal number : one for
the first {yid. e.g. Gen. i. 5, 7). The length of the threshold, i.e.
its measure between the two door-posts (from north to south), is
not given ; but from the breadth of the entrance door mentioned
in ver. 11, we can infer that it was ten cubits. Proceeding
from the threshold, we have next the measurement of the
guard-room ((?), mentioned in ver. 7. According to 1 Kings
xiv. 28, t^IJ is a room constructed in the gate, for the use of the
guard keeping watch at the gate. This was a rod in length,
and the same in breadth. A space of five cubits is then men-
tioned as intervening between the guard-rooms. It is evident
from this that there were several guard-rooms in succession ;
according to ver. 10, three on each side of the doorway, but
that instead of their immediately joining one another, they were
separated by intervening spaces (H) of five cubits each. This
required two spaces on' each side. These spaces between the
guard-rooms, of which we have no further description, must
not be thought of as open or unenclosed, for in that ease there
would have been so many entrances into the court, and the
gateway would not be closed ; but we must assume " that they
were closed by side walls, which connected the guard-rooms
with one another" (Kliefoth). — After the guard-rooms there
follows, thirdly, the threshold of the gate on the side of, or
near the porch of, the gate " in the direction from the house,"
i.e. the second threshold, which was at the western exit from
the gate-buildings near the porch (JT) ; in other words, which
190 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Stood as you entered immediately in front of the porch leading
out into the court {C C), and was also a cubit in breadth, like
the first threshold at the eastern entrance into the gate, n^ano,
" in the direction from the house," or, transposing it into our
mode of viewing and describing directions, "going toward the
temple-house." This is added to l}f?'n D^N to indicate clearly
the position of this porch as being by the inner passage of the
gate-buildings leading into the court, so as to guard against our
thinking of a porch erected on the outside in front of the
entrance gate. Bottcher, Hitzig, and others are wrong in
identifying or interchanging n;;anD with n^ao, inwardly, intrin-
secus (ch. vii. 15; 1 Kings vi. 15), and taking it as referring
to fip, as if the intention were to designate this threshold as the
inner one lying within the gate-buildings, in contrast to the first
threshold mentioned in ver. 6.
In vers. 8 and 9 two different measures of this court-porch
(Z)) are given, viz. first, one rod = six cubits (ver. 8), and then
eight cubits (ver. 9). The ancient translators stumbled at this
difference, and still more at the fact that the definition of the
measurement is repeated in the same words ; so that, with the
exception of the Targumists, they have all omitted the eighth
verse; and in consequence of this, modern critics, such as
Houbigant, Ewald, Bottcher, and Hitzig, have expunged it
from the text as a gloss. But however strange the repetition
of the measurement of the porch with a difference iu the
numbers may appear at the first glance, and however naturally
it may suggest the thought of a gloss which has crept into the
text through the oversight of a copyist, it is very diflScult to
understand how such a gloss could have been perpetuated ; and
this cannot be explained by the groundless assumption that
there was an unwillingness to erase what had once been erro-
neously written. To this must be added the difference in the
terms employed to describe the dimensions, viz. first, a rod, and
then eight cubits, as well as the circumstance that in ver. 9, in
addition to the measure of the porch, that of the pillars adjoin-
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 191
ing the porch is given immediately afterwards. The attempts
of the earlier commentators to explain the two measurements of
the porch have altogether failed ; and Kliefoth was the first to
solve the difficulty correctly, by explaining that in ver. 8 the
measurement of the porch is given in the clear, i,e. according
to the length within, or the depth (from east to west), whilst
in ver. 9 the external length of the southern (or northern) wall
of the porch (from east to west) is given. Both of these were
necessary, the former to give a correct idea of the inner space
of the porch, as in the case of the guard-rooms in ver. 7 ; the
latter, to supply the necessary data for the entire length of the
gate-buildings, and to make it possible to append to this the
dimensions of the pillars adjoining the western porch-wall. As
a portion of the gate-entrance or gateway, this porch was open
to the east and west ; and toward the west, i.e. toward the court,
it was closed by the gate built against it. Kliefoth therefore
assumes that the porch-walls on the southern and northern
sides projected two cubits toward the west beyond the inner
space of the porch, which lay between the threshold and the
gate that could be closed, and was six cubits long, and that the
two gate-pillars, with their thickness of two cubits each, were
attached to this prolongation of the side walls. But by this
supposition we do not gain a porch (Q?^), but a simple extension
of the intervening wall between the third guard-room and the
western gate. If the continuation of the side walls, which
joined the masonry bounding the western threshold on the south
and north, was to have the character of a porch, the hinder
wall (to the east) could not be entirely wanting; but even if
there were a large opening in it for the doorway, it must stand
out in some way so as to strike the eye, whether by projections
of the wall at the north-east and south-east corners, or what
may be more probable, by the fact that the southern and
northern side walls receded at least a cubit in the inside, if
not more, so that the masonry of the walls of the porch was
weaker (thinner) than that at the side of the threshold and by
192 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the pillars, and the porch in the clear from north to south was
broader than the doorway. The suffix attached to IP^X is pro-
bably to be taken as referring to "iJfB'n dSs, and not merely
to 1VE', and the word itself to be construed as a plural C^''??):
the pillars of the gate-porch (E) were two cubits thick, or strong.
This measurement is not to be divided between the two pillars,
as the earlier commentators supposed, so that each pillar would
be but one cubit thick, but applies to each of them. As the
pillars were sixty cubits high (according to ver. 14), they must
have had the strength of at least two cubits of thickness to
secure the requisite firmness. At the close of the ninth verse,
the statement that the gate-porch was directed towards the
temple-house is made for the third time, because it was this
peculiarity in the situation which distinguished the gate-build-
ings of the outer court from those of the inner ; inasmuch as in
the case of the latter, although in othSr respects its construction
resembled that of the gate-buildings of the outer court, the situa-
tion was reversed, and the gate-porch was at the side turned away
from the tfemple toward the outer court, as is also emphatically
stated three times' in vers. 31, 34, and 37 (Kliefoth).
: On reaching the gate-porch and its pillars, the measurer had
gone through the entire length of the gate-buildings, and de-
termined the measure of all its component parts, so far as the
■length was concerned. Having arrived at the inner extremity
or exit, the describer returns, in order to supply certain import-
ant particulars with regard to the situation and character of
the whole structure. He first of all observes (in ver. 10), with
reference to the number and relative position of the guard-houses
(G), that there were three of them on each side opposite to one
another, that all six were of the same measure, i.e. one rod in
length and one in breadth (ver. 7) ; and then, that the pillars
mentioned in ver. 9, the measurement of which was determined
(E), standing at the gate-porch on either side, were of the same
size. Many of the commentators have erroneously imagined
that by D?''N? we are to understand the walls between the guard-
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 193
rooms or pillars in the guard-rooms. The connecting walls
could not be called By'^N ; and if pillars belonging to the guard-
rooms were intended, we should expect to find Iv*^?. — In
ver. 11 there follow the measurements of the breadth and
length of the doorway. The breadth of the opening, i.e. the
width of the doorway, was ten cubits. " By this we are
naturally to understand the breadth of the whole doorway in
its full extent, just as the length of the two thresholds and the
seven steps, which was not given in vers. 6 and 7, is also fixed
at ten cubits" (Kliefoth). — The measurement which follows,
viz. " the length of the gate, thirteen cubits," is difficult to ex-
plain, and has been interpreted in very different ways. The
supposition of Lyra, Kliefoth, and others, that by the length of
the gate we are to understand the height of the trellised gate,
which could be opened and shut, cannot possibly be correct. 'H'?.^,
length, never stands for fl^ip, height; and lyE'ri in this con-
nection cannot mean the gate that was opened and shut. "^V^i},
as distinguished from "iJ?^n nna, can only signify either the
whole of the gate-building (as in ver. 6), or, in a more limited
sense, that portion of the building which bore the character of
a gate in a conspicuous way ; primarily, therefore, the masonry
enclosing the threshold on the two sides, together with its roof;
and then, generally, the covered doorway, or that portion of the
gate-building which was roofed over, in distinction from the un-
covered portion of the building between the two gates (Bottcher,
Hitzig, and Havernick) ; inasmuch as it cannot be supposed
that a gate-building of fifty cubits long was entirely roofed in.
Now, as there are two thresholds mentioned in vers. 6 and 7,
and the distinction in ver. 15 between the (outer) entrance-gate
and the porch of the inner gate implies that the gate-building
had two gates, like the gate-building of the city of Mahanaim
(2 Sam. xviii. 24), one might be disposed to distribute the
thirteen cubits' length of the gate between the two gates, be-
cause each threshold had simply a measurement of six cubits.
But such a supposition as this, which is not very probable in
EZEK. II. N
194 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
itself, is proved to be untenable, by the fact that throughout the
whole description we never find the measurements of two or more
separate portions added together, so that no other course is open
than to assume, as Eottcher, Hitzig, and Havernick have done,
that the length of thirteen cubits refers to one covered doorway,
and that, according to the analogy of the measurements of the
guard-rooms given in ver. 7, it applies to the second gateway
also ; in which case, out of the forty cubits which constituted
the whole length of the gate-building (without the front porch),
about two-thirds (twenty-six cubits) would be covered gateway
(& &), and the fourteen cubits between would form an uncovered
court-yard (c c) enclosed on all sides by the gate-buildings.
Consequently the roofing of the gate extended from the eastern
and western side over the guard-room, which immediately
adjoined the threshold of the gate, and a cubit beyond that,
over the wall which intervened between the guard-rooms, so
that only the central guard-room on either side, together with
a portion of the walls which bounded it, stood in the uncovered
portion or court of the gate-building.— According to ver. 12,
there was a ?«|i, or boundary, in front of the guard-rooms, i.e. a
boundary fence of a cubit in breadth, along the whole of the
guard-room, with its breadth of six cubits on either side. The
construction of this boundary fence or barrier (a) is not ex-
plained ; but the design of it is clear, namely, to enable the
sentry to come without obstruction out of the guard-room, to
observe what was going on in the gate both on the right and
left, without being disturbed by those who were passing through
the gate. These boundary fences in front of the guard-rooms
projected into the gateway to the extent described, so that there
were only eight (10-2) cubits open space between the guard-
rooms, for those who were going out and in. In ver. 12 we
must supply nb!? after the first T\m because of the parallelism.
Ver. 12& is a substantial repetition of ver. 7a. — In ver. 13
there follows the measure of the breadth of the gate-building.
From the roof of the one guard-room to the roof of the other
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 195
guard-room opposite Qip is an abbreviated expression for
^^^ ^??) the breadth was twenty-five cubits, " door against door."
These last words are added for the sake of clearuess, to de-
signate the direction of the measurement as taken right across
the gateway. The door of the guard-room, however, can only
be the door in the outer wall, by which the sentries passed to
and fro between the room and the court. The measurement
given will not allow of our thinking of a door in the inner
wall, i.e. the wall of the barrier of the gateway, without touch-
ing the question in dispute among the commentators, whether
the guard-rooms had walls toward the gateway or not, i.e.
whether they were rooms that could he closed, or sentry-boxes
open in front. All that the measuring from roof to roof pre-
supposes as indisputable is, that the guard-rooms had a roof.
The measurement given agrees, moreover, with the other
measurements. The breadth of the gateway with its ten
cubits, added to that of each guard-room with six, and there-
fore of both together with twelve, makes twenty-two cubits in
all ; so that if we add three cubits for the thickness of the two
outer walls, or a cubit and a half each, that is to say, according
to ver. 42, the breadth of one hewn square stone, we obtain
twenty-five cubits for the breadth of the whole gate-building,
the dimension given in -vers. 21, 25, and 29.
There is a further difficulty in ver. 14. The Dy''^, whose
measurement is fixed in the first clause at sixty cubits, can only
be the gate-pillars (Iv'"*?) mentioned in ver. 9 ; and the measure-
ment given can only refer to their height. The height of sixty
cubits serves to explain the choice of the verb \!>V% in the
general sense of constituit, instead of 1I3J1, inasmuch as such a
height could not be measured from the bottom to the top with
■the measuring rod, but could only be estimated and fixed at
such and such a result. With regard to the offence taken by
modern critics at the sixty cubits, Kliefoth has very correctly
observed, that " if it had been considered that our church
towers have also grown out of gate-pillars, that we may see for
1 96 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ourselves not only in Egyptian obelisks and Turkish minarets,
but in our own hollow factory-chimneys, how pillars of sixty
cubits can be erected upon a pedestal of two cubits square ; and
lastly, that we have here to do with a colossal building seen in
a vision, — there would have been no critical difficulties discovered
in this statement as to the height." Moreover, not only the
number, but the whole text is verified as correct by the Targum
and Vulgate, and defended by them against all critical caprice ;
whilst the verdict of Bottcher himself concerning the Greek
and Syriac texts is, that they are senselessly mutilated and dis-
figured, — In the second half of the verse ?l^? stands in a collec-
tive sense : " and the court touched the pillars." "isn[} is not a
court situated within the gate-building (Hitzig, Havernick, and
others), but the outer court of the temple. "iJ?B'n is an accusa-
tive, literally, with regard to the gate round about, i.e. encom-
passing the gate-building round about, that is to say, on three
sides. These words plainly affirm what is implied in the preceding
account, namely, that the gate-building stood within the outer
court, and that not merely so far as the porch was concerned,
but in its whole extent. — To this there is very suitably attached
in ver. 15 the account of the length of the whole building.
The words, " at the front of the entrance gate to the front of
the porch of the inner gate," are a concise topographical expres-
sion for " from the front side of the entrance gate to the front
side of the porch of the inner gate." At the starting-point of the
measurement t» (73JD) was unnecessary, as the point of com-
mencement is indicated by the position of the word; and in
*^?? '^j as distinguished from "JS i"?, the direction toward the
terminal point is shown, so that there is no necessity to alter i"?
into IV, since 7V, when used of the direction in which the object
aimed at lies, frequently touches the ordinary meaning of IV (cf/
Dnisp hv, Ps. xix. 7, and Dn'bn ^3?, Isa. x. 25) ; whilst here the
direction is rendered perfectly plain by the '? (in ''i^'?). The Chetib
lins^n, a misspelling for )in^Nn, we agree with Gesenius and others
in regarding as a substantive : " entrance." The entrance gate
CHAP. XL. 6- 16. 197
is the outer gate, at the flight of steps leading into the gate-
building. Opposite to this was the "inner gate" at the end of the
gate-building, by the porch leading into the court. The length
from the outer to the inner gate was fifty cubits, which is the
resultant obtained from the measurements of the several por-
tions of the gate-building, as given in vers. 6-10 ; namely, six
cubits the breadth of the first threshold, 3 x 6 = 18 cubits that
of the three guard-rooms, 2 x 5 = 10 cubits that of the spaces
intervening between the guard-rooms, 6 cubits that of the
inner threshold, 8 cubits that of the gate-porch, and 2 cubits
that of the gate-pillars (6+18-hl0+6+8+2:=50).
Lastly, in ver. 16, the windows and decorations of the gate-
buildings are mentioned. niDBK ni3i?n, closed windows, is, no
doubt, a contracted expression for CO^N CSpB* *;)i?n (1 Kings
vi. 4), windows of closed bars, i.e. windows, the lattice-work of
which was made so fast, that they could not be opened at pleasure
like the windows of dwelling-houses. But it is difficult to deter-
mine the situation of these windows. According to the words
of the text, they were in the guard-rooms and in fiGini7N and
also niB^N^, and that IVK'^ nMB^ into the interior of the gate-
building, i.e. going into the inner side of the gateway ^UD
D''3D, round about, i.e. surrounding the gateway on all sides.
To understand these statements, we must endeavour, first of all,
to get a clear idea of the meaning of the words OtY'H and nits?*?.
The first occurs in the singular ?*^?, not only in vers. 14, 16, and
ch. xli. 3, but also in 1 Kings vi. 31 ; in the plural only in this
chapter and in ch. xli. 1. The second a^'K or D?x is met with
only in this chapter, and always in the plural, in the form HlspK
only in vers. 16 and 30, in other cases always CS?'^, or
with a suffix VSrs, after the analogy of ni^n in ver. 12 by
the side of D''!|«ri in vers. 7 and 16, ''Nn in ver. 10, and VNn
or liW in vers. 21, 29, 33, 36, from which it is apparent
that the difference in the formation of the plural (niD!'''N and
D''D7''N) has no influence upon the meaning of the word. On
the other hand, it is evident from our verse (ver. 16), and still
198 THE PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL,
more so from the expression 1G)?N1 v^S, which is repeated in
vers. 21, 24, 29, 33, and 36 (cf. vers. 26, 31, and 34), that n^hl^
and Q^S??? must signify different things, and are not to be
identified, as Bottcher and others suppose. The word b^t?, as
an architectural term, never occurs except in connection with
doors or gates. It is used in this connection as early as
1 Kings vi. 31, in the description of the door of the most holy
place in Solomon's temple, where ?;Nn signifies the projection
on the door-posts, i.e. the projecting portion of the wall in
which the door-posts were fixed. Ezekiel uses nrisn rs in
ch. xli. 3 in the same sense in relation to the door of the most
holy place, and in an analogous manner applies the term Dv*x
to the pillars which rose up to a colossal height at or by the
gates of the courts (vers. 9, 10, 14, 21, 24, etc.), and also of
the pillars at the entrance into the holy place (ch. xli. 1). The
same meaning may also be retained in ver. 16, where pillars (or
posts) are attributed to the guard-rooms, since the suffix in nan^PK
can only be taken as referring to D^srin. As these guard-rooms
had doors, the doors may also have had their posts. And just
as in ver. 14 -'l^'-'S points back to the QyS previously men-
tioned, and the singular is used in a collective sense ; so may
the -'IN ?« in ver. 16 be taken collectively, and referred to
the pillars mentioned before. — There is more difficulty in
determining the meaning of D?^N (plural CS^?? or rfSpN),
which has been identified sometimes with D^W, sometimes with
Dv^N. Although etymologically connected with these two
words, it is not only clearly distinguished from C^^S, as we have
already observed, but it is also distinguished from D^W by the
fact that, apart from ch. xli. 15, where the plural 'B^'iK signifies
the front porches in all the gate-buildings of the court, D^S
only occurs in the singular, because every gate-building had
only one front porch, whereas the plural is always used in the
case of Q^l3?N. So far as the form is concerned, D^^N is derived
from ?;n ; and since ?;n signifies the projection, more especially
the pillars on both sides of the doors and gates, it has apparently
CHAP. XL. 6-16. 199
the force of an abstract noun, projecting work ; but as distin-
guished from the prominent pillars, it seems to indicate the
projecting works or portions on the side walls of a building of
large dimensions. If, then, we endeavour to determine the
meaning of D?'^ more precisely in our description of the gate-
building, where alone the word occurs, we find from ver. 30
that there were nitapN round about the gate-buildings; and
again from vers. 16 and 25, that the O^BpN had windows, which
entered into the gateway ; and still further from vers. 22
and 26, that when one ascended the flight of steps, they were
'?&'?, « in front of them." And lastly, from vers. 21, 29, and 33,
wljere guard-rooms, on this side and on that side, pillars (nvX),
and Q'!??^ are mentioned as constituent parts of the gate-
building or gateway, and the length of the gateway is given
as fifty cubits, we may infer that the D''13PXj with the guard-
rooms and pillars, formed the side enclosures of the gateway
throughout its entire length. Consequently we shall not be
mistaken, if we follow Kliefoth in understanding by 2''13?X those
portions of the inner side walls of the gateway which projected
in the same manner as the two pillars by the porch, namely,
the intervening walls between the three guard-rooms, and also
those portions of the side walls which enclosed the two thresholds
on either side. For " there was nothing more along the gate-
■<\'ay, with the exception of the portions mentioned," that pro-
jected in any way, inasmuch as these projecting portions of the
side enclosures, together with the breadth of the guard-rooms
and the porch, along with its pillars, made up the entire length
of the gateway, amounting to fifty cubits. This explanation of
the word is applicable to all the passages in which it occurs,
even to vers. 30 and 31, as the exposition of these verses will
show. — It follows from this that the windows mentioned in
ver. 16 can only be sought for in the walls of the guard-rooms
and the projecting side walls of the gateway ; and therefore
that fi^i]]''?^ ^^\ is to be taken as a more precise definition of
B'srin-^K : " there were windows in the guard-rooms, and, indeed
200 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
(that is to say), in their pillars," i.e. by the side of the pillars
enclosing the door. These windows entered into the interior
of the gateway. It still remains questionable, however,
whether these windows looked out of the guard-rooms into the
court, and at the same time threw light into the interior of the
gateway, because the guard-rooms were open towards the gate-
way, as Bottcher, Hitzig, Kliefoth, and others assume; or
whether the guard-rooms had also a wall with a door opening
into the gateway, and windows on both sides, to which allusion
is made here. The latter is by no means probable, inasmuch
as, if the guard-rooms were not open towards the gateway, the
walls between them would not have projected in such a man-
ner as to allow of their being designated as nisPN. For this
reason we regard the former as the correct supposition. There
is some difficulty also in the further expression 3"'ap 3^2p ; for,
strictly speaking, there were not windows round about, but
simply on both sides of the gateway. But if we bear in mind
that the windows in the hinder or outer wall of the guard-rooms
receded considerably in relation to the windows in the project-
ing side walls, the expression 3*30 a^Hp can be justified in this
sense : " all round, wherever the eye turned in the gateway."
^^12?^? t?, likewise in the projecting walls, sc. there were such
windows. X?\ implies not only that there were windows in these
walls, but also that they were constructed in the same manner
as those in the pillars of the guard-rooms. It was only thus
that the gateway came to have windows round about, which
went inwards. Consequently this is repeated once more ; and
in the last clause of the verse it is still further observed, that
?;n PN, i.e., according to ver. 15, on the two lofty pillars in front
of the porch, there were D'^lb'? added, i.e. ornaments in the
form of palms, not merely of palm branches or palm leaves. —
This completes the description of the eastern gate of the outer
court. The measuring angel now leads the prophet over the
court to the other two gates, the north gate and the south gate.
On the way, the outer court is described and measured.
CHAP. XL. 17-19. 201
Vers 17-19. The Outer Court described and mea-
sured. — Ver. 17. And he led me into the outer court, and
behold there were cells and pavement made round the court ;
thirty cells on the pavement, Ver. 18. And the pavement was
by the side of the gates, corresponding to the length of the gates,
{namely) the lower pavement. Ver. 19. And he measured the
breadth from the front of the lower gate to the front of the inner
court, about a hundred cubits on the east side and on the north
side. — Ezekiel having been led through the eastern gate into
the outer court, was able to survey it, not on the eastern side
only, but also on the northern and southern sides ; and there he
perceived cells and fis^., pavimentum, mosaic pavement, or a
floor paved with stones laid in mosaic form (2 Chron. vii. 3 ;
Esth, i. 6), made round the court; that is to say, according to
the more precise description in ver. 18, on both sides of the
gate-buildings, of a breadth corresponding to their length, run-
ning along the inner side of the wall of the court, and conse-
quently not covering the floor of the court in all its extent, but
simply running along the inner side of the surrounding wall as
a strip of about flfty cubits broad, and that not uniformly on
all four sides, but simply on the eastern, southern, and northern
sides, and at the north - west and south - west corners of the
western side, so far, namely, as the outer court surrounded the
inner court and temple (see Plate I. b b b); for on the western
side the intervening space from the inner court and temple-
house to the surrounding wall of the outer court was filled by
a special building of the separate place. It is with this limita-
tion that we have to take y^o y<20. i^iyj? may belong either
to fiEV"]! fiiiE'p or merely to fiSV^, so far as grammatical con-
siderations are concerned ; for in either case there would be
an irregularity in the gender, and the participle is put in the
singular as a neuter. If we look fairly at the fact itself, not
one of the reasons assigned by Kiiefoth, for taking '"lE'J/ as
referring to navi only, is applicable throughout. If the pave-
ment ran round by the side of the gate-buildings on three sides
202 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of the court, and the cells were by or upon the pavement, they
may have stood on three sides of the court without our being
forced to assume, or even warranted in assuming, that they
must of necessity have filled up the whole length on every side
from the shoulder of the gate-building to the corner, or rather
to the space that was set apart in every corner, according to
ch. xlvi. 21-24, for the cooking of the sacrificial meals of the
people. We therefore prefer to take 'IW as referring to the
cells and the pavement ; because this answers better than the
other, both to the construction and to the fact. In ver. 18 the
pavement is said to have been by the shoulder of the gates.
DnjJB'n is in the plural, because Ezekiel had probably also in his
mind the two gates which are not described till afterwards.
^ina, the shoulder of the gate-buildings regarded as a body, is
the space on either side of the gate-building along the wall,
with the two angles formed by the longer side of the gate-
buildings and the line of the surrounding wall. This is more
precisely defined by 'cj'n 7]nx riDp, alongside of the length of
the gates, i.e. running parallel with it (cf. 2 Sam. xvi. 13), or
stretching out on both sides with a breadth corresponding to
the length of the gate-buildings. The gates were fifty cubits
long, or, deducting the thickness of the outer wall, they pro-
jected into the court to the distance of forty-four cubits.
Consequently the pavement ran along the inner sides of the
surrounding wall with a breadth of forty-four cubits. This
pavement is called the lower pavement, in distinction from the
pavement or floor of the inner court, which was on a higher
elevation. All that is said concerning the niaC'i' is, that there
were thirty of them, and that they were HQinn i^S! (see Plate
I. C). The dispute whether bi^ signifies by or upon the pave-
ment has no bearing upon the fact itself. As Ezekiel
frequently uses ?s for 7}3. and vice versa, the rendering upon
can be defended ; but it cannot be established, as Hitzig sup-
poses, by referring to 2 Kings xvi. 17. If we retain the
literal meaning of h^, at or against, we cannot picture to our-
CHAP. XL. 17-19. 203
selves the position of the cells as projecting from the inner
edge of the pavement into the unpaved portion of the court ;
for in that case, to a person crossing the court, they would
have stood in front of ("'■'.??) the pavement rather than against
the pavement. The prep. 7S, against, rather suggests the
fact that the cells were built near the surrounding wall, so
that the pavement ran along the front of them, which faced
the inner court in an unbroken line. In this case it made no
difference to the view whether the cells were erected upon the
pavement, or the space occupied by the cells was left unpaved,
and the pavement simply joined the lower edge of the walls of
the cells all round. The text contains no account of the manner
in which they were distributed on the three sides of the court.
But it is obvious from the use of the plural niaE'p, that the
reference is not to thirty entire buildings, but simply to thirty
rooms, as nsB'p does not signify a building consisting of several
rooms, but always a single room or cell in a building. Thus
in 1 Sam. ix. 22 it stands for a room appointed for holding
the sacrificial meals, and that by no means a small room, but
one which could accommodate about thirty persons. In Jer.
xxxvi. 12 it is applied to a room in the king's palace, used as
the chancery. Elsewhere nsE'p is the term constantly employed
for the rooms in the court-buildings and side-buildings of the
temple, which served partly as a residence for the officiating
priests and Levites, and partly for the storing of the temple
dues collected in the form of tithes, fruits, and money (yid.
2 Kings xxiii. 11 ; Jer. xxxv. 4, xxxvi. 10 ; 1 Chron. ix. 26 ;
Neh. X. 38—40). Consequently we must not think of thirty
separate buildings, but have to distribute the thirty cells on the
three sides of the court in such a manner that there would be
ten on each side, and for the sake of symmetry five in every
building, standing both right and left between the gate-building
and the corner kitchens. — In ver. 19 the size or compass of the
outer court is determined. The breadth from the front of the
lower gate to the front of the inner court was 100 cubits.
204 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
njinnnn "tyfy}, the gate of the lower court, i.e. the outer gate,
which was lower than the inner, nj^nnrin is not an adjective
agreeing with IJ'K', for apart from Isa. xiv. 31 "^W is never
construed as a feminine ; but it is used as a substantive for isn
njinnnn, the lower court, see the comm. on ch. viii. 3. V.??*? de-
notes the point from which the measuring started, and 'Jsp
nsnn the ' direction in which it proceeded, including also the
terminus : " to before the inner court," equivalent to " up to
the front of the inner court." The terminal point is more pre-
cisely defined by p"?, from without, which Hitzig proposes to
erase as needless and unusual, but without any reason. For,
inasmuch as the gateways of the inner court were built int6
the outer court, as is evident from what follows, pHD simply
affirms that the measuring only extended to the point where
the inner court commenced within the outer, namely, to the
front of the porch of the gate, not to the boundary wall of the
inner court, as this wall stood at a greater distance from the
porch of the outer court-gate by the whole length of the court-
gate, that is to say, as much as fifty cubits. From this more
precise definition of the terminal point it follows still further,
that the starting-point was not the boundary-wall, but the
porch of the gate of the outer court ; in other words, that the
hundred cubits measured by the man did not include the fifty
cubits' length of the gate-building, but this is expressly ex-
cluded. This is placed beyond all doubt by vers. 23 and 27,
where the distance of the inner court-gate from the gate (of
the outer court) is said to have been a hundred cubits. — The
closing words iissni Dalian have been very properly separated
by the Masoretes from what precedes, by means of the Athnach,
for they are not to be taken in close connection with n»Jl ; nor
are they to be rendered, " he measured . . . toward the east and
toward the north," for this would be at variance with the state-
ment, "to the front of the inner court." They are rather
meant to supply a further appositional definition to the whole
of the preceding clause : " he measured from ... a hundred
CHAP. XL. 20-23. 205
cubits," relating to the east side and the north side of the court,
and affirm that the measuring took place from gate to gate both
on the eastern and on the northern side ; in other words, that the
measure given, a hundred cubits, applied to the eastern side as
well as the northern ; and thus they prepare the way for the
description of the north gate, which follows from ver. 20
onwards.
Vers. 20-27. The North Gate and the South Gate
OF THE Outer Couet (1 Plate I. A). — The description of
these two gate-buildings is very brief, only the principal por-
tions being mentioned, coupled with the remark that they
resembled those of the east gate. The following is the descrip-
tion of the north gate. — Ver. 20. Atid the gate, whose direction
was toward the north, touching the outer court, he measured its
length and its breadth, Ver. 21. And its guardrrooms, three on
this side and three on that, and its pillars audits wall-projections.
It was according to the measure of the first gate, fifty cubits
its length, and the breadth five and twenty cubits. Ver. 22.
And its windows and its wall - projections and its palms were
according to tJie measure of the gate, whose direction was toward
the east; and by seoen steps they went up, and its wall -pro-
jections were in front of it, Ver. 23. And a gate to the inner
court was opposite the gate to the north and to the east; and
he measured from gate to gate a hundred ctibits. — With the
measuring of the breadth of the court the measuring man
had reached the north gate, which he also proceeded to
measure now. In ver. 20 the words l?^"ni to njix^nn are written
absolutely ; and in ver. 21 the verb njn does not belong to the
objects previously enumerated, viz. guard-rooms, pillars, etc.,
but these objects are governed by 10J5, and n^n points back to
the principal subject of the two verses, ^J?K'^ : it (the gate) was
according to the measure . . . (cf. vers. 15 and 13). For the
use of 3 in definitions of measurement, " 25 nBN3" (by the cubit,
sc. measured), as in Ex. xxvii. 18, etc., see Gesenius, § 120. 4,
206 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
Anm. 2. The " first gate " is the east gate, the one first mea-
sured and described. In ver. 236 the number of steps is ^ven
which the flight leading into the gateway had; and this of course
applies to the flight of steps of the east gate also (ver. 6). In
ver. 22, rrnpa is not to be regarded as doubtful, as Hitzig sup-
poses, or changed into 3 ; for even if the windows of the east
gate were not measured, they had at all events a definite mea-
surement, so that it might be affirmed with regard to the windows
of the north gate that their dimensions were the same. This
also applies to the palm-decorations. With regard to the C'Gi^K
(ver. 21), however, it is simply stated that they were measured;
but the measurement is not given. Dni.JSp (ver. 22, end) is not
to be altered in an arbitrary and ungrammatical way into '""?*?£i?,
as Bottcher proposes. The suffix Dn refers to the steps.
Before the steps there were the ^''wV^ of the gate-building.
This " before," however, is not equivalent to " outside the flight
of steps," as Bottcher imagines ; for the measuring man did not
go out of the inside of the gate, or go down the steps into the
court, but came from the court and ascended the steps, and as
he was going up he saw in front {ms-a-vis) of the steps the
D*I3?''X of the gate, i.e. the wall - projections on both sides of
the threshold of the gate. In ver. 23 it is observed for the
first time that there was a gate to the inner court opposite
to the northern and the eastern gate of the outer court already
described, so that the gates of the outer and inner court stood
vis-a-vis. The distance between these outer and inner gates
is then measured, viz. 100 cubits, in harmony with ver. 196.
In vers. 24-27 the south gate is described with the same
brevity. Ver. 24. And he led me toward the south, and behold
there was a gate toioard the south, and he measured its. pillars
and its wall-projections according to the same measures. Ver. 25.
And there were windows in it and its wall-projections round
about like those windows ; fifty cubits was the length, and
the breadth five and twenty cubits. Ver. 26. And seven steps
were its ascent and its wall-projections in the front of them,
CHAP. XL. 24-27. 207
and it had palm -work, one upon this side and one upon
that on its pillars. Ver. 27. And there was a gate to the
inner court toward the south, and he measured from gate to
gate toward the south a hundred cubits. — This gate also
was built exactly like the two others. The description simply
differs in form, and not in substance, from the description
of the gate immediately preceding. n?Nn nilBS, " like those
measures," is a concise expression for " like the measures of
the pillars already described at the north and east gates."
For ver. 25, compare vers. 16 and 216; and for ver. 26a,
vid. ver.' 22J. Ver. 266 is clearly explained from ver. 166,
as compared with ver. 96. And lastly, ver. 27 answers to the
23d verse, and completes the measuring of the breadth of
the court, which was also a hundred cubits upon the south
side, from the outer gate to the inner gate standing opposite,
as was the case according to ver. 19 upon the eastern side.
Havernick has given a different explanation of ver. 27, and
would take the measurement of a hundred cubits as referring
to the distance between the gates of the inner court which stood
opposite to each other, because in ver. 27 we have IJ??'? in the
text, and not iVB'n \q ; so that we should have to render the
passage thus, " he measured from a gate to the gate toward the
south a hundred cubits," and not " from the gate (already
described) of the outer court," but from another gate, which
according to the context of the verse must also be a gate of the
inner court. But it is precisely the context which speaks
decidedly against this explanation. For since, according to
ver. 18, the measuring man did not take the prophet into the
inner court, for the purpose of measuring it before his eyes, till
after he had measured from (a) gate to the south gate of the
inner court, the distance which he had previously measured and
found to be a hundred cubits is not to be sought for within
the inner court, and therefore cannot give the distance between
the gates of the inner court, which stood opposite to one
another, but must be that from the south gate of the outer
208 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
court to the south gate of the inner. This is the case not only
here, but also in ver. 23, where the north gate is mentioned.
We may see how little importance is to be attached to the omis-
sion of the article in IJ'E'D from tlie expression iJ'B' ?N iPB'D in
ver. 23, where neither the one gate nor the other is defined,
because the context showed which gates were meant. Haver-
nick's explanation is therefore untenable, notwithstanding the
fact that, according to ver. 47, the size of the inner court was
a hundred cubits both in breadth and length. — From the
distance between the gates of the outer court and the corre-
sponding gates of the inner, as given in vers. 27, 23, and 19,
we find that the outer court covered a space of two hundred
cubits on every side, — namely, fifty cubits the distance which
the outer court building projected into the court, and fifty cubits
for the projection of the gate-building of the inner court into
the outer court, and a hundred cubits from one gate-porch to
the opposite one (50 -h 50 + 1 00 = 200).
Consequently the full size of the building enclosed by the
wall (ch. xl. 5), i.e. of the temple with its two courts, may also
be calculated, as it has been by many of the expositors. If we
proceed, fcr example, from the outer north gate to the outer
south gate upon the ground plan (Plate I.), we have, to quote
the words of Kliefoth, " first the northern breadth of the outer
court (D) with its two hundred cubits ; then the inner court,
which measured a hundred cubits square according to ch.
xl. 47 (E), with its hundred cubits ; and lastly, the south side
of the outer court with two hundred cubits more (Z)) ; so that
the sanctuary was five hundred cubits broad from north to
south. And if we start from the entrance of the east gate of
the court (A), we have first of all the eastern breadth of the
outer court, viz. two hundred cubits ; then the inner court {E)
with its hundred cubits ; after that the temple-buildings, which
also covered a space of a hundred cubits square according to
ch. xli. 13, 14, including the open space around them (G), with
another hundred cubits ; and lastly, the nnta (J), which was
CHAP. XL. 28-37. 209
situated to the west of the temple-buildings, and also covered a
space of a hundred cubits square according to eh. xli. 13, 14,
with another hundred cubits ; so that the sanctuary was also
five hundred cubits long from east to west, or, in other words,
formed a square of five hundred cubits."
Vers. 28-47. Tlie Inner Court, with its Gates, Cells, and
Slaugh tering- Tables.
Vers. 28-37. The Gates of the Innee Ooukt. — {Vid.
Plate I. B and Plate II. II.) — Ver. 28. And he brought me
into the inner court through the south gate, and measured the
south gate according to the same measures; Ver. 29. And its
guard-rooms, and its pillars, and its wall-projections, according
to the same measures ; and there were windoios in it and in its
wall-projections round about : fifty cubits was the length, and the
breadth Jive and twenty cubits. Ver. 30. And wall-projections
wei'e round about, the length Jive and twenty cubits, and the
breadth Jive cubits. Ver. 31. And its wall-projections were
toward tlie outer court ; and there were palms on its pillars, and
eight steps its ascendings.- Ver. 32. And he led me into the inner
court toward the east, and measured the gate according to the
same measures ; Ver. 33. And its guard-rooms, and its pillars,
and its wall-projections, according to the same measures ; and
there were windows in it and its wall-projections round about :
the length was Jifty cubits, and the breadth Jive and twenty cubits.
Ver. 34. And its wall-projections were toward the outer court ;
and there were palms on its pillars on this side and on that side,
and eight steps its ascent. Ver. 35. And he brought me to tlie north
gate, and measured it according to the same measures ; Ver. 36.
Its guard-rooms, its pillars, and its wall-projections ; and there
were windows in it round about : the lengtli was Jifty cubits, and
the breadth Jive and twenty cubits. Ver. 37. And its pillars
stood toward the outer court ; and palms were upon its pillars
on this side and on that; and its ascent was eight steps. —
In ver. 27 the measuring man had measured the distance from
EZEK. II. O
210 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the south gate of the outer court to the south gate of the inner
court, which stood opposite to it. He then took the prophet
through the latter (ver. 28) into the inner court, and measured
it as he went through, and found the same measurements as he
had found in the gates of the outer court. This was also the
case with the measurements of the guard-rooms, pillars, and
wall-projections, and with the position of the windows, and the
length and breadth of the whole of the gate-building (ver. 29);
from which it follows, as a matter of course, that this gate
resembled the outer gate in construction, constituent parts, and
dimensions. This also applied to both the east gate and north
gate, the description of which in vers. 32-37 corresponds exactly
to that of the south gate, with the exception of slight variations
of expression. It is true that the porch is not mentioned in
the case of either of these gates ; but it is evident that this was
not wanting, and is simply passed over in the description, as we
may see from ver. 39, where the tables for the sacrifices are
described as being in the porch (dSk3). There are only two
points of difference mentioned in vers. 31, 34, and 37, by which
these inner gates were distinguished from the outer. In the
first place, that the flights of steps to the entrances to these
gates had eight steps according to the closing words of the
verses just cited, whereas those of the outer gates had only
seven (cf. vers. 22 and 26) ; whilst the expression also varies,
vyo being constantly used here instead of iniPjI (ver. 26). niiijl,
from npj), the ascending, are literally ascents, i.e. places of
mounting, for a flight of steps or staircase. 1?J?D, the plural of
i"'???, the ascent (not a singular, as Hitzig supposes), has the
same meaning. The second difference, which we find in the
first clause of the verses mentioned, is of a more important
character. It is contained in the words, " and its CS^K (the
projecting portions of the inner side-walls of the gateway) were
directed toward the outer court" (?N and 7 indicating the
direction). The interpretation of this somewhat obscure state-
ment is facilitated by the fact that in ver. 37 I?'?? stands in the
CHAP, XL. 28-37. 211
place of 1ISTN (vers. 31 and 34). v^N are the two lofty gate-
pillars by the porch of the gate, which formed the termination
of the gate-building towards the inner court in the case of the
outer gates. If, then, in the case of the inner gates, these
pillars stood toward the outer court, the arrangement of these
gates must have taken the reverse direction to that of the outer
gates ; so that a person entering the gate would not go from
the flight of steps across the threshold to the guard-rooms, and
then across the second threshold to the porch, but would first of
all enter the porch by the pillars in front, and then go across
the threshold to the guard-rooms, and, lastly, proceed across the
second threshold, and so enter the inner court. But if this
gate-building, when looked at from without, commenced with
the porch-pillars and the front porch, this porch at any rate
must have been situated outside the dividing wall of the two
courts, that is to say, must have been within the limits of the
outer court. And further, if the O^srs, or wall-projections
between the guard-rooms and by the thresholds, were also
directed toward the outer court, the whole of the gate-building
must have been built within the limits of that court. This is
affirmed by the first clauses of vers. 31, 34, and 37, which
have been so greatly misunderstood ; and there is no necessity
to alter If N1 in ver. 37 into IB^XI, in accordance with vers. 31
and 34. For what is stated in vers. 31 and 34 concerning
the position or direction of the Q*l?b''K, also applies to the
Dv*N ; and they are probably mentioned in ver. 37 because of
the intention to describe still further in ver. 38 what stood near
the Oy'''?. Kliefoth very properly finds it incomprehensible,
" that not a few of the commentators have been able, in spite
of these definite statements in vers. 31, 34, and 37, to adopt
the conclusion that the gate-buildings of the inner gates were
situated within the inner court, just as the gate-buildings of the
outer gates were situated within the outer court. As the inner
court measured only a hundred cubits square, if the inner gates
had stood within the inner court, the north and south gates of
212 THE PROPHKCIES OF EZEKIEL.
the inner court would have met in the middle, and the porch of
the east gate of the inner court would have stood close against
the porches of the other two gates. It was self-evident that
the gate-buildings of the inner gates stood within the more
spacious outer court, like those of the outer gates. Neverthe-
less, the reason why the situation of the inner gates is so ex-
pressly mentioned in the text is evidently, that this made the
position of the inner gates the reverse of that of the outer
gates. In the case of the outer gates, the first threshold was
in the surrounding wall of the outer court, and the steps stood
in front of the wall ; and thus the gate-building stretched into
the outer court. In that of the inner gates, on the contrary,
the second threshold lay between the surrounding walls of the
inner court, and the gate-building stretched thence into the outer
court, and its steps stood in front of the porch of the gate.
Moreover, in the case of the east gates, for example, the porch of
the outer gate stood toward the west, and the porch of the inner
gate toward the east, so that the two porches stood opposite to
each other in the outer court, as described in vers. 23 and 27."
In ver. 30 further particulars respecting the D'sr?? are given,
which are apparently unsuitable ; and for this reason the verse
has been omitted by the LXX., while J. D. Michaelis, Biittcher,
Ewald, Hitzig, and Maurer, regard it as an untenable gloss.
Havernick has defended its genuineness ; but inasmuch as he
regards D^s??? as synonymous with D^lK, he has explained it in
a most marvellous and decidedly erroneous manner, as Kliefoth
has already proved. The expression 3'2D nOD, and the length
and breadth of the lisps here given, both appear strange.
Neither the length of twenty-five cubits nor the breadth of five
cubits seems to tally with the other measures of the gate-
building. So much may be regarded as certain, that the
twenty-five cubits' length and the five cubits' breadth of the
nisps cannot be in addition to the total length of the gate-
building, namely fifty cubits, or its total breadth of twenty-five
cubits, but must be included in them. For the nte^K were
CHAP. XL, 28-37. 213
simply separate portions of the side-enclosure of the gateway,
since this enclosure of fifty cubits long consisted of wall-projec-
tions (riiS7S), three open guard-rooms, and a porch with pillars.
The open space of the guard-rooms was 3 X 6 = 18 cubits, and
the porch was six cubits broad in the clear (vers. 7 and 8), and
the pillars two cubits thick. If we deduct these 18 + 6+2 =
26 cubits from the fifty cubits of the entire length, there remain
twenty-four cubits for the walls by the side of the thresholds
and between the guard-rooms, namely, 2 X 5 = 10 cubits for
the walls between the three guard-rooms, 2X6 = 12 cubits for
the walls of the threshold, and 2 cubits for the walls of the
porch ; in all, therefore, twenty-four cubits for the rtB?'? ; so
that only one cubit is wanting to • give us the measurement
stated, viz. twenty-five cubits. We obtain this missing cubit if
we assume that the front of the wall-projections by the guard-
rooms and thresholds was a handbreadth and a half, or six
inches wider than the thickness of the walls, that is to say, that
it projected three inches on each side in the form of a moulding.
— The breadth of the nispN in question, namely five cubits, was
the thickness of their wall-work, however, or the dimension of
the intervening wall from the inside to the outside on either
side of the gateway. That the intervening walls should be of
such a thickness will not appear strange, if we consider that the
surrounding wall of the court was six cubits thick, with a height
of only six cubits (ver. 5). And even the striking expression
a^SD a'^D becomes intelligible if we take into consideration the
fact that the projecting walls bounded not only the entrance to
the gate, and the passage through it on the two sides, but also
the inner spaces of the gate-building (the guard-rooms arid
porch) on all sides, and, together with the gates, enclosed the
gateway on every side. Consequently ver. 30 not only has a
suitable meaning, but furnishes a definite measurement of no
little value for the completion of the picture of the gate-build-
ings. The fact that this definite measure was not given in
connection with the gates of the outer court, but was only
214 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
supplemented in the case of the south gate of the inner court,
cannot furnish any ground for suspecting its genuineness, as
several particulars are supplemented in the same manner in this
description. Thus, for example, the number of steps in front of
the outer gates is first given in ver. 22, where the north gate
is described. Still less is there to surprise us in the fact that
these particulars are not repeated in the case of the following
gates, in which some writers have also discovered a ground for
suspecting the genuineness of the verse.
From the south gate the measuring man led the prophet
(ver. 32) into the inner court toward the east, to measure for
him the inner east gate, the description of which (vers. 33
and 34) corresponds exactly to that of the south gate. Lastly,
he led him (ver. 35) to the inner north gate for the same
purpose ; and this is also found to correspond to those pre-
viously mentioned, and is described in the same manner. The
difficulty which Hitzig finds in Dnisn -jnn i»^jsn lvnn-i)S in
ver. 32, and which drives him into various conjectures, with the
assistance of the LXX., vanishes, if instead of taking DHisn T]1T
along with ''^''iSiTj isnn as a further definition of the latter, we
connect it with 'JKU'1 as an indication of the direction taken :
he led me into the inner court, the way (or direction) toward
the east, and measured the gate (situated there). The words,
when taken in this sense, do not warrant the conclusion that
he had gone out at the south gate again. — TiOl in ver. 35 is an
Aramaic form for IBJl in vers. 32 and 28.
Vers. 38-47. The Cells and Arrangements for the
Sacrificial Worship by and in the Inner Court.—
Ver. 38. And a cell with its door was by the pillars at the gates;
there they had to wash the burnt-offering. Ver. 39. And in the
porch of the gate were two tables on this side and two tables on
that, to slay thereon Hie burnt-offering, the sin-offering, and the
trespass-offering. Ver. 40. And at the shoulder outside, to
one going up to the opening of the gate toward the north, stood
CHAP. XL. 38-47. 215
two tables ; and at the other shoulder, by the porch of the gate,
two tables. Ver. 41. Four tables on this side and four tables
on that side, at the shoulder of the gate ; eight tables on which
they were to slaughter. Ver. 42. And four tables by the steps,
hewp, stone, a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a
half broad, and a cubit high; upon these they were to lay the
instruments with which they slaughtered the burnt-offerings and
other sacrifices. Ver. 43. And the double pegs, a span long, were
fastened round about the house ; but the flesh of the sacrifice was
placed upon the tables. Ver. 44. And outside the inner gate were
two cells in the inner court, one at the shoulder of the north gate,
with its front side toward the south ; one at the shoulder of the
south gate, with the front toward the north. Ver. 45. And he
said to me, Tliis cell, whose front is toward the south, is for the
•priests who attend to the keeping of the house ; Ver. 46. A nd
the cell whose front is toward the north is for the priests who
attend to the keeping of the altar. Tliey are the sons of Zadoh,
who draw near to Jehovah of the sons of Levi, to serve Him.
Ver. 47. And he measured the court, the length a hundred cubits,
and the breadth a hundred cubits in the. square, and the altar
stood before the house. — The opinions of modern commentators
differ greatly as to the situation of the cells mentioned in ver.
38, since Bbttcher and Hitzig have adjusted a test to suit their
own liking, founded upon the Septuagint and upon decidedly-
erroneous suppositions. The dispute, whether Dv^Na is to be
rendered in or by the ^Y^ may be easily set at rest by the
simple consideration that the Dv^N in front of the porch of the
gate were pillars of two cubits long and the same broad (ver. 9),
in which it was impossible that a room could be constructed.
Hence the naE*? could only be by (near) the pillars of the gate.
To ^'h'^^ there is also added ClVf'ri (by the gates) in loose co-
ordination {vid. Ewald, § 293e), not for the purpose of describ-
ing the position of the pillars more minutely, which would be
quite superfluous after ver. 9, but to explain the plural uh%
and extend it to the pillars of all the three inner gates, so that
216 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
we have to assume that there was a nsBO by the pillars of all
these gates (Plate I. 0). This is also demanded by the purpose
of these cells, viz. " for the cleansing or washing of the burnt-
offering." As the sacrifices were not taken through one gate
alone, but through all the gates, the Sabbath-offering of the
prince being carried, according to oh. xlvi. 1, 2, through the
east gate, which was closed during the week, and only opened
on the Sabbath, there must have been a cell, not by the north
gate alone (Bottcher, Havernick), or by the east gate only
(Ewald, Hitzig), but by every gate, for the cleansing of the
burnt-offering. Havernick, Hitzig, and others are wrong in
supposing that HPiyn is a synecdochical designation applied to
every kind of animal sacrifice. This is precluded not only by
the express mention of the burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, and
trespass-offerings (ver. 39), and by the use of the word I3"]P in
this sense in ver. 43, but chiefly by the circumstance that neither
the Old Testament nor the Talmud makes any allusion to the
washing of every kind of flesh offered in sacrifice, but that they
merely speak of the washing of the entrails and legs of the
animals sacrificed as burnt-offerings (Lev. i. 9), for which
purpose the basins upon the mechonoth in Solomon's temple
were used (2 Chron. iv. 6, where the term Y^l used in Lev. i. 9
is interpreted by the apposition M imn;; rbSyn nts'yp-ns). A
room at every gate (not by every pillar) was sufficient for this
purpose. If there had been a naB*? of this kind on each side of
the gate, as many have assumed on symmetrical grounds, this
would have been mentioned, just as in the case of the slaughter-
ing-tables (vers. 39-42). The text furnishes no information as
to the side of the doorway on which it stood, whether by the
right or the left pillar. On the ground plan we have placed the
one at the east gate, on the right side, and those by the north
and south gates on the western side (Plate 1. 0).
Moreover, according to vers. 39-41, there were twice two
tables on each side, eight therefore in all, which served for
slaughtering. Two pairs stood " in the porch of the gate," i.e.
CHAP. XL. 38-47. 217
in the inner space of the porch, one pair on this side, the other
pair on that, i.e. on the right and left sides to a person entering
the porch, probably near the wall (see Plate II. 11.//). The
expression Di]7^ talDB'Pj to slaughter at the tables (vers. 39 and
40), stands for " to use when slaughtering " — that is, for the
purpose of laying the slaughtered flesh upon. This is apparent
from the fact itself in ver. 39. For the slaughtering was not
performed within the front porch, but outside, and somewhere
near it. The front porch of the gate-building was not a
slaughter-house, but the place where those who entered the
gate could assemble. The only purpose, therefore, for which
the tables standing here could be used was to place the sacrificial
flesh upon when it was prepared for the altar, that the priests
might take it thence and lay it upon the altar. "iVE'n n^K3 is
to be understood as signifying the inner space of the porch ;
this is required by the antithesis in ver. 40, where two pair of
tables outside the porch are mentioned. Two of these stood
" by the shoulder outside to one going up to the gate opening,
the northern" (Plate II. II. d d). The meaning of these not very
intelligible words is apparent from the second half of the verse,
■which adds the correlative statement as to the two opposite
tables. When it is said of these tables that they stood by the
other shoulder (n^nxn firi3n"7«) which the porch of the gate
had, not only is "iJ^E'ri nriB? of the first hemistich more pre-
cisely defined hereby as the gate-porch, but nalssn is also
rendered intelligible, namely, that as it corresponds to Minsn,
it is an adjective belonging to HD?'.' ^^, " at the northern
shoulder outside to a person going up the steps to the opening
of the gate " (pftnii^ the outer side, in contrast to the inside of
the porch, D^«3, ver. 39). The shoulder of the gate, or rather
of the porch of the gate, is the side of it, and that the outer
side. Consequently these four tables stood by the outer sides
of the porch, two by the right wall and two by the left. In
ver. 41, what has already been stated concerning the position of
the tables mentioned in vers. 39 and 40 is summed up : Four
218 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tables stood on each side of the porch, two inside, and two
against the outer wall, eight tables in all, which were used for
slaughtering purposes. There is nothing strange in ij?^n ina?
as an abbreviated expression for ^5fB'i^ DPS? IB'N f\r\s? in ver. 40,
as want of clearness was not to be feared after ver. 40. In
addition to these there were four other tables (nya-iKi^ and four,
ver. 42) of stone, from which it may be inferred that the four
already mentioned were of wood. The four stone tables stood
n?iV?, i.e. at (near) the flight of steps (cf . nnj? ''Sp, at the entrance
to the city, Prov. viii. 3), and were of hewn square stones, as
no doubt the steps also were (see Plats II. II. e e). It yields no
sense whatever to render njijJ? " for the burnt-offering " (LXX.
and others); and the expression nii'jJ in ver. 26 thoroughly
warrants our translating n?ij;, a flight of steps or staircase).
These stone tables served as flesh - benches, on which the
slaughtering tools were laid. ^rr'VI ^'^jy.^. belong together, the
1 being inserted " as if at the commencement of a new sentence
after a pause in the thought" (cf. Prov. xxiii. 24, xxx. 28:
Gen. xl. 9, Bottcher). It is not expressly stated, indeed, that
these four tables were distributed on the two sides of the steps ;
but this may be inferred with certainty from the position of
the other tables. Moreover, the twelve tables mentioned were
not merely to be found at one of the gate-porches, but by all
three of the inner gates, as was the case with the washing-cells
(ver. 38), for sacrificial animals were taken to the altar and
slaughtered at every gate ; so that what is stated in vers. 39-42
with reference to one porch, namely, the porch of the east gate,
to judge from njiasn in ver. 40, is applicable to the porches of
the south and north gates also.
In ver. 43 another provision for the slaughtering of the
sacrificial animals is mentioned, concerning which the opinions
of the older translators and commentators are greatly divided.
But the only explanation that can be sustained, so far as both
the usage of the language and the facts are concerned, is that
adopted by the Ohaldee, viz. ^T^I^V^ l''5J''3i? nn TIB'S ppsj pijpjj))
CHAP. XL. 38-47. 219
KjnaDD tV^, et ^mc^ll^ egrediebantur (longitudine) unius palmi
defixi in columoiis domus tnacelU, to which not only Bottcher, but
Roediger (Ges. Tlies. p. 1470) and Dietrich (Lea.) have given
their adhesion. For Q)l!lSf'> from nsK', to set or stand (act.),
signifies stakes or pegs (in Ps. Ixviii. 14, the folds constructed
of stakes), here pegs a span long on the wall, into which they
were inserted, and from which they projected to the length of a
span. In the dual it stands for double pegs, forked pegs, upon
which the carcases of the beasts were hung for the purpose of
flaying, as Dav. Kimchi has interpreted the words of the Ohaldee.
The article indicates the kind, viz. the pegs required for the
process of slaughtering. This explanation is also in harmony
with the verb CJ^IO, HopJuil of JW, fastened, which by no means
suits the rendering originated by theLXX., viz. ledges round
the edge or the rim of the table. The only remaining difficulty
is the word n*33, which Bottcher interprets as signifying " in
the interior of the gate-porch and pillars " (Roediger, in interiore
partej nempe in ea atrii parte, ubi hostiae mactandae esseni), on
the just ground that the interior of the front porch could not
be the place for slaughtering, but that this could only be done
outside, either in front of or near the porch. But even in
interiore parte atrii is not really suitable, and at all events is too
indefinite for CJ^ID. It would therefore be probably more
correct to render it "fastened against the house," i.e. to the
outer walls of the gate-porch buildings, so that JV'Z would stand
for buildings in the sense of ii^J3, although I cannot cite any
passage as a certain proof of the correctness of this rendering.
But this does not render the explanation itself a doubtful one,
as it would be still more diflScult to interpet n;33 if D^HSE' were
explained in any other way. 3''3D 3^2p refers to the three outer
sides of the porch. The description of the slaughtering appa-
ratus closes in ver. 435 with the words, " and upon the tables
(mentioned in vers. 39-42) came the flesh of the offering."
I31i5, the general word for sacrificial offerings, as in Lev. i. 2 sqq.
In vers. 44-46 we have a description of cells for the officiating
220 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
priests, and in vers. 45 and 46 two such cells are plainly men-
tioned according to their situation and purpose (yid. Plate I.
F F). But it is impossible to bring the Masoretic text of
ver. 44 into harmony with this, without explaining it in an
arbitrary manner. For, in the first place, the reference there
is to els' niaBO, cells of the singers ; whereas these cells, ac-
cording to vers. 45 and 46, were intended for the priests who
performed the service in the temple-house and at the altar of
burnt-offering. The attempt of both the earlier and the more
recent supporters of the Masoretic text to set aside this discre-
pancy, by arguing that the priests who had to attend to the
service in the temple and at the altar, according to vers. 45
and 46, were singers, is overturned by the fact that in the
Old Testament worship a sharp distinction is made between
the Levitical singers and the priests, i.e. the Aaronites who
administered the priesthood ; and Ezekiel does not abolish this
distinction in the vision of the temple, but sharpens it still
further by the command, that none but the sons of Zadok are
to attend to the priestly service at the sanctuary, while the
other descendants of Aaron, i.e. the Aaronites who sprang from
Ithamar, are only to be employed in watching at the gate of
the house, and other non-priestly occupations (ch. xliv. 10 sqq.).
Consequently Ezekiel could not identify the priests with the
singers, or call the cells intended for the officiating priests
singers' cells. Moreover, only two cells, or cell-buildings, are
mentioned in vers. 45 and 46, and their position is described in
the same words as that of the cells mentioned in ver. 44, so that
there can be no doubt as to the identity of the former and the
altter cells. In ver. 44 the supposed singers' cells are placed
at the north gate, with the front toward the south, which only
applies, according to ver. 45, to the one cell intended for the
priests who attended to the service in the holy place ; and again,
in ve)'. 44, another cell is mentioned at the east gate, with the
front toward the north, which was set apart, according to ver.
46, for the priests who attended to the altar service. Conse-
CHAP. XL. 38-47. 221
quently, according to our Masoretic text of the 44th verse, there
would be first singers' cells (in the plural), and then one cell, at
least three cells therefore ; whereas, according to vers. 45 and
46, there were only two. And lastly, the ins in ver. 446 can
only be understood by our taking it in the sense of '' another,"
in opposition to the usage of the language. For these reasons
we are compelled to alter D''"iE' into DIDE', and IK'S into fin^,
after the LXX., and probably also D''1i?L! into D^Tin, and in
consequence of this to adopt the pointing niaB"?, and to read
n''?a instead of Dn''3Q. Further alterations are not requisite or
indicated by the LXX., as the rest of the deviations in their
test are to be explained from their free handling of the original.
According to the text with these alterations, even in ver. 44
there are only two cells mentioned. They were situated " out-
side the inner gate." This definition is ambiguous, for you are
outside the inner gate not only before entering the gate, i.e.
while in the outer court, but also after having passed through
it and entered the inner court. Hence there follows the more
precise definition, " in the inner court." If, then, we read nnN
for "i^f?, there follows, in perfect accordance with the fact, a
more precise statement as to the situation of both the one and
the other of these cells, nriN and iriK corresponding to one
another. The second ^^K, instead of nriN, which is grammati-
cally the more correct, is to be attributed to a constructio ad
sensum, as the niaEO were not separate rooms, but buildings
with several chambers. One cell stood by the shoulder (side)
of the north gate, with the front (C^S) toward the south ; the
other at the shoulder of the south gate, with the front toward
the north. They stood opposite to one another, therefore, with
their fronts facing each other. Instead of the south gate, how-
ever, the Masoretic text has PHi?? "^W) the east gate ; and ver.
46 contains nothing that would be expressly at variance with
this, so that D'lijn could be defended in case of need. But only
in case of need — that is to say, if we follow Kliefoth in assum-
ing that it stood on the left of the gateway to persons entering
222 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
through the east gate, and explaining the fact that its front
turned toward the north, on the ground that the priests who
resided in it were charged with the duty of inspecting the
sacrifices brought through the east gate, or watching the
bringing in of the sacrifices, so that this cell was simply a
watchman's cell after all. But this assumption is founded upon
a misinterpretation of the formula najan I'lDB'p IDE', to keep
the keeping of the altar. This formula does not mean to
watch and see that nothing unlawful was taken to the altar, but
refers to the altar service itself, the observance of everything
devolving upon the servants of the altar in the performance of
the sacrificial worship, or the offering of the sacrifices upon the
altar according to the precepts of the law. If, then, this duty
was binding upon the priests who resided in this cell, it would
have been very unsuitable for the front of the cell to be turned
toward the north, in which case it would have been absolutely
impossible to see the altar from the front of the cell. This
unsuitability can only be removed by the supposition that the
cell was built at the south gate, with the front toward the north,
i.e. looking directly toward the altar. For this reason we must
also regard i3'''ii5n as a corruption of Qii'nn, and look for this
second cell at the south gate, so that it stood opposite to the
one built at the north gate. — All that remains doubtful is,
whether these two cells were on the east or the west side of the
south and north gates, a point concerning which we have no
information given in the text. In our sketch we have placed
them on the west side (vid. Plate I. F), so that they stood in
front of the altar and the porch-steps. The concluding words
of ver. 46, in which nsn refers to the priests mentioned in
vers. 45 and 46, state that in the new sanctuary only priests of
the sons of Zadok were to take charge of the service at the
altar and in the holy place ; and this is still further expanded
in ch. xliv. 10 sqq. — Finally, in ver. 47 the description of the
courts is concluded with the account of the measure of the
inner court, a hundred cubits long and the same in breadth,
CHAP. XL. 48, 49. 223
according to which it formed a perfect square surrounded by a
wall, according to ch. xlii. 10. The only other observation
made is, that it was within this space that the altar of burnt-
offering stood, the description of which is given afterwards in
ch. xhii. 13 sqq. (see Plate I. H).
Chap. xl. 48-xli. 26. The Temple-house, with the Porch,
Side-storeys, and Back-building.
Chap. xl. 48, 49. The Temple-poeoh (See Plate III. A).
— The measuring angel conducts the prophet still farther to
the porch of the temple, and measures its breadth and length.
— Ver. 48. And he led me to the porch of the house, and measured
the pillar of the porch, five cubits on this side and five cubits
on that side; and the breadth of the gate, three cubits on this
side and three cubits on that side. Ver. 49. The length of
the porch was twenty cubits, and the breadth eleven cubits,
and that by the steps by which one went up ; and columns
were by the pillars, one on this side and one on that side, —
T)]3n is the temple in the more restricted sense of the word,
the temple-house, as in 1 Kings vi. 2, etc. ; and D?s, the porch
before the entrance into the holy place (cf. 1 Kings vi. 3).
The measurements in vers. 48 and 49, which are apparently
irreconcilable with one another, led the LXX. to the adoption
of arbitrary interpolations and conjectures in ver. 49,^ in accord-
ance with which Bottcher, Hitzig, and others have made correc-
tions in the text, which have a plausible justification in the
many artificial and for the most part mistaken interpretations
that have been given of the text. The measures in ver. 49a
are perfectly plain, namely, the length of the porch twenty
cubits, and the breadth eleven cubits ; and there is no question
^ The text of the LXX. reads thus : . . . xes) iufchprKTS to ss'/a to5 alT^aft,
iTYi^uD TTiUTi TO ffXaroj hhu x«i whp^Sb mt/ri sufsu, x«J TO tvpos Tou Svpufia-
to; '!eyf)C,'^« iixxTimupui, xoti sirufiiiss tvi; fvpag tov a.l'hcij/. irvixuii rpiuu
iuliu Ka\ Trnx'^'' Tpiau schii. Kui to fi^xoi tou uiT^eifi 'jenxfii/ lixotii xal to
224 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
that these measurements are to be understood in the clear, that
is to say, as referring to the internal space, excluding the side-
walls, as in the case of the holy place, the most holy place, and
the inner court. The only question is whether the length
signifies the dimension from east to west, i.e. the distance which
had to be traversed on entering the temple, and therefore the
breadth, the extent from north to south ; or whether we are to
understand by the length the larger dimension, and by the
breadth the smaller, in which case the measurement from north
to south, which formed the breadth of the house, would be
designated the length of the porch, and that from east to west
the breadth. Nearly all the commentators have decided in
favour of the latter view, because, in the porch of Salomon's
temple, the length of twenty cubits was measured according to
the breadth of the house. But the fact has been overlooked,
that in 1 Kings vi. 3 the length given is more precisely defined
by the clause, " in front of the breadth of the house." There
is no such definition here, and the analogy of the building of
Solomon's temple is not sufficient in itself to warrant our
regarding the construction of the porch in the temple seen by
Ezekiel as being precisely the same ; since it was only in the
essential portions, the form of which was of symbolical signifi-
cance (the holy place and the most holy), that this picture of a
temple resembled the temple of Solomon, whereas in those
which were less essential it differed from that temple in various
ways. At the very outset, therefore, the more probable assump-
tion appears to be, that just as in the case of the holy place
and the holy of holies, so also in that of the porch, we are to
understand by the length, the distance to be traversed (from
east to west), and by the breadth, the extension on either side
{i.e. from south to north). If, then, we understand the
measurements in ver. 49 in this way, the measures given in
ver. 48 may also be explained without any alterations in the
text. The measuring of the pillar of the porch on either side^
and of the gate on this side and that (ver. 48), is sufficient of
CHAP. XL. 48, 49. 225
itself to lead to the conclusion that the front turned toward a
person entering is the breadth from south to nortli. This
breadth presented to the eye a pillar on this side and one on
that, — two pillars, therefore, each five cubits broad (c c), and a
breadth of gate of three cubits on this side and thrde on that,
six cubits in all (6), that is to say, a total breadth (k — k) of
5 + 3 + 3 + 5= 16 cubits. The only thing that can surprise
one here is the manner in which the breadth of the gate is
defined : three cubits on this side and that, instead of simply
six cubits. But the only reason in all probability is, that the
pillars on either side are mentioned just before, and the gate of
six cubits' breadth consisted of two halves, which had their
hinges fastened to the adjoining pillars, so that each half was
measured by itself from the pillar to which it was attached.
The breadth of front mentioned, viz. sixteen cubits, agrees very
well with the breadth of the porch inside, i.e. eleven cubits
(m — m), for it allows a thickness of two cubits and a half for
each side wall (a), and this was sufficient for the walls of a
porch. The pillars, which were five cubits broad on the outer
face, were therefore only half that breadth (2-^ cubits) in the
inner side within the porch, the other two cubits and a half
forming the side wall. All the particulars given in ver. 48
may be explained in this way without any artifice, and yield a
result the proportions of which are in harmony with those of
the entire building. For the porch, with an external breadth
of sixteen cubits, was half as broad as the house, which had a
breadth of twenty cubits in the clear, and side walls of six
cubits in thickness (ch. xli. 5), so that when measured on the
outside it was 6 + 20 + 6 = 32 cubits broad. The breadth of
the interior also is apparently perfectly appropriate, as the porch
was not intended either for the reception of vessels or for the
abode of individuals, but was a simple erection in front of the
entrance into the holy place, the door of which (d) was ten
cubits broad (ch. xli. 2), that is to say, half a cubit narrower on
either side than the porch-way leading to it. And lastly, the-
EZEK. 11. p
226 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIF.L.
length of the porcli was also in good proportion to the holy
place, which followed the porch ; the porch being twenty cubits
long, and the holy place forty cubits. If we add to this the
front wall, with a thickness of two cubits and a half, corre-
sponding to that of the side walls, we obtain an external lengtli
of twenty-two cubits and a half for the porch. In front were
the steps by which one went up to the porch (Z). It is generally
supposed that there were ten steps, the "if K after riippi3 being
changed into "IJ^V (ten) after the example of the LXX. But
however this alteration may commend itself when the facts of
the case are considered, ten steps in front of the porch answer-
ing very well to the eight steps before the gateway of the inner
court, and to the seven steps in front of the gateway of the
outer court, it is not absolutely necessary, and in all probability
is merely a conjecture of the Seventy, who did not know what
to do with ItJ'N, and possibly it is not even correct (see at cli.
xli. 8). The words "iK'X Tr\'?Vip2\ can be attached without diffi-
culty to the preceding account of the breadth ; " the breadth
was eleven cubits, and that at the steps by which they went up
to it," i.e. when measured on the side on which the flight of
steps stood. If the words are taken in this way, they serve to
remove all doubt as to the side which is designated as the
breadth, with special reference to the fact that the porch of
Solomon's temple was constructed in a different manner. The
number of steps, therefore, is not given, as was also the case
with the east gate of the outer court (ch. xl. 6), because it was
of no essential importance in relation to the entire building. The
last statement, "and there were columns by the pillars on this side
and on that," is free from difficulty, although there is also a
difference of opinion among the commentators as to the position
of these columns. D^'Nii points back to cbs 7K (ver. 48). The
preposition 75< does not imply that the columns stood close to the
pillars, and had the form of half-columns, but simply that they
stood near the pillars (see Plate III. K), like the columns Jachia
and Boaz in Solomon's temple, to which they correspond.
CHAP. XLI. 1-4. 227
Chap. xli. 1-4. The Inner Space of the Temple (see
Plate III. B and C). — Ver. 1. And he led me into the temple,
and measured the pillars, six cubits breadth on this side and six
cubits breadth on that side, with regard to the breadth of the tent.
Ver. 2. And Hie breadth of the door was ten cubits; and the
shoulders of the door, five cubits on this side, and Jive cubits on
that : and he measured its length, forty cubits ; and the breadth,
twenty cubits. Ver. 3. And he went within and measured the
pillar of the door, two cubits ; and the door, six cubits ; and the
breadth of the door, seven cubits. Ver. 4. And he measured its
length, twenty cubits ; and the breadth, twenty cubits, toward the
temple ; and said to me. This is the holy of holies. — Vers. 1 and 2
give the measurements of the holy place. ^yVi is used here
in the more restricted sense for the nave of the temple, the
holy place (B), without the porch and the holy of holies (of.
1 Kings vi. 17). The measuring commences with the front
(eastern) wall, in which there was the entrance door. This
wall had pillars (e e) of six cubits breadth on either side (on
the right hand and the left), and between the pillars a door {d)
ten cubits broad, with door-shoulders (e e) of five cubits on this
side and that (ver. 2a). These measurements (6 + 6 + 10 +
5 + 5) yield for the front wall a total breadth of thirty-two
cubits. This agrees with the measurements which follow :
twenty cubits, the (internal) breadth of the holy place, and six
cubits the thickness of the wall (e) on either side (ver. 5). The
only remaining difficulty is in the very obscure words appended,
7rixn anhj in which Ewald and Hitzig propose to alter friNn
into Tt«n, because the LXX. have substituted tou alXafi, but
without making any improvement, as ?^sn is still more inexpli-
cable. Kliefoth, after examining the various attempts to
explain these words, comes to the conclusion that no other
course is left than to take -"nKn as signifying the inner space of
Ezekiel's temple, consisting of the holy place and the holy of
holies, which was the same in the entire building as the taber-
nacle had beenj — viz. the tent of God's meeting with His
228 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
people, and which is designated as ^nii to show the suhstantial
identity of this space and the tabernacle. The clause ?ns?n anh
is thus attached to the preceding double nsD (i.e. to the measure-
ment of the two pillars bounding the holy space), in an elliptical
manner, in the following sense : " he measured the breadth of
the pillars, on this side and that, which marked off the breadth
of the tent, on the outside, that is to say, of the inner space of
the holy place which resembled the tabernacle ; " so that this
clause formed a loose apposition, meaning, " with regard to the
breath of the tent." nnan Diana are the walls on both sides of
the door (e e), between the door and the boundary pillars. —
The internal length and breadth of the holy place are the
same as in the holy place of Solomon's temple (1 Kings
vi. 2, 17). — Vers. 3 and 4 refer to the holy of holies (c).
" He went within." We have K3i (for Ni3>5) and not V?5*?*l
(ver. 1), because the prophet was not allowed to tread the
most holy place, and therefore the angel went in alone.
nD''3B is defined in ver. 4 as the holy of holies. The measure-
ments in ver. 3 refer to the partition wall between the holy
place and the most holy (g). nrian VK^ the pillar-work of the
door, stands for the pillars on both sides of the door ; and the
measurement of two cubits no doubt applies to each pillar,
denoting, not the thickness, but the breadth which it covered
on the wall. There is a difficulty in the double measurement
which follows: the door six cubits, and the breadth of the
door seven cubits. As the latter is perfectly clear, and also
apparently in accordance with the fact, and on measuring a
door the height is the only thing which can come into con-
sideration in addition to the breadth, we agree with Kliefoth in
taking the six cubits as a statement of the height. The height
of six cubits bears a fitting proportion to the breadth of seven
cubits, if there were folding-doors ; and the seven is significant
in the case of the door to the holy of holies, the dwelling of
God. The Seventy, however, did not know what to do with
this text, and changed n^SS V^^ nrian anh into tAs eVw/iiSos
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 229
Tov OvpcofiaTOi TTij^wy €771 a BvOev Koi 6v9ev, in which they have
been followed by Bottcher, Hitzig, and others. But it is
obvious at once that the Seventy have simply derived these
data from the measurements of the front of the holy place
(ver. 2), and have overlooked the fact, that in the first place,
beside the measure of the nnsn Disna, i.e. eTrwyni'Se? tov wv\&-
vo<}, the nnan anh, or breadth of the door, is also expressly
measured there, whereas here, on the contrary, it is preceded
by nnsn alone, without 3nn ; and secondly, as the measurement
of the D"'b''K given in ver. 1 indicates their breadth (from south
to north), in the present instance also the measure ascribed to
the nnan ?''« can only refer to the breadth of the PJK, and not
to its thickness (from east to west). But if we explain the first
clause of ver. 3 in this manner, as both the language and the
fact require, the reading of the IjXX. is proved to be a false
correction, by the fact that it yields a breadth of twenty-two or
twenty-four cubits (2 + 2 + 6+7 + 7), whereas the holy of
holies, like the holy place, was only twenty cubits broad.
The dimensions of the holy of holies also correspond to the
space covered by the holy of holies in Solomon's temple
(1 Kings vi. 20). The expression '?^'<m ''JS-iiK, « toward the
holy place," is to be explained by the supposition that the
measuring angel, after he had proceeded to the western end of
the holy of holies for the purpose of measuring the length,
turned round again to measure the breadth, so that this breadth
lay " toward the holy place."
Vers. 5-11. The Wall and the Side-Building. —
Ver. 5. And he measured the wall of Hie house six cubits, and
the breadth of the side storey four cubits round the house round
about. Ver. 6. And of the side-rooms there were room upon
room three, and that thirty times, and they came upon the wall,
which the house had by the side-rooms round about, so that they
were held, and yet they were not held in the wall of the house.
Ver, 7. And it spread out, and was surrounded upwards more
230 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
and more to the side-rooms, for the enclosure of the house went
upwards more and more round about the house; therefore tlie
house received breadth upwards; and so the lower ascended to
the upper after the proportion of the central one. Ver. 8. And
1 saw hi the house a height round about, with regard to the
foundations of the side-rooms a full rod, six cubits to the
joint. Ver. 9. The breadth of the wall, which the side storey
had on the outside, was five cubits, and so also what was left
free was by the side-chamber building of the house. Ver. 10.
And between the cells was a breadth of twenty cubits round the
house round about. Ver. 11. And the door of the side-chamber
building led toward what was left free, one door toward the north
and one door toward the south, and the breadth of the space
left free was five cubits round about. — From the interior of
the sanctuary the measuring man turned to the outer work,
and measured, first of all, the wall of the house (ver. 5), i.e.
the wall commencing with the pillars in the front (ver. 1),
which surrounded the holy place and the holy of holies on
the north, the west, and the south (e). This was six cubits
thick. He then measured the breadth of the vbv i,e. of the
building consisting of three storeys of side-rooms, which was
erected against the north, west, and south sides of the sanc-
tuary (A). For y?S signifies not only a single side-room, but
collectively the whole range of these side-chambers, the entire
building against the sides of the temple house, called JIXJ in
1 Kings vi. 5, 6, with which psn (ver. 8) is also used alternately
there (see the comm. on 1 Kings vi. 5). — The breadth of the
side-building was four cubits in the clear, that is to say, the
space from the temple wall to the outer wall of the side-build-
'°g (/)> which was five cubits thick (ver. 9), and that uniformly
all round the temple.— The further particulars concerning the
side-rooms in vers. 6 and 7 are very obscure, so that they can
only be made perfectly intelligible by comparing them with
the description of the similar building in Solomon's temple.
According to this, ver. 6a is to be taken thus : " and as for the
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 2B1
side-rooms, there were room upon room (7X for ?J?) three, and
(that) thirty times," and understood as signifying that there
were three side-rooms standing one above another, and that
this occurred thirty times, so that the side-building had three
storeys, each containing thirty rooms (chambers), so that there
were thirty times three rooms standing one above another (/t h h).
There is no necessity, therefore, for the transposition of tJ'vE'
D'E'^CT into mhm CB'i'E', which Bottcher, Hitzig, and Havernick
have adopted from the LXX., because of their having taken
7X in the sense of against, room against room thirty, and that
three times, which yields the same thought, no doubt, but not
so clearly, inasmuch as it remains indefinite whether the three
times thirty rooms were above one another or side by side.
Nothing is said about the distribution of the thirty rooms in
each storey ; but it is very probable that the distribution was
uniform, so that on each of the longer sides, i.e. against the
northern and southern walls of the temple, there were twelve
rooms, and six against the shorter western wall. The northern
and southern walls were sixty cubits, plus six cubits the thick-
ness of the wall, plus four cubits the breadth of the side
building against the western wall (60+6+4), in all therefore
seventy cubits, or, deducting five cubits for the thickness of the
outer wall at the front of the building, sixty-five cubits long ;
and the western wall was 20 + 2 X 6 (the thickness of the side
wall), i.e. thirty-two cubits long. If, therefore, we fix the
length of each side-room at 4^ cubits, there remain five cubits
against the western wall for the seven party walls required, or
five-sevenths of a cubit for each, and against the northern and
southern walls eleven cubits for party walls and staircase, and
reckoning the party walls at four-sevenths of a cubit in thick-
ness, there are left four cubits and a seventh for the space for
the stairs, quite a sufficient space for a winding staircase. —
The clauses which follow relate to the connection between these
side-rooms and the temple house. I'l?? nixa, they were coming
(going) upon the wall. 3 Kia, generally intrare in locum, here,
232 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
on account of what follows, to tread upon the wall ; that is to
say, they were built against the wall in such a manner that the
beams of the floors of the three storeys rested on the temple
wall on the inner side, i.e. were held or borne by it, but not so
as to be inserted in the wall and held fast thereby. The only
way in which this could be effected was by so constructing the
temple wall that it had a ledge at every storey on which the
beams of the side storeys could rest, i.e. by making it recede
half a cubit, or become so much thinner on the outer side, so
that if the thickness of the wall at the bottom was six cubits,
it would be five cubits and a half at the first storey, five cubits
at the second, and four and a half at the third. In this way the
side-rooms were supported by the temple wall, but not in such
a manner that the beams laid hold of the walls of the sanctuary,
or were dovetailed into them, which would have done violence
to the sanctity of the temple house ; and the side storeys
appeared as, what they should be, an external building, which
did not interfere with the integrity of the sanctuary. That
this is the meaning of the words is rendered certain by a com-
parison with 1 Kings vi. 6, where the ledges on the temple
wall are expressly mentioned, and the design of these is said to
be nil^ipa ths ''n?3p, that the beams might not be fastened
in the walls of the house, to which the last words of our
verse, n)3n n^pii D^nns m)-i6>\, refer. Kliefoth's rendering of
"i'i33 niN3, " they went against the wall," is grammatically unten-
able, as sia with 3 does not mean to go against anything.
nlv^s? n;a^ IB'N, which the (temple) house had toward the side-
rooms. 3Up aUD, round about, i.e. on all three sides of the
temple. The peculiarity of the storeys, arising from this
resting upon the temple, is described in ver. 7, of which dif-
ferent explanations have been given, but the general meaning
of which is that it occasioned a widening of the side-rooms
proceeding upwards from storey to storey, as is plainly stated
in 1 Kings vi. 6. The words nap3l nami are not to be taken
together, as expressing one idea, viz. " it spread round about "
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 233
(De Wette), but contain two different assertions, which are more
precisely defined in what follows by the substantives 3D!|D and
a^^. Neither T'i? nor psn is to be taken as the subject ; but
the verbs are to be regarded as impersonal : " there spread out
and surrounded," i.e. a widening and a surrounding took place.
The double n^jipi' has been correctly explained by Bochart, viz.
" by continued ascending," i.e. the higher one went the more
extension and compass did one find, with regard to, i.e. accord-
ing to the measure of, the side-rooms or side-storeys. niy?S5
belongs to ^bv??, and is added for the purpose of defining more
precisely how the widening took place, not gradually, but at
each storey ; for " these TV\yTi are the three rooms standing one
above another, spoken of in ver. 6" (Kliefoth). This statement
is explained, and the reason assigned, in the clause introduced
with '3, the meaning of which depends upon the explanation
of the word 3D1D, This word may mean a way round, and a
surrounding. The Rabbins, whom Havernick follows, under-
stand by 3WD a winding staircase, the DyW mentioned in
1 Kings vi. 8, which led from the lower storey to the upper
ones. This is decidedly wrong; for apart from the question
whether this meaning can be grammatically sustained, it is im-
possible to attach any rational meaning to the words, " a winding
staircase of the house was upwards more and more round about
the house," since a winding staircase could never run round
about a building seventy cubits long and forty cubits broad,
but could only ascend at one spot, which would really give it
the character of a winding staircase. Bottcher's explanation is
equally untenable : " for the winding round of the interior was
upwards more and more round and round inwards." For, in'
the first place, n*3n does not mean the interior, and T\)3? does
not mean inwards; and secondly, "winding round" is not
equivalent to an alteration of form in the shape of the rooms,
through which those in the bottom storey were oblongs running
lengthwise, those in the central storey squares, and those in the
third oblongs running inwards, which Bottcher imagines to
234 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
liave been the case. It would be much easier to adopt the
explanation of Kliefoth and others, who take 3mD in the sense
of a way round, and regard it as signifying a passage running
round the house in the form of a gallery, by which one could
walk all round the house, and so reach the rooms in the upper
storeys. This, as Kliefoth still further remarks, was the
reason why the surrounding of (circuit round) the house was
greater the higher one ascended, and also the reason why it
became wider up above in the upper storeys, as the words,
" therefore the breadth of the house increased upwards," affirm.
In these words Kliefoth finds a distinct assertion " that there
is no foundation for the assumption that the widening upwards
was occasioned by the receding of the temple walls ; but that
the widening of the building, which took place above, arose
from the passages round that were attached to the second and
third storeys, and that these passages ran round the building,
and consequently were attached to the outside in the form of
galleries," But we are unable to see how this can be distinctly
asserted in the words npyiDp n^ap ann. Even if n^an, in con-
nection with 3p^O, signified the side-building, including the
temple house, the only thought contained in the words would
be, that the side-building became broader at each storey as
you ascended, i.e. that the breadth of the side-building increased
with each storey. But even then it would not be stated in
what manner the increase in breadth arose ; whether in con-
sequence of the receding of the temple wall at each storey, or
from the fact that the side-rooms were built so as to project
farther out, or that the side-storeys were widened by the addi-
tion of a passage in the form of a gallery. And the decision
in favour of one or other of these possibilities could only be
obtained from the preceding clause, where it is stated that 3WD
JVsn went round about the side-building, and that in favour of
the last. But, in the first place, the assumption that njan and
n^Sr" denote the side-building, to the exclusion of the temple
house, is extremely harsh, as throughout the whole section ri'an
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 235
signifies the temple house ; and in ver. 6 n^l? is used again
in this sense. If we understand, however, by n^an 3D10 a
passage or a surrounding all round the temple house, the words
by no means imply that there were outer galleries running
round the side-rooms. In the second place, it is extremely
harsh to take 3WD in the sense of a passage round, if the
preceding napj is to signify surrounded. As 3W0 takes up
the word n??? again, and " precisely the same thing is signified
by the two verbs fi^pri nariT as by the substantives 3nn and
3M0 afterwards," we cannot render naD3 by surrounded, and
3D1D by a passage round. If, therefore, 3D1D signified a passage,
a gallery running round the building, this would necessarily be
expressed in the verb napj, which must be rendered, " there
went round," i.e. there was a passage round, more and more
upwards, according to the measure of the storeys. But this
would imply that the passage round existed in the case of the
bottom storey also, and merely increased in breadth in the
central and upper storeys. Now a gallery round the bottom
storey is shown to be out of the question by the measurements
which follow. From this we may see that the supposition that
there were galleries on the outside round the second and third
storeys is not required by the text, and possibly is irreconcil-
able with it ; and there is not even a necessity to adduce the
further argument, that Kliefoth's idea, that the entire building
of three storeys was simply upheld by the outer wall, with-
out any support to the beams from the wall of the temple, is
most improbable, as such a building would have been very in-
secure, and useless for the reception of any things of importance.
We therefore take 3p: and 3pio in the sense of surrounded and
surrounding. In this case, ver. 7 simply affirms that the sur-
rounding of the house, i.e. the side-building round about the
temple house, became broader toward the top, increasing (more
and more) according to the measure of the storeys; for it
increased the more in proportion to the height against the
temple house, so that the house became broader as you ascended.
236 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
To tins there is appended by means of 151 the last statement of
the verse : " and so the lower ascended to the upper after the
measure of the central one." This clause is taken by the
majority of the commentators to mean : thus they ascended from
the lower to the upper after the central one. But many have
observed the folly of an arrangement by which they ascended
a staircase on the outside from the lower storey to the upper,
and went from that into the central one, and have therefore
followed the LXX. in changing ]^\ into !l?l and n:b''ri7 into
n3i3''n3, " and from the lower (they ascended) to the upper
through the central one." But there is no apparent necessity
for these alterations of the text, as the reading in the text
yields a good sense, if we take njinnnn as the subject to
n?T. : and thus the lower storey ascended to the upper after the
measure of the central one, — a rendering to which no decisive
objection can be urged on the ground of the difference of
gender (the masc. •V.VS)- t?[ affirms that the ascent took place
according to the mode of widening already mentioned.
In the 8th verse we have a further statement concerning the
side-rooms, as we may see from the middle clause ; but it has also
been explained in various ways. Bottcher, for example, renders
the first clause thus : " and I saw what the height round about
was in an inwardly direction ; " but this is both grammatically
false and senseless, as 0^3? does not mean inwardly, and " in an
inwardly direction " yields no conceivable sense. Kliefoth
adopts the rendering : " I fixed my eyes upon the height round
about to the house ; " but this is also untenable, as nsi does
not mean to fix the eyes upon, in the sense of measuring with
the eyes, and in this case also the article could hardly be
omitted in the case of nail. The words run simply thus : " I
saw in the house a height" = an elevation round about. What
this means is shown in the following words : the side-rooms
had foundations a full rod, i.e. the foundation of the rooms was
a full rod (six cubits) high. n^1D''D is not a substantive niip'D,
but a participle Pml nhD;;D ; and the Keri is substantially
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 237
correct, though an unnecessary correction ; v!3 for Ki^O (com-
pare ch. xxviii. 16, te for l^*??). The side-building did not
stand on level ground, therefore, but had a foundation six
cubits high. This is in harmony with the statement in ch.
xl. 49, that they ascended by steps to the temple porch, so that
the temple house with its front porch was raised above the
inner court. As this elevation was a full rod or six cubits, not
merely for the side-building, but also for the temple porch, we
may assume that there were twelve steps, and not ten after the
LXX. of ch. xl. 49, as half a cubit of Ezekiel's measurement
was a considerable height for steps. — The expression which
follows, " six cubits ^TSS," is obscure, on account of the various
ways in which nb^SS may be understood. So much, however,
is beyond all doubt, that the words cannot contain merely an
explanation of the length of the rod measure : " six cubits
(measured) to the wrist," because the length of the rod has
already been fixed in ch. xl. 5, and therefore a fresh definition
would be superfluous, and the one given here would contradict
that of ch. xl. 6. ?*SS signifies connection or joint, and when
applied to a building can hardly mean anything else than the
point at which one portion of the building joins on to the other.
Havernick and Kliefoth therefore understand by y^^ the point
at which one storey ends and another begins, the connecting line
of the rooms standing one above another ; and Havernick takes
the clause to be a more precise definition of 'sn nilD'^D, under-
standing by nilO'D the foundations of the rooms, i.e. the floors.
Kliefoth, on the other hand, regards the clause as containing
fresh information, namely, concerning the height of the storeys,
so that according to the statement in this verse the side-build-
ing had a foundation of six cubits in height, and each of the
storeys had also a height of six cubits, and consequently the
whole building was twenty-four cubits high, reckoning from
the ground. So much is clear, that ninp''D does not signify the
floors of the rooms, so that Havernick's explanation falls to the
ground. And Kliefoth's view is also open to this objection, that
238 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
if the words gave the height of the storeys, and therefore sup-
plied a second measurement, the copula 1 could hardly fail to
stand before them. The absence of this copula evidently leads
to the conclusion that the " six cubits" n^'SN are merely
intended to furnish a further substantial explanation as to the
foundation, which was a full rod high, the meaning of which
has not yet been satisfactorily cleared up, as all the explana-
tions given elsewhere are still further from the mark.
In ver. 9 there follow two further particulars with reference
to the side-building. The wall of it without, i.e. on the out-
side (/), was five cubits thick or broad, and therefore one cubit
thinner than the temple wall. The nsD in the side-building
was just the same breadth. In the clause beginning with "IB'NI
the measure (five cubits) given in the first clause is to be
repeated, so that we may render 1 by "and also," and must
take the words in the sense of "just as broad." nao, the
Hophal participle of n'jin, to let alone, in the case of a building,
is that portion of the building space which is not built upon
like the rest ; and in ver. 11, where it is used as a substantive,
it signifies the space left open by the sides of the building
(Plate I. i). The Chaldee rendering is P'^K' nns, locus relictus.
niJ?7S IT'S is an adverbial or locative accusative : against the
house of side-chambers, or all along it; and n)ap IK'S is an
appositional explanation: "which was to the temple," i.e. be-
longed to it, was built round about it. — Consequently there is no
necessity for any alteration of the text, not even for changing IT'S
into f? ia order to connect together ver. 96 and ver. 10 as one
clause, as Bottcher and Hitzig propose ; though all that they
gain thereby is the discrepancy that in vers. % and 10 the
space left open between the side - rooms against the temple
house and between the cells against the wall of the court is
said to have been twenty cubits broad, whereas in ver. 12 the
breadth of this munndch is set down as five cubits. — There
follows next in ver. 10 the account of the breadth between the
temple-building and the cells against the wall of the inner
CHAP. XLI. 5-11. 239
court, and then in ver. 11 we have further particulars concern-
ing the side-building and the space left open. niSE'pn (ver. 10)
are the cell buildings, more fully described in ch. xlii. 1 sqq.,
which stood along the wall dividing the inner, court from the
outer on the west of the north and south gates of the inner
court, and therefore opposite to the temple house (Plate I.
L L). To the expression, " and between the cells there was a
breadth," there has to be supplied the correlative term from the
context, namely, the space between the nsD and the niaB"? had a
breadth of twenty cubits round about the house, i.e. on the
north, west, and south sides of the temple house. — The descrip-
tion of this space closes in ver. 11 with an account of the
entrances to the side-building. It had a door toward the space
left open, i.e. leading out into this space, one to the north and
one to the south (Plate III. i i), and the space left open was
five cubits broad round about, i.e. on the north, west, and
south sides of the temple - building. Hssn DipD, the place of
that which remained open, i.e. the space left open.
If, then, in conclusion, we gather together all the measure-
ments of the temple house and its immediate surroundings, we
obtain (as is shown in Plate I.) a square of a hundred cubits
in breadth and a hundred cubits in length, exclusive of the
porch. The temple (G) was twenty cubits broad, in the
inside (ver. 2) ; the wall surrounding the sanctuary was six
cubits (ver. 5), or (for the two walls) 2 x 6 = 12 cubits. The
side-buildings being four cubits broad in the clear on each side
(ver. 5), make 2x4 = 8 cubits. The outside walls of these
buildings, five cubits on each side (ver. 9), make 2 X 5 = 10
cubits. The n2a (i), five cubits round about (ver. 11), makes
2 X 5 = 10 cubits. And the space between this and the cells
standing by the wall of the court {e-g-li-f), twenty cubits round
about (ver. 10), makes 2 X 20 = 40 cubits. The sum total
therefore is 20 -H 12 -H 8 -HO -H 10 + 40 = 100 cubits, in per-
fect hannony with the breadth of the inner court given in
ch. xl. 47. The length was as follows : forty cubits the holy
240 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
place, and twenty cubits the holy of holies (vers. 2 and 4); the
western wall, six cubits ; the side-rooms on the west, four cubits ;
and their wall, five cubits ; the njD, on the west, five cubits ;
and the space to the cells, twenty cubits ; in all, 40+20+6 + 4
+ 5 + 5 + 20 = 100 cubits, as stated in ver. 13. The porch
and the thickness both of the party-wall between the holy place
and the most holy, and also of the front (eastern) wall of the
holy place, are not taken into calculation here. The porch is
not included, because the ground which it covered belonged to
the space of the inner court into which it projected. The party-
wall is not reckoned, because it was merely a thin wooden
partition, and therefore occupied no space worth notice. But
it is difficult to say why the front wall of the holy place is not
included. As there was no room for it in the square of a
hundred cubits, Kliefoth assumes that there was no wall what-
ever on the eastern side of the holy place, and supposes that the
back wall (i.e. the western wall) of the porch supplied its place.
But this is inadmissible, for the simple reason that the porch
was certainly not of the same height as the holy place, and
according to ch. xl. 48 it had only sixteen cubits of external
breadth ; so that there would not only have been an open space
left in the upper portion of the front, but also an open space of
two cubits in breadth on either side, if the holy place had had
no wall of its own. Moreover, the measurement both of the
pillars on both sides of the front of the ?^^^ (ver. 1), and of the
shoulders on both sides of the door (ver. 2), presupposes a wall
or partition on the eastern side of the holy place, which cannot
be supposed to have been thinner than the side-walls, that is to
say, not less than six cubits in thickness. We are shut up,
therefore, to the conjecture that the forty cubits' length of the
holy place was measured from the door-line, which was ten
cubits broad, and that the thickness of the door-shoulders on
the two sides is included in these forty cubits, or, what is the
same thing, that they were not taken into account in the
measurement. The objection raised to this, namely, that the
CHAP. XLI. 12-14. 241
space within the holy place would thereby have lost a consider-
able portion of its significant length of forty cubits, cannot
have much weight, as the door-shoulders, the thickness of which
is not reckoned, were only five cubits broad on each side,
and for the central portion of the holy place, which was occu-
pied by the door, and was ten cubits broad, the length of forty
cubits suffered no perceptible diminution. Just as the pillars
of the door of the holy of holies with the party- wall are
reckoned in the 40+20 cubits' length of the sanctuary, and
are not taken into consideration ; so may this also have been
the case with the thickness of wall of the door-shoulders of the
holy place. The measurements of the space occupied by the
holy place and holy of holies, which have a symbolical signi-
ficance, cannot be measured with mathematical scrupulosity.
Vers. 12-14. The Separate Place, and the External
Dimensions of the Temple. — Ver. 12. And the building at
the front of the separate place was seventy cubits broad on the
side turned toward the west, and the wall of the building Jive
cubits broad round about, and its length ninety cubits. Ver. 13.
And he measured the (temple) house: the length a hundred cubits;
and the separate place, and its building, and its walls : the length
a hundred cubits. Ver. 14, And the breadth of the face of the
(temple) house, and of the separate place toward the east, a
hundred cubits. — The explanation of these verses depends upon
the meaning of the word nnta. According to its derivation
from, iji!, to cut, to separate, nita means that which is cut off, or
separated. Thus nit3 px is the land cut off, the desert, which
is not connected by roads with the inhabited country. In the
passage before us, ni|j signifies a place on the western side of
the temple, i.e. behind the temple, which was separated from
the sanctuary (Plate I. J), aud on which a building stood, but
concerning the purpose of which nothing more definite is stated
than we are able to gather, partly from the name and situation
of the place in question, and partly from such passages as
EZEK. II. Q
242 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
1 Chron. xxvi. 18 and 2 Kings xxiii. 11, according to which,
even in Solomon's temple, there was a similar space at the back
of the temple house with buildings upon it, which had a
separate way out, the gate njW, namely, that " this space, with
its buildings, was to be used for the reception of all refuse,
sweepings, all kinds of rubbish, — in brief, of everything that
was separated or rejected when the holy service was performed
in the temple, — and that this was the reason why it received the
name of the separate place" (Kliefoth). The building upon
this space was situated iTJ!?i}''i!B"i'i|l, in the front of the gismh
(that is to say, as one approached it from the temple) ; and
that Q'i]"^']'!! rixa, on the side of the way to the sea, i.e. on the
western side, sc, of the temple, and had a breadth of seventy
cubits (from north to south), with a wall round about, which
was five cubits broad (thick), and a length of ninety cubits.
As the thickness of the wall is specially mentioned in connec-
tion with the breadth, we must add it both to the breadth and
to the length of the building as given here ; so that, when
looked at from the outside, the building was eighty cubits
broad and a hundred cubits long. In ver. 13& this length is
expressly attributed to the separate place, and {i.e. along with)
its building, and the walls thereof. But the length of the
temple house has also been previously stated as a hundred
cubits. In ver. 14 the breadth of both is also stated to have
been a hundred cubits, — namely, the breadth of the outer front,
or front face of the temple, was a hundred cubits ; and the
breadth of the separate place Cli?? toward the east, i.e. the
breadth which it showed to the person measuring on the eastern
side, was the same. If, then, the building on the separate place
was only eighty cubits broad, according to ver. 12, including
the walls, whilst the separate place itself was a hundred cubits
broad, there remains a space of twenty cubits in breadth not
covered by the building ; that is to say, as we need not hesitate
to put the building in the centre, open spaces of ten cubits
each on the northern and southern sides were left as approaches
CHAP. XLI. 15-26. 243
to the building on both sides {K), whereas the entire length of
the separate place (from east to west) was covered by the
building. — All these measurements are in perfect harmony.
As the inner court formed a square of a hundred cubits in
length (ch. xl. 47), the temple house, which joined it on the
west, extended with its appurtenances to a similar length ; and
the separate place behind the temple also covered a space of
equal size. These three squares, therefore, had a length from
east to west of three hundred cubits. If we add to this the
length of the buildings of the east gates of the inuer and
outer courts, namely fifty cubits for each (ch. xl. 15, 21, 25,
29, 33, 36), and the length of the outer court from gate to
gate a hundred cubits (cb. xl. 19, 23, 27), we obtain for the
whole of the temple building the length of five huudred cubits.
If, again, we add to the breadth of the inner court or temple
house, which was one hundred cubits, the breadths of the
outer court, with the outer and inner gate-buildings, viz. two
hundred cubits on both the north and south sides, we obtain a
total breadth of 100 + 200 + 200 = 500 (say five hundred)
cubits ; so that the whole building covered a space of five hun-
dred cubits square, in harmony with the calculation already
made (at ch. xl. 24-27) of the size of the surrounding wall.
Vers. 15-26. Summary Account of the Measurement,
THE ChARAGTEE, AND THE SIGNIFICANT ORNAMENTS OF THE
PROJECTING Portions of the Temple Building. — Ver. 15.
And thus he measured the length of the building in the front of
the separate place mJiich was at the bach thereof, and its galleries
on this side and that side, a hundred cubits, and the inner sanc-
tuary, and the porches of the court ; Ver. 16. The thresholds,
and the closed windows, and the galleries round about all three —
opposite to the thresholds was wainscoting wood round about, and
the ground up to the windows ; but the windows were covered —
Ver. 17. (The space') above the doors, both to the inner temple
and outside, and on all the tvall round about, within and without,
244 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
had its measures. Ver. 18. And cherubs and palms were made,
a palm between every two cherubs ; and the cherub had two faces;
Ver. 19. A marHs face toward the palm, on this side, and a liorCs
face toward the ■palm on that side : thus was it made round about
the whole house. Ver. 20. From the floor to above the doors
were the cherubs and palms made, and that on the wall of the
sanctuary. Ver. 21. The sanctuary had square door-posts, and
the front of the holy of holies had the same form. Ver. 22.
The altar was of wood, three cubits high, and its length two
cubits ; and it had its corner-pieces and its stand, and its walls
were of wood : and he said to me, This is the table which stands
before Jehovah. Ver. 23. And the holy place and the holy
of holies had two doors. Ver. 24. And the doors had two
icings, two turning leaves; the one door two, and the other two
leaves. Ver. 25. And there were made upon them, upon the
doors of the sanctuary, cherubs and palms, as they were made
upon the walls; and a moulding of wood was on the front of
the porch outside. Ver. 26. And there were closed windows
and palms on this side and on that, on the side-walls of the
porch, and the side -rooms of the house, and the beams. —
Ver, 15 is the commencement of a comprehensive enumeration
of particular features in the building, the greater part of which
have not been mentioned before ; so that Tim (for ^I0J1) is to
be rendered, " and thus he measured." The circumstance that
another measurement follows in ver. 15a, whereas no further
numbers are given from ver. 15b onwards, does not warrant
us in assuming that ver. 15a is to be joined on to ver. 14, and
ver. 156 to be taken in connection with ver. 16. The absence
of the cop. 1 before D^BDH in ver. 16a is sufficient to preclude
the latter, showing as it does that D''BDn commences a fresh
statement ; and the words '131 ?3''[ini in ver. 156 are still
governed by the verb TiD? in ver. 15a. The contents of
ver. 15 are also decisive against the separation mentioned. If,
for instance, we connect ver. 15a with ver. 14, the first clause
contains a pure tautology, as the length of the building has
CHAP. XU. 15-26. 245
been already measured, and the result is given in ver. 13. The
tautology does not exist, if the summary statements of the
measurement of different portions of the whole temple building
commence with ver. 15; and in connection with these a
supplementary account is given of various details not mentioned
before. The contents of the second clause, namely, what is
stated concerning the CiP'Ri?, belong directly to the latter. The
building in front of the separate place, which was measured by
the man, is more precisely defined, so far as its situation is con-
cerned, by the words '^''IDN'Py "IB'N. The feminine suffix in
nnriN points back to finjan -, consequently HE'S can only refer to
l^san : " the building . . . which was at the back of the gizfah."
This is not at variance with the situation indicated in '"JS"?'?
'^l!?'?) but serves as a more exact definition of this statement,
showing that the building which stood at the front of the
gizrah occupied the hinder part of it, i.e. extended in length
from the front of the gizrah to the back.— The meaning of
□■"pWij! or Ci?'''?^, here (Keri) and in ver. 1 6, ch. xlii. 3 and 5, the
only other passages in which it occurs, is involved in obscurity.
Even Easchi confesses that he does not know what it means,
and the older translators have simply resorted to vague con-
jectures for their renderings; the LXX. here, aTroXonra, in
ch. xlii. 3 and 5 irepiaTvXou and aroai; the Vulgate, here,
ethecas (the Hebrew word Latinized), in ch. xlii. porticus ;
Targum, in the London Polyglot, ver. 15, Knri*i''j ; ver. 16,
KJpnx ; ch. xlii. 3, IJ ; and xlii. 5, KTI. There is no root pns
in Hebrew ; and the derivation of the word from pny is not
only uncertain, but furnishes us with nothing that can be used
for tracing the architectural signification of the word. Even
the context in vers. 15 and 16 of this chapter supplies nothing,
for in both verses the meaning of the clauses in which D''p''ns
stands is a matter of dispute. It is only in ch. xlii. 3 and 5
that we find any clue. Recording to ch. xlii. 3, in the three-
storied cell-building there was P''nK ''33'PN P''FiK on the third
storey ; and according to ver. 5 the cells of the upper storey in
246 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
this building were shorter than those of the lower and central
storey, because Ci?*)?^ took space away from them ; and the
reason for this, again, was, that the three- storied cells had no
pillars. From this we may infer with certainty that the b^ip^fts
were galleries or passages running along the outer walls of the
building, which were not supported by pillars, and therefore
necessarily rested upon ledges obtained by the receding of the
rooms of the upper storey. This meaning also suits the present
chapter. The suffix in Kn^iJiRS? (an Aramaic form for "'?.'')?«)
points back, not to 1^33, but to n^^an in ver. 13 ; for the words,
" and its galleries on this side and on that," i.e. on the north
and south sides of the building, are not dependent upon ^lx
ij?an, in the sense of " the length of the building, with its
galleries on this side and on that," as NniiJinsi is too widely
separated from 'an '!]"ik for this. XIT'pinxi is rather a second
object to TIO: he measured (1) the length of the building;
(2) its galleries on this side and that — a hundred cubits;
(3) the inner temple, etc. The hundred cubits do not refer to
the length of the building, but to the galleries on both sides,
which were of the same length as the building, and therefore
ran along its entire length, — a fact which it was not superfluons
to mention, as they might possibly have been shorter, ^^i}!]
*a''3an is the temple house, with the buildings against it, within
the inner court. In addition to these, there are also mentioned
the porches of the court, i.e. at the gate-buildings of the inner
and outer courts, as the projecting portions of these buildings.
These three works mentioned in ver. 15 comprise the whole of
the buildings, the measurements of which have been mentioned
in the previous description — viz. the building to the west of the
temple, in vers. 12-14; the inner temple, in vers. 1-11; the
porches of the courts, to which the temple porch in front of
the holy place is to be added, as having been reckoned in the
measurement as belonging to the inner court, in ch. xli.—
Thus the contents of our verse (ver. 1 5) plainly show that it
not only is an indivisible whole, but forms a conclusion in
CHAP. XLI. 15-2fi. 247
which the foragoing measurements are all summed up, and
which serves as as introduction, in accordance with this, to the
following summary of various additional features in the temple
buildings which are also worthy of mention.
In this summary there are five points noticed : (a) the
fact that all parts of the buildings had their measurements
(vers. 16 and 17) ; (6) the significant ornamentation of the
inner walls of the sanctuary (vers. 18-21) ; (c) the altar in the
holy place (ver. 22) ; (i) the character and decoration of
the doors of the sanctuary (vers. 23-25a) ; (e) the style of the
porch and of the side-buildings against the temple (vers. 25, 26).
— Vers. 16 and 17 form one period, enlarged by the paren-
thetical insertion of explanatory statements, similar to the con-
struction in vers. 18 and 19. The predicate to the three
subjects — the thresholds, the closed windows, and the galleries
— is not to be sought for either in ^^f^f? ^'DD or in flErn
'M^ fi'nE'. The latter construction, adopted by Bottcher and
Havernick, yields the unmeaning assertion that the thresholds
lay across in front of the threshold. The former gives the
apparently bald thought, that thresholds, windows, and galleries
were round about ; in which the use of the article, the thresholds^
the windows, is exceedingly strange. The predicate to 'Ul D'asn
is nilD at the end of ver. 17 : the thresholds, etc., had measure-
ments ; and the construction is so far anakolouthistic, that the
predicate nilD, strictly speaking, belongs to the things mentioned
in ver. 17 alone, and the subjects mentioned in ver. 16 are to
be regarded as absolute nominatives. The words Dri^POT a'DD
belong to the three preceding subjects, as a further definition,
the thresholds, windows, and galleries (which were) against
these three round about. The snfiix to OPiV^f, " their triad,"
refers to the three buildings mentioned in ver. 15: the one
upon the separate place, the temple building, and the porches
of the court ; and the appositional ^'^p is not to be so pressed
as to lead to the conclusion that all three buildings, and there-
fore the porches of the court alao, had D''i^''n>? round about. As
248 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the nnU'^tJ'!' 3''3D is affirmed of the thresholds, and the wiadows,
and the galleries, and these three objects are introduced by the
article, as well known, i.e. as already mentioned and described
in the preceding verses, the more precise definition (resp. limita-
tion) of the apposition, " round about these three," is to be
taken from the preceding description of these three buildings,
and we are simply to assume the existence of thresholds,
windows, and galleries in these buildings in those cases in
which they have been mentioned in that description ; so that
the only place in which there were galleries was the building
upon the separate place. Bat before the intended information
is given concerning the thresholds, etc., a remark is introduced,
with the words from *]Bn 1J3 to a^JD, as to the construction of
the thresholds : viz. that opposite to the threshold (IBH being
used in a general sense for every threshold) there was )'? ^''^'^,
a thin covering of wood, or wainscoting. ^J.J does not mean
across the front (Bottcher), but "opposite;" and the part
opposite to the threshold of a door is, strictly speaking, the
lintel. Here, however, the word is probably used in the broader
sense for the framework of the door, above and on the two
sides, as is shown by 3^3p yzD which follows. With pNn a
fresh object is introduced, psn is a nominative, like CSBn,
etc. ; and the thought of supplying ip, " from the ground," has
originated in a faulty interpretation of the words. The idea is
this : as the thresholds, the windows, etc., so also the ground
up to the windows, i.e. the space between the ground and the
windows, had measurements. The allusion to the windows is
followed by the remark, in the form of a circumstantial clause,
that " the windows were covered." niD3a is apparently only a
substantial explanation of niDDN (see the comm. on ch. xl. 16).
In ver. 17 two further objects are mentioned as having
measurements ; not, however, in the logical position of subjects,
but with prepositions hv and ^N : upon that which was above
the opening of the door . . . and (what was) on all the walls,
i.e. the space above the doors and on all the walls. To this
CHAP. xn. 15-26. 249
periphrasis of the subject, through ?V and 7fJ, there is attached
the predicate liip, which belongs to all the subjects of vers. 16
and 17, in the sense of, " on all the walls there were measures."
The meaning is, that all the parts of the building which have
been named had their definite measurements, were carefully
measured off. In order to express this thought in as general
and comprehensive a manner as possible, the ideas contained in
the subjects in ver. 17 are expanded by means of appositions :
that of the space above, over the entrance door, by 'sn n^an nj)i
pinpl, both (1—1 = et — et) into the inner temple, i.e. both the
inside of the temple throughout, and also to the outside. The
idea of the whole wall is expressed by " round about, in the
inside and on the outside." — Thus everything in vers. 16
and 1 7 is clear, and in accordance with fact ; and there is no
necessity either for the critical scissors of Ewald and Hitzig,
who cut out all that they do not understand as glosses, or
for the ?waZ-emendation of Bottcher, who changes nii» into
niVPpD (1 Kings vi. 18), and thus finds it good to ornament the
temple with sculptures, even on the ontsides of all the walls.
Vers. 18-21 treat of the ornamenting of the inside of the
sanctuary, i.e. of the holy place and the holy of holies.
Vers. 18 and 19 form, like vers. 16 and 17, a period extended
by parentheses. The predicate 'WV, standing at the beginning
of ver. 18, is resumed in ver. 19b, and completed by n^an-isa-ijx
'd 'd. That the cherubim and palms were executed in sculp-
ture or carving, is evident from the resemblance to Solomon's
temple. They were so distributed that a cherub was followed
by a palm, aud this by a cherub again, so that the palm stood
between the two cherubim, and the cherub turned one of its
two faces to the palm on this side, and the other to the palm
upon that side. In sculpture only two faces could be shown,
and consequently these cherubic figures had only two faces,
and not four, like those in the vision. This sculpture was
placed round about the whole house, and that, as is added in
ver. 20 by way of explanation, from the ground even to up above
250 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the door, namely, on the inner wall of the sanctuary (^^DlI).
n;3ri-i)3 is hereby limited to the '?y[}, the holy place and the
holy of holies. l*i?1 is a local accusative. To this there is
appended the further notice in ver. 21, that the sanctuary had
door-posts in a square form. The loose arrangement of the
words, " the sanctuary post work of square form," is a concise
form of expression after the manner of brief topographical
notices, nntp invariably signifies, wherever it occurs, the door-
posts, i.e. the projecting framework of the entrances. J?13"J,
"foured," does not mean four-cornered merely, but really
square (Ex. xxvii. 1 and xxviii. 16). Consequently the words,
"the door-posts of the holy place were of a square shape,"
might be understood as signifying not merely that the door-
posts were beams cut square, but, as Kliefoth supposes, that the
post work surrounding the door was made of a square form,
that is to say, was of the same height as breadth, which would
be quite in keeping with the predominance of the square shape,
with its symbolical significance, in this picture of a temple.
But the statement in the second half of the verse can hardly
be reconciled with this ; for whatever diversity there may be in
the interpretation of this verse in particular points, it is certain
that it does contain the general assertion that the doorway of
the holy of holies was also shaped in the same way. But the
door of the holy of holies, instead of being square, was (accord-
ing to ver. 3) six cubits high and seven cubits broad. Bilipi], as
distinguished from 73^1)!!!, is the holy of holies, which ver. 23
places beyond all doubt (for this use of B'IPl), see Lev. xvi. 2,
3, 16). vr\pn-^:B, the face of the holy of holies, the front
which met the eye of a person entering the holy place, nsnisri
nsnaa is the predicate, which is attached as loosely as in the
first hemistich. The front of the holy of holies had the
appearance like the appearance (just described), i.e. like the
appearance of the «^n ; in fact, it had also a doorway with four-
cornered posts. J. F. Starck has already given this explana-
tion of the words : Eadem fades et aspectus erat utriusque portae
CHAP. XLI. 15-26. 251
templi et adyti, utraque quadrata et quadratis postibus conspicua
erat. The proposial of Ewald, on the other hand, to connect nsnas
with the following word nsfp^!, " in front of the holy of holies
there was something to be seen like the shape of the altar"
(LXX., Syr.), has the article in nN"iBn against it (Bbttcher).
Ver. 22. The Altae of Buent-Offeeing in the holy place
(see Plate III. ii). "The abrupt style-of writing is still con-
tinued." The altar wood for the altar was of wood three cubits
high ; its length, i.e. the expanse of the wall from one corner
to the other, was two cubits ; the breadth (thickness), which is
not expressly mentioned, was the same, because the square form
is presupposed from the shape of this altar in the tabernacle and
Solomon's temple. Under the term VniyVpD, its corner-pieces,
the horns projecting at the corners, or the horn-shaped points,
are probably included, as the simple mention of the corners
appears superfluous, and the horns, which were symbolically
significant features in the altar, would certainly not have been
wanting. There is something strange in the occurrence of iaiNl
before and along with niTp, as the length is already included
in the walls, and it could not be appropriately said of the
length that it was of wood. i3"]N is therefore certainly a
copyist's error for ^J'lN, r) ^daK avToD (LXX.), its stand or
pedestal. The angel describes this altar as the " table which
stands before Jehovah" — in perfect harmony with the epithet
already applied to the sacrifices in the Pentateuch, the " bread
i^U?) of God," though not " because the altar table was in-
tended to combine the old table of shewbread and the altar of
incense " (Bottcher). The table of shewbread is not mentioned
any more than the candlestick and other portions of the temple
furniture. — The altar of burnt-offering stood before Jehovah,
i.e. before the entrance into the holy of holies. This leads
iu vers. 23 sqq. to the notice of the doors of the sanctuary, the
character of which is also described as simply openings (nris)^
since the doorway had been mentioned before. Ti^t signifies a
252 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
moveable door, and the plural niWij doors, whether they consist
of one leaf or two, i.e. whether they are single or folding doors.
Here the rAViTi in vers. 23 and 24 (nin?lb) are folding doors ;
on the other hand, the first nin?'! in ver. 24 and rm ibid, are
used for the wings of the door, and rfn;^ niaoiD for the
swinging portions (leaves) of the separate wings. The mean-
ing is this : the holy place (-'^''D) and the holy of holies
(En'pn) had two folding doors (i.e. each of these rooms had one).
These doors had two wings, and each of these wings, in the
one door and in the other, had two reversible door-leaves, so
that when going in and out there was no necessity to throw
open on every occasion the whole of the wing, which was at
least three or four cubits broad. There is no foundation for
the objection raised by Kliefoth to the interpretation of ^y<y.
^l^i) as signifying the holy place and the holy of holies ;
since he cannot deny that the two words are so used, M^n in
1 Kings vi. 5, 17, 31, 33, and E'Vp in Lev, xvi, 2, 3, etc. And
the artificial explanation, " to the temple space, and indeed to
the holy place," not only passes without notice the agreement
between our verses and 1 Kings vi. 31-34, but gains nothing
further than a side door, which does violence to the dignity of
the sanctuary, a passage from the side chambers into the holy
place, with which Bottcher has presented Solomon's temple, —
These doors were ornamented, like the walls, with figures of
cherubim and palms. — Other remarks are added in vers, 255
and 26 concerning the porch in front of the holy place. The
fii'st is, that on the front of the porch outside there was yv 35?.
The only other passage in which the word 3V occurs in a similar
connection is 1 Kings vii. 6, where it refers to wood-work in
front of the Ulam of Solomon's porch of pillars ; and it cannot
be determined whether it signifies threshold, or moulding, or
threshold-mouldings. On the shoulders, i.e. on the right and
left side walls of the fi-ont porch, there were closed windows
and figures of palms. The cherubim were omitted here. — The
last words of ver. 26 are very obscure, n^an nijJ^^l may be
CHAP. XLII. 1-14. 253
taken in connection with the preceding clause, " and on the
side-rooms of the temple," as there is no necessity to repeat the
preposition in the case of closely continuous clauses (vid- Ewald,
§ 351a) ; and the side-rooms not only must have had windows,
but might also be ornamented with figures of palms. But if
the words be taken in this sense, the D''3y must also signify
something which presented, like the walls of the-porch and of
the side chambers, a considerable extent of surface capable of
receiving a similar decoration ; although nothing definite has
hitherto been ascertained with regard to the meaning of the
word, and our rendering " beams" makes no pretension to
correctness.
Chap. xlii. Tlie Holy Cells in the Court, and tlie Extent of the
Holy Domain around the Temple.
Vers. 1-14. The Cell-Buildings in the Outer Court
FOR Holy Use. — Ver. 1. And he brought me out into the outer
court by the way toward the north, and brought me to tlie cell-
buildingf which was opposite to the separate place, and opposite to
the building toward the north, Ver. 2. Before the long side of
a hundred cubits, with the door toward the north, and the breadth
fifty cubits, Ver. 3. Opposite to the twenty of the inner court and
opposite to the stone pavement of the outer court ; gallery against
gallery was in the third storey, Ver. 4. And before the cells a
walk, ten cubits broad ; to the inner a way of a hundred cubits ;
and their doors went to the north. Ver. 5. And the vpper cells
were shortened, because ike galleries took away space from them,
in comparison with the lower and the central ones hi the building.
Ver.' 6. For they were three- storied, and had no columns, like the
columns of the courts ; therefore a deduction ivas made from the
lower and from the central ones from the ground. Ver. 7. Aiid
a wall outside parallel with the cells ran toward the outer court
in front of the cells ; its length fifty cubits. Ver. 8. For the
length of the cells of the outer court was fifty cubits, and, behold,
against the sanctuary it was a hundred cubits. Ver. 9. And out
254 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
from underneath it rose up these cells ; the entrance was from ihe
east, when one went to them from tlie outer court. Ver. 10. In
the breadth of ihe court wall toward the south, before the separate
place and before the building, there were cells, Ver, 11. With a
way before them, like the cells, which stood toward the north, as
according to their length so according to their breadth, and accord-
ing to all their exits as according to all their arrangements. And
as their doorways, Ver. 12. So were also the doorways of the
cells, which were toward the south, an entrance at the head of the
way, of the way opposite to the corresponding wall, of the way
from the east when one came to them. Ver. 13. And he said to
me. The cells in the north, the cells in the south, which stood in
front of the separate place, are the holy cells where the priests,
who draw near to Jehovah, shall eat the most holy thing ; there they
shall place Hie most holy thing, both the meat-offering and Hie sin-
offering and the trespass-offering ; for the place is holy. Ver. 14.
When they go in, the priests, they shall not go out of the holy
place into the outer court ; but there shall they place their clothes,
in which they perform the service, for they are holy ; they shall
put on other clothes, and so draw near to what belongs to the
people.
It is evident from vers. 13 and 14, which furnish particulars
concerning the cells already described, that the description itself
refers to two cell-buildings only, one on the north side and the
other on the south side of the separate place (see Plate I. L).
Of these the one situated on the north is described in a more
circumstantial manner (vers. 1-9) ; that on the south, on the
contrary, is merely stated in the briefest manner to have
resembled the other in the main (vers. 10-12). That these
two cell-buildings are not identical either with those mentioned
in eh. xl. 44 sqq. or with those of ch. xl. 17, as Havernick
supposes, but are distinct from both, is so obvious that it is im-
possible to understand how they could ever have been identified.
The difference in the description is sufficient to show that they
are not the same as those in ch. xl. 44 sqq. The cells men-
CHAP. XLII. 1-14. 255
tioned in ch. xl. 44 were set apart as dwelling-places for the
priests during their administration of the service in the holy
place and at the altar ; whereas these serve as places for de-
positing the most holy<«acrificial gifts and the official dresses of
the priests. To this may be added the difference of situation,
which distinguishes those mentioned here both from those of
ch. xl. 44 seq., and also from those of ch. xl. 17. Those in
ch. xl. 44 were in the inner court, ours in the outer. It is
true that those mentioned in ch. xl. 17 were also in the latter,
but in entirely different situations, as the description of the
position of those noticed in the chapter before us indisputably
proves. Ezekiel is led out of the inner court into the outer,
by the way in the direction toward the north, to i^'Sf?^, the
cell-building (that nsB?!] is used here in a collective sense is
evident from the plural niaE*? in vers. 4, 5). This stood
opposite to the gizrah, i.e. the separate space behind the temple
house (ch. xli. 12 sqq.), and opposite to the iJJa, i.e. neither the
outer court wall, which is designated as 1*33 in ch. xl. 5, but
cannot be intended here, where there is no further definition,
nor the temple house, as Kliefoth imagines, for this is invariably
called n!3n. We have rather to understand by IJJsn the build-
ing upon the gizrah described in ch. xli. 12 sqq., to which no
valid objection can be offered on the ground of the repetition
of the relative l^^l, as it is omitted in ver. 10, and in general
simply serves to give greater prominence to the second defini-
tion in the sense of " and, indeed, opposite to the building
(sc. of the separate place) toward the north." As ltesn"7N
belongs to lE'N as a more precise definition of the direction
indicated by ^J3, the 'i< '■!S"?N which follows in ver. 2 depends
upon "'3??''2";5, and is co-ordinate with n3E''j>n-i'N, defining the side
of the cell-building to which Ezekiel was taken : " to the face
of the length," i.e. to the long side of the building, which
extended to a hundred cubits. The article in HNBri requires
that the words should be connected in this manner, as it could
not be used if the words were intended to mean " on the sur-
256 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
face of a length of a hundred cubits." Since, then, the separate
place was also a hundred cubits, that is to say, of the same
length as the cell-building opposite to it, we might be disposed
to assume that as the separate place reached to the outer court
wall on the west, the cell-building also extended to the latter
with its western narrow side. But this would be at variance
with the fact that, according to ch. xlvi. 19, 20, the sacrificial
kitchens for the priests stood at the western end of this portion
of the court, and therefore behind the cell-building. The size
of these kitchens is not given ; but judging from the size of
the sacrificial kitchens for the people (ch. xlvi. 22), we must
reserve a space of forty cubits in length ; and consequently the
cell-building, which was a hundred cubits long, if built close
against the kitchens, would reach the line of the back wall of
the temple house with its front (or eastern) narrow side, since,
according to the calculation given in the comm. on ch. xli. 1-11,
this wall was forty cubits from the front of the separate place,
so that there was no prominent building standing opposite to
the true sanctuary on the northern or southern side, by which
any portion of it could have been concealed. And not only is
there no reason for leaving a vacant space between the sacri-
ficial kitchens and the cell-buildings, but this is precluded by
the fact that if the kitchens had been separated from the cell
building by an intervening space, it would have been necessary
to carry the holy sacrificial flesh from the kitchen to the cell in
which it was eaten, after being cooked, across a portion of the
outer court. It is not stated here how far this cell-bnilding
was from the northern boundary of the gisrah, and the open
space (nso) surrounding the temple house; but this may be
inferred from ch. xli. 10, according to which the intervening
space between the munnach and the cells was twenty cubits.
For the cells mentioned there can only be those of our cell-
building, as there were no other cells opposite to the northern
and southern sides of the temple house. But if the distance
of the southern longer side of the cell-building, so far as it
CHAP. SLII. 1-14. 257
stood opposite to the temple house, was only twenty cubits, the
southern wall of the cell-building coincided with the boundary
wall of the inner court, so that it could be regarded as a
continuation of that wall. — The further definition liQSn nns,
door to the north, is to be taken as subordinate to the preceding
clause, in the sense of " with the door to the north," because it
would otherwise come in between the accounts of the length
and breadth of the building, so as to disturb the connection.
The breadth of the building corresponds to the breadth of the
gate-buildings of the inner court.
The meaning of the third verse is a subject of dispute.
" D''"!'K'J|n," says Bottcher, " is difficult on account of the article
as well as the number, inasmuch as, with the exception of the
twenty cubits left open in the temple ground (ch. xli. 10), there
are no ^''''.B'y mentioned as belonging to the actual '3Sn nvn, and
the numeral does not stand with sufficient appropriateness by
the side of the following nasi." But there is not sufficient
weight in the last objection to render the reference to the
twenty cubits a doubtful one, since the " twenty cubits " is
simply a contracted form of expression for "the space of
twenty cubits," and this space forms a fitting antithesis to the
pavement (nasi), i.e. the paved portion of the court. More-
over, it is most natural to supply the missing substantive to the
" twenty " from the DitSN mentioned just before, — much more
natural certainly than to supply 01329, as there is no allusion
either before or afterwards to any other cells than those whose
situation is intended to be defined according to the twenty
We therefore agree with J. H. Michaelis, Eosenmiiller, Hiiver-
nick, and Hitzig, that the only admissible course is to supply
nitsN ; for the description of the priests' cells in ch. xl. 44, to
which Kliefoth imagines that Q"'"!?'?!ii refers, is far too distant
for us to be able to take the word riaB"? thence and supply it to
□''nti'JJn. And again, the situation of these priests' cells to the
east of the cell-building referred to here does not harmonize
with the IW, as the second definition introduced by the correlative
EZEK. II. B
258 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
"1331 points to the stone pavement on the north. East and
north do not form such a vis-a-vis as the double "133 requires. —
Our view of the n''"it5'j;n is also in harmony with the explanatory
relative clause, '• which were to the inner court," i.e. belonged
to it. For the open space of twenty cubits' breadth, which ran
by the long side of the temple house between the munnach
belonging to the temple and the wall of the inner court, formed
the continuation of the inner court which surrounded the
temple house on the north, west, and south.^ If, therefore,
this first definition of the "133 refers to what was opposite to the
cell-building on the south, the second "133 defines what stood
opposite to it on the northern side. There the portion of the
outer court which was paved with stones ran along the inner
side of the surrounding wall. This serves to define as clearly
as passible the position of the broad side of the cell-building.
For Kliefoth and Hitzig are right in connecting these definitions
with ver. 2b, and taking the words from P'WK onwards as intro-
ducing a fresh statement. Even the expression itself \3B"7K
P''PIK does not properly harmonize with the combination of the
two halves of the third verse as one sentence, as Bottcher
proposes, thus : " against the twenty cubits of the inner court
and against the pavement of the outer court there ran gallery
in front of gallery threefold." For if the galleries of the
building were opposite to the pavement on the north, and to the
space in front of the temple on the south of the building, they
must of necessity have run along the northern and southern
walls of the building in a parallel direction, and '3a-^K is not
the correct expression for this. ''JB'^X, to the front — that is to
say, one gallery to the front of the other, or up to the other.
This could only be the case if the galleries surrounded the
' The statement of Kliefoth, that " this space of twenty cubits in breadth
did not belong to the inner court at all," cannot be established from ch.
xl. 47, where the size of the inner court is given as a hundred cubits in
length and the same in breadth. For this measurement simply refers to
the space in front of the temple.
CHAP. XLII. 1-U. 259
building on all four sides, or at any rate on three ; for with the
latter arrangement, the gallery upon the eastern side would
terminate against those on the southern and northern sides.
Again, the rendering " threefold," or into the threefold, cannot
be defended either from the usage of the language or from the
facts. The only other passage in which the plural D^E'pE' occurs
is Gen. vi. 16, where it signifies chambers, or rooms of the
third storey, and the singular ^eOB' means the third. Conse-
quently W'Wpz is " in the third row of chambers or rooms," i.e.
in the third storey. And so far as the fact is concerned, it
does not follow from the allusion to upper, central, and lower
cells (vers. 5 and 6), that there were galleries round every one
of the three storeys.
Ver. 4. " Before the cells there was a walk of ten cubits'
breadth " (m). In what sense we are to understand '3Qp, "before,"
whether running along the northern longer side of the building,
or in front of the eastern wall, depends upon the explanation of
the words which follow, and chiefly of the words nns rifis "^f}^^
by which alone the sense in which n^D^iSn"7S is to be under-
stood can also be determined. Havernick and Kliefoth take
nns nas tiI'i, « a way of one cubit," in the sense of " the ap-
proaches (entrances into the rooms) were a cubit broad." But
the words cannot possibly have this meaning ; not only because
the collective use of "^yi after the preceding 'Hjn^j which is not
collective, and with the plural D'^-'^?' following, is extremely
improbable; if not impossible ; but principally because 'i\'T},, a way,
is not synonymous with Si3D, an entrance, or nns, a doorway.
Moreover, an entrance, if only a cubit in breadth, to a large
building would be much too narrow, and bear no proportion
whatever to the walk of ten cubits in breadth. It is impossible
to get any suitable meaning from the words as they stand, " a way
of one cubit;" and no other course remains than to alter nas
nns into Tim nSD, after the eVi ■7r»;;)^et? eKarov of the Septuagint.
There is no question that we have such a change of nSD into
r\m in ver. 16, where even the Eabbins acknowledge that it
260 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
has occurred. And when once nxD had been turned into nas,
this change would naturally be followed by the alteration of
nOK into a numeral — that is to say, into nnx. The statement
itself, " a way of a hundred cubits" (in length), might be taken
as referring to the length of the walk in front of the cells, as
the cell-building was a hundred cubits long. But nwsn-iis
is hardly reconcilable with this. If, for example, we take these
words in connection with the preceding clause, " a walk of ten
cubits broad into the interior," the statement, " a way of a hun-
dred cubits," does not square with this. For if the walk which
ran in front of the cells was a hundred cubits long, it did not
lead into the interior of the cell-building, but led past it to the
outer western wall. We must therefore take n''p''5an"7» in
connection with what follows, so that it corresponds to '?.S?
niatypn : in front of the cells there was a walk of ten cubits in
breadth, and to the inner there led a way of a hundred cubits
in length, nwan would then signify, not the interior of the
cell-building, but the inner court (n''D"i3Bn IVnrij ch. xliv. 17,
xsi. 27, etc.). This explanation derives its principal support
from the circumstance that, according to vers. 9 and 11, a way
ran from the east, i.e. from the steps of the inner court gates,
on the northern and southern sides, to the cell-buildings on the
north and south of the separate place, the length of which,
from the steps of the gate-buildings already mentioned to the
north-eastern and south-eastern corners of our cell-buildings,
was exactly a hundred cubits, as we may see from ilie plan in
Plate I. This way (Z) was continued in the walk in front of the
cells (wi), and may safely be assumed to have been of the same
breadth as the walk. — The last statement of the fourth verse
is perfectly clear ; the doorways to the cells were turned toward
the north, so that one could go from the walk in front of the
cells directly into the cells themselves. — In vers. 5 and 6 there
follow certain statements concerning the manner in which the
cells were built. The building contained upper, lower, and
middle cells ; so that it wais three-storied. This is expressed in
CHAP. XLII. 1-14. 261
the words nan rn^^m % « for the cells were tripled ;" three
rows stood one above another. But they were not all built alike ;
the upper ones were shortened in comparison with the lower
and the central ones, i.e. were shorter than these (P before
nvJhnFin and riiJi3''rin is comparative) ; " for galleries ate away
part of them " — that is to say, took away a portion of them
(ipai' for li'3^''', in an architectural sense, to take away from).
How far this took place is shown in the first two clauses of the
sixth verse, the first of which explains the reference to upper,
lower, and middle cells, while the second gives the reason for the
shortening of the upper in comparison with the lower and the
central ones. As the three rows of cells built one above another
had no columns on which the galleries of the upper row could
rest, it was necessary, in order to get a foundation for the
gallery of the third storey, that the cells should be thrown back
from the outer wall, or built as far inwards as the breadth of
the gallery required. This is expressly stated in the last clause,
'1:1 ^SN3 13"?y. P?f«3, with an indefinite subject : there was de-
ducted from the lower and the middle cells from the ground, sc.
which these rooms covered. H??? '^ added for the purpose of
elucidation. From the allusion to the columns of the courts
we may see that the courts had colonnades, like the courts in
the Herodian temple, and probably also in that of Solomon,
though their character is nowhere described, and no allusion is
made to them in the description of the courts.
The further statements concerning this cell-building in vers.
7-9 are obscure. "1^3 is a wall serving to enclose courtyards,
vineyards, and the like. The predicate to y}i] follows in 'Ja'Pf?
ntoE'jin : a boundary wall ran along the front of the cells OP.Si'PN
stands for '"JS"''?, as the corresponding «''nn •'JS'PJ? in ver. 8
shows). The course of this wall (n) is more precisely defined
by the relative clause, " which ran outwards parallel with the
cells in the direction of the outer court," i.e. toward the outer
court. The length of this wall was fifty cubits. It is evident
from this that the wall did not run alonfr the north side of the
262 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
building, — for in that case it must have been a hundred cubits
in length, — but along the narrow side, the length of which was
fifty cubits. Whether it was on the western or eastern side
cannot be determined with certainty from ver. 7, although ?N
'JS favours the eastern, i.e. the front side, rather than the
western side, or back. And what follows is decisive in favour
of the eastern narrow side. In explanation of the reason why
this wall was fifty cubits long, it is stated in ver. 8 that " the
length of the cells, which were to the outer court, was fifty
cubits ; but, behold, toward the temple front a hundred cubits."
Consequently "the cells which the outer court had" can only
be the cells whose windows were toward the outer court — that
is to say, those on the eastern narrow side of the building ; for
the sacrificial kitchens were on the western narrow side (cb.xlvi.
19, 20). The second statement in ver. 8, which is introduced
by nan as an indication of something important, is intended to
preclude any misinterpretation of '&vn ^jnx, as though by length
we must necessarily understand the extension of the building
from east to west, as in ver. 2 and most of the other measure-
ments. The use of tjix for the extension of the narrow side of
the building is also suggested by the is"]^, " length of the wall,"
in ver. 7, where snn would have been inadmissible, because
3nh, the breadth of a wall, would have been taken to mean its
thickness. ^^^U'^ 'PS is the outer side of the temple house which
faced the north. — A further confirmation of the fact that the
boundary wall was situated on the eastern narrow side of the
building is given in the first clause of the ninth verse, in which,
however, the reading fluctuates. The Chetib gives nbE'!' i^nnrio,
the Eeri n^3B'^n nnriD. But as we generally find, the Keri is
an alteration for the worse, occasioned by the objection felt by
the Masoretes, partly to the unusual circumstance that the
singular form of the suffix is attached to nnpi, whereas it usually
takes the suffixes in the plural form, and partly to the omission
of the article from niSE'ij by the side of the demonstrative n^sn,
which is defined by the article. But these two deviations from
CHAP. XLII. 1-14.
263
the ordinary rule do not warrant any alterations, as there are
analogies in favour of both, nnri has a singular suffix not only
in nsnnn (Gen. ii. 21) and '?nnn (2 Sam. xxii. 37, 40, and 48),
instead of 'f^rv} (Ps. xviii. 37, 40, 48), which may undoubtedly
be explained on the ground that the direction whither is
thought of (Ges. § 103. 1, Anm. 3), but also in Dnnn, which
occurs more frequently than on'nn'?} and that without any
difference in the meaning (compare, for example, Deut. ii. 12,
21, 22, 23, Josh. v. 7, Job xxxiv. 24, and xl. 12, with 1 Kings
XX. 24, 1 Chron. v. 22, 2 Chron. xii. 10). And n^xn niaB-^
is analogous to Plisn nn in Zech. iv. 7, and many other com-
binations, in which the force of the definition (by means of the
article) is only placed in the middle for the sake of convenience
(uid. Ewald, § 293a). If, therefore, the Chetib is to be taken
without reserve as the original reading, the suffix in PiPinri can
only refer to Tia, which is of common gender: from under-
neath the wall were these cells, i.e. the cells turned toward the
outer court; and the meaning is the following: toward the
bottom these cells were covered by the wall, which ran in front
of them, so that, when a person coming toward them from the
east fixed his eyes upon these cells, they appeared to rise out of
the wall. Kliefoth, therefore, who was the first to perceive
the true meaning of this clause, has given expression to the
conjecture that the design of the wall was to hide the windows
of the lower row of cells which looked toward the east, so that,
when the priests were putting on their official clothes, they
might not be seen from the outside. — Ni3an commences a fresh
statement. To connect these words with the preceding clause
(" underneath these cells was the entrance from the east "), as
Bottcher has done, yields no meaning with which a rational
idea can possibly be associated, unless the 10 in HnnriD be alto-
gether ignored. The LXX. have therefore changed HrinFiDl,
which was unintelligible to them, into Kal ai dvpai (^nnsi), and
Hitzig has followed them in doing so. No such conjecture is
necessary if rinnnoi be rightly interpreted, for in that case
264 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Nbian must be the commencement of a new sentence. NilBH
T - T -
(by the side of which the senseless reading of the Keri X''?^!]
cannot be taken into consideration for a moment) is the ap-
proach, or the way which led to the cells. This was from the
east, from the outer court, not from the inner court, against the
northern boundary of which the building stood. n:vnn isnno
is not to be taken in connection with nan? ixba, but is co-ordinate
with DnijriD, of which it is an explanatory apposition.
In vers. 10-12 the cell-building on the south of the separate
place is described, though very briefly ; all that is said in addi-
tion to the notice of its situation being, that it resembled the
northern one in its entire construction. But there are several
difficulties connected with the explanation of these verses, which
are occasioned, partly by an error in the text, partly by the
unmeaning way in which the Masoretes have divided the text,
and finally, in part by the brevity of the mode of expression.
In the first clause of ver. 10, D^"]!?^ is a copyist's error for
DiTHiij which has arisen from the fact that it is preceded by
'^''lij'l'? (ver. 9). For there is an irreconcilable discrepancy
between O'lisn TjnT and nnwn "if'?^, which follows. The build-
ing stood against, or upon, the broad side (^ni) of the wall of
the court, i.e. the wall which separated the inner court from the
outer, opposite to the separate place and the building upon it
C?.^ '$?» from the outer side hither, is practically equivalent to
^3.5 in ver. 1 ; and lJ33n is to be taken in the same sense here
and there). The relation in which this cell-building stands to
the separate place tallies exactly with the description given of
the former one in ver. 2. If, then, according to ver. 2, the
other stood to the north of the separate place, this must neces-
sarily have stood to the south of it, — that is to say, upon the
broad side of the wall of the court, not in the direction toward
the east (O^lisn r[yf), but in that toward the south (DiTnn V!^},
as is expressly stated in vers. 12 and 13 also. Kliefoth has
affirmed, it is true, in opposition to this, that " the breadth of
the wall enclosing the inner court must, as a matter of course,
J i
CHAP. XLII. 1-14. 265
have been the eastern side of the inner court ; " but on the
eastern side of the wall of the inner court there was not room
for a cell-building of a hundred cubits in length, as the wall
was only thirty-seven cubits and a half long (broad) on each
«ide of the gate-building. If, however, one were disposed so
to dilute the meaning of 'nn Tia anna as to make it affirm
nothing more than that the building stood upon, or against, the
breadth of the wall of the court to the extent of ten or twenty
cubits, and with the other eighty or ninety cubits stood out into
the outer court, as Kliefoth has drawn it upon his " ground
plan ;" it could not possibly be described as standing ''^S"-''?
nnjlin, because it was not opposite to (in face of) the gizrah, but
was so far removed from it, that only the north-west comer
would be slightly visible from the south-east corner of the
gizrah. And if we consider, in addition to this, that in vers. 13
and 14, where the intention of the cell-buildings described in
vers. 1-12 is given, only cells on the north and on the south are
mentioned as standing ^"iV^y} ''?&"???, there can be no doubt that
by anh we are to understand the broad side of the wall which
bounded the inner court on the south side from east to west,
and that Q^lisn 'qn'n should be altered into D^Tnn tj'i'n.— In ver. 11
the true meaning has been obscured by the fact that the
Masoretic verses are so divided as to destroy the sense. The
words Dn''3ap Ti^ll belong to niSB"? in ver. 10 : " cells and a way
before them," i.e. cells with a way in front. 'HT!'!! corresponds
to the ^?ni? in ver. 4. — '"'??']?3, like the appearance = appearing,
or constructed like, does not belong to ij'i.'n in the sense of
made to conform to the way in front of the cells, but to ni3B'^,
cells with a way in front, conforming to the cells toward the
north. The further clauses from |31N3 to !n''t3Q»'Dai are con-
nected together, and contain two statements, loosely subordi-
nated to the preceding notices, concerning the points in which
the cells upon the southern side were made to conform to those
upon the northern ; so that they really depend upon nxioa,
aud to render them intelligible in German (English tr.) must
266 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
be attached by means of a preposition : " ■with regard to," or
" according to " [secundum). Moreover, the four words contain
two co-ordinated comparisons ; the first expressed by }3 ... 3,
the second simply indicated by the particle 3 before in''DaB'p
(cf. Ewald, § 360a). The suffixes of all four words refer to
the cells in the north, which those in the south were seen to
resemble in the points referred to. The meaning is this : the
cells in the south were like the cells in the north to look at, as
according to their length so according to their breadth, and
according to all their exits as according to their arrangements
(D'laaB'ip, lit. the design answering to their purpose, i.e. the
manner of their arrangement and their general character : for
this meaning, compare Ex. xxvi. 30 ; 2 Kings i, 7). The last
word of the verse, jn^nnMi, belongs to ver. 12, viz. to 'tj6n *nns3i,
the comparison being expressed by 3—31, as in Josh. xiv. 11 ;
Dan. xi. 29; 1 Sam. xxx. 24 (cf. Ewald, I.e.). Another con-
struction also commences with irrrinas. in''nria3i is a nominative:
and like their doors (those of the northern cells), so also were
the doors of the cells situated toward the south. Consequently
there is no necessity either to expunge 'nnMl arbitrarily aa
a gloss, for which procedure even the LXX. could not be
appealed to, or to assent to the far-fetched explanation by
which Kliefoth imagines that he has discovered an allusion to a
third cell-building in these words. — Light is thrown upon the
further statements in ver. 12 by the description of the northern
cells. " A door was at the head," i.e. at the beginning of the
way. 'n^'i corresponds to the way of a hundred cubits in
ver. 4, and ^n^. B'Ni is the point where this way, which ran to
the southern gate-building of the inner court, commenced— that
is to say, where it met the walk in front of the cells (ver. 4).
The further statement concerning this way is not quite clear to
US, because the meaning of the d'jr. Xey. nyjn is uncertain. In
the Chaldee and Eabbinical writings the word signifies decens,
conveniens. If we take it in this sense, nyjn fl'l'isn is the wall
corresponding (to these cells), i.e. the wall which ran in frout
CHAP. XLII. 1-14. 267
of the eastern narrow side of the building parallel to the
cells, the wall of fifty cubits in length described in ver. 7 in
connection with the northern building (for the omission of the
article before 'I5''?n after the substantive which it defines, com-
pare ch. xxxix. 27 ; Jer. ii. 21, etc.). 'psa, in eonspectu, which
is not perfectly synonymous with ''3sp, also harmonizes with
this. For the way referred to was exactly opposite to this wall
at its upper end, inasmuch as the wall joined the way at right
angles. The last words of ver. 12 are an abbreviated repetition
of ver, 96 ; nnisn ■I'i'n is equivalent to Q'''3i3no Si2Bn, the way
from the east on coming to them, i.e. as one went to these cells.
According to vers, 13 and 14, these two'' cell-buildings were
set apart as holy cells, in which the ofiiciating priests were to
deposit the most holy sacrifices, and to eat them, and to put on
and off the sacred official clothes in which they drew near to the
Lord. CB'^isn '•ty'lp were that portion of the meat-offering which
was not burned upon the altar (Lev. ii. 3, 10, vi. 9-11, x. 12 ;
see my Bibl. Archdologie, L § 52), and the flesh of all the sin-
and trespass-offerings, with the exception of the sin-offerings
offered for the high priest and all the congregation, the flesh of
which was to be burned outside the camp (cf. Lev, vi. 19-23,
vii, 6), All these portions of the sacrifices were called most
holy, because the priests were to eat them as the representatives
of Jehovah, to the exclusion not only of all the laity, but also
of their own families (women and children ; see my Arehdol.
I, §§ 45 and 47), The depositing (^n's;) is distinguished from
the eating (^•'?^') of the most holy portions of the sacrifices ;
because neither the meal of the meat-offering, which was mixed
with oil, nor the flesh of the sin- and trespass-offerings, could be
eaten by the priests immediately after the offering of the sacri-
1 For no further proof is needed after what has been observed above,
that the relative clause, " which were in front of the separate place,"
belongs to the two subjects : cells of the north and cells of the south, and
does not refer to a third cell-building against the eastern wall, as Kliefoth
supposes.
268 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
fice ; but the former had first of all to be baked, and the latter
to be boiled, and it was not allowable to deposit them wherever
they liked previous to their being so prepared. The putting on
and off, and also the custody of the sacred official clothes, were
to be restricted to a sacred place. ^^^, on their coming, sc.
to the altar, or into the holy place, for the, performance of
service. Their not going out of the holy place into the outer
court applies to their going into the court among the people
assembled there ; for in order to pass from the altar to the
sacred cells, they were obliged to pass through the inner gate
and go thither by the way which led to these cells (Plate I. I).
Vei-s. 15-20. Extent of the Holy Domain abound the
Temple. — Ver. 15. And when lie had finished the meamre-
ments of the inner house, he brought me out hy the way of the
gate, which is directed toward the east, and measured there round
about. Ver. 16. He measured the eastern side with the measuring
rod five hundred rods by the measuring rod round about ; Ver. 17.
He measured the northern side five hundred rods by the measur-
ing rod round about ; Ver. 18. The southern side he measured five
hundred rods by the measuring rod; Ver. 19. He turned round
to the western side, measured five hundred rods by the measuring
rod. Ver. 20. To the four winds he measured it. It had a wall
round about ; the length leas five hundred and the breadth five
hundred, to divide between the holy and the common. — There
has been a division of opinion from time immemorial concern-
ing tlie area, the measuring of which is related in these verses,
and the length and breadth of which are stated in ver. 20 to
have been five hundred ; as the Seventy, and after them J. D.
Michaelis, Bottcher, Maurer, Ewald, and Hitzig, understand by
this the space occupied by the temple with its two courts. But
as that space was five hundred cubits long and five hundred
broad, according to the sum of the measurements given in
ch. xl.-xlii. 15, the LXX. have omitted the word C^iJ in
vers. 16, 18, and 19, whilst they have changed it into 'irri'^m
i i.
CHAP. XLII. 15-20. ' 269
in ver. 17, and have also attached this word to the numbers in
ver. 20. According to this, only the outer circumference of
the temple area would be measured in our verses, and the wall
which was five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits
broad (ver. 20) would be the surrounding wall of the outer
court mentioned in ch. xl. 5. Ver. 15 could certainly be made
to harmonize with this view. For even if we understood by
the " inner house " not merely the temple house, which the
expression primarily indicates, but the whole of the inner
building, i.e. all the buildings found in the inner and outer
court, and by the east gate the eastern gate of the outer court ;
the expression 'D y^o iTip, " he measured it round about,"
merely afBrnis that he measured something round about outside
this gate. The suffix in iTlO is indefinite, and cannot be taken as
referring to any of the objects mentioned before, either to iJ'E'n
or to ''0'?^l' n;3n. The inner house he had already measured ;
and the measurements which follow are not applicable to the
gate. Nor can the suffix be taken as referring to n^an, iUam
sc. aedem (Eos.) ; or at any rate, there is nothing in ver. 20
to sustain such a reference. Nevertheless, we might think of a
measuring of the outer sides of the whole building compre-
hended under the idea of the inner house, and regard the wall
mentioned in ver. 20 as that which had been measured round
about on the outer side both in length and breadth. But it is
difficult to reconcile this view even with ver. 20 ; and with the
measurements given in vers. 16-19 it is perfectly irreconcilable.
Even if we were disposed to expunge Ci''i\> as a gloss in vers. 16,
17, 18, and 19, the words, " he measured the east side with the
measuring rod, five hundred by the measuring rod," are equiva-
lent to five hundred rods, according to the well-known Hebrew
usage ; just as indisputably as nsNa nSD, a hundred by the
cubit, is equivalent to a hundred cubits (see the comm. on
ch. xl. 21 at the close). The rejection of C^iJ as an imaginary
gloss is therefore not only arbitrary, but also useless ; as the
appended words iTnian njpa, even without Q'^iJ, affirm that the
270 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
five hundred were not cubits, but rods/ The 3''3p in vers. 16
and 17 is not to be understood as signifying that on the east
and north sides he measured a square on each side of five
hundred rods in length and breadth, but simply indicates that
he measured on all sides, as is obvious from ver. 20. For ac-
cording to this, the space which was measured toward every
quarter at five hundred rods had a boundary wall, which was
five hundred rods long on every side. This gives an area of
250,000 square rods ; whereas the temple, with the inner
and outer courts, covered only a square of five hundred
cubits in length and breadth, or 250,000 square cubits. It is
evident from this that the measuring related in vers. 15-20
does not refer to the space occupied by the temple and its
courts, and therefore that the wall which the measured space
had around it (ver. 20) cannot be the wall of the outer court
mentioned in ch. xl. 5, the sides of which were not more than
five hundred cubits long. The meaning is rather, that around
this wall, which enclosed the temple and its courts, a further
space of five hundred rods in length and breadth was measured
off " to separate between the holy and profane," i.e. a space
which was intended to form a separating domain between the
sanctuary and the common land. The purpose thus assigned
for the space, which was measured off on all four sides of the
" inner house," leaves no doubt remaining that it was not the
length of the surrounding wall of the outer court that was
1 The niON E'pn for ni^50 E'en in ver. 16 is utterly useless as a proof
that cubits and not rods are intended ; as it is obviously a copyist's error,
a fact which even the Masoretes admit. Rabbi ben-Asher's view of this
writing is an interesting one. Prof. Dr. Delitzsch has sent me the follow-
ing, taken from a fragment in his possession copied from a codex of the
Royal Library at Copenhagen. R. ben-Asher reckons mos among the
"iniNOI DlplB, «-c. words written vuTipov wponpoy, of which there are forty-
seven in the whole of the Old Testament, the following being quoted by
ben-Asher (i.e.) by way of example : ]1^!|, Josh. xx. 8, xxi. 27 ; ^n^Bsi,
2 Sam. XX. 14 ; nn3I>a, 2 Sam. xv. 28 ; ''iB'!?''!!!, Judg. xvi. 26 ; njRhnl,
1 Sam. xiv. 27.
CHAP. XLII. 15-20. 271
measured, but a space outside this wall. The following clause
3''3D V noin, « a wall was round about it," is irreconcilable
with the idea that the suffix in ^TiD (vers. 20 and 15) refers to
this wall, inasmuch as the V can only refer to the object indi-
cated by the sufBx attached to ^TiB. This object, i.e. the space
which was five hundred rods long and the same broad round
about, i.e. on every one of the four sides, had a wall enclosing
it on the outside, and forming the partition between the holy
and the common. C'lpn is therefore 'l?''JBn n^Hn, " the inner
house ;" but this is not the temple house with its side-building,
but the sanctuary of the temple with its two coui'ts and their
buildings, which was measured in ch. xl. 5-xlii. 12.
The arguments which have been adduced in opposition to
this explanation of our verses, — the only one in harmony with
the words of the text, — and in vindication of the alterations
made in the text by the LXX., are without any force. Ac-
cording to Bottcher (p. 355), Hitzig, and others, D^JiJ is likely
to be a false gloss, (1) " because fT^sn njpa stands close to it ;
and while this is quite needless after Wip, it may also have
occasioned the gloss." But this tells rather against the
suspicion that Q''i\> is a gloss, since, as we have already ob-
served, according to the Hebrew mode of expression, the " five
hundred " would be defined as rods by frnen nppaj even without
n^Ji^. Ezekiel, however, had added ir^Bn njipa for the purpose
of expressing in the clearest manner the fact that the reference
here is not to cubits, but to a new measurement of an extra-
ordinary kind, to which nothing corresponding could be shown
in the earlier temple. And the Seventy, by retaining this
clause, iv KoKafia rov fierpov, have pronounced sentence upon
their own change of the rods into cubits ; and it is no answer
to this that the Talmud (Midd. c. ii. note 5) also gives only five
hundred cubits to the n^sn nn^ since this Talmudic description
is treating of the historical temple and not of Ezekiel's prophetic
picture of a temple, although the Rabbins have transferred
various statements from the latter to the former. The second
272
THE PROPHECIES OF EZEEIEL.
and third reasons are weaker still — viz. " because there is no
other instance in which the measurement is expressed by rods
in the plural ; and, on the other hand, nas is frequently omitted
as being the ordinary measurement, and therefore taken for
granted." For the first assertion is proved to be erroneous, not
only by our verses, but also by ch. xlv. 1 sqq. and xlviii. 16 sqq.,
whilst there is no force whatever in the second. The last
argument employed is a more plausible one — namely, that
" the five hundred rods are not in keeping with the sanctuary,
because the edifice with the courts and gates would look but a
little pile according to the previous measurements in the wide
expanse of 20,000 (?) rods." But although the space measured
off around the temple-building for the separation between the
holy and the profane was five times as long and five times as
broad, according to the Hebrew text, or twenty-five times as
large as the whole extent of the temple and its courts,' the
appearance of the temple with its courts is not diminished iu
consequence, because the surrounding space was not covered
with buildings ; on the contrary, the fact that it was separated
from the common by so large a surrounding space, would
rather add to the importance of the temple with its courts.
This broad separation is peculiar to Ezekiel's temple, and
serves, like many other arrangements in the new sanctuary and
worship, to symbolize the inviolable holiness of that sanctuary.
(a) Area of the temple with the
two courts, 500 cubits square.
(i) Surrounding space, five hun-
c dred rods = 3000 cubits sq^uaie.
(c) Circuit of fifty cubits in
breadth around the surrounding
space. — Ch. xlv. 2.
CHAP. XLIII. 1-12. 273
The earlier sanctuary had nothing answering to this; and
Kliefoth is wrong in supposing that the outer court served the
same purpose in the tabernacle and Solomon's temple, whereas
in the temple of Ezekiel this had also become part of the
sanctuary, and was itself holy. The tabernacle had no outer
court at all, and in Solomon's temple the outer court did form
a component part of the sanctuary. The people might enter
it, no doubt, when they desired to draw near to the Lord with
sacrifices and gifts; but this continued to be the case in
Ezekiel's temple, though with certain restrictions (cf. ch. xlvi.
9 and 10). Only, in the case of Solomon's temple, the outer
court bordered directly upon the common soil of the city and
the land, so that the defilement of the land produced by the sin
of the people could penetrate directly even into the holy space
of the courts. In the sanctuary of the future, a safeguard
was to be placed against this by the surrounding space which
separated the holy from the common. It is true that the
surface of Moriah supplied no room for this space of five
hundred I'ods square ; but the new temple was not to be built
upon the real Moriah, but upon a very high mountain, which
the Lord would exalt and make ready for the purpose when
the temple was erected. Moreover, the circumstance that
Moriah was much too small for the extent of the new temple
and its surroundings, cannot furnish any argument against the
correctness of our view of the verses in question, for the simple
reason that in ch. xlv. and xlviii. there follow still further
statements concerning the separation of the sanctuary from
the rest of the land, which are in perfect harmony with this,
and show most indisputably that the temple seen by Ezekiel
was not to have its seat in the ancient Jerusalem.
Chap, xliii. 1-12. Entrance of the Glory of the Lord
into the New Temple,
Ver. L And he led me to the gate, the gate which looked
toward the east : Ver. 2. And behold the glory of the God of
EZ££. II. S
274 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Israel came from the east, and its sound was like tJie sound of
many waters, and the earth shone with His glory. Ver. 3. And
the appearance which 1 saw, was to look at like the appearance
which I saw when I came to destroy the city ; and {there were)
appearances like the appearance which 1 had seen by the river
Chebar ; and I fell down upon my face. Ver. 4. And the glory
of Jehovah came into the house hy the way of the gate, the direc-
tion of which is toward the east. Ver. 5. And wind lifted me
up and brought me into the inner court ; and, behold, the ghry
of Jehovah filled the house. Ver. 6. And I heard one speaking
to me from the house, and there was a man standing by me.
Ver. 7. And he said to me, Son of man, the place of my throne
and the place of the soles of my feet, lohere I shall dwell in the
midst of the sons of Israel for ever ; and the house of Israel will
no more defile my holy name, they and their kings, through their
whoredom and through the corpses of their kings, their high,
places, Ver. 8. Wlien they set their threshold by my threshold.^
and tJieir door-posts by my door-posts, and there was only the wall
between me and them, and they defiled my holy tiame by their
abominations ivliich they did, so that I destroyed them in my
wrath. Ver. 9. Now will they remove their whoredom, and the
corpses of their kings from me, and I shall dwell in the midst of
them for ever. Ver. 10. lliou, son of man, show to the house of
Israel this house, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities,
and may measure the well-measured building. Ver. 11. And
when they are ashamed of all that they have done, show them the
picture of the house and its arrangement, and its goings out and
in, and all its forms and all its statutes, and all its forms and
all its laws ; and write it before their eyes, that they may keep all
its form and all its statutes and do them. Ver. 12. This is th
law of the house : Upon the top of the mountain all its territory
round about is most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.^
The angel had shown the prophet the new sanctuary as already
completed, and had measured it in his presence according to its
several parts. But this building only became the house of God
CHAP. XLIII. 1-12. 275
when Jehovah as the God of Israel consecrated it, to be the
dwelling-place of His divine and gracious presence in the midst
of His people, by the entrance of His divine glory into the
house.^ The description of the new temple closes, therefore,
with this act of consecration. That the prophet might see this
act of divine grace with his own eyes, the measuring man led
him from the ground surrounding the temple (ch. xHi. 15-20)
back again to the east gate (ver. 1). The allusion is to the
eastern gate of the outer court ; for it is not till ver. 5 that
Ezekiel is taken into the inner court, and, according to
ch. xliv. 1, he was brought back to the east gate of the outer
court. Standing in front of this gate, he sees the glory of the
God of Israel come by the way from the east with a great
noise, and lighting up the earth with its splendour. The
coming of the theophany from the east points back to ch. x. 19,
xi. 1 and 23, where the Shechinah,'when leaving the ancient
temple, went out at the east gate and ascended to the summit
of the mountain, which was situated on the east of Jerusalem.
It was from the east, therefore, that it returned to enter the
new temple. This, fact is sufficient of itself to show that the
present entrance of the divine glory into the new temple did
not lay the foundation for a new and more exalted bond of
grace, but was simply intended to restore the relation which
had existed before the removal of Israel into captivity. The
tabernacle and Solomon's temple had both been consecrated
by Jehovah in the same manner as the seat of His throne of
grace in Israel (compare Ex. xl. 34, 35; 1 Kings viii. 10, 11 ;
and 2 Chron. v. 13, 14, and vii, 1-3, from which the expres-
sion nin^ D'STis nini'lina K7» in ver. 5 has been borrowed),
It is true that Havernick, Kliefoth, and others find, along with
this agreement, a difference in the fact that the glory of
Jehovah appeared in the cloud in both the tabernacle and
1 " The Lord appears, and fills the house with His own glory ; showing
that the house will not only be built, but wiU be filled with the power of
God"(Theodoret).
276 THE PROPHECIES OP EZEKIEL,
Solomon's temple ; whereas here, on the contrary, it appeared
in that peculiar form which Ezekiel had already repeatedly
seen. But it does not follow that there was really a difference,
because the cloud is not mentioned in the verses before us ; for
it is evident that the cloud was not wanting, even in the mani-
festation of the glory of God seen by Ezekiel, from the words
found in Ezek. x. 3: "The chud filled the inner court, and
the glory of Jehovah had risen up from the cherubim to the
threshold of the house, and the house was filled with the cloud,
and the court was full of the splendour of the glory of
Jehovah." If, therefore, it is expressly attested in ver. 3,
as even Kliefoth admits, that the appearance of God which
entered the temple was like the appearance which Ezekiel saw
by the Chaboras and before the destruction of the temple, and
in connection with the last-mentioned appearance the cloud
was visible along with the brilliant splendour of the divine
doxa, the cloud will certainly not have been wanting when it
entered the new temple ; and the only reason why it is not
expressly mentioned must be, that it did not present a contrast
to the brilliant splendour, or tend to obscure the light of the
glory of God, but as a shining cloud was simply the atmospheric
clothing of the theophany. If, then, the cloud did not present
a contrast to the brilliancy of the divine glory, it cannot be
inferred from the words, " and the earth shone with His glory,"
that there was any difference between this and the earlier
manifestations of the divine glory at the consecration of the
tabernacle and Solomon's temple ; more especially as these
words do not affirm that it became light on earth, but simply
that the earth shone with the glory of God, — that is to aay,
that it threw a bright light upon the earth as it passed along,
— so that this remark simply serves to indicate the intensity
of the brightness of this theophany. The words '1J1 ?ip3 WP
are not to be understood, as we may learn from ch. i. 24, as
referring to a voice of the coming God, but describe the loud
noise made by the moving of the theophany on account of the
CHAP. XLIII. 1-12. 277
rustling of the wings of the cherubim. This resembled the
roaring of mighty waves. In ver. 3, the expression '1S"iD3
. . . ns"ian ns'ioa is somewhat heavy in style, but is correct
Hebrew ; and the remark with which Hitzig seeks to justify
his alteration of nKi»3l into nsnDi, — namely, that nsnoa " would
signify 'so the appearance,' whereas Ezekiel intends to explain
the present appearance from the well-known earlier one," — is
false so far as the usage of the language is concerned. When
the Hebrew uses two 3 in cases of comparison, which we are
accustomed to express in German by so .. . wie (so . . . as),
he always commences with the thing to which he compares
another, and lets the thing which is to be compared follow
afterwards. Thus, for example, in Gen. xviii. 25, P''=;S3 njrn
yens does not affirm that it happens as to the righteous so to
the wicked, but vice versa, that it happens to the righteous as
to the wicked ; and in Gen. xliv. 18, 'IV"!?! I^li^ '? <^°ss not
mean, for like thee so is Pharaoh, but "for thou art like
Pharaoh." According to this genuine Hebrew expression, the
present appearance of the divine glory is mentioned first in the
verse before us, and then in the earlier one which the present
resembled. And even the apparent pleonasm fiN"ian nsiD
vanishes if we render nK"!)? by " look," — the look of the
apparition which I saw was just like the apparition, etc. 'K33
'U1 T)r\W refers to the ecstatic transportation of the prophet to
Jerusalem (ch. viii.— xi.), to witness the destruction of the city
(see more particularly ch. viii. 4, ix. 1 sqq.). "The prophet
destroyed the city ideally by his prophecy, of which the
fulfilment simply forms the objective reverse side " (Hitzig),
niK")Dl is appended in loose apposition, — there were appearances,
visions, — and the plural is to be taken as in Oi'ipK nlsno in
ch. i. 1, xl. 2. For what follows, compare ch. iii. 23, x. 15.
For ver. 5a, compare ch. iii. 14, xi. 24.
In vers. 6 and 7 the question arises, who it is who is speaking
to the prophet; whether it is Jehovah, who has entered the
temple, or the man who is standing by Ezekjel in the inner court ?
278 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
There can be no doubt that vS "la'iD is Jehovah here, as in
ch. ii. 2; though the commentators are divided in opinion
whether Jehovah spoke directly to the prophet, or through the
medium of the man who stood by his side. Havernick presses
the Hitlipael i?'!l?, and imagines that Ezekiel heard God con-
versing within the sanctuary, in consequence of which the
angel stood by his side ; so that the words of God consisted
chiefly in the command to communicate to Ezekiel the divine
revelation which follows in ver. 7. But this view is proved to
be erroneous by the expression vX which follows "i^iiD, and
which Havernick has overlooked, Kliefoth, on the other hand,
is of opinion that the words contained in ver, 7, which proceeded
from the "IS^O, were addressed to the prophet directly by God
Himself ; for he heard them before anything was said hy the
man, and neither here nor in what follows is the man said to
have spoken. On the contrary, both here and in what follows,
even in ch. xlvi. 20, 24, xlvii. 6, 7, it is always God Himself
who appears as the speaker, and the man simply as the prophet's
guide. But this is also not correct. Such passages as chv
xlvi. 20 and 24 compared with vers. 19 and 21, and ch. xlvii.
6, 8, compared with vers. 1 and 4, show undeniably that the
man who conducted the prophet also talked with him. Conse-
quently, in the case referred to in the verse before us, we must
also conclude that he who spoke to the prophet from the temple
addressed him through the medium of the man who stood by
his side, and that B^'N is the subject to ION'? in ver, 7 ; from
which, however, it by no means follows that the "la^o was also
an angel, who spoke to the prophet, not from the most holy
place, but simply from within the house, as Hitzig explains the
matter. The meaning is rather, that Ezekiel heard God con-
versing with him from the sanctuary, whilst a man, i.e, an
angel, stood by his side and spoke to him as follows. ^^ is in
that case not some angel merely who spoke in the name of
Jehovah, but the angel of Jehovah, God's own speaker, 6 X070?
Tov Qeov (John i, 1 sqq.), But according to his outward habiius,
CHAP. XLIII. 1-12. 279
this angel of the Lord, who is designated as St"'!*, is identical
with the angel who showed the prophet the temple, and mea-
sured it (ch. xl. 3 onwards). For according to ch. xlvii. 1 sqq.
this tyK had also a measuring rod, and measured. The absence
of the article from B'''N in ver. 6, which prevents Kliefoth from
admitting this identity, does not indicate decidedly that a diffe-
rent man from the one mentioned before is introduced here
as the prophet's attendant, but simply leaves the identity of
this tyx with the former indefinite, so that it can only be inferred
from the further course of events ; because the point of import-
ance here was neither to establish this identity- by employing
the article, nor to define the medium of the word of God more
precisely, but simply to introduce the words which follow as
the words of God Himself. The address commences with an
explanation on the part of God that the temple into which the
glory of the Lord had entered was the place of His throne,
where He would dwell for ever among the sons of Israel. The
DipD'OK is a concise expression, in which UK is nota accus., and
we have to supply in thought either n^T or niiri ; « behold the
place." vp niS3 DipD, the place of the soles of my feet (cf.
Isa. Ix. 13), is equivalent to the footstool of my feet in Isa.
Ixvi. 1. The ark of the covenant is called the footstool of God
in 1 Ohron. xxviii. 2 and Ps. cxxxii. 7 ; compare Ps. xcix. 5
and Lam. ii. 1, where this epithet may possibly be used to
designate the temple. This also applies to the throne of
Jehovah, since God was enthroned above the cherubim of the
ark in the holy of holies (cf. Ex. xxv. 22 ; 1 Sam. iv. 4, etc.).
In the sanctuary which Ezekiel saw, no reference is made to
the ark of the covenant, and the silence with regard to this is
hardly to be regarded as a mere omission to mention it, inas-
much as none of the things contained in the temple are men-
tioned with the exception of the altars, not even the table of
shew-bread or the candlestick. The ark of the covenant is not
mentioned, because, as is stated in Jer. iii. 16, in the Messianic
times the ark of the covenant will not be remembered, neither
280 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
will it be missed. OJ'iJ'r', as in ch. xxxvii. 26 and 28. The
promise culminates in this. DjiV? does not apply either to the
tabernacle or to Solomon's temple, in which Jehovah also had
His dwelling-place, though not for ever. These sanctuaries
He left, and gave them up to destruction, because the Israelites
had profaned His holy name by their idolatry. This will not
take place any more after the erection of the new sanctuary.
INBD^ N7 is not imperative, but a simple future : " they will no
more defile," because they come to a knowledge of their sins
through the punitive judgment of exile, so that they become
ashamed of them, and because the Lord will have poured out
His Spirit upon them (cf. ch. xxxvii. 23 sqq., xxxix. 29). —
Formerly, however (ver. 7b}, they profaned the holy name of
God by their spiritual whoredom (cf. ch. xvi.) and by dead idols,
for which they erected high places in the immediate neighbour-
hood of the dwelling-place of Jehovah, that is to say, even in
the temple courts, so that Jehovah was only separated from the
idols by a wall. This is the general meaning of vers, lb and 8,
iu which the exposition of Df)''???' '7?2 is difficult. Kosenmiiller,
Havernick, and others understand by the " corpses of their
kings," the dead idols. Ewald, Hitzig, and Kliefoth, on the
other hand, take the expression in a literal sense, as referring to
the corpses of kings which had been buried near to the temple,
so that the temple had been defiled by the proximity of these
graves. But the latter view is precluded by the fact that not
a single instance can be adduced of the burial of a king in the
vicinity of the temple, since Neh. iii. 15 contains no allusion to
anything of the kind, and the tombs of the kings upon Zion
were not so near to the temple that it could possibly be defiled
in consequence. Moreover, DrfD3 cannot be reconciled with
this view; and for that reason Ewald and Hitzig propose to
read Dni»a, " in their death." The attempt of Kliefoth, how-
ever, to defend the reading onto?, by taking it as in apposition
to DnwD and not to oniapo "'^jiBai, is a desperate remedy, which
clearly shows the impossibility of connecting DHiDa with the
CHAP. XLIII. 1-12, 281
" corpses of the kings." We therefore understand by '''^JS the
dead idols, in accordance with Lev. xxvi. 30 (cf. Jer. xvi. 18) ;
but by Cin''3pD we understand, not the idols, but the Israelitish
kings, as in the case of the preceding DO''??'? ; partly because it
cannot be shown that the plural Dwip is ever used in the sense
of idols (though the singular £33?? is used of Baal in Zeph. i. 5
and Amos v. 26), and partly on account of the harshness
involved in interpreting the two DJT'ai'D when standing so close
together, in the first instance of the kings, and in the second
of the idols of Israel. The corpses of the kings are therefore
the dead idols, for which the kings (for example, Manasseh)
had built altars or high places (ni»3) in the sanctuary, i.e. in
the courts of the temple (2 Kings xxi. 4, 5-7). The objection
that £3'''i33 without anything further, such, for instance, as
WTivi in Lev. xxvi. 30, cannot signify the dead idols, will not
bear examination, as the more precise definition which is want-
ing is supplied by the context, where idolatry is the point in
question. Drii»3 without the preposition 3 is a loosely attached
apposition to On^apD 'njaa and onyn, which defines more pre-
cisely in what way tlie whoredom of the nation and the dead
idols of the kings had amounted to a defiling of the house of
the Lord, namely, from the fact that the people and the kings
had erected temples of high places (bdmoth) for dead idols by
the side of the temple of the living God, and had placed them
so close that the threshold and door-posts of these idol-temples
touched the threshold and door-posts of the temple of Jehovah,
and there was nothing but the wall of the temple (T'lSH) between
Jehovah and the carcase-gods, Dflioa is explained in this way
in ver. 8a, and then the defiling of the holy name of the Lord is
mentioned again for the purpose of appending, by means of '!OK\
(imperf. Piel of n?3), the allusion to the penal judgment which
they had thereby brought upon themselves, Ver. 9, Such
profanation as this will not take place any more in time to
come, and Jehovah will dwell for ever in the midst of Israel.
To lead Israel to this goal, Ezekiel is to show them the house
282 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
{i.e. the temple). In this way are the further words of God in
vers. 10-12 attached to what goes before. D^anTiN Tan^ show
or make known the house, is equivalent to proclaim to the
people the revelation concerning the new temple. In this were
the Israelites to discern the magnitude of the grace of God,
that they might blush at their evil deeds, and measure the well-
measured building ('T'WF), as in ch. xsviii. 12), i.e. carefully
consider and ponder what the Lord had bestowed upon His
people through this sanctuary, so that they might suffer them-
selves to be brought to repentance by means of its glory.
And if they felt shame and repentance on account of their
transgressions, Ezekiel was to show them the shape and arrange-
ment of the sanctuary, with all its forms and ordinances, and
write them out before their eyes, that they might have the
picture of it impressed upon their minds, and keep the statutes
thereof. In ver. 11 the words are crowded together, to indicate
that all the several parts and arrangements of the new temple
are significant and worthy of being pondered and laid to heart.
iTilV is the shape of the temple generally, its external form ;
HiUPi, the internal arrangement as a whole. Both of these are
noticed specifically by the allusion to the goings out and in, as
well as to the forms (niiiv) of the separate parts, and their
statutes and laws, niijn are the precepts concerning the things
to he observed by Israel when appearing before the Lord in
the temple, the regulations for divine worship. Dilin, the
instructions contained in these statutes for sanctification of life.
The second inhiS-731 is omitted in the LXX. and some of the
Hebrew Codd., and has therefore been expunged as a gloss by
Dathe, Hitzig, and other critics ; but it is undoubtedly genuine,
and in conformity with the intentional crowding together of
words. — The admonition to keep and to observe everything
carefully is closed in ver. 12 with a statement of the funda-
mental law of the temple ; that upon the lofty mountain the
whole of its domain round about is to be most holy, inn E'Nvl'J/
does not belong to n;3n ju the sense of the house which is to
CHAP. XLIII. y-XLVI. 2i 283
be built upon the top of the mountain, but to the contents of
the tliordh of this house. It is to stand upon the top of the
mountain, and to be most holy in all its domain, inii B'Ni is
to be understood in accordance with ch. xl. 2 ; and v33 points
back to n'3n. Both by its situation upon a very high mountain,
and also by the fact that not merely the inner sanctuary, and
not merely the whole of the temple house, but also the whole of
its surroundings (all its courts), are to be most holy, the new
sanctuary is to be distinguished from the earlier one. What
has been already stated — namely, that the temple shall not be
profaned any more — is compressed into this clause ; and by the
repetition of the words, " this is the law of the house," the first
section of this vision, viz. the description of the temple, is
rounded off ; whilst the command given to the prophet in vers.
10 and 11, to make known all the statutes and laws of this
temple to the house of Israel, forms at the same time the
transition to the section which follows.
CHAP. XLIII. 13-XLVI. 24. THE NEW ORDINANCES OF DIVINE
WORSHIP.
With the entrance of the divine glory into the new temple,
which Ezekiel saw in the spirit (ch. xliii. 1-5), the Lord
God entered once more into the covenant relation of grace
toward the tribes of Israel. But if the abode of Jehovah in
the midst of His people was to have an eternal duration, Israel
must turn in uprightness of heart to its God, and suffer itself
to be renewed and sanctified in heart, mind, and spirit from
within the sanctuary, through the mercy of the Lord and His
Spirit. It must entirely renounce the idols to which it was
formerly attached, and cherish with willingness of heart fellow-
ship with its God in the temple, through the faithful fulfilment
of all that He required of His people. The description and
consecration of the new temple, as the site of the throne of
Jehovah in Israel, is therefore followed by the precepts con-
284 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cerning the manner in which Israel was to serve its God in the
sanctuary, and to sanctify His name. These precepts commence
with the description and ritual of the consecration of the altar
of burnt-offering, at which the people was to approach the
Lord with sacrifices, to seek and obtain from Him grace, sanc-
tification, and blessing (ch. xliii. 13-27). To these there are ap-
pended regulations, — (1) concerning the access to the sanctuary,
for the prince (ch. xliv. 1-4), also for the ministers of the altar
and of the holy place, the Levites and the priests, their duties
and privileges (ch. xliv. 5-31) ; (2) concerning the attitude of all
the people toward the sanctuary and its ministers, or concerning
the holy portion to be set apart to the Lord for His sanctuary,
and its ministers, priests, Levites, and princes on the division
of the land (ch. xlv. 1-12), and also concerning the heave-
offerings, which all Israel was to bring to the prince to supply
the sacrifices binding upon him (ch. xlv. 13-17) ; (3) concerning
the offerings which were to be brought on the Sabbaths, the
new moons, the yearly festivals, and every day (ch. xlv. 18-
xlvi. 15) ; and lastly, (4) by way of appendix, precepts con-
cerning the landed property of the prince (ch. xlvi. 16-18), and
the sacrificial kitchens (ch. xlvi. 19-24).
Vers. 13-27. Description and Consecration of the Altar of
Burnt- Offering.
Vers. 13-17. Description of the Altar (see the illustra-
tion on Plate III.). — Vcr. 13. And these are the measures of the
altar in cubits: The cubit a cubit and a handbreadth; a ground-
framework of a cubit (in height), and a cubit in breadth^ audits
moulding on its border round about a span. This is the base of
the altar. Ver. 14. And from the ground-framework of earth
to the lower enclosure, two cubits (in height), and a cubit in
breadth ; and from the small enclosure to the greater enclosure,
four cubits (in height), and one cubit in breadth. Ver. 15. And
the mount of God, four cubits ; and from the hearth of God
upwards, the Jour horns. Ver. 16. And the hearth of God,
CHAP. XLIII. 13-1.7. 285
twelve cubits in length by twelve cubits in breadth ; squared on
its four sides. Ver. 17. And the enclosure, fourteen cubits
in length by fourteen cubits in breadth on its four sides; and
the moulding round about it, half a cubit; and the ground-
framework of it, a cubit round about : and its steps faced the east.
— To the heading, " these are the measures of the altar in
(according to) cubits," there is once more appended, as in ch.
xl. 5, in connection with the measuring of the temple, the
length of the cubit measure. The description commences with
the foundation of the altar, and, proceeding upwards, gives the
height and breadth of the several gradations of the walls of the
altar, up to the horns at the four corners (vers. 13-15). It
then passes from above downwards, to supply the length and
breadth, or the circumference of the different stages (vers. 16
and 17). As the first, or lowest part, the P''^ is mentioned^
literally, the bosom or lap ; then by transference, the hollow
formed by the sides of a chariot (1 Kings xxii. 35) ; here the
lower hollow or base of the altar (p), formed by a border of a
definite height, not merely " a frame running round, a stand in
which the altar stood " (Hitzig), nor merely " the hollow filled
with earth " (Kliefoth), but both together. This ground-frame-
work (p) was a cubit (sc. high) and a cubit broad. That
ntssn is to be taken as referring to the height, is evident from
the statement of the breadth which follows, nexn pin is not
to be altered into nsK Pi^in, as Ewald proposes, nor is nasn to
be changed into naxD (Hitzig) ; but Havernick's explanation is
to be adopted : " and a bosom (was there) the cubit," i.e. of the
height of the cubit just described. 3nn, breadth, is the extent
to which the bosom projected beyond the next enclosure (g) on
every side, and formed a support, the circumference of which
was a cubit more than the lower cube of the altar on every side.
This is shown by the measurements in vers. 16 and 17. The
pin had a ^13? on its nSB* of a span (half a cubit) in height (o).
nSB*, lip, is the rim (1 Kings vii. 26 ; Gen. xxii. 17) ; and
i>l33, the bordering on the rim, is a moulding. The feminine
286 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
suffixes attached to ni7i23 and nnSB' refer to P% which is of the
masculine gender, no doubt, when used in its literal sense of
bosom or lap, but is construed as a feminine in the tropical
sense of an inanimate object. The ground-framework, with its
moulding, formed the 33 of the altar. 23, the arched, then a
hump or back, signifies here the support of the altar. Upon this
support the altar rose in a cubical enclosure or frame, which
diminished in circumference by ledges or steps. The enclosure
resting upon the support, and therefore the lowest enclosure (g),
is mentioned in ver. 14a; and the one which followed (r) in
ver. 145. The word nnty, which has probably sprung from
isj? by the softening of s into T, signifies enclosure, surround-
ing, and is mostly used for the outer court of the temple ; here
it is applied to the altar, and signifies the enclosure or frame-
work of the kernel of the altar, consisting of earth. As the
altar rose in steps, a distinction is made between the lower or
smaller, and the (upper or) greater HTTV. The identity of the
lower rritv and the smaller one (nsDisn) is so evident from the
course of the description, that it is universally admitted by
modern expositors. The lower one (5) is called the small one,
in comparison with the large one which stood above it, from the
fact that its height was smaller, as it was only two cubits high,
whereas the upper one (r) was four. When, therefore, the
measurement of the greater one is given in this way in
ver. 146 ; " from the small enclosure to the great enclosure,
four cubits," this statement cannot be understood in any other
way than as meaning, that this enclosure or frame had a height
of four cubits from the lower to the upper end, — that is to say,
in other words, that the lower ledge was four cubits from the
upper. Consequently the statement in ver. 14a, " from the
ground-framework of earth to the lower enclosure, two cubits,"
can also have no other meaning than that the lower enclosure,
from the lower edge by the moulding to the upper edge, at
which the second enclosure commenced, was two cubits high.
This height is reckoned from the upper edge of the p''n, or from
CHAP. XLIII. 13-17. 287
the first (lowest) ledge. The height of these three portions
taken together, therefore, was (1+2+4) seven cubits. To
this the mount of God (s), which was four cubits (ver. 15),
has to be added, making in all eleven cubits. In ver. 14 p''? is
followed by Y^!^'} : the p''n consisting of earth, or filled with
earth. But the P'D, with its moulding, is designated 33, the
back or support of the altar, and is thereby distinguished from
the altar itself ; so that, for the height of the altar, we have
only to reckon the two enclosures, with the mount of God,
which amount to ten cubits. Upon the basis of the p''n, with
its moulding, and the two enclosures (mtj?), there rose the true
altar, with its hearth, and the horns at the four corners, noticed
in ver. 15. A distinction is here made between -"^"in, i.e. mount
of God, and ?^''']^. ; and they are not to be identified, as they
have been by many of the commentators, down to Hitzig, after
the example of the LXX. ^^''1^. (as the word is to be written
according to the Keri) does not mean " lion of God," but
" hearth of God " Q'i^, from iTis, to burn), as in Isa. xxix. 1, 2.
The hearth of God is the surface of the altar, its fire-hearth (t);
whereas ^^Ji}, mount of God (s), was the basis or foundation of
the hearth. This was four cubits high, whereas no height is
mentioned in connection with the hearth of God; but it is
simply stated that four horns went upward from it, namely, at
the four corners. With the horns of the altar, the size and
height of which are not given, and which cannot be reckoned at
three cubits, the description of all the parts, from the bottom to
the top, is given ; and all that remains to complete the measure-
ments, is to describe the circumference of the several parts
which rose one above another in the form of steps. This
follows in vers. 16 and 17. The hearth of God is twelve
cubits long and twelve cubits broad, and is therefore 3?^3"J,
square, of the same length and breadth on its four sides.
Goinor downwards, there follow in ver. 17a the length and
breadth of the mjl?, with fourteen cubits, as it was a cubit
broader on every side according to ver. 14. It is very strange,
288 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
however, that the length and breadth of only one nnjjj are
given here, as there are two of different heights mentioned in
ver. 14. Many of the commentators have therefore identified
the mount of God with the great nnrj?, and attribute only a
height of seven cubits to the altar ; whereas Kliefoth regards
both the n^tJ? of ver. 17 and the i«i3ji and p'n of ver. 15 as
different from the parts mentioned by the same name in
vers. 13 and 14, and takes them as referring to an enclosure
and a barrier of the mount of God. One is as arbitrary as the
other, as the words of the text do not require either of these
assumptions. The difficulty, that only one nnjj? is mentioned
in ver. 17, is easily solved, if we consider that in ver. 15 only
the height of the mount of God is given, and no breadth is
mentioned as in the case of the iTTtJ? in ver. 14. We may see
from this that the mount of God had the same breadth or the
same circumference as the upper i^V. (see r and s in the illus-
tration). In that case the length and breadth of all the parts
of the altar were given, when, in addition to the length and
breadth of the hearth of God (t), those -of one iTJJJI, and that
the lower, were given, as this alone was longer and broader
than the hearth of God and the mount of God ; whereas the
length and breadth of the upper nntl? were identical with those
of the circumference of the mount of God.
The altar, therefore, upon the upper surface, the hearth of
God, was a square, of twelve cubits in length and breadth.
The mount of God and the upper enclosure had the same
length and breadth. The lower enclosure, on the other hand,
was fourteen cubits long and broad ; and the support, finally,
without the moulding, was sixteen cubits in length and breadth.
The height of the , altar was as follows : the support, with the
moulding, a cubit and a half; the lower enclosure, two cubits;
the upper, four ; and the mount of God, with the hearth, also
four cubits in height ; whereas the altar in Solomon's temple
was ten cubits high, and at its lower basis twenty cubits long
and broad (2 Chron. iv. 1). — The description closes in ver. 17i
CHAP. XLllI. 18-27. 289
with an allusion to steps, which the altar of Ezekiel had upon
the eastern side ; whereas, in the case of the tabernacle, steps
were not allowed to be placed by the altar (Ex. xx. 23). The
form niJS is taken by Kimchi as a noun. Others regard it as
an injin. nominase. ; whilst Hitzig proposes to point it as a
participle nija.
Vers. 18-27. Consecbation or the Altae. — Ver. 18.
And he said to me, Son of man, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
These are the statutes of the altar in the day when it is erected,
to offer burnt-offerings upon it, and to sprinkle blood thereon.
Ver. 19. Thou shalt give to the priests of the tribe of Levi who
are of the seed of Zadok, who draw near to me, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah, a bullock, a young ox, for a sin-offering,
Ver. 20. And thou shalt take of its blood, and put it upon its
four horns, and upon the four corners of the enclosure, and upon
the moulding round about ; and so absolve and expiate it. Ver. 21 ,
And thou shalt take the bullock of the sin-offering, and burn it at
the appointed place of the house, outside the sanctuary. Ver. 22.
And on the second day thou shalt offer a faultless he-goat for a
sin-offering, that they may absolve the altar, as they absolved it
loith the bullock. Ver. 23. WJien thou hast completed the abso-
lution, thou shalt offer a bullock, a young ox, without fault, and
a faultless ram of the flock ; Ver. 24. And shalt bring them
before Jehovah^ and the priests shall throw salt upon them, and
sacrifice them as burnt-offering to JehovaJi. Ver. 25. Seven days
shalt thou offer a sin-offering goat daily and a bullocJc, a young
ox, and a ram of the flock without fault shall they prepare.
Ver. 26. Seven days shall they expiate tlie altar, and cleanse it,
and fill its hand. Ver. 27. And when they have completed tliese
days, it shall come to pass on the eighth day and henceforward,
that the priests place your burnt-offerings and your peace-offerings
upon the altar, and I will accept you with delight, is the saying
of the Lord Jehovah.
As the altar of the tabernacle and that of Solomon's temple
EZEK. II. X
290 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
were consecrated before they were used (Lev. viii. 11, 15,
19, 33 ; 1 Kings viii. 62-66 ; 2 Chron. vii. 4-10), and God
commanded and regulated this consecration of the altar of the
tabernacle (Ex. xxix. 10 sqq.), so also is the altar of burnt-
offering in the new sanctuary to be consecrated before it is
used. This command is given to Ezekiel, and the consecration
enjoined upon him, not as the representative of the nation, but
as a prophet, upon whom, as is frequently the case in the pro-
phetical narratives, those things are said to be enjoined, which
are to be set in operation through his proclamation. This
commission is given to him, however, for the day (the time)
when the altar will be made or restored, from which alone we
may see that the execution of the command belongs to the
future, in which the temple shown him in the spirit is to be
erected, and that it will take place in a manner corresponding
to the realization of the temple ; so that we cannot infer from
this command alone that the reference is to the building of a
temple and altar of stone, metal, and wood. f}W?^ 'lii'? are
not the regulations prescribed for the altar service generally,
but simply those relating to its consecration. If we compare
these with the account of the consecration of the altars of the
earlier sanctuaries, we find that no detailed description is given
of the consecration of the altar of Solomon's temple, but that
it is simply stated that it lasted seven days (2 Chron. vii. 9).
The consecration of the altar of the tabernacle lasted just the
same time (Ex. xxix. 37 ; Lev. viii. 33). And the same period
is appointed here (ver. 26). But the consecration of the altar
of the tabernacle was associated with the consecration of the
priests. Here, on the contrary, the existence of the priesthood
is presupposed, and only the altar is consecrated. The conse-
cration of the Mosaic altar commenced with the anointing of
the altar and all its utensils, by the sprinkling of it seven
times by Moses with the holy anointing oil, for the purpose
of sanctifying it (Lev. viii. 11). Here, on the other hand,
nothing is said about the anointing of the altar; only the
CHAP. XLIII. 18-27. 291
absolving of it by sacrifice is mentioned, which followed the
anointing in the case of the Mosaic altar. At the altar in the
tabernacle Moses performed the whole act of consecration, as
the mediator of the covenant, the anointing as well as the pre-
paration of the sacrifices. Here, however, the priests already
consecrated for their service are to complete the sacrificial
ceremony. It is true that the expressions used in ver. 20,
" take of its blood," etc., and in ver. 21, " take the bullock of
the sin-offering," etc., apparently indicate that the prophet was
to perform the sprinkling of the blood and the burning of the
sin-offering. But it is obvious that this is only to be under-
stood as signifying that he was to do it through the medium of
the priests, i.e. was to enjoin the performance of it upon them,
from the use of the plural iK^n in ver. 226 ; " they shall absolve
the altar, as they have absolved it with the bullock." It is not
all the priests of the tribe of Levi, however, who are to perform
this service, but simply those of the family of Zadok, who
alone are selected in the new temple for specifically priestly
service (of. eh. xl. 46 and xliv. 15 sqq.). — The sacred ceremony
commences with the offering of a young ox as a sin-offering;
vers. 19, 20, as in Lev. viii. 14, compared with Ex. xxix. 1, 10.
The blood of the ox is to be put upon the four horns and the
four corners of the enclosure, 'and upon the moulding below it
round about ; and the flesh is to be burned at an appointed
place outside the sanctuary. For the article in nKann "isn
(ver. 21), see Ewald, § 2906. The pouring out of the blood
— that was not used for smearing the places indicated — at the
foot of the altar is not mentioned, nor the burning of the fat
portions of the sacrifice upon the altar. We cannot infer, from
the omission of the latter circumstance, that the fat was not
consumed upon the altar, but was burned, with the flesh, skin,
and bones of the animal, outside the sanctuary, as Kliefoth
supposes. Without the burning of certain definite portions of
the victim upon the altar, the slaughtering of the animal would
not have been a complete sacrifice at all ; the smearing of the
292 THE PBOPBECIES OF EZEEIEL.
blood upon the altar would not have sufficed for this. And
the fact that in ver. 21 the command is given, "take the
bullock and burn it," does not prove that the animal was to be
burned along with those fat portions which were to be con-
sumed upon the altar in the case of every sin-offering. In
Lev. viii. 17 also, "iS'^TiN stands in the place of "isn "IB'STIK,
Ex. xxix. 14. Ezekiel generally presupposes that the sacrificial
ritual is well known, and therefore mentions only those points
in which deviations from the ordinary ritual took place in con-
nection with this sacrifice, such as the sprinkling of the blood,
because the blood was to be smeared on particular parts of the
altar, and the burning of the flesh, on account of the place
where this was to be done. In the case of the burnt-offering
in ver. 23, no directions are given concerning the ceremonial ;
because this was to be in conformity with the standing ritual,
with the exception of the sprinkling with salt, which was not
to be performed in the same manner as in the ordinaiy sacri-
fices. The burning is to take place ri^an 115303, outside the
sanctuary, lijsn is a place commanded or appointed; and
JV^n Ipso is a place in the temple set apart for that purpose.
It follows from this that the place in question, since it belonged
to the house, i.e. to the temple, is to be sought for within the
square of five hundred cubits in extent, which was covered by
the temple and its courts ; and at the same time that it was
outside the E^p?, i.e. upon a spot which did not form part of
the sanctuary in the stricter sense of the word. Kliefoth
therefore thinks of a spot within the gizrali (ch. xli. 12), the
name of which implies that the space which it covered did not
belong to the true E^pO. This view is the most probable one ;
whereas Ewald's conjecture, that the place intended is the
locality of the sacrificial kitchens of the priests described in ch.
xlvi. 19, is decidedly erroneous, as these kitchens, which were
set apart for the cooking of the holy sacrificial flesh to be
eaten by the priests alone, were certainly reckoned as forming
part of the B'^po. — Ver. 22. On the second day, a he-goat
CHAP. XLIII. 18-27. 293
was to be brought for a sin-offering, and the altar was to be
cleansed from sin with this just as with the bullock on the
first day; which implies that the same ceremonial was to be
observed with this sacrifice as with that of the sin-offering.
After the completion of the expiation a burnt-offering was to
be presented to the Lord of a bullock and a ram (vers. 23 and
24). There is a difference of opinion as to the meaning of ini^aa
Sisno in these verses. Hitzig and Kliefoth suppose that the
expiation was' only completed on the second day, with the
offering of the he-goat as a sin-offering. They both of them
lay stress upon the fact that, on the one hand, in vers. 23 and
24 the offering of the burnt-offering is mentioned on the second
day, and not on the first day also ; and, on the other hand, in
ver. 25, for the seven days of consecration, only the prepara-
tion of a he-goat for the sin-offering and the preparation of the
two animals appointed for the burnt-offering are mentioned.
Hitzig also adduces the fact that in ver. 26 there is no further
reference to Stan, but simply to "133 and nnta, and draws the
conclusion from this, that the sin attaching to the altar was
removed with two sin-offerings on two days, and then through
seven days further by means of burnt-offerings the anger of
God which followed the sin was appeased (laa), and the un-
cleanness or profane character of the altar was expunged ("inD),
BO that the seven days of ver. 25 are not to be dated from
ver. 19 onwards. According to this view, the consecration of
the altar lasted nine days, and not seven, and the eighth day
mentioned in ver. 27 would really be the tenth day, reckoning
from the commencement of the consecration. To carry out
this view, Hitzig is obliged to erase not only the 'i^JJl'iS?! of
ver. 20, but also the first half of ver. 25 as glosses ; a fact
which carries its condemnation with it, as even the Septuagint
furnishes no warrant for the erasure of ver. 25a. Moreover,
the distinction which Hitzig draws between ssn on the one
hand, and la? and ino on the other, is quite erroneous. Puri-
fication ("inD) is never mentioned in the law as the effect pro-
294 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
duced by a burnt-offering. A sin-offering followed by a burnt-
offering is invariably prescribed for the renroval of uncleanness ;
for "reconciliation and purification take place through the
absolution effected by the sin-offering; and to such a sin-
offering and its purifying operation the burnt-offering is then
added to secure the good pleasure of God for that which has
been already cleansed" (Kliefoth). — But we cannot regard
even Kliefoth's view as well founded, namely, that on the first
day a sin-offering alone was presented, and it was only from
the second day onwards that a sin-offering and burnt-offering
were presented, and this lasted for seven days, so that the con-
secration of the altar continued fully eight days, and on the
ninth day (not the eighth, as stated in ver. 27) the regular use
of the altar commenced. Kliefoth bases this conclusion prin-
cipally upon the fact that vers. 19-21 attribute only the sin-
offering of a bullock to the first day ; and that, on the other
hand, vers. 25 and 26 extend in all its details to seven days
the very same ceremony as vers. 22—24 assign to the second
day, whereas they do not contain a syllable to the effect that
the sin-offering of the bullock was to be repeated every day,
or that the sacrifices described in vers. 22-24 were also to be
offered on the first day. The sinew of this demonstration
consists in silentio, therefore ; and this precarious basis of
argument crumbles here, as in most other cases, as is evident
from the words of ver. 26 : " seven days shall ye reconcile the
altar, and purify it." This perfectly general statement, which
is not connected with ver. 25 by any Vav copuL, or placed in
subordination to it, affirms in the clearest manner that the con-
secration of the altar was to last seven days, neither more nor
less ; so that if these seven days are to be reckoned from the
second day, the sin-offering of the bullock upon the first day
must be deprived of its reconciling and purifying worth, in
direct contradiction not only to ver. 20, according to which the
altar was to be absolved and reconciled through the sin-offering
of the bullock to be offered on the first day, but also to ver. 22,
CHAP. XLIII. 18-27. 295
according to which they were to absolve the altar by the sin-
offering of the he-goat, in just the same manner as they had
absolved it by the sin-offering of the bullock (on the first day).
To take the "IM and "inD in ver. 26 merely as the effect pro-
duced by the sacrifices mentioned in ver. 25, renders the nWE'
D'd; standing at the head of ver. 26 an impossibility. Unless,
therefore, we would impose upon the words of the prophet a
gross contradiction, we must lay no stress either upon the fact
that in ver. 23 the offering of the burnt-offering is not men-
tioned till after the direction concerning the sin-offering to be
presented on the second day, or upon the circumstance that in
ver. 25 the he-goat is mentioned as a sin-offering for all the
seven days, and no allusion is made to the fact that the sin-
offering of the first day was a bullock. The former (the refer-
ence to the burnt-offering after the sin-offering of the second
day) may be explained very simply, on the ground that the
sin-offerings of the first two days are mentioned one after the
other, because different animals were prescribed for the purpose,
and then, first, the burnt-offerings, which were the same for
every day. And it is obvious that the explanation is to be
sought for in this formal arrangement, and not in the fact that
only a sin-offering without a burnt-offering was to be pre-
sented on the first day, and consequently that the expression
" on the second day " refers solely to the sin-offering of
that day, from the words Xtpn? ini?33 in ver. 23 ; since
NariD cannot be understood in a different sense from that which
it bears in ver. 22b, the clause immediately preceding, i.e. must
not be restricted to the sin-offering of the second day, but must
he taken as referring to the sin-offerings of both the first and
second days. The meaning of the words is therefore this :
when the absolution by means of the sin-offering on the first
and on the second day is ended, then shalt thou bring a burnt-
offering. But if this is the meaning of the words, the offering
of the burnt-offering prescribed in ver. 23 does not fall so
exclusively under the definition of time contained in the words
296 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
" on tlie second day," as to warrant our assigning it to the
second day alone, and concluding that no such offering was
presented on the first day. There was no necessity for Ezekiel
to express himself more clearly on this point, as there was no
fear of any misunderstanding on the part of those who were
acquainted with the law ; since every Israelite who had been
instructed in the law knew full well that no sin-offering could
ever be presented without being followed by a burnt-offering,
that in fact the burnt-offering was indispensable to the accom-
plishment of the fT^S?, for which the sin-offering was presented.
And in ver. 25 also, Ezekiel had no occasion to fear that the
somewhat loose expression, " seven days shalt thou prepare a
he-goat sin-offering for the day," would be misunderstood ; as
he had already stated that a bullock was to be taken for the
sin-offering of the first day, and the period of seven days was
so universally prescribed in the law for every act of consecra-
tion which lasted more than one day, that he would have in-
dicated in a clearer manner any deviation from this rule. We
therefore regard the change of the seven days devoted to the
consecration of the altar into eight as being just as groundless
as that into nine, and adhere to the traditional explanation of
these verses, namely, that the consecration of the altar lasted
only seven days, and that on every one of these days a sin-
offering and a burnt-offering were to be presented, the sin-
offering on the first day being a bullock, and on the other days
a he-goat, whilst the burnt-offerings were to consist on all seven
days of a young ox and a ram. — With regard to the burnt-
offering, the direction given, that the priests are to throw or pour
(ijW'n), and not merely to strew or sprinkle, salt upon it, is to be
regarded as significant. According to Lev. ii. 13, salt was to be
added to every \'2.']P^ (bloody or bloodless) sacrifice. The express
allusion to the salting of these consecrating burnt-offerings,
and also the choice of the verb 'nv^'?, point to a copious strewing
with salt for the purpose of giving greater intensity to the force
of these sacrifices. On the significance of salt in relation to
298 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
there consists in a ram every day, here in a bullock and a ram
daily ; (5) on the other hand, the ram offered as a sacrifice of
consecration in the Mosaic ceremony, which was specially con-
nected with the institution of the priests in their office, is
omitted here, as the priests were already holding their office;
so that the sacrifice of consecration might be said to be here
absorbed into the burnt-offering. All essential differences
tlierefore reduce themselves to the fact that in Ezekiel the
anointing of the altar is wanting, and the sin-offering of the
last six days is diminished by the selection of an inferior
animal, in place of which the burnt-offering is considerably
intensified by the demand of a bullock and a ram for this, the
same thing being also indicated by the copious pouring of salt
thereon. — For the symbolical meaning of these sacrifices, com-
pare the commentary on Lev. viii. — The consecration of the
altar was completed in seven days ; and from the eighth day
onwards the priests were to offer the regular sacrifices upon it
(ver. 27); whereas at the Mosaic consecration of the altar and
priests, the constant altar service of the priests was still further
inaugurated by a solemn sacrifice on the eighth day (Lev. ix.).
Burnt-offerings and peace-offerings are mentioned in ver. 27
instar omnium as being the principal and most frequent sacri-
fices, whilst sin - offerings and meat - offerings are implied
therein.
Chap. xliv. Position of the different Classes of the People in
relation to the New Sanctuary.
With the consecration of the altar of bnrnt-offering the
way is opened for the congregation of Israel to appear in the
sanctuary before the Lord, to serve Him with sacrifices. If,
however, the use of the new house of God was to be in har-
mony with the holiness of the God who dwelt therein, it was
requisite that still further directions should be given concerning
the entering of the people into it, and the character of the
servants of both the altar and the sanctuary. These directions
CHAP. XLIV. 1-3. 299
follow in the chapter before us, — first, as to the place which
the prince was to occupy at the service in the temple (vers.
1-3) ; secondly, as to the admission of foreigners and the
appointment of Levites and priests for the service (vers. 4-16) ;
and lastly, as to the conditions requisite for the administration
of the priest's office, and the duties and privileges of that office
(vers. 17-31).
Vers. 1-3. The Place ojt the Prince in the Sanctuary.
— Ver. 1. And he brought me back by the way to the outer gate
of the sanctuary, which looked toward the east ; and it was shut.
Ver. 2. And Jehovah said to me, This gate shall be shut,
shall not be opened, and no one shall enter thereby; because
Jehovah, the God of Israel, has entered by it, it shall be shut.
Ver. 3. As for the prince, as prince he shall sit therein, to
eat bread before Jehovah; from the way to the porch of the
gate shall he go in, and from its way shall he go out. —
From the inner court where Ezekiel had received the measure-
ments of the altar of burnt-offering and the instructions con-
cerning its consecration (ch. xliii. 5 sqq.), he is taken back to
the east gate of the outer court, and finds this gate, which
formed the principal entrance to the temple, closed. Jehovah
explains this fact to him through the angel (nin) noi<>1 is to be
understood according to ch. xliii. 6 and 7) thus : " this gate is
to be shut, because Jehovah, the God of Israel, has entered
into the temple thereby," as we have already learned from
ch. xliii. 2. Only the prince, as prince, was allowed to sit in
it for the purpose of holding sacrificial meals there. So far
the meaning of the words is clear and indisputable. For there
can be no doubt whatever that ver, 3 introduces a more precise
statement concerning the closing of the gate ; in other words,
that the right of sitting in the gate to eat bread before Jehovah,
which is conceded to the priest, is intended as an explanation,
resp. modification and limitation, of the statement lUD njni
(ver. 2). On the other hand, the more precise definition of
300 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the prerogative granted to the prince in ver. 3 is not quite
clear, and therefore open to dispute. Such a prerogative is
already indicated in the prominence expressly given to the
prince, consisting partly in the fact that S"'B'3n"ns is written
first in an absolute form, and partly in the expression Kin S'fc'J,
which is repeated in the form of a circumstantial clause,
" prince is he," equivalent to " because he is prince, he is to sit
there." S'E'J is neither the high priest, as many of the older
commentators supposed, nor a collective term for the civil
authorities of the people of Israel in the Messianic times
(Havernick), but the David who will be prince in Israel at that
time, according to ch. xxxiv. 23, 24, and xxxvii. 24. " To eat
bread before Jehovah" signifies to hold a sacrificial meal at
the place of the divine presence, i.e. in the temple court, and
is not to be restricted, as Kliefoth supposes, to that sacrificial
meal " which was held after and along with the bloodless
sacrifices, viz. the minchoth, and the shew-breads, and the sweet
loaves of the Passover." There is no authority in the usage
of the language for this literal interpretation of the expression
" to eat bread," for Dn^ p^^ means in general to partake of a
meal, compare Gen. xxxi. 54, etc., and especially Ex. xviii. 12,
where Jethro " eats bread before God " with Aaron and the
elders of Israel, that is to say, joins in a sacrificial meal com-
posed of cnat or slain-offerings. According to this view, which
is the only one supported by usage, the prerogative secured to
the S''B'3 of the future is not " that of participating in the
sacrificial meals (of the priests), which were to be held
daily with the minchoth and shew-bread, in opposition to the
law which prevailed before " (Kliefoth), but simply that of
holding his sacrificial meals in the gate, i.e. in the porch
of the gate, whereas the people were only allowed to hold
them in the court, namely, in the vicinity of the sacrificial
kitchens.
There is also a difference of opinion concerning the meaning
of the second statement in ver. 3 : " from the way of the porch
CHAP. XUV. 1-3. 301
of the gate shall he enter in, and thence shall he go out." The
suffix in ^3"]"!!? can only refer to D?^K, " from the way from
which he came (entered), from this way shall he go out again."
Hitzig follows the Kabbins, who understand the passage thus :
" as the gate is to remain shut, he must go by the way to the
porch which is directed inwardly, toward the court (ch. xl. 9).
He must have gone into the outer court through the north or
the south gate, and by the way by which he came he also went
back again." But Kliefoth argues, in objection to this, that
" if the prince was to eat the bread in the porch, the entrance
through the south or the north gate would be of no use to him
at all ; as the gate which could be shut was at that door of the
porch which was turned toward the outer court." Moreover,
he affirms that it is not at all the meaning of the text that he
was to eat the bread in the porch, but that he was to eat it in
the gate-building, and he was to come thither D??K WV^P
nVK'rij i.e. " from the place which served as a way to the gate
porch, that is to say, the walk from the eastern entrance of the
gate-building to the front of the porch, and from that was he
to go out again." The prince, therefore, was " to go into the
gate-building as far as the front of the porch through the
eastern entrance, there to eat his bread before Jehovah, and to
come out again from thence, so that the gate at the western
side of the gate porch still remained shut." But we cannot
regard either of these views as correct. There is no firm
foundation in the text for Kliefoth's assertion, that he was not
to eat the bread in the porch, but in the gate-building. It is
true that the porch is not expressly mentioned as the place
where the eating was to take place, but simply the gate (ia) ;
yet the porch belonged to the gate as an integral part of the
gate-building ; and if th^» ^'f^. is the way to the porch, or the
way leading to the porch, the words, " by the way to the
porch shall he enter in," imply clearly enough that he was
to go into the porch and to eat bread there. This is also
demanded by the circumstances, as the meaning of the words
302 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cannot possibly be that the prince was to hold his sacrificial
meal upon the threshold of the gate, or in one of the guard-
rooms, or in the middle of the gateway ; and apart from the
porch, there were no other places in the gate-building than
those we have named. And again, the statement that the gate
on the western side of the gate porch was to be shut, and not
that against the eastern wall, is also destitute of proof, as "^yi
D^IX, the way to the porch, is not equivalent to the way " up
to the front of the porch." And if the prince was to hold the
sacrificial meal behind the inner gate, which was closed, how
was the food when it was prepared to be carried into the gate-
building 1 Through a door of one of the guard-rooms ? Such
a supposition is hardly reconcilable with the significance of a
holy sacrificial meal. In fact, it is a question whether eating in
the gate-building with the inner door closed, so that it was not
even possible to look toward the sanctuary, in which Jehovah
was enthroned, could be called eating nin] ^iSp. — Hitzig's ex-
planation of the words is not exposed to any of these difficulties,
but it is beset by others. At the outset it is chargeable with
improbability, as it is impossible to see any just ground why the
prince, if he was to hold the sacrificial meal in the porch of the
east gate, should not have been allowed to enter through this
gate, but was obliged to take the circuitous route through the
south or the north gate. Again, it is irreconcilable with the
analogous statements in ch. xlvi. According to ch. xlvi. 1 sqq.,
the east gate of the inner court was to be shut, namely, during
the six working days ; but on the Sabbath and on the new moon
it was to be opened. Then the prince was to come by the way
of the gate porch from without, and during the preparation of
his sacrifice by the priests to stand upon the threshold of the
gate and worship. This same thing was to take place when the
prince desired to offer a freewill offering on any of the week-
days. The east gate was to be opened for him to this end ;
but after the conclusion of the offering of sacrifice it was to be
closed again, whereas on the Sabbaths and new moons it was to
CHAP XLIV. 1-3. 303
stand open till the evening (ch. xlvi. 12 compared with ver. 2).
It is still further enjoined, that when offering these sacrifices
the prince is to enter by the way of the gate porch, and to go
out again by the same way (vers. 2 and 8) ; whereas on the
feast days, on which the people appear before Jehovah, every
one who comes, the priest along with the rest, is to go in and
out through the north or the south gate (vers. 9 and 10). If,
therefore, on the feast days, when the people appeared before
Jehovah, the prince was to go into the temple in the midst of
the people through the north or the south gate to worship,
whereas on the Sabbaths and new moons, on which the people
were not required to appear before the Lord, so that the prince
alone had to bring the offerings for himself and the people, he
was to enter by the way of the porch of the east gate, and to go
out again by the same, and during the ceremony of offering
the sacrifice was to stand upon the threshold of the inner east
gate, it is obvious that the going in and out by the way of the
porch of the gate was to take place by a different way from
that through the north or the south gate. This other way
could only be through the east gate, as no fourth gate existed.
— The conclusion to which this brings us, so far as the passage
before us is concerned, is that the shutting of the east gate of'
the outer cOurt was to be the rule, but that there were certain
exceptions which are not fully explained till ch. xlvi., though
they are hinted at in the chapter before us in the directions
given there, that the prince was to hold the sacrificial meal in
this gate. — The outer east gate, which was probably the one
chiefly used by the people when appearing before the Lord in
the earlier temple, both for going in and coming out, is to be shut
in the new temple, and not to be made use of by the people for
either entrance or exit, because the glory of the Lord entered
into the temple thereby. This reason is of course not to be
understood in the way suggested by the Eabbins, namely, that
the departure of the Shechinah from the temple was to be pre-
vented by the closing of the gate ; but the thought is this :
304 TOE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
because this gateway had been rendered holy through the
entrance of the Shechinah into the temple thereby, it was not
to remain open to the people, so as to be desecrated, but was
to he kept perpetually holy. This keeping holy was not preju-
diced in any way by the fact that the prince held the sacrificial
meal in the gate, and also entered the court through this gate-
way for the purpose of offering his sacrifice, which was made
ready by the priests before the inner gate, and then was
present at the offering of the sacrifice upon the altar, standing
upon the threshold of the inner gate - building. CmH :]n^
"lyB'n is therefore the way which led from the outer flight of
steps across the threshold past the guard-rooms to the gate
porch at the inner end of the gate-building. By this way the
priest was to go into the gate opened for him, and hold the
sacrificial meal therein, namely, in the porch of this gate. That
the offering of the sacrifice necessarily preceded the meal is
assumed as self-evident, and the law of sacrifice in ch. xlvi.
first prescribes the manner in which the prince was to behave
when offering the sacrifice, and how near to the altar he was
to be allowed to go.
Vers. 4-16. The Position of Fokeigneks, Levites, and
Priests in relation to the Temple and the TeMplb
Service. — The further precepts concerning the approach to
the sanctuary, and the worship to be presented there, are intro-
duced with a fresh exhortation to observe with exactness all the
statutes and laws, in order that the desecration of the sanctuary
which had formerly taken place might not be repeated, and are
delivered to the prophet at the north gate in front of the mani-
festation of the glory of God (vers. 4-8). — Ver. 4. And he
brought me by the way of the north gate to the front of the house ;
and I looked, and behold the glory of Jehovah filled the house of
Jehovah, and T fell down upon my face. Ver. 5. And Jehovah
said to me. Son of man, direct thy heart and see with thine eyes
and hear with thine ears all that I say to thee with regard to
CHAP. XLIV. 4-8. 305
all the statutes of the house of Jehovah and all its laws, and direct
thy heart to the entering into the house th-ough all the exits of the
house, Ver. 6. And say to the rebellious one, to the family of
Israel, Tims saith the Lord Jehovah, Let it he sufficient for you,
of all your abominations, house of Israel, Ver. 7. In that ye
brought in foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised
in flesh, to be in my sanctuary, to desecrate it, my house, when ye
offered my food, fat and blood, and so they broke my covenant
to all your abominations, Ver. 8. And so ye did not hep the charge
of my holy things, but made them keepers of my charge for you
in my sanctuary. — From the outer gate to which Ezekiel had
been taken, simply that he might be instructed concerning
the entering thereby, he is once more conducted, after this has
been done, by the way of the north gate to the front of the
temple house, to receive the further directions there for the
performance of the worship of God in the new sanctuary. The
question, whether we are to understand by the north gate that
of the outer or that of the inner court, cannot be answered with
certainty. Hitzig has decided in favour of the latter, Kliefoth
in favour of the former. The place to which he is conducted
is n^an ''iS'PX, ad faciem domus, before the temple house, so that
he had it before his eyes, i.e. was able to see it. As the gate-
way of the inner court was eight steps, about four cubits, higher
than the outer court gate, this was hardly possible if he stood
at or within the latter. O^sn, i.e. the temple house, could only
be distinctly seen from the inner north gate. And the remark
that it is more natural to think of the outer north gate, because
the next thing said to the prophet has reference to the question
who is to go into and out of the sanctuary, has not much force,
as the instructions do not refer to the going in and out alone,
but chiefly to the charge of Jehovah, i.e. to the maintenance of
divine worship. — At the fresh standing-place the glory of the
Lord, which filled the temple, met the sight of the propliet
again, so that he fell down and worshipped once more (cf.
ch. xliii. 3, 5). This i-emark is not intended " to indicate that
EZEK. II. u
306 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
now, after the preliminary observations in ch. xlili. 13-xliv. 3,
the true tliorali commences " (Kliefoth), but to show the un-
approachable glory and holiness of the new temple. For
ver. 5, see ch. xl. 4, xliii. 11, 12. In ver. 6 "'l^'-'N is placed at
the head in a substantive form for the sake of emphasis, and
''??1?'!"'^''3 is appended in the form of an apposition. For the
fact itself, see ch. ii. 8. ^^f^l followed by |p, a sufficiency of
anything, as in Ex. ix. 28, 1 Kings xii. 28, is equivalent to
" there is enough for you to desist from it." The niajJin, from
which they are to desist, are more precisely defined in ver. 6.
They consisted in the fact that the Israelites admitted foreigners,
heathen, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, into the sanctuary,
to desecrate it during the offering of sacrifice. It is not
expressly stated, indeed, that they admitted uncircumcised
heathen to the offering of sacrifice, but this is implied in what is
affirmed. The offering of sacrifice in the temple of Jehovah is
not only permitted in the Mosaic law to foreigners living in
Israel, but to some extent prescribed (Lev. xvii. 10, 12 ; Num.
XV. 13 sqq.). It was only in the paschal meal that no '133 13
was allowed to participate (Ex. xii. 43). To do this, he must
first of all be circumcised (ver. 44). Solomon accordingly
prays to the Lord in his temple - prayer that He will also
hearken to the prayer of the foreigner, who may come from a
distant land for the Lord's name sake to worship in His
house (1 Kings viii. 41 sqq.). The reproof in the verse before
us is apparently at variance with this. Easchi would therefore
understand by 123"''33, Israelites who had fallen into heathen
idolatry. Eosenmiiller, on the other hand, is of opinion that
the Israelites were blamed because they had accepted victimas
et libamina from the heathen, and offered them in the temple,
which had been prohibited in Lev. xxv. 22. Havernick under-
stands by the sons of the foreigner, Levites who had become
apostates from Jehovah, and were therefore placed by Ezekiel
on a par with the idolatrous sons of the foreigner. And lastly,
Hitzig imagines that they were foreign traders, who had been
CHAP. XLIV. 9-16. 307
admitted within the sacred precincts as sellers of sacrificial
animals, incense, and so forth. All these are alike arbitrary
and erroneous. The apparent discrepancy vanishes, if we con-
sider the more precise definition of 133 V.?, viz. " uncircumcised in
heart and flesh." Their being uncircumcised in heart is placed
first, for the purpose of characterizing the foreigners as godless
heathen, who were destitute not only of the uncircumcision of
their flesh, but also of that of the heart, i.e. of piety of heart,
which Solomon mentions in his prayer as . the motive for the
coming of distant strangers to the temple. By the admission
of such foreigners as these, who had no fear of God at all, into
the temple during the sacrificial worship, Israel had defiled the
sanctuary. ''n''3"ns is in apposition to the suffix to vpn. The
food of Jehovah ('''?n?) is sacrifice, according to Lev. iii. 11,
xxi. 6, etc., and is therefore explained by " fat and blood." ^l^J^,
which the LXX. changed in an arbitrary manner into the
second person, refers to the " foreigners," the heathen. By
their treading the temple in their ungodliness they broke the
covenant of the Lord with His people, who allowed this dese-
cration of His sanctuary. 'ni3jrtFi"73 PSj in addition to all your
abominations. How grievous a sin was involved in this is
stated in ver. 8. The people of Israel, by their unrighteous
admission of godless heathen into the temple, not only failed to
show the proper reverence for the holy things of the Lord, but
even made these heathen, so to speak, servants of God for them-
selves in His sanctuary. These last words are not to be under-
stood literally, but spiritually. Allowing them to tread the
temple is regarded as equivalent to appointing them to take
charge of the worship in the temple. For 'fiipf? IDB", see Lev.
xviii. 30, xxii. 9, and the commentary on Lev. viii. 35.
The Lord would guard against such desecration of His
sanctuary in the future. To this end the following precepts
concerning the worship in the new temple are given. — Ver. 9.
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, No foreigner, uncircumcised in
heart and uncircumcised in flesh, shall come into my sanctuari/,
308 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of all (lie foreigners that are in the midst of the sons of Israel;
Ver. 10. But even the Levites, who have gone away from me
in the wandering of Israel, which wandered away from me after
its idols, they shall bear their guilt, Ver. 11. They shall be
servants in my sanctuifry, as guards at the gates of the house and
serving in the house ; they shall slay the burnt-offering and the
slain-offering for the people, and shall stand before it to serve
them. Ver. 12. Because they served them before their idols, and
became to the house of Israel a stumbling-block to guilt, therefore
I have lifted my hand against them, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovali, that they should bear their guilt. Ver. 13. They shall
not draw near to me to serve me as priests, and to draw near to
all my holy things, to the most holy, but shall bear their disgrace
and all their abominations which they have done. Ver. 14. Ajid
so will I make them guards of the charge of the house with
regard to all its service, and to all that is perfffrmed therein.
Ver. 15. But the priests of the tribe of Levi, the sons of Zadok,
loho have kept the charge of my sanctuary on the loandering of
the sons of Israel from me, they shall draw near to me to serve me,
and stand before me, offer to me fat and blood, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah. Ver. 16. They shall come into my sanctuary, and
they draw near to my table to serve me, and shall keep my charge.
— In order that all desecration may be kept at a distance from
the new sanctuary, foreigners uncircumcised in heart and flesh
are not to be admitted into it; and even of the Levites
appointed for the service of the sanctuary according to the
Mosaic law, all who took part in the falling away of the people
into idolatry are to be excluded from investiture with the
priests' office as a punishment for their departure from tha
Lord, and only to be allowed to perform subordinate duties in
connection with the worship of God. On the other hand, the
descendants of Zadok, who kept themselves free from all stray-
ing into idolatry, are to perform the specifically priestly service
at the altar and in the sanctuary, and they alone. The meaning
and design of the command, to shut out the foreigners un-
CHAP. SLIV. 9-16. ■ 309
circumcised in heart from all access to the sanctuary, are not
that the intermediate position and class of foreigners living in
Israel should henceforth be abolished (Kliefoth); for this
would be at variance with ch. xlvii. 22 and 23, according to
which the foreigners (p'^li) were to receive a possession of their
own in the fresh distribution of the land, which not only pre-
supposes their continuance within the congregation of Israel,
but also secures it for the time to come. The meaning is
rather this : No heathen uncircumcised in heart, i.e. estranged
in life from God, shall have access to the altar in the new
sanctuary. The emphasis of the prohibition lies here, as in
ver. 7, upon their being uncircumcised in heart ; and the
reason for the exclusion of foreigners consists not so much in
the foreskin of the flesh as in the spiritual foreskin, so that
not only the uncircumcised heathen, but also Israelites who
were circumcised in flesh, were to keep at a distance from the
sanctuary if they failed to possess circumcision of heart. Th(!
f before '3 I3"73 serves the purpose of comprehension, as in
Gen. ix. 10, Lev. xi. 42, etc, (compare Ewald, § 310a). Not
only are foreigners who are estranged from God to be prevented
from coming into the sanctuary, but even the Levites, who fell
into idolatry at the time of the apostasy of the Israelites, are
to bear their guilt, i.e. are to be punished for it by exclusion
from the rights of the priesthood. This is the connection
between the tenth verse and the ninth, indicated by DK 'I,
which derives its meaning, truly {imo), yea even, from this
connection, as in Isa. xxxiii. 21. D'^n are not the Levites
here as distinguished from the priests (Aaronites), but all the
descendants of Levi, including the Aaronites chosen for the
priests' oifice, to whom what is to be said concerning the
Levites chiefly applies. The division of the Levites into such
as are excluded from the service and office of priests (in?,
ver. 13) on account of their former straying into idolatry, and
the sons of Zadok, who kept aloof from that wandering, and
therefore are to be the only persons allowed to administer the
310 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIKL.
priests' office for the future, shows very clearly that the threat
"they shall bear their guilt" does not apply to the. common
Lievites, but to the Levitical priests. They are to be degraded
to the performance of the inferior duties in the temple and at
divine worship. The guilt with which they are charged is that
they forsook Jehovah when the people strayed into idolatry.
Forsaking Jehovah involves both passive and active participa-
tion in idolatry (of. Jer. ii. 5). This wandering of the Israelites
from Jehovah took place during the whole time that the
tabernacle and Solomon's temple were in existence, though at
different periods and with varying force and extent. Bearing
the guilt is more minutely defined in vers. 11-13. The
Levitical priests who have forsaken the Lord are to lose the
dignity and rights of the priesthood ; they are not, indeed, to
be entirely deprived of the prerogative conferred upon the
tribe of Levi by virtue of its election to the service of the
sanctuary in the place of the first-born of the whole nation,
but henceforth they are merely to be employed in the per-
formance of the lower duties, as guards at the gates of the
temple, and as servants of the people at the sacrificial worship,
when they are to slaughter the animals for the people, which
every one who offered sacrifice was also able to do for himself.
Because they have already served the people before their idols,
i.e. have helped them in their idolatry, they shall also serve the
people in time to come in the worship of God, though not as
priests, but simply in non-priestly occupations. The words
'iJI VilDVI nan are taken from Num. xvi. 9, and the suffixes in
nn^jsi' and OPn^^ refer to DJ?. fiV Mt^ap, as in ch. vii. 19,
xiv. 3, xviii. 30. IJ NK'3, not to raise the arm to smite, but to
lift up the hand to swear, as in ch. xx. 5, 6, etc. ''^\>y'3 7J? nt}";!?,
to draw near to all my holy things. CK^iJ. are not the rooms
in the sanctuary, but those portions of the sacrifices which
were sacred to the Lord. They are not to touch these, i.e.
neither to sprinkle blood nor to burn the portions of fat upon
the altar, or perform anything connected therewith. This
CHAP. XLIV. 9-16. 311
explanation is required by the apposition C^'iiJ.n '55'"Ti3"i'S<:, which
(in the plural) does not mean the most holy place at the hinder
part of the temple, but the most holy sacrificial gifts (cf.
ch. xHi. 13). nab SB-j, as in eh. xvi. 52. In ver. 14 it is
once more stated in a comprehensive manner in what the
bearing of the guilt and shame was to consist: God would
make them keepers of the temple with regard to the inferior
acts of service. The general expression n^an JTiDBiD nDB', which
signifies the temple service universally, receives its restriction
to the inferior acts of service from 'W1 iniaj? h'J?, which is used
in Num. iii. 26, iv. 23, 30, 32, 39, 47, for the heavy duties
performed by the Merarites and Gershonites, in distinction
from the nihj? of the Kohathites, which consisted in nnaK'b laB'
rijsri (Num. iii. 28) and "mi ^nta hdn^d T\Sm (Num! iv. 3).
The priestly service at the altar and in the sanctuary, on the
other hand, was to be performed by the sons of Zadok alone,
because when the people went astray they kept the charge of
the sanctuary, i.e. performed the duties of the priestly office
with fidelity. Zadok was the son of Ahitub, of the line of
Eleazar (1 Ohron. v. 34, vi. 37, 38), who remained faithful to
King David at the rebellion of Absalom (2 Sam. xv. 24 sqq.),
and also anointed Solomon as king in opposition to Adonijah
the pretender (1 Kings i. 32 sqq.) ; whereas the high priest
Abiathar, of the line of Ithamar, took part with Adonijah
(1 Kings i. 7, 25), and was deposed from his office by Solomon
in consequence, so that now the high-priesthood was in the
sole possession of Zadok and his descendants (1 Kings ii. 26,
27, and 35). From this attitude of Zadok toward David, the
prince given by the Lord to His people, it may be seen at
once that he not only kept aloof from the wandering of the
people, but offered a decided opposition thereto, and attended
to his office in a manner that was well-pleasing to God. As he
received the high -priesthood from Solomon in the place of
Abiathar for this fidelity of his, so shall his descendants only
be invested with the priestly office in the new temple. For
312 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the correct explanation of the words in these verses, however,
we must pay particular regard to the clause, " who have kept
the charge of my sanctuary." This implies, for example, that
lineal descent from Zadok alone was not sufficient, but that
fidelity in the service of the Lord must also be added as an
indispensable requisite. In vers. 156 and 16 the priestly
service is described according to its principal functions at the
altar of burnt-offering, and in the holy place at the altar of
incense. ''^npK' is the altar of incense (see ch, xli. 22).
Vers. 17-31. Eequisites for the Administration of
THE PniESTs' Office, and the Obligations and Privi-
leges OF that Office. — Ver. 17. And it shall come to pass,
when they go to the gates of the inner court, they shall put on
linen clothes, and no wool shall lie upon them, when they serve in
the gates of the inner court and serve toward the house. Ver. 18.
Linen turbans shall be upon their head, and linen drawers upon
their hips: they shall not gird themselves in sweat. Ver. 19.
A nd when they go out into the outer court, into the outer court to
the people, they shall take off their clothes in which they have
ministered, and put them in the holy cells, and put on oilier
clothes, that they may not sanctify the people with their clothes.
Ver. 20. And they shall not shave their head bald, nor let their
Jiair grow freely; they shall cut the hair of their head. Ver. 21.
And they shall not drink wine, no priest, when they go into the
inner court. Ver. 22. And a widow and a divorced woman they
shall not take as wives, but virgins of the seed of the house of
Israel, and the widow who has become the widow of a priest they
may take. Ver. 23. And they shall teach my people, make
known to them the difference between holy and common, and
between unclean and clean. Ver, 24. And they shall stand to
judge concerning disputes ; and they shall observe my laws and
my statutes at all my feasts, and sanctify my Sabbaths. Ver. 25.
A7id one shall not go to any corpse of a man to defile himself;
only for father and mother, for son and daughter, for brother,
CHAP. XLIV. 17-31. 313
for sister who had no husband, may they defile themselves.
Ver. 26. And after his purification shall they reckon seven days
more to him ; Ver. 27. And on the day when he comes to the
holy place, into the inner court, to serve in the holy place, he
shall offer Jiis sin-offerSng, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. —
Ver. 28. And so shall it be with their inheritance, that I am
their inheritance, ye shall not give them a possession in Israel :
I am their possession. Ver. 29. The meat-offering, and the sin-
offering, and the trespass-offering, these shall they eat, and every-
thing banned in Jsra'el shall belong to them. Ver. 30. ' And the
firstlings of all the first-fruits of everything, and every heave-
offering of everything^ of all your heave-offerings, shall belong to
the priests ; and the firstlings of all your ground meal shall ye
give to the priest, that a blessing may come down upon thy house.
Ver. 31. No carrion nor anything torn in pieces of fowl and of
beast shall the priests eat. — To the directions, who are to perforin
the service in the new temple, there are appended corresponding
instructions concerning the bodily condition in which this service
is to be performed, as the bodily condition shadows forth the state
of the soul, or the spiritual constitution of the servants of God.
The dress prescribed in Ex. xxviii. for the priests to wear during
the holy service had this signification. The same rule is here pre-
supposed as still in force ; and it is simply renewed and partially
emphasized by the enumeration of some of the leading points.
At the service at the altar and in the holy place the priests
are to wear linen clothes, and, after the performance of the
service, they are to take them off again when they go into the
outer court (vers. 17—19). In the Mosaic law, W, white byssus,
or la, white linen, is mentioned as the material used for the
priests' clothing (Ex. xxviii. 39, 42) ; here the material is more
distinctly designated as D''fi?''S, flax linen ; and lOV, animal wool,
is expressly forbidden, the motive being assigned for this regu-
lation, namely, that the priest is not to cause himself to sweat
by wearing woollen clothing. Sweat produces uncleanness ;
and the priest, by keeping his body clean, is to show even out-
314 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
wardly that he is clean and blameless. With regard to the
putting on and off of the official clothes, the new thorah accords
with the Mosaic. For we cannot agree with Kliefoth, who
detects a deviation in the fact that, according to Ex. xxviii. 43,
the priests were to wear the official clothes only when they
entered the tabernacle and when approaching the altar, and,
according to Lev. vi. 4, xvi. 23, were to take them off when
the service was ended; whereas, according to ver. 17 of the
chapter before us, they were to put them on as soon as they
entered the inner court, and were never to come before the
people in the official costume. If, according to the Mosaic
law, the priests were to go before the altar of burnt-offering in
the court in their holy official dress, and not otherwise, they
must have put on this dress on entering the court ; for they
could not wait till they were in front of the altar before they
changed their clothes. For the expression Dyn PN riNV does not
imply that, according to Ezekiel, they were never to appear in
the presence of the people in their official costume, as it does
not mean "come before the people," but "go out to the
people," or " walk among the people ; " nor is this involved in
the words 'Wl IB"''!''. K?1., they shall not sanctify the people in
their clothes (by their clothes). The latter by no means
affirms that they are to sanctify the people by intercourse with
them, but are not to do this in official costume ; the meaning is
simply that they are not to move among the people in the outer
court while wearing their official clothes, that they may not
sanctify them by their holy clothes. This sanctification cannot
be understood in any other way than as analogous to the rule
laid down in the law, that touching most holy sacrificial flesh
would sanctify (Lev. vi. 11, 20), which Ezekiel repeats in
ch, xlvi. 20, and which does not stand in anything like an
isolated position in the law, but is also affirmed in Ex. sxix. 37
and XXX. 29 of the altar of burnt-offering and the vessels of
the sanctuary. The same thing which applied to these vessels
— namely, that their holiness passed from them to any one
CHAP. SLIV. 17-31. 315
who touched them — is here predicated of the holy dresses of the
priests; and the moving of the priests among the people in
their holy clothes is forbidden, because such holiness, acquired
by contact with holy objects, imposed upon the person to whom
it had passed the obligation to guard against all defilement
(Lev. xxi. 1-8), which the people could not avoid in the
ordinary relations of life, and thus a weakening or abolition of
the distinction between things holy and common would in-
evitably have ensued. Cninri DbB"^ are the holy cell-buildings
described in ch. xlii. 1-14. — To the clothing there is simply
appended in ver. 20 the direction concerning the hair of the
head, the natural covering of the head, in relation to which
excess on either side is prohibited, either shaving the head bald
or wearing the hair uncut. Both of these were forbidden to
the priests in the law : shaving in Lev. xxi, 5, and letting the
hair grow freely in Lev. x. 6; and the latter was simply
imposed upon the Nazarites for the period of their vow (Num.
vi. 5). DD3 only occurs here ; but its meaning, to cut the hair,
is obvious from the context. — Ver. 21. The prohibition of the
drinking of wine when performing service agrees with Lev.
x. 9 ; on the other hand, the instructions concerning the choice
of wives are sharpened in ver. 22, as that which only applied
to the high priest in the law is here extended to all the priests.
In fact, Ezekiel throughout makes no distinction between the
high priest and the common priests. In Lev. xxi. 14, marrying
a widow is only forbidden to the high priest, who was to marry
a virgin of his own people, whereas no such restriction is laid
down for the ordinary priests. Here, on the other hand,
marrying a widow is forbidden to all the priests, marriage with
the widow of a priest being the only one allowed, jnap belongs
to '"I3WS n)npij who has become the widow of a priest.*
' The Rabbins (Taig. TaJm. and Masor. according to their accentuation)
have endeavoured to obliterate this distinction, by applying the first
hemistich to the high priest alone, and explaining the second thus : " The
Vfidow, who is really a widow, the priest may take," interpreting [nsD by
316 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
In vers. 23 and 24 the general official duties of the priests
are mentioned, viz. to teach the people, and to instruct them
concerning the difference between the holy and the unholy, the
clean and the unclean, as in Lev. x. 10 (of. Deut, xxxiii. 10
and Ezek. xxii. 26) ; also to administer justice in questions in
dispute according to the rights of God, — a duty which had
already been committed to the priests in its highest form in
Dent. xvii. 8 sqq., xix. 17, and xxi. 5. 3''1 '?V, concerning, in
the case of, matters in dispute, toaf^ loP, to stand to judge,
i.e. to appear or act as judge (compare CipatJ' To^fi, to appoint
or institute judges, in 2 Chron. xix. 5). The Keri tJS^Pf is a
needless emendation after 2 Chron. six. 8. The Cfietib WDSB'l,
on the other hand, is a copyist's error for WDSE'*. Lastly, at all
the feasts they are to observe the laws and statutes of Jehovah,
that is to say, to perform all the priestly duties binding upon
them at the feasts, and to sanctify the Sabbaths, not merely by
offering the Sabbath sacrifices, but also by maintaining the
Sabbath rest (cf. Lev. sxiii. 3). — In vers. 25-27 there follow
regulations concerning defilement from the dead, and its
removal. Ver. 25 is a simple repetition of Lev. xxi. 1—3.
But the instructions concerning purification from defilement
from the dead are sharpened, inasmuch as not only is the
purification prescribed by the law (Num. xix. 1 sqq.), and
which lasted seven days, required (tliis is meant by innno), but
a further period of seven days is appointed after these, at
the expiration of which the presentation of a sin-offering is
demanded before the service in the sanctuary can be resumed.
By this demand for a heightened purification, the approach to
a corpse permitted to the priests, which was prohibited to the
high priest in the Mosaic law, even in the case of father and
mother (Lev. xxi. 11), is tolerably equalized.
quidam sacerdotum, or aliqui ex ordine sacerdotali, or ceteri sacerdotes. But
this is contrary to the usage of the language, as jnaD cannot possibly be
understood in a partitive sense in this passage, where the prieets generally
are spoken of, and the plural ^np)^ follows.
CHAP. XUV. ir-31. 317
For these duties and obligations of service the priests are to
receive corresponding emoluments. These are treated of in
vers. 28-31. They are not, indeed, to receive any share of the
land as their property in time to come any more than in former
times ; but in the place of this Jehovah will be their property
and possession, and give them the necessary room for their
dwellings from His own property in the land (ch. xlv. 4), and
let them draw their maintenance from His altar (vers. 29 and
30). The promise that Jehovah will be the njm and njHK of
the priests is a simple repetition of the regulation in the law
(Num. xviii. 20 ; Deut. xviii. 1, x. 9). So far as the construc-
tion in ver. 28a is concerned, the words OTOni '3N are really the
subject to 'y? on? nn^nij which we are obliged to render obliquely,
" the inheritance for them shall be, I am their inheritance."
For the proposal of Hitzig to take the words from Dn?n3 '3K to
the close of the verse as a parenthesis, and to regard '131 nnJBn
in ver. 29a as the subject to 'U1 >^^]'^\, is untenable, not only on
account of the great harshness which such a parenthesis would
involve, but principally because these portions of the sacrifices
and heave-offerings which belonged to the priest were not a njnj,
and are never designated as n?™, inheritance, i.e. property in land.
V^er. 28 treats of the property in land, which God assigned to
the Levites and priests under the Mosaic economy, by appoint-
ing them towns to dwell in, with meadows for the feeding of
their cattle, within the territory of the other tribes, but would
assign to them in future from the heave-offering set apart from
the land for the sanctuary (ch. xlv. 4). It is not till vers. 29
and 30 that the means of support for the priests are spoken of.
They are to be supported from the sacrifices and the tithes and
first-fruits which Israel has to pay to Jehovah as the lord of the
land, and which He transfers to His servants the priests. For
the priests' share of the meat-offering, sin-offering, and trespass-
offering, see Lev. ii. 3, vi. 9, 11, 19, vii. 6, 7 ; for that which
is put under the ban. Lev. xxvii. 21 ; for the first-fruits, Ex.
xxiii. 19, xxxiv. 26, Deut. xviii. 4, Num. xviii. 13; for the
318 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
niDi-in, Num. XV. 19, xviii. 19 ; for the n^Dnj| W'^a^, Num. sv.
20, 21. In '1J1 n''3n5', " to cause a blessing to rest upon thy
house," the individual Israelite is addressed. For the fact
itself, see Mai. iii. 10. — To the enumeration of the means of
support there is appended in ver. 31 an emphatic repetition of
the command in Lev. xxii. 8, not to eat of any dead thing (i.e.
anything that has died a natural death), or anything torn to
pieces, either of birds or beasts, on account of its defiling (Lev.
xvii. 15).
Chap. xlv. 1-17. The Holy Heave of the Land and the
Heave-offerings of the People.
The determination of the means of support for the priesthood
is followed still further by an explanation of the manner in
which Jehovah will be their inheritance and possession; in
other words, assign to the priests and Levites that portion of
the land which was requisite for their abode. This is to be
done by His causing a definite tract of land to be set apart for
Himself, for the sanctuary, and for His servants, and for the
capital, when the country is distributed among the tribes of
Israel (vers. 1-8). On both sides of this domain the prince is
also to receive a possession in land, to guard against all exaction
on the part of the princes in time to come. And everywhere
unrighteousness is to cease, just weight and measure are to be
observed (vers. 9-12), and the people are to pay certain heave-
offerings to provide for the sacrifices binding upon the prince
(vers. 13-17).
Vers. 1-8. The Holt Heave from the Land. — Ver. 1.
And when ye divide the land by lot for an inheritance, ye shall
lift a heave for Jehovah as a holy (portion) from the land ; five
and twenty thousand the length, and the breadth ten (? twenty)
thousand. It shall be holy in all its circumference round about.
Ver. 2. Of this five hundred shall belong to the Holy by five
hundred square round about, and fifty cubits open space thereto
CHAP. XLV. 1-8. 319
round about. Ver. 3. And from this measured space thou ilialt
measure a length of five and twenty thousand, and a breadth of
ten thousand, and in this shall be the sanctuary, a holy of holies.
Ver. 4. A holy {portion) of the land shall this be ; to the priests,
the servants of the sanctuary, shall it belong who draw near to serve
Jeliovah, and it shall be to them the place for houses and a sanc-
tuary for the sanctuary. Ver. 5. And five and twenty thousand
in length and ten thousand in breadtli shall belong to the Levites,
the servants of the house, for a possession to them as gates to
dwell in. Ver. 6. And as a possession for the city, ye sliall give
jive thousand in breadth and five and twenty thousand in length,
parallel to the holy heave ; it shall belong to the whole house of
Israel. Ver. 7. And to the prince {ye shall give) on both sides
of the holy heave and of the possession of the city, along the holy
heave and along the possession of the city, on the' west side west-
wards and on the east side eastwards, and in length parallel to one
of the tribe-portions, from the western border to the eastern border.
Ver. 8. It shall belong to him as land, as a possession in Israel ;
and my princes shall no more oppress my people, but shall leave the
land to the house of Israel according to its tribes. — The domain to
be first of all set apart from the land at the time of its distribution
among the tribes is called nDliPi, heave, not in the general sense
of the lifting or taking of a portion from the whole, but as a
portion lifted or taken by a person from his property as an
offering for God ; for nonn comes from ^'"1?^ which signifies in
the case of the minchah the lifting of a portion which was
burned upon the altar as '"TiStNi for Jehovah (see the comm. on
Lev. ii. 9). Consequently everything that was offered by the
Israelites, either voluntarily or in consequence of a precept
from the Lord for the erection and maintenance of the sanc-
tuary and its servants, was called nDiin (see Ex. xxv. 2 sqq.,
XXX. 15 ; Lev. vii. 14 ; Num. xv. 19, etc.). Only the principal
instructions concerning the heave from the land are given here,
and these are repeated in ch. xlviii. 8-22, in the section con-
perning the division of the land, and to some extent expanded
320 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
tliere. The introductory words, " when ye divide the land by
lot for an inheritance," point to this. (See the map on Plate
IV.) '?''Sin^ sc. ^"3^3 (Prov. i. 14), to cast the lot, to divide by
lot, as in Josh. xiii. 6. Then shall ye lift, set apart, a heave
for Jehovah as a holy (portion) from the land. H?? '*? i^ 'o
be closely connected with EHp^ as shown by ver. 4. In the
numbers mentioned the measure to be employed is not given.
But it is obvious that cubits are not meant, as Bottcher, Hitzig,
and others assume, but rods ; partly from a comparison of ver. 2
with eh. xlii. 16, where the space of the sanctuaiy, which is
given here as 500 by 500 square, is described as five hundred
rods on every side ; and partly also from the fact that the open
space around the sanctuary is fixed at fifty cubits, and in this
case nes is added, because rods are not to be understood there
as in connection with the other numbers. The correctness of
this view, which we meet with in Jerome and Baschi, cannot
be overthrown by appealing to the excessive magnitude of a
re/j,evo<s of twenty-five thousand rods in length and ten thousand
rods in breadth ; for it will be seen in ch. xlviii. that the mea-
surements given answer to the circumstances in rods, but not
in cubits. The T)^ before and after the number is pleonastic :
" as for the length, twenty-five thousand rods in length."
Length here is the measurement from east to west, and breadth
from north to south, as we may clearly see from ch. xlviii. 10.
No regard, therefore, is paid to the natural length and breadth
of the land; and the greater extent of the portions to be
measured is designated as length, the smaller as breadth. The
expression ^1?^ nnB'jJ is a remarkable one, as Q^S^N niB'J! is con-
stantly used, not only in vers. 3 and 5, but also in ch. xlviii. 9,
10, 13, 18. The LXX. have e'Uoa-i p^tXiaSas, twenty thousand
breadth. This reading appears more correct than the Masoretic,
as it is demanded by vers. 3 and 5. For according to ver. 3,
of the portion measured in ver. 1 twenty-five thousand rods in
length and ten thousand in breadth were to be measured for
the sanctuary and for the priests' land ; and according to ver. 5,
CHAP. XLV. 1-8. 321
the Levites were also to receive twenty-five thousand rods in
length and ten thousand in breadth for a possession. The first
clause of ver. 3 is unintelligible if the breadth of the holy
terumah is given in ver. 1 as only ten thousand rods, inasmuch
as one cannot measure off from an area of twenty-five thousand
rods in length and ten thousand rods in breadth another space
of the same length and breadth. Moreover, ver. 1 requires
the reading «!?« 0^1^^, as the " holy terumah " is not only the
portion set apart for the sanctuary and the priests' land, but
also that which was set apart for the Levites. According to
eh. xlviii. 14, this was also " holy to Jehovah ; " whereas the
portion measured off for the city was " common " (ch. xlviii. 15)
This is borne out by the fact that in the chapter before us the
domain appointed for the city is distinguished from the land of
the priests and Levites by the verb l^riri (ver. 6), whilst the
description of the size of the Levites' land in ver. 5 is closely
connected with that of the land of the priests ; and further, that
in ver. 7, in the description of the land of the prince, reference
is made only to the holy terumah and the possession of the
city, from which it also follows that the land of the Levites is
included in the holy terumah. Consequently ver. 1 treats of
the whole of the ^"P noiirt, i.e. the land of the priests and
Levites, which was twenty-five thousand rods long and twenty
thousand rods broad. This is designated in the last clause of
the verse as a holy (portion) in its entire circumference, and
then divided into two domains in vers. 2 and 3. — Ver. 2. Of
this (niPj of the area measured in ver. 1) there shall come, or
belong, to the holy, i.e. to the holy temple domain, five hundred
rods square, namely, the domain measured in ch. xlii. 15-20
round about the temple, for a separation between holy and
common ; and round this domain there is to be a ^1^^, i.e. an
open space of fifty cubits on every side, that the dwellings of
the priests may not be built too near to the holy square of the
temple building. — Ver. 3. flN'in iTHBri, this measure (i.e. this
measured piece of land), also points back to ver. 1, and ID cau-
EZEK. II. X
322 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
not be taken in any other sense than in W (ver. 2), From
the whole tract of land measured in ver. 1 a portion is to be
measured off twenty-five thousand rods in length and ten
thousand rods in breadth, in which the sanctuary, i.e. the temple
with its courts, is to stand as a holy of holies. This domain,
in the midst of which is the temple, is to belong to the priests,
as the sanctified portion of the land, as the place or space for
their houses, and is to be a sanctuary for the sanctuary, i.e. for
the temple. Ver. 5. A portion equally large is to be measured
off to the Levites, as the temple servants, for their possession.
The Keri n^H' is formed after the fi^ni of ver. 4, and the Chetib
iTTi^ is indisputably correct. There is great difficulty in the
last words of this verse, ray? ^^'i^^i " for a possession to them
twenty cells;" for which the LXX. give aurots ew KaTa(T')(e(Tw
TToXets Tov KUToiKelv, and which they have therefore read, or
for which they have substituted by conjecture, ^3?? ^''l^- ^^
cannot, in fact, obtain from the ^327 D^'i'B'y of the Masoretic
text any meaning that will harmonize with the context, even
if we render the words, as Eosenmiiller does, in opposition to
the grammar, cum viginti cuhieulis, and understand by ribE'?
capacious cell-buildings. For we neither expect to find in this
connection a description of the number and character of the
buildings in which the Levites lived, nor can any reason be
imagined why the Levites, with a domain of twenty-five thou-
sand rods in length and ten thousand rods in breadth assigned
to them, should live together in twenty cell-buildings. Still
less can we think of the " twenty cells " as having any connec-
tion with the thirty cells in the outer court near to the gate-
buildings (ch. xl. 17, 18), as these temple cells, even though
they were appointed for the Levites during their service in the
temple, were not connected in any way with the holy teruinah
spoken of here. Havernick's remark, that " the prophet has in
his eye the priests' cells in .the sanctuary, — and the dwellings of
the Levites during their service, which were only on the outside
of the sanctuary, were to correspond to these," is not indicated
CHAP. XLV. 1-8. 323
in the slightest degree by the words, but is a mere conjecture.
There is no other course open, therefore, than to acknowledge
a corruption of the text, and either to alter n^flh d^E'V into
n3B9 D'nj??, as Hitzig proposes (of. Num. xxxv. 2, 3; Josh,
xxi. 2), or to take nniW as a mistake for ^''1^^ : " for a posses-
sion to them as gates to dwell in," according to the frequent
use of Q''iyf , gates, for D'lV, cities, e.g. in what was almost a
standing phrase, " the Levlte who is in thy gates " ( = cities ;
Deut. xii. 18, xiv. 27, xvi. 11 ; cf. Ex. xx. 10 ; Deut. v. 14, etc.).
In that case the faulty reading would have arisen from the
transposition of ^V into V^, and the change of 2 into 3.
Beside the holy terumah for sanctuary, priests, and Levites,
they are also (ver. 6) to give a tract of twenty-five thousand
rods in length and five thousand rods in breadth as the pro-
perty of the city (i.e. of the capital). TiBv? -. parallel to the
holy heave, i.e. running by the longer side of it. This portion
of land, which was set apart for the city, was to belong to all
Israel, and not to any single tribe. The more precise direc-
tions concerning this, and concerning the situation of the whole
terumah in the land, are not given till ch. xlviii. 8-22. Here,
in the present chapter, this heave is simply mentioned in con-
nection with the privileges which the servants of the Lord and
of His sanctuary were to enjoy. These included, in a certain
sense, also the property assigned to the prince in ver. 7 as the
head of the nation, on whom the provision of the sacrifices for
the nation devolved, and who, apart from this, also needed for
his subsistence a portion of the land, which should be peculiarly
his own, in accordance with his rank. They were to give him
as his property (the verb ^Jni? is to be supplied to ^''B'J? from
ver. 6) the land on this side and that side of the holy terumah
and of the city-possession, and that in front (V.?"''?) of these
two tracts of land, that is to say, adjoining them, extending to
their boundaries, 'U1 ^\ Jl^r"?, " from " (i.e., according to our
view, " upon ") the west side westward, and from (upon) the
east side eastward ; in other words, the land which remained on
324 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the eastern and western boundary of the holy terumali and of
the city domain, both toward the west as far as the Mediter-
ranean Sea, and toward the east as far as the Jordan, the two
boundaries of the future Canaan. The further definition
'1J1 nitsp TjlXI is not quite clear ; but the meaning of the words
is, that " the length of the portions of land to be given to the
prince on the east and west side of the terumali shall be equal
to the length of one of the tribe-portions," and not that the
portions of land belonging to the prince are to be just as long
from north to south as the length of one of the twelve tribe-
possessions. " Length " throughout this section is the extent
from east to west. It is so in the case of all the tribe-territories
(cf. ch. xlviii. 8), and must be taken in this sense in connection
with the portion of land belonging to the prince also. The
meaning is therefore this : in length (from east to west) these
portions shall be parallel to the inheritance of one of the twelve
tribes from the western boundary to the eastern. Two things
are stated here : first, that the prince's portion is to extend on
the eastern and western sides of the terumah as far as the
boundary of the land allotted to the tribes, i.e. on the east to
the Jordan, and on the west to the Mediterranean (cf. ch.
xlviii. 8) ; and secondly, that on the east and west it is to run
parallel (HiQ^J?) to the length of the separate tribe-territories,
i.e. not to reach farther toward either north or south than the
terumah lying between, but to be bounded by the long sides of
the tribe-territories which bound the terumah on the north and
south. 'JI'JN is the accusative of direction ; inx, some one (cf.
Judg. xvi. 7; Ps. lxxxii.7). — In ver. 8, D^ with the article is
to be retained, contrary to Hitzig's conjecture px^ : " to the
land belonging to him as a possession shall it (the portion
marked off in ver. 7) be to him." pK, as in 1 Kings xi. 18, of
property in land. In ver. 86, the motive for these instructions
is given. The former kings of Israel had no land of their
own, no domain ; and this had driven them to acquire private
property by violence and extortion. That this may not occur
CHAP. XLV. 9-12. 325
any more in the future, and all inducement to such oppression
of the people may be taken from the princes, in the new king-
dom of God the portion of land more precisely defined in
ver. 7 is to be given to the prince as his own property. The
plural, " my princes," does not refer to several contemporaneous
princes, nor can it be understood of the king and his sons, i.e.
of the royal family, on account of ch. xlvi. 16 ; but it is to be
traced to the simple fact " that Ezekiel was also thinking of
the past kings, and that the whole series of princes, who had
ruled over, Israel, and still would rule, was passing before his
mind" (Kliefoth), without our being able to conclude from
this that there would be a plurality of princes succeeding one
another in time to come, in contradiction to ch. xxxvii. 25. —
" And the land shall they (the princes) leave to the people of
Israel" (PJ in the sense of concedere; and Y'^}'^, the land, with
the exception of the portion set apart from it in vers. 1-7). —
The warning against oppression and extortion, implied in the
reason thus assigned, is expanded into a general exhortation in
the following verses.
Vers. 9-12. General Exhortation to observe Justice
AND Righteousness in their Dealings. — Ver. 9. Thus
saitk the Lord Jehovah, Let it suffice you, ye princes of Israel :
desist from violence and oppression, and observe justice and
righteousness, and cease to thrust my people out of their posses-
sion, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ver. 10. Just scales,
and a just ephah, and a just hath, shall ye have. Ver. 11. The
ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, so that the hath
holds the tenth part of the homer, and the ephah the tenth part
of tlie homer: after the homer shall its standard be. Ver. 12.
And the shekel shall have twenty gerahs ; twenty shekels, five
and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels, shall the mina he with you.
— The exhortation in ver. 9 is similar to that in ch. xliv. 6,
both in form and substance. As the Levites and priests are
to renounce the idolatry to which they have been previously
326 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
adJicted, aiid to serve before tlie Lord in purity and holiness
of life, so are the princes to abstain from the acts of oppression
which they have formerly practised, and to do justice and
righteousness ; for example, to liberate the people of the Lord
from the HiBna. riB'iilJ is unjust expulsion from one's possession,
of which Ahab's conduct toward Naboth furnished a glaring
example (1 Kings xxi.). These acts of violence pressed heavily
upon the people, and this burden is to be removed (?Vt3 D'")n).
In vers. 10-12 the command to practise justice and righteous-
ness is expanded ; and it is laid as a duty upon the whole
nation to have just weights and measures. This forms the
transition to the regulation, which follows from ver. 13
onwards, of the taxes to be paid by the people to the prince to
defray the expenses attendant upon the sacrificial worship.—
For ver. 10, see Lev. xix. 36 and Dent. sxv. 13 sqq. Instead
of the Mn (Lev. xix. 36), the bath, which contained six bins,
is mentioned here as the measure for liquids. The ria is met
with for the first time in Isa. v. 10, and appeai-s to have been
introduced as a measure for liquids after the time of Moses,
having the same capacity as the ejphah for dry goods (see ray
JBibL ArchdoL II. pp. 139 sqq.). This similarity is expressly
stated in ver. 11. Both of them, the ephah as well as the
bath, are to contain the tenth of a homer (n^Ev, to carry, for
P'an?, to contain, to hold ; compare Gen. xxxvi. 7 with Araos
vii. 10), and to be regulated by the homer. Ver. 12 treats of
the weights used for money. The first clause repeats the old
legal provision (Ex. xxx. 13 ; Lev. xxvii. 25 ; Num. iii. 47),
that the shekel, as the standard weight for money, which was
afterwards stamped as a coin, is to contain twenty gerahs.
The regulations which follow are very obscure : " twenty
shekels, twenty-five shekels, fifteen shekels, shall the mina be
to you." The mina, i^iisn, occurs only here and in 1 Kings
X. 17 ; Ezra ii. 69 ; and Neh. vii. 71, 72, — that is to say, only in
books written during the captivity or subsequent to it. If wu
compare 1 Kings x. 17, according to which three minas of gold
CHAP. XLV. 9-12. 327
were used for a shield, with 2 Chron. ix. 16, where three
hundred (shekels) of gold are said to have been used for a
similar shield, it is evident that a mina was equal to a hundred
shekels. Now as the talent (i|3) contained three thousand
(sacred or Mosaic) shekels (see the comm. on Ex. xxxviii. 25, 26),
the talent would only have contained thirty minas, which does
not seem to answer to the Grecian system of weights. For the
Attic talent contained sixty minas, and the mina a hundred
drachms ; so that the talent contained six thousand drachms, or
three thousand didrachms. But as the Hebrew shekel was
equal to a SiSpaxf^'Ov, the Attic talent with three thousand
didrachms corresponded to the Hebrew talent with three thou-
sand shekels ; and the mina, as the sixtieth part of the talent,
with a hundred drachms or fifty didrachms, ought to correspond
to the Hebrew mina with fifty shekels, as the Greek name /iva
is unquestionably derived from the Semitic nJD. The relation
between the mina and the shekel, resulting from a comparison
of 1 KintTs X. 17 with 2 Chron. ix. 16, cai;i hardly be made to
square with this, by the assumption that the shekels referred to
in 2 Chron. ix. 16 are not Mosaic shekels, but so-called civil
shekels, the Mosaic half-shekel, the beka, Vp3, having acquired
the name of shehl in the course of time, as the most widely-
spread silver coin of the larger size. A hundred such shekels
or bekas made only fifty Mosaic shekels, which amounted to
one mina; while sixty minas also formed one talent (see my
Bibl. ArcMol. II. pp. 135, 136). — But the words of the second
half of the verse before us cannot be brought into harmony
with this proportion, take them how we will. If, for example,
we add the three numbers together, 20 + 25 + 15 shekels shall
the mina be to yon, Ezekiel would fix the mina at sixty shekels.
But no reason whatever can be found for such an alteration of
the proportion between the mina and the talent on the one
hand, or the shekel on the other, if the shekel and talent were
to remain unchanged. And even apart from this, the division
of the sixty into twenty, twenty-five, and fifteen still remains
328 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
inexplicable, and can hardly be satisfactorily accounted for in
the manner proposed by the Rabbins, namely, that there were
pieces of money in circulation of the respective weights of
twenty, twenty-five, and fifteen shekels, for the simple reason
that no historical trace of the existence of any such pieces can
be found, apart from the passage before us.^ And the other
attempts that have been made to explain the di£Bcult words are
not satisfactory. The explanation given by Cocceius and J.
D. Michaelis {Supplem. ad lex. p. 1521), that three different
minas are mentioned, — a smaller one of fifteen Mosaic shekels,
a medium size of twenty shekels, and a large one of twenty-
five, — is open to the objection justly pointed out by Bertheau,
that in an exact definition of the true weight of anything we
do not expect three magnitudes, and the purely arbitrary
assumption of three different minas is an obvious subterfuge.
The same thing applies to Hitzig's explanation, that the triple
division, twenty, twenty-five, and fifteen shekels, has reference
to the three kinds of metal used for coinage, viz. gold, silver,
' It is true that Const. I'Emperenr has observed, in the Discursus ad
Lectorem prefixed to the Paraphrasis Joseph. JacMadae in Danielem, that
" as God desired that justice should be preserved in all things, He noticed
the various coins, and commanded that they should have their jnst weight
One coin, according to Jewish testimony, was of twenty shekels, a second
of twenty-five, and a third of fifteen shekels ; and as these together made
one mina, according to the command of God, in order that it might be
manifest that each had its proper quantity. He directed that they should
be weighed against the mina, so that it might be known whether each had
its own weight by means of the mina, to which they ought to be equal."
But the Jewish witnesses (Judaei testes') are no other than the Rabbins of
the Middle Ages, Sal. Jarchi (Raschi), Dav. Kimchi, and Abrabanel, who
attest the existence of these pieces of money, not on the ground of historical
tradition, but from an inference drawn from this verse. The much earlier
Targumist knows nothing whatever of them, but paraphrases the words
thus : " the third part of a mina has twenty shekels ; a silver mina, five
and twenty shekels ; the fourth part of a mina, fifteen shekels ; all sixty
are a mina ; and a great mina (i.e. probably one larger than the ordinary,
or civil mina) shall be holy to you ; " from which all that can be clearly
learned is, that he found in the words of the prophet a mina of sixty
shekels. A different explanation is given by the LXX., whose rendering,
according to the Corf. Vatic. (Tischendorf), runs as follows: 'irii/ri aixlioi,
CHAP. XLV. 13-17. 329
and copper, so tliat the gold mina was worth, or weighed,
twenty shekels ; the silver mina, twenty-five ; and the copper
mina, fifteen, — which has no tenable support in the statement
of Josephus, that the shekel coined by Simon was worth four
drachms ; and is overthrown by the incongruity in the relation
in which it places the gold to the silver, and both these metals
to the copper. — There is evidently a corruption of very old
standing in the words of the text, and we are not in possession
of the requisite materials for removing it by emendation.
Vers. 13-17. The Heave-offeeings of the People. —
Ver. 13. This is the heave-offering which ye shall heave: The
sixth part of the ephah from the homer of wheat, and ye shall
give the sixth part of the ephah from the homer of barley ;
Ver. 14. And the proper measure of oil, from the bath of oil a
tenth of the bath from the cor, which contains ten baths or a
homer; for ten balhs are a homer ; Ver. 15. And one head from
the flock from two hundred from the watered land of Israel, for
muTs icai slxhoii ^ixa ««J 5rs»T^«(ii/T« ctxhot i fiva saTcti vfiis • and according
to the Cod. AL: o! ■Tripn bixKoi "Jtevri xat ol Zsx,a, ctxhot 5sx« x«( ttivtvi-
y-cura x.r.Ti. Boeokh (Metrol. Vntersuch. pp. 54 Bqq.) and Bertheau (^Zur
Gesch. der Isr. pp. 9 sqq.) regard the latter as the original text, and punc-
tuate it thus : Of TTfuTf aixhoi wsi/ts, ««< oi Ss«« alxhoi Se««, xa,\ irsvrii-
xosra six'hoi h fivSi eareei ifilu, — interpreting the whole verse as follows :
" the weight once fixed shall remain unaltered, and unadulterated in its
original value : namely, a shekel shall contain ten gerahs ; five shekels, or a
five-shekel piece, shall contain exactly five ; and so also a ten-shekel piece,
exactly ten shekels ; and the mina shall contain fifty shekels." But how-
ever this explanation may appear to commend itself, and although for this
reason it has been adopted by Havemick and by the author of this com-
mentary in his Bibl. Archdol, after a repeated examination of the matter I
cannot any longer regard it as well-founded, but am obliged to subscribe
to the view held by Hitzig and Kliefoth, " that this rendering of the LXX.
oanies on the face of it the probability of its resting upon nothing more
than an attempt to bring the text into harmony with the ordinary value of
the mina." For apart from the fact that nothing is known of the existence
of five and ten shekel pieces, it is impossible to get any intelligible meaning
from the words, that five shekels are to be worth five shekels, and ten
shekels worth ten shekels, as it was self-evident that five shekels could not
be worth either four shekels or six.
330 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
the meat-offering, and for the hurnt-offering, and for tlie peace-
offerings, to make atonement for them, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Ver. 16. All the people of the land shall be held to this
heave-offering for the prince in Israel. Ver. 17. And upon the
prince shall devolve the burnt-offerings, and the meat-offering, and
the drink-offering at the feasts, the new moons, and the Sabbaths,
at all the festivals of the house of Israel; lie shall provide the
sin-offering, and the m^at-offering, and the burnt-offering, and
the peace-offerings, to make atonement for the house of Israel.
— The introductory precepts to employ just measures and
weights are now followed by the regulations concerning the
productions of nature to be paid by the Israelites to the prince
for the sacrificial worship, the provision for which was to
devolve on him. Fixed contributions are to be levied for this
purpose, of wheat, barley, oil, and animals of the flock — namely,
according to vers. 13—15, of corn the sixtieth part, of oil the
hundredth part, and of the flock the two hundredth head.
There is no express mention made of wine for the drink-
offering, or of cattle, which were also requisite for the burnt-
offering and peace-offering, in addition, to animals from the
flock. The enumeration therefore is not complete, but simply
contains the rule according to which they were to act in levying
what was required for the sacrifices. The word Bn''B'B' in
ver. 13 must not be altered, as Hitzig proposes; for although
this is the only passage in which HE'B' occurs, it is analogous to
IJ'Bn in Gen. xli. 34, both in its formation and its meaning,
" to raise the sixth part." A sixth of an ephah is the sixtieth
part of a homer, ph, that which is fixed or established, i.e. the
proper quantity. iOE'n nan is in apposition to IptS'n (for the
article, see the comm. on ch. xliii. 21), the fixed quantity of
oil, namely of the bath of oil, — i.e. the measure of that which
is to be contributed from the oil, and that from the bath of
oil, — shall be the tenth part of the bath from the cor, i.e. the
hundredth part of the year's crop, as the cor contained ten
baths. The cor is not mentioned in the preceding words
CHAP. XLV. 13-17. 331
(ver. 11), nor does it occur in the Mosaic law. It is another
name for the homer, which is met with for the first time in the
writings of the captivity (1 Kings v. 2, 25; 2 Chron. ii. 9,
xxvii. 5). For this reason its capacity is explained by the
words which are appended to lisD; 'iJi cnan rnjffy, from the
cor (namely) of ten baths, one homer ; and the latter definition
is still further explained by the clause, " for ten baths are one
homer." — Ver. 15. npB'SDj from the watered soil (cf. Gen.
xiii. 10), that is to say, not a lean beast, but a fat one, which
has been fed upon good pasture. Bn''^jJlB3j' indicates the
general purpose of the sacrifices (vid. Lev. i. 4). — Ver. 16.
The article in Wn, as in nan in ver. l4. ?>? n\lj to be, Le. to
belong, to anything — in other words, to be held to it, under
obligation to do it; Jynjn (ver. 17), on the other hand, to be
upon a person, i.e. to devolve upon him. In HjJiD'Paa the
feast and days of festival, which have been previously men-
tioned separately, are all grouped together. 'U1 riKiann ns HB'y,
to furnish the sin-offering, etc., Le. to supply the materials for
them.
So far as the fact is concerned, the Mosaic law makes no
raehtion of any contributions to tlie sanctuary, with the ex-
ception of the first-born, the first-fruits and the tithes, which
could be redeemed with money, however. Besides these, it
was only on extraordinary occasions — e.g. the building of the
tabernacle — that the people were called upon for freewill
heave-offerings. But the Mosaic law contains no regulation as
to the sources from which the priests were to meet the demands
for the festal sacrifices. So far, the instructions in the verses
before ns are new. What had formerly been given for this
object as a gift of spontaneous love, is to become in the future
a regular and established duty, to guard against that arbitrary
and fitful feeling from which the worship of God might suffer
injury. — To these instructions there are appended, from ver. 18
onwards, the regulations concerning the sacrifices to be offered
at the different festivals.
332 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Chap. xlv. 18-xlvi. 15. Instructions concerning the Festal
and Daily Sacrifices.
The series commences with the sln-offerines in the first
month (ch. xlv. 18-20). Then follow the sacrifices at the
Passover and feast of tabernacles (vers. 21-25), in connection
with which a way and a standing-place in the temple are
assigned to the prince and the people during the offering of
these sacrifices (ch. xlvi. 1-3). After these we have the burnt-
offerings on the Sabbaths and new moons (ch. xlvi. 4-7), and
once more a direction with regard to their entrance and exit
when the prince and the people come to the temple at the
yearly festivals (vers. 8—10) ; also the meat-offerings at the
feasts (ver. 11), to which there is appended a direction with
regard to the freewill-offerings of the prince (ver. 12); and,
finally, the instructions concerning the daily burnt-offering and
meat-offering (vers. 13-15).
Vers. 18-20. The Sin-offerings in the Fikst Month.
— Ver. 18. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In the first (month),
on the first of the month, thou shalt take a bullock, a young ox
without blemish, and absolve the sanctuary, Ver. 19. And the
priest shall take of the blood of the sin-ofering, and put it
upon the door-posts of the house, and upon the four corners
of the enclosure of the altar, and upon the door-posts at the
gate of the inner court. Ver. 20. And so shalt thou do
on the seventh of the month, for the sake of erring men
and of folly, that so ye may make atonement for the house. —
The Mosaic law had prescribed for the new moons generally
the sin-offering of a he-goat, in addition to the burnt-offerings
and meat-offerings (Num. xxviii. 15) ; and, besides this, had
also distinguished the new-moon's day of the seventh month by
a special feast-offering to be added to the regular new-moon's
sacrifices, and consisting of a sin-offering of a he-goat, and
burnt-offerings and meat-offerings (Num. xxix. 2-6). This
CHAP. XLV. 18-20. 333
distinguisliing of the seventh month by a special new-moon's
sacrifice is omitted in Ezekiel ; but in the place of it the first
month is distinguished by a sin-offering to be presented on the
first and seventh days. Nothing is said in vers. 18-20 about
burnt-offerings for these days; but as the burnt-offering is
appointed in ch. xlvi. 6, 7 for the new-moon's day without any
limitation, and the regulations as to the connection between the
meat-offering and the burnt-offerings are repeated in ch. xlvi. 11
for the holy days and feast days (a^'iViDi D''3n) generally, and
the new-moon's day is also reckoned among the Q''']ViD, there
is evidently good ground for the assumption that the burnt-
offering and meat-offering prescribed for the new moon in
ch. xlvi. 6, 7 were also to be offered at the new moon of the
first month. On the other hand, no special burnt-offering or
meat-offering is mentioned for the seventh day of the first
month ; so that in all probability only the daily burnt-offering
and meat-offering were added upon that day (ch. xlvi. 13 sqq.)
to the sin-offering appointed for it. Moreover, the sin-offerings
prescribed for the first and seventh days of the first month are
distinguished from the sin-offerings of the Mosaic law, partly
by the animal selected (a young bullock), and partly by the
disposal of the blood. According to the Mosaic law, the sin-
offering for the new moons, as well as for all the feast days of
the year, the Passover, Pentecost, day of trumpets, day of
atonement, and feast of tabernacles (all eight days), was to be
a he-goat (Num. xxviii. 15, xxii. 30, xxix. 5, 11, 16, 19, 22,
25, 28, 31, 34, 38). Even the sin-offering for the congrega-
tion of Israel on the great day of atonement simply consisted
in a he-goat (or two he-goats. Lev. xvi. 5) ; and it was only
for the sin-offering for the high priest, whether on that day
(Lev. xvi, 3), or when he had sinned so as to bring guilt upon
the nation (Lev. iv. 3), or when the whole congregation had
sinned (Lev. iv. 14), that a bullock was required. On the
other hand, according to Ezekiel, the sin-offering both on the
first and seventh days of the first month, and also the one to
334: THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
be brought by the prince on the fourteenth day of tliat month,
i.e. on the day of the feast of Passover (ch. xlv. 22), for himself
and for all the people, were to consist of a bullock, and only
the sin-offering on the seven days of the feasts of Passover and
tabernacles of a he-goat (ch. xlv. 23, 25). The Mosaic law-
contains no express instructions concerning the sprinkling of
the blood of the sin-offering at the new moons and feasts (with
the exception of the great atoning sacrifice on the day of
atonement), because it was probably the same as in the case of
the sin-offerings for the high priest and the whole congregation,
when the blood was first of all to be sprinkled seven times
against the cartain in front of the capporeth, and then to be
applied to the horns of the altar of incense, and the remainder
to be poured out at the foot of the altar of bnrnt-offering
(Lev. iv. 6, 7, 17, 18) ; whereas, in the case of the great
atoning sacrifice on the day of atonement, some of the blood
was first of all to be sprinkled at or upon the front side of the
capporeth and seven times upon the ground, and after that it
was to be applied to the horns of the altar of incense and of
the altar of burnt-offering (Lev. xvi. 15-17). But according
to Ezekiel, some of the blood of the sin-offerings on the first
and seventh days of the first month, and certainly also on the
same days of the feasts of Passover and tabernacles, was to be
smeared upon the posts of the house — that is to say, the posts
mentioned in ch. xli. 21, not merely those of the i'^'n, the door
into the holy place, but also those of the ^p, the door leading
into the most holy place, upon the horns and the four corners
of the enclosure of the altar of burnt-offering (ch. xliii. 20),
and upon the posts of the gate of the inner court. It is a
point in dispute here whether "ivnn IVB' is only one door, and
in that case whether the east gate of the inner court is to be
understood as in ch. xlvi. 2 (iJ'B'n nniD), as Hitzig and others
suppose, or whether iV?' is to be taken in a collective sense as
signifying the three gates of the inner court (Kliefoth and
others). The latter view is favoured by the collective use of
CHAP. XLV. 21-25. 335
the word nvna by itself, aud also by the circumstance that if
only one of the three gates were intended, the statement which
of the three would hardly have been omitted (of. ch. xlvi. 1,
xliv. 1, etc.). — According to ver. 18, these sin-offerings were
to serve for the absolving of the sanctuary ; and according to
ver. 20, to make atonement for the temple on account of error
or folly. Both directions mean the same thing. The recon-
ciliation of the temple was effected by its absolution or purifi-
cation from tlie sins that had come upon it through the error
and folly of the people. Sins •iJJB'a are sins occasioned by the
weakness of flesh and blood, for which expiation could be
made by sin-offerings (see the comm. on Lev. iv, 2 and Num.
XV. 22 sqq.). njtr t^^so, lit. away from the erring man, i.e. to
release him from his sin. This expression is strengthened by
*riB», away from simplicity or folly ; here, as in Prov. vii. 7, as
abstracturn pro concrete, the simple man. — The great expiatory
sacrifice on the day of atonement answered the same purpose,
the absolution of the sanctuary from the sins of the people
committed njjf? (Lev. svi, 16 sqq.).
Vers. 21-25. Sackifices at the Passover and Feast
OF Tabernacles. — Ver. 21. In the first (month), on the four-
teenth day of the month, ye shall keep the Passover, a feast of a
full week ; unleavened shall be eaten. Ver. 22. And the prince
shall prepare on that day for himself and for all the people of
the land a bullock as a sin-offering. Ver. 23. And for the seven
days of the feast he shall prepare as a burnt-offenng for Jehovah
seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily, the seven
days, and as a sin-offering a he-goat daily. Ver. 24. And as
a meat-offering, he shall prepare an ephah for the bullock,
and an ephah for the ram, and a hin of oil for the ephah.
Ver. 25. In the seventh (month), on the fifteenth day of the
month, at the feast he shall do the same for seven days with
regard to the sin-offering, as also the burnt-offering, and the
meat-offenng, as also the oil. — In the words, " shall the
336 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Passover be to you," there lies the tliought that the Passover is
to be celebrated in the manner appointed in Ex. xii., with the
paschal meal in the evening of the 14th Abib. — There is con-
siderable difficulty connected with the following words, Jn
D'p^ niV^B*, which all the older translators have rendered "a
feast of seven days." nij?3E' signifies periods of seven days or
weeks. A feast of heptads of days, or weeks of days, cannot
possibly mean a feast which lasted only seven days, or a week.
nij?3B' Jn is used elsewhere for the feast of weeks (Ex. xxxiv. 22 ;
Deut. xvi. 10), because they were to reckon seven weeks from
the second day of the Passover, the day of the sheaf of first-
fruits, and then to keep the feast of the loaves of first-fruits, or
the feast of harvest (Deut. xvi. 9). Kliefoth retains this well-
established meaning of the words in this passage also, and gives
the following explanation : If the words riij;3E' Jn stood alone
without D''!?^, it would mean that in future the Passover was to
be kept like the feast of seven weeks, as the feast of the loaves
of first-fruits. But the addition of D'O^, which is to be taken in
the same sense as in Dan. x. 2, 3, Gen. xxix. 14, etc., gives
this turn to the thought, that in future the Passover is to be
kept as a feast of seven weeks long, " a feast lasting seven
weeks." According to this explanation, the meaning of the
regulation is, " that in future not only the seven days of sweet
loaves, but the whole of the seven weeks intervening between
the feast of the wave-sheaf and the feast of the wave-loaves,
was to be kept as a Passover, that the whole of the quinqua-
gesima should be one Easter Jn, and the feast of weeks be one
with the Passover." To this there is appended the further
regulation, that unleavened bread is to be eaten, not merely for
the seven days therefore, but for the whole of the seven weeks,
till the feast of the loaves of first-fruits. This explanation is a
very sagacious one, and answers to the Christian view of the
Easter-tide. But it is open to objections which render it
untenable. In the first place, that D''?', when used in the sense
of lasting for days, is not usually connected with the preceding
CHAP. XLV. 21-25. 337
noun in the construct state, but is attached as an adverbial
accusative ; compare D'D^ Q''J'3K' HB^E' in Dan. x. 2, 3, and
W Q]r\3f in Gen. xli. 1, Jer. xxviii. 3, 11, etc. But a still
more important objection is the circumstance that the words
jnn '»] ny^B' in ver. 23 unquestionably point back to n^Jfae' in
D''OJ, as there is no other way in which the article in Jnn can be
explained, just as wnn Di'3 in ver. 22 points back to the four-
teenth day mentioned in ver. 21 as the time of the pesach feast.
It follows from this, however, that D'PJ niyaE* can only signify
a seven days' feast. It is true that the plural niyaB* appears
irreconcilable with this ; for Kimchi's opinion, that nij)aB> is a
singular, written with Cholem instead of Patach, is purely a
result of perplexity, and the explanation given by Gussetius,
that Ezekiel speaks in the plnral of weeks, because the refer-
ence is " to the institution of the Passover as an annual festival
to be celebrated many times in the series of times and ages," is
no better. The plural nivaK* must rather be taken as a plural
of genus, as in '''}V, Gen. xiii. 12 and Judg. xii. 7 ; jn3, Gen.
xix. 29 ; or D'^a, Gen. xxi. 7, Isa. xxxvii. 3 ; so that Ezekiel
speaks indefinitely of heptads of days, because he assumes that
the fact is well known that the feast only lasted one heptad of
days, as he expressly states in ver. 23. If this explanation of
the plural does not commend itself, we must take niWB' as a
copyist's error for nyaB*, feast of a heptad of days, i.e. a feast
lasting a full week, and attribute the origin of this copyist's
error to the fact that nyaB' JPI naturally suggested the thought
of niwa* an, feast of weeks, or Pentecost, not merely because
the feast of Pentecost is always mentioned in the Pentateuch
along with the feasts of Passover and tabernacles, but also
because the only singular form of nivaB" that we meet witli
elsewhere is J/iaB* (Dan. ix. 27), or in the construct state paa'
(Gen. xxix. 27), not nyaE> and nyaa'.— The word npan is used
here as in Dent. xvi. 1, 2, so that it includes the seven days'
feast of unleavened bread. The Niplial ?3^.1 is construed with
the accusative in the olden style : mazzoth shall men eat. — In
EZEK. II. Y
333 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
vers. 22 and 23 there follow the regulations concerning the
sacrifices of this festival, and first of ail concerning the sin-
offering to be presented on the fourteenth day, on the evening
of which the paschal lamb was slaughtered and the paschal
meal was held (ver. 22). The Mosaic legislation makes no
allusion to this, but simply speaks of festal sacrifices for the
seven days of mazzoth, the 15th to the 21st Abib (Lev. xxiii.
5-8; Num. xxviii. lfi-25), with regard to which fresh regula-
tions are also given here. The Mosaic law prescribes for each
of these seven days as burnt-offerings two bullocks, a ram, and
seven yearling lambs, as a meat-offering; three-tenths of an
ephah of meal mixed with oil for each bullock, two-tenths for
the ram, and one-tenth for each lamb, and a he-goat for tlie
sin-offering (Num. xxviii. 19-22). The new law for the feasts,
on the other hand, also requires, it is true, only one he-goat
daily for a sin-offering on the seven feast days, but for the
dailv burnt-offerings seven bullocks and seven rams each ;
and for the meat-offering, an ephah of meal and a bin of
oil for every bullock and for every ram. In the new ihorali,
therefore, the burnt-offerings and meat-offerings are much
richer and more copious, and the latter in far greater measure
than the former. — Ver. 25. The same number of sacrifices is
to be offered throughout the feast of seven days falling upon
the fifteenth day of the seventh month. This feast is the feast
of tabernacles, but the name is not mentioned, doubtless because
the practice of living in tabernacles (booths) would be dropped
in the time to come. And even with regard to the sacrifices of
this feast, the new thorah differs greatly from the old. Accord-
ing to the Mosaic law, there were to be offered, in addition to
the daily sin-offering of a he-goat, seventy bullocks in all as
burnt-offerings for the seven days; and these were to be so
distributed that on the first day thirteen were to be offered,
and the number was to be reduced by one on each of the
following days, so that there would be only seven bullocks
upon the seventh day; moreover, every day two rams and
CHAP. XLVI. 1-7. 339
fourteen yearling lambs were to be offered, together with the
requisite quantity of meal and oil for a meat-offering ac-
cording to the number of the animals (Num. xxix. 12-34).
According to Ezekiel, on the other hand, the quantity of
provision made for the sacrifices remained the same as that
appointed for the feast of Passover; so that the whole cost
of the burnt-offerings and meat-offerings did not reach the
amount required by the Mosaic law. In addition to all this,
there was an eighth day observed as a closing festival in the
Mosaic feast of tabernacles, with special sacrifices; and this
also is wanting in Ezekiel. — But the following is still more
important than the points of difference just mentioned : Ezekiel
only mentions the two yearly feasts of seven days in the first
and seventh months, and omits not only the Pentecost, or feast
of weeks, but also the day of trumpets, on the first of the seventh
month, and the day of atonement on the tenth ; from which we
must infer that the Israel of the future would keep only the
two first named of all the yearly feasts. The correctness of
this conclusion is placed beyond the reach of doubt by the fact
that he practically transfers the feasts of the day of trumpets
and of the day of atonement, which were preparatory to the
feast of tabernacles, to the first month, by the appointment of
special sin-offerings for the first and seventh days of that month
(vers. 18-20), and of a sin-offering on the day of the paschal
meal (ver. 22). This essentially transforms the idea which
lies at the foundation of the cycle of Mosaic feasts, as we intend
subsequently to show, when discussing the meaning and signi-
ficance of the whole picture of the new kingdom of God, as
shown in ch. xl.-xlviii.
Chap. xlvi. 1-15. Sacrifices for the Sabbath and New Moon,
Freewill- Offerings, and Daily Sacrifices.
Vers. 1-7. Sacrifices foe the Sabbath and New Moon.
— As, according to ch. xlv. 17, it devolved upon the prince to
provide and bring the sacrifices for himself and the house of
340 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Israel ; after the appointment of the sacrifices to be offered at
the yearly feasts (eh. xlv. 18-25), and before the regulation of
the sacrifices for the Sabbath and new moon (ch. slvi. 4-7),
directions are given as to the conduct of the prince at the
offering of these sacrifices (ch. xlvi. 1-3). For although the
slaughtering and preparation of the sacrifices for the altar
devolved upon the priests, the prince was to be present at the
offering of the sacrifices to be provided by him, whereas the
people were under no obligation to appear before the Lord in
the temple except at the yearly feasts.
Ver. 1. Tims saith the Lord Jehovah, The gate of the inner
court, which looks toward the east, shall be shut the six working
days, and on the Sabbath it shall be opened, and on the day of
the new moon it shall be opened. Ver. 2. And tlie prince shall
come by the way to the porch of the gate from without, and stand
at the posts of the gate, and the priests shall prepare his bumt-
offeiing and his peace-offerings, and he shall worship on the
threshold of the gate and then go out ; but the gate shall not be shut
till the evening. Ver. 3. And the people of the land shall worship
at the entrance of that gate on the Sabbaths and on the new moons
before Jehovah. Ver. 4. And the burnt-offering which the prince
shall offer to Jehovah shall consist on tlie Sabbath-day of six lambs
without blemish and a ram without blemish ; Ver. 5. And as a
meat-offering, an epliah for the ram, and for the lambs as a meat-
offering that which his hand may give, and of oil a hin to the epluxli
(of m^al). Ver. 6. And on the day of the new moon there shall be
a bullock, a young ox without blemish, and six lambs and a ram
without blemish ; Ver. 7. And he shallput an ephah for the bullock
and an ephah for the ram for the meat-offering, and for the lambs
as much as his hand affords, and of oil a hin for the ephah. —
Vers. 1-3 supply and explain the instructions given in ch.
xliv. 1-3 concerning the outer eastern gate. As the east
gate of the outer court (ch. xliv. 1), so also the east gate of
the inner court was to remain closed during the six work-
ing days, and only to be opened on the Sabbaths and new
CHAP. XLVI. 1-7. 341
moons, wlien it was to remain open till the evening. The
prince was to enter this inner east gate, and to stand there and
worship upon the threshold while his sacrifice was being pre-
pared and offered. "iJ/K'n DJIK ri-n Ki3 is to be taken as in ch.
xliv. 3 ; but pno, which is appended, is not to be referred to
the entrance into the inner court, as the statement would be
quite superfluous so far as this is concerned, since any one who
was not already in the inner court must enter the gate-building
of the inner court from without, or from the outer court. The
meaning of pnp is rather that the prince was to enter, or to go
to, the gate porch of the inner court through the outer east gate.
There he was to stand at the posts of the gate and worship on
the threshold of the gate during the sacrificial ceremony ; and
when this was over he was to go out again, namely, by the same
way by which he entered (ch. xliv. 3). But the people who
came to the temple on the Sabbaths and new moons were to
worship nnSj i.e. at the entrance of this gate, outside the
threshold of the gate. Kliefoth is wrong in taking nna in the
sense of through the doorway, as signifying that the people
were to remain in front of the outer east gate, and to worship
looking at the temple through this gate and through the open
gate between. For ^'^i^k} "i^?'!, t^s gate, can only be the gate of
the inner court, which has been already mentioned. There is
no force in the consideration which has led Kliefoth to overlook
wnrij and think of the outer gate, namely, that " it would be
unnatural to suppose that the people were to come into the
outer court through the outer north and south gates, whilst the
outer east gate remained shut (or perhaps more correctly, was
opened for the prince), and so stand in front of the inner
court," as it is impossible to see what there is that is unnatural
in such a supposition. On the other hand, it is unnatural to
assume that the people, who, according to ver. 9, were to come
through the north and south gates into the outer court at all the
tJ^Jl^O to appear before Jehovah, were not allowed to enter the
court upon the Sabbaths and new moons if they should wish to
342 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL
worship before Jehovah upon these days also, but were to stand
outside before the gate of the outer court. The difference
between the princes and the people, with regard to visiting the
temple upon the Sabbaths and new moons, consisted chiefly in
this, that the prince could enter by the outer east gate and
proceed as far as the posts of the middle gate, and there wor-
ship upon the threshold of the gate, whereas the people were
only allowed to come into the outer court through the outer
north and south gates, and could only proceed to the front of
the middle gate. — Vers. 4 sqq. The burnt-offering for the
Sabbath is considerably increased when compared with that
appointed in the Mosaic law. The law requires two yearling
lambs with the corresponding meat-offering (Num. xxviii. 9) ;
Ezekiel, six lambs and one ram, and in addition to these a meat-
offering for the ram according to the proportion already laid
down in eh. xlv. 24 for the festal sacrifices ; and for the lambs,
\T nriD, a gift, a present of his hand, — that is to say, not a hand-
ful of meal, but, according to the formula used in alternation
with it in ver. 7, as much as his hand can afford. For 1B'N3
St J''ta, see Lev. xiv. 30, xxv. 26. — It is different with the
sacrifices of the new moon in vers. 6 and 7. The law of Moses
prescribed two bullocks, one ram, and seven lambs, with the
corresponding meat-offering, and a he-goat for a sin-offering
(Num. xxviii. 11-15) ; the tliorali of Ezekiel, on the contrary,
omits the sin-offering, and reduces the burnt-offering to one
bullock, one ram, and six lambs, together with a meat-offering,
according to the proportion already mentioned, which is peculiar
to his law. The first D''D''pJii in ver. 6 is a copyist's error for
• T
Vers. 8-12. On the Opening of the Temple for the
People, and for the Voluntary Offerings of the
Prince. — Ver. 8. And when the prince cometh, he shall go in
hy the way to the porch of the gate, and hy its way shall he go
out. Ver. 9. And ichen the people of the land come lefore
CHAP. XLVI. 8-12. 343
Jehovah on the feast days, he who enters through the north gate
to worship shall go out through the south gate; and he ivho enters
through the south gate shall go out through the north gate : they
shall not return through the gate through which they entered, but
go out straight forward. Ver. 10. And the prince shall enter in
the midst of them, when they enter ; and when they go out, they
shall go out (together). Ver. 11. And at the feast days and holy
days the meat-offering shall be an ephah for the bullock, an ephah
for the ram, and for the lambs what his hand may give, and of oil
a hin for the ephah. Ver. 12. And when the prince prepares a
voluntary burnt-offering or voluntary peace-nfferings to Jehovah,
they shall open the gate that looks to the east, and he shallprepare
his burnt-offerings and his peace-offering as he does on the Sabbath
day ; and when he has gone out they shall shut the gate after his going
out. — The coming of the people to worship before Jehovah has
been already mentioned in ver. 3, but only casually, with refer-
ence to the position which they were to take behind the prince
in case any individuals should come on the Sabbaths or new
moons, on which they were not bound to appear. At the high
festivals, on the other hand, every one was to come (Deut.
xvi, 16) ; and for this there follow the necessary directions in
vers. 9 and 10, to prevent crowding aiylj-egjlfusion. For the
purpose of linking these directions to -what comes before, the
rule already laid down in ver. 2 concerning the entrance and
exit of the prince is repeated in ver. 8. ClSjiii is supposed by
the commentators to refer to the high festivals of the first
and seventh months (ch. xlv. 21 and 25) ; but CIJ^^D does not
apply to the same feasts as those which are called Q'sn in
ver. 11, as we may see from the combination of D'sn and DnjtiD.
D'iin is the term applied to the greater annual feasts, as distin-
guished from the Sabbaths, new moons, and the day of atone-
ment. The C'lJ^iiS, on the contrary, are all the times and days
sanctified to the Lord, including even the Sabbath (see the
comm. on Lev. xxiii. 2). It is in this sense that ClJIio is used
here in ver. 9, and not D'aH; because what is laid down con-
344 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
cerning the entrance and exit of the people, when visiting the
temple, is not merely intended to apply to the high festivals, on
which the people were bound to appear before Jehovah, but
also to such feast days as the Sabbaths and new moons, when-
ever individuals from among the people were desirous of their
own free-will to worship before the Lord. The latter cases
were not to be excluded, although, as ver. 10 clearly shows, the
great feasts were principally kept in mind. For the entrance
and exit of the prince in the midst of the people (ver. 10)
apply to the great yearly feasts alone. The Chetib WS» in
ver. 9 is to be preferred to the easier Keri KV;, and is not
merely the more difficult reading, but the more correct readin»
also, as two kinds of people are mentioned, — those who entered
by the north gate and those who entered by the south. Both
are to go out walking straight forward ; and neither of them
is to turn in the court for the purpose of going out by the gate
througli which he entered. Even in ver. 10 if^if' is not to be
altered, as Hitzig supposes, but to be taken as referring to the
prince and the people. — In ver. 11, the instructions given in ch.
xlv. 24, xlvi. 5, 7, concerning the quantities composing the meat-
offering for the different feasts, are repeated here as rules
applicable to all festal times. Dnvioai C?"? has been correctly
explained as follows : " at the feasts, and generally at all
regular (more correctly, established) seasons," cf. ch. xlv. 17.
Only the daily sacrifices are excepted from this rule, other
regulations being laid down for them in ver. 14. — Ver. 12. The
freewill-offerings could be presented on any week-day. And
the rules laid down in vers. 1 and 2 for the Sabbath-offerings
of the prince are extended to cases of this kind, with one
modification, namely, that the east gate, whicli had been opened
for the occasion, should be closed again as soon as the sacrificial
ceremony was over, and not left open till the evening, as on the
Sabbath and new moon. n3"iJ is a substantive : the freewill-
offering, which could be either a burnt-offering or a peace-
offering.
CHAP. XLVI. 13-15. 345
Vers. 13-15. The Daily Sacrifice. — Ver. 13. A7id a
yearling latnb without blemish shali thou prepare as a burnt-
offering daily for Jehovah : every morning shalt thou prepare
it. Ver. 14. And a meat-offering shalt thou add to it every
morning, a sixth of an ephah, and oil a third of a hin, to moisten
the wheaten flour, as a meat-offering for Jehovah : let these be ever-
lasting statutes, perpetually enduring. Ver. 15. And prepare the
lamb, and the meat-offering, and the oil, every morning as a per-
petual burnt-offering. — The preparation of the daily sacrifice is
not imposed upon the prince, in harmony with ch. xlv. 17 ; it is
the duty of the congregation, which the priests have to super-
intend. Every morning a yearling lamb is to be brought as a
burnt-offering. The Mosaic law required such a lamb both
morning and evening (Num. xxviii. 3, 4). The new thorah
omits the evening sacrifice, but increases the meat-offering to
the sixth of an ephah of meal and the third of a hin of oil,
against the tenth of an ephah of meal and the fourth of a hin of
oil prescribed by the Mosaic law (Num. xxviii. 5). Dn, from
Dn, oTT. Xej., to moisten (cf. D''D''i?^, Song of Sol. v. 2). The
plural nipn refers to the burnt-offering and meat-offering.
yDf\ is added to give greater force, and, according to the
correct remark of Hitzig, appears to be intended as a sitbsti-
tute for M^niin^ in Lev. xxiii. 14, 21, 31. The repeated
emphasizing of "ii?.33 lip.iaa shows that the silence as to the
evening sacrifice is not a mere oversight of the matter, but
that in the new order of worship the evening sacrifice is to
be omitted. The Chetib 'lE'JJl is to be retained, in opposition
to the Keri WJ|!.
This brings to an end the new order of worship. The
verses which follow in the chapter before us introduce two
supplementary notices, — namely, a regulation pointing back to
ch. xlv. 7-9, concerning the right of the prince to hand down
or give away his landed property (vers. 16-18) ; and a brief
description of the sacrificial kitchens for priests and people
(vers. 19-24).
346 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Vers. 1 6-18. On the Eight of the Prince to dispose
OF HIS Landed Propekty. — Ver. 16. Thus saith the Lord
Jehovah, If the prince gives a present to one of his sons, it is his
inheritance, shall belong to his sons ; it is their possession, in an
hereditary way. Ver. 17. But if he gives a present from his in-
heritance to one of his servants, it shall belong to him till the year
of liberty, and then return to the prince ; to his sons alone shall his
inheritance remain. Ver. 18. And the prince shall not take from
the inheritance of the people, so as to thrust them out of their
possession; from his own possession he shall transmit to his
sons, thai no one of my people be scattered from Ms possession.
^According to ch. xlv. 7, 8, at the future division of the land
among the tribes, a possession was to be given to the prince on
both sides of the holy heave and of the city domain, that he
might not seize upon a possession by force, as the former
princes had done. The prince might give away portions of
this royal property, but only within such limits that the design
with which a regal possession had been granted might not be
frustrated. To his sons, as his heirs, lie might make gifts
therefrom, which would remain their own property ; but if he
presented to any one of his servants a portion of his hereditary
property, it was to revert to the prince in the year of liberty ;
just as, according to the Mosaic law, the hereditary field of an
Israelite, which had been alienated, was to revert to its heredi-
tary owner (Lev. xxvii. 24, compared with xxv. 10-13). The
suffix in in?™ (ver. 16) is not to be taken as referring to the
prince, and connected with the preceding words in opposition
to the accents, but refers to VjaD e>^ti. What the prince gives
to one of his sons from his landed property shall be his n^nj, j.e.
his hereditary possession. This is expressed still more generally
in the next clause : to his (the prince's) sons shall it (the land
presented) belong as their njnj, i.e. after the manner of an
hereditary possession. On the other hand, what the prince
presents to one of his servants shall not become hereditary in
his case, but shall revert to the prince in the year of liberty, or
CHAP. XLVI. 19-24. 347
the year of jubilee. The second half of ver. 17 reads verbally
thus : " only his inheritance is it ; as for his sons, it shall belong
to them." — And as the prince was not to break up his regal
possession by presents made to servants, so was he (ver. 18)
also not to put any one out of his possession by force, for the
purpose, say, of procuring property for his own sons ; but was
to give his sons their inheritance from his own property alone.
For njirij compare ch. xlv. 8, and such passages as 1 Sam.
viii. 14, xxii. 7. We shall return by and by to the question,
how this regulation stands related to the view that the prince
is the Messiah.
Vers. 19-24. The SacrificiaIj Kitchens foe the
Priests and for the People. — Ver. 19. And he hr ought
me up the entrance by the shoulder of the gate to the holy cells for
the priests, which looked to the north ; aiid behold there was a
place on the outermost side toward the west. Ver. 20. And he
said to me, This is the place where the priests boil the trespass-
offering and the sin-offering, where they bake the meat-offering
that they may not need to carry it out into the outer court, to
sanctify the people. Ver. 21. And he led me out into the outer
court, and caused me to pass by the four corners of the court ;
and behold, in every corner of the court there was again a
court. Ver. 22. In the four corners of the court were closed
courts of forty cubits in length and thirty cubits in breadth;
all four corner spaces had one measure. Ver. 23. And a
row of stands was round about therein in all four, and boiling
hearths were under the rows made round about. Ver. 24.
And he said to me. These are the kitchen-house, where the ser-
vants of the house boil the slain - offering of the people. —
In the list and description of the subordinate buildings of the
temple, the sacrificial kitchens are passed over ; and they are
therefore referred to here again in a supplementary manner.
Ewald has shifted vers. 19-24, and placed them after ch.
xlii. 14, which would certainly have been the most suitable
348 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
place for mentioning the sacrificial kitchens for the priests.
But it is evident that they stood here originally, and not there ;
not only from the fact that in ver. 19a the passage to the holy
cells (ch. xlii. 1 sqq.) is circumstantially described, which would
have been unnecessary if the description of the kitchens had
originally followed immediately after ch. xlii. 14, as Ezekiel
was then standing by the cells ; but also, and still more clearlj',
from the words that serve as an introduction to what follows,
" he led me back to the door of the house " (ch. xlvii. 1), which
are unintelligible unless he had changed his standing- place
between ch. xlvi. 18 and xlvii. 1, as is related in ch. xlvi. 19
and 21, since Ezekiel had received the sacrificial tlwrah (ch.
xliv. 5-xlvi. 18) in front of the house (ch. xliv. 4). If
vers. 19-24 had originally stood elsewhere, so that ch. xlvii. 1
was immediately connected with ch. xlvi. 18, the transition-
formula in ch. xlvii. la would necessarily have read very
differently. — But with this section the right of the preceding
one, vers. 16-18, which Ewald has arbitrarily interpolated in
ch. xlv. between vers. 8 and 9, to hold its present place in the
chapter before us as an appendix, is fully vindicated. — The
holy cells (ver. 19) are those of the northern cell-building (ch-
xlii. 1-10) described in ch. xlii. 1-14 (see Plate I. L). Ni2B3
is the approach or way mentioned in ch. xlii. 9, which led from
the northern inner gate to these cells (see Plate I. V) ; not the
place to which Ezekiel was brought (Kliefoth), but the passage
along which he was led. The spot to which he was conducted
follows in ni3B'>in 7S (the article before the construct state, as
in ch. xliii. 21, etc.). ^''^nbri bx is appended to this in the form
of an apposition ; and here niae*? is to be repeated in thought :
to those for the priests, 'v niJbn belongs to niac'^n. There,.
i.e. by the cells, was a space set apart at the outermost (hinder-
most) sides toward the west (Plate I. ili), for the boiling of the
flesh of the trespass-offering and sin-offering, and the baking
of the mincliah, — that is to say, of those portions of the sacrifices
which the priests were to eat in .their official capacity (see the
CHAP. XLVI. 19-24. 349
comm. on ch. xlii. 13). For the motive assigned in ver, 205
for the provision of special kitchens for this object, see the
exposition of ch. xliv. 19. — In addition to these, kitchens were
required for the preparation of the sacrificial meals, which were
connected with the offering of the shelamim, and were held by
those who presented them. These sacrificial kitchens for the
people are treated of in vers. 20-24. They were situated in
the four corners of the outer court (Plate I. N). To show
them to the prophet, the angel leads him into the outer court.
The holy cells (ver. 19) and the sacrificial kitchens for the
priests (ver. 20) were also situated by the outside wall of the
inner court ; and for this reason Ezekiel had already been led
out of the inner court, where he had received the sacrificial
thorah, through the northern gate of the court by the way
which led to the holy cells, that he might be shown the sacri-
ficial kitchens. When, therefore, it is stated in ver. 21 that
"he led me out into the outer court," ''J??''Vi'' can only be
.explained on the supposition that the space from the surround-
ing wall of the inner court to the way which led from the gate
porch of that court to the holy cells, and to the passage which
continued this way in front of the cells (Plate I. I and m), was
regarded as an appurtenance of the inner court. In every one
of the four corners of the outer court there was a (small)
courtyard in the court. The repetition of 'nn JJVppa Tin has a
distributive force. The small courtyards in the four corners of
the court were niipp, i.e. not " uncovered," as this would be
unmeaning, since all courts or courtyards were uncovered ; nor
" contracted " (Bottcher), for lipij has no such meaning ; nor
"fumum exhahmtia" as the Talmudists suppose ; nor " bridged
over " (Hitzig), which there is also nothing in the language to
sustain ; but in all probability atria clausa, i. e. muris cincta et
januis clausa (Ges. Thes.), from "itaj? ; in Aram, ligavit; in
Ethiop. clausit, obseravit januam. The word nijJSiJriD is marked
with puncta extraordinaria by the Masoretes as a suspicious
word, and is also omitted in the Septuagint and Vulgate.
350 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Bottcher and Hitzig have therefore expunged it as a gloss.
But even Hitzig admits that this does not explain how it found
its way into the text. The word is a Hoplial participle of H'i?,,
in the sense of cornered off, cut off into corners, and is in
apposition to the suffix to DnjJanKP, — literally, one measure was
to all four, the spaces or courtyards cut off in the corners. For
this appositional use of the participle, compare 1 Kings xiv. 6.
Tliere is also a difference of opinion as to the meaning of the
word Tit2, which only occurs here and in Ex. xxviii. 17 sqq.
and xxxix. 10, where it signifies " row." and not "enclosure "
(Kliefoth). niTaj which follows, is evidently merely the femi-
nine plural, from niD, as nn^tp is also derived from niD, in the
sense of " to encircle" (see the comm. on Ps. Ixix. 26). Con-
sequently "I1D does not mean a covering or boundary wall, but
a row or shelf of brickwork which had several separate shelves,
under which the cooking hearths were placed. niP^ap, not
kitchens, but cooking hearths ; strictly speaking a partic. Piel,
things which cause to boil. — D7B'3l3ri n^a, kitchen house,
n)3n ^Pnc"!?, the temple servants, as distinguished from the
servants of Jehovah (ch. xliv. 15, 16), are the Levites (ch.
xliv. 11, 12). MbjJ is construed as in ch. xl. 17 and xli. 18, 19.
CHAP. XLVII. AND XL VIII. BLESSINO OF THE LAND OF CANAAN,
AND DISTEIBDTION OF IT AMONG THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL.
After Ezekiel had seen the entrance of the glory of the Lord
into the new temple, which was measured before his eyes, and
had received the new thorah to be announced to the people
concerning the service which Israel was to render to its God in
the new sanctuary, a stream of living water was shown to him,
proceeding from the threshold of the temple, flowing to the
Arabah, and emptying itself into the Dead Sea, to fertilize the
barren soil, and fill the salt water of the Dead Sea with vital
power (ch. xlvii. 1-12) ; and finally, the command of the
Lord is communicated to him concerning the boundaries of the
CHAP. XLVII. 1-12, 351
holy land, its distribution among the twelve tribes of Israel,
and the building of the holy city (ch. xlvii. 13-xlviii..35).
Chap, xlvii. 1-12. Tlie River of Water of Life.
When Jehovah shall have judged all the heathen in the
valley of Jehoshaphat, and shall dwell as King of His people
upon Zion His holy mountain, then will the mountains trickle
with new wine, and the hills run with milk, and all the brooks
of Judah flow with water ; and a spring will proceed from the
house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley. With these
figures Joel (ch. iv. 18) has already described the river of
salvation, which the Lord would cause to flow to His congrega-
tion in the time when the kingdom of God shall be perfected.
This picture of the Messianic salvation shapes itself in the case
of our prophet into the magnificent vision contained in the
section before us.' — Ver. 1. And he led me back to the door of
the house, and, behold, water flowed out from under the threshold
of the house toward the east, for the front side of the house ivas
toipard the east ; and the water flowed down from below, from
the right shoulder of the house on the south of the altar. Ver. 2.
And he led me out by the way of the north gate, and caused me
to go round about on the outside, to the outer gate of the way to
the (gate), looking toward the east ; and, behold, waters rippled
for the right shoulder of the gate. Ver. 3. When the man went
out toward the east, he had a measuring line in his hand, and
he measured a thousand cubits, and caused me to go through
the water — water to the ankles. Ver. 4. And he measured a
thousand, and caused me to go through the water — water to the
knees ; and he measured a thousand, and caused me to go through
— water to the hips. Ver. 5. Aiid he measured a thousand —
a river through which I could not walk, for the water was high,
water to swim in, a river which could not be forded. Ver. 6.
And he said to me, Hast thou seen it, son of man f and he led me
^ Compare W. Neumann, Die Wasser dea Lebens. An exegetical study
on Ezek. xlvii. 1-12. Berlin, 1848.
352 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
lack again hy the bank of the river. Ver. 7. When I returned,
behold, there stood on the bank of the river very many trees on
this side and on that. Ver. 8. And he said to me. This water
flows out into the eastern circle, and runs down into the plain,
and reaches the sea ; into the sea is it carried out, that the waters
may become wholesome. Ver. 9. And it ivill come to pass, every
living thing with whicit it swarms everywhere, whither the double
river comes, will live, and there will be very many fishes ; for
when this water comes thither they will become wholesome, and
everything will live whither the river comes. Ver. 10. And
fishermen will stand by it, from Engedi to Eneglaim they will
spread out nets ; after their kind will there be fishes therein, like
the fishes of the great sea, very many. Ver. 11. Its marshes and
its swamps, they will not become wholesome, they will be given up
to salt. Ver. 12. And by the river will all kinds of trees of
edible fruit grow on its bank, on this side and on that ; their leaves
will not wither, and their fruits will not fail; every moon they
will bear ripe fruit, for its vmter flows out of its sanctuary.
And their fruits will serve as food, and their leaves as medicine.
From the outer court, where Ezekiel had been shown the
sacrificial kitchens for the people (ch. xlvi. 21 sqq.), he is taken
back to the front of the door of the temple house, to be shown
a spring of water, flowing out from under the threshold of the
temple, which has swollen in the short course of four thousand
cubits from its source into a deep river in which men can swim,
and which flows down to the Jordan valley, to empty itself into
the Dead Sea. In vers. 1 and 2, the origin and course of this
water are described ; in vers. 3 and 5, its marvellous increase ;
in ver. 6, the growth of trees on its banks ; in vers. 7-12, its
emptying itself into the Arabah and into the Dead Sea, with
the life-giving power of its water. — Ver. 1. The door of the
house is the entrance into the holy place of the temple, and iriBO
n)an the threshold of this door. "O'li^, not "in the east"
(Hitzig), for the following sentence explaining the reason does
uot require this meaning; but "toward the east" of the
CHAP. XLVII. 1-12. 353
threshold, wliicli lay toward the east, for the front of the
temple was in the east, nnrip is not to be connected with
f|n3B, but to be taken by itself, only not in the sense of down-
wards (Hitzig), but from beneath, namely, down from the
right shoulder of the house. T]J, to flow down, because the
temple stood on higher ground than the inner court. The
right shoulder is the part of the eastern wall of the holy place
between the door and the pillars, the breadth of which was five
cubits (ch. xli. 1). The water therefore issued from the corner
formed by the southern wall of the porch and the eastern wall
of the holy place (see the sketch on Plate I.), and flowed past
the altar of burnt-offering on the south side, and crossed the
court in an easterly direction, passing under its surrounding
wall. It then flowed across the outer court and under the
pavement and the eastern wall into the open country, where
the prophet, on the outside in front of the gate, saw it rippling
forth from the right shoulder of that gate. That he might
do this, he was led out through the north gate, because the east
gate was shut (ch. xliv. 1), and round by the outside wall
to the eastern outer gate, pn i]n'i is more minutely defined
by r^nn -)V^'?», and this, again, by D''"!i^ njiEan Tjn-i, « by the
way to the (gate) looking eastwards." The avr. Xey. n''|iBp,
Piel of n3S, related to n33, most probably signifies to ripple,
not to trickle. D^p has no article, because it is evident from
the context that the water was the same as that which Ezekiel
had seen in the inner court, issuing from the threshold of the
temple. The right shoulder is that portion of the eastern wall
which joined the south side of the gate. — Vers. 3-5. The
miraculous increase in the depth of the water. A thousand
cubits from the wall, as one walked through, it reached to the
ankles; a thousand cubits further, to the knees; a thousand
cubits further, to the hips ; and after going another thousand
cubits it was impossible to wade through, one could only swim
therein. The words CDBK 'p are a brief expression for " there
was water which reached to the ankles." DSS is equivalent to
EZEK. II. Z
£54 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
DQ, an ankle, not the sole of the foot. In 1 Chron. xi. 13,
on the other hand, we have COT D3 for D^B'i D3N. The
striking expression Bl?")3 O'O for B^?"^? ''I? may possibly have
been chosen because Dl^l? '^ had the same meaning as 'p'D
^^^i"! in Isa. xxxvi. 12 (Keri). The measuring man directed
the prophet's attention (ver. 6) to this extraordinary increase
in the stream of water, because the miraculous nature of the
stream was exhibited therein. A natural river could not
increase to such an extent within such short distances, unless,
indeed, other streams emptied themselves into it on all sides,
which was not the case here. He then directed him to go back
again nSB' PJ?, along the bank, not " to the bank," as he had
never left it. The purpose for which he had been led along
the bank was accomplished after he had gone four thousand
cubits. From the increase in the water, as measured up to this
point, he could infer what depth it would reach in its further
course. He is therefore now to return along the bank to see
how it is covered with trees. ''??l{i'3 cannot be explained in any
other way than as an incorrect form for '^itya, though there
are no corresponding analogies to be found.
In vers. 8-12 he gives him a still further explanation of the
course of the river and the effect of its waters. The river flows
out into njianjjn npvsn, the eastern circle, which is identical
with VP^j] rch'^i, the circle of the Jordan (Josh. xxii. 10, 11),
the region above the Dead Sea, where the Jordan valley (Ghor)
widens out into a broad, deep basin. '^'^'I'SJ) is the deep valley
of the Jordan, now called the Ghor (see the comm. on Dent. i. 1),
of which Eobinson says that the greater part remains a desolate
wilderness. It was so described in ancient times (see Joseph.
Bell. Jud. iii. 10. 7, iv. 8. 2), and we find it so to-day (compare
v. Eaumer, Pal. p. 58). na»n is the Dead Sea, called D>n
iJinnp.n in ver. 18, and the sea of the Arabah in Deut. iii. 17,
iv. 49. We agree with Hengstenberg in taking the words
DiNSiBn nsjn-^x as an emphatic summing up of the previous
statement concerning the outflow of the water, to which the
CHAP. XLVII. 1-12. 355
explanation concerning its effect upon the Dead Sea is attacherl,
and supply 1S3 from the clause immediately preceding : " the
waters of the river that have been brought out (come) to the
sea, and the waters of the Dead Sea are healed." There is no
need, therefore, for the emendation proposed by Hitzig, namely,
m'i^O an a>n b^. So much, however, is beyond all doubt,
that nsjn is no other than the Dead Sea already mentioned.
The supposition that it is the Mediterranean Sea (Chald., Eos.,
Ewald, and others) cannot be reconciled with the words, and
has only been transferred to this passage from Zech. xiv. 8.
Nsnj signifies, as in . 2 Kings ii. 22, the healing or rendering
wholesome of water that is injurious or destructive to life. The
character of the Dead Sea, with which the ancients were also
well acquainted, and of which Tacitus writes as follows : Lacus
immenso amhitu, specie maris sapor e corruptior, gravitate odoris
accolis pestifer, neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas
aquis volucres patitur {Hist. v. c. 6), — a statement confirmed by
all modern travellers (cf. v. Eaumer, Pal. pp. 61 sqq., and
Eobinson, Physical Geography of the. Holy Land), — is regarded
as a disease of the water, which is healed or turned into whole-
some water in which fishes can live, by the water of the river
proceeding from the sanctuary. The healing and life-giving
effect of this river upon the Dead Sea is described in vers. 9
and 10. Whithersoever the waters of the river come, all
animated beincs will come to life and flourish. In ver. 9 the
dual Dvnj occasions some difficulty. It is not likely that the
dual should have been used merely for the sake of its re-
semblance to 0)0, as Maurer imagines ; and still less probable
is it that there is any allusion to a junction of the river proceed-
ing from the temple at some point in its course with the Kedron,
which also flows into the Dead Sea (Havernick), as the Kedron
is not mentioned either before or afterwards. According to
Kliefoth, the dual is intended to indicate a division which takes
place in the waters of the river, that have hitherto flowed on
together, as soon as they enter the sea. But this would certainly
356 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
have been expressed more clearly. Hengstenberg takes the
expression " double river " to mean a river with a strong cur-
rent, and refers to Jer. 1. 21 in support of this. This is pro-
bably the best explanation ; for nothing is gained by altering
the text into D^nJ (Ewald) or D'^m (Hitzig), as hm does not
require definition by means of a suffix, nor does the plural
answer to the context. 'lJ1 l?'^"-'? ■'^ is to be taken in con-
nection with J'^K''; lE'N : " wherewith it swarms whithersoever
the river comes;" though ?x does not stand for ^V after Gen.
vii. 21, as Hitzig supposes, but is to be explained from a species
of attraction, as in Gen. xx. 13. n^n*. is a pregnant expression,
to revive, to come to life. The words are not to be understood,
however, as meaning that tliere were living creatures in the
Dead Sea before the health-giving water flowed into it ; the
thought is simply, that whithersoever the waters of the river
come, there come into existence living creatures in the Dead
Sea, so that it swarms with them. In addition to the Yl?, the
quantity of fish is specially mentioned; and in the second
hemistich the reason is assigned for the number of living
creatures that come into existence by a second allusion to the
health-giving power of the water of the river. The subject to
1KST1, viz. the waters of the Dead Sea, is to be supplied from
the context. The great abundance of fish in the Dead Sea
produced by tlie river is still further depicted in ver. 10.
Fishermen will spread their nets along its coast from Engedi to
Eneglaim; and as for their kind, there will be as many kinds of
fish there as are to be found in the great or Mediterranean
Sea. '■]? \% i.e. Goat's spring, now Ain-Jidi, a spring in
the middle of the west coast of the Dead Sea, with ruins of
several ancient buildings (see the comm. on Josh. xv. 62, and
V. Eaumer, Pal. p. 188). 0)^33; py has not yet been discovered,
though, from the statement of Jerome, " Engallim is at the
beginning of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan enters it," it has
been conjectured that it is to be found in Ain el-Feshkhah, a
spring at the northern end of the west coast, where there are
CHAP. XLVIL 1-12. 357
also ruins of a small square tower and other buildings to be
seen (vid. Robinson's Falestine, II. pp. 491, 492), as none of
the other springs on the west coast, of which there are but few,
answer so well as this. <^}''v? is pointed without Mappik, pro-
bably because the Masoretes did not regard the n as a suffix, as
the noun to which it alludes does not follow till afterwards. —
Ver. 11 introduces an exception, namely, that notwithstanding
this the Dead Sea will still retain marshes or pools and swamps,
which will not be made wholesome (nxS3 for niS3, pools). An
allusion to the natural character of the Dead Sea underlies the
words. " In the rainy season, when the sea is full, its waters
overspread many low tracts of marsh land, which reipain after
the receding of the water in the form of moist pools or basins ;
and as the water in these pools evaporates rapidly, the ground
becomes covered with a thick crust of salt" (Robinson's Physical
Geography, p. 215). 13W? '^^^f, they are given up to salt, i.e.
destined to remain salt, because the waters of the river do not
reach them. The light in which the salt is regarded here is
not that of its seasoning properties, but, in the words of Heng-
stenberg, " as the foe to all fruitfulness, all life and prosperity,
as Pliny has said {Hist. Nat. xxxi. c. 7 : Omnis locus, in quo
reperitur sal, sterilis est nihilqve gigniV) (cf. Deut. xxix. 22 ; Jer.
xvii. 6 ; Zeph. ii. 9 ; Ps. cvii. 34). — In ver. 12 the effect of the
water of the river upon the vegetation of the ground, already
mentioned in ver. 7, is still further described. On its coast
grow all kinds of trees with edible fruits (-'^Xtt yv, as in Lev.
six. 23), whose leaves do not wither, and whose fruits do not
fail, but ripen every month ("I33, to produce first-fruits, i.e.
fresh fruits ; and C^in? distributive, as in Isa. xlvii. 13), be-
cause the waters which moisten the soil proceed from the
sanctuary, i.e. " directly and immediately from the dwelling-
place of Him who is the author of all vital power and fruitful-
ness" (Hitzig). The leaves and fruits of these trees therefore
possess supernatural powers. The fruits serve as food, i.e. for
the maintenance of the life produced by the river of water;
358 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the leaves as medicine (nsinn from fl'n = KS'i, healing), i.e. for
the healing of the sick and corrupt (et? QepaireLav, Rev. xxii. 2).
In the effect of the water proceeding from the sanctuary
upon the Dead Sea and the land on its shores, as described in
vers. 8-12, the significance of this stream of water in relation
to the new kingdom of God is implied. If, then, the question be
asked, what we are to understand by this water, whether we are
to take it in a literal sense as the temple spring, or in a spiritual
and symbolical sense, the complete answer can only be given in
connection with the interpretation of the whole of the temple
vision (ch. xl.-xlviii.). Even if we assume for the moment,
however, that the description of the new temple, with the wor-
ship appointed for it, and the fresh division of Canaan, is to be
understood literally, and therefore that the building of an
earthly temple upon a high mountain in the most holy terumah
of the land set apart for Jehovah, and a renewal of the bleeding
sacrifices in this temple by the twelve tribes of Israel, when
restored to Palestine from the heathen lands, are to be taken
for granted, it would be difficult to combine with this a literal
interpretation of what is said concerning the effect of the
temple spring. It is true that in Volck's opinion " we are to
think of a glorification of nature;" but even this does not
remove the difficulties which stand in the way of a literal inter-
pretation of the temple spring. According to ver. 12, its waters
possess the life-giving and healing power ascribed to them
because they issue from the sanctuary. But how does the
possession by the water of the power to effect the glorification
of nature harmonize with its issuing from a temple in which
bullocks, rams, calves, and goats are slaughtered and sacrificed ?
— Volck is still further of opinion that, with the spiritual inter-
pretation of the temple spring, " nothing at all could be made
of the fishermen ;" because, for example, he cannot conceive of
the spiritual interpretation in any other way than as an alle-
gorical translation of all the separate features of the prophetic
picture into spiritual things. But he has failed to consider
CHAP. XLVII. 1-12. 359
that the fishermen with their nets on the shore of the sea, once
dead, but now swarming with fisli, are irreconcilably opposed to
the assumption of a glorification of nature in the holy land,
just because the inhabitants of the globe or holy land, in its
paradisaically glorified state, will no more eat fish or other
flesh, according to the teaching of Scripture, than the first men
in Paradise. When once the wolf shall feed with the lamb,
the leopard with the kid, the cow with the bear, and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox, under the sceptre of the sprout from
the stem of Jesse, then will men also cease their fishing, and
no longer slaughter and eat either oxen or goats. To this the
Israelites will form no exception in their glorified land of
Canaan. — And if even these features in the vision before us
decidedly favour the figurative or spiritual view of the temple
spring, the necessity for this explanation is placed beyond the
reach of doubt by a comparison of our picture with the parallel
passages. According to Joel iv. 18, at the time when a spring
issues from the house of Jehovah and the vale of Shittim is
watered, the mountains trickle with new wine, and the hills run
with milk. If, then, in this case we understand what is affirmed
of the temple spring literally, the trickling of the mountains
with new wine and the flowing of the hills with milk must be
taken literally as well. But we are unable to attain to the
belief that in the glorified land of Israel the mountains will be
turned into springs of new wine, and the hills into fountains of
milk; and in the words of the whole verse we can discern
nothing but a figurative description of the abundant streams of
blessing which will then pour over the entire land. And just
as in Joel the context points indisputably to a non-literal or
figurative explanation, so also does the free manner in which
Zechariah uses this prophecy of his predecessors, speaking only
of hving waters which issue from Jerusalem, and flow half
into the eastern (i.e. the Dead) sea, and half into the western
{i.e. the Mediterranean) sea (Zech. xiv. 8), show that he was
not thinking of an actual spring with earthly water. And here
360 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
we are still provisionally passing by the application made of
this feature in the prophetic descriptions of the glory of the
new kingdom of God in the picture of the heavenly Jerusalem
(Rev. xxii. 1 and 2).
The figurative interpretation, or spiritual explanation, is
moreover favoured by the analogy of the Scriptures. " Water,"
which renders the unfruitful land fertile, and supplies refresh-
ing drink to the thirsty, is used in Scripture as a figure denoting
blessing and salvation, which had been represented even in
Paradise in the form of watering (cf. Gen. xiii. 10). In Isa.
xii. 3, " and with joy ye draw water from the wells of salvation,"
the figure is expressly interpreted. And so also in Isa. xliv. 3,
"I will pour water upon the thirsty one, and streams upon the
desert ; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing
upon thine offspring :" where the blessing answers to the water,
the Spirit is named as the principal form in which the blessing
is manifested, "the foundation of all other salvation for the
people of God " (Hengstenberg). This salvation, which Joel
had already described as a spring issuing from the house of
Jehovah and watering the dry acacia valley, Ezekiel saw in a
visionary embodiment as water, which sprang from under thft
threshold of the temple into which the glory of the Lord
entered, and had swollen at a short distance off into so mighty
a river that it was no longer possible to wade through. In this
way the thought is symbolized, that the salvation which the
Lord causes to fiow down to His people from His throne will
pour down from small beginnings in marvellously increasing
fulness. The river flows on into the barren, desolate waste of
the Ghor, and finally into the Dead Sea, and makes the waters
thereof sound, so that it swarms with fishes. The waste is a
figure denoting spiritual drought and desolation, and the Dead
Sea a symbol of the death caused by sin. The healing and
quickening of the salt waters of that sea, so fatal to all life, set
forth the power of that divine salvation which conquers death,
and the calling to life of the world sunk in spiritual death.
CHAP. XLVII. 13-23. 361
From this comes life in its creative fulness and manifold variety,
as shown both by the figure of the fishermen who spread their
nets along the shore, and by the reference to the kinds of fisli,
which are as manifold in their variety as those in the great sea.
But life extends no further than the water of salvation flows.
Wherever it cannot reach, the world continues to lie in death.
The pools and swamps of the Dead Sea are still given up to
salt. And lastly, the water of salvation also possesses the
power to produce trees with leaves and fruits, by which the life
called forth from death can be sustained and cured of all
diseases. This is the meaning, according to the express statement
of the text, of the trees with their never withering leaves, upon
the banks of the river, and their fruits ripening every month.
Chap, xlvii, 13-xlviii. 35. Boundaries and Division of the Holy
Land. Description of the City of God.
Chap, xlvii. 13-23, Boundaeibs op the Land to be
DIVIDED AMONG THE Teibes OF IsEAEL. (See the map,
Plate IV,) — Ver. 13. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, This is the
boundary according to ichich ye shall divide the land among you
for an inheritance, for Joseph portions. Ver, 14. And ye shall
receive it for an inheritance, one as well as another, because I
lifted up my hand to give it to your fathers ; and thus shall this
land fall to you for an inheritance. Ver. 15, And this is the
boundary of the land : toward the north side, from the great sea
onwards by the way to Chetlon, in the direction of Zedad;
Ver. 16. Hamath, Berotah, Sibraim, which is between the bound-
ary of Damascus and the boundary of Hamath, the central
Easer, which is on the boundary of Hauran. Ver. 17. And the
boundary from the sea shall be Hazar-Enon, the boundary town
of Damascus ; and as for the north northwards, Hamath is the
boundary. This, the north side. Ver. 18. And the east side
between Hauran and Damascus and Gilead and the land of Israel,
shall be the Jordan ; from the bomidary to the eastern sea ye
shall measure. This, the east side. Ver. 19. And the south side
362 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
toward the south ; from Tamar to the water of strife, Kadesh,
along the brook to the great sea. This, the south side toward the
south. Ver. 20. And the west side ; the great sea from the
houndai-y to Hamath. This, the west side. Ver. 21. This land
shall ye divide among you according to the tribes of Israel.
Ver. 22. And it shall come to pass, ye shall divide it by lot
among yourselves for an inheritance, and among the foreigners
who dioell in the midst of you, who have begotten sons in the
midst of you ; they shall be to you like natives born among the
sons of Israel ; they shall cast lots with you for an inheritance
among the tribes of Israel. Ver. 23. And it shall come to pass,
in the tribe in ivhich the foreigner dwells, there shall ye give Mm
his inheritance, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.
The fixing of the boundary of tlie land which Israel was to
divide in future according to its twelve tribes is commenced
(vers. 13 and 14) and concluded (vers. 22 and 23) with cer-
tain general statements concerning the distribution. The
introductory statements are attached to the heading "this is
the boundary," which is therefore repeated in ver. 15. ns is
evidently a copyist's error for i^l, which is adopted by all the
older translators, contained in some Codd., and demanded by nil
in ver. 15. 7133 stands here for the whole of the boundary of
the land to be distributed ; and "itf'S which follows is an accusa-
tive, "according to which." — " According to the twelve tribes," —
for all Israel is to return and dwell as one people of God under
one prince in its own land (ch. xxxvi. 24 sqq., xxxvii. 21 sqq.).
But the division among the twelve tribes is more precisely
defined immediately afterwards by the clause abruptly appended,
" Joseph portions," i.e. two portions for Joseph. There can be
no doubt that this is the meaning of the words in accordance
with Gen. xlvili. 22 and Josh. xvii. 14, 17. Hence the notice-
like form of the expression, which should not be obliterated by
pointing Qi^nn as a dual, Qv?n.. If the land was to be divided
by lot according to twelve tribes, and the tribe of Levi was to
receive its portion from the terumah which was set apart,
CHAP. XLVII. 13-^23. 363
Joseph must necessarily receive two hereditary portions for his
sons Ephraim and Manasseh, in accordance with the appoint-
ment of the patriarch in Gen. xlviii. 22. The commencement
of ver. 14 is not at variance with this, as Hitzig imagines ; for the
words, " ye shall receive it for an inheritance, one as another,"
simply affirm, that of the twelve tribes reckoned by Israel in
relation to the n?™, all were to receive equal shares, the one as
much as the other. As the reason for this command to divide
the land, allusion is made to the oath with which God promised
to give this land to the fathers (cf. ch. xx. 28). — The definition
of the boundaries commences with ver. 15. In form it differs
in many points from Num. xxxiv. 1-15, but in actual fact it
is in harmony with the Mosaic definition. In Num. xxxiv. the
description commences with the southern boundary, then pro-
ceeds to the western and northern boundaries, and closes with
the eastern. In Ezekiel it commences with the northern bound-
ary and proceeds to the east, the south, and the west. This
difference may be explained in a very simple manner, from the
fact that the Israelites in the time of Moses came from Egypt
i.e. marching from the south, and stood by the south-eastern
boundary of the land, whereas at this time they were carried
away into the northern lands Assyria and Babylon, and were
regarded as returning thence. Again, in Ezekiel the bound-
aries are described much more briefly than in Num. xxxiv.,
the northern boundary alone being somewhat more circum-
stantially described. The course which it takes is represented
in a general manner in ver. 15 as running from the great sea,
i.e. the Mediterranean, by the way to Chetlon, in the direction
toward Zedad. In vers. 16 and 17 there follow the places
which formed the boundary. The starting-point on the Medi-
terranean Sea can only be approximately determined, as the
places mentioned, Chetlon and Zedad, are still unknown. Not
only Chetlon, but Zedad also, has not yet been discovered. The
city of Sadad (Sudud), to the east of the road leading from
Damascus to Hums (Emesa), which Kobinson and Wetzsteiu
364 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
suppose to be the same, lies much too far toward iTie east to be
used in defining the boundary either here or in Num. xxxiv. 8
(see the coinm. on Num. xxxiv. 8). Among the names enu-
merated in ver. 16, n»n is not the city of Eamah on the
Orontes, wliich lay much too far to the north, but the king-
dom of Hamath, the southern boundary of which formed the
northern boundary of Canaan, tliough it cannot be given with
exactness- Berothah is probably identical with Berothai in
2 Sara. viii. 8, a city of the king of Zobah ; but the situation of
it is still unknown. Sibraim may perhaps be identical with
Ziphron in Num. xxxiv. 9, which has also not yet been dis-
covered, and is not to be souglit for in the ruins of Zifran, to
the north-east of Damascus, near the road to Palmyra; for
that place could not form the boundary of Damascus and
Hamath. The situation of the "central Hater" has also not
yet been determined. Hauran, on the boundary of which it
stood, is used here in a more comprehensive sense than 'Avpa-
vlri.<i in Josephus and other Greek authors, and includes the
later Auranitis, together with Gaulanitis (Golan) and Batanaea
(Bashan), and probably also Ituraea, as only Damascus and
Gilead are named in ver. 18 in addition to Hauran, on the
east side of the Jordan ; so that the whole tract of land between
the territory of Damascus and the country of Gilead is em-
braced by the name Hauran. t"JlD, Arab. ^o\)%=>-j is derived
from the number of caves ("lin, n^in) in that district, to which
Wetzstein {Reiseber. p. 92) indeed raises the objection that with
the exception of the eastern and south-eastern Hauran, where
no doubt most of the volcanic hills have been perforated by
troglodytes, the dwellings in caves are by no means common in
that region. But the name may have originated in this eastern
district, and possibly have included even that portion of Gilead
which was situated to the north of the Jabbok, namely, Erbed
and SuSt, the true cave-country. For further remarks con-
cerning these districts, see the comm. on Deut. iii. 4 and 10.
CHAP. XLVII. 13-23. 365
The statement in ver. 17a, " the boundary from the sea shall
be Hazar-Enon, the boundary of Damascus," cannot have any
other meaning than that the northern boundary, which started
from the Mediterranean Sea, stretched as far as Hazar-Enon,
the frontier city of Damascus, or that Hazar-Enon formed the
terminal point on the east, toward the boundary of Damascus,
for the northern boundary proceeding from the sea. livy "isn
or \'i^y "ivn (Num. xxxiv. 9), i.e. spring-court, we have endea-
voured to identify in the comm. on Num. xxxiv. 3 with the
spring Lebweh, which lies in the JBeMa at the watershed between
the Orontes and the Leontes ; and the designation " the
boundary of Damascus " suits the situation very well. Ver. lib
has been aptly explaiued by Hitzig thus, in accordance with the
literal meaning of the words, " and as for the north north-
wards, Hamath is the boundary," which he further elucidates by
observing that njiDS is intended as a supplementary note to the
boundary line from west to east, which is indicated just before.
lias nsa nsi is a concluding formula : " this, the north side."
But HKi (here and vers. 18 and 19) is not to be altered into
riKt, after ver. 20 and the Syriac version, as Hitzig supposes,
but to be explained, as ver. 18 clearly shows, on the supposition
that Ezekiel had Wiion, " ye shall measure," floating before his
mind, to which 's HKl, " and that the northern boundary," would
form a correct logical sequel. — The eastern boundary is defined
in ver. 18 in the same manner as in Num. xxxiv. 10—12, except
that in the latter it is more minutely described above the Lake of
Gennesaret by the mention of several localities, whereas Ezekiel
only names the Jordan as the boundary. — C'liJ DKS, with sup-
plementary remarks, is not to be taken as the predicate to the
subject r!!"!!n, as Hitzig has correctly observed ; for the meaning
of nsa does not allow of this. The explanation is rather this : as
for the east side, between Hauran, etc. and the land of Israel, is
the Jordan. Hauran, Damascus, and Gilead lie on the east side
of the Jordan, the land of Israel on the west side. The striking
circumstance that Ezekiel commences with Hauran, which lay in
366 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the middle between Damascus and Gilead, — Hauran, Damascus,
and Gilead, instead of Damascus, Hauran, and Gilead, — may
probably be explained from the fact that the Jordan, which he
names as the boundary, for the sake of brevity, did not extend
so far upwards as to the territory of Damascus, but simply
formed the boundary of the land of Israel between Hauran and
Gilead. A2ii2 points back to the northern boundary already
mentioned. From this boundary, the eastern terminal point of
which was Hazar-Enon, they are to measure to the eastern sea,
i.e. to the Dead Sea. — Ver. 19. The southern boundary toward
the south is to proceed from Tamar to the water of strife,
Kadesh, (and thence) along the brook to the great {i.e. Medi-
terranean) sea. Tamar, a different place from Hazazon-
Tamar, called Engedi in ver. 10 (cf. 2 Chron. xx. 2), is sup-
posed to be the Thaniara (Qafiapd)^ which w-as a day's
journey on the road from Hebron to Aelam {Aelath, Deut. ii. 8 ;
1 Kings ix. 26), according to Eusebius in the Owomasf. ed. Lars,
p. 68, and had a Eoman garrison ; and Robinson {Pal. HI.
pp. 178 and 186 sqq.) accordingly conjectures that it is to be
found in the ruins of Kurnub, which lie six hours' journey to
the south of Milh, toward the pass of es-Sufdh. But this con-
jecture is bound up with various assumptions of a very ques-
tionable character, and the situation of Kurnub hardly suits the
Tamar of our passage, which should be sought, not to the west
of the southern point of the Dead Sea, but, according to the
southern boundary of Canaan as drawn in Num. xxxiv. 3-5,
to the south of the Dead Sea. The waters of strife of
Kadesh (Num. xx. 1-13), in the desert of Zin, were near
1 The statement runs thus : y^iyirxi li n; Qafiapa. xiift,); lisa-riiaa. Mdi^ig
91/>cspas o'SoV, a-Tiourat/ a-Tro 'Ki^pciy eis AtT^afi, yjTig vvit (ppovpiov suTt rat/
(jTpa.TiuTuv. In Jerome : est et aliud castellum, unius diet itinere a Mampsis
oppido separatum, pergentihus Ailiam de Chehron, ubi uiivc romanum prae-
sidium positum est. But on account of the Mdypi; (Mampsis'), which is
evidently a corruption, the passage is obscure. Robinson's conjecture
concerning Thamara is founded upon the assumption that the reading
should be MaX/j, and that this is the Malatha mentioned by later writers
as the station of a Roman cohort.
CHAP. XLVII. 13-23. 367
Siiadesli-Barnea, which was in the neighbourhood of the spring
iin Kades, discovered by Eowland to the south of Bir-Seba
nd Khalasa by the fore-courts of Jehel Helal, i.e. at the
lorth-west corner of the mountain land of the Asazimeh (see the
omm. on Num. x. 12, xii. 16, and xx. 16). Instead of ninnp
re have the singular nn^D in ch. xlviii. 28, as in Num.
xvii. 14 and Dent, xxxii. 51. npqj is to be pointed n^™, from
nJ with n loc. ; and the reference is to the brook of Egypt ; the
;reat wady el-Arish (PivoKopovpa), along which the southern
loundary of Canaan ran from Kadesh to the Mediterranean
jea (see the comm. on ch. xxxiv. 5). — Ver. 20. The Mediter-
anean Sea formed the western boundary. ?'2iiO, {.e. from the
louthern boundary mentioned in ver. 19 till opposite (nai nj?)
lOthe coming to ITamath, i.e. till opposite to the point at which
ine enters the territory of Hamath (Hitzig), i.e. the spot meii-
loned in ver. 20 (? 17) as the commencement of the northern
joundary in the neighbourhood of the promontory of esli-
ymkah, between Byblus (Gebal) and Tripolis. — Ver. 21. This
and they are to divide among them according to their tribes.
iVith this remark, which points back to ver. 13, the definition of
the boundaries is brought to a close. There is simply added in
?ers. 22 and 23 a further regulation concerning the foreigners
iving in Israel. The law of Moses had already repeatedly
irged upon the Israelites affectionate treatment of them, and
n Lev. xix. 34 the command is given to treat them like natives
n this respect, and to love them. But the full right of citizen-
ihip was not thereby conceded to them, so that they could also
icquire property in land. The land was given to the IsraeHtes
ilone for an hereditary possession. Foreigners could only be
ncorporated into the congregation of Israel under the limita-
ions laid down in Deut. xxiii. 2-9, by the reception of circum-
;islon. But in the future distribution of the land, on the
lontrary, the D^IJ were to receive hereditary property like
lative-born Israelites ; and in this respect no difference was to
ixist between the members of the people of God born of
368 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Abraham's seed and those born of the heathen. At the same
time, this right was not to be conferred upon every foreigner
who might be only temporarily living in Israel, but to those
alone who should beget sons in the midst of Israel, i.e. settle
permanently in the holy land. The Kal 1?31 is not to be altered
into the HipMl li^sn, as Hitzig proposes, but is used in the
sense of receiving by lot, derived from the Hiphil signification,
" to apportion by lot."
Chap, xlviii. 1-29. Division of Canaan among the
Tkibes, and Boundaet of the Teeumah. — The division of
the land, like the definition of the boundaries (ch. xlvii. 15),
commences in the north, and enumerates the tribes in the order
in which they were to receive their inheritances from north to
south : first, seven tribes from the northern boundary to the
centre of the land (vers. 1-7), where the heave for the sanctuary,
with the land of the priests and Levites and the city domain,
together with the prince's land on the two sides, was to be set
apart (vers. 8-22 ; and secondly, the other five tribes from
this to the southern boundary (vers. 23-29). Compare the
map on Plate IV.
Ver. 1. And these are the names of the tribes : from the
north end by the side of the way to Chetlon toward Hamath (and)
Hazar-Enon the boundary of Damascus — toward the north by
the side of Hamath there shall east side, west side belong to him :
Dan one (tribe-lot). Ver. 2. And on the boundai-y of Dan from
the east side to the west side: Asher one. Ver. 3. And on the
boundary of Asher from the east side to the west side : Naph-
tali one. Ver. 4. And on the boundary of Naphtali from the
east side to the west side : Manasseh one. Ver. 5. And on the
boundary of Manasseh from the east side to the west side:
Ephraim one. Ver. 6. And on the boundary of Ephraim from
the east side to the west side : Reuben one. Ver. 7. And on the
boundary of Reuben from the east side to the west side : Judah one.
Ver. 8. And on the boundary of Judah from the east side to the
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-29. 369
loest side shall be the heave, which ye shall lift (lieave) off, Jive and
twenty thousand (rods) in breadth, and the length like every tribe
portion from the east side to the west side ; and the sanctuary shall
be in the midst of it. Ver. 9. The heave which ye shall lift
[heave) for Jehovah shall be jive and twenty thousand in length
and ten thousand in breadth, Ver. 10. And to these shall the
holy heave belong, to the priests, toward the north, jive and twenty
thousand; toward the west, breadth ten thousand; toward the
east, breadth ten thousand; and toward the south, length jive
and twenty thousand ; and the sanctuary of Jehovah shall be in
the middle of it. Ver. 11. To the priests, whoever is sanctified
of the sons of Zadoh, who have kept my charge, who have not
strayed with tlie straying of the sons of Israel, as the Levites have
strayed, Ver. 12. To them shall a portion lifted off belong from
the heave of the land; a most holy beside the territory of the
Leuites. Yer. 13.- And the Levites (shall receive) parallel with
the territory of the priests jive and twenty thousand in length, and
in breadth ten thousand ; the whole length jive and twenty thousand,
and (the whole) breadth ten thousand. Ver. 14. And tliey shall
not sell or exchange any of it, nor shall the first- fruit of the land
pass to others ; for it is Jioly to Jehovah. Ver. 15. And the jive
l^ious'and which remain in the breadth along the jive and twenty
thousand are common land for the city for dwellings and for open
space; and the city shall be in the centre of it. Ver. 16. And
these are its measures : the north side four thousand five hundred,
ilie south side four thousand jive hundred, the east side four
thousand jive hundred, and the west side four thousand jive
hundred. Ver. 17. And the open space of the city shall be toward
the north two hundred and fifty, toward the south two hundred
mid fifty, toward Hie east two hundred and jifly, and toward the
west two hundred and fifty. Ver. 18. And tJie remainder in
length parallel with the holy heave, ten thousand toward the east
and ten thousand toward the west, this shall be beside the holy
heave, and its produce shall serve the workmen of the city for food.
Ver. 19. And as for the workmen of the city, they shall cultivate
EZEK. II. 2 A
370 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
it from all the tribes. Ver. 20. The whole of the heave is five
and twenty thousand by five and twenty thousand; a fourth of
the holy heave shall ye take for the possession of the city. Ver. 21.
And the remainder shall belong to the prince on this side and on
that side of the holy heave and of the city possession ; along the
five and twenty thousand of the heave to the eastern boundary^ and
toward the west along the five and twenty thousand to the western
boundary parallel with the tribe portions, it shall belong to the
prince ; and the holy heave and the sanctuary of the house sJiall
be in the midst. Ver. 22. TJius from the possession of the Levites
(as) from the possession of the city shall that which lies in tlie
midst of what belongs to the prince between the territory of Judah
and the territory of Benjamin belong to the prince. Ver. 23.
And the rest of the tribes are from the east side to the west side:
Benjamin one. Ver. 24. And on the boundary of Benjamin
from the east side to the loest side : Simeon one. Ver. 25. And
on the boundary of Simeon from the east side to the ivest side :
Issachar one. Ver. 26. And on the boundary of Issachar from
the east side to the west side : Zebulon one. Ver. 27. And on the
boundary of Zebulon from the east side to the west side : Gad one.
Ver. 28. And on the boundary of Gad on the soutJi side toward
the south, the boundary shall be from Tamar to the water of
strife from Kadesh along the brook to the great sea. Ver. 29.
This is the land which ye shall divide by lot for inheritance to the
tribes of Israel; these are their portions, is the saying of the
Lord Jehovah.
The new division of the land differs from the foi'mer one
effected in the time of Joshua, in the first place, in the fact
that all the tribe-portions were to extend uniformly across the
entire breadth of the land from the eastern boundary to the
Mediterranean Sea on the west, so that they were to form
parallel tracts of country ; whei'cas in the distribution made in
the time of Joshua, several of the tribe-territories covered only
half the breadth of the land. For example, Dan received his
inheritance on the west of Benjamin ; and the territories of
chap; XLVIII. 1-29. 371
half Manasseh and Asher ran up from the northern boundary
of Ephraim to the northern boundary of Canaan; while
Issachar, Naphtali, and Zebulon received their portions on the
east of these ; and lastly, Simeon received his possession within
the boundaries of the tribe of Judah. And secondly, it also
differs from the former, in the fact that not only are all the
twelve tribes located in Canaan proper, between the Jordan
and the Mediterranean Sea ; whereas previously two tribes and
a half had received from Moses, at their own request, the con-
quered land of Bashan and Gilead on the eastern side of the
Jordan, so that the land of Canaan could be divided among the
remaining nine tribes and a half. But besides this, the central
tract of land, about the fifth part of the whole, was separated
for the holy heave, the city domain, and the prince's land, so
that only the northern and southern portions, about four-fifths
of the whole, remained for distribution among the twelve tribes,
seven tribes receiving their hereditary portions to the north of
the heave and five to the south, because the heave was so
selected that the city with its territory lay near the ancient
Jerusalem. — In vers. 1-^7 the seven tribes which were to dwell
on the north of the heave are enumerated. The principal
points of the northern boundary, viz. the way to Chetlon and
Hazar-Enon, the boundary of Damascus, are repeated in ver. 1
from ch. xlvii. 15, 17, as the starting and terminal points of
the northern boundary running from west to east. The words
Don T"?K fix the northern boundary more precisely in relation
to the adjoining territory ; and in 'S v Vni the enumeration of
the tribe-lots begins with that of the tribe of Dan, which was to
receive its territory against the northern boundary, 'h refers
to the name fn which follows, and which Ezekiel already had
in his mind. Djn Dn^ nxa is constructed asyndetds ; and ns3
is to be repeated in thought before Djn : the east side (and) the
west (side) ai-e to belong to it, i.e. the tract of land toward its
west and its east side. The words which follow, inx 11, are
attached in an anacoluthistic manner : " Dan (is to redeive)
372 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
one portion," for " one shall belong to Dan." To "ins we are
to supply in thought the substantive ?3n, tribe-lot, according to
ch. xlvii. 13. " The assumption that one tribe was to receive as
much as another (vid. ch. xlvii. 14), leads to the conclusion
that each tribe-lot was to be taken as a monas " (Kliefoth).
In this way the names in vers. 2-7, with the constantly re-
peated "ins, must also be taken. The same form of description
is repeated in vers. 23-28 in the case of the five tribes placed
to the south of the heave. — In the order of the several tribe-
territories it is impossible to discover any universal principle of
arrangement. All that is clear is, that in the case of Dan,
Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, and Ephraim, regard is had to the
former position of these tribe-territories as far as the altered
circumstances allowed. In the time of the Judges a portion of
the Danites had migrated to the north, conquered the city of
Laish, and given it the name of Dan, so that from that time
forward Dan is generally named as the northern boundary of
the land (e.g. as early as 2 Sam. iii. 10, and in other passages).
Accordingly Dan receives the tract of land along the northern
boundary. Asher and Naphtali, which formerly occupied the
most northerly portions of the land, follow next. Then comes
Manasseh, as half Manasseh had formerly dwelt on the east of
Naphtali ; and Ephraim joins Manasseh, as it formerly joined
the western half Manasseh. The reason for placing Eenben
between Ephraim and Judah appears to be, that Keuben was the
first-born of Jacob's sons. The position of the terumah between
Judah and Benjamin is probably connected with the circum-
stance that Jerusalem formerly stood on the boundary of these
two tribes, and so also in the future was to skirt Benjamin with
its territory. Tlie other tribes had then to be located on the
south of Benjamin ; Simeon, whose territory formerly lay to
the south ; Issachar and Zebulon, for which no room was left
in the north ; and Gad, which had to be brought over from
Gilead to Canaan.
In vers. 8-22, tlie terumah, which has already been described
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-29. 373
in ch. xlv. 1-7 for a different purpose, is more precisely-
defined : first of all, in ver. 8, according to its whole extent —
viz. twenty-five thousand rods in breadth (from north to south),
and the length the same as any one (= every one) of the tribe-
lots, i.e. reaching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea
(cf. ch. xlv. 7). In the centre of this separated territory the
sanctuary (the temple) was to stand, ^^ina, the suffix of which
refers ad sensum to P?n instead of nDnn, has not the indefinite
meaning " therein," but signifies " in the centre ; " for the
priests' portion, in the middle of which the temple was to stand,
occupied the central position between the portion of the Levites
and the city possession, as is evident from ver. 22. The
circumstance that here, as in ch. xlv. 1 sqq., in the division of
the terumah, the priests' portion is mentioned first, then the
portion of the Levites, and after this the city possession, proves
nothing so far as the local order in which these three portions
followed one another is concerned ; but the enumeration is
regulated by their spiritual significance, so that first of all the
most holy land for the temple and priests is defined, then the
holy portion of the Levites, and lastly, the common land for the
city. The command, that the sanctuary is to occupy the centre
of the whole terumah, leads to a more minute description in the
first place (vers. 9-12) of the priests' portion, in which the
sanctuary was situated, than of the heave to be lifted off for
Jehovah. In ver. 10, n?N7, which stands at the head, is ex-
plained by C^ns? which follows. The extent of this holy
terumah on all four sides is then given ; and lastly, the com-
mand is repeated, that the sanctuary of Jehovah is to be in
the centre of it. In ver. 11, ^\>^^ is rendered in the plural by
the LXX., Cliald. and Syr., and is taken in a distributive
sense by Kimchi and others : to the priests whoever is sancti-
fied of the sons of Zadok. This is required by the position of
the participle between CJna^ and piis '3313 (compare 2 Ohron.
xxvi. 18, and for the singular of the participle after a previous
plural, Ps. viii. 9). The other rendering, " for the priests is it
374 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
sanctified, those of the sons of Zadok," is at variance not only
with the position of the words, but also with the fact, namely,
that the assignment to the priests of a heave set apart for
Jehovah is never designated as 55*^!?, and from the nature of the
case could not be so designated. The apodosis to ver. 11a
follows in ver. 12, where C^^.b? is resumed in DH?. njDliJii is
an adjective formation derived from nmiPi, with the significa-
tion of an abstract : that which is lifted (the lifting) from the
heave, as it were " a terumah in the second potency " (for these
formations, see Ewald, §§ 164 and 165). This terumiyali is
called most holy, in contrast with the Levites' portion of the
terumah, which was ^p (ver. 14). The priests' portion is to
he beside the territory of the Levites, whether on the southern
or northern side cannot be gathered from these words any
more than from the definition in ver. 13: "and the Levites
beside (parallel with) the territory of the priests." Both
statements simply affirm that the portions of the priests and
Levites were to lie side by side, and not to be separated by the
town possession. — Vers. 13 and 14 treat of the Levites' portion :
ver. 13, of its situation and extent; ver. 14, of its law of
tenure. The seemingly tautological repetition of the measure-
ment of the length and breadth, as "all the length and the
breadth," is occasioned by the fact "that Ezekiel intends to
express himself more briefly here, and not, as in ver. 10, to
take all the four points of the compass singly; in 'all the
length ' he embraces the two long sides of the oblong, and in
' (all) the breadth ' the two broad sides, and affirms that ' all
the length,' i.e. of both the north and south sides, is to be
twenty-five thousand rods, and 'all the breadth,' i.e. of both
the east and west sides, is to be ten thousand rods " (Kliefoth).
Hitzig has missed the sense, and therefore proposes to alter the
text. With regard to the possession of the Levites, the in-
structions given in Lev. xxv. 34 for the field of the Levites'
cities — namely, that none of it was to be sold — are extended
to the whole of the territory of the Levites : no part of it is
CHAP. XLVIII. l-2d. 375
to be alienated by sale or barter. And the character of the
possession is assigned as the reason : the first-fruit of the land,
i.e. the land lifted off (separated) as first-fruit, is not to pass
into the possession of others, because as such it is holy to the
Lord. The Chetib li^gj is the correct reading: to pass over,
sc. to others, to non-Levites.
Vers. 15-18 treat of the city possession. As the terumah
was twenty -five thousand rods in breadth (ver. 8), after
measuring off ten thousand rods in breadth for the priests and
ten thousand rods in breadth for the Levites from the entire
breadth, there still remain five thousand rods 'pa 7J?, in front of,
i.e. along, the long side, which was twenty -five thousand rods.
This remnant was to be hh, i.e. common (not holy) land for
the city (Jerusalem). ^0"?, for dwelling-places, i.e. for build-
ing dwelling-houses upon ; and ^W?, for open space, the
precinct around the city. The city was to stand in the centre
of this oblong. Ver. 16 gives the size of the city : on each
of the four sides, four thousand five hundred rods (the {yon,
designated by the Masoretes as np 'Ni>1 yVQ, has crept into the
text through a copyist's error) ; and ver. 17, the extent of the
open space surrounding it : on each side two hundred and fifty
rods. This gives for the city, together with the open space, a
square of five thousand rods on every side ; so that the city
with its precinct filled the entire breadth of the space left for
it, and there only remained on the east and west an open space
of ten thousand rods in length and five thousand rods in
breadth along the holy terumah. This is noticed in ver. 18 ;
its produce was to serve for bread, i.e. for maintenance, for the
labourers of the city (the masculine suffix in nhsiari refers
grammatically to inisn). By l^n ''i^V Hitzig would undei-
stand the inhabitants of the city, because one cultivates a piece
of land even by dwelling on it. But this use of laV cannot
be established. Nor are l''VO '"!!?V the workmen employed in
building the city, as Gesenius, Eavernick, and others suppose;
for the city was not perpetually being built, so that there
376 THE PKOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
should be any necessity for setting apart a particular piece of
land for the builders; but they are the working men of the
city, the labouring class living in the city. They are not to be
without possession in the future Jerusalem, but are to receive
a possession in land for their maintenance. We are told in
ver. 19 who these workmen are. Here l?Vii is used collectively:
as for the labouring class of the city, people out of all the tribes
of Israel shall work upon the land belonging to the city. The
suffix in wnnj)^ points back to "inisri. The transitive explana-
tion, to employ a person in work, has nothing in the language
to confirm it. The fact itself is in harmony with the statement
in ch. xlv. 6, that the city was to belong to all Israel. Lastly,
in ver. 20 the dimensions of the whole terumah, and the
relation of the city possession to the holy terumah, are given.
nD?nnn-p3 is the whole heave, so far as it has hitherto been
described, embracing the property of the priests, of the Levites,
and of the city. In this extent it is twenty-five thousand rods
long and the same broad. If, however, we add the property
of the prince, which is not treated of till vers. 21-23, it is con-
siderably longer, and reaches, as has been stated in ver. 8, to
the boundaries of the land both on the east and west, the
Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, as the several tribe-
territories do. But if we omit the prince's land, the space
set apart for the city possession occupied the fourth part of the
holy terumah, i.e. of the portion of the priests and Levites.
This is the meaning of the second half of ver. 20, which
literally reads thus : " to a fourth shall ye lift off the holy
terumah for the city possession." This is not to be under-
stood as meaning that a fourth was to be taken from the holy
terumah for the city possession ; for that would yield an in-
correct proportion, as the twenty thousand rods in breadth
would be reduced to fifteen thousand rods by the subtraction
of the fourth part, which would be opposed to vers. 9 and 15.
The meaning is rather the following : from the whole terumah
the fourth part of the area of the holy terumah is to be taken
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-29. 377
off for the city possession, i.e. five thousand rods for twenty
thousand. According to ver. 15, this was the size of the
, domain set apart for the city.
In vers. 21-23 the situation and extent of the prince's pos-
session are described. For ver. 21, vid. ch. xlv. 7. inisn, the
rest of the terumah, as it has been defined in ver. 8, reaching
in length from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. As the
holy terumah and the city possession were only twenty-five
thousand rods in length, and did not reach to the Jordan on
the east, or to the sea on the west, there still, remained an area
on either side whose length or extent toward the east and west
is not given in rods, but may be calculated from the proportion
which the intervening terumah bore to the length of the land
(from east to west). V.?"''? and V.!"'??, in front of, or along,
the front of the twenty-five thousand rods, refer to the eastern
and western boundaries of the terumah^ wliich was twenty-five
thousand rods in length. In ver. 216 the statement is repeated,
that the holy terumah and the sanctuary were to lie in the
centre of it, i.e. between the portions of land appointed for the
prince on either side ; and lastly, in ver. 22 it is still further
stated, with regard to the prince's land on both sides of the
terumah, that it was to lie between the adjoining tribe-territories
of Judah (to the north) and Benjamin (to the south), so that
it was to be bounded by these two. But this is expressed in a
heavy and therefore obscure manner. The words IK'S Tjina
nipi; N''fc'3?, " in the centre of that which belongs to the prince,"
belong to l"'Vn . . . ninsoi, and form together with the latter
the subject, which is written absolutely; so that jl? is not used
in a partitive, but in a local sense (from), and the whole is to be
rendered thus : And as for that which lies on the side of the
possession of the Levites, and of the possession of the city in
the centre of what belongs to the prince, (that which lies)
between the territory of Judah and the territory of Benjamin
shall belong to the prince. Hitzig's explanation — what remains
between Judah and Benjamin, from the city territory to the
378 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
priests' domain, both inclusive, shall belong to the prince — is
arbitrary, and perverts the sense. The periphrastic designation
of the terumah bounded off between the prince's land by the
two portions named together without a copula, viz. " possession
of the Levites and possession of the city," is worthy of notice.
This periphrasis of the whole by two portions, shows that the
portions named formed the boundaries of the whole, that the
third portion, which is not mentioned, was enclosed within the
two, so that the priests' portion with the sanctuary lay between
them. — In vers. 23-27 the rest of the tribes located to the
south of the terumah are mentioned in order ; and in vers. 28
and 29 the account of the division of the land is brought to a
close with a repetition of the statement as to the southern
boundary (cf. ch. xlvii. 19), and a comprehensive concluding
formula.
If now we attempt, in order to form a clear idea of the
relation in which this prophetic division of the land stands to
the actual size of Canaan according to the boundaries described
in ch. xlvii. 15 sqq., to determine the length and breadth of the
terumah given here by their geographical dimensions, twenty-
five thousand rods, according to the metrological calculations of
Boeckh and Berthean, would be 10-70 geographical miles, or,
according to the estimate of the Hebrew cubit by Thenius,
only 9*75 geographical miles.* The extent of Canaan from
Beersheba, or Kadesh, up to a line running across from Eas
esh-Shukah to the spring El Lebweb, is 3^ degrees, i.e. fifty
geographical miles, ten of which are occupied by the terumah,
and forty remain for the twelve tribe-territories, so that each
1 According to Boeckh, one sacred cubit was equal to 234^ Paris lines
= 528-62 millimetres ; according to Thenius = 214^ P. 1. = 481'62
millim. Now as one geographical mile, the 5400th part of the circum-
ference of the globe, which is 40,000,000 metres, is equivalent to 7407-398
metres = 22,803-290 old Paris feet, the geographical mile according to
Boeckh is \Afi\2^^ cubits = 2335^ rods (sacred measure) ; according to
Thenius, 15,380^ cubits = 2563J rods (s. m.), from which the numbers
given in the text may easily be calculated.
CHAP. XLVIII. 1-29. 379
tribe-lot would be 3^ geographical miles in breadth. If, now,
we reckon three geographical miles as the breadth of each of
the five tribe-lots to the south of the terumah, and as the land
becomes broader toward the south a breadth of 3t geogra-
phical miles for the seven tribe-lots to the north, the terumah
set apart in the centre of the land would extend from the site
of Jerusalem to Dothan or Jenin. If, however, we take into
consideration the breadth of the land from east to west in the
neighbourhood of Jerusalem, or where the Jordan enters the
Dead Sea, Canaan is eleven geographical miles in breadth,
whereas at Jenin it is hardly ten geographical miles broad.
If, therefore, the length of the terumah (from east to west)
was fully ten geographical miles, there would only remain a
piece of land of half a mile in breadth on the east and west at
the southern boundary, and nothing at all at the northern, for
prince's land. We have therefore given to the terumah upon
the map (Plate IV.) the length and breadth of eight geo-
graphical miles, which leaves a tract of two miles on the
average for the prince's land, so that it would occupy a fifth
of the area of the holy terumah, whereas the city possession
covered a fourth. No doubt the breadth of the terumah from
south to north is also diminished thereby, so that it cannot
have reached quite down to Jerusalem or quite up to Jenin. —
If, now, we consider that the distances of places, and therefore
also the measurements of a land in length and breadth, are
greater in reality than those given upon the map, on account
partly of the mountains and valleys and partly of the windings
of the roads, and, still further, that our calculations of the
Hebrew cubit are not quite certain, and that even the smaller
estimates of Thenius are possibly still too high, the measure-
ments of the terumah given by Ezekiel correspond as exactly to
the actual size of the land of Canaan as could be expected
with a knowledge of its extent obtained not by trigonometrical
measurement, but from a simple calculation of the length of
the roads. — But this furnishes a confirmation by no means
380 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
slight of our assumption, that the lengths and breadths indi-
cated here are measured by rods and not by cubits. Reckoned
by cubits, the terumah would be only a mile and a half or a
mile and two-thirds in length and breadth, and the city pos-
session would be only a third of a mile broad ; whereas the
prince's land would be more than six times as large as the
whole of the terumah, — i.e. of the territory of the Levites, the
priests, and the city, — thirteen times as large as the priests'
land, and from thirty to thirty-two times as large as the city
possession = proportions the improbability of which is at once
apparent.
Vers. 30-35. Size, Gates, and Name of the City.— To
complete the whole picture of the future land of Israel, what
has been stated in vers. 15 and 16 concerning the size of the
holy city is still further expanded here. — Ver. 30. And these
are the outgoings of the city from the north side, four thousand
and fve hundred (rods) measurement. Ver. 31. And the gatis
of the city according to the names of the tribes of Israel : three
gates toward the north ; the gate of Reuben one, the gate of
Judah one, the gate of Levi one. Ver. 32. And on the east side
four thousand five hundred (rods) : and three gates ; namely, the
gate of Joseph one, the gate of Benjamin one, the gate of Dan
one. Ver. 33. And to the south side, four thousand five hundred
measurement : and three gates ; the gate of Simeon one, the
gate of Issachar one, the gate of Zebulon one. Ver. 34. To
the west side, four thousand five hundred — their gates three ;
the gate of Gad one, the gate of Asher one, the gate of Naphtali
one. Ver. 35. Round about, eighteen thousand (rods) ; and
the name of the city: from henceforth Jehovah there. — The
situation of the city of God within the temmah and its
external dimensions have already been generally indicated in
vers. 15, 16. Here the measurement of the several sides is
specified with a notice of their gates, and this is preceded by
the heading, " the outlets of the city." nxvin, the outgoings
CHAP. XLVIIL 30-3& 381
(not extensions, for the word never has this meaning) are the
furthest extremities in which a city or a tract of land termi-
nates ; not outlets or gates, which are expressly distinguished
from themj but outgoing sides; hence the definition of the
extent or length of the several sides is appended immediately
afterwards. The enumeration commences, as above in the case
of the land, with the north side. Each side has three gates, so
that the whole city has twelve, which bear the names of the
twelve tribes, like the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem in Rev.
xxi. 12, because it will be the city of the true people of God.
Levi is included here, and consequently Ephraim and Manasseli
are united in the one tribe of Joseph. The three sons of Leah
commence the series with the northern gates. They also stand
first in the blessing of Moses in Deut. xxxiii. 6-8 : the first-
born in age, the first-born by virtue of the patriarchal blessing,
and the one chosen by Jehovah for His own service in the
place of the first-born. Then follow, for the eastern gates, the
two sons of Rachel, according to their age (thus deviating from
Deut. xxxiii. 12 and 1 3), and, along with them, the elder son
of Rachel's maid ; for the southern gates, the three other sons
of Leah ; and lastly, for the western gates, the three other sons
of the maids. Being thus indicated by the names of its gates
as the city of all Israel, the city itself receives a name, which
exalts it into the city of God (Jehovah). But different
explanations have been given of the words in ver. 35 which
refer to this name. The allusion in Di'p and the meaning of
r\m are both disputed points. It is true that the latter literally
means " thither ; " but Ezekiel also uses it as synonymous with
DB', « there," in ch. xxiii. 3 and xxxii. 29, 30, so that the asser-
tion that nsE' never means "there" is incorrect. Di'?, from
day forward, equivalent to henceforward ; but not henceforth
and for ever, though this may be implied in the context.
Whether Di'O be taken in connection with the preceding words,
" the name of the city will henceforward be," or with those
which follow, the name of the city will be, "henceforward
382 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
Jeliovali there," makes no material difference so far as the
thought is concerned, as the city can only bear the name from
the time when Jehovah is i^ff, and can only bear it so long as
Jehovah is naB*. But so far as the question is concerned,
whether nBB" signifies thither or there in this passage. Haver-
nick is of opinion, indeed, that the whole of Ezekiel's vision
does not harmonize witlj the meaning " there," inasmuch as he
separates temple and city, so that Jehovah does not properly
dwell in Jerusalem, but, in the strictest and highest sense, in
His sanctuary, and turns thence to Jerusalem with the fulness
of His grace and love. But if Jehovah does not merely direct
His love toward the city from afar off, but, as Havernick still
further says, turns it fully toward it, causes His good pleasure
to rest upon it, then He also rules and is in the city with His
love, so that it can bear the name " Jehovah thither (there)."
In any case, the interpretation, " Jehovah will from henceforth
proceed thither, to restore it, to make it a holy city " (Kliefoth),
is untenable; for the name is not given to Jerusalem when
lying waste, but to the city already restored and fully built,
which Ezekiel sees in the spirit. He has therefore before this
turned His favour once more to Jerusalem, which was laid
waste; and the name naB' nin', given to the new Jerusalem,
can only affirm that henceforward it is to be a city of Jehovah,
i.e. that from this time forth Jehovah will be and rule in her.
The rendering " Jehovah thither " does not answer to this, but
only the rendering, " Jehovah will be there." ' Compare Isa.
Ix. 14, where Jerusalem is called the city of Jehovah, Zion of
the Holy One in Israel, because the glory of Jehovah has
risen over her as a brilliant light.
Having now completed our exposition in detail, if we take a
survey of the substance of the entire vision in ch. xl.-xlviii., on
comparing it with the preceding prophecies of the restoration
CHAP. XL.^SLVIII. 383
of Israel (ch. xxxiv.-xxxvii.), we obtain the folloVvinrr picture
of the new constitution of the kingdom of God : — When the
Lord shall gather the sons of Israel from their banishment
among the heathen, and bring them back to Canaan, so that
they shall dwell therein as a united people under the rule of
His servant David, then shall they, on the fresh distribution of
the land according to the full extent to which God promised it
to the patriarchs, and indicated the boundaries thereof through
Moses (ch. xlvii. 15-20), set apart the central portion of it as
a heave for the sanctuary and His servants, the priests and
Levites, as well as for the capital and its labourers, and also
give to the prince a possession of his own on both sides of this
heave. In the central point of the heave, which occupies a
square space of twenty-five thousand rods in length and
breadth, the temple is to stand upon a high mountain, and
cover, with its courts, a space of five hundred cubits square ;
and round about it a space of five hundred rods on every side
is to form a boundary between the holy and the common. The
glory of Jehovah will enter into the temple and dwell therein
for ever; and the temple, in its whole extent, will be most
holy (ch. xliii. 1-12). Kound about this the priests receive a
tract of land of twenty-five thousand rods in length and ten
thousand in breadth to dwell in as a sanctuary for the sanctuary;
and by their side, toward the north, the Levites receive au
area of similar size for dwelling-places ; but toward the south,
a tract of land of twenty-five thousand rods in length and five
thousand rods in breadth is to be the property of the city ; and
in the centre of this area, the city, with its open space, is to
cover a square of five thousand rods m length and breadth ;
and the rest of the land on both sides is to be given to the
labourers of the city out of all Israel for their maintenance.
The land lying on the eastern and western sides of the heave,
as far as the Jordan and the Mediterranean, is to be the pro-
perty of the prince, and to remain the hereditary possession of
his sons (ch. xlv. 1-8, xivi. 16-18, xlviii. 8-22). After the
384 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
separation of this heave, which, with the prince's possession,
covers about the fifth part of the whole extent of Canaan, the
rest of the land on the north and south of the heave is to be
divided into equal parts and distributed among the twelve
tribes, so that every tribe-territory shall stretch from the Jordan
to the Mediterranean, — seven tribes receiving their hereditary
portions on the north of the heave and five on the south,
whilst the foreigners having their permanent homes among
the different tribes are to receive hereditary possessions like
the native Israelites (ch. xlvii. 21-xlviii. 7, and slviii.
23-29).
Israel, thus placed once more in possession of the promised
land, is to appear with its prince before the Lord in the temple
at the yearly feasts, to worship and to offer sacrifices, the pro-
vision of which is to devolve upon the prince at all festal
seasons, for which purpose the people are to pay to him the
sixtieth part of the corn, the hundredth part of the oil, and the
two hundredth head from the flock every year as a heave-
offering. The sacrificial service at the altar and in the holy
place is to be performed by none but priests of the family of
Zadok, who kept the charge of the Lord faithfully when the
people wandered into idolatry. All the other descendants of
Levi are simply to discharge the inferior duties of the temple
service, whilst uncircumcised heathen are not to be admitted
into the temple any more, that it may not be defiled by
them (ch. xliii. 13-xliv. 31, xlv. 8-xlvi. 15, and 19-24).
When Israel shall thus serve the Lord its God, and walk in
His commandments and statutes, it will enjoy the richest
blessing from God. A spring of living water will issue from
the threshold of the temple house, and, swelling after a short
course into a mighty river, will fiow down to the Jordan valley,
empty itself into the Dead Sea, and make the water of that sea
so wholesome that it will swarm with living creatures and fishes
of every kind ; and on the banks of the river fruit-trees will
grow with never-withering leaves, which will bear ripe fruit for
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 385
food every month, whilst the leaves will serve as medicine (ch.
xlvii. 1-12).
As to the Messianic character of the substance of this whole
vision, Jewish and Christian commentators are generally agreed;
and the opinion which, according to Jerome, many of the Jews
entertained, and which has been supported by the rationalistic
expositors (Dathe, Eichhorn, Herder, Bottcher, and others),
after the example of Grotius, — namely, that Ezekiel describes
the temple of Solomon destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar as a
model for the rebuilding of it after the return of the Jews from
the captivity, — has not found much favour, inasmuch as, apart
from all other objections to which it is exposed, it is upset by
the fact that not only are its supporters unable to make any-
thing of the description of the spring which issues from the
threshold of the temple, flows through the land, and maltes the
waters of the Dead Sea sound, but they are also unable to
explain the separation of the temple from the city of Jeru-
salem ; as it would never have occurred to any Jewish patriot,
apart from divine revelation, much less to a priest like Ezekiel,
who claims such important prerogatives for the prince of the
family of David in relation to the temple, to remove the house
of Jehovah from Mount Zion, the seat of the royal house of
David, and out of the bounds and territory of the city of
Jerusalem. But even if we lay aside this view, and the one
related to it, — viz. that the whole vision contains nothing more
than ideal hopes and desires of better things belonging to that
age, with regard to the future restoration of the destroyed
temple and kingdom, as Evvald and others represent the matter,
— as being irreconcilable with the biblical view of prophecy, the
commentators, who acknowledge the divine origin of prophecy
and the Messianic character of the vision in these chapters,
differ very widely from one another with reference to the
question how the vision is to be interpreted ; some declaring
tliemselves quite as decidedly in favour of the literal explana-
tion of the whole picture as others in favour of the figurative
EZEK. II. 2 B
386 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
or syrabolico-typical view, which they regard as the only correct
and scriptural one. — The latter view gained the upper hand at
a very early period in the Christian church, so that we find it
adopted by Ephraem Syrns, Theodoret, and Jerome ;^ and it
prevailed so generally, that Lud. Cappellns, for example, in his
Trisagion s. templi Hierosol. tripl. delin. (in the apparat. MM,
of Walton, in the first part of the London Polyglot, p. 3), says :
" In this passage God designs to show by the prophet that Pie
no more delights in that carnal and legal worship which they
have hitherto presented to Ilim ; but that He demands from
them another kind of worship very different from that, and
more pleasing to Him (a spiritual worship, of which they have
a type in the picture and all the rites of this temple, which
differ greatly from those of Moses), and that He will establish
it among them when He shall have called them to Himself
through the Messiah. And that this spiritual worship is set
before them in shadows and figures, there is not a Christian
who denies ; nor any Jew, unless prejudiced and very obdurate,
' Ephraem Syrus, on cli. xli., not only interprets the windows of the
temple and even the measuring rod allegorically, but says expressly : " It
is evident that the rest of the things shown to the prophet in the building
of the new temple pertain to the church of Christ, so that we must hold
that the priests of that house were types of the apostles, and the calves
slain therein prefigured the sacrifice of Christ." — Theod. indeed restricts,
himself througbout to a brief paraphrase of the words, without explaining
every particular in a spiritual manner ; but he nevertheless says expressly
(at ch. xliii.) that we must ascend from the type to the truth, as God will
not dwell for ever in the type ; and therefore he repeatedly opposes the
Judaeo-literal interpretation of Apollinaris, although he himself appears to
take ch. xlviii. as simply referring to the return of the Jews from the
Babylonian exile, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple in the
time of Zerubbabel. — This explanation is expressly opposed by Jerome, as
the opinion of ignorant Jews ; and he observes, on the other hand, that
" this temple which is now described, with the order of the priesthood and
division of the land and its fertility, is much superior to that which
Solomon built ; whereas the one which was built under Zerubbabel was
so small, and so unworthy of comparison with the earlier one, that they
who had seen the first temple, and now looked on this, wept," etc. Under
the type of the restoration of the city destroyed by the Babylonians, there
is predicted /uturae aedificationis Veritas.
CHAP. xL.-xLVin. 387
who ventures to deny, seeing tliat there are so many things in
this description of Ezekiel which not even the most shameless
Jew has dared to argue that we are to interpret according to
the letter," etc. — The literal interpretation remained for a long
time peculiar to the Jews, who expect from the Messiah not
only their own restoration to the earthly Canaan, but the re-
building of the temple and the renewal of the Levitical worship
in the manner described by Ezekiel, and the establishment of
a political kingdom generally ; whereas Christians have founded
the expectation of an earthly kingdom of glory in the form of
the millennium, more upon the Apocalypse than upon Ezekiel's
prophecy. It has only been in the most recent time that
certain scientific defenders of chiliasm have not shrunk from
carrying out their views so far as to teach not only the restora-
tion of the Jews to Palestine on their conversion to Christ, but,
according to their literal explanation of our prophecy, the re-
building of the temple in Jerusalem and the renewal of the
Levitical worship in the millennial kingdom. Auberlen has
only hinted at this, so that from his words quoted already,
"when once priesthood and monarchy are revived, then, with-
out impairing the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ceremonial and
civil law of Moses will unfold its spiritual depths in the worship
and in the constitution of the millennial kingdom," we cannot
see how far he assumes that there will be a literal fulfilment of
Ezekiel's prophecy. M. Baumgarten (art. "Ezekiel" in Herzog's
Cyclopaedia) says, more plainly, that " the restoration of all the
outward reality, which Ezekiel saw in vision, will be not so
much a repetition of what went before, as a glorification of the
outward, which had perished and been condemned," since this
"glorification" will simply consist in " extgnsions and intensi-
fications" of the earher precepts of the law "For," he adds,
in support of this opinion, " when Israel as a nation turns to
God, how can, how should it manifest its faith and its obedi-
ence in any other way than in the forms and ordinances which
Jehovah gave to that people ? And is it not obvious (! ?) that
388 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
the whole law, in all its sections and portions, will not receive,
till after this conversion, that fulfilment which in all ages it has
hitherto sought in vain ? And how should temple, priesthood,
sacrificial service, Sabbath, and new moon, in themselves be
opposed to faith in the perfect and eternal revelation of God in
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?" In con-
sistency with this, Baumgarten is therefore of opinion that
eventually even the Gentile community will enter again into
the congregation of Israel, and find its national organization iii
the law of Israel according to the will of God. — Hofmann, on
the contrary (Schri/tbeweis, U. 2, pp. 577 sqq.), finds only so
much established with certainty in the revelation of Ezekiel,
viz. that Israel will serve God again in its own land, and
Jehovah will dwell in the midst of it again. He therefore
would have the several parts interpreted in relation to the whole ;
so that what Hengstenberg calls the ideal interpretation of this
prophecy remains. But he does not say precisely what his
view is concerning the temple, and the Levitical rite of sacrifice
to be performed therein. He simply infers, from the fact that
a stream of water issuing from the temple-mountain makes the
Dead Sea sound and the lower Kedron-valley fruitful, that the
land will be different from what it was before ; and this altera-
tion Volck calls a glorification of Palestine.
In our discussion of the question concerning the restoration
of Israel to Canaan, we have already declared ourselves as
opposed to the literal interpretation of the prophecy, and have
given the general grounds on which the symbolico-typical view
appears to be demanded — namely, because the assumption of a
restoration of the temple and the Levitical, i.e. bloody, sacrificial
worship is opposed to the teaching of Christ and His apostles.
We have now to assign further reasons for this. If, then,
in the first place, we fix our attention upon the vision in ch.
xl.— xlviii., we cannot find any conclusive argument against the
literal and in favour of the figurative interpretation of the
vision in question, either in the fact that Ezekiel does not give
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 389
any building-plan for the temple, but simply ground arrange-
ments and ground measurements, and does not say that a
temple is ever to be built according to his plan, or give any
instructions for the restoration of the Israelitish worship, or in
the fact that the division of the land, the bounding off of the
terumah and the arranging of the city, cannot be practically
realized. The omission of any command to build the temple
might be simply accounted for, from the design to let the
prophet merely see the restoration of the destroyed temple in
a more perfect form, and cause this to be predicted to the
people through him, without at present giving any command
to build, as that was only to be carried out in the remote future.
The absence of elevations and precise directions concerning the
construction of the several buildings might be explained from
the fact that in these respects the building was to resemble the
former temple. And with regard to the distribution of the
land among the tribes, and the setting apart of the terumah, it
cannot truly be said that " they bear on the face of them their
purposelessness and impracticability." The description of a
portion of land of definite size for priests, Levites, city, and
prince, which was to reach from the eastern boundary of
Canaan to the western, and to be bounded off in a straight
line by the tribe-territories immediately adjoining, contains
nothing impracticable, provided that we do not think of the
boundary line as a straight line upon a chess-board. But we
may infer from the Mosaic instructions concerning the districts,
which were to be given to the Levites as pasture grounds for
their cattle round about the cities assigned to them to dwell in,
that the words of the text do not warrant any such idea. They
are described as perfect squares of a thousand cubits on every
side (Num. xxxv. 2-5). If, then, these Mosaic instructions
could be carried out, the same must be true of those of Ezekiel
concerning the terumah, as its dimensions are in harmony with
the actual size of the land. And so also the separation of
the city from the temple, and the square form of the city
390 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
with three gates on every side, cannot be regarded in general
as either purposeless or impracticable. And, finally, in the
statements concerning the territories to be distributed among
the twelve tribes, viz. that they were to lie side by side, that
they were all to stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan,
and that they were to be of equal size, there is no ground for
supposing that the land was to be cut up with the measuring
rod into abstract oblongs of equal measurements, with an entire
disregard of all the actual conditions. The only thing which
causes any surprise here is the assumption on which the regu-
lation, that one tribe is to receive as much as another, is
founded, namely, that all the tribes of Israel will be equal in
the number of families they contain. This hypothesis can
hardly be reconciled with the assumption that an actual dis-
tribution of Palestine among the twelve tribes of Israel return-
ing from exile is contemplated. Even the measuring of a
space around the temple for the purpose of forming a separation
between the holy and the common, which space was to be five
times as large as the extent of the temple with its courts, con-
tains an obvious hint at a symboHcal signification of the temple
building, inasmuch as with a real temple such an object could
have been attained by much simpler means. To this must be
added the river issuing from the threshold of the eastern
temple gate, with its marvellously increasing flow of water, and
the supernatural force of life which it contains ; for, as we have
already pointed out, this cannot be regarded as an earthly
river watering the land, but can only be interpreted figuratively,
i.e. in a symbolico-typical sense. But if the stream of water
flowing from the temple cannot be regarded as a natural river,
the temple also cannot be an earthly temple, and the saci'ificial
service appointed for this temple cannot be taken as divine
service consisting in the slaying and offering of bullocks, goats,
and calves; and as the entire description forms a uniform
prophetic picture, the distribution of the land among the sons
of Israel must also not be interpreted literally.
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 391
But as different supporters of the chiliastlc view have de-
fended the literal interpretation of the picture of the temple
spring by the assumption of a glorification of nature, i.e. of a
glorification of Palestine before the new creation of the heaven
and the earth, and this assumption is of great importance in
relation to the question concerning the fulfilment of this pro-
phecy (Ezek. xl.-xlviii.), we must examine somewhat more
closely the arguments used in its support.
I. 7s the glorification- of Canaan hefore the last judgment taught
in the prophecy of the Old Testament? — According to Volck
(" Zur Eschatologie," Dorpat. Zeitschr. vii. pp. 158 sqq.), the
idea of such a glorification is very common throughout the Old
Testament prophecy, " When," he says, " Isaiah (ii. 2-4) sees
the mouutaiu of the house of Jehovah exalted above all the
mountains, and the nations fl.owing to it, to walk in Jehovah's
ways ; when he prophesies of a time in which the Lord will
shelter Israel, now saved and holy in all its members, and fill
its land with glory, and Canaan, under the rule of the righteous
prince of peace, with its inhabitants once scattered over all the
world brought back once more, will be restored to the original,
paradisaical state of peace, whilst the world is given up to
judgment (Isa. iv. 2-6, ix. 1-6, and 11, 12) ; — when Jeremiah
prophesies that Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and a sprout from
the house of David will rule well over his people, upon whose
heart Jehovah will write His law (Jer. xxxi. 31-44, xxxiii. 15) ;
— when Hosea (ii. 16-25) sees the house of Jacob, which has
returned home after a period of severe affliction, as a pardoned
people to which its God betrothes Himself again ; — when Joel
(iv. 16-21) sees a time break forth after the judgment upon the
army of the world of nations, in which the holy land bursts
into miraculous fruitf ulness ; — when Amos (ix. 8-15) predicts
the rebuilding of the tabernacle of David that has been over-
thrown^ and the restoration of the Davidic kingdom; — when,
according to Zechariah (xiv. 8 sqq.), Jerusalem is to be the
392 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
centre of the world, to wliich the nations flow, to celebrate the
feast of tabernacles with Israel : — it is impossible, without in-
troducing unbounded caprice into our exposition, to resist the
conclusion, that in all these passages, and others of a similar
kind, a time is depicted, when, after the judgment of God upon
the power of the world, Israel will dwell in the enjoyment of
blissful peace within its own land, now transfigured into para-
disaical glory, and will rule over the nations round about."
But that all these passages do not contain clear scriptural state-
ments " concerning a partial glorification of the earth " during
that kingdom of glory, is apparent from the fact that it is not
till after writing this that Volck himself raises the question,
" Are there really, then, any distinct utterances of Scripture
upon this pointi" and he only cites two passages (Joel iv.
18 sqq. and Mic. vii. 9—13) as containing an affirmative
answer to the question, to which he also adds in a note Isa.
xxiv. 1-23 as compared with Isa. xiii. 9 and Zecb. xiv. 8-11.
But when Joel foretells that, after the judgment of Jehovah
upon the army of nations in the valley of Jehoshaphat, the
mountains will trickle with new wine, the hills flow with
milk, and all the springs of Judah stream with water, while
Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom a barren desert, he
announces nothing more than that which Isaiah repeats and
still further expands in ch. xxxiv. and xxxv. ; where even Hof-
mann (Scliriftbeiueis, II. 2, p. 563) admits that Edom is a
symbolical designation, applied to the world of mankind in its
estrangement from God. Joel merely mentions Egypt as well
as Edom as representatives of the world in its hostility to God.
But if Egypt and Edom are types of the world in its estrange-
ment from God or its enmity against Him, Judah is a type of
the kingdom of God; and this passage simply teaches that
through the judgment the might and glory of the kingdoms of
the world at enmity against God will be laid waste and de-
stroyed, and the glory of the kingdom of God established.
But in nowise do they teach the glorification of Palestine and
CHAP. XU-XLVIII. 393
the desolation of Iduraaea and the country of the Nile ; espe-
cially if we bedr in mind that, as we have already observed,
the trickling and flowing of the mountains and hills with new
wine and oil cannot possibly be understood literally. We meet
with the very same antithesis in Mic. vii. 9-13, where the
daughter of Zion, presented under the figure of a vineyard, is
promised the building of her walls and the flowing into her
of numerous peoples from Egypt, Asshur, and the ends of the
world, and the desolation of the world is foretold. Micah does
not say a word about a partial glorification of the earth, unless
the building of the walls of Zion is taken allegorically, and
changed into a glorification of Palestine. But if this is the
case with passages selected as peculiarly clear, the rest will
furnish still less proof of the supposed glorification of the land
of Israel. It is true, indeed, that we also find in Isa. xxiv.
1-23 " the antithesis between Zion, the glorified seat of Jehovah,
and the earth laid waste by the judgment" (cf. Isa. xiii. 3),
and in Zecli. xiv. 8 sqq. the prediction of an exaltation of Jeru-
salem above the land lying round about ; but even if a future
glorification of the seat of God in the midst of His people, and,
indeed, a transformation of the earthly soil of the kingdom of
God, be foretold in these and many other passages, the chiliastic
idea of a glorification of Palestine before the universal judg-
ment and the new creation of the heaven and earth is by no
means proved thereby, so long as there are no distinct state-
ments of Scripture to confirm the supposition that the future
glorification of Zion, Jerusalem, Canaan, predicted by the
prophets, will take place before the judgment. Even Volck
appears to have felt that the passages already quoted do not
furnish a conclusive proof of this, since it is not till after dis-
cussing them that he thinks it necessary to raise the question,
" Does the Old Testament really speak of a glorification of
Canaan in the literal sense of the word?" To reply to this
he commences with an examination of the view of the millen-
nium held by Auberlen, who finds nothing more in the state-
394 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
inents of the Old Testament than that "even nature will be
included in the blessing of the general salvation, the soil endowed
with inexhaustible fruitfulness, all hostility and thirst for blood
be taken from the animal world, yea, the heavens bound to the
earth in corresponding harmony," so that we sliould be reminded
of the times of the world before the flood, when the powers of
nature were still greater than they are now. To this the
intimation in Isa. Ixv. 20-22 alludes, where men a hundred
years old are called boys, etc. {der Prophet Daniel, pp. 402, 403).
But Volck objects to the literal interpretation of such passages
as Isa. Ixv. 20, on the ground that " the consequence of this
assumption leads to absurdities, inasmuch as such passages as
Isa. xi. 6, Ix. 17, 19, Ixvi. 25, would then also have to be taken
literally, to which certainly no one would be so ready to agree "
(see also Luthardt, die Lelire von den lelzten Dingen, p. 78).
On the other hand, he defends the canon laid down by Hof-
mann (p. 566), " that in the prophetic description of that time
of glory we must distinguish between the thoughts of the
prophecy and the means used for expressing them ; the former
we reach by generahzing what is said by way of example, and
reducing the figurative expression to the literal one." The
thought lying at the foundation of these prophetic pictures is,
in his opinion, no other than that of a blessed, blissful fellow-
ship with God, and a state of peace embracing both the human
and the extra-human creation. '' To set forth this thought,
the prophets seize upon the most manifold figures and colours
which the earth offers them." Thus in Isa. Ixv. 20—23 we
have only a figurative description of what is said in literal
words in Isa. xxv. 8 : He swalloweth up death for ever, and
Jehovah wipeth away the tears from every face. So also the
figurative expressions in Isa. xi. 6-8, Ixv. 25, affirm nothing
more " than that the ground will be delivered from the curse
which rests upon it for the sake of man, and the extra-human
creation will be included in the state of peace enjoyed in the
holy seat of God. But where there is no death and uo evil.
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 395
and therefore no more sin, where the glory of the Lord shines
without change (Isa. Ix. 19, 20), not only has the world before
the flood with its still greater powers of nature returned, but
there is the world of glorification.^^ We agree with this view
in general, and simply add that this furnishes no proof of the
glorification of Canaan before the last judgment. Before this
can be done, it must be conclusively shown that these prophetic
passages treat of the so-called millennial kingdom, and do not
depict what is plainly taught in Isa. Ixv. 17 sqq. and Eev. xxi.
and xxii., the glory of the heavenly Jerusalem upon the new earth.
Volck also acknowledges this, inasmuch as, after examining
these passages, he proposes the question, " Are there really
clear passages in the Old Testament prophecy which warrant
us in assuming that there will be an intermediate period between
the judgment, through which Jehovah glorifies Himself and
His people before the eyes of the world, and a last end of all
things?" An affirmative answer to this question is said to
be furnished by Isa. xxi v. 21 sqq., where the prophet, when
depicting the judgment upon the earth, says : " And it will
come to pass in that day, that Jehovah will visit the army of
the height on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth ;
and they will be gathered together as a crowd, taken in the pit,
and shut up in the prison, and after the expiration of many
days will they be visited. And the sun blushes, and the moon
turns pale ; for Jehovah rules royally upon Mount Zion and in
Jernsalem, and in the face of His elders is glory." Here even
Hofmann finds (pp. 566, 567) the idea clearly expressed " of a
time between the judgment through which Jehovah glorifies
Himself and His people before all the world, and a last end of
things, such as we must picture to ourselves when we read of
a rolling up of the heaven on which all its host falls off, like
dry leaves from the vine (Isa. xxxiv. 4), and of a day of retri-
bution upon earth, when the earth falls to rise no more, and
a fire devours its inhabitants, which burns for ever" (Isa.
xxxiv. 8, 9, xxiv. 20). But if we observe that the announce-
396 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ment of the judgment upon the earth closes in Isa. xxiv. 20
with the words, " the earth will fall, and not rise again ;" and
then vers. 21 sqq. continue as follows : " And it comes to pass
in that day, Jehovah will visit," etc., — it will be evident that the
judgment upon the host of the heavens, etc., is assigned to the
time when the earth is destroyed, so that by the Mount Zion
and Jerusalem, where Jehovah will then reign royally in glory,
we can only understand the heavenly Jerusalem. An inter-
mediate time between the judgment upon the world and the
last end of things, i.e. the destruction of the heaven and the
earth, is not taught here. Nor is it taught in ch. Ixv. 17-19,
where, according to Hofmann (p. 568), a glorification of Jeru-
salem before the new creation of the heaven and the earth is
said to be foretold ; for here even Volck admits that we have
a picture of the new world after the destruction of heaven and
earth and after the last judgment, and concludes his discussion
upon this point (p. 166) with the acknowledgment, " that in
the Old Testament prophecy these two phases of the end are
not sharply separated from each other, and especially that the
manner of transition from the former (the glorification of
Jehovah and His church before the world in the so-called
thousand years' reign) to the last end of all things, to the life
of eternity, does not stand clearly out," though even in the
latter respect there is an indication to be found in Ezek. xxxviii.
If, then, for the present we lay this indication aside, as the
question concerning Ezek. xxxviii. can only be considered in
connection with Eev. xx., the examination of all the passatres
quoted by the chiliasts in support of the glorification of Pales-
tine, before the new creation of the heavens and the earth,
yields rather the result that the two assumed phases of the end
are generally not distinguished in the Old Testament prophecy,
and that the utterances of the different prophets concerning the
final issue of the war of the world-powers against the kingdom
of God clearly contain no more than this, that Jehovah will
destroy all the enemies of His kingdom by a judgment, over-
CHAP. XL.-XLV1II. 397
throw the kuigdoms of the world, and establish His kingdom
in glory. Isaiah alone rises to a prediction of the destruction
of the whole world, and of the new creation of the heaven and
the earth. — But what the Old Testament leaves still obscure in
this respect, is supposed to be clearly revealed in tlie New. To
this question, therefore, we will now proceed.
II. Does the New Testament teach a glorification of Palestine
and a kingdom of glory in the earthly Jerusalem, before the last
judgment and the destruction of the heaven and the earth ? — In
the opinion of most of the representatives of miilenarianism,
there is no doubt whatever as to either of these. " For, ac-
cording to Eev. XX., the overthrow of the world-power and the
destruction of Antichrist are immediately followed by the
establishment of the kingdom of glory of the glorified church
of Jesus Christ for the space of a thousand years, at the
expiration of which the war of Gog and Magog against the
beloved city takes place, and ends in the overthrow of the
hostile army and the creation of the new heaven and the new
earth" (Volck, p. 167). But this assumption is by no means
so indisputable. Even if we grant in passing, that, according
to the millenarian view of the Apocalypse, the events depicted
in ch. XX. are to be understood chronologically, the assumption
that Palestine will be glorified during the millennium is apt
yet demonstrated. Auberlen, for example, who regards the
doctrine of the thousand years' reign as one of the primary
articles of the Christian hope, pronounces the following sen-
tence (pp. 454, 455) upon Hofmann's view of the millennial
reign, according to which the glorified church is to be thought
of, not as in heaven, but as on earth, and, indeed, as united
with the equally glorified Israel in the equally glorified Canaan :
" It appears obvious to me that the whole of the Old Testament
prophecy is irreconcilable with this view, apart from the internal
improbability of the thing." And according to our discussion
above, we regard this sentence as perfectly well founded. The
398 IHE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
prophets of the Old Testament know nothing of a thousand
years' kingdom ; and a glorification of the earthly Canaan
before the end of the world cannot be inferred from the picture
of the temple spring, for the simple reason that the resumption
of this prophetic figure in Kev. xxii. 1 and 2 shows that this
spring belongs to the heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth.
Even in Rev. xx. we read nothing about a glorification of
Palestine or Jerusalem. This has merely been inferred from
the fact that, according to the literal interpretation of the
chapter, those who rise from the dead at the second coming of
Christ will reign with Christ in the " beloved city," i.e. Jeru-
salem ; but the question has not been taken into consideration,
whether a warlike expedition of the heathen from the four
corners of the unglorified world against the inhabitants of a
glorified city, who are clothed with spiritual bodies, is possible
and conceivable, or whether such an assumption does not rather
" lead to absurdities." Nor can it be shown that the doctrine
of a glorification of Palestine before the end of the present
world is contained in the remaining chapters of the Apocalypse
or the other writings of the New Testament. It cannot be
inferred from the words of the Apostle Paul in Rom. xi. 15,
viz. that the restoration of the people of Israel, rejected for a
time after the entrance of the pleroma of the heathen into the
kingdom of God, will be or cause " life from the dead ;" since
" life from the dead " never really means the new bodily life
of glorification beginning with the resurrection of the dead
(Meyer), nor the glorification of the world (Volck) ; and this
meaning cannot be deduced from the fact that the iraXiy-
yeveerta (" regeneration," Matt. xix. 28) and the -xpovoi, diro-
Karaa-Tda-ea'i (" times of restitution," Acts iii. 19-21) will
follow the " receiving " {■n-poaXrjyfn,';) of Israel.
And even for the doctrine of a kingdom of glory in the
earthly Jerusalem before the last judgment, we have no con-
clusive scriptural evidence. The assumption, that by the
" beloved city" in Eev. xx. 9 we are to understand the earthly
CfiAP. XL.-XLVIII. 399
Jerusalem, rests upon the hypothesis, that the people of Israel
will return to Palestine on or after their conversion to Christ,
rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and dwell there till the
coming of Christ. But, as we have already shown, this
hypothesis has no support either in Rom. xi. 25 or any other
unequivocal passages of the New Testament; and the only
passages that come into consideration at all are Eev. vii. 1-8,
xiv. 1-5, and xi,, xii., in which this doctrine is said to be con-
tained. In Eev. vii. 1 sqq., John sees how, before the outbreak
of the judgment upon the God-opposing world-power, an angel
seals "the servants of our God" in their foreheads, and hears
that the number of those sealed is a hundred and forty-four
thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel, twelve
thousand from each of the twelve tribes mentioned by name.
In ch. xiv. 1 sqq. he sees the Lamb stand upon Mount Zion, and
with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand, having the name
of his Father written upon their forehead. And in ch. xi. 1 sqq.
a rod is given to him, and he is commanded to measure the
temple of God and the altar, but to cast out the outer court of
the temple, and not to measure it, because it is given to the
heatlien, who will tread under foot the holy city, which has
become spiritually a Sodom and an Egypt for forty-two months.
From these passages, Hof mann (II. 2, p. 703), Luther, Volck,
and others conclude that the converted Israelitish church will
not only dwell in Palestine, more especially in Jerusalem,
before the coming (parusia) of Christ, but will be alone in
outliving the coming of Christ ; whilst the rest of Christendom,
at all events the whole number of the believers from among
the Gentile Christians, will lose their lives in the great tribula-
tion which precedes the parusia, and go through death to God.
This conclusion would be indisputable if the premises were
well founded, namely, that the passages in question treated
only of Jewish Christians and the earthly Jerusalem. For, in
the first place, it is evident that the hundred and forty-four
thousand whom John sees with the Lamb upon Mount Zion in
400 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
ch. xiv. 1 sqq. are identical with the hundred and forty-four
thousand who are sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel in
ch. vii. The omission of the retrospective article before eKaTov,
/c.T.X. in ch. xiv. 1 is to be explained from the fact that the in-
tention is to give prominence to the antithesis, in which the
notice of it stands to what precedes. " Over against the whole
multitude of the rest of the world, subject to the beast and his
prophet, there stands upon Zion a comparatively limited host of
a hundred and forty- four thousand" (Volck). And in the
second place, it is quite as evident that in the one hundred and
forty-four thousand who are sealed (ch. vii.), the total number
is contained of all believers, who have been preserved in the
great tribulation, and kept from perishing therein ; and in ch.
vii. 9-17 there is placed in contrast with these, in the innumer-
able multitude out of all the heathen, and nations, and lan-
guages standing before the throne of God clothed in white
robes, and carrying palms in their hands, who have come out
of the great tribulation, the total number of believers who have
lost their temporal lives in the great tribulation, and entered
into the everlasting life. The mode in which Christiani
(" Uebersichtliche Darstellung des Inhalts der Apokalypse,"
Dorpater Zeilschr. III. p. 53) attempts to evade this conclu-
sion — namely, by affirming that the separate visions never give
a complete final account, but only isolated glimpses of it, and
that they have mutually to supplement one another — does not
suffice. Volck has correctly observed, in answer to the objec-
tion that the vision in ch. vii. 9—17 does not set before us the
entrance of all the believing Gentile Christians of the last time
into heaven through death, that although we simply read of a
" great multitude" in ch. vii. 9, this expression does not permit
us to infer that there will be a I'emnant of Gentile Christians,
inasmuch as the antithesis upon which all turns is this : " on
the one side, this compact number of a hundred and forty-four
thousand out of Israel destined to survive the last oppression ;
on the other, an innumerable multitude out of every nation,
CHAP. SL.-XLVin. 401
wlio have come to God through death." Nevertheless, we must
support Christiani in his opposition to the assumption, that at
the parusia of Christ only Jewish Christians will be living on
earth iu Jerusalem or upon Mount Zion, and that all the
believing Gentile Christians will have perished from the globe ;
because such a view is irreconcilably opposed not only to Eev.
iii. 12, but also, to all the teaching of the New Testament,
especially to the declarations of our Lord concerning His second
coming. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at
Thessalonica, consisting of Gentile and Jewish Christians, iv
Xoytp Kvpiou : " we who live and remain to the coming of the
Lord shall not anticipate those who sleep" (1 Thess. iv. 15 sqq.),
and when he announced as a jjAJo-Tripiov to the church at Corinth,
which was also a mixed church, consisting for the most part of
Gentile Christians : " we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed " (1 Cor. xv. 51), he held the conviction, based upon
a word of the Lord, that at the time of Christ's coming there
would still be believing Gentile Christians living upon the
earth. And when the Lord Himself tells His disciples : " the
Son of man will come in the clouds of heaven with great power
and glory, and will send His angels with sounding trumpets,
and they will gather His elect from the four winds from one
end of heaven to the other " (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31), He treats it
as an indisputable fact that there will be eKXe/erot, believing
Christians, in all the countries of the earth, and that the church
existing at His coming will not be limited to the Israel which
has become believing in Jerusalem and Palestine.
If, therefore, the Apocalypse is not to stand in direct con-
tradiction to the teaching of Christ and the Apostle Paul in one
of the principal articles of the truths of salvation, the exposition
in question of Kev. vii. and xiv. cannot be correct. On the
contrary, we are firmly convinced that in the hundred and
forty-four thousand who are sealed, the whole body of believing
Christians living at the parusia of our Lord is represented ;
and notwithstanding the fact that they are described as the
EZEK. 11. ^^ ^
402 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
servants of God " out of all the tribes of the children of Israel,"
and are distributed by twelve thousands among the twelve
tribes of Israel, and that in ch. xiv. 1 they stand with the
Lamb upon Mount Zion, we can only regard them, not as
Jewish Christians, but as the Israel of God (Gal. vi, 16), i.e.
the church of believers in the last days gathered from both
Gentiles and Jews. If the description of the sealed as children
of Israel out of all the twelve tribes, and the enumeration of
these tribes by name, prove that only Jewish Christians are
intended, and preclude our taking the words as referring to
believers from both Gentiles and Jews, we must also regard
the heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth as a Jewish Christian
city, because it has the names of the twelve tribes of the chil-
dren of Israel written upon its gates (Rev. xxi. 12), like the
Jerusalem of Ezekiel (ch. xlviii. 31) ; and as this holy city is
called the bride of the Lamb (Kev. xxi. 9, 10), we must assume
that only Jewish Christians will take part in the marriage of
the Lamb. Moreover, the Mount Zion upon which John sees
Lamb and the hundred and forty-four thousand standing
(ch. xiv. 1), cannot be the earthly Mount Zion, as Bengel,
Hengstenberg, and others have correctly shown, because those
who are standing there hear and learn the song sounding from
heaven, which is sung before the throne and the four living
creatures and the elders (Rev. xiv. 3). The Mount Zion in
this instance, as in Heb. xii. 22, belongs to the heavenly Jeru-
salem. There is no foundation for the assertion that this view
is at variance with the connection of this group, and is also
opposed to the context (Christiani, p. 194, Luther, and others).
The excellent remarks of Diisterdieck, with regard to the con-
nection, are a sufficient refutation of the first, which is asserted
without any proof : " Just as in ch. vii. 9 sqq. an inspiring look
at the heavenly glory was granted to such believers as should
remain faithful in the great tribulation which had yet to come,
before the tribulation itself was displayed ; so also in the first
part of ch. xiv. (vers. 1-5) a scene is exliibited, which shows
CHAP. XL.-XLVin. 403
the glorious reward of the conquerors (of. ch. ii. 11, iii. 12, 21)
in a certain group of blessed believers (ver. 1 : ' a hundred
and forty-four thousand;' ver. 4: 'the first-fruits'), who
appear with the Lamb upon Mount Zion, and are described as
those who have kept themselves pure from all the defilement of
the world during their earthly life." And this assumption would
only be opposed to the context if vers. 2-5 formed an antithesis
to ver. 1, i.e. if those in heaven mentioned in vers. 2, 3 were dis-
tinguished from the hundred and forty-four thousand as being
still on earth. But if those who sing the new song are really
distinguished from the hundred and forty-four thousand, and are
" angelic choirs," which is still questionable, it by no means
follows from this that the hundred and forty-four thousand are
upon the earthly Mount Zion, but simply that they have reached
the Zion of the heavenly Jerusalem, and stand with the Lamb
by the throne of God, serving Him as His attendants, seeing
His face, and bearing His name upon their foreheads (Rev. xxii.
1, 3, 4), and that they learn the new song sung before the throne.
Still less can we understand by the holy city of Rev. xi. the
earthly Jerusalem, and by the woman clothed with the sun in
Rev. xii. the Israelitish church of God, i.e. the Israel of the
last days converted to Christ. The Jerusalem of Rev. xi. is
spiritually a Sodom and Egypt. The Lord is obliged to endow
the two witnesses anointed with His Spirit, whom He causes to
appear there, with the miraculous power of Elias and Moses, to
defend them from their adversaries. And when eventually
they are slain by the beast from the abyss, and all the world,
seeing their dead bodies lying in the streets of the spiritual
Sodom and Egypt, rejoices at their death, He brinfgs them to
life again after three days and a half, and causes them to
asceud visibly into heaven, and the same hour He destroys the
tenth part of the city by an earthquake, through which seven
thousand men are slain, so that the rest are alarmed and give
glory to the God of heaven. Jerusalem is introduced here in
quite as degenerate a state as in the last times before its
404 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEU
destruction by the Romans. Nevertheless we cannot think
of this ancient Jerusalem, because if John meant this, his
prophecy would be at variance with Christ's prophecy of the
destruction of Jerusalem. " For, according to the Eevelation,
there is neither a destruction of the temple in prospect, nor
does the church of Jesus flee from the city devoted to destruc-
tion " (Hofmann, p. 684). The temple with the altar of burnt-
offering is measured and defended, and only the outer court
with the city is given up to the nations to be trodden down ;
and lastly, only the tenth part of the city is laid in ruins.
For this reason, according to Hofmann and Luther, the
Jerusalem of the last days, inhabited by the Israel converted
to Christ, is intended. But the difficulty which presses upon
this explanation is to be found not so much in the fact that
Jerusalem is restored in the period intervening between the
conversion of Israel as a nation to Christ and the establishment
of the millennial kingdom, and possesses a Jewish temple, as in
the fact that the Israel thus converted to Christ, whose restora-
tion, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul in Kom.
xi. 25, will be " life from the dead" to all Christendom, should
again become a spiritual Sodom and Egypt, so that the Lord
has to defend His temple with the believers who worship there
from being trampled down by means of witnesses endowed
with miraculous power, and to destroy the godless city partially
by an earthquake for the purpose of terrifying the rest of the
inhabitants, so that they may give glory to Him. Such an
apostasy of the people of Israel after their final conversion to
Christ is thoroughly opposed to the hope expressed by the
Apostle Paul of the result of the restoration of Israel after the
entrance of the pleroma of the Gentiles into the kingdom of
God. Hofmann and Luther are therefore of opinion that
the Israelitish-Christian Jerusalem of the last times is called
spiritually Sodom and Egypt, because the old Jewish Jerusalem
had formerly sunk into a Sodom and Egypt, and that the
Christian city is punished by the destruction of its tenth part
CHAP. XL-XLVIIL 405
and the slaying of seven thousand men "as a judgment
upon the hostile nationality ; " as if God could act so un-
justly in the government of Jerusalem as to give up to
the heathen the city that had been faithful to Him, and to
destroy the tenth part thereof. This realistic Jewish inter-
pretation becomes utterly impossible when ch. xii. is added.
According to Hofmann, the woman in the sun is that Israel of
which Paul says, " God has not cast away His people whom
He foreknew " (Rom. xi. 2), i.e. the Israelitish church of the
saved. Before the birth of the boy who will rule the nations
with a sceptre of iron, this church is opposed by the dragon ;
and after the child born by her has been caught up into
heaven, she is hidden by God from the persecution of the
dragon in a place in the wilderness for twelve hundred and
sixty days, or three times and a half, i.e. during the forty-two
months in which Jerusalem as a spiritual Sodom is trodden
down of the heathen, and only the temple with those who
wdrship there is protected by God. But even if we overlook
the' contradiction involved in the supposition that the Israel
believing in Christ of ch. xi. has sunk so deep that Jerusalem
Las to be trodden down by the heathen, and only a small
portion of the worshippers of God are protected in the temple,
we must nevertheless inquire how it is possible that the
Israelitish church of believers in Christ should at the same
time be defended in the temple at Jerusalem, and, having fled
from Canaan into the wilderness, be concealed " in a place of
distress and tribulation." The Jerusalem of the last times
does not stand in the wilderness, and the temple protected by
God is not a place of distress and tribulation. And how can
the Israelitish church of God, which has given birth to Christ,
be concealed in the wilderness after the catching up of Christ
into heaven, or His ascension, seeing that the believing portion
of Israel entered the Christian church, whilst the unbelieving
mass at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem were in part
destroyed by sword, famine, and pestilence, and in part thrust
406 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
out amon" the Gentiles over all the world ? From the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem onwards, there is no longer any Israelitish
congregation of God outside the Christian church. The
branches broken off from the olive tree because of their
unbelief, are not a church of God. And Auberlen's objection
to this interpretation— namely, that from the birth of Christ in
ver. 6 it makes all at once a violent leap into the antichristian
times — still retains its force, inasmuch as this leap not only has
nothing in the text to indicate it, but is irreconcilable with
vers. 5 and 6, according to which the flight of the woman into
the wilderness takes place directly after the catching away of
the child. Auberlen and Christiani have therefore clearly
seen the impossibility of carrying out the realistic Jewish
interpretation of these chapters. The latter, indeed, would
take the holy city in ch. xi. in a literal sense, i.e. as signifying
the material Jerusalem ; whilst he interprets the temple
" allegorically " as representing the Christian church, without
observing the difficulty in which he thereby entangles himself,
inasmuch as if the holy city were the material Jerusalem, the
whole of believing Christendom out of all lands would have
fled thither for refuge. In the exposition of ch. xii. he follows
Auberlen (^Daniel, p. 460), who has correctly interpreted the
woman clothed with the sun as signifying primarily the
Israelitish church of God, and then passing afterwards into
the believing church of Christ, which rises on the foundation
of the Israelitish church as its continuation, other branches
from the wild olive tree being grafted on in the place of the
branches of the good olive that have been broken off (Eoni.
xi. 17 sqq.). — In Eev. xiii. and xv.-xix. there is no further
allusion to Judah and Jerusalem.
If, then, we draw the conclusion from the foregoing discus-
sion, the result at which we have arrived is, that even Eev.
i.-xix. furnishes no confirmation of the assumption that the
Israel which has come to believe in Christ will dwell in the
earthly Jerusalem, and have a temple with bleeding sacrifices.
408 THE PEOPEECIES OF EZEKIEL.
to happen till a thousand years later, cannot be inferred from
the position of ch. xx. 10 after cli. xix. 20, 21, but must be
gathered from some other source if it is to be determined at
all. The assumption that the contents of Eev. xx. are chrono-
logically posterior to ch. xviii. and xix., which the millenarian
interpretation of the Apocalypse has adopted from the earlier
orthodox exposition, is at variance with the plan of the whole
book. It is now admitted by all scientific expositors of the
Apocalypse, that the visions contained therein do not form
such a continuous series as to present the leading features of
the conflict between the powers at enmity against God and the
kingdom of God in chronological order, but rather that they
are arranged in groups, each rounded off within itself, every
one of which reaches to the end or closes with the last judg-
ment, while those which follow go back again and expand
more fully the several events which prepare the way for and
introduce the last judgment ; so that, for example, after the
last judgment upon the living and the dead has been announced
in ch. xi. 15 sqq. by the seventh trumpet, the conflict between
Satan and the kingdom of God on the birth and ascension
of Christ is not shown to the seer till the ft)llowing chapter
(ch. xii.). And the events set forth in the last group com-
mencing with ch. xix. must be interpreted in a manner
analogous to this. The contents of this group have been
correctly explained by Hofmann (II. 2, p. 720) as follows:
"The whole series of visions, from ch. xix. 11 onwards, is
merely intended to exhibit the victory of Christ over His foes.
There is first a victory over Satan, through which the army of
the enemies of His people by which he is served is destroyed ;
secondly, a victory over Satan, by which the possibility of
leading the nations astray any more to fight against His church
is taken from him ; thirdly, a victory over Satan, by which he
is deprived of the power to keep those who have died with
faith in their Saviour in death any longer; and, fourthly, a
victory over Satan, by which his last attack upon the saints of
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 409
God Issues in his final destruction." Tliat the second and
third victories are not to be separated from each other in point
of time, is indicated by the sameness in the period assigned
to each, viz. "a thousand years." But the time when these
thousand years commence, cannot be determined from the
Apocalypse itself ; it must be gathered from the teaching of
the rest of the New Testament concerning the first resurrec-
tion. According to the statements made by the Apostle Paul
in 1 Cor. XV., every one will be raised " in his own order :
Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at His
coming ; " then the end, i.e. the resurrection of all the dead,
the last judgment, the destruction of the world, and the new
creation of heaven and earth. Consequently the first resurrection
takes place along with the coming of Christ. But, according
to the teaching of the New Testament, the parusia of Christ is
not to be deferred till the last day of the present world, but
commences, as the Lord Himself has said, not long after His
ascension, so that some of His own contemporaries will not
taste of death till they see the Son of man come in His
kingdom (Matt. xvi. 28). The Lord repeats this in Matt.
xxiv. 34, in the elaborate discourse concerning His parusia to
judgment, with the solemn asseveration : " Veriiy I say unto
you, this generation (ij yevea avTrj) will not pass till all these
things be fulfilled." And, as Hofmann has correctly observed
(p. 640), the idea that " this generation " signifies the church
of Christ, does not deserve refutation. We therefore under-
stand that the contemporaries of Christ would live to see the
things of which He says, "that they will be the heralding
tokens of His second appearance;" and, still further (p. 641) :
"We have already seen, from Matt. xvi. 28, that the Lord has
solemnly affirmed that His own contemporaries will live to see
His royal coming." ^ Concerning this royal coming of the Son
' Luthardt also says just the same (pp. 94, 95) : " Undoubtedly the age
of which the Lord is speaking is not the whole of the present era, nor the
nation of Israel, but the generation then existing. Aud yet the Lord's
410 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
of man in the glory of His Father with His angels, which some
of His contemporaries live to see (Matt. xvi. 27 and 28), Paul
writes, in 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16: "We which are ahve and
remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not anticipate them
which are asleep ; for the Lord Himself shall descend from
heaven with a shout, etc., and the dead in Christ will rise
first," etc. Consequently the New Testament teaches quite
clearly that the first resurrection commences with the coming
of Christ, which began with the Judgment executed through
the Eomans upon the ancient Jerusalem. This was preceded
only by the resurrection of Christ as " the first-fruits," and tlie
resurrection of the " many bodies of the saints which slept,"
that arose from the graves at the resurrection of Christ, and
appeared to many in the holy city (Matt, xxvii. 52, 53), as a
practical testimony that through the resurrection of Christ
death is deprived of its power, and a resurrection from the
grave secured for all believers. — According to this distinct
teaching of Christ and the apostles, the popular opinion, that
the resurrection of the dead as a whole will not take place
till the last day of this world, must be rectified. The New
Testament does not teach anywhere that all the dead, even
those who have fallen asleep in Christ, will remain in the
grave, or in Hades, till the last judgment immediately before
the destruction of heaven and earth, and that the souls which
have entered heaven at their death will be with Christ till then
unclothed and without the body. This traditional view merely
rests upon the nnscriptural idea of the coming of Christ as not
taking place till the end of the era, and as an act restricted to
a single day of twenty-four hours. According to the Scriptures,
the jMrusia takes place on the day of the Lord, nin^ Di'', ■^ rjjiepa
Tov Kvpiov. But this day is not an earthly day of twelve or
twenty-four hours ; but, as Peter says (2 Pet. iii. 8), " one
prophecy goes to the very end, and reaches far beyond the destruction of
Jerusalem. . . . The existing generation was to live to see the beginning
of the end, and did live to see it."
CHAP. XL.-XLVIir. 411
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day" (cf. Ps. xc. 4)* The day on which the Son of
man comes in His glory commences with the appearing of the
Lord to the judgment upon the hardened Israel at the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem by the Komans ; continues till His appearing
to the last judgment, which is still future and will be visible to
all nations; and closes with the day of God, on which the
heavens will be dissolved with fire, and the elements will melt
with heat, and the new heaven and new earth will be created,
for which we wait according to His promise (2 Pet. iii. 12, 13).
To show how incorrect is the popular idea of the resurrection
of the dead, we may adduce not only the fact of the resurrec-
tion of many saints immediately after the resurrection of Christ
(Matt, xxvii. 52, 53), but also the solemn declaration of the
Lord : " Verily, verily, I say unto you. The hour cometh, and
now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God,
and they that hear shall live," — the hour " in the which all
that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth ; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life,
etc." (John v. 25, 28) ; and again the repeated word of Christ,
that whosoever believeth on Him hath everlasting life, and
cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto
life (John v. 24, vi, 40, 47, iii. 16, 18, 36) ; and lastly, what
was seen by the sacred seer on the opening of the fifth seal
(Eev. vi. 9-11), namely, that white rohes were given to the
souls that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony
which they held, and that were crying for the avenging of
their blood, inasmuch as the putting on of the white robe
involves or presupposes the clothing of the soul with the new
body, so that this vision teaches that the deceased martyrs are
translated into the state of those who have risen from the dead
before the judgment upon Babylon. The word "^jrvval, which
is used to designate them, does not prove that disembodied
souls are intended (compare, as evidence to the contrary, the
oKTw y^v^at, of 1 Pet. iii. 20).
412 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
But as Rev. xx. 1-10 furnishes no information concerning
the time of the first resurrection, so also this passage does not
teach that they who are exalted to reign with Christ by the
first resurrection will live and reign with Christ in the earthly
Jerusalem, whether it be glorified or not. The place where the
thrones stand, upon which they are seated, is not mentioned
either in vers. 4-6 or vers. 1-3. The opinion that this will be
in Jerusalem merely rests upon the twofold assumption, for
which no evidence can be adduced, viz. (1) that, according to
the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament, Jerusalem or
the holy land is the site for the appearance of the Lord to the
judgment upon the world of nations (Hofmann, pp. 637, 638) ;
and (2) that the beloved city which the heathen, under Gog
and Magog, will besiege, according to Eev. xx. 8, 9, is the
earthly Jerusalem, from which it is still further inferred, that
the saints besieged in the beloved city cannot he any others
than those placed upon thrones through the first resurrection.
But the inconceivable nature, not to say the absurdity, of such
an assumption as that of a war between earthly men and those
who have been raised from the dead and are glorified with
spiritual bodies, precludes the identification, which is not ex-
pressed in the text, of the saints in Jerusalem with those sitting
upon thrones and reigning with Christ, who have obtained
eternal life through the resurrection. And as they are reigning
with Christ, the Son of God, who has returned to the glory of
His heavenly Father, would also be besieged along with them
by the hosts of Gog and Magog. But where do the Scriptures
teach anything of the kind ? The fact that, according to the
prophecy of the Old Testament, the Lord comes from Zion to
judge the nations furnishes no proof of this, inasmuch as this
Zion of the prophets is not the earthly and material, but the
heavenly Jerusalem. The angels who come at the ascension of
Christ to comfort His disciples with regard to the departure of
their Master to the Father, merely say : " This Jesus, who has
gone up from you to heaven, will so come in like manner as ye
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII.
413
have seen Him go to heaven" (A.cts i. 11); but they do not
say at what place He will come again. And though the Apostle
Paul says in 1 Thess. iv. 16, "the Lord will descend from
heaven," he also says, they that are living then will be caught
up together with those that have risen in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air, and so be ever with the Lord. And as here
the being caught up in the clouds into the air is not to be
understood literally, but simply expresses the thought that those
who are glorified will hasten with those who have risen from
the dead to meet the Lord, to welcome Him and to be united
with Him, and does not assume a permanent abiding in the air ;
so the expression, " descend from heaven," does not involve a
coming to Jerusalem and remaining upon earth. The words
are meant to be understood spiritually, like the rending of the
heaven and coming down in Isa. Ixiv. 1. Paul therefore uses
the words aTroKaXwi^i? air' ovpavov, revelation from heaven, in
2 Thess. i. 7, with reference to the same event. The Lord has
already descended from heaven to judgment upon the ancient
Jerusalem, to take vengeance with flaming fire upon those who
would not know God and obey the gospel (2 Thess. i. 8). Every
manifestation of God which produces an actual effect upon the
earth is a coming down from heaven, which does not involve a
local abiding of the Lord upon the earth. As the coming of
Christ to the judgment upon Jerusalem does not affect His
sitting at the right hand of the Father, so we must not picture
to ourselves the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in
the Lord, which commences with this coming, in any other way
than that 'those who rise are received into heaven, and, as the
church of the first-born, who are written in heaven, Le. who
have become citizens of heaven (Heb. xii. 23), sit on seats
around the throne of God and reign with Christ. — Even the
first resurrection is not to be thought of as an act occurring
once and ending there ; but as the coming of the Lord, which
■commenced with the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem,
is continued in the long series of judgments through which one
414 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
hostile power after another is overtiirown, until the destruction
of the last enemy, so may we also assume, in analogy with this,
that the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Christ,
commencing with that parusia, is continued through the course
of centuries; so that they who die in living faith in their
Saviour are raised from the dead at the hour appointed by God
according to His wisdom, and the souls received into heaven at
death, together with those sown as seed-corn in the earth and
ripened from corruption to incorruptibility, will be clothed with
spiritual bodies, to reign with Christ. The thousand years are
not to be reckoned chronologically, but commence with the
coming of Christ to the judgment upon Jerusalem, and extend
to the final casting of the beast and the false prophet into the
lake of fire, perhaps still further. When they will end we
cannot tell ; for it is not for us to know the times or the seasons,
which the Father hath reserved in His own power (Acts i. 7).
The chaining and imprisonment of Satan in the abyss during
the thousand years can also be brought into harmony with this
view of the niillenninm, provided that the words are not taken
in a grossly materialistic sense, and we bear in mind that
nearly all the pictures of the Apocalypse are of a very drastic
character. The key to the interpretation of Eev. xx. 1-3 and
7-10 is to be found in the words of Christ in John xii. 31,
when just before His passion He is about to bring His addresses
to the people to a close, for the purpose of completing the
work of the world's redemption by His death and resurrection.
When the Lord says, just at this moment, " now is the judg-
ment passing over the world ; now will the prince of this world
be cast out," namely, out of the sphere of his dominion, He
designates the completion of the work of redemption by His
death as a judgment upon the world, through which the rule of
Satan in the world is brought to nought, or the kingdom of the
devil destroyed. This casting out of the prince of this world,
which is accomplished in the establishment and spread of the
kingdom of Christ on earth, is shown to the sacred seer in
CHAP. XL.-SLVIII. 415
Patmos in the visions of the conflict of Michael with the dragon,
which ends in the casting out of Satan into the earth (Rev.
xii. 7 sqq.), and of the chaining and imprisonment of Satan in
the abyss for a thousand years (Eev. xx. 1 sqq.). The conflict
of Michael with the dragon, which is called the Devil and
Satanas, commences when the dragon begins to persecute the
woman clothed with the sun after the birth of her child, and
its being caught up into heaven, i.e. after the work of Christ
on earth has terminated with His ascension to heaven. John
receives an explanation of the way in which the victory of
Michael, through which Satan is cast out of heaven upon the
earth, is to be interpreted, from the voice, which says in heaven,
" Now is come the salvation, and the strength, and the kingdom
of our God, and the power of His Christ ; for the accuser of
our brethren is cast down, who accused us day and night before
God" (ver. 10). With the casting of Satan out of heaven, the
kingdom of God and the power of His anointed are estab-
lished, and Satan is thereby deprived of the power to rule any
longer as the prince of the world. It is true that when he sees
himself cast from heaven to earth, i.e. hurled from his throne,
he persecutes the woman ; but the woman receives eagles' wines,
so that she flies ipto the' wilderness to the place prepared for her
by God, and is there nourished for three times and a half,
away from the face of the serpent (Rev. xii. 8, 13, 14). After
the casting out of Satan from heaven, there follow the chaining
and shutting up in the abyss, or in hell; so that during this
time he is no more able to seduce the heathen to make war
upon the camp of the saints (Rev. xx. 1-3 and 8). All in-
fluence upon earth is not thereby taken from him ; he is simply
deprived of the power to rule on the earth as apxo>v among the
heathen, and to restore the i^ovcrla wrested from him.^ We
1 Hofmann {Schriftheweis, II. 2, p. 722) understands the binding of Satan
in a similar manner, and writes as follows on the subject : " That which is
rendered impossible to Satan, through his being bound and imprisoned in
the nether world, and therefore through his exclusion from the upper
416 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
may therefore say that the binding of Satan began with the
fall of heathenism as the religion of the world, through the
elevation of Christianity to be the state-religion of the Roman
empire, and that it will last so long as Christianity continues to
be the state-religion of the kingdoms which rule the world.
It is impossible, therefore, to prove from Rev. xx. that there
will be a kingdom of glory in the earthly Jerusalem before the
last judgment ; and the New Testament generally neither
teaches the return of the people of Israel to Palestine on their
conversion to Christ, — which will take place according to Rom.
XI 25 sqq., — nor the rebuilding of the temple and restoration of
Levitical sacrifices. But if this be the case, then Ezekiel's
vision of the new temple and sacrificial worship, and the new
division of the land of Canaan, cannot be understood literally,
but only in a symbolico-typical sense. The following question,
therefore, is the only one that remains to be answered : —
III. How are we to understand the vision of the new kingdom of
God in Ezek. xl.-xlviii. ? — In other words, What opinion are
we to form concerning the fulfilment of this prophetic picture?
The first reply to be given to this is, that this vision does not
depict the coming into existence, or the successive stages in the
rise and development, of the new kingdom of God. For
Ezekiel sees the temple as a finished building, the component
parts of which are so measured before his eyes that he is led
about within the building. He sees the glory of Jehovah enter
into the temple, and hears the voice of the Lord, who declares
world, where the history of mankind is proceeding, is siv^vly that kind of
activity which exerts a determining influence upon the course of history."
And Flacius, in his Ghssa to the New Testament, gives this explanation :
" But Satan is not then so bound or shut up in hell that he cannot do
anything, or cause any injury, more especially disobedience in his children ;
but simply that he cannot act any more either so powerfully or with such
success as before." He also reckons the thousand years " from the resur-
rection and ascension of the Lord, when Christ began in the most powerful
manner to triumph over devils and ungodly men throughout the world "
etc.
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 417
this house to be the seat of His throne in the midst of His
people; and commands the prophet to make known to the
people the form of the house, and its arrangement and ordi-
nances, that they may consider the building, and be ashamed
of their evil deeds (eh. xHii. 4—12). The new order of worship
also (eh. xliii. 13-xIvi. 15) does not refer to the building of the
temple, but to the service which Israel is to render to God, who
is enthroned in this temple. Only the directions concerning
the boundaries and the division of the land presuppose that
Israel has still to take possession of Canaan, though it has
already been brought back out of the heathen lands, and is
about to divide it by lot and take possession of it as its own
inheritance, to dwell there, and to sustain and delight itself
with the fulness of its blessings. It follows from this that the
prophetic picture does not furnish a typical exhibition of the
church of Christ in its gradual development, but sets forth the
kingdom of God established by Christ in its perfect form, and
is partly to be regarded as the Old Testament outline of the
New Testament picture of the heavenly Jerusalem in Kev. xxi.
and xxii. For the river of the water of life is common to both
visions. According to Ezekiel, it springs from the threshold of
the temple, in which the Lord has ascended His throne, flows
through the land to the Arabah, and pours into the Dead Sea,
to make the water thereof sound ; and according to Eev. xxii.
1 sqq., it proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and
flows through the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem.
According to Ezek. xlvii. 7, 12, as well as Kev. xxii. 2, there
are trees growing upon its banks which bear edible fruits every
month, that is to say, twelve times a year, and the leaves of
which serve for the healing of the nations. But Ezekiel's
picture of the new kingdom of God comes short of the ])icture
of the New Jerusalem in this respect, that in Ezekiel the city
and temple are separated, although the temple stands upon a
high mountain in the centre of the holy terumah in the midst
of the land of Canaan, and the city of Jerusalem reaches to the.
EZEK. II. 2d
418 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
holy termuah with the northern side of its territory ; whereas
the new heavenly Jerusalem has no temple, and, in its perfect
cubic form of equal length, breadth, and height, has itself
become the holy of holies, in which there stands the throne of
God and of the Lamb (Eev. xxi. 16, xxii. 4). Ezekiel could
not rise to such an eminence of vision as this. The kingdom
of God seen by him has a preponderatingly Old Testament
stamp, and is a perfect Israelitish Canaan, answering to the
idea of the Old Covenant, in the midst of which Jehovah
dwells in His temple, and the water of life flows down from
His throne and pours over all the land, to give prosperity to
His people. The temple of Ezekiel is simply a new Solomon's
temple, built in perfect accordance with the holiness of the
house of God, in the courts of which Israel appears before
Jehovah to offer burnt-offerings and slain-offerings, and to
worship ; and although the city of Jerusalem does indeed form
a perfect square, with three gates on every side bearing the
names of the twelve tribes of Israel, like the gates of the
heavenly Jerusalem, it has not yet the form of a cube as the
stamp of the holy of holies, in which Jehovah the almighty God
is enthroned, though its name is, " henceforth Jehovah thither."
Still less does the attack of Gog with his peoples, gathered
together from the ends of the earth, apply to the heavenly
Jerusalem. It is true that, according to the formal arrange-
ment of our prophet's book, it stands before the vision of the
new kingdom of God ; but chronologically its proper place is
within it, and it does not even fall at the commencement of it,
but at the end of the years, after Israel has been gathered out
of the nations and brought back into its own land, and has
dwelt there for a long time in security (ch. xxxviii. 8, 16).
This attack on the part of the heathen nations is only conceiv-
able as directed against the people of God still dwelling in the
earthly Canaan.
How then are we to remove the discrepancy, that on the one
hand the river of the water of life proceeding from the temple
CHAP. XL-XLVm.
419
indicates a glorification of Canaan, and on the other hand the
land and people appear to be still unglorified, and the latter are
living in circumstances which conform to the earlier condition of
Israel? Does not this picture suggest a state of earthly glory
on the part of the nation of Israel in its own land, which has
passed through a paradisaical transformation before the new
creation of the heaven and the earth ? Isaiah also predicts
a new time, in which the patriarchal length of life of the
primeval era shall return, when death shall no more sweep men
prematurely away, and not only shall war cease among men,
but mutual destruction in the animal world shall also come to
an end (Isa. Ixv. 19-23 compared with ch. xi. 6-9). When
shall this take place ? Delitzsch, who asks this question (Isa.
vol. II. p. 492, transl.), gives the following reply : " Certainly
not in the blessed life beyond the grave, to which it would be
both impossible and absurd to refer these promises, since they
presuppose a continued mixture of sinners with the righteous,
and merely a limitation of the power of death, not its destruc-
tion." From this he then draws the conclusion that the
description is only applicable to the state of the millennium.
But the creation of a new heaven and a new earth precedes
this description (ch. Ixv. 17, 18). Does not this point to the
heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth? To this Delitzsch
replies that " the Old Testament prophet was not yet able to
distinguish from one another the things which the author of
the Apocalypse separates into distinct periods. From the Old
Testament point of view generally, iiothing was known of a
state of blessedness beyond the grave. — ^In the Old Testament
prophecy, the idea of the new cosmos is blended with the mil-
lennium. It is only in the New Testament that the new
creation intervenes as a party wall between this life and the
life beyond ; whereas the Old Testament prophecy brings the
new creation itself into the present life, and knows nothing of
any Jerusalem of the blessed life to come, as distinct from the
new Jerusalem of the millenniutn." But even if there were a
420 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
better foundation for the chiliastic idea of the millennium
(Rev. XX.) than there is according to our discussion of the
question above, the passage Just quoted would not suffice to
remove the difficulty before us. For if Isaiah is describing the
Jerusalem of the millennium in ch. Ixv. 19—23, he has not
merely brought the new creation of heaven and earth into the
present life, but he has also transferred the so-called millennium
to the new earth, i.e. to the other side of the new creation of
heaven and earth. Delitzsch himself acknowledges this on
page 517 (transl.), where he observes in his commentary on Isa.
Ixvi. 22-24 that "the object of the prophecy" (namely, that
from new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath,
all flesh will come to worship before Jehovah, and they will go
out to look at the corpses of the men that have rebelled against
Him, whose worm will not die, nor their fire be quenched) " is
no other than the new Jerusalem of the world to come, and the
eternal torment of the damned." Isaiah " is speaking of tlie
other side, but he speaks of it as on this side." But if Isaiah is
speaking of the other side as on this side in ch. Ixvi., he has
done the same in ch. Ixv. 19-23 ; and the Jerusalem depicted in
ch. Ixv. cannot be the Jerusalem of the millennium on this side,
but can only be the New Jerusalem of the other side coming
down from heaven, as the description is the same in both chap-
ters, and therefore must refer to one and the same object. The
description in Isa. Ixv., like that in ch. Ixvi., can be perfectly
comprehended from the fact that the prophet is speaking of
that which is on the other side as on this side, without there
being any necessity for the hypothesis of a thousand years'
earthly kingdom of glory. It is quite correct that the Old
Testament knows nothing whatever of a blessed state beyond
the grave, or rather merely teaches nothing with regard to it,
and that the Old Testament prophecy transfers the state beyond
to this side, in other words, depicts the eternal life after the last
judgment in colours taken from the happiness of the Israelitish
life in Canaan. And this is also correct, " that the Old Testa-
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 421
ment depicts both this life and the life to come as an endless
extension of this life ; whilst the New Testament depicts it as a
continuous line in two halves, the last point in this present
finite state being the first point of the infinite state beyond :
tiiat the Old Testament preserves the continuity of this life and
the life to come, by transferring the outer side, the form, the
' appearance of this life, to the life to come ; the New Testament
by making the inner side, the nature, the reality of the life to
come, the BwdiieK ^eXXovTos alS)vo<;, immanent in this life."
But it is only to the doctrinal writings of the New Testament
that this absolutely applies. Of the prophetical pictures of the
New Testament, on the other hand, and especially the Apo-
calypse, it can only be affirmed with considerable limitations.
Not only is the New Jerusalem of Isaiah, which has a new
heaven above it and a new earth beneath, simply the old earthly
Jerusalem, which has attained to the highest glory and happi-
ness; but in the Apocalypse also, the Jerusalem which has
come down from heaven is an earthly city with great walls of
jasper and pure gold, founded upon twelve precious stones, with
twelve gates consisting of pearls, that are not shut by day, in
order that the kings of the earth may bring their glory into the
city, into which nothing common and no abomination enter.
The whole picture rests upon those of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and
merely rises above these Old Testament types by the fact that
the most costly minerals of the earth are selected, to indicate
the exceeding glory of the heavenly nature of this city of God.
What, then, is the heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth ? Is it
actually a city of the new world, or the capital of the kingdom
of heaven ? Is it not rather a picture of the many mansions in
the Father's house in heaven, which Jesus entered at His
ascension to heaven, to prepare a place for us (John xiv. 2) ?
Is it not a picture of the heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. iv. 18),
into which all the blessed in that world enter whose names are
written in the book of life ? And its brilliant glory, is it not a
picture of the unspeakable glory of the eternal life, which no
422 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
eye has seen, no ear has heard, and which has not entered into
the heart of any man (1 Cor. ii. 9) ?
And if the state beyond the grave is transferred to this side,
i.e. depicted in colours and imagery drawn from this side, not
only in the Old Testament prophecy, bnt in that of the New
Testament also, we must not seek the reason for this prophetic
mode of describing the circumstances of the everlasting life, or
the world to come, in the fact that the Old Testament knows
nothing of a blessed state beyond the grave, is ignorant of a
heaven with men that are saved. The reason is rather to be
found in the fact, that heavenly things and circumstances lie
beyond our idea and comprehension ; so that we can only repre-
sent to ourselves the kingdom of God after the analogy of
earthly circumstances and conditions, just as we are unable to
form any other conception of eternal blessedness than as a life
without end in heavenly glory and joy, set free from all the
imperfections and evils of this earthly world. So long as we
are walking here below by faith and not by sight, we must be
content with those pictures of the future blessings of eternal
life with the Lord in His heavenly kingdom which the Scrip-
tures have borrowed from the divinely ordered form of the
Israelitish theocracy, presenting Jerusalem with its temple, and
Canaan the abode of the covenant people of the Old Testament
as types of the kingdom of heaven, and picturing the glory of
the world to come as a city of God coming down from heaven
upon the new earth, built of gold, precious stones, and pearls,
and illumined with the light of the glory of the Lord. — To
this there must no doubt be added, in the case of the Old
Testament prophets, the fact that the division of the king-
dom of the Messiah into a period of development on this side,
and one of full completion on the other, had not yet been
so clearly revealed to them as it has been to us by Christ in
the New Testament ; so that Isaiah is the only prophet who
prophesies of the destruction of the present world and the crea-
tion of a new heaven and new earth. If we leave out of
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII.
423
sight this cuhninating point of the Old Testament prophecy,
all the prophets depict the glorification and completion of the
kingdom of God established in Israel by the Messiah, on the one
hand, as a continuous extension of His dominion on Zion from
Jerusalem outwards over all the earth, through the execution
of the judgment upon the heathen nations of the world ; and,
on the other hand, as a bursting of the land of Canaan into
miraculous fruitfulness for the increase of His people's pro-
sperity, and as a glorification of Jerusalem, to which all nations
will go on pilgrimage to the house of the Lord on Zion, to
worship the Lord and present their treasures to Him as offer-
ings. Thus also in Ezekiel the bringing back of the people of
Israel, who have been scattered by the Lord among the heathen
on account of their apostasy, to the promised land, the restora-
tion of Jerusalem and the temple, which have been destroyed,
and the future blessing of Israel with the most abundant sup-
ply of earthly good from the land which has been glorified into
paradisaical fruitfulness, form a continuity, in which the small
beginnings of the return of the people from Babylon and the
deliverance and blessing which are still in the future, lie folded
in one another, and the present state and that beyond are
blended together. And accordingly he depicts the glory and
completion of the restored and renovated kingdom of God under
the figure of a new division of Canaan among the twelve tribes
of all Israel, united under the sceptre of the second David for
ever, and forming one single nation, by which all the incon-
gruities of the former times are removed, and also of a new
sanctuary built upon a very high mountain in the centre of
Canaan, in which the people walking in the commandments
and rights of their God offer sacrifice, and come to worship
before the Lord in His courts on the Sabbaths, new moons, and
yearly feasts. This blessedness of Israel also is not permanently
disturbed through the invasion of the restored land by Goc
and his hordes, but rather perfected and everlastingly estab-
lished by the fact that the Lord God destroys this last enemy,
424 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIF.L.
and causes him to perish by self-immolation. But however
strongly the Old Testament drapery of the Messianic prophecy
stands out even in Ezekiel, there are traits to. be met with even
in this form, by which we may recognise the fact that the Israel-
itish theocratical form simply constitutes the- clothing in which
the New Testament constitution of the kingdom of God is
veiled.' Among these traits we reckon not only the description
given in ch. xl.-xlviii., which can only be interpreted in a typical
sense, but also the vision of the raising to life of the dry bones
in ch. xxxvii. 1-14, the ultimate fulfilment of which will not
take place till the general resurrection, and more especially
the prophecy of the restoration not only of Jerusalem, but
also of Samaria and Sodom, to their original condition (ch. xvi.
53 sqq.), which, as we have already shown, will not be perfectly
fulfilled till the •jrakijyevecria, i.e. the general renovation of
the world after the last judgment. From this last-named
1 Of all such pictures it may certainly be said that we " cannot see how
an Old Testament prophet, when speaking of Canaan, Jerusalem, Zion,
and their future glorification, can have thought of anything else than the
earthly sites of the Old Testament kingdom of God " (Volck) ; but this
objection proves nothing against their typical explanation, as we know that
the prophets of the Old Testament, who prophesied of the grace that was
to come to us, inquired and searched diligently what, and what manner of
time, the Spirit of Christ that was in them did signify (1 Pet. i. 10, 11).
Even, therefore, if the prophets in their uninspired meditation upon that
Avhich they had prophesied, when moved by the Holy Ghost^ did not discern
the typical meaning of their own utterances, we, who are living in the
times of the fulfilment, and are acquainted not only with the commence-
ment of the fulfilment in the coming of our Lord, in His life, sufferings,
and death, and His resurrection and ascension to heaven, as well as in His
utterances concerning His second coming, but also with a lonw course of
fulfilment in the extension for eighteen hundred years of the kingdom of
heaven established by Him on earth, have not so much to inquire what
the Old Testament prophets thought in their searching into the prophecies
which they were inspired to utter by the Spirit of Christ, even if it were
possible to discover what their thoughts really were, but rather, in the light
of the fulfilment that has already taken place, to inquire what the Spirit of
Christ, which enabled the prophets to see and to predict the coming of His
kingdom in pictures drawn from the Old Testament kingdom of God,
has foretold and revealed to us through the medium of these figures.
CHAP. XL.-XLVin. 425
prophecy, to which tlie healing of the watere of the Dead Sea
in ch. xlvii. 9 sqq. supplies a parallel, pointing as it does to
the renewal of the .earth after the destruction of the present
world, it clearly follows that the tribes of Israel which receive
Canaan for a perpetual possession are not the Jewish people
converted to Christ, but the Israel of God, i.e. the people of
God of the new covenant gathered from among both Jews and
Gentiles ; and tliat Canaan, in which they are to dwell, is not
the earthly Canaan or Palestine between the Jordan and the
Mediterranean Sea, but the New Testament Canaan, i.e. the
territory of the kingdom of God, whose boundaries reach from
sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. And
the temple upon a very high mountain in the midst of this
Canaan, in which the Lord is enthroned, and causes the river
of the water of life to flow down from His throne over His
kingdom, so that the earth produces the tree of life with leaves
as medicine for men, and the Dead Sea is filled with fishes
and living creatures, is a figurative representation and type
of the gracious presence of the Lord in His church, which is
realized in the present period of the earthly development of
the kingdom of heaven in the form of the Christian church
in a spiritual and invisible manner in the indwelling of the
Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of
believers, and in a spiritual and invisible operation in the
church, but which will eventually manifest itself when our
Lord shall appear in the glory of the Father, to translate His
church into the kingdom of glory, in such a manner that we
sliall see the almighty God and the Lamb with the eyes of our
glorified body, and worship before His throne.
This worship is described in our vision (ch. xliii. '13-xlvi. 24)
as the offering of sacrifice according to the Israeliiish form of
divine worship under the Old Testament; and in accordance
with the mode peculiar to Ezekiel of carrying out all the
pictures in detail, the leading instructions concerning the Levi-
tical sacrifices are repeated and modified in harmony with the
426 THE rROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
new circumstances. As the Mosaic worship after the building
of the tabernacle commenced with the consecration of the altar,
so Ezekiel's description of the new worship commences witii
the consecration of the altar of burnt-offering, and then spreads
over the entering into and exit from the temple, the things
requisite for the service at the altar, the duties and rights of
the worshippers at the altar, and the quantity and quality of
the sacrifices to be offered on the Sabbaths, new moons, and
yearly feasts, as well as every day. From a comparison of the
new sacrificial thoxah with that of Moses in our exposition of
tliese chapters, we have observed various distinctions which
essentially modified the character of the whole service, viz. a
thorough alteration in the order and celebration of the feasts,
and a complete change in the proportion between the material
of the meat-offering and the animal sacrifices. So far as the
first distinction is concerned, the daily sacrifice is reduced to a
morning burnt- and meat-offering, and the evening sacrifice of
the Mosaic law is abolished; on the other hand, the Sabbath
offering is more than tripled in quantity ; again, in the case of
the new-moon offerings, the sin-offering is omitted and the
burnt-offering diminished; in the yearly feasts, the offerings
prescribed for the seven days of the feast of unleavened bread
and of the feast of tabernacles are equalized in quantity and
quality, and the daily burnt- and meat-offerings of the feast of
unleavened bread are considerably increased ; on the other
hand, the daily sacrifices of the feast of tabernacles are dimi-
nished in proportion to those proscribed by the Mosaic law.
Moreover, the feast of weeks, or harvest-feast, and in the
seventh month the day of trumpets and the feast of atonement,
with its great atoning sacrifices, are dropt. In the place of these,
copious sin-offerings are appointed for the first, seventh, and
fourteenth days of the first month. To do justice to the meaninn-
of these changes, we must keep in mind the idea of the Mosaic
cycle of feasts. (For this, see my Bibl. Archaol. I. § 76 sqq.)
The ceremonial worship prescribed by the Mosaic law, in
CHAP. XL.-XLVI1I. 427
addition to the daily sacrifice, consisted of a cycle of feast days
and festal seasons regulated according to the number seven,
which had its root in the Sabbath, and was organized in
accordance with the division of time, based upon the creation,
into weeks, months, and years. As the Lord God created tlie
world in six days, and ended the creation on the seventh day
by blessing and sanctifying that day through resting from His
works, so also were His people to sanctify every seventh day of
the week to Him by resting from all work, and by a special
burnt- and meat-offering. And, like the seventh day of the
week, so also was the seventh month of the year to be sanctified
by the keeping of the new moon with sabbatical rest and special
sacrifices, and every seventh year to be a sabbatical year. Into
this cycle of holy days, arranged according to the number
seven, the yearly feasts consecrated to the remembrance of the
mighty acts of the Lord for the establishment, preservation,
and blessing of His people, were so dovetailed that the number
of these yearly feasts amounted to seven, — the Passover, feast
of unleavened bread, feast of weeks, day of trumpets, day of
atonement, feast of tabernacles, and conclusion of this feast, —
of which the feasts of unleavened bread and tabernacles were
kept for seven days each. These seven feasts formed two
festal circles, the first of which with three feasts referred to
the raising of Israel into the people of God and to its earthly
subsistence ; whilst the second, which fell in the seventh month,
and was introduced by the day of trumpets, had for its object
the preservation of Israel in a state of grace, and its happiness
in the full enjoyment of the blessings of salvation, and com-
menced with the day of atonement, culminated in the feast of
tabernacles, and ended with the octave of that feast. In the
festal tliorah of Ezekiel, on the other hand, the weekly Sabbatii
did indeed form the foundation of all the festal seasons, and the
keeping of the new moon as the monthly Sabbath corresponds
to this ; but the number of yearly feasts is reduced to the Pass-
over, the seven days' feast of unleavened bread, and the seven
428 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
days' feast of the seventli month (the feast of tabernacles).
The feast of weeks and the presentation of the sheaf of first-
fruits on the second day of the feast of unleavened bread are
omitted; and thus the allusion in these two feasts to the
harvest, or to their earthly maintenance, is abolished. Of still
greater importance are the abolition both of the day of trumpets
and of the day of atonement, and the octave of the feast of
tabernacles, and the institution of three great sin-offerings in
the first month, by which the seventh month is divested of the
sabbatical character which it had in the Mosaic tlwrali. Ac-
cording to the Mosaic order of feasts, Israel was to consecrate
its life to the Lord and to His service, by keeping the feast of
Passover and the seven days' feast of unleavened bread every
year in the month of its deliverance from Egypt as the first
month of the year, in commemoration of this act of divine
mercy, — by appropriating to itself afresh the sparing of its first-
born, and its reception into the covenant with the Lord, in the
sacrifice of the paschal lamb and in the paschal meal, — and by
renewing its transportation from the old condition in Egypt
into the new life of divine grace in the feast of unleavened
bread, — then by its receiving every month absolution for the
sins of weakness committed in the previous month, by means of
a sin-offering presented on the new moon, — and by keeping the
seventh month of the year in a sabbatical manner, by observing
the new moon with sabbatical rest and the tenth day as a day
of atonement, on which it received forgiveness of all the sins
that had remained without expiation during the course of the
year through the blood of the great sin-offering, and the puri-
fication of its sanctuary from all the uncleanness of those who
approached it, so that, on the feast of tabernacles which fol-
lowed, they could not only thank the Lord their God for their
gracious preservation in the way through the wilderness, and
their introduction into the Canaan so abounding in blessings,
but could also taste the happiness of vital fellowship with their
God. The yearly feasts of Israel, which commenced with the
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 429
celebration of the memorial of their reception into the Lord's
covenant of grace, culminated in the two high feasts of the
seventh month, the great day of atonement, and the joyous
feast of tabernacles, to indicate that the people living under the
law needed, in addition to the expiation required from month
to month, another great and comprehensive expiation in the
seventh month of the year, in order to be able to enjoy the
blessing consequent upon its introduction into Canaan, the
blessedness of the sonship of God. According to Ezekiel's
order of feasts and sacrifices, on the other hand, Israel was to
begin every new year of its life with a great sin-offering on the
first, seventh, and fourteenth days of the first month, and
through the blood of these sin-offerings procure for itself for-
giveness of all sins, and the removal of all the uncleanness of
its sanctuary, before it renewed the covenant of grace with the
Lord in the paschal meal, and its' transposition into the new
life of grace in the days of unleavened bread, and throughout
the year consecrated its life to -the Lord in the daily burnt-
offering, through increased Sabbath-offerings and the regular
sacrifices of the new moon; and lastly, through the feast in
commemoration of its entrance into Canaan, in order to live
before Him a blameless, righteous, and happy life. In the
Mosaic order of the feasts and sacrifices the most comprehensive
act of expiation, and the most perfect reconciliation of the
people to God which the old covenant could offer, lay in the
seventh month, the Sabbath month of the year, by which it
was indicated that the Sinaitic covenant led the people toward
reconciliation, and only offered it to them in the middle of the
year ; whereas Ezekiel's new order of worship offers to Israel,
now returning to its God, reconciliation through the forgiveness
of its sins and purification from its nncleannesses at the begin-
ning of the year, so that it can walk before God in righteousness
in the strength of the blood of the atoning sacrifice throughout
the year, and rejoice in the blessings of His grace. Now, inas-
much as the great atoning sacrifice of the day of atonement
430 THE PEOPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
pointed typically to the eternally availing atoning sacrifice
which Christ was to offer in the midst of the years of the world
through His death upon the cross on Golgotha, the trans-
position of the .chief atoning sacrifices to the commencement of
the year by Ezekiel indicates that, for the Israel of the new
covenant, this eternally-availing atoning sacrifice would form
the foundation for all its acts of worship and keeping of feasts,
as well as for the whole course of its life. It is in this that we
find the Messianic feature of Ezekiel's order of sacrifices and
feasts, by which it acquires a character more in accordance
with the New Testament completion of the sacrificial service,
which also presents itself to us in the other and still more
deeply penetrating modifications of the Mosaic thorali of
sacrifice on the part of Ezekiel, both in the fact that the
daily sacrifice is reduced to a morning sacrifice, and also in the
fact that the quantities are tripled in the Sabbath-offerings and
those of the feast of unleavened bread as compared with the
Mosaic institutes, and more especially in the change in the
relative proportion of the quantity of the meat-offering to that
of the burnt-offering. For example, as the burnt-offering
shadows forth the reconciliation and surrender to the Lord
of the person offering the sacrifice, whilst the meat-offering
shadows forth the fruit of this surrender, the sanctification of
the life in good works, the increase in the quantity of the meat-
offering connected with the burnt-offering, indicates that the
people offering these sacrifices will bring forth more of the
fruit of sanctification in good works upon the ground of the
reconciliation which it has received. We do not venture to
carry out to any greater length the interpretation of the differ-
ences between the Mosaic law of sacrifice and that of Ezekiel,
or to point out any Messianic allusions either in the number of
victims prescribed for the several feast days, or in the fact that
a different quantity is prescribed for the meat-offering con-
nected with the daily burnt-offering from that enjoined for the
festal sacrifices, or in any other things of a similar nature.
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 431
These points of detail apparently belong merely to the indi-
vidualizing of the matter. And so also, in the faet that the
provision of the people's sacrifices for the Sabbath, new moon,
and feasts devolves upon the prince, and in the appointment of
the place where the prince is to stand and worship in the
temple, and to hold the sacrificial meal, we are unable to detect
any Messianic elements, for the simple reason that the position
which David and Solomon assumed in relation to the temple
and its ritual furnished Ezekiel with a model for these regula-
tions. And, in a similar manner, the precept concerning the
hereditary property of the prince and its transmission to his
sons (ch. xlvi. 16 sqq.) is to be explained from the fact that the
future David is thought of as a king, like the son of Jesse, who
will be the prince of Israel for ever, not in his own person, but
in his family. The only thing that still appears worthy of
consideration is the circumstance that throughout the whole of
Ezekiel's order of worship no allusion is made to the high
priest, but the same holiness is demanded of all the priests
which was required of the high priest in the Mosaic law. This
points to the fact that the Israel of the future will answer to
its calling to be a holy people of the Lord in a more perfect
manner than in past times. In this respect the new temple
will also differ from the old temple of Solomon. The very
elaborate description of the gates and courts, with their build-
ings, in the new temple has no other object than to show how
the future sanctuary will answer in all its parts to the holiness
of the Lord's house, and will be so arranged that no person
uncircumcised in heart and flesh will be able to enter it. — But
all these things belong to the "shadow of things to come,'
which were to pass away when "the body of Christ" appeared
(Col. ii. 17; Heb. x. 1). When, therefore, M. Baumgarten,
Auberlen, and other millenarians, express the opinion that this
shadpw-work will be I'estored after the eventual conversion of
Israel to Christ, in support of which Baumgarten even appeals
to the authority of the apostle of the Gentiles, they have
432 THE PROPHECIES OF EZEKIEL.
altogether disregarded the warning of this very apostle : " Be-
ware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ" (Col. ii. 8, 16, 20, 21).
Lastly, with regard to the prophecy concerning Gog, the
prince of Magog, and his expedition against the restored land
and people of Israel (Ezek. xxxviii. and xxxix.), and its relation
to the new conformation of the kingdom of God depicted in
eh. xl.-xlviii., the assumption of Hengstenberg (on Rev. xx. 7),
" that Gog and Magog represent generally all the future
enemies of the kingdom of God, and that we have here em-
braced in one large picture all that has been developing itself
in a long series of events, so that the explanations which take
them as referring to the Syrian kings, the Goths and Vandals,
or the Turks, are all alike true, and only false in their exclu-
siveness," — is not in harmony with the contents of this prophecy,
and cannot be reconciled with the position which it occupies in
Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse. For the prophecy concerning
Gog, though it is indeed essentially different from those which
concern themselves with the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians,
and other smaller or larger nations of the world, has nothing
" Utopian " about it, which indicates " a thoroughly ideal and
comprehensive character." Even if the name Gog be formed
by Ezekiel in the freest manner from Magog, and however
remote the peoples led by Gog from the ends of the earth to
make war upon Israel, when restored and living in the deepest
peace, may be ; yet Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Pharaz, Cush, and
Phut are not Utopian nations, but the names of historical tribes
of whose existence there is no doubt, although their settlements
lie outside the known civilised world. Whether there be any
foundation for the old Jewish interpretation of the name Magog
as referring to a great Scythian tribe, or not, we leave undecided ;
but so much is certain, that Magog was a people settled in the
extreme north of the world known to the ancients. Nor will
we attempt to decide whether the invasion of Hither Asia by
CHAP. XL.-XLVIII. 433
the Scythians forms the historical starting-point or connecting
link for Ezekiel's prophecy concerning Gog ; but there can be
no doubt that this prophecy does not refer to an invasion on
the part of the Scythians, but foretells a last great conflict, in
which the heathen dwelling on the borders of the globe will
engage against the kingdom of God, after tlie kingdom of the
world in its organized national forms, as Asshur, Babel, Javan,
shall have been destroyed, and the kingdom of Christ shall have
spread over the whole of the civilised world. Gog of Magog
is the last hostile phase of the world-power opposed to God,
which will wage war on earth against the kingdom of God, and
that the rude force of the uncivilised heathen world, which will
not rise up and attack the church of Christ till after the fall of
the world-power bearing the name of Babylon in the Apocalypse,
i.e. till towards the end of the present course of the world, when
it will attempt to lay it waste and destroy it, but will be itself
annihilated by the Lord by miracles of His almighty power.
In the " conglomerate of nations," which Gog leads against the
people of Israel at the end of the years, there is a combination
of all that is ungodly in the heathen world, and that has be-
come ripe for casting into the great wine-press of the wrath of
God, to be destroyed by the storms of divine judgment (ch.
xxxviii. 21, 22, xxxix. 6). But, as Baumgarten has correctly
observed (in Herzog's Cyclopaedia), " inasmuch as the undis-
guised and final malice of the world of nations against the
kingdom of God is exhibited here, Ezekiel could truly say
that the prophets of the former times had already prophesied
of this enemy (ch. xxxviii. 17), and that the day of vengeance
upon Gog and Magog is that of which Jehovah has already
spoken (ch. xxxix. 8), — that is to say, all that has been stated
concerning hostility on the part of the heathen towards the
kingdom of Jehovah, and the judgment upon this hostility,
finds its ultimate fulfilment in this the last and extremest op-
position of all." This is in harmony not only with the assump-
tion of this prophecy in Eev. xx., but also with the declaration
EZEK. 11. 2 E
434 THE PROPHECIES OF EZliKlEL.
of the Apocalypse, that it is the Satan released from his prison
who leads the heathen to battle against the camp of the saints
and the beloved city, and that fire from God out of heaven
consumes these enemies, and the devil who has seduced them
is cast into the lake of fire to be tormented for ever and ever.
— According to all this, the appearing of Gog is still in the
future, and the day alone can clearly show what form it will
assume.
THE END.
lltJERAT AND fllEB, EDINBURGn,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.
T. and T. Claris Publications.
In Twenty-four Handsome Svo Volumes, Subscription Price £6, 6s. od.,
A COLLECTION OF ALL THE WOKKS OF THE FATHEES OP THE
OHBISTIAN CHUEOH PBIOB TO THE COUNCIL OP NIO^A.
EDITED BY THE
REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D., AND JAMES DONALDSON, LL.D.
MESSRS. CLARK are now happy to announce the completion of this Series.
It has been received with marked approval by all sections of the
Christian Church in this country and in the United States, as supplying what
has long been felt to be a want, and also on account of the impartiality, learn-
ing, and care with which Editors and Translators have executed a very difficult
task.
The Publishers do not bind themselves to continue to supply the Series at the
Subscription price.
The Works are arranged as follow : —
FIRST YEAR.
APOSTOLIC ■ FATHEBS, compriaing
Clement's Epiatlss to the Cormthiana ;
Polycarp to ths Ephaaiana; Martyr-
dom of Folycarp ; Epistle of Bamabaa ;
Epistles oi IgnatiuaCIongarandahorter,
and alao ths Syriac version); Martyr-
dom of Ignatiua ; Epiatleto Diognatua ;
Pastor of Hermaa ; Fapiaa ; Spurioua
Epistlaa of Ignatius. In One Yolume.
JUSTIN MAETYE; ATHENAGOEAS.
In One Volume.
TATIAN; THEOPHILUS; THE CLE-
Ttientine Becognitiona. In One Volume.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDBIA, Volume
First, comprising Exhortation to Hea-
then ; The Instructor; and a portion
of the Miscellaniea.
SECOND YEAR.
HIPPOLTTUS, Volume Firot; Hofutotion
of all Hereaiea, and Fragments from
hia Commentariea.
IEEN.a:US, Volume Pirat.
TEETULLIAN AGAINST MAECION.
OTPBIAN, Volume Firat ; the Epiatlee,
and some of the Treatiaea.
THIRD YEAR.
lEBN^US (completion); HIPPOLTTUS
(oompletion) ; Fragments of Third
Century. In One Volume.
OBIGEN: De Principiia; Lettera; and
portion of Treatiae againat Celsua.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDBIA, Volume
Second ; Completion of Miscellaniee.
TEETULLIAN, Volume Firat; To the
Martyrs; Apology; To the Nationa.
etc.
FOURTH YEAR.
CYPEIAN, Volume Second (completion) ;
Novatian; Minuciua Felix; Pragmenta.
METHODIUS; ALEXANDEE ffF LT-
copolia; Peter of Alexandria; Anato-
liua ; Clement on Virginity ; and
Fragmenta.
TEETULLIAN, Volume Second.
APOCEYPHAL GOSPELS, ACTS, AND
Eevelationa ; comprising all the very
curioua Apooryphal Writings of the
first three Centuriea.
FIFTH YEAR
TEETULLIAN, Volume Third (comple-
tion).
CLEMENTINE HOMILIES; APOSTO-
lical Constitutions. In One Volums.
AENOBIUS.
DIONYSIUS; GBEGOEY THAUMA-
turgua ; Syrian Fragments. In One
Volume.
SIXTH YEAR.
LAOTANTIUS ; together with The Testa-
menta of the Twelve Patriarcha, and
Fragments of the Second and Third
Centuriea. Two Volumes.
OBIGEN, Volume Second (completion).
I2a. to Non-Subscribere.
EABLY LITUEGIES & EBMAINING
Fragmeota. 9s. to Non-Subscribers.
Single Years cannot be had separately, nnlesa to complete sets; but any Volume
may be had separately, price 10s. 6d., — with the exception of Orioen, Vol. II., 12s. ;
and the Early Litukoies, 9s.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In Fifteen Voliimes, demy 8vo, Subscription Price £S, 198.
(Yearly issues of Four Volumes, 21s.)
%\jt mSioxU 0f St augustint,
EDITED BY MARCUS DODS, D.D.
SUBSCRIPTION:
Four Volumes for a Guinea, payable in advance (24s. when not paid
in advance).
FIRST YEAR.
THE ' CITY OF GOD.' Two Volumes.
WEITINGS IN CONNECTION WITH
the Donatist ControverBy. In One
Volume.
THE ANTI-PELAGIAN WOEKS OF
St. Augustine. Vol. I.
SECOND YEAR.
' LETTERS.' Vol. I.
TBEATISES AGAINST FAUSTUS
the Manichrean. One Volume.
THE HAEMONY OF THE EVAN-
geliete, and the Sermon on the Mount.
One Volume.
ON THE TEINITY. One Volume.
THIRD YEAR.
COMMENTAEY ON JOHN. Two
Volumes.
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, En-
chiridion, On Catechizing, and On
Faith and thk Creed. One Volume.
THE ANTI-PELAGIAN WORKS OP
St. Augustine. Vol. II.
FOURTH YEAR.
' LETTERS.' Vol. IL
'CONFESSIONS.' With Copious Notes
by Rev. J. G. Pilkihgton.
ANTI-PELAGIAN WRITINGS.
III.
Vol.
Messrs. Claek believe this will prove not the least valuable of their various
Series. Every care has been taken to secure not only accuracy, but elegance.
It is understood that Subscribers are bound to take at least the issues for
two years. Each volume is sold separately at 10s. 6d.
'For the reproduction of the "City of God" in an admirable English garb we are
greatly indebted to the well-directed enterprise and energy of Messrs. Clark, and to the
accuracy and scholarehip of those who have undertaken the laborious task of translation.'
— Christian Observer.
' The present trauslation reads smoothly and pleasantly, and we have every reason to
he eatiefied both with the erudition and the fair and eound judgmeut displayed by the
translators and the editor.' — John Bull.
SELECTION FROM
ANTE-NICENE LIBRARY
AND
ST. AUGUSTINE'S WORKS.
11HE Ante-Nicene Library being now completed in 24 volumes, and the
St. Augustine Series being also complete (with the exception of the ' Life ')
in 15 volumes, Messrs. Clark will, as in the case of the Foreign Theological
Library, give a Selection of 20 Volumes from both of those series at the Sub-
scription Price of Five Guineas (or a larger number at same proportion).
T. &c T. C Hi J^ I^ IC,
38 GEORGE STREET EDJNBURQH;
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
Adam (J., D.D.) — An Exposition of the Epistle of James. 8vo, 9s.
Ahlfeld (Dr.), etc. — The Voice from the Cross : Sermons on our
Lord's Passion by Eminent Living Preachers of Germany. Cr. 8vo, price 53.
Alexander (Prof. W. Lindsay) — System of Biblical TnEOLOftY,
Two vols. 8vo, 21a.
Alexander (Dr. J. A.) — Commentary on Isaiah. Two vols. 8vo, 17s.
Ante-Nicene Christian Library — A Collection of all the Works
OF THE Fathers of the Christian Church prior to the Council of
NiCiEA. Twenty-four vols. 8vo, Subscription price, £6, 6s.
Augustine's Works— Edited by Marcus, DoDS, D.D. Fifteen vols.
8vo, Subscription price, £3, 193.
Bannerman (Prof.) — The Church of Christ. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Bannerman (Rev. D.D.) — The Doctrine of the Church. 8vo, 12s.
Baumgarten (Professor) — Apostolic History. Three vols. Svo, 27s.
Beck (Dr.)— Outlines of Biblical Psychology. Crown Svo, 4s.
Pastoral Theology in the New Testament. Crown Svo, 6s.
Bengel — Gnomon of the New Testament. With Original Notes,
Explanatory and Illustrative. Five vols. Svo, Subscription price, 31s. 6d. •
Cheaper Edition, the five volumes bound in three, 24a.
Besser's Christ the Life of the World. Price 6s.
Bible-Class Handbooks. Crown Svo.
BiNNlE (Prof.)— The Churcli, Is. 6d.
Brown (Principal) — The Epistle to the Romans, 2s.
Caotdlish (Prof.)— The Christian Sacraments, Is. 6d.
The Work of fhe Holy Spirit, Is. 6d.
Christian Doctrine of God. Is. 6d.
Davidson (Prof.)— The Epistle to the Hebrews, 2s. 6d.
DoDS (Marcds, D.D.) — Post-Exilian Prophets, 2s. Book of Genesis, 23.
Douglas (Principal) — Book of Joshua, Is. 6d. Book of Judges, Is. 3d.
Hamilton (T., D.D.)— Irish Presbyterian Church History, 2s.
Henderson (Archibald, M.A.) — Palestine, with Maps. The maps are hy
Captain Conder, R.E., of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Price 2s. 6d.
KiLPATRiCK (T. B., B.D.)— Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature. Is. 6d.
Lindsay (Prof.) — -St. Mark's Gospel, 2s. 6d.
St. Luke's Gospel, PartL, 2s. ; Part II., Is. 3d.
The Reformation, 2s.
The Acts of the Apostles, Two vols., Is. 6d. each.
Macgregok (Prof.) — The Epistle to the Galatians, Is. 6d.
Macpherson (John, M.A.) — Presbyter! anism. Is. 6d.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 23.
The Sum of Saving Knowledge, Is. 6d.
Murphy (Prof.) — The Books of Chronicles, Is. 6d.
SCRYMGEOUE (Wm.) — Lessons on the Life of Christ, 2s. 6d.
Stalker (James, M.A.) — Life of Christ, Is. 6d. Life of St. Paul, Is. 6d.
Smith (George, LL.D.) — A Short History of Missions, 23. 6d.
Thomson (W.D.,M.A.) — Christian Miracles and Conclusions of Science. 2s.
Walker (Norman L., M.A.) — Scottish Church History, Is. 6d.
Whyte (Alexander, D.D.)— The Shorter Catechism, 2s. 6d.
Bible-Class Primers. Paper covers, 6d. each; free by post, 7d, In
cloth, 8d. each; free by post, 9d.
Ceoskeey (Prof.) — Joshuaand the Oonquest. Given (Prof.) — The Kings of Judah.
Gloag (Paton J., D.D.) — Life of Paul. Iveeach (Jambs, M.A.) — life of Moses.
Paterson (Prof. J. A.) — Period of the Judges.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Bible-Class Primers — continued.
EoBSON (John, D.D.)— Outlines of Protestant Missions.
Salmond (Prof.)— Life of Peter. The Shorter Catechism, 3 Parts. Life of Christ.
Smith (H. W., D.D.)— Outlines of Early Chvireh History.
Thomson (P., M. A.)— Life of David. Walkek (W. , M. A.)— The Kings of Israel.
WiNTERBOTHAM (Eatuer, M.A.) — Life and Reign of Solomon.
WiTHEROAV (Prof.) — The History of the Eeformation.
Blaikie (Prof. W. G-.) — The Pkeacheks of Scotland from the 6th
TO THE 19th Centuet. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Bleek's Introduction to the New Testament. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Bowman (T., M.A.)— Easy and Complete Hebrew Course. 8vo.
Part I., 7s. 6d. ; Part II., 10s. 6d.
Briggs (Prof.) — Biblical Study: Its Principles, Methods, and
History. Second Edition, post 8vo, 7s. 6d,
American Presbyterianism. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Messianic Prophecy. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Brown (David, D.D.) — Christ's Second Coming : WUl it be Pre-
Millennial ? ScTenth Edition, crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Bruce (A. B., D.D.) — The Training of the Twelve ; exidbiting the
Twelve Disciples under Discipline for the Apostleship. 3rd Ed., 8vo, 10s. 6d.
The Humiliation of Christ, in its Physical, Ethical, and
Official Aspects. Second Edition, 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Buchanan (Professor) — The Doctrine of Justification. Svo, 10s. 6d.
On Comfort in Affliction. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d.
On Improvement of Affliction. Crown Svo, 2 s. 6d.
Bungener (Felix) — Eome and the Council in 1 9th Century. Cr. Svo, 5s.
Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion. (Translation. )2 vols. Svo, 1 4s.
Calvini Institutio Christianse Religionis. Curavit A. Tholuck.
Two vols. 8vo, Subscription price, 14s.
Candlish (Prof. J. S., D.D.) — The Kingdom of God, Biblically and
HiSTOEICALLT CONSIDEKED. SvO, lOs, 6d.
Caspari (C. E.) — A Chronological and Geographical Introduc-
tion TO THE Life of Chkist. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Caspers (A) — The Footsteps of Christ. Crown Sv.o, 7s. 6d.
Cassel (Prof.) — Commentary on Esther. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Cave (Prof) — The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice. Svo, 12s.
An Introduction to Theology : Its Principles, its Branches,
its Results, and its Literature. 8vo, 12s.
Ohristlieb (Dr.) — Modern Doubt and Christian Belief. Apologetic
Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
CotteriU — PerEGRINUS Proteus : Clement to the Corinthians, etc. 8vo, 12s.
Modern Criticism : Clement's Epistles to Virgins, etc. Svo, 5s.
Cremer (Professor)— Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testa-
ment Gkeek. Third Edition, with Supplement, demy 4to. 38s. SUPPLE-
MENT, separately, lis.
Crippen (Kev. T. G.)— A Popular Introduction to the History
OF Chkistian Doctbine. 8vo, 9s.
Cunningham (Principal)— Historical Theology. Eeview of the
Principal Doctrinal Discussions since the Apostolic Age. Two vols 8vo 21s
Discussions on Church Principles. Svo 10s 6d "
Curtiss (Dr. S. I.)— The Levitical Priests. Crown Svo 5s
Dabney (R. L., D.D.)— The Sensualistic Philosophy of the
JN INETEBNTH CeNTUKY CONSIDERED. Crown 8vo 6s
Davidson (Professor)— An Introductory Hebrew Grammar With
n 1-4. ^™S'^??si^« Exercises in Reading and Writing. Ninth Edition, Svo, 7s 6d
Delitzsch (Prof )— A System of Biblical Psychology. Svo, 12s. "
Delitzsch(Prof.) — NewCommentaryon Genesis. TvvoVo1s.,8vo. Vol.1.
: OOMMENTAKY ON JoB. TwO Vols. 8vO, 21s. 1""^ i^^ady, 10a. 6d.
Commentary ON Psalms. Three vols. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
On the Proveebs of Solomon. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
On the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Svo, lOs. 6d.
Old Testament History of Redemption. Or. Svo, 4s. 6d.
Commentary on Isaiah. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
On the Epistle to the Hebrews. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Doedes — Manual of New Testament Hermeneutics. Cr. Svo, 3s.
DoUinger (Dr.) — Hippolytus and Callistus ; or, The Eoman Chiirch
in the First Half of the Third Century. 8ro, 7s. 6d.
Domer (Professor) — History of the Development of the Doctrine
OF THE Peeson OF CHRIST. Five vols. Svo, £2, 12s. 6d.
System or Christian Doctrine. Pour vols. Svo, £2, 2s.
System of Christian Ethics. Svo, 14s.
Eadie (Professor) — Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to the
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossiajts. New and Eevised Editions, Edited
by Eev. Wm. Young, M.A. Three vols. Svo, 10s. 6d. each ; or set, 18s. nett.
Ebrard (Dr. J. H. A.)— The Gospel History. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on the Epistles of St. John. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Apologetics. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Elliott — On the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Svo, 6s.
Emesti — Biblical Interpretation of New Testament. Two vo1s.,8s.
Ewald (Heinrich) — Syntax of the Hebrew Language of the Old
Testament. Svo, 8s. 6d.
EeVELATION : ITS NATURE AND RECORD. SvO, lOs. 6d.
Old AND New Testament Theology. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Fairbaim (Principal)^TYPOLOGY of Scripture, viewed in connection
•with the series of Divine Dispensations. Sixth Edition, Two vols. Svo, 21s.
The Revelation of Law in Scripture, Svo, lOs. 6d.
Ezekiel and the Book of his Prophecy. 4th Ed. , Svo, 1 Os. 6d.
Prophecy Viewed in its Distinctive Nature, its Special
Functions, and Proper Interpretations. Second Edition, Svo, 10s. 6d.
— : New Testament Hermeneutical Manual. Svo, 10s. 6d.
The Pastoral Epistles, The Greek Text and Translation.
With Introdnctibn, Expository Notes, and Dissertations. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Pastoral Theology : A Treatise on the Office and Duties of
the Christian Pastor. With a Memoir of the Author. Crown Svo, 63.
Forbes (Prof.) — Symmetrical Structure of Scripture. Svo, Ss. 6d.
: Analytical Commentary on the Romans. Svo, 10s. 6d.
■ Studies in the Book of Psalms. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Frank (Prof. F. H.)— System of Christian Evidence. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Geblardt (H.) — The Doctrine of the Apocalypse, and its Relation
TO THE Doctrine of the Gospel and Epistles of John. Svo, lOs. 6d.
Grerlach — Commentary on the Pentateuch. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Gieseler (Dr. J. C. L.) — Ecclesiastical History. Four vols. Svo, £2, 2s.
Gifford (Canon) — Voices of the Prophets. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Given (Rev. Prof. J. J.) — The Truths of Scripture in connection
with Revelation, IsBPiRATioir, and the Canon. Svo, 6s.
Glasgow (Prof.) — Apocalypse Translated and Expounded.
Svo, lOs. 6d.
Gloag (Paton J., D.D.) — A Critical and Exegetical Commentary
ON THE Acts of the Apostles. Two vols.' Svo, 2I3.
— The Messianic Prophecies. Crown Svo, price 7s. 6d.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Gloag(P.J.,D.D.)— Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. 8vo, 1 28.
Introduction to the Catholic Epistles. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Exegetical Studies. Crown 8vo, 5s.
Godet (Prof.)— Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
. Commentary on St. John's Gospel. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Commentary on Epistle to the Eomans. Two vols. Svo, 21 s.
Commentary on 1st Epistle to Corinthians. 2vo1s. 8vo, 21s.
Lectures in Defence of the Christla.n Faith. Cr. Svo, 6s.
Goebel (Siegfried)— The Parables of Jesus. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Gotthold's Emblems; or, Invisible Things Understood by Things
THAT ARE Madb. Crown Svo, 5s.
Grimm's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, irans-
lated, Revised, and Enlarged by Joseph H. Thateb, D.D. Demy 4to, 36s.
Guyot (Arnold, LL.D.)— Creation ; or. The Biblical Cosmogony m the
Light of Modern Science. With Illustrations. Crown Svo, 5s. 6d.
Hagenbach (Dr. K. R.)— History or Doctrines. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
History of the Reformation. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Hall (Rev. Newman, LL.B.)— The Lord's Prayer. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Hamilton (T., D.D.)— Beyond the Stars; or. Heaven, its Inhabitants,
Occupations, and Life. Crown Svo, 5s.
Harless (Dr. 0. A.)— System of Christian Ethics. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Harris(Rev. S., D.D.)— The Philosophical Basis ofTheism. 8vo,12s.
The Self-Revelation of God. Svo, 12s.
Haupt (Erich) — The First Epistle of St. John. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Havernick (H. A, Ch.) — Introduction to Old Testament. 10s. 6d.
Heard (Rev. J. B., M.A.)— The Tripartite Nature of Man— Spirit,
Soul, and Body. Fifth Edition, crown Svo, 6s.
Old AND New Theology. AConstructiveCritique. Cr. Svo,6s.
Hefele (Bishop)— A History of the Councils of the Church.
Vol. I., to A.D. 325 ; Vol. II., a.d. 326 to 429. Vol. III., a.d. 431 to the
close of the Council of Chalcedon, 451. Svo, 12s. each.
Hengstenberg (Professor) — Commentary on Psalms. 3 vols. Svo, 33s.
Commentary on the Book or Ecclesiastes. Treatises on
the Song of Solomon, Job, and on Isaiah, etc. Svo, 9s.
The Prophecies of Ezekiel Elucidated. Svo, 10s. 6d.
The Genuineness of Daniel, etc. Svo, 12s.
History of the Kingdom of God. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Christology of the Old Testament. Four vols. Svo, £2, 2s.
On the Gospel of St. John. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
Herzog — ENOYCLOPiEDiA OF Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and
Practical Theology. Based ore the JReal-Encykhpadie of Herzog, Plitt.
and Hauch. Edited by Prof. Schaff, D.D. In Three vols., price 24s. each.
. Encyclopedia of Living Divines, etc., of all Dbnominations
IN Etjuope AND America. {Supplementto Herzog' sEncyclopcedia.) Imp. Svo, 8s,
Hutchison (John, D.D.) — Commentary on Thessalonians. Svo, 9s.
Commentary on Philipfians. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Janet (Paul) — Final Causes. By Paul Janet, Member of the In-
stitute. Translated from the French. Second Edition, demy Svo, 12s.
The Theory of Morals. Demy Svo, 10s. 6d.
Johnstone (Prof. R., D.D.)— Commentary on First Peter. Svo,
lOs. 6d.
Jouffroy — Philosophical Essays. Fcap. Svo, 5s.
Kant — The Metaphysic of Ethics. Crown Svo, 6s.
• Philosophy of Law. Trans, liy W. Hastie, B.D. Cr. Svo, 5s.
Olshausen (Dr. H.)— Corinthians. One vol. 8vo, 9s.
Philippians, Titus, AND First Timothy. 'Onevol.Svo, 10s.6d.
Orelli— Old Testament Prophecy regarding the Consummation
'■>3»t OP THE Kingdom OF God. 8vo, 10s. 6d. ...... "r'f ! ftrhri 8
'""^P r- John)— Works, Best and only Complete ■wif'o- -^^ '•'• '
Commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Commentary on Jeremiah. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Commentary on Ezekiel. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
— : — Commentary on Daniel. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
On the Books of the Minor Prophets. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Manual of Historico-Ceitical Introduction to the
■ Canonical Soriptukes of the Old Testament. Two vols. 8vo, 2l8.
Handbook of Biblical Archeology. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Keymer (Eev. N., M. A.)— Notes on Genesis. Crown 8vo, Is. 6d.
Killen (Prof.)— The Old Catholic Church ; or, The History, Doc-
trine, Worship, and Polity of the Christians, traced to a.d. 755. 8yo, 9s.
f The IgnatianEpis'tles Entirely Spurious. Cr. 8vo, 2s. 6d.
Kon^ (Dr. F. E.) — The Religious History of Israel. A Discussion
of the Chief Problems in Old Testament History as opposed to the
Development Theorists. Ciown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Krummacher (Dr. F. W.) — The Suffering Saviour ; or. Meditations
on the Last Days of the Sufferings of Christ. Eighth Edition, crown Svo, 63.
David, the King of Israel: A Portrait drawn from Bible
History and the Book of Psalms. Second Edition, crown Svo, 6s.
Autobiography. Crown Svo, 6s.
Kurtz (Prof.) — Handbook of Church History. Two vols. 8vo, 15s.
— ' History of the Old Covenant. Three vols. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
Ladd (Prof. G. T.) — The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture: A
Critical, Historical, and Dogmatic Inquiry into the Origin and Nature of the
Old and New Testaments. Two vols. Svo, 1600 pp., 24s.
Laidlaw (Prof.) — The Bible Doctrine of Man. Svo, 10s. 6d.
Lange (J. P., D.D.) — The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Edited,
with additional Notes, by Makccts Dods, D.D. Second Edition, in Four
vols. Svo, Subscription price 2Ss.
Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments. Edited
by Philip Sohaff, D.D. Old Testament, 14 vols. ; New Testament, 10
vols. ; Apocrypha, 1 vol. Subscription price, nett, I5a. each.
On St. Matthew and St. Mark. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
On the Gospel of St. Luke. Two vols. Svo, 18s.
On the Gospel of St. John. Two vols. Svo, 21s.
LecHler (Prof. G. V., D.D.) — The Apostolic and Post- Apostolic
Times. TheirDiversity and Unity in Life and Doctrine. 2 vols. cr. Svo, 16s.
Lehmann (Pastor) — Scenes from the Life of Jesus. Cr. Svo, 3s. 6d.
Lewis (Tayler, LL.D.)— The Six Days of Creation. Cr. Svo, 7s. 6d.
Iiisco (F. G.) — Parables of Jesus Explained. Fcap. 8vo, 5s.
Lotze (Hermann) — Microcosmus : An Essay concerning Man and his
relation to the World. Second Edition, two vols. Svo (1450 pages), 36s.
Luthardt, Kahnis, and Bruckner — The Church. Crown Svo, 5s.
Luthardt (Prof. ) — St. John the Author of theFourth Gospel. 7s. 6d.
St. John's Gospel Described and Explained according
TO ITS Peculiar, Character. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
Apologetic Lectures on the Fundamental (Sixth
Edition), Saving (,Fifth Edition), Moral Truths of Christianity ( Third
Edition). Three vols, crown Svo, 6s. each.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
GloaK(P J ,D.D.)-lNTKODUCTION TO THE PAULINE EPISTUES 8vO, 12b.
!_^ Introduction to the Catholic Epistles. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
, . EXEGETICAL Studies. Crown 8vo, 5s. i„ 8^„ oi-
Godet (Prof.)-CoMMENTAEy on St. Luke's Gospel. Two vols. Sjo, 2i
Mair (AT, i;:iJ:p^.T OTS St.. John's Gospel. Tlirse,M%.*'^Cr. Bro, 6s.
Martensen (Bishop)— Cheistluj Dogmatics : A Compendium of the
Doctrines of Christianity. 8to, 10s. 6d. ,r. £!j
Christian Ethics. (General Ethics.) Bvo, 10s. bd.
Christian Ethics. (Individual Ethics.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Christian Ethics. (Social Ethics.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Matheson (Geo., D.D.)— Growth of the Spirit of Christianity, from
the First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era. Two vols. 8to, 21s.
Aids TO THE Study OF German Theology. 3rd Edition, 4s. 6d.
Meyer (Dr.) — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on St.
Matthew's Gospel. Two toIs. 8vo, 21s:
On Mark and Luke. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On St. John's Gospel. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Acts of the Apostles. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On the Epistle to the Romans. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Corinthians. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
On Galatians. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
On Ephesians and Philemon. One vol. 8vo, lOs. 6d.
On Philippians and Colossians. One vol. Bvo, 10s. 6d.
On Thessalonians. {Dt. lAinemann.) One vol. Bvo, 10s. 6d.
The Pastoral Epistles. (Dr. Euther.) Bvo, 10s. 6d.
The Epistle to the Hebrews. (Dr. Lunemann.) Bvo, 10s. 6d.
St. James' and St. John's Epistles. (Euther.) Bvo, 10s. 6d.
Peter and Jude. (Dr. Euther.) One vol. Bvo, 10s. 6d.
Michie (Charles, M.A.)— Bible Words and Phrases. IBmo, Is.
Monrad (Dr. D. G.) — "The World of Prayer. Crown Bvo, 4s. 6d.
Morgan (J., D.D.)— Scripture Testimony to the Holy Spirit. 7s. 6d.
Exposition of the First Epistle of John. Bvo, 7s. 6d.
MtQler (Dr. Julius) — The Christian Doctrine of Sin. An entirely
New Translation from the Fifth German Edition. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Murphy (Professor)— Commentary on the Psalms. Bvo, 12s.
A Critical and Exegetical, Commentary on Exodus. 9s.
NaviUe (Ernest) — The Problem of Evil. Crown Bvo, 4s. 6d.
The Christ. Translated by Rev. T. J. Despr^s. Cr.Bvo,4s.6d.
Modern Physics: Studies Historical and Philosophical.
Translated by Rev. Henkt Downton, M.A. Crown 8vo, 6a.
Nicoll (W. R., M.A)— The Incarnate Saviour: A Life of Jesus
Christ. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Neander (Dr.) — General History of the Christian Religion and
Church. Nine vols. 8vo, £3, 7s. 6d.
Novalis — Hymns and Thoughts on Religion. Crown Bvo, 4s.
Oehler (Prof.) — Theology of the Old Testament. 2 vols. Bvo, 21s.
Oosterzee (Dr. Van) — The Year of Salvation. Words of Life for
Every Day. A Book of Household Devotion. Two vols. 8vo, 6s. each.
Moses : A Biblical Study. Crown Bvo, 6s.
Olshausen (Dr. H.) — Biblical Commentary on the Gospels and
Acts. Fouj vols. 8vo, £2, 2s. Cheaper Edition, four vols, crown 8vo, 24s.
Romans. One vol. Bvo, 10s. 6d.
Olshausen (Dr. H.) — Corinthians. One vol. 8vo, 9s.
Philippians, Titus, AND First Timothy. Onevol.Svo, 10s.6d.
Orelli — Old Testament Prophecy regarding the Consummation
OP THE Kingdom or God. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Owen (Dr. John) — Works. Best and only Complete Edition. Edited
by Eev. Dr. Goold. Twenty-four vols. 8vo, Subscription price, £4, 4s.
The ' Hebrews ' may be had separately, in Seven vela., £2, 2s. nett.
Philippi (P. A. ) — Commentary on thb Epistle to the Eomans. From
the Third Improved Edition, by Eev. Professor Banks. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Piper — Lives of Leaders of Church Univeesal. Two vols. 8vo, 21 s.
Popular Conunentary on the New Testament. Edited by Philip
ScHAFF, D.D. "With Illustrations and Maps. Vol. I. — Thb StnoptjcaIj
Gospels. Vol. II. — St. John's Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles.
Vol. III.— RoMAHs TO Philemon. Vol. IV. — Hebrews to Kbvelation.
In Four vols, imperial 8vo, 12s. 6d. each.
Pressensd (Edward de) — ^The Kedeemer : Discourses. Crown 8vo, 6s.
Punjer (Bemhaxd) — History of the Christian Philosophy of
Religion prom the Reformation to Kant. 8vo, 16s.
Eabiger (Prof.) — Encyclopedia of Theology. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Rainy (Principal) — Delivery and Development of Christian
Doctrine. {i%e Fifth Series of the Cunningliam Lectures.) 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Reusch (Prof.) — Nature and the Bible : Lectures on the Mosaic
History of Creation in Relation to Natural Science. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Reuss (Professor) — History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New
Testament. 640 pp. 8vo, 15s.
Riehm (Dr. E.) — Messianic Prophecy : Its Origin, Historical Charac-
ter, and Relation to New Testament Fulfilment. Crown 8vo, Ss.
Bitter (Carl) — The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the
Sinaitic Peninsula. Four vols. 8vo, 26s.
Robinson (Bev. S., D.D.) — Discourses on Eedemption. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Robinson (Edward, D.D.) — Gejeek and English Lexicon of the
New Testament. 8vo, 9s.
Rothe (Prof) — Sermons for the Christian Year. Cr. 8vo, 4s. 6d.
Saisset — Manual of Modern Pantheism. Two vols. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Sartorius (Dr. E.) — Doctrine of Divine Love. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Schaff (Professor) — History of the Christian Church. (New
Edition, thoroughly Revised and Enlarged. )
Apostolic Christianity, a.d. I-IOO. 2 vols. Ex. 8vo, 2is.
Ante-Nicene Christianity, A. D. 100-325. 2 vols. Ex. 8yo, 2is.
Post-Nicene Christianity, A.D. 325-600. 2 vols. Ex. 8vo, 2la.
Medieval Christianity, A.D. 590-1073. 2 vols. Ex.8vo,2ls.
{Completion o/ this Period, 1073-1517, in preparation).
Modern Christianity, A.D. 1517-1530. 2 vols. Ex. 8vo, 2is.
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The Didachd
and Kindred Documents in the Original. Second Edition, ex. 8vo, 93.
Schmid's Biblical Theology of the New Testament. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Schiirer (Prof.)— History of the New Testament Times. Div. IL
Three vols. 8vo, 31s. 6d.
Scott (Jas., M.A., D.D.) — Principles of New Testament Quotation
Established and Applied to Biblical Criticism. Cr. 8vo, 2ud Edit., 4s,
Shedd— History of Christian Doctrine. ■ Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
Sermons to the Natural Man. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Sermons to the Spiritual Man. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Simon (Rev. Prof. D. W.)— The Bible; An Outgrowth of Theocratic
• Life. Crown -8vo, 4s. 6d.
T. and T. Clark's Publications.
Smeaton (Professor)— The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught
BT Chkist Himself. Second Edition, 8vo, lOs. 6d.
■ On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 8vo, 9s.
Smith (Professor Thos., D.D.)— Medieval Missions. Cr. 8vo, 4s. 6d.
Stalker (Eev. Jas., M.A.)— The Life of Jesus Christ. New Edition,
in larger Type. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Life of St. Paul. Large Type Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Stanton (V. H., M.A.).— The Jewish and The Christian Messiah.
A Study in the Earliest History of Christianity. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Steinmeyer (Dr. F. L.) — The Miracles of Our Lord : Examined in
their relation to Modern Criticism. 8vo, 7s. 6d.
The History of the Passion and Resurrection of our
Lord, considered in the Light of Modern Criticism. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Stevenson (Mrs.) — The Symbolic Parables : The Predictions of the
Apocalypse in relation to the General Truths of Scripture. Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Steward (Rev. G.) — Mediatorial Sovereignty : The Mystery of Christ
and the Revelation of the Old and New Testaments. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
The Argument OF THE Epistle TO the Hebrews. 8vo, 10s.6d.
Stier (Dr. Kudolph) — On the Words of the Lord Jesus. Eight
vols. 8vo, Subscription price of £2, 2s. Separate volumes, price 10s. 6d.
The Words of the Risen Saviour, and Commentary on
THE Epistle of St. James. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
The Words of the Apostles Expounded. 8vo, 10s. 6d.
Tholuck (Prof.) — The Epistle to the Romans. Two vols. fcap. 8vo, 8s.
Light from the Cross. Third Edition, crown 8vo, 5s.
Tophel (Pastor G.) — The Work of the Holy Spirit. Cr. 8vo, 2s. 6d.
TIlilhorn(G.) — Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. Cr. 8vo,6s.
Ullmann (Dr. Carl) — Reformers before the Reformation, princi-
pally in Germany and the Netherlands. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.
The Sinlessness of Jesus : An Evidence for Christianity.
Fourth Edition, crown 8vo, 6s.
Urwick (W., M.A.) — The Servant of Jehovah : A Commentary
upon Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12; with Dissertations upon Isaiah xl.-lxvi. 8vo, 6s.
Vinet (Professor) — Studies on Blaise Pascal. Crown Svo, 5s.
■ Pastoral Theology. Second Edition, post 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Walker (J., D.D.) — Theology and Theologians of Scotland.
New Edition, crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
Watts (Professor) — The Newer Criticism and the Analogy of
THE Faith. Third Edition, crown 8vo, 5s.
The Reign of Causality : A Vindication of the Scientific
Principle of Telic Causal Efficiency. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Weiss (Prof. ) — Biblical Theology ofNew Testament. 2 vols. 8 vo, 2 1 s.
Life of Christ. Three vols. Svo, 31s. 6d.
White (Rev. M.) — Symbolical Numbers of Scripture. Cr. 8vo, 4s.
Williams — Select Vocabulary of Latin Etymology. Fcap. 8vo, is. 6d.'
Winer (Dr. Gr. B.) — A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testa-
ment Gkbek, regarded as the Basis of New Testament Exegesis. Third
Edition, edited by W. F. Moulton, D.D. Ninth English Edition, 8vo, 15s.
TheDoCTRINESANdCoNFESSIONSOFChRISTENDOM. 8vo,10s.6d.
Witherow(Prof . T. ,D.D. ) —The Form of the Christian Temple. 8vo,io/6.
Workman (Prof. G. C.)— The Text of Jeremiah ; or, A Critical Investi-
gation of the Greek and Hebrew with the Variations in the LXX Retrans-
lated into the Original, and Explained. Post 8vo, 9s.
Wright (C. H., D.D.)— Biblical Essays. Crown 8vo, 5s.
Wuttke (Professor) — Christian Ethics. Two vols. 8vo, 12s. 6d.
1
hS
^
1
^
xfifiift
-^^
i^
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11